Meet Michael Waskewich - By Canvas Rebel

Interview and story by Canvas Rebel. 

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Michael Waskewich a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Michael , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to go back in time and hear the story of how you came up with the name of your brand?

Deciding on a name and logo was more difficult than I originally imagined. My fiancé, Dolly Gray – Co-founder, and I spent hours kicking ideas back and forth to develop a name and a brand that would capture users and clearly portray our identity. This was not a short or simple process. We conducted informal polls amongst our closest friends and relatives to help narrow everything from the name to the logo, to the colors; even our kids provided input. Building the brand took hours of research into the terminology and history of the alcohol and tobacco industries. All of this research and insistent polling of our friends and family led to the perfect name and brand: The Bar Book. A bar book is a tool used by bartenders, mixologists, and industry professionals to record their recipes, ideas, pairings, and flavors for future use. It is their intellectual property; their playbook that gives them an edge over their competitors. This concept of a bar book fit very well with our business plan to create the only tool a customer would need to build their flavor profile. We did not want to write a book for users to spend hours reading and studying, nor did we want to use more expert opinions and ratings to describe different products. We wanted to build an application that recorded real reviews from users to determine their own individual favorites and produce informed and calculated ideas for their next drink discovery or cigar pairing. The Bar Book is a mobile application that uses the customer’s selections to build a flavor profile unique to that user and suggest products that most closely fit their preferences, while still providing rating and reviews from the community of users.
As we move towards the launch of our company and mobile application, we hope our users will appreciate the usefulness of our concept and brand as much as our close-knit group of advisors (family and friends). The Bar Book is expected to launch in the BETA phase as a progressive web application (PWA) and mobile application on the app stores in the Summer of 2023.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

After almost 24 years as an enlisted Soldier in the Army, my pallet was not exactly refined. As a young Soldier, my definition of a cocktail was usually some cheap bottom shelf brand mixed with whatever cola I had on hand at the time, and I did not have the money to experiment with pricier brands. Eventually I could afford to appreciate craft beers, but of course I could not remember which ones I liked, and I was not taking notes for later. My appreciation for bourbon and tequila came towards the end of my career in the Army when several of my peers introduced me to their favorites and we started talking about flavor profiles and searching for our favorite spirits across our many duty locations. As I was processing my retirement from military service, I began collecting bottles and trying to capture the flavors I appreciated the most. I searched for a mobile application to record my favorites, but the ones I found did not have all of the features I was looking for; apparently there was not an app for that. Out of sheer curiosity I began looking at the cost to build a mobile application and start a new business. I then took the next step and discussed building a mobile application and business with a friend who had done this before, and before you know it, I was drawing wire diagrams, crafting page sketches, and trying to discover a brand that would encapsulate this concept.
Dolly was already out of the Army when we started dating. She had served 21 years in the Army and had a vastly different experience. She is the one with a refined pallet that can taste and smell the difference between vintages of wine and spirits. She guided me through development and branding with her more delicate approach to this concept. Dolly had also built a collection of her favorite spirits but had relied solely on memory and the recommendations of others to experiment with new spirits and cocktails.
The Bar Book was developed to simplify real reviews from real users and collect user feedback to build an individual flavor profile. Users will be able to make simple selections while the software inside The Bar Book calculates the flavor profile and makes selections based on the input received. As a user continues to rate and review products their flavor profile will evolve to match.
There are a myriad of other features that will come online throughout the launch of the mobile application and assist users of all experience levels. This app creates a social media platform specifically for spirits, beer, cigars, and all products associated with them. Influencers from other social media platforms will be able to share their ratings and reviews for products and build a following. The reviews will be linked to not only the influencer but the product as well. This allows users to search for information by product instead of searching through piles of content and videos for information on a product. The Bar Book is only for users 21 and older, and it is not a application designed to sell products.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I retired from the Army as a Sergeant Major, the highest enlisted rank in the Army. As a Sergeant Major, I was taught how to manage and motivate teams to achieve results, obviously working with civilian contractors is quite a bit different. While my team of developers have been fantastic, their responsiveness was not at the same level I was used to as a senior enlisted leader in the Army. I could not just shout and direct they work nights and weekends to make a deadline I established, nor could I just redirect manpower to accomplish a task. The artists and designers were much different than Soldiers. I had to learn how to communicate effectively in a whole new language and include a level of specificity that had not previously been required. I remember once in the early development stages, I sent some graphics to the team for them to build into the website. I had written some language for a web page and at the tip of the page template I wrote, “use this language”. When the site when live, the page started with, “use this language” and then the rest of the language I had written.
Effective communication in the civilian world is far different than the military and learning how to manage and motivate a team through emails, phone calls, and text messages is extremely challenging.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We are still building our audience on social media and right now we have a very narrow following, but we have experimented with different methods that I think anyone starting out might want to learn from. Once I started building my social media pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest my phone and email blew up with ads from marketing companies and social media influences claiming to guarantee me an instant social media following. I tested the water with a few just to see what they were all talking about, but nothing substantial happened. I started doing some research into marketing and ad development for small businesses. I did not want to take on loans for marketing and I was trying to maximize the cheap or free resources. While the application is being prepared to launch, I have done a few things to prepare my social media accounts. I am not sure how well this will work, but I do know social media cannot be my only method of marketing.
I started building content relevant to my mobile application to build intrigue for the coming application. I built posts with cocktail recipes and started sharing drink discoveries from my travels. The pictures generate some views and likes, but nothing viral. Talk to your kids, they know more about social media influencers than you. I show the kids my posts before I finalize them, they will tell me if I need to change the font, color, music, or video length to grab people’s attention. They have some great input, and it makes the business something fun for the family.
I have also started reaching out to local businesses that will benefit from my application (breweries, distilleries, and liquor stores), to start introducing ourselves and our business. This interview itself is a method of telling the world about our business and our story. The bottom line is we are using multiple avenues to get the word out about our business and build our social media presence. Do not rely on one method to grow your presence, and no one has the magic bullet to make your business an overnight success on social media.

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