Lessons Learned From A Successful Service Business Exit to Launching a Retail Start-Up

Molly Baker, Founder and CEO of Indie Consulting was able to sit down with Jim Baker, CEO of Sumus Development Group & Owner of 50 Cups, a forward-thinking entrepreneur who is currently charting the course through the exciting early stages of startup. Jim brings a fresh perspective on the challenges and opportunities faced as one embarks on a journey to bring innovative ideas to life. Get ready for an inspiring conversation filled with lessons, challenges, and the spark that fuels entrepreneurial dreams!

Molly Baker [MB]: So tell us a little bit about what you're thinking about professionally today. What's good? What's bad? What's top of mind?

Jim Baker [JB]: Just really trying to grow the business. It's a startup that I'm involved with right now, and it's all about attracting customers to buy our product. We've been doing it for about seven or eight months now. And, it's an experience and it's a challenge. 

MB: What's challenging about it? 

JB: It's a business-to-consumer experience. You simply don't know who's gonna be coming in and who's gonna buy. 

MB: What has been fun about it? 

JB: That's part of it- the unknown. It's also the marketing piece of it and the mission. I can't reveal too much more at this point in time, but it's a combination of a lot of different things.

MB: So brag about yourself a little bit. What are you really good at? 

JB: I've been in business for a long time and thankfully had some successful exits in the past. I've learned a lot over that time frame. So I think I'm good at understanding what needs to be done and hopefully getting everybody to move in the right direction to either fix or to be successful in our strategy.

MB: Would you identify yourself more as a visionary or an operator when you think about your business leadership style? 

JB: I identify more as a visionary. I have the ability to know where I want to go. Once that vision is set, then you have to do the work. I think I'm pretty good at reminding everybody what the vision is regularly so we can get the work done.

MB: What do you think makes a successful entrepreneur today? 

JB: Today, it's an interesting world because, back in the old days, you didn't have access to networks and instant information. It was a bit more difficult to get that first sale or to raise money for what you’re doing. Now, because everything is so technology-driven and at your fingertips, a lot of entrepreneurs tend to think they don't need to do the work and are always looking for quick fixes like getting a bunch of likes on Instagram. But you have to actually do the work at the end of the day and ensure your entrepreneurial dream is practical—meaning someone will buy your goods or services.

There's a company that is trying to see if I have an interest in investing in them. And it's a school security company that invented this lock. I referred them to a school just to see how it would work. I was thinking that the owner would make contact because he's doing the selling at this point in time with the school and then come up with a solution. Instead, he has a twelve-question questionnaire and four videos. Right away, he's forcing the potential customer to do a pile of work before he'll even engage with them. I'm a little skeptical that that's gonna work out down the road. 

MB: Despite all of the technological advances, you think the human element of business is critical? 

JB: Absolutely. At the end of the day, they're tools. Just like a carpenter has a hammer and saw, you have to put your hand on that hammer and saw to make a move. It's the same thing in business—you have to do the work.

MB: What do you think are the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs face today? 

JB: The fact that there's so much opportunity can make it difficult to come up with a strategy to find consumers who will buy your goods or services. Also, many people feel they can get wildly rich in a few years by simply pressing a couple of buttons. But even successful companies like Google, Facebook, or Amazon took a long time to reach where they are today.

MB: Very true. I was reading something recently about how Lululemon was founded in 1991 or 1992. Equinox opened its first gym on the Upper East Side in 1991. We think of these brands as things that started five to ten years ago, and they've been around for decades. 

I don't think that's talked about enough. Everyone thinks it's this quick trajectory to being a household name, and that takes time.

JB: Exactly. One of the books I would highly recommend for aspiring entrepreneurs is Phil Knight's 'Shoe Dog.' He was door-to-door for years before Nike took off.

MB: As you think about your marketing ecosystem for your company, what would be something that you would change? 

JB: We've talked about this before, but it's about having a brand presence that translates into dollars. Whoever figures out that next piece of the marketing Return on Investment {ROI} puzzle will make trillions.

What's happening now in marketing is way more effective than what we saw fifteen to twenty years ago. There's no way in the world they could’ve possibly given you any type of ROI. 

MB: What relationship has had the most impact on you over your career? 

JB: As you go through your career, you have mentors at different stages—starting, growing, and selling a business.

I unfortunately didn't have my father to help mentor me since he passed away when I was twenty-four years old. There have been other people in my life that have been very influential to me. But it's not necessarily one single person. There are different stages for different types of people. All remain great friends, by the way.

It's understanding that one mentor may not be everything to you, based on the stage of business that you're in. 

MB: How would you recommend somebody go out and find a mentor if they feel like they want one but don't know where to start? 

JB: The easiest thing to do is to look at your own personal friend and family network. Is there somebody out there who's maybe a parent of one of your friends or is an uncle or somebody that has done similar things to what you're trying to do? I think most people want to help if they're approached. It's worth your while to try to do that. If there isn't anybody out there, then there's all these networks out there. There's Vistage. Each local area probably has its own through the Chamber of Commerce or through a similar peer group.

I also think you must be prepared when you go talk to the mentor because a mentor wants to help. They don't wanna just hang out and wait for you to ask questions. Maximize your time with them, and they're gonna respect that.

MB: So tell us who you are. What's the big reveal? 

JB: The thing I'm most proud of is, I'm a father to a podcast host. My name is Jim Baker. Yes, Molly is my daughter. I am happily married with four kids and grandkids now.

I had a company called Ockham, which was a clinical research organization. We did clinical trials for oncology, mostly in Phase 1 and Phase 2. I had that business for about twenty-five years and we sold it back in 2014. 

Then I did what most people do, wrote a book that nobody reads. I still have about 250 copies of it at my house. 

I also do some advisory work with a healthcare company in Cary, North Carolina called Optimal Bio. 

I also decided to open up a tea and coffee shop called 50 Cups, where you can buy online. We're trying to go wholesale, so hopefully you'll see it in your favorite coffee shop or tea shop down the road. We do have a retail outlet, and that's my struggle at this point in time. 

MB: What has been most surprising about starting a CPG company after you worked in services for your entire career? 

JB: The unpredictability of who's gonna walk in the door or go online and order.

In my previous company, they were biotech and pharmaceutical firms. We could go and talk to them and have our scientists behind us. And hopefully, they would give us a clinical trial. That trial might be worth anywhere from $500,000 to $5,000,000. Once we sold it, we knew we had that work for three to six years.

Somebody coming in the door to buy some tea or coffee, it's a $3 to $6 transaction. The goal is to get more and more people, but there's no such thing as a backlog in the retail world. 

MB: That's true. It's different. 

JB: You talk about vision and strategy, and vision is mental health. Our population is getting sicker and sicker. In 1996, 18 and under 14% of those people were on medication. Today, it's 56%.

So our unhealthy young, they're going to be even more unhealthy when they're older. Tea has a lot of health benefits. So we feel like 50 Cups, we're all united in the fact that none of us wanna get sick.

MB: What does an average day look like for you right now?

JB: If I have to go behind the counter, I open the store up at 6:30 am and get it all set up to go. Open the doors at 7:00 am, and we go all day long making lattes and I'm making matchas.

When I'm not behind the counter, it's mostly the finance, marketing, strategy, or recruiting piece of it. We're always in hiring mode looking for good people. 

MB: So what would you say is the high of your current role and the low of your current role?

JB: I get excited when we sell to a wholesale account or when we have online orders. Our goal is to have all of our customers send us videos from all 50 states in the country. Right now we have five, so we have forty-five to go. I get excited when those people do that for us. 

MB: What is the low part?

JB: The unpredictability of the business. You simply just don't know. 

When you open that door in the morning and you've done everything you possibly could do to attract people into your location, maybe you got the wrong location. At the end of the day, I don't know all the reasons why they're not coming into the store. There are days when it's busy and there are other days when it's quiet. 

MB: How does your 50 Cups experience differ from your previous business? What have you learned now that has been surprising or unexpected given the variance of how this experience is?

JB: I think you forget that when you've taken a business and it was nothing and then you eventually have $55,000,000 in revenue with 400 plus people,  it's a hard job, but all the other people are doing most of the work. You're leading, strategizing, and buying other companies. That's a lot of fun.

You're not doing the day-to-day execution. Whereas this is a rewind. You're going back to the start where you're cleaning bathrooms, turning on the coffee pot, grinding the beans, and mixing the tea. You gotta do everything yourself.

Unfortunately, leadership is 90% perception. So if you want other people to do a better job, then they better see you doing a job. You can't just simply talk about it, sit in the back, and point your finger. 

MB: At 21, did you ever think you would have a tea company? What did you think you were gonna be doing?

JB: No, I didn't. 

I sold consumer paper. That was my first job out of school and I called on all these retail accounts in the New York metropolitan area. What I didn't know then was that I wanted to work hard and make money. And working for this corporation, you had to work hard, but you didn't make any money.

Eventually, I just wanted to be able to self-perform. And if I did, then I would hopefully be in a situation where I could get paid. And so that's what drove me to start my own business. 

MB: What would be your biggest piece of advice for somebody who's looking to start a business? 

JB: Be willing to work. And secondly, you may have the greatest idea in the world, but if nobody's willing to buy your service or your product, you may be too early or too late.

Find something that people are actually gonna buy and make sure you run with that. You can always evolve as time goes by, but you need to start somewhere where there's a market. 

MB: On the health front, as this is the purpose behind 50 Cups, what's your vision for health for young Americans?

JB: I'm never going to ask tea to supplant coffee because coffee is number 2 in America, water is number 1. All I'm simply saying is that this is a very organic and natural product. It has a lot of compounds, antioxidants, and natural things that are from the earth that help you heal, increase energy, de-stress, detox, and hydrate. All those things are in these herbal teas. 

I'm just simply asking you to buy our product as opposed to Gatorade, Diet Coke, or any of these other energy drinks out there that are so-called healthy. There are 256 different names of sugar that the FDA allows to be put into these soda cans. Half of them or three-quarters of them are under the names of fruits. You think you're getting something that's healthy.

I think sugar is the ultimate culprit in our country at this point in time. And our tea can solve that problem for you. 

Trendy or Tragic

Looking at candidates' social media before you hire them? 

Trendy. It absolutely should be done. If you like somebody a lot, and you think they're gonna be good for the job, but you're not quite sure, then see how they operate behind the scenes, so to speak. 

It shouldn't even be trendy. It should be almost a requirement now. 

The 4-day workweek?

Tragic. You gotta work. If you wanna get ahead in life and you wanna do well, then you have to work.

This goes into our 50 Cups situation with our health because, at the end of the day, you're either a victim of your circumstance or you're a victor. There are a lot of people out there who think they deserve a four-day workweek. The four-day workweek, I think, will be a thing of the past down the road. 

Dick Vitale’s reported return to ESPN as a broadcaster? 

He's been a great ambassador for basketball. I'll say trendy in this case. 

He's been a warrior battling cancer. The thing about him that unfortunately a lot of the younger people never could witness is, he has a passion for what he does.

He truly loves the game. He truly loves to broadcast. He loves the students. He loves everything about basketball. 

When you exude that passion, you get excited just watching it.

MB: What's one piece of advice you would give me based on what you know about Indie and my life right now? 

JB: Make decisions in the best interest of the company, believe in yourself, and just simply stay the course because you and anybody else who follows that advice will be wildly successful, not only in business but also in life.

Check out Jim Baker on LinkedIn &  @50cupstea on Instagram and 50cupstea.com.

As for us, follow @namedrop.pod on Instagram & LinkedIn and @molbakes on Instagram for all future episodes and insights.