257. Building a Business That Still Feels Like You

0:01Welcome to Startup to Scale, a podcast by FoodBevy. I'm your host, Jordan Buckner. Join me as I talk to aspiring entrepreneurs, seasoned industry experts, and everyone in between as we unlock the keys to growing from startup to scale.

0:18As companies grow, something subtle often happens. The business starts to change the founder and the founder starts to change the business a little bit. Decisions get filtered through sometimes investors, advisors, different expectations they have. And slowly the company can stop feeling like an extension of the person who started it and its own thing. Now, this can be a good thing, but a lot of times it happens over time slowly. And founders sometimes look into the business and say, like, this isn't what I intended to be. And so today I want to talk about identity drift, kind of what it looks like, why it happens, and how founders can reconnect with the values that shape their business in the first place.

1:01So for this conversation, I am invited on Veronica with JPG Resources to explore how founders kind of lose and rediscover their intuition as they scale. So Veronica, welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much, Jordan. It's great to see you again and great to be here. And hi to everyone listening and watching. So Veronica, I love talking with you because you have experience both as a founder and then also helping other founders after your exit as well. And, you know, just to kind of start things out, when for you yourself or when you talk with other founders, what are the common things you hear around why people start this call like a business or a CPG business in the first place?

1:41Why they start it? Well, it's a passion project, right? I mean, usually it's something they're very passionate about. Often founders are their own demographic. And so they're kind of solving a need that they have within their own life or that somebody close to them has. And so it's something that that they're very close to and very passionate about when they start. Yeah, I think that's very true. I just think back to when I started Tea Squares, it was all around the idea that I could not drink coffee anymore. And I wanted a better way to get my caffeine and found myself not really drinking tea.

2:14And so created a product to give me that energy and tea boost of having tea in a energy bar or snack bar. I'm curious to know what was your kind of why behind starting your product? Well, my oldest daughter, who was six at the time, decided to become a vegetarian. And I was packing her school lunches and I really struggled with healthy, whole, you know, kind of filling food that would get her through the day that she would actually eat as a six year old. And so that's why I started my bars and started making them with fruits and nuts and dates and chocolate and things that I would blend together.

2:52So she didn't know what was in there, but but it tasted good. And so that was a foundation for me as a busy mom, you know, trying to solve a problem in my life. And because my bars were lifesavers for me, I thought, wow, these could probably help other moms, you know, solve the problem of getting their kids to eat healthy whole foods. I love that. And that's with your company, Pure Organic. And, you know, I'm kind of curious as you're building the company, what are some of the ways that outside pressures start to reshape the way you're doing business? Yeah, I mean, so many. And it's such a good question.

3:25I have a story. I was sitting on an airplane next to an older gentleman early on when I just launched Pure Organic. And I was so excited. I had bars in my bag and I shared some with him and I told him my whole story and how I was going to grow this business. And I'll never forget one of the things he said to me during that conversation was, you're going to build a bullet train that you can't get off. And I thought to myself, I hope so. Like, that's what I want to do. Like, I want to build this, you know, fast train that disrupts the market. And I didn't quite understand the warning at the time.

4:06But I thought about that through the years as I built my company. I thought about what he said. And it really rang true because as your company grows and as it evolves and as you bring on more people, you start to definitely sometimes feel out of control. And like you've lost that original purpose and that things are moving so fast and you've kind of built this monster, so to speak, that controls your life instead of you controlling the business. and ways that happens. Like you said, it can be slow and it can be subtle, but as you grow and you need more support, and we all want growth and we all want support and we all want to scale, those things come with more opinions, more people that you need to listen to and appease.

5:01It comes with an expanded customer base that are going to have different ideas and different needs. And so those are all of the things that can make you feel like the business is driving you instead of you're driving the business. I think that's so true. And one thing that is true is any business always evolves over time. And so that is a given. It will change. but I think a lot of founders really underestimate while they're in the moment how much a single person's comment can change the direction of the product or how people perceive it. I remember trying and sampling the T-squares early and had a single person make the comment of saying like, hey, I saw your package on the shelf at Whole Foods.

5:46It looked interesting, but I didn't buy it. And now that I get to try the demo, like this is actually good, but I didn't buy it without hearing your story. And now like I didn't do a big focus group or expand to like do a large sample size is basically off of that one comment that we actually redesigned our entire packaging. And I tell that story, but it was really like one person, like maybe two or three others kind of mentioned different comments. But the outsized impact that a negative or positive comment can have on how you make decisions when your sample sizes are so small, because that's the only feedback that you're getting.

6:19And so it feels like a very important data point. Yeah. And, you know, that's a great story. And you have to have kind of a thick skin because you're going to get all sorts of different opinions and data points. But yeah, I mean, those type of comments and suggestions from the people around you, your customers, you know, I think as a founder, it's important initially to kind of write your non-negotiables, right? And you probably will have to even prioritize your non-negotiables because some of them will maybe become negotiable. You know, for Pure, for example, we had, we used this organic tart cherry and it was very expensive.

7:04And my investors wanted me to edit the formula to replace some of those cherries with citric acid, which delivered like on the tartan, but without the cherries and at a lower cost. I remember just thinking, you know, I don't want, I want my child when they eat this bar to get all the goodness of all the cherries. And it probably, I mean, it cost me a lot of headaches and money throughout the years, but I didn't bend on that one because I just felt like that was a value that was important to have, you know, this, this whole real food in my product. But other things like do we need organic wild-grown blueberries or can we do just organic blueberries?

7:43Decisions like that that might have saved money were decisions I was willing to make. So, I mean, I think you've got to understand sort of where you stand as a founder. Write down your non-negotiables. And also, you know, people that come alongside you are meant to kind of sharpen your thinking, not override it. And so I think it's important as you bring alongside investors and teammates to think about, you know, are they already aligned with the values of this company, the lifestyle this company is trying to uphold? And if you get people that are aligned in those ways, it makes moving forward a lot easier.

8:24I think that's a really great point of writing down the non-negotiables for your business, both for the product and for how you want to run the business as well. If you look to some of the companies who are most successful in the last 10, 20 years, a lot of them have a very strong point of view on their product, how they did business. And that actually plays a big role in attracting both customers and attracting partners and retail partners, investors, distributors, because they want to follow people and work with people who have a strong point of view that they believe in. But I know it can be hard.

8:59And as you mentioned, some things do feel non-negotiable at the beginning, but then you realize like, OK, after you're testing those, they don't really matter as much. And you can really get to the core of what is most important, which is usually one to three things. And so I think that's so powerful. I do want to touch on investors, which you mentioned a lot, because I feel like that's one of the big contention pressure points for this outside influence. Because, as you know, building a CPG brand is expensive. Most founders vastly underestimate how much money and time it takes to get to sustainable, profitable, something that you could run the business without investors.

9:34And invariably, a lot of companies start having those conversations because they need the money to make their business survive. And I feel like because of that, they are almost in a place of less negotiating power, right? Because in the back of their mind, they know like, okay, if I don't get money, like my business could very well go out of business in a couple of months. And so they end up saying yes, or maybe being agreeable because of the money. But I'm kind of curious from your perspective, how you've experienced or have you seen investors start to really push and pull at the identity of the company?

10:06Yeah, it's important to have investors unless you can self-fund. And balancing that, it's important to have the right investors. What I found in my experience is that investors love data and founders love intuition. And as a founder, I think most founders do have very good intuition because of the things we talked about early on. It's their passion project. They're their own demographic. They're very, very close to this. But I tell founders all the time, start collecting data from day one. Your own data from your own customers, whether it's during a demo, asking them about flavor choices, getting their feedback on packaging, whether it's small, easy surveys through social media, anything you can record that is data, start creating that database so that you can use that to kind of back up your intuition, right?

11:03So you're not just saying, I feel like this is the right way to go, but you're saying, you know, this is the direction I think we should go. And here's what my customers have been saying for four years. And so that's, I think, really important as you grow, not only with investors, but also with retailers. As you talk about launching new products and new flavors, showing them that you're close to your consumer and that you've been talking with them and gathering their thoughts and insights since day one is really impressive and will help you push through the initiatives that you believe in. Have there been any types of data points your presentations that you found particularly useful?

11:46Like, was it looking at customer growth rate or the reviews from customers or like e-commerce conversion rates? I know a lot of people are like, what should I track and how to track it? Do you have any insights on like what kind of helped best in determining how the company was growing? Yeah. I mean, as we started growing our social presence, we identified kind of our core users and our core community. And we created a community that we would send prototypes to and get their feedback on different things. And that was a great way for us to just get insights from core users on our product. So like I said, whenever we did demos, I would have like a list of questions for myself or the people doing a demo just to get some more feel from people that maybe weren't necessarily our customers, but were out in those markets buying.

12:42And then any type of retail data I could get from my retailers, I would, even if it was a small mom and pop store, you know, and just recording how much they're buying, how much they're selling, the different markets, you know, the velocities and the different types of markets. Those are all really valuable data points and just give you a lot of knowledge on just the business side of growing, you know, your business. I love that. I think one thing that always helps as well, which is hard for especially for a food business and really for any business is to have a North Star metric that I found in terms of determining are you focused on velocity for your product?

13:20Are you focused on like retail growth? Are you focused on e-commerce sales or conversions? And it can change over time, but at least for a period of time, like what's the one metric that you're really tracking is one of the most important, obviously, besides just total revenue, and to use that to test how decisions affect what's happening in your business. And so I think that's helpful. And then, you know, one thing that I've seen just kind of closing out on the investor side, a lot of times I've heard from investors that they actually don't want founders to blindly follow their comments, right?

13:53They actually want to have their opinions considered, not followed, right? They want it to be thoughtful. They don't want to be dismissed, but they want to know that founder of the company is actually looking into their ideas. And it could be a yes or it could be a no, but that it was considered. And I think that actually lends to your credibility a lot more than just blindly following or blindly dismissing what investors have to say. Yeah, for sure. I mean, and to layer on to that, I think it's really important that founders try to stay close to the parts of the business that they love and are passionate about.

14:29I think one of the things that I've observed is, for example, when I took on investors, the natural, you know, kind of next step as we built a team was to make me the CEO of the company. But I actually told them that I didn't want to be the CEO because I wanted to be, I wanted to direct all of the marketing. I wanted to be the face and the voice of the brand and have more of my time spent on innovation and new products. And so we actually brought in a CEO that I worked closely with, but then I didn't have to like manage people and manage finances and all of that side of the business, which really wasn't my passion.

15:11It freed me up to spend the time doing what I love. And I think that's another way for founders to kind of keep close to the business instead of losing themselves also, but it comes with the ability. You have to have the ability to let some things go, right? Which is hard as a founder. Not total control, but as you grow and you can't have total control everywhere, it's important to say, okay, where do I shine as a founder? And that's where I'm going to go. And I'm going to bring people in, experts in alongside me that shine in those other areas. Very insightful. I know, you know, like Elliot Egan with TIG Collective.

15:51And, you know, one thing that Elliot always talks about is like the skills that are needed as a founder are different than the skills of a scaling CEO. And just because you started with the company and had the idea ready to get off the ground is actually just a different skill set. It's not saying that you can't grow and some people can grow into that new skill set and others actually aren't that great of a fit for it. And so it's so important to recognize and understand where you want to be and where you want to grow and if you want to adapt to that as well. You know, one thing that I've also noticed is sometimes your business does need a major change or major shakeup.

16:28And so when should a founder start to consider that it is time to completely change the way that I'm doing things? And a lot of times that comes from both internal instinct and probably those external opinions. And sometimes it can be hard to know when to actually listen and make a big change? Yeah, I think every founder should brace themselves for the fact that as your business grows, you are going to have to make some big changes. And that in order to go more mainstream or reach more people or scale, you know, I mean, there's a million reasons why, but you will have to change some things. What works in the very beginning with kind of a niche group of people is not going to work generally the exact same way.

17:13as you grow into a bigger business. So I think that's something that founders have to accept. And then beyond that, it's like, okay, what are those changes? And again, what are my non-negotiables? But what can we do, you know, to reach more people, you know, to bring more people in under the fold? And it's exciting. We did about five years in, we did a complete packaging rehaul as well, overhaul as well. And we did that. Because, you know, I had experts alongside of me saying, hey, you know, your package is good, but it could be great. And if it's great, think of how many more people we could reach.

17:54And sure enough, you know, I trusted experts. I worked with the right people to redesign the packaging. And we saw about a 20 % lift in sales after we launched the new packaging. And so it's changes like that that you have to be open to. If it's worked for you in the past, something better could be there to work for you in the future. So having that open mindset as a founder is really, really important. And then also, you know, trusting the individuals that you bring alongside, you know, listening to them and hearing them and weighing what they're saying with your intuition is extremely important.

18:34I love that insight. You know, that kind of brings me to a closing thought that I had as well as for founders who are listening that maybe feel like their business has drifted too far from their purpose and their alignment. What would you recommend they do? What steps would you encourage they take to realign their own kind of self with the business? Yeah, I mean, I think putting some, you know, mindful thought into where they were, where they want to go, like what, why did they start this business in the first place? And where do they want to take it kind of revisiting the roots, so to speak? And then I would say trying to either bring alongside experts in certain areas that you might be struggling in to advise you.

19:24JPG has advisor our founder cohorts, which I love because we bring together like 12 founders and they learn something new every week. But they also have each other, which is huge, I think, to have a founder community where you can talk to other founders who are struggling about the same type of things. So that's, you know, that's another way to get perspective on a business that might have drifted a little bit. You know, talking to other people who are in the, you know, kind of doing the same thing or in the same boat as you is important as well. And then just, you know, making sure you're close to your customer.

20:01I mean, I think most people start because when you start a business, like you're so close to your customer, right? Your own demos, you're answering all your own emails, you're doing your own social. And then as you grow, you get more and more disconnected to the customer. So I think just like going back to your customer, too, and understanding what their needs are to help kind of realign and drive the business going forward is an important strategy, too. I love that. And I think that is so instrumental is having that group of trusted advisors, peers who can really talk through these things with is so important just to level set your own instinct and expectations.

20:44Because a lot of founders like they'll have a gut feeling that something's off, but don't quite have the confidence to know or which direction to take or how to make that change. And so having that support system and network can really help navigate that. And I love, you know, JPG is founder cohorts because of that as well, because then you have a structured group of peers to to work with who are also not going to be biased in any certain way. They just want you to be successful. So absolutely love that. Yeah, 100 percent. It's a great program and it's a great way to to just get some more solid footing for founders.

21:20Well, Veronica, thanks so much for being on today and for sharing this and really, you know, through your experience, everything that you've learned and now the work that you've done to help founders as well. And, you know, if anyone's listening and is curious about joining the founder cohorts, I'll put the info in the show notes so you can learn to see if they'll be right for you. Thanks so much, Veronica. Thanks, Jordan. I appreciate it. And thanks, everybody, for watching and listening.