Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aF_lcDl--b0&list=PLOQvdw7d0cd9RZZkd2lZy2hmrnJv-cfLI&index=18
Evan Snow: And we are back here on another episode of the Choose 954 podcast, episode 82, with my dear friend, book writing partner, coach, author, speaker, and our upcoming AAF Creative Zen speaker, Ernesto Mendowski. If you didn’t know about Choose 954, myself, Evan Snow, and my business partner, Mr. Andrew Martino, started a social movement to cultivate culture and community here in Broward County, where I’m very proud to be born and raised. Our effort is to keep people in the know with a lot of the great things that are going on to make this a better place to live, not just a better place to vacation. The point of the podcast is to connect you with interesting people like him, who do important things in the community—and he does, as you’re about to find out.
So without much further ado, why don’t you just tell us a little bit about yourself at a high level?
Ernesto Mendowski: Thank you, Evan. I’m from Miami. I was always fascinated with restaurants and connecting the dots in systems engineering, and that turned into an eight-year journey of working in restaurants, startups, and big companies, which led me to recognize my real profound interest, which is helping people recognize their unique intersection—what I call their "honey." And not only helping them recognize it but helping them share it with the world, which brings me to the work I do today and what I’ll be speaking about at Creative Zen.
So, yeah, I’m from here, toured around the country, worked in New York, worked in DC, and found my way back to Miami. I see myself building the community just like you, but maybe through using business systems as my vehicle.
Evan Snow: Which is important, and you’ll get to hear more about that when Ernesto shares his story at AAF Creative Zen on the second Friday morning of October, October 14th, at the Gaspar Arts Center. We’ll put the link and all that in the show notes. We won’t give away your full story, but as a little bit of a preview, walk us through at a high level how that journey in the restaurant industry and business ultimately led you to the work that you’re doing now.
Ernesto Mendowski: Yeah, so I wanted to get into restaurants when I was a teenager. I met a man when I was 18 who owned six restaurants, and that became my dream—I wanted to own six restaurants. I went to school and studied systems engineering, which is kind of a weird combination, but I was super focused on those six restaurants while also being a little confused and unsure of how I was going to bring tech into the picture. But after reading a book about the Ritz-Carlton, I discovered that hotels use powerful CRM tools, which stands for Customer Relationship Management, and I thought, "Wow, this could be it." I went to a nightclub in New York, built a CRM, and someone told me I did tech consulting. I looked into that, got a job with a company called Deloitte, and then started a bakery in my apartment in New York. During the week, I would work at Deloitte, and on the weekends, I would bake challah bread at my bakery and deliver it around New York.
I really wanted to do more of the baking, so I signed up for a culinary business course, which continued to fuel my appetite for discovering how to take my passions for systems engineering and include restaurants. That turned into a job with a restaurant group in New York City, setting up the business systems for a food hall, a restaurant, a coffee commissary, and a nonprofit school. There was a big struggle, but it kicked off my passion for teaching other people—teaching future restaurant analysts that would come after me. I started writing a book with all of my lessons, and this book eventually morphed into a new understanding of how humans are connected to bees. When bees make honey, they go from flower to flower, extract nectar, transfer pollen, and then go back to the hive to create their honey. We’re no different—we go to different jobs, courses, and conferences, extract lessons, and create our honey that we give back to the world in the form of a job, product, or service. I happened to be doing it in restaurants and tech.
With this new understanding of my book, I was going to tour the country and speak about it, but the universe had another plan for me, taking me to one last hurrah in the restaurant industry, working with a very famous 100-year-old restaurant group called The Palm as their director of strategy, helping them totally reinvent themselves through modernizing. Through that experience, both the restaurant and I went through a big transformation, and I recognized it was time to go after the real dream—not just restaurants and systems, but being an entrepreneur, being a creator, and helping other people realize their dreams.
Evan Snow: Amazing. And he is going to help you realize your dream, not only at Creative Zen but also through some other things we’ll share. I know you’ve done a lot of work in discovery and self-development in this process, and I know we share a love for yoga and working out. What are some of the books you’ve read, courses or conferences you’ve attended, that you attribute to growth in this journey?
Ernesto Mendowski: The first book is probably in many people’s libraries—it’s called The Secret. I read it when I was 16 years old. It’s a book that came out in 2004 by Rhonda Byrne, and she talks about the law of attraction and a vision board. This whole journey started with my vision board, being that thing that you constantly reflect back toward, no matter what’s happening externally in your world. You go back to the vision board and dream of that thing you’re chasing after. That’s a super powerful tool. I also attended a conference called the Landmark Forum.
Evan Snow: Which is where my parents met.
Ernesto Mendowski: Yeah, it’s a crazy, almost cult-like experience where they basically bash into your head that we are our own roadblock that’s keeping us from the possibilities we’re creating for ourselves. For a weekend straight, you’re just calling different people that you have what they call "kaka" with, and you’re clearing up all the crap that has actually been in the way of creating a connection. When you think about that, and just other people think about the crap that keeps you from reaching your potential—that was just such a powerful experience.
Evan Snow: A lot of people know about gratitude training now, which is similar, right?
Ernesto Mendowski: Yeah, there are a lot of heady types of personal development. Landmark has been around since the 1970s, and they keep enrolling you—the whole thing is about enrolling people into possibilities, which they do a great job of. But it also teaches you how to enroll other people into the world you are creating. I try to integrate some of those lessons now into what I teach people.
Evan Snow: For those who are not familiar, could you tell us a little bit about what you do with CPD Advisors and some of the systems you put in place to help entrepreneurs and business owners?
Ernesto Mendowski: Totally. After writing my book, I decided to take cross-pollination design and bring it out into the world. I had no idea what that meant, and after many iterations, I finally landed on becoming a coach and consultant to help founders implement these business systems to transform chaos into cash flow. We’ve developed a playbook—the 6P Playbook—which covers the six fundamental feedback loops for every company. Those six P’s are priorities, people, projects, promotion, playbooks, and planning.
When you’re a founder and you get a good grasp of these six elements of your business, you’re able to relax and flow in your day-to-day. You’re able to enter your zone of genius and do what you do best—sell the vision, enroll clients, create business development opportunities, and truly grow. The problem that most people don’t realize, or maybe they do, is that when we go back to the book and bees and how bees make honey, bees are connected to their source—they know what they have to do, they have infrared vision to identify the best flowers, and they’re very disciplined. Founders, however, are wearing nine different hats, constantly switching. They’re busy doing what they do best, which is selling the vision, but they’re not best at doing the operations, the processes, the tech, the automations—they’re not busy in those details. So what we do is come in and set up all of those little details so that as they are in flow, going from meeting to meeting, client to client, project to project, everything is being taken care of in the background. It keeps them in their state of flow and Zen, and keeps the team aligned and moving forward.
Evan Snow: Amen. From your personal and now professional experience, how do you feel—since we’re both mindfulness practitioners who appreciate yoga—how does that help founders live their best life and be as successful as possible?
Ernesto Mendowski: I think the concept of Yin and Yang applies here. There’s the mind and the mental, and then there’s the physical, or the mind and the emotional. There are all these sides of a human. Your business also needs to have these sides—you need to have the systems, and it’s not really called spirituality, but it’s a different brand, called culture. You need to have these two sides of the same coin. As a founder, you need to have your big vision and big dreams, but you also need to be grounded. You need to know that you have this dream of being a $50 million company in five years, but today you need to enroll 10 clients at $1,000 each to make $10,000 a month. If you don’t have this long-term and short-term balance, you’re just going to stay floating in the air, and people will just say, "Oh, he’s just a visionary," or "He’s just dreaming of the future—he’s not grounded in today."
Evan Snow: Of course, amen. We can’t strongly emphasize, recommend, and suggest taking the time out of your life to meditate and develop a mindfulness and meditation practice. Not only will it have positive impacts on your professional life, but also on your personal life. As we’re finding out—and you’ll find out on October 14th—it will significantly impact your professional life, your business, your community, and whatever you’re trying to impact. Ernesto has also graciously offered to lead the guided meditation that we’ll put in play to put us in a Zen state before the Creative Zen talk, which will take place on Friday, October 14th, at Gaspar Arts Center in Dania Beach. The doors open at 8:30, the talk starts at 9, and you’re out of there by 10. It’s a free event that we continue to host to connect, engage, and inspire our creative community one Friday morning a month. I initially had my "aha" moment at Creative Zen, which led me down this path of arts, culture, community building, and now creative entrepreneurship. That’s why I like to pay it back and pay it forward by bringing in local speakers to share their thought-provoking, inspiring stories. You never know who’s going to be sitting there in your chair in the audience, yearning for that one little piece of information, that one little nugget that can change the course of their life, their community, or their world. I appreciate you taking the time to share with us out of your life on October 14th.
It’s not going to be a surprise—we’ve already mentioned it—but what else can they look forward to receiving if they come and attend on October 14th?
Ernesto Mendowski: We’re going to do a really powerful exercise. We spoke about Landmark earlier and all this meaning that we create in our lives. So many times something happens in our lives, and we make it mean something. When you look back at the story of your life, we fail, or we think we fail, and we’re told no, and we’re rejected. We kind of get stuck in that, or we make it mean something about ourselves. But when we look at the whole trajectory of our life, actually, that rejection turned into a transformation. There’s going to be a very powerful exercise where we look at the arc of our lives, look at all the "no’s," look at all the rejections, and transform them into something extremely powerful—like a launching pad for the next experience that would happen. So today, as we continue our journeys, when we encounter a "no," we very quickly catch it and recognize it’s not a "no"—it’s just a redirection. It’s just life telling you, "This isn’t the way right now."
Evan Snow: Amen. I’m glad you mentioned that and are sharing that because a lot of people don’t know how to address those "no’s," closed doors, and lost opportunities. That can lead to people giving up on their dream, goal, or passion project when, ultimately, it can and should be a pivot. It could be a blessing in disguise, a lesson, or whatever it very well could be for somebody. I appreciate that. If they happen to bring a small appetite to the event, what might they be in store for?
Ernesto Mendowski: I’m bringing the thing that led to all of this—my challah. My challah is the unsung hero of my story. It’s the thing that got me the job in restaurants. It’s the thing that lights people up when I stick it in their mouths. It’s vegan, organic, and uses coconut oil. It’s special. I’ll be bringing some challah to the event to sponsor breakfast.
Evan Snow: How about that? We appreciate that, of course. For those who would like more inspiration and insight, what other offerings and opportunities do you have coming up throughout the rest of this year?
Ernesto Mendowski: I have an event on December 11th. It’s called the Vision and Vibes event—my spiritual take on annual planning, which is sometimes a little uptight. We’re going to be putting together a vision, setting the vibes, and setting the tone that you can take as you set out to accomplish this vision. The location is TBD, but we will start selling tickets soon, and you can grab them on my website, which is just ernestomendowski.com, or on Instagram, which is also just Ernesto Mendowski. I’ll be giving a little sneak peek—an extra early bird sale.
Evan Snow: Okay, and if they want to find out more about the 6Ps, where can they follow you for CPD Advisors?
Ernesto Mendowski: They can go to cpdadvisors.com. Right now, it’s pretty bare bones—just an intake form about what you’re working on, what your project is, and I’ll get back to you. I’m still working on my company’s website.
Evan Snow: No problem. You’ve got enough going there. The magic isn’t in the website—the magic’s in the work you do with people.
Ernesto Mendowski: Totally.
Evan Snow: I did attend the goal-setting workshop last year in December. I found it to be very beneficial. I shared with you previously that if nothing else, it spawned the idea to further nurture relationships with clients and even vendors—people we do business with. I subsequently sent them gifts for the first time during the holidays—something I’d never done before. I purchased a goal-setting workbook in addition to the worksheets and workbooks you provided. It definitely helped put me in a different mind frame and mindset going into the new year to attack it with new goals and new eyes. I would strongly encourage you, if you’re looking for some insight, motivation, and support, to attend Creative Zen on October 14th and potentially save the date for December 11th to attend the Vision and Vibes workshop as well.
We certainly hope you can join us. We have all the talks replayed on our social media and our YouTube page, thanks to support from Mike Hewitt Live Digital Agency, one of our previous speakers. If you’re looking for some inspiration, we’ve got replays of all the great talks we’ve had on there.
A couple of other good events to look out for as we get into October 2022: we are getting closer to the return of the fifth annual Fort Lauderdale Art and Design Week, which we co-founded as well. It’s a celebration and self-guided discovery tour of the arts around Greater Fort Lauderdale and Broward County, held the last week in January every year. There are talks, parties, studio tours, exhibits, and events. We’re going to have a fundraising dinner for the week at Regina’s Farm, which generally has a six-month to a year wait to eat there.
Ernesto Mendowski: The Brazilian place?
Evan Snow: Yeah, and we’re going to have a dinner there on the 22nd, which we’re excited about. You can find out more at ftladw.com—that’s Fort Lauderdale Art and Design Week. We just held a virtual lunch-and-learn information session yesterday. If you weren’t able to attend, we posted the replay on our Facebook page. You can find out more about how you can participate or how you can support a business or an artist if it’s something that you feel called to participate in. We create the week-long series of events and use our resources to highlight and showcase the artists and arts organizations that we know, love, and support throughout the year. We try to get people to really jump on supporting them during this one-week celebration of the arts to hopefully propel them throughout the rest of the year so they can continue thriving and being successful. We appreciate the support of the Broward County Cultural Division in sponsoring and helping make this happen.
One last thing—on October 30th, we have our second fundraising dinner for the Thousand Mermaids Artificial Reef Project. It’s a pre-deployment dinner, and we’re getting ready to create our second site, an artificial reef site, for this eco-art ocean conservation coral restoration project that I co-founded about five years ago. It’s going to be our first site in Broward County, with the support of the City of Hollywood, the Community Redevelopment Agency, and Commissioner Carol Shuham. We’re very grateful for that. The dinner will be Sunday, October 30th, at Gigi’s Waterfront on the Intracoastal on A1A in Hollywood Beach. It’s a beautiful venue. Tickets are $150, and the proceeds go toward our 501(c)(3) nonprofit to continue doing the work we’re doing to help save the reef, save the ocean, and save the planet. You can find out more at thousandmermaids.com. Feel free to reach out to me—limited tickets remain, and we’re still looking for support, silent auction items, people buying tickets, tables, and stuff like that. You can reach out at info@thousandmermaids.com.
I’d love to hear from other thought-provoking, inspiring speakers in the community. We’re always looking to bring in new people to share their story on the podcast, and if they feel called, compelled, and comfortable, to share their story for Creative Zen. We’re looking forward to continuing hosting that—we’re now on just about four and a half years of Creative Zen.
Ernesto Mendowski: Wow.
Evan Snow: Making an impact, changing multiple lives multiple times over—I’m super grateful for that. So feel free to reach out. I’m an open book. He’s an open book. Two nice Jewish boys here to help, and we appreciate you tuning in and hope to see you on October 14th.
Cheers.
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