WHOOP Podcast - Chef Michael Chernow discusses sobriety, gratitude, and what drives him to perform

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

Chef, businessman, and athlete Michael Chernow discusses his journey to sobriety, the importance of gratitude, and what drives him to perform in life. Michael talks about overcoming adversity and what he’s learned along the way. He also shares how he’s learned to balance being a father, a husband, a fitness freak, and a successful businessman all at the same time. Michael discusses finding his passion at a young age (2:09), getting sober (5:14), the role fitness plays in sobriety (8:24), using WHOOP (11:47), skipping workouts on red recovery days (15:12), learning patience (21:31), becoming a bodybuilder (22:21), how kickboxing helped on his road to recovery (28:47), finding work-life balance (34:34), gratitude (37:39), and learning from failure (40:41).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

What's up, folks? Welcome back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Amit, founder and CEO of WOOP, and we are on a mission to unlock human performance. That's right, the WOOP membership collects information about your body, strain, recovery, sleep, helps you figure out what you need to change about your behavior to perform at a higher level. And if you do not have a WOOP membership, you can use the code Will Ahmed, W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D, and get 15% off a W-W-P membership.

I hope you enjoyed the Super Bowl, Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs, great season. We have to congratulate Tom Brady and the Bucks. And you can check out some cool analysis we did of how WOOP data was affected by the big game. Right now at whoop.com slash locker. That's whoop.com slash locker. We look at some behavioral analysis on not the players, in fact, but the fans. Headed fans from different cities react to the Super Bowl. Pretty interesting.

This week, we've got a great guest, chef, entrepreneur, and athlete Michael Chernow. Michael joins me to detail his journey to sobriety, the importance of gratitude, and what drives him to perform in life. He dives deep on overcoming adversity and what he's learned along the way. He talks about balancing being a father, a husband, a friend, a friend. fitness freak and a successful businessman all at the same time. We discuss how Michael found his passion for the restaurant business at the young age of 13, the importance of creating the right environment to foster success, learning how to not let work consume your life and why gratitude is critical, embracing failure, his opinion, not mine, and learning from your mistakes, and why he thinks

the restaurant industry is in for a big bounce back later this year. Michael's a great guest without Now further ado, here is Michael Chernow. Michael, welcome to the Woof podcast. I'm excited to be here. You know, you've had a pretty fascinating career. You've done a lot in a pretty short period of time. What got you into the restaurant interest and being a chef? Well, I started out as a very young kid.

I got my first job in a restaurant when I was 12 going on 13. In New York City, I grew up in Manhattan. And from an early age, I've always wanted things. It's just, I can't really describe it, but I've always wanted things. And I was a doer from as early as I can remember as well. And so when I found out that a friend of mine was working at a, at a restaurant on 76th Street and Third Avenue, he was a year older than me. I said, dude, you got to get me a job. And so he got me a job there.

And I also learned in that period of time, that people were my like oxygen. I really loved being around people. I love the human connection, the human engagement. Communication is, I think, my superpower in life. And so, yeah, I fell right into it. And I can honestly say that up until February,

I've had a job in a restaurant, whether I've owned them or worked in them from that very day forward. And so, yeah, I just, I loved the business. I went to culinary school. I graduated with a chef's degree and also a restaurant management degree. And I was off to the races. What did you do right after French culinary school? Right after FCI, I basically put a plan together. I said, you know, I lived a bit of a of a different life from 13 to 23. I was I was a New York City kid, running the streets. being a maniac, getting into a lot of trouble, having a lot of fun, working in the night. And when I was 23, I made a call that changed my life. And I basically said, I'm not going to live this way anymore.

And I got sober. I stopped drinking. I stopped partying. And I started planning. And I, you know, within that first year, I really put a plan together for the next 10 years. And I said, I'm going to get on my feet, like start to feel better mentally. physically and then I'm going to start to get serious about my career because I knew at that point that I really wanted to be in the hospitality business as a professional forever and that meant

owning my own business. And so I enrolled to culinary school. I started a culinary school at 25 and as soon as I got out at 20 little past my 27th birthday, I put a plan together for what is now the meatball shop. And I, you know, when I when I finished my culinary program, I enrolled in this restaurant management program that was taught by Cornell professors and some of the high-level executives were at Union Square Hospitality Group and a couple of other, you know, legal people. It was really an incredible crash course, a year-long course on what it takes to actually manage a restaurant from financials to the food, to the atmosphere, to everything. And it was, it was incredible. I want to understand for a second. So you're 23 years old.

and you decided to get sober. Was there a specific moment in time? Did you just recognize the animal within that you weren't going to be able to accomplish everything you wanted to if you still lived this fast and loose life? What was the trigger for that? So, yeah, I mean, what led me to want to put a plug in the jug pretty much was overdosing.

I overdosed when I was 23 on drugs, and that, you know, I had said that night that I was not going to ever partake in that again. I really thought that was it. And I found myself writing back in the same spot later on. And so I had made a decision that I was either going to die or try to die. And that's where I was. That's where I was. You know, I was spiritually bankrupt, mentally defeated, and physically.

like a waste of space. Like that's literally how I felt about myself at that point. And so I walked this list, this like terrible march down, you know, path for two weeks. And somehow, some way I, you know, one night, it was actually a Monday morning. I remember very clearly.

And I said, you know, I don't want to do this anymore. There's nothing left here for me. Like, you know, I really wanted it to be over. And then I just woke up 16 hours later. And I, you know, I remember sort of contemplating suicide. And I don't know, man. I just passed out. Luckily, thank gosh, I passed out. And I woke up 16 hours later. People were banging down my bedroom door. They knew how bad I was. And they, you know, thought that I was done. Luckily, I wasn't. And I walked into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was the end of it. And I've been sober for the last 16 years. Well, congratulations on the recovery side of that. I've had the pleasure of getting to interview and meet just a lot of people who have told me similar stories. And it's pretty unbelievable. And it's also, I think what's amazing to take from it is just what a low you were in your life

to what a high you are now. I mean, married, family, you've got various businesses that you're running. It's inspiring, I think. I believe in my heart of hearts that there is a, I mean, I don't believe, I should say, I know firsthand that addiction, mental health is a real epidemic. And it has been for a long time. And it's very polarized right now, specifically right now because of where we are as a nation and as a, as a, as a, you know, globally. fitness and nutrition along with sobriety for me because there's some people that are dealing with depression and mental health issues don't necessarily have a dependency issue but for me it was addiction and depression and anxiety and all this all the all this stuff that comes along with it but I know

that yes I got sober but ultimately what saved my life and continues to save my life on a daily basis is fitness for sure 100%. Fitness is my medicine. I put fitness before everything. I put it before my wife and my kids. I put it before business. I put it before my mother and my sister. I put it before everything. And that doesn't mean that I sacrifice those things. That means that I actually wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning to get into the gym by 515 to be done by the time they wake up. And I know that that's a priority. That is the priority in my life. And I know that if I continue doing that and have a connection with a sort of universal power that's greater than myself, I'm going to be just fine. It's fascinating to me also just how powerful and addictive

personality can be when it's channeled properly. Just having spent 15 minutes with you, I can tell that you've been able to focus on specific things and really execute against them. And in some ways, maybe that's what's led to you to addiction earlier in your life. But I think it's what's also made you someone who's super fit and super motivated in the rest of your life now. And so again, I think it's inspiring the ability to channel that, that energy. Do you agree with that? I have a podcast called Born or Made. And Born or Made is, it talks about the exact thing that you just mentioned, which is, I believe that I was predisposed with some sort of drive to do. I, you know, although I will say, you know, after like, I read fair amount of books,

after reading that book Relentless by Tim Grover and understanding, you know, going into the minds of some of the super duper high performing, like world, world renowned high performers, I don't believe that that is the kind of mindset I have where it's just like I don't care about anything else aside from winning. I do have a real soul and I care about people enormously, but I do know that I have a tendency to be extreme in every single thing that I do that interest me. If it doesn't interest me, I'm useless.

But if I'm interested in it and I love it, I am relentless. And I take it to the, you know, I don't like run 5Ks. I run marathons. I don't like strength, train. compete in bodybuilding competitions. I don't open a restaurant. I open 16. You know, I don't, I just, I'm not, I don't have the ability, I think, once I start going with something to stop until I feel, you know, I don't stop. Yeah, I guess I just don't stop. Now, people like you have always have interesting whoop data. And, and in many ways, whoop, I think, fits someone of your personality

really well because driven people, extreme people, often can accidentally punish their bodies. You know, in the process of opening 16 restaurants and training for a marathon and being a bodybuilder, you know, you might just run yourself into the ground. And in part, that's why I started whoop was that I was doing that to myself as a college athlete. And so it's fascinating to see whoop data on individuals like you? What have you gotten out of whoop and how long you've been on it? I've been on whoop for two years. Woop has truly changed, well, it's changed a lot for me. I really understand how imperative sleep is to success, just in everything. I did not, I did not pay enough attention to my sleep at all. I really, you know, I would listen to people tell me, you know,

sleep is integral, but I actually never, I just never implemented that into my life. I mean, I was happy with five and a half to six hours of sleep, and that's what I was used to and that's what I did. And, you know, I'm not perfect by any means. And Woop tells me most of the time that I need nine hours and 49 minutes of sleep based on the strain that I put on my body. But I get, I now get pretty damn close to eight hours of sleep a night. And it's like very good sleep.

Because not only did Woop convince me based on my recovery score every day that either makes me super duper stoked or like a bit frustrated with myself that I did not go to bed when I knew I could have and I didn't, which has changed my life actually. Because I've realized that the hour that I could spend at 10 o'clock at night to 11 o'clock at night trying to finish up some last minute emails or whatever are just not efficient. and it doesn't actually serve anybody's purpose. The extra hour that I get to sleep is far superior in efficiency than that hour staying awake. And so that's what I will tell you whoop has done for me. It has really given me that perspective. And so not only have I gone to bed at the same time, pretty much every single night, but I've really put an emphasis on my sleep routine.

I pre-bed, you know, what I do before I go to bed because I really not only want to want to get those eight hours, but I want those eight hours to be as, as optimized as possible. You've created a tool that's developed communities and pockets all over the country and probably now, I'm sure, globally, and it's just fun as hell. It's fun. There's a level of competition involved with myself and with others, you know, like once a month. I don't look at my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, team's often. I look at them once a month to see how long if I'm in the if I'm in first second or third place

man am I stoked especially in the big groups like the thousands of people groups you know well I appreciate I appreciate all that that feedback and it sounds like you've learned a bunch about about the product I mean you strike me also as a guy who when you wake up with a yellow recovery or red recovery you're like pissed off because you realize that you can't now crush yourself as hard as you wanted to, right? Like you want to be able, you want to be able to take it on every day. Well, I will say this, and this is another great thing that Whoop has done for me. If I wake up in the red, so my morning routine is pretty structured. It's actually not pretty structured. It's very, very structured. I'm a true creature

of habit. And so I, you know, I look at Whoop, not the minute I get up, because I don't look at my phone for about the first 20 minutes that I get up. But when I check my whoops score, when I finally pick up my phone, if it's in the red, I do not train because I train every single morning, well, five to six days a week. And if I'm in the red, I typically feel it when I'm in, when I wake up in the morning and I, and I don't train. And that's, that, that is also the practice of that style of, you know, when you're a fitness. person, as you know, it's a part of your life. It's a lifestyle. For me, it really, really weighs heavy on my, on my daily mental success, whether I'm training or not. And so for me to be

able to look at something like my whoop score and it being at like 22, I used to just plow through it. And so I didn't experiment myself since we've been up here, just because I'm trying to be smart about my immune system and everything. And I said, you know what? If I'm in the red, I'm not going to train. And sure enough, I don't train. And the next day, most of the time, I'm back in the green. It's great. And I bet by you taking that one day off and letting your body get back, you actually are going to make bigger gains going forward. I've seen this now with so many different types of individuals and athletes. And it's pretty fascinating. You know, I'll tell you something really cool. So I had Henry Sohudo, who was a two-time UFC champion, you know,

2008 gold medalist wrestling, freestyle wrestling gold medalists. And I had him on my podcast a few weeks ago. And I was listening to him on Joe Rogan. And so I was taking notes from his Rogan show. And I really wanted to understand he only trains hard three days a week. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Yeah. He only trains hard three days a week. If, if his body is in any way, he just won't train. And he's totally cool with it. He's like, I'm not, I'm not training just to train. He's like, I'm training to optimize. I want to be, I want to be able to, like if I'm going to go in there and train hard, I want to train as hard as I can possibly train. And it doesn't make sense for me to walk into a session thinking that I'm going to

train hard, but my body is not matching where my mind is. So he's got this like mental physical and scientific trifecta that he's trying to put together. And so he says, yeah, man, I train three, three times a week really hard. Maybe four, my body is up to it. But he's like, the gains that I get incredible. So that was really cool. And I think, I think, you know, like wearable technology for the most part is all about how hard you're training. like how like it tells you and and when people ask me about whoop i don't i'm like i don't use

whoop for my strain i don't i don't need something to tell me how hard i'm training i know that i'm going hard i do however need something to tell me to slow the fuck down yeah no it's it's fascinating and i mean that's one thing i've learned from some of the best athletes in the world too is their level of focus on their bodies when they're training is so high. It's definitely higher than mine. And I realize there are times that I'll train or exercise because it's as much a mental release for me as it is a physical one. Whereas the UFC fighter you just mentioned, he's not training because he wants a mental release. He's training because he wants to be the very best fighter in the world. There is an interesting difference there.

And then you contrast that with like a David Goggins or something, right? Where this guy has just convinced himself that his body can overcome anything. And I don't know, David, but my gut would be that he's doing permanent damage to his body at times, that he can't feel and there will be a physiological effect down the road. I'm curious what you think. Yeah, without a question of a doubt. There's no doubt about it. Have you read that book Born to Run?

Yeah, it's great. Yeah. So that book is really sort of a controversial. Like for me, that book is a controversial use case, right? There are these people that run in like moccasins and they run like 100 miles and they were like sort of they were doing it. They've done it since they were little kids. The Guadalajaran's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they and and and you know, and that's like what they do and they're fine. They talk about they do these like insane ultramarathons. Not even for, for no reason, they just do it. That's part of their culture. And their bodies are like, you know, they're apparently fine. Whereas me, you know, after I run a marathon, there's no doubt that my body just doesn't love it, you know. I don't know if I'll ever do super long, you know, distance running anymore. I don't.

I do know this, though, that I've gotten a lot smarter about how I compete. You know, I was really lucky to get a competition in through in the pandemic. I was, I was training for a bodybuilding, men's physique bodybuilding competition. And it got canceled. And then the next one showed up and it got canceled. And then I was, I was able to get to one in September where I won the whole thing. And I got, I was awarded my, my professional bodybuilding card, which is pretty awesome. Wow.

And I said to my- Congratulations. Thanks, man. Thanks. Yeah, I said to my coach. I was like, look, man, now, now I got my pro card. It was what I was after. Let's take a full year and not worry about competition.

And let's just take a full year and see what we can do, you know? And I think that that, like, I would never do that. I would never do that. I would never, like, compete in something, win the competition, be high as hell off of that win, and then say, all right, now we're going to take a year and see what we can, see how we can advance over the course of a year. And I think, you know, this idea of being patient with myself, you know, I would never take five, I would never take two days off in a row. You know, now I train Monday through Friday most of the time. And I can't say I owe it all

to whoop, but I can't say that was really, really helped change my perspective. It just has. It's helped change my perspective on performance and recovery. no i really appreciate that man and thank you for saying it let me ask you this bodybuilding explain a little bit of what it means to win a uh a competition i never thought in a million years that i would be a bodybuilder especially by the way being being like a professional level chef and professional level bodybuilder there's like probably four of you in the whole world so that's also we're going to we're going to unpack that in a little bit but let's start with Let's start with bodybuilding.

So I had done, I did the New York City Marathon in 2018. It was one of the best days in my life. I'd run a marathon before that. But the new marathon is like, my hometown, it's one of the coolest experiences ever. And I was stoked about running that, especially because my wife and kids were at the finish line. And it was just awesome. And I was at the gym a couple days later, downtown above, you know, I have a restaurant down at Brookfield Place, and there's an equinox there, and I was training.

And an old friend of mine hadn't seen in a long time, she said, hey, what's up? She was like, so what's your next goal? I was like, I don't know, you know, I'm probably another marathon. I'm not sure. And she said, have you ever body, have you ever done bodybuilding? And I was like, no, never done bodybuilding. I did Muay kickboxing for 10 years, competed in that, you know, running predominantly my life was built around endurance calisthenics.

and, you know, combat sports. Like, that was, like, what I did. And then she was like, you ought to try it. Like, you got a good physique for it. You should try it. And for whatever reason, I went home that night, and I said to my wife, Don, I'm going to be a professional bodybuilder.

And she was like, oh. And I, you know, and I, but I just sort of, like, started looking into it and started lifting heavy, like lifting weights. And I had lifted weights, but never, never like that. And I don't know. some for some reason I just left to it and I brought on a coach to help me and I you know I would never be like a big muscle bodybuilder but men's physique was kind of like what I was for I just got

I got with this coach and he was like man we got a lot of work to do and I was like let's go and it was exciting it was a new challenge and um so basically the way it works is you know you can't just like you I guess you can just go right into a bodybuilding competition you know it'll probably take you six months to go from like if you have a physique of any kind to where you'd want to get you know you'd want to compete in the show and that's really predominantly like hardcore training but even more intense is the nutrition yeah for me we said hey like let's take like let's take like you know eight nine months and see if we can bulk you up for three months and then strip you down and that's what it is that is a life of a bodybuilder like a year of a bodybuilder looks like

six to eight months of like real eating and real heavy duty lifting, like not a lot of cardio at all. And then you get into four to six months of preseason or like when you're going to get ready to compete. And depending on how many shows you would do, if you do one, if you do three, you sort of line up, you know, the shows that you want to do. And you and you get down to like, you know, sub three percent and five fat. Anyway, so before a show, you really go. So right now I'm eating 2,500 calories a day, 240 grams of protein, 260 grams of carbohydrates, and like 70 grams of fat, before show for the last six weeks, you're eating about 180 grams of protein, 50 grams of carbohydrates, and 40 grams of fat. And so it's like 50% or less the calories.

And what does that do to you, what does that do to you mentally? Like, do you, I mean, I've, I've fooled around with that. It's like, I remember one point I was, on the paleo diet, and that felt restrictive, which is the closest thing I can compare to this. And there's a weird, like, mental clarity, but there's also weird things that happen to your energy levels. I'm just curious how you feel making such a shift like that. Yeah, so mentally, I feel focused is, I'm zeroed in, you know? And I also, like, prep myself for that. Physically, it doesn't feel awesome. yeah you probably feel depleted correct yeah i feel like it's depleted i mean i drink an enormous

amount of fluid so like i that really that that the amount of fluid that i'm drinking throughout that process there is a society that comes along with that um you know i drink like even now like i drink two of these a day every day no matter what i drink two gallons of water when i'm when i'm in that zone in that place like i'm i'm just super duper focused hyper focus i'm i probably perform really, I perform really well at work just because I'm intense and I'm making sure to get a lot of sleep too, which is very important. You know, like a lot of bodybuilders will say that they sleep, you know, 10 to 11 hours a night. I don't get, I wasn't getting that much sleep, but I, but you know, I do get probably nine hours of sleep when I'm there, when I'm in prep

hard. You know, one thing that I noticed with my body, and it's probably a deficiency in something, maybe magnesium, because I just started recently taking a magnesium supplement. But when I'm down that low, when I'm in the 5 to, you know, 4 to 6% body fat and then I drop down to like 1⁄2% right before the show, when I'm there, my muscles cramp up, my leg, my feet, my hands, my jaw, you know, luckily I don't really get many calf, you know, spasms, but I have. So my body definitely doesn't love it. But I do love the pain.

And that's, I think, what is this? I'm a bit of a sick dude, right? Like I, you have to be a little crazy to want to do this stuff. Something that gives me a little bit of a leg up, I think, is the fact that I have zero issue with pain. Yeah. I have actually learned to love the heart and the hurt. Like I just have.

And I, if it doesn't hurt for me, Which is, I wish I wasn't this way. My wife definitely wishes it wasn't this way for sure when I, when I latch on to something. But like, I make sure that it hurts because I really, there's a part of that that I enjoy. Now, your wife doesn't like you doing it, though. So how do you reconcile that? I think it, you know, so we've been, we've been together since we're kids. I mean, I met Donna when I was just turned 24, she turned 22. And she met me right when I was like I had been, you know, I had changed my life. I was a new person and I was focused on Muay kickboxing. I replaced all of my addiction, like the guys that actually helped me out, these two dudes that I thought were the coolest guys ever, they knew that I had that I was going through some stuff. And I did not know that they were sober, but they dragged me into a boxing gym and they threw me in the ring. And they said, man, you need to get your fucking ass kicked.

That's what you need. And I was like, let's go. That's great advice. Yeah, they were just like, you just need to sit here and just get your ass kicked. And I was like, all right, you know, whatever you say, guys, I'm down. Let's go. I just want to, I want this to stop. And I, and I fell in love.

I fell in love with it. I was training four hours a day, man. I was, I was an animal. And Donna met me then. And so she must have known because I was, I was probably, I don't, I can't remember it's very specifically, she can remember how insane I was, but I would get up at 5.30 in the morning. I was so in love with moitai that I would put on moitai gear, like I would put on my moitai shorts, like my wraps, you know, and I would go run through New York City. So I would wake up super early in morning. I'd run from where I lived in the East Village, down to the end of the Manhattan, back up to 14th Street. And I did it every single morning like clockwork. Didn't matter. what was in my bed, whether she was, you know, like, I just was like, that's what I did. And then I trained, like, literally four hours a day.

I was still working in the restaurant at that point. And so she knows the kind of person I am. And we've had this conversation, you know, a bunch over the years. Like, I just am this extreme person. And the byproduct of that is I love you more than anything on the planet with our children now. And I will protect and be your support system. till till eternity the thing that you're going to have to understand is that i there are going to be things throughout our journey together that i become obsessed with and if you can you know and

yeah totally i get it and and and sometimes that's work you know i mean look donna took me aside when i when we opened up the meatball shop i mean similarly i you know as i as i get pretty uh you know I'm extreme with fitness and nutrition. We opened up the meatball shop. It was my dream come true. I've always wanted to have my own business and my own restaurant specifically. I didn't take a day off for two years. And I was there.

And we didn't have kids then. But I worked, you know, if she wanted to see me, she had to come to the restaurant. That was pretty much what it was. And she took me aside about two and a half, three years in. And she literally said, I need to sit with you. And I said, okay. And I knew it was coming. I just didn't know

like how she was going to word it but she was basically like saying I love you I want to continue loving you this shit is not going to work like this isn't going to work there's no there's no way I can continue to live this way

and I looked at her in her eyes and I was like you know what you're absolutely right I said here's the problem if I am in New York City on Saturday and Sunday I will be at the restaurant And I'm just telling you that.

I don't know. I can't, I have a business and I have partners. And for me to be in the city on a Saturday or a Sunday and not physically in the restaurant is going to be a hard one to describe. However, if I'm not in the city, then there's a chance that I can get away with it because I'm not here. And so if I make a hard call and tell my partner, listen, man, I'm married, you're not. Here's a deal. I don't want to lose my marriage. on the weekends, I need to leave New York City.

I need to, we're going to go rent a place out of the city. And I came up with that plan and I said, let's rent a place out of the city and try to get away every weekend. And if we can get away, if we do get away, if I'm able to peel myself in the business, then we should buy something and make it our, and this is how we're going to live, you know, and do this in a harmonious way. And that's exactly what we did. We rented a place up in Phoenicia.

We went every single weekend. we, you know, I don't want to say fell back in love, but like I was much more available. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and I think God, we do, because now, now, now we're living in that um, um, um, since a pandemic. Uh, but yeah, you know, my wife does not love the fact that I get obsessed with, uh, with anything I fall, like, anything I like, you know, she knows she, but I think at this point, we've been together 16 years. She knows who I am. You know, she definitely also knows how to communicate with me. I hate told no, but I love being, you know, being like, hey, Mike, you're doing 60 miles an hour.

There's a speed bump, man. You got to just, you know, you'll probably, you'll probably break the chassis of the car if you hit it that fast. And I'm like, okay, I understand what you're saying, you know, and I take it like that. I don't, I don't love being taught by anyone. Well, I think there's a lot. Your story has so many lessons in it. One of the most obvious, though, to me is this idea of creating an environment where you can be successful when you just know the animal that you are. I mean, this idea that you just knew if you were in Manhattan, you were going to go to the restaurant.

It was almost like you wouldn't have a choice. Can I just say something, though, that I think is really important to mention? I do not, to be very clear, think that that is a successful lifestyle at all. I really don't believe it's a successful lifestyle. I think that there are moments in time. You know, people ask a lot about work-like balance and how do you know. The most common question I get through, you know, social media or in an interview is, how do you balance being a father and a business owner and a, you know, and a husband and, like,

you know, the work-like balance thing. I don't think that there is actually a real work-like balance. I think that, you know, the goal is that at the end of the year, it's all balanced out, but there are going to be times where you have to sacrifice family for business. There are going to be times where you are able to completely sacrifice business for family. And I would just say that the most important piece of the puzzle for me and anybody who is actually looking to enhance and or optimize their performance and anything that they're doing is they must put themselves first, period. And putting myself,

first and not sacrificing time with with my business and my family means that like you have to sacrifice right you have to wake up early or you have to stay up later or you know there is a sacrifice there but being able to do that offers an a sense of balance in my life that I've never had before and I will say that I don't work you know 90 hours a week anymore I don't believe that that all or nothing like work to your dead mentality is a successful way to live at all. And I did it. And yes, like, did it, did it, did it work for me at the time? It did. But there was other areas of my life that really suffered. And I just don't think that that's absolutely necessary. And I think that this whole entire experience that we're all

going through in this crazy year has polarized that. A bunch has said, hey, like, let's look at what really matters, right? Like, what's the point of working till you're a nub? if you're not going to experience and appreciate the fruits of the labor ever. Like, oh, you retire at 65, if you're lucky. Like, so what, from 20 when you start working until 65, it's just a fucking grind? Is that worth any? Is that worth like, what's the purpose? And so I think that we're learning a little bit more about that right now.

Well, I mean, look, well said. I think that the thing that I've come to realize, because I've had things way out of balance myself in life and in building whoop frankly is that you do have to ask yourself what do you want like do you want to create something from scratch that's high impact and make that thing a success do you want to be happy and fulfilled do you want to be rich do you want to be famous fill in the blank right and I do think that it's hard to have all of that at once I really do. I mean, that's at least what I've experienced in building this company, is it's hard to,

it's hard to have too many things at once that you want. Gratitude is a little bit of the unlock, I think. If you can be hard driving and grateful along the way, you can continue on, but there were just so many years, in fact, in building whoop that I can think about where it was just a singular, it was a singular thing. I mean, it's just the way you describe building. restaurant. And so I think that if you're speaking to someone who, and I meet entrepreneurs all the time, right, founders, they just raised a bunch of money, they want to figure out how they can be the next billion dollar company. If you're speaking to that person, you actually have to be honest with them to say, if you actually want to do this thing, if you actually want to get

this thing to a place that no one's gotten it before, you're going to have to make massive sacrifices in your life, like massive sacrifices. And you are not always going to be happy. Like, I do think there is an element of that. But if you can be grateful along the way of what you're building, that actually, that creates the serotonin your brain to still be happy. So that's probably the biggest thing I've learned in the last 10 years is how to be grateful for all the progress while still now wondering, okay, how do I make it a $10 billion company, right?

And I recognize that that's not necessarily the healthiest mindset in having built a billion dollar company, you know, but it's just where my brain goes is how can we get whoop on more people? How can more people improve their health? How can we have a, how can we have a bigger impact? And when you feel that, and that's the first thing you're thinking about in the shower in the morning, there's, there is a tradeoff, I think. And that's my own point of view. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I, you know, I'm, I'm right at the sort of precipice of launching a new business, um, myself. And, uh, I know that the sack, I know the sacrifice that that's going to take and by the way like everybody in my household does as well including my two

young boys right right you know they they just they understand um i do it's a different kind of experience now though because i am working remotely and so i am able to like leave the office and give my kid a high five and which is like just a wonderful i never ever thought ever ever a ever thought that i would not be working in the restaurant business and the new business that i'm launching. I'm obviously not launching a restaurant right now, but the new business that I'm launching is in the digital wellness space, still around nutrition, but, you know, it's not a brick and mortar business. And so, you know, but I know that that doesn't, it doesn't matter. I mean, there's going to be an enormous workload. However, I will say that I have gotten a bit

smarter over the years in regards to how I think about business. The hardest part, I think the hardest part of business in general is people. I just learned over the, over the last 12 years of being a business owner that the more I'm comfortable with bringing on great people that feel the autonomy to make decisions and fail. I'm like, fucking fail, guys. Like, let's, let's fucking fail, you know?

Like, say that shit. I'm like, let's go. Let's, like, let's, you know, like, if we're not, if we're not, if we don't feel like we made any mistakes, we're not going at it as hard as we should be you know where do you see the restaurant industry in 2021 are you bullish are we coming back i believe that the spring of 2021 will be a little bit of a slow burn i think the summer is going to kick ass and i think the fall of 2021 is going to be on fire. I really believe it's going to be on fire because I feel like we'll be somewhere with this

vaccine. People will feel a little bit, you know, I mean, in New York City, I can speak to New York because I really, you know, that's where my restaurants are. I think that de Blasio is going to, you know, he's given, he's, he's opened up the streets to restaurants. I think the people of New York have really, really appreciated that energy in the street. It feels like Europe. It's cool. When you walk through the streets, even though the city's in a massive catastrophic state,

like because the restaurants are out on the sidewalk and in the street, it just feels there's an energy that it produces hard to, to, you know, like say existed before that was there, even non-pandemic. And so I think I think that there is a chance that that stays for some time, especially for a few years for the, you know, giving the city an opportunity and businesses an opportunity to get back on their feet. I think that I don't think I know the restaurant industry is not going anywhere. People, human beings crave experience. When people ask me what I did for a living, for a long time, I would say I'm a memory maker because that is what I did.

in the world of restaurants. My goal and priority was to make memories for people. Ideally, those memories were fucking good ones. You know, sometimes we didn't always win. But that is it. And people cherish those moments. And, you know, I don't think that's going anywhere. Human beings have definitely been impacted by this.

But, you know, just because, you know, you break your leg and it takes you a few years to get back up to running speed, it doesn't mean you're not going to run again. you know like you're going to you're going to want to run again trust me um and that's the city city's got a couple of broken legs and uh you know they've like torn ACL like real bad one um and it's just got to it's just got to take a little time to get back but there's no doubt that the city's going to run again uh and and and i believe the restaurants are the restaurants that make it through will be great because there needed to be a correction anyway i mean the way landlords in New York City, we're thinking about rents was just absolutely unbelievable.

And, you know, you can't as an operator in New York City make a lot of money. It's just, you can't, you know, you're my, it's razor thin. And as the rents go up and the food costs go up and the labor goes up and you can't charge more, you cannot charge your guests more money. Like if a guest walked into a restaurant, it's been $22 on a bowl of food, you know, six months ago and then they came back and that same bowl of food was $28. They'd be like, what the, what? You know?

And you're like, no, no, no. But labor just went up 100 percent and food costs just went up 60 percent. And my rent just, you know, they're just like, whatever, man. I'm going next door. Well, I'm with you. I mean, most people in tech are very actually bearish on cities. And they think that there's this new distributed workforce. and cities are going to decline.

And what's interesting is reconciling that point of view with the fact that if you look at every pandemic, like there's been a number of pandemics in the history of humanity. And if you look at the way humans have behaved following those pandemics, they crave togetherness, they gravitate towards cities, and they live really freely. Like, it's a really fun time coming out of a pandemic. And so we just had Nicholas Christakis on the podcast, who wrote the book Apollo's Arrow, which is awesome. And I encourage people to read it all about the aftermath of coronavirus. Yeah, I mean, I think that I think that 2021, 2022, it could be a big bounceback, especially within cities.

So we'll see. Yeah, look, I think people want experience. I think that that's something that's ingrained in our DNA as human. Now, Michael, if people want a great bike in Manhattan, where can they find your restaurants? Sure. I mean, Meatball Shop and Seymour's are two small chains of restaurants. You know, you can, Meatball Shop is, there's one on 23rd or 22nd and 9th. There's one on the Upper East Side on 76th Street and 2nd Avenue. There's one on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg. There's one on 53rd Street and 9th Avenue. Seymours. There's one on Broome Street in Mulberry. There's one on 18th and 8th. We've got one in Dumbo,

Brooklyn on Water Street, and we've got a huge one at the mouth of Brookfield Place down in the financial district across from Goldman Sachs. And then as soon as the urban spaces are back up and running, we have a few in urban spaces as well. Now, you're probably the first bodybuilder to own a meatball shop. Is that fair? I would say that's probably accurate. it. This has been a lot of fun, Michael. I know we've got to let you get out of here. Where can people find you?

You can follow along at Michael Chernow pretty much everywhere. Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. I'm trying to work on this TikTok thing. I'm really trying to understand how it all, how it all pans out. But you could also check out Born or Made with Michael Chernow. It's a podcast that I really love doing that I'm going to get you on pretty soon. Yeah, I can't wait. And I'm launching a new business car.

creatures of habit this spring. I'm pretty fired up about. So keep your eyes open for that. Awesome. Well, we'll include all of that in the show notes. Michael, thanks for coming on, man. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Will. Thank you to Michael for coming on the Whoop podcast. A reminder, you can use the code Will Ahmed and get 15% off a Whoop membership. You can check us out on social at Whoop at Will Amid. We've got some great new stories on the locker. That's just, whoop.com slash locker where you can read various thought pieces that we've done. We just did a great one on Super Bowl data.

And wishing everyone listening to this, a healthy and happy week.