 So anyway, so we're coming up to, we've launched for about three or four months in, and things are going well, but they're not going so well to pay the mortgage. Sure. And it was, it was the start of me understanding what it takes to be an entrepreneur and how really you need to have a strong spine all the time, because things go, wee, things are amazing and then, oh, yeah, what's going to happen now, and it's a roller coaster. This is Startup to Storefront. Today's guest is Anthony Bartlett, who is the CEO and co-founder of Real Plans. Real Plans is an all-in-one meal planning app that helps you plan, shop, and cook your food with recipes that cater to just about any dietary restrictions, hectic schedules, or personal taste. Anthony was uniquely suited to help kickstart this company, having designed similar programs for software giant SAP. Together with his ex-wife Emily, whose careful curation of the recipes and blogging make up the other half of the equation, they built a company that Inc. Magazine included among the top of their list of the fastest growing innovators in America. So listen in as we cover everything from the biggest mistake Real Plans made as a company, how Anthony calculated how many subscriptions it would take for him to quit his day job, and why leftovers are the best thing you can see when you open your fridge. Now back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. We're here with Anthony from Real Plans. Great to be here. Tell us a little bit about what your company does. We are an automated online meal planner. So you say how many meals you want to cook in a week, what your diet is, and by diet I mean what you actually eat. So you could eat everything but I just don't eat tomatoes or mushrooms. Got it. So you can put your preferences. Yeah. Or I'm gluten-free, pescatarian. And paleo. And paleo and I don't eat asparagus. That's my diet. And then we come up with a really kind of convincing weekly plan, which is a set of recipes on a calendar. Yeah. It consolidates the shopping list on a timeline. Okay. And then you go around the kitchen going, well, I've already got salt, I've already got, you know, paprika, whatever. And then you go to the shops and then you gather everything else and you come back. Got it. And you'll love it because it's real plans was really a play on the idea that we're real pragmatic, but it's also real food. So we don't have any kind of Oreo cookie recipes. We ignore the last 60 years of processed food and go back to cooking with ingredients that you can pronounce and, you know, actually work within your kitchen. What made you want to start the company? Were you guys like having the issue of what do we cook this week? Yeah. It started actually many years ago, about like 15 years ago. Wow. And my then wife, my ex-wife, she was an acupuncturist. Okay. And I set up a website for her, what have you for her practice. And she started getting more and more into nutrition and realizing that a lot of the elements that people were having to do with food, all kinds of fascinating stories coming back. And so she got deeper into it. And then we started getting into Western price. Have you ever heard of that? No. No. He was an American doctor back in the day, about 80, 90 years ago. And he was mystified as to why his affluent urban clients had always like tooth decay going on. And yet there were all these explorers coming back from the antipodes, you know, from anywhere in Australia or kind of whatever, and you'd see all of these supposed savages with beautiful teeth. That's weird. So he thought, well, maybe diet has got something to do with health. And he took his camera, went around the world and took all these shots, like gummy shots, like he grabbed people's mouths and opened them up. Uncomfortable. Uncomfortable. But there were all these amazing cases of, you know, brothers. One, one would be like in the city, one would be still in the countryside. And he pulled together a thesis of what constituted a good diet and led to health. And it was that you should eat locally, seasonally. You always contentiously eat a little animal protein, which helps for you to ingest all the nutrients. And we got into it. So we got this great cookbook that was all kind of based on kind of Western priced. And it ended up being this way of life for us. And we got really into it. So anyway, the website went from strength to strength. And what's the secret? Is it non-processed food or what was? Yeah, it was just the basic keeping it simple. Yeah. How grandma used to cook. Going back to the beginning. There was one of the main tenants is the idea that you soak your grains at night. And the reason for it is because a lot of grains have phytic acid, which is like a little snowflake type thing. Okay. And then when you soak your grains, the phytic acid comes off the grain and the next day you then cook it and it's easier to cook too. Right? But if you don't soak your grains, the phytic acid, let's say you eat a bowl of rice with broccoli or the nutrients in the broccoli clings then to the phytic acid and you poop it out basically. Like it flushes through. And so then you don't metabolize the nutrients that you're eating. Interesting. Basic stuff. And all of these people, desert dwellers, coastal dwellers, forest dwellers, wherever they're from, they all had very similar ways and traditional ways of preparing food. And so, you know, it didn't matter. They'd be like, there was this famous village somewhere in Europe that was difficult to get into. Like a horse and cart could hardly get in because it was like as tiny little face you had to go through. And they didn't clean their teeth. They didn't hardly do anything, but they were super hardy children and it was because they were eating like cheese, local bread, you know, just it didn't really matter. Yeah. But it was local, you know, organic, obviously. Totally seasonal. So anyway, so we ate like that for as a family. OK. And it was it went great, great energy. Things were good. Yeah. And so that went led into creating some PDF meal plans. You know, right? Because this is if it's 15 years ago. Yeah. And we went out and through the website, we met lots of really interesting other food based bloggers. OK. Like Wellness Mama. He's a huge right now. Katie Spears and Seth Spears, Jenny McGrother, Norris Kitchen, Michelle Tam, Norman and Paley, all of these different people. When you say met them, did they reach out or did you reach out or something like that? It's a small world, kind of kind of a smaller back then in terms of the food bloggers and the recipes and the people, you know, the rebels who are trying to educate the public on alternative ways of doing things outside of the the standard American diet or the food pyramid that the government produces. Right. And so we met, you know, made lots of good friends through that with similar interests. And we went to, you know, entrepreneurial meetups and things like that. And that's how we met people. And then she puts out this PDF, like weekly PDF gets people to subscribe. And it was just like what, reading this week? Yeah, she said, no, she had, she made five dinners, consolidated shopping lists. Our first ever employee, Charlene, was like counting the apples. And, you know, there was like some mistake on the shopping list or something, just just a little one. Yeah. Oh, forgot to put the dill weed. Oh, right. You know, whatever herb. So anyway, we created that. And meanwhile, I'm working as a kind of a coder. Okay. Consulting for SAP, really huge ERP. Yeah, yeah, big company, big company who, you know, the systems run my sister works for them. Yeah. The big one or the little SAP business one or the big one, the one that runs McDonald's or the one that runs the local? Probably the one that runs McDonald's. OK, yeah. So I ran the one that went to four to 10 million, five to 50 million dollar businesses. But I was able to make because I had this strange two sided kind of relationship to computers. On the one side, I knew how to speak computer. And the other side, I know how to speak human. And often you have developers who can speak and can't really articulate ideas very well. Or you have project managers and business folk who know all about the business and then write a functional functional specification and hand it to a developer. Right. I was able to do both. So I had a whale of a time, like ten years. You're kind of like a product manager. Product manager, but coder as well. A coder, yes. And so clients loved it. I'd sit down and we created beautiful crystal palaces of logic. There's a company called Invalidments down in the OC and also monkey sports. And if you know those guys, you know, huge sports retailer. And in both cases, we built these beautiful systems that did all kinds of things and were way faster than the humans. And I even got to the point on this one, Invalidments, where they're a company that builds really cool little cards, you know, cards, wedding invitations, birthday things. But they're super complicated, you know, three inserts and a fold here and a drill piece here. I mean, we built SAP and personalized it, like made it into a person. We called it HAL out of 2001. And keep kept giving it rules about the warehouse and the order of doing things and how long it would take a machine to do something and where everything was stored. And there came a point where HAL started making decisions that we couldn't understand. It's like, get the yellow card and do that cutting first and then pass it to this operator and then do this. No, OK, HAL. But we reduced order times by, you know, 70 percent. Yeah. We were able to push so many orders through because the computer had taken over. And it was through that experience that I realized that algorithms are incredibly powerful. And when you put a computer in the right place at the right time to do the right kind of things, you know, it's like a whole kind of Japan robots that, you know, little dogs or things that can help you and you kind of keep you company. And we try and humanize them as much as possible. I think the people bark up the wrong tree. The things that computers are really good at right now with our current understanding of them is that they're really good at making a billion calculations in a second. Like our stock markets are run by a computer. But if you turn that onto a company or to an idea, they can do things really cleverly. So when we came to do the PDF meal plans, people kept writing back and going, oh, love the plan. So cool, but I'm not into salmon. Anywhere you could make a plan for me that's that's fascinating to think about it from a code perspective. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm like coming at some right. You're like, oh, next challenge. How do we remove the salmon? How do I remove fish salmon? Is it fish? The wheels start turning and the wheels are turning. And then and then people are going, well, it's great having the dinners. But, you know, maybe they'll breakfast to be nice or smaller meals. And so so the X is all like started just tearing up all the time, going, oh, my gosh, how can I possibly do this? This is incredible. I mean, she worked super hard to kind of try and please everybody. But it was an impossible task. Right. And people kept writing and kept writing. And I said, oh, I could get a computer to do that. Yeah, because I'd had all this experience of teaching SAP to dance to my tune, to the customer's tune. It was a beautiful dance. I'm like, oh, we could do this to meal planning because no one's doing this. Right. No one on the market is really figured this out and made it so it's completely personalized. But and it's just inputs and outputs. But the trick is really knowing how to assimilate all this information. She said, there's no way you can build this. You know, no one's going to be able to, you know, a machine can't build a meal plan. Like I spend hours over this stuff. And I said, all right, well, give it a shot. So anyway, a year later, first, like totally bootstrapped. I literally started my garage. That's great. I clear out the garage, the front of the house. Car gets parked outside, set a desk up and in the evenings and weekends, I get going. So I'm doing my day job, keeping everyone happy. Right. And then I develop a caffeine habit because I'm literally having to stay awake in the evenings and during the weekends and I had no social life. For two years. That's great. And it was one of those moments in my life where I knew I had to push the pendulum. Yeah. And all the time that I'm doing this, I'm exercising like an idiot, like I don't stop. I have this great martial arts practice and I have a teacher called Master Z down by LAX Dharma Health Institute. And the more I work, the more I'm doing this martial arts stuff. Wow. And it's two years of like incubating and going through this stuff, literally I'm whiteboarding with Emily going. So what's, you know, what happens now? And we launch and there's this moment where I've got like a safe corporate job, right? And we have a discussion about what we're going to do because I need to work full time on this now. It's evident that I need to get going. Yeah. And we're we're just launching and we figure out how many subscriptions per day and then the lifetime value of those subscriptions, obviously you need that to figure out how many it would take for us to be able to cover all of our bills and not get into more debt. And we had, you know, we paid for things on credit cards and stuff, developers and because I could do all the database side, but I needed presentation layer outsourcing. You know, right? So we're walking on the beach down in Venice and we figure it out. And I'm like, all right, we make a decision. I'll do this. So you got your number of subscribers that you need? Yeah, a number of subscribers. We need like eight or something a day or something to cover my salary, which was, you know, paying for everything. She was still working for Acupuncturists to bring other stuff, but we're living in LA. Yeah. So to cover the mortgage and things like that. So we do it and I trade out my Audi S5 convertible. Love that guy. You traded it for freedom. It's a good car. Oh, freedom for a fear 500 E for $120 a month. And that was because I got the sunroof. It was 110. If you got something worth it for the extra 10. Electric car, 90, 90 mile range, loved that thing. Yeah. Yeah. Off the traffic lights, zero to 20 and like, I beat a Camaro SS on Lincoln Boulevard. I believe it. In that thing. That's all torque. Up to 20 miles an hour. And then he took over. I knew he was pissed. Yeah. Driving around my little Fiat, sitting in a garage working on this thing. Anyway, we're coming up to, we've launched and it's kind of going well, you know, like people are into it and they're converting. What are you charging subscribers at this time? What's the business model? It's a monthly, so it's a SaaS business. Okay. Software as a service. And we're charging $14 a month and then $11 a quarter or $6 if you do the annual. And they're just getting recipes. They basically send to them and they can personalize it as much as they want. And we, not only that, but we're madly cooking recipes, photographing them, coming up with content as well, at the same time as doing all that. And she was the kind of queen of content and all that kind of stuff, did all that stuff. So anyway, so we're coming up to, we've launched for about three or four months in and things are going well, but they're not going so well to pay the mortgage. Sure. And we're like, oh my gosh. And it was the start of me understanding what it takes to be an entrepreneur and how really you need to have a strong spine all the time because things go, wee, things are amazing. And then, oh, what's going to happen now? Wee, and it's a roller coaster. Yeah. And you just got to hold it together. Did Tai Chi help out with that when you were? Oh yeah. Yeah, right? It's the great balancer of things. Totally. I mean, Tai Chi is a weird thing. I mean, I didn't know any of this stuff when I came to, I was an unfit English mom when I came to LA. So how are you and your wife dealing with it? Or is like one of you dealing with a little bit better than the other? Or was it a, were you guys were balancing each other out? I mean, she almost lost it doing the blog. I mean, she really worked hard on that blog and nonstop. And I, you know, I was doing the corporate thing, but I was quite often taking the kids the weekends or whatever else. And she was just madly writing content about whatever. Coming up with some really good stuff too. And I was the one who was kind of steady Eddie. And then when I started coding, she took over and took on a lot of the kid stuff and let me like whole weekends where I would just see nothing and I would just be Cody, Cody, Cody, Cody. Yeah. Did you think about raising money at that time where you said maybe we can go raise some money and then this solves the issue? We had offers and because people close to us were like, oh, this sounds like a good idea. Do you want a hundred grand? You know, we said, no, we don't need it right now. Okay. You know, it's really interesting. So it's nice. I mean, that gives comfort in some way, right? Cause there's still signals from the market that are saying, hey, you're onto something. And so it sort of reduces the pain in some way. It does, but it takes, it really takes you facing your fears when you do this. I think in order to move forward with it and to not stay in a dogmatic position, you know, the one way that you're used to doing the comfort of the office, the comfort of having someone else tell you what to do and everything else. The structure, yeah. The structure and really going out on a limb and doing something different is where it's at. And also believing you can do it. I mean, having the audacity to say, I can come up with a product that will really help people and maybe help a sector of the market that's underserved right now. To even have that idea is pretty hardcore, really. For sure. Cause it must be like, you know, right now you could go, okay, car, taxi services, Uber's got it, almost Lyft's got it, you know? But somewhere right now is going, no, I can take on these guys. I could do this, you know, Uber or whatever, you know, whatever, you just come up with some, see them and just get going. And it's just the act of doing it means that it's gonna, at some point someone will take over Uber, someone will come up with a cooler idea. For sure. Whatever, anyway. So I'm sitting at a party, like it was kind of a food party type thing for Expo West, which is a huge food exhibition and a bunch of our blogger friends in there and I'm sitting around at this party and don't really know very many people cause I've, you know, got my head down. Right. I'm not out there on the internet. You're on the coding set, yeah, yeah. And I'm sitting next to this really nice lady and we're chatting and we've got our feet dangling in the hot tub of this nice house and chatting about food and she goes, oh, what do you do? I'm like, oh God, this meal plan I've been working on is, it's amazing, you can do all this different stuff. So what do you do? She goes, oh, you know, I've got a website and have some recipes and you know, I try and inspire people to eat good food and I have like pictures of every time that I prepare the food so that people have a pictorial understanding of how to prepare recipes, it works really well. Like, ah, cool. So, and she said, well, what do you think about putting my recipes into your meal plan? Yeah. I went, yes, we can do that. Yeah. And I said, we could do that in two months. No idea how I was going to do it. The framework hadn't been built, nothing. There weren't even tables for add-on recipes or anything and I had the idea previously that this could be something that we could do but here was someone who was just going, yeah, I'll do it. So I'm like, all right, great. So I walk over to Emily and I said, oh, that lady over there, see her? She's, she's gonna, we've just struck a deal. We're gonna, you know, she's gonna put a resume, we're gonna, you know, do it for a dollar a month and she's gonna be an affiliate of ours and sell real plans and stuff. And she looks at me and she goes, Anthony, that's Michelle Tam from Num Num Paleo. She's like a, my hero. You know, she's a celebrity. She's in the Whole Foods, like on the vegetable counter or wherever going, Num Num Paleo says this is a good idea. She has this amazing brand and she works with her husband on stuff. Wow. I'm like, oh, cool. Cool. Yeah. We just partnered with her. Great, well, we just partnered with her. So anyway, we send out a contract, we make one up and solid and we go back and forth. And then two months later, Michelle puts real plans on her website. Does a really, you know, high level link on her site and says, you should give this a go. And she was super honest as well. She goes, I don't really meal plan that much but I know that a lot of you do and you've asked me about meal plans with my recipes and how to do Paleo from a meal planning perspective. These are the guys who are really kind of hot right now. You should try them out. Boom. That first day. Order, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. So on my phone, I had a little, I'd be in the geek head. I had a little ding on my phone every time an order came in. So throughout the day, we'd get like about six or eight orders and I'm going, ding, yay. Oh, is it? Oh, it's an annual, great. Someone's, it wasn't. This is like Shopify. It's like, cha-ching, you get an order. What you think is gonna happen, you think outside of it. And when you dream about it, you're like, oh man, you want the sound to be, cha-ching. Right. And you go, oh, I'm going to make lots of money but when you're actually in it, that's not how it works. You go, okay, someone else has put their faith into me and they've just put their credit card down and now it's my responsibility to make sure that they have a good time that they have really into it. I have somehow managed to inspire someone to throw energy at me. That's what money is, it's just energy. And if you come up with a really good idea, something that's going to help them that they can't, they don't have time to figure out for themselves, money just goes thrown at you. That's a great way of looking at it. And it's a responsibility. You don't get that money and then get to just spend it on a yacht or something. You have to do something, you've got to invest it back in your business. So we never really needed investment because we started paying commissions for people but it was, it's a cash basis because we're paying commissions based on sales that have already happened. Sure. 30 day refund period, blah, blah, blah, you know, like this kind of stuff. And it works out great. So from a cash flow perspective, it's a great business model. It wasn't like, you know, if I needed to buy inventory and then try and sell it or if that inventory was seasonal or perishable, suck. You know, it's like, oh gosh, okay. I've bought a bunch of milk. Anyone wants some milk? Yeah. You've got two weeks to get to move it along. Right. You mentioned that, you know, there was a responsibility to deliver when all these people started signing up. What did you reinvest that money in after that huge order? We invested the money in customer support. That was the very first thing we did. So. And then you would automate that, I'm sure, at some point or is it hands-on? People are, they're just calling in, emailing in. We have chat support. Okay. And we have it at 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day. Wow. And we have... What is it that they're asking? Is it like, how do I make this? Everything. I can't log in. I can't do this. I can't do that. And it's all on them, you know. Sure. They've got a, they're trying to get in on their old browser from 1982 or something. Yeah, yeah. No, it was 1982. Around the 90s, you know? Sure. Windows 95. Windows 95, yeah. Windows 3.1, it's not working. And so there's that. And then there's people, yeah, walking around, walking around the store. And then like, do you have, do you know, any whole 30 compliant mayonnaise, you know, yes, Primal Kitchen, go there. You know, go and find Primal Kitchen. So you have all kinds of different questions coming in, but it's support. Because when you're running a SaaS business, an online SaaS business is a deeply impersonal experience, unless you come up with a way of humanizing the experience. And feeding yourself and feeding your loved ones is a deeply personal and vulnerable position to be in, right? Every time that you cook some food and it's not just for you or even for yourself, there's a moment when it's all coming together and you're like, oh, this is gonna be good. Yeah. I've cooked this a million times before, but my new girlfriend's here and is it gonna work out? Once again, the pressure to deliver. The pressure to deliver. And then it happens. And then you see their face and they go, oh, wow. This is the best lasagna legit I've ever eaten in my life. And you're just relieved. You're not even excited, you're just like, oh, a few. And then at some point, technology's shifting, right? And so you sort of go from this internet phase, websites gets easier to make, iPhone apps come out. Are you guys like a first mover on the app? Oh yeah, we have to do iOS app, Android. We try to come up with, if there's any kind of super geeks out there, frameworks that would handle all of it, you know? Like HTML5 kind of website. Doesn't exist though, does it? It does. It does. There are frameworks. Because Xcode is like it. They just don't work. Right. I'm sure someone's going to write to me now, going, yes they do. Maybe they can just reach out to you and tell you, but yeah, as far as I'm concerned, they're all super different. Well, we found that by building natively, we will really be able to leverage the different platforms. And they all have interesting nuances about how they function. And so by writing things in native iOS code and native Android code, we were able to cover a lot. And also, there are lots of other phones that are using Android. You know, it's not just like Samsung. Not everyone has a Samsung. Right. So if they're using Android, then by being in native Android, it works really well. They do a lot of the kind of porting for you, especially around the graphics and when you're doing stuff. Anyhow, so we launched all this. It's all going very well. And then it's going so well that we start reaching out and going, does anyone else want recipes in our meal plan? Because it's going pretty good. Right. Cut long story short, we end up working with Melissa Urban at hole 30. Have you heard of hole 30? I've heard of hole 30. I've heard of hole 30, yeah. Hole 30, yeah, huge. So Melissa put out a bunch of New York bestselling. She liked the creator of hole 30, yeah. Books, yeah. She came up with the whole concept. It's like a dare basically. Bet you can't eat meat, fruit, and vegetables for 30 days. And really, it's about having a relationship with your food. Sure. Filled it food freedom. Absolutely. So, you know, there's all these kind of fun hole 30 type phrases that they have, you know, like little sayings, like one of them is don't eat swipers. Swipers? Sex with your pants on. So, I would have never guessed that. No, no. It's the idea. So we actually have a category called swipers and real things, and it's basically saying having food that reminds you of a doughnut, for example. So if you're trying to not eat doughnuts for that month, don't eat anything that's kind of like a doughnut. Yeah. Like just disregard anything like that and stick to things that look like a. That's smart, because you don't want to associate. Yeah. Or you can put the fog in your head. In life, that's good advice. The marginal cost of, yeah, I don't want to drink, but maybe I'll have this, even like a non-alcoholic beer. It's like, why? Yeah, it's beer-adjacent. So I'm feeling very entrepreneur at this point, because we're on, I meet her at PaleoFX. We have a whole conversation. It's this whole like, all right, we'll get on a course or whatever. I had this holiday books back to England, see the parents, and then we went on to North, ditched the kids with the grandparents and went on to Norway. And we're in the Lofoten Islands, which is, have you been there? No, I haven't. It's in the North. North Sea, right? Yeah, it's like inside the Arctic Circle. It's exactly Svalbard. OK. Nice. So it's like this archipelago and it's beautiful. You know, Minecraft? Yeah. And at the beginning, you can randomize Minecraft and have different hills and different clouds and different things. It's like that. Got it. And you go around the most ridiculous thing. And we were there to see the midnight sun. It was beautiful. So we're there. I've just had a dip inside the Arctic Circle. And it was cold, but I did it. Yeah. And then we have a call with Melissa and her team on a cell phone, overlooking the most ridiculous view, going, talking about how we're going to put in Whole30 into real plans. Surreal. I mean, to have this kind of experience was already. Sensory overload. Yeah, this kind of experience. And by that time, we were already 10xing my original salary from the job. Within, like, six months. I mean, beyond our wildest dreams, what's going to happen? Yeah. Whole30 come online. And it's, you know, partly our relationship with Michelle Tam, because once you get the first one, everyone else goes, oh, it's legit. Right. So I got a lot. I'm very grateful for Michelle for, like, just going, hey, let's do this. Yeah. And so Melissa took on her community love real plans. All her, they have their own kind of community boards and stuff, and they were all talking about this and how much easier it was to actually have a plan. They, Melissa has plans in her books, but to be able to go, I'm going to the Whole30, and I don't eat, you know, whatever, cucumber. And don't make any recipes with cucumber or onion or something, you know, whatever. So, so that really catapulted the business. And then from there, we have, you know, wellness mummer, as I've said, and all of these other amazing paleo-MG, all these other, and we're still signing now, like yesterday, we just signed, oh, AIP is huge. So autoimmune paleo, Mickey Trescott and Sarah Banzang, anyone. And we just signed up with FODMAP every day. So FODMAP is like a huge deal in the health community. FODMAP. FODMAP, it's a low FODMAP. And it's basically to do with carbohydrates. And so it solves IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. So lots of, there's a significant percentage of the public who walk around farting more often than they care to. And low FODMAP handles that. And so we've got these amazing folks that we work with all the time. You know, people who are on it. You're a resource center in a real way. Yeah, we've become a platform for people to be able to, you know, share meal planning with their communities and their content. That's amazing. And so then we've, you know, we've gone through the mill with different consultants and marketing firms and all this stuff to kind of get to where we are today. And then probably the big highlight has been like last year, we were in the Inc. 5000, you know, those guys? Sure. And we were, we were. That might know. We were 91st in the US. That's amazing. Third in food and drink. Wow. 91st, fastest growing private company in the US. Wow. I know, ridiculous. That's outstanding. And the way they calculate it is they look at your books in 2016 to 2018. And then the percentage growth is, is, you know, just straight up percentage and they have your. It's very subjective. Yeah, it really is. It's like, I think we beat out Peloton or something by, I mean, they're a $80 million company. It was different, different game, but still, you know, it's just kind of fun. I walked into Peloton the next day. I was like, congrats. Shoppers didn't know what to do with me, but. So we talked about this earlier. So you said you had 30 employees, mostly remote. All remote. All remote. How do you guys manage that? What tools do you use for people listening? Obviously Slack is probably one of them. Slack, Zoom, Trello. That's it. So Trello basically allows you to automate some tasks, Zoom meetings, and then Slack, your chat. Yeah. Yeah. And that's it. What is, what is your secret in terms of, we've had a lot of people on who say they enjoy, you know, the remote workplace. Cause, cause then the people can sort of set their own schedule, right? In this whole nine to five sitting in a chair thing is kind of outdated. Doesn't really work for the, the human today. If they want to go to Tai Chi, go do it. If you need to go bring your, your mother or your kid to something, do it. Is that, you see it the same way? I mean, on a personal level. Yeah. On a Wednesday morning, I teach Tai Chi at 6.30 to an 87 year old who comes to my house. Seriously. Like we sit there, swinging our arms around in front of these two huge speakers listening to cool music and doing Tai Chi. I've been teaching for like a decade now. That's awesome. And then at 7.30, another whole crew of people come in come into my house and be like, you know, do the thing. By 8.30, they're all out. They've dropped their little kind of, you know class fees into the, into the basket. They're all out by nine o'clock. I'm sitting there in front of the zoom, you know running a company meeting. Hey guys, what's up? I'm Marof and we're dealing with stuff. I have employees in lots of different states. Oh, yeah, we can talk about that in a second. That was an interesting, that was our biggest booboo as a company. I'll tell you that in a minute. Yeah, sure. Yeah, cause I want people to know about this actually. And hopefully learn from my mistakes. But we have developers internationally. We have, you know, our longest serving employees. Charlene is in South Africa, you know. And everyone works out. And if you're trying to man a chat line, kind of good to have people in different times. Absolutely. You know, you don't want to go together. Yeah. And we really, it's a slightly rebellious thing to say but I just don't really feel that you spend all this money on your mortgage to come up with a nice house. Or use it and to disappear all day and not be in the house that you've just set up. Right. And it's all configured especially for you with your snacks and everything else. And so occasionally you kind of all meet up, you know, and have people like, I'll have people fly into LA and we'll have like a little summit and do that kind of stuff. But really it's, I get a lot of time with people online and then also have the quiet to just get on with the work that I need to do. And we also have a policy of real plans for people is that, you know, we say family first. So if you have a family thing you need to do be it a funeral or a wedding, you know, whatever, go and do it, live your life. Yeah. Why are we professing to help people eat well and have a good life when we ourselves are not doing the same thing? Like the real mission of real plans has always been to inspire people to make and share good food. And we feel that, I feel that when you eat good food you just have a positive vibe about you, right? And when you have a positive vibe you smile upon the world and the world smiles back at you. Yeah. And that means that you're handling your node of society. That's in your control, how you deal with your internal self actually means that outwardly people react to you in a different way. Yeah, that's very true. And so our mission has always been kind of, thank you. Our mission has always been that. And so we've kind of expanded out of that idea as much as possible and led to where we are today, you know. When you think about the future in terms of partnerships for your business is it giving people the ability to maybe partnering with grocery stores into a meaningful way? We already do that. We're linked to Instacart. Oh, perfect, okay. Amazon don't have an API yet. And as soon as they do we will. Instacart, yeah, had a great thing and people love Instacart. They just like click the button. The whole thing comes in. It makes it so much easier. So I said I'd talk about our biggest boobah as a company. Yeah, please do. Taxes. Not saving for taxes. That was fine. It was the idea, I guess as an Englishman, you know and also at SAP I should have known this too but you're doing an accounting system but I completely forgot about the idea that different states have different tax laws. And we were just like, you know, employing anyone who was in our Facebook group and super into doing support for us, you know and the profile were basically moms who had got to the point where their kids were starting to go to school and they wanted some adult time but didn't want to leave the house. And so they do customer service for us. It was great. And we were hiring people all over the country and you know, a little bit abroad but mainly all over the country. And what we didn't figure out is that we were not charging sales tax in those states where a SaaS business is considered a tangible good and there was also a major thing that happened a couple of years ago where Wayfair had a high court ruling against them with South Dakota that they had a financial nexus with South Dakota. So there are two reasons why you have to charge sales tax which is just for anyone who's not in America pass through tax, it's like VAT in England or whatever. You have to charge like 9% in California. You gather that 9% and then you give it to the state. That's it. So $100 sale, $9 hold on to it, charge the customer and everyone in America knows that you know, we see a little bit of tax act, whatever. So it doesn't really affect sales but you need to gather the money and then give it to the state. So we were selling all over the place and we were not charging sales tax in certain states where we had a nexus which means that you either have an employee or a warehouse or property in that state for your business. And secondly, that your product is a tangible good. So they all have different rules. What is deemed a nexus is different but then what's deemed a tangible good is different and that was the key. We didn't know. So there's this website called taxjar.com and they have a great article on what is taxable and what isn't for SaaS. And so we had to negotiate once we found out what was going because the very first time that Texas came to us and went, hey, where's our money, y'all? You know, I'm like, what are you talking about? I was gonna say, so I've looked into this a little bit but customer service, as long as it's, I think under 40% of the total, right? So let's pretend I have a SaaS product and you're paying 100,000. I think the rule is up to 20% of that can be custom now, okay. Different states have different rules. Interest. So I think California, it's an 80-20 split. Everyone just makes it up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically 20%, you can charge the customer as a customer service fee and you don't pay taxes on that but the 80% you have to report. Yeah. So we had, you know, we had a... That's a full-time job knowing which states are doing what. So now we're on it and we're paying everyone and we're still paying off states for 2017, just to cover our tax liability. Did you have to just hire a new accountant or what was the... Yeah, we actually had an accountant at the time who should remain nameless. Yeah, of course. This is one of those things you hire the experts, they should... Right, on a monthly payment, yeah. But at the same time, SaaS is relatively new to any accountant and so they... And also we're not, I've never been to Tizius anyway and so, you know, we didn't want to kind of go after him when he, what was he to know anyway. So in the end, you just put it down to I had really good entrepreneurial friends and he was just like, you just... This is your degree in business and this is just... Yeah, totally. Anyway, so one thing led to another over the last kind of two years and we turn out that Emily and I were much better business partners than we were being married and so we had the most beautiful... This is not two words that you get together but the most beautiful divorce ever. No lawyer ever found out that we got divorced. We both paid our $500 to kind of do it and looked up online because we're business folk. We just, it's form filling. Split everything down the middle because as I said, she'd worked so hard on the first 10 years. I worked so hard on putting this whole online thing together and we decided that she'd take a step back from the business and she's gonna kind of go and do some other stuff and I've taken over doing real plans full time and all the time and it's been a most agreeable arrangement, you know? And it's, I wanted to tell people about that because it is possible to negotiate. I think it's not, in life, it's not really the cards that you're dealt. It's more how you deal with the cards that you're dealt. That marks you as a character. As a business, we always make good as much as we can when things go wrong. You know, we try and help as much as possible and the same way in my private life, you know, you try and do the right thing. And of course, you know, there's obviously emotion attached to it and everything but we got through it very kind of cleanly and so now I had this idea like three years ago about making a professional version of real plans. I was thinking, well, we kept getting bombarded with people going, hey, is there a pro version of this? Cause I want to give this to my clients. And I was thinking, oh, we should do this, we should do this. We held off, we held off and then in the last year, boom, just developed the whole thing and we launched on Monday and it's basically for anyone who wants to meal plan for their clients. So, yeah. Can you break down what the differences are between the two pro version? Yeah, sure. The pro version, first of all, you are managing a number of seats so you can log in to someone else's meal plan, you can see their engagement with the product, so you can understand whether they've been compliant or not and you have access to all the passwords and all that kind of stuff. In other words, you can control their account and help them log in and stuff but also you can add your own templates and so a lot of practitioners, gym instructors and all that kind of stuff, personal coaches, they want to set up some kind of a template and you can deploy that template to someone and they can still make adjustments and go, oh, I'm not going to cook this on a Tuesday and I'm going to do it on a Wednesday or maybe I only want to cook three times but I want to have leftovers for lunches, you can do that and you can set it up. And so the templating is really strong and we've been beta testing for months and people love that. And you can also import your own recipes and you can hand that off to people too so they're able to see what's going on and plus what we do is we try and, we also have a focus of trying to be entrepreneurial for the business folk as well who are joining real plans and so what we do, we set up this amazing kind of pass through of the client so the original engagement of a client will be for maybe like six, 12 sessions depending on what vertical you're in, what industry you're in and then you let them go but really your desire as an instructor, you know, a trainer or someone, you're in a position that you're like a teacher, you're saying, hey, here's something that will help you heal either mentally or physically. And so typically like a registered dietitian will be doing some various tests and stuff and then go, you need to eat this much protein, this much carbohydrate and he's a, and he rummage around the desk drawer and everyone hates meal planning. Here you go, here's my high fat meal plan. 1988, yeah, there you go, that's black and white. And there's no one really serving that market in the way that we can because we're offering like a full service, beautiful meal planner that we have fallen over and failed so many times the last five years. We might just know a little bit now about how to, you know, serve that up for people. But that's the end result. But what we do is we then turn those ex clients of theirs into affiliates of the pro. So they get affiliate commission for the lifetime of the client, if they stick with real plans. So they're finding us clients, we wanna thank them for that, reward them. And so now they've got a passive income model. So this, you know, in business, if you had that term sawdust, you know, in business, you know, I might be running a pool equipment website or what have you and all these swimming instructors kind of, you know, coming in, asking certain questions and you're like, oh, swimming instructors need to have clients and maybe I can, and that sawdust all of a sudden there's a side business that you can suddenly start up. Right, a derivative, you know. Yeah, swimcoachinglessons.com and you know, whatever. Maybe that exists already, if not buy it. But that sawdust is what we think of as, you know, how do we help that? What business is that and where does that go? Yeah, so many gems today from you. I like all your expressions, really, really cool. Yeah. When you think about the future for your business or maybe even in terms of culture, in terms of trend, in terms of food, you're kind of, you're creating it, right? And then you're finding all these other avenues to branch out, where do you see your business in the next like five years? What things have become really important to you as you scale, where do you see culture moving right now? We can talk about maybe deliveries all the rage. Do you think about that in terms of your business? Well, delivery is an interesting one because we're gonna be partnering in Q2 with someone who delivers farm boxes. Okay. And what we're gonna do is we're going to take the inventory of the farm box, put it into the meal plan, and part of the upside of having this farm box is that you're able to then have a meal plan that goes with it so that you know how to use it all. Sign me up for that. We're in. Right, pretty cool. Actual full on delivery services like Blue Apron or what have you, is a different model really. Right. Because, and again, you know, I'm never into bashing other businesses, it just serves a different market. It's for people who want to have packaging, arrive at their house, they open it up, cook it up, eat it, and done the thing about it. Yeah. What we're doing is we're saying, come up with your exact diet. Commit to how many times you're actually gonna cook. Oh, and make leftovers. You're like, I think people should consider leftovers as a good thing. Okay, well, why is that? Oh, because you cook less. Right, okay, right. You know, I mean, I got you. One of the, there's two images that come to mind. Or invite a friend over. Right, yeah. But I have two images that come to mind with real plans. One is, you cross the threshold of the store, right? Supermarket, and you go, oh, what am I gonna buy? And you have that slight panic. Yes. I eat chicken, so I'll buy some chicken. Right, where's the chocolate aisle? Right, right, right. That's a whole nother story. And I think I eat rice. Do I have rice? I'll get some rice. And then you come home, and then you go, what am I gonna eat? I don't know, I'll just order pizza. Yeah. You know, it's planned. Tastes less chicken. They're all planned. The second one, the second image that always comes to mind, and I keep thinking of these as kind of marketing campaigns, is that moment where you open the fridge. And you know, like if you're at Christmas or whatever, you're at home, and you're at the parents' house, and you open up the fridge, and it's full of food, and you go, ooh, and you go, ooh, it's under this tin foil, ooh. And it's like lots of things to heat up and to make and sources here and that stuff. But if you're a bachelor, or you're kind of, you know, or you're in a family that doesn't cook, and you depend on eating out and take out whatever, you open the fridge, and it's completely empty. Voidable food, right? Just alcohol. But have you ever had this where you then close the fridge again, right? And then you, I'm seeing this commercial in my mind. Yeah, and they're really, really hard, and you're like, now this time, I'm gonna open the fridge on a three course chicken roast meal is gonna, oh, it's still not bad. That is what I'm trying to avoid. And so leftovers, if you're gonna put all the trouble to like, I don't know, chopping up garlic and onions and doing all this stuff and making a whole meal, then there's potential energy then sitting in your fridge. And when you open it next time, you go, oh my gosh, I've just cooked myself even. I've got an entire meal right here that I'm gonna eat, yay! And within five minutes, you're just eating it. Leftover's a cool, but you've got a plan for it. Leftover's the sawdust. Yeah, the sawdust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what is leftover? I really love it. Where can people find you? Realplans.com. And then if you're a professional, realplans.com slash pro. Yeah, if you're a chef listening or you're a fitness trainer, the pro is obviously for you. I'm sure Office is a funeral tech office with a chef for you also. Exactly, or if you can't even remember that, just go to mealplans.com. I've got the 301 redirect that goes straight to my company, so that's good too. There you go. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Anthony. I appreciate it. It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much. Thanks, guys. Bye. We here at Startup Storefront would love to hear feedback from you. Reach out and let us know what you think, either through rating us on the podcast app or by sliding into our DMs. You can find us both on Facebook and Instagram at StartupStorefront. The team is comprised of Diego Torres Palma, Nick Conrad, Natalia Capolini, Megan Conrad, and Haley Nelson. Our theme song is composed by Double Touch. If you want to learn more about the products and businesses featured on today's episode, check out the links in the show notes. 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