Fresh Bet: How I Rolled the Dice on a Start-up and Won

Chapter 1 - Why You Should Break All the Rules

The sound of children’s laughter gushed up the stairs and trickled under the door to my office. I could hear my wife welcoming people into our home, my daughter scampering around with friends and family. It was the night before my first son’s bris--a very important night in the Jewish religion when children come over to recite the Shema, a Jewish prayer, for the baby. I’d imagined this special night for many years, and now it was here.

 Downstairs, the sounds of joy echoed through the house, and here I was, sitting in a dark room in front of a computer playing online party poker. I could not pull myself away.

“Zalmi,” my wife, Leah, shouted up the stairs. “Come down, we’re about to start.”

My hand consisted of two aces, a four, a seven and a king. Two other players had folded and we were facing the final showdown. I was down by two thousand, but I thought I had a shot to win it all back and then some.

“Zalmi, we’re waiting for you.”

I discarded my four and drew another ace. Feeling confident that I had a winning hand, I doubled down for another $500. I was already down to nothing in my personal bank account. At this point, I was drawing from the operating account of my new startup company, The Fresh Diet-- funds designated to buy groceries for next week’s deliveries. It wasn’t the first time I’d pulled money out of it for this purpose. But I was so confident of my hand, so sure I was going to win it all and make us thousands of dollars.

“Zalmi, come down,” my mother yelled from below. I could hear footsteps on the stairs. I couldn’t ignore them anymore. I spun around in my chair to see my wife and my mother standing at the door, both fuming.

“I’m almost done here,” I told them.

“But we’re starting now,” Leah said. “Everyone’s waiting.”

I looked at her and I looked at the computer. The three aces danced before me on the screen.

“Do I really need to be there?” I said. “It’s not like it’s the actual bris. Just go ahead without me.”

I turned back to the computer. I knew it wasn’t right, but I just couldn’t help myself. The cards were right there, about to make me thousands of dollars. Surely they would understand if they knew I was about to win!

“Zalmi, you get up from that chair right now and come downstairs,” my mother said sharply.

“Mom, this is a huge. I’m about to make a lot of money! You can’t just let me leave it on the table!”

“Leave it on the table!” My mother shouted. She was not usually a shouter. “This is more important!” Behind her, Leah stood in the door looking at me, tears falling down her face. At that moment I knew I had to choose between two of the people I loved most in life and poker.

I chose poker.

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I said, turning back to the computer.

“How could you do this?!” my mother yelled. She turned and went back downstairs with Leah.

I discarded my seven, drawing a two. Still feeling good about my three aces, I unveiled my cards. My competitor held a straight flush, all spades, trumping my three of a kind. I had lost the hand and lost all the money. With zero in both bank accounts, and frightening debts to pay, I tucked my tail between my legs and slinked downstairs. I was just in time for the ceremony.

My wife’s face beamed. She thought I’d had a change of heart, when really, I’d drawn a two of hearts. I just lost the hand at the perfect time. It had been a moment of both terrible luck and very good luck.

As I watched the children gather around my newborn son, I could only think about the thousands of dollars I had just lost playing poker. Holy crap, I thought. I just started a new business, had been fired from my day job a week ago, was dealing with a major gambling addiction and now a newborn son. What was I going to do?

Fresh Start

I thought back to why I started The Fresh Diet in the first place. I had been trapped in a cubicle, working a dead-end job that used none of my passions or talents. Ideas for ventures constantly spun in my head, but with no formal business training and no funds to start a company, I felt powerless.

At the same time, I was channeling my unfulfilled potential into some very unhealthy places-- namely gambling. I owed twenty thousand dollars to a bookie for several losing bets on baseball games. I live in Miami Beach, which is something of a sun bleached playground for many burnt-out members of the mafia looking to escape the frigid temperatures of New York. A bookie down here isn’t going to just leave a lot of messages on your voice mail. If you’re late with a debt, he’s more likely to use your legs for batting practice, or, if a lot of money is at stake, use your body for target practice. My bookie (not mentioning any names here to protect him and my legs), had taken the step of calling my house and threatening my wife. Who knows what was next?

Thinking that I was wisely taking a break from sports betting, I turned my focus to online party poker and contemplated how I was going to pay off my debt in case I didn’t win the twenty G back in a virtual card game. That was when I received the phone call that would forever change my life.  

My best friend Yos Schwartz, a chef in Los Angeles, called for our daily chat and mentioned that he had been approached by an employee of Zone Chefs, a diet delivery service in L.A. My curiosity peaked, I googled the company and found that the diet delivery service--a business I had never heard of--was a rapidly growing industry. The idea behind it was to provide three meals a day for people who wanted to lose weight but didn’t have the time to cook, shop, or count calories. Zone Chefs delivered the food directly to people’s homes daily and claimed that clients received healthy food and lost weight. I continued my internet research looking for a diet delivery service in Miami, thinking I could do something with them and maybe make extra money on the side. But I found absolutely no such company in South Florida. Weird. Miami, a town obsessed with beach-ready bodies, didn’t have anything like Zone Chefs. That’s when I realized there was a hole here that needed to be filled, and if I didn’t do it, someone else would.

That very day, I set up a website and took out an ad in the local paper, setting up the company that would soon become The Fresh Diet. It was a big gamble because by posting an ad that delivery would start on January 1st of the new year, I was painting myself into a corner. There would be no turning back once clients signed up; Sort of like doubling down on a bet when you need to draw three specific cards to win.

From there it was history.

Over the past decade, I’ve built The Fresh Diet from a company with 3 employees (that would be me, my pregnant wife and our unborn child), to a company with 350 employees that is now worth over 25 million dollars.

 It was an extremely bumpy start. I was still a gambling addict when I began my company, and in the initial months I was also working my day job, which meant shopping, cooking, packing and delivering the food during the hours that most people are sleeping. In addition, my lack of business training or any knowledge of the food industry left me pretty much flailing--I basically had no idea what the hell I was doing.

How Starting a Business is Just Like Gambling

Although I knew nothing about business, I knew a lot about gambling. I’d gone from playing kiddie roulette in my 6th grade classroom (yes, that would be me saving up money for my very own mini-roulette table, which I’d seen advertised in the back of  a magazine; then bringing it in to class and starting a gambling ring, much to the dismay of Mrs. Pearson), to joining my parents on forays to Atlantic City and Vegas, where they’d let me put an occasional coin in the slot machine when the casino staff wasn’t looking; to busting out into a full-fledged obsession with sports betting once I hit the legal age, and now to my current addiction with online party poker.

I had to take all the skills I learned as a gambling addict, for better or worse, and put them to work for my startup company. Although these principles go against anything you will learn in business school and are contrary to the advice you find in most business books, they worked fantastically in my favor. They can work for you too, and this book will show you how.

I not only built the Fresh Diet from nothing to a multi-million dollar, publicly traded company, but I did it by breaking all the rules. Now, I want to show other entrepreneurs how to do the same. If you’ve ever had an idea for a company but were afraid to execute it, this book will give you the guts to do it. If you’re in the middle of a start-up and find yourself lost, this book will show you how to steer the ship, and make millions doing so.

I’ve experienced great triumphs, but I’ve also made major mistakes. By telling my story, I want anyone with a vision to learn from my success and failures. If a high school drop-out can start a business with no money and no experience, you can too.

The entrepreneurial roller coaster is a fun, wild and crazy trip. So, strap on that safety belt, hold on tight, take a deep breath and close your eyes. We’re about to go for one hell of a ride.