🇺🇸 From JAG Corps to Craft Spirits: The Founders Bringing Tech to Your Taste Buds!

From JAG to Gin – How One Veteran Couple is Disrupting Spirits Discovery

🕒 By Jessie Ott | Thirsty Thursdays @3PM EST
🎙️ Featuring: Mike & Dolly Waskiewicz, Co-Founders of The Bar Book

What if your next favorite spirit wasn’t sitting on a shelf—but in your pocket? That’s the question Mike and Dolly Waskiewicz set out to answer when they created The Bar Book, a revolutionary app that matches people with spirits based on taste, not brand.

These two aren't your typical startup founders—they’re U.S. Army veterans with decades of service, including careers in JAG, global deployments, and legal leadership. Their pivot from the courtroom to the cocktail world is not only inspiring—it’s solving a real market problem.

💡 Why The Bar Book Matters

For consumers, choosing a spirit often means guessing based on a label, a friend’s recommendation, or blind luck. For brands, especially small or veteran-owned producers, getting discovered is an uphill battle.

The Bar Book bridges that gap—think “Dating App for Spirits” meets WSET-certified palate intelligence. It helps you:

• Discover new brands by flavor profile
• Save and track your favorites
• Explore cocktails and where to find them
• Connect with bars and bartenders in real-time
• Give smaller brands visibility based on taste, not budget

🔍 What Makes It Different?

Mike and Dolly are building The Bar Book as a family-run, veteran-powered venture, with real user needs in mind. It’s not about algorithms from Silicon Valley—it’s about the real flavor experience.

And in 2025, they’re opening up the platform to onboard brands, bars, and industry partners. The goal? To democratize discovery and create a community-first platform for the spirits world.

🥃 A Few Takeaways from the Episode:

✅ How their military mindset helps them lead with clarity and kindness
 ✅ Why flavor tech is the future of beverage discovery
 ✅ Their favorite spirits, bars, and cocktail must-haves
 ✅ Why data matters—but people matter more
 ✅ And how they’re helping veterans & craft distillers shine 🌟

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: [Thirsty Thursdays YouTube Playlist]
🔗 Explore The Bar Book: https://www.thebarbook.com

📲 Free for consumers. Brand onboarding opens 2025.

NOW ON YOUTUBE!!! Thank you for Listening! Join us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter!

Host Jessie Ott's Profile on LinkedIn

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Background
• 1:42 Military Careers and Experiences
• 4:19 Transitioning from Military to Civilian Life
• 6:41 The Bar Book App Development
• 9:05 Exploring Spirits and Flavor Matching
• 11:15 Building Community and Brand Relationships
• 21:37 Tequila Dinners and Data Insights
• 21:54 Understanding Flavor Profiles in Market
• 22:55 Crafting Brand Descriptions and Marketing
• 23:51 Supporting Small Brands in the Spirits Industry
• 25:08 Building Community and Free Marketing Opportunities
• 27:05 Synergies in Data and Distribution
• 27:53 Showcasing Bars and Cocktails
• 30:15 Enhancing Consumer Experience with Spirits
• 31:43 The Importance of Memorable Experiences
• 35:40 Mentorship and Learning in the Spirits Industry
• 36:59 The Bar Book App and Its Mission
• 37:52 Challenges in the Spirits Industry
• 43:03 Mentors
• 44:49 Produced by Fedora J Productions
• 45:10 Tune in Next Thursday & Have a Great Week!

Transcript

Jessie Ott (00:28)
Welcome everybody to Thursday Thursdays. I'm Jessie Ott and I have an exciting couple here today. I get told we're going to have a lot of fun. Mike and Dolly Waskiewicz from The Bar Book. Welcome.

Mike & Dolly (00:41)
Thank you. Hey, Jessie, how are you?

Jessie Ott (00:44)
Good, good, good. believe our mutual friend, Epe, introduced us, right, Mike? Yeah.

Mike & Dolly (00:48)
Yeah, yeah.

Jessie Ott (00:52)
so where are calling from?

Mike & Dolly (00:54)
Just outside of DC. So Epe is just up the road from us in Maryland. yeah, we're Northern Virginia. We tell everybody DC. actually Springfield, Virginia.

Jessie Ott (00:59)
okay.

Okay. Springfield. I, I interned in DC for a while. I lived in the Foggy Bottom area and I think we would, the, the Iowa bar that I would go to is, was in Crystal City. The Iowa Hawkeye bar. So yeah.

Mike & Dolly (01:11)
Okay.

So you, I was gonna say you're a Hawkeye, okay. So

I didn't say anything because I'm a Jayhawk. you know, Hawkeyes, Jayhawks don't get along too well. So congratulations, Jessie.

Jessie Ott (01:30)
Yeah, well, you know, we haven't been too great at anything except for women's basketball.

Mike & Dolly (01:36)
Well, you guys are coming along in men's basketball now too and football, whereas Kansas is losing all of it from basketball to everything. So I'm jealous.

Jessie Ott (01:45)
Yeah.

Yeah. Well, that's, that's true. I guess we're a little more, we're well balanced in that way. So we're, and are you both from that area?

Mike & Dolly (01:51)
Yes.

Well, that's a complicated question. I was born in Rockville, Maryland, just up the road there. And then my parents moved to Indiana when I I think around 10 or 11. Joined the military at 18 and bounced all over the place. Was stationed in this area quite a few times. And then this just happened to be where we stopped.

Jessie Ott (02:17)
Okay. ⁓

Mike & Dolly (02:18)
So

a lot of all around the US, but I think if you add up the years, DC's a home. Which is funny because if you were to ask me where Michael's from, I would say Indiana. you know, I'm just his wife. So I am an Army brat and I will turn on my Southern accent right now because I was born in Fort Midden, Georgia and was raised in Columbia, South Carolina where my father

Jessie Ott (02:27)
Yeah.

Heheheheh!

Mike & Dolly (02:46)
tired at Fort Jackson. And so I lived there until the age of 21, then ended up going to law school in Kansas and then joining the Army after that. Bounced around a little bit, but then my last duty station was in this area. So this is where I settled down.

Jessie Ott (03:04)
So law school, then military, that's different.

Mike & Dolly (03:07)
Yeah, because I was dumb. So I I was a Jag and my father was an infantry officer and I did not like the Army growing up because I don't know if you know anything about the infantry But they're tired they work hard and they're dirty and that's nothing that I wanted to do So if you would have asked me growing up if I was ever going to join the army, I said no

Jessie Ott (03:10)
Were you Jack?

Mike & Dolly (03:31)
which I never looked at ROTC, you know, the Army has a funded legal education program, didn't think about anything like that. And then between my first and second year of law school, my father called me and said, hey, Dolly, you know, there's this JAG internship program. And I said, that's great, not for me.

And by the time we were done with the conversation, he had me standing at attention in my apartment. I'm not lying about this. Standing at attention on the phone in my apartment in Lawrence, Kansas, saying, yes, sir, I will apply. Yes, sir, I will try my best. I didn't think I was going to get selected. I got selected, did my internship at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, fell in love with it, and then blinked and 21 years later I was retired.

Jessie Ott (04:20)
Wow, okay, that's cool. And Mike, what about you? What made you decide to join?

Mike & Dolly (04:22)
Yeah.

Well, so I had an uncle who was a Green Beret back in the 80s. And from the moment I got to see his Green Beret, I was like, that's what I want to do.

I was ready to go down that path and go all the dirty stuff that she was talking about. And then my uncle got a hold of me and said, don't you dare. He said, go join the Navy, go join the air force, go do something else, but don't join the infantry, don't join Green Beret, don't do any of that. It'll just teach you to get dirty and run around the woods. And I was like, no, I want to. So. ⁓

Jessie Ott (04:42)
Hehehehe

get

dirty and run around the woods.

Mike & Dolly (05:02)
I kind of

listened to him halfway and didn't. I enlisted in the Army. I went the legal field. I was a paralegal. And then as often as I could, I went back to, you know. Getting dirty and being in the woods. That's right. Getting dirty and being in the woods. So and then similar to Dolly, you know, was 23 and a half for me. But yes, 23 and a half years later, it's like, wow, that went quick. ⁓ lots of fun. was a great experience.

Jessie Ott (05:25)
Wow, yeah, it does.

And you both were just lived in, I guess from the legal side, you were always in the US, never abroad or anything.

Mike & Dolly (05:36)
Short answer no, we spent some time in different places deployed and stationed all over But this is where the competition comes in and so if you have any veterans that are watching there there Please disable the comments on your podcast because I don't have to say right literally So Michael says I am a unicorn because I am probably the happiest Veteran you will ever meet in your whole entire life, right?

So I had great assignments stateside. I had great assignments all over the world. I was in Germany I was the person that was in Kuwait, not...

Iraq or Afghanistan. I was in Israel for a year. And so Michael's like, you are a unicorn. No one else has that type of career. Whereas he, once again, was the, let me get dirty. Let me run through the woods. You know, let me sleep with one eye open. And I never had to do that.

Jessie Ott (06:29)
Okay.

So you did do some, you served some with some troops then.

Mike & Dolly (06:35)
Who me? Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. I would say Dolly did too. I tell people all the time that if you're looking at Dolly's career as a recruiting pitch, you know, disclaimer, experiences may vary. But that doesn't mean you can't have an experience like mine though. That's very true. Right? Like, yeah. So it was a great time. And if it wasn't great, I wouldn't have done it for as long as I did. So no army.

Jessie Ott (06:36)
Mike.

Okay.

Hahaha!

Yeah, for sure.

Mike & Dolly (07:04)
who are all the way I would never, I would not go back and change a thing. No, it was fun.

Jessie Ott (07:09)
Can you talk about any of like what cases you had or like types of cases?

Mike & Dolly (07:16)
So the great thing about the Army Jag Corps, and I promise you they're not paying me to say this, the great thing about the Army Jag Corps is that it makes you a jack of all trades. So I started out as an administrative law attorney, which a lot of people will be like, she's just in regulations and stuff all the time, kind of boring, know, statutes. But I was also able to be a...

in civilian terms, a prosecutor. I also was a defense counsel and handled murders, rapes, big time cases. We got to support all of our veterans who work their tails off and their bodies just kind of give out on them. I did a lot of medical boards and things of that nature. Also helped the JAG Corps with recruiting.

got to serve in Israel, working with both the Israelis and Palestinians on certain issues with security coordination, and got to train attorneys and paralegals, you name it, I got to do it a little bit so I'm very happy with my service. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (08:13)
That's cool. So,

and you were kind of based in one spot, but you kind of worked with different people all over kind of thing.

Mike & Dolly (08:22)
So no, for both of us, we moved all over. I think in my career, I think I moved 11 different times. Yeah, I think it was 11 different PCS, well, Permanent Change of Stations that I did in 23 years. So it was a lot to move every so often, but it was...

Jessie Ott (08:28)
Looker.

Mike & Dolly (08:46)
It was either because I got promoted or I got accepted for a voluntary, you know, cool assignment or whatever. I was always going after what was the next cool thing to do. so I, I chased a lot of assignments and did as many things as I could get my hands on.

Jessie Ott (09:01)
that's cool.

Mike & Dolly (09:02)
And I got to, I just counted on my fingers. I moved 10 times. So anything from Washington, DC to joint base McGuire Dix Lakers in New Jersey to Monheim, Germany to Jerusalem, Israel, I did it. So.

Jessie Ott (09:19)
Cool. What was it like back then, Israel?

Mike & Dolly (09:22)
Okay, now you're aging me. When you say back then, like how far back are we going?

Jessie Ott (09:26)
Well, I

don't know when you're there. I'm assuming it's been a minute.

Mike & Dolly (09:29)
I was there from 2018 to 2019, so things were pretty peaceful during the time period. It was great because my assignment let me work with,

Jessie Ott (09:36)
Yeah.

Mike & Dolly (09:42)
a multinational unit. So I got to work with Brits, Canadians, Germans, the Dutch, Italians. I'm sure I'm missing a couple of countries, but it was fantastic. And, you know, kind of opens your eyes to the world. And when we weren't working hard, we got to play hard. So, you know, a lot of people don't get the opportunity to see Israel or Jordan under a peaceful time period.

Jessie Ott (09:45)
cool.

you

Yep. Yep.

Mike & Dolly (10:11)
So to be able to see the ruins in Petra or the old city in Jerusalem and walk the stations to Christ's death or go up north and see the Sea of Galilee and things of that nature, I wouldn't change the world.

Jessie Ott (10:14)
Yeah.

Yeah. It's pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah. It's pretty neat. I wish there was a better solution, but there's a, yeah. I mean, it's like, it's never going to get solved, but we can't solve it on this podcast today. Anyway. Cool. So what, what made you guys want to retire?

Mike & Dolly (10:32)
Yes. Well, we'll see. There's always a new day.

I'm

For me, it was family at the point where my kids, this is our second marriage, so my kids were pretty stationary and I retired as a Sergeant Major, so I reached as high as I was gonna get. Rank wise, you could always chase positions to be in a more senior position out there, but as far as pay and rank, I was as high as I was gonna get.

you know, it just became a point for me to make family the priority. So I think I kind of owed it to him to do that. I haven't regretted it. It's been a great decision. And now I get to enjoy all the time as a executive assistant to kids, a scheduler, a Uber driver, ⁓ coach, teacher.

Jessie Ott (11:29)
Yep

Mike & Dolly (11:33)
homework assistant, I think all the other duties that come with it, stuff I missed out on for so long because I was chasing a career and doing all those things. now I get to focus and do a lot more of that, which she lets me do, which is like- Key word is let. I love that, right? Let. Yeah.

Jessie Ott (11:38)
Yep.

Mike & Dolly (11:52)
even in the worst days of doing that stuff, it's still better than anything else. So you know, you can't complain about it.

Jessie Ott (12:00)
Yeah,

a hundred percent. I have some friends that are in a similar position where he was a police officer in New York City for 20 years and retired. And he's, he's the dad at home now. And it was just really cool to see him spend so much time with his kids and relax and not have the stress and take them to school, know all their schedules of all the things. It was really cool. Yeah, that's neat.

Mike & Dolly (12:24)
I

promise you there's stress. promise you there's a lot of catching schedules. yeah. Yes. Boy Scout projects, sports training. Yes, there's a lot, but it's, but it's fun. And it's worth it.

Jessie Ott (12:32)
Science projects.

Yeah, that's great. And what about you, Dolly?

Mike & Dolly (12:50)
Why did I retire? The same thing, ⁓ family. ⁓ I mean to sum it up in one word, it was family. Those that are in the military know when it's time to do something else.

Jessie Ott (12:51)
Yeah. Okay.

Mike & Dolly (13:04)
And it was time to do something else. My kids with the previous marriage were very lucky in that a lot of the friends they had made from our last duty station actually moved to the Northern Virginia area. And so once we got here and got settled in a great school system, yay, Fairfax County, Virginia, great school system, good job, you name it, it was just time to say enough.

Jessie Ott (13:32)
Gotcha. Yeah, I hear you.

All right. Cool. So when you guys decided to kind of roll out, there, did you have any issues or, mean, was the transition okay for you all?

Mike & Dolly (13:45)
Okay, I get to go first. Okay, so we gotta go back. So Michael didn't really know a lot about spirits and he wanted to learn about spirits.

So the transition was very, I think, smoother for him. Whereas for me, it was very abrupt because literally we had a couple of conversations about, hey, I want to create an app because if I don't know this information, that means other people don't know this information. And I want to make this app to put it out to the world. And I kind of went, that's so sweet, baby. You've just retired. You're bored. You don't have anything to do.

Keep dreaming. And I literally came home from work one day and he goes, I found the developer. I'm doing this. I'm doing that. We're going to create this app. was like, holy shit. What has he done? Right. So that's how this baby was birthed. Right. For the most part. Yeah. Like, yeah. So literally came home one day and said, we're going to create an app. I want to call it The Bar Book.

Jessie Ott (14:36)
Hahaha!

Mike & Dolly (14:50)
We've got to create a logo, we've got to do this, we've got to do whatever. And then it was, you know, we're off to the races.

Jessie Ott (14:56)
Awesome. Okay.

Mike & Dolly (14:58)
So she's right. I had a longer glide path. So I was fortunate for my last assignment. As I said, I was trying to figure out how to make everything transition to being closer to my kids and my family and that kind of stuff. So as I'm leaving my last assignment out in El Paso, Texas, I'm spending a lot of time driving back there or flying back to DC and seeing my kids. It's South Valley and I started the date and all that. But

As I'm starting that long glide path to retirement, I am figuring out what to do next. And like Dolly said, I had a lot of people that in the military would talk to me about spirits and share their experiences and talk to me through flavors and things I might like and things of that nature. Where if you would have asked me back then, what's your favorite drink? I would have said, whatever.

Corona. Whatever whiskey or yeah, a Corona beer, right? Just something simple I can get my hands on and just enjoy. I didn't know enough about enough. So when I was making this transition and doing this, I was looking at a way to create a tool that could help people with kind of their flavor matching and find out what was next.

Jessie Ott (15:47)
Hahaha.

Yeah.

Mike & Dolly (16:04)
spitballed the idea to Dolly. She thought I was crazy. And she was like, somebody's already done this, right? Somebody is, we can't be the first people that thought of this. Somebody's put this together, whatever. And I said, no, I'm pretty sure they haven't. I've told a couple of my buddies and they don't think anybody's done this. And she's like, hold on. So she's searched and she checked the internet and she, the app stores and she's like, well, you're right. Nobody has built this thing. She's like, okay, so we have to stop.

So a few times I told him he was right.

But when we're looking at the apps, what Michael wanted to do, other apps hadn't done. The other apps had little bits and pieces, right? So like if you look at Vivino, it's all about wine. If you look about Untapped, or look at Untapped, it's beer. But because the spirits industry is so large and so diverse,

Jessie Ott (16:46)
Yeah.

Mike & Dolly (17:00)
And if you look outside of Kentucky and Tennessee, there are whiskeys and bourbons and vodkas and tequilas, you name it, it's all over the place. So it's like we're eating an elephant one bite at a time.

Jessie Ott (17:15)
Gotcha.

Mike & Dolly (17:15)
So yeah, we took, we decided to take flavors and turned it into a formula.

and a formula that matched it to you based off of an algorithm of likes, reviews, and ratings. And then at the end of the day, it spits out suggestions. And it also allows you to keep track of what you like. So you just may want to use it to keep track of what you like. You use it for the suggestions. But just like I have apps on my phone that says I like this type of food, I like this type of wine, I like this type of whatever, I want to be able to go into a restaurant

Jessie Ott (17:42)
Yeah.

Mike & Dolly (17:53)
look at their bar and say, I know I don't want and I'm not picking on any brands when I say this, I'm just using you as an example. I know I want to try Casa Luna in my margarita tonight. I know I don't want Jose Cuervo, right? And so I can keep track of all of that. So it makes it easier when we're out eating and drinking.

Jessie Ott (18:16)
Okay,

and can you follow people?

Mike & Dolly (18:19)
Yes, yes. So you can follow people, you can follow brands. Yeah, people and brands. We're expanding the capabilities in this, we're starting right now, the app is in beta, it's on both of the app stores. But we're starting with the basic functionality, which is the algorithm for flavor matching, right? Starting to, if you like this gin or this bourbon or this whatever,

it will pull the, if you will, a flavor fingerprint from that bottle and then

Flip it through our algorithm and find all the other bottles, regardless of spirit or even beer, it will flip through there and find things that align. So a perfect example of that is the Anejo tequilas. They're aged a lot longer than your silvers or your repasados. So what I found when I was hanging out with my Canadian friends is that they're like, no, we don't like tequila. But when they had the Anejos, it has a

similar to certain scotches. And so they were able to pivot because of the profiles and say, if I like this type of scotch, then I may like this type of tequila. And that's what we're trying to help people do.

Jessie Ott (19:28)
Yeah.

You know, it's interesting. I just talked to the owner of Suavecito Tequila. I don't know if you've ever seen or heard it. It's in total wine only. ⁓ But what he's telling people there in Yeho is the number one selling item. And what he tells people is that that say they don't like tequila, but they like whiskey to try it. And he's like, I've converted so many people that said they don't like tequila. It's not even funny. Like over the years, you know, and ⁓ it's

Mike & Dolly (19:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yeah. So that's,

that's one of the things this can do. exactly what you're saying is that this can do that. So, you know, a brand, like the tequila you're talking about may pay either in their own time or through a brand ambassador, they may pay somebody to stand at a liquor store or a bar or whatever.

Jessie Ott (19:58)
So interesting.

Mike & Dolly (20:14)
and host a bottle share tasting or whatever where they're pouring little shots and they'll do it for eight, eight hours or so, six hours, whatever it may be. By the time you pay that person to go there, you pay for the, you know, the banners and the booth, the little setup that you do and the, you know, all the stuff that goes on the table and then the bar and then the person to pour it. You're spending a couple hundred bucks to put this thing together and then replicate in small doses over and over.

That's still the best way. Liquid to lips is still the best way to find out if you like something or not. Right. It really is. What we are going to do is shrink your pool. So instead of looking at that wall of tequila and saying, my gosh, where do I start? It seems so overwhelming. We'll be able to take that and shrink it down to, you know, four or five things that fit with what you already like and get you in there because

I mean, buying a bottle and trying it yourself, that gets expensive. ⁓ You know, especially if you buy a craft brand.

Jessie Ott (21:09)
Yeah, yeah, 100%.

So are you going to brands with this then to get them on the app?

Mike & Dolly (21:17)
Yes. So right now, one of the biggest pushes we're doing as we're, we anticipate all back this up a second. We anticipate going full marketing, spending money, launching probably the end of August, beginning of September. So targeting Labor Day kind of ish where we can get out of beta and say the app is functioning the way we anticipate. know future updates will come, but at least it's where we want it to be for now.

So while we're doing that, we're approaching brands, bars, restaurants, breweries, distilleries, and saying, if you have a bottle, we will give you full access to your brand page, your control of all the backend admin data, totally free.

for at least the remainder of 2025, we're giving it to a totally free. And we ask two things in return. One, tell people you're on the app, right? Because it's gonna help us grow the community. And two, give us real feedback. Tell us what we don't know. Because we designed this app from a consumer point of view. From if I'm buying this or tasting this, what would I want to know?

Jessie Ott (22:22)
Yeah.

Mike & Dolly (22:22)
what

we don't have a real good perspective on. We've got a lot of feedback, so we're getting better at it. But what we'd still love to know more is, what does a brand want to know? What does the brand want to sell? And who are they targeting? Yes. So there is part of that, yes.

Jessie Ott (22:33)
I think that they're going to want customer profiles of who's right.

Yep. And yeah, that's, that's really interesting because that kind of creates a community of the system too,

when it comes to the business itself, the distributors are put in a really poor place right now. The consolidation, has really hurt us long-term with all the developing brands. And so they don't have time. Like they used to, to develop relationships and sell, sell, sell. They're just kind of in a position where they only can just take whatever they can.

They're run thin, they don't have enough employees, all the things, right? And so I think having that target list and that target market, if you can connect the brands to the stores, you create lists of accounts for the right brands.

Mike & Dolly (23:25)
So you're 100 % right and that is the data that... That's why she said it, That is the data that you can get through... Well, be careful what you ask for. No, so... our tequila dinners are fantastic. They are. Yes.

Jessie Ott (23:31)
You guys are riot. What are what dinners like with you guys?

Is there tequila involved?

Mike & Dolly (23:44)
That data that you're talking about is available. I won't say easily available, but it is available through sales data, right? What we can do differently is we can break those molds. So for example, if you are...

selling to a distributor, you own a bottle, you're in Iowa, you can sell it to a distributor in Iowa and maybe one or two states in your surrounding areas, right? You're getting that bubble. What we can give you is where your flavors are hitting other markets that have similar flavor spikes, right? So let's say, let me use something very, very simple. Let's say vanilla is a huge market in Kentucky.

Right? So for some reason it is spiking. Everybody is drinking. Doesn't matter what bottle or brand or beer or spirit or whatever it is. If it has some sort of vanilla, it is selling top over there in Kentucky. And it is, a lot of people are hitting that note out there. Well, you have a lot of stuff in your inventory that may have that vanilla profile as well. And I know flavor profiles are much more complex than just vanilla, simplicity.

Jessie Ott (24:53)
Right.

Mike & Dolly (24:54)
your flavor profile is very similar so you can go to a distributor and say look my fingerprint is an 86 % match to what's selling at the top over here. Let's let's let's have a conversation let's inject our stuff into that market because I think we can do well.

Jessie Ott (25:06)
Yeah.

That's cool. So how do you come up with the descriptions?

Mike & Dolly (25:14)
So most of the descriptions we pull is data mining through, I mean, we have people that are helping us with data mining through basically the distillers, the producers, their websites. And once we build a brand, regardless of whether they decide to take part in the app or not,

We do two things. I send them an email that says, Hey, just added your brand onto the app. If you'd love to go in here and take a look, tell me if I got something wrong. If I messed up on your flavor profile, if you don't like the picture, just shoot me an email and I will fix it immediately. But it's about showcasing your brand. We'll do that. And then the other thing is, is we shout them out on all our socials. Hey, if you haven't heard of check this out, they're now on The Bar Book, you know, something along those lines.

Jessie Ott (25:53)
Cool.

Mike & Dolly (25:54)
both for our own purposes, it shows that we're growing and building the inventory, but two, it also gives a shout out to some of these brands. We do focus heavily on craft brands, smaller producers.

because I don't think they get enough love and attention. And just as you mentioned, it's hard to break in and get distributors and market share. And they don't get a lot of love and attention. So we love the big brands, but the big brands don't need our help. Right. ⁓

Jessie Ott (26:12)
Yeah. Yep.

Right. Yeah.

Mike & Dolly (26:24)
But the smaller brands that are in our community, Michael's gonna roll his eyes because I tell the story to everybody, but Bowman Brothers, right? We live in Springfield, Virginia. They are down in Fredericksburg. That's where their distillery is. I did not know until we started the bar book that there was this great distillery, what?

35 miles from us and their spirits are fantastic like yummy yummy He hates when I say this but yummy yummy deliciousness, right? Like if you ever hear me go somewhere and say it's yummy yummy deliciousness. That means it's really good And so we want to help them now Bowman has grown quite a bit You're going to see them in a lot of places when we go to different states and things of that nature But that's what we're talking about is getting

Jessie Ott (26:58)
Hahaha!

Mike & Dolly (27:11)
kind of evening the playing field. Because the other thing is, and I'm sorry to talk too much, because the other thing is not everybody can afford a Blanton's or what are the other ones? An old Fitzgerald, a Wellers, or it may be available in your area. putting other brands on the bar book helps everybody. It's a win-win for everybody.

Jessie Ott (27:14)
Gotcha.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's really cool. I'm just thinking of all the clients that I have that would probably want to be part of that.

Mike & Dolly (27:39)
Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. mean, so any, of your, your clients or friends or connections or anybody who's watching this podcast, if you've got a brand and you're looking for what amounts to free marketing, we're not charging anybody right now. the beauty is the overhead for, for this operation that you're looking at it. right. So

This is a, we're still happily married. Right. ⁓ there is, there's not some big tech company in the sky that's building this and running this together. Like it is Dolly and I, and every aspect of this from showing up at different places and, doing the presentations, to, building the data and data mining. It is us. I have my, college age daughter who's helping out a little bit as well, but it's, it's us.

Jessie Ott (28:05)
Hahaha!

Yeah, Fiverr and Upwork are really good sources for things like that. They can scrape data pretty quickly.

Mike & Dolly (28:33)
Yeah, so I've looked at those and thought about some of those and I've actually I used a service once to do some of that for us. It's not bad. It's just I have a college student right now who needs help with a summer job. So I'm like.

Jessie Ott (28:48)
Hey, if it works, that's great.

Mike & Dolly (28:51)
It does right now.

Jessie Ott (28:52)
That's awesome. That's really, really cool. Well, I can see some synergies with us. I know that when we first met the first time, we went down the list of all the things that how we could work together. like, you know, like for example, with my, with my platform, my data platform, what I want to start doing is, is, is doing that whole process of, okay, well you've got this wine at this price. Here's your consumer base. Okay. Well, where do these people shop?

Mike & Dolly (29:18)
Yeah

Jessie Ott (29:18)
let's

get them a list of accounts on and off premise that are perfect for the people that are going to buy this X product. And then that becomes a task for the distributor to be like, okay, we want to X products in here, you know, and kind of keep track and keep a list. then they have, there's some direction there instead of just, okay, we're in the distributor. Let's see what they do, you know, kind of thing. not saying that's what people do. I'm just saying,

It helps build a little bit of structure within the system. And then we can then track that.

Mike & Dolly (29:53)
Yeah.

I think, I think, I think you're right. I think there's some real synergies between what we can do and we will have to, you know, flush those out and go down each of those trails, um, figuring that stuff out because the, are, we are not a, um, direct to consumer shipping sales platform. But we will be one day. That's of my goals. That's one of my goals. Um, but we are telling people where to get, get this stuff. Right. So.

Jessie Ott (30:14)
I'm sure you will.

Mike & Dolly (30:22)
There is definitely soon to be turned on a pass through button that will, you you can click buy in the app, but it will take you out to the brand's purchase website, whatever that may be. You know, we may cut out the middleman later, like Dolly said, and expand our capabilities, but we also share where those spirits are available on-prem. So like, you your bars and restaurants.

Cause we just had a great visit to New Orleans. We did. Yeah. So where we can showcase bars because whereas where Michael is talking about the products themselves, I get really frustrated when we travel and I want to drink a certain cocktail and don't know where to go. Cause how many times have people gone to a restaurant, gone to a bar and they have a cocktail and they literally like, this sucks. Like I could have made this better at home. So

the other part of the bar book is showcasing bars, showcasing bartenders. So if you're traveling to certain cities and you are in the mood for something, you can look at the bar book and go, I want to go to X bar or X restaurant because I know they're going to what I want. And we, we take it even a step further. So if, if you've looked on the app and I encourage anybody that's watching to take, you know, why we're talking about this look on the app. So each

Jessie Ott (31:33)
Wow, that's cool.

Mike & Dolly (31:43)
product has a profile page, right? You open it up, it will tell you who makes it, what the name of it is, a picture of it, a rating based off the community ratings, and then a little description, its flavor, you know, fingerprint or profile down there at the bottom, where it's available. It has a newsfeed connect to it, cocktails that are made from that kind of spirit.

Jessie Ott (31:58)
Mm-hmm.

Mike & Dolly (32:05)
similar bottles and then down at the bottom it has the reviews, right? So all of that for every product that's on this app. We also do that for cocktails. So what Dolly just mentioned about going to your favorite bar, if you're traveling to a bar, most of the time, if you go to a bar now and you look up the bar ahead of time, just like, want to see what they have.

It's gonna give you a PDF menu and it's gonna be five or six words under the name of a cocktail. A lot of times it's brand words and you may not even know what kind of spirit those brand words mean. Which we've done before. I'm like, what is this? What kind of spirit is that? And then it's five or six words and then no picture and then a number just telling you the price, right? That's all it is. And it's a menu, right? That's what you see online.

you look at that same bar in the bar book, we now have the picture of the cocktail. We will have the name, the flavor profile, all the data about it and what other people who've went there and they said, imagine you go to a bar and you're like, hey, if Jen is working tonight, ask her for the old fashioned, she makes it the best. If Mark is working, he makes a better margarita, right? Whatever, right? You can see that in the comments down at the bottom for those bars.

Jessie Ott (33:09)
That's cool.

Mike & Dolly (33:18)
So you mix so many other applications and you center it around alcohol. And that's kind of what we're doing, building the community around the spirits and the flavors you love. So if you're ever in Northern Virginia and you love Japanese food, you need to go to the Modan, M-O-D-A-N restaurant. Because we took Michael there for...

Father's Day and they make the most fantastic lychee martini you have ever had in your whole entire life to where I was so grateful that we Ubered and did not drive or we had to get a hotel room that night. But it was literally like you just take the martini glass and you're like that's how good that cocktail was. They do make some fantastic cocktails.

Jessie Ott (33:51)
Hahaha!

Yum.

that's the experience now, you know, that's what makes it so fun. We did something similar. We had some friends here. They've kind of helped me with my business and she's a lawyer. So she's helped me with some contracts and whatnot. And so I wanted them to have a really cool experience. And it's a Mexican restaurant, just like a half a mile or mile from our house.

Mike & Dolly (34:06)
Yes. It is.

Jessie Ott (34:25)
And we got the flaming cheese where they light it on fire and they have like a seven and a nine year old. So, and it was late and they spent the day at the beach. So they needed some excitement. And then we did the big tomahawk, you know, thing. And then we did the, you know, all the, all the things that light up. did a few of those and then we did a mezcal tasting in it. It was just an amazing experience to try all the different things. And, and that's, you know, it's been my word for then that last couple of years, you know, I think you got to elevate and you got to have the.

that experience to really take consumers to that next level when you think about all the brands out there competing. That's kind of what you got to do.

Mike & Dolly (35:00)
So now

imagine that you did that exact same thing and then you just tried three or four different Mezcal shots, right? You had the sampling and you could record which ones you liked the best and which one you didn't and all that kind of stuff from that.

Jessie Ott (35:16)
And we, we did, we,

we had them and we, went through them and we're like, yes, no. And then that changed and then, and then, then, you know, was fun. It was really, we could have totally done that.

Mike & Dolly (35:26)
and you save it, you save it into the app and now the next time you're out and you're like, I want that one Mezcal, what was it? And instead of trying to remember in text chat and group, you can literally go back and look at it on your phone and find it in the app and it will have all your data about that kind of stuff. ⁓ We don't collect as much individual data, right? Like,

Jessie Ott (35:32)
Yep.

What sounds fun?

Mike & Dolly (35:48)
I don't need, you names don't really matter a whole lot, right? You can have a fake pseudonym or whatever in an email. The big things we want to know is your geographic location and your flavor likes. That's pretty much it. Your age, obviously, because we need to make sure you're 21 to use the platform, but that only tells us, you know, like anything else, this age range likes these kinds of drinks more than these kind. It'll give us that data on the past.

Jessie Ott (36:04)
Yeah.

Gender.

Do you catch gender? Because I think that could be interesting.

Mike & Dolly (36:17)
I don't think we I mean we do ask it. Yeah, we do ask it on there. So yeah, it's yeah, it's captured I'm going back to all the questions we asked

Jessie Ott (36:23)
Because that would be interesting to see the differences between

men and women if there is any.

Mike & Dolly (36:30)
We choose better tasting drinks.

Jessie Ott (36:34)
Well,

know, it's known that women have better palates.

Mike & Dolly (36:37)
Yeah, we choose like I will not I will not argue that point whatsoever because that is one of the founding reasons for the bar book is miss self-proclaimed wine snob over here. Okay, no, no, no. I am not a self-proclaimed wine snob. He calls me a wine snob. I was very lucky when I went to law school. I met a really good friend from California. We were in the same law school class and she had this book.

of all of the wines that she tried and what she liked about them and she didn't like about them, right? So I learned from her.

what to look for. And so after 20 years, you figure out what you like and what you don't like. But I'm type A, I want to know why I don't like something just because I don't like it. So we actually took a cruise tour, took a wine tasting class because Michael is from Indiana. And there's nothing about wine

and in the wine tasting class it was a they had to taste wines

Yes, she is a self-proclaimed wine snob and it is funny because she knows so much about so many different wines. When she was telling me about these flavors, I'm back. I make the joke that I can't pick out nuanced flavors. What I can tell you is whether I like it or I don't. So, okay, so back to my story because I'm back. So we're at this wine tasting and it was taste the wine and pick out the grape.

Jessie Ott (37:48)
That's cool.

Hi! ⁓

Mike & Dolly (38:06)
whether it's old world, new world, know, what region, whatever. And I think I got four out of five. Like even the sommelier was like, where the heck did you come from? And I'm like, it's like, I'm not a plant. I just, you know, have learned this over the years. And so Michael wanted to have that same experience with spirits that, know, you can taste something and know where it came from, how it was made, you know, and whether we want to try it again.

I have now taken classes. Obviously I've learned a lot through the bar book. Tell her about the certificate. Yes. I have my WSET Two in Spirits. So yes, ⁓ I have. I'm learning more as we go through. There is there is.

Jessie Ott (38:41)
Nice.

Yeah, there's a lot to learn. mean,

you got sake that is really hard, you know, but

Mike & Dolly (38:50)
Yes.

It's a great industry. mean, you've experienced this, I'm preaching to the choir here, but it is the one industry that I've found that it doesn't matter who you walk up to or who you ask the question to. They will stop what they're doing and try to help you and walk you through whatever. everybody's an open book. Nobody is trying to hide.

There is competition in the industry, but not as a ruthless competition. It's more of a gamesmanship competition, everybody wants to see everybody succeed. It's really, like I said, I have not seen, I'm sure it's out there somewhere, but I have just not seen it in the industry of anybody who's just like, I don't want to help you because you're my competitor. It has really been.

Sure, how can we work together? And he's so serious. The other part about this industry is it's just fun. You get a whole bunch of people in a room trying different drinks. It's fun.

Jessie Ott (39:37)
Yeah.

It's fun. Yeah,

it is. It is fun. I agree. We do have fun and people are really nice. you know, I wanted to get over kind of back over to y'all. Do you have anything else that you want to mention about The Bar Book or do you have a website or just is it just an

Mike & Dolly (39:56)
Yeah, so ⁓

the app is available on both app stores on both Android and Apple. It is on the web. If you go to thebarbook.app, you can see some of the videos, tutorial stuff about the app, learn a little bit more, see profiles on Dolly and I. Just look for this logo. Yeah. Look for this logo.

how the app came about, all that stuff's on there. We are, as we tell people all the time, we are not some big tech company in the sky that has a faceless corporation behind it. It is literally Mike and Dolly grinding away trying to make an app that really supports this industry. And that's kind of our mission is to make sure that everybody gets noticed, everybody gets some love and attention out there. We don't want to see another brand shut their doors.

Because that's a scary thing because there is too much competition and you know with everybody coming out of COVID and things there was a distillery that we visited in Virginia Beach and that was what two years ago? Yeah, and they had a great story. They had found the old pots from Jamestown. They found the well that the settlers had used to you know for the water to do all this stuff. It was this great story and two years later.

They're gone. Yep.

Jessie Ott (41:18)
It's really hard and it's really expensive.

Mike & Dolly (41:21)
Yes. Yeah. But that distillery turned me on to the Bee's Knees because I'd never had a Bee's Knees. And it was fantastic. And what made there's so great is that they had beehives in the back to where instead of using ice cubes, they would freeze the honeycomb and the honeycomb served as the ice cubes in the drink. And then as it melted, you got the honey. It was fantastic.

Jessie Ott (41:45)
This does sound good. That's what a great idea.

Mike & Dolly (41:48)
it was yummy, yummy, to where I mean, granted we don't have the honeycomb here, even though Michael's mom is a beekeeper herself. But there may have been rumor has it a night to where I was here by myself and Michael was out doing football stuff. And so I was it bourbon that I did that night. You did bourbon. Somehow I got my mother-in-law's honey, which is fantastic. Richardson Farms. So her honey and with the bourbon and

mixed it together and by the time Michael got home he was like my god Dolly what has happened to you and I'm like I'm the happiest person in the world tonight and then he joins me once he realized how good it tasted so they were very good they were very good

Jessie Ott (42:29)
That

sounds good. I love honey. Well.

Mike & Dolly (42:33)
⁓ then you

should come visit because his mother's honey is fantastic.

Jessie Ott (42:39)
Okay, sounds good. My wife has not been to DC, so that's part of a plan.

Mike & Dolly (42:43)
Well,

what are you waiting for? Yeah, put it on the list.

Jessie Ott (42:47)
Just timing. We're busy people.

Mike & Dolly (42:49)
Well, just wait till the fall when it cools down a little bit and then just come on over.

Jessie Ott (42:52)
Yeah.

Yeah, I think the fall will be a good time to come up. Wait till kids are in school.

Mike & Dolly (42:56)
Yes. is, is

spring and fall are nice up here. The summer is just.

Jessie Ott (43:03)
I'd like to switch over to mentors if you guys are ready. you guys pick who wants to go first, but do you have any mentors that you want to mention, whether it's with the app or in your service time?

Mike & Dolly (43:03)
Bye.

Okay.

Go ahead, babe.

So,

So one of my mentors, her name is Marilyn Shafulo. And when I was growing up in the Army, I want to be just like her, right? She is the most, she is the kindest, sweetest, but awesome leader I've ever had.

and her goal was always to care about people. And when I was growing up in the Army, there weren't a lot of females in my leadership chain, right? And so she was one of the first ones that I ever dealt with. And it didn't mean that she treated me differently because I was a female, she treated everybody equally. But I think both men and women can acknowledge

Jessie Ott (43:34)
Nice.

Mike & Dolly (43:56)
when you see someone that looks like you or you see someone like that you want to be like, it helps you work harder to be like them. And so she was probably my number one mentor. Then there was another mentor that I had, Patricia McDaniel, who's awesome. She lives in Texas. And I love her because she was the one, you got to always have someone in your corner that tells you what your faults are.

and helps you, I don't say change, but mitigate some of those faults. So as you've noticed through this podcast, I'm a little outgoing and I'm a little mouthy, right? And that can take some people aback. And so she worked with me when I was a younger soldier to understand how

you can come across to others.