Start With A Win - Jeff Fenster: How I Scaled Everbowl Without Burning Out

Episode Date: July 1, 2026

Are you ready to redefine success with superfoods and a side of franchising? Dive into the world of Everbowl with Jeff Fenster, its founder and CEO, who's transforming the quick-serve scene with acai bowls that mean business. Jeff, once a skeptic of franchising, shares his journey from anti-franchising to franchise pioneer, revealing how he scaled Everbowl into a nationwide brand without burning out. Learn how to build an empire, discover the power of making friends, having fun, fueling growth, and turning challenges into opportunities. This Start With a Win episode is your blueprint for winning in business and life.A pioneer in the quick-serve restaurant category, Jeff Fenster is the founder of the rapidly expanding, SoCal-based superfood brand, Everbowl™, which he established in 2016. Everbowl is nationally recognized as a rising-star within the sector, making healthy superfoods accessible and affordable for everyone. With a growing footprint of retail locations in SoCal and Arizona, Fenster is driving the monumental growth of Everbowl, with plans to introduce the brand nationwide through both retail operations and a line of superfood-infused CPG products. As part of successfully scaling the brand, Fenster has spearheaded the implementation of innovative processes to streamline Everbowl’s revenue-driving efficiencies in areas including operations, procurement, supply chain, and construction.00:00 Intro02:08 Is this why you say no to a franchise?03:57 ...And the Power of Partnerships06:49 Lessons from the Top08:47 Making Friends and Having Fun?12:25 Performance Coaching Advice – 5 Steps! 15:55 Is it possible to make one individual become five?20:20 Leverage up – AI for busy work, you focus ON your business!25:02 Challenge it / ask why it is wrong – it will create so many opportunities!32:10 I don’t do this but drink this…https://www.everbowl.com/ https://jefffenster.com/===========================Subscribe and Listen to the Start With a Win Podcast HERE:📱 ===========================YT ➡︎ https://www.youtube.com/@AdamContosCEOApple ➡︎ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/start-with-a-win/id1438598347Spotify ➡︎ https://open.spotify.com/show/4w1qmb90KZOKoisbwj6cqT===========================Connect with Adam:===========================Website ➡︎ https://adamcontos.com/Facebook  ➡︎ https://facebook.com/AdamContosCEOTwitter  ➡︎ https://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOInstagram  ➡︎ https://instagram.com/adamcontosceo/#adamcontos #startwithawin #leadershipfactory

Anyone who says, I just do this, therefore I don't need AI, is the same person who said, I don't need the internet. I'm just a business owner, a bookstore, a Sears, or, you know, these companies that didn't pivot and adjust to when technology changed everything. You're a glorified firefighter in the professional sense. If you're not loving the problems and looking for them and identifying them and solving them every day and you're just operating in your business, I hate to tell you, but you're not going to survive. There are things that we can control and things we can't.

And the ones who can survive the length of time and, and pivot and adjust and win are the ones who are able to see them before they come and recognize that it's an iceberg. And it takes a while to turn a big boat. So let's start turning. Welcome to Start With a Win, where we unpack leadership, personal growth and development, and how to build a better business. Let's go. Coming to you from Area 15 Ventures and Start With a Win, headquarters, it's Adam Contos with Start with a Win. Would have building a wildly successful brand could actually be fun and still scale nationally. That's exactly what today's guest has done. Jeff Fenster is the founder and CEO of

Everbull, one of the fastest growing superfood, quick-serve brands in the country. He's a true pioneer in the space, turning Asai Bowls and Superfoods into an accessible, affordable, and purpose-driven business that's now expanding nationwide. Jeff has been featured in entrepreneur, franchise times, San Diego Magazine, and beyond, and he's known for scaling smart. dialing in operations, supply chain and culture without burning out. At his core, Jeff believes in making friends, having fun and building relationships that fuel real business growth. And today, we're diving into what that looks like in practice. Jeff, welcome to start with a win.

Great to be here, man. Thank you so much. It's a privilege and honor, huge fan of you in the show. And I love the title because it's all about winning. That's right. Yeah. I mean, it's, I think we have a lot in common. And, you know, it's, first of all, we like to have fun doing stuff.

We like to build businesses. And we're both into franchise space. So, you know, a lot of things in parallel. You know, it's, first of all, how did you get into the franchise space? It's an interesting thing because people don't talk about it that much, but when they fall into it, they stay there. Well, I was anti-franchising. You know, I started Eberboa as a hobby after selling a few companies and told everybody and

anyone who would listen, I will never franchise. Mostly because I didn't know what it was. I assumed it was a bunch of winners and losers. I didn't think it, meaning some people win, some people lose, but I didn't understand the true value and benefit of it. So I was completely against it. Even when I had a private equity group who invested in me, Saruya Private Equity, the king of investor of franchising,

I explicitly said, no, not franchising ever. And COVID is actually the reason I had to start franchising. Why were you saying no to franchising? Because I didn't understand exactly what it was. You know, I knew that what I was running was an operations company. I didn't think I wanted to also be able to have to support another operator. And that's the key distinction. You see a lot of franchisors, and they either don't realize that their job now is not to operate restaurants,

but it's actually to become a support operations for franchisees. And I didn't like the idea that only the wealthy could open a franchise because I had looked at franchising as a franchisee in the past. And it was always like, what's your net worth, what's your liquidity? There's all these criteria. So it really wasn't for the every man and woman who wanted to take control of their financial freedom and become an entrepreneur. It was for the people who already had money to scale their money, kind of like a hedge fund, if you will.

Right. And just as a serial entrepreneur or someone who likes to help people and grow and do these things, I just didn't understand it. And then I also struggled with how can I be entrepreneurial and be a franchisee? and I didn't really understand the whole dichotomy of it all. And so it took, it took COVID and having to slow down scale and growth for me to finally realize, oh, wait, I actually understand it now. It's the best path for success for entrepreneurs because it creates something that you

didn't have before, which is partners and coworkers and equals at your level and scale and a team or a army of like-minded people growing and trying to build the exact same brand from the same position of ownership. There was just a lot I missed. And so, you know, hey, we're all dumb until we're not and we're all ignorant until we finally open our eyes. And I learned. So it was a good moment in 2020 at the end of 2020 when I started franchising and I wouldn't

go back at all. Nice. Yeah. So Ever Bowl. Give us flyover. What is Ever Bowl? It's obviously a, you know, a bowl concept. But I mean, what does that mean?

So Ever Bowl is a better for you fast food quick serve restaurant. You know, I believe to be successful in business, you have to eat. invent something new, solve a problem, or improve something. And to me, I'm a hypochondriacs. I was afraid of illness and disease. And I believe we could prevent a lot of it with lifestyle. And so I ate superfoods and healthy. And, you know, in 2015 and before, there's a much bigger crisis of obesity in this country before we had, you know, the wonder peptides and drugs that we have today. And also the mindset towards health and wellness that we have today. You know, an average, when I was growing up in the 90s and 80s, you know, we'd have family

dinner with McDonald's around the dinner table. And the average American was eating fast food three point two times a week. And I said, you know, why are they eating fast food? And I identified what I believed is the four excuses humans in America make to make bad choices for food. And so I started Everbole as a solution, if you will, for those four excuses to make affordable, healthy, and better for you eating, affordable, filling, delicious, and accessible. And that was the four targets that I went after with Everbull. So Everbull is basically craft superfood in a bowl or made from stuff that's been around forever, as we like to say, meaning we start with real food and we try to put it in a bowl.

We're expanding a little bit away from the bowl now, but still at a bowl. And, you know, it's predominantly today. It's asaibals and patia bowls and fun, creative concoctions that we make. But we also have toasts and a whole new line of products we're coming out with. Cool. That's exciting. And where are you guys based out of?

We're based out of San Diego. But we have over 100 locations in 33 states from Hawaii all the way to Boston. and, you know, Florida all the way up. So it's evolved because I'm a systems guy. You know, I'm not a restaurateur. I still don't know anything about restaurants. I think restaurants fail because they're started by restaurant tours and not by people who understand business.

And I think that that's a critical component to be successful. And so I'm about winning. I'm about success formulas. I don't care if you're a plumber who has his own plumbing company, Everbull, and you own an asaibal chain. You know, you're in a lawyer, an accountant, or you're a consultant. It doesn't really matter. business is business. And when you peel back to what you do, it's can you make more money than you

spend? Do you understand budgets? Do you understand attracting customers, clients, marketing, advertising, cost of goods sold, cost of service, you know, vendors and vendor management, supply chain. Do you understand how to do all that, you know, how to utilize capital? Do you understand how to do and navigate against competition and handle the macros and handle what you can't see like the COVIDs and inflationary periods and wars and competitors opening next door and your best customer going out of business or leaving you and your best, you know, employee doing this, you just don't know what you don't know. And that's where business is so critical. And so I tried to create Everbal in a model that takes all of that guesswork out and simplify it. Because if,

as adults, if we just go back to being children, it's very easy to win. We forget how easy it is for kids. And I jokingly always say, if adults had to learn to walk, none of us would be able to walk. So that's so true. And I love how you just kind of nailed down. all of the biggest complaints and biggest opportunities in franchising that exist every day. So, you know, it's, oh, gas went up by 10 cents. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to be out of business next week. Franchise or how do I solve this? Yeah.

So, I mean, it's, but also it, if everybody's focused on the problems, then it gives a lot of opportunity for people to go after the successes. So. And that's what I think we forget. A business owner doesn't mean you get to do this four hour lifestyle and be rich and watch people work for you, which internet has created this facade. You're a glorified firefighter in the professional sense. If you're not loving the problems and looking for them and identifying them and solving them every day and you're just operating in your business, I hate to tell you,

but you're not going to survive. There are things that we can control and things we can't. And the ones who can survive the length of time and pivot and adjust and wind are the ones who are able to see them before they come and recognize that it's an iceberg. And it takes a while to turn a big boat. So let's start turning. I love it. I love it. Hey, you have a saying, and I just, I think this is fantastic. You know, it doesn't take away from the challenges of business or the fact we have to get up every day and work hard and make things happen.

But you like to say make friends and have fun. We would you come up with that. How does that fit into the business? It fits into everything, you know, because making friends and having fun means that you don't treat. Everyone has these like, you know, employee handbooks and stuff. You know, and I used to own apparel and HR company, we'd create these things. And they were stale and boring. It was like, don't treat your coworker poorly and do this, do that.

We forget that, again, making friends means that you treat everybody with a level of respect that you would want for yourself, that you think about others as much as you think about yourself, and you handle society that way. And when you want to be able to, we all know this other saying, it's not what you know, it's who you know. People take care of their tribe, their community. And out of 8 billion plus people in this world, there's probably 30 that we all have that are in our air quote tribe.

So every time you can add another member to that, it's meaningful because there's a lot of people out there who don't know you, who don't care about you, who will step on you. And so making friends and expanding that group of people that love you and care about your best interests and you care about theirs is just a quality way of living. But from the, in a professional sense, it's how you attract customers, employees, investors, opportunities. Because when you're sitting here and I'm sitting here talking to each other, somewhere in the world, someone may ask a question about either our business or us.

that we're involved in and how that human being acts, they are our brand ambassador for that moment. And they can dictate a lot of opportunity. And in the hospitality space, it's never more true than that because we have all been to a restaurant and we've had a bad experience with an employee, a waiter, a server, or somebody, a host. And we leave saying, I'm never going back to that restaurant again because that individual who works here part-time and doesn't care and doesn't own the thing, treated me in a manner that I don't like. So I'm swearing off this business forever, and the business owner gets to lose my money forever

because they hired this individual who had a bad moment in a bad day. And when you realize how important that is that we don't dictate what we're preceding opportunities, but others do, the making friends part is just great because it means that if I do what I believe is in your best interest all the time and I make deposits into our relationship account, most likely you're going to be a brand champion for me. You're going to create good positive vibes when my name or my business or things come around. I'm hoping that if I do that enough times, then luck is going to find me more often. And I believe that you create luck because people who sit around waiting for fish to jump on

the boat don't get to eat. But I'm putting every rod and reel I have in the water. And I want to manufacture as much luck and opportunity as I can. And again, it's just a better, happy quality place. And then having fun is if you don't love what you're doing, then you're going to turn it off. It's a job. At 5 o'clock, you're going to go think about something else. I love what I do.

So when I'm in the shower or I've got some downtime driving or my kids are asleep and I'm got a TV on and I'm laying in bed, I'm still thinking about this because I'm passionate about it. So I'm putting in so many more hours a day than everybody else that I'm getting to leap them in time. And they've served me so well that it's a formula that I've kind of worked on and I'm a formula guy. So, you know, that's how winning has been able to be done for me. And if you look and peel back the onion of the professional athletes or anybody that has been extremely. extremely successful. I think that you will find a lot of those formulaic attributes, you know, are there. Awesome. I love the analogy to professional athletes and things of that nature. In that space, we talk a lot about performance coaching. How did improve what you do?

What advice do you have for somebody who runs a small business when it comes to performance coaching? What should they be working on in order to create more success? So I was just going to give you the high notes, but I have a success. formula. It's worked for me forever. It's a keynote speech I give. It's make friends and have fun, number one, because if you do that, you're going to have opportunity and you need to focus, not networking. Don't go to a networking meeting, but everybody. You know, the biggest, you know, I'll give you, and we're going to keep this short, but my first company, it was a pair on HR company when I was done being a sports agent. And I was almost going to fail. And it was during

the great recession of 08, 09. And I got my biggest client and saved my business from the checkout clerk at an hour since. And when that triggered, you know, when I'm early 20, with a wife and a daughter and trying to make it. And I made friends with everybody. And so I had a cordial conversation with the checkout clerk over and over and over again. And she knew I had a payroll business and she asked if I would help her brother with a problem. I did. He had one of the biggest companies that I've ever got to serve in my business. And it was a six figure a year account. I helped him not knowing who he was or what it was worth. And he then gave me his business, saved my company and allowed me to ultimately scale and sell it. So I really learned that power.

So make friends and have fun. Number two is Kai Zen. That's a good. idea to get 1% better every day. Have a target. And that is so important that don't just do things to do them, but what are we working on right now? And just make sure that you can identify how we can have a micro improvement of 1% today or in this moment. Number three, be remarkable. And that doesn't mean be perfect. It means give your absolute best. Like, I'm doing the best I can with you right now, Adam. And if I suck, I'm sorry, guys. But I'm being remarkable because this is the best I got. I'm focused. I'm here. I'm not looking in doing 93 other things. My mind's not on what I'm doing tonight with somebody else. I'm

engaged in what I'm doing, giving my best. That's all we can do, and that's how we improve. And then the most important one is be change ready. Don't get stuck in your ways. Pivot when you need to, adapt when you need to, because every moment there's new things. AI is coming hard. Are you adapting to it?

Before this, there was so many other elements that we had to deal with in the course of business. And those who don't realize that you have to be always learning, you have to be engaged. And so you ask, well, I don't know anything about AI. What am I going to do? And here's where the success formula comes. By making friends and having fun, you're going to know somebody who does know something and you can have an engaging, meaningful conversation to begin to learn.

You can Kisen your way there by making micro goals of saying, do it. And the last one I didn't mention, which is actually right before Kisen, is do it now. We wait too long until it's perfect to another day. Tomorrow is the scary, crazy thing where nothing ever happens. And yesterday is the past that we can't change. But what we can do is do it now. So make that text or email right now to somebody who knows AI if that's what you need to do. say, hey, can I please have five or 10 minutes?

I have a couple quick questions about AI. It's scary for me and I just want to begin the process of learning. So make friends and have fun so you know who to reach out to. Do it now. Take immediate action. Kisen 1%. Give your absolute best and then change and pivot your business in your life when you need to. That's what I would do if I was giving you advice as a small business owner or anybody.

I love that. I hope everybody wrote those down. If not, you can go back and hit play again on this video or on this podcast because that was some valuable information from. Jeff, Jeff, I want to dig into the AI piece that you brought up. I mean, it's, you know, we, a lot of our franchises are, you know, we're in the food space also, sandwiches, things that nature. You're in the bowl space. And franchisees look at it and they're like, I'm going to make bowls whether or not there's AI.

Or my folks are like, I'm going to make sandwiches whether or not there's AI. How can we start to look at integrating AI into small business from your perspective? Well, it's, I think it's a mistake we're making right now of what is AI. You know, we made this in the dot-com era back in the early 2000. where we didn't think, we thought internet was email. What we didn't realize was internet was connectivity and communication, right? So I didn't expect to be able to talk to my smart refrigerator and turn my oven on before I get home so it's hot when I'm, so I can buy time.

AI is the empowerment of making one individual become five. Meaning if you are using AI properly in your job, career, or life, you're able to duplicate yourself in a manner with which you couldn't before. I don't know much about coding. I don't know much about computers. I don't know much about whatever I don't know much about. AI gives me the ability to now have a much higher education, kind of like what a calculator did for math back in the day,

where you asked me what 142 times 975 is, and I would look at you blinking, but if I have a calculator, I can do it in two seconds. AI in a weird way has done that for a lot of individuals, especially in small business. And so if I'm a restaurateur as an example, and I sit there and I say, well, you're crazy if you're not at least leveraging it in a few capacities,

and I'll give you some. Have you leveraged and looked at your sales against weather and seen how you do on weather forecast historically? So now you do a weather forecast this week and you see that it's going to be cold and rainy three days. Maybe you want to schedule better. Have you looked at AI from your employees and said, which employees are working when we have the most tips in sales and which ones are working when we don't and schedule your better employees on your busy days? Have we looked at our food costs in a more congruent and simplistic way and said, okay, let's load in all of our food costs that we get from our suppliers and look at our menu items and are we driving and pushing and upselling the ones that make us more money?

Are we upselling the ones that cost us more money? Are we adjusting our hours of the day based on sales, realizing like we're closing at five, but our sales are pretty strong four to five. What if we stay till six or six 30 and expand what could be a busy day part and maybe not open at 7 a.m because we're pretty slow till nine. These small little things that used to be like, oh my gosh, that data would be incredible. Where do I get it? It's five minutes now with an artificial intelligence tool or an LLM. I mean, I don't know what POS system you use, but a lot of these are now built in. Yeah, I mean, you can obviously download from the point of sale systems, all of this data and then benchmark it against just the open internet using the large language models,

AI, whichever engine you want to apply it to. And by the way, for those listening, everything that Jeff just said is not a franchisor or a brand level opportunity. It is a local store level opportunity that anybody can just sit down, flip open their laptop and take advantage of. So, and those, those pennies add up to dollars. And those dollars add up to personnel costs and profitability and things of that nature. So definitely something to take a look at. And as you're talking about that, I was thinking, okay, how many people engage in the upsell in the business? Who's on, what's that? Would you like fries with that? The most famous thing McDonald's gave the entire restaurant industry.

It is the most important thing we've got is the would you like fries with that. And we don't. Exactly. Yeah. How many people at the register ask for the upsell in the local store? Or maybe if, you know, maybe you're selling shoes. Do you want to buy socks with that? I mean, that's, it was interesting.

When I was buying ski boots this year, the guy says, do you have some good socks? We didn't even talk about ski boots yet. He went to socks first. Yeah. And I'm like, this guy just sold me $100 worth of socks. It probably costs them $10. And I haven't even started talking about my $1,000 ski boots or whatever it is yet. So I'm going, wow, that was smarter.

You know, when you're getting a haircut, the people saying, what kind of product do you use? You know, things of that nature. And who's on doing that? Why don't we take advantage of using that knowledge and these comparison engines in order to see what's working best for our business? This is amazing. Now, let's talk about leadership in AI. Yeah, yeah. So let's say you're a leader in a business, Zor or a Z.

What do you think are some, I mean, obviously next week, this could totally change because somebody could come up with something new and go, oh, Claude Co-Work is doing this or Grok's doing that. But what are you instructing your leaders on right now to take a look at an AI? Well, in November of 24, I had two or three. It was two in November, one in December, so three. voluntary Saturday lunch and learns for my staff. And I brought in AI experts and we talked about AI.

Not all of them showed up, but the ones who did, did. And I said, guys, this is where we've got to be thinking about because this is a pivot in the professional world like I've never seen in my entire life. I'm forcing them to try to do everything with AI, meaning don't leverage AI and ask it to do your work for you. That's where people think incorrectly. No, it's use the tool. like a calculator to better understand what's in front of you. So instead of having a 150 different

Excel spreadsheets with data spread everywhere and have no data integrity, have AI do your busy work so you can work on your business, not in your business, or on your data, not in your data. And that's the big change because anyone who says, I just do this, therefore I don't need AI. He's the same person who said, I don't need the internet. I'm just a business owner, a bookstore, a Blockbuster, a Sears or, you know, these companies that didn't pivot and adjust. to when technology changed everything. Because there's a world now where if you don't use this data, somebody else is. And that data is absolutely everything.

So with AI, you know, I think that there's such a great opportunity for everybody to really leverage up because from whether it's local advertising and marketing to even consolidation of information to just showing your employees. You could be using it to remember that it's their birthdays, their favorite colors, things to make hospitality better. I mean, there's so many unique ways that you can utilize this data and this information that if you are, you're just separating yourself. You're being remarkable.

You're showing and acting differently. You can start to take what used to be very hard, long, and arduous, something that was not at your disposal and now act as if you're Chipotle or Starbucks. I mean, we've never had the ability as a small business owner or a mid-sized business to have the tools and resources and capabilities that used to be reserved. for the multi-billion dollar mass, you know, S&P 500 companies that had all the resources in the world. Right. Data that they never had 20 years ago.

And now what separates us? You know, because before small and big businesses, we only had one great gift that we could beat them with, which was speed and agility. We were a small, little zingy, you know, speedboat and their big behemoth, you know, cruise boat. They don't change and adapt as fast as we do, so we got to. But now we have the same access to information. Yep. I don't need to go hire somebody I can't afford to do some work that I don't understand. I can now use it.

I mean, and these new tools like Replit and lovable that allow you to do, you know, this coding stuff that you can just talk to it. I mean, I'm building tools that are fascinating. And I don't know anything. I mean, I couldn't even work the, I needed Nate the Great to help me with the mic and the camera today. So it shows that you now are able to be the equivalent of five, six, ten people. And if you do that for yourself, you become a true resource for yourself, for your organization, for the community,

and you probably will be one of the few that will survive the transition that's going to happen. It's fascinating to say that. I mean, realistically, we try to be the ones who say, here's the problem I want to solve. But the reality is we probably don't even see the problem that AI sees that we should be solving. Correct. So when you take and you look at the possibility here, and I'm just thinking out loud,

but, you know, AI is an amazing correlation machine. So you might have your point of sales or your POS system that, you know, your cash register for those that don't speak to lingo in the space. And all the data behind that, you would have your scheduling, you would have your menu of some sorts. And so we have this data and the books behind it for, call it this past six or 12 months, and we load all that into someplace and say, do me some, create some correlation. around this and tell me where I'm weak in these things. And now predict where I could be stronger

with these things. And now, here's the interesting part. We all now have MBAs because of AI. So you come in and when I was doing my MBA, part of it was we're talking about Porter's Five Forces and SWAT analysis and, you know, where do we spend all of our marketing money in order to maximize the growth curve in the organization, things like that? You can ask it, say, you have a, a Harvard MBA, which I don't, by the way, but you have a Harvard MBA. Take all the MBA analysis tools and all the data that I've given to you and tell me where I'm weak in my business. Sure. And it will open your eyes to things that you have not even seen. And don't be afraid to do that. The one thing I hear about people, and you've probably heard this also, Jeff,

people are like, well, I don't want to upload it because then all my competitors will have that information. They already do. Right. It's crazy. It's crazy. You just said it was so great. The prompts and how you ask it and then challenge it and ask it to tell you why it's wrong. I like that. Like I would say, put the exact circumstance I just gave you and tell me how Steve Ells would have handled it or has handled it in the past. Give me real world examples of McDonald's dealing with a similar or the closest example that you have access to and how they would have handled this and how you predict that they

would be doing this. And, you know, there's a hack I used to do, which I still do, but used to meaning before AI, I had no other option. Now I do is I listen to quarterly calls. on public companies in my industry. So I would listen to Domino's and McDonald's quarterly calls, where I'm hearing their CMOs and their CFOs talk about problems they're dealing with, where they're moving because they're public companies. And so during COVID, I was listening to Domino's and McDonald's and then really talking about Wendy's talking about the investment in

technology and the app and how the consumer's behavior was going to change from ordering in a restaurant to off-premise. And I didn't have their resources or an L-L-LM at the time, but I started to think about that for Everpool. And were they right? Of course they were. That's why they're the biggest in the space, right? So those opportunities are now available without having a way to every quarter to listen to a phone call from whoever they decide to share. I can now have these LLM models do exactly what you just said. You know, I can have an LLM that I create an agent and have it understand how my needs are and run through my legal contracts before I even send them to my lawyer to save me legal money.

So I'm giving my lawyer a better prepared document for them to now actually put human eyes on. those little things add up. They save you a lot of money in the long run because you said something earlier, which to me has been the biggest win that I've ever had in this hospitality space. I know later we'll start with, but this is a massive one. I used to focus on dollars and for everyone. And the mistake I was making, and it's not. In restaurants, you need to focus on pennies, let the dollars take care of themselves.

And I learned that lesson when I had 21 of my own restaurants long before franchising. my labor was scheduled right, but I was getting killed in my labor. I didn't understand why my labor numbers weren't working. And then I found out that my average employee clocked in four minutes early and they clocked out six minutes late every day. Now, four minutes for someone who's making at the time, it was like 12 bucks an hour, is nothing, it's pennies. So I wouldn't notice it.

But times four or five employees a day, times 21 stores, times 365 days a year, is a six figure hole in my pocket that was unaccounted for because it was pennies a day per store, hard to see. Dollars are easy to see. You know, if I lose $1,000, it's big, easy to find out on my balance sheet or my P&L or my bank account. But when you lose $2.40 by from every employee, every day. And all of a sudden, the days go by and the weeks go by and it's tens of thousands of dollars. It made me realize focus on pennies. So now I can use AI and LLMs to help me understand where those pennies could be. I can load in my monthly labor and my data from my POS and my bank account in my actual P&Ls from my bookkeeper, if you use one, and say, help me identify

where is my slippage and leakage. This was my plan. This is my reality. What am I not seeing? I love this. The ability is incredible. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I mean, here's the important thing, since we're nerding out on labor and, you know, profitability and small businesses, folks, 70% of the leakage in your business and the labor issues, the employee issues, are caused by middle management. So we have to train our middle management to keep an eye out for these things and understand how to correlate those to profitability. And maybe they get bonus on this by tightening things up. Who knows? But realistically, labor costs go through the roof and prime cost, which is a restaurant term. You know, we talk about labor costs, cost to get sold, things like that. In prime costs, those things go through the roof and kill your profitability when you have bad management

because you have more people in training and you have mismanagement of those labor. hours. So throw that into a correlation machine or AI and say, tell me where I'm overtraining or not, you know, maintaining a long longevity of employees. So maybe you have turnover because your managers are jerks or something like that or where people are clocking in too early, too later, or anything else that's causing leakage in labor cost. And you're going to, you're going to have your eyes opened and go, whoa, all right, Christmas just got a lot better this year. So. And as you just said, what you just freed up was investment dollars. You know, so often I hear, you know, when I'm helping small business owners are talking with them and

they're asking me questions, they say, well, I don't have the money to invest in this. And I go, what you do, you just happen to be letting it fall out of your pocket every day. So, why are you not realizing that this is where you should be spending your time? Because this is going to reward you with the most increase in working capital tomorrow without having to sell another product through your door. This is free money that you can then choose to give bonuses. You can choose to invest in another location or invest in tech. or hire somebody else in your organization or do a marketing campaign or put it in your pocket and go out to dinner, you have the opportunity to choose when you focus on that because that's

actually the pennies is where your dollars are going. The big items, you know, a fridge breaks, a fridge breaks. It's something we can do about it. Right. But if you leave the door open every day and you let $2 of electricity walk out the door, that's $60 a month, times 12, times however many stores you have. And all of a sudden, that's your new fridge when the fridge breaks. Yep. Found money, folks. Found money. All right, Jeff, where can we find you online to learn more about you, your business, franchising, leadership, things of that nature? Well, Averbal.com, if you're interested in Averbal.

I have a couple other businesses. We build as I help business, retail restaurants, gyms, service industries. I helped them scale in a way that we did for Everbole, which has been fun. But jeffensler.com, everbole.com. Definitely listen to starts with the win our episode because that's always a good place. And, you know, I'm a good. I'm a student. So I like to learn as much as I can. And I like to help. I speak and a little less these days, but I travel around and I speak and I try to help, you know, aspiring entrepreneurs and

people who are struggling like me and how I used to break through because it's, it's available for everybody. You don't have to be genius or have skills and attributes that you don't think you have to be successful, you know, experience is overrated. The average person can do amazing things because all they got to do is learn the formula. And so I'm trying to spread that message and help. There you go. And this is a giving. space. Everybody wants to help everybody else. Because the reality is people eat three times a day. And they are out

being consumers. So let's help each other give the customer base a great experience. So learn from each other. Jeff, you're sharing a lot of great information. Everybody, make sure you check out Jeff online. Jeff, I have a question. I ask all the great leaders on the show. How do you start your day with a win?

Well, that's a good question. And it's a great one because I'm a big believer in win stacking, meaning consistency and you got to start the day with a win and keep going. And, you know, there was a famous saying, make your bed so you can do that. So the first thing I actually do is I don't make my bed. I drink a glass of water. Why? Because it's something that I can do immediately.

It's good for my body and my soul. It's hydrating. And when I drink that glass of water reminds me that I need to control the controllables all day. It's up to me to stay hydrated. And that's something that I was an athlete growing up. So I was all about hydration. And I know it sounds trivial. and it's kind of like the making the bed thing, but for me, it worked because I said,

if I can control hydration and I can focus on the winds that I can control, I do. So I try to start my day with the wind by controlling the first controllable I can, which is my hydration. I'm not a bedmaker by trade. So that was my version of it. And from there, every time I struggling, I go, okay, hydrate. What are the things I got to hydrate in my business? What are the things I got to hydrate in my family, in relationships, and with myself?

And that's kind of my mental cue to say, learn, do good, show up, finish, you know, all the things that I forget. So for me, it's the glass of water right by the bed or the water bottle. And I start my day with a win there. I know it doesn't sound as probably as good as some of your other guests, but it served me well. And, you know, that's a good one, yeah. I love it.

And I love the wind stacking. You know, we all know that small wins create big wins and it keeps you winning. And you're going to have setbacks. But as long as we keep moving forward, hitting those small wins, life is grand. And we build our businesses. So Jeff Fenster. Great business leader, founder, CEO, just a great guy. Fun to be around and good friend.

Thank you for being on here. Everybody, make sure you check them out. Huge fan, Adam. I mean, I really appreciate what you're doing for the space and how you're giving back. And if I can ever do anything for you or any of your guests, please don't ever hesitate to reach out. And I really look forward to continuing these kinds of conversations because it is a community and we've got to help each other, bro.

Awesome. Thanks a lot, Jeff. And thanks for starting your day with a win. Thank you.