Exit Zero and Beyond: Jack Wright's Entrepreneurial Rollercoaster

Entrepreneurship is borne of passion and inspiration. We have a ton of it here, for you. Dive into the entrepreneurial journey of Jack Wright, from London editor to Cape May's creative force behind Exit Zero Magazine & more! Discover how a T-shirt idea sparked a local phenomenon in our latest episode. Catch it now! #Podcast #Entrepreneurship #ExitZero 

Transcript

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Welcome to the Water Trough where we can't make you drink, but we will make you think. My name is Ed Draws to the Small Business Doctor, and I'm really excited you chose to join me here as we discuss topics that are important for small business folks just like you. If you're looking for ideas, inspiration, and possibility, you've come to the right place. Join us as we take steps to help you create the healthy business that you've all. Always wanted. Welcome back to the Water Trough. This is Ed DRA to the Small Business Doctor, and today I'm pleased to be joined by Jack Wright. Jack was a newspaper and magazine editor in London and New York before moving to Cape May, New Jersey in 2002 when he wrote and designed the coffee table book, Tommy Folly, A History of Congress Hall, America's oldest Seaside Hotel. Shortly after he founded Exit Zero Magazine. In 2008, he wrote and designed a wild ride, the official history of Maury's Piers. He was also commissioned to design and publish the Lucky Bones Cookbook plus history books on the Shelf Hunt Hotel and the boroughs of Stone Harbor and Wildwood Crest. He created the Exit zero filling station restaurant in 2015. Hey, man, you got a lot of stuff going on. How you doing, Jack? I'm doing good, ed. It's a pleasure to talk with you again. It's a pleasure for me as well. let me just jump right in here and ask you a little bit of a question about the origin of Exit Zero, the name. So, I came here 2002 I quit my job as an magazine editor in New York, something on a whim. I came down to Cape Me the invitation of Curtis Bashaw, the owner of Congress Hall. I worked in his pool bar. I managed the pool bar at the swimming pool at the hotel for the summer. I had never worked in hospitality before. I'm sure it was probably pretty awful. but in the course of that, I stayed, in Cape Me through that fall. I. I was researching the history book that Curtis commissioned me to write about the hotel Congress hall, and I came across an old magazine called Pennywise, which you know, a long time Cape Me. People know a lot about great little magazine that was published from the thirties through probably the seventies or early eighties, and. I thought, well, it'd be great to bring that magazine back. so what would it be called? We would redo it. And, you know, I had done some t-shirts for Congress hall that said, meet me at Exit Zero. And it wasn't a phrase that was really used. I think a couple of people talked about Exit Zero, the number I was trying to get the design of the t-shirt to work. And so I made it exit zero ZERO and it was a name that, that Curtis and I bandied around and we thought, that's a great name for a magazine. because Cape May is at the very bottom of the 172 exits of the Garden State Parkway. So it's the phrase that wasn't around much. A couple of, locals would talk about it, but, It wasn't used. And so the first iteration was on those congress hall t-shirts, but then it became the name of the magazine that was launched July 4th, 2003. And on account of your effort to put out a t-shirt, the state of New Jersey took you up on it and made it, in fact, exit zero. Yeah. So some people don't believe me when I say this in 2008. We got a call from the Garden State partway authority, who operate that road. And they said that they were going to put up a sign that said Exit zero. And we said, so why are you doing that? And they said, well, your magazine has really kind of publicized this name. And we thought it would be a fun thing for the locals and the visitors to put up the sign. So it wasn't for any. Like highway standards. It was just done on a whim, which seems like a strange thing for something like the state of New Jersey to do. So they did it. But what's odd of course, is that the sign points to North Cape May, it doesn't point straight on to Cape May. So I don't know. Why they did that. it doesn't really make any sense. as I said, people don't believe me, when I say that that sign was inspired by us. That's just a fact. And, you know, it was nice that they did that. I think it's fun, but it doesn't really serve any purpose. But hey. It's fun. Well, every time I come down to the end of the parkway and I see the sign. I first and foremost, think of the magazine Exit Zero. Yeah. And you're right, it does point off to the ferry and beyond. So I admit it is kind of peculiar it's not going down town, but, well, you know what, It's funny though. I guess you could say that it does take you to West Cape May, which is where. our building is, it's technically in West Cape Main, and anybody knows when you go into Cape May, if you want to go to West Cape May, you don't go straight over the Lobster House Bridge. You take the back bridge. So I guess, you could say that the Exit Zero sign does take you to Exit zero in West Cape May. So I don't think that's what the Garden State Parkway had in mind, that I'll take it. Or it takes us to Jack's house, which in that case, of course, yeah. Yeah. So either way. Either way. Well, I think it's fantastic. I have to tell you, as somebody that's been coming to Cape Maye since 1965, I will tell you this, that's the year I was born. Uh. Well, okay. Let's not get into that part. That's all right. Okay. Enough said End of story. we're done now. Happy Birthday. anyway, the site of Exit Zero always, always, always is, proceeded by the countdown. Usually starts somewhere around Ocean City. We start chopping off. Blocks of five miles. And then as we get closer, it's, in the last 10 miles we're going like, ah, nine miles, eight miles, seven miles, zero. it is such a big deal. But Cape May is a lovely place and Cape May has really benefited a lot from the effort. That you have put in with Exit Zero with the filling station and so on and so forth. Tell us about how things evolve for you when you got down here. As you said, you were an editor in, in New York City and a magazine editor. I believe it was Men's Journal, if I'm not mistaken. I. Yeah, that was the most recent one. Yeah. Okay. And so you come to Cape May and as you say, you're working at the pool bar. And by the way, I don't recall you ever serving me at the pool bar, but that's probably'cause they wouldn't let me, ibe at the pool bar. But that's another story for another day. So you came down here and you got this idea for a t-shirt, which led to this, magazine or actually Pennywise, which led to the magazine, but. Where was your head at? are you a natural born storyteller? What's going on here? Well, I think I'm an accidental entrepreneur, first of all. I only ever wanted to be a journalist from the age of 12 or 13. Well, journalists are long distance truck driver, I wanted to be a long distance truck driver for about 15 minutes. I grew up in Scotland and I thought it'd be really fun to drive long distances to continental Europe and sleep in the cab. It just seems like a very romantic thing to do. But, more than that, I wanted to be a journalist and so I did, I was a journalist in Scotland and in London and then New York. I don't know if I can call myself a journalist for putting Exit Zero out every week, but hey, I still write. So that's journalism of a sort. I think that when I came to Cape May, I had the little fancy that I was gonna do, like an earnest Hemingway, leaving the city and going to the Florida Keys. So that was the kind of romantic nonsense that was in my head. When Curtis Barau asked me to come down, I thought, okay. I'll leave New York City and I will come down to the beach and maybe I'll write a novel. And I will enjoy, you know, I don't drink daiquiris like hemming weed does, but I'll enjoy some cocktails by the beach and A I'll have a fabulous summer fling, a romance or two. Boy, wouldn't that be fun? And then I just assumed that I'd come back to New York after the summer and find another magazine job. So that was where my head was at. I guess Kate may very quickly got under my skin and after the summer was over, I didn't want to leave. I had no plans. I had no preconceptions. And when Curtis asked me to stay, and work on this book, and he gave me a little basement apartment where I hunkered up. and those were the days of the internet was a little 57 kilobyte modem that took about 20 minutes to connect. And, researching then was interesting compared to what it's like now. I did that book over the course of the winter, not knowing. Again, what would happen next? I really didn't know what I was doing next. I was just basically living in the moment, without really a plan. at one point I thought I might have to go back to the UK because my work visa was attached to my previous engagement in New York. It's not as if I had a permanent visa or citizenship at that point. So I think, uh, looking back I was probably a little bit all over the place, very much day to day thinking, what will happen next? And I ended up sponsoring myself. I. To stay in the country to get what was an oh one visa, they call it the genius visa. I don't know why they call it that, but, I think it was probably easier to get visas than it is now. God bless America. and so I sponsored myself to get that visa that kept me in the country. And then I thought, okay, I'm here now. I have to somehow try to make a living that's not in New York. And so I was here, Helped me to buy a house. This was the days when you could get a no Doc mortgage. And, somehow I got a mortgage. I don't know how that happened, but I got one and, exit zero was launched and I thought it would last one summer. I thought people would be sick of seeing the picture in the paper after one summer, and that would be it. And I would have to come up with plan B. Seriously, you thought that? Yeah. I thought it would be a one and done. it launched at 24 pages. I think by the end of the summer it was four, eight pages. And then next year it was, double that and it just kept going. it eventually stopped growing because social media happened and, newsprints been in decline for like 40 years. I remember growing up and being told there wouldn't be newspapers in my future. there, still are of course, but it's been in decline. So, the magazine, it was a big success and, still didn't really regard myself as an entrepreneur. I've never made a business decision because it was a business decision. I make decisions based on what excites me. And you know what? This would be fun. Let me try it. I've never done cost analysis or anything like that. Maybe I should have, a little later on, but, two years into publishing the magazine, I lived next door to a lady who owned a t-shirt company called Sue Luozzo Flying Fish Studio. And I said, Hey Sue, I'd love to get a couple of t-shirts made that say exit zero. You know, we have this nice logo. So she did that. And me and a couple of the people who were helping me with the magazine, including the photographer Alexa, we wore exit zero T-shirts. And this was in my house. We were doing the paper for my house, and one day this lady drives in and she wanted to. have someone come and take pictures and she saw a t-shirt and she's like, oh, I'd like to buy a t-shirt. Do you sell them? And I said, um, yeah, yeah, we do. Um, what, size are you looking for? And she says, oh, um, I think I'm looking for three mediums. I was like, yeah, yeah, we can do that. And that'll be$15 each,$45. And at the time I was trying to go on a date with a girl, in Philadelphia. And I had no money. I had no money. This was the early days of exit zero. And this lady, she left. I looked at Alexa, the photographer. We were a lot younger and thinner back then. I was a medium. He was a medium I. And I said, okay, get those t-shirts off. I'm going to put them in the laundry and I'm going to wash'em and dry'em and I'm going to drop them off at this lady's house in North Cape May'cause she paid me$45. And so I laundered those three T-shirts, dropped'em off in North Cape May borrowed$50 from my friend Mark Chamberlain, who owned North Beach Gym at the time, and drove up to Philadelphia for this date. armed with, just enough money to get there and back and buy dinner, and I literally had like$1 50 left at the end of it. So that gave me the thought, if someone wants to buy my t-shirts, maybe I should open a shop. So I spoke to Curtis Bau, who had sort of like a broom closet at the end of Congress Hall, and we decided to turn that into the first Exit Zero shop, and that opened in February of 2005. And, we were there for a few years and then we opened a shop and office on Sunset Boulevard in 2009, and then we doubled that in 2012. We took over the shop next door, and then in 2000, 15, the landlord said, the tea shop. Next to your store is available, it's up for rent, you know, all the restaurant owners in town. Would you tell me if there's any that you think would be interested in taking that over? I went home that night and I said to my wife, Diane, I would love to do a Curry restaurant. There's no curry in Cape May. There's no curry anywhere near here. We have to go to Egg Harbor 45 minutes away. And she was like, mm-hmm. A restaurant. She was over my dead body. I worked in the restaurant industry. It's brutal. Uh, so the nicotine, I said to my landlord, I'd like to open a curry restaurant next door. And he said, okay. he had faith in me, I suppose. I think a lot of the local restaurant owners thought it was crazy. My wife certainly thought it was crazy. Three months later, we opened it to zero Cookhouse. I basically research probably every night until four in the morning.'cause I knew nothing about running a restaurant and that terrified me. And so I threw myself into it, every aspect of it. We couldn't afford to buy a walk-in cooler, so I figured out this thing that you could buy for$300 called a robo cooler, I think it was. And deer hunters use them. You buy it. And you buy a digital AC unit and it tricks the AC unit to going down to like 35 degrees. And it worked beautifully. You have to insulate it, and it worked like a treat. We passed the county health exam and it worked really well as a walk-in cooler. so that was how the restaurant opened. And I think by July, we were. Top restaurant and Cape Me on TripAdvisor because everyone gave us five stars. And I think everyone gave us five stars because their expectations were so low.'cause they were like, what the hell does Exit zero know about running a restaurant? This is gonna be really bad. And they would go in and it was good. maybe sometimes it was very good and we'd get five stars. So at one point we were number one rated restaurant in Cape May, which was kind of surreal. and so we had a nice little run there. The restaurant did fine, it didn't, make anybody rich. It barely made money, to be honest. But it was fun. I really enjoyed it. Right. As a result of that, Kurt Basho again bought the gas station across the road and said, Hey, would you like to have your restaurant and your office and your shop all in one spot?'cause I'm going to buy it and we'd like to rent it to you. And I said, sure. And I said, we'll take the gas station as well. He's like, why would you do that? I said, well, I don't want somebody running a gas station right next to our business. I don't know what their aesthetics will be. I don't know what their customer service will be. It might look really dowdy next to a nice restaurant. I'd like to do the gas station as well, and that was terrifying. Um. Running a gas station without any experience of running a gas station. This big giant truck would come and then you would get a giant invoice a day later, for like$15,000 for gasoline. And, twice we had this kind of the worst case scenario for a gas station. We had gas tenders put in diesel instead of gas. That happened to us twice. And One of the times was actually to one of Curtis B's company Vans. Oh, he was fairly understanding. more noteworthy was, the couple from upstate New York who came by here in a convoy. the husband had a big pickup truck, and in the back were cages that they had their dog in there. They had weasels, or ferrets. his wife had a Subaru car with their four kids, and I. We had a Turkish G one student who maybe never understood them properly, was working there for the summer and he put diesel in the guy's truck. And this guy was a big dude. He was about six four. This was midday or just before midday on a Saturday. They were about to leave Cape May to go back home to upstate New York. This guy wanted to rip the kid's head off. I sent the kid home. I said, you need to leave. And I said to him, I can't tell you how sorry I'm, this is a nightmare. and I said to him, please, your wife, your four kids, your dog, your ferrets, you can bring them upstairs to a restaurant. in my office, I was working that Saturday. I will take care of you, we'll give you a food and drinks. we will get your, gas tank taken off and we will get it, stripped and emptied. And cleaned out.'cause this has happened to us once before. I said, we know what to do. He kinda gave me a look of horror. So he goes upstairs, the dog, this beautiful dog that I hung out with all day. It was so sweet. It was like a white pit bull mix. I then spent the next few hours trying to find a mechanic on a Saturday afternoon who would do that, right? And it took about three or four hours to find one. Thank God I did I think it was Chuck at Sunset, Otto. I still, he was amazing and they came and they did it. but that couple were here for seven and a half hours on a Saturday, on a roasting hot, July or August, Saturday, just desperate to get home. And I have to say that by the end, they were tooting their horn and saying, this is one of the most funny experiences we've ever had. We'll, never forget this. You guys took such good care of us. It was a nightmare, but. Really, it just turned into a story that we'll tell for the rest of our lives. So that, was one of the, fun parts of running a gas station, a bit of a roller coaster. and then Covid happened of course, and, we converted that sort of gas station forecourt into outdoor dining, and for a while people would roll up to get their gas. And then at five o'clock people were drinking margaritas on the other side of those gas tanks, those pumps. And that was quite surreal. people were like either horrified or like, this is genius. This is amazing. You know, it was interesting. We closed the gas station at five so that people could then eat, but there was a little bit of an overlap with someone standing there getting their gas tank filled while someone's having a drink literally like three feet away from them. that kind of got us in the news that got us talked a lot. About, and I think it really propelled our restaurant to the next level. we got the old vintage trailers that people could, safely dine in, and that became viral. We were on a, b, c news. we were everywhere. And, the restaurant became a huge success. So much so that, we were invited to go for the concessions at the Cape Mill Lewis Ferry terminal. Long story short, we took over. A huge operation there and overreached, overreached quite dramatically. And we had to cut short, after two and a half years because we were basically David playing in Goliath Sandbox. we were a little company that crashed through our own glass ceiling, but I think it all happened too quickly. We became the most talked about restaurant in the area. We went from having maybe 40 employees to having 200 employees between all of our venues. And it was too much, it was too much for me to handle. it was just too much money. I borrowed too much money going into too much debt. And, we'd had deeper pockets, but we didn't have deeper pockets. And it reminds me of magazines. a lot of magazines fail, just like a lot of restaurants fail. And the reason that magazines fail is. It's not necessarily because people don't like them. it takes a while for people to become, loyal fans and to become subscribers. And all the research I read was that most magazines got business because they just didn't have enough money to get past three years. And that three years was kind of the litmus test. Like if you can get past the first three years, then you'll probably build enough subscriber and reader loyalty to make it. But if you don't get past those three years, but you're gonna get business because it costs a lot of money to print. if you're printing a glossy magazine and you're printing half a million copies, it's gonna cost you about$600,000. That's a lot of money. So we had a great concept and people liked it, but we just ran outta money and, couldn't continue anymore and it definitely had a negative impact on the filming station and all other aspects of our business. So it's been a tremendously challenging 18 months. the backwash from that, the fallout from that. it's definitely been. A rollercoaster ride where this little exit zero climbed and climbed and kinda got to the top of the mountain, and then we're kind of falling all the way back down the mountain again. And this time, we're not gonna climb to the top of the mountain, or if we do, it'll be a different size mountain. It'll be more of a hill. I saw what it was like at the point where you have 200 employees and you're dealing with those stakes, and I don't want to go back to that. I want to, go back to my publishing roots. I did love doing a restaurant and we are still in the restaurant business and I do still enjoy it, but it is a tremendously difficult I. Industry, I don't think the people who go out to eat understand how difficult it is to get that food on your plate. It takes so much. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of resources and, the staffing issues since Covid have not really abated, the restaurant industry famously became horribly affected by Covid. in terms of staffing, a lot of people left the business and have not returned. I think in general, Americans, eat too cheaply in restaurants. Restaurants in other countries tend to be more expensive. People don't go out to eat. I. Four or five next a week, the way that they sometimes do in America, especially in resort towns. Mm-hmm. it's a tremendously difficult business. If you enjoy having friends around to your house and pour them drinks and making them food, then the chances are there are things about the restaurant business that you enjoy. And so I enjoy that. But the tremendously difficult things as well. So we are still in the magazine, in the restaurant business, in the retail business. Just not to the extent that we were two years ago. Oh, I appreciate the fact that you have scaled a large mountain, recognized perhaps that your, ambition outpaced your resources and are now looking at it from a different perspective. So many entrepreneurs fall into the same camp, but I do have to point out, it seems like your approach to it was. Gradual despite the fact that I think your last effort, the ferry, which was certainly a lot of things simultaneously, was a big undertaking. it still seems you went there piece by piece by piece, would you say that you were open-eyed what you were getting into, or did it surprise you when you got there to find out just how much it entailed? Yeah, I mean. It was that gradual, as you say, we started publishing, we did retail, we added a restaurant, and then we kinda did it all together. I think I knew when I took on the ferry that it was a huge undertaking. I did get some experience partners in to help, but they were expensive. And I think maybe the mistake was that we tried to open. With all guns blazing, because we wanted to make an instant impact, because first impressions are important. We wanted to have an instant impact, but the cost of having that instant impact was huge. It was also during covid, so the cost of the renovation were probably 30% more than they should have been. The cost of plumbing and electrical work. Back then was hideous. it really just was exponentially larger than it that would've been before. but instinctively, everybody told me when I was doing the ferry that you're gonna crush it. This is such an amazing location. And it was. And it is. And everybody thought I would crush it. So there weren't really any concerns. I thought it was gonna be a lot of work, but I thought we would crush it. I think nobody. expected the costs, the expenses to be so enormous. That was really what did us, we doubled the sales that the DRBA had done the previous year. Sales wise, we did well. it was really just our expenses that killed us, the payroll, the utilities, the rent. It was extraordinary burden. And so I probably still for the first year or year and a half, I thought we could get through it. And then after, two years, I realized that, I probably had to get out because I sort of wanted to get out before I was forced out, if you know what I mean. Mm-hmm. Yeah. so yeah. did I learn a lot? Yes. do. I always think that things happened for a reason. I'm not sure about that. I wish that we hadn't done the very, I, I'm really not going to sugarcoat it and say that. Well, it was an interesting experience. Yes, it was an interesting experience that I wish I'd never had. I could think of some other interesting experiences that I would prefer. I still feel excited about being in Cape May I still feel excited about Exit Zero. my wife perhaps doesn't share that same excitement. The funny thing is that when we launched the ferry, it was also literally the same month that my son was born. Mm-hmm. so it's certainly been a lot. At one time, trying to be a, good father in the midst of, the kind of biggest chaos and certainly the most stress I've ever endured in my life. so that was definitely an interesting coming together. your story is a wonderful story because I think it showcases pretty much the entire spectrum of what entrepreneurs experience Going from a stable place where you've got a paycheck and somebody's got certain expectations of you to this rather tumultuous place where, everything and anything is possible, but there's just so much that one can do. I think you've run the gamut and I think it's really important to note that. Being an entrepreneur is cyclical. That is to say that yes, you can indeed scale the mountain, while some don't quite make it to the top, you certainly did, but getting there does not mean one stays there. You have scaled back, but there's another mountain to climb and although it's not fair for me to ask you the question of what that mountain might be, I just want to put the bug in your ear, which I'm sure is already there. that there's gotta be something else out there that's on Jack Wright's mind. Yeah, I mean, what's perverse actually is that to my wife's horror, I have not got the restaurant bug. Outta me, despite everything that happened. I remain quite, allured. it's very alluring, the restaurant business. I think. I love creating things. I love the design aspect. I love creating a concept, creating a brand. Perhaps I should do more creation and not operation.'cause creation's a lot more fun. I would love to create things for other people. And so I'm probably gonna be doing a little bit of. Consulting, maybe marketing consulting and things like that for companies down here while still running the magazine and the restaurant. which would allow me to. One, hopefully be useful to other people while earning some money for it. And also kind of scratched my creative itch that I constantly have. I don't want to retire. I don't have any, ambition to retire. I also don't think I have any resources to retire. I like being creative. I like coming up with ideas and I like executing ideas. so I think, probably the rest of my Cape Me story is probably going to be wrapped up in that, might I end up opening some little 30 feet somewhere, maybe, or maybe I'll help someone else do it. I think I've, I. In the last few years, I've had a lot of operational, management experience at the sharp end that I probably didn't have before, which has been interesting, interesting and chaning. Mm-hmm. But, you know, I think it, it kind of leads me better prepared for what comes next, but whatever comes next, I want it to be full of creativity and being able to come up with ideas and actually see them put into operation. I hear you. Well, Jack, our time is up here. I wanna ask, is there anything you'd like to leave us with before we part company? I think the old saying, always trust your instinct. I don't know about that. I think trust your instinct and then sleep on it. Sleep on your instinct. Sleep on your instincts. I like that one. Okay. Don't, jump at the sight of the first shiny penny. Yeah. That's fantastic. Jack, I want to thank you so much for being here. I find your story very inspirational, as I'm sure that our listeners will as well. And I want to thank you for all the efforts in Cape May because Debbie and I have been the, grateful recipients of many of those as well. And so, thank you for that. This is Ed draws to the small business doctor, and again, I wanna thank my guest, Jack Wright. The, exit zero and the Cape May Wizard, I shall call him. I think that's fair enough, at least in my opinion. I wanna thank you all for listening, and until next time, I wanna wish you a healthy business.