The year 2011 found us on opposite sides of the country. Jim lived in Boston and worked in sales for a medical device company while Sabin was a real estate agent in Los Angeles. We hadn’t talked to each other in years. Maybe we weren’t in our dream jobs, but we made decent money and life was good. We rarely thought about each other, except during our infrequent trips home to visit family.
And life very well might have gone on like that, each of us as far away from the other as possible, the memory of our shared childhood growing up on the Maine coast fading away. Neither of us had any plans to rock the boat.
But that’s when Jim got in touch with his ex-girlfriend, who just happened to live in LA. A few conversations later and Jim found himself considering her invitation to visit. She didn’t have to sell him very hard. A chance to escape the Boston winter was just the sort of vacation an overworked sales representative needed.
Then Jim remembered that Sabin lived in LA. Aha! Two birds, one stone. Jim would just say he wanted to visit his long-lost cousin, whom he loved and missed dearly. He loved and missed Sabin so much that Jim had to send him a message on Facebook just to get his number. Of course Sabin was overjoyed to hear from Jim, and couldn’t wait to show him around town. It felt good for both of us to catch up over the phone, all those years apart just passing under the bridge. But Jim’s motives for going to LA hadn’t changed; he just had a better excuse.
Get out of dreary Boston, enjoy the California sunshine, see the ex, and, oh, catch up with Sabin—this was Jim’s plan. It would’ve worked beautifully, but thank God it didn’t.
A MAINE CHILDHOOD
There are those entrepreneurs who show a knack for the art of creating and growing businesses from a very early age. Some start selling lemonade on the sidewalk and move on to Internet retail by the time they’re in high school. Others challenge themselves with a new technology or platform, and start their entrepreneurial careers by doing something that’s never been done.
We weren’t either kind. In fact, there’s no reason to expect that we’d grow up to become entrepreneurs. It’s probably the myth of the prodigy that keeps so many would-be entrepreneurs on the sidelines. One of the main reasons we wrote this book was to prove that childhood precociousness or technical brilliance aren’t required to start and build a company. You won’t find any signs of our future business acumen by digging through our school report cards. You’ll be equally hard-pressed to see the younger versions of us as anything other than normal boys, certainly not prodigies or budding capitalists.
In short, we were just kids growing up in Maine. And that’s all we needed.
Let’s start with Jim. Jim and his older sister Annie (whom you’ll meet later) grew up in Cape Elizabeth, Maine, the children of Steve and Julie Tselikis. Cape Elizabeth is your typical coastal Maine town, small, middle class, and chock-full of history. Named after the sister of King Charles I, the land was first owned by the same Ferdinando Gorges who did such a bang-up job funding several expeditions to the Maine coast. Quick side note on Gorges: although the guy spent most of his life trying to become the effective emperor of Maine, he never visited once. It set a pattern for the next hundred-or-so years where the legal owners of Maine land couldn’t be bothered to live in, or even visit, their vast holdings. Of course, that didn’t stop them from “protecting” their property at the point of a sword to drive off or even kill those who actually lived there and worked the land and sea.
The seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were some hard years for the early Maine settlers. Like most of Maine’s coastal towns, Cape Elizabeth was destroyed during one of the many Native American wars that ravaged the region in this period. As historian Colin Woodard tells us:
For a quarter of a century, Maine was the scene of Balkan-like desolation, warfare, lawlessness, and ethnic slaughter. In 1689, all of Maine’s settlers north of Wells—up to four thousand people—fled for their lives. Many of those who got away found themselves in the streets and poorhouses of Boston. Many of those who did not came to slow and gruesome ends. From 1689 to 1713, not a single English home stood in all of Maine north of Wells, which lies twenty-five miles south of what is now Portland.2
Cape Elizabeth was caught in the middle of this terrible slaughter. It was eventually rebuilt, just like many of its neighbors, and officially incorporated on November 1, 1765. Growing up amid such history is mostly lost on a child, particularly since there aren’t all that many landmarks or monuments memorializing the town’s four-hundred-years-long story. Again, this makes Cape Elizabeth fairly ordinary among Maine’s coastal towns, where history isn’t remembered so much as it is still lived.
Jim’s parents, Steve and Julie, were Maine natives who both grew up in the same area, not far from Portland. Although he started out studying psychology, Steve would turn to accounting and earn his CPA. And while accounting suited Steve, it wasn’t his passion, a sentiment that we share. But it was fortuitous that we had someone so close to us who understood the complex, confusing stuff—things like addition, subtraction, and long division. Even then, Steve spent most of his career working in real estate development, which he enjoyed far more than accounting, and picked up a lifetime of useful knowledge and wisdom about putting together business deals.
Jim’s mother, Julie, was the nurse at her son’s middle school. For a kid, it’s a blessing and a curse having your mom on staff at school: Sometimes you can get away with shenanigans, but often the maternal presence keeps you in line. However, it set a pattern between Jim and Julie that endures to this very day: you go to the school nurse when there’s something wrong, and Jim still goes to his mother when something’s wrong.
More importantly, Jim witnessed Mainers’ infamous work ethic in his parents. Even on the weekends, Steve often would put in a half day at the office, while Julie’s mother did most of the caretaking of Jim and Annie during the week. In fact, when Jim was about ten, Steve noticed that his son took an interest in the nicer things some friends of the family, mostly lawyers and doctors, had in their homes. Rather than criticize those who owned expensive things, Steve asked his church if they could use an extra hand to help clean up on the weekends. Wouldn’t you know it, but Steve knew someone who could use some work. It wasn’t a really labor-intensive job, but it taught Jim the value of a dollar. While most of his friends spent their weekends playing sports, Jim helped clean the church. And when we say “clean,” we’re not talking about sweeping floors and emptying the garbage. We’re talking about scrubbing toilets and urinals that had just been used. We’re talking about being on hands and knees washing the floors. To this day, Steve looks back on Jim’s first job as “one of the best things” he did for his son.
Jim eventually discovered sports, too. In a big way. Jim was always a driven, determined boy, but when he started playing hockey, he discovered an outlet for his competitive side. Jim hates to lose. Hates it. And he threw himself into hockey like he did everything else: with single-minded determination. It wasn’t long before Jim’s coaches saw the raw talent and the makings of a genuine athlete. In Maine, hockey is a big deal, but most of Jim’s friends treated it more like a hobby than a passion. The level of competition wasn’t equal to Jim’s talents, so Steve began to take him to Minnesota to play in hockey tournaments. By high school, Jim was ready to leave Cape Elizabeth—and the public school system—behind to hone his talents at a private school. Money was an issue, but Jim handled that by getting a scholarship to play hockey at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire—not so far as Los Angeles but far enough for Julie to cry when her boy went off on his first great adventure.
Then there was Sabin. It’s not that his childhood was all that different from Jim’s, but it was different. Raised by a single mother, Sabin grew up about fifteen minutes from Jim in Scarborough. Unlike Jim, Sabin wasn’t born in Maine, but in California. His mother, Jeannie, however, felt that her native Maine would be a more suitable place to raise her son, and they would also be next to family. So, Jeannie packed up everything she and her little four-year-old owned and drove the three thousand miles to Scarborough, Maine.
Nearly a hundred years older than Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough is a place boiling in history. Scarborough was destroyed in King Philip’s War, one of the many English-Indian conflagrations that was fought between 1675 and 1678 up and down the New England coast. “Though it is largely forgotten today, a larger proportion of America’s population died in King Philip’s War than in any other war in our nation’s history,” writes Woodard.3 The Indian wars eventually subsided, as the natives were overwhelmed by disease and simple numbers. They retreated to the Maine woods, bidding farewell to the coast they had called home for thousands of years.
And just like Cape Elizabeth, Scarborough rose from the ashes—only to barely survive its next catastrophe, Sabin Lomac. We kid, but only just. The truth is that Sabin was a great kid who turned into a slightly rambunctious adolescent. It wasn’t anything too illegal—mostly pranks, like graffiti. And, yes, there was one time that Sabin was arrested for scalping tickets to a concert in Worcester, Massachusetts. He also got into trouble a few times for fighting and playing hooky. Even if Sabin limited his shenanigans to the PG-13 variety, he was clearly headed in the wrong direction, which helps explain why Jeannie signed him up for Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. It was an experience that thoroughly transformed Sabin’s life.
Sabin’s Big Brother’s name was Stephen, a Coast Guard member from New Jersey who provided the fatherless Sabin with the support and stability he so desperately lacked. He helped Sabin channel his energy into more productive arenas, like sports. Where Jim found hockey, Sabin excelled on the basketball court. He also found more creative outlets for his wilder side, and eventually the troubled kid turned into a leader on his team and among his friends. Well, except when he decided to perm his hair in high school—no one wanted to follow him down that path.
Like Jim, Sabin started working at a young age. He learned quickly that if he wanted something he had to pay for it himself. Being in a single-parent household meant that there simply wasn’t enough money for the sorts of things kids love—sports equipment, video games, and, later, clothes. So, Sabin earned his own. At thirteen, he began bussing tables at a seafood restaurant in town. Before Sabin left for college, he had had more than thirty jobs, which included working at the Clambake, Best Buy, Chili’s, Marshview Restaurant, Anjon’s, Lois’ Natural, B-Fit, Dunstan School Restaurant, Black Point Inn, Pizza Time, Dimitri’s, Sand Dollar Inn, and Salty Bay Seafood.
Of course, when you’re a kid, you rarely realize when you’re in the middle of a life lesson. Jim certainly didn’t see his father’s motive behind making him clean the church every weekend, nor did Sabin understand how he was forging a work ethic that would one day surpass that of most of his peers. We were both hard workers and we both thank our parents for making us work for the things we wanted. We debated whether to include some variation of “work hard” as one of our principles, but in the end we decided that hard work isn’t a unique entrepreneurial trait. It’s like breathing—it’s the bare minimum one must accomplish to get anywhere in life. Still, if you don’t have a good work ethic, then you won’t be much of an entrepreneur. That’s just how it is.
In any case, Sabin also began to pursue his first passion, acting, more seriously. As a kid, he had done some commercials and other small parts, clearly influenced by Jeannie, who worked as a theater director. By his teenage years, Sabin had decided he wanted to try acting as a profession and began to look beyond Maine for opportunities.
So where did our lives intersect? It was mostly during family gatherings—birthdays, holidays, the usual moments when all our nutty relatives got together. We weren’t the only cousins in the bunch, but we formed a friendship as kids that we now realize went deeper than most cousin friendships. We certainly liked the same things, and established a bond playing NHL ’94—a very popular hockey video game at the time. But it would be the family gatherings at Jim’s house in Cape Elizabeth that would create the intimate bond that would one day build a company.
In Maine, the summer lobster bake is so normal and common that it’s part of the rhythm of life there. It’s just what families do when they get together in those few precious months when the weather is perfect—and Maine summers are perfect. The scene is simple but beautiful: The family would gather at the Tselikis’s, a total of five cousins, several aunts and uncles, and grandparents. Steve would get the water boiling, which isn’t just for lobster, but also clams and corn. The aroma would permeate the backyard, while the sound of kids playing and laughing was a steady drum in the background. The adults would sip their beer, wine, and cocktails, and we kids roughhoused until we were sweaty and dirty. Then the food would be brought out onto large picnic tables, spread out over old newspapers, and that’s when we’d dive in. Of course, there would be leftovers, which is where the lobster roll comes in. Much like that the old standby, the turkey sandwich, which is the perfect leftover meal after Thanksgiving, the lobster roll is the best way to enjoy lobster after a bake.
As we said, this scene isn’t at all unique to our family. It’s a scene that plays out every summer day in Maine—and any Mainer would recognize that gathering in Jim’s backyard. Like a lot of childhood memories, the lobster bakes are ingrained in our hearts as pristine, almost idyllic. And as we grew older and took on our own struggles, challenges, and worries, the ghosts of Jim’s backyard seemed to call to us, reminding us of the way life should be. We still gather there when we can, but, of course, it’s different. Those same grandparents who would chase us, hug us, and teach us how to pick a lobster clean are now gone. The parents, aunts, and uncles who used to haul the bags of live lobster, the cases of beer, and the ice now prefer to rest with a drink while the younger generation does the heavy lifting. The laughter and squeals of us kids have become the mature banter of grown adults—well, maybe “mature” is too strong a word. We appreciate those precious hours all the more now, all of us together again, even as we mourn the passing of those carefree summer days of our childhood, when nothing mattered more than showing our grandfather how fast, strong, or tough we were.
The college years found Jim at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he played Division I hockey, while Sabin let his acting bug take him to Hofstra University on Long Island to study drama. After graduation, Jim stayed in the Boston area and eventually got into medical sales for Stryker Corporation. Meanwhile, Sabin hung around New York City, landing the occasional acting role, but also earned his real estate license to make ends meet. It wasn’t long before acting took Sabin to Los Angeles, as it usually does for actors. Jim vaguely remembers hearing that Sabin had “moved away”—which means away from New England—but he wasn’t there to see his cousin off. We had gone our separate ways.
Our jobs after college certainly taught us some necessary skills for starting and growing our own business, but we’ll get to those lessons later. What’s important is at this stage in our lives is that after we left college—well, Jim graduated a couple years before Sabin—we slowly lost contact with each other. The gatherings in Jim’s backyard became less frequent, our connection to Maine more tenuous. That seemed normal to us, as it must for most. You grow up to leave home behind and build your own future. The absolute last thought in either of our heads was to take what we had known as children and re-create it.
And then, years later, out of nowhere Jim called Sabin.
AN EX, A VIDEO GAME, AND BOOZE—LOTS OF IT
The plan was for Jim to see Sabin for a day or so, catch up, see how life had been treating him, but then reconnect with Amanda. The exact opposite happened. Yes, Jim saw Amanda, but seeing Sabin again brought all those old childhood memories surging forth—for both of us. Jim didn’t realize how excited Sabin would be to show him around LA. He couldn’t have left Sabin even if he had wanted to. We visited famous Venice Beach, saw the sights, but mostly we talked. We talked about our families, our grandfather, with whom we were both very close, and how much we missed Maine and all it meant to us.
In the evening, Sabin took Jim to a sushi place on Sunset Boulevard, and the talk continued—only this time, we added copious amounts of beer, cocktails, and sake. Damn, but it felt good to catch up. We were old friends, but we were also family. We didn’t realize how rare that was when we were kids, but now we understood that special bond. After all, you don’t get to choose your family; but you get to choose your friends. We were both, and we couldn’t help but slightly regret the years that had passed in silence between us.
The talk ranged from childhood to college to work, and back again. We remembered how different our childhoods had been. We probably had some vague notion of it when we were young—Jim was a bit more clean-cut while Sabin had always been more rebellious—but that was as far as it had gone. We saw that the old spark we had as kids was still there—a sort of yin and yang, if that makes sense. If we didn’t quite finish each other’s sentences, we were close.
But the more surprising thing to us was that we remembered (and cherished) the same things from back home—family, tradition, and lobster. Now, we didn’t come up with Cousins Maine Lobster right there over sake bombs, but we did talk around it. We talked about Jim’s backyard and the great times we had there. Compared to our current lives, we missed how simple and peaceful life had been back then. We certainly couldn’t have articulated it at the time—we were both pretty blasted by this point in the evening—but the idea came to us that, even if our childhood was gone, we could still recapture some small part of it by working together.
Now, we had no idea what we would do. Although we both worked for companies, we acted like independent contractors. We were accustomed to operating on our own and loved that freedom, even if we were answerable to a boss and all that at the end of the day. As we talked, we both realized we saw that our “perfect jobs” had the same element: working for ourselves, doing what we wanted to do. We realize a lot of people have that dream, so don’t think that this was any great flash of insight. But we had made our first step as entrepreneurs. We wanted to work for ourselves and we wanted to work together. Not bad for a night neither one of us can recall in any great detail.
That might have been that. Talking about big dreams is what drinking is for—then the next morning rolls around, bringing with it a wicked headache, and those big dreams die in the sober light of day. Only, this was different. When we awoke the next morning, we discovered that we were ready to delve deeper into our crazy idea to work together. We cracked open a large bag of Cool Ranch Doritos—the best hangover cure—and picked up where we left off.
What could we do together? That was the big question, but we had no answer for it then. With mouths full of Doritos, we fired up NHL ’94 again, just like the old days, and brainstormed as we played. The next day, Jim flew back to Boston, but it wasn’t goodbye. At the very least, we were determined to stay in touch, even if our crazy idea of working together fell apart. But it didn’t. Over the next several weeks, we talked often. It wasn’t anything too substantial, but it kept the conversation alive and our brains working on a possible solution.
Then one day, Sabin asked the question again: “What do you think we could do together?” For whatever reason, Jim mentioned lobster, as in: “What about lobster?”
YES, WHAT ABOUT LOBSTER?
It wasn’t very inspiring or clear-sighted. It was just a word—an image really. An image of what lobster represented to both of us: Maine, family, home … We mulled it over, wondering what in the world we could do with lobster. Open a lobster shack in Maine? That didn’t seem like the sort of thing either one of us would have been good at.
But it did get us talking about food. There was a moment when Sabin tossed out the idea of sandwiches, just like the ones we remembered scarfing down in Maine at Amato’s. We quickly scratched that. If we didn’t know anything about food, we knew less about making Italian-style hoagies. But there we were again, our minds back in Maine. Why?
Neither one of us could’ve articulated it very well then, but it’s clear to us now that what we wanted to do was re-create our childhoods. The first half of that was just working together; the second, tougher part was creating a product or service that we could sell. Lobster seemed like the obvious choice, but how would we sell lobster? Mainers have always been a bit tickled by lobster’s fancy, elite status outside of our state. Don’t get us wrong: we believe lobster is a delicacy, but it’s a democratic delicacy. It’s a delicacy that is—and should be—enjoyed by all. Yet was there even a market for the sort of lobster fare we had in mind—the lobster we ate in Jim’s backyard—outside Maine? Would Californians, for example, want to buy lobster that wasn’t served in an expensive restaurant at fifty dollars a pound? We weren’t sure yet. But at least we knew that that wasn’t the sort of lobster experience we had in mind. The goal wasn’t simply to sell lobster—it was to sell Maine lobster in the Maine way.
The more we talked the clearer the idea became in our minds. We wanted to sell the kind of lobster we ate—and still eat—in Jim’s backyard: simple, clean, and delicious. Nothing fussy. We knew we couldn’t do this anywhere near New England, because the sort of lobster meal we had in mind was fairly ordinary around there. We had to get far away, and Los Angeles was about as far away from Maine as one could get. So, then we whittled it down to two options. Option number one was to open a restaurant in Los Angeles. But Sabin knew the restaurant business—he had worked in more than a dozen, after all—and opening his own sounded like a bridge too far. Our overhead would be terrible, we would need huge up-front investment, and, finally, Jim couldn’t see how he could open a restaurant three thousand miles away from where he lived and worked. Which brought us to option number two: a food truck. This being 2011, food trucks were sort of the hot new thing in the culinary world. We knew about them, particularly Sabin, who saw them all the time scooting around LA. But that was about it.
What was their overhead?
How much did a truck cost?
What was considered a good day in sales?
We didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. The idea of the food truck, the two of us palling around LA selling lobster out of a window to Californians who had never tasted Maine lobster before, appealed to us. We would be working together, selling a sample of our childhood that we knew very well. Sure, we knew nothing about everything else that goes into a successful food truck, but that didn’t bother us. That’s an important point for all of you budding entrepreneurs out there: had we known the complexities of a food truck, we might not have gotten into the business at all. You’d be surprised how far ignorance will get you.
Regardless, Sabin promised Jim he would get the answers to most of these questions. But we should also pause here to mention that Sabin had some misgivings about the whole thing. While Jim seemed ready to move on from his life in Boston, Sabin had found enormous success in the real estate industry. His bosses, Rob and Lio, were Sabin’s role models in many ways. Both immigrants who came to the US to pursue their own dreams, Rob and Lio defined hard work, commitment, and, most of all, optimism for Sabin. Rob was from Iran and had moved to the US to escape the revolution that gripped his country in the late 1970s, while Lio was from Morocco. They came together to build a real estate business and started to make a lot of money doing short sales on foreclosures during the housing downturn. Sabin was one of the first agents they hired—and it was a great job for the budding actor. His hours were his own, which allowed him to pursue auditions and other acting gigs during the day and at night. Before long, Sabin was closing ten deals a month and managing over fifty listings. He was killing it.
The point is, Sabin wasn’t looking for an escape hatch when Jim landed at LAX that day. Even if he wasn’t busy doing the thing he came to LA to do—act—he knew how lucky he had gotten meeting up with Rob and Lio. So, when talk with Jim turned toward starting a venture, Sabin took it all with a grain of salt. He was very excited to work with his cousin again, but if things didn’t work out, such is life. Sabin also wasn’t convinced that opening any food business was a great idea. The idea for a food truck was more appealing than a restaurant, but Sabin still kept a cool head about the whole thing.
We had discussed it over the phone a few times and run some numbers. We figured that to make a food truck worthwhile and not lose money—never mind making money—we would need to sell fifty to sixty customers (or tickets) a day. It seemed like a lot, but doable. Despite his misgivings, Sabin said he would find out if they were in the ballpark with their sales figures.
How? By talking to the people who operate food trucks. It was a simple enough plan, and so Sabin went to work. As a real estate agent, Sabin was in his car all day anyway, so doing quick stops on the way to and from his properties wasn’t a big ordeal. Plus, Sabin loves to schmooze. Had he just starting yammering questions at the guys inside the trucks, he probably would’ve been told to shove it. At least, we certainly would have done that to some nosy guy bugging us while we’re working. But Sabin was a bit subtler, and if Cousins Maine Lobster ever closes, he probably would become a good reporter. He knows how to make people talk.
The number that caused Sabin to reconsider his misgivings about starting a food truck business was 120. As in, he learned from a kid working on a food truck—and not a particularly unique or successful truck—that they sold 120 tickets a day—or twice what we had initially projected needing. If we could pull that off, then we would have a moneymaker on our hands. Sabin’s misgiving began to slip away.
But what really brought Sabin on board was Jim’s signature determination. He was relentless, using every moment to push Sabin into believing in our crazy idea. Sabin had seen Jim pursue something with single-minded focus before—usually during our NHL ’94 games as kids—but now he was on the receiving end. It was like trying to stand upright in a hurricane. Eventually, Sabin said yes, if only to make Jim shut up. We kid … but only a little.
But now Sabin had a vision of selling 120 tickets a day. He was on board, and it was time to tell Jim. Several weeks after Jim’s trip to LA, he got a call from Sabin while standing outside a Boston hospital.
“Well?” said Jim.
“We’re doing a food truck,” said Sabin.
LESSON
PURSUE YOUR DREAM WITH THE BEST OF INTENTIONS
The first thing one learns as an entrepreneur is that there is no science to starting a business. After all, science is the pursuit of knowledge through the use of reason. There is very little reason behind starting a business. The urge that makes one want to start something on his or her own is pure passion—or at least it should be. What moves you? What inspires you? What do you do when you aren’t working? These are the simple ways you discover your passion. And whatever your answer to those questions, that’s what you should be doing as an entrepreneur.
Now, we said at the start of this that there are those entrepreneurs who have excelled at building businesses from the very beginning. For them, the creation of something new is the juice. We aren’t like this, and we doubt you are either. Maybe after you build your first company, you’ll want to build another, and we wish you luck. This type of entrepreneur has to look at starting a new business dispassionately. They aren’t so much looking to turn their passion into a day job as they are looking to fill a void in a particular market—and make gobs of money doing it. They study industries, markets, tech trends, and read the The Wall Street Journal front to back, searching for that opportunity. Folks like this are very good at starting businesses this way. Like we said, they have a knack for it and they approach it very scientifically.
We were all passion, with very little reason. The amount of reason we put into our little idea was just enough to believe that it could work. Everything else was about turning our passion into something that we could market. In a word, we’re talking about money here. We wanted to make sure that we stood a reasonable chance of making a buck or two, but we had no intention of becoming rich from it. Yes, we all need money, but that wasn’t what drove us. What pushed us to start this crazy adventure was the passion we both shared for our childhood memories—the way life should be, eating lobster with family and friends, on a gorgeous summer day off the coast of Maine. That’s what we wanted to sell. That was our passion. And you should notice something more in that: we basically did this for ourselves. If there was a selfish motive in our thinking at the time, that was it. We wanted to re-create Jim’s backyard for us.
We had both been in the real working world long enough to know what we loved—and what we missed. Seeing each other again in LA was more than a reunion of old cousins; it was a brief but powerful step backward in time. We were kids again, if only for a moment. But that moment lasted long enough that we were greedy for it to come again. The food truck was simply a way for us to get back to that time. It would be our DeLorean. And that was the origin of Cousins Maine Lobster—two regular guys who missed being kids.
So, this is our first lesson to you, because it’s a lesson we never want to forget: make sure your dreams are worth pursuing and then go after them with the best of intentions. Family, happiness, service, joy—these were the things that went into our absurd dream of working together selling lobster out of a truck. But we know they were the right things because they are still what get us out of bed every morning. Five years later, we’re still trying to get back to Jim’s backyard.