Do you want to know that secret to building a multi-million dollar business with no experience? Join Jeff Fenster (Founder of Everbowl) and Eric Partaker as they share tips on how to reach your full potential, and share the secrets that led to Jeff becoming the successful Entrepreneur he is today.
KEY POINTS
Nobody Is Born With Success! – It is created through hard work, perseverance and resilience.
It’s The Little Things In Life – If you eat good, you feel good. When you feel good, you look good. When you look good, you perform good. And when you perform good you get everything you want in life! Success starts with the fuel you put in your body!
Experience is Overrated – Experience is one of the most overrated prerequisites to start a company. Too often people wait to have a wealth of experience. Instead, let go of your ego and surround yourself with incredible talent.
The World Is Your Oyster! – Everything you need to succeed already exists, all the resources, all the expertise. Your job is simply to connect the dots to the person, to the book, to the course, and pull it all together.
What Is Your Purpose? – It is very important to have a clear definitive purpose for striving for your goals. During tough times, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to fail. Knowing you’re ‘why’ gives you the inspiration and motivation to chase your goals and stay focused.
Not Preparing For Change Is Preparing To Fail – A change ready mindset both professionally and personally, allows you to adapt with the waves and pivot when you need to pivot and continue to grow and develop to the best version of yourself. The world is forever changing.
Big Journeys Begin With Small Steps – Don’t strive for perfection. Instead, strive to get 1% better today, 1% better tomorrow, 1% better the next day.
Dreams Don’t Work Unless You Do! – Hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard! The secret to success is hard work. Laying back and allowing talent to carry you through will end up with failure.
Embrace Your Feelings – Don’t spend too much time in a state of pity, being a victim. Set a timer on your phone for five minutes. Then curse, scream, cry, jump up and down. Go through an emotional reflection period and let your feelings out. But when the alarm goes off it’s done. It’s back to solving the next problem.
TRANSCRIPT
Jeff Fenster:
Whatever business you’re starting, whatever business you’re running, don’t wait for a perfect product to launch. Too many people are waiting for perfect. If you think about the digital world, which is I had a digital marketing agency before this. In the digital world, it’s data, data, data, data, data, user behavior, and why did you click this button, and conversion rate optimization, and all of these acronyms in the digital marketing space.
Jeff Fenster:
But it’s completely disregarded in the physical real world, the non-virtual. When customers come in, why did you sit there instead of there? Why did you order this instead of that? Did you like that? Would you come back? What would you have changed? One person doesn’t give you all the answers, but when you make a habit of talking to your customers, you’re going to hear what they want. I don’t have all the answers. So lose your ego when you’re developing the product and skate with the customer to give the customers what they’re looking for.
Eric Partaker:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of The 2% where as always, we’re having conversations with peak performers from all walks of life, to help decode excellence, to help give you the practical strategies, tips, and tools that you can use to close the gap between your current and best self, not just in your work life, also in your personal life. I’m super excited today to have our next guest. His name is Jeff Fenster, serial entrepreneur, disruptor in the US.
Eric Partaker:
This guy has got a crazy resume, CV, if you’re on this side of the pond, and he’s going to be taking us through all of that. And hopefully weave in through that, some stories and some tips and tricks that you can learn to up your game. Welcome to the show, Jeff. Really great to have you here, man.
Jeff Fenster:
Thank you for having me. It’s truly an honor. I’m a fan, and excited to get the opportunity to speak to your audience today.
Eric Partaker:
You’re in California, right?
Jeff Fenster:
Yeah. Sunny San Diego. Literally I am on the other side of the pond and the other side of that country as well.
Eric Partaker:
Yeah. Very, very cool. I mean, you’ve done a huge amount of things. We were saying just before we hit record here, that rather than rattle off that long list in the intro, we’ll just naturally get to conversation. Otherwise, I’m going to use half the podcast just introducing you. Let’s bring things back down to earth though first, because one of the things that I try to stress on these shows is that we’re all born clean slate. Nobody’s born with their success. It’s created through hard work, perseverance, resilience, all that good stuff.
Eric Partaker:
But we’re not even born that way either. We’re just born completely clean slate. Can you bring us down to maybe perhaps some humbler beginnings? How did life start for you? What did that look like?
Jeff Fenster:
Sure. Yeah. I grew up with parents that basically said I could be a doctor, a lawyer, or a doctor or a lawyer. So it was a stressed in me early. My dad was a doctor, and so I grew up thinking I was going to… Well, my goal and dream was to be a professional athlete, but I wasn’t fortunate to have the natural tools necessary to achieve that. And so, decided to go the legal route and went to law school to be a sports agent and stay connected to sports and have a career.
Jeff Fenster:
This was 2004, five, and six, back before even the word entrepreneur was even a word that we used. It was you had a job and a career, you were a business owner, because you had a job and a career and then you became a business owner, or you had a family business to go into. And so, really, my path, my plan was to be a sports agent. Graduating law school, my third year, I had a job lined up.
Jeff Fenster:
Met the woman who is now my wife. But we had a young daughter. With a child in law school, I decided I didn’t want to travel the world representing grown-ups. I wanted to be a present parent and raise my own daughter. And so, it really threw a curve ball in my whole career, and all of that time and energy and effort into that path changed overnight. And so, when I graduated law school, I had no idea what I was going to do. No plan, no path, a baby, law school, debt and uncertainty, if you will.
Jeff Fenster:
So I got a job. I got a job selling payroll services for a big company called ADP. I think they’re international. They’re in the UK and Europe as well. It was an outside sales job making $38,000 a year selling payroll services and HR human resource services to small businesses in San Diego. With a baby and six figures in law school debt, I just had to pay bills. So I got this job. I figured, “Okay, I’ll figure out what I’m going to do.” But I never actually wanted to be a practicing attorney. I wanted to be a sports agent, and to do that, I had to travel all the time.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, it just didn’t fit with what my new life situation was. And so, I did. That was my humble beginning. Fortunately, through something we’ll talk about today, my core values as a business individual, as well as an individual, is making friends and having fun. Those are my two business rules and my two most important core values and the two rules at all of my companies. But using those same principles without having them clearly identified…
Jeff Fenster:
I was successful at selling payroll. And so, I became ADP’s number one sales rep in the country my first six months there. Made a lot of money and figured out really quickly I was really good at this. And so, as a result of that, and as a result of an issue with my employer over $17,000 bonus, I got thrusted into entrepreneurship or what we now call entrepreneurship and started my own payroll company out of my mom’s kitchen six months later.
Eric Partaker:
Awesome, man. We’re going to fill in the gaps in between, but let’s fast forward for a moment. One of the things that puts a smile on my face is the variety of things that you’ve done. I mean, puts a smile on my face because, yeah, in similar fashion, I was at McKinsey and Company as a consultant. Then I was in tech with Skype. Then, as we were talking about, then I built a chain of Mexican restaurants. Now I’m doing a new gig now.
Eric Partaker:
I looked at your resume and I was like, “Man, this guy, he has that same mentality of basically you can just do whatever you want if you have the right mentality.” Before we get into that, because I’d really love to go into the mindset stuff, can you just take people… Give us a snapshot of the different industries and the businesses that you’re in at the moment.
Jeff Fenster:
Today?
Eric Partaker:
Yeah.
Jeff Fenster:
Yeah. Today I run a company called Everbowl. It’s a QSR, quick-serve restaurant chain focusing on super foods, acai bowls, pitaya bowls, and all the different fun super foods that we can put together into these beautiful concoctions. But I use a concept of vertical integration, and we built this to be a vertically integrated machine or system. What that means is there’s a bunch of subsidiaries and companies underneath it.
Jeff Fenster:
There’s a company called WeBuild. We build stuff which we created to build out all the Everbowls. It’s our construction and fabrication company. We have Unevolve products, which is our manufacturer and import company where we import super foods from all over the world and manufacture our own proprietary flavors and bases for our restaurants, that we then sell. We have Unevolve products, which also does clothing. We also partner with QVC and do direct to consumer.
Jeff Fenster:
We also have Everbowl Finance, which is a finance company we use to finance franchisees. Then we have Everbowl Franchise, which is the franchise arm of Everbowl. And so, all of those different subsidiaries and all those companies form together to form what is the Everbowl offering. Everbowl’s built off of a why. My why is unevolve. It’s a word I created and trademarked, and hence the word Unevolve products. Unevolve means to live actively and eat stuff that’s been around forever. Everbowl’s tagline is, “Made from stuff that’s been around forever.”
Jeff Fenster:
So it’s the eating side of Unevolve. It’s the lifestyle that we’re trying to promote, the lifestyle brand, as well as the lifestyle for every human, to be the best version of themselves, because when you eat good, you feel good. When you feel good, you look good. When you look good, you perform good. And when you perform good, you get everything you want in life. So it starts with the fuel we put in our bodies and we wanted to be on the forefront of that. That’s Everbowl.
Eric Partaker:
That’s awesome. I love it. Becoming the best version of yourself, that’s something that I’m super passionate about as well. Connect the dots for us. What prompted you to want to get into the food space? Because it seems like that’s the spearhead of the whole thing.
Jeff Fenster:
Well, actually, I truthfully never really wanted to be in the restaurant business. I know nothing about restaurants. I think experience is one of the most overrated prerequisites to starting a company. Too often people wait to have all this experience. I’ll tell a little story. I was out to dinner with my mom and my dad and my kids and my wife. This was 2016, and I said, “Hey, I’m going to start this restaurant chain.” Well, my plan was it actually wasn’t called Everbowl then. I didn’t even have the name yet.
Jeff Fenster:
I remember my dad said, “Are you nuts? Nine out of 10 restaurants fail.” My mom said, “You don’t know how to cook.” And then, my wife, because she was just having some fun with me just said, “All you do in a kitchen is eat and make a mess.” And all of that is true. But remember, nine out of 10 restaurants fail. Why do I need to have experience then? Because if I go get restaurant experience, I have a 90% failure rate.
Jeff Fenster:
The reason is because I would do the same things that everyone else did, which gives me a 90% failure rate or a 10% success rate. What I like to do is come in with fresh eyes and disruption and disruptive industries, and take whatever the modern present day business acumen I have and approach the problem differently. If everybody’s going right, go left, and when nothing’s going right, go left.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, for us at Everbowl, the idea was not to be in the restaurant business, but to actually be in the entertainment business and realize that people eat with their eyes. But if you create a good lifestyle brand and you create a good experiential situation, the consumers are going to really adapt to what we’re doing. We could adapt the menu. We could change what we offer to fit whatever the trends are or whatever the consumers’ needs are.
Jeff Fenster:
But when you’re building that business, you’ve got to remember whether it’s a restaurant chain, a payroll business, digital marketing, a dental practice, a law firm, a construction company, the core foundational principles of business are the same. You have to make more money than you spend. You’ve got to have strong financials. You’ve got to have a good P and L. You’ve got to attract good talent. You’ve got to have a good one marketing arm. You’ve got to do all these things that are just business and are not specific to restaurants, specific to construction, specific to payroll, or you name whatever industry you want.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, that’s the mistake, is that good chefs try to start restaurants. And while they’re amazing chefs, they don’t have the business skills. That’s why nine out of 10 restaurants fail because restaurateurs are not necessarily business people. But when you can get a great chef and a great business person together, or you have someone who has both, you could be really successful. And so, that’s where, I think, for a lot of people sitting on the sidelines waiting for this experience, they’re chasing the wrong experience.
Jeff Fenster:
You can hire a great chef or you can hire a great CEO, but you’ve got to identify what strengths you have and what value add you’re bringing to the enterprise, and then surround yourself with incredible people who can fill in those gaps. That’s one of my secret sauce, is one of the things that in order to be successful and to prove out that you don’t need experience, is having no ego and surrounding yourself with incredible talent, because at Everbowl, for example, I don’t know how to build things. I could barely put Legos together.
Jeff Fenster:
But we’ve built 36 restaurants. We can do it very quickly. The WeBuild side is growing exponentially because we have an incredible WeBuild team and construction team that can manufacture and fabricate these stores exactly how we want them to be, on time, within budget, and allows us to scale. And I don’t know how to build anything. You give me a hammer and you give me a screwdriver and I don’t know what to do with either one of them.
Eric Partaker:
Love it. I think your point about how you don’t need the experience is so liberating. Because I have a similar thought in that I’ve always said that I’ve unburdened myself when it comes to entrepreneurship, because I think of it as all the experience, all the expertise, all the resources that I need, they already exist. My job is simply to connect the dots to the person, to the book, the course, the knowledge, the mentor, the finance, whatever it is, and pull it all together. I have the sense that we share a similar view on this, right?
Jeff Fenster:
Yeah. I think you just nailed it. My perspective is exactly that. Someone says, “What’s an entrepreneur to me?” The simple answer is I’m a problem solver. That’s what I do all day. I just solve problems and I try to bring in either the capital necessary, the product necessary, the people necessary, or whatever that objective is, to solve whatever the problem is in front of us. That’s how we grow and scale companies.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, in no way am I a firefighter, but in the business sense, I’m a firefighter. I’m solving the problems that come up every day that is standing in the way of this company getting to where we want to be, whether it’s selling more product, getting more talent, raising more capital. Whatever it is, those are the problems. To your point, all the information’s there, whether it’s humans that have it, YouTube, Google.
Jeff Fenster:
The digitization of information and the power of the internet in our pockets is such an enabling device that I internally feel sad for people who feel like they don’t know how to get the answers they’re looking for. I want to tell them, just turn off Instagram and turn on Google. If you ask Google questions, it gives you answers.
Eric Partaker:
Yeah. Exactly.
Jeff Fenster:
It’s so powerful to have that 24/7 at your hip, because I didn’t have that when I started in 2004. I didn’t have a smartphone. I had one of those little flip devices. And so, to have that for guys like us and men and women out there looking to grow their companies and trying to figure out, “How do I get that next answer?” Ask. I mean, it’s as simple as that.
Eric Partaker:
Bingo. Illustrate for us. 36 restaurants now. You’ve got a vertically integrated, successful restaurant brand with all the ancillary businesses. But you started blank slate. Again, you weren’t born like, “Oh my gosh, look, on Jeff’s forehead, there’s an Everbowl tattoo.” There was none of that, but you’ve created it. So you started a completely blank slate, no experience. First year, what were the first things you did to connect the dots, tap into the expertise that you required? How did you strategically put those pieces together?
Jeff Fenster:
It was July of 2016. I was actually in Poway, California visiting a former client of mine at my digital marketing company that I had just sold. Went to a smoothie king to get a smoothie because I was looking for something to eat. The owner was closing down the shop. He was literally taking things from the business, physical brick and mortar business into his van. He told me he was retiring at the end of the week. He didn’t sell the business because no one wanted to buy it for the price he was offering. So he was just closing it down and his lease was up.
Jeff Fenster:
I got the landlord’s name and number and signed the lease the very next week without a name or even the full menu. Because I knew that I wanted to penetrate the space. I wanted to really build something in the health and wellness side. I think, like smoking, the information is there that what we eat has such an impact on us. So I started with my why. I think it’s very important that you have a clear definitive why you’re doing whatever you’re doing, because during the peaks and the valleys, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re going to chase all the squirrels.
Jeff Fenster:
I’m guilty of having entrepreneurial ADD, so that’s why I really need to have a clear vision as to, what am I doing? Why am I doing this every day? Once you know what that is, that’s going to give you the inspiration and the motivation to chase that through the storms and through the dry spells and through the winds and, and stay focused, like, “This is where we’re going.” So, for me, it was about unevolve. I didn’t have that word coined yet, but the concept was there. I knew that was the direction I’m heading.
Jeff Fenster:
Then it was about fine-tuning that answer, that word unevolve, to the point where it’s now with clear focus, everything we do at Everbowl is all surrounded on, are we getting closer to achieving the goal of promoting an unevolve lifestyle, helping everybody be the best version of themselves? If the answer’s yes, it’s very easy for us to decide whether or not we’re going to do something.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, that first year, that first restaurant, I signed a lease. Told my family, “I’m now going to be in the restaurant business.” Started figuring out what we were going to sell. Came up with some names. Started recruiting, some friends of mine that were really good at branding, to help me with the brand and the design and what we were going to call it, because I didn’t have a name yet. Really came out with that offering.
Jeff Fenster:
And then, October 15th, 2016, I opened the restaurant, and I didn’t know what I was doing. So I had to hire people. I’d never really hired for restaurant space. So I figured, okay, being that it’s a quick-serve restaurant and we’re doing in the smoothies and acai bowls, we’re not cooking fish or having exotic offerings, so I don’t need exquisitely, talented chefs. I needed what I believed was going to be our core values of making friends and having fun, I needed to bring in good personalities that wanted to help promote the unevolve lifestyle.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, I mean, as simple as this was, this was my hiring strategy. I asked everyone who was coming in to bring one thing unique and show up at a weird time. I would say, “Bring me a red paperclip and I’ll see you at 2:48.” I figured if they can follow directions and show up on time, I could train them to do the rest. And so, that was my hiring protocol. And so, those who did those two things and looked me in the eye during the interview and were friendly, I hired.
Jeff Fenster:
So I hired seven people and we opened our doors. The very first day, I said, “Okay, you guys need training, and we need to get customers to go tell all your friends and family we’re giving away free food at Everbowl. You’re going to make the food. So as many people as you invite, just remember, you’re going to be making the food for them and we’re going to have some fun.” And so, we really did.
Jeff Fenster:
We threw a house party at Everbowl the very first day. A bunch of people came. Couple of hundred showed up for free acai bowls, and we made it for them. From there, it just started to grow up. And so it was like, “Okay, let’s learn how we’re going to do each thing. How do we clean a restaurant? How do we schedule? How do I order the right food? What is my cost of goods?” I started to use Google and learn what good restaurants do and started to understand what prime numbers were in the restaurant space and what good targets were.
Jeff Fenster:
One of the secrets that I use, that I recommend everyone else do, is look at public companies in your industry. I mean, the Chipotles in my world, the Starbucks’s in my world, the McDonald’s in my world, they’re public, which means they have to do a quarterly report and they have to provide information to the public about their business. What are their goals for the next quarter and the next year? What are their results? What do their financials look like? What are the key metrics? Where did they miss? Where did they hit? What does the market think is success? And then apply that to your own business.
Jeff Fenster:
I started to understand what good restaurants, public restaurants, were doing and where they were getting enterprise value, where they were looked at successfully financially. And then I started to reverse engineer what mine needed to be as a small single operator in a small community. That gave me a little bit of information that I didn’t have before. I self-funded the first restaurant and grew. It really started to just hockey stick. By making friends and having fun every day with customers, and realizing that that was what we were doing, promoting an unevolve lifestyle, we were attracting great people, customers.
Jeff Fenster:
And then, because we were attracting great customers, you start to be busy and then all things start to snowball. For mindset purposes and for the purpose of what your audience is looking for is don’t chase the ball. Be in position so the ball finds you. What I mean is, a lot of restaurants spend a lot of money on marketing, spend a lot of money on recruiting, spend a lot of money on driving customers.
Jeff Fenster:
But I think that’s the wrong approach. I want to attract them all. Because if you chase things, whether it’s money, results, a boy or a girl, an animal, it runs. Chase anything, watch. It’s going to immediately start running from you. That’s true for tangible things as well, like money. A lot of people chasing money every day and they never get it. Do the good things, do the right things, and it’s going to actually be attracted to you because you’re not after it.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, what I mean is, by us recognizing quickly that we had a good product and we had a good culture, and by building the culture and making friends with our customers, making friends with our employees, and building this lifestyle brand, the food itself was good and it tasted better because people liked us. The food itself was good and our employees liked it because we were busy and we had happy customers.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, as a result, we started to get momentum. Once you get momentum, that starts to attract all the other pieces. Using my background as a serial entrepreneur, I started a construction company because the first restaurant cost me way too much money. It cost me almost $270,000 to build. I said, “Well, I want to build a hundred of these because my four problems that I was solving to help promote the unevolve lifestyle, as I got laser-focused on that why was, the four excuses we make to why we don’t eat healthy, why we choose something fast and fried, why we go to McDonald’s 3.7 times a week, or why we eat poorly.
Jeff Fenster:
In America, and I’m sure it’s similar on your side of the pond, obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, hypertension, it’s killing us. 80% of this stuff is preventable by lifestyle choices, by eating healthy and moving your body. And so, if we know that and we’re still doing it, my question was why. Again, I always go back to the why. I came up with four excuses that humans make every day to eat something bad for us. They are either A, we think eating healthy doesn’t taste good. B it costs too much money. You can’t get it because, yeah, you don’t have enough time, or it doesn’t fill you up.
Jeff Fenster:
You feel like a salad’s just not going to leave you full and satisfied. So affordable, filling, delicious, and accessible. And so, in that vein, I realized what my four goals were. I needed to make Everbowl affordable, filling, delicious, and accessible. I had to open a lot of Everbowls. And so, immediately, I went to the building side and I said, “Okay, I’m going to start a construction company so I can lower my cost to build, and I can scale this thing faster.
Jeff Fenster:
And then when I scale this thing faster, a lot of things are going to happen. One, I’m going to increase my buying power, which is going to drive down my cost of goods, which is going to let me, in turn, give that savings back to my customer to drive down the cost of my items. More affordable. Two, accessible. By opening more restaurants, were more accessible, By being more accessible, we’re going to get more customers, which means we’re going to improve cost of goods and those two things are going to happen.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, I signed my second lease two months after I opened my first one, even before we were profitable, because I believed wholeheartedly in this approach and the strategy. And so, the first year, we opened four restaurants, October, May, September, October. Those were the first four openings, and self-funded them. Just kept going and building and building and building. As a result, what happens is now because we’re building stores so fast and we’re opening more stores and we’re announcing it, we’re attracting more customers because people are getting familiar with our brand.
Jeff Fenster:
We’re attracting more employees because people want to be a part of growing companies where they can grow with the company and be a part of that. So we were attracting more talented, better people. We were attracting media attention because media loves growth. As a result of that, we attract more customers. And so, it became the self-fulfilling snowball that just grows as it goes down the mountain.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, that was the first year, was just all about identifying the why of unevolve, and then what are the four reasons why customers are going to come to Everbowl, and then doing everything we can to solve those four.
Eric Partaker:
Awesome. Awesome. Love it. You talk about having a great product and a great culture.
Jeff Fenster:
Yes.
Eric Partaker:
Let’s demystify product development a bit, because, again, big menu. You’ve got lots of things on there. Again, you weren’t born with it in your head. It’s not like Matrix where you download it either. So how did you go about developing the products? Because presumably, the food tasted good enough to give you the confidence to sign that second lease two months after the first one. So yeah, take us through that. How did you do that practically?
Jeff Fenster:
By making friends with our customers. It’s the number one thing most restaurants, in my opinion, don’t do. I eat at restaurants all the time. So I can say this from personal experience. I never get asked by the chef, or the manager, or the restaurateur, or an employee, “Hey, did you like this item? Tell me about it. What could we have done better?” I never get asked that question, ever. And I eat out five days a week.
Jeff Fenster:
So you start to wonder, well, you have all of this data. If you think about the digital world, which is I had a digital marketing agency before this, and in the digital world, it’s data, data, data, data, data. That’s all that Google cares about, and Facebook, and Instagram, and Apple. It’s collecting data, and user behavior, and why did you click this button? And conversion rate optimization and all of these acronyms and digital marketing space about our digital behavior and digital habits.
Jeff Fenster:
But it’s completely disregarded in the physical real world, the non-virtual. When customers come in, why did you sit there instead of there? Why did you order this instead of that? Did you like that? Would you come back? What would you have changed? Because we were seeing hundreds of customers a day, we were asking them what they thought. I was engaging in fruitful, deep conversation with customers. I wasn’t just trying to get them to buy something.
Jeff Fenster:
I would sit down at their tables. While I’m sitting there, I would say, “Hey, how are you guys?” And I get to know them. A, I’m building relationship. B, now ask them, specifically, did you like the berry squared bowl?” “Yeah, I did. I thought it had too many blueberries though.” Interesting. So less blueberries means I’m going to save money and you’re going to like your bowl better. Or, “I wish it had more blueberries.” Okay. Interesting. Why? One person doesn’t give you all the answers, but when you make a habit of talking to your customers, you’re going to hear what they want.
Jeff Fenster:
Again, if you go back to the digital world and you look at software companies or these app companies, there’s a concept called MVP, which is a minimum viable product. That’s the way we approached Everbowl, was, “Let’s come out with a basic menu, but our customers create their own. That’s pretty much what we have, is a more of a create-your-own offering and let the customers tell us what they want. And then we’ll provide. That’s what people in the software business do.
Jeff Fenster:
They build these apps or this software. They see what user behavior is, and then they adapt the software to give the user what they want. And so, again, in the vein of product development, that’s really what it is, it’s I don’t have all the answers. So lose your ego when you’re developing your product and skate where the puck’s going to be. Give the customers what they’re looking for.
Jeff Fenster:
We used to offer a bunch of things that are no longer on the menu because customers didn’t like it. Okay. No hard, no feelings. We have new items on the menu that I never thought would sell because I don’t like them. The customers love them. Okay. Who am I to tell you what’s going to be out there? For me, it’s about developing products that consumers want, and at Everbowl, we’re Everbowl for everybody. And so, if everybody wants a certain item and it meets our criteria of made from stuff that’s been around forever, and it’s a super food, and it’s helping people be the best version of themselves, we want to offer that product.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, for product development side, you’re right. I didn’t have all the answers, and I don’t think anyone does. Sometimes I get it. There’s certain restaurant concepts where the experience is whatever that chef wants, because you’re going for that chef. That’s not the case at my brand or our brand here at Everbowl. We’re not an individual chef-driven concept. You’re not coming to Everbowl because we have one world renowned chef. You’re coming to Everbowl for super foods. And so, it was about being dynamic and being available.
Eric Partaker:
Awesome. This goes back to the whole connecting the dots, because it’s like all the expertise for the product development that you needed, it existed. It was in all the customers coming to the restaurant. I really like that. You don’t need it to be perfect. You just need to have a good enough product, the MVP, the minimum viable product, such that you can start collecting the feedback, which will inform that final stretch and, and the continual on evolution, right?
Jeff Fenster:
Yeah. Going back to that, I mean, that’s what… Again, whether you’re in the restaurant space or not, that’s all business. Whatever business you’re starting, whatever business you’re running, don’t wait for a perfect product to launch. Too many people are waiting for perfect. You don’t know. The only way you’re going to try is to try. So start trying and then the market will help you adapt. One of our core values that Everbowl and one of my business core values is being change ready.
Jeff Fenster:
It’s so important, especially as we hit the pandemic, in how a lot of businesses had to pivot and change. If you’re not change ready and you don’t have a change ready mindset, you’re going to go extinct. You can see examples of this in history. From most recently Blockbuster’s should have been Netflix. But they didn’t pivot when the world changed. Blackberry could been the iPhone, but they didn’t pivot when the world changed. Myspace could have been Facebook, but they didn’t pivot when the world changed.
Jeff Fenster:
You can go back in all business time and you can see these examples of market leaders staying so stuck in the way they’ve always done it and being so afraid of change and adapting and realizing that the only constant is change. So when you have a change ready mindset, both personally and professionally, you can adapt with the waves and pivot when you need to pivot and move where you need to move and not go extinct, and continue to grow, and continue to develop and be the best version of yourself, both professionally and personally tomorrow, because it’s a different world.
Eric Partaker:
What are some of the changes you see on the horizon for yourself that you need to be ready for, from the company’s point of view?
Jeff Fenster:
Well, we made the big one. We had all corporate stores up until March of 2020 when COVID happened. And then when COVID happened, we decided at that point, it was time to franchise because we couldn’t grow in all of these markets with social distancing and travel restrictions and realizing that our growth path had to change. We also launched a direct-to-consumer product offering at Unevolve products.
Jeff Fenster:
We partnered with, in the United States, it’s called QVC, which is basically selling products on the TV to people at home. Really went the direct-to-consumer approach to basically start selling outside the four walls. That really was the birth, and a deeper birth, of Unevolve products, which was another subsidiary of ours, to make that bigger and stronger. And so, the big franchise shift went. We went from 28 corporate stores in March of 2020, to right now we are 100% franchised and we have 112 more stores under development.
Jeff Fenster:
Over the next three years, we’ve already signed 112 more Everbowls, and we’re going coast to coast. Right now we’re in the West Coast, primarily, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and California. But we have franchisees opening now all the way from Florida, and the Carolinas, and Georgia and Texas, and Tennessee. Now even talking to a couple of people internationally, nothing yet by you, but I’m going to keep prodding you a little bit to bring Everbowl over there.
Jeff Fenster:
We’ve now expanded the horizon to be international and national. And so, that was a huge change for us because we were really under the modality of corporate owned, corporate owned, corporate owned, corporate owned, the whole path. We were never going to franchise. And so, that was a big change and I attribute that to COVID in just how we had to adapt.
Eric Partaker:
Okay. We talked about product and then culture, talked about change there for a moment. Just going back to the culture piece, you said culture is super important for you. Can you share some of the practical things that you did to foster the culture that you wanted, which presumably was quite easy to create in the corporate setting? But also, how do you see that carrying through now in the franchise setting? How are you going to protect that?
Jeff Fenster:
I think it starts with your core values, and I think it’s always important. I think what you’ll see with me as a common theme is clear definitive direction and what that is, your whys. Again, I’m going back to that phrase, but it’s so important. For us, it’s about our core values, and the first two are making friends and having fun. It sounds very loose when I say that. And so, a lot of people roll their eyes and go, “Okay, but that doesn’t tell me anything.”
Jeff Fenster:
Well, that’s just not true. There is so much depth to those two things that I just said, that when you peel it back, we can spend an hour talking about making friends and having fun. I’ll give you a great example. When you’re making friends and having fun as an employee at Everbowl, because those are the two main rules to work here, it means you show up on time because you don’t leave friends waiting for you. You don’t leave customers waiting for you. You don’t steal. You’re not derogatory. We’re not treating people.
Jeff Fenster:
We’re doing all the things that I could list out, don’t steal it, show up on time, yada, yada, yada, yada, and feel like that, or I can simply say, “Just make friends. Make friends with your coworkers. Make friends with your customers.” By doing that, the simple answer is, I don’t need to tell you how to behave. Do what you would do if it was your friend. All of a sudden, it’s like, wait, I know it seems simple, but in a culture perspective, when you don’t have rigid rules, that everyone feels like, “Okay, it’s like school again,” show up on time, obviously, just make friends with everyone.
Jeff Fenster:
The simple answer is, “Hey, so-and-so,” like when we had to do corrective conversations and coaching, it’s very simple. It’s like, “Is that the best way you would treat a friend right there?” “No, you’re right.” You were having a bad day. No worries. I forgive you because you’re my friend. So it’s like it goes back to that. And so, we look for franchisees that can continue to promote making friends and having fun because when you’re having fun, you attract friendly people.
Jeff Fenster:
You can do this on the street right now. You walk outside and you frown at a stranger, they’re going to frown or look at you weird back. But if you smile at a stranger, they’re going to smile back. Smiling is very addictive. So look at someone, look them in the eye, and smile. When you do it, you’re going to get the same thing back. Now we’re creating already a positive experience both for coworkers as well as customers.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, that’s what we’re trying to promote inside of the Everbowl family, is make friends and have fun, make it a positive experience, a positive environment. And as a result of those two, we can then focus on the next three for us. One of them I already hit, which is obviously being change ready. But another one is Kaizen and that’s to get 1% better every day, recognizing that no one is perfect. We are all at different levels of experience.
Jeff Fenster:
The company’s at different levels of experience, and the world’s changing. So can we get 1% better every day? Can we have obtainable goals that aren’t so audacious that we’re not going to hit them, and so we’re always going to feel the pressure and stress of never being where we want to be? But can we have something identifiable that we can do today to get us a little bit closer to where we want to be long term? We know where we’re going. Let’s get 1% better today, 1% better tomorrow, 1% better the next day.
Jeff Fenster:
And then we can start what we call stacking winds or wind stacking. Today we achieved it because it’s 1%. I don’t care what you’re doing. We can all get 1% better every day. And so, when you start to stack those wins, it starts to build a culture of success. We have something to celebrate daily. So while we’re making friends and having fun at Everbowl, we’re stacking our wins. We’re doing little things and micro improvements. So we’re seeing progress.
Jeff Fenster:
As a result, we’re happy, we’re having fun, we’re making progress, we’re achieving our goals. Now all of a sudden it’s like this culture starts to grow where people are like, “Hey, you know what? I can get 1.1% better, 1.5% better.” You can do better than that. Things just really start to happen. And then you attract all of this stuff. The last one is just being remarkable. Remarkability and holding that as our standard, that says, “If we’re going to do something, let’s do it remarkably well.”
Jeff Fenster:
And so, when you put all those together, you really have a fun culture. I think you attract like-minded people because if you’re not outgoing, if you’re not into smiling and having fun, and you’re a pessimist, you’re just not going to come work with us at Everbowl. It’s just not the right fit. So we can really attract the culture we want. We hired Brian Augustine. He’s our chief development officer, but he came from Trader Joe’s where he helped them shape and develop talent.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, he’s been instrumental in helping us take our core values and having a development plan or program to help develop our staff into these five core values. This is what we use to make sure our culture stays strong.
Eric Partaker:
Awesome. How do you get that then to translate to the incoming franchisees?
Jeff Fenster:
Through franchise training. When we are deciding on who’s going to be a franchisee, we are very selective. I tell every potential franchisee, “We’re interviewing you as much as you’re interviewing us. So you may want to move forward and we don’t, or we may want to move forward and you don’t. So let’s both find a reason not to move forward. And if we can’t, let’s do it. We’re looking for people who live and breathe the unevolve lifestyle, both personally and professionally, and can make friends and have fun. And if you can do that, I can train you to run an Everbowl store. I can train you to build out a chain of Everbowl stores and be a successful franchisee. But I can’t change you as a person.”
Jeff Fenster:
I’m looking for the right raw ingredients in the individual. They should be looking at us as a business opportunity, as an investment. When we meet the right combination of raw human with good business fundamentals, it’s a good fit for Everbowl, it’s a good fit for them, it’s a good fit for us. The culture continues to grow and we continue to promote the unevolve lifestyle.
Eric Partaker:
You have a view on work versus talent that I came across. It reminded me of a conversation that I had with my… At the time, he was 15 years old, one of my boys. We were talking about there’s somebody smarter than him in the class. I said, “You know what?” I said, “Alex, I constantly have gone up against people who are smarter than me. The way you’ve got to treat it is that you’ve got to look at that guy and you’ve got to think to yourself, ‘You may be smarter than me, but there’s no way in hell you’re going to outwork me'”
Eric Partaker:
I know that’s a common thing as well, just from a bit of research I’ve done on you. So yeah. Can you bring that a bit more to life from your point of view, hard work, how does that relate to talent? If there’s a story to share about how that’s been put into place for you, that would be amazing.
Jeff Fenster:
Sure. Yeah, of course. I mean, so the famous saying, hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. It’s clear because in a way, talent is great. But talent’s also, unfortunately, a handicap for a lot of people. Because they’re so talented at whatever it is, they don’t have to work as hard to see the results early on when they’re developing their habits, their pattern, in that sport, in that business, in whatever it is, music, singing, work, school, you name it.
Jeff Fenster:
If I’m a natural at something, I don’t have to work very hard to get the results to be near the top early, when everyone else is trying to figure out, how do I hit a baseball? Or how do I sing this song? Or how do I study that history stuff? If I don’t have a photographic memory and I struggle, I’m going to have to read it 20 times. If I have a photographic memory, it’s like, “Oh, this is easy.” Early on, when the talent gap is huge, they have this crutch. They have this unfortunate handicap, which is helping them early, but is going to hurt them later.
Jeff Fenster:
As you get past that, and we get to the level of professional world where it’s like I’m a professional, you’re a professional, and we’re competing or we’re in college or we’re in high school or we’re in post-college, whatever it is, you pick the level, all of a sudden, the person who’s developed the right habits on how to work hard wins. Because you can’t beat someone who never quits. Even if you’re better than me, you’re going to get tired and I’m not. So I’m just going to keep going.
Jeff Fenster:
You might beat me 364 straight days. I’m going again tomorrow. So unless you have that same motto, you have that same work ethic, you’re going to eventually lose. Not because I’m more talented, just because I’m going to outwork you. It’s just sheer math. It’s sheer numbers. You’ve probably seen water hitting those rocks. There’s a beautiful illustration of this if you Google it. I don’t remember where it is, but they show a rock with water dropping on it, and there’s three of them. One shows five years, one shows 50 years, and one shows a hundred years. Eventually, the water breaks through the rock because it never stops.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, I challenge people who feel like, “I don’t have the talent of these people,” or, “I don’t have the skill.” Does not matter. You can win if you’re willing to outwork them. When talent works hard, they win. Okay. Then you get the Michael Jordans of the world. When you have the work ethic with natural talent. Sure. But there’s a whole lot of success to be had because there are more talented people who are not where they want to be and are losing to people with less talent because the people with less talent have the right work ethic.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, if I had to choose talent or work ethic, I will always take work ethic. I don’t care about talent. Talent, it’s fluffy. It’s not tangible and it doesn’t amount to anything. I developed personally because I was a small kid trying to play sports. I was always the little kid playing football and baseball and playing against bigger kids, and I had less talent. So if I wanted to play was either you have to outwork them or you don’t get to play.
Jeff Fenster:
I had little man syndrome growing up. And so, it was like that small dog that had to bark loud and compete. As a result of that, I think it taught me to work hard. And as a result of that, I think that has allowed me to be successful in a lot of arenas, competing with people who have more natural talent than I do, or more capability. And so, work ethic is the number one secret. I mean, the secret to success is hard work, and those who can find it without it, it’s just a matter of time. They’re not going to be able to hold on to it, for that same reason, because talent will get you here, but work ethic will get you all the way to the top.
Jeff Fenster:
And so, I challenge everyone to realize that if you… That’s why it’s so important you have to love what you do, because if you don’t like what you do and you don’t have a clear why, those tough days, you’re going to give up. Because I’ve always been able to identify my why, and my why is bigger than my what, I’m able to lean on that in those tough times, when it feels like, “Oh my gosh, nothing is going my way.” And I’m not seeing results. It’s like, “Go back to my core values. Kaizen. What can I do today to get 1% better?”
Jeff Fenster:
Let me start stacking my wins, because guess what? I’m seeing progress against talented people that aren’t seeing progress. So when they’re feeling down, they quit. When I’m feeling down, it’s like, “Well, you know what? I’ve just got to get 1% better today.” A good analogy is if I was sitting on the couch and I’m out of shape and I want to run a marathon. Well, that’s a big goal, especially if you’re out of shape. So it’s like, today, just put your gym clothes on and sit on the couch and watch TV. Tomorrow, put your gym clothes on and walk to the mailbox.
Jeff Fenster:
The next day, put your gym clothes on, walk or run to your next door neighbor’s mailbox. Everyday just go one more mailbox. You know what will happen? Yeah. Someone else who’s running marathons is way ahead of you, but eventually you’re going to be running further than them because they’re stopping at 26 miles and eventually you’re going to be 26 miles plus one mailbox. And so it’s like you just consistently grow and grow and grow and grow and grow.
Jeff Fenster:
The other mistake I think that stops people is they have unrealistic timelines. “I need it tomorrow.” Well, that’s tough. I mean, you don’t always get everything you want tomorrow. But if you drop the time constraint and you just say, “My goal is this.” Whenever it happens, it happens, but I’m not stopping till I get there. And you lose time from it. It really makes that path so much clearer because once you start stacking those wins and you get that 1% better, you’re going to see progress every day.
Jeff Fenster:
That’s to motivate you tomorrow to keep going. You’re never going to hit a day where you hit the plateau in the wall that stops talented people all the time. So that’s my hard work beats talent.
Eric Partaker:
I love it. I love it. Man, soon as this episode’s over, I am putting on my gym clothes to watch Netflix. My wife’s going to be like, “What the hell are you doing?” I’m like-
Jeff Fenster:
Running a marathon.
Eric Partaker:
Yeah. I’m just like, “Slow, incremental progress. It’s gym clothes, Breaking Bad. That’s what I’m doing.” That’s awesome. There’s a lot of cool themes in here. I want to get back to that word liberation, because as I talked to you, there’s a lot of liberating things. You don’t need the experience to start anything. We need to remember, as human beings, we’re all born the same. You don’t need any experience at all. You’ve got to connect your way to that relevant experience.
Eric Partaker:
And then, even as you shared, you don’t even have to connect your way to the relevant experience, such that you have whatever it is at 100%. You need to connect to it enough so that you could say, “Hey, is this good enough? Hey,” for example, “Try the food. What’s the feedback? How do I improve it?” And then you improve it further. Don’t worry about the people out there who are smarter than you. Just work harder. And if you work harder, it pays the dividends.
Eric Partaker:
I mean, there’s so many great messages in there, Jeff. I love it. I want to end though with little bit of a doomsday scenario, because it helps make the guests on the show real, or a little bit more down to earth. We started down to earth. We said, “Hey, come on, humble beginnings,” and I want to end that way as well. Let’s say everything fails. Fast forward, 18 months from now, just all your goals, you’ve missed them all. You’ve failed. You know yourself super well, obviously. If that were to happen, what would be the number one driver for that? What would be the reason that that happened?
Jeff Fenster:
That everything failed?
Eric Partaker:
Yeah.
Jeff Fenster:
I went away from my values. I went away from the plan. I believe success is formulated. I don’t think it’s this luck. I try to minimize luck in life as much as possible because we all have the same amount of luck. Some things are just going to fall in our lap, and some things are going to get taken from us that should be in our lap. And so, if and when I fail or have failed, it’s because… Again, I say fail, not a specific one little thing like I want to hit a home run on the next pitch, or make a million dollars tomorrow.
Jeff Fenster:
But fundamentally, it’s because I went away from those core values of making friends, having fun, being remarkable at everything I do, Kaizen, get 1% better every day and be change ready. And most likely I missed the fifth one. I wasn’t change ready. I didn’t pay attention to what was happening. And so, I wasn’t in a position to thrive, unfortunately. And so, I’ll leave you with something I do when I have those doomsday situations, because I think this is something that has helped me well, and if it can help someone else, I think it’s great, which is I call it my five-minute pity party.
Jeff Fenster:
I think we spend too much time in a state of pity, being a victim. So when things don’t go my way, I set a timer on my phone for five minutes and I curse, scream, cry, jump up and down, feel like a victim, “The whole world’s mean, and it’s all against me.” I go through the emotional reflection period. I let those emotions have their five minutes. But when the alarm goes off, it’s done. It’s it. Now it’s back to, how do we solve the next problem? What’s the next thing in front of us?
Jeff Fenster:
And so, I give that emotion the attention it needs, but I limit it to five minutes. I think some people don’t give it the attention it needs. And so, it lingers with them forever, and it’s gnawing at the back of them, or they stay there too long and they’re feeling like a victim for the next six months, missing out on all of this incredible opportunity that’s now in front of them. And so, sometimes, when the world’s punching you in the face, spend the five minutes…
Jeff Fenster:
Again, five minutes for me, maybe it’s 10 for you, but don’t spend too much time, and don’t spend zero time, because you have to give that emotion the moment, but not too long. As a result of that, I give myself a five-minute pity party. 18 months from now, if that all happens, I’ll pick myself back up and start anew. Put my clothes on and watch Breaking Bad, so we get 1% better.
Eric Partaker:
Love it. For the last five minutes, should we just like spit, scream, shout, swear, and do a joint [inaudible 00:49:06]? No. But that’s great. I like that idea too, of not trying to repress. Just whatever it is, let it out, but contain it. I really loved the acknowledgement that you can have the hard work ethic, but there will be days that you don’t want to do it. But then that’s where your why and your values become even more important to power you through those low points.
Eric Partaker:
Jeff, it’s been awesome, dude. Really, really enjoyed the conversation. For everyone listening and or watching, if you haven’t checked out Everbowl yet, you’re crazy. You’ve got to check it out. It’s amazing. Jeff’s an awesome guy, so make sure you look it up, check it out. Yeah, Jeff, thanks so much for coming on the show. Really, really appreciate it.
Jeff Fenster:
Well, thank you for having me again. Truly a fan of you and your show. I’m always excited to meet new audiences and help share not only my message, but what has helped me, because I’ve learned from others. Listening to your show and all the guests you bring on is powerful because you can take snippets from a lot of different people and find what works for you to be successful. And so, we’re in this together, and I love being part of this community. So I appreciate it.
Eric Partaker:
Cool. Awesome, man. Peace. Thank you.
Jeff Fenster:
Thank you.
