The Founder Mindset: Why Strategy Outperforms Hustle Pre-Launch

0:00Welcome to the Emerging Brands podcast, sharing the stories behind brands you'll want to shop next. I'm your host, Kelly Bennett. I am a New York City based brand strategist for CPG food and beverage brands. In each episode, I'll take you behind the scenes of founders that are building better for you products and bringing them to market. it. Also, I talk to brand builders, retailers, industry experts, and tastemakers who help bring those cool products to your shopping cart. You will hear stories of real-life founders, their launch strategies, and practical advice you could use to grow your own brand or simply discover what's next on shelf.

0:42And the best part is you could shop all the brands featured on the show. This podcast is brought to you by Glimpse. Glimpse is an AI powered deduction management tool that disputes and recovers invalid deductions, winning brands, thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours back to founders so that they can focus on what really matters most. If you're a brand selling and retail, go to tryglimpse.com backslash trial for 30 days free and let them know I sent you. Now let's dive into the new episode. Hi everyone. Welcome back to a new episode of Emerging Brands Podcast with Kelly Bennett. This is a solo episode for founders who are starting

1:32Unknown Speaker:to move forward with taking their product ideas and making it into a brand that people will want to shop. I wanted to do a solo episode just focusing on the founder mindset when you're building a brand, especially in 2026. There's so much to consider, way more eyes on you from the beginning. And I wanted to send you into the new year, into the new month with some really great practical and strategic advice that I've learned over the years. So the first thing I really want to start diving into is when you're launching a brand this year, you want to make sure that you're able to have your own clear point of view because you are going to be asked so many questions from people outside of just you and maybe one other person on your team, maybe if you have like say a co-founder, but you're going to need to ask yourself a lot of questions and people are going to ask you a lot of questions.

2:41Unknown Speaker:Like what should you post on social media to should you raise money? What you should have on your packaging. I mean, those are bare minimum questions. There's so much that you are going to have to process and make decisions fairly quickly as you are building a brand. And most people listening to this podcast who are building a brand, this is their first time as a founder. And stepping into that role as a founder is such a huge move. You are doing something completely different. CPG, food and beverage, is its own world. And I hear this all the time from people who are currently working in corporate, who have worked in corporate, who are now going into CPG, stepping in the role as founder, CEO, and they feel like they are starting from scratch.

3:39Unknown Speaker:Probably you are more of that A-type personality, like myself, who are the type of people that take leaps and take big swings and do things that are bold and take leaps and and seize things when most people don't that's our personality and at the same time when you're starting a whole new career and you are learning about a whole new industry there is a steep learning curve and that's sometimes really hard to digest because you want to do things right you want to do things correctly. You want to feel like you are crushing it as a founder. So this episode is really about the mindset. I want to help you reframe some storylines or help you adjust how you're looking at things so that you are better pacing yourself as a founder in this new role because it's not just what happens pre-launch.

4:41Unknown Speaker:It's not just happens the buzz around your launch. This is, and not to sound cheesy, but this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. And I've seen so many founders over the years. I've been working 15 plus years with founders who my role has always been helping them take their ideas, either that be in the food, beverage, hospitality, lifestyle, wellness sectors, into a brand that consumers can shop. And that's looked differently over the years. But that's essentially what my whole career has been. I've taught thousands of founders at this point through workshops I used to teach. I had a whole platform of a business I used to have that was essentially sharing skills to early stage founders.

5:38Unknown Speaker:Like I have doubled down in working with founders. I just love working with founders. I love being in the behind the scenes of hearing an idea and making it into a brand. So I am also basing this off of truly at this point thousands of founders I've connected with either through working with me, attending my workshops, panels I've been on, interviews I've had with founders and just an assortment of being in the mix for so long. And so these are things that could feel really basic on its head, but really can make a huge impact. And currently right now I'm working with over 20 founders who are coming to market with new brands in 2026.

6:32Unknown Speaker:so that is only of February now it's the second day of February that I am recording this I am going to build that roster quite a bit this year I'm very excited about taking on many more clients so that is just going into the first month of the new year over 20 brands so I'm also seeing this in real time because yes, I've been doing this a very long time. However, there is some nuance every year that's a little bit different, different trends that are happening, things that are happening culturally, economically. There's just a lot happening and I want to make sure that you feel the most grounded as possible.

7:21Unknown Speaker:And we all have to do our own self-care and taking care of ourselves while we become a founder. This is something I've personally have struggled with over the years. I have definitely reached the point of burnout, crash out, literally couldn't get out of bed because I worked myself too much. And something that I'm really, really being mindful of this time around in this year moving forward as my business has been taking off. I'm so grateful. And at the same time, I'm also being hyper aware of how I'm taking care of myself. And also this is some of the advice I'm sharing with clients who are stepping into this new role.

8:05Unknown Speaker:And so that is the point of view I'm coming to you with today. So the first thing to keep in mind is that when you're launching in 2026, there's more brands than ever launching. The barrier to entry this space has decreased, which is awesome. But at the same time, you have way more competition than ever. Retail buyers are overwhelmed with so many brands pitching them. Investors have become overly cautious, especially in CPG. And consumers are smart. They are able to sniff out who's just jumping on trends, what products are gimmicky, and they are really demanding more from the brands that they are spending their hard-earned dollars from.

8:56Unknown Speaker:So yes, it's gotten way louder, but at the same time, I see it as a way to double down in the niche that you really want to build and the brand world that you really want to build because you don't have to do everything and you shouldn't do everything. You should really hone in on your lane. So the next thing I want you to think about is as you're building this brand world and as you're stepping into the role of founder, it can feel really, what is the right word? Vulnerable. That's a good word for it. You feel really vulnerable, especially when you want to look like you are competent, you are intelligent, you know what you're doing, and at the same time, you're also fighting internally with, oh shit, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what a co-man is, what is that, who do I need to talk to to source the right products and ingredients for my product?

9:57Unknown Speaker:There's so much happening right behind the scenes, and so it's this internal conflict that founders always have of wanting to appear a certain way, but also internally struggling with figuring it out. And in the year 2026, we also have that extra layer of building in public and sharing your journey and sharing on social media, networking. We have so much more exposure to the people behind brands than ever before. I'm going to dive into founder-led content in a moment, But just to set the stage. So when you're stepping into this role, you have to make a lot of decisions. And you have to also make those decisions from a place of clarity and not just looking around of what everyone else is doing.

10:48Unknown Speaker:Right? So common mistakes that I see here is that founders are jumping into design too early, packaging too early, probably doing photo shoots too soon. they're posting content with no point of view they are spending on production without even building demand for their product and so there's a lot going on and I definitely see the sense that people feel this urgency to go to market as quickly as possible and yes I love speed I'm very much a New Yorker I very much love the gratification of turning ideas making it into a product and with the right people and strategy and tools in place I think that we absolutely cut down on time which I think is a huge benefit however there's also this energy sometimes coming from emerging brand founders that feels frantic that they have to do everything right now and just make super fast decisions without doing the behind the scenes work because they feel like everyone else is going to jump on it or someone's going to take their idea and they are seeing posts of x brand just got into whole foods or x brand just raised five million dollars this founder was just featured on 30 under 30 right there's we are constantly in this cycle of information knowing what everyone else is doing and it very much could send an early stage founder into a spin and that is something I really want us to be mindful of so I get it everything feels urgent, everything feels important, you're starting to now spend money, which also brings its own slew of feelings with.

12:47Unknown Speaker:Maybe your family is investing in your business. Maybe you're spending your savings into this. Maybe you're working a nine to five to save up to get to the next step. Whatever the case may be, whenever we're spending money, it also too can bring on other challenges, right? And we want to make sure that we're doing things right. We want to be seen as professionals. So there's a lot of this inner turmoil, and I'm really genuinely saying this from my own experience of working for myself, basically my whole career. And so that's over 16 years now. um I haven't been a I've dabbled in some products based businesses over the years but by and large I've always been a service provider but working with founders by and large who were creating products so I get it from my own point of view and experience as a founder and also just being behind the scenes with so many brands so the next thing I really want us to tap into is the conversation that I usually get into with founders early on.

14:00Unknown Speaker:And in particular, because we're building brands in the year 2026 is founder led content. And I have a lot of feelings about founder led content. I hear a lot of the industry conversations around it. I understand the pros and I've seen the cons. And so these are the conversations I want you to have early on. Because again, very similar to what I was just saying about mindset, there's also this pressure that I see from early stage founders that they have to create content in a certain style, in a certain way, in a very much urgent way or very much of like scrappy behind the scenes way and showing every single step of the process.

14:50Unknown Speaker:And that alone could give someone a lot of anxiety on, okay, I'm building this brand. I'm learning a whole new industry. And wait, my friends, family, strangers on the internet are going to watch me do it. That already could set someone up feeling incredibly anxious and incredibly vulnerable when they're already taking such a huge leap. So what I do as a rule of thumb for my clients, this is what I tell my clients because I get this question almost every single day around founder-led content. And what I tell them and what I'm going to tell you is that yes, I do 99 % of the time vote for founder-led content.

15:36Unknown Speaker:Now, there's some things I will say because it has to be intentional. So I'll dive into that in a moment. but what I will say is that there is something to be said around showing up and showing your face behind the scenes when I've worked on this style of content this was over a decade ago so we didn't Instagram wasn't in the place where it is now TikTok wasn't a thing I was building in public and doing more founder-led content when it wasn't even a trend. It was something pretty groundbreaking a decade ago. And it was a huge gamble, I guess, in one way. To me, it was the scrappiest way of doing it because I had no marketing dollars.

16:21Unknown Speaker:So I knew I had to think outside the box. And I hadn't really seen brands do it. But I'm like, you know what? This would be cool. It was a community-based restaurant. Why not build it with the community? So that was my point of view a decade ago and it still is held true uh and if you haven't heard the behind the scenes of that I haven't made a tiktok on it but I I have seen the results we built that into a multi seven figure business multiple locations like it worked right and so I have also tested this myself and I have done the work to to really storytell build in public founder like content And at the same time, I've seen a lot of people now jump on this trend and ask me, why isn't it hitting for my brand?

17:09Unknown Speaker:And so what I always tell my clients is that before you lead founder-led content, very similar to the advice I just shared about having a point of view as a founder and really getting grounded in what your point of view is, is that I tell my clients to wait before creating content for their brand until their brand strategy is finished. Now, some founders get excited and they start posting. If that is the case for you, I think TikTok is a better platform because it's not as curated as a brand by and large. If you want to just start building your confidence and just getting a sense of creating content, I think you as a human, just as a person, not as a brand yet, creating content and starting to create conversations around the niche of the product you're building, I do think there is a case to be made for that.

18:07Unknown Speaker:And I have a few clients currently doing that that is working for them. They're building confidence. They're getting warmed up. They know that they're going to have to shift more into branded content soon. But it's been a really good way for them to just get comfortable on video. Because again, also being on video, being on camera, most of the time when we're building businesses, our hair is tied back. We may be wearing our sweatpants. We may be working from the couch. But at the same time, that's real and genuine. And so I get the fact that you want to show up in a certain way. But there is some levers to pull with founder-led content.

18:46Unknown Speaker:So let's talk about why this does work. I want to first start there. So building founder-led content or sharing founder-led content does build trust. It does build trust. Consumers now more than ever want to trust who they are spending their money on, who they're investing in, who they're shopping from. That's become more and more important to consumers. Back in the day when I went to college, this was 2003, 2004, I've always been obsessed with brands that have been transparent, who are better for you, who are really wanting to align with consumers' lifestyles and ethics and shopping behavior and how they want to show up.

19:38But back then, that was not the conversation.

19:42Unknown Speaker:That was absolutely not the conversation. I had so many professors, classmates literally laugh at me and saying, that's such a cute idea, but that's not reality. and I'm grateful I've stuck to my guns. So that was in 2003, 2004, it's 2026. So I've been talking about this for a minute and I still believe it then. I believed it then, I believe it now. People wanna shop from brands they could trust. And so founder-led content is a very powerful way to build that trust. They see you, they hear your story, they understand why you're building this brand And for so many founders coming to market now, by and large, not always, but by and large, there is a personal pain point.

20:29Unknown Speaker:They couldn't find a product that meets those pain points. So they founded, yeah, they created their own product and brand. And so that creates this relationship and that trust from such an early stage. also specialty retailers even larger retailers are paying attention they want also to have cool emerging brands that have buzz and demand around them I'm seeing it in real time from my clients who are going to market they did their brand strategy they got a great brand name they got great branding. They have a great product. And I'm seeing the inbound now of retailers showing up, which is always so cool.

21:20Unknown Speaker:And retailers are paying attention. They're paying attention. And so that is a great way to get traction so early on when it is not easy to get on a retailer shelf. You have to convince them that there's demand for your product, that it's worth getting on the shelf, and that you could drive consumers to then shop it and get it off shelf. Because really having it come off the shelves and into consumers' hands is the real tell, right? So you really have to tell a great, compelling story to have them believe in you. So having that founder-led content and building those relationships is really powerful.

22:04The next

22:05Unknown Speaker:group of people who are watching, and I hear this from investors, is that investors are watching. VC firms, family offices, angel investors, they are watching founders on social to see essentially what jockey they want to bet on. It is a very powerful way to create your own buzz and to get some really warm relationships building for when and if you want to raise capital to build and scale your brand. And so that alone is a very desirable lever that you would want to pull, right? This is not a cheap industry. most likely not everyone but most likely you're gonna have to raise at some point to grow why not get in front of investors who have been who've been watching you build who've seen what you've been doing that are curious about you know what's happening behind the scenes that to me sounds like a great way to get your name out there versus feeling like you are knocking on all these doors and no one knows who the hell you are.

23:24Unknown Speaker:I'm all about pulling as many levers as possible yourself to get as much buzz and demand around your brand as possible. Also, you are showing that there is demand for your products through DMs, through messages, through content, through people sharing your post, you leverage that to help build to the next step. It is one of the best ways that you can get your brand off the ground is showing that there's demand. Retailers want to see there's demand. They want to see that people want to shop this product. So if you could show them, hey, these people in your neighborhood want to shop this brand. I have demand for it.

24:17Unknown Speaker:I need to be able to send them to a retailer. When can we get this product on shelf? That is a much more powerful pitch than, hey, I have a cute brand. I would love to have it on your shelf. Which pitch do you think is really going to get attention? So showing this proof of demand is a huge lever that you could pull so early on. And creating your own founder-led content down to the nitty-gritty here is that it doesn't cost you money. This is a very expensive industry. It's not cheap. It's not a cheap hobby. And you want to make sure that you are doing things as cost-effectively as possible. I've touched upon this before, but even if you are funded and you have some fundraising behind you, you want to show that you are a good steward of that capital and that you will use it the most responsible way possible and that you're not just lighting money on fire.

25:26Unknown Speaker:That could be cute to get you started, but then when things get real, you cannot be just burning cash, right? And so you want to be as efficient as possible. Founder-led content and showing up is a very cost-effective way to do exactly what I just said. Building trust, having retailers reach out, taking watch, possible investors, creating proof of demand. You could do that in a very cost-effective way through founder-led content. Now, the pros, like I said, building your wait list, showing traction, building free brand awareness, showing that you could sell is huge. There's a huge upside. However, however, I always like to give you both sides of the coin.

26:23It can be a time suck when you're not quite sure how to leverage it.

26:30Unknown Speaker:And again, this is why I always tell my clients, wait on creating founder-led content or just content in general, honestly, until we're clear on what is the brand you're building. What is the storyline? Who is it for? Why are they gonna shop? What's the messaging that we wanna test? What is the buzz we wanna build? What are the use cases for the product? We get that all flushed out. Because if you're just trying things and kind of all over the place, you are going to waste so much time being unfocused. And very similar to you wasting money, this is also just as important. You don't want to waste time.

27:18Unknown Speaker:Time is one of the most finite resources that you have. It's also one of your biggest advantages. so do not waste it being unfocused and being all over the place also too going back a little bit further you want to show up in a professional way it doesn't mean that you have to be super corporate it could still be fun kind of that unhinged vibe but doing it in a strategic way there's a way of going about it also you could get burnt out so quickly if you're just posting at random and looking around the room and thinking, oh my gosh, everyone's doing this better than me and crashing out. I've seen this so much, so much.

28:04Unknown Speaker:And I always feel for founders when they hit that wall, right? It sucks. And so I don't want you to burn out. I want you to pace yourself and make sure that you are, again, in a good mindset for how you're building and how you're sharing it. also too you don't want to be a copy and paste of like oh I love X's brand uh and how they post on social fill in the brand name I'm gonna post like them you don't want to look like a copycat you don't want to look like you are just literally copying pasting a brand you admire the why why you admire that brand most likely is because they have their own unique lane they have their own point of view.

28:50Unknown Speaker:They have their own brand world that they're building and they have their own messaging. They have their own storyline. And I do see a lot of founders starting to pick up of like, oh, this storyline of I quit my corporate job and I launched a brand is getting traction for some brands, which yes, it's a great storyline, but it's not the only storyline. Everyone's storyline is going to be slightly different. When I work on brand strategy, that's something I work on with my clients of helping them understand what their own storylines are. Because you don't want to sound like everyone else. That's boring.

29:28Unknown Speaker:And that's honestly going to just feel like noise to people. They're like, oh, I already heard this story. Like, this isn't anything new. When you're building a brand, you want to have something fresh and different and new. So this is why you want to have your own point of view before creating content. Another thing that I really want to put on your radar is helping you really hone in on the advice that you take and also being strategic with what advice that you are asking for. And not even just advice, but what insights you're asking for. So one of the biggest benefits of doing this work pre-launch is that you're able to test.

30:17Unknown Speaker:So before you do your production run, before you spend money on packaging, before you finalize, okay, this is the product I'm bringing to market, you can leverage a lot in testing your messaging, testing flavors, testing packaging concepts, testing price points, testing content, testing retail interest there's so much that you could do to validate this product idea pre-launch that I think so many founders overlook and is such a huge advantage that big brands have this advantage right they have teams they have the infrastructure they have the data they have the resources for the pricey market research to be done but when you are bootstrapping and you're super early on we have to do this ourselves which is cool we got this but we have to be strategic about it right so really understanding how you are validating your idea and not just listening to everyone's two cents on what you should quote unquote should be doing really getting clear on what are you testing what are you looking for what are the insights that you want more information on and who is telling you those answers right I've had a client recently come to me really upset and it was because someone in her family didn't like her brand name and didn't like what she was building didn't like the packaging and I had to ask her in a little bit of a cheeky way but like that person is not your target audience that is not your consumer that person I wish them the best but I really don't care what they think they are not who we're selling to they will never want to buy your product they are just not within even the secondary segment of who who we're targeting here so respectfully I don't care what they think I care about the target audience that we are looking to sell your product to.

32:29Unknown Speaker:What are they saying? And she said, oh, I'm getting great feedback from my friends and they think it's really cool and they definitely are who would buy it. I'm like, exactly. That's who we listen to for product validation, for product testing, messaging, packaging, etc. We are not listening to random family members, respectfully. We're just not. And again, I'm saying this as someone who's worked for themselves a really long time, female founder. I have heard a lot of people try to tell me what I should be doing. And yes, I've taken some good advice over the years. But by and large, it was more so me being hyper-focused on what I wanted to build.

33:17Unknown Speaker:It has taken a lot of different paths over the years. I've had tons of different titles I've given myself. Lots of different ways I've gone about business. But at the end of the day, it has really been always the same storyline. Has been the same storyline that I've been obsessed with building. And so that's what I really want you to hone in on. Of yes, we have to be open. We have to make adjustments. But we also have to be discerning on who we're listening to. And that brings me to the next section is discernment. This is probably one of the biggest things I look for in a founder I say yes to working with and also founders that I'm working with to help them advise in the implementation of their strategy is understanding how you discern feedback, how you discern making decisions, and just really honing in on how you're going to show up as a founder.

34:20Unknown Speaker:And it is absolutely easier said than done, especially for young founders. It's really challenging. And I'm saying this with the energy of an almost 41-year-old woman versus how I was when I was 18 starting in school and having this concept for building emerging brands that were better for you. a lot of that language wasn't even a thing back then but how I show up at 18 is I mean how I show up at 41 is wildly different than how I show up at eight from when I was 18 but what I will say is that what I had to really work on internally over the years is discernment and what I really try to emphasize with my clients is helping them discern how they make decisions how they even communicate and these are the small things that I see from founders of how I could see if how how successful their brand might be in the long run of just how they communicate how they are building relationships how they are making decisions it's these small things that we do on a day-to-day basis that really start adding up and these are things I want to put on your radar are.