Your business is sponsored by hi, everyone. Welcome to your business. How many of you love a good food truck . The meals have definitely come a long way. You no longer have to settle for hot dogs or pretzels. With hungry customers all lined up, two virginia owners have made food trucks their lives. And they started a company eto help others. Many food truck owners are now roll in the dough. Your entire approach to growth is problem solving. Growth is painful and uncomfortable. Eduardo and jason know its scary to expand your company. When you start a business youre taking a huge risk. Everything weve done has been in response to trying to solve a problem for our customer. The owners of east coast mobile business launch pad have so focused on the success of their clients that theyve made Business Decisions designed to support them. Our intent is to make it easier to run a food truck so that more people can get into the business. And two, now were focusing on helping people. What started as a company that only customized food trucks in 2007 has transformed into a one stop shop that keeps these restaurants on wheels rolling around washington, d. C. , maryland and virginia. Food trucks are now their own attraction. Were Firm Believers that you dont need to brick and mortar to make money. Its not a location based business, which means that your rent is cheap. And the second thing is, no seating. Eduardo started east coast after buying his first food truck in texas. It was an awful experience. And he didnt want anyone else suffering the setback he did. I brought it to virginia, had to rebuild it so that i wouldnt die in it. And i was like, i cant be the only person with this problem. If this guy can build nofood trucks, i can build food truck zb. Both men love food and have worked in many kitchens. Its that expertise that they share with customers buying their first, second and third trucks. You have to understand what it takes to put together a dish in order to understand what equipment you need to put that together and in which order it needs to be laid out in order to make it as efficient as possible. We know how to value the rusk and assess the risk. East coast transformed the food truck industry by offering more and mores is services. The expansion was because of listening to their customers and needs. Were set up to serve the widest possible range of people that want to start a food truck and our services are you can take them or leave them. Nobody offers these services. Nobody. East coast takes its customers through every step of the process. It now sources trucks, customizes the kitchen were orders equipment, arrangines branding and advises on business structuring and offer advice on what food to sell. Make sure that the menu makes sense and that eve eaten something similar before. Theres now a second location in washington, d. C. Where operates can have trucks checked out as part of a service deal. The pair financed some of the equipment theyve built by using their own profits. Most people cant come up with 60,000 or 70,000. We were seeing people with good concepts and would be successful if they had the financing. We then had to figure out how to get the sale and if we can bridge the gap to getting a completed truck, we know theyre going to pay us back. The financing then helps us to develop a revenue stream where weve good guaranteed money coming in. Now they have so many customers on the road locally, nationally and globally, eduardo and jason want to make sure they can keep trucking. We want our customeres to succeed. Many customers dont know it, but eduardo and jason have food trucks of their own. One of the things that makes us a successful business is were really transparent and honest with people. It allows them to stay on top of trends and better understand the evolving needs of mobile business owners. When i open my food truck, none of that was available. And i made all of the mistakes, burned all kinds of money on all of the wrong things because you tonig dont know which is the right problem to solve. People trust theyre in the right hands, questions answered getting welcome advice. He helps translate it down into building a truck. All of the work doesnt pale in comparison to their future goals. Our big picture growth plan is to replicate the auto facility, having Service Centers in major urban areas around the country where we sell food truck builds, demo them and serve as the local food truck fleet. Eduardo and jason have made this their mission. Theyve come up with ways to help their customers succeed and they thoroughly enjoy being by their side every step of the way. Weve got their back. That theyre not alone in starting the business. We want our customers to feel like were their partner in their endeavor. Food as we just saw is a real passion for a lot of people. And that love spawns many businesses. But what happens when you take your love for food and business and mix it with your love for your partner. Nbc chenille jones talks to two entrepreneurial couples to find out. This couple has been flipping over flapjacks long before they said i do. Pancakes are an american staple. Everyone has eat an pancake in their lifetime. We wanted to do something that relied on everyones personal experiences with pancakes. We started this business right out of college, we got married a couple of years ago. Six years ago, 20somethings fresh out of college grid ld up their all natural all american organic pancake and waffle mix, birch benders. The initial idea came about when i woke up one morning, i was really hungry and wanted pancakes but didnt want to go through the hassle of making pan takes. Based in denver, the husband and wife due so said it took 99 taste tests to settle on their one step recipes. Only requiring water. We wanted to make the best possible pancake experience requiring the least amount of work. There wasnt anything like that and i truly fundamentally from the bottom of my heart believed it would work. But it took a while. We would go to the stores and do two a day demos every day for a year. The concept paid off, taking a bite out of an industry that serves un2p 200 million america a year. We have sweet potato, pumpkin spice, original, buttermilk. Sold at 6,000 frogroceries a big box retailers across the country. Pillow talk is a lot of pancake talk. Talking of mixing business and pleasure, theres plenty of sweet talk between this california couple. Four years ago josh and rosie fit their jobs in toys and tech and started a grown up candy boutique. The story has followed our love story. Josh took me to see willie wonka and the chocolate factory. It seems obviously candy for grown ups, it hasnt been done before. The Company Sells millions of pounds of candy a year. We thought it was going to be a hobby and the response is amazing. I think people really got it. Last summer sugissuing sugar blast. I got to do the more boring things. Hes good at the boring stuff. I think were always on a constant sugar high. That helps our relationship. And that has translated squarely into success. We know how lucky we are that we get to spend every day together, we get to travel, taste and experiment new candies. Its a Pretty Amazing experience. Awww. Were happy today to have with us an incredibly successful entrepreneur, a pillar of the business company. His rags to riches biography is featured in a documentary. John paul, thank you so much more joining us today. My pleasure. Youve got a great station and youre super cool. I wish we could talk with you the whole day but youve been so successful in yuour life. I know you started, you were homeless and things were hard. But i would love to hear from someone who is so successful about the time when you felt i need to give this all up. Did that ever happen to you. Was it ever so hard that you thought i cant do it. So many times i was so down i would look up and see an ant. We only started for 700 dollars. Every day for two years we should have gone bankrupt. It was hand to mouth. Very difficult. Why are we doing this. I cant pay the bills, i cant sleep at night. That happened many times. People are saying no. I cant get this from this person. A lot of times. But deep inside it was, i know what we have is the greatest product for hair, i know if i keep on talking about it to enough people and they try it, theyre going to reorder it. After two years, a big movement for us, after two years we were able to pay our bills on time. Not off but on time. Now since that time are there ups and downs, of course there were. But what youve got to do is realize that dont take your mind off of the goal. Obstacles are things well always see but you put your mind on the goal and go like a river, go around the problems. Because many times people Pay Attention to the trivia many. But then you learn after a while, Pay Attention to the vital few. Not the trivial many. Duping you were a go getter, an optimist and ambitious or is there something that you did in the middle of the night when you were up at 2 00 a. M. Worried. It didnt help any. The bills were still there the next day. That didnt help at all. After a couple of years i started writing before i went to bed challenges down. Writing them down on a piece of paper. Instead of thinking about them all night long like most people do, i put it in the bathroom. You get up in the morning, its still there. I could read every problem i had. Didnt have to think about it all the time. I believe in all of those little tips and tricks that you can do to help yourself get through the day. Every successful entrepreneur ive interviewed have this same attitude which is i dreamed so big, ridiculously big. And when somebody didnt agree with me, instead of listening to them. I think thats where a lot of people get stuck. Thats true. They think their dreams are too large so they dont let themselves believe in them. Or our original dream is only if we can do 5 million a year at Paul Mitchell we would make 250,000 each. Were set for life. We realized we could do much better and we learned how to be bigger and bigger. We thought we could do 100,000 case as year. Little did we know we would get into the millions. And i know in the news here recently was that they had sold one particular tequila company, Michael Millman was involved in, george clooney. 700 million. A billion dollars it sold for. This they do 120 ca,000 cases a year. We have more money to give away and help the world with. You are a big fiphilanthropi. Youre such an inspiring story. I e encourage everyone to watch the documentary and read the book. And i want people to remember that the American Dream is alive and we Business People can make it. Keep your eye on the goal. Theres a lot of things along the way that will discourage you. As long as you know theres rejection coming, it doesnt hurt you as much. You are the example. Homeless to think. Thank you so much c. Youre very welcome. Thank you. It makes it aa lot harder to be a leader if you dont put focus on your own wellbeing. We have these high impact ways for Business Leaders to increase their productive tiff. One, get a good sleep. Lack of sleep can reduce your focus and limit high brain functions. Get 6 to 8 hours a night for peek performance. Two, work on your eating habits. Our food is our bodys fuel. Put bad stuff in, get bad stuff out. Fatty foods take energy to break down and cause you to feel drained. Three, get out and exercise. Regular exercise can help you be a better leader. Exercise reduces stress, fights depression, improves confidence and boosts your creativity. Four, make time to meditate. No matter how spiritual you are, you can improve your performance by taking some time to unplug, five to ten minutes reflecting a and keeping yourself grounded every day. And five, read voraciously. Reading has a direct impact on your emotional awareness. Read everything to stay balanced and wellinformed. I recently stopped by the International Franchise expoe in new york city where company were whoaing potential fan chiez e f. The ceo of Health Care StaffingCompany Bright star care with more than 300 locations nationwide. She knows what shes talking about. We asked her to give us a nittygritty of what you need to do if you want to franchise your business. I think from a franchiser perspective, people need to know they have a successful business mod model. Theyve done it once, replicated it a second or third time to know that it wasnt just luck and making sure its something thats needed by the consumer on a national scale, not a local or regional fad. And there are skill sets they have with their own schooling. What are the mistakes that people make. A lot of people say i have a great company, i want to franchise it and dont understand this is going to be hard work. I think theres a few. I think one most are not properly capitalized. Like building a house, be done faster and cost less than it will actually. Thats one. The second is i think they really under estimate the skill sets of the franchisees coming in have and therefore what we need to provide in terms of training. For example we had really robust Training Programs for our franchisees in terms of operations, sales and clinical. Multiple weeks. But we realized most of our franchisees have never looked at a profit and loss statement. They dont have finance skills. We had to teach our franchisees that. You need to put together back for training. Exactly. One of two of my people go out to the location to refine the med mods l bel of having accesse and think team, i get to do that in the training process. Do you think its critical to have a Company Owned franchise. I think thats critical. I dont know how you train for something you havent done. Before you franchise, was everything buttoned up . I think for us it was very buttoned. It was everyone written down. Theres things that as you do the business for a few years you might assume its known so i think youre kind of finetuning write everything down. Youre finetuning to make sure everything is written down. Thats critical. Whats the biggest mistake that people make in getting franchisees. Theyre anxious to grow the brand and might not have the standards that they need. But theres multiple criteria and it gets better with more franchisees. They need to have a certain amount of money, a certain skill set whether theyre going to be in an operations role or a sales roll, whatever that is going to look like. And then have they led people. In our organization, once a franchisee gets to a large scale, they may have direct and indirect employees of 400. Someone who hasnt managed white collar and blue collar labor when were utilizing low wage employees for some of our offersings. Were going to need franchisees fng that have a skill set. So thats one. Then i think as we grow in scale weve used profiling tools so we could see who made frayed franchisees and were had a ep. As you grow its great to use data. Thank you so much, elie. I really appreciate. Congratulations on the growth of your company, of this organization. Its been great talking to you. Thank you, my pleasure sneefr wun stick around because coming up on your business we talk to our brain trust about should you build an app for your company and if you do how do you get people to download it . Should yor company and if you do how do you get people to download it . Trust app for your company and if you do how do you get people to download it . Should you build anr company and if you do how do you get people to download it . Trust app for your company and if you do how do you get people to download it . I kind of feel like its a game changer. I wouldnt go that far. Are you there . Hes probably on mute. Yeah. Gary wont like it. Why . Because hes gary. phone ringing what . Keep going yeah. laughs voice on phone its not millennial enough. There are a lot of ways to say no. Thank you so much. Thank you so were doing it. Yes start saying yes to your companys best ideas. Let us help with money and knowhow, so you can get business done. American express open. From selling Enterprise Software at a prototype level to being able to license it out at a large scale in a few years . So we want to take our software thats like in a prototype and we want to sell it and license it out to like Larger Companies and you can do this, this happens all the time. Some advice for you, first of all, in the world of business its all about connections. You need to see who you are connected to. If you are going to be doing business with some larger Software Company go through your linked in connections, ask your friends, see if there is some type of referral, some type of Human Interaction that you can get. Somebody that you know or that somebody knows because in business you have to trust these people and hope they are not going to steal your idea. Filing for a patent or talking to a patent attorney to make sure that your intellectual property is pro ticketed, that is something you should absolutely do before you talk to somebody on the outside. And finally if you dont know anybody or if just youre really not sure go on to site like linked in, skerch for people in your industry that have the title of business development. Business Development People at corporations those are the people tasked with doing deals, development arrangements, partnerships, thats your first entryway into talking to somebody about the product that you want to sell or to license to them. When you are making Big Decisions for your company or the group that youre leading you need a brain trust, people who can be really honest with and get their feedback. Today we have chris meyers who is the cofounder and ceo of bode tree a Financial Services company which works with a million is it . About a million Small Businesses. Congratulations on that. We have melinda nicki, how long ago did you start your company . Two and a half years ago. Youve grown so much. Congratulations to you. Thank you. Baby to body and its a platform for expecting and new moms. All right. You have an app, you have to get people to download things. I find when i talk to people it is nearly impossible to get people to download an app, they may love your company but to actually download an app is a lot. It is a big ask. So how do you get people to do it and should you have an app . Well, there was a question we thought long and hard about but our users we