Turning the Entrepreneurial Switch Back On with Business Leader Jeanne David

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and again, go to Wydell on winning.com webinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode of Million Dollar Mastermind.

I'm here with John David from California, the founder of cauliflower crust and sandwich thin phenomena called Outer Aisle Gourmet and created something new and became in 2020, the fifth fastest growing company in California and this year is on track for $50 million. She started out her working career, she was a personal trainer and then became mom. And one thing and another. And so, John, glad to have you here and talk about turning that entrepreneurial switch back on. You said you talking with one of your sons who said do it and talk about how your brain, you said no, but your brain, your subconscious, said yes and immediately started unfolding all kind of products and ideas and ways it could work. It's really an interesting phenomena to see your mind start to charge when it gets confronted with the opportunity to do something that it's wanted to do all along but been held back from doing. And so that had to be quite an awakening for you.

Yeah, it really was. Like you said, I was in a place in my life where I had to give myself permission to allow that entrepreneur to be turned back on again. I had turned it off for 15 years specifically and needing so out of necessity to survive and get a job and just get steady income and pay my bills. And I just didn't have the emotional and mental bandwidth to be speculating and to be entrepreneurial. So the beautiful thing I will say is my husband is finance and legal and so he's very much the opposite of me. So from the early concept days, like, we all were like, yeah, this would be amazing because we wanted the product out there for our own use. We wanted to be able to buy it because we wanted the product. So we thought concept wise, it would be an amazing thing. Wow. Just think of the world with instead of eating bread, you're eating vegetables, but it feels like bread and it tastes better than bread. So. So that for us was our big win and we believe that other people would see it. And then again, the whole diabetes epidemic and knowing that our world was going to be our people needed to be shifting towards the help because it would overwhelm our medical system and we would need, the medical system would need to turn to food to solve the diabetes. Issues because type 2, as we know, is very, very controllable with food. So just wanting to be part of that revolution out there and to impact people's health. I mean, we get people who write us and say, I can eat a sandwich at lunch on your sandwich thins and not have to take an insulin shot. And for us it's like mission accomplished. So that was me and that was the whole vision pretty quickly that we would have a line that that substituted all the high carb counterparts with vegetables. So zucchini noodles was in our first line. Cauliflower rice was part of it. Another iteration was squashatoni. But we also had the rice, the zucchini noodles and the squashetoni before anybody else was doing that. Really just trying to create a world where vegetables actually replace those high. We were also trying to get more vegetables in on a daily basis than we had been. So the two met each other. I was given the freedom and permission to go ahead and allow that entrepreneur mind to go and to see. So it was quite a different experience than in the past because I kind of had the other skill set that is so necessary to an entrepreneur which is the finance and the details of the business plan and the finance that allow a true entrepreneur to be successful on our own. You know, we're usually very vision forward and you know, for me it was very product centric. I definitely needed the balance of the finance and then our son became the operations which proved to be a really strong three legged stool. So we were able to launch without a lot of capital and without a lot of resources because we were willing to work. You know, I was not taking a salary, our was paid pretty minimally and my husband was a lawyer. So we were able to launch with a pretty strong founding between the three of us.

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Did you outsource the how did you get your first product made and where did you get it sold in your launch?

Well, really interesting story. When we were still in concept in R and D mode. I was selling to an R and D group. I created the product and immediately started selling it to people as true entrepreneur salesperson. So we immediately were selling it to people, getting feedback, continuing to refine the recipe. And a new gluten free cafe had just opened and they knew me and wanted to sell the pizza crust and the sandwich. They wanted to use our sandwich thins in pizza crust. And so they did. And the whole food, the whole foods forager went in that cafe to eat and found our pizza crust and called me and said, hey, I would love. Are you thinking about bringing this to market? I would love to bring this into our store. Can we meet? So yeah, that doesn't usually happen, but that was really. We weren't even ready to hit market yet and she had contacted me. So the beautiful thing was that I got to work with an industry insider on packaging. And I mean, we were having to set the market because nobody was doing this yet. Like, what is that price range that the market will bear for this product? It was definitely going to be more expensive than tortillas. We wanted to be in the refrigerated set because we wanted to be outer aisle, right. We wanted to be in the healthy section of the grocery store. So we had some parameters. We, you know, we had some ideas about that. That whole outer aisle concept is, you know, if you want to eat healthy, eat the outer aisle of the grocery store. So she helped us in all of that. And we hit market at a 699 SRP and then competitor and low carb hit and they were $2 above us. So, you know, you just don't know what the market's going to bear until you have a little bit of traction. So yeah, that was, that was how we got into the market. And we were in those four stores, those four Whole Foods stores for a year, our first year.

And what was she.

Every week.

And this person that found this, what was her real job again?

She was at that time, Whole Foods had what was called local foragers where they would, you know, the forager would go into the community to forage and find new products. That was her job. Yep. Then they went to statewide kind of. Oh, yeah.

Huh. And so for you, what is this research? You said you had a R and D group. Immediately you were talk, what R D group?

So I created a research and development group, an R D group, as I called it, of friends and friends of friends.

Okay, so you created a product.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So just word once a week at the beginning of the week and say, I'm taking orders. And people would say, you know, I want a pack of sandwich thins. I want a pack of pizza crust. And yeah, it was. It was that simple. But that. That gave us the feedback we needed, and it also gave us the production experience to kind of begin, like, producing and seeing what it would be like and where we could bring. Where, where. Where we could bring scale into it and if we could scale it, because that was the question. Can we do this? Because these ingredients obviously are high quality ingredients. Can we do this and have the margins we need to successful business?

How did you go about creating that research and development group? You said family and friends, and you got people and sold them on the idea of helping you figure this out. And were you selling to them? Were you giving it to them?

Yeah, no, I was selling to them and they were simply giving me feedback. But I was starting to sell the product more because I would want the product.

And was this their advantage, was they got a chance to buy it where you couldn't buy it anyplace else in the world because you were the first one creating it.

Exactly.

Now, did you say you had calls, regular calls, once a week, or how did the feedback go?

Yeah, well, for that group, we sent out an email once a week with what they could get, what they could buy, and then they come. I would interact with them in person because they come to our then kitchen to pick up their product. So every week they came for pickup. So I would get their feedback, ask them specific questions that way, and interact with them.

Yeah, and I know of a lot of meal prep businesses around the country that are doing that type of thing where they. They are pretty much once a week putting out their stuff, you know, and again, it'll be frozen, you know, casseroles or certain meals or things like that. And then some of them are expanding and open up a few distribution centers where people don't have to drive so far. But there is a demand for that thing, and you tapped right into it. But that was pretty clever, putting together your own research and development group.

Yeah, I guess that's just one of those entrepreneurial things that didn't seem. It seemed like, okay, this is what you do. This is how we'll start. This is how we need to start. It was very intuitive to me.

But you mentioned other groups. You said that group did this, that, and the other. How have you used. However, Elks, have you used groups to expand and get input?

Yeah, we did actually a formal RD group to get feedback when we were looking at expanding our line and wanting to do flavors. So we did kind of blind taste test. We had 12 people, all from different backgrounds. Some had tasted the product before, Some were not familiar with the product before. And we asked for specific feedback because of what we were trying to get from the group. So, yeah, utilizing R and D groups. Yeah, you can't. It's invaluable because you need the market, you know, now we can. Now we have such a following on social media that we can tap in pretty quickly, which is just an amazing experience. But when you're starting out, that consumer feedback is critical. Of course, you don't have the money to buy, you know, any of these studies on any of the, you know, the market shares or what consumers are doing. So it's really great to get direct consumer feedback.

John, you've shared some incredible insight that I know is going to be very helpful to people who are going through the process of turning on their own entrepreneurial switch. And you may already be an entrepreneur, you may already be in business, but it may be time for an expansion. It may be time for a new beachhead. You know, one thing about being in business, you got to keep that excitement and growth. And these new beachheads, new markets, new ideas, make all the difference. And sometimes you can talk yourself into reasons why you've got to suppress that desire. But if your growth is tapping out and you're starting to flatline, that's the time to turn on that expansion switch, that entrepreneurial switch, and go for it. And a lot of times we don't do it because we don't know how. And John has given some great insights on how she did it. And it may transfer into how you can do the same.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world. I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell, and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.