778 Turn Your Creative Passion into a Thriving Business with Christina Tosi

This is episode number 778 with Christina tozi. Welcome to the school of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former Pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.

And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today.

Now, let the class begin.

Georgia O'Keefe said, whether you succeed or not is irrelevant. There is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing. Welcome to this episode. I'm super pumped. We've got Christina Tosi in the house. If you are a fan of Master Chef, then you're gonna love this episode. I watched an episode of Master Chef and was blown away by this story about Christina Tosi. She is the founder and owner of Milk Bar, which is the sister bakery to the Momofuku restaurant group. And with a number of locations all around North America, it's been blowing up and her story is incredible. In this interview, we talk about how her story became a metaphor for people who are passionate about life and what it takes to get your dream going. Also the power of making mistakes and figuring out answers as you go when you start a business and not just having it all figured out right from the start. How to scale a business and what it takes to go from one store to several around the country, from starting out with minimal funding to raising more money and beyond. Also the mindset of an introverted entrepreneur and how that compares to an extrovert. This is a powerful one. Make sure to share with your friends. Lewishouse.com/778 Make sure to tag Christina Tosi as well on Instagram. Let her know what you enjoyed about this. And I'm telling you guys, you will be addicted to the all the goodies at Milk Bar. So make sure to check out Milk Bar because it is unbelievable what they make.

One of the best parts about my job as a podcast host is getting to know people on a deeper level. And I love discovering the interests my guests have. that they don't always talk about. You know, the world class athlete whose favorite pastime is painting or the billionaire who still plays a weekend garage band. And the truth is everyone has layers and people are rarely as simple as they appear on the surface. For marketers, that complexity can make the job even more challenging. After all, how can you reach your customers if you don't really know them? That's where TransUnion's marketing solutions come in. TransUnion brings clarity to marketing chaos by delivering a 360 degree view of your customer, helping you deepen your insights, accelerate your decision making, and better measure the impact of every marketing dollar. Visit transunion.com/clarity to learn more.

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Welcome back, everyone, in the School of Greatness podcast. Tina, Tosi in the house. Good to see you.

Thank you.

I'm all drugged up on milk bar truffles right now. I'm so excited. And I've been wanting to learn more about you ever since Higgins told me, Matt Higgins told me that I had to have you on. I was next to you in line at the pop gala last year. I didn't say hi to you 'cause you were busy. And I watched the Netflix special.

Oh, the chef's table.

It's unbelievable. First off, how amazing are those specials? They just make you love people and love food. They're incredible.

It's an incredible process because these people learn everything about you and your background, and it's fascinating to me. I mean, they're storytellers, right? They're incredible. They're storytellers, and they do it through video, and they do it through interviews.

The music is just, like, so moving and emotional.

They know how to, like, just, like, tap into you. Like, getting into your brain waves, getting into your heartstrings, and tugging at you.

How long was that process for you?

It took 14 days.

14 days of filming?

Yeah, which on some level, and you have to imagine they probably did months of research in advance because they came in knowing what they wanted. One, committing 14 days of your life to something like that is a commitment.

Huge commitment.

And it's also a leap of faith because you're also like, I mean, you're gonna see, I'm a big believer in like when you commit, you're jumping. You're going all in. There's no like committing a quarter of the way or part of the way or committing here but not committing there. So it's like, great, welcome to my world. What do you want? What do you want access to? What do you need? But I also think committing helps make something like that what it is.

Even better.

Yeah, because if they don't understand you, how are they gonna tell your story best?

Now, did you know it was going to do pretty well based on previous chefs that you had talked to?

Oh, yeah. No, because up until that point, chef's table was about typically fine dining chefs and you're in their beautiful restaurants and you're in their beautiful kitchens.

And you didn't have a restaurant.

We don't have a restaurant. And our kitchens are, you know, our New York City kitchen, for example, is 11,000 square feet of space. And so I'm thinking, like, we don't use tweezers. We mix cookies in mixers that are big enough for you to take a bubble bath in, right? And so when they first even approached us. I was like, I don't, like, I think maybe you read the wrong article, or I think perhaps you have the wrong impression because you're not gonna get the story that you typically tell. One, the spirit of what we do is very, very democratic in the, we make cookies that are accessible in an ideal world to anyone and everyone, right? It's a $2 cookie, it's a $3 cookie. You don't have to make a reservation. It does take a team to put together, but we're doing it in this really big, large, almost Willy Wonka type of factory. And the spirit of these things, it's so different. It's so different. Our stores are open from seven or 8 a.m. until midnight or 1 a.m. or 2 a.m. It's so different. And they said, no, we know exactly what it is that this episode will be. And we're like, we're into taking the risk.

Wow.

We're into taking the chance. And I think that acknowledgement for me was the Great, they're going to stretch. And so committing to this means meeting them at that stretch.

Wow. And it came out when? Mid last year?

Yeah, middle of last year.

And what happened afterwards? Like the next six months?

Well, I had no concept of, it's kind of interesting. You live in your own world, you live in your own head. I do what I do for me, I do what I do for my team, I do what I do because it's what make sense in my head. I have no clue whether or not it's gonna, I don't know. I'm sure it'll resonate with some people, maybe not others. I didn't anticipate that it would sort of like blow up our universe in the most beautiful ways. And I mean that in it affected people in ways that had nothing to do with food. Like food was really the conduit more so than it was the focal point. I think you get to it 'cause food's interesting and everyone wants to watch like a gooey cookie. Right. In like high res on a screen. Everyone wants that. But it was really interesting that it became, our story became almost a metaphor.

For.

People that are passionate about life, that are trying to figure out what that means, what it can mean, what it should mean, what it takes to chase down a calling. And that it was, it ended up acting as just like a connectivity, connective tissue, like an open hand, like, Hey, do you need a friend? Or do you need a pal? Or do you need someone that gets what you're going assistant< end_header_id >assistant< start_header_id > successes. Yeah.

Oh.

It didn't, I didn't just wake up one start making cookies. And I think just kind of like ripping back or bringing down all of the barriers and boundaries that people put up in their heads through a really honest, simple story of like, we make cookies and cakes and pies and ice cream. We do it on our own terms. And it took a long time to get to the point to even have access to do that. And then once we did it, it took us another 10 years to get to where we are to today. And just being as honest as possible about that somehow resonated in that mom always said, Honesty is the best policy. It really is. So.

For those who haven't seen the special and don't know what we're talking about, you had been a chef at five-star restaurants for many years, right? And can you tell the story in a brief amount of what you were doing at the last restaurant and how Milk Bar Stuffed. Came to me. Yeah.

So.

I moved to New York to become a pastry chef. I went to culinary school because I thought being, loving to make dessert in a professional capacity meant being at the top of your game and being at the top of your game was being in the most expensive fine dining establishment. And I worked my way up. And what I realized in doing that was I loved that pursuit of that craft. But when I took a look at myself in the mirror, I was like, But I really want to go home and make cookies at the end of the day. Oh, really? I want to feed, I love feeding people. And my version of loving to feed people isn't in the fanciest environment. Like.

A little thing with the sauce. Which.

Is gorgeous and amazing. And I obviously have so much respect for it. It just wasn't what was, it just wasn't what was in me. And so the last restaurant I was, at, I was doing that while also trying to figure out what my next step was. Because I knew that was, I couldn't do that anymore and be true to myself. You.

Weren'T finding fulfillment in the work you.

Were doing necessarily. Exactly. I was finding fulfillment in the pursuit of a craft, but I wasn't finding fulfillment in the truth of where I needed to be. as a pastry chef, as a top dog, like I wasn't resonating with the, I was resonating with the part of the creation, but not the entirety of the creation. You were making great money. I'm.

Assuming. Well.

No, great money does not really exist when you work in a kitchen. You work really long hours. You don't make a lot of money. It is a true labor of love. But.

You were working at the best places. I.

Was working at the best places. So.

You had credibility. Credibility. People looked up to you and respected you. For sure. the master of your craft. For sure. Got.

It. But.

I was like, but what's it for? Because I still want to come in early and make cookies. Crazy brownies or cookies for everyone that works in the kitchen. And then I'll go and do my job. My day job, which inevitably when you work in a restaurant is typically a night job, was I was getting to a place that I was, that I purposefully didn't want when I decided to work into a kitchen. I was like, I don't want a nine to five job. I don't want to be a grown up. I don't want to fall into a routine. and on some level that was what that job was. So I needed to get out and figure out what my next step was. And my chef at that restaurant introduced me to Dave Chang, who was democratizing savory food. He had a very similar path. He was in fine dining restaurants and then was like, this doesn't make sense to me. And so he opened this like hilariously confusing ramen shop. and was just like, I'm just gonna cook whatever I want that's delicious, and I'm just gonna open the doors. And if you come in and get a stool, you can eat for seven or eight or nine or $10. And it became a magnet for people that would make a reservation at this fine dining restaurant, and for someone that lived around the block that was like, I'm here for good food. And that made sense to me on so many levels. I saw what he was doing through savory food and I thought, I know what I wanted. There's a path forward. So I started working for him at Momofuku and helping him run operations. I would bake cookies at night and bring them in. And he knew I had a pastry background. And so one day he was like, this is pretty much ridiculous. It's clear what you need to be doing. Go and do it. that push to open Milk Bar. So.

You were working with him doing operations. You weren't actually cooking. Mm-mm.

Or.

Doing cooking. There were no desserts on his menu. It was like wham, bam. You like saddle up to this noodle bar and you go, I'll have some roasted Brussels sprouts with kimchi puree and smoky bacon, which is something that exists now but didn't exist 12, 13 years ago. And it was kind of like a bunch of cowboys, right? Like there's a few dudes running the kitchen and I knew how to hold my own and all of that, The thought of dessert at that point was like, what do you even make for dessert? Because it's like a ramen bar, but there's kind of pseudo Japanese food, but also not at all became a melting pot for food. But also you need to get people in and out. If you're only charging them a few bucks, you gotta get them in and out because you don't want them to sit and eat dessert. So.

Did you start serving dessert there for customers? I.

Did over time. I started like working backwards and going, all right, well like what would be, I came up with soft serve ice cream. Great people, you don't want people to sit in their chairs for a long time. Take somebody and go. Give them something that is going to be a beautiful liquid puddle if they don't eat it quickly, right? And beyond that, I was like, it's this tiny little space. There's no room in the kitchen for a pastry team. So how do you reverse engineer that? And I was like, well, I can make these big, flavorful, delicious milks, if you will, ice cream bases. Put them in a machine and there's, I'm very big to nostalgia. And I was like, soft, everyone loves soft serve. Everyone has that attached. But.

It was different than just soft serve. It had like cereal milk, something crazy. They.

Were all different kind of crazy flavors because I was also like, I don't want to make vanilla ice cream. Everyone makes vanilla ice cream. Like I'm not here to be the second, the third, the fourth of anyone else. I'm here to be the first me. And so what does that mean through soft serve ice cream? And that was like, that was where I started to put the pieces together of my own voice through food and my perspective on it. And I was ready when I opened, when Dave was like, this is ridiculous. Just go and do it. Just go and do what we both know you want to do and you need to do. And I have your back. And he kind of just me out the door. He said, I mean, literally right next door. Right.

Next door. He said, Hey, we got a space here. I'll help you launch this. Did he surprise you? I.

Mean, I was running operations. so I was like, Dude, there's this spot next door. It's coming up. We need to be careful, right? Like a competitor could come in, this, that, or the other. The landlord could make trouble for us, whatever it was. And it became clear very quickly that I would take over that spot because it was best for the Momofuku side of the business. And it checked the box of like, you,'ll still be around, we'll still be to get, like, we'll still have each other's backs. But you'll go and do this thing. So.

You open it next door. What happens in the first few months? We.

Opened the door on November 15th of 2008, and there was a line out the door immediately to the point that I have so many things I'm thankful for. One of the things was that I did not have enough time to worry about any of the things that I worry about now. I didn't have-- there was no point in me that I was like, What if no one comes? I worry about that every day when we open, do we just open our 17th store? And I'm like, what if no one comes? Or what if only five people, right? Like, what if no one comes? What if no one cares? What if people don't get what a compost cookie is? What if calling, like calling something that has, you know, pretzels and potato chips and chocolate chips and coffee and all of these like random in your cupboard things, what if people are like, that's such a weird name? Or what if people are like, the milk that tastes like what's left in your bowl after you eat all the cereal out of it. Like, okay, I guess. I didn't have time to worry about any of that. And so when we opened the doors, we really did open in our truest, like most honest form of ourselves because we just had this vision and in a beautiful and terrible way, we hadn't gut checked it. It was just guttural. Like there was no, like, is that... You.

Didn'T have a test group of people be like, Tell me your opinion on this flavor. What.

You think of this? and I was like, we're gonna open at 8:00 a.m. and we'll open until 2:00 a.m. And there was no point of me that was like, girlfriend, that means you are gonna need to be at work from like 5:00 in the morning until like when you're done cleaning up 3:00 in the morning. Like, how is that gonna work? Or I had, we were a team of, I think, four or five where it was like, maybe you're gonna need a few more people if you're gonna do that seven days a week. And so the doors open, there was a line out the door from the very beginning. And we figured it out. I mean, we took off sprinting, and we started climbing, and every day we figured it out for good and for bad. We made so many mistakes. And the beauty of the mistakes were that we didn't have the opportunity for the mistakes to sit around. So we'd make a mistake and learn it, make a mistake and fix it real quick. Fix it real quick. I mean, I remember that morning of opening day, It was probably like 6:00 a.m. and it's like, okay, we're two hours from opening and we're looking around and I'm like, oh my God, we don't have a menu. Like, I knew what we were serving and it was all loaded into the point of sale system and we had paper menus, but I was like, you walk in and you can't actually see a physical menu. So we took the legs off of a stainless steel prep table. We're looking around like, what are we gonna do? Took the legs off of this stainless steel prep table, grabbed a dry erase marker and I have terrible handwriting at best. And I was just like, keep baking, like, you know, just trying to like direct, like keep baking. We were just like, we didn't know what to expect, but I think in a beautiful way, it resonated with people because I think when you buy a cookie, you're buying it's something that's so human. If you have ever had a cookie or a cake or a pie, you've probably had it from someone that's in your family that cares about you, that like in a love language way, making dessert is the ultimate love language. Love language. And I think you were just getting this honest team of people that were just like, they cared so much about what they did and were just figuring it out. So it required a lot of patience from our customers, but you also got the most delicious baked, mixed by hand, delivered with so much care thing. And people just came back. Just.

Serving love all day. You.

Know? Love.

And hugs. Love.

And hugs, right? Oh.

My gosh. Every time I go to New York, there's always a line. It's crazy. When I go, I used to live off.

Prince and Mulberry, and there's a spot right there. Yeah.

There'S one on Mott. You're right. So whenever I go back to New York, I always try to go to my old neighborhood and see what's new. And.

I saw the Milk Bar, and I was like, man, that's a line. That one is one of my- so tiny. It's just like a little cupboard. So one of the reasons there's a line is because the reality of doing business in New York City for a New York City store is like, rent is expensive. You gotta sell a lot of cookies to pay the rent. And, I mean, you're open seven days a week, 365. or 363, 362. But for me, I really think about our stores in New York. And I think in New York, you're there to be a person in the world. Your apartment is small. You're not really cooking at home. Really? Maybe on a special occasion. But you go home to sleep. You do everything else to be out in the world. And so that store, for me, was really special because it's just a window on the street. It was like, we can try and jam people in. or that neighborhood is like that sort of like no Lita Soho neighborhood is the neighborhood where you go to explore. So sweet. And so it felt more like we have to be a part of the street of this street of New York. That's cool. And so you just grab it and you go on your way. You.

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Amazing. So the first store, you were making the cookies and cakes in the store. Yeah.

But.

Now you have this huge warehouse where you have bathtubs of truffle ball butter or whatever it is you have in there that you're mixing all day from the Netflix series I saw. It's like, okay, how did you learn how to scale it? And when did you realize like, okay, we can't do this in individual stores anymore, it all has to be in one place and take it to the stores? That's.

A good question. I like to think about my life, especially when people go like, okay, but like how do I get to where you are? And it's like, you have to follow your intuition and you have to make sure that every decision you make It doesn't have to be on one straight path. It can be a very curvy path. It can be really wide lanes, but you have to make sure you show up to whatever that path is every day and mean it. So when I think about answering that question, I go, well, every single day leading up to that trained me for that decision and learning how to do it. So when I was first deciding to work in kitchens, I would work in like kind of on some level in any kitchen that was compelling to me. I got a job really early on before I moved to New York City. Someone convinced someone that I was a great baker and I like tiny little stand mixer at home. And someone gave me a job running this huge bakery on an island off the coast of New Hampshire where I had to cook breakfast, lunch, and dinner for 800 people every day. And I showed up and in the spirit of like, you have to rise to the occasion, someone was like, here's the mixer. And it was this gigantic thing. I was like, I have no clue how to run this. You're.

Used to a small one, not a scale. Yeah.

The one that sits on your kitchen counter, but it's like, great, it's just like a Honey I Shrunk the Kids moment. That's fine, how hard could it be? You gotta just lean into it. And I was like, great, so can you just give me the quick one, two, three, how do you lift the bowl up, this, that, or the other? And I figured out how to do it. Went to New York, went into all this fine dining, never saw a mixer like that again, but in my mind was like, okay, I know how to feed the masses. so when we opened Milk Bar, there was a line out the door and I was like, our kitchen is just a.

Little thing over there. Hugely.

Undersized for the demand. And I was like, we're gonna need a bigger boat. And it was a lot easier to figure out what that bigger boat looked like because I just started going into my experience and memory of, okay, what does this mean? One day at a time, one step at a time, one huge mixing bowl at a time. Instead of buying, you know, a little pack of butter, we buy a 30 pound case of butter. And instead of buying a 30 pound case of butter, we buy, you know, like a 3,000 pound brick of butter. Crazy. And you just make, you just make- 3,000 bricks? A 3,000 pound brick, it comes like a pallet. And.

I'm not joking. It's not like a bunch of little bricks.

It'S one big thing. They make a big brick. Well, how do you think they make the little sticks, dude? Like it comes, it comes in a brick. That's crazy. But.

That'S how much does a 3,000 pound.

Brick of butter cost? That's a good question. I don't know. I'd have to check a dairy label. I'm.

Just curious. It's.

Crazy. It's crazy. How many cookies can I make? But that's how big, I mean, batches and batches, hundreds of thousands of cookies. Wow.

But.

That'S also the, that's when you start to go, at some point as you grow a business, you have to go, what are my bottlenecks? How do I work smarter, not harder? and you just have to equip yourself. I think for me, one of the biggest, like, mental realizations was people do it every day, right? Like, you're not necessarily any better or worse equipped than someone else, whether the toilet's clogged or you need to move a light switch or the delivery van breaks down, right? Like, these are people doing things, applicable things that they've learned in the world, and that, like, empowerment of equipping yourself with as many skills as necessary to solve your problems. is really important. And that was for me, those are like the really fun parts. One, yeah, how do you scale up the compost cookie to go from this to that? Is trial and error, is trying to throw as much of your learnings as possible against it, and then learning along the way. Like, great, okay, so when we scale up, we need to always increase salt by 15% or flour needs to, you know, you have to be careful with it, or it's a bigger mixer, so you're going to develop gluten because it takes more manpower, there's more friction that's working the dough and cookie dough. You want to kind of be mixed as little as possible so they're tender and fudgy. But it's, it's, it is not being afraid to acknowledge the problem and to solve with it. It's to never work with the problem. But yeah, we went from this tiny store, 750 square feet. In New York, we have an 11,000 square foot kitchen in DC. It's about 4,000 square feet here in LA, it's 3,000 square feet. How.

Many stores in LA? Just.

One. Just our flagship. 3,000.

Square feet for one store. Yeah.

Are.

You gonna expand to more than? That's.

A good question. I don't know. Venice and Monica, it's gotta get bigger. I know. I like this is always whenever you hang out with someone that lives in LA. Or.

Just like, there's a shop right around the corner. Yeah.

Yeah. There.

Is a place right down the street.

That just opened up. Yeah. I don't know. Weho needs it. It's the tricky part of of knowing too much at this point, right? What do you mean knowing too much? Knowing too much, like then now opening a store is totally different than what opening that first store was. There's so much more on the line. I mean, you gotta know this, right? Like in your career, you work, you work, you work. And then once you start to actually achieve, there's more people counting on you, there's more to lose, there's more things to consider. There's.

Money involved, investors now. Visibility.

All these things. and your single decision is something that is responsible for so many other things. Aside from that, it's like, why do people love it? If it were on every corner, does it feel as special? You almost worry about breaking it as much as you worry about feeding it and supporting it and growing it.

And.

So when that happens, I'm like, all right, stop. You got to get out of your own head. Like, get out of the room, go for a run, whatever it is, because now you're treating it in a way that's so precious and that's also not what it is. Yeah.

But.

It is like, how do we inspire... The big question is like, how do we inspire celebration? How do we remind people, show people, be a part of people's lives in the big and little ways, especially the little ways for me, like whether it's cheat day, cheat morning with those birthday truffles, or the like, I just ran the marathon, or the like, I just broke, I just got dumped or I just broke up with someone or I just bought my first car, whatever, the little things that you don't think about. I was on time to work today, whatever it was, right? Like the bigger little things and being a part of that texture in people's lives. And what does that look like? For me, it's not about store count. It's not about measuring milk bar success in any way other than trying to figure out how to measure those like really human connections. which are basically possible to measure. But for me, that's why I do it. That's what makes it worth it. And that's kind of what I'm always protecting. I'm like, but I don't want 100, 200, 300 stores if it means, if we do it, we have to do it in a way that still maintains that philosophy. That isn't just about like, well, we're opening it 'cause we can open it. Yeah. You.

Don'T wanna lose the magic. Yeah.

So.

What'S the vision then? 17 stores right now. Do you call them stores, bakeries, what do.

You call them? Change.

It up. Okay. 17 locations. Milk.

Bars. Milk bars. I mean, every store is different. Yeah. Which is part of the formula, right? Like, we don't stamp them out. We have a road map, but it's really important that each one of them is their own, like, living, breathing thing. Yeah.

That.

It'S a reflection of the people that are a part of it. And I don't mean on the inside. I do mean on the inside, but I also mean we want to be a part of your life. So if you to a store, you're part of that, what making a store, what it is. What's.

The vision then moving forward? You've been doing it for 11 years almost. Almost.

11 years. And.

What'S the next? I.

Mean, for me, Milk Bar in my most grand vision of it, and I've had to like go back to the dreamscape because every time I get close to the dream, I'm like, Girl, you gotta set the bar a little bit further, a little bit further. So my current bar is to make milk bar a thing that would the 10 year old version of myself growing up in the suburbs of Ohio or Virginia that milk bars reach and presence is there to inspire the 10 year old that is like, that loves cookies and loves doing things to make people feel like supported and a part of something that loves walking up and down the aisles of the grocery store, that loves digging into the cupboards and making a total mess.

To.

Make milk bar into a thing that a 10-year-old that just has the most basic normal access that anyone in this country might have in that setting, in that suburban setting, that it empowers that person to just to learn the rules and then maybe learn how to break them a little bit or to say, cool, I get what a chocolate chip cookie is, but what if I like these other things? What if I put them in or I want to do something for someone? And it doesn't have to look like a vanilla cake with vanilla frosting, that it could be a reflection of the person, that it's an opportunity to really feed, to bring imagination in and to feed someone through this dessert. Just a big one, but I also feel like in my head it makes perfect sense and it's not out of reach. Nothing's.

Out of reach. Wow.

How.

Do you continue to reinvent the dream as you get closer to it? What's the process for dreaming beyond the dream? That's.

A good question. I'm very introspective. I'm actually an introvert, so I spend a lot of time My recharge time is spent alone. Usually in a run, baking alone, going on a run alone. So a lot of it is, I leave my house in the morning, leave my apartment in the morning. I'm like, okay, you have to let that go and you have to go and be a person for people. But a lot of that dream setting and measuring and swimming around in my own head happens. when I'm alone and on my own, which is usually late at night or early in the morning. And I gut check. I'm a very big, I talk about like November 15, 2008, I had no time to gut check. It was just guttural. I do all of my editing, whether it's rest editing recipe or editing a plan for the business or editing that like big dream, it happens when I'm on my own and I run things through my mind. Is.

That crazy? Whenever I'm running by myself as well, I get the best ideas because I'm allowed to, I give myself space to reflect on what's working, what's not working, and start to redream as well. Yeah.

And it's not like a to-do list thing. It's not like, all right, so tonight when you're running, this is what we're gonna go through in our head, right? It's almost like letting yourself just be instead of do, it's like being versus doing. Yeah. So interesting. Running is big for you in that space, huh? It.

Allows me to clear everything in my mind, you know, even if I'm, Sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I'll listen to an interview, or sometimes I'll do nothing. And all three times I get ideas, and I start to reevaluate what's happening in my life, good and bad or neutral. Just start to reimagine. It's.

A meditative space. Very meditative. Do you meditate on the regular? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I like to say that I'm very consistent, but I miss some days here and there, but I try to do 13 to 15 minutes every morning. Oh.

You'Re so good. Try to. I.

Missed this morning, but. But.

The missing is also like the humanity of it. I'm.

Not perfect. I'm not gonna hit the same routine every single day. I do my best. But a workout I feel like is the most meditative thing I can do. It processes any negative energy or any toxic energy or anything and just kind of gets it out. I.

Like that. It's true. It's that for me and it's also this, I think there's like, for me, I take an insane amount of empowerment in running long distances because there's something about like, once I get in motion, this sense of telling myself and having the relationship with myself, like, you can go forever, you can go forever. It's mind over matter. And also this, you can do in like, you can do anything, you can do anything. You have to just start like taking those, that first step or the second step or the third step in the running from Me is like, it's not hard to do, but once I've taken the first three steps, it could have been my millionth step. It's that like mentality of empowerment of like, just start once you start, you'll figure everything else out. You don't have to have all the answers. For me, I'm not a distance guy. I'll.

Run maybe four or five miles max on like, once a week. That's a really long amount for most people. I.

Like that you're like, that's not distance, which depending on- Three miles in a vacuum. Yeah.

Exactly. I'm more of a sprinter or like interval sprinting. so if I do a three or four mile run, the first two minutes is easy. It's like right after my, I hit mile one, one and a half, it starts to, like, hurt. And then I'm like, okay, I can either stop here or I can continue to push through it. When I push through the pain and the adversity and I get on the other side, it's like, I feel like I can run forever. Forever for me is, like, another two miles, right? But it's like, I feel like I can run farther than I'm used to running, which is two and a or three miles, I can go four, four and a half, five. And I hit that zone as well, where it doesn't hurt anymore. Yeah.

It'S almost like you learn every time anew to quiet the voice in your head, like the naysayer in your head. You're like, we're not gonna do that right now. But whether you're doing like sprints or intervals or whatever it is, I feel like it's the same thing of like, we're not gonna let that voice kind of like we, the voices in my head, right? Like the personalities that you hold. We're not gonna do that right now. We're just gonna be quiet. What's.

The worst voice that you have and what's the best voice? I.

Think the best voice is the one that just like puts a smile on my face. I went for a run yesterday morning and I was like, I think everyone on the street right now must think I'm a lunatic because it's the most quiet voice that just trans, I was just smiling. I'm like running up a huge hill, just smiling, just so happy and at peace. It's the voice that almost doesn't have a voice. It's the voice that just keeps all the other voices. Quiet.

I.

Think the worst voice is the one that's hypercritical. Whether it's like, you didn't meditate today. That's a problem. Or this or that, or you're not this enough, you're not that enough, or you could have, could have, would have, should have. And I think the best voice is the one that's like, oh, I see you, shh, we're gonna be quiet. Just be quiet. And I think talking about it and acknowledging it is a big part of it. Because whether you're talking about working out, you're talking about building a business, you're talking about finding your calling and just in the pursuit of engaging with it.

What.

Do they say? Like showing up is 80% or 90% of it. And like learning to showing up, I think is letting that your strongest, most powerful voice, which is your quieting voice, tell everything else to be quiet. And.

Percentage wise, throughout your day, what's the percentage of the critical voice versus the positive voice, would you say? Depends.

On the day. I am at my best when I am, I know my relationship with myself is that I'm at my best when I'm in just like a little over my head, where my drive to be like, you got to keep your head up above water, you got to keep your head up above water, is like my middle voice that keeps the critical voice quiet. So I'd say the critical voice comes out most at night and in the morning when I'm quiet and I'm by myself. Really.

I.

Try to keep it out of the way the rest of the day by going like, Hey, great. Why don't you build this bakery into this big, magic, magnificent thing? Wow.

And.

When I'm focused on that, it'll usually quell everything else, especially the voice that you're like. Because.

You'Re just focused on taking action and making it happen. I'm.

Focused. I have my team. I want to serve them. I want them to feel motivated. I want to push them so that they're motivating themselves. I have all these other things I'm worried about that are in front of me. as opposed to letting that self go. Yeah.

Exactly. Isn't that interesting that you say you love being an introvert, but the times you're alone, you're the most critical person. Oh.

It makes no sense. But.

You like being alone. Yeah.

Why.

Do you like being alone if you're critical of yourself?

I.

Think it's the time that I get to know myself most. I think when you're out, when I'm out all the time, I don't have like a stopping point to check in with myself, 'cause I'm just like, go, go, go, go, go. and that stopping point to check in with myself is the place where I have the opportunity to feel the most accomplished. Because I don't need, I don't want or need somebody else's recognition to tell me about me and where I'm at and how I'm feeling about the job that I'm doing. It's the place where I have the opportunity for that when I'm alone. But the tricky part is it's also the place where like the bad voices have the opportunity to sneak into. Huh.

Do.

You think you would be as driven and successful as you are if you weren't critical in those alone times? No. -Because.

I wouldn't have my own measure, right? Like if you don't have your own measure of what right from wrong is, what you want to set up, where you're falling short, then how do you know? Then you have no measure. Then good and bad is all the same thing. Right and wrong is all the same thing. But it's also tricky because you have to be a person in the world and you can't just measure your own feedback for yourself. One of the big things that I've really learned over the past 10 years is it's easy to get defensive when you're like, no, I'm my own worst enemy, so I don't actually need you to give me feedback. And to open yourself up a bit more to start to understand the things you don't know. you only know what you know. You don't know what you don't know. Wow. That's an interesting balance. So.

Wait, did you say you don't care about the approval of anyone else? I.

Don'T, that's not how I measure my own success. I think that approval, winning awards, this and that, I think that those are things that are like nice to haves. They're nice to haves for my team. Sometimes I think about, my day or the commitments I make in terms of like, I'm not, it's not just me anymore, right? Like there are people that show up every single day and make a promise and I need to make a promise to me and to Milk Bar and it's really important that that's, that it's a two-way street that I'm making a promise to them. But also if something bad comes out, if a bad piece, if a piece of criticism comes out, it doesn't, it also can't mean that you're a total failure. You have to find a space for those two things to exist. I think I always say to the team, like, their perception is our reality. If someone has something positive to say, that's great, but that can't be the only thing. But also, if someone has something negative to say, there's truth somewhere in it, and that's an opportunity. And we shouldn't be. We shouldn't have our guards up so much where we're only barometers of success and measure that we're not open to that. Yeah.

You.

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To really feel like you're growing and blossoming a bit more. It's a scary place to be, but it's a really good place to be too. What's.

The biggest thing you've learned about yourself in the last 11 years? that's.

A good one. The biggest thing that I've learned about myself is that I only know what I know. And some days that's a lot, and some days it's just the beginning. And that's a. That, I think, comes from, you know, when you're in your 20s, you're feeling great about life. You're feeling yourself, like, big time, and that it's such an empowering. like decade of years and in a really beautiful way. It's so easy to be like, to feel great and feel big and to very quickly have that turn into like defense or closing yourself off to all of the things that you will surely learn in your 30s and in your 40s or whatever it is. And I think when people ask like, what's your biggest mistake? Would you ever change anything? I was like, no, but I would love to be able to go back to my 20s and just like tap myself and be like, Hey, girlfriend, like what you're doing is great and keep going. But like, let people in, let the conflict in a little bit more, let the criticism in a little bit more, because you're so much better off when you do. Really?

So.

You weren't letting any criticism in? I.

Think I was doing the like, I'm on my long distance run, shh, like I've got my armor on every day as a battle. Wow. Opening this and going and like, I have to have my back first, like on an extra, extra, extra level. And I think the second you start to.

Actually.

Open yourself up to let other people be a part of that dream and that vision and that business in your life, when you let people be with you, you're so much better for it. And so I was a bit more, I'm a very stubborn person in general, but I was incredibly stubborn in my 20s. And stubborn is what, I mean, on the tiniest purse string is also what drove me to make Milk Bar what it is and why Milk Bar is what it is on many levels. But it's opportunity and threat at the same time. Like if I didn't have that, like no one gets to tell me who I am and who I'm not, what I'm capable of, what's possible. I mean, in 2008, someone being like, you have how much money in your bank account? You're gonna open a bakery? That sounds like a really a bad idea. I mean, my sweet parents were like, oh my God, we gave you so much opportunity. Why do you want to go work in kitchens and why this bakery? Like, can you go be like a doctor or a lawyer? Can't you do the safe thing? And I both needed to be really stubborn and closed-minded from other people's opinions to be able to hear myself. But at the same time, I look back and go, oh my God, what worked for me back then does not work for me today. and if I hadn't figured it out, would have been holding me back so much. Wow.

Yeah. What.

Are you most proud of that you've done? This.

Is like, I feel like such a hilarious old lady saying it. One of my biggest pieces of pride from the past few months was we just started offering a 401K program at Milk Bar, which is like, when you work in restaurants, you give it your all. It's a labor of love. Restaurant, like the word restaurant is restorative, right? Like people come to be restored. But in a really tricky way, people don't typically, you don't take care of yourself because you're working crazy long hours on your feet all the time. It's stressful and strenuous and yelly and scream-y usually, and like all of these things. And there's typically not a program put in place to take, your job is to restore all these other people and that's why you love doing it. you love feeding and nurturing. But who has your back? I think is the question that I started asking myself or realizing. And that was like, we offer health insurance and maternity and paternity and all of these other things. But the 401k for me was like, what if when you came into the doors of Milk Bar, you never had to write, you never had to go for another job interview, you never had to write another resume? Like, what if when we grew, you grew. What if Milk Bar is a true reflection of all the people that work in it? And in order to do that, you got to come in and make a promise every day. But I got to make a promise to you. And I want to have your back. And I think that's the one thing when you work in the food industry, you don't really think about the future because you're just so happy in this labor of love. And that was for me, like, the ultimate. It took a long time, and it's not cheap. and it is so worth it. And it's like that part of it is the funniest part of it. Because looking back 10 years ago, I mean, I would never, it wouldn't even occur to me that I thought I was opening this bakery because I love to feed people and be a part of people's lives. And I do. I think the people's lives that I underestimated, I would become obsessed with being part of was my own team. teams was the people that helped me bring it to life. How.

Many people are working in Milk Bar? 320.

30. Wow.

It.

Grows every day. Crazy. It's crazy. 300 people. And super cool. It's amazing. It's.

Amazing. Yeah.

The.

First one started with like four or five of you? Yeah. 17 locations. So you have people working in the storefront and then you have people working in the, I guess, what do we call it? The.

Bakery. Yeah. In the kitchens, we have people that run like the delivery teams driving the cookies and the cakes and the pies. We have the shipping and, yeah, you're on it. You're like, you're already ready to be the director of operations at Nobu Park. Shipping and fulfillment. And then we have the other like sticky teams of when we're at like an Oscar party. The stores are still open and this, that, and the other. And so we have so many other unsung heroes on the team as well. Like.

Caterers that are going to these events. Wow.

They'll like show up high kicking and high fiving and they work their butts off so that when they're there, they have a blast and they want you to have a blast too. Wow. Yeah.

It's.

Kind of crazy. When.

Do you feel the most loved? When.

Do I feel the most loved? I feel the most loved when I receive a care package from my mom. Wow.

She.

Sends me, I'm like, technically, Grown-up. She sends me, it sounds funny, but like she sends me a care package. It's usually once a month or once every two months. She sees me in obviously a very true form of myself. She's known me my entire life. She sends me, I kid you not, a bag of like little candy, like almost penny candy. So like if it's, you know, it's a little bag of Reese's Pieces or it's a tiny little to expire, whatever. She sends me that. She typically sends me a baked good. Like, I, she'll send me a nine by nine square aluminum pan of brownie or something. Gooey butter cake, brownie, whatever it is. And she knows that I like everything a little on, you know, from the middle. I love the gooeyness. Under baked. It has to be under baked. It has to be under baked. And so then usually it's like, can't to the edges. No. And so it's usually all smushed on one side because she doesn't have, like, a master. shipping warehouse the way that we do, right? She has, it's always a bunch of, she lives in the DC area, a bunch of DC food sections, which is her way of pursuing me being like, I get it and I support your dream. She always writes me a letter and it's always on some random piece of scrap paper because she's totally a waste not, what not lady. And it's about whatever random thing she was doing that day, right? There's nothing about it. It's just the texture of that day and that moment in life. And then maybe there's like a baby quilt because we have this tradition in our family. My family, they're all sewers and quilters, and they make baby quilts for so anyone that we know that's having a baby gets a baby quilt that's made by hand by the women in my family. It's these layers and blankets of like visibility and acceptance. That's when I feel the most most loved because it's like, it feels like I know that I've been the same person since the moment I left home. I've been the same person. She sends the same care package and it doesn't matter to her. It doesn't matter to her that she's sending it to this huge office in New York City now. It doesn't matter to her that she's sending a baked good that's totally smushed on one side to a place that has plenty of baked goods. It doesn't matter to her. That's when I feel the most loved, 'cause I feel the most seen. Huh.

You.

Feel the most seen by your mom. Yeah.

And it's always in a cardboard box. It's been used six times. You know, like the Sharpie on the side, like it's, maybe it was like an Amazon package, and then it was this, and then it was that. And I love it, 'cause she's kind of, she's also very stubborn, where she's like, oh, I see you. Oh, I see you. And it also, for me, is like the best, I feel the most loved, 'cause it's also the biggest anchor for me in a day. To get that, to get that, to open it, to share it with the team, to put the newspaper things out, people are like, what is this? And it's like, my mom, and I usually do like the roll of the eye, like, you know, you can't take her anywhere kind of thing, but. It.

Reminds me of camp. When I was growing up, I go to camp, and I get care packages, and it reminds me of home and feeling loved as well. There needs to be a business around care packages. I.

Mean, milkbarstore.com, you can buy care packages. That for me, that for me is like, The other part of Milk Bar is what we do online that a lot of people know, but I think we're still getting out is the, it's easy from a business standpoint to be like, it's e-comm, right? That's the business term, but for me, it's like the spirit of a care package of. Feeling.

Loved and seen and home. And.

Some people in a beautiful way send themselves a cake. And they're like, Hey girl. Send themselves a cake. They're doing it. Wow.

But.

You can see it, and you can see it as we're packing it. And for me, that's fuel. well.

That'S like the inspiration. How many? So these are care packages. You can send yourself anything, or do you.

Have kind of like pre-planned? We have, you can send almost anything on our menu. We don't ship the, the soft, the cereal.

Milk soft serve, but we ship pretty much anything else. You.

Guys do like scrap paper notes? Do you do quilts? We'll write a note. I'm like, we should totally do quilts. My.

Mom would be like, girlfriend. Put like a little, little mini. I.

Do. Well, I say, I'm like, Reese's Pieces. Every.

Box gets like a little candy thing. Oh.

My God, do you wanna be the.

Creative director of Milk Bar? We'd make a great team. I'm telling you, this would go even better, I think. If you added like little Reese's Pieces or a Kit Kat or whatever it is.

Like every box got just a little.

Thing of candy. Every box got a little square of a quilt and a little scrap off note. It's just like a quote. Yes.

Something.

That'S like you're loved and seen. And.

It adds it more like homey, less corporatey, you know, feeling. Yeah, that's what I'm talking about, right? Like I got you. And the batter's gotta be a little bit to the side. Yeah, because Exactly. I feel like someone would be mad if their crack pie was like a little, they'd be like, that's not what it looked like in the picture when I ordered it. Okay, fine. But yeah, the like, what else goes in the box is the question that hilariously we're asking ourselves. And that's the fun part of building the business too, is like bringing that part of being seen in, where sometimes the team is like, Christian, we can't do that. And asking like, but why can't we? Tell me why. You.

Couldn'T do cereal milk. Yeah.

There you go. Also, you couldn't pay rent off of selling $3 cookies. Exactly. But somehow we do it. So.

How many box care packages do you ship a day, do you know? Oh.

My gosh, it depends. Over the holiday season, I mean hundreds of thousands. Wow.

We.

This past holiday season, it was our biggest one. And the only way we could make it work, even in our big kitchen in New York, 'cause we ship some out of LA, the LA kitchen, some out of the rest out of the New York City kitchen, We hired these trucks that were refrigerated to literally just drive around to keep the packages cold until UPS or FedEx or the Postal Service came to pick it up. Because.

You didn't have enough freezer space. We.

Don'T have enough fridge or freezer space, right? That's when you're like, oh my god. That's innovation right there. Yeah, and also this is the coolest thing. And I look at that and I go, I wonder if 10-year-old I don't know if Christina got one of those in the mail, and it's like, probably not. We gotta keep going. Wow. But that was like, that's, and that's the, like, we make things funny to keep it real. Obviously it's stressful trying to figure that out, plan for it, logistics, package day and night. But when we take a step back being like, we literally had trucks driving around our kitchens to keep the packages cold, because that's how many people came out for their care, for their holiday care packages. That's.

Cool. I've got three final questions for you. This one's called the Three Truths. Okay. So imagine you've accomplished everything you've ever dreamed of. And every dream you get closer to, you have to reinvent the new dream and dream bigger and you achieve everything you want that you can think of. But one day you have to go. You know, it could be a hundred years from now, it could be whenever. You.

Have to say goodbye to the world. Yeah.

Another place, wherever you go to. Got.

It. You.

Gotta die. And you've accomplished everything. And for whatever reason, all of your message that you put out to the world, this interview, videos, Netflix, whatever books, everything you put out in the world, you've gotta take it all with you. So no one has your message anymore. No one has like your words, written audio, video. But you get to write down on a piece of paper, this final day, three things you know to be true all the lessons you've learned that you would share with the world. Your three truths or lessons. What would you say are yours? I.

Showed up. I meant it. I made it better.

That.

And like a really, I thought, I was like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna do this? That is my measure of a day. And similar to like, I like to think I meditate every day. I don't. I try to do it regularly. The thing I try and do regularly is when I check in with myself before I go to bed and I'm like looking to my own internal voice is like, did you show up? Did you mean it? More and more than anything else, did you make it better? And that can be, it's applicable to everything big and small, especially the small. I.

Like that. Before I ask the final two questions, how can we support you? Where can we follow you? How can we show up to Milk Bar.

In person, online? Ella, you gotta come hang out. I.

Know, I did that. I.

Did that. She.

Lives right across the street. across the street from in Miracle Mile area. Yeah.

Can.

You get that care package? Okay.

So.

You can get a care package online. Yeah. Milkbarstore.com is our handle, is our website. All of our social handles, our website. My handle's just my first last name, Christina Tosi. You can go to christinatosi.com. I have a bi-weekly newsletter that I try to just show up, mean it, and make it better in the world and just kind of like share my personal path of whatever random thing I find joy in in the moment or I discovered in my week or two. Come out and visit us in the stores. For me, it's like come out in the morning, come out late at night, like come and see us and show up and we want to connect with you. Let us connect with you. Show up and don't show up prepared almost. That's like my request. Show up unprepared, show up curious, show up like ready to take a leap with us. Or send someone some love in the mail. Yeah.

It'S an experience, so make sure you guys go and check it out. Try and sample a few things. What are the main cities you guys are in? New.

York, LA, DC, Las Vegas, the Cosmopolitan. Nice. And we have a fun little refrigerated cube of a store in Toronto. Cool. Yeah.

And.

You get an expansion in the Midwest. Oh.

My gosh, in Boston. What.

Am I talking about? We just opened a store in Boston. Harvard Square, right? I was just there. this.

Is the like, what day of the.

Week is it? I don't even know. Boston, Harvard Square. I.

Get to open up in the Midwest at all. I.

Mean, that's my Christina's a 10-year-old what is that? How does Milk Bar get to the Midwest? For me, that's where it all began. That's why the corn cookie exists. Growing up in the cornfields of Ohio is like, that is the ultimate love letter. That's when we'll know. That's one of the dreams. How.

Do we get in with Bart? When you open it up in Columbus, I'll go there. We'll all show up for the opening, right? I'm in, I'm in. I want to acknowledge you, Christina, for your creativity, your curiosity, and for showing up. Thank you. Because I think it's hard coming from the Midwest and having these big dreams and actually pursuing it. You pursued a craft that you thought you were supposed to take for so many years and you realize, okay, this is a great job, but it's not where I ultimately want to be. and everyone, almost everyone said it was kind of crazy to go make cookies now, but you did it anyways. And look what you've created. You've inspired so many people. So I acknowledge you for everything. I acknowledge you for showing up as a rainbow, even though I know you said there's a lot of darkness that happens day to day and challenges you have to go through and the grit that you have to have to make this happen after 11 years. It's a lot of work. So I acknowledge you for all the work you've done. My final question is, what's your definition of greatness?

I.

Think my definition of greatness is being able to sit with myself and smile. Be happy, to find happiness in just being alone, because I'm an introvert. Being.

Happy alone. That.

For me, that's greatness. That's something I always wanted to make sure I had in life. my life. And if that's what I leave as my mark or the thing that I have that I know I checked off, that is great news for me. Christina.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

There.

You have it, my friends. I hope you enjoyed this episode with the incredible Christina Tosi of Milk Bar. Again, I'm so inspired by her story. Check out all of her information that we talked about. Make sure to follow her on social media as well because she's got some great stuff. And check out one of her locations. Milk Bar has been blowing up. You can get it online. You can go to a location, one of her stores, and try the full experience in person. And you may get addicted. I'm telling you, I can eat their cookies, their balls, their cakes, everything. It is so addictive. Make sure to check it out ASAP and get get someone a gift as well. You can buy a gift for someone online and that'll go a long way. Again, make sure to share this with your friends, lewishouse.com/778 if you enjoyed this and tag myself @lewishouse on Instagram and connect with Christina Tosi as well and let her know what you thought. And always remember, you don't have to have everything figured out when you get started. So many people are crippled by making a decision on how to launch their or grow their business or start a new project. But this analysis paralysis is really what holds you back because you're never going to have it perfect at the start. All businesses evolve, all projects grow and transform and innovate. You trying to over analyze and make everything perfect right away is only wasting time. The quicker you start, the faster you you go. You're going to learn quickly and you can adjust quickly. Just don't stay stuck in your ways if it's not working right away. Be willing to adapt and evolve. And that's something I love about Christina. She was willing to try and innovate and be creative, and her creativity grew and so did her business along the way. So I hope you enjoyed this one again. Georgia O'Keeffe at the beginning said, whether you succeed or not is irrelevant. there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing. I hope you guys enjoyed this one. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.

Thank you.

Hey.

Everybody. Ted Danson here to tell you about my podcast with my longtime friend and sometimes co-host Woody Harrelson. It's called Where Everybody Knows yous Name, and we're back for another season. I'm so excited to be joined this season by friends like John Mulaney, David Spade, Sarah Silverman, Ed Helms, and many more. You don't want to miss it. Listen to Where Everybody Knows yous Name with me, Ted Danson, and Woody Harrelson sometimes.

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