Welcome to the Entrepreneurial Leap Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dubay. For context, this podcast is inspired by the book Entrepreneurial Leap by Gino Wickman. Gino is the founder of e o S Worldwide, and an author with over 2 million copies of his books sold worldwide. Now, in his next phase, he's taking his passion for helping entrepreneurs by partnering with five equally passionate, successful entrepreneurs, myself included, who have created the E LEAP Academy, where we teach the content from the book in a one year program guaranteed to increase the success of early stage businesses. Now, a quick note about me, I've been an entrepreneur since the age of 14. When I started my first business selling Blow Pop Lollipops outta my locker with my best friend, I ran a company that I sold to a public company and later bought back. I'm an author, speaker, host of an annual leadership retreat, and I'm partners in several other businesses.

I'll be your host for the Entrepreneurial LEAP Podcast, where every other week you will be hearing life stories from successful entrepreneurs who took the leap into entrepreneurship. You will learn from their mistakes and successes and be inspired as you move forward on your journey. Now, before I introduce my guest, I'm going to share with you a bit about Ewe Academy. The Entrepreneurial Leap Academy provides an immersive nine month experience for new entrepreneurs with a focus on the three Cs, clarity, competence, and community. Let's start with the first C, clarity. You'll learn to be clear about who you are, what you want from your business, and how to get it. The next C confidence, you will learn to be confident you are on the right path, equipped with powerful mindset tools. The last C connected you will become connected to a community of entrepreneurs just like you.

Now all participants receive four full day in-person classes led by experience entrepreneurs to equip you with the tools and strategies necessary to build a successful business. The Academy's dynamic community connects participants with a tribe of like-minded individuals for support and networking opportunities during in between classes. Students also receive a seasoned mentor offering personalized guidance and expertise to help you navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. To start building the business of your dreams, visit our website@eleap.com. Again, that's e leap.com. There you can learn more about and sign up for the next Entrepreneurial LEAP Academy. Today's guest, Charles Coine, is changing the way we think about snacking. You've probably seen his products while shopping for groceries, lesser evil snacks as the president and C E O Charles channels, his passions for mindfulness and healthy living into creating snacks and a brand that inspires those same virtues in others.

Lesser Evil is proud to be a vertically integrated company that employs over 200 people in the Danbury, Connecticut area. Charles believes lesser evil's success has been in building a strong company culture and being highly capital efficient, focusing on profitability and not just growth. Check out lesser evil's, new space balls available in two delicious flavors. Interstellar cheddar and cinnamon sugar Stardust. I had to share that because the names are just so great. But he also has red bars, R E D D bars, and they're new and improved with five decorative flavors that everyone will love. Please check 'em out. I love his brand. Charles Entrepreneurial Leap is a unique and interesting story. You are going to love it. So here we go. Please enjoy my chat with Charles. Charles, it's great to see you again. We had a podcast a few years back and here we are. So, and things have changed a little, so I'm so excited to talk to you.

Yeah, things have changed a lot.

Well, let's just say you won't admit it 'cause you're one of the most humble people I've ever met, but you are absolutely killing it with lesser evil snacks. So this is gonna be a treat, no pun intended, for the listeners. And I always like to start with a quote. And so I'm gonna read it to you and just let me know what your thought, what thoughts come to mind for you. I promise Charles, I'm not gonna stump you. Don't worry. Okay. I'm getting

Nervous.

Yeah, I know you are. I know you are. So it goes like this. We need to stop taking ourselves so seriously, just slow down a bit and don't try to hit home runs right out of the gate. And that was something I found that you said at a certain point, and if you can recall what that meant to you at the time, I'd love to hear any feedback you have on it.

Yeah, I would say I, you know, at the beginning, I, I failed so many times that, you know, I kind of just, I guess I just kind of let the company take its own direction and I, as long as I focused, focused on the process and the process was, you know, trying to do my best every day and try to figure out, you know, what was, what would take the company to the next level. And that typically was trying to hire the right people, not spending my money foolishly innovating, you know, looking for new products, trying to build, you know, great partnerships with some of our, you know, some of our early s you know, early retailers and just, just didn't, didn't try to hit, you know, you know, didn't try to hit a home run. We tried to hit as many singles as we possibly could.

Well, it seems to be working out quite well for you. So for all those early stage entrepreneurs with less than 10 employees, please listen closely because Charles' story and his real life entrepreneurial story is so great. And I'm wondering if you can share a little bit about how you kind of got into this entrepreneurial world with this business.

That's a great question. So I was in finance from, you know, after, you know, basically after I did my undergrad, I, I moved from Canada to Chicago. Anyways, I, I wanted to talk a little bit about what got me into it. I would, in, in college, I suffered from a little bit of anxiety. You know, I was, was having some panic attacks and stuff like that. And then they, they kind of followed me along, you know, while I was on finance, you know, in finance. And as I got closer to 40, sometimes I felt like I was calling outta my skin. You know, that's really, we, I think in our last podcast we talked a lot about meditation and spirituality or whatever, but ultimately that's what led me to food. You know, I, I started living a really holistic lifestyle and I wanted to do something that allowed me to work on myself.

And by starting a company, it was a really nice way to become the person that I wanted to be. You know, it was essentially, it was a, a process of actualization. I know it sounds kind of for a reach, but I get to surround myself by people that I really cared about and, you know, and work on things that I really enjoyed doing. And all of a sudden, you know, when that, that, I mean, there's a ton of stress in this business, and being an entrepreneur is super stressful, but for whatever reason, the environment was a lot better for me and it allowed me to flourish.

And you, you came from a really stressful job because you were a bond trader. Yep. And you were up at all hours of the evening calling into London and, and Tokyo, you had six computer screens. You

Remember all

Your house, you never had a good night's sleep. So Yeah. But, but then you

Kind of, my wife was crazy, you know,

And, and I love the story though, about how you learned about this business and how you got into it. Do you mind sharing that?

How I learned about it was a, you know, I was ready. I, I believe so much in synchronicity, I was ready to make a change. And then a, a, you know, a friend of a friend's father was selling the business and the name Les was kind of like lesser evil, evil, the, you know, that kind of, you know, caught my attention and they were making snacks and, you know, I was really into food. I think I'd been to a, a nutrition retreat or something like that at Kripalu at the time. I can't remember something. It would all, it all lined up and anyway, so I, I bought the gum not knowing what I was doing, and, and, and I took it from there.

Amazing. And now growing up, did you notice that you had any sort of entrepreneurial tendencies? Did you, do ev ever do anything? Like we always say, did you ever like have a story of like the person who had a paper router, anything?

Yeah, I had a paper route when I was You did?

Seriously. Yeah,

Totally. So my mom was really the, the impetus of me becoming an entrepreneur because at a really young age, she taught me the, you know, she told me that I could sell ice to Eskimos, and she gave, you know, gave me a ton of confidence. Yes. So I get, you know, so I, I al had always, and then I went back to graduate school kind of knowing in my late mid thirties, I went back to graduate school and kind of knowing that I was ready to try something at some point, and I needed to learn some other skills other than my finance skills. I mean, bond training was great because it taught me how to cut my losses really quickly, and I made a lot more losing trades than I made winning trades. So the, the mark of a good bond trader is that you get out of those trades really quickly. So I brought that kind of mentality to, to, to being an entrepreneur where I, I probably launched, you know, 10 products, you know, and failed every single time. But I, I didn't get a attached to any one product until I found my hero product.

And you mentioned you went to college, you even went to graduate. Yep. Did you feel that was a valuable experience as you look back and what you're doing now? Would you say I do that again?

Yeah, I would. I, I mean, I, I hear a lot about college, no college, all, you know, graduate school, no, graduate school. I would say undergrad was really, really valuable for me because I, you know, I, it allowed me to make a lot of mistakes really early as a, as a kid, you know, I was somewhat irresponsible. You know, I, you know, I don't, I don't wanna get too much, too much into my early years, but I, I did an extra year in, in university because I would, you know, every year I would drop my weakest course.

I had a great time and I, it came, I came out and I think I blew off a lot of steam. And that allowed me to be a little bit more responsible. I think a lot of these kids that come straight out and become entrepreneurs, I think it's amazing. But I think you miss, you miss some growing up graduate school. Yeah. I could hit, or it was hit or miss. I mean, I definitely learned some stuff, but I think I would've been fine not going to graduate school. But I, you know, I ultimately, we met my partner in graduate school, so some good did come of it, but it was, it was definitely worth, it was a lot of money to, I I, I'm, I'm unsure whether it was worth it.

Okay. That's a great answer, by the way. Yeah. So, you know, it, it seems that most entrepreneurs who are, you know, well along their way, like you are, have a story of a nightmare time in the business, and then a story of what we might call the dream. And so I'm wondering, can you share a story about the nightmare? And then of course we'll move into the dream?

Yeah, I would say the nightmare was like, because Reval existed before I even got involved, and it had failed a couple times. It was incredibly hard to raise money. And there came a time where I had to go, basically go to my, my parents and say, you know, you know, hat in hand and say, Hey, listen, I'm, I'm not sure if I can con continue because I was burning cash. I mean, we were burning probably, you know, 75 to a hundred thousand dollars a month. And I think that's pretty common for most entrepreneurs. But it was a real come to Jesus moment because I knew when I took my parents' money that, you know, I was all, you know, I had to be all in because I couldn't afford to lose it, you know? So that was, that was kind of a nightmare. But it turned out to be, it worked out okay. But I, you know, I felt after being on Wall Street for so long, and I thought I'd, I'd become a real grownup. And then all of a sudden I wasn't a grownup anymore. I was back to being a, you know, a college student or something like that, asking my parents for money. I

Like the parents. Right?

Yeah.

Okay. How about the dream?

The dream was, I think I made reference to this, is, is that if you do the right thing and you trying to live your authentic self, the dream is being, you know, working on something that you feel is magical. And it's so important that you really dig what you're gonna do. And if you do do that and you, you kind of align with your authentic self work becomes a, you know, kind of a playful thing. And that was what really got me excited. I mean, we are obviously vertically integrated and we have our own factory, but it, so we, there's an added sense of playfulness because we can invent things and stuff like that. So like, you know, I love being playful and I, I, I feel like I can be playful pretty much every day I come to work and I really enjoy going to work every day. I'm, and I don't just say that like, it's, it is fun to just be here. And I, I love all the people I work with.

It's, it's so special to have a business like that where it's like you're pinching yourself. Like, is this for real? Yeah. And I saw you have a product called Spaceballs. Yeah. And like, that sounds playful to me, and I, I don't wanna assume, but, you know, did, did you kind of harken back to the movie at all? Or was that

No, no, no. I, I mean, I love the name 'cause I, you know, obviously I watched baseballs when I was a, yeah. When I was a kid or whatever. But, you know, ob I was all into the Huble telescope and, you know, I think the next frontier is space and Oh, I love it. You know, so I, I was like, and I, yeah, it just felt right. It felt playful. It was like, kind of where I was going, you know, in my, in my own curiosity, if that makes any sense.

It does. And, and where, what are these red bars? R E D D. I don't even know if I'm saying it right, but I saw something about it.

Yeah. So I've always been a nutrition bar guy. Like, I, I like to try, you know, I like to, I like, I'm pretty mobile, so I always have some of these things in my bag. Yeah. I've always wanted to, to have my own, you know, bar company. And a while back I bought a bar line from some guy that was selling it. And I had, so I had the equipment and then a friend synchronistic, you can't make this stuff up, basically reached out to me and said, you know, that, you know, that they weren't sure that this, you know, this red bar was gonna survive because it was, you know, continue. Would I be interested in something like this? Knowing that I had kind of done something similar with Lesser Evil. And I said, yeah, I'm really, really interested. So I, I, we did a deal where they get to keep some stock and we, you know, we would run it and, and we see if we could, you know, make a run for it. And so I'm making bars. I'm super excited about it. We're trying to make some, some improvements. We've rebranded it a little bit. We think it's, you know, a very cool product. You know, it's low sugar, high fiber, mostly organic ingredients, so,

Okay. I love it. I'll have to make an order, to be honest with you. Yeah. It's hard to find a good bar, I have to say.

It is hard to find a good bar.

Now what about mentorship? You know, we always talk about that with the early stage entrepreneurs. Did you ever have and mentor?

I rob, I was thinking about this. I, I don't know if I ever had one of those early, early ones. Yeah. Like we, part of being in Danbury was like, it was great because we were so under the radar and there's nothing around here. You know, it's kind of an industrial town and, you know, most food brands are, you know, in Boulder or San Diego or poor, you know, like, so, you know, I didn't, I mean, I had lots of people who influenced me along the way, but I would say I had many mentors. And now I probably have, you know, more 'cause some of my investors are, are entrepreneurs and have been in the food business. So now I do have kind of like a kind of a bunch of people that it can bounce ideas off. But at the beginning, yeah, I didn't really have have that, unfortunately.

Is there anybody now even from afar that maybe you don't, you know, have contact with, but just somebody who inspired you, kind of their philosophies or anything of that nature that comes to mind?

No, nothing that comes to mind. No. Okay.

What about, I've talked to you a little bit about these six essential traits that we believe entrepreneurs must have. Visionary, passionate, problem, solver driven, risk take, taker responsible. Do you feel you have those six?

I think I have. I I think I have elements of all six. I mean, obviously some of them resonate a little bit more. Obviously I have no problem taking risk. I, I love taking risk, you know, the more risk, the more reward I would say. I have a vision, you know, I, I'm, I'm, you know, or vision or a mission, you know, whatever. We kind of both the same, the same thing. I'm super passionate, responsible. I would say I'm somewhat responsible, not all the time.

That's so good.

But probably the biggest one is I'm a problem solver. I, I think if there's one of those that resonates well with me is that I, I, when I see problems, I see opportunities. I, I, I've never had, I've never tapped out and said, I can't figure this out. You know, I think that if you, if you're curious and you're, you know, flexible, you can figure things out. You know, there's, there's, there's nothing that you can't solve. Yeah.

I love that there are eight must-dos that we always recommend to entrepreneurs. And one of them, I just wanna segue from a thing you said a moment ago, which is having a clear vision. And so do you think, it sounds like you do, do you think in 10 year timeframes and, you know, how do you value the importance of having a clear vision or mission for the company?

I think the, the mission or the vision is super important, particularly as you hire your first employees. You know, I mean, I, we started off there were like two or three people, and then as we developed our mission, we were able to hire better and better people because people want to be tied to a mission. And if you, if you don't have a mission, it gets hard to get, you know, the kind of people, the, you, the I call 'em the right people on the bus, right? So, but I've never had a 10 year plan. I still don't have a tenure plan. I'm still, you know, 'cause the, the, the market changes so much. What, what it's, you know, valuing that I'm constantly readjusting my, my plan every, you know, every year or every six months, I have a, I have a, we have a sales conference and we do this thing where we have everyone come into the office and I kind of give a state of the union and every six months I talk about what I'm focused on, these six months and how that's changed from the previous six months. And I think that that's, you know, sometimes people will be like, oh, you were wrong or you were right. But I think it's really important that I articulate that so we, our employees know exactly where we're going. Yeah.

So thank you for actually bringing that up because we have these nine stages that we talk about when you go through in your business. And one of them is communicating frequently with your employees. And so I'm wondering how that shows up for you at lesser evil snacks.

So you, I don't even have, I, I mean, I technically have an office, but I don't use my office. I only use my office for, you know, for interviews such as this, right. For a podcast. So I typically, I typically sit out in the middle as I showed you before, our thing that, you know, yeah. We have a bullpen and there's no office, beautiful

Office space. Yeah.

And so everybody listens to every single conversation I have, you know, and I communicate with everybody every single day, you know, so it's, it's certainly big part of my culture 'cause I've considered these people all my friends. Yeah.

So can you talk more about the state of the union that you do?

Yeah, it's usually like a 30 minute talk that I give to, you know, about 60 or 65 of our, of our employees. We've got about 40 people in the office. We've got, you know, 10, 10 or so salespeople that are probably eight salespeople that work remotely. And then there's a bunch of people that come from the warehouse and the factory. And I just kind of give the state of the union how we did, you know, the last six months, you know, you know, where we're focused. Like big, big thing for us last year was growth, for instance. And then as interest rates started to rise, I, you know, I got more and more focused on, okay, we gotta really get, get dialed in on our margin structure and get dialed in on, on EBITDA percentage, you know, percentages and all those things that are, are important because interest rates are much higher than they were before.

Yeah.

As an example,

Can you talk about the importance of getting feedback from your customers and your clients as early as possible and as often as possible?

Oh, totally. I think part of what made us super successful is we never went too wide. We went deep and we had, you know, for the first five or six years, we only had five, 10 really important accounts. And I probably developed relationships with almost every single one of them where we would go in and talk about what they were seeing and what they liked about what we were doing, where we could approve and stuff like that. And I was constantly had dialogues with them and I innovated around a, a lot of what they thought. And I kind of just let the business, you know, basically move in the direction that my biggest stakeholders thought it should move. You know, I wasn't stubborn. I didn't say, oh, that flavor doesn't work. Give, give it more, you know, give it another chance. Like we did what, what our partners told, told us to do.

That's great. And then what about the thought around always having a plan b? I mean, have you ever found yourself having to,

I have no plan B? You know, I think the minute you take friends and family money, you can't have a plan. It's like this, there's no failure's. Failure's not an option.

I love it. But what about,

At least for me it was, you know.

Yeah, no, and, and, and what about though, within just the way you operate the business. So maybe, you know, we move into this type of product line, but it, if that's not gonna work, maybe we'll move into something different. Does that resonate at all?

Oh, totally does. Okay. I see what you're saying. Yeah. You know, so a little evolution for us that I, I thought maybe that might be useful for your listeners is that, you know, we used to have a lot of niche products that fit my lifestyle, right? Because I was being playful and I wanted to be grain free and I wanted to do this, and I wanted to do that. And a lot of those categories that are I was playing in are super small. And as I evolved, you know, we had, we, we realized we had the success with popcorn that I realized we needed to be bigger categories. And the space balls that we just launched are an effort to go into a, a much bigger category with much bigger velo, with much greater velocities where I can really grow a lot faster than doing a lot of these little niche products, if that makes any sense.

Yeah. Okay. That makes total sense. What about core values? I mean, you really have such an amazing culture at Lesser Evil, and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the importance of discovering your core values and how you make sure that, you know, the company is true to those.

We have a, we have a, a values mural on our office wall, and I basically have, I think there's 12 of them on there. And everybody sees 'em every single day and knows what they are. Yeah, I think it's super, super valuable exercise to write those things down and then let all your employees know what they are.

And, and when you're recruiting and hiring and even going through review processes and things like that, is, are these an important sort of foundation for you when you're, when you're dealing with your team? Yeah,

One of the best things that I learned about hiring was when I first got into, because we care so much about attitude. When I first got into, into Less regal, we, I, you know, I would look to hire for skill, you know, like, okay, we need this, we need that. And I ended up getting some employees that I wasn't exactly thrilled with. We went when we made the shift to hiring for attitude, thinking that we could teach the skills or they could learn the skills over time. And then we only wanted can-do people, all of a sudden everything changed. Know we started getting, you know, the culture just got a lot better, a lot faster. Interesting. Now, now we try to weeded out. Like we still don't hire perfectly. Sometimes they can trick you pretty quickly, but if you find some, we, someone we don't like that's a taker, not a giver, we try to weeded 'em out real fast and, and get rid of 'em.

And are those a couple of the values, like can do attitude, take giver not taker or something like that?

Yeah, exactly Right. Totally.

Okay. Very cool. I wanted to ask you a, about capitalizing on coaching and training and mentoring. 'cause I, I know, you know, you with your leadership team, you place emphasis on listening from a place of empathy and being open to real human conversations. And I, I just love that kind of culture and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you cultivate that at the company.

You know, it's funny, you know, a lot of our employee, we all have issues, right? And, and it's important to remember that work is, is a privilege that you get, you know, you get to work with these people on a regular basis and they have real lives and real concerns outside of work. And that, that in order for them to feel like they're a complete person, they need to be holistically listened to and they need to feel like they're being heard, you know, not just, you know, on a work level basis that you care about what's going on with their families and what you know, and their kids and what's happening. And if they need, you know, need extra time to work on something outside of work or, you know, we, we try to develop whole, you know, like whole people here and it may not be the most efficient way to do business, you know, because I've seen people like, okay, you know, I expected, you know, a 45 hour week or whatever. We don't really keep track of that kind of stuff. You know, we, we figure that if people are happy, we're gonna get the best work. And it may not happen in it and an eight hour workday, it may happen in a six hour workday or a five hour workday. And we try to give people as much space as they possibly, you know, as much space as they possibly need.

It's inspirational, really. And I, I hope that entrepreneurship and leaders of entrepreneurial companies like you, you know, continue to move in that direction and look at the, the whole person and not just Can

I caveat that just a little bit? Please, please, yes. I'm also, you know, 'cause I wanna be dead honest, I'm also one of, I'm also a person that believes in working in the office. Like since Covid started Yeah. We were big proponents of not being remote. We, I am, I'm big believer that problems get solved together and they get solved in by hanging out in that dugout that I tell you about and talking about everyone else's problems around us. And we kind of collectively problem solve. And I don't think that that happens with remote work. So we've been in the office, you know, kicking it out for the last, you know, three years. It hasn't always been perfect, you know, sometimes we had one group, you know, one cohort and then another cohort. But we, we we're a big believer in, in office culture.

Yeah. I'm wondering, do you have any thoughts on where that might move? Like in the business world? I'm always so curious about that. And I happen to agree with you, by the way,

Where I, I'm, I think that, that we're probably 30%, 40% more productive in the office than we would be remote. I think that when I talk to other entrepreneurs, you know, they agree and they're trying to get their employees to come in. But I, I've, I've talked to a bunch of people though that say it's tough to get their employees to come in that tough, you know, the, especially the younger, the younger generation, they like this remote work. Yeah. 'cause we didn't go that route. We didn't, we don't have that problem thankfully. But

That was the culture. You, you took a stand it,

I love it. It's difficult. And I, I told 'em that you just gotta rip the bandaid off and if you lose some people because of it, you lose some people because of it. That's

Right. Yeah. Again, it's, it's staying true to who you are and that's an important thing to do. Okay. Last question. Any advice you might give to an early stage entrepreneur?

I would say, going back a little bit, you want to do something that's gonna allow you to shine. You know, because retailers will sense on your, you know, on your enthusiasm. They, they, they can feel it. It has to be authentic. So like, you may have a great idea, but unless you're really passionate about that idea, it's not gonna play off. And investors are gonna notice that too. So I would, you know, I would say do something that aligns with your authentic self. It's much easier to feel, you know, I, I'm all about feelings these days and, you know, being grateful and, you know, finding, you know, kind of love and joy and you know, all these kind of things. So I, I, you know, do something that allows you to keep your heart wide open and, and, you know, and I, and I, I believe in, you know, kind of a gratitude practice, so, you know, if you're grateful to come to work every day, you, you're probably gonna succeed.

That's so good. Do you, do you have a specific practice or is it just something that you're aware of?

No, I have a practice in the mornings that I try to think of, you know, it's like a 10 minute practice where I try to, you know, see my future self and feel all those emotions that I want to feel. So, and you know, hopefully that allows me to feel those a little bit more consistently.

That's so good. I would say if there's one nugget of wisdom that you took out of the entire conversation and there's probably 40 nuggets of wisdom, please, listener, listen to what Charles just said. It's so powerful.

Aw, thanks Charles.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me today. It meant the world.

Oh, I really appreciate it, Rob. Thanks so, so much for doing it again with me.

Absolutely. And to all the amazing entrepreneurs listening today, I greatly appreciate you spending time with us, and I wish you all much love and gratitude.