Surviving the Side Hustle

E126 - Lessons from Ben LeRose: Playbook for Sustainable Growth

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 126

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What if growth wasn’t about grinding harder but about choosing the right moments to sprint, the right people to trust, and the right systems to make quality automatic? We unpack Chef Ben LaRose’s journey from dishwasher to architect of Fork and Delicious, tracing how his brand evolved from meal prep and small events to chef’s tables, influencer dinners, restaurant takeovers, and a fine‑dining food truck concept in the making. Along the way, we dig into the mindset shift that made it possible: hustle with purpose, don’t push from fear.

We break down a simple filter to spot the difference between momentum and force, then map out how to structure sprint seasons with clear dates, recovery, and communication that keeps relationships intact. We explore why leadership in the kitchen is as essential as technique, and how Ben’s language—people working with him, not for him—translates into operations that scale. Using our team triangle—coaches, captains, and crowd—we share how trust compounds capacity across service, social, and collaborations while protecting standards when demand spikes.

Accept and adapt becomes a core theme: when costs swing or plans shift, standards hold while methods flex. We show how systems—checklists, briefs, content calendars, inventory cycles, and cash‑flow dashboards—reduce reliance on motivation and turn discipline into default. The result is a brand that’s ready when opportunity knocks, not scrambling to catch up. If you’re building a side hustle or scaling a creative service, you’ll walk away with playbook-ready ideas: resilience rhythms, trust-led leadership, and the mindset to build experiences instead of forcing outcomes.

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SPEAKER_00:

What if the key to growing your side hustle wasn't about working harder, but about learning when to hustle, when to accept, and when to trust the right people? So, welcome back to another Friday recap clip episode. And this week I'm going to dive into my recent conversation with Chef Ben LaRose. So Ben has actually been on the show before. So if you haven't checked out that episode, that was one of the most downloaded and listened to episodes of Surviving the Side Hustle. I believe it was episode number 27. And it came out on December 27th, 2023. So you might have to scroll all the way back to find it, but I will also tag it in like the notes if you're interested to go check it out. So that was a great episode. And then this one here was really great to bring him back on to kind of catch up to see where he's at and what he's up to now. And the um big theme that I pulled from the second conversation with Chef Ben was that um a lot about what kind of things have been going on. So if you if you hadn't listened to the first one, you gotta go back and realize or find out that he's the founder of Fork and Delicious. Um he's really the mastermind behind some of the most like creative food experiences happening in the tri-state area. Um Ben basically, he's been a he was a dishwasher uh and he transitioned, built his way up, climbed the whole culinary system, and he's been a chef for the last 15 years. And he shared in this most recent episode how leadership in the kitchen uh matters just as much as cooking does itself. So, since that first episode, a couple years back, Fork and Delicious has evolved. It started off as like a meal prep and a small event. It's really it's grown into this chef's table, influencer dinners, restaurant takeover, collaborations left and right, and even early blueprints he's got planned for food truck fine dining concept. Ben's brand has really split into two entities. So when people are side hustling and starting these projects, like it's crazy to think about because Fork and Delicious is now like bigger and growing, even more so. You've got Fork and Delicious as like the signature catering experience, and then you also have Chef Ben LaRose as the personal chefslash consultant for high-level collaborations. But what really struck me most this time around wasn't just the growth of his business, it was the mindset shift behind it. So, as always, I try to give you guys three main takeaways from the conversation. The first takeaway from this week was learning the difference essentially between hustling and just pushing. Ben made a powerful distinction that hustling is doing the daily work with discipline and passion, but pushing is trying to force something before it's ready. When you push too hard, you risk breaking yourself or even your business. So, how does this relate to you? You want to ask, like, all right, well, where in your life are you hustling with purpose? And where might you be pushing out of fear or impatience? This is good because if you've kind of been following along me and my journey of coaching and my brand with uh TAPS coaching, specifically prime performance coaching and the prime performance process, I'm constantly always talking about the resilience principle. And true resilience isn't really about just endless grind. It's about the sustainable challenge and recovery. You want to try to like reframe your next push moment by asking yourself if this is really momentum or just force. There's a lot of times, like, I know for me, there's periods of times when I go into sprint seasons and I have to have the conversation with myself, like, hey, okay, this is gonna be difficult. There's gonna be less sleep. It's it's not forever, but it is for a designated period of time. Sometimes even having the conversation with Victoria um is helpful because like you can kind of see, like, okay, it's gonna be tough for a couple of weeks, maybe we can't do a date night, or maybe something else, but you gotta be able to identify when you're just daily hustling and when you're making that push or that sprint season, I I frequently say. So again, think to yourself, um, where in your life are you hustling with purpose and where might you be pushing out of that fear or impatience? And the second takeaway from the conversation with Ben was trust is earned through teamwork. So from the first conversation to this most recent interview, Ben's success comes from the team that he's built. He's got servers, sous chefs, social media coordinators, collaborators, all of these people he trusts because they believe in the vision as much as he does. He said it clearly. He said, I don't have people working for me, I have people working with me. So for yourself, your projects, and your side hustles that you're working on, who in your world right now is truly working with you? And who are you still trying to carry alone? That could be friends, that could be 1099, that could be people you're trying to collaborate with for projects. Think about that. And because when I'm thinking about socializing and building teams and such, this reminds me of the prime principle about social support and influence. And this ties to it directly. Just like Ben's team multiplies his capacity, remember your team triangle, your coaches, your captains, and the crowd multiplies your growth and your momentum. So it's important, like it's cool to build by yourself, but if you really want to scale and get to the next level, you can't be doing it alone. So, number three, the third takeaway that Ben shared was acceptance plus adaptability is the key to growth. From fluctuating food costs to last-minute event changes, Ben's mantra is accept and adapt. He doesn't lower his standards by any means. He adapts his process. That's how he stays consistent even in the chaos of working his full-time job and growing and scaling his business here. So, where in your business or personal life do you need more acceptance of what's outside of your control and more adaptability in how you respond? See, I'm constantly talking with people about juggling between so much stuff that they've got going on and how the outside world affects them and how they're thrown off emotionally or thrown off from unexpected circumstances and such. But you can't let that stuff get to you. You got to be able to stick to the systems, your rules and your routines, and know that efficiency isn't about perfection. It's really about building the systems and the adaptability so you can perform at a high level no matter what variables coming your way. Like, I don't remember where I heard it, but somebody was saying along the lines like motivation comes and goes, discipline is what gets the work done. But one step further from discipline is creating the systems. Because once the systems are in place, everything else is kind of disciplined and set and set the tone. So you can kind of step away from it. It's not even don't have to rely on your discipline anymore. So to connect the conversation, I know what it's like to be grinding that 70 plus hours a week and thinking that's the only way to succeed. But just like Ben, I've learned that standards matter more than speed. Being prepared, holding yourself accountable, and staying resilient is what allows opportunities to stick when they do finally show up. There's a lot of times when opportunities pop up, but we might be not like slip in or unprepared or not not ready for it. And how many times do we miss those opportunities? Ben wrapped up the conversation perfectly too by saying, accept, understand, and keep hustling. The hustle doesn't sleep. It's the same advice that he shared the first time around, and it still means a lot the second time through. So if you want to follow along with everything that he's building, whether that's the private chef's tables, pop-up collaborations, or the future food truck things that he might be building, check him out on Instagram at Chef underscore Benjamin underscore Lavrose. And at it's underscore forking delicious. He's open, approachable, and always willing to answer any kind of questions, whether it's business, cooking, etc. He's a cool dude, so you can shoot him a message, ask him what's going on, what's the latest updates on the projects, and also what the newest events are gonna be. I was worried wasn't gonna be able to get his episode out in time, but he's got this big event coming up um beginning of November. So shoot him a message, see if he's still got spots open for that, because that's gonna be uh like I would like to say a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I it's like once in a while type of opportunity. So you definitely want to make sure you take advantage of it because you don't know when it's gonna pop back up. Um, and I'll add this too, towards the end here. If you've never been to one of his dinners, do yourself a favor and go. Like, like we said, it's not just food, it's an experience that changes how you think about connection, culture, and craft. Because it's high quality stuff, high quality connections. So if you're someone out there who's listening to this, who's got a project of your own, you want to get around better quality people, better quality food, and inspiring people who are growing and scaling themselves. Because at the end of the day, whether it's business or life, the lessons from Chef Ben is don't force the plate, build the experience. Peace, guys.