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Eric Partaker is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mexican restaurant chain Chilango and a High Performance Coach. Eric was named "CEO of the Year" at the 2019 Business Excellence Awards and in his role at Chilango, he oversees strategy, operations, and marketing as well as product, brand, and culture.

In the earlier parts of his career, Eric was part of high-performing teams at McKinsey and Skype and he’s continued to build his passion for high performance not just as CEO of Chilango but as a high performance coach.

He’s completed a coaching certification and apprenticeship with Professor BJ Fogg, who leads Stanford University’s Behaviour Design Lab and has also been certified as coach by the High Performance Institute.

This conversation was so good and went into so much depth that I’ve broken it into two parts. This first part is focused on the early part of Eric’s career and the business lessons he’s learned from Chilango, while Part 2 will focus on building high performance habits and the insights Eric has gained from his lifelong fascination with personal growth.

In this episode we discuss:

- The importance of building career capital and why the people telling you to ignore university and big corporations might be wrong
- The art of good branding and how Eric has turned Chilango into one of the most recognizable brands on the UK high street
- How Eric broke records and made of the most successfully crowdfunded restaurant of all time

So whether you’re looking to take your career to the next level or upgrade your business, this episode will give you all you need and more.

Show Notes‍

• Introducing Eric [00:33]
• How was the turnout for Chilango’s second crowdsourcing investment, commonly known as Burrito Bond? [02:34]
• What was school like for Eric? What did Eric learn about consistency during his time in university? [04:09]
• How did having a mentor help Eric land a job at McKinsey? [07:28]
• With an increasing indifference to traditional career paths, is there still value in pursuing a career in traditional high-performance institutions? [11:50]
• What are the important lessons that Eric took learned from working at Skype? [17:51]
• Where did the idea behind Chilango come from? How did Eric know that Dan Houghton was the perfect co-founder for Chilango? [20:33]
• How did changing their branding greatly improved Chilango’s sales? [24:59]
• What questions should you be asking when deciding on your company branding? [27:10]
• How did Chilango come up with their vibrancy branding? What changes did they make to the business since adopting this concept? [30:01]
• How can talking to the right person help ease business rejections and miscalculations? [32:24]
• Where did the concept of Burrito Bond come from? What were the conversations around Burrito Bond before Chilango implemented it? [35:32]
• Why does social proof work in branding? How did Chilango utilise this idea? [43:46]
• Eric shares the inspiration behind their Burrito Bond 2 video [46:00]
• Closing remarks [49:04]

Resources

🖥 EricPartaker.com - Eric's personal website

🖥 ScaleUp Yourself - Eric's online coaching program

▶️ Chilango's Crowdfunding Videos for Burrito Bonds 1&2