The great artist Georgia O’Keefe said, “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant — there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.”
I like this quote because it opens up the definition of greatness to mean something so much more than “success” or “achievement.” The act of putting something into the world and being willing to adapt and evolve is simply what matters at the end of the day.
My guest on this episode of School of Greatness is a success by any definition. But what I like about her most is that she didn’t try to have everything figured out when she launched her business. When Christina Tosi launched Milk Bar in 2008, she didn’t even have a menu ready for their first guests.
“I remember that morning of opening day — it was 6:00 AM, and we were two hours away from opening. I’m looking around, and we don’t have a menu. I knew what we were serving, and it was loaded to the point of [a] sales system … but I realized when you walked in, you couldn’t actually see a physical menu. So we took off the legs of the stainless steel prep table and grabbed the dry erase marker. I have terrible handwriting at best.” – Christina Tosi
Christina didn’t let perfectionism get in the way of action. Today, Milk Bar has 17 locations and a thriving delivery business.
So many of us are crippled by making a decision about how to launch their business or grow their business or start a new project. This analysis/paralysis holds you back — nothing new is ever going to be perfect from day one. The quicker you start, the sooner you learn and can adjust. That’s something I love about Christina: She was willing to try, innovate, and be creative. As her creativity grew, so did her business. But first, let’s go back to the beginning.
Who Is Christina Tosi?
Christina Tosi is a chef, author, and television personality. Christina is the recipient of several awards and was featured on a list of “Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink” by Food and Wine Magazine in 2014. She was featured in Netflix’s Chef’s Table Pastry season as the founder and owner of Milk Bar, the sister bakery to the Momofuku restaurant group.
When Chef’s Table approached her, Christina was surprised they wanted to hear her story. She wasn’t running your typical fine-dining restaurant.
“When they first approached us, I thought, ‘Maybe I read the wrong article [about the show].’ I thought they had the wrong impression [of my business]. The spirit of what we do is very democratic. We make cookies that are accessible to everyone. It’s a $2 cookie. You don’t have to make a reservation. It does take a team to put together [our cookies], but we’re doing it in this really big, almost Willy Wonka-type factory — the spirit is so different.” – Christina Tosi
Before all the press and attention, Christina worked in those fancy, fine-dining establishments you typically see on Chef’s Table. She moved to New York to be a pastry chef and worked her way up at Bouley before joining the team at David Chang’s Momofuku. Despite working at some of the top-rated restaurants in the world, she was feeling unfulfilled in her career.
“I was finding fulfillment in the pursuit of the craft, but I wasn’t finding fulfillment in where I needed to be as a pastry chef, as a top dog. I was resonating with the part of the creation but not the entirety of the creation. … I took a look at myself in the mirror, and I was realized ‘I really want to go home and make cookies at the end of the day.’” – Christina Tosi
Christina started to ask herself, “What’s it all for?” Why was she pursuing success as a pastry chef when it didn’t truly align with her internal definition of greatness? This was the spark that led to her “a-ha moment” — when she realized that she needed to make her unknown, known.
Making Your Unknown Known
It took meeting David Chang for Christina to start to recognize the true potential of what she could do with her passion for baking. If you’re unfamiliar with David Chang, he’s a restauranteur who’s on a mission to democratize savory food. On shows like Ugly Delicious, David demonstrates how food can bring people together in beautiful ways.
“I saw what [David Chang] was doing through savory food, and I thought, ‘There’s a path for me.’ I started working for him at Momofuku, helping him run operations. I would bake cookies at night and bring them in. He knew that I had a pastry background, and so one day he said, ‘This is pretty much ridiculous, it’s clear what you need to be doing. Go and do it.’ That gave me that little push to open Milk Bar.” – Christina Tosi
Christina said when they opened Milk Bar’s first location next to Momofuku, they were anything but ready. She didn’t expect that there would be a line out the door on their first day.
“We took off sprinting … and every day we figured it out for good and for bad. We made so many mistakes, and the beauty of the mistakes was that we didn’t have the opportunity for the mistakes to sit around. We make a mistake and learn [from] it.” – Christina Tosi
Christina attributes part of her success to following her intuition. She’s strong in her conviction that there’s no one right path for anyone — the decisions you make may lead you down a curvy path, one with wide lanes, or one that turns out to be a high-speed highway. But, make sure you show up to whatever path you’re on each day and learn from it.
