Denis Waitley, an American motivational speaker, once said “Failure is something we can only avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” It is not uncommon to experience difficulties when trying new things. Matthew Sherman, founder of Jugofresh and Paradigm Kitchen, gave a personal recollection of his own successes and failures at this month’s sold-out BrainFood speaker series at the LAB Miami. Sherman stated that although Jugofresh was a failure business-wise, it was a success in inspiring other juice places to become more fun places to hang around. Jugofresh was the 5th juice place in the nation, thus setting a standard for how juiceries should display their locales.
Jugofresh began out of Sherman’s apartment in 2010. Sherman was making around 144 juices per week in his kitchen when he realized he should open up a physical store. The first Jugofresh opened in Sunset Harbour and although Sherman’s father had not believed in the juice business once he visited the store he said he finally understood why Sherman was so passionate about it. Soon after, thanks to his father’s advice, Sherman opened multiple stores across Miami. The number of employees went from 9 to 300 in just one year; even though the business was a part of Sherman, he stated “at that point there were too many people touching it for it to be completely you.”
During his interview at BrainFood, Sherman acknowledged that he had to take a break from Jugofresh a few years ago because he was feeling out of touch with himself. He spent a lot of time in nature with little to no communication with people he knew. He mentioned that his greatest learning lesson was to continue “looking inside” and focus on his well being. After taking a break from the business he realized that “who [he is] as a human being and [his] happiness has nothing to do with [his] business.”
Sherman later returned to Jugofresh, but on March 13, 2018 he sent an email to all of his customers announcing that all stores would be closing that day. In his goodbye letter, he stated “my lack of experience and the rapid expansion are what ultimately lead us to close.” What had been seen as a necessary step in expanding his business is what ended up pushing the company over the edge. There is no right way to scale your business, it all depends on the path you want it to take. “Wherever you are in your journey is great.” – Matthew Sherman
Join us at our next #BrainFood on June 19th with David Koretz, founder and CEO of Plum.