EntreLeadership - #257: Pushing Past Fear with the founders of Cousins Maine Lobster

Episode Date: April 9, 2018

After the near overnight success of their first food truck, followed by a winning appearance on ABC’s Shark Tank, Cousins Maine Lobster cofounders Jim Tselikis and Sabin Lomac found themselves in an enviable position. Financially, they had the capability to quickly scale their business—but getting past the fear was easier said than done. Join us to find out how the cousins strategically grew from one food truck to a nationwide franchise, hear the invaluable advice from their Shark Tank mentor Barbara Corcoran, and why they are determined to stay true to their roots during this time of exponential growth. entreleadership.com/podcast EntreLeadership 1-Day Special Offer from EntreLeadership 14-Day Free Automation Software Trail from Infusionsoft Want expert help with your business question? Call 844-944-1070 and leave a message or send an email to [e-mail]. You could be featured on a future podcast episode! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is Andre Leadership. Now, here's your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the broadcast of leaders, by leaders, for leaders. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Our feature conversation happens to be with two entrepreneurs and leaders today. Jim Salicus and Sabin Lomac. These guys are cousins and founders of Cousins Main Land.

Lobster. This is an awesome, awesome story. Their new book is entitled Cousins Main Lobster, how one food truck became a multimillion dollar business. You're going to love this. This is going to encourage all of you entrepreneurs and leaders out there that there is no such thing as too small of a start. And of course, we have some great free resources coming your way as well. Well, this was a fun conversation, so we're not going to waste a whole lot of time. A little bit of background you hear in the conversation with Jim Salicus and Sabin Lomac. is that they made it on the shark tank, didn't go exactly how they may have envisioned it, but they succeeded. And again, an idea that turned into a risk, a food truck. And now they're

off and running. And here's what's great. As you are listening to this conversation, yes, they've got a new book coming out, but these guys are still small business guys, still hustling. They have by no means hit Easy Street. So this is such an encouraging and inspiring story with a lot of great practical, practical things that you can put to play in your business. Here is our conversation with Cousins, Maine Lobster founders, Jim Salicus and Sabin Lomac. Well, this is great fun. The cousins themselves are with us. Jim and Sabin, Jim Salicus, Sabin Lomac, they are the founders of Cousins, Maine Lobster,

and the new book that comes out very soon, how one food truck became a multi-million-dollar business. They join us here on the Entree Leadership Program. Guys, thanks for being with us. Thank you for having us. Thank you. Thank you. So I want to have a moment of honesty with the audience. This is exciting for me because I had some of the food for the first time today.

Will the producer went to a local food truck about literally two miles from here and got me. Yeah. Guys are very excited if you're watching on video. Got me some, what was it called? I think you had the Connecticut role. Okay. So basically, I'm in a training for half marathon. and I didn't want anything fried.

Wow. And so I went with the Connecticut roll and it was delicious. So this is fun to actually talk to some guys who were on the front lines here. So let's start with. And I've read the book, but I want you to start with the very beginning of this company. You guys are second cousins, I understand. How did this company develop from an idea? What was the initial conversation or those early conversations like?

We were training for a half marathon. Yeah, we're getting pumped, eating Burger King. The way that this really started a long time ago, it seems like just yesterday. Oh, you're so cute. In 2011, I was invited out to Los Angeles by an ex-girlfriend, who I had grown up with in Maine. And I said, well, hey, in order to justify this one and selling it to my friends and my family, I need maybe some other hook, some reason to go to L.A. And meanwhile, this guy had been living in Los Angeles for probably five or six years,

trying to be an actor, it didn't work out. And so I said, well, hey, maybe I kill two birds with one stone. I reached out to Sabin. Didn't even have a cell phone number. Nope. Nope. I said maybe we can do, maybe I can meet up when I get there. Sure enough, I was here for five days and I spent 90% of my time with him because, you know,

we just re-engaged from our younger years of him pushing me in the pool and all of our kind of summer bakes at home and all the holidays together as crazy cousins and family. We reminisced about family, our grandparents, those days in Maine. And, you know, most specifically, I think we were, it was one night at Katana having a couple of cocktails. Yeah, we were at this very high-end sushi place. And the more we talked about life and family and Jim worked for a medical device company. And he was like an independent contractor salesman. I sold real estate as well.

So we had both been doing really well in our individual jobs, but we kind of wanted more. And that's when the whole idea of working together kind of hatched. and it just kind of happened. And so as we started talking and working together on what would we do and how would the ideas come about? More and more ideas came kind of floating to the surface. And it wasn't until really the next day and the next couple of days when we were, we kind of started talking about lobster and the food truck scene and working together that way. And it just organically came about that maybe just maybe we would do this kind of wacky idea together.

And I think what happened from there, obviously, the next coming weeks is that I think there was a true desire for both of us to do something together. Like Saban said, we had had those kind of independent contractor jobs, so we knew that we wanted to run our own business and not necessarily be managed by managers or owners, take the good from our companies and be able to develop our own thing. And it was just a matter of what was the product and what was the delivery vehicle? Was it a truck or a restaurant and lobster or Italian sandwiches? Yeah. So at some point you decide on lobster, but I'm curious. is, did you have existing relationships at that point with folks in Maine that were providing the lobster? Did you have any connections at all?

We always had connections growing up there. I mean, it's like it's a very, you know, the kind of joke is that the state of Maine is like a high school locker room. You know, if you know this family, you know that person. If you know this lobsterman, you know that lobster. So we certainly were born and raised there and my sister had been in the lobster industry for 12 years at the time. And growing up, we did a lot of recreational lobster with our friends and family. But were they the connections that we have now? Of course not. It wasn't on that scale and that volume. But the ability to call up so-and-so and our friends and our family and work our way into those relationships, that's kind of what our connections

were at the time. Yeah. What I love about the story is it's going to encourage anybody that has a dream or is in the early stages or maybe even the halfway stage because it literally is two cousins and you guys are literally solving one problem at a time. I love how you talk about that in the early part of the book. Your strategy was, if there's a problem, let's find that solution. And then when the next problem came up, you went, let's get that solution. Sometimes we make business too complex and too difficult, and you guys stayed with it. I think that's what I love most about the story.

And I want you to speak to that. I want you to be honest about the fears or maybe frustrations in those early days as you're looking for some of those solutions. Was there a point where you guys, looked at each other and said, what are we doing? Why are we even trying to do this? And then if that's true, if that happened, how did you power on? What are we doing? I was just going to say, do you know the answer to this one? Because I certainly don't. I would say that there was never a moment when we questioned why we were doing this. I think leading up to it, I definitely questioned it. And I think Jim questioned it. We didn't tell our family or friends about even this idea until about a

week before we opened. And the reason we worked on it for about a year of this project, the reason why we didn't tell anyone is we didn't want anyone to be pessimistic or negative and say, ah, that sounds stupid and kind of derail our progress. We didn't have any high expectations. We weren't doing this to make money. We really just were doing it to hopefully break even and work together and have more of a passion project. Once the first day opened and the window opened and I looked out the window and there was, you know, 70, 80 people in line, I remember turning to him and I go, you know, several times, when are you moving here? When are you moving here? Because it hit us like a ton of bricks like this is going to be big. So now, where was that first truck, by the way? Just a point of reference.

Where was the first truck? The first truck was at a place in Artesia, California, the Portuguese dining home, which we've never been back to. We should, we pull that out of the ball. You know, it's like a vault. And we looked, we looked out the window. There's 80 people in line. I kept turning to Jimmy and I said, wow, this is this is going to be big. When are you moving here? When are you moving here? So after that, it was never a matter of, is this the right thing? It was just a matter of how big is this going to be. And in the first couple months, it was, are we comfortable enough leaving our jobs, which, you know, at 30 and probably 27, you want stability. Yeah. So leaving your comfort and leaving the jobs that were great jobs, by the way, that was the part. That was a question mark. It really

wasn't how if we liked this idea. It was how big this was going to be. That's exciting. Now, what was that transition like? Because I think a lot of people, people get locked up, Jim and Saban, with this very issue right here. I've got this great side gig that I'm highly, highly passionate about. No question about it, but I do want stability. I need stability many times. How do I make the leap? And I think some people think it's always the Geronimo jump. Sometimes it is. But I have found in interviewing a lot of successful entrepreneurs that somewhere along the way you balanced it and you made a nice step into it. What's your story? What was that transition like? I certainly think that there is.

a big learning curve and transition for anyone. I mean, Sabin was local in LA. For me, it meant moving across country, even the security of my job and a steady salary and my friends and my family and everything I had grown to know. But I think that for, you know, true entrepreneurs, people that will come up through our truck and they'll sit there and say, oh my God, Shark Tank and Barbara and the food and I can touch us and feel it. It's amazing. I was going to do this or I was going to do X, Y, or Z. The biggest difference is they didn't. Or they haven't. They haven't taking the jump, they haven't put themselves in that position where maybe your financials aren't that stable anymore. And this is, you've got to make this work. So I think for us going into that

transition where we said, hey, this has a major upside. We're passionate about it. We love it. We want to work together. We want to create something together. You got to go all in, which we chose to do. And I think the main reason that we did that and what helped with that transition was knowing the type of guys we were. And by that, I think our work ethics like second to none, you know, Save grew up in a single family home, and so he had to make it work. I grew up wanting to play division on college hockey in a place where, you know, generally doesn't happen. And so I had to make it work. So we knew that if our backs are against the wall and we need to make our own income and start a company, we're the two guys that were going to do it. And we couldn't fail. And I think that's one of the things that helped us

with our transition in finding success over time. And also knowing that it's not a, like we write in the book, it's not a get rich quick type of thing. We knew that this was one truck to two trucks and there's going to be growth, we'd have to scale, and it's constant reinvestment. We have to be prepared to do that and take a hit in some other places through that journey. I'll also add that I think there's a certain amount of fearlessness now that we have that's much different than when we first started. And I would say that probably when we first started, we were a little more cautious, we were scared, we had fear instilled in us. And I think that's a huge obstacle for young entrepreneurs to overcome, which is fear, which is you're taught to have stability and you have to have this tick, tick, tack job.

And you look at a guy like Damon who sold t-shirts out of the trunk of his car in Harlem up front of the Apollo theater. That's not exactly tick, tick, tick how you're supposed to do it. But look what he did with it. And I think in this instance, you're not supposed to probably open a food truck when you're 30 and you have a stable job. And it doesn't sound really right. So we did it.

and we took a little bit of a risk, but we were scared when we first opened. And now we're not scared of anything. We take risks all the time. And I think that fearlessness allows you to continue to grow. Yeah. Let's stay there because I think you make a very good point here. And that is that you take risk all the time. Why? Because you've seen what is really behind fear. And it's actually nothing to be terrified about. Is that true or false? I do believe that. I think it's just a lot of pressure that may be society or your home or your whoever it is instilled in you to not take these risks. It doesn't mean be reckless. Of course, we take calculated risks. And now we have six years of sales and understanding and learning to business. But we still do things and we go,

I don't know how this is going to turn out. We might lose money on this. It might not, it might not be the best profitable thing. But we might try it and we might learn from it and it might develop into something or a different arm of the company. And we're willing to do that now because we've learned that what you think is a great idea isn't always a great idea and what you think is a bad idea might be a great idea. We're not geniuses and we're open to learning and still trying. So you can't be scared if you want to grow. I also think if you believe in yourself and you believe in your product, then what else is there? So it's like you'll see on Shark Tank all the time, well, why haven't you quit your other job or why haven't you gone all in? And I think we believed

strongly in ourselves. We believe in our product. And therefore, we're so hungry. We know we might fail or you might not have the biggest success right away with these risks, but eventually they will pay off. And if that means you, like Sabin said, I mean, I said at my wedding the other day, I don't think that saying I'm starting a food truck to the gal that I married was the most alluring thing to her, the most stable job in your parents' eyes, right? But it was a risk because we saw how this could trend and getting lobster at affordable prices at the quality we have all throughout the country was a dream of ours. Wouldn't happen overnight, but we took the risk. So it was one truck, it was two trucks. Even before that, it was going on Shark Tank with two months of business,

which was insane for a lot of reasons that you don't have any business history to make a valuation on. And then it was, you know, taking on franchising to have that real growth that's now, you know, global for us. You've mentioned Chartank a couple times. We're going to get here. Let's go there now. Because I love the story. You went on the show, for those who didn't see it or may not know you from the show. Give us a quick summary of what happened. And then I've got a follow-up question about something that was said to you on the show, and you just touched on it, Jim, the confidence factor. I want to get back to that. But first, just kind of tell us about that experience. What happened to you guys on the show? Yeah, the experience was obviously overwhelming, insane, scary, exciting, all of the things that

you would think would go into going on Shark Tank. We went into it kind of eyeballing Barbara. We knew that she had had success with some other food groups and we'd heard great things about her, as well as many of the other sharks because they're all fantastic and really, really cool. And just being there on the stage, we felt really prepared. We had watched about 50 episodes. We made flashcards previous to going on, and we had studied the questions that the sharks tend to ask. We strangled each other. We strangled each other.

So Mark Cuban might always ask, you know, this type of question, and Barbara might ask this. So we would stand up and rehearse, and I would be Mr. Wonderful, or I would be Barbara and Jim would have to do it. Then we'd go on runs and we'd be jogging through the neighborhood and we'd be saying our pitch out loud. And then to Jim's point, we'd look in the mirror and one of us would be strangling each other while the other gave the answer because we didn't want ever to get distracted when the bright lights were on. And as it turned out, the preparation really, really paid off because there were several times, you know, the lights are bright, stakes are high, the sharks are peppering you with questions. You can get lost and nervous. And we didn't. And there was a couple times when the shark started asking a question, and the question didn't even get halfway out of their mouth.

And I knew the answer or Jim knew the answer immediately because they had previously asked it before. So, you know, preparation in any atmosphere, obviously, is the key. So, but what happened? So you guys make your pitch. Oh, what happened? Yeah. What happened? Oh, geez.

What happened? We were fortunate enough to get a deal with Barbara, who was the shark that we wanted to get a deal with for $15,000 for $55,000. in our business that was two months young. Wow. And just to give people some concept here, $55,000, how did that change your business? Because $55,000 in the grand scheme of these not a lot of money, certainly not to you guys now. What did that mean to you at that moment? We said when we got to the show and we said to the sharks and we didn't need the money. We had saved our own money. The first month we had been profitable. We did $65,000 in sales. second month we did $85,000 in sales, we've been profitable. We had high hopes for the business.

We had our own savings. We funded everything. We didn't need 55 or 85 or 100 because we were there really for the mentorship because we kind of felt like we had hit something that was going to be really big. Yeah. And oftentimes when you hit things like that, you do need mentorship. You do need someone who has experience and business experience. So sometimes people go on the show and they say that. I don't know how candid they really are. In our instance, 55,000, we didn't need. We didn't need, we didn't touch that money for two and a half years. We just left it in a separate bank account and never spent it until we actually really, you know, said, okay, this is what we'll use it for.

So we were there for the mentorship and that's exactly what we got. Yeah. All right. I want to go to a moment in the show that you actually write about in this book. And I'm paraphrasing, but it will tee you up because I think I really enjoyed it. As I was reading it, I just smiled and I appreciate the confidence that you had. At some point, Mr. Wonderful himself, Kevin. is basically looking at you guys and he's like, okay, what's so special about this?

What's keeping me from going out and doing this myself? And your response, whether or not it was verbal, certainly was something that you thought and you write about it in the book, was he couldn't actually do it. While he had way more money and way more experience, he didn't have some of the firsthand knowledge and the relationships that you guys had because of the fact that you know Lobsterman by name and you know the industry by growing up there. there's a lot of confidence there, and I just want you to speak to that because I think sometimes the small businessman or woman can get intimidated by what they lack and they forget what they actually know. Yeah, I mean, you know, we meant it at the time, and it's amazing to see six years later how much that truly meant then and means now in the big picture.

And it is just that. It is a very small community. When you look at like the state of Maine and then, you know, down east Maine where we catch all of our live lobsters, it's a blip on the radar in the entire globe. globe, but the Maine lobster industry appears to be relatively big, but it comes from, you know, a few hundred boats and privately owned business men and women that are the lobster men that are looking to support the state of Maine and their families. So it's not just something that you can go throw money at because a lot of the times what Mr. Wonderful said, that does work. You know, you go and you need to buy a thousand trinkets or toys versus 10,000 versus 100,000. You're going to get your discounts and he can just go throw money at it. But it's not like that in Maine, You know, especially from the generations of family to family that date back to great grandparents

that were lobstermen who had people come in and say, hey, we're going to spend this type of money, we're going to guarantee you this, we're going to open restaurants or wholesale deals. And those deals fell through when product or supply was put up by the lobstermint. And so it becomes a very close-knit community where they want to deal with their own. They want to deal more on a handshake and people and kids that have grown up there that are known versus people coming in. and just throwing money at something where they've been burned in years past. So it's really one of those things that you need to feel comfortable about. They need to know your name.

That trust level is huge, the loyalty. And fortunately for us, we were raised in that, which would be no different than, you know, if you were raised in Napa Valley, you know, growing grapes or something. And you kind of work into that industry. Great example. Thank you. So that stuff is, it's not just, you know, smoke and mirrors. It's a very real thing.

Fortunately, we had it growing up, and it's been able to benefit our business in the state of Maine. We're talking about like a small region, and it's a sustainable product and a sustainable fishery where there's limited supply. So there isn't mass produced. It's not like a trinket. It's not a frozen beef patty where you can go in and buy like that. So not a lot of people understand that. So his question, which is a common question that he also asks, but his question doesn't really apply in that instance. Yeah, and I love that. All right, so let's get back into the timeline. So you guys are rocking and rolling. You've been in business for a few months. You get some shark tank success. You've got that first initial truck. One of the big issues that small businessmen and women and entrepreneurs have to face is growing slow, growing fast, which is the best choice, scaling. I'd love for you to take us back into your timeline and some of the temptations, some of the decisions that you made. I'll just tee you guys up and let you run with it and teach us. But going from that

first truck to do we go get another truck? What did that look like for you guys? What are some of the decisions that you decided to make? I'll give a start. It's it is crazy to hear you say that and to actually think back and to remember those times because they were thrilling, tiring, and scary times. Sure. For us, we, we opened the first truck and since day one had lines and it seemed like a massive success, two months later, your partners with Barbara Corcoran and the lines are obviously longer than ever. the first decision was how much longer are we going to keep our day jobs, which lasted about six months. We kept our day jobs for about six months. And then my bosses, who I worked with in real estate, were very, very pushy in encouraging me to quit my job, get out of there, and to open a

second truck already. These guys are young entrepreneurs, very good friends of mine, and they were saying, you know, you need to open another one. You need to open another one. And And Jim and I were, I remember, you know, thinking these guys were crazy. Like, this is insane. We're not going to open another. We barely even figured out how to do this. This is scary. This is what if?

What if this is just a phenomenon? What if the food trucks don't last? What if people stop liking lobster in Los Angeles? What if Shark Tank goes out, you know, all of the what ifs? And again, it comes back to fear, which is the common theme, is we were kind of scared that this was just a blip or a fad. something quick, a flash in the pan. And that's something we really didn't want to be. So we really wanted to dive into our business, dig in. So it wasn't, I think, until about six months in that we got our second truck, which to us was, you know, very huge. It was maybe bigger than the first one almost.

And we essentially doubled our business, which was the big scare. Yeah. I think the other decisions for that for like growth and how it happened is that you can be scared, you can be fearful, you could see opportunity, but eventually once we started really also looking at our numbers and getting the whole accounting side and bookkeeping side to make sense, and it references this in the book. My father, Steve, who's generally a conservative guy, but he was looking at numbers and saying, well, if you're doing this with one truck, why the hell wouldn't you have a second truck? And if you're doing this with two trucks, even if sometimes you're reinvesting and the bottom line's not what you want, if you can go triple sales, why wouldn't you do three trucks?

And that's really, it says that in the book where we do, we do three trucks. And that was our own looking back on it, our own internal corporate franchising. It was growing from one truck to two to three, meeting demand, getting it spread, increase in our bottom line. And that's eventually what's happened with franchising to other cities and even multiple units within franchisees themselves. Yeah. And I'm curious to how you guys begin to meet the challenge of, I've got to have extra bodies. If I've got a second truck, we've got to hire people that we can trust. You guys, there's only two of you.

And certainly when you go to three trucks, now you're spread even thinner. You're learning how to run financials. You've got so much more going on in the business. What were some of the unique challenges for you all as you began to, I'm talking about you two individually, begin to realize, you know what, Jim, I'm best at this. Saving, I'm best of this. And we're going to play those roles because now things are beginning to explode. Yeah, that's a great question.

Same's not good at much. That's true. Well, that made it easy, I guess. Yeah. I mean, I think it's probably pretty common for most people to want to do everything. In our instance, you've got to keep in mind we didn't go to business school. I went to school for drama. Jim, we went to school for concussions. We didn't go to school thinking we were going to open small businesses. Things like you mentioned, like staffing or how to manage staff or payroll or insurance or PNLs and financials and scaling. These are words. that I'd never personally ever really understood or heard of in some instances. Financials. Speak for Jimmy as well. We had never done that. The only reason we started doing financials was because Steve's dad was like, hey, guys, you need to get a handle on this.

So when it came to staffing, when it came to just doing the basics, we jumped in. We didn't, we made mistakes. We learned every aspect of our business. We micromanaged. We overthought. We didn't sleep. At some point, what you mentioned decided that, hey, hey, we need to divide and conquer because what we were doing wasn't effective use of our time.

We were both doing everything, which wasn't a good use of our time. But for a while, you don't know anything. So you have to be the expert of your own business. And that required us to not sleep and learn every aspect. I was out here for the grand opening, still living in Boston and working my job. And this always resonates in my mind is that Sabin and I, the type of guys, we're friendly, we're sociable, we're outgoing. But when we started a truck, we wanted people in line to be talking. into us, learning about where it comes from a main, where we're from, educated on the product.

No one everything about our business. And everyone's comments are like, hey, these guys are outside talking to the customers or not hiding behind the window like other owners. And we're sitting here seeing all these five-star Yelp reviews talking about our food, our quality, and ourselves being there. So I said to my dad, I'm like, I can't go back to Boston, one truck operating three days at the time. He's like, why not? I said, well, we got great Yelp reviews. I got to stay outside and talk to these customers. And so he said to me, he's like, listen, someday when you and Saban, if you think you're going to make a living on one truck happily, probably you won't, but if you want to grow and

have two trucks, three trucks, four trucks, you can't be at all of them at once. And it resonated then. It's something Barbara said now, and it's something we've certainly learned, and saying, how do we get the best average of ourselves or the best ability to have ourselves, even if we aren't physically at the trucks, to be there from marketing, from branding to the experience, product, education, service. And that's, to me, something that was the big thing in our growth as we went from one to two. You can't be there.

So that means you've got to learn processes and rules and systems and implement those to your staff, truck, your marketing material and everything. Yeah. I love how authentic you guys are. You can tell that you guys care about each other, even though you're joking around all the time. I mean, it's obvious. This is a great story.

See, I teed them up to make goofy faces at each other. They just couldn't help themselves. But I love the story. And story is what works with brands like this. So I've got a couple quick questions, but I first want you to give us a quick snapshot. Where's the company at today? As you sit here today, how many trucks versus brick and mortar? And then what's the franchising situation look like right now?

We currently have 28 trucks on the road in 15 cities. We have four new cities opening with trucks in the next two months here. So we will have 32 trucks in 19 cities throughout the country. We just were fortunate enough about three months ago to have our first international expansion where we opened in Taiwan. Nice. And they have a restaurant, a container, and a food truck there. They've got one unit operating at this point.

And then we've got huge growth already stores bought for the restaurants. We've got six stores bought domestically. And they will be opening in the next two to four months. And there's a huge opportunity where we're getting a lot. lot of multi-unit buyers, you know, these buyers that have owned Jimmy Johns or burger places or pizza places, sandwich spots that say, hey, they're diversifying and they want lobster because at the end of the day, the beauty of our product, our brand, our story is it really doesn't exist in most places throughout the country. They're either landlock and you can't get the quality at our price

or the brand is just set to go on fire, you know, in these really cool cities that have, you know, foodies and these millennials. So great opportunity, whether it's a truck, because of food truck friendly and nice weather, or whether it's the restaurant because you can expand more quickly, we're starting to see it both. Okay, so that's a great snapshot. I would love to hear how you are keeping your story, the two of you, the early days, the story itself.

How are you drilling that home to the franchisees? And then are you being intentional to say, I want to make sure that you guys, you know, for instance, let's just be honest, the guy that's right here in Franklin, suburb of Nashville, two miles from our office. How important is the story to these franchisees? That's a great question. And that was one of our biggest concerns with expanding or even going to two trucks. We didn't realize, you know, when we first started the business, we started putting photos out of us as kids on Twitter when we had 200 Twitter followers. It's that photo that got picked up the night before we opened that Urban Daddy in Los Angeles.

was featured on the cover of what's hot in L.A. You have to go to this opening. Because it provided authenticity. People were like, wow, this is cool. These guys are flying lobster. They're doing this. These are the kids as cousins. But it took us a long time for us to understand exactly how powerful the story was.

The story was real and it was authentic. We just didn't understand how important it was to express to everyone. Once we started understanding that, it really made things a lot more clear. And again, that goes to marketing. and so on and so forth, also something we didn't have a background in. But as we started to scale and as we decided to franchise, that was our biggest skepticism was in that, what if they don't do that? What if our franchisees don't care about the family traditions and they aren't like that?

So we had a huge burst of leads when we first decided to franchise. Thousands of leads. And we decided to franchise with 10 people. The decision-making process there was, number one, we don't know how to franchise. We're not experts and we want to learn this process slowly and scale slowly as opposed to taking 500 payments and then crapping out, not being able to handle it. So we wanted to grow slow.

But more importantly, we really wanted to love and care and appreciate the people that we worked with and have them feel the same way. So for the most part, we've been very successful in that. You reference the people in Nashville and they're fantastic. They were here in Los Angeles last week because they're opening a restaurant. and they were at my house and we're having dinner and we didn't talk business at all. They're just hanging out. I have a newborn son and they're throwing them around and it's like we've known them forever.

So that goes a lot to just the people that we choose to work with. We're in the fortunate position now where we get to choose who we work with. So someone can come to us and say, well, I want to buy. And we oftentimes get people on the phone and we don't like the way they sound or if they sound like they're unprepared or if they sound like they're only there to make money, we won't work with them. And I think that's a really fortunate position to be in. And I'll share one more story in that a year into our business, we decided of franchising. We decided to bring all of our franchisees and their significant others to Maine.

We brought them on the boats. We brought them out catching lobster, the local where all our lobsters processed, our facilities. And we saw their change completely. Everything changed for them. The previous year they've been working. We taught them about family. We talked them about Maine. and we talked about traditions and why that's important to us.

And they got the majority of it. But once they went to Maine and they sat in Jimmy's backyard and they met our families, things changed for them. So now when we bring new people on into our system, we make it mandatory. First of all, they have to get through the first barriers of us feeling good about them. But we bring them to Maine. We put them on the lobster boat. They touch lobsters.

They touch the traps. They see how hard this business really is. And they see the small towns and the people that we really are. they meet our families. I think that's an important part of the process. Yeah, it really is. I think, you know, on that point, too, to answer your question is like Sabin clearly spoken about the people, you know, in our vetting process to make sure that they are as close to us and what they value in their ethics so that it comes through. Clearly, the process is a big one, whether it's our own operations manuals or the process in Maine of learning and being really

educated so that you can speak to your customers as a firsthand knowledge of being on the boat, of hauling those traps, and seeing all of the supply. chain of getting the product from Maine as a live animal to lobster meat in your city. And there's also products that we focus on like the truck itself and at the restaurants, whether it's technology from our digital menus, which are showing videos of Maine, of our boats, of catching lobster. So it really makes it authentic to the customer, you know, on top of our apps and loyalty. And it's telling this story so that when you walk in, and I think one of the biggest things

about our business and that people want to support, you know, it's not McDonald's. It's not this massive chain. It is a family-owned business with, when we call them family members, our franchisees in cities, bringing something phenomenal there with love and trying to give happiness to everyone. And customers like to support those small businesses with emotional connections to their time or their trip in Maine or just that quality of food that's treating themselves. So people can get on board, and it's our job to make sure that that whole A to Z customer

experience is one that makes it seem like it's the very first. food truck with us outside. Yeah. Well, you're doing a great job, obviously, with the growth. The consumers are voting with their dollars, and things are going very well, and I'm really happy about that. You guys are solid guys. I'm just real curious, L.A. headquarters, does it feel like Maine when you walk in?

Do you bring that culture into your offices there for your team members that aren't, obviously, family members out on the streets of America? Yeah, absolutely. And as Jimmy was talking, I was thinking a huge part. of our success is our team. And just like we weren't 100% with each one of the franchisees, we weren't obviously 100% with our staff. It took us years to understand who we wanted on our team. And the same thing goes with the franchisees. Our team here is phenomenal. They care. They love what they do. They've been to Maine as well. It's fun. It's a fun environment. We empower people now.

we used to micromanage. We used to, because we were so scared of giving up the reins, we used to micromanage and double check and triple check. And now in hindsight, what we do is we try and hire people that are good at things we're not good at and that will be better than us anyway. And that want to grow, that want it to do things. And the cool thing about our company and many young companies is you can actually move the needle yourself. You can come up with things daily here in our office, ideas, concepts, implement. them, see if they work, and if they do, you will have ownership on that forever. And the same thing goes with our franchise system.

All the time, franchises are saying, oh, I tried this and this work. I tried this and this work. We're all learning together. So our core team here, it feels like Maine in an emotional way. We have a cool ping pong table. How about the lobster traps and the lobster buoys and the TV with all the pictures of Maine? I mean, God. We're in Hollywood, so it's not Maine.

Exactly. We were in Hollywood, so it's not made. But the people here are as good as it gets. The same thing goes with every member of our CML. We call them CML family members. Everyone in our family is so cool and caring. So it's fun. I think we've always tried to have, we've said it.

We've had humility. We didn't know how to do the books or finances. We didn't know insurance. We didn't know payroll. We didn't know anything that Barbara taught us. We knew lobster. We knew food trucks as we got into it. But the things that we learned teach us.

We'll learn. We'll ask you a million questions. We're not. Not too proud. We're not too big of egos to say, oh, no, we'll figure it out. Like, no, we'll ask you a million questions until we figure it out and it becomes ours. And then we can make it, you know, our expertise too. But I don't know anything about social media. So we have the best social media girl in the world here, you know?

Like, that's the type of stuff that we have here. And I'll learn from it. But I don't want to do it on my own because I'm not better than me. One of the early things that Barbara taught us or she thought she was teaching us, but we would ask her questions or we'd say something and she would say, well, what does that mean? I don't know what that is. And she'd say it very bluntly. So you would say, you know, I'm X, Y, Z. And she'd go, I don't know what that is. What is that? And initially, you're kind of caught off guard when anyone says that, let alone someone of her stature.

You know, she should know everything. She's a genius. But she doesn't. And she's not afraid to tell you what she doesn't know. But once you tell her and she asks the right questions, she gets a firm understanding. It never leaves her. She's a smart woman. I think the same thing goes for us is people are taught to not come out of their comfort zone and say, I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what that means. Can you explain that again? Can you slow down? People don't want to feel because they feel stupid. They might as well just be quiet and kind of nod their head. And we don't do that. And I think we learn that. And it happens all the time. We'll be on the phone with a banker trying to do something. And I was like, I have no clue what that is. Can you tell me what that is? And probably the guy's going, how does this guy not know? But once he says it, I won't forget. And I'm getting smarter. every single day. So that's something that Barbara taught us and that can be implemented to every single

entrepreneur right now today. Yeah. See, that's a very big point here. Folks, we've had the curiosity beaten out of us. The reason, Jim and Saving, you know this is the American education system, it's created in us, this anxiety over always having the right answer because we're test takers in our education system. I'm not knocking it. It's just a fact. And so we get out on our own and we're afraid to ask a question or look like we don't know an answer. I think that's a great point. It takes a little bit of audacity, but it's going to serve you very, very well. Last question, we've got to let you go.

This has been great fun. You said, you referenced this, I believe it was you say, even early on in our conversation about the early days as you got going. You know, is this a fat? Our truck's going to go away. It seems to me, by my just casual observation, I've not put a lot of thought into this, that it seems to me that food trucks are certainly here to stay. I don't think they're a fat.

I think even more so now in the way. world we live in, that they are going to be a mainstay for many decades to come. Would you agree or disagree? I would thankfully, thankfully, oh, agree. I would 100% agree. And what you're seeing now is big, big restaurant chains like in and out burger have food trucks because they're seeing a void in the market that they can't fill. If you're a permanent location, you can't fill it. So the food trucks have been able to provide a vehicle. Oh, that's nice. That's nice. That's well done. I'm sure why he's dancing.

Yeah, you've got to go where the customers are. That's what's so great about it. Well, Jim Salicus and Sabin Lomack, Second Cousins, the co-founders of Cousins Main Lobster, the new book, is entitled Cousins Main Lobster, how one food truck became a multi-million dollar business.

I highly recommend you get this book. First of all, it's an easy and fun read, but it will not only inspire you, it really will equip you. And I think in a couple key ways, there's some great practical business knowledge here. But more importantly, this will feed your soul. It can be done. You've got what it takes.

And these guys, prove it. So, guys, we appreciate you. I think you really are modeling the American dream. Really, really cool to see your success. You're enjoyable to talk to and wish you all the best. We know you got a lot going on. So we're really grateful for hanging out with us. Thank you for our pleasure.

Thank you. It means a lot. Thank you. Hey, I hope you enjoyed that as much. as we did. Those guys were a lot of fun. We had so much content prior to the conversation being recorded and after really fun guys. They are who they seem to be. Great, great, great, great guys. All right. Our Entree Leadership One Day event is coming up at the end of this month and we've got a special offer for you amazing podcast listeners. Our Grand Puba, Daniel Tarty, was so excited about it.

He said, can I come in the studio and tell these kind folks about the offer? And what am I going to say? No. He's the grand pooh-bah. So here he is Daniel Tarty. Hey guys, it's Daniel Tarty. I'm excited to tell you about an incredible full-day leadership experience for you and your team. I know as a leader, there's a lot of things I'm learning and I'm going, how can I get my team on board with this stuff? Well, the Entree Leadership One Day Event is designed exactly for people like you and me who want to grow as leaders, but also want to get our team plugged in on the front row seat to the information we're learning. So the Entree Leadership One Day Event is going to let you do that when

Dave Ramsey, Chris Hogan, and Stephen Mansfield, and our own Christy Wright, are teaching you and your team how to grow and develop his leaders. The way you can do this is come to the live event in Houston, Texas, or you can stream the entire event from your home or office. We're going to get you a workbook you can download and give to your team. We're going to get them all the event experience, and this way you guys have a chance to discuss this information together and grow as a leadership team. Just for podcast listeners, we're giving you a pretty sweet deal. Just text the word E1D 2018. That's E1D 2018 to 33444. And you save $10 bucks on your pass.

Go ahead and lock this in today. Get it on the calendar for you and your team. This could literally change the trajectory of your entire business. You don't want to miss it. We'll see you there. Thank you, Daniel Tarty, for hanging out with us and giving the goodies away. Chad Kirby from Infusionsoft joins me on the line. Always good to have you on with us, Chad.

And, you know, we mention InfusionSoft every episode because you're constantly giving our audience some great tools, resources, guides, ebooks. The list goes on and on and on. But some of our newer members of the listing audience may not know who InfusionSoft is. And we love the organization, but we love the mission. Take a moment and tell these fine folks who InfusionSoft is and what InfusionSoft does. Absolutely. So one thing that we do, we are passionate about making small businesses successful. We want entrepreneurs to achieve the success that they were hoping for when they started their business.

And so we do that by creating a system for them to be successful. And so what does that mean? Well, to be clear, InfusionSoft is a product that allows you, it's a tool that allows you to run your business so that you can speak to your audience intelligently. And it allows you to manage your customers' interactions. For example, it allows you to capture your leads and nurture those leads so that in the end you close more sales and it gets your customers to want to buy from you again. And so it helps clarify your message and allow you to deliver it in a way that is based upon their level of engagement, not yours. All right. And then how would these small business owners who are saying, all right, Chad, that's definitely where we need to be. And it's where we want to be. So how do they get connected and begin at least the process of just kicking the tires?

You know, Ken, there's one thing that we've always toyed with doing here in Infusionsoft. And that's giving people a free trial of the software. And we've never done it with any partner. And so because of the relationship we have with Entree leadership, we decided this is the perfect partner and the perfect opportunity to try the free trial. So let me tell you what we're going to do, Ken. We want to welcome everyone in the Entree Leadership community to join us here in InfusionSoft and try Infusion Soft for a 14-day free trial. And then you can see how it can empower you to leverage automation and leverage the software of Infusion Soft to help grow your business. That's a pretty sweet deal because they get to keep all the results, even if they decide not to move. forward, they get to keep all the goodness that you've tilled up for them, huh? Absolutely. It's a wonderful learning experience. And if you're the right fit for us,

great, we'll move full speed ahead. But if you're not, you take what you learn and keep moving forward in your business. All right. I want to ask you a question that, again, whether they engage with Infusionsoft or not, there's some practical advice here I want you to share. And that's when you're changing systems within a business. That's always scary to leadership and many times to the team that is tasked with making those changes happen. Oh, our system works fine now. Sure, we'd love it to work great, but they're always scared. And that's something I'm sure you guys encounter.

Oh, absolutely. People think, you know what, I just don't want to change yet. They're hesitant. They get stressed out about something new. But as my wife tells me all the time, whenever she asks me to do something, she always says, Chad, successful people do it now. You know what, Chad? Let's be honest with these people.

Your wife doesn't ask you to do anything. She tells you. Well, she couches it in a question, so it feels like she's asking me to do something. Right. But I've been married 21 years, so I know that I know what the result is, right? That's right. Oh, yeah. When she's asking me if the front door is locked, she's telling me to go lock the front door.

So that's the reality. They have to stop and go now. I need to do it now. And there is no risk, Ken. Again, we have never done this with any partner before, but there's no risk. And they can say, okay, this is something I've heard about. Marketing automation is, I read about it in Entrepreneur Magazine. I hear about it on Entree Leadership.

I hear about the importance of having marketing automation. But to stop and do it now is the key. And we're doing it for an opportunity for you to have no risk at all. That's right. Come on, folks. Seriously, why wouldn't you try some marketing automation for 14, days. You get it set up. They're going to help you do it. You set it and you forget it. You want talking about working smart. How about watching your favorite TV show or sporting event knowing that

your customers are hearing from you? You know what I'm saying? I mean, it's that kind of peace of mind. And speaking of peace of mind, there's zero risk. 14 day free trial. You can click the link for the free trial in this episode show notes. Chad Kirby's going to be back with us again. He's at all of our big events. We love the folks in the Fusionsoft. We're We use them. They are amazing people. We don't talk about them every episode because we have to. We like them.

They do good work. 14-day, free trial. Move on it right now. Get the link in this episode show notes. Chad Kirby, always good to talk with you, buddy. Always good to be with you, Ken. Hey, you have a to-do list that your wife wants done. So I'm going to let you go so you can get that done.

You know what I'm saying? Absolutely. Always want to thank Chad for being a part of this program. Remember, InfusionSoft helps power this program. They're big partners in everything we do, and we love what they do. Well, hard to believe. Another episode, drawing to a close. As I say every time, on behalf of Will the producer, Jim the engineer, and the entire Entree leadership team.

Thank you so much for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon.