Irrational Persistence E-Book

Dave Zilko

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 288

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

A modern-day Detroit success story that fuels the entrepreneurial fire Irrational Persistence tells the story of Garden Fresh Gourmet, and how two entrepreneurs turned a million-dollar debt to a 100-million-dollar annual revenue. Woody Allen famously said that 80 percent of success is just showing up; but any entrepreneur can tell you that it's the other 20 percent that's key. The founders of Garden Fresh took that old saying to heart, building so many strategic advantages into their products and business that their 'sales' team didn't have to do any selling--they simply had to show up. In this book, you'll find out what kind of legwork goes into building a mega-success product, and the strategies, methods, and just plain stubbornness that helped two guys from Detroit build a market leader. Garden Fresh Gourmet is now the number-one fresh salsa in the US, shipping over a million units every week to Costco, Walmart, Whole Foods, and other national chains--and it all began with two middle-aged guys with negative funds and plenty of ideas. This book shares their journey, insight, and passion to help you build a better business and take it to the top. * Learn how two entrepreneurs went from major debt to major revenue * Discover the key characteristics of a product that sells itself * Consider why selling out might not be the ultimate goal * Track a journey of 'irrational persistence' from rags to riches Garden Fresh Gourmet is an inspiration beyond the journey--the way you run things at the top matters, too. Irrational Persistence shows you how to make the tough decisions, live with the sacrifices, and prioritize your values as you build your brand and just keep on going.

Leseprobe

Dave Zilko

FORMER VICE CHAIRMAN OF GARDEN FRESH

IRRATIONAL PERSISTENCE

SEVEN SECRETS THAT TURNED A BANKRUPT STARTUP INTO A $231,000,000 BUSINESS

Cover image: ©iStock.com/pearleye Cover design: Wiley

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright © 2016 by Dave Zilko. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Names: Zilko, Dave, author. Title: Irrational persistence : seven business secrets that turned a crazy    startup into a #1 national brand / Dave Zilko. Description: Hoboken, New Jersey : John Wiley & Sons, [2016] | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015043063 (print) | LCCN 2016000691 (ebook) | ISBN 9781119240082 (hardback) | ISBN 9781119240099 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119240105 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Zilko, Dave, 1963- | Garden Fresh (Firm) | Snack food    industry—United States. | Businesspeople—United States—Biography. |    Entrepreneurship. | Success in business. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS /    Entrepreneurship. Classification: LCC HD9219.U64 G379 2016 (print) | LCC HD9219.U64 (ebook) |    DDC 338.7/66458—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043063

TO MY PARENTS,DON AND ARLEEN, WHO INSTILLED IN THEIR CHILDREN THAT ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE IN THIS LIFE AS LONG AS YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT. AND TO MY SONS, CHRISTIAN AND ALEX, IN THE HOPE THAT THIS DEMONSTRATES HOW TRUE THAT IS.

CONTENTS

Prologue

Introduction

1 Summon the Courage to Enter the Dark Room

LIFE IN THE DARK ROOM: DAVE

LIFE IN THE DARK ROOM: JACK AND ANNETTE

IRRATIONAL PERSISTENCE

ILLUMINATING THE DARK ROOM

2 Find Your Place in This World

EMBRACE WHAT MAKES YOU SPECIAL

BE AUTHENTIC NO MATTER WHAT

FINDING YOUR PLACE IN YOUR CUSTOMERS’ WORLD

CREATE MORE VALUE BY MAKING LESS MONEY

3 Search for the Holy Grail

HOLY GRAIL 1

HOLY GRAIL 2

HOLY GRAIL 3

INFINITE HOLY GRAILS

4 Never Sell Anything

THIS NEEDS TO BE FROM THE HEART

BUILD RESPECT, GENUINELY

DON’T BE AFRAID TO BE UNPREPARED

WHAT YOU DON’T BRING TO A MEETING IS AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT YOU DO BRING

YOUR CUSTOMERS NEED TO SEE YOUR C-SUITE

OFFER YOUR COMPANY, NOT YOUR PRODUCTS

DON’T SUGGESTIVE SELL; SUGGESTIVE PARTNER

MELT AWAY THE SKEPTICISM

5 Build a Company Woody Allen Would Be Proud Of

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 1: WE’RE THE NUMBER 1 BRAND OF FRESH SALSA IN THE UNITED STATES

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 2: GARDEN FRESH DIPS

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 3: MARGARITAVILLE

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 4: TORTILLA CHIPS

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 5: HUMMUS

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 6: HIGH PRESSURE PASTEURIZATION (HPP)

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE 7: PRIVATE LABEL

JUST SHOW UP

6 Value Values

RESOLVE

FORGIVENESS

RESPECT AND DIGNITY

COMPASSION

VALUES

ARE

VALUABLE

7 If a Fortune 500 Company Calls, Take the Call

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT. SO WHAT? DO IT AGAIN

THE FIVE-MINUTE MEET-AND-GREET THAT TURNED INTO A 125-MINUTE MEET-AND-GREET

EVERY IDEA NEEDS A CHAMPION

KNOW THE REAL MEANING OF VALUE

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD TO A “NUMBER”

TAKE TIME TO REFLECT

HEART MATTERS

Epilogue

Index

EULA

Guide

Cover

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“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

Calvin Coolidge

PROLOGUE

WHAT’S IT LIKE TO TAKE A BANKRUPT startup and eventually sell it to a Fortune 500 company for almost a quarter of a billion dollars?

This is a different type of business book, one that tells a story—an “Only in America” story.

Just not from the place in America you’d expect.

“Salsa from Detroit? You’re kidding, right?”

We’d hear it all the time, and frankly I couldn’t blame anyone for asking the question. It’s counterintuitive at the very least and borders on irrational.

I’d love to say the idea was born out of some ultra-chic marketing incubator. Where some bold and brilliant entrepreneurs concluded launching a fresh salsa company from Detroit was “so crazy it just might work” and “all we’ll need now is a slick ad and PR campaign and we’ll be on our way.”

But to be honest, we’re not that clever.

Instead, Garden Fresh Gourmet was born in the back of a small bankrupt restaurant just outside of Detroit when a 44-year-old man named Jack Aronson pulled out a five-gallon bucket and in 15 minutes developed a recipe for fresh salsa.

“I was just hoping to pay my electric bill,” Jack has since told me.

When I first met Jack and his wife, Annette, five years after he made that first batch of fresh salsa, they were still struggling, although no longer bankrupt. I, however, technically could not say the same; 11 years earlier I had founded my own food company on a $2,500 credit card loan, and let’s just say things were not going too well for me.

Soon after I met the Aronsons they invited me to be their partner and, despite our humble origins, Garden Fresh is now the largest brand of fresh salsa in the United States with-annual revenues well in excess of $100 million.

And Garden Fresh was just sold to the Campbell Soup Company for $231 million.

We all want to live the life we’ve imagined for ourselves. For most of us doing that does not just happen; we have to make it happen. Doing so requires sacrifice—often tremendous sacrifice. Sacrifice unimagined in common hours.

I refer to those 11 years between the time I founded my company on that $2,500 credit card loan and the time I met the Aronsons as my “lost decade.” And Jack and Annette had had a couple of lost decades of their own before we became partners. On top of that, it took us another decade to fully realize the company Garden Fresh would eventually become.

We persisted against seemingly insurmountable odds in a fashion that can only be described as irrational.

Just as salsa from Detroit is irrational.

It’s not lost on me, though, that a lot of people work hard, are determined, yet don’t make it, don’t end up living the life they’ve imagined for themselves. Very often there’s a missing strategic link that is the difference between success and failure.

Failure’s in vogue right now, and for good reason; failure is important in a lot of ways; we all learn more from our mistakes than we do from anything else. We should not fear it. Thus, I’m fine accepting it, even embracing it, as a necessary speed bump on the road to success.

But I’ve done it enough in my life to confidently state: failure’s overrated.

Another thing I can confidently state: it’s not as necessary as some people might lead you to believe. We can all learn from other people’s experiences.

In this book I share our experiences, a heartfelt story that only life itself could write, as well as the secrets that drove Garden Fresh from the back of that tiny restaurant to become the premiere deli supply company in the United States.

So that you can begin to live the life you’ve imagined for yourself. Ideally a lot quicker than we did.

INTRODUCTIONStarting with Less Than Nothing

JACK AND I WERE WITH A GUEST in our conference room in Garden Fresh’s administrative offices. The company had just hit the $100 million mark and the local media had picked up on it. Our guest was amazed and could not contain himself:

“You know what I like about you two? You guys started with nothing, no one ever gave either of you a thing. I really respect that.”

Jack was taken aback by the statement, and answered the only way he knew how:

“Started with nothing? That would have been easy. What’s hard is starting with less than nothing.”

Our guest was perplexed.

“Dave,” Jack asked, “how much debt were you in when we got together?”

“Do you want the real number or just what I’ll admit to?

“Let’s just go with what you’ll admit to.”

“$350,000 . . . and I’m glad my wife doesn’t read what I give her to sign, no sense both of us losing sleep at night.”

Jack proceeded to throw a $450,000 figure on the table, but I knew that too was only what he’d admit to—for a while it seemed every other day someone was showing up at our office reminding Jack of the money they had lent him, and we always seemed to be paying them back.

Jack continued with our guest: “When we add it all up, it was easily a million-dollar hole. Starting with nothing would have been a blessing. Starting with less than nothing—now that’s a challenge.”

So how did we, me with a couple business degrees from a couple well-respected universities, and Jack, who now deserves to be considered one of the premiere food entrepreneurs in America, find ourselves middle-aged and starting with less than nothing, to the tune of about $1 million?

For me it all started when I was in college. I spent the summer between my sophomore and junior years studying in France, where I absolutely fell in love with the culture. I was just enamored by how wonderful their food was, and even more so by how the French use the occasion of the meal to bring people together. Those people have truly mastered everyday life.

The following summer I interned at a General Motors financial office and realized that working in that world wasn’t connecting with me, but what was were the marketing classes I was taking at Michigan State. The strategic aspects of marketing fascinated me, and I was compelled to earn an MBA in marketing, which I did from The George Washington University.

My first job in the real world after I graduated, selling financial securities, was underwhelming, to say the least.

I was not only bored but realized I was not living the life I had imagined for myself. There was simply a gap between the level at which I was living my life, in terms of both professional and financial fulfillment, and the level at which I wanted to live my life.

And that void was simply unacceptable to me. It was driving me crazy.

So I decided to do something about it. I combined my love of food with my passion for business and started a food company.

I then proceeded to do what just about every food entrepreneur does—spent four months at my kitchen counter developing a line of chicken and beef marinades, came up with the name “American Connoisseur,” hired a graphic designer for $15 per hour, and stood over her shoulder while she created some labels.

When she finished she printed one copy of each, laminated them, and I stuck them on four bottles, then sent them to the buyer at what was then Dayton Hudson Marshall Field’s, now known as Macy’s.

One night the buyer called me at home—I certainly did not have an office—and said, “These are the best marinades I’ve ever had. I’m going to place an order,” which he did, for 96 cases.

That was the good news.

The bad news was I did not have a place to produce them.

Somehow I stumbled across a guy who owned a small industrial park in metro Detroit. He told me he just had a tenant move out who had a kitchen used for breaks. “Why don’t you convert that to a commercial kitchen and see what you can do?”

I thought it was a great idea and, after some research, determined that it would cost $2,500 to convert this 300-square-foot space to a licensed food processing facility.

Well, that was $2,500 more than I had at the time, so I did what every red-blooded American entrepreneur does when he wants to launch a business but does not have the money to do so: I applied for a credit card loan with Discover.

Discover, seeing that I did not have a reliable income but seeing that I did have tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt, turned me down.

So I proceeded to do what every red-blooded American male entrepreneur does when he wants to launch a business but does not have the money to do so and is turned down for a credit card loan: I reached out to my girlfriend.

She must have seen something in me and decided to sign for it.

So while I’d love to say that I founded my company on a credit card loan, in reality I was so broke I founded it on my girlfriend’s credit card loan.

And people ask me all the time: I not only paid her back, but I did marry her. And we’re still married to this day.

A mere 11 years later I found myself, now hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, at a food show in New York where I approached another metro Detroit food entrepreneur, Jack Aronson.

A few years beforehand Jack founded a fresh salsa company, which he called Garden Fresh Gourmet, in the back of his 1,200-square-foot restaurant. I asked him whether he’d be interested in me bottling some of my products under his label.

Jack thought it was a great idea and after we returned home we got together for lunch and he began to share his saga.

Five years before we met, Jack found himself in the previously mentioned $450,000 hole, 44 years old with no formal education and no formal training, running a tiny restaurant called Clubhouse Bar-B-Q, just outside of Detroit. Jack had to declare bankruptcy to hold onto his lease, was taking the bus to work as his car had been repossessed, and was having tax issues with the IRS.

Desperate, one day Jack pulled out a five-gallon bucket, peeled some onions by hand and in 15 minutes made what is today known as Garden Fresh Artichoke Garlic Salsa.

Jack started putting his salsa on the tables of the Clubhouse Bar-B-Q; after a few weeks, people were standing in line on Friday and Saturday nights to get in.

One day, out of nowhere, Jim Hiller, owner of an upscale chain of metro Detroit supermarkets that bears his name, walked in and told Jack one of his employees said he just had to try Jack’s salsa. Jim told Jack that he had been looking for a good fresh salsa for 20 years to no avail, and he asked Jack to whip him up a batch.

Jack did. Jim liked it and asked Jack to start making it for his six-store chain.

Thus, what is today the best-selling brand of fresh salsa in America was innocently born.

Soon, in addition to Hiller’s Markets, every party store in the area started picking up Jack’s salsa. Word starting getting out about how good Jack’s salsa was, so a local news station, Fox2 Detroit, decided to do a story on this eccentric guy making this salsa in the back of his restaurant.

There’s an old maxim that says there’s no such thing as bad publicity. That’s generally true, unless your city manager is sitting at home watching Fox2 news, aghast at this guy making salsa in the back of an unlicensed restaurant in his town.

So the next day he showed up and threatened to shut Jack down. Jack, though, befriended him, and together they found a former video store nearby, with floor to ceiling windows, which Jack converted to a salsa factory.

Jack and his wife, Annette, and their five children now found themselves making salsa for 10 to 12 hours per day, and Garden Fresh Gourmet continued to grow. After a few years, it was finally picked up by a major Midwest chain, Meijer.

A local developer then convinced Jack to build a 25,000-square-foot plant, which he did. It opened just when I first met Jack in New York.

Which brings us to our lunch when we got back to Detroit from the conference.

“You know,” Jack said, “everyone told me I was crazy to go from 3,000 square feet to 25,000 square feet, that you don’t increase your size eight-fold, and I’m starting to think they’re right. Why don’t you move your business in with me, outsource your manufacturing to Garden Fresh. That will help pay my rent, and I’ll give you a free office—you can focus on sales and marketing, whatever you want.”

I did just that, and after a few months our talents seemed to complement each other, so Jack asked me to be a partner in Garden Fresh.

That first year together, 2002, Garden Fresh recorded $4.6 million in sales. I distinctly remember meeting with Jack and saying, “If we could ever get this to $10 million and pay attention to our margins, wouldn’t that be a great life?”

Well, that seemed to happen in about 15 minutes.

By the middle of the decade, we were up to $30 million in sales and recently crossed the $100-million revenue mark. Garden Fresh is now the number 1 brand of fresh salsa in the United States.

We eventually made our way up to become the third-largest hummus manufacturer in this country, the largest brand of tortilla chips merchandised in the deli, developed a top-ten line of dips, ship over a million units a week, and in the midst of all this, received offers from some of the largest food companies in the world.

All before being approached by the Fortune 500 company that would eventually purchase us.

Doing all this wasn’t easy. In fact, there were long stretches when there were more bad days than good. We were often stunned, and often heartbroken, over what was happening to us.

But it was an adventure. In fact, the adventure of a lifetime. Through it all we uncovered powerful secrets that directly led to our success.

In Irrational Persistence I describe both our adventures and our misadventures.

Adventures that illustrate that you’re not alone with respect to the challenges you might face.

Misadventures that will enable you to avoid our mistakes as you face those challenges. Secrets that can be applied directly to the challenges.

Secrets that can help not only the entrepreneur but that are valuable for the multinational company as well.

Secrets you can implement to accelerate growth and minimize risk.

Secrets that illustrate that, while I hope you never find yourself in the position we did, starting with less than nothing, even under those conditions building something great is still possible.

1Summon the Courage to Enter the Dark Room

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

–Winston Churchill

So how do you launch a business, even with less than nothing, and somehow get to the point at which some of the largest companies in the world want to buy you?

What’s the first step?

The first step is into the dark room.

The dark room is what confronts everyone who is not living the life they’ve imagined for themselves. Who is professionally unfulfilled. Who finds that condition unacceptable.

And who is determined to do something about it.

And also those who determine that doing something about it involves developing a product or service, then launching it, either within an existing company or doing so independently on their own.

It’s one thing to have an idea. Actually making it a reality is another entirely. Actually bringing it to life requires facing a moment of truth.

What’s that moment like?

Imagine you’re standing in front of a door that leads into a room. A dark room, a room completely devoid of light.

Dark rooms are frightening, potentially filled with peril. There is tremendous ambiguity involved.

It’s natural, and certainly rational, to walk away from a situation like that. To not enter the dark room. To stay where you are, where you can at least see what’s around you. Where you’re comfortable.

But it takes courage, which is often irrational, to enter that room. And to have the door close behind you.

You’re now alone. In utter blackness. Not sure where to go. Not sure what to do.

No one is comfortable in a situation like that. It’s unpleasant at best, and often terrifying.

So what do you do then?

You search for sources of light to illuminate the dark room. Sources of light that will allow you to navigate your way around the room. That will allow you to be successful in the room so that you’re not operating in the dark.

Those sources of light are not always obvious. They can, in fact, take years to locate.

Both Jack and I did enter dark rooms, and we both spent years in them, years in which we often found ourselves in absurd situations doing things we never thought we’d do.

What was it like? What were our darkest moments? Why did we stay in them for as long as we did? Why did we persist?

How did we find the lights to illuminate our dark rooms, so that we could see the paths we needed to be successful? To live the lives we had imagined for ourselves?

LIFE IN THE DARK ROOM: DAVE

So my girlfriend just financed my new food company, American Connoisseur, by signing for a $2,500 credit card loan and I set up shop in a 300-square-foot former break room in a vacant office in a small industrial park in tiny Sylvan Lake, Michigan.

You don’t get much for that kind of money, even in the early 1990 s. Washable walls and ceiling, a couple sinks; fortunately, my landlord had just closed a TCBY yogurt shop he owned, so he let us borrow a stainless steel table. For equipment I ran to K-Mart and purchased two standard household blenders, some one-quart plastic pitchers, and four funnels.

I found a bottle supplier in downtown Detroit, along with a spice importer, and would make the 35-minute trek one way in my car for supplies. I could fit 35 cases of bottles in my trunk and would buy 20-pound bags of dehydrated garlic, onion, oregano, and basil, all of which would go in my back seat. I’d travel back to our plant with my windows open, even in the winter, to try to dilute the pungent odor from the garlic, but nevertheless the smell would permeate the fabric of the seat upholstery and would last for weeks. For just about everything else—salt, sugar, and canola oil—I’d go to Sam’s Club.

To make our marinades I’d measure the ingredients into the blenders, mix them, pour them into a plastic pitcher, put a funnel in the bottle, and fill them, then seal them and label them. All by hand.

The blenders invariably broke down every few weeks—I soon learned the hard way that canola oil seeping into the control panel is not a good thing—and I’d run back to K-Mart to buy $30 replacements.

We did have air conditioning but, ironically, we had no heat. I kept calling my landlord, who lived in the Bahamas for half the year for tax purposes, if that tells you anything, and he just kept telling me to keep flicking the switch on the thermostat and the heat would kick in. Apparently, the $300 per month in rent I was paying him under the table did not justify a significant capital expenditure budget.

We kept flicking that switch, but nothing ever happened. I wasn’t, though, going to let something like the lack of heat stop me. I was in business, and that was all that mattered.

I estimate we did the first 400,000 bottles this way, through five Michigan winters. We could see our breath when we first walked in. My parents gave me a couple of space heaters and after a while that, coupled with our body heat, brought the temperature up to a relatively humane level.

No worries in the summer, however, as again we had air conditioning.

For the most part we’d make our product at night, and in the day I’d balance my time between the various commission-only jobs I arranged, either selling commercial real estate or life insurance, while also trying to market my line of premium marinades.

I was actually getting some nice publicity, even being interviewed by the Food Network on their daily “TV Food News and Views” show.

After taping my segment with one of their hosts, The Dean & Deluca Cookbook author David Rosengarten, he was kind enough to escort me out of their Manhattan studios down to the street.

Rosengarten was also at the time the New York City restaurant critic for Gourmet magazine. I asked him whether he had any idea how much money he spent dining in Manhattan per year.

“Funny you should ask that,” he replied. “They have me use a dedicated American Express Gold Card for all my restaurant meals for the magazine. Just last week I was looking at my statement, and so far this year I’ve charged just under $95,000 to the card.”

This was in early November. Nice work if you can find it.

And sure enough I was getting picked up by local food retailers and then by a few national accounts as well. T.J. Maxx, for example, who had just started selling specialty food, and even QVC, who featured my marinades for years.

Although accounts were buying my products, getting it to them was another story.

Heat wasn’t the only thing I was lacking in my little makeshift 300-square-foot kitchen. I couldn’t afford a forklift either.

Every time I needed to ship an order, I’d wheel all our product out on a cart into the parking lot, load it onto a pallet on the truck by hand, stretch wrap it myself, and use the truck’s pallet jack to get it into the back of the trailer.

After a while it was difficult to even get trucks to come, as sometimes they’d be there for upwards of an hour.

One day a woman, Michelle Marshall, came out into the parking lot. About a decade before, she had started a specialty food company of her own, launching a British pub style mustard she called Mucky Duck, and by chance her kitchen was directly across from mine.

I’d like to think Michelle felt sorry for me, seeing me loading pallets in the snow. In reality she had a doctor’s appointment and could not get out of the parking lot, as the truck was blocking her way. She blessedly offered to let me use Mucky Duck’s forklift.

That soon became a standard practice for us, and I befriended her as well; I thought she was terrific personally and professionally and believed she had developed a great product, verified by the fact that Mucky Duck Mustard won the 1996 World Championships of Mustard.

A few years after that chance first meeting, after I had been encouraging Michelle to partner with me, she said she was retiring and moving to Phoenix and that if I wanted to buy Mucky Duck, now was my chance.

We closed on the company three weeks later, an all-cash deal that the bank financed 100 percent, with my dad guaranteeing the $108,000 loan.

I figured at least I was consistent: I founded my first company via financing courtesy of my girlfriend and I financed my first acquisition via my dad’s credit worthiness.

So now I owned a mustard company, which was very exciting. Even more exciting was that I finally had a somewhat professional commercial kitchen to work out of, and at that time I defined “professional” as having a place with heat and a working forklift.

The day after we closed on the Mucky Duck Mustard Company, we moved across the parking lot to our new professional commercial kitchen. After moving a vertical spice rack we had against the wall in our old American Connoisseur space, one of my employees looked at me, somewhat aghast, and called me over to that wall.

“Uh, Dave—you want to take a look at this?”

I walked over, somewhat concerned, and could not believe what I saw; it was a second thermostat. I flicked the switch, just as my landlord had implored me to do so many times, and sure enough the heat came on. Just as we were leaving the space for the very last time.

An even bigger surprise was waiting for me when I showed up for the first day of production as the new owner of the Mucky Duck Mustard Company.

Most American mustards are made with mustard flour and vinegar that is mixed with maybe turmeric and, when whipped together, comes out as mustard.

It was just my luck, though, that I did not buy an American mustard company but one that produced a British pub style mustard, which typically have more personality than their U.S. cousins; they’re made with eggs and sugar and employ a multi-day process to produce.

So I soon found myself getting up at 5:30 every morning to go in and break eggs for that day’s production, something I did for years, and one day I looked back and estimated that the hands that are typing these words now have conservatively broken 800,000 eggs in their lifetime.

Things they don’t teach you in grad school. . .

But I wasn’t the only one in our family breaking eggs. My then-girlfriend-now wife Jill, whose signature on that $2,500 Discover credit card loan launched our company, was pregnant with our first child, our son Christian. On her days off from her job working at the cosmetic counter at Neiman Marcus, she would join us in our kitchen and break eggs as well.

As Jill’s due date drew closer we found ourselves in our OB-GYN’s office and he informed us that Christian was breached and that as a result he’d have to be delivered by Caesarian section. We were thus able to pick a date and time in which Christian would be born. We subsequently picked a Monday, which the doctor thought was great; then he suggested a time: 11:00 a.m.

I asked if we could make it later that day, as I had a truck coming that morning that I’d have to load. Thus, we scheduled the appointment for 1:00 p.m., and our eldest son was brought into this world about 45 minutes after 1:00 p.m.

The mustard order went out as well that day.

At this point I was six years into my entrepreneurial adventure, still not making money, certainly not enough to raise a family and live on, still piling up debt. Jack and I did not even know each other yet; in fact, we would not even meet for another five years, but it was at this time that his entrepreneurial adventure was beginning, and he was enduring similar experiences with Garden Fresh.

LIFE IN THE DARK ROOM: JACK AND ANNETTE