311: How to Turn Employees into Partners with Tim Rexius
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Tim Rexius, Serial Entrepreneur and Founder of Omaha Protein Popcorn, shares how he helps people reach their personal greatness through health, fitness, and nutrition.
We explore Tim’s journey from homelessness to multiple successful ventures, the strategies behind Omaha Protein Popcorn, and how purpose-driven leadership creates long-term impact.
Tim introduces his Entrepreneur Creation Framework—Identify Them, Give Them a Voice, Coach & Mentor, Secure Financing, Let’em Do It Their Way—a system that turns talented employees into entrepreneurs, scales businesses, and drives innovation across industries.
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How to Turn Employees into Partners with Tim Rexius
Good day, dear listeners. Steve Preda here, the host of the Management Blueprint Podcast and the founder of the Summit OS® Group with the Summit OS® Business Operating System. And today I have an exciting entrepreneur on the show. When do I not have exciting entrepreneurs on the show? I always do, but this is probably next level. So Timothy Rexius, he’s a serial entrepreneur, including the owner of the world-famous Omaha Protein Popcorn, which is launching in like four countries a month. He was Entrepreneur of the year, and he’s creating companies left, right, and center. So without further ado, let me introduce Tim Rexius. Tim, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I’m honored to be here.
Well, it’s exciting to have you here, and we’ll have a good conversation talking about your special sauces. So let’s first start with your ‘Why’, your personal ‘Why’. What is driving you, and how are you manifesting it in your entrepreneurial ventures?
My ‘Why’ is, especially when it comes to the fields I’m in, all the companies I own are around health, fitness, and nutrition, and helping people find their own personal piece of greatness is an honorable trait. I wake up every day knowing I get to help people, and that for me is everything.
You’ve seen the power of helping someone look and feel their best and what that can do to change them.
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And the fact that I get to be part of that is amazing. For me, it still gives me chills up my spine all these years later and that I get to be part of that story. It’s my ‘Why’. I’ve seen the power of helping somebody lose a hundred pounds. I’ve seen what that can do. And helping somebody overcome a death, a financial reversal, a divorce, or whatever it might be. And I get to be part of that story page, and that’s just awesome.
Yeah, that’s great. Shouldn’t all leaders think that way? Because this is what leaders do, right? We help people become the best version of themselves, be more than they imagined they could be, and that’s highly empowering. Tell me about Omaha Protein Popcorn, and also tell me about how you’re launching all these businesses. Maybe that’s going to be your framework that you’re going to discuss because you are creating entrepreneurs. But let’s first start with the story of how you created yourself as an entrepreneur, and then how you stumbled upon this protein popcorn concept.
I’ll give you the quick and ugly version. I started in nutrition back in high school and into college. Loved it. I got the chance. I was really poor when I was 19, 20. I mean, most people are, but I was really poor. I was sleeping in my car, homeless for a while. And I was like, “Okay, what do I have?” Well, I’ve got the ability to talk. I can talk like nobody’s business, like I can sell, so it looks like I’m selling myself. Something easy to do in the Midwest here in the United States in the summer is mow lawns. So I started my first business, Poor College Kids Lawn Service, and just started hustling door to door, and got myself out of my homeless situation, and loved it, as far as the money.
And I loved being on my own. Wasn’t a big fan of mow and lawns, but I could do it. So I loved the nutrition, and it was in college, and college really didn’t prepare me for the entrepreneurial journey. I didn’t have family money. It was on my own. And it didn’t really prepare me for finding alternative financing measures or how do I start a business. So I worked in corporate America for six and a half, seven years. When I was 29, I was just young enough and dumb enough to go for broke. I quit my really good paying job, and start my first nutrition store in Omaha, Nebraska, called Rexius Nutrition. Named it after myself, brought in the whole mom-and-pop feel back to what I thought was an over-corporatized industry. And one store led to two stores, led to three stores, and I met my amazing wife. And within a year of meeting her, we went from one state to five states. And now we have franchises operating in five, and it just worked out really well. And it was still the highlight of the retail store experience, and we just had a different experience there. And at the same time as we’re scaling that business.
I’m sorry, Tim, how is Rexius Nutrition different from other nutrition stores? What was so attractive that you could spread like wildfire?
None of my staff knows what I make on anything. Their job isn’t to know what I make on anything. My job as an owner is to know where the pluses and minuses are. My job as an owner is to know where the gross and net profits are. My staff’s job is to make happy customers. That’s it. And I think that in nutrition, it really got turned into high moving, high sales, high pressure, talking into the most expensive stuff. And realizing when it comes to health and wellness, it’s each person is their own individual storybook.
There is no cookie-cutter. There is no one-plan-fits-all. It doesn’t exist. So if you have a bunch of 18- to 19-year-old kids selling products they don’t understand for the highest commission they can get to people of different walks of life, you’re not going to have a lot of success other than a moral standpoint. I felt it morally. I thought it was wrong, but from a business standpoint, it didn’t make sense. Because you’re not creating customers for a lifetime, you’re creating a one-time transaction. And I thought, okay, if I focus on the person and solving their problem, I create a 20, 30, 40, 50 year repetitive business cycle.
And the only job I’ going to do every day is add one more person to that cycle. And all of a sudden you can grow an empire. And I’m doing it morally sound. I’m doing it based on your health. If you come in with a list from a trainer of the 20 items they want you to take, and I start asking you questions about your health, your medications, like where are you at? Like your lifestyle. I start asking all the questions. I’m like, hey, you don’t need these 20 things, you need these 2. Yeah, I’m not going to make as much money today, but now that person trusts me for the next three or four decades to the point that they’re bringing in their network, their family, their neighbors, their kids, everybody.
And
that's how you grow a health business is by looking out for the constituents' health and their end goal more than mine.
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And all I need to do, if I do that once, is I need to do it a couple hundred more times. And so we are results-driven, not profit-driven. And so most of my staff never knew what I made on anything until they got into the management side. And then I’m like, okay, well, you’ve shown talent here. You’ve shown the drive. You’re doing a great job. Let me show you how the math of this all works. And I explained to them, it’s very tempting to push the high-dollar item. I get it. But that’s the check for today. I want to check tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year.
Okay. I love that.
That’s how I did it. That’s how I built the structure of it. And so how we built the franchising structure of it was the same thing. Once I had a great manager and they understood it. Okay, cool, you need to be an owner. I’ve taught you, I’ve trained you, you know how to do this. You’re talented. I mean, if you’re really talented, you’re not going to stay working for me. Let me make you an owner. Let me show you the fun of being an entrepreneur and being underneath our cloud of expertise that we have. We can help you, and boom, store after store. And it’s always been kind of true and I got to be for other people what I needed at that younger age that I didn’t have. And that’s also part of my ‘Why’.
I can create better, more well-equipped business owners who deserve the opportunity versus
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