Ben Mulroney is joined by Jeremy Potvin of Jeremy Potvin Cooking to talk all about some of his most recent business ventures including leaving behind some longtime goals in order to focus on building a career in something he loves.
Podcast Episode
The Spot: Jeremy Potvin Cooking
Toronto This Weekend
Here's the conversation transcription:
Ben Mulroney (00:00):
Welcome back Toronto. It's time now for the spot, our weekly segment where we put a spotlight on small businesses, and this week we are welcoming one of my very good friends. Jeremy Potvin. Welcome to the show.
Jeremy Potvin (00:11):
Ben. Thanks for having me here. This is great.
Ben Mulroney (00:13):
So normally during this segment, we've talked to someone who's got a bricks and mortar store. They're selling cookies, they've got a coffee shop. This is going to be one of the most unique stories that we share because you and I met when you were an entrepreneur. I had an idea for an app, we worked on it together in our spare time. Those were fun days, and then we became fast friends because of that. You kept doing the entrepreneurial thing.
Jeremy Potvin (00:37):
Yeah, I'm the most unemployable human being on the planet. I've had a company since I was 16 years old. There are very few jobs I've had.
Ben Mulroney (00:45):
Yes. Yeah, that's the thing about an entrepreneur, right? You're always going to do the next thing, but then you really decide to sink your teeth into this one idea in the cannabis space.
Jeremy Potvin (00:58):
Yes. So I was coming out of a long streak of tech startups and I got into consulting and I ended up consulting for this company called Tokyo Smoke. And we sort of got absorbed into it. We were part of the original Tokyo Smoke team, and we then branched off into the cannabis space launching this company called Weedbox. And we were waiting around to get licenses like everybody else, and that sort of came crashing to a halt in the beginning of the pandemic. We were under construction in four locations and then boom, everyone got shut down.
Ben Mulroney (01:28):
Now what I should have said off the top of this is from the very beginning of our relationship, and it continues to this day, Jeremy is one of the greatest home cooks, self-taught chefs you'll ever meet. And his Instagram is food porn to the nth degree. Beautifully shot. The stuff looks terrific. He dropped off bread at my place at oh remember that? The sourdough. And so you've got this love and this passion for cooking. But it's the thing you do after work.
Jeremy Potvin (02:00):
It's the thing I do after work. And actually I do a lot of mentoring to tech startups too. And I always say, look, startups are hard. There's ups and downs. You're going to have a lot of failures and small wins. And this was a great way to just feel like you've got to win from start to finish. You can start my meal, cook it, take some time to relax, think through the day, and then you serve this food to hopefully your family and friends. And I found this to be, especially during the pandemic, an incredible way just to keep people I want close even closer.
Ben Mulroney (02:28):
Yeah. Okay, so then at what point do you pull a bait and switch on yourself and say, okay, this business that I was building Ciara, and instead I'm going to focus on this thing that I love, but I've never done as a, and I'm going to turn into a business. I'm going to turn cooking into a business. So for
Jeremy Potvin (02:45):
Decades I've been saying no to everyone who's going, Jeremy, you got to do something in food. And I always heard "open a restaurant", which I never, and I still don't want to do, but it was back at the beginning of this year when the cannabis, now tech startup, had gone through so many different changes, just taking it on the chin, so many times and I could see around the corner something - this is going to be a tough year. I should start to think about what's the next thing. And that's when I finally said, you know what that eff-it, I am going to throw in the towel and I'm going to try to build a business around my love for cooking and just see where it goes.
Ben Mulroney (03:22):
And so you created Jeremy Potvin cooking? Yeah, that's the brand. That's the brand. Okay. So what are you doing in that space? So
Jeremy Potvin (03:30):
What I'm doing is nothing different than what I was always doing. So was, as you said on my Instagram, you could follow me. It's like, okay, when the weekend would roll around, there's just a million stories in there of me cooking this dish or whatever. I had heard a podcast, Ed Mylett interviewed someone named Amy Porterfield and she got my head right around how to do this, which was pick a genesis point – which was a newsletter. So I said, I'm just going to start with a newsletter. I'm going to get just people to sign up. I'm going to be really consistent about what I give them. Every Wednesday I'm going to send them an email saying, here's what I'm going to cook on Friday, here's the shopping list, here's the recipe. I'm going to cook it live on my Instagram over on stories for three hours. And then on Sunday there'll be a follow-up email that goes out and we talk about the week or whatever, or maybe some techniques. But that's it. I just want to give them one thing a week and see and just start from there and see where it goes because And
Ben Mulroney (04:28):
How'd it go?
Jeremy Potvin (04:28):
Fantastic. Right away. Hundreds of people signed up in the first few days and it's continuing to grow. And I just started thinking, okay, at that point I'm like, I still dunno how to monetize this, but one thing I do know, and this is going way back in my career from all my tech startups and apparel businesses, consumer retention is the most important thing. Find an audience, listen to them and make them the hero of the whole journey. I can help you cook better. You see all these 35 second super sexy Instagram res of just clip together. I'm like, okay, that's great. I can
Ben Mulroney (05:03):
Look at that. How do I do that?
Jeremy Potvin (05:04):
I can do that. I can watch that reel once and I know how to cook it, but most people can't. I'm like, I'm going to take that recipe and I'm going to take that and turn it into three hours. I'm going to cook it live. There's going to be a 10 minute YouTube follow up video that I'll create a very detailed recipe, and I'm just going to say, that's what I know how to do. I'm going to see how I can build an audience from just putting that out without trying to reach and chase likes and views.
Ben Mulroney (05:28):
So you establish the beachhead, this is what the cooking, but where do you take Jeremy Puffin cooking next? Where does the brand go?
Jeremy Potvin (05:35):
So you know me, data surveys. Listen, listen, listen. We did a survey and we got a ton of great information back. 83% of our audience considers themselves to be a beginner or intermediate cook. They want to try something once a week new, at least twice a month. But the biggest friction point was, Hey, this is great, Jeremy. We want to cook your butter chicken. The whole thing started with this butter chicken night. That's another long story, but we dunno where to get Kasoor Methi. And even if you live in Toronto where you have access to these types of ingredients, I don't want to get in my car, drive across the city or go into Kensington and park and look and try to find the right ingredients to make this amazing. So I immediately started sourcing out all the ingredients and suppliers that create my own kitchen and dry goods line. So jeremypotvin.com, you can go to right now and you can buy over 40 different spices and meal kits so you can buy. But people also were like, I'll buy it. But I don't want so much that I use it once and now I've got this huge container of it in my pantry, which I'll forget about in two years. When I want to try something like that again, I go and buy it again. I forgot I had it. So I sell it in packages enough to cook it two or three times. That's it. Great.
Ben Mulroney (06:45):
And then I have to assume at some point you're going to keep building. You got the cookbook.
Jeremy Potvin (06:49):
So we launch a cookbook. That's awesome. So yeah. So I was thinking on the way over here, I'm like, it's like that Reese Wetherspoon movie, Legally Blonde. When they're like, "you go to Harvard", and she's like, "what, like it's hard?" So someone said to me, 'you're going to launch a cookbook right out of the gate". I'm like, "what, like it's hard?" Okay. It was hard. It was hard. It's a lot of work. It was so much work.
Ben Mulroney (07:06):
So, you got the dry good lines. You got, I mean, this thing could go anywhere. It could become a restaurant.
Jeremy Potvin (07:11):
Yeah. So there's perfect classic Jeremy Potvin eating your own words moment that I end up with a restaurant or something. I've already had people trying to get, do you remember I did a smashburger a couple of weeks ago? Yeah. I woke up to landlords saying, open a pop-up. I'll give you the space. Let's do this right now.
Ben Mulroney (07:28):
That's awesome, Jeremy. I'm so glad that you found, I mean, the joy was always there, but now you've figured out a way to live with it more often. Yes. And I hope when people listen to this, that that's what they take away from this. It's jeremy potvin.com. Yes. Fantastic. Hey, thank you so much for being here, man.
Jeremy Potvin (07:44):
And thanks for having me. This has been great.