278. Building Good Journey and the Mindset to Do It Again

0:00Welcome 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.

0:18What does it look like to build a CPG brand when you've already seen both the highs and lows, successes and failures on the journey, and have really developed that mindset of how you want to build a business next. So my guest today is Christopher, who's built Good Journey and have amazing products. We'll kind of get into those. And I really want to talk to him today about how he's approaching this company with the new mindset, kind of grounded in self-awareness, mental health, and long-term stability or sustainability. You know, it's interesting because now we're just talking, Christopher has built Good Journey.

0:54He's been in this company for five years, which is actually longer than his previous company and lots of kind of fun, interesting milestones along the way. And, you know, also just want to talk through what that's been like and how he's grown up through the business as well. Christopher, welcome to the show. Awesome. Thanks for having me, Jordan. Of course. I was just looking back. We originally, as we were mentioning before, recording the episode back in 2023. So this is like a fun follow up to that. If you missed that episode, you can go back to episode number 144, which is pretty exciting, which you can learn more about the origin story a bit.

1:30But for those who don't know, I want to start with Good Journey, just to describe what the company is and what you're building.

1:37Kristoffer Quiaoit:Yeah, so Good Journey, we make decadent, low-sugar, low-carb donuts and cookies. Our purpose is to empower people to be happy and healthy. So not just on the product side, but like, how do we as a company stand for this idea of being happy and healthy, right? So yeah, it's something that kind of stemmed from the last company of going through my own journey of, you know, growing a company, but also being unhappy. And so how do we take this deliberate purpose and incorporate into who we are as people and then bring it out to our customers and all the people that we work with? I absolutely love that.

2:13So, you know, I think it really resonated with me. It was like good journeys for a lot of people who are like going on journeys themselves around food, health, nutrition and eating well. But then also just that personal, you know, growth mindset of you as a individual and bringing more pretty good into this business. Then I know the last business was as a really, really stressful moments to it.

2:35Kristoffer Quiaoit:Yeah, no, I mean, the last business, for those that don't know, we had started a keto cookie company in 2016, right before keto took off. And we started with six grand. And within a year and a half, we had grown to over a million dollars in revenue, all e-commerce. but we also made some really big we were on shark tank we also made some really big mistakes along the way is uh we sent out 300 grand with their product that got moldy after we moved to a co-man because we thought our cookie dough that we were hand scooping in our kitchen could scale to you know a co-manufacturer and yeah that was a definitely a tough experience but it wasn't just that i think back in that company i think it was accumulation of things because even though we hit these milestones, I was never happy.

3:21Kristoffer Quiaoit:I was like, okay, we hit six figures. Great. What's next? You know, and I never really stopped and celebrated what we had accomplished, nor did I celebrate our team members of what they had accomplished. And it was always coming from this place of not being enough. And so then when, you know, everything led down to that$300 ,000 of moldy stuff and then, you know, having 800K in debt that we, expensive debt that we were paying like 18 % on. And then filing bankruptcy, it was kind of like a sign to revisit what I value and who I am as a person. And, you know, I think about the keto cookie days, the new-y days, and I remember always comparing ourselves to another company, comparing ourselves to competitors, comparing ourselves to another company who had raised like$12 million and we were here bootstrapping.

4:16Kristoffer Quiaoit:And so it was always out of a place of not being enough. And I had attached my value as a person to the company, like, all right, we're not doing enough. So I am not good enough. And I did not enjoy that journey as much as I could have. Right. And I think if I did enjoy it, I think we would have probably made some different decisions along the way. And so now going to this good journey, it was from, And, you know, I was very hesitant to start Good Journey because I was like, that was so painful. Why would I do this again? You know, and then I met my co-founder who owns a donut shop and she's like, why don't we work on low carb donuts together?

4:52Kristoffer Quiaoit:And so I thought really hard about it. And then, you know, we started testing it out. I still had some hesitation. So I, you know, had, you know, a little bit of my foot on the gas, but a lot of it on the brake because I was afraid to crash it. But it's been this process of re-evaluating who I am. And so I made it very intentional to be like, all right, how can I be happy along the way? How can you make this a good journey for myself and make it for other people? You're five years into it now. I'm curious to know how you've even evolved and changed from that initial hesitation, kind of one foot in, one foot out to the business, to now five years in.

5:31If there are any journeys or things that have happened along the way that change how you've grown or how you approach and how you're running the business now.

5:39Kristoffer Quiaoit:I would say it was a process of reminding myself that wherever the business is, is not who I am as a person, or it doesn't determine my value as a human being. And by removing that attachment and really standing in my commitment to empowering people to be happy and healthy, that allowed me to take my foot off the brake, right? And so it wasn't about, okay, is this going to be crashing or not? It's how do we create a sustainable business that continues to serve our mission over and over again every year. And so, you know, we have a mission that goes out to 2035, right? It's not about like, can we exit in four years, you know, can we exit in so many years, which was a conversation that I had in the previous company is like, can we exit, you know?

6:28Kristoffer Quiaoit:And so that's not that we wouldn't exit, but it also is like, you know, it gives us an opportunity to create something sustainable. And so we really focused on that and yeah, removing the attachment. The other thing is like, as a CPG founder, we wear so many hats, right? And it at times feels like I'm not doing a good job in all of them. But what I've learned is to surrender and accept and to surrender that things might look like how I want it to look like or what I imagine it to look like, but I'm just going to surrender at this moment, surrender, and I'm going to accept where we are. And by doing that, it's allowed me to not hold on to those things, which would prevent me from being creative, would prevent me from taking some pretty big moves, you know, like going after bigger customers.

7:20Kristoffer Quiaoit:So essentially it helped me get out of the way, out of my own way, not of the way of our team by actually surrendering, accepting wherever we are. Yeah, I think that makes a big impact because on one hand, having a grand vision of like growing the company by X amount or a lot or getting to some like fictitious revenue can like definitely create some type of drive, but it's not sustainable most of the time. And like that's what leads to, I don't even call it like burnout, but just like self depreciation, like on a mental and emotional level that really kind of degrades over time. And so I think that's so important.

8:00Have there been any examples of like how that mindset shift has shown up behaviorally in terms of like not taking on certain opportunities or turning down things or saying yes to things that are different that kind of come to mind?

8:15Kristoffer Quiaoit:Like right now, we're still not big enough for Costco, but we're having conversations to get in there. We're having conversations to get into other clubs right now because we know that, okay, we can get a command here, command there, right? And have the supply and be able to service them. And we might temper it, you know, but it didn't, it hasn't stopped that conversation of having with the clubs. Whereas in the past, it's like, you know, can we actually do it or execute? And what if it fails? But we've been so diligent on creating integrity in our processes. And like, you know, it's a consistent commitment to sticking to our promises and also creating a system that can do that, that we feel confident.

9:01Kristoffer Quiaoit:And then also, you know, it comes down to who we have on the team. Like I have an amazing ops, you know, VP of ops on my team who came from, you know, they're doing eight figures a year at a sweetener company. And so I can't do this by myself. So it's a matter of like, who can I get, who can I have be part of the team, including the co-mans to carry out this objective for us. Yeah, I was, you know, so curious about the evolution of like the founder journey because I found that, you know, there's kind of broadly two types of founders. There's founders who are like, I want to try to do everything myself to like build in and breathe this thing into creation.

9:37And then there are some other founders. Sometimes it comes with different life experiences where they're like, I'm just going to delegate from the beginning. They're either good at finding people who can like operationalize and like do the work. But I was definitely the founder and still in many ways where I like doing everything myself. I actually enjoy it. But it also creates bottlenecks and problems when it grows beyond my control. And that was a big problem, especially when I was running T-Squares. That was really hard for me to kind of break out because as the company grows, I can't do or even approve everything because then I am the bottleneck.

10:13But it was hard to kind of set the right expectations and standards and make sure people follow through on them. And so that's a problem that I've always had and have been like dealing with that. I'm curious if, you know, what type of founder you found yourself to be and how that's evolved over time.

10:31Kristoffer Quiaoit:I would say I have definitely been that, right? That let me control every single part of it. Because at least I know if it fails, it's because it's my fault. And we failed a lot of times because it's my fault. And with Good Journey, it's this constant question of, am I the bottleneck here? Am I the bottleneck? And I ask myself that almost every day. It's like, am I the bottleneck in this process and then learning to trust my team to carry it out. And it helps when there are people on the team that know way more than I do and can execute it better. It gets challenging if it's, you know, if they don't have the competency, but it's really about trusting the people on the team and also allowing them to make mistakes.

11:14Kristoffer Quiaoit:Like if there's a mistake, okay, we made a mistake. What is the thing we're going to do next time to prevent it? And so it's allowing space for mistakes. But I think it started with me internally because I had to have empathy for myself when I make mistakes, right? When I make mistakes in the past is I've beaten myself down, like, you know. And so when I have been able to practice self-forgiveness, it's allowed me to allow myself to forgive other people's mistakes and not make it mean so much. And it's definitely allowed this journey to be a lot more fun because I'm not beating myself up all the time.

11:54Kristoffer Quiaoit:And there, you know, there are times where I do beat myself up, but I have been practicing so much of learning to forgive myself that it's starting to become like muscle memory. And so it comes with repetition. I wouldn't say it just happens overnight, but it's this constant, constant reminding myself to forgive myself. Because I truly believe if we start internally, it carries out into our leadership, right? But I had to learn how to be empathetic with myself before I started to become empathetic with other people. Yeah, I think that's so powerful. You know, one thing that's so, so instrumental I found of people who have ran a business before is that you learn so much about yourself and how you operate, both the good and the bad, and can then use that to structure and form what comes next if you start another business or not.

12:43I feel like a lot of people do. One thing that I learned or a couple of things is like with T-Squares, because we raised money and we weren't profitable, we were constantly losing money every single month. And by design, because we like raise equity. And so the whole idea is that you're going to spend that down. And eventually at some point, maybe you start making more money than you're losing. But that was like really hard on my mental psyche. Like I never understood that. Like, oh, my bank account is constantly going down to zero. And I have this like ticking time bomb of like, okay, we're going to run out where the company like all these people are going to be out of jobs, right?

13:21And so that was a lot of pressure. And so with the work that I'm doing now, I told myself like, all right, I am going to run a business that's basically like profitable from day one, like not incredibly profitable, like not making a ton of money. But like, you know, it's going to be sustainable where I don't feel that downward pressure and where it's more like an upward growth curve. Other people go through those experiences like, yeah, I love VC money. Let me raise more. I'm going to raise like millions of dollars more. But I'm curious, like any other mindset changes or like how you're structured the business or your role or how you're hiring people that have changed based on what you learned about yourself.

13:56Kristoffer Quiaoit:I think you bring up a great point in terms of, you know, having this downer pressure. There is a shift in mindset where I was running away from something previously. It's like running away from shutting down, running away from, and that's just like out of this mindset for, you know, of like scarcity. And so what I've been practicing is what can I run towards? And it's a different mindset. It's coming from not enough to there's going to be more than enough. And that's been a huge mindset for myself. And it applies to a lot of different things. It's like, am I eating because I'm running away from, you know, having a broken down body or being overweight or all that?

14:39Kristoffer Quiaoit:Or am I working out because I love myself and I want to, you know, continue, you know, playing basketball till I'm like, you know, I'm 60 or 70 years old. And that's a huge shift. It's a small one, but it's like going from running from to running to. And that's one thing that I've, you know, practiced. The other thing is how do I build structures for myself to practice these mindset principles? Like, for example, I tell myself to forgive myself. But in my email, my sign off is treat yourself kindly. And it's there to remind other people to do the same. But it's really there for me to remind myself is to treat myself kindly.

15:19Kristoffer Quiaoit:And so I built structures to put in these principles. And then as a company, we have company core values. and we choose one every quarter that we focus on. This quarter is be kind and it's be kind to yourself and being kind to yourself makes it easier to be kind with other people. And I'm excited for that because that's something that we can focus on is not just to be kind to other people, but just, you know, but it really starts internally because how we are with other people is how we are with ourselves, right? And you can tell, like if I am upset, I get really irritated with people, it's probably because something happened where I am upset at myself at the moment.

15:56Kristoffer Quiaoit:And, but when I'm like good, I'm good with everybody. And it's a matter of creating structures personally and also into our company that reinforce these core values. And, you know, with, when it comes to working vendors, that they're not, it's not about them and us. It's about we're partners and we're trying to accomplish this mission together, right? Even competitors. Like I look at competitors, like, you know what? We're on the same team. Yeah, we might compete for Shell Speed, but really out there to make a difference for people in the world. And you are also helping me, inspiring me to how can I elevate my game?

16:32Kristoffer Quiaoit:And so it's more of like coming from this idea of having access to more opportunities. And yeah, so we really work on the structures. Yeah, I love those little tips because, you know, I remember people used to say, you know, write your value, your mission statement on like a post-it and like put it on your wall behind your desk. I even love the ability of like putting in your email signature because like whether you're like on your phone or you're on the go or something like you have that constant reminder there every time you communicate with someone via email and like little things like that can really make a big difference.

17:05And I think it's so important just for new founders and the current ones who have been running their business to align your personal mission and reason why with the company itself. So you can find that balance. And for everyone, it's going to be different. There's some people who are still in their minds. I want to make this large change and be as big as possible. And that's what really drives them. And at least in this time in their life. And that's what they want to do. there's other people like you know where i am now especially like i want a sustainable business i don't need you know billion dollar exit like would i like the money of course but like i'm not designing a company to do that designing it to like be a successful company and i've actually seen like those are the companies that are most attractive anyway like if there's time for an acquisition like the ones are like i don't actually need your money right like sure if we had some we would grow a little bit faster maybe do you know 50 million this year instead of 30 sure like you can grow fast.

18:03We're like, I don't need it. And they actually have the most leverage for an optionality for how they want to grow their business. And so I love that mindset shift of like, all right, how do I build for the long time? Not necessarily slow on purpose, but the right speed for the business without, you know, using a skiing analogy, like sticking, you know, leaning out past your skis where you might trip over and fall or like what you can sustain so that you can

18:28Kristoffer Quiaoit:build a successful company along the way. Yeah, 100%. Building for sustainability. And, you know, you've mentioned about when you're exiting, if you don't need it, then you have more leverage. Going into the leverage piece, what I, what we, our conversation about leverage, because we're still emerging brand, right? And as emerging brand, we don't have much like traditional leverage. And so what I've mentioned to our team is like, honestly, the commitment is our leverage. Like our commitment to our customers and to our purpose is our leverage. And people feel it, like people really feel it. And they start to get inspired and like, how can I be part of this?

19:06Kristoffer Quiaoit:And that's what we focus on is like, you know what, stand in our commitment, stand in our commitment and things will happen. But yeah, let me, can I share one more thing that has made a difference is every day we have a team 15 minute huddle. And so I'm really good at beating myself up, you know, and finding stuff that's wrong. And so what I've created is every day we in our huddle, we have, we start out with wins. We started with wins and self-acknowledgements. And at first is very awkward. People are like, Oh, what is my win? What am I going to acknowledge myself for? And they don't look. And so we put that in place because it gives us the opportunity to practice looking for the wins and acknowledgements because it's so easy to find the problems and we are constantly looking for problems.

19:54Kristoffer Quiaoit:But it makes it easier to deal with the problems if we acknowledge our wins. And so that's something that we do every single day and every single meeting is start out with wins. And that's made a huge difference for myself and for our team. That is so powerful and I absolutely love that. And bringing that about is so strong. I've also heard of teams who will share like compliments of other people or other team members, you do like team member shout outs, especially for more like collaborative teams are working together to hear that. I love that you like hear from yourself. And then also, you know, for companies to have opportunities to hear it from your peers and coworkers and everyone else too, because it helps you feel part of a, like part of the team, part of the community beyond just the kind of the everyday work that you're driving towards a purpose together.

20:39So absolutely love that. Christopher, thanks so much for being on and for sharing just your journey, how you've grown through this entire journey and excited to see where good journey goes from here. Awesome. Thanks, Jordan. Thank you.