How Big Do I Want My Business to Be?

Introduction:

This week, we bring you a taste of what we experienced at the recent 21 Hats Live event in Ann Arbor, where we did a deep dive into a challenge confronting Mars Chapman, owner of Casey’s New Orleans Snowballs, a snowcone business in Austin, Texas. Mars, who is 36, bought the business from his parents and also inherited from them a somewhat laidback approach to ownership. The business has been operating for 29 years, but it has generally run only eight months of the year, which has been enough, thus far, to support a comfortable lifestyle for its owners. But Mars, whose wife, Page, works for a nonprofit and who is pregnant with their first child, has begun to question whether his current approach will be enough to support a family. This is another in our series of 21 Hats Brainstorms—we used to call them Fish Bowls—in which we pair an owner facing a challenge with a group of entrepreneurs eager to help. We ask questions, break into small groups to exchange ideas, and then report back. Sometimes—as I personally experienced at last year’s 21 Hats Live event—the comments and suggestions can be challenging, even a little painful to hear. But they’re always constructive.

— Loren Feldman

Guests:

Mars Chapman, co-founder of Casey’s New Orleans Snowballs; Tricia Groff, executive performance psychologist; David Billstrom of Flashing Red Light; Chris Campbell of Ritzr; Jay Goltz of The Goltz Group; Jaime Echt of The Crafter’s Workshop; Mark Forsythe of Mainscape; Brandon Gray of CRI Simple Numbers; Casey Helmick of New Bridge Studios; Jimmy Kalb of Triad Components Group; Channon Kennedy of The Morgan Square; Ed Leventhal of Valco Industries; Nile Livingston of Creative Repute; Lena McGuire of Spoca Kitchen & Bath; Nawal Motawi of Motawi Tileworks; Liz Picarazzi of Citibin; Jaci Russo of BrandRusso; Michael Russo of BrandRusso; Sarah Segal of Segal Communications; Justin Tinley of SendEngage; and William Vanderbloemen of Vanderbloemen Search.

Producer:

Jess Thoubboron is founder of Blank Word.

Full Episode Transcript:

Loren Feldman:
Welcome to 21 Hats Live in Ann Arbor. Once again this year, we are going to do our special 21 Hats brainstorming exercise to help one business figure out how to approach a specific challenge, and that challenge this year comes from Mars Chapman. Mars, what’s your business?

Mars Chapman:
Casey’s New Orleans Snowballs in Austin, Texas.

Loren Feldman:
And what’s your challenge?

Mars Chapman:
I just turned 36. I run my—well, I shouldn’t even say family shaved-ice business anymore, because I bought out my parents’ interest in it. So it’s now my shaved-ice business in Austin, Texas. We have one brick-and-mortar store that has been in business for 29 years and is more or less mature. In order to see any more growth out of that, you know, we can add up-sells or tweak things or increase pricing. But pretty much, that location is mature.

Over the last eight years, we have added our first food truck for doing mobile events, and then last year we added our second one. So catering and events and festivals has been a really good revenue driver and profit driver for us, but I don’t know if I want to grow larger than just a lifestyle business. It’s a very nice quality of life. We operate seasonally, so we’re closed for four months out of the year. That’s a really nice period of vacation to have.

Loren Feldman:
What do you do during those four months, Mars?

Mars Chapman:
I live. Over the years, my wife and I, we’ve traveled for extended periods of time. I’ve read a lot. I’ve gardened. I live in Texas, so I can garden in the winter. This year, however, my wife and I are expecting our first child, so that is a substantial change in my life circumstances. And so I’m keenly aware of, like: Oh, growth could be fun. Growth could mean more money. Growth could mean more work. Growth could mean year-round work. And one of the things that I loved when I was young and my parents were selling shaved ice was there was an off-season. They worked for six months. They were closed for six months. And to have that much time with my parents, when I was a teen, particularly, was just really, really rewarding.

And I don’t necessarily want to not be able to offer that to my child. So I guess the question is, I’d love some help with figuring out if I want to grow or how that might affect my personal time. Or can I grow and still maybe protect some of that vacation time? And somebody said at some point: What do I want to be when I grow up? And I think as business owners, we probably ask ourselves that regularly. It’s like, where do you want to be in a few years? And that’s maybe a question that I’d tack on there too right now, that I’d like some help with.

Loren Feldman:
What are your annual revenues?

Mars Chapman:
So last year was nearly a record year for us, but we came in at $480,000 top line.

Loren Feldman:
How many employees do you have?

Mars Chapman:
We operate seasonally, so for four months out of the year we’re closed, and then when we’re open, we generally start off with about 10 staff that return from the previous year. And then as the season progresses, we will again invite more and more people who have worked for us previously. Each year we’ll add some, but we’ll balloon up to about 20 to 25, and then we’ll shrink back down to 10 to 12 by the time we near the end of our season.

Loren Feldman:
So a lot of people are probably entry-level, college-student type employees. How many management-level employees would there be?

Mars Chapman:
There’s three. So there’s myself, there’s our general manager who oversees our store operation, and then there is our events manager who oversees our catering and events operation.

Loren Feldman:
In all these years, have you or your parents ever experimented with opening other locations?

Mars Chapman:
When I first joined my parents, one of the things that I did was, I did purchase a used shaved-ice trailer and set it up on a busy stretch of South Congress, which is a popular tourist destination in Austin and a busy, busy place where there’s a fair amount of foot traffic. And so we did set that up, and it did okay the first year, middling, and then the second year, it was not worthwhile. That was probably just poor execution, if I look back on it.

But I learned a lot from that experience. One of my favorite things that I learned is, it’s really nice to—if you’re going to try a new location—do it with a trailer, something that’s mobile and easily moved or easily liquidated, as opposed to a lease build-out. You can’t really sell a space that you’ve built out to your color scheme and your use case. So, a trailer is something that, if we were going to try different locations, that’s probably the method that I would go. That was ultimately what led to getting a food truck. It was because people would ask us, “Oh, you have a trailer. Do you do festivals, events?”

Loren Feldman:
And you own the store location that you do have, correct?

Mars Chapman:
Yes, so my parents own the real estate.

Loren Feldman:
Your parents own it.

Mars Chapman:
My parents own the real estate that our business sits on.

Loren Feldman:
Will that go to you eventually?

Loren Feldman:
Yes, assuming catastrophic things don’t happen. Yes.

Loren Feldman:
And are you happy with the amount of money you are able to take out of the business every year? How do you feel about that?

Mars Chapman:
The last few years, we really shifted from me being underpaid to now I feel much happier with my compensation. We kind of had to reconcile that one of the things that happened during the pandemic was we actually, oddly enough, through the PPP program, had the opportunity to experiment with how we pay people. So we were able to increase everyone’s compensation to where we now guarantee $18 an hour. So all of our servers earn $18 an hour.

And that prompted this thought of: Oh, are we compensating everyone fairly? Are we compensating everyone in a way that’s aligned with our ethics? And so that kind of went: All right, are we taking care of our servers? Check. Are we taking care of our general manager? Oh, well, we needed to do an adjustment there. Are we taking care of our events manager? Doing fine there. And then, finally, are we taking care of me? And I realized, no. And so now I’m quite comfortable. And I think the main thing is, there’s this question mark of, I’m comfortable for now, but as I mentioned, having a kid is going to change the family dynamics, the family financial dynamics, in a way that I can’t foresee. So I’m comfortable—with an asterisk.

Loren Feldman:
Questions from the group?

Ed Leventhal:
Ed Leventhal, Valco Industries in Springfield, Ohio. Thanks for sharing all that. That was great. I just think it’s very difficult for other people to tell you what’s right for your life and your lifestyle. It’s a personal decision. So maybe some suggestions, but really it’s your decision, your family’s decision. But have you ever looked at franchising what you have? That might still allow you that lifestyle, but be another stream of revenue for you so that you can continue the lifestyle you seem to enjoy.

Mars Chapman:
Ed, thank you for that. I think you’re dead on that people can’t tell me what’s best for me. And I appreciate you sharing both that wisdom, and then asking a really great advice-oriented question. Have I considered it? Not in any great seriousness. My consideration has been, or my cursory look at it would be: Oh, if we franchise, then probably, one, I don’t know how easy it is to franchise off of one location. Maybe we might have to prove that multiple locations are viable and that might be possible. It might not be possible. I haven’t put enough into it to be able to answer that.

And then, also, if we do franchise, then one of my customers goes from being people who are buying a shaved-ice product or buying our catering services to now they are buying our business. They might have a different lifestyle wish or return on investment desire than I have. And they might want me to work 12 months out of the year.

Now, could I go from being off for four months to then working a little bit during that four months? Yes, but I could also see how the more people you add, the more I get hooked on that income that they’re generating, and the more demand or value they’re going to want to take from me. Or maybe in the process of franchising, systems are built, people are hired, and there’s a possibility that I wouldn’t have to do it. However, if I’m not clearing half a million dollars off of a mature brick-and-mortar and two trucks, I don’t necessarily think that there’s enough juice in that lemon to build that managerial overhead. This is all just shooting from the hip.

Sarah Segal:
Sarah Segal with Segal Communications. Can you talk a little bit about the human process of making the product? Have you ever thought about automation? I’m in San Francisco. We have robots that make coffee. They just opened a restaurant that makes hamburgers through robots. Have you thought about automating?

Mars Chapman:
Have I thought about automation or dreamed about it? Yes. Where those thoughts led me to was that catering is an easier lift because we already know how to do it. So doubling down on catering, which is why I was like, “Oh, let’s add another vehicle. Let’s add another truck and start maybe building out a fleet.” That’s just an easier lift, I think. It also led me to think of what’s a similar product that we can sell, or a similar experience we can provide?

The way that we make our product—to answer your question, as you stated it—is we put a block of ice in a machine, secure it, and then turn the machine on. At one end of that machine are some rotating razor blades, and then we push that block of ice towards those razor blades. Snow comes out of a chute, and we pack that into a cup, shape it with a funnel, poke a hole in it, pour some syrup on it, put a spoon and a straw in there, grab a napkin, hand it to the customer. And we have experimented with a catering product that we call Casey’s To Go, so it’s where we’ll make a batch of snow that’s flavored. So we’ll shave a big bucket full of snow, pour syrup on it, flavor it, scoop that into cups, lid them, freeze them, and then it’s kind of a grab-and-go thing.

Could that potentially be packaged and sold to local grocery stores? Possibly. Not opposed to it. Haven’t really tested it or tried it out. It works very well in specific catering applications, like if we need to serve 500 people in 10 minutes, we have that capability. And then, in addition to catering and our brick-and-mortar shop, we also wholesale some syrups, but we also wholesale block ice to other shaved ice vendors in the Austin area. So those are kind of our main revenue streams.

Michael Russo:
My name is Michael Russo. I’m the chief creative officer at BrandRusso. Just about your other question and about lifestyle and for us, I run my agency with my wife and business partner. So we raised four kids. They’re in college and post-college now, so we went our entire lives trying to figure that out and how to do that right. And there is no easy answer to it, but, one, the business was driven by our need to pay for our kids. As they got older and more needs came in, as we had more kids, we had to work harder and grow to adapt to those lifestyles and what we wanted to give to them.

At the same time, how did we manage the time with that? We incorporated it into our world, good or bad. That’s the way it happened. They came to the office with us. They lived the experience with us. And they could probably quote more about branding than I can right now, but that’s the whole thing: We didn’t allow it to hamper us. We embraced it, because we knew there was no getting away from it. When you run a business, you’re drawn into it. So that was our take on that world.

Mars Chapman:
Thank you very much for sharing that. That is largely what my experience was with my parents. I also have so much sympathy for the Sierra Nevada ad: “Family owned, operated, and argued over since” whenever it started. So yeah, family businesses are a special breed.

Nawal Motawi:
Nawal Motawi, Motawi Tileworks, Ann Arbor, Michigan. I want to go back to Loren’s first question that has to do with, well, first, are you making enough money for the life you want and for saving for the future and emergencies? And you sort of answered that as, not quite, maybe. But the question I have is—or to ask yourself—is, how do you want to spend your time? Because, for instance, becoming a franchisor is a completely different way to spend your time than managing people and doing catering and being hands-on in a shaved-ice business. So, one question that has to get answered before the others, I think, is: How do you want to spend your time? And it’s not that you have to answer. It’s a question I would ask.

Mars Chapman:
I think that’s a valuable question, and one that I will probably be mulling over for a long period of time. I was really touched last night at dinner when Ari of Zingerman’s said that at the end of every day, he likes to work an hour or so on the floor at the Roadhouse. I mean, I literally teared up because my favorite part of my job—and the part that I do the least—is serving people to take a simple, pedestrian product and turn it into a meaningful moment of human connection. And it far exceeds just a transaction of product and value. That’s magic. That’s human. That’s special. And I get to do that? That’s an honor and a privilege. And so that really kind of hit with me. And I’m like, “Oh, maybe it’s not about the money.”

Loren Feldman:
Or would you still be able to do that if you had two locations or three locations, that you are managing people instead of working? Something to think about. Jay?

Jay Goltz:
So let’s talk about money. So you use the phrase “lifestyle business.” That could be 100 grand a year, that could be a million dollars a year. So what is a good lifestyle business to you? $300,000 a year? You tell me. That’s the first question. The second point I’d only make because I’ve looked into franchising. It ain’t anywhere near as easy as it looks. Constant lawsuits: You told me, “Blah, blah, blah.” And I’m not so sure that’s viable, as you’ve already figured out. I’m not sure. But I could see you scaling up to—maybe four trucks get the job done. I would want to ask you, the very first thing I would think of with your businesses, are your trucks fun and cool? And do people say, “Oh my god, I love your truck.” Do they say that?

Mars Chapman:
I would hope so. We just had one, our second one, wrapped, and it’s a very fun, colorful, great wrap. A lot of people have commented on it, so that’s been really great. The look on people’s faces when we pull up for a birthday party, and they’re playing in the front yard, or they come running around the side gate and then they see us—it could be adults, it could be kids. It’s a blast. At weddings, it’s amazing to see that people welcome us into that moment in their lives. And, you know, we’re part of their wedding photography, which is also an honor. So I’d like to say I think that we’re quite memorable.

To answer your first question about money, my compensation right now, before any profit share, is $42,000 a year, which is not a lot of money. However, my wife and I, we were fortunate enough to both graduate from college without any debt. We have a mortgage from 2017—it has a sub-4-percent interest rate. We’ve been living in Austin now for, oh gosh, 12 years, and we’re quite happy. We’re able to both max out our IRAs and still save money to be able to go to Disney World if we want, which is not the cheapest vacation in the world. So, comfortable, but I’m keenly aware that there’s not a lot of slack there either. We’re comfortable, but I could totally see that vacation getting skinnier and skinnier and skinnier, especially adding a third seat on an airplane.

Loren Feldman:
I assume that $42,000 is a conservative estimate, and perhaps the bulk of your compensation comes from the profit share?

Mars Chapman:
It does if I do my job well, but even still, my profit-share take is going to be—you know, if we hit our numbers this year, my profit share would be 12 grand. So not a substantial amount. For as profitable as the business is, we leave a fair amount in there, because we do go dark for four months out of the year, I have my estimated cost for how much that’s going to run, and then I add a little bit on it for fluff. Because inevitably, $5,000 is going to pop up. And I think we all know that $5,000 means almost nothing, as an expense goes.

Loren Feldman:
Brandon?

Brandon Gray:
Brandon Gray with Simple Numbers. In most cases, growth requires capital and time. So as you look at that equation, whether that’s sweat equity coming in the form of capital, which are you more comfortable with taking on: additional capital, which could be debt or investment, or giving up some of your time that you have in the off-season?

Mars Chapman:
We’re currently doing a remodel of our shop, and to do that, we received a loan through the SBA. And so that’s tapped out. That’s kind of put our debt-service coverage ratio about where I’m comfortable with it being. And so I don’t really want to take on any more debt until we’ve been able to pay that down some. So once the remodel is complete and we’re able to get back into our shop and fully run the machine the way that we want it to run—and after we do that for a year or two, we can see how much additional principal we’ve paid down. I would prefer a loan over investment.

We fortunately have enough talent, I think. I know our general manager, he’s said on more than one occasion that he’s happy to work year-round. Right now, he receives a wintertime stipend, so he gets four months paid vacation. It’s not quite enough to cover all of his living expenses, but it’s a decent chunk. But if he wants to do it, and he wouldn’t find sitting there serving only 50 people in a day—because that’s what some days in December would probably entail—if he wouldn’t find that demoralizing, then that’s another option. And I would also trust him to run the shop and need minimal assistance from me, because that’s what he’s been doing now for eight years.

Liz Picarazzi:
Liz Picarazzi from Citibin. I am curious about syrup as an ingredient, and if that’s something that’s proprietary, if that could be monetized.

Mars Chapman:
Somebody said that they were looking on Amazon to find snow-cone syrup—I’ve forgotten what they were trying to do. I think they were trying to find something that didn’t have high-fructose corn syrup in it, which I thought, “Great.” And they were like, “Oh, you should be on Amazon.” Never had ever thought about that, because it’s literally flavored sugar water, but—

Liz Picarazzi:
There’s a market for that.

Mars Chapman:
Apparently! Apparently, there’s a market for that, and I didn’t know.

Liz Picarazzi:
There is. And I’ll tell you partly what it is and the reason I ask. So I’m sober. I don’t drink alcohol. I often, when I go to Whole Foods or like the non-alcoholic store—and there are lots, these stores are everywhere—I buy syrup all the time. And I’m willing to pay for it because it’s good ingredients. It’s just great. You know, I can make non-alcoholic drinks out of it. I would think that if you had something sort of proprietary, that had a story around it, that had great materials, there is this whole market out there. But you would have to have something special about your syrup. It couldn’t just be, you know, sugar water.

Mars Chapman:
Right. That’s that wouldn’t be too heavy of a lift. And that’s a good idea. Thank you.

Loren Feldman:
Maybe one or two more questions.

Jimmy Kalb:
Jimmy Kalb, Triad Components Group. It seems to me—and you’ve kind of already addressed it—it’s insane that you’re shutting out four months. That’s one third of the year. And even if you’re not making $50,000 a month in revenue, which sounds like you’re about at right now, if you were only doing $30,000 in that time period, that could add a significant amount of bottom line.

And I would also think that there are still holiday parties. There are still birthday parties. There’s still winter weddings. There’s still all sorts of other special events that your trucks could potentially go to. Maybe not necessarily the brick-and-mortar place, but it would seem to me that you’re leaving a lot of potential revenue on the table. And I can’t understand why, since you’ve already paid for these capital expenditures. It’s like Southwest keeping their planes on the ground. They’re only making money when they’re flying. So your trucks are only making money when they’re out there serving snow cones or snowballs or whatever.

Mars Chapman:
That’s 100-percent bang on. One of the many advantages of a family business is—well, there probably are some. They aren’t coming to my mind right now. But one of the disadvantages of a family business is you inherit ways and reasons for doing things that aren’t your own. And so I’ve had to do a fair amount of unlearning. And I think you raise a really good prospect, and one that I’ve acknowledged, but it’s really nice to have it validated from an experienced and a wise external party. Thank you, Jimmy, because I think that that’s bang on.

Loren Feldman:
Last question.

Lena McGuire:
Lena McGuire, Spoca Kitchen and Bath in Syracuse, New York. As far as your vision planning and how big you should grow, have you run the numbers? What is the minimal salary you want, and what is the revenue required to create that? Versus what an ideal salary and revenue would be, so kind of like pie in the sky. If I was a really successful, rich businessman, what would my salary be, and how much do I have to sell to achieve that? As a proportion of looking at it as: This is my minimum, this is my maximum, and then I can grow somewhere in between that, so that you actually have a comparison to make a decision.

Mars Chapman:
I love that, because it grounds the vision in numbers and seeing what’s feasible. No, I haven’t done that, but I can do that tonight. I have my spreadsheet for exactly where to go to calculate that. So thank you for giving me some homework.

Loren Feldman:
All right, we’re going to take 10 minutes. This is a group on this side. This is a group on this side. This is a group over here. Please brainstorm. Come up with two or three ideas that you would like to bounce off of Mars, and you’ve got about eight minutes to do it. You’re not necessarily telling him what to do. You’re making suggestions for him to consider.

Loren Feldman Voiceover:
So at this point, we split into three groups to brainstorm. After kicking around ideas, each group will pick a spokesperson to explain what they have in mind. You can hear the brainstorming in the background as Mars and I chat—although before we chat, a member of one group asks Mars a relevant question, which is whether his wife is employed.

Mars Chapman:
My wife is an advocate for survivors of sexual assault with a nonprofit in Austin and earns a nonprofit salary.

Loren Feldman:
The question I would have asked if we’d had a little bit more time is how you think about competition. I’m sure there are ice cream shops all over the city. People have other alternatives. How much room to grow do you think there is?

Mars Chapman:
So in Austin, there’s an ice cream company called Amy’s Ice Creams. Amy Simmons is a great person, and I have so much respect for Amy’s Ice Creams, and in many ways, I view them as a role model of what we could do. And Amy’s has, I want to say, I think close to 20 locations. They might be above or below that in a few different Texas markets. I know that pre-pandemic they had revenue around $10 million. I don’t know where it is now.

But I bring up Amy’s because they’ve done a few things that I really admired. One, the Amy’s Corporation owns some real estate. And then also, Amy herself, I guess, set up a family trust that purchased some real estate that the business, Amy’s Ice Creams, is the tenant. So in terms of wealth creation, I think that they’ve done some really cool things, but I also know that as many locations as they have, they’ve attempted to open and then had to close, I think, just as many locations.

I really look up to Amy’s Ice Creams as one potential model. But I bring them up because I heard something that they said, that they’re competing for the sugar dollar. People are only going to buy one frappuccino, one Krispy Kreme, or one Shipley’s, one cookie, one shaved ice. So, it’s the sugar dollar. Not that many people are going to go out and buy this many sweet treats in a day. And so in terms of competition—my competition—I would include Coca Cola amongst my competitors. So am I worried about that? I think that there are so many people that are vying for consumer sugar dollars that it’s about, okay, what’s the absolute best product that we can provide, and what can we do that’s unique?

And so, we’re in-person. We’re a unique product within the category, where, yes, we are a seasonal product, but our experience and our service is really, I think, what sets us apart. And that’s not just based upon my gut. That’s based upon what guests tell us when they come up to the window, when they place their order, when they hand us a manila folder and sa, “We don’t know the gender of our baby. Can you please use an opaque cup and put this color in the bottom for boy, this color in the bottom for girl, and then clear on top?” We’ve had people that want us to put an engagement ring in their snowball before. We’ve done that on multiple occasions. Yeah, I know. We’re like, “I don’t know how I feel about this from a liability perspective, but thank you!” [Laughter]

Am I worried about competition? Yes and no. Would I be worried if somebody did shaved ice right across the street and sold them for $1 less? Probably, yeah. Is anybody doing that? No, not right now. Could they? Well, they’d have to take over the used car lot that’s there, but they could.

Loren Feldman:
Have you put any energy into thinking about a counter-seasonal product that you could sell during those months?

Mars Chapman:
I have. The balance that I’ve always come into is, this is the life that I’ve had. And so the relationship that I have, both with myself and with my space and with my wife is seasonal. And she loves that I have four months off every year, because when I go into work mode, there’s some time where she picks up a little bit more around the house, and then when I’m in off mode, I’m 100-percent focused on the house. And so there’s kind of this give and take.

And so anything that we would have to do that involves being open more year-round would involve renegotiating, revisiting—because I’d like to say that nothing in a relationship is ever set in concrete. It’s always in flux, but we would have to definitely revisit some things that otherwise have been more or less untouched for a little while. So yes, I have thought about it, but I’d have to do it judiciously. More than anything, what I thought about is actually selling another product with the same seasonality.

Loren Feldman:
Folks, one minute, one minute to wrap up. You’re about to find out your future!

Mars Chapman:
It feels great. Somebody else is determining it.

Loren Feldman:
I’m gonna call this in five seconds. When they throw out an idea, you don’t have to respond. But if there’s something that clicks for you, you do have a reaction, or you have a question back to them about what they’re suggesting, go for it. Okay, folks, time to go.

Jay Goltz:
Jay Goltz, representing our group, we suspect you’re wearing a tie-dye undershirt under there, because you’re kind of a hippie. Are you not? Your parents? Yes?

Mars Chapman:
Parents, definitely hippies. Yes.

Jay Goltz:
So we’re trying to figure out, can you make a conversion from that to making—forget lifestyle business—making a decent living. Because you’re not. Like, to own a business making your money is not really—we were all a little surprised at the number. So when you say you want to have a kid, you want to have a nice life, we think you’re going to have to make not $300,000, but triple your salary, probably, which means maybe you need two more trucks. For sure, we all agree, why wouldn’t you let your guy go do that and give that a shot? So we think you might have to shift some of your thinking from what you’re used to. And we don’t know how your parents raised you, put you through college with no debt, and it’s—

Mars Chapman:
I received a scholarship.

Jay Goltz:
Ah, see, I said there was more to the story. Okay, that makes sense. No siblings?

Mars Chapman:
No siblings.

Jay Goltz:
Okay, so then the question becomes: Do you want to have more than one kid? It costs money. So just because you’ve been able to go to Disney World, there’s just the two of you. It’s not going to be with having a kid, because then childcare is expensive. So you’re going to have to make a six-figure salary, we believe. There’s different ways of doing that, and we like—or, I at least like—the whole idea of: Maybe you could do your own syrup and sell it nationally on Amazon. So we think you’re gonna have to do some soul-searching.

Mars Chapman:
Thank you.

Jay Goltz:
You do have tie-dye T-shirts, though, don’t you?

Mars Chapman:
Not today.

David Billstrom:
David Billstrom, Flashing Red Light. Speaking for our group, we had some of the same thoughts as the other group. We think that capital investment that Jimmy described deserves to be open year-round. The additional trucks, we were a little bit concerned. You’ve got a unicorn for a general manager willing to work for that, and if they were to go poof, for some reason, you might be high and dry. So they’re going to need to make more money as well.

And the truck or trucks, they may go poof, and we’re betting you’ve got a reputation problem when you don’t show up at the birthday party catering because the truck’s down. So you need a backup truck, which can also be monetized. But the larger issue that we identified is your vision. Do you want to make more money? Or do you want to keep that time off every year? So those were our thoughts.

Mars Chapman:
I didn’t expect to receive anything other than thought-provoking and hard propositions. So thank you all very much for honesty. This is why I love 21 Hats.

Loren Feldman:
You’re not done yet. William?

William Vanderbloemen:
Well, the hits just keep on coming. William Vanderbloemen, Vanderbloemen Search. I was with a really great group of smart people, and left the room for a minute, and then they voted to make me speaker. So, don’t leave the room, is the lesson. It’s more of the same. We immediately dove into, “Well, he could do merch. He could sell the things on Amazon as high-end syrups,” all the ideas for expansion. But I think what we kept coming back to was: What a fabulous time in your life, as you’re getting ready to take on a child. And instead of it being two plus one is three in your house, it’s two plus one is about nine. So, like, what a great time to drop back and say: All right, realistically, what do I want to get done with the time that I have left, and what kind of earnings does that require? And how do I reverse engineer a growth plan—if that’s what you want—to achieve those goals?

Because I think what we were saying, there were a lot of great ideas for growing the business, but until you know the answer of whether you want to grow it or not and what you want to grow it to, it really doesn’t matter. So you’re at a great crossroads in life to ask those questions. I don’t know if that’s hiring an executive coach for a couple months or something that makes you take long looks in the mirror to say—because I’m kind of with the other two groups—kids are expensive. I can tell you about it. [Laughter] So I’d just encourage you to use the opportunity to drop back and really ask the hard question: What do I want to get done with the time I have left? And what does that mean for a business plan?

Mars Chapman:
Thank you.

Loren Feldman:
Mars, you got some tough love thrown at you there, a little bit. What’s your reaction?

Mars Chapman:
I would take issue with the term “tough love,” because tough love is sometimes something where you’re like, “Ooh, but maybe they were right.” This felt very supportive and very practical and very reasonable and very grounded in real, day-to-day experience from a range of businesses. We have, what was it, a $205 million a year company? And then we have—

Loren Feldman:
Me. [Laughter]

Mars Chapman:
Okay, then we have an undisclosed, but small, 21 Hats in the room. And so, I love this because now I can take it and do an effort-versus-reward matrix and figure out where the low-hanging fruits that are going to be the highest reward with the lowest effort and then start pushing, lifting those—or I have that as something that I can do after, as Michael very, I think, well said, some time staring in the mirror and the question of: What do I really want my life to look like?

Loren Feldman:
So these 45 minutes haven’t been enough for you to decide what you want to be when you grow up?

Mars Chapman:
Sadly, no, not quite. But they’ve given me a goal, and they’ve given me a destination and something to work towards, and I appreciate that.

Loren Feldman:
And you’re going to think about it, and one day, in the not too distant future, you’re going to come back and tell us what you concluded?

Mars Chapman:
That’s exactly what I’ll do.

Loren Feldman:
Excellent. Thank you all. [Applause] And thank you, especially, Mars, for sharing, being open, and subjecting yourself to this.

Mars Chapman:
Thank you all.