Making Your Business a Force for Good with The FruitGuys Founder Chris Mittelstaedt
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The Nitty Gritty:
- How “necessity being the mother of invention” guided The FruitGuys into the B2B space and the subscription model
- How to think about growth or look for opportunity even in times of crisis
- Why you should think about the meaning you want to have in the world all the time and how you drive business to align with that meaning
My guest this week on the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast is Chris Mittelstaedt, founder, CEO and Chief Banana of The FruitGuys, America’s No. 1 and original office fruit provider. He tells me about starting a biz in San Francisco during the heyday of the first dot-com wave and weathering the bust as a business owner, his learning experiences for how and when to expand business operations and how making a difference and being a force for good is at The FruitGuys’ core.
Necessity: Mother of Invention
It was a reality-driven strategy, and to be honest I often think those are the best strategies anyway.
— Chris Mittelstaedt
Although Chris moved to San Francisco in the 1990s because he wanted to be a poet, he was working in the business services department of the Fairmont Hotel as a temp in 1997 when he first contemplated the idea of delivering fruit to offices. He and his wife were expecting their first baby, and Chris needed to determine what he wanted to do with his life very quickly. He had a friend who had a coffee cart and mentioned that office workers would really like something healthy to eat. So, the idea of The FruitGuys was born. They opened in 1998, an incredible time in San Francisco, as a bootstrapped company among a venture capital, dot-com world.
Chris shares that although this B2B business was the only option at the time and some of his earliest business decisions such as to focus on the B2B space and to create a subscription model of business were born out of necessity, he grew to really understand the B2B space and over the 20 years in business so far they have developed a core competency for the higher service levels required for B2B work.
Grow Smart in Times of Crisis
Risk aversion is actually something I think about all the time. I NEVER want to be a deer in the headlights and do nothing. I always want to be in fight or flight.
— Chris Mittelstaedt
After an early learning experience of expanding that left the business with a significant loan to pay off during a downturn in the economy, all of The FruitGuys’ subsequent expansion has been variable cost expansion not fixed cost expansion. That’s allowed them to think about growth and about how they expand or look for opportunities in times of crisis in a really creative way so they don’t put themselves in more debt or more at risk.
A Force for Good
Business owners need to be empowered to talk about the positive value of business, what it gives back rather than something that can potentially harm.
— Chris Mittelstaedt
From day one, The FruitGuys has been an organization that has always thought about its impact on the community and the world. Even in their earliest days, when they had leftover fruit, they would go around and hand it out to people on the street. Today, they operate The FruitGuys GoodWorks Program, that supports the small sustainable farms that grow their food and aims to reduce food waste and give excess fruit to those who are hungry. In every way, Chris wants his business to be a positive influence.
There’s much more to learn and be inspired by in the full episode, including more details about growing a business in San Francisco among tech giants, a specific example of how The FruitGuys expanded in a safe, variable-cost way and you certainly don’t want to miss out on hearing about Chris’ passion project to write Harry Potter meets the anti-Ayn Rand.
Every week, I speak with inspiring entrepreneurs about how they started and grew their businesses. Please join us and subscribe on iTunes today!
Pursuing an Adventurous Life with Uncaged Life founder Rebecca Tracey
The Nitty Gritty:
- How conscious scheduling allows Tracey to time gaps to be “out” of her business and travel
- Why careful cash flow management is imperative when you sell fewer products or services
- How experimentation was key to helping her business evolve
This week on the Profit. Power. Pursuit podcast I talk to Uncaged Life founder Rebecca Tracey, and the insights she has for building a business that allows her to pursue her personal adventures in rock climbing and traveling the world are incredible. Rebecca helps solopreneurs, life and health coaches, virtual assistants and more who are just starting out build an online business they can run from anywhere in the world.
Conscious Scheduling
I take a lot of time off. To the point people ask, ‘Do you work at all?’
– Rebecca Tracey
Even though Rebecca first started her business while living in a van while on an 8-month rock climbing trip (something she doesn’t recommend by the way), she soon realized that for her to live the life she wanted it would be important to not have client time during the climbing season. She has created a business model that allows her to run one main program that launches twice a year that are strategically scheduled for right before or after climbing season. When she’s traveling, she doesn’t have anything in her business that consistently needs her time, although she admits it did take some time to experiment and figure out what would work.
Careful Cash Flow Management
My lifestyle is adventurous and awesome, but also pretty cheap.
– Rebecca Tracey
Rebecca used to run her program six times per year, but has gone down to two times. It’s her second year trying out her streamlined business model and she’s still getting used to it. It’s definitely a bit scary and a little stressful being reliant on only two launches a year to make the money she needs. To ease that stress, she has a financial buffer in savings to cover her personal and business expenses if one of her launches doesn’t hit the numbers, but so far, things are working out well. Her operating expenses are also quite low.
Evolution of a Business
As her business model evolved Rebecca wasn’t afraid to experiment. The program that she runs is really fine-tuned and gets results, and it’s the thing she loves doing most in her business. She decided that her program was going to be the thing she would sell, and she stopped messing around with trying to create new things all the time. She decided to just give it a go at her program being her main thing. It was working and feeling pretty good, so she decided, why not just go for it.
When she realized that running the program six times a year wasn’t very “uncaged” of her or good for her sanity, she experimented with reducing the frequency. As a result, even though at first she didn’t want to increase her group size and it was a little scary to do so, she had to if she was going down in frequency. So, she doubled the group size and when everything seemed to run smoothly, she doubled the group size again. She did have to make changes to the program to accommodate more people and she’s still adjusting her marketing efforts to be sure she gets the number of participants she needs for each launch. She knows that she will continue to evolve her business model in the future, as the program she runs will eventually expire.
Be sure to tune into the full episode where you can learn more specifics about Rebecca’s adventurous life and her formula for success at juggling her business and her personal passions.
I invite you to subscribe to the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast on iTunes to join our community of like-minded entrepreneurs and learn my guests who share the nitty-gritty details of forging the life and business you want.
The Ins & Outs of Authentic Networking with Art of Charm Co-founder Jordan Harbinger
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The Nitty Gritty:
- What a day in the life looks like for Jordan as an entrepreneur
- What he does to manage his email and not waste time
- How to maximize your return when you network
Networking guru Jordan Harbinger, co-founder of the Art of Charm podcast and franchise is my guest on this week’s episode of the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast. In this episode, we dig into his daily routine as an entrepreneur, he shared some email management tips I’m excited to implement and lots of valuable insight on the best way to network—we can all use that, right?
Jordan and his business partner AJ didn’t start out with the intention of creating a business together. What became the Art of Charm podcast started out as just conversations about nonverbal communication, persuasion, influence and even dating and attraction. Their friends found these conversations valuable and would join AJ and Jordan at restaurants and bars before any of us knew the term podcast. Soon, the team ventured online and even had air time on SiriusXM satellite radio. Their business continues to grow since having a weekly broadcast since 2006.
A Day In the Life of an Entrepreneur
I like to make damn sure that I’m engaging with people and practicing what we preach here at the Art of Charm and not just sitting up here writing books about networking and then never doing it.
– Jordan Harbinger
As he would advise any business owner, Jordan checks email first thing every morning to be sure to jump on any issues or negativity before it has a chance to get out of hand. He also spends a bit of time every morning on personal development; right now he’s learning Chinese! In addition, he studies his craft and will watch other interviewers each day to get his creative juices flowing. Following that, he works his network by checking in with friends and colleagues and then does extensive show prep for the podcast.
Jordan is also responsible for engaging his audience on Twitter and Facebook. Although he delegates regularly posting, he personally handles responses to posts as “it’s a little disingenuous to say, tweet at me, and some person in the Philippines is pretending to be you.”
He schedules all admin duties and meetings on Monday, so he can spend the rest of the week on creative pursuits. And to avoid micromanaging, he checks in on the work his employees are doing just once per week. A lot of his responsibilities are scheduled and regular which is great because it makes it predictable. If there is ever any sort of emergency, he can plan to be flexible for that because he’s not just flying by the seat of his pants all day every day.
Email Management
Jordan triages his email every morning with the assistance of Spark, an app that helps him quickly see the important messages and organize the rest. If there is anything that needs done immediately, he delegates those tasks. He suggests that every time you look at an email you need to make a decision about its level of importance and what to do with it. If you don’t have the time to make a decision, don’t look at the email at all. It’s just a waste of time, because you’ll have to re-read it later when you are going to make a decision about it.
Networking Is Usually about a Serendipitous Relationship
The only way to maximize your return on your networking is to help everyone you can without actually expecting anything in return.
– Jordan Harbinger
Most people network with a specific target in mind and want to meet a particular person because they think that person will deliver opportunities. In Jordan’s experience, they rarely do, even though hobnobbing with celebrities or powerful people does make for good cocktail party conversation.
You usually can’t see the opportunities that you end up getting because they are over the horizon. So, the way that you get them is by helping other people without expecting anything in return. Those are the same types of people that will then later on reciprocate.
Check out the entire podcast to learn more about networking, how to avoid a major faux pas of networking, what’s next for Art of Charm including The Art of Networking, a new course on CreativeLive, and more!
Each week I interview today’s brilliant entrepreneurs who offer listeners nuggets of wisdom for anyone building a business. I hope you will join me and subscribe in iTunes so you never miss out!
Cultivating A Confident Personal Brand with Bestselling Author Gabby Bernstein
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The Nitty Gritty:
- Why bringing your authentic self to every interaction is the key to confidence
- Why getting your content right first is priority over branding
- Why you must be committed to healing any beliefs that stand in your way of receiving
You’re not going to want to miss a minute of the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast this week when I talk to No. 1 New York Times best-selling author, spiritual junkie and international speaker Gabby Bernstein. Gabby shares her secrets about cultivating a confident personal brand, when she added to her team and, oh yeah, getting interviewed by Miss Oprah Winfrey.
Your Authentic Self Builds Confidence
Nobody really wants anything other than you.
– Gabby Bernstein
Gabby says the key to confidence is showing up as your authentic self whether that is vulnerable, goofy, nerdy or something else. If you show up with the state of presence of being your authentic self, that’s when people resonate with you most.
She gained more and more confidence over the years when she became more and more Gabby, and she believes showing up as your authentic self is the key to owning a room, holding a group and to having your presence have an impact.
The first step is knowing the difference between what if feels like to be in alignment with your authenticity and what it feels like when you’re not. When you witness that misalignment, stop doing whatever you were doing and take a breath. You can always breathe yourself back to your truth.
To those that worry about coming off as egotistical when you are your authentic self, Gabby says:
“Being more authentic is the least egotistical thing you can do. The more authentic you are the more you give other people permission to be real. It’s a gift to be real to other people. It means your ego is out of the way when you’re authentic. When you’re trying to be something else is when your ego is in the way.”
Get Your Content Right, Branding Can Follow
I need to make sure I’m keeping it real with whatever I’m doing.
– Gabby Bernstein
No matter what Gabby produces—a new website, blog, social media post or event—she always checks herself to be sure what she’s presenting is free of ego and in the service of what she is doing.
Gabby had never done any traditional branding until about a year ago, mainly because she doesn’t live in the world that way. She’s not a visual person, but when she sees something that’s right for her, she physically knows it and feels it.
Before you get your brand right, get your content right.
Stay Committed to Healing Any Beliefs that Stand in Your Way of Receiving
As I become more grounded in my spiritual foundation, my business grows more, ultimately.
– Gabby Bernstein
Gabby had a belief that if she wasn’t the one to handle things for her business, no one else would, but she shared that that belief was going to kill her and led to severe work addiction. Transcending that belief system changed her life and allowed her to hire tons of people and invest in her business so she can focus on more creative pursuits rather than be tied down in the minutia of the business.
I hope you’ll join us for the full episode when we talk about how Gabby healed and kept her business running after hitting rock bottom, why things happen in her business at the perfect time (yes, even that call from Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday producer), Gabby’s Spirit Junkie masterclass, her “greatest contribution in the world,” and what’s on the horizon for her.
Every week I chat about the nitty-gritty of entrepreneurship with leaders who are building success. Never miss a single episode by subscribing on iTunes.
Finding a Niche That Leads to Success with Photographer Galicia Virgen
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The Nitty Gritty:
- Why determining a niche and focusing on it helps business thrive
- How staying in alignment with core values produces success and new opportunities
- How to capitalize on marketing that also creates revenue
When Galicia Virgen, my guest on this week’s Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast sticks to her core values within her business, she finds she ends up with a revenue mindset and her business thrives. Galicia is the owner and creative mind behind Photography by Galicia, a high school senior portrait studio and The Twelfth Year, a training resource for other senior portrait photographers.
Finding Her Niche
When Galicia started her photography business, she used to shoot everything—babies, food, families. After being inspired with a creative collaboration with one of her daughters and the resulting confidence boost that a high-quality, personalized senior portrait session had on her, Galicia knew she wanted to give that feeling to other girls.
Becoming niche specific has been a blessing. I have more work than I can handle.
– Galicia Virgen
So, about a year into her business, she decided she wanted to be known as the best senior portrait photographer in her town. To gain experience and knowledge to help her achieve her goal, she turned down work taking pictures of other genres. She studied all she could about how teens think, how they look at themselves and what they look for. She became an expert in senior portrait photography, and now has more work than she can handle.
Alignment with Core Values Produces New Opportunities
I found such great success when I switched my business model to reflect what my passion was.
– Galicia Virgen
With a go-giver mindset, Galicia has developed new products and services for both businesses based on her desire to serve. She wants the high school seniors and other photographers she works with to become the best they can be. When ideas brew in her heart and her gut, she knows she’s onto something that can make a difference. This was the case for her latest product that develops social media content for teens, by teens that can be used by her fellow photographers to reach their target market.
Street Team—New Twist on Senior Rep Program
Most senior portrait photographers have a senior rep program where teens are used to market the photography business, but Galicia’s focuses on what she can give the girls who participate in it. Called the Street Team, this program is her pride and joy. By delivering above and beyond and making it all about the girls and the incredible experiences they get by participating, it has done more for her business than requiring them to hand out her business cards and other tactics used by other rep programs. She focuses her program on the participants and to help them become better versions of themselves. She treats them like other clients, but they get a lot more perks and bonuses.
To listen in to our conversation, tune into the full episode where we talk about her process, her team and plans for the future.
Why not become a regular listener to the Profit. Power. Pursuit. podcast? Just subscribe on iTunes to get the nitty-gritty details directly from today’s most innovative and successful entrepreneurs who are living the lives of their dreams.
What Kind Of Person Are You?
I’m not the kind of person who wakes up early to exercise.
I’m not the kind of person who is outdoorsy.
I’m not the kind of person who makes a lot of money.
You have a story (probably many) about who you are and what you’re about.
Those 4 were some of mine.
Have a minute? I’d like to share more–but it’s personal.
***
In January 2016, I hired a personal trainer because I thought I needed someone to hold me accountable for exercising on a regular basis.
I didn’t like the way I felt, the way I looked, or the amount of energy I had. It seemed like a reasonable solution to the problem.
Guess what? I went to the first 2-3 sessions of the package I purchased and didn’t show up for the rest.
In January 2017, I decided I was going to set my alarm for 6am and start the day with a workout.
I’ve massively succeeded. I feel more comfortable in my body, I love the way I look, and I have pretty boundless energy.
The difference? When I hired a trainer, I told myself, “I’m not the kind of person who exercises on her own.”
When I got serious about changing my routine, I told myself, “I am the kind of person who wakes up early to take care of herself.”
And, now I am.
***
I moved to the coast of Oregon 5 years ago.
Every day, I felt like a “city person” in our small fishing town.
I loved spending time outside in the temperate rain forest, at the beach, or in the state parks. But I looked at Sean’s friends–who would hike up a mountain and then ride their bikes 20 miles on the beach in one weekend–with jealousy.
They were “outdoorsy” people.
When I moved back to PA 2 years ago, I grieved the loss of the wild outdoors. I wanted mountains, beaches, and rivers. But I realized that PA Dutch countryside, deciduous forest, and rail trails were cool too.
We bought a Subaru. We got a bike rack. I bought hiking shoes.
And we used them.
One day Sean said, “I think we’re becoming the kind of people who go hiking & biking every weekend.”
I said, “We already are.”
***
When I started my business, I set my earning goal at about $30,000.
That’s how much I had been making in my previous job.
After all, the person I am–the interests I have, the skills I have, the way of thinking I have–isn’t the kind of person who makes a lot of money.
Luckily, I met a lot of women (and men) who were exactly the kind of person I knew myself to be (smart, ambitious, values-driven, philosophically-minded…) who were making a lot of money running fabulous businesses.
I changed my mind: I am the kind of person who makes a lot of money.
Not only that, I’m the kind of person who leads a company that makes a lot of money.
And now I do… and now I do.
***
What I’ve discovered is that, quite often, when I say, “I’m not that kind of person…”
What I mean is that “I wish I was that kind of person. Too bad I’m not.”
What’s more, I’ve discovered that I can be any kind of person I really want to be simply by changing my story and taking action to make it real.
Now, left to my own devices I might have been perfect (dis)content to limit myself to my preconceived notions of who I am and what I’m capable of.
But I make a point to surround myself with savvy, fiercely intelligent, healthy, and happy friends. They’re business owners who are constantly improving themselves, their companies, and their craft.
They’re the members of CoCommercial–an online community of small business owners serious about making waves in the New Economy.
Yesterday, during CoCommercial‘s The New Economy & Your Money virtual conference, I asked our members to consider their money stories.
They shared the “kind of person” they believed themselves to be.
And many, many of them realized that the kind of person they believed themselves to be was only a shadow of who they truly wanted to be.
They realized that by shifting their money stories, their entrepreneurial stories, or their personal stories, they could change the action they took and the reality they lived in.
Think about the reality you’re creating with the stories you’re telling yourself about the person you are.
If you don’t like the “kind of person” you believe yourself to be, take action to change it. When you do differently, you become something new.
When you become something new, it might be the person you’ve been all along.
***
Interested in surrounding yourself with the kind of business owners who can help YOU make this kind of leap?