 This episode of the podcast is supported by Audible. You can download and listen to the world's best storytelling. I use it all the time to inform work. You can listen to audiobooks, original series and more on their free app. To get your free 30 day subscription, which includes a free book, click on the link in our show notes and enjoy. Hey folks, welcome to the podcast. Today I had a great conversation with Eric Partaker who was voted CEO of the year last year and is co-founder and CEO of Chillangos, which is a chain of Mexican restaurants in the UK. And he's also a high performance coach and he coaches a select number of entrepreneurs around mindset and high performance and all of that stuff. So really cool. And we hear about his story. He started his career in McKinsey and Skype and met his co-founder and business partner at Skype. And he gives us some insight into the challenges they faced early on and how they grew and scaled a business which is awesome. And then we talk a bit about coaching, leadership, entrepreneurship and all the mindset stuff that goes with that. Hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis, welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Eric, thanks for coming in. Yeah, thanks for inviting me. Pleasure, we finally made it. So how was your commute in? Yeah, not bad. You're saying you used to living in me in Highbury? Yeah, I moved to the UK from Oslo, Norway in 2004 and joined Skype in a early day, shortly thereafter. And then most of my life was spent in Islington. Amazing. Actually, the first restaurant I started with Chilango, the restaurant chain I founded was on Upper Street. Oh really? Or is on Upper Street in Islington. Nice. But yeah, now I live in Wimbledon. How come you came over to the UK? Well, yeah, funny story. So I'm half-American, half-Norwegian. I grew up for the most part though in Chicago and then moved back to Norway to spend time with my biological father and some of my siblings. At the time, I was working with McKinsey and Company. And so I transferred from the Chicago to their Oslo office. And I lasted about two and a half years before I realized that I had been tainted by big city living. And then Oslo was way too small. How many people in Oslo? Oh, yeah, you're talking like hundreds of thousands. Oh, right, right. There's only five million people in all of Norway. So I set my sights further afield and still had the sense of adventure though. So I didn't want to move back to the States. And at the time, I didn't want to learn another language even though I've learned more since. Did you speak fluent Norwegian? Yeah, yeah, English. So I thought London, because they speak English. Why not? And that was the only reason. Yeah, I wish I could say that I was absolutely enamored with the city and couldn't wait to get there. But nope, it's a cool city. It's a cool city. It grew on me. Did you have a job here to come to where you just decided to come and then? Yeah, yeah, I worked for a short while with a small private equity group here. But shortly after arriving, I had been using Skype quite early on, earlier than most people, given its Scandinavian roots. And I looked at the product and I thought, this is going to be exciting. And so I joined them when they were very, very small. We were about 30 or so people in an unmarked office on Lexington Street in Soho. Cool. And it was a rocket ship, helped build up the company. And it was an exit two years later to eBay for about $2.5 billion. Wow. Yeah, incredible experience. And McKinsey and Skype, those experiences were incredibly formative thanks to those experiences as they were able to start the restaurant chain. And you did McKinsey for a few years? Yeah. In Osley? In Chicago and Osley. OK. Yeah. Also a bit of nonprofit work, mostly there after it was Skype and then Chilango, yeah. Great. Why did you start? How did it all come about? So growing up in Chicago means you have a lot of Mexican friends and eat lots of Mexican food. Because at the time it was, when I was growing up, it was the nation's second largest population of Mexicans who were living in Chicago. So LA was number one, Chicago number two. So yeah, to grow up not eating Mexican food there is setting yourself up for starvation. So I loved it. And typical thing is you can imagine in university, you go out at night, and then you soak up the evening with a burrito. Really? Well, here it's a kebab. Yeah, exactly, right? And yeah, so it was a case of missing the food. And then I thought back, when did I have the most fun in life at that time? And it was when I was working in restaurants and bars. And then when I had been at McKinsey, I saw the professional corporate side of that. I had some restaurant clients, massive corporations. And then Skype gave me that taste for entrepreneurship. So I thought, well, why not create a restaurant to make and serve the food that I'm missing? Definitely. And the real reason it started, though, at the end of it all is because of my business partner who I started it with, so Dan Houghton. We were working together at Skype as a two-person team. So it's a classic proof, or example, of first, who, then what? Because we worked so well. We had a pact. Whoever had an idea first would tell the other, and we'd start that business. You kind of worked in the trenches together, you knew what you were about. And very, very different. Like in the psychometric profile, and that's all the rage these days, we test absolutely opposite spectrums, like literally polar opposites. Amazing. So the combination is really good. And how long did you work together for a couple of years? Yeah. Got on really well. Yeah. And we've worked together now for 14 years. Wow. Yeah, so that prompted the desire to do my own thing. And you always wanted to do your own thing? Yeah, always. It's just that classic thing of just you have a desire, but you don't know what to do. But because the desire is there, you're constantly keeping your eyes open, right? Yeah. And then suddenly it hits you. And Skype was really good for it because, so VoiceOver IP had existed for 10 years prior to Skype's arrival. So it's like the question then is, at that time, why was Skype doing so much better? Why were they so much superior to everything else out there? And I zeroed in on two things, that they were absolutely obsessed with product quality. The product, again, at that time was vastly superior. And they wrapped it all up in a brand that people love. So the strap line at the time was, the whole world can talk for free. Yeah, nice. So it creates a nice revolutionary spirit, right? You're doing the world good. Yeah, yeah. And so we built Cholango, especially in the early days, on those two core tenants. So have incredible product quality. It's all about the flavor at the end of the day. And then wrap it up in a brand that people love. And Cholango's one word, brand distillation is vibrancy. So we exist to make the world a more vibrant place. Love it, yeah. And how was it in the early days? Oh, God. Yeah, it's. You're working in the kitchen. The first three months, there's been a couple of times and this is one of them, the first three months. It's like, I thought I was going to break. Like, just like completely fall apart. You're doing absolutely everything. You are getting signal after signal that it's not going to work. And you're physically and mentally just depleted, destroyed, exhausted. You know, a typical day was waking up at 4 a.m. to get to Smithfields to buy our meat direct. Well, every day, do that. Three days a week. And then you would work until 10 p.m. or midnight. So on those days, you're often getting like four or three hours of sleep. And then you got that bumper day, say, in between the Smithfields trips. You need the eight every night, not like, you know, three, four, and then eight. You're still on a deficit, right? Yeah, yeah. So that and the face of everything that was against us, it was really challenging. The sleep thing's crazy. Yeah. I mean, you're not getting enough. You're just mentally drained and exhausted. Yeah. There's a book called Why Are We Sleep by Matthew Walker. So if you have less than six hours of sleep, you have the equivalent ability of somebody that's had a six pack of beer in terms of cognitive ability, your reaction times, and all of that. So it's not, you're not optimized to run a business like that. But you can, you can try and accumulate the eight hours. You don't have to get it all in the evening. Yeah, but if you can find the time and who can, but if you can find a time to take a little nap. But that was impossible in the early days. I mean, one of the things I've had going all the way through is great coaches and mentors. Interesting, did you have that from day one? Yeah, I mean, Mackenzie was a culture that was set up in that way. If you look at mastery in any, anybody's achieved, mastery at any level. Of course, they engage in that whole, the 10,000 hour thing, but they also have someone in the background to help them out. So I was fortunate enough to have people to call on to help me see through it all. So how did you use them? You'd meet them once a quarter or something and kind of step away and like work on the business rather than in the business? Well, I'd love to say that I was working on the business the whole, it wasn't the case, you know? And I know that's the dream and it's all the rage to say that. It's like, I was in the business to keep the business alive, right? And early days, it's not like that now, but I didn't even have the capacity to meet with anybody regularly. So that was more like, you know, to be using person on an ad hoc basis. Now, when we're in our scale-up stage as a company, I have weekly coaching and also off coaching outside of Chilango in somewhat, you know, the same capacity like I've received myself. Interesting. So then at what point did you kind of come out all of that startup grind and then think, right, you know, first one's kind of moving nicely. Was it hard for you to just adjust your mindset and be like, right, let's crack on? Yeah, it's not as easy as just saying, okay, it's time to mature and let go and focus just on the business because there's that necessity thing going on where you just don't have a choice. But that has to go very, very quickly in the restaurant industry because of the physical presence requirement. You just can't be in all places. So even just to get to the second unit, you need to start creating, you know, a strong team underneath you. So I'd say it was in the trenches with no ability to look over the wall. For the first year. And then after that, you know, we started to be able to come up for air. What other challenges then did you start to face? You talked a bit about, Sandin, mostly actually your time, sleep and time has been. Yeah, I mean, so that's, again, that's like the typical grind. I think that happens in any business. After that first stage, after we got through that, you know, I imagine all entrepreneurs, certainly those that I coach, they also have these challenges. So basic things like feeling like you're just not winning the day. You don't feel efficient or productive. You're bouncing around from one person's agenda to the next rather than your own. Feel like you're constantly busy, but you're not necessarily working on the right things. Yeah. So there's that. It's like the classic kind of important urgent type stuff. So there's that bucket of, you know, challenges. Then there was, you know, questions of balance. So for a long time it was, it felt like it was all about work and it came at the price of my health and, you know, presence at home. And that's not sustainable either. Then there's challenges around scale. That's one thing to be a founder. It's completely different. I had to take a really, really focused and created, you know, my own like bootcamp or development plan to go from founder to that CEO of the year accolade that I picked up earlier in the year. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. So that took a lot of effort. So scaling up yourself, you know, as a leader and then just making sure the company scales. You know, are the people right? Is the strategy clear? Is the execution happening without drama? You know, is there enough cash in the business? You know, those are the three main areas, you know, of challenges that I face and that I see most entrepreneurs facing. Yeah. How did you get in to move on to your coaching? It's interesting. Wow. Well, so that's quite cool. So first of all, it was unintended. Right. Because that's like Chilanga was keeping you plenty busy. Yeah. Okay, so two things going on there. So it goes back to our one word brand distillation, vibrancy. I think all the great companies out there, they go from good to great. They have this intangible one word distillation that sets them apart from their competition. So, you know, for example, Nike's about competition. I'm not sure what JD Sports is about. Disney is about making people happy. I'm not sure what Alt dollars is about. You're right. I mean, Apple might be simplicity. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure what it's about, right? So then once you have that, you have to ask yourself, well, how do I stitch everything in the company and align it to that? Their food was vibrant. Our audition element in our interview process to find vibrant personalities. The restaurant interiors, I'm sure you've been in one year, they're quite vibrant. Yeah. But then I thought a little bit more philosophically. So it's like, how do I get someone to shine as vibrantly as possible? And rather than doing something that's very, very scripted, and if we do this, suddenly they smile, I thought, well, what if we hit them here, like right in the soul? And what if we actually create a culture inside Chilanga that helps them become the best version of themselves professionally, personally? And then I thought they'll shine naturally, quite vibrantly. So we started to do that. And that started to happen. And that started to happen. And then I was always getting approached by entrepreneurs asking for advice, either about the Skype times or because of what we had done with Chilango. And I started to drop in some of the things that we were doing internally at Chilango in those conversations. Right. And then a weird thing happened where I get an email and somebody said, thanks so much for that coffee three months ago. You know, it changed my life or thanks so much for that chat the other day. You totally saved me from doing the wrong thing or you inspired me to do something that I didn't have the courage to do. And so that was the trigger that made me think, what do I want to use my free time for? Because it's a free time thing. I don't have a lot of capacity, but I don't play golf. I don't play football. I go to the gym, but I don't have these traditional other hobbies. And I thought, you know what? We all need to do something in our free time. This is what I would like to do in my free time is kind of shorten the learning curve for other entrepreneurs and use that experience from McKinsey, from Skype, from growing from founder to CEO at Chilango. And then lastly, I became obsessed with the whole field of high performance. Here's, did you know this, for example? Did you know that apparently only 1% of people reach their full potential in business or life as defined by themselves, if they're asked. And that's, you know, that goes back to Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And, you know, once our basic needs are met, the deepest sense of fulfillment comes from feeling that we've become everything we could. Yeah, yeah. And that was his original estimate, which has been validated by the studies. I wonder why people don't quite make it. Well, I think for a lot of those, those, you know, reasons we talked about, they can't overcome, you know, basic challenges around, how do I win the day? At least from an entrepreneurial point of view. Yeah, yeah. You know, things aren't balanced. So they have a lot of regret, maybe with their health or with their family. Or they just don't, they don't learn from others how to scale properly. Do you know, they're all interesting. I mean, health is gotta be the most important thing. And certainly also like mental health. Mental health and health are just, you know, key. And you find that people, they often have any excuse, you know, why they can't go and do some exercise. They're too busy, you know. But we will have 24 hours in a day. It's quite a long time. Exactly. You know, and you only need to really find half an hour, 45 minutes to do some exercise. For me, exercise really, for my brain and for my mood, it's amazing. You're so right. People are in a bit of a rut with their psychology. They often look and stay in the mind when actually, if they thought about their physiology, it drives the psychology. At least I think 90% of the time. 100% I agree. I mean, if I'm out on the road running or I'm lifting weights, I do CrossFit. I went to CrossFit this morning. I mean, all I was thinking about was, damn, I don't wanna lift that weight again. Everyone else around me is like going for you. And you keep going. And you don't think about anything else. So it's really quite meditative. And suddenly you're like really ready for the day. So two groups tested. One group is on antidepressants, Prozac. The other group is just asked to go and do a workout in the morning. And the mood boost in the group, just focused on going to do a workout is equivalent to the mood boost created by the Prozac, which is crazy. But heavyweight boxer Tyson Fury. He fought Deontay Wilder recently and very publicly suffered from mental health issues, depression, thinking almost committed suicide, all these things. And there was an interview with him recently and the way he got out of it was he just went to the gym seven days a week. He just dived right back into training. I mean, you just feel great. Feel great. You feel better about yourself. Scientifically proven to create a mood. The worst goal, again, this is another evidence-based study, is people who have this milestone of I wanna get in shape. And that's not a good goal because for one, what happens once you achieve it? What's keeping you motivated then? Those that fare better are those exercising for the immediate benefit in the moment, such as the mood boost and that it makes you happier. So when they focus on that as a rationale, just like you saw at Tyson then, that's a much better result. You're right. I mean, I feel bad when I don't get to the gym. Just in myself, I don't feel good. And I'm in the habit where I want to go. I love it. I like to yoga, I like to do these things. And I think when you're running a company, that's how you get balance. You have a good version of yourself that really feeds into everything else. Yeah, from a balanced point of view, when I'm coaching someone internally at Cholango or I scale up CEO or founder externally, I focus on getting the energy right. Like you just said, that's energy health is the foundation. And then we have two things. Well, according to Sigmund Freud, we have two things we seek to optimize in life after that, which is our work and our love for relationships. And so making sure those are both right. It's important. What's really interesting, I think certainly in this country, and probably America's the same, is when you're an entrepreneur and you start the business, you only really get asked two questions by people. Everyone asks me, when am I planning on selling? And how many people do I employ? Yes. Now, I mean, the number of people doesn't mean you're making any money. I just find the question of when do you want to sell? It's a weird one, because it implies as a business owner and entrepreneur, is you have to want to build something to sell. Yeah, exactly. You know, I meet a few people in there, think to me, how's it going? And they're in this thing, I've got to build it to sell. I've got to think about that. So you have to stay true to what your motives are and what motivates you. And if that's somebody that's motivated by that, well then it's important to stay true to that and just design goals and plans around that. Personally, I think if you keep your head down and just focus on making your people as happy as possible, serving a great product and blowing away your guests or customers, whatever you refer to them as, that the good things will happen as a by-product of that. No, that's true, that's true. Do you do much work with people's attitudes? So it's a part from a good ground game, being organized, healthy and stuff. You then find in a mindset, being positive and the way you look at different scenarios, I feel. That's a massive part of the coaching that I do. So let's go with those energy work in love areas, right? So I have three identities that I set every single day in that. It could be a person that I want to kind of step into from like an alter ego point of view or just a phrase. And I have some stand-bys that I use as well. Every morning at 6.30 a.m. an alarm goes off on my phone and it says, world fitness champion. And as funny as that sounds, it changes the way I show up in the gym, right? Love it. At 9 a.m. it says WBC, which can mean world's best CEO, world's best coach, changes the way I show up. How does that person act and behave? And then the most important one for me goes off at 6.30 p.m. and it says world's best husband and father. And it just prompts the question, before I walk to the door, how would the world's best husband and father walk into the house right now? And again, it changes the way you show up for your kids, for your spouse, everything. Love that. I need to do that. I turn up sometimes, I'm like, tired, can't be bothered, don't want to speak to anyone. Yeah, so that energy, right? That wears off on everyone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Yeah, so that mindset is absolutely key. Because once you decide who you want to be, then instead of then trying to build yourself into that persona in one, three, five, 10 years time, just decide what's the identity, give it a name. Decide how does that person behave and then step into it right now. I also, how long have you done that for? I've been doing that a couple of years now and all of my clients love it. Because the other thing that I asked them to do is, I call it a champion proof. So you're trying to be your best, the best version of you in each of those areas. That's what it's all about, closing the gap between who you are and who you're capable of being in each of those areas. So it's just to clarify again, so it's fitness? Yeah, so health, energy, something around work and something around love or relationships at home. So I encourage people to come up with your number one action or thing you could do each day, such that by doing it, you're in a way proving that the identity you set at the beginning of the day is true. Brilliant. So yeah, so to be the best at the gym, you've got to go to the gym. So today, my for the gym was it was to burn 700 calories. If I did that, that would be evidence that I was the world fitness champion. And that makes you feel good because you succeeded in your first goal of the day and it sets you up nicely for the rest. So the work one, it was actually this podcast. I wanted to make sure I showed up and delivered something that could inspire someone else. Or I think you've done that. Yeah, thank you. And then for the relationship one for me today or the home on the home front, it was just a semi-ma, a nice message, because she's in Chicago. Right, right. So yeah, she loves messages. So any form of a contact, she goes through the roof. I love that. And if you succeeded in balancing them, spending as much time with your family and also on the work and business. And I use balance when I'm talking to people because that's kind of the catch word. The truth is you can never perfectly balance it all. So it's less about balance and it's actually more about satisfaction. And satisfaction is linked to do you believe you're doing your best? Because all suffering, disillusionment, pain, anxiety, it all lives in that gap between how we're behaving and how we're capable of behaving. And so when that gap's too big, you feel bad. Yeah, that's so true. Yeah. That's so true. Yeah, so yeah. Amazing. I think let's end there. Thank you so much for coming in. How do people find you? I am very keen to identify a single entrepreneur who's in the scale-up phase for their business. Somebody who's got a bias for action, already a track record for success, but yet they're craving something more because I have a single coaching spot opening up. Cool. Somebody who's interested in making a real transformation business-wise and even life-wise, love to be that guide for you. And they can reach me by email. I have a website, ericpartaker.com, or they can just shoot me an email, ericwithaceeatcholango.co.uk. Cool. We'll stick that in the show notes. Great. Hopefully you won't get too many people contacting you. And then you're on LinkedIn and Instagram and all of that stuff as well, I guess. Fantastic. Cool. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places.