Food Business Success® with Sari Kimbell

Ep 230 - Stop Waiting for Inspiration - Be a Blue Collar Worker Instead

• Episode 230

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Are you stuck waiting for the "perfect moment" to work on your food business? In this episode I reveals why so many food entrepreneurs fall into the trap of waiting for inspiration to strike, leading to inconsistent progress and frustration. Drawing from the concept of "blue collar work ethic," I explain explains why treating your business like a real job - could be the breakthrough you need.

Learn why traditional professionals often struggle with procrastination when becoming entrepreneurs, and discover how adopting a blue collar mindset can transform your productivity. No more waiting to "feel motivated" or letting emotions drive your business decisions. If you're tired of the start-stop cycle in your business and ready to create consistent progress, this episode is your wake-up call. 

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Sari  0:00  
Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the package food industry ready to finally turn that delicious idea into reality. I'm your host, Sari Kimbell. I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach, and it's got to be fun. In this podcast, I share with you mindset tools to become a true entrepreneur and run your business like a boss, interviews with industry experts to help you understand the business you are actually in, and food founder journey so you can learn what worked and didn't work and not feel so alone in your own journey. Now let's jump in!

Sari  0:47  
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. So happy to be here with you today. And I have a concept, super short, super sweet, and it is going to change your world. It's going to change your business, it's going to change how you show up. It's something I wrote about in my book, Key Ingredients, which you can get on Amazon. You can see it behind me here, if you're watching the video. In this chapter, in the very last chapter, chapter nine, people have told me that writing about the boss and employee relationship that happens in your business, even if it's just a business of one, which it usually is, has been a life changer for them. They're like, oh my gosh, you you totally get me, right? Like you are reading my mind. You are reading my business. You understand why I struggle so much because of that boss and employee relationship, and you're both of those people. And so I want to talk about this concept. I learned it from Steve Chandler, and he is like an OG life coach. I really respect him a lot, and he has talked about this idea of being a blue collar worker showing up with blue collar energy in your business, whatever you're doing in your life, what you've decided to do, that we drop the entitlement of like I can just do whatever I want when I want it. I'm an entrepreneur, or we stop waiting around to be inspired, and instead we decide I am a blue collar worker. I'm going to show up and get it done as if I were an employee in my business. And this is such a common issue for entrepreneurs is that you have so many great ideas. I know, you have no shortage of amazing ideas. That's what being an entrepreneur is all about, right? You're the visionary of the business. And as much as I wish that we all had a team of amazing employees that we could just be like, hey, here's my great idea. Go get it done. The reality is that we have to make the vision, take that hat off and then put on our employee hat and actually get the project, the idea over the finish line, right? And this is where most things die a slow death, or get stuck, or, you know, are just super frustrating, and don't happen on the deadline. Some arbitrary deadline that we set ahead of time as entrepreneurs is because somebody actually has to do the work, and in most cases, that is you as well, and so we set up this terrible employee boss relationship. But today, I want to just talk about, what does it mean to be a blue collar worker, and what if you decided, what if you resolved, as we are at the beginning of the year, and you're like, I'm going to do things differently, what if you made a decision to show up as an employee, a blue collar employee in your business no matter what.

Sari  4:10  
I will tell you ahead of time. Spoiler alert. The results of you showing up this way are that you will get so much done, you will create so much more. And now it's not all going to be a plus plus work. It's not all going to be perfection. But if you were committed as a blue collar worker to the 100 slash 80 rule that I talked about a few episodes ago, you were 100% committed to b minus work, 80% level of work. You would get so much done. You would see huge growth. You would see big changes in your business. And we know when you're making progress, then you're going to want to keep going. So what does it mean to be a blue collar worker? Some of you know, I have a degree in history, and I'm always endlessly curious about where words come from and the history of things. So I did look this up, and you might be interested to know, like, where did that word come from? That's interesting. Blue collar worker. It started in the 20th century in the United States, around 1920s - 1930s, it refers to manual labors, skilled trades, people or industrial workers who traditionally wore dark, durable blue denim to work, and that was part of their uniform, right? And then you contrast that with a white collar worker, which is where you wear, like white dress shirts. Of course, we're talking about men here, because that was the time that we were in, and so those terminologies just kind of stuck. Now, obviously many of us were denim to a professional office, and so things have changed, but the idea being like more of a manual labor, a trades person. You're not your own boss, by any means. But you go in, you have special talents and skills, and you get the work done according to somebody else's timeline.

Sari  6:13  
I also love this idea that, like a blue collar worker gets their hands dirty. They're willing to get messy, they're willing to get in it and do the B minus work and see a project through like they are in it versus like white collar workers. Sometimes they think about that one, that boss that's just like looking out over the workers, right, but not actually doing the work. And you need both in a business to some extent. But what I'm suggesting is, what if you decided to adopt a blue collar mindset? And so here's what it means to me to be a blue collar worker. You show up regardless of how you feel. Now I'm not saying that if you are feeling sick or ill, physically ill, that you show up anyway. That's not what this is about. This is about I'm just not feeling it today. I'm not feeling inspired. I'm waiting, you know, for the inspiration to strike. Listen, you will not feel inspired every day. What we want to do is say, I have work to be done. I have made decisions ahead of time using my prefrontal cortex, using my CEO brain, and now I've assigned this task, this work, to the blue collar workers in my business, and that's you as well, right?

Sari  7:38  
So you're going to show up no matter how you feel, I know you're not going to want to do it. You're going to want to procrastinate. It feels hard, it feels scary, but you show up and you do it anyway, right? It's like if you work for the DMV, you don't get to feel inspired. And only go into work when you feel inspired. You don't get that right. You have a job with the DMV. You've committed to doing that, and whatever the day brings the ups and downs, you're like, I'm here from eight until five, right? That's the agreement. And so what if we all took on a little bit more of a mindset of like, I'm just punching in the clock right? I'm showing up for my shift, and it doesn't matter whether I feel inspired or whether I want to do this right now, I've decided to do it. It's about focusing on tangible results rather than the just busy work. It's not just about looking busy, it's about getting very specific things done that you have pre defined the results for. So the boss, right? The CEO says, here's the results that I want. And I say this over and over again in Master Your Business, when people start asking me about how to get something done, or should they outsource it? Or, you know, when they're getting stuck on something, I say, what is the result that you're trying to accomplish here? You got to define these things in terms of results. I want the result might be that you have a finished product that's legal and profitable and ready to be sold online in a farmer's market or on grocery store shelves. The result may be that you want to increase your followers on social media by 10%. The result might be that you want to grow your email list or to get on Amazon, like you can define the results, big and small however you want, as the boss. But then the employee, the blue collar employee, gets to work on a very specific task that contributes to that result. So let's just say I use this one a lot. Let's just say the result is I want a finished website, right? You break it down into, what are all the pages that I need for my website, and then the tasks that the employee shows up and does is like, okay, what goes on the About Page? And I'm going to be, you know, very results focused on getting the about page done. I'm getting the Product Page done. It's kind of blue collar energy. Blue Collar employee is that they have clear end and beginning times, so we don't just like endlessly work all day long. I really don't recommend that. I think that there's a lot of value in punching in and punching out. And I'll oftentimes, at the end of the day, be like, alright, I'm done, pat myself on the back, give myself a high five, right? Like, mark the ending of my day, or the beginning of your day, right? Like, I'm clocking in. Okay, what did I decide ahead of time that I'm going to work on today. I'll be honest, I am struggling with this one just a little bit. I'm trying to kind of find my way. I'm giving myself some grace to figure it out. I am actually really good at this and sort of my normal life, quote, unquote, normal life, when I have my normal place where I live, I mean, I'm very disciplined. It's not something that I've always been that disciplined, but I was always a really good employee, right? I always really cared about the appreciation of my bosses the customers, right? I always showed up and I always gave my best, and I clocked in early and left late, and honestly, probably burned myself out as well doing that when I was at the farm and then Whole Foods Market. I've gotten a lot better as an entrepreneur to be very disciplined of like, Mondays, I start work at this time, you know. And it varies day to day. I do have a variation in my days, you know, Tuesdays, I start earlier. Wednesdays, I start a little bit later. And I'll have different end times, beginning times. Being in Costa Rica and kind of allowing myself some freedom in the schedule, and wanting to be sure that I'm available for cool things and opportunities. I'm allowing a little bit more freedom there. It's a little bit uncomfortable. I think I'm kind of pushing up against some edges for myself around, how can I still be productive and work less and letting some things go, letting go of some perfection as well, and allowing there to be a little bit more space in the days. Spaciousness like today, I decided to go to a Pilates class kind of early. I went to the very first one. And then there was a farmer's market today. And while, like if I was back in Denver, I would have, you know, gotten right to work after the Pilates, like, gotten ready, got gotten to my desk, and I was like, I want to go to the farmers market. It's once a week, you know, I want to take advantage of that. And so I allowed myself, I gave myself some freedom to go to that and use up a good part of my morning. So I'm playing around with that, right? And, that's okay. I feel like, after, I don't know where we on, like, 7, 8, 9, maybe nine years of entrepreneurship here, that I get to do that, right? I'm not entitled to it, but I'm choosing to do that, and I'm sometimes, I'm working later. I'm just allowing a little bit more flexibility. However, what I'm trying to say here is that once you know how to do it, once you become disciplined, then you earn the right to be able to make exceptions, like I have. But what I see is that we have a mindset that's like, I'm an entrepreneur, I can work whenever, and then we find all sorts of reasons not to work, not to be disciplined. And so what I want you to do is get disciplined, first, earn it, and then very intentionally, give yourself freedom to be a little bit more relaxed on occasion. And again, this is a part of the book that really resonate with people, is to create a better employee boss relationship. And so instead of waiting to feel motivated, instead of, you know, hoping that inspiration will just strike, and then you'll get into a frenzy of like, geez, like, work, work, work, work in the flow, and five hours go by and you get all this work done. 

Sari  14:49  
Those don't happen as often as we would like them to on their own. They start to happen more frequently when you get disciplined, when you eat the frog. And I have a podcast episode about that, when you show up and you are consistent in doing things you don't want to do, which is about 90% of entrepreneurship. Sorry, hate to break it to you, but some things that you can do to get in this blue collar mindset create clear job descriptions. Now you may have multiple job descriptions. They don't have to be long. You don't have to write out a whole, you know, job description. But if you were the website designer, if that was your job description, right, what would you expect of that employee? So you could have different, you know, social media person, the production person, like, there's all these different kind of jobs within your business, and so creating ahead of time like, what would a good employee do if you were being a good employee in each of those jobs, set specific work hours and stick to them. I do find this to be really helpful, that we don't just blur all of our time, that we create constraint. So it's not that you need to do an eight hour day, but you might say two hours on Tuesday, I'm going to work on the website. I'm going to be the website designer, right? That is my blue collar title for that specific period of time. You're going to have it on your calendar. You're not going to want to do it, and you're going to do it anyways, because you decided ahead of time. And then you just do it. You show up at the DMV, and you work your two hours, you work your four hours, your eight hours, whatever you decide, make detailed lists with clear outcomes. The results need to be listed first. Then what are all the things that need to be done to create that result? And then finally, of course, show up, do the work, punch in, and know that you're not going to feel like it, and that's especially when you need to do it is when you don't feel like it, if you want support doing this work, becoming the CEO, having a better relationship with the boss of the business and also the employees, and going beyond just you as an employee, and starting to scale up and bring on a team, which is a whole other thing, right? First, we gotta manage ourselves. Then we learn to manage others. If you want support with this, we are starting our first Master Your Business call is coming up at the end of the month, and you don't want to miss it. If you need help, scaling, growing, getting the foundations ready in your business. Go big in 2025, come join us in Master Your Business. Apply today. Go to masteryourbiz.co, and I would love to see you inside. If you want things to change for this year, if you want to make huge strides in your business, commit to this blue collar energy. Showing up as a blue collar employee, and you can literally, like, physically put on a hat or some kind of totem that says, I put this watch on, or I put this, these earphones in, or whatever it is, and you're like, I'm getting to work. I'm showing up as the employee, just like you would for any other job. Do this and your whole business will radically change over time. Give me a month. Give me two months of you doing this, and watch your business start to skyrocket on the things that get done. And the more things that get done, the more progress you make, and the more you want to keep going. That's what I have for you today. As usual, I show up here weekly like a good blue collar employee. Until next time, have an amazing week!

Sari  18:55  
The smartest thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to invest in a who to help you with the how to speed up your journey and help you skip the line. When you are ready for more support and accountability to finally get this thing done, you can work with me in two ways. Get me all to yourself with one on one business coaching, or join Food Business Success, which includes membership inside Fuel, our community of food business founders, that includes monthly live group coaching calls and so much more. It's one of my favorite places to hang out, and I would love to see you there. Go to foodbizsuccess.com to start your journey towards your own food business success.