Everybody's Brett, and this 2023 Jeep Wrangler 4xE Sahara is stock number 23J69A. I am here at Summit Automotive in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, your new and used Jeep and Jeep Wrangler headquarters. This 2023 Jeep Wrangler Sahara 4xE has the 2.0-liter turbocharged 4-cylinder engine. It's paired up with the hybrid technology. It is a plug-in hybrid. It gets you 375 horsepower and 470 foot-pounds of torque. It's also going to get you 49 miles per gallon equivalent, and has an electric, all-electric range of 22 miles, roughly. So you can charge one of these fully charged in approximately two hours with a 240-volt charger and approximately 12 hours with a 120-volt charger. This one does come with the charging plug-in. This vehicle has been fully safety and inspected by our service shop, has a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. This Jeep is 100% ready to go. I'm going to go all the way around in this video inside, underneath, start it up, take a look under the hood, give you the most accurate representation that I can of the vehicle, and go over all the options as well. High-velocity clear coat is the color. Shoot all my videos in 4K. If you like the video, consider subscribing to the YouTube channel, click the bell notifications and get updates on the videos I do each and every day, as well as having access to one of the largest catalogues of vehicle, and specifically Jeep Wrangler walk-arounds on YouTube, almost 500 videos of Wranglers on there, and 9,000 videos subtle. This one comes with the 20-inch gloss black, 20-inch wheels, and the hybrids all give you the blue Jeep there, and it has Bridgestone Duler HL tires. These are 275, 55-hour 20s. I would say they have right around 50% to 60% of the tread left on them. Frame and underbody is exceptionally clean. This is a one-owner clean title history, clean car facts from right here in Wisconsin. This one does have the color match fenders, the LED headlamps, running lights, and fog lights, as well as the LED halo lights on there as well. Front bumper is in very nice condition, didn't see any dense dings or scuffs on there. You also get the blue tow hooks when you get the hybrid model, the seven-slotted grille with the silver inserts. The hood is in fantastic condition. I didn't see any major dents or dings on there, looks really good. And the passenger side front fender is in excellent shape as well. No scuffs or scrapes. Passenger side front wheel, no scuffs on there. You get the Jeep lettering outlined in that blue as well as the blue Wrangler logo or sticker there. You get the Jeep climbing up the side of the windshield and the sandals and the shroud there. And as you go down this side of this 2023 Jeep Wrangler Sahara hybrid, take note of how clean those doors are, how reflective and mirror-like that paint is. I take these HD videos so if you're far away or even if you're close by and you just cannot make the trip down but you're still interested in purchasing the vehicle, you can see the vehicle, hear the vehicle, and have confidence in what you're looking at before you even get here. So when you do get here, there's absolutely no surprises. And you can make a smart and informed buying decision or just make the decision to take a trip and come look at the vehicle. If this video helps you do either of those, let your salesmen know that you saw the video that I was helpful and that Brett sent you. That I can keep doing these videos each and every day for our great customers all over the United States. Back wheels in excellent shape as well. Four-wheel disc brakes on the Wranglers. The back tires look like they have just a little bit more tread than the front tires. I'd say probably 60, 65% of the tried on the back tires. Frame and underbody is in excellent shape as well. You can see any corrosion under there. Comes with the factory running boards. And as always on these Wranglers, I want to show you the door hinges to make sure that there's no corrosion on them because that is a very common issue with these vehicles. And this one looks absolutely perfect. Also, we have a video on how to take your doors off your JL Wrangler. If you want to check that video, it's linked in the description below as well as in the upper right hand part of the screen. Coming around to the back, that hard top is in nice shape. The rear bumper is absolutely perfect. No dents or dings on there. You do get the blue tow hook back here. The 4xE lettering on the back as well. Matching spare tire and wheel. So that's a brand new tire. So you can see just how much tread comes on a brand new one. Back storage area is very clean. And there is that charger I was talking about. This is the case for the charger. This is the case for the front hard top pieces. This one does have the Alpine premium sound system with the factory subwoofer. You get the painted bars back here. So when you have that hard top off, it actually looks like it's supposed to be off. Get two quick disconnects. There's four bolts on each side. To get that hard top off, we also did a demo on how to take your hard top off. If you want to check out that video, that's in the upper right hand part of the screen. And linked in the description below. You get a nice storage area back here. You get holders for your door hinge roof and windshield bolts. You also get these seven slotted panel on the back door here, as well as the JL badge. Which tells you wheel base overall length and water 40. And this door closes nice and easily. You also get the LED tail lamps on here. Coming around the driver side, just as clean as I pass on your side. No scuffs or scrapes on that rear fender. And the rest of the hard top is in very nice condition. I didn't see any scuffs or scrapes on that or chips. And for full disclosure, this back wheel just as nice as the rest. And down the rest of the side doors all look really good. And once again, door hinges, very nice condition. Take a quick look at the back seats. So the four by ease are a little different than the normal Wranglers back here. You get the latch child safety system. Frame child car seats you may have. Now the normal Wranglers, these seats just all fold down in one motion. On the four by ease, this piece goes up first and then this piece goes down. And that's because your batteries for the hybrid system are actually right under the seat and they can't make it go down as flat as the normal Wranglers. So that's really the only difference when it comes to the interior on these things. You also get factory formats back here. You get two USBs, two USB C's and a 115 volt, 150 watt plug-in. Very nice and clean back here. Child safety locks on the back doors and the inside and bottoms of the doors all look fantastic. Has the enter and go system. Just have to have the key fob in your pocket, put your hand in there and it'll automatically unlock.  No rips or tears back here. You get the Sahara stitched into the backrest, driver's seat height adjuster, factory floor mats, auto headlamps, tilt, telescopic steering wheel, power locks, power mirrors. And then this is your hybrid control system. You get the, you can put it in hybrid mode so it uses the gas and the electric. Just electric mode will not turn the engine on. And then the e-save mode just uses the gasoline engine to move you for the most part. You do get side airbags on these seats, hop inside, check out the miles, the radio and everything that this Jeep has to offer on the interior. You can see you get these Sahara animation at the beginning there. This one has 19,076 miles on it. You do get these seven inch LCD display, digital speedometer, time, battery life left and average miles per gallon. You can change all those corners to read pretty much whatever you want. The instrument cluster is a little different on these. You do have a charge meter right there as well as your gas meter. And then your tachometer is on the left there. It does come with the heated leather wrap steering wheel, cruise controls on the right, Bluetooth and information center controls on the left and audio controls on the back of the steering wheel. Does have the Uconnect 4C 8.4 inch radio. This one does have the factory navigation system. There is highway 41. So that is working nicely. You also get AMFM and serious XM radio capabilities. You have heated seats, heated steering wheel controls as well as your backup camera. They made these backup cameras HD so they are crystal clear and high definition. You get all your different apps on here. It does have off-road pages and projection manager. We can project your cell phone to the screen. We did a demo with Android Auto. If you want to check that out, see how that system works. That's in the upper right hand part of the screen. Then you get your off-road pages here. They do take a second to load. So while they're loading, I will show you down here are your more tactile volume tune and climate controls including your heated seats, heated steering wheel controls, stability control, push button start, speed select, crawl control and you can turn that screen off. There are your power window buttons, USB, USB-C and Augsjack. So your off-road pages here, you get the Jeep going. You may be stuck but not or maybe lost but never stuck whatever it said there in a Wrangler. And then once these load up, it's got a couple of really cool features. Features you can see the steering wheel angle right there as I turn that steering wheel. Those angles change as soon as it loads. So you got pitch and roll here. So you get pitch and roll, latitude, longitude, altitude. You also have your accessory gauges and then the drivetrain once I turn that steering wheel you can see that those angles change there as well. So that's a pretty cool system. You also have your transfer case if it's in too high for high or auto or for low. So a lot of cool stuff that you can do with this radio. The one button I didn't show you is the recharge mode. So you can put it in that and it'll actually use the brakes more to recharge the batteries. So it has regenerative braking on it. So that is kind of an interesting mode as well. Down here's your four by four shifter, your eight-speed automatic transmission. Keyless entry with remote start. It does have the flipper key on there and the key fob is in really nice condition. Passenger side, floor mat and seat are in excellent condition. The other thing to point out on this Wrangler, get those hard top pieces. They're in nice shape. Assistant SOS buttons, auto dimmy mirror and your home link buttons for your garage door security systems and lighting systems. One little design note here, you get the leather wrapped dash. In 2024, they replaced this. This is no longer leather wrapped. It's kind of a cloth material. So in the Sahara's, so that's kind of a different thing. So if you like the leather wrapped dash, 2023 is the last year that you could get that. Anyways, this started out. Take a look in the hood. Also check out all the LED lights in the front here because they are super bright. Check out those LED lights in the back. You also get LED license plate lights on there. They look really good. I would personally like to thank you for checking out the video today. And hopefully from this HD video, you've been able to verify the quality condition options and of course, cleanliness of this Jeep Wrangler inside and out. This is where you charge the vehicle with that charger in back. And there are those LED lights. They are super bright, very nice. This thing is in great condition and definitely everything I'd want in a Wrangler. My next Wrangler will be a four-byte. Under the hood, we have the two-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine. And once again, when paired up with a hybrid system, gives you 375 horsepower and 470 foot-pounds of torque. Engine-based, very clean runs, very smooth. Once again, this vehicle has been fully safety that is inspected by a service shop as a fresh oil and filter change. All the fluids have been checked and topped off. And this Jeep is 100% ready to go. Very nice vehicle. I would recommend this Jeep from a quality and condition standpoint. I'd ship this one anywhere, California, Texas, New York, Florida, wherever, whoever's gonna get this one is going to absolutely love it. And to see more pictures of this Jeep or one of other 550 new New Skars trucks, SCBs, minivans, Wranglers, you name it, we gotta go to the website right there. Summitauto.com, whole pictures and descriptions of every single vehicle, all at Summitauto.com. If you'd like to check out more HD videos, you can go to youtube.com slash Summit Auto. Click the bell notifications, get updates on the videos I do each and every day as well as having access to one of the largest catalogs of vehicle and Wrangler walk-arounds on YouTube. Like I said, 9,000 videos and counting and almost 500 Wrangler videos on there. In fact, in a second, you will see a link to subscribe to my YouTube channel in the upper left, a link to all the Wrangler videos I've ever done in the upper right, a link to this vehicle on our website in the lower left, and a link to one of our latest YouTube videos in the lower right, click those, check us out. We're super excited to help you with this Ultra Clean 2023 Jeep Wrangler Sahara 4xE in high-velocity clear coat. Thanks again for checking out the video. Remember to like, subscribe and share on the YouTube channel. I really appreciate it. Thanks again.


a plan for them not to be operational to some extent, which means there'll be classrooms that we can take over in the evening. But yeah, we haven't talked to them about that. You might promise you would I, Jim's case is both hand and hand. It'll be childcare, it'll be fine. Well no, you've got to serve on the commission though. Oh. I mean, that is a concern. I think also just from being able to have cross-pollination. So like if I am the liaison to, for example, the finance commission, I can't attend the infrastructure commission ever unless I swap with someone or leave them liaison lists. So that's the only, there's one challenge there. And I also wonder how that will work for you. Christine, in terms of, you know, being on two to seven commissions, I don't even give it to them. If you do need to, if there's any staffing or liaising problems there. However, I think those are logistical issues. And I think that the benefit of people seeing a larger body of people trying to help with all these things and working on different aspects is also motivating when you're not sitting around with three people that you see a once a month, but you're sitting around with 18 or 20. I think that could be powerful. There certainly is a logistical challenge in trying to sub in if anyone is unavailable for staff or council liaisons. I also am curious, I think the days they meet on were initially chosen by like members who are serving on them as convenient times. I don't know. I guess I'd be curious what actual current members would think about this idea. If I don't know that we've brought it up. We've talked about it a couple of times loosely not in any kind of systematic way. You know, we talked about realigning them with the master, as the master plan was being developed in the hopes that there would be more joint conversations around that prioritization. You know, I think people kind of romantically like the idea. I think there's this interest in like, oh, we're all together, we're all doing this work and we're all gonna have dinner afterwards or that there's gonna be this kind of community coming together feel. But I think sometimes that gets overshadowed by the logistical challenges. I also think, you know, there are ways we can achieve the same results. And I'm curious, I'll be curious to see if this comes out in any of the equity work. In fact, like if the meetings are at different times do we come together on an annual basis all together and invite them more, you know, extend the retreat and invite them more into the retreat process? Or is there another way we achieve some of those same goals outside of just this kind of monthly meeting process? I will say that. But there's been no systematic data collection on what they think. I have read about being able to provide childcare being like a very effective way to reduce barrier to participation. From what I've read in other municipalities it's like the number one challenge for having more engagement. If we were to do that, it would be much more cost effective to have everybody on the same night. It does feel to me like this is something that, one, it would be nice to hear from current members. Two, it would be nice to make this decision after being informed by the equity dialogue series. I don't know if this is something, like if this is a specific thing that you all have talked about or were considering. Can I ask you tomorrow? Yeah. It's been mentioned as one of the ideas that's been on the table. So I think the members would be aware of it but we haven't really dove into any Winooski specific suggestions yet. So I feel like we could wait to make this decision after that point. I think that falls in alignment with soliciting membership and typically in the past we have set the meeting date after getting some membership in place. I don't think, well, sometimes. You don't always know what date, like people could be interested and then can or cannot based on what date is determined from the meeting schedule. So is this something we also want to table for now? I think it makes sense to wait at least until July to make the decision. And I don't think it would hurt in the meantime to try and ping members to find out what they think about the idea. I mean, that's certainly, that's an email conversation or a phone call. I don't know if it has to happen in a commission setting to at least get people's initial reactions. Doesn't mean you have to do what they want but we'll do what they say in their initial reaction. We might still have a discussion but it would be a good pulse taking in the month in between. Um, the last part here is these charters and I had some feedback, I don't know if you were looking for it but I had some feedback on how to adjust the new charters. Sure. They're your charters, so you can feedback all you would like. The public safety, the meanest and public works and community services charters were all pretty similar. They looked like to me. I personally preferred some of the language in the community services one. I don't really remember why. It looked like we could essentially just use that same format, update the authority purpose and scope to reflect the new breadth of work, particularly for the safe, healthy connected people. But that we should probably remove the recommend department budget language. There's, right, like they can be advising on prior, they're not like the ones making the recommendation of here is your budget. That was the most noticeable thing to me. I had some specifics about the finance one as well but did you all have, like were you even thinking about that when you reviewed the charters attached to you? Yeah. For the finance one, I think the purpose and scope and their needed updating based on our discussions about being focused on policies and planning versus reviewing specific, like the previous iteration was very like specific policy reviews. And then I noticed the format of that one didn't really look the same as the rest but. Yeah, these are all adopted at different times in history. I don't, Angela was probably here. I'm not sure if it has to have some work. Yeah, I basically just wanted to mention the scope piece being not aligned to the recent discussions we've had. No, it's not. Yeah. No public comment? Do y'all have any other comments about this particular topic? We'll read about our next steps. All right. I hope it related to commissions that I didn't see any mention of the Trojan Chain Commission. Yes, so that was kind of an oversight about this item reflecting the restructuring. We will bring that, I think, to the next meeting to talk about that. Okay. What was that? The Charter Change Committee that we discussed also at the primary setting session. That was neglected from this list so we need to talk about that next meeting. Sorry about that. I want to call a two-minute recess before this item. So we will reconvene at 8.45. That did last longer than I thought. Yeah, me too. Let's reconvene the regular city council meeting at 8.45. And our next item is grant approval for a build grant for Main Street revitalization. So we are requesting to put an application together for the FY19 build grant. So we did prepare an application last year and were unsuccessful for the Main Street project. But some of the work that was done through a consultant were looking to reuse that and put it in for the FY19 application. So for example, there's a whole cost benefit analysis that was performed through one of our consultants. We could reuse all that data for the FY19 application. Just to go through some of the numbers. So we are looking to put this application mainly for the general fund piece. So that work through our preliminary design phase is $14 million total. So that would be, we're looking at 80% grant portion and then a 20% local match for that. So the city would be on, potentially be on the hook for 2.8 million for that work. But that's sort of worst case scenario. So the build grant has a rural component and urban component. Urban is a population over 200,000. So we're in the rural piece. So there is potential to be 100% grant eligible for the project. We haven't seen that in previous applications. So that's why we're showing the 20% local match requirement. And I think it's important to note, if we don't get this and decide to move forward with Main Street, the worst case scenario is that we cover $14 million based solely on property taxpayers. So the worst case as John's mentioning is stepping down from that, being responsible for $14 million to jumping from $14 million down to $2.8 million. So it's still a much better scenario to be awarded than that. Yeah, absolutely. And that gets into the page that I handed out. So what I tried to show here was sort of the debt modeling that we have been showing throughout the project. The existing debt modeling to date, we're showing a little more accurate, 3.7 million is what the general fund project cost is. So our phase one portion that we've been modeling, that project cost is at 5.4 million, which is an annual sort of debt payment of 312 million. So kind of comparing that with say, if we did get a bills grant with a 20% local match, that would be a $162,000 annual debt payment. So much lower than that sort of even just phase one piece of the project. So potentially, in theory, you could do the whole project for almost half of what the phase one piece would be. So just to say another sentence. So on the modeling below, which is just screenshots from what we previously presented, the new revenue options that we've identified primarily are the local options tax, which you see even conservatively budgeted for this year is below that 1.62, 1.62,000 that we would have to incur to get that 20% match. So in theory, we could fund that portion slowly based on that revenue stream that we've already talked about committing to capital projects. And we had that discussion with business owners. They were more in favor of having that tax if it was committed to capital improvement projects. So that's something we've, that's a thing we've been saying that we would do. Even to the residents all have one of the selling points to try to get the residents on board with the tax also. God, that's going that way. And let's just be clear. I think we are optimistic that the federal government will get behind Winooski and give us $14 million. It is a very aggressive grant application. So while we are going to be confident, we're going to put our best foot forward of all the grants we apply for. This is probably the most competitive grant. So I think, may not be a huge chance we get into it. Are you doing anything different from last year's application? Was there any feedback you were able to act on? So we weren't, because it is a pretty large federal grant, we were not able to get any feedback. We are going to be, as the new grant guidelines come out, tweaking the grant to kind of a more aligned with their guidelines. I mean, I will say, you know, what we've heard is with this grant in particular, the more times you put it in, the better chance you have. So yeah, the first round we weren't surprised in not getting it. But we're also talking regionally and trying to find out who's putting in built grants. So for example, I mentioned the memo. Last year, VTrans did get a pretty large regional grant for freight railway connections. This year they're putting in a much less sort of desirable project that's in like culvert replacements. So we have a better chance over maybe a state built grant. So that kind of comes into play too. We do have statewide, there's a $90 million cap on these funds. Project-wise, there's a $25 million cap. So we're trying to be cognizant of what our regional partners are putting in as well. We did meet with a representative from our congressional delegation last week, Heather, John and myself, to go over this project and have her understand really what it, what the nature revitalization project was and that we would be submitting this grant application. And in the past, our delegation has been very supportive of trying to advocate for us. And again, this might be a really good time to invest in Winooski. Keep this project. So the funding you're showing us here is, these numbers are specific to, sorry, not the revenue, but the debt modeling is specific to the general fund piece only. Correct, so, yeah.  Did this answer your question? Yep, yeah. I had asked over email about if there's a running total of already committed cost share from our obligation on, but that's I think is, I think it's clear that this is within the allowance of what we have. So that we wouldn't be overmatched. Oh, right, with the 20%? Overcommitted, yeah. Or closing us off from other opportunities by committing this 20% match. Yeah, and I will say the funding that we're showing and putting in will also include the engineering soft costs that have been approved by the council previously. So there may be some funding that we could try to recoup that's baked into this number. If we get a word of this grant, is there a set of guidelines we have to follow? Is it fall into our Main Street project picture or is there other things that we have to do to get this grant? So it's a federal grant in what comes with that or all the sort of federal ties that come along with grants like your sort of contract requirements for American Iron Steel and some of your payroll wage requirements. But since we've already received and accepted a USDA grant, we're already on the hook for those federal requirements. So there's not none that we've addressed that are gonna be kind of superseded those USDA requirements that we're already following. Any other questions or concerns? So I would entertain a motion to approve the grant, the build grant for Main Street revitalization. So a second? Motion by Mike, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. The motion carries. Thank you. We welcome Heather for our next item, another grant approval, the Trans-Bike and Pedestrian Grant for Main Street. I also would like to get us free money. So staff request permission to apply for an $800,000 grant through the Trans-Bike School and Pedestrian Program. This also is another grant that we had applied for last year and did not receive. There's a 20% required local match that would be covered through the general obligation bond, and that would be $200,000. The application, as was stated previously, is part of our ongoing effort to obtain additional grant funding to reduce the impact to our tax base. With this, this would be applied then to the general fund costs as well. Correct. I didn't have any specific questions about this one. Motion to approve the V Trans-Bike and Pedestrian Grant for Main Street. I would entertain one. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. The motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Heather. I'll just keep the dog flying around my head. Thank you. The next item is discussion, introduction of chapter 28, the updates. So this is our ongoing fine tuning of this chapter of the ordinance. And there's both proposals for community services and planning and zoning indicated here. Yeah, so the fairly straightforward, and hopefully decently explained here, one cleanup item of just adjusting the language in the ordinance to reflect the resolution that was passed in January for annual rate setting for Thrive, for the Thrive program. So that had been prior established in ordinance, the resolution that was passed this year during budget process states that that'll be happening on an annual basis through resolution moving forward. So the cleanup language here just kind of reiterates that in the ordinance itself. And then with North End Studios coming into the O'Brien Center space, another cleanup item here to strike the fees for the O'Brien Center since we are no longer going to be charging those. And then for Eric's, I'll speak for him. He can correct me if I'm wrong, but there was a residential and a commercial rate and not a mixed use rate set for DRB appeals. So this just adds that third category. I think that is what we have got at the moment. So we're looking for a formal introduction tonight. So at the July meeting, you can hold your public hearing. Any questions from folks? It's pretty straightforward to me. Yeah, absolutely. So I would entertain a motion to introduce the chapter 28 fee updates. So hold. Second. Motion by Mike, second by Jim. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Motion carries, unless I miss some language. Great. Great. Thank you. So let's return to item A, my guest never came. So we have, this is for resolution. Proclaiming International World Refugee Day. This is something that we have done as a city in the past. It is on June 20th, so it's coming up this week. I was, I had invited a staff member from the Refugee Resettlement Program to come speak to us in conjunction with this item, but I'll have to follow up with her after. Unfortunately, she has not been able to attend. Basically, we have done this resolution before. It's similar to how we had one for our every day to, as a city, recognize this holiday. It's not really holiday, but it's basically in recognition of June 20th as World Refugee Day that Winnieski recognizes that as we have refugee residents here that we want to recognize as well. Would you add anything to that about resolutions? Nope? Yes. Yeah, so we have, like I said, we have done this resolution in the past, and I wanted to bring it forth to do, again, as a community, as well as a city for community. Any questions or concerns about this item? Well, I want to thank you for making sure that this is done annually. I think the news coming out of Portland and other places where we're seeing new refugee arrivals even this week, I think it's important that we're continuing to keep this in our minds. And the only question I had is what sort of outreach or event communications anything's planned for on the 20th, like will the city do a press release or anything like that? That's a good question. So the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program is hosting an event on the 30th at the school for it's like a new American event for in honor of World Refugee Day. We, in the past, I think we just kind of did a post. We partnered on that event, yeah, we posted there. Yeah. But I don't think we've discussed any additional. That's fine, that's just curious. Any other questions or concerns? So I would entertain a motion to approve the World Refugee Day proclamation. So moved. All second. Motion by Jim, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Motion carries, thank you. I hope maybe to get our guests from the Resettlement Program here at another time, she was gonna speak a little bit about experience in the new ski of their clients. So I'll try to make that happen in the future. With that, we have made it through our regular items and I would entertain a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. Motion by Jim, second by Mike. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Meeting adjourned. Thank you all. Thank you. Small but.


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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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?  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.  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.