YouSaid · the spoken record

Seth Berkowitz

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115
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2024-08-26
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2024-08-26
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  1. “Well, in all fairness, my wife named it. She's an insomniac herself. She struggles with sleep at times. And she's like, how do you feel about insomniac cookies? And we were like, maybe you drop one of those C's, but insomnia cookies. And the name has always been really strong. It just captures the business really well.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Yeah, and so since I was traveling every other weekend, the first semester was Monday through Thursday only. Friday, Saturday, Sunday we were closed, which is ironic because Friday, Saturday, Sunday are absolutely our busiest days now by like a tremendous march. But it fit into my lifestyle. And it said insomnia cookies, phone number, order, warm, delicious cookies to your door. That was pretty much the entire flyer.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “Yeah, I mean, I still have that flyer. I took a piece of paper, cut it into force, and had these quarter sheets yellow, blue, like orange, pretty neon colors, and really started handing out those fires in September of 20 And I went to the top of each high riser, three high rises of pen. There were like 30 stories each. I go to the top, and I would just post it on each floor. I'd walk down. And then I do it two or three days a week. I'd stand on the main campus with a tray of cookies. And it started to pick up. I mean, it wasn't, you know, from the beginnings of the business, if I got five or six deliveries a night, that felt like, all right, making progress, not overly taxing can still get my work done. And that was really just kind of the first few weeks”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “I mean, so I think to your point on the recipe, I think you're right to some extent. There's tons of good cookies. And it took me a little while to develop a recipe that worked, but that particularly worked for warm because the premise was always I want to get it to you in 20 or 30 minutes when you eat it. That's going to be optimal. That moment in time is going to be optimal. And if we can execute against that, you're going to order again. That was really like the whole business model to some extent. I had a cell phone and I had a car and I had a notebook. That was like literally the whole story. People had my cell phone. I had to change it eventually because people called it for years and years and years. That's how I took orders. I wrote it down a notebook. I baked and off I went.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “I think I spent $100 on everything, like the first mixer, like $30 and the first ingredients. It was effectively no investment.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “In the beginning and for the first month or two that it was open, it really was like this is just fun. Like I was the cookie guy on campus. People knew of me. And if it worked out, great. If it didn't, you know, I was 20. What's the harm?”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “This be awesome to I think I looked around in my sophomore year. I'm traveling back and forth up to Boston. And life starts to seem like I'm at this point in time where adulthood is here and professionally I'm going to be there at some point in the near future. I'm going to need to make a choice in life. And just in that moment, I was like, I'm going to go for this. I think it's a good enough idea. I think it's definitely niche enough. And I think it's going to resonate. And so I kind of tested it a fair amount. Like I was baking cookies and mixing doughs for a few months. I was handing cookies out on the main thoroughfare of the pennus, seeing if people liked them. So I was working on a recipe and the concept and even a small business plan through my second semester and into the summer.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “It was cold out, and I'm like, I don't want to walk to Wawa. That was where the warm came from. I think a warm cookie on an emotional level really reminded me of home. So there was an element of being 20 and being away from home for the first time in my life, even if it was year two and thinking, you know what, reminds me a little bit of my childhood, a warm cookie. And I think that'll resonate with others.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Well, I think the premise used to be if you were going to deliver, it had to be something that you could deliver really well. Pizza delivers well. If it's not great, you can heat it up. Chinese food same story. Sandwiches, it didn't matter. And so cookies really lent to that really effectively like warm cookies, you can be done well, can be done quickly, we can get to your door very fast. Fit into that effectively.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “Yeah, it was open all hours in the night. And I kind of married those two. It was just like, all right, we're ordering food. I love sweets. I'm really sick and tired of these options. Actually, I had this moment where I opened the door and there was a delivery driver at the door and it was the same delivery driver who'd been there two or three times that evening, like the same guy with the same pizza. And I was just saying to my friends, like, what's happening here? Like, we're ordering Papa John's for the third time in one night. Like, I think we have a bit of a problem. We need to expand what the options are here. And that was really the beginnings of the Insomnia Cookie inspiration.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “So I moved off campus with eight of my good friends, and we lived in this fairly dilapidated college house on 41st Street. And it was like till five o'clock in the morning a video game and food ordering kind of haven, right? We were ordering product all night long. And there were so few options. There was a hoagie place. There was a Chinese restaurant that delivered. There were two pizza shops. And that was it. And I used to walk five blocks to the Wahwah to get like ended tasty cakes, a Philly special and I'd get licorice and Ben& Jerry's. I always had a sweet tooth.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “So we had mutual friends at Penn, and Rebecca would come visit. We hit it off at one point. And I went up to Boston to hang out with her one weekend, and we just started dating.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Really, not. I mean, I grew up in a small kind of insular community going to Penn was a big change for me. And honestly, I was just so excited and attracted to opportunity in general, like what there could be out there sophomore year. I joined the school newspaper. And I started dating somebody who was in Boston. So I was traveling quite a bit.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “Say I'm the least successful sports fan that exists. So I root for. You can root for the right teams in New York. You can root for the Yankees. I root for the Mets. You can root for the Giants. I root for the Jets. You can root for the Rangers. I root for the Islanders. And we're all Knicks fans. It's really the primary option. I've never watched my team win a title in 43 years on this planet. The Mets won, but I was sleeping when I was five.”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Went to the investors as I'd been doing for the last three or four years. I'm like, here's what our losses for the year. It's less than last year, but it's still a loss. You know, I'm hoping to raise half a million dollars. And they're like, checkbooks closed. We have no idea what the future holds that the checkbook is closed. Like, figure out what you're going to do. And so I ended up cutting my team and I stopped paying myself for 18 months. It was crazy. Honestly, I did compartmentalize that time. I don't really think about it too much. It was. So very hard”

    2024-08-26 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Insomnia Cookies: Seth Berkowitz · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT