George Mirosevich

I'm George Mosfich, and I'm a chef, and food is at the heart of everything that I do. Right now for a breakdown, my week, the busiest things are Bear Chefs, my ready-made meal company, content creation, and curating experiences for brands that money can't buy.

So three years ago, me and my brother were running a catering business. We were based in Newcastle, and we're travelling to Sydney sometimes seven days a week, right? We were both fit. Young.

That's it, that's it. And for me, the really alarming part was, you know, we're going from Newcastle to Sydney, we're cooking these big bloody mansions, Wagyu, caviar, we're cooking this amazing food, but what are we doing on the way home? Mickey D's every time. That is one week, bookkeeper says, "George, mate, we need to talk about this." She goes, "You spent $600 at service stations on food this week alone." And I felt like shit, like we're talking like protein cookies with like Caesar wraps, whatever it may be, just garbage, right? Just putting food in my mouth and mindlessly. And that made me realize, well, hang on a sec. What about the people that can't even cook? Like, I'm able. I'm fit, I'm young, and I can cook a lot of great food, and even I'm still going towards that fast food. So Bear Chefs was a was a product built for people that are time-poor and busy and don't want to sacrifice nutrition.

Correct. Yes. It's a meal and a container that you put in the oven. Yeah. But the quality of food is, is second to none. It's what it's what changed my life. You know, going through this phase, the two things that changed my life two years ago were Bear Chefs and deciding to wear all black, right?

Well, first of all, it took all the thought process out of my day. Yeah, having Bear Chefs in the fridge, knowing that I was going to have great food all the time, to feel great, to optimize my output, that was number one. There was no thought process. What's on Uber Eats? What's this? And then wearing black, there's no thought process. I'm going to wear the same black shirt or singlet. It all goes in the washing machine with my sauna towels, my gym towels every day. So not deciding on food and not deciding what I wear each day, that's what got me to where I am today.

Yeah, and the byproduct of me eating great food and looking after my body. I walk in anywhere with my $12.00 T-shirt and it's a little better than most of the room. So that was enough. That was enough evidence to me. That's the right thing to do. And what else do you do with yourself? So content creation for me, since being on the TV show, it's sort of...

Billion Dollar Playground. OK, so me and my brother starred in that as the chefs. So a Billion Dollar Playground is a reality TV show that follows the lives of people that cater for the uber rich. So we have a brand new house, $30, $40 million, with brand new guests each week. And the TV sheaf, the TV show follows us. So chefs, catering, butlers, concierge, housekeeping, it's all about our lives catering for the ultra rich. So for me, when I knew that was coming out, I said, "Right, I'm going to pick up a tripod and I'm going to start." And I'll tell you what, that was 10 hours of my life for a 15-second video. It was hard, right? You know, even spending 10 weeks in front of a camera for reality TV, that's different because we're doing our thing, we're getting around, we're working, right? When it comes to a tripod in front of your face with a camera, you just shut off, it's hardcore.

Be OK with sucking. You have to suck first. That's the reality at content.

Be OK with sucking at content because you're not going to be great at the start. Yeah, there is so much to absorb. For me, my personal strategy and game plan was to go right, who's doing well in the food creator space and literally copy their videos to the point of getting their video, dropping in a Final Cut Pro. If there's 35 slides, then you make sure you do 35 slides, right? You, you. They're already figuring it out. They're already getting millions of views. There is no shame in copying their products at the start just so you get, you get familiar with it and then you can digress, you can go off, you can be your own person, but it is really hard to start. Don't have any shame in copying the guys that are doing the best. You're not going to be there forever, but it's a very long, long slow road. Get your reps up, but have no shame that be OK with not being great and copy the guys that are doing the greatest thing. And how much content should you produce weekly or daily? What's your thoughts around that?

At the start, I was doing three posts a week, so three posts on my grid, or stories. Stories is a bit of a different one. Stories to me now is more of a a brand building exercise and it's also me understanding what my audience really wants. So at the start, I had a contractor, he would come in and we'd just film for like six, seven hours. He'd bang out three videos, we'd post it and that was it. And to be honest, I was very directional with just fast-paced, doable, healthy cooking videos. And that's when I had somewhat virality. I started in February as a basic bro, posting photos of me and the boys drinking to within five months accumulated across the Instagram, Facebook 400,000 followers.

To a to a point. And like I said, me at the start, I knew the show was coming out. I knew that if I had a platform with 1,000 followers, with 1,000 followers or 50,000 followers, I'm still going to get the same exposure, right? So for me, I was like, right, that's when the camera came out six months before and we're going to start filming content. And I just dotted on the food, right? Now, if you look at my spaces and all, all across social media, it's more brand building. It's, you know, trying different things. Once again, I'm going back to the point of like, "You're going to suck at this for a bit, George, but it's all about building the brand," rather than being known as George who just cooks healthy videos.

There's two, I've got two parts to that answer. Number one, first of all, brands, brands want your reach. So I've got one video that, you know, overnight, not overnight, probably over the course of two weeks, you had 40 million views.

100%. And for, you know, if we're looking down marketing and advertising, you know, let's look at, you know, big car brands. I'm going to use Toyota for an example. When they when they, when they advertise the Toyota Yaris, it's a Yaris going sideways around a racetrack. Is that necessarily going to appease people to go, "Oh yeah, I'm going to buy a Yaris?" Not exactly. So there's this there's this shift to the moment where people that can create content have much more power and reach than these guys with huge marketing budgets. So for me, it's, it was very apparent when these big brands are coming across and going, "Oh, geez, we can offer you this much money for this exposure." I'm like, "What?" Ow. And when you start understanding how much they can spend per click to get in front of their audience versus you with a camera, it's the, the, the ball's moving. It's it's going from old-style advertising to, well, essentially content creators and your entrepreneurs of the digital world.

At the moment, small to large. Any pay between $10,000 for a reel to $50,000 for a three-piece reel.

Yes.

It's cool. It's very cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Everything's food related. So for me, if we look at just, you know, a collaboration with the pasta company, that was just a reel talking about their product, you know, not being too salesy being about it. People subconsciously they switch off. They don't want, no one's to be sold to. I don't want to be sold to. So it's got to be entertaining and that's part of the craft of working with these brands. You know, you do get pushed around a little bit, but you want to play ball and you want to, I've accessed, you know, to those deals. You got to play ball. You got to go through that process, Yeah.

This is fun. This is fun. So for me, look, I've been a chef for 15 years. Yeah, that's all I know. Now I have, I've done my time on beat fries with fish and chips. I've worked in high-end restaurants in Australia, three Michelin star in London, three hat in Australia, I've owned a restaurant, I've sold a restaurant, I've got a catering business. Everything I've do to do with is food. So for me, I see myself as the artillery of food. So when I talked to brands, I go, "Right, what's your budget and what's your vision," right? So the budget could be, you know, X amount of dollars and that's obviously going to be reflective of what sort of goes into it. But what I'm seeing is people have these weird and wacky ideas, right? And I'm like, "Put it on me," because I might not, you know, I might say yes, so we're doing that, but it's going to inspire me. "Your vision is my inspiration." That's the first thing I say to all of them. So for example, we're looking at with a watch company right now, they have picked out a house from the TV show and they, they said, "Right, we're going to launch three new watches this year. And once you send them across, you be inspired by the watches, be inspired by the real estate, create an experience for our top ten clients around the world."

These guys want experiences. And these brands know that, right? They, they these customers, they get invited to all sorts of cool parties. Yeah. But they're like, for me, by reaching out and going right, I can do anything with food and give me your wildest dreams because like I said, "Your vision is my inspiration," and let's see where it goes. So it's everything from glamorizing a canteen menu to a watch brands to barbecues. Budget, vision. Let's go.

I think I, I can say catering stuff, absolutely. So I, I've got some pretty cool clients. This one, this is, this comes to mind straight away. I wasn't allowed to see where I was going. So this client, I cooked four, five or six times and they said, "Look, we can't tell you where the property's gonna be, but literally you're gonna jump in a car with all your stuff and you're gonna rock up the property."

This particular time, no. OK, I've jumped in the van. I've filled up with all my own stuff. Phones get left behind. I mean, driven for driven for about 20 minutes, not blindfolded. I wish. I wish I was blindfolded. Would have been not that red hot, yeah, but yeah. No phones though. Nothing. Into the garage, walk up, up the stairs. It was somewhere in Sydney and I walked in. And have you seen Madagascar the kids movie?

OK, this was real life Madagascar. We're talking three-story like we're talking palm trees, waterfalls, animals in Sydney somewhere.

So I walked in. They're like, "I'll just go through the atrium." So I'm walking through. I'm looking around like, "What is this place?" Walk straight. Through...

Private residence, yeah.

It's and I've I've, I still don't know. I still don't know that that's about as much as the story I can tell. And I just cooked food, that was it.

Yeah. Yeah, 100%. I always eat the food. That's why they get me back.

Keep building brand. Look, for me, the directions always, you know, have more impact to do more. If we're looking at George on a personal level, what I do really behind the scenes is I'm chasing energy. You know, if we go back to the TV show, the TV show was the darkest point of my life. In what in what way? Nothing to do with the TV show. This was a personal issue. I remember being there at a certain time. You know, I'm driving McLaren, it's my birthday. You know, there's big party room, mansions, there's cameras. It's the rockstar life. And we're sitting there. I'm. I'm half cut and everyone's enjoying themselves. Everyone's loving it. And I was miserable. Yeah. At the time, Bear Chefs was six months old. It was losing a [expletive] load of money. And all I want to do was go home, look after that business. And what I realized was I love food, but the stigma that comes with it, you know, the drinking, the partying, the late nights, I didn't like that anymore. And it got to a point where I almost thought I don't want to be a chef anymore. And I realized, "No, hang on a sec, George, cut the shit." But I had to get real. I had to get really real with myself. And it's been, it's been 12 for 18 months of like really deep personal development. And I went back to basics. You know, I had some fallouts of relationships. I had, I didn't love myself, and I had to find it fall back in love with myself. And that all started with food. And it meant that, you know, I thought the really cool stuff was working with these billionaires and these really hard-point business people because of the experience and check out that car and like, you know, I get the high five this guy and like fat paychecks, but really the value is so much more than that. Because what I realized was the guys that I started that to sort of gravitate towards, I realized one day I've never seen them with any sort of substance or alcohol. And when I, when I meet them, they're literally walking out of a meeting room and they're walking back in. I was like, "Hang on a second." And I started getting talking to them. These are all clients that I've consistently cooked for that somewhat became mentors. And in their own words, it got to a point where they said, "George, really what's important is health," right? They've got all the hyperbaric changes, they've got the cold therapy, they've got this, they've got that, the special meds, the special water. But it all comes back to food. And for me, it was a realization where these guys have everything and they're going back to try reverse, reverse age body clocks, trying to eat great food. And what I realized, the lesson wasn't hanging out with billionaires. The lesson was these guys have it all and they're going back to basics, which is food. Because you can have all the hacks and the magic pills, but if you're not feeding yourself properly every single day, you piss in the wind. So for me, that was my big lesson and that was my big lesson. That was really that smacked me in the face 12 months ago. That's what I said right from now on, I'm not drinking, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that. And obviously you completely quit drinking.

Completely quit. Well, to the point where the I don't throw shade over. I'm not like, well, you know, I've got my soy wrap, but I don't claim that I'm sober. But I know for this next part of my life, I need to be sober to really get the most out of it. Because for me, let's say I get get blind drunk tonight and then I go to have my sweet potato, poach, fish, whatever is tomorrow, I'm going to feel that shit anyway. Yeah, right. To really dial myself back and to really know who George is, I have to be clean. I have to make sure I'm doing my rehab, my breath work, all that sort of stuff. And then to really get rock solid evidence of what makes me feel good. And that all starts. What goes My mouth.

Is that ideal day, right? We're awake. Warm and water number one.

Warm and water. Yeah, yeah. Downstairs. Boil. Boil the kettle. Squeeze like a whole lemon. Good. Morning 5:36. Yeah. Cool. Yeah, ideal. And then back upstairs. Breath work, so warm. And then water. Breath work, meditate, ice bath. Well, straight to the gym. This is that perfect morning. It is. This is the perfect morning. It hasn't been like this every single day, trust me. And straight to the gym now, once again chasing what makes me feel good. I've been going down this avenue of movement, so I'm not claiming I'll be calisthenics, whatever it may be. I've never even touched my toes. That's that's the honest truth.

I'm so close. I'm so close. But for me, it's once again going down this avenue what makes me feel good, what gives me energy. Yeah. So movement less, much less weights at the moment. And then my landing routine, red light, sauna, and journaling, that's sort of my come up, that's my go down. And then that's all in in aid to have to give me the most amount of energy for that 12-hour period that I'm going to go do all my things. It's about a three-hour morning if you add all that together.

Oh, I stand, I, I break it up throughout the course of the day because otherwise it's too long between the time I wake up to the time I sit in front of the computer. I did that for a little while. It was three and a half hours at the start. And I was like, "Dude, you're taking the piss like you've, you're, you're getting to your first task at three and a half hours of the day and your, your brain power's not there." Yeah, because the issue is if you try and do all these treatments, which I was doing at one stage, sauna, ice bath, training for grounding, getting sun, everything I don't do, I do a little bit of breath. I don't do journaling. But it was, it was a five-hour morning. Yes. And it's just the fuck, when do I actually work to go make money?

All that for me, I, I list all that out right now. This is all the last four months about creating an artillery to make me feel better. Now my food artillery, I know what makes me feel great. I've got a great team behind me as far as my diet. I went through the biogenetic testing. So at the start of the year, a lot of gut issues to the point where I was, I was jacked, I was strong. I was eating a kilo steak a day, but I was having a meal and six, like 60 minutes later, I'm on the ground. Like excruciating.

Biogenetic Testing. So let's, I had a lot of testing done, but if what's really shaped my diet, this is the one. So for me, biogenetic, biogenetic. So. Figuring out what food you're genetically supposed to eat. Right? So you got to send off stool and blood samples to the States. It comes back and goes, "Right? George, your Croatian, so Mediterranean diet suits you most." So I should be prioritizing fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, things like steak and sugar once a week max? Is that right? Because that's what my body's genetically meant to actually process. Yeah, right. So once again, I was pissing in the wind at the start of the year going, "Right, I'm going to kill." I was steak me and all these vegetables, whatever it may be. Yes, it's healthy. It may be great for you, but for me, my body's not built to break that down. So that's been another one of my avenues where I'm like, "Geez, all right, give me this list of food. How do I make this convenient, approachable?" And you know, not taking me three hours in the kitchen each day. Once again, that's also sharpen my artillery to, to live an energy full of more life. So for me at the moment, talking about these, all these regimes that's created my artillery to make you feel better. Like you said, sometimes like a rush routine. I'm in front of the computer in 45 minutes. Yeah, because it's like a little bit of breath work. And don't meditate today. Ice baths, great. Maybe I might train, like at lunchtime. Yeah. But it's about having the artillery to go, right, today. This is what I'm being dealt with. What am I pulling out? What am I going to use? Because I need to do something, right? And, you know, on an ideal day, what's a Saturday? And things all pushed aside, no one's calling me. OK, sweet. Well, that's really. Yeah, let's let's do that. But I think right now the last four months is about acquiring those skill sets, realizing what makes me feel great and then branching off that and then using what I need it because life's different all the time. It's a whirlwind this week. It's a little bit more relaxed next week. Oh shit, we're on a big well win next week. And just a matter of just pulling and and going back and forth and not to be not being too hardly sought.

Oh, hell yeah. To see what their body needs. Absolutely. It's changed my life, it's changed my life. I feel amazing now.

Every single day. So fish, ideal diet, so sweet potato is the carb with whitefish for lunch with three or four different vegetables all roasted at the moment. What I've found with roast vegetables is it's much less abrasive on the gut and I process it much better.

Say lettuce, lettuce, cucumber, like fresh raw veggies. I know that if you think about you're breaking down your mouth, that's fine. But even when you break it all down, it's still much more abrasive on the gut. Is that right? As opposed to a roast zucchini, roast cauliflower, roast broccoli. So for me, fish, sweet potato and vegetables. Lather up an olive oil, hemp seed oil, avocado oil, seeds, five days a week. There'll be some sort of cultured food. So we're talking about sauerkraut, kimchi. Once again, through the genetic testing, it says, "George, maximum five days a week. That's what your body's going to be optimized on by eating your style of foods." So getting the genetic testing and having someone that you trust to sort of guide you through that process, it means that you can actually go out and buy the food that you know you're built to process and then start your journey that way.

Absolutely. It's my skin. My skin's so much better. What I also realized was I was eating way too much food. I just eating too much. And I'm sure I wasn't drinking or partying or, you know, feeling my body was shit. But I was still, first of all, eating the wrong food and eating too much of the wrong food, even though it was somewhat healthy. So genetic testing is, is the place to start. Look, it's it's, it's not as scary as you think because they're going to give you a list of food that your body's built to process and your body's built to optimize off.

What are you good at? What are you good at? Because for me, I, I've, I've always boiled back down to food. You know why? I had this drink over and everyone was sad and sitting in the lounge drinking a lot of wine. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to start a Prosecco business." So I'm on the phone and I'm calling these guys and I end up locating 10,000 litres of Prosecco juice. Got it all, sent it off to another wine maker. He made it. Then it got bottled up. Anyway, turns out for three months later I had 10 pallets of Prosecco rock off my door, right? That was a learning curve. It was cool at the time. Was I really passionate about Prosecco? Was I passionate about alcohol? No, not at all. So when the times got tough, I was very resistant towards, you know, having to do the hard stuff when it comes to Bear Chefs, content creation and working, you know, with the top end brands. I'm still fully immersed in food. So it's OK. I'm still learning. I'm I'm only adding to my own mission. Prosecco wasn't my mission. Do something that you love because it's going to make it much easier when the times do get tough and they will get tough.

It's calmed down a lot. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm gonna if I'm gonna go back to my glory days in London. I worked in London. Yeah, I spent, I spent two years at L'Enclume.

Life changing, life changing on a business level and a personal level. Business, once I want to say business on a personal skill set level. Even in the kitchen, we spent so many hours in that place. Like I would start at 7:00 AM, I want to finish till 1:00 AM the next morning, go home, sleep in three hours, back to work, right? So once again starting with business. This is going to go back to your first question. It's all only good to say, "I've owned a business for two years." That's great. But did you spend five hours a day, five, five days a week? Or did you spend 18 hours a day, five days a week? It's not about how many days or months or years you've been in there. How many hours are you spending per day in that time frame? And what I learned was you can, you can achieve and you can learn a lot if you just go balls to the wall. And that's exactly what I did. 18 hours a day. That was the truth. Then it was, it was rogue, like it was, it was testing. I went from, OK, I walked in that kitchen, 90 kilos. And I used to Skype or what? Skype or MSN, my mum.

Skype. Yeah, Skype every single week. And on week three, she's like, "George, maybe a chat." I was like, "OK, what's up?" She's like, "Have you taken up hard drugs?" I'm like, "No." She goes, "George, you look sick." Anyway, I was 78 kilos. I went from 90 kilos to 78. Three weeks, three weeks, right? My face was sucked in. Yeah, in hindsight, looked like a junkie, but it was because I was not sleeping, I wasn't resting. I was working like an absolute dog. 3 cups of coffee a day, sometimes four and one meal. That was it. Now, am I saying that is the way to do it? No, absolutely not. But that was a period of my life where I realized it's how many hours you spending on the thing that you're trying to improve on per day. So my two years at L'Enclume were like four years anywhere else in the world. It was hardcore. It was, it was brutal.

No, it's a different place. It's it's, I'm a different place in my life. But any young chef, just book one way ticket, get to Europe, get to London, bring that knowledge back to Australia.

I won a scholarship.

So I won a scholarship that bought me, gave me $10,000 cheque and I won my ticket to London to work in delivery with Rogan. So I was 19 at the time. You know, for me, I before I left, I had...

Oh, well, I lived at home with mum. I had a partner of four years, so if I needed a bill paid, they would do it. Not those any bills in 19. My undies were folded in my drawer each night, right? So I went from like very being very nurtured, everything being done to me, to moving to London, having to get a lease, having to figure out how to use a washing machine and having a shop for my own food. And that for me, that grew me up real fast. Went from everything in Australia to having nothing in London and also working 95 hours a week in one of the world's most brutal and prestigious kitchens.

I, I couldn't agree more. I've so I've got a, went through the contracting route at the start of the year with my videographer, and now I've got a, he's actually one of my first kitchen aids in my restaurant back in 2019. He's now my videographer, 20 years old, never used a professional camera, obviously at least one year old's very handy with an iPhone to the point where he was working with me full time. Now he's actually moving, he's living with me. Oh, shit, right? And that's commitment. It's me.

Well mate, he's gone from once again party boy to eating organic food with George, waking up, getting it done and he's now on the mission. And I'll tell you what the first thing I said to him, because obviously working, you know, very closely, it's just always on, always on their phone. I said, "Man, if I can give you one piece of advice to, to skyrocket you past everyone in your in your league, put your phone down." Yeah, put your phone down and concentrate because we're all guilty over the times. But your generation in particular, dude, it is killing you, right? I don't care that you can do two things a month. You can't put your phone down. Give yourself at least just, you know, four or five hours just away from it and the progress you'll have. This. This guy is for everyone. Yeah.

Look, it's very difficult. Let's say you live in a house and a share house with four blokes, right? And they all love eating KFC, get on the piss and smoking weed. It's very hard for you to decide. "You know what, I'm gonna eat organic food. I'm gonna go to the gym in the morning. I would have sauna at night." When they're all doing that, you've got a bit. It's really difficult. I, I strongly suggest you need a new environment. Remove yourself. There's no shame. It's not even move cities or whatever it may be, but it is really bloody hard to make positive changes, have positive impact. And immediately if you're in that environment where it's like, "Oh no, it's pretty easy." Just fall back into it. And that's what London did for me. I went from being comfortable to being in the shit on the other side of the world in one of the hardest restaurants in the world.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going. To say, yeah, that is, if I was a young guy, I wanted to be a chef, I'd probably move to Europe and work in a restaurant like that just to build resilience.

That's it. That's all. Like for, for so long I was worried about the skill set and like, oh, I'm not learning this. I'm not learning this. Just learn the skill set of life of resilience, of getting after it and just showing up. Because there's going to be so many periods in your life where you feel like shit and you're like, oh, you know, I, I didn't really do anything today or I didn't really get anything done today. I just got flogged at work. No, you're learning so much more. Let's zoom out. All you're learning is so much greater than you learning how to cut a vegetable properly. It's once again, it's environmental.

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.