From the archive: This episode was originally recorded and published in 2021. Our interviews on Entrepreneurs On Fire are meant to be evergreen, and we do our best to confirm that all offers and URL’s in these archive episodes are still relevant.
Greg Connolly is the Co-Founder & CEO of Trifecta, the nation’s largest organic meal delivery service with over $120M in ARR – and free shipping to all 50 states!
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Resources
Trifecta Nutrition – Get a 40% discount on your first order! Use the code FIRE.
Trifecta’s Instagram – #1 Organic #MealDelivery in the US! Free Shipping to all 50 states!
The Goal – A Process of Ongoing Improvement.
3 Value Bombs
1) There is a certain amount of crazy in believing that you have to be a massive entrepreneur.
2) As an entrepreneur, start to structure your organization so that it helps people while also making a profit.
3) If you want a business and to help make America better, then you have to take care of yourself first.
Sponsors
HubSpot: Starting a business doesn’t have to be so hard. Go to ClickHubSpot.com/ent to download HubSpot’s Entrepreneurship Kit for free right now!
BetterHelp: Online therapy that’s flexible to fit your schedule. All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. It’s really that simple. Visit BetterHelp.com/fire today to get 10% off your first month.
Fundera: One easy online application to compare multiple lenders! Get funding in as little as 24 hours with no collateral required. Visit Fundera.com to see your loan options today!
Show Notes
**Click the time stamp to jump directly to that point in the episode.
Today’s Audio MASTERCLASS: How Trifecta is Hacking the American Diet and Building a $1B+ Empire in the Process with Greg Connolly
[1:35] – Greg shares something that he believes about becoming successful that most people disagree with.
- There is a certain amount of crazy in believing that you have to be a massive entrepreneur.
[3:09] – Greg talks about how high-level entrepreneurship is focused on solving major world problems.
- Greg is married to a chief ER physician, and he hears stories about those with chronic diseases caused by poor nutrition all the time
- Wanting to tackle a significant world problem like sub-optimal nutrition and the obesity epidemic inspired him to start Trifecta.
[5:33] – The vast majority of Americans are overweight and obese. What is wrong, and how are you helping to fix it?
- Greg encourages you to look deeply at the problem. Think through the obesity problem.
- The obesity epidemic problem didn’t exist in the ’80s in the USA.
- The transition happened when women started to join the workforce.
- It created an environment where getting food fast became a critical thing that Americans focused on.
- The rise of fast food.
- Less focus on the health aspect and more emphasis on the convenience of getting food quickly.
- Trifecta’s market solution is to give you fully cooked organic food directly to your doorstep.
- They shorten the supply chain by cutting the retailer and the distributor out of the equation.
[10:14] – How can our listeners become and remain a premium brand without sacrificing cost or quality for consumers?
- It starts with the brand itself.
- As an early-stage entrepreneur, start a premium brand with a premium product.
- It helps establish your brand in the mind of consumers as a premium brand.
[15:01] – A timeout to thank our sponsors!
- HubSpot: Starting a business doesn’t have to be so hard. Go to ClickHubSpot.com/ent to download HubSpot’s Entrepreneurship Kit for free right now!
- Fundera: One easy online application to compare multiple lenders! Get funding in as little as 24 hours with no collateral required. Visit Fundera.com to see your loan options today!
- BetterHelp: Online therapy that’s flexible to fit your schedule. All you have to do is fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist. It’s really that simple. Visit BetterHelp.com/fire today to get 10% off your first month.
[17:45] – Greg shares his top strategies for inbound marketing funnels and digital media buying.
- Inbound marketing is the most helpful skillset an entrepreneur can have today.
- Get people from wherever they are on the internet to come to your website and purchase.
- Understand the process of driving traffic, capturing the lead, and building a connections.
- Greg suggests searching and learning more about CVO (Customer Value Optimization).
[21:14] – Greg talks about Media Buying.
- Media buying is the easiest way to get audience traffic, but it also costs you money.
- Start with a Facebook page, Instagram, and Google Analytics on your website.
- As you get bigger, show yourself across all platforms to create the halo effect.
- Be all over the digital marketplace and convert your traffic to scale.
[24:49] – Greg talks about the importance of staying true to our products while trying to scale for the masses.
- The more extensive visibility a company gets, the more you have to be prepared to scale operationally.
- Have experienced operational people around you if you aren’t familiar with the operations.
- Spend time learning Six Sigma.
- Read The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
[29:20] – People, Profit, Planet: Greg shares the importance of this Trifecta.
- He found that a massive percentage of responsibility for eliminating plastic wastes or reducing our carbon footprint is in the hands of entrepreneurs.
- Trifecta pays an extra amount of money to buy plant-based insulation case packaging from TemperPack.
- It creates less friction with customers.
- As an entrepreneur, you have to make the right choice for the planet and to help you keep your customers; the market will reward you for making the right choice.
- Start to structure your organization so that it helps people on the planet while also making a profit.
[33:53] – Greg’s takeaway and call to action for Fire Nation.
- Start to develop a growth mindset
- If you want a business and to help make America better, you’ve got to take care of yourself
- Trifecta Nutrition – Get a 40% discount on your first order! Use the code FIRE.
- Trifecta’s Instagram – #1 Organic #MealDelivery in the US!
[30:06] – Thank you to our Sponsor!
- HubSpot: Starting a business doesn’t have to be so hard. Go to ClickHubSpot.com/ent to download HubSpot’s Entrepreneurship Kit for free right now!
Transcript
0 (1s):
Lights that sparked Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs On Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like the shakeup. And today we'll be focusing on how trifecta is hacking the American diet in rapidly building a $1 billion empire and the process to drop these value bombs. I brought Greg Connolly into EOFire studios. He is the founder and CEO of Trifecta, the nation's largest organic meal delivery service with over $120M in ARR - that's annual recurring revenue and free shipping to all 50 states, but sadly not Puerto Rico, which we'll be talking about today.
1 (45s):
So find each day we talking about solving major world problems. We'll talk about how you can become and remain a premium brand without sacrificing costs or quality. We'll talk about the Trifecta of people, profit and planet, and so much more. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, Fire Nation is time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF. That's Thinkific.com/EOF. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business.
1 (1m 32s):
Whether you're looking for marketing sales service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back, listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork. Greg say what's up the Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.
2 (1m 57s):
Hey John, thanks for having me. And, and that's really a tough one. I, I tend to focus on pushing entrepreneurs to really have a growth mindset and continuously learn. And I think that's pretty well agreed with across the board in terms of, of something that I think a lot of people will not disagree or will disagree with. I think there's a certain amount of kind of crazy and believing your own legend that you have to have to be a massively successful entrepreneur, like the Yuan Musk caliber entrepreneurs.
2 (2m 37s):
So I think I probably differ from a lot of people in that area. Although I think, you know, continuing to remain humble as you, you grow your company, you know, at this point are, you know, for Trifecta we're now, well, north of a hundred million in revenue. Wow. Making sure you stay humble while kind of believing your own legend at the same time, I think is pretty important. And in a little bit, you know, counterintuitive for most entrepreneurs, I mean, Fire Nation, you have two options in life, believe your own legends or nots. And so of those two, why would you not like, believe in yourself, have confidence have pride. You are legendary and Greg high-level entrepreneurship, we're specifically talking high level, it's focused on solving major, we're talking major world problems.
2 (3m 27s):
How are you specifically doing this? Absolutely. So I, I joke that some of the entrepreneurs that really inspire me are people like, like Elon Musk that I just mentioned that look at like species level problems. If we look at humankind as a single species globally, what are some of the biggest problems we face and, you know, easy ones come to mind and that, you know, we're a one planet species. We get hit by an asteroid, you know, pardon my French we're we're staffed, you know, so, you know, Elon Musk is trying to set up a, you know, a city on Mars, obviously there's pretty wide consensus around climate change.
2 (4m 12s):
So, you know, getting electric cars and electric houses and buildings up and running, he's, he's tackled those as well. For me, I'm I happen to be married to an emergency room physician, and she's a chief in the ER here in Sacramento and ultimately, you know, hearing her kind of day in and day out stories throughout our, our relationship we've been together for 12 years now, chronic disease seems to be like the big problem that we face here in the United States. We spend over a trillion dollars trillion with a T in healthcare costs every year.
2 (4m 53s):
And if, if you look at total productivity, healthcare, et cetera, costs, a lot of the estimates are as much as 1.7 trillion a year that we're spending on chronic disease that's caused by poor nutrition. So I come from the software entrepreneurship world largely kind of B2B software. And while it feels great to save other businesses, you know, 2% on their, their EBITDA, their bottom line, et cetera, tackling a major world problem, like, you know, suboptimal nutrition, the obesity epidemic, whatever turn of phrase you want to call. It was what really inspired us to start Trifecta.
1 (5m 36s):
And I do want to jump in on that, Greg, because let's be honest, the vast majority of Americans they're overweight, they're obese. So we're talking not just like over 50%, we're talking the vast majority. So what specifically is wrong and how are you setting about to fix
2 (5m 54s):
It? It's a great question. And getting into the being savvy entrepreneurs, I, I, I always encourage people to really look deeply at the problem. You know, think thinking through the obesity epidemic, most people are like, oh, it's personal choice. People just need to pick a salad instead of a McDonald's big Mac. And if you look back over history, going back to the 80 seventies and even sixties, we didn't have this problem in the United States. It's a relatively new problem for us. And the transition that happened in society, which was a fantastic, you know, transition that all of us are in full supportive was that women entered the workforce.
2 (6m 41s):
So there was no longer one major member of the household at home cooking three meals a day, like leave it to beaver style. You now have women working right alongside men, 50, 60 plus hours a week. Like, like my wife that created a environment in the economy where getting food quickly became the key thing that Americans focused on and that in the, you know, the late seventies and especially in the eighties and nineties led to the rise of fast food, ultimately time became the big factor for people to eat.
2 (7m 20s):
And as that happened, you know, we started focusing less and less on, you know, on the health aspects and cooking from home. And, you know, all of those types of things when it comes to eating and more and more on the convenience of food. So that was our fix with trifectas. We said, how can we be more convenient than fast food? And you know, unless you're in Puerto Rico, sorry, John, you know, we, we shipped the food fully cooked directly to your door. So you don't even have to go through the drive-through. That was our kind of market solution to out-compete fast food in the marketplace.
2 (8m 1s):
So that, that really was our, you know, whatever you wanna call it, our better mouse trap or solution, et cetera, is we shorten the supply chain by cutting the retailer and the distributor out of the equation. So you don't, you don't go to the grocery store to pick up trifecta, you order it on the internet and we ship it directly to your house. So there's
1 (8m 22s):
So much, I love about this because Fire Nation, when I came across this quote, it just made so much sense to me. That's the healthy person wants a million things. The unhealthy person wants one thing, what is the unhealthy person wants? They want their health. That's all that matters when you don't have your health. When you have your health. Yeah. Life is great. You want a lot of things you want to go at fun, travel, do this, do that. When you don't have your health, all you want is your house. So it's so important. It's been the focus of my life for years. I mean, my business has taken a back seat to my health and wellness and my optimal living.
1 (9m 3s):
And, you know, I don't want to pat myself on the back too much, but I do try to set and lead my audience. I want to set that example and lead them to the ways that I am actually finding to be the ways that I'm obtaining maximum and ultimal health. I just got back from a 17 day wellness retreat. It was actually up in your neck of the woods, Santa Rosa, California. It was a 10 day watcher, only fast, which you may not be a big fan of Greg cause I wasn't eating any of your amazing food, but then it also included a seven day refeeding the right way. And it just made me realize that what we put in our body is so important. It is so critical. And that's why, what Greg's doing with organic meal delivery is so key and so critical because if we can get more people healthy, then besides the drag, it is on our overall, you know, just gross domestic product, our GDP and everything that's happening.
1 (9m 58s):
That's just why we're printing trillions of dollars right now to pay for all these things. People are no longer going to be that kind of a draw on that financially, but also they're can be out doing great things. They're not going to be sitting in front of a TV all day, bingeing on sodas and chips, getting fatter and more and less, less healthy every single day, they're going to be out and about doing productive things in society. So Greg, how can our listeners become and remain a premium brands without having to sacrifice the cost or the quality of the deliverables they'd give to their customers?
2 (10m 35s):
It's a great question. From an entrepreneurial entrepreneurial standpoint, I, I think it starts with the brand itself. So for us, since we're a consumer packaged goods brand, I'd love to take credit for coming up with the trifecta name. But we went to a branding firm that I had worked with in the past a company called McLean design. Who's based out of the San Francisco bay area. They've come up with a number of brands you would recognize probably their most famous one is they took an energy drink called Hansen's energy. I'm sure you remember, like Hansen's cream soda and root beer and that type of stuff. And they turned it into monster energy.
2 (11m 17s):
You know, monster energy has gone on to become the largest energy drink company in the world. So really having a solid brand to start with, I think, is a huge piece. And that, that starts with the name. I would recommend entrepreneurs read Igor's naming guide Igor, like, you know, Dr. Frankenstein's servant. I think it's, I G O R fantastic naming guide the full version you can download for free off the internet. I think it's 80 pages, but it really explains the difference, an evocative brand name, a descriptive brand name.
2 (11m 58s):
And I forget the third, which was the worst type of brand name, but you know, the different types of brand names and then really building kind of evocative, meaning into your brand name. So some of the most famous evocative brands are like apple or maybe the best brand of all time, which is Virgin. You know, any market that Richard Branson moves into with the Virgin brand name, it makes it seem like they're the new cool kids in that it's
1 (12m 28s):
Like pure, fresh new. And it's a little bit like, Ooh, that, that word Virgin means a little edgy to us. So I like it for all those.
2 (12m 38s):
Exactly. So any, remember it, of course, you're never going to forget the Virgin brand name. So it trifecta, we wanted to start with a really solid brand. And then from there it was a lot of work around the design. So making sure you've got S I I'm big into design, but making sure you've got somebody in the organization, who's going to have an incredible design eye when it comes to the website. And then really another book I would recommend reading, you know, not to go back to Elon Musk, but his Elon Musk's kind of UN edited biography where they talk about the pyramid branding strategy.
2 (13m 18s):
And that is, if you imagine a brand like Toyota, they started with the inexpensive kind of bottom of the pyramid cars in the seventies and eighties, and it was impossible for them to sell luxury. Americans didn't want to buy an expensive Toyota. So they had to, obviously we all know what happened after that. They invented Lexus, which is literally an acronym for luxury export us, Lexus and they were able to sell Lexus for more expensive. Now, Tesla did the opposite. They started with the super premium option, very few Roadsters.
2 (13m 60s):
Then they went to the model S and eventually to the, you know, the model three, which is their mass market car. So it's, it's much better as a brand and an early stage entrepreneur, in my opinion, to start as a premium brand with a premium product. Cause you're only going to sell a few in the beginning. So you might as well get high margins. And then over time work downmarket, instead of trying to compete on price in the beginning and work up market, that's what establishes your brand in the mind of consumers as a premium brand.
1 (14m 37s):
Fire Nation, I really hope you're kind of taking through what it looks like in the process. And I think that's a really unique way to look at it where starting with a high ticket thing or starting with a really premium, potentially even a little exclusive that allows you to build and scale the right way where you can out as you kind of catch on more mass adoption, have proof of concept, enough testimonials, and maybe a small raving super fan audience. And we're going to hear about Greg's top strategies for inbound marketing funnels, as well as digital media buying, which I'm pretty understanding, hearing being in digital media, myself also, you know, staying true to your products while you're scaling. And then of course the importance of Trifecta people, profit planet. When we get back from thanking our sponsors, your content and branding speak volumes about your business, but it's not always easy to whip up, beautiful, polished on brand landing pages, documents, quotes, and more for your prospects and customers, especially when you're not the marketing expert in your business.
1 (15m 32s):
But that changes today with HubSpot CRM platform, you can create a shared library of marketing approved content, ensuring everyone in your company can get the right content out to the right people anytime. And from anywhere, whether you're looking to create landing pages that align with key sales plays documents with already approved sales assets or a quotes and proposals, you can send to customers in seconds. HubSpot's CRM platform has you covered, you can even collect e-signatures and receive payment via Stripe, having content tools as a foundational aspect of your CRM platform just makes sense. And with HubSpot, you do learn more about how you can scale your company without scaling complexity at hubspot.com.
1 (16m 13s):
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1 (16m 52s):
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1 (17m 33s):
And let's talk about digital media buying and break those down. Yes,
2 (17m 38s):
Absolutely. So w when it comes to inbound marketing, I think it's maybe the most useful skill set an entrepreneur can have today. What I mean by inbound marketing is getting people from wherever they are on the internet to come to your website and buy your stuff. Now, a lot of people know how to set up a website and I've, I must have mentored dozens of entrepreneurs over my 20 or so years doing this. And one of the most common things, you know, I hear is people will set up a website and they'll go, well, I don't know how to drive traffic to my website. So really understanding the process of driving traffic.
2 (18m 20s):
Then when traffic comes to your website, capturing the lead, which is somebody's email. And then from there building out, you know, email automations, a drip sequence, whatever marketing term you want to use for it, but automated emails that eventually convert people into customers. And then, you know, of course, once they're customers turning them into evangelists, going through that whole process is just blocking and tackling. You're, you're just doing it step by step and then zooming out as the entrepreneur and going, okay, what, what part of the process am I falling down on? So for most entrepreneurs in the beginning, it's getting traffic, but that is where I tend to see a lot of people fall down.
2 (19m 3s):
Like we work with a lot of celebrities and celebrity athletes, and they'll have millions of followers on social media. And then I talked to them and I'm like, well, how big is your email list? And they're like, oh, well, you know, a thousand people. And I'm like, how the F do you have 5 million followers on Instagram and a thousand people on your email list? And then I look at their website and they don't have any lead magnets. You know, all they have is sign up for my newsletter at the bottom of the page. So I'm not going to be able to explain all of the details on this call, but what I would recommend to your listeners is go to Google and Google digital marketer and the CV, oh, article CVO, standing for customer value optimization.
2 (19m 49s):
That's the best holistic article I've ever found on the internet, showing people the step-by-step process of how to go from setting up a website to driving inbound traffic, capturing leads and converting them into customers. That's literally what trifecta did. And within five months we were doing over a hundred thousand a month in, in revenue. And now we're obviously, you know, well into the multi-millions, we're now getting into the tens of millions a month. So, you know, ultimately it's just building out that infrastructure, which you can do for practically free with stuff like WordPress and MailChimp and you know, other platforms to start.
2 (20m 35s):
And then, you know, taking the time as the entrepreneur to look at what stage of the funnel are you breaking down? So, you know, are you not getting enough traffic? Are you not converting? The traffic to leads? Are your leads not converting from your email list into buying customers, you know, et cetera. And at that point, you're almost like a mechanic working on the part of the, the car that you want to improve as, as best as possible. Your second part of your question was media buying. So that's the easiest way to get traffic. Unfortunately, it also costs money.
2 (21m 16s):
So, you know, a lot of early stage entrepreneurs have a limited budget, but the good news is it's easier to media buy when you're small, you're never going to spend a million dollars a month as effectively as you're going to spend a hundred dollars a month or a thousand dollars a month. So when you're early stage, you actually have a competitive advantage that you're able to spend money on Facebook, Google, et cetera. That's what we mean by media buying or podcasts. In your case, John, you know, where you're ultimately driving attention from somewhere on the internet, like Facebook, Google, you know, podcasts, et cetera, to your website.
2 (21m 60s):
And you know that that's relatively simple to start, you set up a Facebook page, you set up an Instagram, you know, you set up Google analytics on your website and you start driving traffic to your website. I recommend people start with Facebook because initially it's just going to be cheaper than, than Google. As you get bigger, though, you're going to want to buy across all platforms because that creates something called the halo effect, which is essentially customers are seeing you everywhere. They're seeing you on Google, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, we're now on connected TV podcasts, you know, all over the place.
2 (22m 40s):
So we're all over in the digital marketplace. And that allows us to drive over a million monthly unique visitors to our website, which, you know, we obviously convert a lot of them into, into paying customers.
1 (22m 54s):
Fantastic stuff. I love how he broke this down and Fire Nation. I mean, make sure you do go into Google and type at digital marketer, CVO article that's Charlie, Victor Oscar article, and go through that book market, go back to it again, have your team read that. And we were talking step-by-step stuff and listen, Ryan Dyson, his team. They only put out the highest quality stuff there. And I love how you talk to what that halo effect. I mean, that's one thing that I love talking to my sponsors of entrepreneurs on fire about is like, listen, we're going to get you on the show. We're going to get you in the ear balls of amazing people. But guess what the halo effect is real. Like when they listen to and hear a sponsorship on a podcast, and then they go to Google and search something on a topic around what you do and what you sell.
1 (23m 38s):
And they see a sponsored ad there. And then they go to LinkedIn and see something there. And then they drive on the highway and there's a billboard there that are, this company is legit. Like they're around. Like, I need to look more into this. And like, they're, they're doing some serious stuff here. And it really takes that halo effect if you're able and willing to go all in on that. And when I want to talk about next is the importance of staying true to our own products that we're producing while we're actually trying to scale for the masses, because you do see that a lot in the world where, you know, there'll be this amazing product you find. It's like, under-covered hidden, not many people know about it, and it's so amazing and you just love it. And then you tell people about it and everybody starts buying it. And then you just see this degrading of quality over time as they just can't scale.
1 (24m 23s):
In fact, my buddy, Tim Ferriss talks about the hug of death sometimes where he's given so much exposure to a company that he loves by talking about them or promoting them that they literally go under because they just can't handle the mass inbounds. They're just not ready for. So the hug of death is a scary thing. So talk to us about that.
2 (24m 41s):
The bigger visibility accompany gets, the more you have to be prepared to scale operationally, and, you know, to give you a, you know, a plug on the podcast front, I mean, one of the, one of the advantages of let's say a sponsor sponsoring your podcast is you're very channel aligned with CEOs. So if I'm a business like MailChimp or HubSpot or Salesforce, or, you know, any of these B2B businesses that want to communicate with a lot of CEOs, you know, sponsoring a podcast, that's very channel aligned and communicating with CEOs is, is an ideal direction to go, you know, ultimately as, as a brand.
2 (25m 24s):
So I think the other piece of the equation is making sure, you know, who you're targeting is really channel aligned with who you're trying to sell to. So other part of your question, you know, scaling operations that has been definitely a huge challenge for us that we've continuously worked on. You know, at this point, we're shipping close to 200,000 meals a week. So you can imagine the amount of production that we have going on at our, our production facility. We'll, we'll ship close to 20 million meals this year. And that, that has led to us at this point, we've got three shifts going and 120,000 square foot facility, about 600 employees in that facility producing, you know, essentially 24 hours a day.
2 (26m 15s):
We've got, you know, between three and 4:00 AM, we've got a full kind of clean of all the equipment that comes in and happens. But above and beyond that really having the right operational people around you, if you aren't familiar with operations, they're gonna save you so many costly mistakes. And when I say operational people, I mean, somebody that's been on a warehouse floor for 20 plus years, you know, on our side of the fence, we've got a gentleman named Todd Burke, he's our VP of supply chain. And he he's, he ran PF Chang supply chain, you know, 430 restaurants, 23 distribution centers, Pacific seafood, you know, multi-billion dollar seafood company, you know, Sigma, which is a $7 billion division of Cisco.
2 (27m 7s):
I mean, he's got, I've got a lot of operational experience, but he's got 30 years of, of running massive teams and massive production facilities and, and warehouses. So really bringing in a, been there, done that person. Who's, who's ultimately gonna understand supply chain and, you know, maybe spending a little bit of time studying six Sigma and other things yourself. You know, I, I, the book I recommend to entrepreneurs on this is it's actually an older book. It's called the goal by Eli gold rat. And wa was one of the best operations books I read in my early operations days to understand the theory of constraints.
2 (27m 51s):
So, and it's a fun book. It's like, you know, showcasing a guy coming into a production facility that has all these bottlenecks in their production. And he essentially over a couple of years, like fixes the facilities. So, you know, understanding really how to, how to scale up operations. So, so yeah, the book I would recommend on that front is the goal to prevent yourself from getting the, the Tim Ferris hug of death. As you, as you said,
1 (28m 19s):
The Tim Ferris hug of death is real Fire Nation. And I love how you kind of talked about alignments and you actually mentioned HubSpot in there, which is pretty unique because just two months ago, we signed a seven figure two year deal to go into a major partnership with HubSpot where we're becoming part of the HubSpot network. They're taking a huge chunk of our sponsorship inventory over and over the next two years, because they know how big the audio space is in, is going to become as we just go forward here. And they're just going all in on that because they see the alignment. So this is a huge opportunity for our nation to make sure that, you know, who aligns with your brands and go after them. And what I want to end with us, Greg is people, profits and planets.
1 (29m 3s):
You know, the name Trifecta is so meaningful in so many ways, but people profit and planet share the importance of this trifecta.
2 (29m 12s):
Absolutely. So I've gotten deep into the supply chain over my years as an entrepreneur. And I've really found that a huge percent of the responsibility of eliminating plastic waste, for example, or reducing our carbon footprint, et cetera, oftentimes lands on the entrepreneur. In the case of Trifecta, when we first started producing a Trifecta, we were shipping things in styrofoam cases, as you can imagine, about 90% of plastic or styrofoam ends up in the ocean.
2 (29m 53s):
You know, I've been, I've gone on a lot of tropical island vacations in my life. And you know, I've been on deserted islands out in the middle of the Pacific and they're like covered in plastic at this point. So we pay extra money to buy a type of packaging. In our case, we, we use a plant-based insulation case from a company called temper pack, but ultimately, yes, it's maybe an extra dollar per box in shipping for me, but it creates less friction with my customers. I hated throwing away all that styrofoam. And so did they. So if they stick around for longer, I end up making more gross and net profit by them staying subscribed to the service and buying more of my product because as the entrepreneur, I made the right choice for the planet.
2 (30m 46s):
So, you know, ultimately that is a big part of what falls on the, you know, the entrepreneurs, shoulders is convincing your board in my case that we should pay more money for our packaging in order to keep customers around for longer. And that the market itself would reward us for making the right choice. And that's forced me in some cases to drag some of my suppliers in the ice pack space. And, you know, we use plastic trays that we're now replacing with fully biodegradable trays. We've really had to drag some of our suppliers over the finish line with our huge BuyPower to get them to produce these products.
2 (31m 26s):
But now our customers reward us for making these giant efforts to go green. So that's, that's one example on the planet front that I really think it's, it's up to entrepreneurs to fix a lot of problems and developing market solutions that are better for the planet. The market itself will reward you, especially now that millennial consumers have such massive BuyPower. They are the largest market in the US and their BuyPower soon is going to rival the baby boomers. And that's something all entrepreneurs should really think about going forward. I know we're pretty much out of time, so I won't get into the, you know, the people profit piece too much, but, you know, I very much so believe in for profit enterprises and capitalism.
2 (32m 15s):
I don't think we could have done what, you know, saved as many lives and helped as many people with trifecta. If, if we had started a nonprofit, I think we need a business that is able to scale and compete with McDonald's, toe-to-toe blow for blow in the marketplace. We need to make being healthy, eating healthy, having a six pack, all of that sexy and cool. And that will result in incredible health outcomes for America and eventually the rest of the world. So that's what gets me up seven days a week, and excited to work on the business. And I would highly encourage other entrepreneurs to, to structure their organization so that it's helping people in the planet along with making a profit.
1 (32m 60s):
So I love this Fire Nation. And I mean, when you're aligning on all these different areas and platforms and plateaus, I mean, it just feels great. And it just is this feeling of satisfaction that, you know, you're doing the right thing on multiple levels, not just providing a great product, great service fill in the blank, but you are a part of making this world a better place. And Greg, you shared a lot of value bombs. Give us the one takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that we've talked about here today, and then give us any call to action you have for us, you know, maybe for Fire Nation to get their tongues and mouth all around this amazing food that you have and have those taste buds popping off with all this awesome organicness and then we'll say goodbye.
1 (33m 46s):
Absolutely.
2 (33m 47s):
So the, the ad I would give people would be to, to really develop a growth mindset. I always tell people that has been my key to success. I I've read over over 1400 business books that I've read at this point that that includes sales, operations, personal development, et cetera. I'm just a voracious learner. And if you really want to learn about having a growth mindset, I would, I would recommend the namesake book, which is growth mindset by Carol Dwek. I've given, you know, some nuggets that really helped me in this, this podcast, but, you know, entrepreneurs, if they're already listening to this, they probably already have, or on the way to developing a growth mindset, because they're listening to your podcast to, to learn.
2 (34m 37s):
And continuing that learning process is really what differentiates the, the multi-billion dollar companies from the companies that struggle for for years and years to, to grow and successfully make a profit. So that would be my big tip is, you know, develop a growth mindset. If, if you want to learn more about it, read the book growth mindset. You know, my most popular article I ever wrote for entrepreneur magazine was on that topic as well. So you can just Google Greg Connolly entrepreneur mindset. And then if you want to find trifecta, we're easy to find. You can just Google the word Trifecta. We'll we'll come up. Number one on Google, wherever you are, a website is trifectanutrition.com.
2 (35m 20s):
All our social handles like Instagram or at Trifecta, but, you know, we are really trying to help get America back into shape. And if, if you guys do want a discount from listening to the fire podcast, we've set up a special 40%, your first order. So you would go to trifectanutrition.com/fire, and use the code fire. When you check out and it'll give you 40% off to, to test out our, our game-changing food. Cause you know, if you want to build a business and help make America better, you've got to take care of yourself first and be in great health. Like you mentioned,
1 (36m 0s):
Fire Nation. Just remember the quotes, the healthy person wants a million things. The unhealthy person wants one thing. They want their health. So take action, check out trifecta nutrition.com/fire use promo code fire for 40% off and give these guys a try. I mean, you're going to not regret these amazing organic meals coming your way. And plus you heard all about Greg's greater purpose and greater mission about making the earth a safer and healthier place as well. So amazing stuff all around. Cause you know this Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time time with. And you've been hanging out with GC and JLD today. So please keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com type Greg and the search bar.
1 (36m 44s):
And the show notes page will pop up with everything we talked about today. And Greg, thank you for that incredibly kind, 40% off trifecta nutrition.com/fire promo code fire. Thank you for sharing also your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today, for that we salute your brother and we'll catch you on the flip side.
2 (37m 3s):
Sounds good. Thanks for having me, John. Really appreciate it. Hey,
1 (37m 6s):
Fire Nation today's value bomb concept was brought to you by Greg and Fire Nation. If you've ever thought about creating a podcast of your very own, the podcast journal is for you. It is gorgeous. It is full leather and it will guide you step-by-step in the creation and launch of your podcast. In 50 days, visits the podcastjournal.com use promo code podcast free $15 discount. And thank you for listening to my podcasts and I will catch you there or I'll catch you on the flippity flip side. Fire Nation is time to stop trading time for money and start reaching more clients and making a bigger impact. And you can do just that with online courses, try Thinkific for free today at Thinkific.com/EOF.
1 (37m 46s):
That's Thinkific.com/EOF. The HubSpot Podcast Network is the audio destination for business professionals who seek the best education and inspiration on how to grow a business. Whether you're looking for marketing sales, service, or operational guidance, the HubSpot Podcast Network hosts have your back, listen, learn and grow with the HubSpot Podcast Network at hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.
Killer Resources!
1) The Common Path to Uncommon Success: JLD’s 1st traditionally published book! Over 3000 interviews with the world’s most successful Entrepreneurs compiled into a 17-step roadmap to financial freedom and fulfillment!
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3) Podcasters’ Paradise: The #1 podcasting community in the world!