The #1 SECRET To Success NOBODY SHARES! | Jeff Fenster

My mom and dad were not supportive at first. They were like, are you crazy? I mean, you literally just made $140,000 in four months on quota at this company. You're on pace to make 400 grand a year. What are you doing? Just take the money and move on with your career. And there was no guarantee. And so I was nervous, but she was supportive and she said, you know, whatever makes you happy. If this is what you think you need to do, let's do it. And we've been in our house less than 60 days, so it was also like, hey, now we're also going to go share a room at my mom and dad's house, which is not great for the e, ego or the marriage.

Welcome to Stuck to Unstoppable, where we interview the world's foremost thought leaders to break things down in order to help you get past your hurts, habits and hangups and finally level up and move forward. I'm your host, Stephen Scoggins. Now let's go ahead and get into today's guest and our featured conversation. You're not going to want to miss it. Our special guest today is a fellow serial entrepreneur whose main business principles are making friends and having fun. One of his core startups and flagships, Everbowl is is one of the fastest growing superfoods and brands on the planet. With over 20 locations and growing, he's one of the Nation's top performing 40 under 40. Jeff Finster's amazing passion specializes in disruptive startups that recognize the importance of vertical integration, all while driving innovation and empowering top tier leaders to actually foster growth and fun and energy. To add his credibility, Jeff's insights have been featured all over the place such as Fox, NBC, hbo, abc, and San Diego's own San Diego Magazine. I don't know about you guys, but I'm ready to have a lot of fun. So, guys, help me welcome my good friend, Jeff Fenster. Jeff, what's going on, man? How you doing?

I'm doing amazing. Thank you so much for having me today.

Yeah, we're have a lot of fun. You know, I was joking around with my team, I was like, I'm about to have on a brother from another mother. Because aspiring entrepreneurship and getting started is not always the easiest thing to do, as you can imagine. So I am curious, you know, as somebody who's already.

All right, so you see, you got that under your belt, which I know is not an easy climb. Like, how did you get there? How'd you get started? Like, if you're like me, you probably stumbled your way in entrepreneurship, but I'm curious to know your story.

Yeah, I mean, truthfully, I never wanted to be an entrepreneur, nor did I even know what that word was. You know, when I started and this was 2007, we were called business owners. This was pre entrepreneurship being sexy. So we were called business owners. And I had no idea about running my own company. I went to law school to be a sports agent. And that was my.

Thought, what I was going to or that was my passion or what I thought I was going to be doing forever. And my third year of law school, I got engaged and had a daughter and ultimately changed my focus. I realized, you know what, I don't want to travel around the world representing athletes. I wanted to be home, I wanted to be a father, I wanted to be a husband. So I graduated law school with six figures in law school loans and needed a job to figure out what I was going to do with my life. So I got a job. I got a job at ADP selling payroll services as an outside sales rep, making 38,000 bucks a year plus commission. And that's what I did at 24 years old. And I was there six months. And fortunately, I have a way of selling that has been successful for me growing up. And I learned solution based selling and objection handling and just making friends and really ultimately making friends. And I was very successful at adp. You know, in the six months I was there, I was the number one sales rep in the country. First to make president's club, made six figures in six months, built a big ego and thought I was the shit.

And really, I had earned an annual bonus, this bonus that was in my contract for $17,000, which was going to go to my base pay. And I went to my boss in January of 2008 and I said, hey, I earned my bonus, I'd like to get it. And they informed me it was an annual goal and I had to wait till the end of the fiscal year, which wasn't until June, and I'd get the money in July. I said, well, listen, listen, listen, I just bought a house. Literally, I bought a house 60 days earlier. I'm engaged, I have a daughter, I have law school loans, I need the money. I can't wait. You know, I did what I was supposed to do. And they said to me, jeff, that's just not how a big company works. And so in the heat of the moment, I threatened to quit. After back and forth couple days of conversations, I said, well, listen, if you guys don't appreciate what I do here as your top sales rep, then why am I going to be here? I can go anywhere. So if you can't pay me the money, I'm going to quit thinking. There's no way they would let Jeff Bench to walk out the door.

How'd that work out?

Well, they said that there's a pretty door in front of you, and if you don't like it, you can leave that. That's not how things are done at this company. And so I went home that night really, really frazzled and just discouraged. As you know, it was a low point for me because I was like, this is my life. I'm going to have to literally sit here for six months. So I went to my fiance and I said, listen, I'd like to quit my job.

Yeah.

Sell the house, move you and our daughter into my mom and dad's house, and try to start my own payroll company. I know I can sell a lot of payroll, so I'll figure out the rest.

So the real American dream.

Yeah. But I didn't realize it wasn't because I want to be an entrepreneur, is because I really wanted to stick it to ADP and not. Not be a. Not be a prisoner. And fortunately, she was supportive. And so literally, I sold my house, quit my job, moved my fiance and daughter into my mom's house, and with a buddy, started my own payroll company out of my mom's kitchen in 2008 called iChext.

Very cool. Let me ask you this.

So. Yeah. All right.

So you dipped in a little bit. So I'm very fortunate.

My wife's been an incredible woman. Our good friend David Meltzer would also brag about obviously, the importance of a creative spouse and a supportive spouse. What was that conversation like? I mean, were you even worried about it, like, even going into the conversation, were you, like, she's going to understand. She's going to get me because, you know, we're tight like that or like, how did that conversation even take place?

Well, it wasn't. I mean, I don't. I don't know if I was. A long time ago now, but I, you know, I. I definitely had trepidation. I was definitely nervous because we literally. We had. When we met, I had an apartment and I was in law school, and, you know, we had all this debt now, and we were getting engaged and we had a baby, and, you know, stability is important. And she was in cosmetology school, and she was really. Had just graduated, but yet to really find her lane so we were two kids. I mean, we were 24 years old with a one year old baby. And so it wasn't really like the time to risk everything, so to speak. And you know, my mom and dad were not supportive at first. They were like, are you crazy? I mean, you literally just made $140,000 in four months on quota at this company. You're on pace to make 400 grand a year. What are you doing? Just take the money and move on with your career. And there was no guarantee. And so I was nervous. But she, she was supportive and she said, you know, whatever makes you happy. If this is what you think you need to do, let's do it. And we've been in our house less than 60 days. So it was also like, hey, now we're also going to go share a room at my mom and dad's house. Which is not great for the ego or the marriage.

But she was totally supportive. And obviously, as you said, without that supportive, without that supportive partner or that supports, you know, support system, who knows what my life would be right now.

Yeah, well, that's one reason I want to talk about it. Because, you know, there's, there's lots of entrepreneurs. There's lots of entrepreneurs. There's lots of guys and gals, so to speak, who are doing the best they can to try to try to figure that out. However, especially the early entrepreneur crowd, folks who are normally in their early to mid-20s, a lot of times they don't put enough importance on having a supportive person in and around their life. You know, they're, they're doing the entrepreneur thing during the course of the day, then they're dating all over the place at night, not realizing it's a distraction kind of scenario or kind of thing like that. So I felt like it was an important topic to at least touch on just a little bit, because that support system is so important in building pretty much anything. And one of the things that I appreciate the most about what you've been doing and studying what you've been doing, and some of the areas that you're kind of like a master at is this process of innovation and understanding human capital and things of that nature, which is all about relationships. How did you actually learn the process of human capital and relationships? I mean, how did you actually go through that?

Well, you know, it wasn't as formal as courses or master classes or, you know, I even just came out with my own course. It's on LinkedIn. LinkedIn learning on relationship capital. So now you can actually like, learn this stuff. Okay.

All right, I'm jotting it down. Here's my. Right now.

Yep. LinkedIn learning. And anyone who's listening, if you hit me up on LinkedIn, I'll send it to you for free. If you're a LinkedIn Premium member, you have free access anyway, so don't pay for it. Just hit me up and I'll send it to you for free. But the idea there was. I grew up, and in my teenage years, I was fortunate to have some amazing, amazing friends that were older than me. David Meltzer being one of them. I grew up with Dave, and I got to intern.

Incredible chance to get started with someone like that.

Yeah, I mean, our moms were best friends and worked together. And so when I was a little kid, he used to come watch me play Little League. I used to watch him play high school football. And then when he got into the workforce, he let me come and intern at his companies. And so what I realized early on, and my dad instilled this in me, was use your youth to learn instead of earn. And I think too many people are worried about making some money. And it's like, yeah, okay, back then, minimum wage was like 475. It's like, yeah, I can go make 4. 75 an hour and go do this. Or I could go be around people that are 10, 12 years older than me, but are doing things in the adult world that I get exposed to. I get to start to understand who these people are. I get to see what they do for success, makes them successful. I get to just be around and educate myself. So I focused on learning instead of earning. And at the same time, I was able to start building these relationships, which I didn't really understand the power of until I was a little bit older. And the concept and the best way I can give a good analogy for relationship capital is anyone who's ever said so and so got that job or got that because they are so and so's, brother, sister's friend, cousins, etc. That's the power of relationships. As soon as you realize how important nepotism is in this world, and utilizing friendships and relationships to grow your business, to grow opportunity, to grow your personal life, that is what is really done. People buy from people. People interact and transact with people. So when you realize that your network is really your net worth, you know, when I started my.

When I.

When I'll give everyone the secret, as good as I think I am in sales when I started at adp, and I'm Gonna use Dave Meltzer. This is literally what happened. I got my quota at ADP. 24 years old. I've been there for 65 days. And they said, okay, Jeff, here's your territory. Go sell payroll. And I said, okay, can I sell outside my territory? They said, only if you have a personal relationship. I was like, great, I don't know anyone in my territory. Pick up the phone. And I said, hey, Dave, I need to come have lunch with you. He said, okay. I said, dave, I just got this sales job. I need to meet business owners that have 50 employees or less. Can we put a list together of friends of yours that have businesses and have 50 employees or less? And I promise I'll take care of them. And because of all the years of us growing up together and our relationship, he knew I was going to take care of them. He sent an email to literally hundreds of his friends. I closed like 65 deals from it. I made six figures off of it. Presidents Club and got all of this recognition because of one one relationship and the power of what that can do. And I used a couple other days to grow my payroll sales even more. And that's the power of relationships. Right? That's what it does. The same thing where if I said to anyone on the street, you know, hey, you should go meet and you can name your celebrity Kim Kardashian. I want her to endorse my product. Well, she doesn't know me, so I'm going to, I'm going to pitch her. She's going to ignore me. But if her best friend says, hey, you should take. Take a look at Ever Bull. It's Jeff's product, and Jeff's an awesome human. Kim Kardashian is going to look at it. And so that's the power of relationships. And so it's developing these and not under. And understanding that relationship capital or human capital is just like a bank account. Right. You have positive balances, which means you're wealthy and rich in relationships, or you have negative balances because you've been making withdrawals. And understanding how to build, develop, and leverage these relationships in a win win environment that's going to exponentially grow you, your companies and opportunity around you. Absolutely.

You know, one of the things I've heard you talk a lot about recently, or not even just in general, I think it just kind of exudes out of you is especially in the area of human capital. It's outside of that. That, just that. That tight knit circle of influence. I mean, one of the things I've Heard you talk about before is, hey, look, I might not know, you know, John, the president of this company, but I do know Dave is his cousin. What if I got to a, you know, what if I could just hang out with him, go to a football game and just chill with him, right? With no objective other than just to get to know people. I find that people, you know, will try to leverage human capital, we'll try to level leverage relationship, but they never go at it from a service perspective or, you know, how can I add value? You know, how can I add value to you? How can I come alongside of you to help your initiative succeed? And one of the things I've seen you do really well with your entire career, with all the startups and all the, all the success that you've had and all, of course, all the roller coasters that come with it, is this idea of, hey, look, let's get to know each other. I want to get to know you, like, at a sincere level. Do you feel like that? A lot of entrepreneurs, they make that make a big mistake of, hey, look, I'm going at it for what I can get rather than what I can give 100%.

And that's why networking meetings are the worst place to network, because you have a. It's like picking up a boy or girl at a bar. Everyone's there for the same purpose, and no one's there for any authenticity or real relationships. I don't sell people. I make friends. My entire business foundation is built on making friends and having fun. And the way I. The way you do that, right? And one of the things that I strongly urge everyone to really start approaching it with was lead with value, right? If I meet somebody, and it doesn't matter who it is, if I meet the checkout person at the grocery store, and this is a true story, one of my biggest payroll clients I ever got was the brother of the lady who checks me out at my local grocery store, you know, 10 years ago, 12 years ago. Because for two years I get groceries and I'd see her and I would just make small talk. I'd get to know her. But I got it to a personal level. It got to the point where it's, how's your kids? Oh, my kids are great. How are your kids? What are you guys doing this weekend? We got to that level, to the point where she knew I owned a payroll company. She knew I was a family man. She's seen me consistently and regularly. And we're always friendly and we've developed, you know, did we hang out outside of the grocery store? No, but we still got to know each other on a personal level. And then finally she says, hey, my brother's company. My brother owns a company. He's looking for a new payroll service. He was just complaining about it. Can I introduce you? And I said, yes. He had almost 2,000 employees. You know, that was almost a $75,000 a year account for my company. That doesn't happen if I don't make friends with her. But when you say, but, Jeff, what if you didn't get that? So what? Yeah, everybody. And this is the critical thing. Everybody is somebody's brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle, mother, father, Right? Yeah, everybody.

Yeah.

So when you realize that everybody has value and you don't judge somebody with the same. The problem is we always ask this question, oh, where do you live and what do you do for work? And we do that for a specific purpose. We think it's small talk, but it's not. We're classifying people to see how valuable is this person going to be to me and how much do I want to invest in the conversation.

Yeah.

And I expose this to a crowd once. One of the very first times I ever spoke on stage, I showed up with a backwards hat, athletic gear, and this was pre. That was acceptable in the business world. This is back, like 2010 11, when.

When everyone where a sport jacket was required.

Correct? Yeah. Before the Internet and social media glorified entrepreneurship and, you know, you could wear pajamas and be cool like that was. And so I was wearing athletic clothes and a backwards hat, and we were mingling just in the crowd, you know, kind of like you do before conferences. And nobody really was giving me any time of day. Like, it was clear, like, most people would talk over me and quickly say, oh, hey, nice to meet you. Yep, yep. And then you can see they were rushing to go speak to someone who they thought had more immediate value. Then I went on stage and I called them all out without picking on names, but I was like, hey, you know, I spoke to a lot of you today, and a lot of you didn't even give me the time of day. I'm here to talk about relationship capital and how you missed an opportunity to make friends with me. And now I'm on stage talking to you, and you have to listen to me for the next 45 minutes. So had I been in a suit and you knew I was the speaker, you would have wanted to speak to me because you would have assumed I had more value. And so it's These little lessons where we can pick up so many great relationships on a daily basis just with getting out into the world, that you start to grow your circle of influence. You start to grow that relationship capital. And whether or not you use it is not important. That's the big mistake everyone says is, well, why do I need to know Jeff? I'm not in the restaurant space. Okay, so don't know me. But I'm more than just the restaurant space. Right. I know a lot of people. I can.

Not only that, you're just a good. You're just a good dude.

Well, I appreciate that. I want to be. I want to be. But for some people, they're like, hey, I have enough friends. And the biggest. The thing that drives me crazy and one day I'm going to have, like, I'm going to devote some serious time to is this idea that when people say, I don't mix business and friendship.

I'd rather do business with friends who I can trust. And you only get to trust people, actually, if you get to know them.

Yep. And I only do business with friends. So if you're not my friend, I'm not doing business with you. It's very simple, because I want to know you, and I'm an honest person, and I'm gonna do my best. I'm gonna make mistakes, and I'm gonna screw up, but you're gonna know that I did it authentically and not on purpose, and I want to work with people like that. And so this concept that entrepreneurs striving want, you know, entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, or just people trying to navigate as an employee, make as many friends as you can, develop those relationships, because I promise you, you will see exponential growth in your personal professional development. And you'll also just get to enjoy yourself more because you know so many cool people.

Absolutely. You know, I think this bridges really well into something else that I think is one of your superpowers, and that's scalability. Everybody likes to use the word. I got a scale, man. I got a scale. Like what? A scale. Do you have more business? There's more to scaling than having more business, dude kind of thing. But human capital plays a huge part in that. And obviously, you've had a lot of startup success. Obviously some struggles, like we all have, especially anybody that owns multiple companies or started multiple companies. But one of the superpowers that I've seen you do, especially with Everbowl and a few other of your flagship brands, is this scalability. What do you think separates an entrepreneur that can scale from one that can't.

Success. If you can't scale, you're eventually going to perish, unfortunately, because you can't pivot, you can't adapt. You can't attract the right investors or the right customers or the right employees. When you can scale and show growth and you can show that you have the capability or opportunity to be a rocket ship, you attract everything you want. Customers, employees, partners, investors, exit opportunities, vendors, suppliers. Everybody comes to you. Media, it all comes to you versus you out there banging on doors, oh, I need to hire somebody. Oh, I need to find an investor. I need, hey, please put me on the media. I need media attention. All of it comes to you when you can scale and you can scale effectively. And so if you're not understanding and thinking about how you can scale and how you're doing that, if you're not already there, you're behind, you've got to start with that. You have to understand and build processes with scale in mind. From the beginning. Not. Okay, well, worry about scale tomorrow. That's too late. That's too late.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

You know, it's funny. I was. I was listening to some more things and recently and caught a podcast you did a couple years ago with a young man. I can't remember his name off top of my head, so I apologize in advance. Please tell him, not get mad at me. But one of the things that, you know, one of the things you brought up was, you know, I think that especially early entrepreneurship, there's.

There's what I refer to as the early stage. In the early stage, you're heavily involved in your own ego. You're also heavily involved in your own isolation. And one of the things that I know that you speak a lot about or talk a lot about or teach a lot about to a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs and people in life and business in general, is battling that ego, but also battling that isolation. Specifically, do you feel like those kind of play a role into whether or not someone's scalable or not? Because it seems like if you can't grow yourself, you can't grow a business 100%.

And I was guilty of this early on. And it's. I like to be the dumbest guy in the room now. So I want to surround myself with rock stars and excellent people and give them the freedom to be excellent. Because as an entrepreneur, especially a young, not in age, but young and experienced entrepreneur, the mistake we make is we think we have to be the decision maker. We have to be the shot caller. Like Our ego says, well, wait, I'm the founder, CEO, so that idea is good, but I need to. My business card a little bit. Yeah, I need to twist it a little bit. I need to be the one who gets the credit for this and, and drives the initiative. And here's how you're going to do your job. Instead of realizing that if you want great people, if you want true artists at their craft or rock stars, they don't want you to tell them how to be a rock star. They already know. They just want the canvas. And your job as the. As the founder or the CEO is to. To bring people together and make sure that they're all creating their masterpiece on one big canvas, which is your vision and your scalability, and let them all paint their picture inside of it so it looks like what your vision is supposed to be. And the great example of that, if you guys want like an actual example, is ever bull. Right? So I built my first restaurant. It cost me a quarter of a million dollars of my own money, and I wanted to build 30 of them. Well, that's expensive.

That gets expensive.

That gets expensive. Yeah. So I said, okay, what's the problem? And if. And most entrepreneurs would say, well, we need to raise money because that's too much money. You know, we don't have enough money to do that. Yeah, okay, that's one problem. But before we do that, I like to always ask myself this question, and I recommend everyone do this, which is before we solve what we think the problem is, could we solve a different problem and make that problem go away? Right. So I want to. I want to raise money. Okay, that's. That's one way. So let's think about how am I going to raise money. I have a restaurant. I have one store. It's expensive to build. So I'm going to go tell investors, please give me money so I can go build expensive restaurants and hope they're successful. Or what if I build my own and I start my own construction company and I now reduce the cost to open stores and I don't need to go raise money yet, and I take a quarter of a million dollars and I build out a construction company with my second. What would be my second store? But I don't know how to use any tools. I'm not handy. So let me go find somebody who is handy, who doesn't have the knowledge to be their own business owner and doesn't know how to scale and grow in a construction company, but is great at construction and make them the CEO and Head of our construction arm to build my restaurants for cheaper so I don't have to go raise money yet. So that's what I did. And I started my own construction company, which is great. And I don't know how to do anything with tools. So when I brought them in, I said, look, here's the vision. Ikea can build furniture in a box. Yeah. And I can then take it home and install it really cheap. We're gonna cookie cutter 30 of these restaurants that are gonna look very similar. I need it to be like ikea. I don't know how to do it. And I'm not gonna tell you how to do it. Here's the problem. Go solve it. You're amazing. You're excellent. And here's the ecosystem. Don't worry about sales because you don't have to sell new clients. Don't worry about payroll. Don't worry about all that we've got that you just be amazing at what you're amazing at. And they did. Our team did. Our we build team did. So we build. We build stuff as our construction arm, and we're able to do that now. The first problem that we. That most people ran to was I need to raise money. Well, now I've built four restaurants for a quarter of a million dollars. So I have five restaurants. And when I go talk to an investor now, because I do want to eventually raise money, my, my pitch to you is not, help me. Give me money so I can build expensive restaurants. Hey, Mr. And Mrs. Investor. We have a system that allows us to build restaurants cheaper than anybody else. Here's our brand. By the way, you love the food, you love the restaurant. Restaurants are expensive and risky. We've de. Risked this investment because your capital can now build five instead of one. And that's how disruptive we are. Then media comes to us because they're like, wow, how are you building so many restaurants so fast? And then employees come to us because we're opening so many restaurants so fast. And everyone's like, opportunity. And everything starts to scale. Because we rethought the problem up front and created a scalability solution that allows us to scale. Raising money to build restaurants is not scalable. It's just. It's just putting a band aid on it. And you're going to have to keep raising money to build restaurants. Yeah. They're too expensive.

Yeah.

So that's just one example of how scale and rethinking the problem applied to our business and allowed us to still do everything that everyone else wanted to do. But we did it in a different way. We came at it with scale. First by us investing in construction. We're now able to scale the build outs. Yeah, that's exciting to investors because I come to you for growth, not proof of concept. I come to you with a disruptive solution that allows you to go, not only am I investing in a restaurant, I'm investing in a construction arm that has its own opportunities and offshoots. And this company is growing really fast. They already have five, six, seven restaurants. That's different. Right. So that's how you can really use scale to attract all the things and solve problems.

Your brands are now working in synergy. You know, now you, now you're, now you're starting to build this vertical integration. You know, you're starting to build this, this technique that you see it. I mean, gosh, I think Ray Kroc was the first person I ever heard, you know, he owns gold or, you know, obviously he's passed away now, but you know, he built the first, not built the first McDonald's, bought the first McDonald's, mastered the process, then went to Golden State Foods, then went to what's it called, Mickey D's you or something like McDonald's University or whatever that is. And you know, he controlled his cost, but he also controlled his quality from step one to step B to step A to step Z. And that's one of the things I love most about the kind of scalability model that you seem to thrive in. Like, you're always looking for that pivot point, always looking for, okay, well, how does that integrate with over here? How does that integrate with over here? How do I leverage this leader to make them better? You know, maybe this guy is not a good ever bowl candidate and leader, but maybe he should be over here with the construction company, constantly moving things around to find the right fit.

That's right.

What is it that attracts you to that model? I mean, why does that model fire you up and get you so excited all the time?

Because for me, people think I take a lot of risk. I'm actually risk adverse. And when you vertically integrate your organization, you take risk out. So, you know, again, so we build our own stores. Well, that's really risky, Jeff. Well, why I'm gonna build 30 restaurants anyway. So I've actually de risked each store. It cost me less. So when I pick a bad location or if I pick a bad location, I spent less money. Right. I've also now have the opportunity to do construction for other companies simultaneously. Right. So now you Continue that vertical integration wheel well. Acai. I sell acai bowls, I import acai. It's expensive. So I went down to Brazil and I met with the locals and I realized, well, we can import this ourselves and mitigate the fluctuations in the, in the cost of this product and take the market conditions away from the from us and standardize our pricing. So I can have a cost savings and reduce my cost of goods. I have two choices. I can be more profitable or I can pass those savings to my customers. I have options now. So I'm de risking my food cost side. I'm de risking my supply chain issues. Then I bring in all this acai and I want to start trying new products. Why put acai in coffee? And I launched Super Fuel Coffee, the world's first acai infused coffee line. So now I'm driving revenue outside the four walls. I'm building our brand, I'm building our brand value and I'm introducing the brand into new locations long before we ever open stores. Because it's on Amazon, it's shelf stable, it's in sprouts. So now I've created more opportunity for the business. So by us vertically integrating and investing in these other areas, I've actually de risked my stores and I've created more shareholder value and enterprise value along the way, which again, just is allowing us to be more stable and allows you to pivot when things happen. Because one of my core values is to always be change ready. And too many entrepreneurs get stuck doing the same thing that made them successful yesterday. Thinking it's going to work tomorrow. And that's why Circuit City's gone. That's why Blockbuster is gone. Blockbuster should have been Netflix. Yeah. There is no earthly reason that Netflix is Netflix. If the CEO of Blockbuster had any foresight, they would have been Netflix. They had the movie industry rental industry on lockdown. They had to just go digital. They didn't. Right. Same thing with Kodak and Xerox and BlackBerry. Who had all of the business telephones in the 90s and early 2000s were Blackberries. Yeah, totally. They're gone. Because they weren't change ready. They didn't pivot. They were locked in doing what they used to do. So when Covid happened and we shut down our restaurants.

Preach. Come on.

Yeah. We didn't die. And the reason we didn't is because we import our own superfoods and we manufacture our own products ourselves. So immediately we launched later. Bull. Yeah. Which is direct to consumer acai bowls sent to your house. And we went on QVC and started selling out there and driving revenue through new mediums and new channels. And because we import our own food and because we have our own construction arm, we then launched franchise which allowed us to offer the cheapest franchise street next to no compared to anybody, and introduce ever bull to new consumers all across the country and let more people take control, their financial freedom and again pass the savings where I don't need to make money building your store. I don't need to make money selling you food. So you're going to get your store cheap, you're going to get your food cheap. We're going to make money together on royalties as you make profit and we make a profit together. Yeah. And that was able to launch for us. And because we control all of that, we also launched our own financing arm to finance franchisees because we're paying all of ourselves, right? Yeah. My construction company, my import company, that's the food, my ip, my name on the door. Not mine, Jeff, but mine Everbowl. So Ever bull can finance a franchisee and de risk it knowing if the. If this franchisee is unsuccessful. We know how to run the stores and we're the. All the vendors. So it's not. The cash is kind of. We're basically risking our own people's time to help you get in. And so that whole thing, that vertical integration allowed us to do what we're doing. And that is why it's attractive to me. And that's why I love that concept. Because like you said, I mean, McDonald's. Fun fact. Most people don't know McDonald's is the largest toy manufacturer in the world.

I didn't even know that.

The Happy Meal, dad.

You're totally right. Holy smokes.

Yep. They have the largest chicken farms in the world because of the Chicken McNuggets. Yeah. Right. That's the power of McDonald's. So. So, you know, you learn. You can learn from these other massive brands that have done this and apply it to your own business and start asking yourself these questions. What are the repeatable vendors I use again and again and again that are foundational to my core business? Can I take that on? Yeah. Like, for me, it was. Love it. Yeah, it was. For me, it was acai. Right? I buy acai. You can't go to Inevitable without it.

Yeah.

McDonald's, it's the chicken farms, it's the cattle farms, it's the toys for the. For the Happy Meal. So they took care of those three themselves.

Yeah.

I'm an entrepreneur. That's my superpower I love starting companies, so why not start them, manage them and grow them? And then again, they don't all work. You know, like we, we fail along the way. We try our own. Yeah, yeah, of course we tried to do our own distribution and we realized that that's. We just weren't. We didn't have size to handle that. So we lost and started going to someone else. But you're going to scrape your knee as you do it. The difference is you have options. You're change ready, you're able to pivot when the world requires it. And circumstances change because every day there's somebody like me and you sitting there going, I'm going to compete now. I'm going to start my own company and I'm going to take what they did now that you're now successful of some degree as the foundation and just get better from there. So there are always challengers coming up and trying to take your turf and trying to become your spot. And the way you do and build a moat around you and give you that protection is with this vertical integration. Because I can tell you, if someone wanted to compete with ever Bull, you can't build them as cheap as me. You can't get your acai as cheap as me. So if we're going to have a race to zero and you try to undercut me in price, I'll undercut you back and we'll see who survives. It's like, compete with Starbucks. It's very hard.

Yeah, for sure.

Very hard. To compete with Starbucks. Three in one shopping center.

Yeah, I was in. I think it was Washington, D.C. and there was one directly across the street. Like, just on the other side of the street. It's crazy.

In the center, literally in the center, I have an Ever bowl, there's a Starbucks. Across the street, there's a Starbucks. And then there's a grocery store in that center that has a Starbucks inside.

Oh, my God.

So in across the street, you have three, and there. And Schultz's logic was, I'm gonna catch you on both sides of the street.

Yeah. Hey, it works innovative. It's disruptive, right?

That's right. And it kills competition.

Yeah, for sure. Now, one of the other byproducts that I think that has been so wonderful is you're always looking for ways to. When most people say reduce waste, people are like, okay, reduce inefficiencies. Where can I get rid of something? Whereas if I'm not mistaken, one of your vendors, one of the vendors that you dealt with, or one of the I'd say the vendors, loosely, the one of the places you buy product from, the raw goods themselves, they actually learned that what they were throwing away they could turn into dory.

Correct? Yep. So acai seeds.

Yeah.

And I'm actually, I almost always wear them and literally for this call, I'm not wearing them today. But. But really, when I was down in Brazil, you see thousands, I mean, hundreds of thousands of acai seeds being thrown out. Like millions and millions of acai seeds. Some people burn them for fuel, but most of the time they just throw them away. And there's locals down there that don't have a means to support themselves. And so we started working with some local families that literally hand make our acaisi bracelets and jewelry. And we sell them here locally for three to five bucks a piece. Not a lot, but just enough to give back. And we're sending kids to school, we're supporting local families in the region where we're taking acai. And so we're giving back and we're trying to help the community because, you know, it's. Making money never should be your purpose. It should never be your focus. If you're focused, if you're like, I'm just chasing money, it's going to run from you and you're never going to get what you want. Have a better purpose than that. Be a value to your communities and make sure you're giving back as much as you can and you'll attract more money, you'll attract more opportunity. And that's for us, very important. So for us, it's not just taking acai from the region and selling it here because we can make money. No, we want to improve the region in Brazil where we source our products and be a valuable, know, valuable add on in addition to that whole ecosystem and make sure that the families down there, you know, and the beauty is because we take care of them, they take care of us. If I need something, those families, they'll help me.

Absolutely.

And I have local resources down there that understand the culture and speak Portuguese and understand the language that can really help me. You know, I'm not Portuguese and I'm not Brazilian, so that's a, that's a component. But, you know, yes, it's selfish, but, but the selfish feeling is giving back. When you're able to give back and you see the emotion of the humans that you can touch, there's just nothing better in this world.

Impact over income. All day long, impact over income. You get impact. Income comes, you focus on the income you lose the impact and the income. It's been my experience anyway, for sure. Well, look, you know, we've brushed a little bit about Ever Bowl. Okay. Now, Ever bowl is huge on the west coast. I know you've been growing it steadily with franchise with a franchise model. I know that's your. That was close to your heart. I know you've, you looked at New York, you've looked at some other east coast places. If someone listening is interested in a proven model that has proven results, who actually wants to change lives through healthy lifestyles and healthy eating? Like how do they learn more about the franchise that you also have and then also, you know, for those who aren't familiar with Everbowl, like talk just a itty bit about Everbowl because I want to save some time for your exciting news you got coming up.

No problem. Yeah. So Ever Bull's why just because it's important to understand is on the back of my hat. It's unevolve. It's a word we created and trademarked. It's a lifestyle. It means to move and eat the way you were meant to live actively and eat stuff that's been around forever. Very simple. Move your body and eat real food. Ever Bull's tagline is made from stuff that's been around forever. We craft superfood bowls that we create on site for you in multiple sizes with unlimited toppings of your choice, all made from stuff that's been around forever. That was a long winded way of saying we sell fun, delicious, exciting bowls. And the problem we're solving is the four excuses humans make to why we don't eat healthy. You know, heart disease, stroke, obesity, cancer, diabetes. 80% of these conditions are lifestyle driven, meaning we can prevent them by changing our habits by moving our body and eating real food.

Yeah.

Well, why do we not eat healthy? Four excuses. One, we think it costs too much to eat healthy. Two, we think it doesn't taste good. Three, it doesn't fill us up and leave us satisfied. Or four, you are on a quick window and you just can't get it.

You're.

You have a break from lunch or from work and you have a 30 minute lunch. So that's why fast food is so pretty prevalent.

Yeah.

So Everbowl was built to be affordable, filling, delicious and accessible. And that's how we've entered the market. We've opened 30 stores in three years and we're just about to turn four. Congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you.

We have 24 franchises being built. We're in Multiple states from Utah, Oregon, Nevada, California, Arizona. We've signed franchises in Florida. We're in professional sports stadiums. We're with the San Diego Padres. We're going to be in the Vegas Raiders stadium when it opens to the public, Pechanga Arena. We've done Macy's deals, so we've done all this growth. And so to answer that question, if you do want to join our ever family and not not only just be a franchisee, but actually join us, you know, I highly recommend you go to everbowl.com click franchise, fill out the form, and we'll start the conversation. The truth is, we have over 500 franchise requests already, and we're selective simply because we're not looking for just anyone with money and a pulse to take on. You have to be. No, you have to. You have to be a brand representative and exude the five core values of. Of ever Bull. And understand that we want. We're picking you as much as you're picking us, and so we want you to be very selective. And what I always tell franchise, potential franchisees is, let's both find a reason not to do this, and if we can, let's do it. And so, you know, I don't want to say, like, it's gonna, you know, yes, I would love everyone to reach out, but if you don't believe in making friends and having fun, if you don't believe in an unevolved lifestyle, I'll save you the hassle. Don't waste your time. Because for us, that's just not who we're looking for. And if you are, the beauty is, don't worry about the financial side. If you don't have all the capital, we can help. If you do have the capital, Phenomenal. And the average price is very cheap. You know, it's between 75 and 125,000 bucks all in. Gets you a store.

Wow.

Yeah, That's a hell of a deal, to be honest.

That's a solid franchise, homie.

Yeah. Yep. And we're here to help, and we're gonna help you with every step, from designing it to building it, to sourcing the products to getting it with the distributors, to training your staff at Everbowl University and then making sure once you get open, that your store is the best store in the region. And then open as many as we can to dominate that market and bring Everbowl to everybody everywhere.

Love it, dude. Love it, love it, Dude. Guys, if you haven't got this already, this dude has got it going on.

Got it.

Going together. And from the franchisee to the scalable model, to the vertical integration to just helping people and putting impact over income, there's not enough that can be said. Clearly, you've done a lot of work just on the internal heart side, on the external side, you know, building teams. None of that stuff's easy. And to be here at this stage in the game, scaling at this level, this quickly, with this level of excellence, with this level of heart, is simply incredible.

And thank you.

Yeah. So give my love to your team, who's done a phenomenal job as well, because we all, we all know that behind every entrepreneur that gets to be on the business cards and stuff like that, so to speak, there's a fantastic team behind them.

But I want, I wouldn't be here without them, so. Oh, I stand on their shoulders and they lift me up every day.

Amen to that. Well, look, I got one more thing I want to hit up real fast. You got some extra special news coming out and some, if I'm not mistaken, it's your first brand new book, sure to be a bestseller. Tell us a little bit about the book and when it's coming out. All good stuff.

Yes, thank you. Yes, I'm excited. So LinkedIn Learning hired me to do a course for LinkedIn, which I mentioned to everybody on relationship Capital. And the course, the course went live a couple weeks back and it really went really well. And so as a byproduct of that, I'm now writing my first book on Relationship Capital, the Power of It. I can't share the title yet, but when this comes out. I know, I know, I'm not, I'm not.

I'm trying to be. I'm trying to be first. I'm trying to be on the innovative side of things.

Yes. And I will show. I'm going to send you a message as soon as I can share it, but it should be live before December 15th. And it'll be available obviously on Kindle and Hard and, you know, Amazon and all of the different means, methods, whatever the right term is. But it's really going to be a powerful book. It's going to share some of the lessons and skills that I've developed and learned from mentors and successful people. And really, if you take a survey of a lot of successful individuals, you will find that most of them have built their success on the back of relationship capital. And so if you're not using that skill and you can't afford the book, reach out to me, I'll send it to you. For free. Also, I'm not here to. I'm not doing it to make money. I'm doing it to help a lot of people. Obviously, if you can afford it and you want to support, I would appreciate it. But yeah, our goal is to make it a best seller. And I'm really excited at really talking about something that the market just doesn't mess, doesn't. It doesn't talk about enough. Like us as entrepreneurs, you know, you can learn all these master classes on so many skills, but we lose sight of making friends and how important that is and how to do it right. And I'm going to give you exactly tips and tactics on how to start implementing this tomorrow, not six months from now. This doesn't take a long time and really get into that. And I'm going to end with it. For those of you who say, hey, I don't have time to read, you know, this is something I speak on a ton, but I'm going to change all of your lives with one little life hack. And it's the power of four minutes. Most people say, I don't have time to do this. I don't have time to learn a new skill. I don't have time to. And I'm so tired of hearing that. So let me disrupt that. The average snooze button is eight minutes. Just for anyone who's ever hit snooze on an alarm clock. If you don't hit snooze, can you invest four minutes a day? And you say, what am I going to do in four minutes? Well, if you do something for four minutes a day for 365 days a year, that's 24 hours. That's an entire day worth of learning. So if you want to learn how to yo, yo and you, yo, yo, four minutes a day. In one year from today, you've spent 24 hours yo yoing. And you will be really, really good. So if you can just invest four minutes in learning something new, developing a new skill, honing a new skill a year from today will happen whether you do it or not. But you will have invested 24 hours into that craft, and that will change your life. And when you start realizing what eight minutes will do, that snooze button is two days a year. You're wasting hitting snooze. Stop hitting snooze. Wake up and start reading, start learning, start, start experiencing new things and developing skills. And that's how you're going to get to be the level of success that you're after.

And that's how you get to the 40 under 40.

There's the secret right there. You just got it, man. Oh, my gosh. Well, dude, I have enjoyed this conversation. I can't wait to do it again. In fact, I'd love to have you on just before the book releases, if you got time.

I would love it.

Yeah. Hope you share that out there, because I will. I will tell you from my personal experience is that I've got probably 450 team members myself across three states. I know what it's like to try to manage that and try to cultivate leadership and also try to let leaders run in their lane and stay out of their way. You know, I'm good at the strategy and the vision side. I suck at detail. So, like, don't let me get over there in your widget kind of deal. So I totally get all that. And I'm a firm believer that the relationships will make or break your business. Either. Either you're really. You become really astute at getting the right ones, really astute at getting the right partnerships and the relationships in place. Or you're going to hire bad people and you're going to be a bad person. Or you have the tendency to be a bad person. Next thing you know, your entire organization falls apart simply because you didn't know any better. So after this, after this episode, there is no more not knowing any better. Right?

Exactly. And if you still have questions, reach out to me. Because I don't just say this on podcasts and on in books. I truly want to make friends with everybody. So I want to get to know you. I'm here as a resource. It doesn't cost money. Reach out to me. LinkedIn, Instagram, email, any. Which means I want to get to know you and your audience and all of your audience and any of you listening. If you have questions, hit me up. I mean, we're all human beings. It's never been easier to connect and call me out on my. Make sure that I'm making friends every day, because that's what I'm trying to do.

Yeah, I messaged you a week ago.

No, man, I've loved it. I thank you again. You know, I would normally say, hey, how do we stay connected? But you just gave the shout out, so I don't think we need to go there. But, dude, loved it, man. Loved having you on. I can't wait to do this again in the near future.

Well, thank you. I'm a huge fan of your show, so it's truly an honor for me to be here today and I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity. I love what you're doing and the messaging that you bring and the guests that you bring on. So I'm flattered and honored and thank you and I look forward to doing this again.

Oh, it's going to be great, man. I appreciate it. Thank you for those kind words. I really appreciate it. All right, dude, I'll see you later. Take care.

Bye.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as I did with Jeff Finster. And if you did, you're really going to love this next one right here. Check it out.

I was given some ways to think about things in my brain that shaped.

The way I act in the world.

And my guess is as someone that.

Interviews a lot of smart people that you're like constantly learning and my guess.

Is you've talked to some people and you've heard.