February 15, 2024 • 42 mins
In this compelling episode of the Carlos Inspire Show, we bring an in-depth conversation with visionary entrepreneur, Jeff Fenster, founder of the rapidly growing food brand, Everbowl. From persevering through global lockdowns to spiraling growth to 350+ locations as of 2024, Fenster shares the transformation journey of his company and the unique strategies employed for scaling. Get behind-the-scenes insights into Everbowl's swift expansion and discover the ingredients for their rapid growth. Fenster talks about adapting strategies from giants such as McDonald's, Chipotle, and Starbucks to navigate his business through challenging times.
For more info about Everbowl or Jeff Fenster, go to: https://www.instagram.com/fensterjeff/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It's about to go down. It's another episode of the Carlos Inspire Show.
In this electrifying episode and podcast,
ladies and gentlemen, we sit down with Jeff Fenster, the visionary founder of Everbow,
a brand that's redefining the fast casual food industry with its unstoppable
(00:25):
growth, from securing $5 million investment,
just as the world went into lockdown to operate a new franchise that they are
opening one every six days,
350 plus locations as of February of 2024.
(00:46):
And how they went from almost shutting everything down to building this incredible company.
With no further ado, I want to bring it to the stage, the founder,
serial entrepreneur, speaker, author, investor of Ever Freaking Bow,
Jeff Pesner. What's up, my brother?
What's up, Carlos? Thank you so much, man. It's a privilege and honor to be here.
(01:08):
Yes, sir. The pleasure is mine, my friend. And, you know, as you guys know,
we always love bringing visionaries and people that are doing incredible things for humanity.
And they are raising the bar in the industries, creating blue oceans around
the space. And you, my brother, are doing incredible stuff.
I love the jersey on the back, Kobe and Jay.
You know, Kobe, you know, we were talking over here before the show started.
(01:31):
He died on my birthday on January 26th. I was about to speak in San Diego.
And it was very hard to speak. And so shout out my brother, Kobe.
I know that you're in heaven.
I know that you are going to be on the show in 2027, but time did not permit.
But my brother, man, I'm looking forward for this show. And I want to start
it with a bang, Jeff. Okay.
(01:52):
March of 2020, right after you secure $5 million from investors, no pressure.
The whole world changed overnight. Okay.
With the onset of COVID and everything that went down. Now you are faced with
the daunting task of shutting everything down, layoffs, all the things that all of us went through.
They run several businesses. We own multiple companies.
(02:14):
I want us to walk us through, Jeff, how you navigated this unprecedented challenge
and what strategies, let's go deep,
you implemented to pivot and thrive during such uncertain times, my friend. Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot there to unpack, but yeah, March 18th,
2020, we were not a franchise system. I had 28 corporate stores of my own.
(02:38):
We hadn't just raised the capital, but from 2016 to March of 2020, we had raised 5 million.
We had some investors. We were growing a corporately run QSR called Everbull,
Kraft Superfood, like you mentioned, all the fun things.
And I was never thinking about franchising, but we use a concept and my background
of selling a few companies and in serial entrepreneurship, I always try to use
(02:59):
vertical integration to grow and scale.
So internally, we have our own construction company that I started just to build
Everbulls. I have my own import company.
So we bring in our own superfoods and control our own supply chain.
Not knowing the benefit of that for how it was going to impact COVID,
we were doing that to kind of shore up our own infrastructure and grow.
And March 18th, 2020, we had to temporarily shut shut down 28 restaurants,
(03:23):
lay off over 500 people was one of the worst days in my professional career.
I mean, I went home, you know, I do this thing called my five minute pity party
where you set a timer for five minutes.
I cry, I scream, I curse. I'm a victim for me. Why is this not fair?
That day was a little longer than five minutes. I won't lie.
I had to go probably an hour.
(03:43):
But when the timer goes off, it's now, what are we going to do,
right? You fall off a boat and you're in the water.
You can sit there and dwell on it or you start swimming and get out of the water.
And so we had to immediately say, what can we do now to move forward? And we had no idea yet.
But me and a few executives that I had laid off all came into the office on
March 19th. And we said, what do we have at our disposal?
(04:05):
And what can we do to start moving forward?
And we looked internally and we realized we have a ton of superfoods because
of our import company. So I had all this acai and all this bataya,
no open restaurants, but all this product.
And we have customers that are at home that can't buy our product.
And so one of my executives said, why don't we launch that concept we had talked about?
And we named it Later Bowls, where we were going to package our product into
(04:27):
boxes and sell 10 bowls that you could buy over the internet.
And we spun up a Shopify website called laterbowls.com.
You'd order it. We would deliver it with dry ice and it'd come to your door
and you'd be able to make our bowls in the house.
And that was like, okay, it's momentum. it's activity it's
strategic activity so now instead of dwelling on why is
this not fair yada yada yada we started to do this and so really quickly our
(04:49):
customers said hey we want this we want this we want this so we're now we're
generating generating revenue we're focused on a positive not dwelling on a
negative and our bulls start to disseminate throughout our 28 locations near
our customers it was like well hey this is working locally what if we do this nationally.
And so utilizing the relationship capital I had, I found an in with QVC through a good friend of mine.
(05:13):
And he introduced me to a buyer. I shipped them the product.
They liked it. They gave us an airing. And we sold 70,000 bowls in seven minutes
and sold out on our first airing on QVC. And now we're selling our product nationally.
And we had 17 future airings, all sellouts. And we generated close to $10 million
in revenue selling direct to consumer through that platform.
But something else fun happened.
(05:34):
Customers around the country were eating our bowls and saying,
well, there's no Everbull near us. Can I franchise?
Can I franchise? Can I franchise? And we reopened all of our stores May 1st of 2020.
So locally, we were open again, San Diego, Orange County, and in Phoenix, but not nationally.
And so we had over 500 franchise requests come in. And we said, you know what?
(05:56):
Now's the time. We should now open our doors and start franchising because we can't be everywhere.
And the world's asking for this. They want it. Let's deliver.
So that's when we launched franchising and we launched franchising in July of
2020 and to where we are now.
So then based on that, it allowed us to really grow and scale.
We started selling a ton of franchises, transitioning from a operations company to a support company.
(06:18):
And we ended up selling off our 28 corporate locations. We ended up buying some
back later, but at the time and dove all the way in into franchising.
And what's really cool is we build every Everbulls. We can build them more cost
effectively than any of our competitors and any GCs. We provide the food,
so our cost of goods and our food costs are lower, and we control that supply chain.
So as we were navigating post-COVID, the supply chain hell, the construction
(06:42):
hell, can't hire and find people to do things.
We controlled those pieces for our system, so we were able to continue to open and scale.
And so when the world was slowing down, we were accelerating,
which created more buzz around our brand, attracted some very high-profile individuals,
which we ended up partnering with.
Our biggest franchisee is Drew Brees. He has 160 locations now,
and he's an investor in the brand.
(07:03):
And things just started to propel. And the snowball started to grow as it kind
of goes down the mountain. And one thing leads to another. And here we are today.
Wow. Wow. Wow. What an incredible story.
You know, one thing that for everybody that's struggling right now, you guys know the drill.
God will never put you through something if he doesn't think you can handle,
(07:25):
baby. We all have those stories, man, when we invite the pity party parade and
nope, we're not going to go there. You know, like I always say, pain.
You know, it's not optional. Suffering is. And it's all about like shifting,
shifting because, you know what I mean?
That, you know, it's like we got to go through the test before the testimonial, baby. Say it again.
(07:47):
You got to go through the test before the testimonial.
And I love talking about expansion and rapid expansion, right?
I often say it's no longer the big that eats the small.
It's the fastest that consumes the slow. low and your ability,
Jeff, to scale Everbow, I mean, across the nation, you know,
(08:08):
is astonishing pace. It's nothing short of remarkable.
So what is the secret sauce behind opening almost 100 franchises in sort of
short, you know, span of time?
Like, could you share some insights as far as like, let's go deep.
I like to go deep into the strategies and the planning and execution and the
management management strategies that have fueled this rapid expansion?
(08:32):
Can you share and elaborate some of those strategies? Yeah.
Foundationally, it's our team. We attract world-class talent here at Everbull
at our corporate office and our corporate team.
And because of that, you know, you look at the two jerseys behind my head,
this is a testament to two guys that had a ton of raw potential and fulfilled it.
And they fulfilled it by focusing on the things you can control,
(08:53):
the daily habits, the daily practices of being in, you know,
striving for remarkability and Kaizen-ing how you get there and learning from mistakes,
not repeating them and making them choices and never being a victim and overcoming,
working hard, outworking your competition.
I'd love to tell you there's like a magic wand, but the truth is we have a culture
here of high performers that are remarkable at what they do.
(09:14):
We push each other to be the best. And that's has allowed us to overcome and
do things that from the outside may look to your point.
How are you doing that? And And it seems like it's unobtainable. It is obtainable.
Just the difference is we're water here at Everbull. We're never going to stop.
You can't stop water. It will find the cracks. It will keep coming.
It's relentless. We're relentless. We have that Mamba mentality and we have
(09:35):
that dedication and desire to be the best at what we do. And so that's the foundational principle.
I mean, there's more to it, obviously, in how we do things, our SOPs and our
execution, but at its core.
You can't make somebody be something they're not. So culturally and organizationally,
if you don't have the right players that believe in your mission and are going
to do what's necessary and hold themselves accountable to want the best for
(09:57):
themselves at what they're doing,
it's very hard. It's very hard to compete with other companies that do.
And so we really pride ourselves on having a culture. We understand our core values.
There's five of them. We don't deviate from those. We hold those truths to be who we are.
And it has allowed us this opportunity. opportunity
and so from those you know that gets into the weeds
now which is you know making friends and having fun are our
(10:19):
two main rules and it's important because who you
know can open so many doors if i don't have a friend who can introduce me
to a buyer at qbc i don't get that opportunity i don't generate all that franchise
requests we don't generate revenue at a time when we weren't generating revenue
and who knows what this business looks like so that one introduction opened
a door for us to generate tens of millions of dollars and opportunity and i
(10:42):
didn't know that at the time when I built that relationship.
So the foundation of making friends with every single person you come in contact
with and being in leading with value and seeing this world in the view of abundance
instead of scarcity and realizing that if you help everybody every which way you can,
in turn, they're going to want to help you and you have champions of you,
you have champions of your brand and things just happen.
(11:03):
You know, my friend call it fenster luck, but it's because of what I put my
attention and intention on and to, and it creates those opportunities.
And then second, the other part of luck is recognizing the opportunity when
it's there and having the ability, the skills necessary and the team necessary
to execute when that happens.
Because if we didn't have the team to execute when the QVC opportunity presented
(11:24):
itself and then be able to fulfill.
Well, then I'm telling you about this almost cool opportunity that we stumbled
and fumbled on. And it's not this story.
And so there's a lot there about holding yourself that daily habit of accountability,
being the best version of you.
If you do that, just in time, learning happens just in time, opportunities happen.
And you really can do some remarkable, remarkable things. And that's the definition
(11:47):
differentiator between the one percent and everyone else.
Yes, I love that. I love that big time. You see, Jeff, whenever I'm traveling
around the world and speaking on stages, and I often refer to the founder of
the companies, whatever company I'm speaking for.
And I always say this, and that also applies to you big time,
which is the speed of the leader is determined by the speed of the pack.
(12:12):
Say it again, brother Carlo.
The speed of the leader is determined by the speed of the pack.
And that's what you do. whether you lead by example and you bring
like you say it's that energy that you bring how you start the
day when you walk into the office right you like you guys
watching us now when you walk into your office when people are talking about
you are you bringing the holiday spirit i'm talking about you at the dinner
(12:36):
table because guess what i was talking about everyone at the dinner table is
your brand doing that something that you got to think about ladies and gentlemen and it's so So part also,
one thing that you also mentioned, proximity, being in proximity.
Me, by being in proximity, I love helping people, like finding them in stages,
referring them to stages. Now people come to me all the time for help with that.
(12:57):
So many great friends that I've met speaking on stages, like my good friend,
shout out, Alex Stern, founder of Constant Contact, sold the company a billion plus dollars.
And again, refer me at Tony's stages because why? You know, friends of ours
like Greg in San Diego, right?
And they're reciprocal. You focus on adding value to others,
and the business that adds the most value wins every time.
(13:20):
And that's what you guys are doing, man. And you touched base on something earlier.
Innovative cost reduction tactics. I want to go there because I want you guys
to think about it, right?
Right now you're struggling with your brand and maybe you wanted to reduce some of the costs.
And I want to go there because scaling a business often comes with cost problems, right?
(13:44):
And people run into scenarios where now they don't have enough credit to get
another credit line and all the other fun stuff.
You got to take me to your mortgage, refinance, we'll be in there,
right? But you took some unconventional steps to keep this in check,
including starting your own construction company to handle the build out of new locations.
(14:05):
Talk about X-level thinking, right? So what drove you to this decision?
And how has this move, my brother, impacted your overall business model and cost structure?
I mean, it was a game changer. You know, I opened my first ever bull in October
of 2016. You know, I was going to go build 100 of them and self-fund the whole thing.
You know, I had a few exits, so I had my own capital and it cost 300 grand to open an Everbull.
(14:29):
And I was thinking to myself, why should it cost that much money for a smoothie bowl shop?
It's just a lot of money. And I looked into it and I said, OK,
you hire a general contractor, they hire a bunch of subcontractors,
they hire a bunch of manufacturers and buy materials. Everybody marks it up.
Everyone has to make a bunch of money and I got to pay the end result. all.
And because it's a first time for this group, there's no economies of scale.
(14:52):
There's no learnings. There's no automation.
And they have to turn down other jobs to take my job. So there's an opportunity
cost, which means they must make the profit.
Okay. That all makes sense to me, but I'm a serial entrepreneur.
I'm a problem solver. The definition of an entrepreneur is a problem solver.
My problem is I want to open a hundred restaurants and they cost too much money
and I'm going to spend $30 million to go open a hundred restaurants.
(15:13):
That doesn't seem like a good good use of capital.
So what I like to do is I like to write my problem down.
And instead of just solving the problem the way most people think,
which is raise a bunch of money, take on debt, and just pay the bill,
what can I do to make that problem disappear?
I don't want to solve the problem. I want it to go away. I want to have a different problem.
And so we just started thinking about it. And we're like, well,
(15:34):
if we're going to go build 100 of the same thing, why don't I just build them myself?
Why do I need somebody else to build them? I don't know anything about about
construction. So that's a new problem, but we can solve that. I can hire people.
We can find talent. Like I'm good at that. That's okay.
If we do that and I bring the cost down, Hey, now I'm getting something that's going to have scale.
(15:54):
And so I invested, you know, low seven figures and built a construction fabrication
company, spent a ton of money upfront.
So that's the other challenge. It took about 11 or 12 stores before I started
to start to really feel the savings.
And it took about 20 stores till I started to recoup the majority of my capital.
But fast forward, I can now sell an Everbull and build it for a franchisee with
(16:16):
equipment for about $110,000 from the $300,000 I spent and still make money doing it,
which means everybody wins. My franchisees win. I was able to win.
And so it changed the business because if you're looking at Everbull versus
one of my competitors, it's just more cost effective to build mine.
And I'm just going to let you know, like cash on cash return,
you're opening a business, right? Right. So we're more attractive from that
(16:39):
side and made it to allow us to scale.
It also allowed me to control that. So as we want to open in different cities
and states around the country, I don't have to find a general contractor and
hope they're good and interview them.
I don't have to hope for can the materials that we use be sourced locally or
where are we going to get it and have all of this extra stuff.
And fast forward, guess what? Now we build, which is the name of my construction
(17:00):
company. I don't just build Everbulls.
I build all of Shaquille O'Neal's big chickens. We build Capriotis and WingZone.
We're building StretchZones. We're now building Pickleball membership facilities.
We're now building for Dirty Dough Cookies and all these other brands that are
coming to us that have the same problems as Everbull.
I can solve for them now. And I built a business solving my own problems and
(17:20):
spinning it off now to solve for others.
And so any retail or restaurant concept that's looking to scale or already has
scale and is looking to renovate, we offer a turnkey solution that no one else
does in the country in a manner which no one else can do it because I run Everbolt.
So I know the pain points of the operator.
I understand it. I don't speak construction. I actually speak what they're looking
for. And so this business has turned into a massive opportunity for us.
(17:44):
And we're like holding the hell on as we're going because it grew so big by solving that problem.
And so I would encourage everyone who is having business challenges,
if you have a problem, don't just just immediately rush to solve the problem.
Take a moment, step back and say, okay.
What if we rethink the problem? Can we make it disappear by changing a different behavior, right?
(18:08):
And if you can, who knows what can happen from there, right?
Because if you're an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur.
And so you will figure stuff out. You will hustle your way through.
And now, you know, our WeBoat company, we have a facility in Georgia.
We have a facility in the West Coast in San Diego. We're opening a facility
in Vegas and Texas and Iowa.
We're serving brands all across the country from some of the biggest brands
(18:29):
in the entire entire country and world to all these upstart,
fast growth, very exciting concepts, similar size to Everbull,
all the way down to you have three to five units and you want to grow and scale.
What we can offer you, no one else can. And we can do it in a way that's so
disruptive and help you have the same competitive advantage that Everbull had.
And we get to make a bunch of money while we do that for my shareholders and
(18:50):
increase the enterprise value of our organization and everyone wins.
And that's the key. When you can create win-win relationships where
you help somebody and help yourself those are the
best kinds of relationships wow what an incredible
story and a way to leverage that role big time you
know where now not just you're using for your own company and look at all the
doors that open right partnerships with shaquille and all the you know shaq
(19:12):
owns a bunch of franchises you know constantly and all the other doors that
would open because now you walk in the top like i often tell somebody you know
if you are so great show me don't tell me Right.
You've got the receipts to prove it. And I love that.
When it's thinking of construction, I want to give a shout out to my cousin,
Jonathan, in the East Coast. One of my cousins, I love this brother.
He actually has a construction company called Metal Lev. And he produces a few
(19:36):
tons of metal per year through his company.
The same way how you build a desk on Ikea.
Right. You got a desk and it's already pre-assembled.
Prefab all the metal. It's pre-assembled. All you have to do is have the foundation in place.
Then he creates all the metal, ships it on a semi-truck, and then brings it to the foundation.
And then it reduces the cost. As you were telling me, I was like,
(19:58):
hold up. That's exactly what he did. He reduced the cost of construction by tenfold.
He reduced the cost of goods. He reduced how fast it can be built because once
you have the foundation in place, you just put in the metals and it's a deal.
And done that for malls and apartments and shopping centers and houses,
and he does all over the East Coast.
So my cousin, shout out. I bet you're going to like that shout for real.
(20:20):
You made me think of him because, again, innovating, creating new things,
creating blue oceans, and helping people, like you say, reducing the cost and
doing things that are different. I love that.
And let's talk about rapid growth in times like this. Sometimes people,
they get stuck. They're not seeing a rapid growth.
And leading a fast-growing company requires unique skills and a dynamic approach to leadership.
(20:43):
So how do you maintain, Jeff, like that company culture, values,
and the vision amidst such a rapid expansion?
And additionally, this is a two-part question. Additionally,
how do you stay ahead of the curve, right?
Because I bet you people are watching, especially in the fast, casual industry.
Yeah. Ensuring that Everbo's remains competitive and innovative.
(21:05):
Sure. So there's two parts to that. So the culture and leadership side,
I think not enough leaders understand and have clearly defined core values,
and they don't understand why you need them.
Core values are not what you should. You shouldn't have core values that you aspire to be.
You should have your core values listed as what you are, what your company is,
what you are, how you're going to handle when you're under duress and in a storm,
(21:28):
and how you're going to handle when it's sunny outside and you're laying at the beach.
And so for us, it's very clear. Like my five core values, I call them my success principles.
It's make friends, number one. I make friends
with every single person I can have fun because if I
don't like what i'm doing and enjoying it I'm not going to put a hundred percent
of me into it And therefore i'm not going to be the
best number three take immediate decisive action too
(21:50):
often We sit there and spend so much time with analysis paralysis that we don't
get things done You get a hundred percent of the things done that you actually
do And even if it's not the right choice through the course of doing you're
going to learn what not to do and pivot and adjust So taking immediate decisive
action is number three number four is kaizen in,
the idea of getting 1% better every single day.
(22:11):
You don't have to be great at what you do. You just need to understand that.
Can you set a goal for a little improvement today?
And if you consistently do that, it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when
you hit, you know, competency and then excellence and you're just keep improving.
And over time, I mean, I'm going to share a Kobe Bryant story because you like Kobe.
It's one of the most fascinating stories was when he was 10 years old and everyone
(22:34):
knows Kobe is this incredible scorer.
And, you know, he was playing in a basketball league and he was playing with
older kids and he didn't score a single point for an entire summer.
He missed every shot he took and never really got many shots.
And he did not shoot or score a single point.
That doesn't mean that he couldn't find ways to improve. So he worked on his defense.
He worked on his footwork. He worked on his court vision and his passing while
(22:54):
he was also working on his shooting.
And so you say, well, yeah, but he didn't score all summer. Big deal.
He got better at defense all summer. He got better at passing all summer.
He got better at learning and watching those around him. And now look at him
today. So the idea of Kaizen doesn't mean you have to be great today.
It just means you have to continuously improve. group.
The next one is be remarkable because so often people are focusing on excellence
(23:15):
or perfect and they're trying to be perfect at what you do.
You're never going to be perfect, but remarkable is did you put a hundred percent
of your best effort into whatever you're doing right now?
And if the answer is yes, then Hey, you're remarkable. You did the best you physically could.
And every day you're going to Kaizen. So that's going to get a little bit better.
And you're going to keep giving a hundred percent, a hundred percent,
a hundred percent. That's a hard person to be.
(23:35):
It's really hard to beat someone who never gives up and outworks you you and just as there.
Even if you're better than them today, you can't take a vacation or day off
because they're going to gain on you and catch you and pass you.
And so it's very unnerving for competitors to have somebody who's truly giving
100% every single moment.
And then the last one is change ready. You can't get complacent.
The world changes. I had 28 corporate stores. We were never franchising. COVID happened.
(23:58):
We pivoted. So we were change ready as an organization.
We're not afraid to reinvent ourselves. We're not afraid to try new things.
And how do you do that when you're You're not sure what to do.
You start back over and you make friends and have fun. You take immediate decisive action.
You kize in your way to competency and excellence, and you aim for remarkability on a daily basis.
And through that, we went from a corporate run organization to a franchise operation.
(24:20):
From that, we went from knowing nothing about construction and building Everbulls
to now building for everybody else.
And that's all through that process. And so those core values allow us as a
team to say, this is how we operate.
So when we're attracting people to the organization, do you believe this?
If you don't believe in our core values, you might be great at what you do,
but you're not a cultural fit.
So we don't put square pegs in round holes. I'm not looking for the best at the one thing.
(24:45):
I'm looking for someone who fits our culture, because if you fit our culture,
you're going to become the best. Whether you are today or not,
you're going to have that aptitude.
So that's the culture answer. You know, I think it's very important.
Love that. Yeah. And the second part of your question, and sorry, I went so long.
I love it because, you know, I'm actually reflecting it. And before you answer
the second part, I just want to share a quick story for the minute.
(25:07):
It's like you mentioned. Guys, just think about this, right?
If you make a declaration, like I'm going to be doing speaking today,
but right after this call, this podcast show, and I'm going to talk about making your declaration.
In the same way how our early founders, they made a declaration of independence, right?
And I want you guys to think about when you make that declaration that you're
going to be the one hard to beat, that you're going to be doing this.
(25:30):
I used to have a thing back in the day. I used to have on a shirt like hashtag make it personal.
I used to tell them my stories, Jeff. you know, which is a crazy story about
where my father died when I was a baby, three months old in a car accident.
And my stepfather was murdered.
So I had to sell bread when I was seven years old to help my widow mom.
(25:50):
And I was four and I used to have these big dreams. I used to say,
all these guys you guys see on the stage, you know, all these celebrities that
you guys see me interviewing over the years that I became friends with, that I've mentored.
And I used to say that when I was four, one day I
will leave the hood and I will come back back and
every one of my friends that died that were murdered my loved
ones that were taken from me i'm gonna come back and we're gonna
(26:12):
show up to blow up because that's more to life than
money and fame it's like jeff said man it's like when you
show you are you around the people that you wanted to be with are they making
your eyes lit up and they know that you are coming and then when you make the
declaration my friend i can just listen i really hope that this is like jeff
and i are taking you to church right now if you make the declaration and you
(26:33):
see incredible stories his wife from Jeff and Colby and myself and many of our friends.
And I pray that you do that because if you just tell yourself that I'm going
to go for it, I don't care what they say.
I won't listen to none of the BS and the haters and just keep it coming.
If you want to see me fail, I will give you a show. And you make the declaration.
And I promise you that it's magic in its own death when you say,
(26:55):
I'm not going to give up no matter what.
I'm not going to give up like, you know, when you are out there.
Maybe you're a podcaster and you're looking for incredible guests and you reach
out to people that you don't know.
And what if they say no? You say next. Maybe it's not now, but you never know.
But the point to the point is, go no matter what.
Never give up because as I always say, man, the days that breaks us are truly the days that makes us.
(27:21):
And now Jeff, back to, I get fired up. You know, when I have great guests like
you and bringing the members and I see my boy Kobe in the back there,
but now back to the part two of that question.
About how to stay ahead and- The curve and innovating and remaining competitive.
And I love a shout out to our brother from another mother, Gary V. Jab, jab, jab, bam.
(27:43):
You know, for, you know, you guys are always sticking to another level.
Gary is always sticking to another level.
And so let's talk a little bit about that part of the innovation.
And there's a competitive space, which is the fast food casual industry,
which is, you know, you guys are dominating.
Educate to dominate. Boom. Well, I want to give everyone a hack first,
(28:04):
because I think it's the foundation, which is, are you constantly learning about your space, right?
Are you looking at the people who have done it before you at the highest level?
Are you, you know, stealing ideas from competitors?
You should do that. You should take what works from them and improve it and
make it your own, right? And people do that in sports.
(28:26):
You do that everywhere. everywhere kobe bryant watched michael jordan
as a kid copied his moves and then made his own moves right learned
about his work ethic and his training and what he eats and how he worked
out and all those things it's true in business so when i was starting in the
restaurant space i knew nothing about it so what did i do i started to study
chipotle i started to study mcdonald's i started to study starbucks and the
(28:47):
beauty is when public companies they're public which means they have have quarterly
calls where the CFOs, the CMOs, the CEOs,
the presidents, the high level employees get on a phone call, which you can listen to.
And they talk about what challenges they're dealing with, how they're planning
on solving them and what they're doing for the next quarter or two quarters or three quarters.
So when COVID happened and I'm listening to Domino's talk about investing in
(29:10):
technology and their mobile app and mobile ordering, and I'm listening to Chipotle
say the same thing, and I'm listening to McDonald's say the same thing.
Well, okay. What do I think I need to do? I'm not their size.
We improved our mobile app. We improved mobile ordering.
We started to realize I don't need to be smarter than them. I need to learn from them.
So the collective power of your industry, there's public companies in every industry.
(29:32):
So take advantage, learn from them, and then figure out how you can apply those
lessons to your own organization at your own size.
And so I think that that's a little hack that I use. It's helped me kind of
understand what they're thinking about and what they're seeing because Because
they have teams and teams of people and units all over.
Same thing with construction or import and supply chain.
Or now with my show, The Jeff Fenster Show with Entrepreneur,
(29:53):
I study some of the best podcasters.
And from the Joe Rogans, the Patrick Bedevis, the Carlos Sequeiras, all of you, right?
I want to learn. And I want to see what you guys are doing and how you're growing your show.
And so I took what I liked. I took what I thought was valuable.
And I'm implementing it. I launched my book. I wanted it to be a bestseller.
So I started to look at my friends who are bestsellers.
What did you guys do? How did you do it? And then I took, you know,
(30:15):
I didn't create all of those.
Thank you. I didn't create all of those concepts.
I emulated a lot of those and made some of them my own and tried to improve
it where I can. And if you do that, it's going to help you stay competitive.
But the latter part, and I think
to the Gary V part is you also need to amplify. And what do you amplify?
You can spend money with ads. You can use influencers. You can attract world-class
(30:39):
people that will help be part of your brand.
And, you know, we've done a really good job as an organization of attracting
incredibly high, incredible high profile humans to join us, whether it's Drew
Brees or Gary Vaynerchuk or Shaquille O'Neal with the builds,
you know, or Jason Tatum deal, you know, all the different fun,
Kamaru Usman, you know, Sean Merriman.
It's like, I'm more in the sports world with my background. So I know a lot
(31:00):
of athletes, but point is, how do you attract them?
Same thing with team members and our private equity groups, Saru,
your private equity, you know, how do you attract them? Well,
it goes back to high-profile, remarkably successful, high-intensity A-list people
aren't going to join a B-team.
They're just not. So if you're not living, going back to something you said a few minutes ago,
(31:24):
if you're not showing the receipts that you are who you say you are and who
you want to be, and it's not something that they look at and go,
I want to be part of this team, you're never going to get there.
So all the things we just talked about for the last 25 minutes is the foundation
to then do this final piece, which then creates the explosive growth that people
are seeing and saying, hey man, how is this all happening?
(31:46):
It's because we have an an incredible team of people that show up every day.
We strive for remarkability.
We're killing it in every direction, which way we can. We're staying ahead of
the curve by studying and learning and opening doors and taking immediate action
because we live this every day.
When a Gary Vee, the opportunity, you know, me and him are talking and I'm on
a stage and I'm speaking and we're chatting about what we can do.
(32:08):
It's not a question of, well, who's Everbull? Why would I, and who's Jeff?
And do I want to associate with this brand?
And it's, that's all validated. Now Now it's a question of, does it fit?
Is it a win-win? You know, with his VFriends community, and we just launched a collab.
I don't know when this will air, but last week.
And that collab was about VFriends and Everbull and how you can now get access
to VFriends and certain VFriend toys and get part of his NFT collection only
(32:31):
exclusively at Everbull locations around the country.
He came to Everbull. We did a meet and greet with customers and he's going to drive traffic there.
We chose each other to do that because it benefited VFriends in his new initiative.
It benefits Everbull and all of our stores because it's driving new customers in.
But Gary could have gone to any concept to do that. There's a reason he felt
comfortable working with Everbull and myself.
(32:52):
And it's not because I had a good one line to tell him.
And I made some big promise. It's because of the history of who we are on a
daily basis and how we adapt and pivot.
So he didn't have that concern. Just like I don't have that concern that Gary
can't deliver on his side.
And so the Kobe's want to play with the Jordans, right? So you need to make
yourself and your organization remarkable.
(33:13):
And when you do that, that, the opportunities, when you meet the people that
you want to bring in and help and amplify, they're going to want to participate.
And so often you get the chance to meet them, but you're not ready for them and they don't say yes.
And then forevermore, you're saying, man, if I only had, if I only had,
yes, Gary V could blow up lots of concepts.
So can Michael Jordan. And so can LeBron James. And so can you name your person.
(33:35):
The key is you need to be ready when that opportunity is there.
And you do that by not having to get ready, But stay ready and you stay ready by your daily habits.
Yes, man. Wow. Incredible. I just love hearing those stories,
right? It's like innovating and goes back, right?
Proximity, what do we surround ourselves with, the receipts,
the miles, and it comes all along.
(33:57):
That's just incredible. You know, I often talk about, you know,
people when I speak at private masterminds and to like CEOs and we talk about,
you know, Starbucks, for example, you mentioned Starbucks.
And I often ask people the question, what do you think is this Starbucks money making product?
And a lot of people like normally think it's the coffee. They're like,
no, it takes 30 to 90 days to train a barista to do a coffee.
(34:21):
But guess what, guys? Here's the secret. Here's the secret sauce.
How long do you think it takes to train somebody to bake a goddamn cookie?
You know so guess what their cookies is their money making the profit margins are insane,
so you see like it's like jeff has been talking about it we have
a really good hope you guys need to really listen this show over
here this should be like in harvard a class you know
which i've been literally giving you guys the layout as you guys know i love
(34:45):
extracting the knowledge from my guests so that you guys can look at it feel
inspired empowered and get to work because hard work works and you know jeffrey
as i'm getting towards over here the end of the show you know Now I'm looking ahead, you know.
What is next, man? What is next for Everbull? I mean, are there any market products,
maybe some hints that you can give us, some innovations you are particularly
(35:06):
excited about exploring the near future?
Well, I mean, Everbull is growing. So we're opening a store every six days.
We're coming to new markets all across the country.
We're coming to the Northeast in Boston. We just opened in New Jersey.
We just opened in Bettendorf, Iowa and Rock Hill, South Carolina.
So if you're in a market and you don't see an Everbull anywhere and you're interested,
(35:27):
did hit us up, obviously, or hopefully one's coming soon and it just hasn't happened yet.
But we want you part of our, if you're a high performer, right?
We worry about people first.
You know, there's the Marcus Limonis, if you know who he is,
you know, he's got this, he publicized the idea of people, process,
and product as the three Ps of business.
And everyone has their own prioritization of those three. What is most important?
(35:49):
For some companies, it's product.
For some, it's process. For some, it's people. For me, it's people all all day, every day.
I want to be around the greatest people. You put great people together, great things happen.
And we're continuously adding more great people to our sphere,
always looking to do that from top down or bottom up. I don't care which way and which path.
If you're someone who operates at that highest level and are looking to join
(36:11):
a remarkable team, then we'd love to have you.
But outside of that, I mean, really, I don't do five years in the future,
right? You got to win the day.
And so we organizationally keep winning the day.
Yes, we're playing chess yes we have this bigger vision but we
don't spend so much time dreaming about what we're going to do once we do
all these other things it's how do we win today let's go
(36:31):
win the day and if we win the day today and we keep winning you
know what you look back and you go look how far we've come and maybe
we don't do enough of that you know take someone like like coming on a show
and hearing you say these things which makes me blush a little bit because we
don't spend enough time looking in the rear view because that's not where we're
going you know what we did yesterday is cool but today's a new day and i don't
(36:52):
want my best day to ever be yesterday and that fear.
Keeps me driving every moment. You know, I don't want to be like,
oh man, I remember that day. Like that, those days were the best.
Like I want my best days to still be forward. And how do we continue to create?
And so organizationally at Everbull, we're trying to continue to innovate. We love ideas.
We're not afraid to, to learn from our customers and from our fans and from
(37:14):
our employees and from our coworkers and teammates. So if you have ideas for us, please share.
I'll be the dumbest guy in the room every day. And we're going to keep trying to grow.
Wow. No, man. I love that big time. It's just, you know, just think about a lot of great stuff, man.
You guys literally success live close, ladies and gentlemen.
Now you guys know Jeff, you know.
Follow him on Instagram at Jeff Fenster, at Fenster Jeff.
(37:38):
You guys can go to everbowl.com. For you guys that are going to right below
here, the screen, everbowl.com. And you guys reach out.
You know, that's this growing franchise, man. I love what these guys are doing.
I love their values. You guys know me. I'm big in faith, family, values, and beliefs.
And these guys are just taking it to another level.
And I love it. It's an honor for me having people that have been on this show
(38:00):
that are taking things to another level. Shout out to my brother, Frank Shankwitz.
He also died on the 24th of January.
It's crazy how the number 24 is there, which is Brian Jersey.
And he died on the 24th, two days before my birthday.
And if you guys haven't read Frank's book or watched his movie,
go check it out, ladies and gentlemen. and Wishman, incredible human being,
(38:21):
the founder of Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Before he died, he made the wish of 500,000 kids.
500,000 kids have the wish granted because that man showed up.
The way how Jeff shows up, the way how I showed up, the way how we keep showing
up every day, no matter what, where are we going to keep putting the work because hard work works.
Yeah, we've done some cool things in the past, but it's not over yet, baby.
(38:44):
We have so much more in the tank. My greatest fear is knowing that if I was
going to die on an airplane when I travel to speak around the world,
knowing that if there was anything left in that gas tank.
And Jeff is here today because I can sense that in him.
All the great and the legendary folks that have been on the show before us,
it's like it's none of us. It's the higher force that goes through us.
(39:04):
It's to inspire you that are watching us. Maybe you are thinking about giving
up and pull that plug, jump on that bridge. Don't do it yet.
Reach out to me. Reach out to Jeff on social media. Do a comment in our posts.
We are humans. We get You don't have no AI that's going to get back to you.
It's growing up, man. You have an idea, go raise some money,
open up a franchise in your town.
Jeff just gave you the clue. They're expanding. They're growing.
(39:25):
They're making the competition irrelevant, as I like to call it,
baby. And Jeff, before I let you go, I ask this question.
Have you ever been a great human that's been on my show?
And the question is, my friend, I know you are young. I think when you're in your 30s right now? 40.
40. All right. So you and I are in the same era.
And let's just say 80 years from now, you and I are 120.
(39:48):
Okay. And we're all going to live longer. Thanks to everybody,
we can live even longer. Look at that. That's right.
I'm going to 200, Carlos. Brother, you know, the world needs more Jeffs. Real talk.
And Jeff, now is your eulogy.
All the legends are there. If I happen to be alive, you know,
before you go, we're all going to be there, listen to some ACDC,
(40:09):
your favorite songs, I don't make the Metallica, whatever that is.
And we're going to be smoking cigars, drinking some whiskey.
I love acai. I grew up in Brazil in the Amazon. Acai for my tribes.
I'm a native from Brazil. Good shout out to the Inca tribes.
And they're going to read your eulogy, my brother. And they're going to say,
Jeff, a.k.a. City Entrepreneur Badass, found this amazing company in the last century.
(40:35):
And during that time, he made incredible impact around the globe, saved so many lives.
But in Jeff's, a.k.a. Fenster's, own words, Jeff Fenster was dot, dot, dot.
Who called Jeff Fenster, brother?
Father? Husband?
(40:56):
And someone who left every ounce of everything he had in life out there.
There you guys have it, ladies and gentlemen. In case you don't wake up tomorrow, you know the drill.
I appreciate you, my friend. Such an honor to have you on the show.
Congratulations again on all the success.
Thank you. Much, much more to you, your family, your two beautiful kids,
(41:18):
and all your friends and your staff. Jeff, shout out to our staff, to our employees.
Without you guys, our partners, our friends, our influencers,
friends, and everyone in our lives, you guys watching us, the viewers,
by ourselves, we can only do so much. Together, we can move mountains.
Share this show. Follow up Jeff. Reach out to him and his company if you guys
want to open up a franchise in your town.
(41:39):
And share this. Thank somebody here today that might be struggling in their business or their life.
And as my grandma always used to tell me, as I always like to close the show
with my two favorite quotes, life.
It's all about the mission, never the commission.
And whenever you feel like giving up and you're stressed and COVID comes and
(42:01):
you have $5 million of money, then you're like, God, what am I going to do now?
What am I going to say to these people?
Because you know, if you go into something struggling and if you're depressed,
full of anxiety, you know that's real.
The days that breaks us are truly the days that makes us.
Let's freaking go. So God bless you, brother. I'll see you guys. Thank you.
It's about to go down. It's another episode of the Carlos Inspire Show.
In this electrifying episode and podcast,
ladies and gentlemen, we sit down with Jeff Fenster, the visionary founder of Everbow,
a brand that's redefining the fast casual food industry with its unstoppable
(00:25):
growth, from securing $5 million investment,
just as the world went into lockdown to operate a new franchise that they are
opening one every six days,
350 plus locations as of February of 2024.
(00:46):
And how they went from almost shutting everything down to building this incredible company.
With no further ado, I want to bring it to the stage, the founder,
serial entrepreneur, speaker, author, investor of Ever Freaking Bow,
Jeff Pesner. What's up, my brother?
What's up, Carlos? Thank you so much, man. It's a privilege and honor to be here.
(01:08):
Yes, sir. The pleasure is mine, my friend. And, you know, as you guys know,
we always love bringing visionaries and people that are doing incredible things for humanity.
And they are raising the bar in the industries, creating blue oceans around
the space. And you, my brother, are doing incredible stuff.
I love the jersey on the back, Kobe and Jay.
You know, Kobe, you know, we were talking over here before the show started.
(01:31):
He died on my birthday on January 26th. I was about to speak in San Diego.
And it was very hard to speak. And so shout out my brother, Kobe.
I know that you're in heaven.
I know that you are going to be on the show in 2027, but time did not permit.
But my brother, man, I'm looking forward for this show. And I want to start
it with a bang, Jeff. Okay.
(01:52):
March of 2020, right after you secure $5 million from investors, no pressure.
The whole world changed overnight. Okay.
With the onset of COVID and everything that went down. Now you are faced with
the daunting task of shutting everything down, layoffs, all the things that all of us went through.
They run several businesses. We own multiple companies.
(02:14):
I want us to walk us through, Jeff, how you navigated this unprecedented challenge
and what strategies, let's go deep,
you implemented to pivot and thrive during such uncertain times, my friend. Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot there to unpack, but yeah, March 18th,
2020, we were not a franchise system. I had 28 corporate stores of my own.
(02:38):
We hadn't just raised the capital, but from 2016 to March of 2020, we had raised 5 million.
We had some investors. We were growing a corporately run QSR called Everbull,
Kraft Superfood, like you mentioned, all the fun things.
And I was never thinking about franchising, but we use a concept and my background
of selling a few companies and in serial entrepreneurship, I always try to use
(02:59):
vertical integration to grow and scale.
So internally, we have our own construction company that I started just to build
Everbulls. I have my own import company.
So we bring in our own superfoods and control our own supply chain.
Not knowing the benefit of that for how it was going to impact COVID,
we were doing that to kind of shore up our own infrastructure and grow.
And March 18th, 2020, we had to temporarily shut shut down 28 restaurants,
(03:23):
lay off over 500 people was one of the worst days in my professional career.
I mean, I went home, you know, I do this thing called my five minute pity party
where you set a timer for five minutes.
I cry, I scream, I curse. I'm a victim for me. Why is this not fair?
That day was a little longer than five minutes. I won't lie.
I had to go probably an hour.
(03:43):
But when the timer goes off, it's now, what are we going to do,
right? You fall off a boat and you're in the water.
You can sit there and dwell on it or you start swimming and get out of the water.
And so we had to immediately say, what can we do now to move forward? And we had no idea yet.
But me and a few executives that I had laid off all came into the office on
March 19th. And we said, what do we have at our disposal?
(04:05):
And what can we do to start moving forward?
And we looked internally and we realized we have a ton of superfoods because
of our import company. So I had all this acai and all this bataya,
no open restaurants, but all this product.
And we have customers that are at home that can't buy our product.
And so one of my executives said, why don't we launch that concept we had talked about?
And we named it Later Bowls, where we were going to package our product into
(04:27):
boxes and sell 10 bowls that you could buy over the internet.
And we spun up a Shopify website called laterbowls.com.
You'd order it. We would deliver it with dry ice and it'd come to your door
and you'd be able to make our bowls in the house.
And that was like, okay, it's momentum. it's activity it's
strategic activity so now instead of dwelling on why is
this not fair yada yada yada we started to do this and so really quickly our
(04:49):
customers said hey we want this we want this we want this so we're now we're
generating generating revenue we're focused on a positive not dwelling on a
negative and our bulls start to disseminate throughout our 28 locations near
our customers it was like well hey this is working locally what if we do this nationally.
And so utilizing the relationship capital I had, I found an in with QVC through a good friend of mine.
(05:13):
And he introduced me to a buyer. I shipped them the product.
They liked it. They gave us an airing. And we sold 70,000 bowls in seven minutes
and sold out on our first airing on QVC. And now we're selling our product nationally.
And we had 17 future airings, all sellouts. And we generated close to $10 million
in revenue selling direct to consumer through that platform.
But something else fun happened.
(05:34):
Customers around the country were eating our bowls and saying,
well, there's no Everbull near us. Can I franchise?
Can I franchise? Can I franchise? And we reopened all of our stores May 1st of 2020.
So locally, we were open again, San Diego, Orange County, and in Phoenix, but not nationally.
And so we had over 500 franchise requests come in. And we said, you know what?
(05:56):
Now's the time. We should now open our doors and start franchising because we can't be everywhere.
And the world's asking for this. They want it. Let's deliver.
So that's when we launched franchising and we launched franchising in July of
2020 and to where we are now.
So then based on that, it allowed us to really grow and scale.
We started selling a ton of franchises, transitioning from a operations company to a support company.
(06:18):
And we ended up selling off our 28 corporate locations. We ended up buying some
back later, but at the time and dove all the way in into franchising.
And what's really cool is we build every Everbulls. We can build them more cost
effectively than any of our competitors and any GCs. We provide the food,
so our cost of goods and our food costs are lower, and we control that supply chain.
So as we were navigating post-COVID, the supply chain hell, the construction
(06:42):
hell, can't hire and find people to do things.
We controlled those pieces for our system, so we were able to continue to open and scale.
And so when the world was slowing down, we were accelerating,
which created more buzz around our brand, attracted some very high-profile individuals,
which we ended up partnering with.
Our biggest franchisee is Drew Brees. He has 160 locations now,
and he's an investor in the brand.
(07:03):
And things just started to propel. And the snowball started to grow as it kind
of goes down the mountain. And one thing leads to another. And here we are today.
Wow. Wow. Wow. What an incredible story.
You know, one thing that for everybody that's struggling right now, you guys know the drill.
God will never put you through something if he doesn't think you can handle,
(07:25):
baby. We all have those stories, man, when we invite the pity party parade and
nope, we're not going to go there. You know, like I always say, pain.
You know, it's not optional. Suffering is. And it's all about like shifting,
shifting because, you know what I mean?
That, you know, it's like we got to go through the test before the testimonial, baby. Say it again.
(07:47):
You got to go through the test before the testimonial.
And I love talking about expansion and rapid expansion, right?
I often say it's no longer the big that eats the small.
It's the fastest that consumes the slow. low and your ability,
Jeff, to scale Everbow, I mean, across the nation, you know,
(08:08):
is astonishing pace. It's nothing short of remarkable.
So what is the secret sauce behind opening almost 100 franchises in sort of
short, you know, span of time?
Like, could you share some insights as far as like, let's go deep.
I like to go deep into the strategies and the planning and execution and the
management management strategies that have fueled this rapid expansion?
(08:32):
Can you share and elaborate some of those strategies? Yeah.
Foundationally, it's our team. We attract world-class talent here at Everbull
at our corporate office and our corporate team.
And because of that, you know, you look at the two jerseys behind my head,
this is a testament to two guys that had a ton of raw potential and fulfilled it.
And they fulfilled it by focusing on the things you can control,
(08:53):
the daily habits, the daily practices of being in, you know,
striving for remarkability and Kaizen-ing how you get there and learning from mistakes,
not repeating them and making them choices and never being a victim and overcoming,
working hard, outworking your competition.
I'd love to tell you there's like a magic wand, but the truth is we have a culture
here of high performers that are remarkable at what they do.
(09:14):
We push each other to be the best. And that's has allowed us to overcome and
do things that from the outside may look to your point.
How are you doing that? And And it seems like it's unobtainable. It is obtainable.
Just the difference is we're water here at Everbull. We're never going to stop.
You can't stop water. It will find the cracks. It will keep coming.
It's relentless. We're relentless. We have that Mamba mentality and we have
(09:35):
that dedication and desire to be the best at what we do. And so that's the foundational principle.
I mean, there's more to it, obviously, in how we do things, our SOPs and our
execution, but at its core.
You can't make somebody be something they're not. So culturally and organizationally,
if you don't have the right players that believe in your mission and are going
to do what's necessary and hold themselves accountable to want the best for
(09:57):
themselves at what they're doing,
it's very hard. It's very hard to compete with other companies that do.
And so we really pride ourselves on having a culture. We understand our core values.
There's five of them. We don't deviate from those. We hold those truths to be who we are.
And it has allowed us this opportunity. opportunity
and so from those you know that gets into the weeds
now which is you know making friends and having fun are our
(10:19):
two main rules and it's important because who you
know can open so many doors if i don't have a friend who can introduce me
to a buyer at qbc i don't get that opportunity i don't generate all that franchise
requests we don't generate revenue at a time when we weren't generating revenue
and who knows what this business looks like so that one introduction opened
a door for us to generate tens of millions of dollars and opportunity and i
(10:42):
didn't know that at the time when I built that relationship.
So the foundation of making friends with every single person you come in contact
with and being in leading with value and seeing this world in the view of abundance
instead of scarcity and realizing that if you help everybody every which way you can,
in turn, they're going to want to help you and you have champions of you,
you have champions of your brand and things just happen.
(11:03):
You know, my friend call it fenster luck, but it's because of what I put my
attention and intention on and to, and it creates those opportunities.
And then second, the other part of luck is recognizing the opportunity when
it's there and having the ability, the skills necessary and the team necessary
to execute when that happens.
Because if we didn't have the team to execute when the QVC opportunity presented
(11:24):
itself and then be able to fulfill.
Well, then I'm telling you about this almost cool opportunity that we stumbled
and fumbled on. And it's not this story.
And so there's a lot there about holding yourself that daily habit of accountability,
being the best version of you.
If you do that, just in time, learning happens just in time, opportunities happen.
And you really can do some remarkable, remarkable things. And that's the definition
(11:47):
differentiator between the one percent and everyone else.
Yes, I love that. I love that big time. You see, Jeff, whenever I'm traveling
around the world and speaking on stages, and I often refer to the founder of
the companies, whatever company I'm speaking for.
And I always say this, and that also applies to you big time,
which is the speed of the leader is determined by the speed of the pack.
(12:12):
Say it again, brother Carlo.
The speed of the leader is determined by the speed of the pack.
And that's what you do. whether you lead by example and you bring
like you say it's that energy that you bring how you start the
day when you walk into the office right you like you guys
watching us now when you walk into your office when people are talking about
you are you bringing the holiday spirit i'm talking about you at the dinner
(12:36):
table because guess what i was talking about everyone at the dinner table is
your brand doing that something that you got to think about ladies and gentlemen and it's so So part also,
one thing that you also mentioned, proximity, being in proximity.
Me, by being in proximity, I love helping people, like finding them in stages,
referring them to stages. Now people come to me all the time for help with that.
(12:57):
So many great friends that I've met speaking on stages, like my good friend,
shout out, Alex Stern, founder of Constant Contact, sold the company a billion plus dollars.
And again, refer me at Tony's stages because why? You know, friends of ours
like Greg in San Diego, right?
And they're reciprocal. You focus on adding value to others,
and the business that adds the most value wins every time.
(13:20):
And that's what you guys are doing, man. And you touched base on something earlier.
Innovative cost reduction tactics. I want to go there because I want you guys
to think about it, right?
Right now you're struggling with your brand and maybe you wanted to reduce some of the costs.
And I want to go there because scaling a business often comes with cost problems, right?
(13:44):
And people run into scenarios where now they don't have enough credit to get
another credit line and all the other fun stuff.
You got to take me to your mortgage, refinance, we'll be in there,
right? But you took some unconventional steps to keep this in check,
including starting your own construction company to handle the build out of new locations.
(14:05):
Talk about X-level thinking, right? So what drove you to this decision?
And how has this move, my brother, impacted your overall business model and cost structure?
I mean, it was a game changer. You know, I opened my first ever bull in October
of 2016. You know, I was going to go build 100 of them and self-fund the whole thing.
You know, I had a few exits, so I had my own capital and it cost 300 grand to open an Everbull.
(14:29):
And I was thinking to myself, why should it cost that much money for a smoothie bowl shop?
It's just a lot of money. And I looked into it and I said, OK,
you hire a general contractor, they hire a bunch of subcontractors,
they hire a bunch of manufacturers and buy materials. Everybody marks it up.
Everyone has to make a bunch of money and I got to pay the end result. all.
And because it's a first time for this group, there's no economies of scale.
(14:52):
There's no learnings. There's no automation.
And they have to turn down other jobs to take my job. So there's an opportunity
cost, which means they must make the profit.
Okay. That all makes sense to me, but I'm a serial entrepreneur.
I'm a problem solver. The definition of an entrepreneur is a problem solver.
My problem is I want to open a hundred restaurants and they cost too much money
and I'm going to spend $30 million to go open a hundred restaurants.
(15:13):
That doesn't seem like a good good use of capital.
So what I like to do is I like to write my problem down.
And instead of just solving the problem the way most people think,
which is raise a bunch of money, take on debt, and just pay the bill,
what can I do to make that problem disappear?
I don't want to solve the problem. I want it to go away. I want to have a different problem.
And so we just started thinking about it. And we're like, well,
(15:34):
if we're going to go build 100 of the same thing, why don't I just build them myself?
Why do I need somebody else to build them? I don't know anything about about
construction. So that's a new problem, but we can solve that. I can hire people.
We can find talent. Like I'm good at that. That's okay.
If we do that and I bring the cost down, Hey, now I'm getting something that's going to have scale.
(15:54):
And so I invested, you know, low seven figures and built a construction fabrication
company, spent a ton of money upfront.
So that's the other challenge. It took about 11 or 12 stores before I started
to start to really feel the savings.
And it took about 20 stores till I started to recoup the majority of my capital.
But fast forward, I can now sell an Everbull and build it for a franchisee with
(16:16):
equipment for about $110,000 from the $300,000 I spent and still make money doing it,
which means everybody wins. My franchisees win. I was able to win.
And so it changed the business because if you're looking at Everbull versus
one of my competitors, it's just more cost effective to build mine.
And I'm just going to let you know, like cash on cash return,
you're opening a business, right? Right. So we're more attractive from that
(16:39):
side and made it to allow us to scale.
It also allowed me to control that. So as we want to open in different cities
and states around the country, I don't have to find a general contractor and
hope they're good and interview them.
I don't have to hope for can the materials that we use be sourced locally or
where are we going to get it and have all of this extra stuff.
And fast forward, guess what? Now we build, which is the name of my construction
(17:00):
company. I don't just build Everbulls.
I build all of Shaquille O'Neal's big chickens. We build Capriotis and WingZone.
We're building StretchZones. We're now building Pickleball membership facilities.
We're now building for Dirty Dough Cookies and all these other brands that are
coming to us that have the same problems as Everbull.
I can solve for them now. And I built a business solving my own problems and
(17:20):
spinning it off now to solve for others.
And so any retail or restaurant concept that's looking to scale or already has
scale and is looking to renovate, we offer a turnkey solution that no one else
does in the country in a manner which no one else can do it because I run Everbolt.
So I know the pain points of the operator.
I understand it. I don't speak construction. I actually speak what they're looking
for. And so this business has turned into a massive opportunity for us.
(17:44):
And we're like holding the hell on as we're going because it grew so big by solving that problem.
And so I would encourage everyone who is having business challenges,
if you have a problem, don't just just immediately rush to solve the problem.
Take a moment, step back and say, okay.
What if we rethink the problem? Can we make it disappear by changing a different behavior, right?
(18:08):
And if you can, who knows what can happen from there, right?
Because if you're an entrepreneur, you're an entrepreneur.
And so you will figure stuff out. You will hustle your way through.
And now, you know, our WeBoat company, we have a facility in Georgia.
We have a facility in the West Coast in San Diego. We're opening a facility
in Vegas and Texas and Iowa.
We're serving brands all across the country from some of the biggest brands
(18:29):
in the entire entire country and world to all these upstart,
fast growth, very exciting concepts, similar size to Everbull,
all the way down to you have three to five units and you want to grow and scale.
What we can offer you, no one else can. And we can do it in a way that's so
disruptive and help you have the same competitive advantage that Everbull had.
And we get to make a bunch of money while we do that for my shareholders and
(18:50):
increase the enterprise value of our organization and everyone wins.
And that's the key. When you can create win-win relationships where
you help somebody and help yourself those are the
best kinds of relationships wow what an incredible
story and a way to leverage that role big time you
know where now not just you're using for your own company and look at all the
doors that open right partnerships with shaquille and all the you know shaq
(19:12):
owns a bunch of franchises you know constantly and all the other doors that
would open because now you walk in the top like i often tell somebody you know
if you are so great show me don't tell me Right.
You've got the receipts to prove it. And I love that.
When it's thinking of construction, I want to give a shout out to my cousin,
Jonathan, in the East Coast. One of my cousins, I love this brother.
He actually has a construction company called Metal Lev. And he produces a few
(19:36):
tons of metal per year through his company.
The same way how you build a desk on Ikea.
Right. You got a desk and it's already pre-assembled.
Prefab all the metal. It's pre-assembled. All you have to do is have the foundation in place.
Then he creates all the metal, ships it on a semi-truck, and then brings it to the foundation.
And then it reduces the cost. As you were telling me, I was like,
(19:58):
hold up. That's exactly what he did. He reduced the cost of construction by tenfold.
He reduced the cost of goods. He reduced how fast it can be built because once
you have the foundation in place, you just put in the metals and it's a deal.
And done that for malls and apartments and shopping centers and houses,
and he does all over the East Coast.
So my cousin, shout out. I bet you're going to like that shout for real.
(20:20):
You made me think of him because, again, innovating, creating new things,
creating blue oceans, and helping people, like you say, reducing the cost and
doing things that are different. I love that.
And let's talk about rapid growth in times like this. Sometimes people,
they get stuck. They're not seeing a rapid growth.
And leading a fast-growing company requires unique skills and a dynamic approach to leadership.
(20:43):
So how do you maintain, Jeff, like that company culture, values,
and the vision amidst such a rapid expansion?
And additionally, this is a two-part question. Additionally,
how do you stay ahead of the curve, right?
Because I bet you people are watching, especially in the fast, casual industry.
Yeah. Ensuring that Everbo's remains competitive and innovative.
(21:05):
Sure. So there's two parts to that. So the culture and leadership side,
I think not enough leaders understand and have clearly defined core values,
and they don't understand why you need them.
Core values are not what you should. You shouldn't have core values that you aspire to be.
You should have your core values listed as what you are, what your company is,
what you are, how you're going to handle when you're under duress and in a storm,
(21:28):
and how you're going to handle when it's sunny outside and you're laying at the beach.
And so for us, it's very clear. Like my five core values, I call them my success principles.
It's make friends, number one. I make friends
with every single person I can have fun because if I
don't like what i'm doing and enjoying it I'm not going to put a hundred percent
of me into it And therefore i'm not going to be the
best number three take immediate decisive action too
(21:50):
often We sit there and spend so much time with analysis paralysis that we don't
get things done You get a hundred percent of the things done that you actually
do And even if it's not the right choice through the course of doing you're
going to learn what not to do and pivot and adjust So taking immediate decisive
action is number three number four is kaizen in,
the idea of getting 1% better every single day.
(22:11):
You don't have to be great at what you do. You just need to understand that.
Can you set a goal for a little improvement today?
And if you consistently do that, it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when
you hit, you know, competency and then excellence and you're just keep improving.
And over time, I mean, I'm going to share a Kobe Bryant story because you like Kobe.
It's one of the most fascinating stories was when he was 10 years old and everyone
(22:34):
knows Kobe is this incredible scorer.
And, you know, he was playing in a basketball league and he was playing with
older kids and he didn't score a single point for an entire summer.
He missed every shot he took and never really got many shots.
And he did not shoot or score a single point.
That doesn't mean that he couldn't find ways to improve. So he worked on his defense.
He worked on his footwork. He worked on his court vision and his passing while
(22:54):
he was also working on his shooting.
And so you say, well, yeah, but he didn't score all summer. Big deal.
He got better at defense all summer. He got better at passing all summer.
He got better at learning and watching those around him. And now look at him
today. So the idea of Kaizen doesn't mean you have to be great today.
It just means you have to continuously improve. group.
The next one is be remarkable because so often people are focusing on excellence
(23:15):
or perfect and they're trying to be perfect at what you do.
You're never going to be perfect, but remarkable is did you put a hundred percent
of your best effort into whatever you're doing right now?
And if the answer is yes, then Hey, you're remarkable. You did the best you physically could.
And every day you're going to Kaizen. So that's going to get a little bit better.
And you're going to keep giving a hundred percent, a hundred percent,
a hundred percent. That's a hard person to be.
(23:35):
It's really hard to beat someone who never gives up and outworks you you and just as there.
Even if you're better than them today, you can't take a vacation or day off
because they're going to gain on you and catch you and pass you.
And so it's very unnerving for competitors to have somebody who's truly giving
100% every single moment.
And then the last one is change ready. You can't get complacent.
The world changes. I had 28 corporate stores. We were never franchising. COVID happened.
(23:58):
We pivoted. So we were change ready as an organization.
We're not afraid to reinvent ourselves. We're not afraid to try new things.
And how do you do that when you're You're not sure what to do.
You start back over and you make friends and have fun. You take immediate decisive action.
You kize in your way to competency and excellence, and you aim for remarkability on a daily basis.
And through that, we went from a corporate run organization to a franchise operation.
(24:20):
From that, we went from knowing nothing about construction and building Everbulls
to now building for everybody else.
And that's all through that process. And so those core values allow us as a
team to say, this is how we operate.
So when we're attracting people to the organization, do you believe this?
If you don't believe in our core values, you might be great at what you do,
but you're not a cultural fit.
So we don't put square pegs in round holes. I'm not looking for the best at the one thing.
(24:45):
I'm looking for someone who fits our culture, because if you fit our culture,
you're going to become the best. Whether you are today or not,
you're going to have that aptitude.
So that's the culture answer. You know, I think it's very important.
Love that. Yeah. And the second part of your question, and sorry, I went so long.
I love it because, you know, I'm actually reflecting it. And before you answer
the second part, I just want to share a quick story for the minute.
(25:07):
It's like you mentioned. Guys, just think about this, right?
If you make a declaration, like I'm going to be doing speaking today,
but right after this call, this podcast show, and I'm going to talk about making your declaration.
In the same way how our early founders, they made a declaration of independence, right?
And I want you guys to think about when you make that declaration that you're
going to be the one hard to beat, that you're going to be doing this.
(25:30):
I used to have a thing back in the day. I used to have on a shirt like hashtag make it personal.
I used to tell them my stories, Jeff. you know, which is a crazy story about
where my father died when I was a baby, three months old in a car accident.
And my stepfather was murdered.
So I had to sell bread when I was seven years old to help my widow mom.
(25:50):
And I was four and I used to have these big dreams. I used to say,
all these guys you guys see on the stage, you know, all these celebrities that
you guys see me interviewing over the years that I became friends with, that I've mentored.
And I used to say that when I was four, one day I
will leave the hood and I will come back back and
every one of my friends that died that were murdered my loved
ones that were taken from me i'm gonna come back and we're gonna
(26:12):
show up to blow up because that's more to life than
money and fame it's like jeff said man it's like when you
show you are you around the people that you wanted to be with are they making
your eyes lit up and they know that you are coming and then when you make the
declaration my friend i can just listen i really hope that this is like jeff
and i are taking you to church right now if you make the declaration and you
(26:33):
see incredible stories his wife from Jeff and Colby and myself and many of our friends.
And I pray that you do that because if you just tell yourself that I'm going
to go for it, I don't care what they say.
I won't listen to none of the BS and the haters and just keep it coming.
If you want to see me fail, I will give you a show. And you make the declaration.
And I promise you that it's magic in its own death when you say,
(26:55):
I'm not going to give up no matter what.
I'm not going to give up like, you know, when you are out there.
Maybe you're a podcaster and you're looking for incredible guests and you reach
out to people that you don't know.
And what if they say no? You say next. Maybe it's not now, but you never know.
But the point to the point is, go no matter what.
Never give up because as I always say, man, the days that breaks us are truly the days that makes us.
(27:21):
And now Jeff, back to, I get fired up. You know, when I have great guests like
you and bringing the members and I see my boy Kobe in the back there,
but now back to the part two of that question.
About how to stay ahead and- The curve and innovating and remaining competitive.
And I love a shout out to our brother from another mother, Gary V. Jab, jab, jab, bam.
(27:43):
You know, for, you know, you guys are always sticking to another level.
Gary is always sticking to another level.
And so let's talk a little bit about that part of the innovation.
And there's a competitive space, which is the fast food casual industry,
which is, you know, you guys are dominating.
Educate to dominate. Boom. Well, I want to give everyone a hack first,
(28:04):
because I think it's the foundation, which is, are you constantly learning about your space, right?
Are you looking at the people who have done it before you at the highest level?
Are you, you know, stealing ideas from competitors?
You should do that. You should take what works from them and improve it and
make it your own, right? And people do that in sports.
(28:26):
You do that everywhere. everywhere kobe bryant watched michael jordan
as a kid copied his moves and then made his own moves right learned
about his work ethic and his training and what he eats and how he worked
out and all those things it's true in business so when i was starting in the
restaurant space i knew nothing about it so what did i do i started to study
chipotle i started to study mcdonald's i started to study starbucks and the
(28:47):
beauty is when public companies they're public which means they have have quarterly
calls where the CFOs, the CMOs, the CEOs,
the presidents, the high level employees get on a phone call, which you can listen to.
And they talk about what challenges they're dealing with, how they're planning
on solving them and what they're doing for the next quarter or two quarters or three quarters.
So when COVID happened and I'm listening to Domino's talk about investing in
(29:10):
technology and their mobile app and mobile ordering, and I'm listening to Chipotle
say the same thing, and I'm listening to McDonald's say the same thing.
Well, okay. What do I think I need to do? I'm not their size.
We improved our mobile app. We improved mobile ordering.
We started to realize I don't need to be smarter than them. I need to learn from them.
So the collective power of your industry, there's public companies in every industry.
(29:32):
So take advantage, learn from them, and then figure out how you can apply those
lessons to your own organization at your own size.
And so I think that that's a little hack that I use. It's helped me kind of
understand what they're thinking about and what they're seeing because Because
they have teams and teams of people and units all over.
Same thing with construction or import and supply chain.
Or now with my show, The Jeff Fenster Show with Entrepreneur,
(29:53):
I study some of the best podcasters.
And from the Joe Rogans, the Patrick Bedevis, the Carlos Sequeiras, all of you, right?
I want to learn. And I want to see what you guys are doing and how you're growing your show.
And so I took what I liked. I took what I thought was valuable.
And I'm implementing it. I launched my book. I wanted it to be a bestseller.
So I started to look at my friends who are bestsellers.
What did you guys do? How did you do it? And then I took, you know,
(30:15):
I didn't create all of those.
Thank you. I didn't create all of those concepts.
I emulated a lot of those and made some of them my own and tried to improve
it where I can. And if you do that, it's going to help you stay competitive.
But the latter part, and I think
to the Gary V part is you also need to amplify. And what do you amplify?
You can spend money with ads. You can use influencers. You can attract world-class
(30:39):
people that will help be part of your brand.
And, you know, we've done a really good job as an organization of attracting
incredibly high, incredible high profile humans to join us, whether it's Drew
Brees or Gary Vaynerchuk or Shaquille O'Neal with the builds,
you know, or Jason Tatum deal, you know, all the different fun,
Kamaru Usman, you know, Sean Merriman.
It's like, I'm more in the sports world with my background. So I know a lot
(31:00):
of athletes, but point is, how do you attract them?
Same thing with team members and our private equity groups, Saru,
your private equity, you know, how do you attract them? Well,
it goes back to high-profile, remarkably successful, high-intensity A-list people
aren't going to join a B-team.
They're just not. So if you're not living, going back to something you said a few minutes ago,
(31:24):
if you're not showing the receipts that you are who you say you are and who
you want to be, and it's not something that they look at and go,
I want to be part of this team, you're never going to get there.
So all the things we just talked about for the last 25 minutes is the foundation
to then do this final piece, which then creates the explosive growth that people
are seeing and saying, hey man, how is this all happening?
(31:46):
It's because we have an an incredible team of people that show up every day.
We strive for remarkability.
We're killing it in every direction, which way we can. We're staying ahead of
the curve by studying and learning and opening doors and taking immediate action
because we live this every day.
When a Gary Vee, the opportunity, you know, me and him are talking and I'm on
a stage and I'm speaking and we're chatting about what we can do.
(32:08):
It's not a question of, well, who's Everbull? Why would I, and who's Jeff?
And do I want to associate with this brand?
And it's, that's all validated. Now Now it's a question of, does it fit?
Is it a win-win? You know, with his VFriends community, and we just launched a collab.
I don't know when this will air, but last week.
And that collab was about VFriends and Everbull and how you can now get access
to VFriends and certain VFriend toys and get part of his NFT collection only
(32:31):
exclusively at Everbull locations around the country.
He came to Everbull. We did a meet and greet with customers and he's going to drive traffic there.
We chose each other to do that because it benefited VFriends in his new initiative.
It benefits Everbull and all of our stores because it's driving new customers in.
But Gary could have gone to any concept to do that. There's a reason he felt
comfortable working with Everbull and myself.
(32:52):
And it's not because I had a good one line to tell him.
And I made some big promise. It's because of the history of who we are on a
daily basis and how we adapt and pivot.
So he didn't have that concern. Just like I don't have that concern that Gary
can't deliver on his side.
And so the Kobe's want to play with the Jordans, right? So you need to make
yourself and your organization remarkable.
(33:13):
And when you do that, that, the opportunities, when you meet the people that
you want to bring in and help and amplify, they're going to want to participate.
And so often you get the chance to meet them, but you're not ready for them and they don't say yes.
And then forevermore, you're saying, man, if I only had, if I only had,
yes, Gary V could blow up lots of concepts.
So can Michael Jordan. And so can LeBron James. And so can you name your person.
(33:35):
The key is you need to be ready when that opportunity is there.
And you do that by not having to get ready, But stay ready and you stay ready by your daily habits.
Yes, man. Wow. Incredible. I just love hearing those stories,
right? It's like innovating and goes back, right?
Proximity, what do we surround ourselves with, the receipts,
the miles, and it comes all along.
(33:57):
That's just incredible. You know, I often talk about, you know,
people when I speak at private masterminds and to like CEOs and we talk about,
you know, Starbucks, for example, you mentioned Starbucks.
And I often ask people the question, what do you think is this Starbucks money making product?
And a lot of people like normally think it's the coffee. They're like,
no, it takes 30 to 90 days to train a barista to do a coffee.
(34:21):
But guess what, guys? Here's the secret. Here's the secret sauce.
How long do you think it takes to train somebody to bake a goddamn cookie?
You know so guess what their cookies is their money making the profit margins are insane,
so you see like it's like jeff has been talking about it we have
a really good hope you guys need to really listen this show over
here this should be like in harvard a class you know
which i've been literally giving you guys the layout as you guys know i love
(34:45):
extracting the knowledge from my guests so that you guys can look at it feel
inspired empowered and get to work because hard work works and you know jeffrey
as i'm getting towards over here the end of the show you know Now I'm looking ahead, you know.
What is next, man? What is next for Everbull? I mean, are there any market products,
maybe some hints that you can give us, some innovations you are particularly
(35:06):
excited about exploring the near future?
Well, I mean, Everbull is growing. So we're opening a store every six days.
We're coming to new markets all across the country.
We're coming to the Northeast in Boston. We just opened in New Jersey.
We just opened in Bettendorf, Iowa and Rock Hill, South Carolina.
So if you're in a market and you don't see an Everbull anywhere and you're interested,
(35:27):
did hit us up, obviously, or hopefully one's coming soon and it just hasn't happened yet.
But we want you part of our, if you're a high performer, right?
We worry about people first.
You know, there's the Marcus Limonis, if you know who he is,
you know, he's got this, he publicized the idea of people, process,
and product as the three Ps of business.
And everyone has their own prioritization of those three. What is most important?
(35:49):
For some companies, it's product.
For some, it's process. For some, it's people. For me, it's people all all day, every day.
I want to be around the greatest people. You put great people together, great things happen.
And we're continuously adding more great people to our sphere,
always looking to do that from top down or bottom up. I don't care which way and which path.
If you're someone who operates at that highest level and are looking to join
(36:11):
a remarkable team, then we'd love to have you.
But outside of that, I mean, really, I don't do five years in the future,
right? You got to win the day.
And so we organizationally keep winning the day.
Yes, we're playing chess yes we have this bigger vision but we
don't spend so much time dreaming about what we're going to do once we do
all these other things it's how do we win today let's go
(36:31):
win the day and if we win the day today and we keep winning you
know what you look back and you go look how far we've come and maybe
we don't do enough of that you know take someone like like coming on a show
and hearing you say these things which makes me blush a little bit because we
don't spend enough time looking in the rear view because that's not where we're
going you know what we did yesterday is cool but today's a new day and i don't
(36:52):
want my best day to ever be yesterday and that fear.
Keeps me driving every moment. You know, I don't want to be like,
oh man, I remember that day. Like that, those days were the best.
Like I want my best days to still be forward. And how do we continue to create?
And so organizationally at Everbull, we're trying to continue to innovate. We love ideas.
We're not afraid to, to learn from our customers and from our fans and from
(37:14):
our employees and from our coworkers and teammates. So if you have ideas for us, please share.
I'll be the dumbest guy in the room every day. And we're going to keep trying to grow.
Wow. No, man. I love that big time. It's just, you know, just think about a lot of great stuff, man.
You guys literally success live close, ladies and gentlemen.
Now you guys know Jeff, you know.
Follow him on Instagram at Jeff Fenster, at Fenster Jeff.
(37:38):
You guys can go to everbowl.com. For you guys that are going to right below
here, the screen, everbowl.com. And you guys reach out.
You know, that's this growing franchise, man. I love what these guys are doing.
I love their values. You guys know me. I'm big in faith, family, values, and beliefs.
And these guys are just taking it to another level.
And I love it. It's an honor for me having people that have been on this show
(38:00):
that are taking things to another level. Shout out to my brother, Frank Shankwitz.
He also died on the 24th of January.
It's crazy how the number 24 is there, which is Brian Jersey.
And he died on the 24th, two days before my birthday.
And if you guys haven't read Frank's book or watched his movie,
go check it out, ladies and gentlemen. and Wishman, incredible human being,
(38:21):
the founder of Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Before he died, he made the wish of 500,000 kids.
500,000 kids have the wish granted because that man showed up.
The way how Jeff shows up, the way how I showed up, the way how we keep showing
up every day, no matter what, where are we going to keep putting the work because hard work works.
Yeah, we've done some cool things in the past, but it's not over yet, baby.
(38:44):
We have so much more in the tank. My greatest fear is knowing that if I was
going to die on an airplane when I travel to speak around the world,
knowing that if there was anything left in that gas tank.
And Jeff is here today because I can sense that in him.
All the great and the legendary folks that have been on the show before us,
it's like it's none of us. It's the higher force that goes through us.
(39:04):
It's to inspire you that are watching us. Maybe you are thinking about giving
up and pull that plug, jump on that bridge. Don't do it yet.
Reach out to me. Reach out to Jeff on social media. Do a comment in our posts.
We are humans. We get You don't have no AI that's going to get back to you.
It's growing up, man. You have an idea, go raise some money,
open up a franchise in your town.
Jeff just gave you the clue. They're expanding. They're growing.
(39:25):
They're making the competition irrelevant, as I like to call it,
baby. And Jeff, before I let you go, I ask this question.
Have you ever been a great human that's been on my show?
And the question is, my friend, I know you are young. I think when you're in your 30s right now? 40.
40. All right. So you and I are in the same era.
And let's just say 80 years from now, you and I are 120.
(39:48):
Okay. And we're all going to live longer. Thanks to everybody,
we can live even longer. Look at that. That's right.
I'm going to 200, Carlos. Brother, you know, the world needs more Jeffs. Real talk.
And Jeff, now is your eulogy.
All the legends are there. If I happen to be alive, you know,
before you go, we're all going to be there, listen to some ACDC,
(40:09):
your favorite songs, I don't make the Metallica, whatever that is.
And we're going to be smoking cigars, drinking some whiskey.
I love acai. I grew up in Brazil in the Amazon. Acai for my tribes.
I'm a native from Brazil. Good shout out to the Inca tribes.
And they're going to read your eulogy, my brother. And they're going to say,
Jeff, a.k.a. City Entrepreneur Badass, found this amazing company in the last century.
(40:35):
And during that time, he made incredible impact around the globe, saved so many lives.
But in Jeff's, a.k.a. Fenster's, own words, Jeff Fenster was dot, dot, dot.
Who called Jeff Fenster, brother?
Father? Husband?
(40:56):
And someone who left every ounce of everything he had in life out there.
There you guys have it, ladies and gentlemen. In case you don't wake up tomorrow, you know the drill.
I appreciate you, my friend. Such an honor to have you on the show.
Congratulations again on all the success.
Thank you. Much, much more to you, your family, your two beautiful kids,
(41:18):
and all your friends and your staff. Jeff, shout out to our staff, to our employees.
Without you guys, our partners, our friends, our influencers,
friends, and everyone in our lives, you guys watching us, the viewers,
by ourselves, we can only do so much. Together, we can move mountains.
Share this show. Follow up Jeff. Reach out to him and his company if you guys
want to open up a franchise in your town.
(41:39):
And share this. Thank somebody here today that might be struggling in their business or their life.
And as my grandma always used to tell me, as I always like to close the show
with my two favorite quotes, life.
It's all about the mission, never the commission.
And whenever you feel like giving up and you're stressed and COVID comes and
(42:01):
you have $5 million of money, then you're like, God, what am I going to do now?
What am I going to say to these people?
Because you know, if you go into something struggling and if you're depressed,
full of anxiety, you know that's real.
The days that breaks us are truly the days that makes us.
Let's freaking go. So God bless you, brother. I'll see you guys. Thank you.
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