IAM164- CEO Supporting Companies Become Healthier Workplaces

Abdul Ogunbiyi is the Chief Elderberry Officer of Fruit Movement. A company created to support companies in becoming healthier workplaces. Allowing teams to maximize performance without sacrificing health. We start with the simple act of offering fruit, jump-starting your company's wellness program and put you on the right path towards a positive future.

• CEO Hack: (1) Waking up early (2) Continous learning
• CEO Nugget: Jump in, don't overthink it
• CEO Defined: Having the freedom of expression and being the artist of your business

Website: https://www.fruitmovement.com/

Instagram: @fruitmovement.va
FB: Fruit Movement

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:26

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Abdul Ogunbiyi of the Fruit Movement. Abdul, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 0:37

Thank you, Gresh, I love being on the show. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the opportunity. And yeah, excited to get going.

Gresham Harkless 0:43

Yeah, I'm excited as well. And I appreciate you for taking some time out. What I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Abdul, so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And Abdul is the Chief Elderberry Officer of Fruit Movement. Fruit Movement is a company created to support companies and becomes healthier workplaces and allow teams to maximize performance without sacrificing health. They start with a simple act of offering a fruit jumpstart in your company's wellness program and putting you on the right path toward a positive future. Abdul, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 1:13

Definitely, I am ready to speak to the I AM CEO community. I'm glad you again, one more time, I'm glad you're having me on the show.

Gresham Harkless 1:19

Yeah, I'm super excited to have you on and super excited to hear a little bit more about everything you do in Fruit Movement, but I want to start everything off to hear about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 1:28

Like I'll see your stories, it always has like a, like a low ebb. And when you finally have the guts to stick to your dream. In my previous life, I call my previous platform, I was in consulting the night consultant. And the idea first occurred to me when I was my client site, and they always have like the really great vibe in the office, you know, people back into the office. People always have fruits and healthy things in the office.

And I thought man, it'd be so cool if someone could just replicate this. Someone could replicate this vibe, or someone could replicate, just the healthy habits that the team was picking up. And I had the idea for a while.

And I didn't really act on it until I met my partner, my business partner. His name is Indie Paul, and he specifically worked with mergers and acquisitions. And he talked to me about it. And he said, you know what, like, this is a good idea, you should totally do something about this. And the real action actually did come by when he did like whole financial projection on it. And it was like, again this idea can be real, like, I couldn't really, replicate this idea and like, actually help other people be healthy.

And the reason why we, why I looked more at offices, was because that's where I spend most of my time, right? Like, that's where you spend most of your time, your everyone's always in the office. And that's what you put on what we call Office 20. Now a lot of companies are looking to take care of you and like maybe episode what to do is like they have alcohol, and they have all kinds of snacks in the office, which is fine, how about we just give people options in the office to eat a little healthier. So, hence Fruit Movement, and that's why we exist. Just make it easier for people to eat healthily in the office.

Gresham Harkless 2:59

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And as you mentioned, I think that sometimes people forget how much time you spend at work and however whatever work looks like but usually you're in your office you're doing whatever helps pay the bills, so to speak. And to be able to like you guys have been able to do incorporate a healthy perspective into that is definitely huge because you spend so much time there anyways and sometimes you're just doing whatever is around you.

So when you surround yourself with those positive things that kind of manifests itself and I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more about like what you guys are doing to help out these clients, and these offices that you're working with.

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 3:31

Yeah, so we start from the very very simple part. First of all, find out what our clients having the office. What budgets are allocated towards snacks, for example, seems very simple but a lot of again, like a lot of companies, is going towards that and they just grab whatever is available.

So while we go in we say hey, listen, we are making this as easy for you as possible. We talked to farms all the way in Leesburg, Virginia without possibly even passing that to Batesville to get fruits to you as fresh as possible. Like you leave the logistics doors, and we do the rest.

And I think we're making we're doing also just we just make it easy for us for clients to take us on in that they're not worrying too much about invoicing, every time they have an order, just send you one at the end of the month, so that we're not sweating, that you can actually focus on your role in the office as opposed to spending more time but this and then we also ensure the quality of it. Because I mean, you're paying for local fruits, you have to get local foods, obviously and you have to get it as fresh as possible.

So that's what we care about. And what we've been doing in that regard. Now just like taking that also to the next level because now we've had we've been around for about a year and a half, two years actually. And now our clients who've been with us for quite a while and saying what, like, what's next? We're eating healthy now. So what's the next step?

So we are working on the next phase of the project, which is first off helping clients build like the health and wellness teams that are working on that portion, and then the second part is also helping them build a health and wellness program like one that's actually very useful, because one thing we've seen is that some clients will have like one big event, once a year.

And that's it for the rest of the year, that's not enough for you to have a habit, you know, think about someone who smokes, you know, you're the only did try to quit and you'll quit one day out of the year, that's not going to carry on. So we want to make it in such a way that a lot of our clients can have easy access to a program that would be fun, and also very interactive. And they can that we develop good habits as a company. So those are like some of the things we're working on and some of the things we have going on right now.

Gresham Harkless 5:34

That's awesome. And I think that I love kind of like that plan and that process, because a lot of times when you think about being healthy, you automatically think oh, how can I become an Instagram model? How do I go all the way from zero to 100? Taking those small steps as far as eating fruits and vegetables in the middle of the day. And then all of a sudden, as you mentioned, you start out maybe doing a walk in the middle of the day, and then you start doing a program from once a year to every quarter then it's every month and you start to incorporate those things and then all of a sudden you start to have like that movement that you guys are talking about.

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 6:04

Exactly.

Gresham Harkless 6:04

And now I want to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. So this is kind of like your differentiator What do you feel kind of sets you guys apart Fruit Movement?

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 6:11

Oh, I think what sets us apart in Fruit Movement is just the vibe. We work hard but the differentiator is that we try to do things a little differently because when we go to our clients, they expect a fun vibe, and what I think I call it is like we bring the sun to them right? Like you know, we're outside we're coming in with the sun, we're coming in with positivity, it's like hey are you getting fruits but oh, you're also getting like good vibe from us. That's one of the sauces. Another one is like, we have events, what we call the movement events.

So fruit, the fruit part is the movement of parts as well. So we try to every at least twice a month, we have events for our clients, friends of clients, family members, whoever have you who's available and we go on hikes, we go snowboarding, we go ice skating, we go name and outdoor activity, we've probably already done it.

We invite people and we tell them to come out, come hey, come into rock climbing. Just get to hang out get to meet other people. It's like a different way of networking. But the best part about is that we don't even have to see it that much people finally in the end ask us hey what's this moment? What is this event I'm attending? And it's like, all the qualification already happens because the work somewhere, and then they pull us and so I think that's one of the really good secret sauces for us.

And I will say the final one is also it's not much of a secret sauce, but just networking has been great for us. But the biggest part of it is just also staying in touch. I mean, I'm sure in your experiences you've met people that were integral to you, or people that were kind of off the wall, but you kind of lost connection with them.

One thing we've done and just like thinking that staying connected is inviting people to our events and saying, hey, we're having a fun event, I know we met you once but you want to come out. And just keep on that relationship. And we've had random referrals from people we could just touch base with like continuously.

And all of a sudden something they heard something about, oh I heard this company, they always have snacks in the office. Oh, this is a new company that has 30 people and they want to eat healthily and like be here being things off the wall. And next, you know, I'm getting random emails. So I think those three things have been really great for our growth. And while we're definitely still in business, we're ready to go for the future.

Gresham Harkless 8:13

Yeah, that makes perfect sense I think those are obviously great examples of secret sauces. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or a book or a habit that you have but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 8:25

Oh yeah, definitely. I'd say the toughest one that's been for me that now I'm finally imbibing and it's been such a game changer for me. And you can even read about this in books and a lot of CEOs will tell you this as well as that waking up early is key. Waking up on time, waking up early is so key. It starts off with a whole set of new habits you never had before. I would say in my previous life you know work will start at nine I'll get up an hour before and I'd be at work on time and that was fine.

But when you start building your own foundational your own company you have to wake up earlier because there's a lot more to do and waking up at 5-6 am every day and then making that a habit has been such a game changer. It's such a simple but hard hack because you have to find that snooze button and that urges you to hit that snooze button but what happens right after just what I think is beautiful, is you can have three more hours in the day all of sudden, you can start off getting a little fitness a little run in and then after that, you have something that you probably didn't finish from the day before or a new project that you're working on.

You have like an extra hour or two to get to it and then by the time the day rolls by we stop setting off your clients like you're already in the zone and you're just sharper and you're just ready to go and like the jokes that flowing and getting everyone in the good mood starts flowing and getting your teammates in the mood starts flowing.

So I think honestly that's been like the biggest hack for me. And I will say the second biggest one is also reading and elevating my knowledge when it comes to things I've never known about because your mindset when you're doing a 9 to 5 and your mindset when you start a business is completely different. You have to educate yourself continuously and I believe in a lot of sales books. Sales books on closing, sales books on going through a sales process.

Because yeah, even though the idea of Fruit Movement, is great, it's like, you don't want to go out there and just say, hey, this is all I'm bringing to you want to give people value and be able to enunciate and eloquently state what it is that you're doing for them and the service you bring to them.

I will say those are the two biggest hacks that really changed over the past few years. Some of them were very difficult to imbibe. But now it's second nature, I just get the value out of it and become something I used to.

Gresham Harkless 10:30

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And like I think we talked about a little bit more offline. And getting up early is a huge thing. Because when you're able to kind of attack the day you take the morning, you can get a lot of stuff done that by the time the clients start needing services and start having coupon calls and things like that you've already accomplished so much throughout the day. So getting that jump on the day is huge. And of course never stop learning never stop hurting, and stop learning how to be a better CEO, entrepreneur, and business owner. So that's definitely a great thing as well too.

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 10:57

Was definitely

Gresham Harkless 10:58

And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. Or if you could happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 11:08

Oh, that's a great question. I would say, if I could go back in a time machine right now, I would tell myself to jump because as I said, even though there's a whole planning process that comes into, you know, starting your business, making an LLC, getting the documentation and all that I had a moment in time where I hesitated on starting on the idea because I took so long doing just the planning portion, making sure everything was all your ducks in a row.

And something I figured out now on Tuesday, there's like your ducks are never always going to be in a row. Especially if you set it up in certain ways. Something's always going to come to throw it off course or throw it way on the course I expect.

And I would say if I could go back out, tell myself to jump just jump in. Don't overthink it. Don't overanalyze, you already have the idea of helping people be healthy and the office just acts on it as opposed to taking too long to do all the planning and all that because the funniest thing about it that I would say is like a lot of people who end up being big planners, which planners when you start business things just all the time is spent on planning so many different things out the window. I'm not even kidding. But like 70% of the plans that I had when I first started the company that is out the window, we don't even use them anymore. They started 30 less than 30%.

Now that was just like, okay, that's to still tenable. Yes, definitely worked with this guy worked through this kind of client. Oh, yeah, market this way? Oh, that I'll do when I'm not saying don't have a business plan. Definitely have it. But don't spend too long on it. You have to jump in and get better, especially when it comes to a whole industry you're not completely familiar with. But yeah, jump definitely the main nugget I would give myself in the past would be jumping in doing everything.

Gresham Harkless 12:41

Yeah, action often cures all, and a lot of times, you know, people get paralysis by analysis, they think about the perfect time at the perfect place and all those things. And then one thing happens and all of a sudden the plan is completely different. Exactly, exactly. So I love that sometimes you just have to jump in and get your hands dirty and get things started and action curious all.

And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show. So Abdul, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 13:14

Oh, being a CEO, to me means freedom of expression. Being a CEO, to me means that, now you have all of a sudden your own board, your own whiteboard, and you have your own marker, so have you and you can just go in there and design what it is that you feel is right. Being a CEO means like, you have the power to make a decision now influence and help other people. Even sometimes when the board becomes a mess, it's like one thing, you have to remind yourself that, hey, you know what, like, you're the shot caller, you have to take control and just decide what's going to be on the board.

And I loved that part a lot. Because I've gone from always reporting to someone to now being the person that has to report to, and I love that freedom of just when I wake up in the morning, it's like what I'm gonna express myself today, I'm gonna express myself in X way and Y way. So I would say being a CEO, to me means just having that freedom of expression.

Gresham Harkless 14:07

Yeah, and I love that definition. And that reminder, oftentimes, you are like an artist, so to speak. So you can create that vision, like you said, on the whiteboard, which is the proverbial entrepreneurial thing. So definitely write and erase and rewrite and redesign everything you want to do with your business. So I appreciate that definition. And I think that's right with everything you need to be able to do. So Abdul, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out.

What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak one last time to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and then of course, how they can find out about you.

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 14:39

Oh, yeah, definitely, um, you know, like I said earlier Fruit Movement is here to take care of other people and take care of businesses and make sure that they're healthy and wealthy, especially in the office place. That's what we care about. That's where we're doing this business and I love what we're doing because even though sometimes it takes a little bit, we've seen people change their habits, and I just love seeing that. Just love the fact that now it's like they're looking at different fruits and they're learning so much more about how to take that to the next level.

And I want people to follow us on Instagram and let us know what to think we try to have fruit facts on there. And then when we have events, we usually announce it there. And we would love people to come, anyone could go if you want to have fun and meet new people. So follow us on Instagram @fruitmovement.va. And we have a website www.fruitmovement.com. And you can follow us on Facebook to Fruit Movement, easier, and easy to find. And just come with us and join the movement and then enjoy the adventure.

Gresham Harkless 15:37

Absolutely, definitely looking forward to hearing more about the movement, and thank you for all the awesome things that you're doing Abdul, will have those links in the show notes and I hope you have a great and phenomenal rest of the day.

Abdul-Rasheed Ogunbiyi 15:46

Thank you Gresh love being on the show. Thank you so much.

Outro 15:49

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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