This time last year, Jerri Evans didn’t know anything about Los Angeles Dodgers star Mookie Betts.
Evans, a D.C. native, had returned to the city after her mother’s 2010 death and spent the past decade building Turning Natural, a juice bar with six locations in the region. Last winter, Evans was ready to grow the business, but with limited options for the kind of support she was looking for, the engineer-turned-entrepreneur was bracing for a long, uphill battle.
That changed when representatives from PlayersTV, an online network whose programming centers on athletes’ off-field lives and pursuits, reached out to gauge Evans’s interest in participating in a show called “Front Office” — something akin to ABC’s “Shark Tank” with a rotating cast of athletes serving as the prospective investors. Betts and his wife, Brianna, wanted to invest in a health-conscious business, and Turning Natural was identified as a fitting candidate.
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“We were going to hustle until we figured it out,” Evans said of her plans to grow the business before she heard from the show. “You kind of get discouraged because here you are nine years in, six locations, you have a proven model, you’re profitable, and you still can’t walk into a bank and ask for seven figures.”
The show is one of several athlete-focused programs on the network, alongside a DeAndre Jordan-hosted vegan cooking show and a reality show starring Dwyane Wade, among others. It’s the result of a marketing partnership between PlayersTV and banking giant UBS, which tapped former Pro Bowl defensive end Adewale Ogunleye as its head of sports and entertainment in 2020. Through the partnership, UBS created three programs for PlayersTV, including “Front Office.”
During the waning years of Ogunleye’s NFL career, which ended in 2010, the former Chicago Bear became more money-conscious. He lamented the “shady characters” who offered questionable investment opportunities to players, and he wondered why they weren’t being told about the same wealth-building tools and institutions to which other millionaires had access.
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He pitched the idea of UBS partnering and working more closely with athletes to help them better capitalize on their entrepreneurial pursuits, leading to his role and eventually the PlayersTV programming, meant to open the door for meaningful projects and conversations about money.
“We’re reimagining the way people should be looking at investing with clients,” Ogunleye said of his work at UBS.
That’s how Evans connected with Betts, the featured investor in a soon-to-be-released episode of “Front Office” who was looking to expand his portfolio by investing in a small business.
Showrunners searched for small business owners with the understanding that Betts would be interested in a company branded around a health-conscious lifestyle, and they eventually found Evans.
Evans grew up in Anacostia with her mother, Annette, who was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer in 2001. With limited access to healthy food options, Annette relied on homemade fruit and vegetable juices to meet her nutritional needs, and she eventually began selling those juices from her home. Annette was in remission for nine years following her initial diagnosis, but by the time the cancer was found to have returned in 2010, it was too late. She died less than two weeks later.
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The loss left a void that pushed Evans to reassess her priorities. Mentally exhausted, she quit her engineering job and moved from Atlanta back to D.C. She wanted to make money, but she didn’t want to go back to engineering. She wanted to take care of herself, but she wanted to honor her mother’s legacy.
Three- to seven-day juice cleanses were a regular part of Evans’s life, and her friends occasionally partook, although they typically enjoyed the product more than the process. They started requesting the juices so often that Evans eventually launched Turning Natural in 2013, selling juices from a church cafeteria.
Over nine years, Evans built and expanded Turning Natural, which now operates five D.C. locations and another in District Heights, Md., selling veggie patties, black bean burgers and salad dressings along with playfully named juices such as “Green Latifah” and “Mikale Jackson.” She planned to expand the product line and to push those products into more stores and online retailers but initially anticipated that goal would take years, she said, because banks viewed her businesses, which operate in underserved communities, as too great a risk.
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In the “Front Office” episode filmed in January and scheduled to air Oct. 25, Evans tells Betts and his team about Turning Natural’s backstory. Evans said she felt like she bonded with Betts over their appreciation of healthy eating and their mutual connection to Nashville — where Betts was born and where Evans attended Tennessee State.
Evans requested an investment of around $250,000. After Betts and his group deliberated, Ogunleye escorted Evans back to the boardroom, and she eventually accepted a seven-figure deal.
For Evans, the deal with Betts and his team represents something deeper than financial support. It touches on the very sentiment that drove Ogunleye to help launch programs such as “Front Office.”
We’re “not just talking about franchising but having access to financial advisers and having access to amazing people,” Evans said. “I think those are some of the things that people often forget when it comes to scaling a small business: It’s not just the resources. Give me all the money in the world, but if I don’t know what to do with it, I don’t know how to properly put it in places to grow my company.”
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Evans said she hadn’t followed sports since the Washington Bullets changed their name to the Wizards in 1997. After the “Front Office” experience, her burgeoning baseball fandom may grow alongside her business.
“Of course I’m a Mookie Betts fan,” she said. “I’m not just saying that because he’s an investor — he’s actually really good! And I’m understanding more and more about baseball, so that helps, too.”
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