The Values, Culture, and Drive That Built $550M ButcherBox with Mike Salguero | Ep 242
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What's up guys. Welcome back to build today. We have a special episode where we are going to dive into the story of Mike Salguro. Mike is the CEO and founder of butcher box, which he bootstrapped into a $600 million company. And he is revolutionizing the meat industry. What I love about butcher box is it has the mission of making high quality meat accessible to all. And it's focused on rethinking the food system.

At the center of this company, which is the part that I love the most, is that they have an amazing set of values and they have an amazing mission and amazing culture, which we're all going to talk about today. So I'm going to cover in this episode their values, building an authentic culture, and the personal transformation that happens when you go from failing at one company to scaling another one to $600 million. I'm honored to have Mike on the show today. Let me know what you think.

I think a lot of the times when we get into entrepreneurship, we start a business and I always equate like the first business or sometimes like first businesses to like a floppy first pancake. Like it soaks up all the butter. It's like you learn all the lessons from that one and then you know how to cook the next one better. And I know that sounds silly, but I was curious and listening to your journey through custom made and going into ButcherBox.

What were some of the lessons that you learned from custom made that allowed you to build ButcherBox into what it is today? Yeah. So I started, I started custom made in 2008 and ran it until 2015 and then started ButcherBox. I took the weekend off and I started ButcherBox.

It was just the weekend. The weekend, yeah. It was a long weekend. It was Memorial Day weekend. So there was four days? Yeah. And then on Tuesday, I had an intern who started on Tuesday who knocked on my door and was like, I'm here. What are we doing? Which was actually really good for me because I had gone from a company of 60 people. We had to let everyone go. I literally closed the gate of the office and locked the padlock and

It was pretty traumatizing. We had raised a bunch of venture capital. I lost everyone's money and was not feeling very great about myself. And if I had had to just motivate myself to pick up the pieces on Tuesday and start, I don't think I would have. But having somebody else be like, all right, what are we working on? Right away, I'm like, let's go find a coffee shop. That was like step one. Let's go find a coffee shop.

Can you, you know, I think a lot of people talk about having to let people go, having to do layoffs. I had to do a layoff. The first layoff I did was 25 people. What was that like for you? Like I would say in two different respects, which is like emotionally or mentally, like how did it feel? And then second is like, how did you figure out how to navigate it in a way that you felt the least shitty as possible? Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, so first of all, going back to your first question, because I definitely learned some lessons. So one, when I started ButcherBox, I decided I wasn't going to raise outside capital. And so we bootstrapped ButcherBox. So we've built a $550 million revenue business, bootstrapped, no outside capital.

And one of the reasons why I wanted to bootstrap was my first company, we brought in a bunch of venture capital and they pushed me to essentially fire everybody who had started a company with me, which was incredibly hard, incredibly painful. I lost a bunch of my friends and a bunch of the people who like

hacked through the jungle with me to start the company. When I started ButcherBox, there were a couple things that were important to me. One was, I don't want to raise money. I don't care how small the business is. Two was, I'm going to start with company values. I'm going to start with understanding the types of people who will succeed here, the types of people I want around myself.

And, you know, really just make sure I screen against that. Because my first company we hired on resume, it was like, oh, they have a great resume. They must be good. And what I realized is that's not enough. That's not enough. So unfortunately, in my custom-made experience, I had a lot of experience firing people, which is unfortunate. And a lot of them were like really close friends. And I oftentimes think that people, one thing to, if you're running a company,

One, nobody likes to fire people. So oftentimes your manager will bargain with you forever before they actually, you kind of have to force them. You're like, look, I'll hold your hand. You have to make a move here. But oftentimes the employee knows that they're not performing.

And so I like to say like we're freeing up their future. You know, it's like it's going to be painful for a minute for them. But oftentimes they know and no one wants to work at a place where they feel underutilized and unappreciated.

Um, so really, you know, recognizing that that's the case and, uh, trying to meet them where they are is important. Now there's obviously like when you let someone go, there's some like legal stuff you have to do. You have to have their paycheck and you have to have their COBRA forms. And I would always start with like, Hey, do you have a minute? They come in the room. I'll be like, look, this is going to be a really hard conversation. I want you to, I want to let you know it's your last day. Um, but yeah, I had to do that a lot. I've had to do that quite a bit. And, uh,

It's never easy. I'm a heart leader rather than a fear leader. Unfortunately, you have to do what's best for the company. Oftentimes, that means saying goodbye to people that you have known and loved and have done great work at the company. You have to recognize when that work is dwindling and either retask them on something else or part ways. That can be tough.

Yeah, and it's funny, as you're saying all this, I'm like, wow, I have so many of these same fundamental ways in which I run my company. So it's cool to hear because everyone has their own different way. When you said that you started with values,

one, what are your values? And two, I'm curious, did you come up with them by yourself or did you do it with that one other person? No. So we actually, um, we came up with our values, uh, nine months in, we started having people. Yeah. I was hiring people that had a chip on their shoulder that showed grit, whether that was athletics, uh, army, um, some sort of like, like top of their class, something that shows some grit. Yeah. Um, and

and we filled, we filled the company with failed entrepreneurs, um,

Children of divorced parents, D1 athletes, and just people who had something to prove. And then as we got going, we were like, okay, now we're starting to hire a lot of people. And it was like, okay, time for these core values. So we have five core values. The way that we derived them is we pulled all those people in a room and we said, okay, what are the traits and characteristics that make people successful here?

And people put a whole bunch of stickies on the board and then we combine those stickies into groups. And then we'd kind of like looked at the theme and came up with a theme and landed on five. And I actually didn't participate until the very end. And I was like, okay, I like these.

Um, so the first two are, um, how we expect you to show up to work. Um, one is authentic and the other is humble. Um, so authenticity, like actually being your true self, like not, um, putting on a show is really important to us. And humility, like,

For many reasons, I wasn't a meat person when I started this company. We've kind of been this outsider who just built something. And having the humility to know that and having the humility to know what we're good at and what we're not good at, really, really important. And then we have accountable, which is kind of how we expect you to show up or how you should do your work.

Uh, we want people to be accountable. Uh, if you say you're going to do something like you need to do it. Um, we, I don't want to be in an organization where it's like, let me get that to you on Friday. And then it doesn't show up on a Friday. Yeah.

And I am a master of remembering that you promised me something two weeks ago. So it's like, hey, you remember that thing that you promised me two weeks ago? I'm very good at remembering that and firing off an email or a text. And then we have the core value of relentless improvement.

which I love. So the idea is that you can always improve. You can improve yourself, whether that's yourself physically or the work that you're doing. We're expecting people to improve themselves and their learning and whatnot, but also the business. And what it does is it gives you the ability to maybe start with something that's not the best solution.

But you know that with relentless improvement over time, you're going to improve. So my favorite example is when we started ButcherBox, the only box that was available to ship in was a big styrofoam box. That's how like Omaha Steaks shipped. And so we started shipping in a styrofoam box. And some of my friends were like, I can't believe you're shipping in styrofoam. Like styrofoam is so bad for the environment. Doesn't it bother you?

And I'm like, yeah, it bothers me, but it's not like we're building a meat company. I can't even touch the styrofoam box. So I still have a styrofoam box in my office as a reminder of like relentless improvement. We're on our eighth or ninth version of a box. We're constantly trying to improve it, improve it, improve it. And that's how we approach our work in general is you can launch something early that might be a little embarrassing and then you can continue to improve it.

And so we're constantly just trying to improve operationally the business every day. So we're looking at our delivery scores and our customer satisfaction scores and our gross margin and all these things. And we're doing whatever we can to improve those every step of the way. And the last one is customer obsessed. So we like the customer to be in any conversation, in any decision. And we try to align ourselves with the customer and what the customer cares about.

Uh, one example of that is during COVID, um, you know, there were, there was no meat on the shelves. And so we saw this massive run up on butcher box. Like we went from maybe signing up 500 people a day to seeing like 5,000, 6,000 people a day. And it became clear within a few days that, um, we were going to run out of meat. Yeah.

And I turned to my team. I was like, look, like I don't want to go to the grocery store. I don't want my family to have to go to the grocery store. And I don't want our members to have to go to the grocery store. And so we're going to go on wait list so that our members know that they have enough meat. And we let our members know like, look, we're customer obsessed.

We want you to know that whatever you want to order from us, you can order from us. And we're going to sacrifice growth for being customer obsessed. That's fantastic. I still get emails from people who are like, thank you so much. You held my hand during COVID. You were the only company that wasn't chasing growth. So yeah, that's a big one. I like to say our company values are all aspirational. Being humble, what does that mean? It's pretty aspirational. Relentless improvement. Am I being relentless enough?

And so it's kind of a, at any given point, you have a spectrum of how you're showing up in all of these different areas. And then we do annual reviews where we rank you on the core values, like whether you're meeting the bar or you're exceeding the bar or whether you need improvement. Just let people know this is where you are, this is how you're showing up, this is why you're in this bucket.

We also, we have all hands meetings every other week where I'm reminding people of the core values because if you don't keep reminding people, they're just going to forget them. And then we give out core value company awards every quarter just to like remind people of, you know, who's exhibiting this value, et cetera. So it's really become like the foundation and it's,

There's a point, well, we're 200 people now, there's a point where you don't interview everyone anymore. And for me, that was around 75 people where I was like, I can't spend all my time interviewing. And so as a founder, if you don't have core values...

people are just going to guess what the core values are and start hiring people that they think fit in. And if you don't write those down and if you don't have like specific processes for like, okay, who checked on accountability or who checked on humility in your hiring process, then it can go sideways very quickly. And my first company venture funded brought in a bunch of people who weren't like the starting crew because I let them all go.

And I got to the point where I'm sitting in my car and I don't want to go in the office. I just don't even want to be there. And it's like, all these people are strangers. I don't like them. It's just, it was really bad. And so I, um, I knew that, um, having, uh, really like, like having core values at the center was going to be really important.

As well as a mission, which I'm happy to talk about as well. But I think companies that have a mission, like what is your mission? What are you trying to do here? That's the only type of company I would want to run. And going back to something that you said at the very beginning, which I think ties into this, you said, I want to hire people with a chip on their shoulder with all these things. What's your chip on your shoulder? Because I'm curious. Yeah, I'm curious what drives you. Yeah, well...

Through a lot of introspection. Well, aside from the fact that I had just failed at a company, I lost $30 million of venture funding. It's painful. And, you know, felt like a failure, which put a big chip on my shoulder as an entrepreneur of like, I think I can do this. And I think these people were telling me the wrong things and I'm going to prove people wrong. Yeah.

But ultimately, I grew up the youngest of four with a single mother and no father. And so I have my daddy issues and those are like, I'm never enough. And so no matter how successful I am, no matter how hard I work, no matter how successful the business is, it's just never enough. And understanding that about myself and harnessing that has been a real talent for

Um, but yeah, no, I have a friend who's an investor and he's like, I like people who have like trauma or, you know, like childhood, something happened in their childhood where they're just like, it just wires you differently. Um, and being the only kid in my town without a father wired me in a way that, um, you know, now, now I really appreciate at the time it didn't, it was pretty painful. A hundred percent. I, I can relate to that. I had the same except with my mother. What, so then I'm thinking when you're talking about humility, for example,

I think humility is like there's insecurity and then there's ego. Which side is your natural tendency? Is it more on the insecurity side, like underestimating or constantly thinking that you're not doing good enough? When I talk about ButcherBox...

I generally, my story that I repeat over and over is like, I didn't expect this to happen. Yeah. Like ButcherBox wanted to be something more than I expected. I heard you say that. Yeah. And so like, I always give this example of like Simone Biles, who,

I just had this picture in my head that Simone Biles, the gymnast at like the age of three is doing like flips and her parents are like, okay, maybe gymnastics. And you know, it's like in her, it's like parents are there to like give guardrails and to encourage, but like really it's going to be what it wants to be. I believe the same thing about business. Um, and so my first company didn't want to be a big business. We

We threw $30 million at it. I busted my ass at that. I mean, I lost everything in that company. Every weekend we were there working, I gained like 30 pounds. I fired all my friends. I was just like constantly working.

And I started ButcherBox and I was like, I don't want to do that again. I want to be around for my children. I want to be healthy. I want to hire people I enjoy working with. And so all of that to say, I have this vision in my head that ButcherBox was a Simone Biles and that I had nothing to do with it.

And so I would imagine that that is probably on the side of like insecurity. Like there's no way that I built this. I have a really hard time because so much like providence happened. So many things dropped into our lap. So many people walked in the door at the perfect time where it's like, Oh, if only we had this person and it's like, there they are. Great.

Maybe I'm either really lucky or talented, but I tend to go on the side of being lucky. I think there's companies that can be successful by surface level measurement, like revenue, profit. But then there's companies that are successful, they're going to outlast other companies. And that's in researching you and researching the company, that's the vibe that I got from ButcherBox, which is quality measurement.

growth, quality revenue, quality company, which is like somebody could be doing 600 million, but it could be built on stilts essentially. And it could be that it could crumble easily. And so what I've seen is just like, it just screams quality to me. And the thing that I've noticed in people that have quality companies is that they have the hardest time doing two things, which is one, taking the credit. It's like the leader never wants to take credit. They always want to give credit, which

I also relate to because I have a very hard time saying me rather than we. Because I'm sure like you, when you speak to your team, you say, we have done this. We've accomplished. You guys, it's all you. You know what I mean? I noticed that you said that you came in after they had talked about the core values. I'm guessing that's because you wanted to empower them. Correct. Really fantastic. And then the second thing that I've noticed is that I think a lot of really great leaders actually tend to

be on that side of the spectrum. We see all of these people who, and this is what I really want to get through to people, is that we see people that have these really great egos. They're very polarizing. And we assume that's what you have to be to be a successful leader

But those are just the people who make the headlines because they're so interesting. But for every one of those people, if you look at most leaders of great companies, they're just great people. And they don't say it was all me and they're not the genius on the top of the hill, but they're people that are saying, it's my team, it's my people. Authenticity and humility, two of our core values. But authenticity is really important, I think.

to be able to go to a place of work and be yourself as the leader and not feel like you need to put on a mask or be a certain person or like it just, it, I got too blended with like the CEO Mike at my first company versus just being myself. Um,

And I recognize that's a luxury and generally a luxury of being a bootstrapped company or something like that. I agree with you on the quality. I use the word sustainable, but we're trying to like, first of all, introduce sustainable meat and seafood to the world.

but also do it in a way in which we're trying to show that capitalism can be done in a sustainable way where you're not just trying to extract from everything. I mean, capitalism in general is this idea that you're just going to like, you know, treat the animal poorly, treat the environment poorly, don't pay the worker well, and like overcharge the customer.

Yeah. And what if you could do well and do good at the same time? And that's what gets me excited is like building a company that has a mission that's beyond like make a lot of money.

And I believe money follows passion and mission. And I just really encourage people to find something that they can do and are good at, but that it has a mission behind it. Because that's really what carries you during the dark days. The hard times. I'm curious, when you started Custom Made, what prompted you to start a company in general? What got you into doing this? Because I think some people say like,

People ask me, for example, they'll be like, why'd you decide to? And I'm like, for me, it just made sense. Like I'm built for it. And I'm curious, like, did you feel like you were built for it? I mean, so when I was 10, I had a paper route.

So at a very early age, I was wanting to work and saw the connection between work and making money. And I was very focused on making money. In college, I created a whole bunch of t-shirts and sold them door to door. So I was starting to get high volume sales and then I dabbled in real estate and I

I had a best friend, Seth, that we wanted to start a company together. And so custom made, we, we, we sent out probably 30 offers for companies to purchase or our ideas of companies to start. And he found custom made and we decided to buy it and, and work together on it. And,

There's a moment where we had, you know, we're both in the same office and we're like, this was the dream. Like we're living the dream. This is amazing. That's cool. Uh, right before I turned into a bit of a nightmare. Yeah. I'm curious what was going through your head at that time when the VCs told you to let everybody go? Yeah. I mean, you know, uh, I was, I was young. Um,

I think I started when I was 26 and I didn't know a lot and I was impressionable. And we had, we had like Google, Google ventures was in our deal.

So, you know, when Google comes in and they're like, what happened was Google, like when, when they invest in you and they're a really great investor, when they invest in you, they offer you all these other services and they're like, Hey, do you want someone to come in and look at your website and like, you know, assess your technology? We're like, absolutely. Come on in. Yeah. Free work. Yeah. Free work. They come in and they're like, this is a disaster. Like this is the worst website we've ever seen. And we're like, Oh boy. Uh,

And so then our investor is like, you need to do something. You can't just not do something.

And so then that began the, okay, we need more different engineers. And then, well, we need different product people. We need different operations people. So it just spiraled into, everyone needs to be different. And then it became, well, the CEO needs to be different. And then things really went off the rails. What did they want you to do differently? Or what did they say that you didn't have that they thought was needed? Yeah, there's this idea around A players. A company like Google,

especially in 2015, had their pick of anyone they want to hire. Right. And so there's this idea that you as a founder in a very competitive market in Boston, uh, should be able to hire top, top, top, top tier talent, like the top of the top of the top. Got it. And, um,

And if you can find somebody who has a resume, that's that good. Like they're at the top of their class and they went and did these amazing things. And then they, and why do they want to work here? I don't know. You can find someone like that. Then values don't matter. Like just hire that person because they're going to have a huge impact on your company. Got it. And, um, I like to talk about, I think I lifted this from someone, but I like to talk about, um,

startups being like hacking through the jungle with machetes. I heard you say that. So you get dropped in the middle of the jungle and you're just hacking away with machetes and

And at that point, it's all about grit. It's literally build fast, don't give up, work all the time. We need to find a road. We need to find a trail here because we're lost. Then you find a trail and then you find a road. And in my first company, when we found that road and we saw the big, beautiful Google bus, my co-founder and I jumped on it. And we're like, you guys don't know how to drive. We're going to find better drivers to drive this Google bus.

Um, this time around I was like, that's not happening. I want to keep those. I want to keep those hackers. Cause I believe that, um, we can like grow them. Yeah. So we talk about this talent curve that like you need to grow your talent as fast as the company is growing. And if your company's doubling every year, as we did for the first several years, your talent needs to grow incredibly quick.

And so we were just constantly like mentoring and, and just exposing them to as much stuff as possible so that they could grow alongside, like learn how to drive before we hit the bus. That makes sense. And that worked really, really well. What about in the situations where you're putting the same amount of effort into, say you have

four people on your team and you put, say it's from you personally, an hour or two hours into each of those people plus extra resources every week. And then one of those people is not growing. How do you handle that situation? It depends on why they're not growing. So in my experience, there's two core reasons why people are not growing. One is they don't want to grow. They don't want to grow. They need to go.

That's, you know, there's no other option. Yeah. They don't want to grow. They need to go. The second is that they're in the wrong role. And I see that a lot. So great person, a lot of grit, really like could be impactful. Yeah. Wrong role.

And I believe that a job of a CEO is to notice that, or any manager is to notice that and try to retask them or try to give them something else. I like to call it the useful life meter. So like those old parking meters that like, you know, the dial goes down to zero. You need to be like, this dial is going to go to zero if we keep them in this role and put another quarter in by retasking them on something else, getting them to do something else.

um harder to do as the business grows but early on it's very easy to say like you know what you're not doing a great job in marketing how about operations like could you go over here and help with this problem and uh we've seen people like really take on to moving around moving roles um so i think that's that that's the way but oftentimes people you're like why why doesn't sally like i

We've been coaching Sally for six months and the behavior's not changing or this thing isn't changing. And oftentimes they don't see it. They're not dedicated to changing themselves or to growing. Yeah, that's always the hard one for me because I never want to let go when I'm like, I know that they have so much potential, but if they don't know that and they don't want to capitalize on it, then it's like, yeah, on the ladder. Yeah, my buddy uses this gets it, wants it, has the potential. And so that's like his framework. So like,

potential high okay do they get their job do they want it no gotta go uh no potential but gets it really wants it maybe you can work with them but you gotta like figure out where to you know like

Right. Everyone, I believe everyone at their core wants to contribute to a company, wants to feel wanted, wants to feel well compensated, wants to feel like they are doing a good job. Yeah. And either you find that at your place or you free them up to go find that somewhere else. Yeah. And the longer you keep them when you know it's not there.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. I mean, nowadays, uh, there's a lot of like law around how you, how you like hire and, you know, the questions you ask and all this stuff. So it's changed a lot since like, it was just me or me and a few people. Um,

So there's the competencies of the job. What are we hiring you for? If we're hiring you to be an engineer or we're hiring you to be a supply chain person or an analyst, we want to see you do that work. So oftentimes that piece gets missed. It's like, well, look at the resume. And people can fudge a lot of stuff on their resume. So doing tests, kind of like, okay, you have an hour to work on this, whatever that might be. You want to get really confident in the competency piece.

And then there's the core value piece, which is, you know, we have these five core values. And so it's like, how do you screen on humility? Exactly. And it's similar to what you said earlier. It's like, do they use we statements instead of I statements? One of my favorite marks of humility is do they ask what they do with their coffee mug after the interview or do they leave it there?

It's like a humble person, in my opinion, is like, where do I put this? Can I wash this out for you? And you're like, no, don't worry about it. We'll take care of it. But like, you know, for somebody who's just thinking about themselves, that doesn't even like cross their, doesn't even cross their mind. So there are these little tells that you can kind of like key into and be like, hmm.

And I would hate to have people listen to this podcast and then be like, I got to put my coffee cup in my way. But there are ways to customer obsess, same thing. When they talk about their business, how much do they talk about the customer and how much they listen to the customer and how much the customer drove what they did.

So core values is a big piece. And then I love a good back channel reference. So usually you ask for references. The problem with references is they're going to give you their top people. And so what I love doing is you go on LinkedIn, you find somebody who worked with them, and then you're like, hey, can we talk about this person? And that's the most telling is really reference references.

There's a whole bunch of thinking. There's a book called Top Grading, which is all about finding the best people. This has worked really well, too. They talk about the threat of reference check. You're kind of like, hey, walk me through your career. Then I did this, and I did this project, and I did this project. I'm like, oh, cool. We know someone there, but they say nice things about you. They're like, yeah. Oftentimes,

you can get the truth out of people and what they really did versus what's on their resume. Yeah, it's so funny because it is interesting. I've talked to our team about that. I'm like, the resume, people can put whatever they want on there. It's just a piece of paper. It's like marketing. Half the time they lie and you're like, what is this? So I do love that a lot. One thing I actually want to circle back on that I thought was really cool is that you had started in sales. And I had started in sales as well.

But I think that if anyone were to watch this episode, they're probably listening to you talk and you seem like such a great leader, all these things. It's almost like people have this association where they think if you're a great leader and you love people and you love this, how can you also love sales? And so I'm kind of curious, how did that transfer into ButcherBox? And what's your relationship with sales? Maybe it's the department or maybe it's just sales as a philosophy. How's it evolved now? Yeah, well, I think you're always selling.

as a, as a CEO, as a founder, as a, somebody in a company, I, I'm always selling. I'm, you know, whether I'm talking to my company and reminding them of the core values and the mission and why their work matters and whatnot, or I'm talking to a supplier about what we're trying to do and how they need to get behind us and give us better pricing, or I'm, you know, talking to the media or I'm talking to my customers, like I'm always selling. Um, it's changing yourself. Yeah. You're just changing who you're selling to. Um,

And sometimes you got to sell yourself to be like, okay, let's rally and get excited about this. So it's a constant sales job. I think selling is, I personally, if somebody comes to me and says, I'm graduating from college, what should I do? I personally think two years is door-to-door sales, some sort of sales. It doesn't need to be door-to-door.

But if you don't have your ass kicked by people saying no to you and know what it feels like to just have no, no, no, no, no, yes. You're like, oh, okay, what did I do? Okay, can I change? Oh, more yeses. Oh, we have a pattern here. If you haven't gone through that experience, I don't think that you can be as effective.

And so I, especially for people who want to be executives, I feel like sales is the path. At least it was my path and many of the successful executives I know is their path as well. 100%. So back when I was, I started in personal training and I had to go get my own clients.

I remember I realized like I had to be in sales. And so I was so terrified at first of getting a no. And so I went up to a woman and she was on the elliptical and I was like, Hey, would you? And then literally just stopped me. And she was like, fuck off. And I was like, Oh wow.

And that was like my first ever attempt to like cold, just go up to someone at the gym, try and sell them. Um, and it's so funny because when it happened, it was so traumatizing, but I was like, I need to fucking learn this. And then you get so resilient. So I'm curious, do you remember some of like the biggest rejections that you had in sales? Yeah. Well, um, so first of all, um, I was a peanut vendor at Fenway park, which is where the Boston Red Sox play. Um,

Um, and I, it basically every day you show up and you get assigned something. And so like diet Coke in the bleacher section, which is the cheap section, uh, when it's really cold out, not a good product. Right. And so you're just, everyone's like, what the hell are you doing? Yeah. Um, and, and, you know, I worked eight, I worked every season. I basically worked full-time in college. Um, I worked every season. So that started just like constant rejection.

Uh, then I worked in, I rented apartments, which is high volume. You just like find people apartments. So many knows. Um,

And then I've had two experiences. I think sometimes people are like, I want to be an entrepreneur, but it's not going very well. I have two experiences that I think are important for people to recognize. One is I decided after my real estate thing that I wanted a real job, which was a mistake. I went off the entrepreneurship route into corporate America. And I decided I wanted a job in real estate.

I went on 70 informational interviews before I got a job. I slept on a buddy's couch and I had one suit and I went on 70 informational interviews. And like that is, and then that experience was repeated when we went and raised venture capital. We went on like 65 meetings in one summer. It was the summer of no and just heard no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And I,

I oftentimes like to tell that because I think people don't, don't understand the resiliency and the amount of times that somebody is going to say no before you might get a yes. And like entrepreneurship, a lot of entrepreneurship is just pounding your head against the wall until the wall breaks. Even when you have a headache, you're just like, I'm just going to keep going. I'm just going to keep going. It's like, no, no, no, no. So yeah, I mean, there's been all sorts of people who have been, you know, mean about it. Uh,

you know, not very nice in their no. But there have been these like prolonged periods of no that, you know, I just didn't let it get to me. I'm curious, have you had those prolonged periods of,

recently, like being as successful now as the company is, do you still have times where despite the success and the evidence and all that, that like, there's been something where you're like, I still have to bang my head against the wall? Oh, absolutely. In all aspects of my life. Like I, you know, I, I track my, my health very carefully. And, um, that's an area where I,

I just, I'm relentlessly going after whether it's body weight or body fat percentage or whatever it is. I'm just constantly searching. Yes. You have a quote on, um, it's like a consistency beats intensity. Consistency is a, it's a no. Yeah. Like, yeah, no, I, I, my, my, my body isn't reacting the way I want it to, but like, that doesn't mean you stop. It just means you just keep being consistent.

And so that, and that's been interesting at ButcherBox, especially as we've grown, like, you know, in order for us to double the business, we've doubled the business over and over. In order for us to double the business, we have to add $500 million of revenue. It's a lot of money. So it's like, how do you do that? Well, what you do is you get really clear about like,

what do we need to be consistent on and how do we just keep the drumbeat going over? And like you said before, like you seem like you're going to be around for a while. That's right. We want to be around for a while. So if we just stay consistent, the nose just kind of go away as you just keep consistency going. No, it's not as persistent. Yeah. I'm curious. Um, you had said a failed venture is not a failed entrepreneur. Yes. Um,

I'm curious when it comes to everything you're doing right now with ButcherBox, are there still moments where you feel like it could fail? Or what if it does go wrong? Because I think a lot of people see someone like you and they think,

There's just no way that there's any doubt, that there's any insecurity, that there's any negative thoughts. And I'm curious, does any of that seep in or any of those things from past experiences still come back and you think like, what if, or this or that? And if so, how do you handle that? Yeah. So 2023 was our first and only down year. 24, we grew again. But 2023 was the first year that we went down in revenues. Yeah.

And that was really troubling. It was like, oh my God, what have we done? I'm a failure. I'm not doing this right. This market is just going to fall apart. Just all the stuff. So yeah, I definitely can ride that train of anxiety quite often. And then you got to remind yourself about being consistent and about the team you have. And yeah, we can get through this. Everyone must be dealing with the same thing. It's not just us. So I am...

no stranger to self-doubt and to feeling like I might fail. I think tactically, as an entrepreneur, entrepreneurs are some of the most risk-adverse people I know. And oftentimes they're considered to be the most risky.

And so it's like, oh yeah, just put everything on your personally guaranteed credit card and just get after it. And you just work all the time and you'll be fine. And the best entrepreneurs I know are ones that know how to manage risk really well. So my first company that hit the...

Got it. Understood.

um, at butcher box, you know, uh, I have to figure out how to get myself and shareholders like some capital back so that if this thing went to zero, it's not like, Oh my God. Like, obviously that would be heartbreaking, but it's not like I'm not going to be like financially ruined. Right. I talked to so many entrepreneurs who, um,

especially with Amex in particular, they get an Amex card for their business. They don't necessarily realize that they personally guaranteed it. They run it up and then they're like, we're out of money, but we owe like $150,000 to our credit card.

Turns out that you go personally bankrupt if you do that. It's not like the company shuts its doors and it's like, oh yeah, no problem. It's like you personally guaranteed that loan. And it's the same with the SBA. It's all these loan providers that you are personally guaranteeing it. And so I think one of the lies of entrepreneurship is you need to be super risky.

versus figuring out how to make things less and less risky as you go along. I love that so much because I think oftentimes when someone tells me that they're taking a giant risk, I think to myself, why is that necessary? And oftentimes I think that it's because they haven't put more thought into it. It's almost like a reaction versus a well-thought-out plan. Yes. Yeah. And so to think about one of the tenets of being a great entrepreneur is

is managing risk. I think it's really important for people to think about and to have a plan on how am I reducing my risk day after day. The other one I think is personal boundaries, which I'm happy to talk about as well. But I think entrepreneurs oftentimes lose their soul to the business.

And I think the best ones are ones that are able to like have their own personality and their own time and their own space. And like, if they want to be like hanging out with a family or going on trips or like what unplugging, like whatever that looks like, that the best entrepreneurs I know are not 24, seven, 365. They've learned how to incorporate what they're doing into their life, but

but their life continues to be the thing that's like the most important. Have a thing there. Yeah, I'm curious then. Let's go into that because I did actually have the question for you, which was like, what are your thoughts on, you know, the word work-life balance, how that looks for you versus how it looks for people in your team? Do you use that term? Do you use a different term? Beliefs around it in general. Yeah, so I think the idea of work-life balance certainly post-COVID has changed. I think it's more of this work-life blur, right? Because you're like, you're kind of like,

always working. The messages are always coming in. Like it's, you could just work all the time if you, if you wanted to.

So a couple things for me. So when I started the company, I had a four-month-old at home, my first child. Wow. And I had seen what I had done in my first company. It was like, I'm not doing that again. And so right from the beginning, I decided that I was not going to work on Fridays. Wow. And throughout, my girls are now eight and 10. I have two eight-year-olds and a 10-year-old. Throughout them being at home before they started going to school, I was home every Friday.

uh, took care of them, did everything. Uh, and I actually think that that was one of our like competitive advantages because what it did is it's forced my team to grow up. Like my team knew that on Fridays I wasn't going to be reachable. And if I was, it was going to be a few hours. And so those quick term decisions, those things that needed like my attention, they just solved themselves. Yeah. Which I think is like what, like every, like,

founder CEO should be trying to figure out how to get themselves out of the anything. Yeah. Right. Like get yourself out of a job so you can find a different one. Yeah. Um, and so it, it basically forced people to do that, uh, for us. Really cool. Um, so that was like, you know, that the balance piece, um,

there's a circus act of spinning plates. You ever seen it where you spin a plate and then it's spinning and then they started another one and they spin that one and then like, and they grab another one and spin that one. And then that one's wobbling and they, and they run around and like the best circus acts can be like a dozen plates spinning all at the same time. And I think that that is what like us as entrepreneurs and people who like are getting after it, like do is we spin all these plates and,

And when I originally started thinking about this analogy, I thought it was really funny because anytime that they're all spinning really well, I'm like the guy who's like, let's put up another plate. Like, let's go. God forbid we sit back and just look Marvel at the plate spinning. Just be like, I'm so happy they're all spinning. Yeah. No, you don't do that. You just start another one. So something's wobbling just because like, that's, that's like the affliction. Yeah.

And as I've used this analogy more and as life has gone on, I've realized that there are in this analogy of spinning plates and your job is to go to the one that's wobbling and get it spinning again. There are some plates that cannot wobble. One is your health. You cannot sacrifice your health for your company. It is not worth it. I agree with you.

um, you know, I got to make all this money. Like, whoa, you're going to be dead. So, you know, yeah, it won't work. So, um, the, the next one is your family, your, your marriage, your kids, whatever that it looks like for you. Like you cannot sacrifice that for, it doesn't matter what's happening over here. It's like this, these, these plates don't wobble. And so for me, my health, um,

my time with my family. I do very little travel. I try to, even if I'm coming to Vegas, I'm taking a red eye home. Like I don't, I don't like missing time. And as a CEO, you can say yes to everything. Like if you say yes to everything, I mean, I could be traveling every single day. I could be somewhere and thinking I'm doing something important. Yeah. And like, it's so important. It's like, Oh my God, they have to hear from me. Um,

And it's just like, it's just this, you can get very caught up in the culture if you don't have boundaries. The last thing I've done for work-life balance and it's worked incredibly well and it's, it's started to spread, which I really love is I put a, um, I have a footer note at like a footer thing on all the emails I send. So I changed my footer and it says, um,

I will be unresponsive to email between the hours of 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. because I'm hanging out with my family. And then after 8 p.m., sometimes I look at my email again and I might respond to you, but that doesn't mean you need to respond. It just means I'm just getting through my email inbox. So unless it's marked urgent, don't respond to it. And I've seen people really appreciate that I'm just like, no, I'm just going to put my phone away for a few hours. Yeah.

It's harder and harder to do. You know, it's like, it's just more all encompassing. Um, but I think incredibly important for, uh, leaders and, and then to tell your staff that as well, but leaders, and then to push it to your staff of being able to take time to think, um,

I actually think that the Fridays, in addition to growing my team, were really good for me because while I was playing with Legos and dressing up dolls and going to the science museum, I was thinking. And you oftentimes don't get time to think because you're so busy tweeting and responding and doing all the other things that you do these days. You don't get very much time to think. And it was like forced thinking time. It's really, really good. And I love that you said that because

you know, even in my content, I think sometimes I've gone a little too hard on like, uh, like just, you need to fucking work because I see so many people who like think it's, you know, they work four hours and they're like, gosh, it's a long day. And I'm like, all right, this is gonna be tough. Um, but the things that I've never sacrificed are, I've never sacrificed working out. So it's like, I have a target. How many times am I going to work out a week? The time might change. The nature of the workout might change, but like I'm

My team knows I'm not missing a walk or a lifting session. One of those is happening because I want to stay healthy. And I don't feel good about myself if I skip it. Second is my marriage. I don't have kids. But if at any point in my marriage there's anything, a disagreement, a feeling of tension, I will postpone a meeting. I have to fix that first because it will be stealing my attention thereafter. And then I don't feel good.

And then the last one, having that time, I've done something similar except with my Wednesdays. I don't take meetings on that day because I've realized Monday, Tuesday are heavy hitters and I usually need to make decisions at some point. So it's like Wednesdays I need more buffer time so I can process the things that have happened and then go back on Thursday, Friday. But I think it's so important because I think a lot of people, I don't know if you relate to this, but I think it is one of those where of course when you very first start the company,

There's definitely times where it feels very chaotic. But as the company grows, especially the magnitude of your decisions, it's like steering a rowboat versus steering the Titanic, right? Because if you make the wrong decision as the CEO, it's not just like, oh, we'll just go the other direction. It's like, we've got to steer the whole ship.

And so it's something I've tried to get through to even like my leaders in my company, which is like the importance of the thinking time. Um, because your decisions take so much more to reverse once the company gets big. I don't know. Have you noticed that? Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I make less and less decisions now. Um,

I think, uh, I, you know, I kind of get called in for the, the bigger decisions, but yeah, when you make a decision, it, it, it matters. And obviously you, ideally you make decisions that, you know, Jeff Bezos talks about one way and two way doors. Like you make decisions that hopefully you can come back from if it doesn't work out. Yeah. Um, but, uh, yeah, you, it, uh, you get paid for your brain. Um, and I like to tell people like, um,

If you learned that LeBron James spent two hours a day shooting free throws, you'd be like, yeah, of course. He's a professional athlete. He's got to do that. And then we expect ourselves to sit in a CEO seat and not spend that time doing the things that we need to do, which is working out and grounding ourselves and all the things and whatever we're doing with our brain. I spend a tremendous amount of time trying to prime myself to make those big decisions and

and treat myself like the professional athlete that I am, but it's my brain, not necessarily my body. That is what I get paid for. I love that. I recently told my team, I said, these people say like, what's your hobby? I was like, I am...

a business athlete. Business is my sport. I treat myself like that when I step into the arena every day. I told people, I look at my one-on-ones and it's like, how am I going to score the goal? What's the objective of this one-on-one, of this meeting, of this pitch? Whatever it might be. I really do love that. I'm curious, one thing that you said, it was on Guy Raz, you said you spent a lot of time hands in, head down in the beginning, but now the goal is to have your head up.

So I am curious, because you kind of just alluded to that. How has your day-to-day and your job changed over the evolution of ButcherBox? Maybe if you were to chunk it into the seasons that you've had. Yeah, so you start out... So first of all, on the idea of working all the time or the four-hour day, when I started the company, the very first day, I had an intern working with me. $10 an hour, freshman in college, intern.

And the reason why I did that is I was leaving a company of 60 people and I knew that if I was responsible for doing everything, it wouldn't happen. And so I think being in tune with what gives you goosebumps and what do you think you're really good at versus what you're not good at is really important. If you only want to work four hours a day, that's fine, but you better have someone who's working another eight, right? And you pay them $10 an hour or probably a lot more now, but like...

that is how like you can, you know, get some leverage on your time and energy. Okay. So very, very first was like somebody to motivate me, right? It was like somebody who could do some of the stuff I didn't want to do. Yeah. Then you get to like a size of 10 people and it's like,

you're it's like you're conducting an orchestra so it's like what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing like here are goals we're very goal oriented we always have like three to five goals every year this is what we're going to do we break that down by quarter this is what we're going to do this quarter you can break it down by week what are we doing this week to drive the quarter to drive the year

But at that point, I'm in everything. I know everything. I know every number. I know everything. And I will say, so when COVID hit, we closed the office. Everyone went away. Then it became online. We have a few dashboards that we look at. I have stuff that I look at to be like, how's the health of your business going? I probably have stayed in the head down for way too long. And I feel like I'm now picking my head up.

So recently I got rid of all of my regularly scheduled one-on-ones. So I went from meeting with, I have eight people who report to me, I went from meeting with them every week and then I met with the team below them, all the VPs, I met with them every month. I got rid of all of them.

I do that. So I'm like, okay, so why did you get rid of them? Oh my God. It's amazing. Uh, I, I did because there, there was, there was like a movement. There was a Jensen Wong and then, uh, Brian Chesky and people are like, yeah, I don't do one-on-ones anymore. And what I realized was a one-on-one, um, like you said, it's like, okay, what am I trying to drive? Like, what's the thing I'm trying to drive? Um,

one-on-ones are great for personal connection time, right? Like get to know someone, ask about whatever, you know, like get to know them better. Yeah. And I, you need to maintain the personal connection. That's important. Yeah. But the details and the stuff, what I, what ended up happening for me is I realized that like, I'd already talked to their direct reports because I had these monthly meetings. I already knew that there was an issue with this direct report and someone else's direct report. And like, I just got caught in like all the drama. It's just like,

And I'm not like making high value decisions. And I'm kind of just reminding people that they should go talk to like the other executive. And when I, when I really took a hard look at like, what am I spending my time on in these one-on-ones? Yeah. One, like people on the other side of the one-on-one, they have to prepare for it. They have to think of like, Oh, I have this time with Mike. Like, what am I going to ask him? Like, what, what are the questions? Like, what are we going to talk about? So they're preparing, they're wasting time. I'm wasting time.

And what it's done is it's like freed up. I mean, I think it was, I think I had 23 hours of one-on-ones per week, all gone. It was freed up 23 hours of time. Wow. And then it's like, what do you do with that time? Or for one, I, what I love is I still do one-on-ones, just not regularly scheduled. So now it's like, hey, Mike, I have this issue. Can we talk about it? And I'm

I can talk about it until like, you know, I'm kind of like, they're like, are you free? I'm like, yeah, I'm really, I'm really, I'm really free. So we could talk for two hours, like whatever, whatever you need. And so I can be there for the things that matter. I can be there for like the big rocks or the big objectives that I have that I need to push forward. Um, and so that this, I feel like is the new heads up, um,

that I'm starting. I know I talked to Guy Raz in like 22, but like I'm starting to really see a path where it's a lot less like in the day to day. That's really interesting. And like I've actually found that it's not helpful. It's no longer really helpful for me to be like, hey, why is this number down?

Because people get, one, I'm the CEO, so they get a little worried about that. And then two, they'll probably guess at an answer because they want to impress me, but that doesn't impress me. And then I'm like, well, you're wrong because of this thing. You already know. Then their manager gets upset. Nowadays, I found, which I love, is I was on the plane here and I'm like,

looking at something, I'm like, why is that number down? And so I texted a few people or I chatted a few people. I was like, why is this number down? They're like, yeah, we already saw that. We have a team. We'll let you know at 3 p.m. And I'm like, great. And it's kind of like not being around on Friday. It's like as I step out, I'm making space for other people to step in.

And so now I really look at my job as reminding people of the values and like storytelling and those high value meetings, high value decisions, all of which I love. And so I can like do the thing I love rather than be in the day-to-day minutiae.

And I can give space to other people. So they're not like, well, let's wait, wait for Mike and he'll make the decision. Now they're just making decisions. Great. It's funny. I have like PTSD. Cause at one point I was like, I'm not getting on any of these meetings today. I walked and I heard someone say, well, let's bring this background and wait for Layla. And I was, I walked in and my EA was on the meeting and I was like, you fucking told them

not to wait for me. Don't wait for me. No. Yeah. That's really interesting and inspiring. And it is such a trend I've seen. Alex sends me consistently shorts from people who have done it. And so I had, I've re...

oriented my cadence, so I have every other week, but I have not eliminated them. And I think it is this fear that you're going to lose the personal connection. Maybe it's something to that degree, specifically with people who are hybrid. I'm curious, to get to this point, were there any people that were unlocks in terms of hires or strategic leaders for you? Yeah, for sure. My first unlock, we were about a year in the business. We had about 6,000 subscribers online.

We were sending about 10 pounds of meat per subscriber. So we were sending like 60,000 pounds of meat. Is that how you guys measure that? Pounds per subscriber? At the time we did, yeah. And so we're like, I'm like, there's got to be somebody. And we knew nothing about meat. Like I didn't, I ate meat, but I didn't know how to like buy meat or-

There's got to be someone out there who, if they saved us like 25 cents, they could make up their salary. Like somebody who's a professional meat buyer. And so I found this guy, Mike, and he ran Meat and Seafood at like a large grocery chain. But he had retired. He had retired two years prior. And so he was bored and I pulled him out of retirement and he started working for us.

And the thing that that started was what I called the barbell strategy. Okay. So going back to the hacking through the jungle with machetes, so I have all these young people who don't really chip on their shoulder, a lot of heart, not a lot of knowledge. Yes.

And then I hired this guy who was in retirement. And so I had two ends of a barbell, one like really young people and older people. And what we found was that people who are near retirement or post-retirement are so delightful to work with because they, first of all, they're domain experts. They just like know the domain way better than, I mean, the guy came from 30 years of buying meat and seafood. Like he knew everything about it.

They are really eager to leave a legacy by teaching young people the tricks of the trade. They don't have the ego and they don't have like, I find that a lot of people in the middle, they're thinking about their career. They want this to be like the one mark on their thing. They, they want to like progress really quickly. They, they have a lot of pressures at home to like be home and all this stuff. And like versus young and old, right.

That is like a beautiful, beautiful mix. And so, yeah, we had, he was like one of the first real big unlock change makers for us. The other one was a woman who I had tried to hire for years. I tried to hire her at my last company. Her name is Leslie.

Leslie ran customer experience at Zipcar, which is right down the street from my first company, Custom Made. I got to know her and was like, I need to work with this woman. I brought her in to run customer experience and product, and now she runs technology as well. She really solidified, how do you operationalize customer obsession? When you get as big as we are,

you forget that there is a customer eating meat on the, on the end of like all of our work and numbers and graphs and all that. There's like humans eating stuff and bringing that to life and helping remind people of that and really like indoctrinating the company into customer obsession has been something that she's done incredibly well. Um, I mean, I have so many examples of people who are like, you know, just have done an incredible, incredible job. And, uh,

I think that's one of the beautiful things about a company. It's both the most heartbreaking and the most beautiful thing about a company. It's like water, like a river. People pass through the company. And if you're building anything for the long term,

Even you will pass through as the founder. And so what do they do when they pass through? Well, they like, you know, erode the rocks and make the river more beautiful or, or they don't. And I just try to, my goal with my talent is to, I want people to leave and say, that was the best place I ever worked. And that was like the best move for my career.

And if they leave after a year or if they leave after 10 years or if this is the only place of their career, it almost doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is like, do we have the impact on that person? And what I've found is if I focus on that and I just care about that, driving them to be the best that they can be, everything else kind of solves itself.

Love that and say the same thing, which is I say, I want to leave everybody better than they came in. That's the goal. It's just like, leave better than you came. And if everybody leaves better than they come, then it's like, I feel like I've done something good on this dust rock in the universe. It's really interesting. So in bringing in those people, I'm curious on a more tactical level, because a lot of people who listen to my podcast, they love, okay, well, when you bring someone in who's

the older side of the spectrum. And say you're bringing them in and there's a lot of younger people that are going to go under them. How do you facilitate that so that all these younger people don't just quit and leave? I guess there's two questions there. So what we found was younger people loved the older people because they had way less ego than kind of the middle people. Yeah, there wasn't like a competition. It was just kind of like, wow, I get to learn from this person, like sign me up.

Um, I think anytime that you bring in somebody's manager, it's, it can be rocky. Um, and so, yeah, like that, that's something that you have to manage. Well, I, I personally like to have the person who's going to be managed, meet with the manager, interview the manager, be part of the hiring process to the extent as possible, unless it's a surprise, which sometimes happens. Um,

And, you know, oftentimes if you're open and authentic enough, um, people who are about to be managed recognize that they're like at their, um, they're at their end. Like they're, they just, they're not going to be able to continue and progress. And so it's like, Hey, this is a really great way for you to learn. And for you, like maybe someday you'll get there. Um,

We found that this has changed a lot. So we grew incredibly quickly. It took us six years to get to $500 million.

And so people's roles just got, like they came in as an intern and now they're like running a whole division of the company. But as you grow, that becomes like less and less common. And so oftentimes younger people, they're just so eager to like become the CEO. And it's like, you know, that takes years. Like it's not, this isn't like you come in and it happens. If you want that to happen, go run your own company. But it's,

Um, so really like letting people know that this can, is a great place for your career, but also like you need to be patient. It's, this isn't like a, you come in and then this happens, which is hard because some people that has happened, right? So they're seeing other people where that has, where that has occurred.

But yeah, just being very open to people. Have you heard of the Peter Principle? Yeah. Yeah. So the Peter Principle, for your listeners, maybe they haven't, is this idea that you hire somebody and if you keep promoting them, at a certain point you promote them to their level of incompetence. And then you're like, oh, don't promote them anymore because they're buried. Yeah.

And so if you are running a company and you're into promoting people and into letting people grow, which is what you want, over time, in the aggregate, everyone is now incompetent. And so you need to be able to have the courage to say to somebody, look, you're incompetent right now. We love you, but you can't do this job. So I need to bring someone in to help you get to the next level.

Um, that doesn't go well with everybody, but the right people, the ones that are willing to grow and listen and see it as an opportunity and just want to continue to do great work and contribute. They're all for it. I agree with you on that one. And I think, uh, it is positioning it as like, this is your, I'm paying for you to have a mentor essentially because like you're at, and I can't teach you and I don't have the time. So, uh, I do love that. I kind of want to segue into something that I actually am just curious of that came to mind a few times as we're talking, which is

Why make content at all? Why come on the podcast today? What is that? Because now you've shifted into being more heads up. Is this part of what you now want to take on as being, um, is stepping into that more now than maybe in the past? Because you have plenty of content out there, but you know, I don't know. I'm curious, like what percentage of your time does it take? Uh, you could call it content, public relations, um,

being the face of the company, doing external facing things. Like, do you enjoy that? And curious because you said you love the time at home, you came and flew here. I'm curious, what's the objective with that for you? I have like three stories to tell. And unfortunately for me, or fortunately, they require a lot of conversation. And so I really love

a conversation podcast. I really love lecturing. I really love like getting in front of people and telling our story because I think it needs to be told. One is that meat is broken.

meat needs to be transformed. Um, if you look at anything, uh, like any sort of demographic, it's more and more people are guilty about the meat that they're eating. They feel guilty about it. Why? Because meat has a huge ethical wake. The animals are treated poorly. The environment is treated poorly. Farms are closing faster than they ever have. And, uh, we have a solution for that.

And more and more people are deciding, like, I don't want to feel guilty about the meat I'm eating. I'm going to eat something that I know the animal is treated well, the farmer was paid well, the environment is being regenerated, building that sustainability into the meat that they're eating. And we have all the species and seafood and all that stuff so that you can just buy from us and like feel good about it. Not worry.

Not worry about it. It's like ButcherBox. I literally, I could spend an hour and a half talking about salmon. Like just salmon. Like all the things about salmon. And you know, I love that. So that's a story that we have to tell. Now that's not this podcast, but like that's a story we have to tell. The next one is around entrepreneurship and bootstrapping.

I built this company with no outside capital. That is rare. And when you read the tech press, you read TechCrunch, you're like in the tech stuff, it's not even considered as an option that you can bootstrap something. And what I love about this enterprise here with you and Alex is that you guys are fervent bootstrappers. Yeah.

You're like, we're going to teach people how to bootstrap. We're going to encourage them how to bootstrap. We're going to help them grow big businesses. And by the way, you can make so much more money bootstrapping. Like this is the path. Yeah. What most people see is shark tank where the sharks go on and they shit all over your company and then take 35% of it. And then like you're, you're sunk. Yeah. Right. And so like,

Bootstrapping, I believe, is the right way to build a company. And I don't think it gets the time of day. So if anyone wants to talk to me about bootstrapping, I'm like, no problem. Tell me where to go. It's so fascinating because it's funny, but I so see that now that you pointed out. I just knew nothing about the Silicon Valley world when we got into business. I didn't even know that was an option. I was like, great, people would give us money? When I understood that after, because that's how naive I was and what a small town I came from, I was like,

really people like just give you money when you have a pitch deck. Like it was beyond my ability to comprehend. Yeah. And then the third is like this idea of mission and company values and treating your employees. Well, I think capitalism, you know, capitalism, capitalism has been around for however many years, 500 years, whatever. Um,

People think of it as an extractive thing. I'm going to take as much money from my customer, pay my employees as little as possible, and then go treat the animals as poorly as possible so I can make as much money as possible. And the reality is that you sign a fiduciary duty to your shareholders that says you're going to just drive profits, drive shareholder value.

And I just think that that is not what this world needs. What this world needs is people who want to build a company and do well, do incredibly well, but do good as well.

Can you treat your employees well? Can you have a mission that's bigger than like make tons of money? Can you like almost blur the line between like a nonprofit and a for-profit and build something that's sustainable and growing and profitable and do it in a way that honors the whole system? And so like...

basically anyone who's willing to let me like get on my soapbox and talk about those things. Like I'm all for it. I'm like, yeah, put me on. Have you read John Mackey's book founder of whole foods? Yes. Where he talks about win, win, win, win, you know, win for the community, win for the customer. It just, it came to mind when you were talking about that, which is like, I definitely think through that too, which is like, you can't make the decision unless it's a win for every party involved. I love that. That's right. Central to what you're doing. Yeah. I mean, I think it's like, for me, it's the only way to build a business.

And I was just being here today and just seeing all these hungry entrepreneurs who are trying to make a difference. The amount of impact that you can have, even today with 140 people here and all of their customers, it's just so massive. That's what we're here for. Make a big ripple so it just creates something different in the world. Yeah, I agree with you. I'm curious, have you felt, because talking about capitalism, when I first got into business,

Granted, it was only 10 years ago. Things changed so much. It was like it was one way and then it ebbed the other and now it's ebbing back another way. Have you felt that as well in your business, like the cultural shift changed?

through the process of hiring, through the process of what people expect in the workplace, through... Because it's interesting because sometimes I'm so busy in the business that I don't realize the outside forces that are affecting it. But it's definitely been something that I, when I look up and I reflect back, has greatly affected a lot of the, especially in the people department, the HR department, the things that are considered norms and such in there. Has that been something that you've noticed too? Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, so...

we have a, um, most of our backbone is outsourced. So we don't own our own farms. We don't own our own slaughterhouses. We don't own our own distribution facilities. Um, and, but when you think about meat, meat is oftentimes known as one of like the worst jobs, uh, working a slaughterhouse is like the jungle was written by Upton Sinclair back in like the, you know, 1800s. Um,

And so we saw huge changes in meat during COVID. Oh. If you remember in COVID, people in meat plants were dying and they were being forced to work and they weren't slowing down the chain. And then they did slow down the chain and then there were shortages and people were really concerned and

I just remember buying a crap ton of meat. Yeah, exactly. We've navigated a lot. My first company I started in 2008. I've been running a company now for 18 years, which is a long time. There have been ebbs and flows. I think the consistent thing is trying to build a really great place that people are proud of working for.

But yeah, engineers are impossible to get. And then it's like, well, AI is disrupting us. And now there's lots of engineers. I wouldn't want to be an engineer. Or people in meat plants were...

oftentimes paid very little and whatnot. And then they couldn't find any workers. So then they started adding all these expenses and labor costs went way up and all sorts of ebbs and flows and ins and outs. And that's what makes business great. It's such a fun game. It's just like such a great game. I agree with you. I am a big fan of being incredibly transparent with my company and

We show our company the numbers. We show them how we're doing. We get them rallied behind the idea of like, we teach them what they need to know, teach them about gross margins, teach them about EBITDA, teach them about all these things so that they can be better stewards of the company. I love that. And that's something I've done for my last company too. We used to tell people like, this is how many months we have until we hit a wall. So like no one was surprised when we had an issue. Yeah.

And now this company, it's like a great way to rally people and get people bought in and to understand how what they're doing contributes to a much bigger story.

That's fantastic. And I'm glad you shared that because I encourage people to share their numbers and to share like, you know, I said, you don't have to share the expense of every single department because it's not relevant to everybody. But the basic P&L for the business to be able to share that with people and educate them on, that's really cool that you do that because I think it just empowers people because you're like, this is the number that you affect. Yeah, exactly. And then they're like, it clicks with them. They're like, oh gosh, that's how I affect the business. Yeah.

We don't do open salaries. Some people are like, here are the salaries. I think that's, I mean, I just, we don't do that. But everything else we're very, very open about and I think it's helped dramatically. It's really cool. If you don't mind, I actually had a few quick questions I wanted to ask you as we near to the end. My own version of a lightning round.

One question for you is what's one thing that you do that you think other people would consider weird or odd considering your status? Oh, considering my status? Yeah, you're a CEO. You have this very successful company. Very professional. The first thing that came to mind was I do prolonged water fasts.

Oh. But maybe someone of my status would do that. I'm not sure. Yeah. So I oftentimes do five-day fasts where I just drink water. How often? At least once a year, ideally two or three times a year. Wow.

What's that been like, the experience? Oh my gosh, it's amazing. It's so cool. So the first 24 hours, you're super hungry. First 48 hours, the first 24 hours, you're hungry. 24 to 48, you're really hungry. You're like not doing well, not a lot of energy. After about 50 hours, your body shuts off your hunger response. So you're just not hungry.

Not hungry. And for me, my sense of smell goes like through the roof. So I remember I was at a park with my kids and I could smell it like a Caesar salad. Like I was like, smell Caesar salad. And it was like a hundred yards. It's like, cause your body's just like primed to eat. It's like, you need to eat. Wow. And then at around a hundred hours, which is, you know, just over four days,

Um, at least for me and many other people have reported this, uh, it's like this euphoria. It's like, I think your body's basically like either it's saying like, okay, you're going to die. So we're going to keep you happy. Or it's saying like, well, it burns extra calories to be anxious or angry or

And so I just have like no negative triggers and I'm just like living like just with like joy and love and curiosity. And it's, it's like wonderful to the point where when I eat again,

I'm like, Ooh, I can like feel, I could just like feel the anxiousness just rising up in my body. Um, so that's one that's, is that unexpected enough? Yeah. I mean, I didn't expect it and it doesn't know. It's really interesting too. Okay. So if I asked your team, what's your biggest pet peeve? What do you think they would say? I think they would say like not being on time or not being accountable. I was going to give you my example, which is not being on time. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's just like, you know, time is money. Yeah. Like, show up on time. That's great. Are you like, is it, if it's, say a meeting starts at 12 and someone shows up at 12.01, do you address it? Yeah, I mean, I usually say time is money. And usually my executives are like so back to back to back to back.

And then now that I'm in this realm of doing less one-on-ones, it's just kind of like, you might want to consider having less of these because you're so back-to-back that you can't show up to a group of eight people who are the most highly compensated people in the company. We're burning money.

Yeah, I address it. I wouldn't say I'm hardcore on it. When we get in a meeting, the first few minutes are like ketchup anyway. As long as they come in while the ice is being broken, I'm good. If it's after that, then we'd have more of a problem. I understand that. Okay, tactical. What is your favorite automation, organizational tool, just like tool you use most often in business?

A notebook. No, that's cool. So you write most things down. Yeah, I like crossing things off. So what I do is I have a notebook, usually with graph paper, the grids, and I like to write it and then I put a checkbox by it. And then once it's off my desk, I check it.

And then once it's confirmed done, I write it off. And so that's how I'm really good at like two weeks from now being like, hey, whatever happened with that thing you were going to give me is because it never got crossed off. It got checked.

And so that is like my system. Is that a yellow notepad or? No, white, definitely white. Yeah, over the years I've done, I do a lot of goal setting. I do goal setting for myself personally. And then I bake that into my calendar or into like, I tried to do like, what do I need to accomplish today? What are the few things I need to accomplish? And.

And yeah, just focus on those and just block out the noise. I like that. Write it down. It's not very automated. It's a piece of paper and a pen. It's funny because people ask me all the time, do you use some crazy, I'm like, oh, I've got a notepad on my phone. I've got one on my desk. Notepad on the phone is great too. I actually had a five and a half hour flight getting here and I went through my entire

notes and there was a lot of stuff I forgot to do. So I was just hitting stuff that was like five months old. I love plain work. That's fantastic. Plain work is my favorite work. I already know this one I feel like, but I said meetings or emails. If you had gunned ahead, there's only one.

What did you say? Phone call. Phone call. Okay, so you like that better. Yeah. I like phone calls too. Yeah. You guys like walk around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hate sitting. Yeah, during COVID, I was like, I'm not doing the Zoom thing because all I do is look at myself and like, I can't even pay attention because I've just, and even when I hide myself, then an email comes in and so. Oh,

I have a pond around my house. It's like a three-mile loop. If I'm not in the office, I would prefer to be on the phone, walk in the pond. It's funny because I'm the exact same way. I love the phone call. I'll call into the meeting, if anything, because it's so hard to sit at your desk all day. It's like quality of life. I'm so much happier when I'm walking. I say, do you want to do a walking one-on-one? If I do the one-on-ones walking, even here we go outside, do a loop.

I put two treadmills in the gym in the basement. I'll go down there with some of my direct reports. We just walk on the treadmill together. Anything but sit. So I love that. Remote work versus in-person work? We have both now. We're hybrid, yeah. So when COVID happened, we closed the office, all went back to our houses. And at the time, we had, I think, two employees who weren't Boston located. And then everyone scattered.

And so our younger demographic at the company did what I was like really jealous of. They would go stay somewhere for like a month. So they're like, I'm going to be in Minneapolis for a month and then San Diego and then Las Vegas and then Austin. Oh, you know what? I love Austin. I'm going to stay in Austin. And so we just, there was just this huge dispersion of people. So we're now 60% Massachusetts, 40% remote. Got it. And I don't know how to call it back. You know, it's like-

I can't force everyone to come to the office or I'll lose 40% of my staff and some really good people. Cause we hired people outside of, of Boston. I go to the office. I love the office. Um,

But I don't expect everyone to come in all the time. We do believe, I believe that you need to build. So if you're going to do that, if you're going to do hybrid or you're going to do fully remote, you need to build like in-person connective tissue somehow. And so for my executive team and my VPs, every quarter we get together, we're all together for like two and a half days.

couple of night, a couple of like dinners and stuff. And then we do one annual trip with the entire company. Yeah. We just got back from a trip. Okay. So I'm asking you because we've been doing an annual meetup and I said, you know what? I'd love to do an annual trip, something fun. This is too serious for me. And they were like, like what? So what have you, what's your favorite one been? Uh, well we just got back. So we've done a bunch of them. Um,

And they all started because my company hit a sales prize. In 2016, we got together. We're like, let's set some goals. We set these goals. And they were really audacious. And it was like, if we hit these goals, we got to do something crazy. And I was like, guys, if you hit those goals, I'll take you all to Mexico. Oh, gosh, yeah. And then they hit the goals. And so I was like, okay, I have two choices. I can either go to a Mexican restaurant and be like, we're in Mexico, or go to Mexico and wow them.

I chose to go to Mexico and wow them. And we invited plus ones and it was just like, wow, this is incredible. And so, but on that trip, it was like three days. Most of the time we were in like in a room, like talking strategy, watching these waves crashing or it was just like, this doesn't feel right.

Nowadays for our trips, we try to put the content to as little as possible. We'll have a producer, we'll have a few customer panels. It's like an hour to two hours of content a day. And then the rest of it is trying to build glue. Go hang out, go to this thing. We have this event activity. This is our 10th year. We just went on a cruise.

which was cool. Okay, it was cool. I was like, I can go one way or the other. No, it was great. It was great. It was a big ship. It was a celebrity cruise line. There was like 2,000 people. But we invited plus ones. So there was about 270 people who went.

And it was awesome. We went Fort Lauderdale, Key West, Day at Sea, Bahamas, and back. So not super adventurous, but for some people, very adventurous. I travel a lot, but for some people, I was like, wow, like,

But, and I'm not a cruiser by any stretch, but it was awesome. We had such a good time. And I actually showed on the opening night, I had, I was working with a coach in 2016. So a year into the business, the business had just started. And my coach was like, okay, vision out your grandest vision. Like what is your grandest vision for this company?

And I said, I wrote down on a piece of paper, which I found, I just happened to find like a few weeks before the cruise. I wrote down that I was going to have sold ButcherBox. That part I got wrong. But I was going to have sold ButcherBox, have started these other companies that collectively we would have a path to a billion dollars in revenue. And then I was going to take everybody, all of my employees and all my family on a cruise.

And I, I, I like didn't remember I wrote this, but I, I found, I was like, holy cow. And so I shared it with the company and I was like, you know, this is, this is both a reminder that when you set your intention on something, you can like manifest amazing things in the world.

And also a reminder that whatever your vision is, there might be a bigger vision out there. Because I didn't have to sell the company, and here we are, and we're doing exactly what I had said we were going to do. I think that most entrepreneurs, when they think about starting a company, they think about a business plan. They're like, okay, I need to put together, what am I going to sell, and what are my customers, how much is it going to cost, and all that. What's my business?

And I really encourage people to start with a lifestyle plan. And so the exercise that I have want to be entrepreneurs do is to vision your life three years in the future and do this after you've like had a hard workout or you're walking through the woods or whatever, like do it. Don't do it like using your brain, do it using your heart.

And you think about your day. Where are you waking up? Are you waking up next to somebody? Are you getting a workout in? Are you hanging out at home for a bit? Do you go to an office? If you go to an office, who do you see there? What's your day look like? Who are you calling? What are you doing? What are you focused on? What are you looking at? Just like creative writing exercise a day in the life of you three years from now. Pick the date. It's January 28th, 2028. And this is what I'm doing.

And I've done that several times. And it is eerie how close you can get from what you had said was going to happen to what actually does happen.

And I think, again, because a lot of entrepreneurs, they let the business take over themselves. They forget why they started it. And if you have something that you've written down that you can go back to and be like, wait, this doesn't fit in with my lifestyle plan. Now I'm traveling all the time and doing all this stuff and that's not what I wanted to do. It's a great reminder, more so than a business plan. Because I think your business plan needs to feed that lifestyle plan.

If you don't want to be on sales calls all day, don't start a sales calls business, whatever it is, or hire a sales call person. But if you get straight on what you want out of your life and what kind of life you want to live, then I think the business then becomes in service of the lifestyle you want to have. I really like that because I think it's,

It's similar to something I say, which is you want to engineer an environment that you want to keep showing up to. For me, that was a huge reason I wanted the in-person. I actually really like in-person work. I was like, I want an office that I can go into every day. I want a studio that I can go to. When I have my vision, it's like I get to go into work versus work at my desk and never see anybody all day and work in this fucking box in the sky because I live in the high rises. I really agree with that because I think a lot of times people don't think about that. It

It's funny because last week an entrepreneur asked me, he said, how do I know, because he's selling his business, and he said, how do I know what the next one should be? And I literally said, what do you want to do every day? What do you want your day-to-day to look like? Because I thought about that so much in starting Acquisition.com because I hadn't thought about it in starting my last business. And I ended up, honestly, being pretty miserable some of the times because I realized I'd built a business that...

did not support the kind of stuff I wanted to do. It wasn't social enough. It was all remote. It was very disjointed and it just wasn't the kind of thing I wanted to do every day. And so it made me want to quit. And it's like, if the CEO quits, the business doesn't go anywhere. Right. And so I think that's really, really important. And I liked that you added that in. So thank you. Yeah.

Well, cool. I appreciate your time. This has been really fun. I did not ask you a lot of the questions that were on here because, again, I'm just curious and I really love hearing all of your views on business. Also, it's just funny because...

you know i for some reason expected to have completely different points of views on business like maybe you from myself and there's just so many things you said i just found myself being like yeah like that's it and uh yeah success leaves clues so thank you for being on i really appreciate it thank you for having me that's been great great awesome