Latest / The Weekly Run / The Exchange at UCF (Part 2) | #25

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The Exchange at UCF (Part 2) | #25 · The Weekly Run

• Jeff Perera: Welcome to the Week Rebun. This is part two of New Exchange, an episode where we sat with students at the University of Central Florida and discussed business, life, and entrepreneurships. Lots of good questions ahead. We are wrapping the day up, so take a listen and enjoy. Aaron: right, who else? We got one over here, one next to you. Great. Go ahead. Jeff Perera: All right, who else? We got one over here, one next to you. Great, go ahead. JBR: Alright, who else? We got one over here one next year. Great. Goodbye. ⁓ I was wondering when you thought it was a good idea to expand ⁓ and make it the franchise that it is. ⁓ like from from the one store you're thinking, man, I'm doing good. Let's let's open up a second one. Jeff Perera: Yeah, so we o we had one running and it was great. You know, we were we were busier than we could handle. You know, we just had capacity issues, the weekends were crazy. We had finally hired some people so that we had help in the shop. the second store we got a little lucky. ⁓ I had met a lot of other business owners in the community, especially in the food space, and I had a baker who was ⁓ actually Unironically doing bagels as well. They were ⁓ Montreal style bagels, which is slightly different. They're ⁓ honey boiled and then wood oven baked. I see your face. Yeah, I know. They're good. They're sweet. They're very sweet, the honey on there and they they get zero overnight rise. So you roll the dough, you make the bagel, you boil it in the honey bath, and then you seed it, and the seeding sticks to the honey and it's almost like a brittle on the outside. It's different, it's totally different. ⁓ they're really skinny, big hole. ⁓ But he got sick and he's like, I'm closing my business. Do you wanna buy it? And I was like, Sure. That sounds like a great idea. Like and we worked out a deal. I bought the assets of his business really affordably and we opened our second location and that like nearly broke us. It was so hard. Like so, so hard. So at first shop you're like, Great, this is awesome. Danielle and I like Yin and yang. Like she was the operator. I was the creative. Like we had the perfect balance of like how you run a business together. And then now you split us and neither store ran as well. It was really hard. business wise, personally, it was challenging. ⁓ that year, Danielle's dad ⁓ died that October after we bought the store. ⁓ she took some time out of the business and suddenly we like had to zoom out because she wasn't as involved. And so I had to run both stores and all that experience that I'd gotten from Target and all the other places. running multi unit businesses, we just plugged that in. We hired managers, we started running our businesses more like they were like our own two little corporate operations. And you know, they got better. In that process is when we met Justin. Justin had ⁓ the team had been coming into the ⁓ the shop in College Park. Like, we love your bagels. Everybody in the office is eating ⁓ like every day. You should meet my boss, he's really cool. He started a business too. He might want to help you grow this thing. And we're like, no Like, dude, we're we can barely like we're barely staying alive right now. Like, no. And it was it's so hard. You don't running two stores is hard. And so ⁓ we finally it was like January and they mean his our our general counsel reached back out to me and he was like ⁓ he's like, Alright, listen, last shot, like ⁓ we're just if you don't want to pursue it, that's cool. But like we're probably gonna just, you know, move on, do something else. I'm like, well let's just take the meeting. So we took the meeting and and it was like great. It was there was a kinship. Like Justin had started and founded a business called You Break I Fix. It's got a plaque on the wall over there. really successful UCF student. You've probably heard the story. Spoken here before at the exchange. but he's also a super down to earth guy who just gets it. He came into our shop and he said, I know if you break I fixed like when we opened our first location, we hung the drywall and we built the counters from IKEA too while he had his hands on our counters that were from IKEA. So he's just a he's just a really normal guy who built a really great business and has these tools to build a franchise company. And so we said, all right, let's go, let's do this. And I think if Danielle's dad hadn't died, we probably wouldn't have. So it was more of like a What would dad want us to do? He'd say go for it. He was also the same person who was like, I can't believe you're married to some bum who won't go get a job and he's making bagels. Both sides of that coin. Aaron: Both sides of that coin. Yeah. JBR: Just a really normal guy who built a really great business and has these tools to build a franchise company. And so he said, all right, let's build this. And I think if Danielle's dad has that, he's probably what he's done. So it was more of like a wait, but it's still different. He was also the same person who was like, I can't think married stuff and won't get ⁓ job and they both sides of that point. Yeah. Aaron: It's hard to really evaluate how things are gonna turn Jeff Perera: out. It's hard to see the future. Yeah, if we could all the future, we'd be doing different things. Coming in short. Yeah, ⁓ Aaron: out. It's hard to see the future. Yeah, if we could all see the future we'd be doing different things. Yeah. Right, there was another question on this side. We got a few more minutes. I don't I know you guys got a hard stop at twelve. JBR: It's hard to see the future. Yeah, we can all see the future. We got a few more minutes, I'll and then you get a hard stuff as Jeff Perera: When we first started our approach to marketing was one hundred percent social media. There was just me and my phone and the bagels. That was it. I reshared every tag. I posted every day consistently. Social media marketing is a completely different beast than traditional marketing. I don't even know what they teach anymore around marketing, but social media marketing is about consistency, it's about compelling storytelling, capturing people's attention. And so I knew that my journey was not unique, but it was unique to me. And so I just started telling my story online. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. And as I told that story, the content got better because I was doing it more frequently. But Aaron: Telling storytelling, capturing people's attention. And so I knew that my journey was not unique, but it was unique to me. And so I just started telling my story online. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. And as I told that story, the content got better because I was doing it more frequently. But JBR: And so I knew that my journey was not unique, but it was unique to me. So I just started telling my story online, Facebook, right on TikTok. As I told that story, the content got better, people were doing it more frequently. But Jeff Perera: as the business progressed You know, you don't you can't just rely on that. So there's it it moved beyond, truly organic social to the point where when we were building our ⁓ F D, which is a financial disclosure document that you have to build for ⁓ when you register a franchise, our marketing line had zero dollars. ⁓ And franchise lawyer was like, It's absolutely impossible for a business to not have any marketing spend. They're lying. Someone's gonna think you're lying, the auditors are gonna think you're lying. And we're like we're just like dude, we haven't spent any money on marketing. We've never ⁓ Done an ad, we've never spent a dollar on a you know a back of a pamphlet, you know, business card size, whatever. And the we never did it. We didn't. We just everything was organic, everything was social media. ⁓ now we have a marketing machine that not only promotes the brand. and bagels in a market but specifically promotes franchise sales to a different audience and there's I don't know seven people on the marketing team now that do various jobs. There's a social media manager who helps me. There's franchise marketing. There's we have one person totally dedicated with supporter dude. He's like dedicated solely to like franch franchise sales and SEO marketing and it's crazy. So I think a lot like this podcast You know, let's bring it back to this. Like we're done this we're not like episode twenty one. This will be episode twenty one. It's a long one, so maybe we'll cut it up like two or three episodes. But you know, I think sometimes you just gotta start something for it to become something. So, you know, we knew that telling our story in a different way on a different platform would be valuable and so we started podcasting and you know, it's led us to the exchanges, yeah, which is cool. Who knows where it'll take us next, but it's another vehicle for someone to hear about our story and where where it's going. I Aaron: You know, I think sometimes you just gotta start something for it to become something. So, you know, we knew that telling our story in a different way on a different platform would be valuable and so we started podcasting and it's led us to the exchange at UCF, which is cool. Who knows where it'll take us next, but it's another vehicle for someone to hear about our story and where where it's going and JBR: ⁓ Aaron: ⁓ I think it's also really important to think about from a business perspective, having watched sort the journey is there's phases to it. And there's phases where different different actions and different things are going to pay different dividends. I think what was so amazing about sort of how you started with it and then how it's become is that in the early days, you're just trying to establish identity and brand. And you did an incredibly powerful job at that. And that's really what all that was needed. You had one shop. You either went to it or you didn't. It wasn't like you were you weren't we weren't selling franchises. So it's like I need people to understand what this is and create draw. And I remember sort of a side story on that is when when Justin said he wanted to meet me. This is before I even got offered the job. And so Justin, who we've been talking about, was like, Hey, we should go grab breakfast. And I'm like, We're friends, but I don't know if we're breakfast on Tuesday friends. And so I'm like, something's up and I'm telling my wife, she's like, Well, where are you going? And I'm like, I don't know, some bagel shop in a Koei of all places. She's like, ⁓ I know where you're going. And and her entire understanding had been through just social, just because where we are regionally and that it just bled into her feed. She's like, I've been wanting to try that for weeks, months, whatever. And so we you had brand identity from from nothing. We weren't there. We weren't, you know, we're not really in that market. From a locale standpoint, ⁓ but it but it established just a strong brand. And now we can build off that. All now when we go into new markets, it's much more traditional, but it's an extension of that brand that's already been built that actually is the hardest part, in my opinion. Jeff Perera: We you had brand identity from from nothing. We weren't there, we weren't you know, we're not really in that market from a locale standpoint. ⁓ but it it establishes a strong brand and now we can build off that. All now when we go into new markets, it's much more traditional. Yep. But it's an extension of that brand that's already been built. It actually is the hardest part, in my opinion. No but brand building is sure The cornerstone. Aaron: the So for you to be doing paper marketing and loot, you know, and leaflets and and radio spots without identity wouldn't have made any sense. So you invested in the right spot. Jeff Perera: So for you to be doing paper marketing ⁓ and and and ⁓ radio without identity wouldn't have made any sense. So you invest in the right spot. So Aaron: You're the right piece at the right time. Jeff Perera: I got a smart guy sitting next to me. ⁓ think we're at time the day. So ⁓ thank you for all of your wonderful questions. Thanks for participating in the weekly run with us. Aaron and I will be here for a period of time as you exit, so you're more than welcome to come up and hang out and say hi or ask more questions. Thanks everybody. ⁓ I'm gonna keep recording. Just so we can get extra. The show, yeah, we can have an after show. I think it needs to be like Muppets. We can just comment ⁓ commentate on Muppets. The two old men and the Muppets and Muppets. Hi. Hey, thanks for your questions today. It's so nice to you. So ⁓ Aaron: be like the Muppets and we can just common commentate on the Muppets. It's the two old men and the Muppets and we can just Hi Thanks for your questions. ⁓ Jeff Perera: I'm in the team and we our jobs like everyone's spit like out of I love it. ⁓ we have a Regana in April this year and that's been so long our season just ended If do you guys do food trucks? We don't. Okay. We don't have a food truck. Is it local? Yes, it's in like Pican, like I know where it is. But I mean we don't do food trucks, but we definitely have like catering off site catering stuff that we could do. Do so who would be the closest one? Yeah. ⁓ it was it would be the O Vito. Yeah. I wasn't sure. Yeah. Because we have so many people show up and that's awesome. ⁓ there was no food and no water in the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need no reason. Okay, I'm taking some notes. ⁓ let me ⁓ so it's of next year. ⁓ Yes. ⁓ ⁓ all right. Yeah. So if ⁓ I have notes, but if you'll send me an email ⁓ just Aaron: football engineering. Yes. ⁓ Smart, out of it. Yeah. a while. ⁓ So if ⁓ Jeffy's I have notes, but if you send me an email. Just it, then we can have Jeff Perera: way I it and then we can have like start the process of figuring out who's gonna it, when and what that looks like to me. ⁓ Of thanks so much, Target. Hey, how you doing? I'm Jeff. Chris, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. ⁓ ⁓ I had a question that kinda got sparked towards the end so I didn't have time to ask. obviously this is actually my first time hearing. I've heard about the name. Yeah. ⁓ but I'm not the time to really eat up, but I will be going here soon. Cool. Thank you. my question is a piece of advice I kinda get floating around is being wary of starting a business with family. ⁓ jeez, good question. I wish that'd be good yeah. Have you done that, Jeff? Obviously you you've been successful at it. How did you mitigate the risk of it? I'm sure Yeah. I mean it's hard. When you start a business with any partner, regardless of whether it's a family member, a spouse, a good friend, like you definitely want to make sure you set up like really clear guardrails on what what role you're gonna play, what role they're gonna play. I think for Danielle and I, like we know what our lane is and like how to stay in it. And if we if we stay in our lane, we're successful, it's when we veer out is when it becomes a problem. an attorney once told me that when you write a contract, you write a contract for when it goes bad, not for when it goes good. So like that contract really is for like the worst case scenario. It's like the last ditch bailout effort when something's going bad. So I think the contracts aside, like just make sure you know what your role is, what lane you're gonna play in. Like you can still be an advisor and still support, but like if they're the decision maker on X, then you should let them be the decision maker on X. You just advise it. I think it's professional. Like if you're ⁓ yeah if you can ⁓ if you can treat that person 'cause I've had actually failed friendship. Aaron: professional Like if you're yeah if you can ⁓ if you can treat that person because I've had actually failed friendships. Business starts and they fail because you can't go into business mode. And so if when you're doing business together, you feel still like the previous relationship, and you can't get into a different mode, it's gonna be hard. It's also because you know, school projects that way that you'd have some groups. ⁓ it's a great case study. Okay, you're about doing your part or whatever, and you know, you get that teacher where you kind of have to mitigate that. One last thing. with you guys so I can make a LinkedIn post for this. Let's do it. Sure. Aaron loves a picture. I think we come down here. Thank you, I appreciate it. We brought a guy. We brought our professional kid in here. I appreciate it. All right. I mean I appreciate it. I'll be sure to tag you guys. Thank you guys for meeting you. Thanks for your question, of course. Yeah. Thanks for giving me the one tag question. I Jeff Perera: question of a lot of framing, but my girlfriend would kill if I didn't Aaron: man. ⁓ we don't want that. Is there a product testing I'm to keep it Is there a product testing reason of why the tomato bacon cannot be a property menu I'm ⁓ Ooh, the tomato the wait, tomato grilled cheese? Side-dried tomato. Sun-dry tomato. But honorable mention tomato grilled cheese. Okay. So that's a power question, Jeff. Jeff Perera: A sun dried tomato. Sundried tomato bagel, but honorable mention of tomato grill cheese. Okay. So that's a bad question. is a great question. I think it's about creating ⁓ Scarcity. So like our business like McRib not our business the micrib. Our business started on this like the backbone of scarcity, right? Like you would go online and you'd have a really short opportunity to capture bagels, and if you got it, you got it. If you didn't you didn't, right? Like we sell it was a weekend. Like okay, we would sell it every weekend, but like as you open more and more businesses and you grow at this scale, like and you're investing a half a million dollars into opening a store, not to sell out. Like you need to have bagels. You need To have products when people come into your store, then it doesn't matter if it's ten thirty or one thirty, like you've gotta have something to sell them. So the bagel of the day is kinda become that daily LTO. And so some of these f flavors like sun dried tomato or even like loaded baked potato. My daughter, my my eleven year old's like, When's loaded baked potato? When's loaded baked potato? I'm like, it's it it's loaded baked potato is when it is. Like it's just coming when it gets there. ⁓ and so that scarcity it creates more trips, it creates a little bit of like yearning for that Yeah, you know. You're hearing about it. That's awesome. Thank you, so nice to meet then. Thank you. Take care. I just want to say thank you for having tonight. Of course, absolutely I appreciate you. That's awesome, man. Thanks. Take care. It's nice to meet you guys. Hey my name is Ryan. Ryan, nice to meet you. So I actually do social fitness personal brand on. Instagram and sweet or Facebook to talk and I'm trying to still card I'm not gonna say I like know everything about it but I'm curious as to how you went about building that brand online because I saw you guys have a close up for res of a hundred K on Instagram which is really impressive for a business. Not a lot of businesses don't figure out how to actually run social media. So how did you figure it out? So I started the business page just documenting my journey. So like it is my story through and through. Like storytelling. Just storytelling. It's a hundred percent it like Not every story is compelling to everyone. Right. And so some videos hit, some content hits, other content doesn't. And what you could do is you can like when you when you see something that works, you can try to replicate it and see if it was like what about it. Like so it is a lot of A B testing. It's a ton of trial and error. I would tell you though, like as a person that has been creating any content for this business for like six years. And I have I only missed ever three days of posting a story on the Jeff's Bigelone Instagram account. That's great. Like three days ever. That was it. So gotta be consistent and then gotta be authentic. ⁓ If you're not authentic and like you're trying to like ⁓ be somebody else or fake it, ⁓ it Aaron: gotta be authentic. If you're not authentic and like you're trying to like Jeff Perera: Every single person watching the video will know. And there's gonna swipe right by. I feel like that's where I struggle with, where I'm trying to improve is first of all the storytelling. I don't do any type of storytelling. I kind of just, you know, post content that helps that specific person that I think would appreciate the type of content I make. Yeah. But thank you for answering Aaron: interesting. I think that's a good ang it's somebody that watches Jeff and is like a consumer of it. I think what's really compelling ⁓ is I feel like Just to double down that, like I feel like I'm a part of your journey, even if I'm not necessarily interested in the broader specific message. And I think that's sort of the missing piece with storytelling is that you the value can be more tangential. Like you're trying to teach somebody how to do a very specific thing, you've got a very specific target audience. That's fine. But I may have no idea what your audience does or what you do. And I could just be interested because it's a peak behind a curtain in a world that. I don't have exposure to. And I think that's where his stuff really does very well because it's like, I'm just interested. What's a bagel shop? What are bagels doing? You're boiling. What's that? That's weird. I think that so access is an interesting part of storytelling. And Jeff Perera: What's a bagel shop? What do bagels do? You're boiling. What's that? That's weird. I think that's so access is an interesting part of storytelling. And it's Aaron: it's also evolving. Like I'm seeing it like what you consume is probably different from what you consumed a few years ago. And so ⁓ I think messy content is done right now. ⁓ If it's not like if it's perfectly curated, ⁓ people like especially in the AI world. Jeff Perera: also evolving. Like I'm you're seeing it like what you consume is probably different than what you consumed three years ago. ⁓ so ⁓ I think messy content is working right now. ⁓ If it's not like if it's perfectly curated, ⁓ people are like, ⁓ scroll past. in the You know, like it's it's got if it's little messy, I think it's good. I think you're authentic to you are, it's just gonna shine through. That's my advice. Just be you. Document. Document, don't create. Exactly. Document, don't create, and you'll you'll see success. Eventually. And maybe you're not. Maybe people just don't care about fitness. Right. Like I mean, like maybe you're just not reaching the right like that's not to say that we were talking about this on the way over here, like the ⁓ What the movie obsession that just came out with YouTube creator made a movie, right? Like been creating on YouTube for years and like put a movie out, it's like gross like 150 million dollars, you made it like seven hundred fifty thousand. You're shaking your head. Yeah, yeah. And like rooms. The back rooms yeah, and the back room's completely different. Like so I think you've got this like you've got a space where you can create and like beat you and be goofy. If you're goofy, if you're dead if you're real serious, be real like whatever your natural default is that you should do. So I think if you guys want to collab sort, you know, as you were saying, collaborations are great. If it fits your brand, I would love to. What's your at? Ryan Diaz. At Ryan Diaz. I can give you guys a follow and it'll pop up from Awesome man. Thanks. Take care. Hey. So I'm Jeff. Nice to meet you, I'm Jack. So ⁓ I've worked in retail now for a few years, like specifically like ⁓ beverage retail, like beer water, that sort of thing. So I had this idea and I was just wondering if you guys have an idea of like Whenever you open your first brick and mortar store, like I know that wasn't cheap. Yep. It took a lot of funding. Was that mostly personal investment? Yeah, financing? No, so we sold our house. We so we personally funded like almost all of it. We sold our house, we we did a Kickstarter campaign. We raised like twenty eight thousand dollars from backers in our in the community. ⁓ which was really a fun way to build community right away. And and then the rest of it was ⁓ Like honestly, like we our business like cash flowed from like day one. Yeah. Just because we were selling a product that had high margin, it had mass appeal. So we had you know, if we sold eighty dozen bagels at the time, which like on our first day was the most we could sell, like that eighty dozen bagels was making money from beginning. Right. And then as we built like we were strategic in how we built the team, like so we never took on any debt. ⁓ it's different now as we're growing and we've got like Aaron and his whole dev team and his AWS bill is probably more than you know what we paid in what we paid in rent for a whole year. It's not it is you know ⁓ like it's so I think you do have expensive days there. But so I I think if when you're first starting out anything you can do to not take on debt is like really valuable. Like really valuable. Cool, cool. And I guess the idea was like to have a ⁓ tap room that's kind of a storefront. But Main purpose of it is like ⁓ I'm I'm sure you've seen it before. Ravnus Big has their own consumer package beer that they sell in stores, so it's like marketing that's earning them money. Yep. So the idea was to just have a private label brewery that does that for like restaurants. So they can actually get to shelf in like publics and whole foods, like that's where I work. And there's people that don't know about Ravnus Jig to buy the beer. I'm you know, it's a restaurant. And then they end up having I think it's a That's a really neat idea. I like that. I think there's like there's definitely a room for that. I think there's still space. I think you could I think creating something too even around like non alcoholics too. Yeah. Because that's such like a trend right now for for people. So like if you combine the two things and like have these kind of premium products branded for for businesses. I think there's just that room there. It's kinda cool. Cool. Okay. Great idea. I know reps, so I hope I can make it work out. Awesome. Hey. Interesting. If you have questions and you want just chat more about it, just hit me up on LinkedIn. Yes. Jeff at Jeff's Bagel Run. Cool. I'm writing a business plan, so I hope Send it over. Take a look. And I think we use all their things. Likewise. ⁓ how do you guys take that? And how can someone turn added person into an advantage? Yeah. I think ⁓ Aaron: Yeah. ⁓ what's the place for the business? ⁓ how do you guys handle it? And how can someone turn that university into an event that was Yeah. I think ⁓ for me, like toughest thing that we experienced was when Danielle's dad We were both running one store each and they were both busy stores. Like we were we had like two legitimate businesses ⁓ going and we were the only ones ⁓ like running them. Like, you we didn't give ⁓ enough ⁓ autonomy to our Jeff Perera: For me, like the toughest thing that we experienced was when Danielle's dad died. We were both running one store each and they were both busy stores. Like we were we had like two legitimate businesses going and we were the only ones like running them. Like, you know, we didn't give enough autonomy to our to our teams and so And part of that was like that was a mistake on our part 'cause we just wanted to have the control, right? And like so as we've grown now, thirty five stores, if we have franchise these, I see them, I talk to them every day, like every month on the phone. see what they're doing in their business. Like I think about like if you give them the autonomy and you trust people to run your business, you end up growing faster. You'll end up with a lot less like stress and problems like for you still have stress, like still have different things, but it's like it ch it shifts a little bit. And so letting go of some of that control. For me it was really hard because the bagels were like my baby. Like if you if you were like a thinker making it the wrong way or you did something that was ⁓ not to my standard, I would just lose my mind. And like structures were ⁓ yeah, there were. There was all sorts of things, but people feel like it's still a bit of a creative space. So someone's like, ⁓ I think it should be more or this or that. And sometimes those ideas were really valuable. And I had to like let go of the idea that you know, these bagels aren't mine anymore. You know, these bagels are being created by that baker and that store. And it's their bagel. It's my recipe and ultimately It's their experience to deliver it to the guests that's coming into their shop. So it's not mine as much as it is theirs. And so once I started to instill that like ownership into that product, it changed my mindset and allowed me to let go a little bit of that control. I still have standards, I still have expectations for the way things should be made. But it doesn't take away from the fact that somebody might take ownership and pride in what they're going to do. Okay. Okay, so you're s Aaron: you're saying that ⁓ as a business owner ⁓ should let your have a good parts of ⁓ can be more control ⁓ of what ⁓ open up some the business want achieve in their own ⁓ Yeah, I that I I think if you ⁓ give ⁓ autonomy Jeff Perera: you're saying that ⁓ As a business owner, you should let your employees have a bit more autonomy and be more in control of what the business in your own way. Yeah, I think that I think if you give autonomy within like guardrails, right? Like I have a re I I've got this recipe, like you should build this recipe. Like and you know, like I think give them the autonomy, give them a space sometimes sometimes depending on the business, give them a space to be creative. They need an outlet occasionally. But like even in my career at Target, it was about assigning ownership, right? So like if I was responsible for the sporting goods department and I had ⁓ you know the twentieth highest volume bike department, I might look at a team leader and be like, Hey, you're my team leader for the sporting goods department. You run this bike department. Like What can you do to get this bike department to number ten in the company? Like give them a lot of ownership, autonomy, ownership, however you want to look at it. I think both of those are gonna give you a lot of value as the owner, because then you can back out, you just follow up with them, you're not doing all the tasks anymore, you can do other stuff, you can position your your time in a different way. Okay, cool. Aaron: I think you also want to think about what does the business need from you at every stage? Yeah. And what it needs from the first days is not the same as it's going to need in the later days and as you scale. And and in the early days, when you're trying to build that product and understand what it needs to be, you need to be hands-on and do it all. And then to open two, three, five, ten, twenty stores, it's not the the goals changed. You can't possibly make every bagel anymore. So now your goal's gone from making bagels to making systems that allow people to make bagels. And then we go further. And so it's the the empowerment and the and the autonomy is really a byproduct of that fact that your job is changing as a business owner rapidly. And that's the piece that you got to make sure that you don't miss because a lot of places fail to scale a lot of times just because the owner fails to scale. And they stay small minded about what they're doing and then they never have time or capacity or energy to do it. Jeff Perera: I like that. Like so we ⁓ we talk about this a lot. Like we always want to I said and Aaron ⁓ helped me ⁓ frame this differently ⁓ probably three months ago. ⁓ I like how we stay small? But I I don't want to stay small. I want to grow huge business. I want hundreds of stores. I want just Bigel run in any community that wants it. ⁓ So what I mean by staying small is like staying connected. ⁓ How we stay ⁓ connected to our communities. How do we build community in a way? And so everyone's like it's you don't really want to be small. You don't want to feel small. You don't want to show up small. You want to be connected to your community. You want to build that relationship with the places you're doing business. And so it kind of just changed the mindset a little bit. It's not like that. I would trust it that specifically. Yeah, yeah. So I have a question for you actually. so in the tech port Aaron: what's one suggestion you gotta ⁓ know? Somebody might put your crowd, they should learn. ⁓ I I do marketing, so I yeah, either way I should learn a little bit of tax. I think the biggest thing with technology is and this is when we build our own, this is a very important sort of ⁓ mantra or sort of our guiding principle around it is like you really just gotta focus on the purpose. It's very easy, there's so much stuff and there's so many things you can do, and now with AI supposedly the dream is that I can make all my own software. Okay, great. But true whether it's true or not doesn't matter, but but it's a tool. Right? You don't you wouldn't pick up a hammer and say, ⁓ my goodness, what are all the crazy things I can do with this hammer? You're like, where's the nail? Let me make sure it hammers in. And if it's not the hammer, it's a screwdriver, because I actually have a screw, not a not a nail. Like we gotta think of software that way. So for you, when you're starting, like start specific, start small. What is what is the goal that I have for this software? A lot of people start tool first, use second. It's got to be flipped. What am I trying to accomplish? And I'll have this conversation when we build things internally with our teams. People come and be like, ⁓ we need this software. And I'm like, okay, that's great. What are you trying to do? And I always want to distill back to you there's a goal that you're trying to accomplish, there's a tool for it. That marriage is the success. And what that does for you, especially somebody that's potentially not from technology specifically, it simplifies everything. And now you're in a world where it's like, this is great. That solves that problem. That solves this problem. those together and the next thing you know you have something impressive. Okay. Cool. But you don't get overwhelmed, which is nice. Okay. So it's basically find discourse first. Yeah. And then trying to find tools. A lot. I know like a lot of people might be like, ⁓ I need most expensive thing to run it, but it's not history that and that's a big reason why we built our own software, because we looked at the field and we're like, all right, could we have probably pieced them in together out of everything? Sure. But it we would have spent as much time on that. versus just building the little thing that we need. And and also when you do that, you go through the exercise of ask actually asking yourself and vetting your question before you even get started. Because you have to think about what you what you have to think about the problem you're trying to solve before you pick anything. You might find that you're not even focusing on the right problem or that you don't understand your problem well enough. We do that internally all the time. We'll have that whole conversation. Next thing you know, we're like, you what, this isn't really what we wanted to do at all. This isn't really important. And then we just throw the whole thing away. And so like that journey, that process, which is a very standard engineering process, but a lot of other disciplines aren't familiar with it. So like it's a good skill to learn ⁓ anywhere. Honestly, is just really understanding your problems before you even start to tackle them. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Thanks for coming out. Wow, is that it? Like that's that's you're gonna have no chance at editing this. No chance whatsoever. I just it's gonna be a big cornucopia. You can filter in all of Corey's stuff. Corey's over there. He's ⁓ he's on the pod silently. Silent Corey. Jeff Perera: What an episode, man. It was fun. It was ⁓ I guess until next week, bake fresh, bring joy, ⁓ build community.