Chris:
Live each day for the day, words by our guest, Heidi Knoblauch on today’s episode of the Get Overit podcast as we talked to her about her journey from a PhD in history to owning an oyster bar. I know, right. Something that you might not ever think goes together, but that my friends is life in the truest way. Things happen, things pop up things, just up here. But if we are not living in the present moment, we might miss those opportunities and we might miss those chances.
Chris:
The great Ferris Bueller once said, “Life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you could miss it.” Well said, Ferris, my friend, but life isn’t that easy, it isn’t that easy. Being present isn’t that easy. In fact, it’s so difficult, I have the words, be present tattooed on my forearm as a reminder every day to live in the day. So what do you say? Enough talk? Let’s Get Overit.
Chris:
All right. Our guest today is, I guess what you would say a real mover and shaker, a true entrepreneur, doctor. And I’m calling her doctor because as one person who’s gone through the rigors of getting that degree, I give everyone the respect it commands when I see it next to their name, so Dr. Heidi Knoblauch. Heidi has been involved in numerous business ventures, including the owner of the Plumb Oyster Bar in Troy, New York, shout out.
Chris:
She’s been recognized for her business prowess. We’re going to talk to her a little bit about that today, named in Albany’s Business Review 40 Under 40 in 2019, earned Ignite Your Accelerator best pitch in 2019 and was given the WYCA’s Resourceful Women Award in 2018. She earned a PhD in History, which I’m going to talk to her about in a second. Master’s degrees in both History of Science and Medicine. Public humanities from Yale University, bachelor’s degree in history and public health from the University of Rochester.
Chris:
Heidi, welcome to the Get Overit Podcast.
Heidi:
Thanks so much.
Chris:
All right. I always want to start with giving the audience and myself too, this is the first time we’re actually meeting and speaking. So introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about where you’re from, what you enjoy doing. Just give us a little bit about yourself before we start to get into more of the business stuff.
Heidi:
I have a super wild background. I will tell you that someone dubbed me a nomad New Yorker, which I kind of like.
Chris:
I like.
Heidi:
Albany and then Cooperstown, and then Syracuse, and then up to Ballston Lake and then in Troy, and then in Rochester and then New York city. So kind of seen it all except Buffalo. So I’m a nomad New Yorker and I also had business itchings from the early start of my life. I was, the person selling pixy sticks on the back of the bus. I would go to the dollar store, buy 100 for a dollar and then sell them each for 10 cents a piece.
Chris:
That’s real gangster of you, pixy sticks. Yeah.
Heidi:
That’s right. And went to the Round Lake Antique Festival, selling water to people and doing just that kind of stuff when I was a kid. Then that translated into adulthood. So I went into academia actually because I think academia is a very entrepreneurial place. It makes sense, you’re creating something, you’re doing something. You’re creating new knowledge and oftentimes seeking a lot of grant applications or moving and shaking [crosstalk 00:03:37]-
Chris:
Oftentimes.
Heidi:
Yes.
Chris:
All the time.
Heidi:
All the time. That’s right, all the time.
Chris:
That’s funny.
Heidi:
I would not change my time in academia for anything. I wouldn’t trade it.
Chris:
It’s interesting you say that, because I get a lot of people who say to me, “How does someone who has an academic background and went to school to do neuroscience and do basic research end up in business and in the world of marketing?” And I don’t see it as such a far stretch, to be honest with you, because like you said, in academics and science and research, you’re creating. Your job is to create. Your job is to think, your job is to challenge and create.
Chris:
And if that is applicable all across spectrums, but definitely in business when you’re trying to come up with something new. And so again, I find that the knowledge I’ve gained too has really, really helped me give me a little bit of an edge.
Chris:
Tell me a little bit about grad school. The first thing is I want to understand your decision as to why you entered into that journey, because it is a journey. It is a whole… People always say like… I’ve heard these jokes from MDs and PhDs, the battles that they have is like, you don’t get… People that don’t get into med school, go get a PhD because they could still get called doctor. And I always say, “Don’t ever do that. Never go into a program like that unless you really, really want it.”
Chris:
So first question is, talk to me about the decision to enter grad school to learn more and then History. What was it about history that you really found to drive you?
Heidi:
Yeah, sure. When I was in my undergrad, I majored in history and public health and I was super interested in public health and how to change social determinants of health. So I thought when I was studying public health at the University of Rochester that that stuff would be changing housing conditions for people, these like large scale structural change. And I actually dropped out of the University of Rochester my junior year and went to CUNY Hunter because they had a community health education program.
Heidi:
And so I went there and I was like, “Okay, we’re going to fix these social determines of health. Let’s do this.” And a lot of it was about brochure making and changing individual behavior traits. So I was bummed out about that and I thought, what shifted from 19th century public health stuff to 20th century, all of a sudden we’re doing individual behavior change.
Heidi:
What does that change about? And was always interested in history, just I like history, and so I thought, I got to figure this out like when did this change happen? And through that, life happens in such random ways, right?
Chris:
It does.
Heidi:
But, I was taking a class called French women and I was writing a paper on a medical history issue that related to French women. And my professor said… And this is still when I was at CUNY, said, “Hey, you should go to AAHM,” which is the American Medical Association. Sorry, not the American Medical Association, but AAHM. So the American History of Medical Med, whatever. Wow, that’s embarrassing that I’ve forgotten that.
Chris:
No, it’s all good. [crosstalk 00:07:06] There’s too many of those in our society today. It’s all good.
Heidi:
I went to this conference just because I was interested, and people don’t go to conferences like that just because they’re interested. They go there because it’s part of their professional development. And I happened to meet the people who would become my advisor at Yale and I saw, oh, history could be a career. I could actually do this type of research and figure out these large complex problems for a career. So I thought about that for a little bit, and then decided that I was going to buy a coffee shop in New York city instead. That was in 2007 or early 2008.
Chris:
So this is pre grad school.
Heidi:
That’s right, all pre grad school. 2007, 2008, I was like, “You know what? I’m going to do this entrepreneurial thing. I’m buying this coffee shop. We’re going to do it.” Had this verbal deal with the owner of the coffee shop and-
Chris:
No, wait. So now 2007, 2008, I’m living on the upper East side. So where is this coffee shop, I’m curious?
Heidi:
It was called 17 Bleaker, so it was [crosstalk 00:08:24] Street between Bowery and… Like right over by the Bowery.
Chris:
That’s a fun place, a fun area, yeah.
Heidi:
Absolutely. And almost did it, but what happened was the owner had a lot of outstanding debts that he wanted us to take on. And I had to make this game time decision at the end of this road and decided not to do it. And then the entire financial system collapsed. So that was a lucky break for me, and so my backup plan was to go to Yale for graduate school.
Chris:
Then you enter Yale as a master student first or is the master’s degree on the way? Because sometimes like in my case, I received a master’s on my way, but I entered in as a doctoral student. Is that what happened for you?
Heidi:
That’s exactly what happened to me.
Chris:
All right.
Heidi:
So I only applied to PhD programs that would pay you-
Chris:
Same. Which by the way, pay is loosely defined in this for grad students. I think it was like-
Heidi:
Yeah.
Chris:
I think my stipend back in the day was like 23,000 bucks in all.
Heidi:
Yeah. I think mine was like 28, 30 something like that.
Chris:
You can live there, but it’s no debt. Right? That’s the difference, right? You were not paying for the tuition. Sorry, go ahead.
Heidi:
No, you’re fine. I applied to a bunch of programs, got into a bunch of them and made the decision to go to Yale primarily just because it had a couple of researchers there that I really respected. And I thought, these are the people who I’m going to work with and I still respect them so much and really valued them. But my advisor, John Harley Warner was at Yale, and so I decided to go there and have him mentor me through the program.
Heidi:
But in your two or three, probably two, I realized that I didn’t want a tenure track position. That wasn’t for me. That kind of climbing the ladder and-
Chris:
You realized that early in your [crosstalk 00:10:27]-
Heidi:
Yeah, I did. That’s what led me to get that public humanities degree. So, I actually had to [crosstalk 00:10:33]-
Chris:
I see.
Heidi:
That was an American studies program, so it didn’t cross over with history, so I actually had to apply to the American studies program to be able to do my master’s in that on the way instead of my masters in history. And so through that public humanities angle got really interested in digital humanities. So all the rage back in early 2010s, it’s really, I think a place that a lot of entrepreneurs who are in the humanities end up, because they’re trying to solve these really complex problems.
Heidi:
So I’ll give you an example of a complex problem that I was trying to solve. My dissertation is on clinical photography in the early 19th and 20th century and how it relates to conceptions of patient privacy. And so something that I wanted to figure out was when do the black bars over the eyes start to come into play. So I wrote a Python script that scraped down the New York Medical Journal from 1860 to 1922, and then used another script that actually someone else had written to pull out all of the images from those articles.
Heidi:
And it pulled out like 3,000 images, and then I coded all of them to see like when black bars started appearing over people’s eyes. And to be honest, it’s much later than you’d think. And I can talk about that forever, but… That is what led me into digital humanities. And at the time I was also working for a Ford foundation project that was done at the community graduate center, the CUNY graduate center. And in that project, it was called Just [Publix Spree 65 00:12:24]
Heidi:
And I led a bunch of what were called media camps for academics because the goal of the program was to connect academics, activists and the media, and to really teach academics how to expand their audience. Because a lot of people write these… Like when I was given my book deal, I said, “How many copies of this are you going to run in the first round?” The answer was 500, and I said, “Wow, that is a lot of work for 500 people to potentially get [inaudible 00:13:03].”
Chris:
For sure. It’s like wow.
Heidi:
And it wasn’t like a bad press. It was not all bad press. It was very reputable, it was the University of Pittsburgh press. I was debating between that and Johns Hopkins… Oh, I’m sorry, University of Chicago. And so between those two, it was both like 500 run. And that for me really struck home of the idea that I want to make an impact.
Chris:
Right. Like it’s too small scale.
Heidi:
Yeah. I wanted to make an impact. And although it’s not like… I just wanted to influence people beyond this like 250 person-group of people who know everything about history of medicine. And although I actually miss those people greatly, I really miss being able to like jam about Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison’s book on Objectivity. I’m I miss that piece. I miss chatting historiography and like how when a new book comes out, it challenges this other thing.
Heidi:
My sister got this book from my mom for Christmas because she was really interested in the Civil War. And it’s by this person that I don’t particularly like. And I was like, “Why didn’t you ask me before you bought this book? This is-“
Chris:
You’re like, “This is what I do, man.” I know, it’s funny.
Heidi:
They get this huge narrative wrong. You know what I mean?
Chris:
Yeah.
Heidi:
Let’s go to page like 230 and I’ll show you. But talking in that insular group of people, it didn’t fulfill whatever that itch and need was inside of me.
Chris:
You don’t feel like you’re getting to where you want to get to. That’s how I felt. I remember… The beauty of academics is, or at least the spirit of academics, I think it has changed a bit because it’s gotten a lot more infiltrated by just whatever money is going to give you, the money for your work. You tend to go that way, it’s not just pure on what your thought is. The idea of sitting in a room with smart people, being able to have a really awesome discussion where people challenge you or you expect the challenge and you can then have like good real debate and incremental movement, it’s really fun.
Chris:
And I agree with you, I miss it, but there’s a certain personality that is okay with that sort of dialogue forever. And for me, never was that. It couldn’t be because… That’s why I always did other things because I needed something else. Don’t get me wrong, like you said, I loved it, but it didn’t do it for me to the point where I can do this forever. And I realized that later than you. I went through grad school, went into research and then started getting into content production by happenstance because I had a business to grow and I had to learn how to do that.
Chris:
And then I fell in love with that because that was real tangible, you start something, you grow it. And it’s really as much as you hustle, whereas science, I can hustle all day long, but a lot of factors are going to keep me back. So there was always that. So, tell us now, so you go, you graduate. You have that amazing feeling, you get the degree. Where are you going now? What’s your option? Where are you at in life and where do you go?
Heidi:
At the end of my degree, I was like, “Man, I’m not sure what I’m going to do.” And at the last minute, which is like March, when you’re applying for jobs, that’s like late. That’s like super late. I was like, “I should apply for a job. I probably won’t get it, so it’s fine, I can crash this and do whatever else I want to do next.” And I applied for a job at Bard College, the digital digital projects coordinator and also professor, not full professor, but-
Chris:
On the track, yeah.
Heidi:
Yeah, for historical studies, which is what Bard calls it. And I got in, I got it. So I was both thrilled and also like, “Okay, what am I going to do with this? Am I going to stay at Bard forever and work in this small liberal arts college?” And I think I could’ve seen myself doing that, but again, the problem just came back to, I felt like I was in meetings where it was these circular conversations and we’re talking about like how to allocate $500 for like a lunch program for like when there’s a speaker series. Like how to do lunch for that speaker series.
Heidi:
And I really, really liked all my colleagues at Bard, I thought that they were great, but again, it just was like, this just doesn’t feel right. This just doesn’t scratch the itch that I’ve been trying to scratch. And so I made a really hard… I wasn’t really ready to do this, but I didn’t feel like I… Because I had senior senior advisees and stuff. So I felt like I needed to let Bard know before school started that I wasn’t going to be teaching these classes and I wasn’t going to have these senior advisees.
Heidi:
I don’t know if you felt this when you were getting out of academia, but it’s like terrifying. It’s because it’s, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, but it’s a insular community. And if you don’t follow that kind of tenure track path, if you don’t follow the path that they’ve set for you, you feel like a little lost.
Chris:
We used to call it, you’re either going into academics or the dark side. That’s what we used to call it amongst my friends. The dark side was like pharma and industry, and then academics was like pure. It was more of like this pure place. Whereas you were going over the dark side, you make more money. You’re less creative and you’re not going to be able to create your own ideas unless you get to that really high level, but you’ll do better and you’ll probably have a little bit more of a comfortable life.
Chris:
Right, it’s a dark side because it’s more of an unknown. When you grow up in academics, it’s like a family, those pedigrees are real. You have like grandparents and-
Heidi:
Yes.
Chris:
… siblings in academics. And [crosstalk 00:20:00] you think like them. It’s funny, when you sit… When I have big Italian family dinner, I’m more like my cousins and my uncles and aunts a lot, but we’re very different, but we’re all come from the same lineage, so we share isms. Same thing in academics, and then all of a sudden you’re out of that family. Right?
Heidi:
Yes.
Chris:
So you’re like, “Whoa.” I totally get it. Yeah, it’s a very weird thing. And a lot of academics cannot make the switch. They can’t. It’s too difficult for them and they belong there. Luckily I wasn’t that person, luckily I was able to come out.
Heidi:
But that feeling is very real like it’s a loss. Then you become an independent scholar in my case. So an independent scholar-
Chris:
Which is a smart way to say a smart person on their own now.
Heidi:
Yeah, that’s right. You’ve got no affiliation, you’ve go umbrella and nothing. So making that jump for me was like… Whenever I know that something is right, I feel very propelled to do it. So I knew that making Plumb Oyster Bar was right. I knew that that was right. So I felt a compulsion almost to make that thing, but at the same time knew I couldn’t keep this other security community that I had made for myself. [crosstalk 00:21:23]-
Chris:
This was your get over it moment.
Heidi:
Yes.
Chris:
You were like, “I need to get over it.” I not fulfilled and I need to do it.” The difference is you did it, or you at least attempted to do it and then did it. Whereas I feel like one of the things I wanted to talk to you about is we want you to continue like how you took the jump, because a lot of people can’t do that. They’re just restricted by this idea. They think about it, oh, I really am passionate about making sandwiches. I want to make sandwiches, dude. That’s all I want to do.
Chris:
By the way, I love making sandwiches. That’s a real thing. I want to make sandwiches, that’s my passion, but I have a job and it’s safe and it gives me the life I have. And if I go to make sandwiches, yes, I’ll be doing what I love, but there’s a lot more unknown and I might not have any money. And people struggle with that branch and they never get over it because they’re afraid of the… It’s a real fear of that, what if it doesn’t work out?
Chris:
I guess you’re deciding that and you know it’s right, and you decide that you’re going to do it. So how did you square that? Was it just like, “I’m done, I’m doing it and I’ll deal with it”?
Heidi:
No, it was more that I knew I wouldn’t fail because I would refuse to let myself fail. So on our like second or third week open at Plumb Oyster Bar, we had a person who I had hired as a kitchen manager and that person decided to sabotage our first TriNet out and not come to work.
Chris:
Geez. Brutal.
Heidi:
It was brutal. And in that moment, I didn’t even think like, man, that guy’s a jerk. It didn’t even register to me. It was okay, how do I do this?
Chris:
You’re going to survive mode, like I got make-
Heidi:
Of course.
Chris:
… this work.
Heidi:
Yep. It’s like I went to Restaurant Depot, I got a bunch of stuff. I got everything that I was able to make and I cooked in the kitchen for three weeks. I should’ve worn it, so I could show you. My wife made me this necklace because I always said after that moment, I can point to the day that I became invincible and it’s January 27th, 2017.
Chris:
That’s cool.
Heidi:
That’s the day I became invincible. And so, forever, I have that. And so I think that people who are scared to make that jump, you’re absolutely right, all the time you’re going to have to make it work, make it work, make it work. At the bank, I work with a lot of clients who are like, “We have got to make it work, we have got to do this, we have got to make it work. And that’s true and that’s going to be that hustle all the time. Because there’s always something you’re going to have to make work, until your business is stable, which is like five, 10 years. It’s a long time.
Heidi:
And so making it work is like feeling that it’s once you get to a point where something happens, that you overcame an impossible task, that feeling of invincibility doesn’t wane away. There’s nothing that I can’t do.
Chris:
Right. Like I did it, I’m going to keep doing it. Right, it’s that mindset that it’s never… It’s a very academic thing to learn in academics, because in academics, 90 odd percent of the time, things are going to not work in your way. Your thing is getting rejected, your paper’s not getting in, your grants aren’t getting funded. So it sort of gets you tough. Two, there’s that element of you just have to keep going.
Chris:
But I got to know, how do you come out of this program in history and academics, and open up an oyster bar? First of all, are you all about that oyster life? Have you always been? Or was it a complete business angle? Did you see an angle for oysters? Was it both? Tell me about that because that’s a niche. That’s real specific.
Heidi:
I tell different versions of the answer like [inaudible 00:25:26], but I’m going to tell you straight up, it was totally a business decision. And so many people said to me, “Don’t call it Plumb Oyster Bar, call it Plum Bar. Do not call it Plumb Oyster Bar.” And I was like, “Nah, man-
Chris:
Nah, man.
Heidi:
… the path has oysters.” And so I had seen a lot of oyster bars in New York City. I’ve been at a lot of them. I had gone with my wife to a bunch of them. I did like a little Google keyword search and a lot of people were looking for oysters in the capital region. If you do it, just zone in on what people are looking for. A lot of people were doing searches for oysters and so I thought like, oh, this is interesting.
Heidi:
Then so Lucas Confectionery is right across the street from us. So I went to Lucas Confectionery every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Tuesday was their oyster night and they were packed and every other night they weren’t as packed. So I was like, “Okay.”
Chris:
So you’re sitting there like, “Okay, check, search volume, check, demand, check.”
Heidi:
That’s rights right. That’s exactly right. There’s some factors there and I just saw that there was going to be appeal for it. So I got a lot of flack for putting oyster in the name. You wouldn’t believe, everyone has got an opinion.
Chris:
Everyone has got opinions, yup.
Heidi:
And I said [crosstalk 00:26:59]-
Chris:
And so you open the oyster bar and they all want to come and try oysters?
Heidi:
Yeah, they started.
Chris:
Exactly.
Heidi:
No, what I said to them is I said, “I feel like they got over it with Jack’s Oyster House, I think they’ll get over it with me.
Chris:
Exactly, right. That’s true, it’s exactly right. But you do like oysters, I would imagine. This isn’t-
Heidi:
It’s not that I don’t like oysters.
Chris:
They’re oysters, you can’t eat them all the time. Right?
Heidi:
Right.
Chris:
Right.
Heidi:
You can, you can eat them all the time. And like-
Chris:
That’s what I mean, I mean it’s not a primary thing that you’re having at a meal, but you could have it with meals. It’s not that
Heidi:
Yeah.
Chris:
Right. Exactly, yeah
Heidi:
I’ve tasted every oyster variety that’s come in, but I don’t think I’ve had an oyster, not just because we haven’t been closed, but I don’t think I’ve had an oyster in a year. And that’s not because I don’t like them, it’s like-
Chris:
No, you don’t have to… It doesn’t have to be all about what you just love. Right. Exactly, right.
Heidi:
People who know me closely will tell you is that I’m also like a super paranoid person, and so when we first started Plumb Oyster Bar, we get our oyster delivery at like 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning. And I would eat every oyster just to make sure that they were all [crosstalk 00:28:13] and everything was good. It was so funny though, because I would get anxious towards when we were going to be open. I was like, “Oh man, I’m feeling like a little lip in my stomach.”
Chris:
Oh, man. You’re like, “No, what’s going to happen?”
Heidi:
Like, “Maybe we shouldn’t serve this one.” And everyone was like, “Yo, got to chill out with that. You’re just nervous.” And so I had a lot of oysters at like 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning too, so that’s a [crosstalk 00:28:41]-
Chris:
That will be enough to make you slow down on the oysters.
Heidi:
Yeah, that’s right.
Chris:
So you open this, you dive in, you go for it, and you clearly have this, and I want to look into at the time and I want to make sure I get to some things. But you clearly have this sort of passion. There’s some sort of fire in you that’s going to make you invincible like you’re saying. It’s going to make you plow through and go through and do something, even though people are like, “What? What are you doing? Are you crazy?” Which I find that when a lot of people say that it sometimes reinforces the idea that I need to do something.
Chris:
Because if they think it’s that crazy, then it’s either that crazy or it’s that interesting. So there’s always that too. But where does that come from? This is one of the great things for neuroscience that I find fascinating, is that there are these people that are inherently driven, and I hate the word driven because it implies that other people are not and some people are. That’s not what I mean. I mean that there is clear passion in certain people and this drive. And if you’re going to get over it, take something to the next level, you have to have that.
Chris:
So, you always have that? How did you foster it? And talk to me about how failing, and maybe being in an environment of academics where there’s a lot of failure fueled it for you and kept it going? Because I think that’s really important for people to succeed. They got to be able to fail on the way.
Heidi:
Absolutely. And I’ve failed so many times. I fail all the time. I think I fail on like a weekly basis [crosstalk 00:30:09]-
Chris:
Yeah, you should. That means this is not you. You’re not trying anything. Right?
Heidi:
That’s right. And so I think that that failure rate, I’ll tell you a little story of when I was a kid. You know those little toys that are a circle where you put like little tiny shapes into them and [crosstalk 00:30:24] the box-
Chris:
Yep, yep [crosstalk 00:30:26].
Heidi:
When I was a kid, I was so wanting to do this thing. And when I couldn’t do it, I would flip myself back in frustration like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t have the motor skills to do this yet.” I’m three years old, whatever, two years old. And my mom would always have to put a cushion behind me because she thought all kids did that. When my sister was born and she did the same thing, she’s like, “Oh yeah. Not all kids get like that. I think that I have this combination of being driven, but also being really frustrated.
Heidi:
And frustrated in a way that I’ve had to like channel into fixing problems to make the path easier. So the big things for me are like one day at a time. It’s one day at a time. You can have these long, long-term goals, but it’s like, what can you do in this day? So every day I wake up, I’ve got a little prayer. I wake up, have a little prayer, and I just say, “Okay, I have today. What can I do today to move it one step forward?”
Heidi:
Because for me, if I take on the whole thing, I just get too frustrated and I feel I’m [inaudible 00:31:43]. So it’s all about taking those little tiny chunks. But what you’re saying, and I totally agree is that taking those little tiny chunks at some point, there’s a moment where you have to over it. There’s a moment where you have to say, “No, I’m going to do this.” There’s a moment that you say, “I do risk this as [crosstalk 00:32:00]-
Chris:
Right. And It’s okay to take the steps first. No one’s suggesting you have to take the jump right away. That would be crazy and that would probably be ill-advised.
Heidi:
Yes, exactly. And so that’s what I would say to people is that, do a little bit every day. If you do a little bit every day, what that does is it gets you to the point where you can get over it. If you just are trying to tackle the whole thing all at once in one day, it’s just going to frustrate you and you’re going to throw your head back.
Chris:
It’s a very mindful technique. It’s all about mindfulness. One of my biggest problems in life is my ability to hold my presence and in the day, in the moment. And I actually tattooed be present on my arm, on my left arm, which is my cell phone arm. So every time I have it out or I’m doing something, I can remind myself. And then I have the patient on my reach arm, which is my right arm to remind me to just slow down. Just chill back and this is where you have to be right now.
Chris:
Because I’m always going, going, going, going, going, which is great, but it could be disastrous. And like you said, it creates the anxiety that’s unnecessary, because you can’t control any of that stuff. And it sounds cliche, really it does, but it’s so true. The only thing you could actually can control is what you’re doing in that moment and everything else falls into place. So that mindful approach is really important, you have very disciplined because almost impossible to maintain presence. Right?
Heidi:
Yes.
Chris:
But I agree, it has to be a constant reminder, especially during this crazy time. This is what I want to talk about in the last little bit while we’re talking is… When we’re recording this, it’s early 2021. So for those people that might catch this podcast years after it comes out, this is 2021, early 2021. We’re still in this historic pandemic that we’ve been going through now for over a year. It’s changed so many lives, fundamentally how we approached our life, our business.
Chris:
So what I want to ask you is two things, first off actually as student of history, history of science and medicine, et cetera. I’m curious, where does this fit in for you? You’re a great person to ask in terms of the gravity, how serious of the time we’re in right now? And how do you think it affects humans personally going forward? Do you see this as a shift in human… Evolutionarily as we look back, this could cause humans to shift, I believe.
Heidi:
I would say a couple of things about that. If you look at a lot of people point to like the 1918 flu pandemic as like a parallel. There are some issues with doing that, but let’s just take like the U.S. GDP or whatever. The pandemic started in 1918, obviously continued through 1919 and 1920. And so you see a decrease until 1921 when it spikes. So I will say that I think this year is going to be like a pretty hard year. I think we’re going to see that decline for sure.
Heidi:
But I think when you think of the 1920s, what do you think of? You think of the Roaring Twenties. Right?
Chris:
Right.
Heidi:
So the Roaring Twenties are happening, prohibition is during the Roaring Twenties. So there’s a lot going on in the United States, but the economy is booming. So I definitely think that we’re going to have a rough 2021. I think it’s not going to get back to normal until next year, but I try and think very term. I think very long-term in my investments, I think very long-term in relationships, I think very long-term just generally. And I think the more you can think about-
Chris:
That’s very scientific of you, by the way. It’s very academic of you to root out because there’s less error and variants in the longer periods of time. Right?
Heidi:
Right.
Chris:
Correct.
Heidi:
But if you think about someone in 1925, they’re not thinking about the flu. You know what I mean?
Chris:
Yeah.
Heidi:
Our memories are super short and I think that there will be some changes from this, for sure. I think that there will be some positive changes, I think that there’s going to be some negative changes. But I’ll give you an example in my business-
Chris:
Yeah, that’s the second part. That’s what I want to ask you, so personal, and then the second part is business because the business landscape has to… As someone who markets for a living, it’s definitely changed. I’ve seen that digital platforms, all these things have really changed. You’re in the restaurant game, so you know this more than anyone. So talk to us about that, how it affects business now. And then long game, do you think we remain on this pivot that we’re seeing?
Heidi:
For me, I’m always trying to figure out how can we use this time to do better in the future. Like one small thing is that we’re going to print a QR code on everyone’s receipt and they’re going to pay with their phone. So there’s not going to be this running back and forth with credit cards or anything like that, people will pay on their phone at the table. And so that’s hugely different than somebody getting their credit card, giving it to someone else, someone running it at the Point of Sale system and then bringing it back for them to sign, and all of that stuff. I think 2020 was a great year for the QR code. [crosstalk 00:37:29]-
Chris:
It really was. It’s so true.
Heidi:
A great year for the QR code, so I feel like people are really apt to use that now. And so just thinking about small things like that, small changes like that-
Chris:
People will be likely to do things now, possibly that they weren’t because they become used to it.
Heidi:
Yeah, that’s right. And so when I think about the restaurant, the huge bummer for me is like I’ve had to lay off pretty much the whole staff, besides someone who a couple of hours a week is doing the cocktail club. That’s a big bummer because I was those people’s livelihood. And when we closed, I could no longer support them. Right?
Chris:
Right. Which every business owner knows, you want your business to be successful, obviously and the goal is to make money, but when you employ people, that’s the kind of thing that just you think about at night. You should at least. Most small businesses, at least, bigger businesses are a little different story. But I’ve done a small business, especially like local small businesses in communities, you think and it hurts. That’s why I can imagine people’s pain.
Chris:
It clearly is a difficult thing to go through. There are some positives that come out of difficulties. At the restaurant, what is it like now there? Have you reduced down? Are you doing something different?
Heidi:
Yes. What we’re doing is this cocktail clubs, so people buy a cocktail club that’s for four weeks. They get four drinks a week, so a total of 16 cocktails. They can have it delivered or they can pick it up. What that allows us to do is that-
Chris:
That’s cool.
Heidi:
… they buy it beforehand… Yeah, they buy it before the month starts. We know exactly how many we’re doing for the month. Last time we had… Each time we have about 50 people that sign up, so we can batch all the cocktails, we give them with a snack. And they’re on their merry way and it allows us to keep our name out there, our brand out there, and also to employ a couple of people. But we really shut down the whole restaurant, there’s no food coming out of it. The cocktail club is the only thing coming out of it.
Heidi:
And so why I did that is I felt like, oh, let’s save energy for when it can be busy in April. Because you don’t want to wear people out, because the last thing you want to do to a restaurant worker is put them in a kitchen where they’re not doing anything. Because that’s defeating, that feels defeating and deflating. That’s not a good place to be. And so for morale’s sake, I just said, “Let’s cut this.” And I think that the majority of employees will come back.
Heidi:
There was one person who took it really hard and so I don’t think they’ll be coming back, but I think that the majority of employees are going to come back and hopefully we’ll just be up and running in April.
Chris:
And you can look back on this as just that something that was in the past and in a science word, it’s plus or… It was more than two standard deviations from the mean, so you can get rid of it from your dataset and keep moving forward. One of the things I hope that comes out of this time that has been obviously terrible, wreaking havoc on people’s health in so many ways, physical and mental health is that I hope when this is over because we’re still in and there’s still too many people dying every day.
Chris:
But when we start to come out of that and we can look back and say, “What was it?” That we will see the vulnerability that is our country and their health. Because they do think that we have a problem both in physical and mental health and we are left vulnerable. And when a vulnerable population is susceptible for viral spread, that’s what they do, they find cracks and they wreak havoc there. What I hope is that, I spent a lot of time on mental health. I have another podcast where I’m focused solely on that.
Chris:
What I’ve seen in mental health is that people have embraced it more because it’s been made a little bit more available to them. There’s just been an explosion of digital mental health outlets. And insurance companies have waived copays and you don’t have to go in and see a psychologist or a psychiatrist and lay on the couch and be… You don’t have to do that. You can just call somebody and talk it out. And people are trying to get a little more healthy because they don’t want to get sick.
Chris:
So I’m doing this because just highlighting the fact that in the most extreme downtimes, there always is things that come out that make it better in the time where it was so bad. And I think that it’s sort of a metaphor for life that if you’re feeling stuck and you’re feeling like you know what you want to do and you want to get over it, you just have to tell yourself that it’s okay, do it. Put your mind to it. And like you said, I think you said…
Chris:
Your advice, my last question was going to be to, if you have a room full of people from all over the world and they’re all in the same place and they’re feeling stuck and they really want to get over it, what are you telling them? I think what you said was you’re telling them, “Just live in this moment every day.” That’s what you would say to them.
Heidi:
That’s exactly right. If people can take it one step at a time. So for me, if I’m ever thinking about the future, what I try to do is write very, very detailed to-dos. And we’re talking like detailed, we’re talking like make Excel Spreadsheet with these four headings, Fill in column A, Fill in column B. And if you break it down like that, you feel like you’re moving. You feel like you’re getting somewhere. So I’m not to say that I’ve totally-
Chris:
No, no, you’re not.
Heidi:
… great at future thinking, but I’ve got a couple of things that I really want to learn about right now, like always learning. And so got a few things that I really want to learn about, so I just like made a schedule. You’ll laugh about this. I did the same thing with my dissertation. For my dissertation, I looked up how many words is in… Our top journal in our field was the Bolton, The History of Medicine, how many words is in the average chapter? And they cut it off at 10,000 words.
Heidi:
So I said, “Okay, I’m going to write five chapters. They’re each going to be 10,000 words.” And then I just said, “I want to finish in six months. This is how many words I need to write a day. And then I’m going to give myself-
Chris:
Wow.
Heidi:
… two weeks to edit it.” And so when I stuck to that, I was like, “Okay, I can get up off of this chair if I write these like 1,000 words or whatever. That is what allowed me to do it. I was just like, “Got to write these 1,000 words. They don’t have to be good, but I have to-
Chris:
You’re just got to write them. Especially with the dissertation, it’s all about progress because you can get stuck, there you get stuck. But again, it’s just like life, you get stuck. Winter’s here in Upstate New York, it’s cold. You get more down, you get more stuck. And it’s the time where you could either go into like a little bit of a hole and just live there or you can find that thing that maybe you’ve been putting off and then say, “Look, I got nothing else to do, so I’m going to put my effort and my time into this so that I can really do it.”
Chris:
It’s really just a mind game and it’s getting your mind right. And I’m glad that you took this time today to come on the show and talk us a little bit about your experience. With these shows, it’s never… For me, I find them fun and I get to know people and I just want to keep talking to them about it. But now I know that nowadays, listeners have limited time to actually listen to things, so we try to do it in concise bits.
Chris:
But again, I really want to thank you for coming on, telling me a little about your story, how you got over it and how you continue to get over it because your challenges are not over. I’m sure you would agree with that. You’re going to continue to face them, but you have to hold that philosophy and just continue to push to the next level. So thank you so much for coming on the show and it’s really been nice talking to you.
Heidi:
Absolutely. You too. Thanks so much.
Chris:
All right. So she is Heidi Knoblauch, I am Chris Pisano, and this is the Overit Podcast, where people come together to discuss the various ways to stop just getting through it and start getting over it. We’ll see you on the next episode.