EntreLeadership - #279: Solving Unsolved Problems with Michael Wystrach

Episode Date: August 13, 2018

Michael Wystrach, CEO and co-founder of Freshly, insists that the best businesses are built by those who, first and foremost, are passionate about finding a solution to an unsolved problem. And based on the success of his all-natural, chef-cooked meal delivery service, he’s 100% right. In less than three years, Freshly has become a standout in the $1.2 trillion food industry and attracted heavyweight investors like Nestlé. Tune in as Michael talks about the necessity of passion, why the best marketing platform is always your product, and his mission to change the world one meal at a time. Ramsey Solutions’ senior vice president also joins us with All Access member Dathan to offer counsel and tactics for getting his business back on track. entreleadership.com/podcast Mission Mapper from EntreLeadership Grow Your Customer Lifetime Value Worksheet 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. Here's what we got coming up for you on this episode. Really excited to introduce you to the co-founder and CEO Freshly. He is Michael Weistrack.

This is fun. This is great for you starters. You people that are in those startup phases, you entrepreneurs have got vision, you dreamers out there. You feel like you've got a good idea that could change the world. This is going to be a lot of fun. And then this is exciting. This is a new feature. And not only is it a new feature, this is something we're going to do regularly.

I'll tell you more about it later. But Daniel Tarty, our senior vice president of business and leadership here at Ramsey Solutions, took on one of your questions. We want to get to more of your questions. And if anybody understands Entree leadership, it is Daniel Tarty. So that's a lot of fun. And of course, you know we're going to bring you some great free stuff. All right, folks, I told you about this at the top of the show.

This is a new feature segment. We're going to bring it to you regularly, and we're going to build this thing. Daniel Tarty and I are going to eventually start taking more of your questions. And that's why we're debuting this today. Once you get a sense of what you're going to get, if you could sit down with Daniel Tarty, one-on-one and ask him questions about your business, what would you ask him? This is a guy who's learned on-tray leadership from Dave, from the early days, has grown, lead, and the guy can answer it pretty much how Dave would answer. This is a tremendous resource. And then a little

bonus, you're going to get my amazing wisdom on top of that. I'll throw in a little kinisms here and there, and we'll have some fun with it as well. So we're really excited about this. Hey, I do this every day, helping people with their careers on the Ken Coleman show. So Daniel, and I are going to team up. And we're excited about this. And I see this being a huge part of this program going forward. So it gets started today with Dathan, who is in the cabinetry business. Now, I had to practice saying that for about 25 minutes. And I'm so excited that I said cabinetry just right. And I wanted to throw it in twice to impress all of you because I don't want that hard work to go wasted. So normally we're going to do this over the phone, but we

happened to have Dathan into our offices, so we put him in the studio here with Daniel Tarty. And Dathan asked some questions, and Daniel gave some answers. So tell me a little bit about your business. What do you guys do? We build custom cabinets. So for like residential applications? Yep. We have a small five-man shop, and we build custom cabinets for, yeah, completely for residential. There's no commercial, really. It's all pretty much direct to consumer. Yeah. How's business going right now?

It's slowed down a good bit. And we noticed it first in the fall. Is that sales revenue when you say it slows down? It's our sales have slowed down. We currently have work, but we're near the end of that. Okay. So the pipeline is kind of. We notice in a fall just a slowdown in sales. And we normally run four to seven month lead time. We have a certain amount we can produce because of our small shop situation. And in the fall, we noticed just a downturn in sales, which the lead time started decreasing. And it continued to do that.

And we assumed that this spring, March, April, which is a busy time for sales, it would just take off. Did it pick up again? Did this happen before? Have you had a time? Never. Never like this. We've had times that slowed down for a bit, but then picked right back up again. What's the biggest challenge for you in all of this?

The biggest challenge. or the biggest fear. I mean, the biggest fear in all of this is that we simply run out of work and we can't provide number one for the families that are accounting on our business. We've been fairly busy to this point, but it's just kind of coming to the end of that.

And so we're going to have to make some real serious adjustments, at least temporarily. And, you know, that's worrisome because we've not had to do that in the past. So the biggest fears you run out of work and, gosh, and now what? Send the guys home for, or a month or whatever, right.

How likely is that to happen with the current trajectory? As it's looking now, it looks like it could be a month or so that we may need to send the guys home or find something else to do. We have some things in the pipeline for late summer, early fall. Some things coming. We're doing more quoting recently. But there could be a month or so. So you got a month.

The clock's ticking. let's put together a game plan. It sounds like one of the top things is you want to hire a tiger who lives and breathes sales and their whole thing is go get revenue in the door. It's probably going to take more than a month to find that person. So short term, what are you sensing right now is your top priority for you and the things that you need to lean into and maybe even let go of some distractions so you can make sure you keep the lights on. What's kind of been in your mind is your big things you've got to shove forward right now. You know, you talked about some of that going out there and actually finding the work.

And we've talked about that. We've had enough going on right to this point that we haven't done that. Probably should have gotten on that earlier, but just the last month or so that we really realized that this is not going away immediately. And so that would be one of the things. In addition to that, probably talking to the team about it, which we've done. We've obviously been talking about it, but maybe together as a team working on that as well, and all of us doing whatever we can to go after work, you know, temporarily here.

Okay. Until it starts coming in. How are you feeling? Well, I mean, I feel like we have some ideas to go with, some more, and just the encouragement to go after it. How are you feeling with your confidence? Your internal dialogue right now, how are you, as the leader of this thing, feeling about your ability to drive this forward and your batteries charged up or you feeling drained what's

yeah i've been feeling i mean i have been feeling pretty beat up yeah i've been telling a few people here and there that i've i've been questioning everything about my business skills and knowledge and you know i feel like i don't have any idea what i'm doing anymore it was just rolling for for quite a while and it's suddenly just falling apart and So it's like, do I know anything about what I'm doing? You question everything about your capabilities. So, yeah, I feel a bit beat up from that for sure. I think it's normal to feel that way.

I think when you go through an unusual time, it tends to be. So I don't feel exactly completely confident, but neither do I feel paralyzed by fear. Because I feel like it's going to happen. I feel like things are going to open up and we're going to be able to move. forward, but I'm not sure when. Well, I want you to know what you're doing really matters. You know this, I'm sure, but these guys that work for you, you know, I mean, in a lot of ways you're probably a father figure to them.

You're providing work for them and dignity and incomes for them. And so for you to take this seriously, I can tell it's not about you and just building your own wealth. It's very much you have a heart to do the right thing to help people. That's right. I believe that God honors that. And that really is a thing that it's going to be the thing that gets you through this season because it's not about you being the hero. It's about you taking care of the team.

Right. So just to summarize the plan, you guys are about to get disrupted. But the good news is you've got a month to six weeks to disrupt the current patterns and not let disruption happen to your business. You've got some time. And it sounds like you're hungry. You understand the stakes are high. It's not like you're sitting around just taking this lightly. It's a very serious situation.

hiring somebody that's a sales tiger. I love that part of your plan is also invite the entire team into the situation and go, guys. We're in trouble, but we can figure this out together. If you can rally the team around a common purpose and say, look, I'm going to lead you guys forward. I'm going to make sure that we don't go down. And at the same time, I need your help to be a part of the solution. And it's going to look like we're probably wearing different hats. We're probably working outside of our comfort zone for the next 60 days.

We're probably working hours that we're not used to working to do our day job. and then on top of that go, how do we go get new business in here? I love the idea of creating a big milestone that gets everybody to point the right direction. And in 60 days, here's what we're going to do to celebrate this crazy, maniacal, all-out effort that we're about to paint our faces blue and charge the hill. That's what it's going to take to keep this thing alive. And you can do it. And you're already on that pace, right? Right.

So double down there. And then give the team something to kind of get excited about when we get to this milestone, certain amount of revenue, certain amount of new customers in the pipeline, whatever you feel like is going to kind of right-size the ship, we're going to party, man. We're going to celebrate that we've all come together. What's gotten us here is we're sticking together as a team. What's going to keep us moving through this tough spot as we're going to do as a team and then we're going to celebrate as a team. And that way you're connecting the dots with people that may be running a table saw as their normal job or they're running a hand plane or whatever the thing is. They're going, oh, okay, I need to help the actual business right

now. I'm not just a cabinet maker today. I'm a co-owner in this business because our business that we all get provision from has a problem, and so I'm going to be a part of that solution. So, I think rallying the team is a huge piece of this. So give me kind of your commitment for next 30 days. What's going to be your game plan that's going to move this thing forward? Well, I think you've made it clear that being very serious about sales is important, going out and going after the work. And like you said, that may include a different person in sales. We do need to be aggressive. And, you know, when we're running out of work, you got to do something. So I do see that we're going to need to be more aggressive. You know, things do change in a market over time.

And the one thing we've talked about is that we may need to do some things different moving forward. There may be some things changing. We hadn't noticed. The cheese moved. Yeah. The marketplace is talking to you. Right, right. Exactly. We're like, well, you know, we may need to maybe even offer a different line of cabinets or, you know, something. along those lines. Yeah. Well, this is a critical season. Broaden the offer, diversify a little bit.

All those things are really healthy things for your business. Make sure that your time frame, that the team fills the sense of urgency. That's the biggest thing I feel here is you can be worrying about all this and trying to fall at sleep a night going, what are the next ideas? Invite the team into the problem, encourage the team to solve the problem together, and then lead them forward. And so I think you're on track. I think you've already said it.

Get more aggressive. get a sales guy in there that they live and breathe sales, pull the team into how are we going to fix this, let's all get creative, let's shake it up, and then create some kind of thing that you're going to celebrate when you guys get through this, because I believe you guys are. You're in a storm, but when you get out of the storm,

it's going to be good sailing again. So I want you to stay in touch with us, let us know what it looks like over the next 30 days and then 60 days, and we're cheering for you and stay plugged in with all access in your coaching community there. Those guys obviously are resource for you, but if I can do anything with the entre,

leadership team can do anything for you in this season, And just give us a call, man. We're here for you because we believe in what you're doing. It's been very valuable already. It's been a couple of years now, and I love it. Fantastic. Well, Dathan, keep fighting, man. You're going to pull through this, and we're excited to see how this progresses.

And really hear when you're winning and you feel like you're winning. We want you to call us and let us celebrate with you because we believe in what you're doing. Right. And I do know that coming out the other side of this, we're going to be stronger. Absolutely. We've already talked about that. I keep telling the guys, there's a reason for this. And we're going to learn something that's going to be really valuable.

Yes, indeed. I love your heart. of your attitude. Go get them, man. Oh, that was fun. Now, more of that's coming your way. So if you've got questions, and listen, I mean, I don't care how long you've been listening to this program. If you had a question from a year ago, you got a question from last night, you've got a question that just pops up every day of your life and you don't feel like you got an answer to it and you trust us enough, then this is your opportunity. We're going to make this more of a caller-driven program. I'm just telling you that right now. So here.

Here's how you submit your question. You can email Will, the producer, at podcast at entreleadership.com. That's podcast at entreleadership.com. Or you can call 844-944-1070. That's 844-944-1070. Call in, leave the voicemail, and we will get back with you, and we look forward to having you on the program. Entree leadership got a great tool for us this month. It's called the Mission Mapper. Now, you heard me talk about mission just a moment ago before I set up the Michael Weistrat conversation. Every organization needs a mission statement. What is mission? What question? What question does mission answer? Well, I believe mission answers the how question. If purpose answers the why question, this is why our company exists, then mission says, how do we make our why?

reality. This is why we're here. How are we going to do it? And so every company needs a mission statement. And so everything our company does is rooted in our mission statement, which is to provide biblically based common sense, education, and empowerment that gives hope to everyone in every walk of life. That's the mission. So that is exciting stuff for us because it keeps our North Star in front of us. So the Entry Leadership Mission Mapper is going to do the same for you. You'll find step-by-step instructions as well as mission statement examples so that you and your team can get together and create or edit a mission statement for you and your company. So here's how you get it. Text episode 279. That's the number. So the word episode and then 279. That's episode 279. That's

3344. That's 33444. Or you can get the link in the show notes, episode 279 at Entreeleadership.com. All right, here we go. Michael Weistrack, again, told you who he was. Here's why I think this interview is important and something that I want you to be listening in for. Freshly was built on his personal passion. He's going to tell you the story. But I want you to get this. I think the most successful entrepreneurs are people that are starting something to create a solution or solve a problem. And it's one and the same. Kind of two ways to say in the same thing. Because it becomes missional. The passion turns it into a personal mission and they won't stop at anything. This is a great story. We're going to get right to this. This is

going to encourage all of you out there who've got an idea that you've just launched or you've got an idea that you believe needs to be launched. Here is Michael Weistrat. Well, Mike, this is great to have you. I was really intrigued by the story because honestly, as a dad of three kiddos, two nine-year-olds and a 12-year-old, my wife and I both have awesome gigs that we love. And so, you know, meal preparation is just kind of, you know, insane at times. And I love the mission of Freshly. So to hear it from you, the CEO and co-founder, how would you describe Freshly and what Freshly provides? Well, Ken, first of all, thanks a ton for happening on your podcast.

Sure. It's an honor to be here, and it's always fun to tell the Freshly story. Yeah, I think the thesis of Freshly is really easy. It's how do we make it unbelievably easy for you to eat healthy? And the way we do that is I think there's a good analogy is imagine if you had a team of nutritionists who worked for you and they were on your payroll, which would be very expensive, and you had a team of these great chefs that worked for you. And they just did your meal prep every week.

And depending on how many meals you wanted every week, they did all the research. They found out, you know, what was good for you, what was bad for you? yet, and they took that information and they put into these great meals. And that's what freshly is. We cook healthy, ready-made meals that we ship direct to your house. We're your nutritious and personal chef. And so you can do meal prep really easily. And we do it for as low as $9.99 a meal, actually as low as $8.99 a meal now. No delivery fees, no tipping the driver. It's delivered to direct your house. The thesis is just how do we make it unbelievably easy for you and your wife and your kids to eat healthy and not do any of the work. Let us do all the heavy lifting. Yeah, but I'll tell you

what, this is affordable as well. You're talking about changing the grocery budgets across America. If you plan this right and use it effectively, it really is affordable. So, you know, for us, it was all about, like, how can we use technology? How can we use scale? You know, health and conveniences is only as good as affordability, right? So we have what we call our four pillars that are our foundation. It's health, it's convenience. It's taste, right? If you're eating a meal and it tastes like crap for $899, it doesn't matter, you know, all the other things. It's got to taste great. And then the last one is affordable. So if it breaks the bank, then that doesn't work.

You know, when you look at the average household when they cook, I think right now cooking at home is around $6. Plus you add in the time that you put in there that, you know, you're well over $8.99 a meal. And really the question is, is are we the cheapest way to eat healthy? No, we're not. Are we the cheapest, one of the cheapest ways to eat healthy without doing the work? I would say absolutely yes.

So it comes down to how much do you value your time. You know, couples like you and your wife, when they do cook, they will. want it to be an experience. And they really want to enjoy that. And they don't want to feel like, oh, I got to cook. They want to feel like, wow, I get to cook one meal a week where I'm really enjoying that. That's exactly right. When I cook, Mike, I'm out on the grill. I got my big old grill and it's we're going after it. You know what I mean? It's something I dig. I think this is great. You and I were talking before we started recording. I want you to share this. And this is my favorite part of what I get to do on this program is talk to entrepreneurs who see a problem

and then you fantasize almost of a solution. Then you go, wait a second, this is actually real. This could happen. That's what happened here. This company, as you said it, scratched the itch of you and your co-founder. This made sense for your family. And I think that we see now just the first couple answers you've given. Of course it made sense for you.

And that's how it became a great business model. Yeah, and I think they say all the time that the best businesses are built by people who are really passionate about it. That's right. It's something they wanted in the world. and they didn't see it. And I think that's an example. A lot like you, I love grilling. I absolutely love grilling. If you put me inside of a kitchen, I'm miserable. I hate being inside of a kitchen. But my problem is I wanted to eat healthy. In this day and age, with marketing and all these messages, I didn't even know what healthy was, to be honest. And you know what I didn't want to do is go to the grocery

store and read a thousand labels and I didn't want to have to get a PhD in nutrition to eat healthy. Like, I like so many people, and I'm proud myself, I'm lazy. I'm lazy on the things that I don't want to do. So what I did is I said there's got to be a smarter way. And like so many people, I went out and searched for it, right? I was willing to pay money to get this done. And it just wasn't there. So I was fortunate. I had a situation where I had a really good family friend who was a doctor who started writing about the paleo diet and healthy eating about 15 years ago before it was the paleo diet.

And I had a restaurant. And I said, wow, like, I'm a smart guy. Like, let's put these two things together and just solve my problem. And I solved mine. And 60 days later, I'm in the best shape of my life. And I haven't counted a calorie and I haven't read a nutrition label and everything. is just done for me. And I'm like, wow, this is amazing. I was like, so my dad comes to me and he's like, what are you doing? Like, you look great. And I was like, oh, I walked

him through. He's like, do it for me. And that's how it started is that people just were like, do it for me, do it for me. Like, I have the same problem. I don't want to cook. So we really, when we went about this, we were like, hey, we think we can change the world. We also think we can change food companies to be of the mindset. Like, it's our job. It's our responsibility to not have to make the consumer feel like they have to be these informed people, but let's us do the work for them. Let's make their lives easier. And let's make ready-made meals really healthy. So all they have to do is eat. Again, that's the fundamentals of our mission is how do we make eating healthy really, really easy, which means you have to take the complexity not only out

of cooking it, but you have to take the complexity out of the nutrition, which is like a maze of just marketing and all these kind of crazy thing. Do you listen to the FDA? Do you listen to some of the leading experts who are saying don't listen to the FDA? Are you listening to the marketing package? Where do you even begin? And most people just throw the their hands up in the air and they say it's all BS because you can't trust anyone. And that's a really dangerous spot to be in when you think about food, the number one thing that goes into our body that changes not only the way we look, the way we feel, our emotions, how well we sleep, our energy levels. Like, it's just amazing. So true. And listen, when we talk about no artificial

ingredients, preservatives or added sugars, I mean, that is, if you do any kind of research on your own, multiple resources, hard to get away from those three things that you guys are committed to. And that is a big part of the health crisis we have in our country, the artificial ingredients and the preservatives because it's all about convenience. And we make bad choices based on convenience and you've brought healthy options to convenience here. I'm curious to know what was your professional background before you hook up with your doctor here and start testing down on yourself and realize, wait a second, I've piloted a great company. What were you doing before that? Going way back, I mean, I grew up in a restaurant family. So my parents literally bought our

first restaurant when I was a month old. So I've been around food for a really long time. It's probably why I hate to cook because I've been forced to cook for so long. I'm sure. But after college, I went out and did investment banking and I realized that wasn't for me. I did a few years stint there and came back and opened a restaurant of myself and realized, like, wow, this is a hard business to be. And why didn't I pay attention? But I also was doing and starting a bunch of different companies. And what I feel like I'm really good at is connecting the dots and seeing five years, ten years down the road

and being like, why does this portion of life, like food, not work like technology? Like, I don't know anything about mobile security on a handheld device. Like, I don't know what the best encryption method is. I don't know anything about that. But Apple does. And I trust Apple to make the right decision. So, like, why with food is it that, like, I have to know what's good for me, bad for me. I have to know, like, where.

And that just to me seemed really, really broken in this day and age that we're still using this kind of outdated method. And so I wanted to fix it for me first. And then when we fixed it, I really saw an opportunity here to make a huge impact on the world, make a huge impact on our customers and have a lot of fun doing it. Because, like, as I was joking with you earlier, it's like, I love when we improve the process inside freshly. And we just launched an iPhone app. And I was like, I was so stoked primarily for me because I was like, I want an iPhone app as a customer. Like, I want to be able to change my orders. And so it's really fun for me.

And I always joke, I'm the hair club for men. That's an old ad for me dating myself. But where you say I'm not only the president, but I'm the first customer. It's like I am still Freshly's first customer. So it's been a lot of fun. It's a fun journey. Well, Mike, I want you to share some of the things you have learned in the early years here because you're still in those early years.

It's about three years or so of age. And I love that this is so innovative. You know, it's almost just like out of the kitchen itself. You know, it's like we're going to take all these ideas and all this knowledge, put it together, and it's like a custom-made company, and that's what it delivers. And I want people who are entrepreneurial, who are small business owners, who have to be nimble, who have to be constantly paying attention to the market, to what customers want, because they don't have the big dollars, they've got to be scrappy.

And I really think that's what freshly is. You certainly have learned how to do that. What have you learned in the early years here of launching this company and what works and what doesn't work when you take a new idea to the marketplace? So there's so many things. But this is the first thing I always tell people, is that really try to choose something you absolutely love to do and you're passionate about.

If you're ever doing something for money, not that it can't work, it's a lot harder because there are days you will sit there, no matter who you are and be like, what am I doing? And if there's that passion, if you can reach deep inside of you and say, like, you know, I'm changing the world. I'm building a product that I love. I'm building something that I want to exist.

And we always say that with us is that like, you know, we worked for free for a year because we wanted this product to exist because we thought it needed to be in the world. When you're doing something on startups, I think, you know, if you read TechCrunch or these things, it sounds like it's all a glory ride and everyone's winning all the time. And, you know, that can be discouraging when you're starting out because you're like, why am I not finding that success? When you break through, you realize like it's all BS, right? Like all those guys are going through that same stuff.

And passion's key. Passion's key in things that are really hard because it gets you through the hard times. And you will, no matter who you are, no matter what success levels you hit, you will have really hard times. And you need that thing pulling you through. What was a few things that you decided early on? We've got to differentiate ourselves from other companies who obviously were, you know, sending pre-prepared meals. I mean, I love your tagline, an unbelievably easy way to eat healthy, or at least that's the mission that you mentioned right at the top of the conversation. But, How did you really focus in on that USP, that unique selling proposition? So again, I think it was easy for us because we wanted to solve our problem. And I think what you'll see, and this is a danger of like, especially when you start taking VC money, you'll see that it starts being fall to leader, right? So like, oh, this guy's doing this. So like, meal kits are really hot.

So let's do a meal kit. And I was like, no, we don't like cooking. Yeah. That's not what we want to do. And we had a lot of early investors that like, we should do this. And so for us, it was staying true about what we wanted in the world. And I think, you know, again, that's why you really want it to be more passion and you want it to be less about like an outcome of monetary success. Because I don't think we've ever said that success means that we are a billion dollar company, a 50 billion dollar company.

Success means that we make a huge impact on our customers and our customers love us and they're passionate about us. And that's kind of a, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? So it's better to focus on the one customer than it is on like the outcome at the end. And that's been our passion. I think that keeps you very focused on what you want to do. It keeps you focused on what you don't want to do. I think one of the hard parts in startups and even businesses is saying no or not yet. It's easy to say yes. And all of a sudden you've got diluted returns because you've said yes to too many things. In what ways is freshly very intentional in keeping a pulse on what your customers are liking, not liking? What's that engagement look like?

So we do a ton around engagement and personalization. So we're taking ratings. We're constantly asking for consumer feedback. It's built into our system where we're getting ratings on meals. We're understanding that from both a personal level and an aggregate level, right? Because, you know, there's a few things like food and fashion, right? Like, I can give you a turkey chili and you hate it and I love it. Like, are you wrong and I'm right?

No, it just means we have very different taste, right? Like, I'm sure there's things you love and your wife hates. Now, in your household, I guarantee she's right. Well, let's put it this way. I would be ordering some peas from you guys. and I would be the only one of my five family members to eat the peas. I don't know what the problem is, but I like peas. And that's funny because there's so many circumstances like that where, you know,

when you cook at home, right, so like no one likes peas. So you love peas, but guess what? You can't cook peas because no one likes them. That's right. Maybe when you go out, you can have peas, but not at home. But that's the thing about freshly is we've really worked to take data to a personalization standpoint. And also to an aggregate. So, like, how do we make better meals for the large degree of our country?

customers. How do we make sure we understand our customers? Geographic is really important. So people in the Southwest eat different than people in the Northeast. Again, that's not necessarily a right or wrong. It's just different. By the way, I got to tell you, this is fun for me. I would love to see CNN or Fox News on election night get some data from freshly and show like how people in different parts of the country eat. I think that would just be hysterical because I'm from the South. I'm guessing there's a high volume of fried foods coming from the South, right? Right? Yeah. So the interesting thing is you've got to play up those things. So like we don't do fried food, but we do a lot of like the classics and we're working a lot of like classic southern dishes and saying, hey, how can we make this healthy, right? So the key is how do you take like some of the new dishes that we've got coming that I get the foresight and I get the ability to taste is like lasagna and how do you make lasagna really healthy and how do you do these different things in there and make that when people are getting lasagna, they feel like is home cooked lasagna, but it also has a bunch of veggies and it's 100% gluten free. and all these different parameters.

So what we really want to do is we want you to feel like you're just eating lasagna. Because that's the best. Like if you just have great lasagna and all you do is say, wow, this is really good lasagna, then we've done our job. Now what we want to do is all the health behind that. And we want to make sure that like you're getting this really, really, really healthy lasagna, but you're not doing the work. And then what we want to do is guide you on the path, right?

So we think of health as kind of a journey. And again, this is how we use data, is that there's meals on our menu that we think are really, really healthy. and there's meals that are okay healthy. You know, lasagna would be an okay healthy. So what we want to do is give you feedback and give you recommendations on, hey, maybe if you want to get a little more healthy,

how can we help you get there? Like, if you want to go more low carb or if you want to go a little more low calorie, like, can we guide you in that direction? And again, it's very personal, right? We all have different things within health and wellness that, you know, just as in your podcast, like with entrepreneurs,

like there's no one answer for entrepreneurs because everyone has a different outcome and different journey. And health is very much the same thing. So we want to guide you on that personal journey. How are you spreading the word? What's worked for you all as you're still in these early, early stages of the company? Marketing is, I always say, the best marketing platform you have is your product. And we invest heavily in our product. And our product, what we say is not only the food

you get, it's the communication that we put in front of you. It's our customer service. So we've built world-class customer service. We respond to every email right now in under 15 minutes. 95% of our phone calls are picked up in less than five seconds, five rings. And that's part of your product, right? Is accessibility making it. So when someone does want to cancel, they can cancel right online. They don't have to call us. It's building a world-class great product that your customers want. So that builds word about. That builds organic. Now, that's been our biggest driver. Otherwise, what we're doing is we're able to speak to people. You know, Facebook's been a great channel first. Instagram's been a good channel. But again, sometimes people want to start spreading

the message too quickly. And sometimes that can be like your worst enemy. It's really about focusing on the product, focusing on that consumer experience. If there was one, One thing if I were going to go back and talk to myself three years ago would have been like slow down another six months. And don't worry as much on growth, really worry about the consumer experience and do a better job earlier. Like I feel we had some bumpy things in the beginning because we didn't focus enough on customer service. And we grew really quickly. And our customer service was atrocious. That was like really embarrassing for us as founders.

Because when you hold convenience as like a core staple and it takes three days to get a response from your. customer service, like, that is inconvenient. It's really making sure you invest in the product and you're honest with yourself in the product. You know, I think in this day and age where you see these successes of Instagrams that sell for a billion dollars three years in or these unicorns, it kind of changes like successes being a billionaire. And I think what you see is people who really love their companies, they want to be there for 20 years. So if it takes an extra year, two years, you just want an amazing product that you're proud of that you want to be part of for a long, long time. And I promise at the end of it, you're not going to look back and be like, ah, I wish I would have laid on the gas a little quicker.

That's right, especially when it's missional like this company and so many people who are listening in today. It really is a mission. It's not just a company. It's not just work they enjoy. There's a real mission, a real connection to this. And that's what I love about the story. It really is great. But it just seems to me, I'm just curious.

I love to talk to founders and CEOs. As you look at the landscape right now, here we are in 2018. it seems like the public's becoming more and more aware of what really is healthy and what isn't. And yet there's still a lot of misinformation and a lot of marketing out there, as you pointed out earlier. What do you think the landscape looks like for the space that you're in, not just freshly, but even the competitors? Do you think that this is a potentially exploding market? I think it's going to be massive. I think, first of all, we have systemic, huge issues that we have to deal with as a nation, right?

So we have obesity hitting just all-time records. You know, right now, 60% of Americans are overweight, 30% of Americans are obese. We have health care costs that are ballooning. We have more and more money going into medicine, which is fighting these diseases that our bad health is creating. So we have to decide, like, do we want to fight this battle at the end or do we want to fight it at the beginning? And that is like, do you want someone walking into your office who's already, you know, 200 pounds overweight? Or do you want to talk to that person from day one? And I think the reality is we've got to stop looking to the government to regulate what is right or wrong for foods.

While I think they're doing great things and I think they're making a concerted effort to do this, I think we have to put onus on companies. And we have to say that companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their consumers. I like using tech as an example because I think tech is highly competitive. It goes through quick iterations and you look at tech companies and they're held to a standard where like they are not going against their customers. And when they do, there's huge ramifications that. I think food is a massive, huge, huge, huge business. It's a $1.2 trillion market. No one is going to own food, right?

What we can be part of is we can be part of moving the movement of all food companies to this idea of a fiduciary responsibility to your customer. It's your responsibility, not your customer's responsibility to make healthy food. It's your responsibility to remove a lot of these ingredients that we know aren't good. It's our responsibility as companies to, get rid of added sugars and reduce added sugars and make a concerted efforts on those things. And that's really what we need. And I think what will happen, I think you've already seen it happen, as you said, is that consumers are coming smarter.

And consumers are rewarding companies that are great companies, right? And they don't care about brands and they don't care about big brand names that my parents generation was like, oh, it's a big brand name so you can trust it. I think it's now about like the company and the company's integrity and the feedback mechanisms, the company's taking and willing in the transparency. And I think, look, we want Fresley to be massive and huge and we want Freshly to touch a ton of people. And success for us is making our customers really happy. And success for us ultimately is changing food industry because the food industry will always be way bigger than freshly, right? It always will be. Sure.

Again, 1.2 trillion. So, like, can we change the entire system? Can we change it from a regulated kind of like, hey, well, the government says it's good or bad? To me, like, no, the food companies are doing this. And I do think, look, I can say for myself and our partner, who, who's the largest food company in the world, Nestle, who just invested at us, that they see that. And they are already putting their money behind the mouth and they're transforming their company. Now, you know, the old saying is it takes a long time for a big oil rig to turn.

It's taking some time. But I think we're tremendously proud of the efforts that they're doing, that Mark Schneider, who's the brand new CEO is coming in and doing, I'm really altering and saying, like, they just got rid of their convectionary business. Basically, their sugar business here in the U.S. They've reinvented a lot of their brands. They've really dug in and said, how can we make these brands? healthier. And it's a big ship. But again, I think, you know, what they're really, really

passionate about. And we get an opportunity to speak with a lot of their employees, you know, from people in the manufacturing facility to big high executives, is they're really passionate about being a health and wellness company. And they still have work to do. There's no doubt there. But I think that it's an exciting opportunity in food. Again, I think it's exciting when these big companies, because these guys are going to be part of the solution, right? That's right. We have to stop thinking of like, we have to make sure that they're part of the solution, they're part of the conversation, and they believe in the success. And we've gotten the opportunity to learn from them on manufacturing on a bunch of things that they have absolute

skill sets that we don't have. But again, that's really our goal and our mission is that we want to make eating healthy unbelievably easy. And part of that is changing food, right? Changing food in general, so that healthy eating is everywhere. Well, yeah, and just changing the mindset. I mean, you've done the part of changing the food. I'm just going to speak to our audience. You folks know me. You know me very, very well. I don't pitch stuff to you. This was not an infomercial, but this is phenomenal here. I mean, because I'm doing the research for this conversation, Mike, and I'm looking at this as a real dude, you know, who watches what he eats and has three kids in the whole nine yards. I mean, I got the dog. We're all busy. We've got

stuff going on. And it spoke to me because, again, you've done the work of making it healthy. And now it's changing the mindset of the consumer, i.e. Ken Coleman, to say, wait a second, I can actually get healthy food without all the preservatives and junk that we know are making us sick. And you're kidding me? It's sent to me and I don't even have to prepare it. I just warm it up. That's a mindset thing that it's possible. And I got to give Nestle credit as well. I mean, you guys are like, freshly is like the little tugboat dragging the giant cruise boat out into the waters, you know? And I give them credit for attaching themselves to you guys. I think what you're doing is really, really cool. And, you know, cheers to you. I gave my qualifications.

But when I have guests on, I always let them talk about how our audience can connect. We've got a big audience here. Obviously, you got an iPhone app you mentioned earlier. How can people kick the tires and learn more about the service? Yeah. So, I mean, you can find us online at freshly.com is probably the easiest best way to kind of learn about the product. Give us a try. We have promo codes all over the place on first orders and just give it a try. I think it's one of these things that you got to try for yourself and experience it to believe it. And look, at the end of the day again. I mean, this is a business. We absolutely want customers. We want things. But we also want the world to change. And I think we don't mean that jokingly. Again, it comes down to the passion I was

talking about. But, you know, give us to tryfresely.com. You can follow us on Instagram and get freshly and download the app. You can go to the iPhone app store. We don't have the Android app yet, but go to that iPhone app store and search freshly and download it there. But look, Ken, I'm a huge fan of entrepreneurship. I think entrepreneurship is going to change the world. I think that it's fun to look at things that are broken, and entrepreneurs get to do that. And we get to rethink systems, and we get a restart. And it's a really amazing opportunity that entrepreneurs have to change the world. I know that a lot of companies get foo-fooed on that for like the Googles or whatever. When they say these things in tech companies, especially get foo-food, but they really do change

the world. Like if you think about how easy information is able to access because of Google, you know, that's the power of entrepreneurship. The power of entrepreneurship is not being a billionaire. there, the power of entrepreneurship is being able to change the world. Now, being a billionaire isn't bad. And God bless us if we get there, but like it is the ability to change the world and build a greater world and leave something great behind. So I'm a huge fan of what you're doing and promoting entrepreneurship. And number one thing if you want to start a company is get on podcasts like this. Get on podcasts. There's so much free information out there. There's so much access to information with, you know, and I wouldn't even say me. I mean, your past people that have been on, you know,

Mark Cuban, Seth Godin, who's, I'm a huge fan of read his books. But like, there's so much free information in this day and age that you can start at such a higher level and get out there and listen. If you want, I will tell you right now, I listen to at least four or five podcasts a week. I mature and grow a lot from podcast and email chains and all these things. So everyone should be doing it. It's a huge advantage that you young entrepreneurs have that even me when I started out in the game.

It was, you know, I kind of feel like I'm cheating now, being. able to listen to the smartest people in the world giving advice. It almost feels like it's an unfair advantage. Yeah, well, try getting paid pretty well to talk to smart people. So, I mean, it's, I feel like I'm stealing on a daily basis. But I get over it quickly. I get over it very, very quickly. This is awesome. I'm going to try it. I got to tell you, I'm going to try it. And I think this is like completely perfect for the Coleman's. And I would highly suggest you folks try it as well. Mike, very good stuff, my man. I really appreciate you hanging out with. this. This is a really, really inspiring story, I think, for our audience and we're better for it. Thank you.

Thank you, Ken. Really appreciate being able to share the story and doing this. All right, I hope you enjoyed that, folks. Now, listen, this is not an endorsement because they're not paying me, so I'm not going to endorse them, but I will tell you, I am now a customer of Freshly. Okay? Not the freebies. I went ahead. And I'm not trying to endorse it. I'm just telling you, for my wife and I with three kids, healthy meals that we don't have to cook, it's unbelievable. go, do with that what you will. All right, let's go to Infusion Soft's tool for this program. It's the growing customer lifetime value worksheet. So essentially, it's 50 ways to wow your customers. Who doesn't want to wow their customers? These are 50 cost-effective ideas

to expand how you're wowing or how about just begin wowing your customers. So if you want to get it, go to the link in this episode show notes at entreleadership.com. Click on podcast. And episode 279, the link will be there. This is a great worksheet. This will open many of your eyes. And here's what's great about it. It's going to do a lot of hard work. All you have to do is execute.

Well, great show. Thrilled to have you with us. Hey, listen, I need your help. Would you, if you enjoy this program and you are consuming it, would you help us share the message? From time to time, we ask you our amazing audience to help us grow, and you do. So we want you to share, like, and support. subscribe. That is a big help to us. On behalf of Will the producer, Tim the engineer, and the entire

Entree Leadership team, thank you for listening. We'll talk with you again very soon. Hey folks, I want to make you aware that we have other great podcasts from Ramsey Solutions. Here's a sample of the Ken Coleman Show. According to a recent Gallup poll, nearly 70% of Americans are disengaged at work. If you dread going into work every Monday morning and you're just trying to make it to the weekend, the Ken Coleman show is for you. Everyone has a sweet spot. Your sweet spot is at the intersection of your greatest talent and greatest passion. We will help you discover what it is you were born to do and then will help you create a plan to make your dream job a reality. You matter and you have what it takes. Join the conversation on the

Ken Coleman Show. To hear full episodes, just search Ken Coleman in iTunes or go to Ken Colemanshow.com.