It was such an emotional experience to represent 315 million Americans at the Olympic Games.
You have a unique responsibility.
I'm a chef.
I want these ingredients in my life.
These things are very spiritual.
I followed what inspired me.
I was a freshman at Stanford.
We were training at a really high level and I was with some of the best athletes in the world.
I noticed we were eating really poorly, you know, six, seven, eight thousand calories
a day.
It was not being maximized.
So I did my own research.
I found that sushi grade fish is really easy to absorb for your body and that changed my
life and I became passionate about making that cuisine come to life
for me as a performance athlete.
When it all came to fruition and I was walking through the tunnel, out into the stadium with
U.S.A. on my chest, in the semifinal of the Olympic Games, 115,000 people screaming their
heads off...pretty amazing moment.
So it worked.
When I retired as a runner, I tried a few industries, you know, real-estate, solar energy,
but the whole time I was having people over for dinner and really excited about that trade.
I had a huge solar deal that went really well.
I thought to myself, "Okay, what if this whole thing works out and suddenly you're making
oodles of money and it was no longer about money, how would you spend your time?" because
you can't that back.
The answer immediately came to me, like, "Well, I'd have some really amazing ingredients,
live music, have some friends over and I'd probably do some cooking."
I thought to myself, "Why don't I just do that right now?"
That was a big risk.
A couple people thought I was crazy to go from what could be an exciting solar energy
career to this, like, little underground sushi party in my loft.
But it's not like it suddenly became my passion.
Cooking led to a better athlete.
So it was embedded in my whole life.
He didn't wait for anybody to validate his idea.
He didn't wait for it to make sense from a financial perspective.
He just started doing it.
Sushi Belly Tower, when I started it, I didn't have a license to buy fish.
I just kind of kept pestering, kept asking.
"I know I don't have a license, but can I come buy a little bit of fish and here's a
little bit of cash," and just kind of worked my way into that network.
I went to Ikea and bought a little chopping block.
I borrowed a table, 12 chairs, from a neighbor.
There was a password.
There was a sense of adventure.
Every single dish, I did right in front of them, also communicated specifics around these
ingredients that they would learn a ton from; where the fish came from, the fish sources,
what wasabi was, what environment it grows in.
He takes the world of art and performance, the world of athletics and efficiency and
merges it with food and dining and hospitality.
The way it's plated, the way it's encouraged to be shared, there's a social experience,
an air of informality that comes with Michael that's refreshing.
Mi familia!
You welcome someone into your home for a dinner experience, your guard is down and, suddenly,
theirs is too.
It's an intimate dinner with strangers and you walk out with friends.
The feeling was so invigorating.
What it gave me was something of a gift in terms of how I want to spend my time.
The way he approaches it is the way an artist would approach their trade.
It feels that his heart is literally being, like, transferred from the fish to the knife
to the plate.
The groundswell began.
The word traveled amongst the community and suddenly there was thousands of people that
wanted tickets.
I could only fit 25 people in my loft.
Sushi Belly Tower spread and we started traveling and now we've done several cities.
He's a very natural networker.
He'll be like, "So, I have 35 people for dinner.
I have all of this fish that's been flown in and I need a place to host this dinner."
Then everybody will call out and find, like, some awesome loft somewhere, and an hour and
a half later, it'll be a party with delicious food.
Sushi Belly Tower became a hot ticket and as it grew in demand and it grew in price,
it became less accessible.
And I wanted to open up that net.
There's no real reason why the common man shouldn't be eating the same food that an
Olympic athlete should eat.
Our real goal here is to democratize access to healthy food and the education around that
food and grow it and make it a business.
I've signed a 10-year lease on The Bowery and we're going to start that story right
here in this room.
It's a very exciting time.
The goal, really, is to pull it into a sort of fast, casual poke concept,
downtown New York.
This is going to be sort of ground zero, our first home.
I hope my cuisine educates people, empowers them and to make people feel like they can
do it themselves.
My dream is to make as much impact as possible.
We're trying to change the world.
What are kids eating?
What are soldiers eating?
What are patients eating in hospitals?
Most of the time, it's not great food.
We hope to change that, to take these principles of simple, high quality, sustainably sourced
ingredients and embed them in communities that don't have options.
There's no age limit on changing your career or following your passion.
If you're not enjoying what you're spending your time doing, then stop.
Do something else.
It is scary because, yeah, you can fail.
You're vulnerable when you're honest.
When you're honest, you got to figure what you love to do and somewhere in there is the
magic of a pursuit.
Start small and start now.
The rest of it will figure itself out.
It changed my life.