Food Business Success® with Sari Kimbell

Ep #243 The Strategic Exit: How to Build a Food Business That Becomes Your Only Job

• Sari Kimbell • Episode 243

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Do you dream of quitting your job and running your business full time? Sure, you can do the "quit and figure it out" approach that leads many founders to burnout or failure OR I'll share what has worked best for my clients and Fuel members to start a business while working full time and then to transition out of the your 9-5.  

Whether you're just starting your food business journey or already juggling a side hustle with your day job, this episode provides the roadmap to intentionally build your exit strategy.


Stop the endless research and overwhelm! Know exactly what each sales channel looks like for success and create a roadmap for your unique business - it's all inside the Sales Channel Challenge https://www.foodbizsuccess.com/challenge

When you are ready to make the leap, get the support and accountability you need to create a beautiful business!

Pick up your copy of "Key Ingredients" on Amazon here.

Check out my YouTube channel at www.foodbiz.tube for how to videos to start and grow a packaged food business.

Sari  0:00  
Do you dream about the day that you can walk into your boss's office and hand in your notice and say, I quit? If you are trying to build your CPG business to turn your food business into your full time job, this is the episode for you. 

Sari  0:19  
Welcome to your Food Business Success. This podcast is for early stage entrepreneurs in the packaged 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  1:06  
Welcome back to the podcast. So glad you are with me today. This is going to be a great episode, but before I get into the episode, I just want to share with you a little glimpse into the life of an entrepreneur. Because lest you think that I never make mistakes and I don't have to redo things, and that I am "perfect". Sometimes I get that from people like you just make it look too easy. You never make any mistakes. I want to just put those at rest and say that is absolutely not true. I recorded this podcast last week and it was okay. I was like, hmm, I don't know if that's up to my standards, right? It wasn't even, maybe it was B minus, but I'd like to think I have, you know, maybe B plus standards right now for the podcast after gosh, we're four years in, I wanted to re record, and I had been sitting on it. Sometimes I do that. I'll record the podcast, and then afterwards, I'll be like, you know, I want to say it this way, or I want to, like, re tweak that. Or I have some other ideas that that come up after I record an episode. And so on Friday, after the Sales Channel Challenge, I was like, okay, I'm going to re record this. It's going to be great. And it was, it was amazing, until I went to go and edit it, and there was no podcast. I did not hit record. So I was like, oh, darn. And then by the end of Friday, like, that was like, Friday afternoon, and I just had no energy for it. I was like, this is definitely not going to be up to standards. And so here we are. It's Monday before the podcast comes out, and I'm getting it done, and it's going to be a great podcast. And I always like to think of these things, whenever I have to redo things like I'm sure this happens to you and will happen to you a lot as an entrepreneur, you like, fill out an application where you write a social media post or you do some video and something glitches, right? The application crashes. I don't know why the social media post doesn't save,had that happen, or whatever it is, right? And you find yourself in a position where you have to redo it. And I've had that happen multiple times, where it'll be like the third or fourth time, and it's so frustrating. I get it. But here's a little pro tip from one entrepreneur to another, when that happens, instead of getting more frustrated and getting angry about it, which puts me in no good place to be recording a podcast or writing a social media post or whatever it is, right? Because then we've like, turned on our nervous system, where the cortisol is up and our creativity goes down. Instead, I take a deep breath and I say, oh, this third time around is going to be so much better. It was supposed to happen this way. I know exactly what to say, and let's just get to it. It is what it is, right? I can't change the fact that here we are. Third time is a charm. The only thing I have control over is my attitude about it. If I showed up right now and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so pissed off about this. I'm so frustrated, I have to record this again. Like, that's going to be terrible energy, right? It's not going to be a good experience for either one of us. Instead, I'm like, I get to re record this podcast. What's my alternative, right? It needs to come out. I have decided that I do want the podcast to come out on Tuesday, and believe me, I actually thought about it. I'm like, maybe I don't need to do a podcast this week. And I'm like, no, I want to. I get to and I'm choosing to. And so here we are Monday morning, and I'm going to show up and record the podcast, and it's going to be amazing. And aren't you guys happy that I did? You are, because if you have a job, a full time job, a part time job, and let's just lump in your obligations, so I'm going to call it your job. But it could be family obligations, it could be, you know, other obligations that you would consider. Maybe it brings in revenue, or it's your time, right? If you're a full time parent, that you need money to replace your time, for you to go and work more in your business. Just know that, like for ease of the podcast, we're just going to call it a job, but you can insert whatever obligations you have into that word. 

Sari  6:01  
So during the Sales Channel Challenge, which was amazing, by the way, I just want to pause actually, for a quick second and say thank you to my amazing team. Thank you to April. Thank you to Susie. Thank you to Vinness. You guys really helped me to be able to pull that together. And thank you to myself. I'm going to pat myself on the back. That was an incredible amount of work, but I am so glad it's out there now, and it is available anytime that you are listening to this. If you go to foodbizsuccess.com/challenge, you can get the three day challenge. It's three days of videos that are going to walk you through what it means to start or grow in markets and events, ecommerce and wholesale. We're going to finally answer that question, what sales channel? Where should I go sell first? It answers that, and it's just $27. It is an incredible value. People who showed up were like, oh my gosh, this is insane. How much value we got from this? So super proud of myself for that. But someone had the question, can I start my food business while I have a full time job? And can I quit my job? Will I be able to eventually be able to quit my job? And so you may have that question or one of those questions yourself, and the answer to both of those is yes, and yes and 100% yes, and I am honored and beyond grateful. And I love it. I love that I have helped so many people start their food business while they're working at a job, and leave that job, leave those obligations, and go full time in their business. It is my greatest thrill. It's such a reward. I absolutely love it when someone comes onto a Fuel call, or I'm coaching with someone and they're like, I'm doing it. I'm ready. I'm leaving my job. So yes, it's 100% available and possible for you. Now, over the years, I have seen people go about it. I'm not going to say the wrong way, but a way that definitely sets you up for more pressure, more hustle, more anxiety, more worry. And then there are ways that you can do it that really set you up to have the most success possible, to do it as fast as possible, but it may mean that you are working two jobs in essence, right? You're working your full time, your regular job, and then you have your business as a side hustle. And I love that. I actually really love that model, because I have worked with a few people that are like, I got an inheritance, or I was laid off, and I have this severance, and that can be amazing. I mean, I love that for them, that they're starting out with so many resources. But as somebody who was also in that position, I will say that there is something about having the pressure, the constraint that a full time gig, having a full time job provides, especially at the beginning.

Sari  9:31  
I had gotten divorced in 2015 and we had sold a condo, and so there was a settlement there, and then I got laid off that same year from Whole Foods Market, and so I had severance from there, and I was living rent free in my step mom's basement. So it was a year I say that's the year I blew up my life. But in any case, I decided to start a business because, you know, I kind of tiptoed into on entrepreneurship, but I became a consultant and was taking on projects in 2016 and I will have to say, because I had that runway, that money tucked away, there wasn't this like urgency, and there wasn't as much constraint. And I actually think I would have gone a lot faster had there been a little bit more constraint and little less open ended, like there's no rush. I can take my time. Now that said, I am very grateful for that time. I learned a lot about myself. I had some great experiences. But had I been a little bit more focused and I really knew, like I want to create this in retrospect. Now as a coach, I would have put a little bit more pressure on myself and some constraints. So I actually love it for you, yes, to start your packaged food business while you are working and have those obligations. Because what I think it does is it sets up constraints where you need to go to your full time job. You don't have to literally say this to anybody, but in your mind, you're like, what are the results that I am responsible for? What is it that I need to accomplish, get done, the tasks, the end goals, and let me be responsible for that, but I'm not going to go above and beyond that. And I work with a lot of high achievers, so I know you. I see you. I am you. I know that you're probably overachieving in your full time job. You know, you're like, Ah, it's like B work. But really, if we were to ask your bosses and your team, they're like, no, no, they're pulling A plus work, right? So I know you, I see you. What it does is you have to be willing to kind of lower your standard of work just a little bit. I'm not saying slack off. I'm not saying don't get work done. But my guess is that if you're working an eight hour, nine hour day, there is lots of time in there that is not being used as effectively and as efficiently as possible. So it forces you to get really efficient with the work time and get it all done in this constraint. Let's just call it an eight hour work day. We're going to be really mindful of setting up some guardrails and saying, this is my work time for my job. And then here's where I'm going to carve out my food business time. 

Sari  12:32  
One of our Fuel members is a teacher, for example, and I used to be a teacher, so I know his schedule well. He goes in early to work, to skip all the traffic, and then before, like his regular job starts, he takes an hour and works on the business or during your lunch hour or after or the weekends, right? Like you have to do it very intentionally, and you're going to have to stop leaking time in your full time job, your job, and stop leaking the time out where you're like, well, I can just do that on the weekend. I can do that later. I'll do that at night. Like, no, no, I get my stuff done, and then I create time in the rest of my schedule very intentionally for my business. So that is one of my first recommendations, that you really set it up with some guard rails, some boundaries. Really do it with intentionality on getting your tasks and your responsibility covered at your job, creating intentional time for your business. The other thing I love about working full time or having that other income source, is that it allows you to test, right? We talk about the MVP, get your Minimum Viable Product out there. I want you to test this. I want you to have some space and some freedom to be like, I'm going to go to the market, or I'm going to put it up on a website. I'm going to try selling it into stores before I just go and quit my job, because,

Sari  14:13  
Hey, there! Quick pause on the podcast, if you have been dreaming about launching your packaged food business, or you are ready to take it into new sales channels. I have something just for you. The Sales Channel Challenge is three days of value packed information in video and presentation and worksheets, and it's going to have everything you need to be able to make great decisions as an entrepreneur to know which channels to launch into. Is it markets and events ecommerce or wholesale, and what path is for you to be able to create your food business success? Go to foodbizsuccess.com/challenge to get started today. Now back to the podcast. 

Sari  15:10  
Maybe you don't even want to be an entrepreneur. Let's go test it out. Let's see if entrepreneurship is for you. Because you can have your delicious product, your food, and you can have it as a hobby. There is something that happens that's not always good. I'll be honest, when we flip from a hobby to now, this has to create money. We put a lot of pressure on that thing to all of a sudden generate income. And I actually have a really good example from my own life about this. In high school, my very first job was at a fabric store, and I learned how to sew. And then as I got older, and even in college, I took some pattern classes, I, like, really got into it. But it was totally for me. It was a fun hobby. It was for me. I loved it. I did some theater productions which was really fun. So I was like learning and growing, and I would just make stuff, mainly for me. So in one year, I was living in Los Angeles, and I was hired for two jobs to be like a designer slash seamstress, and I was hired one to make 40 Pinocchio outfits. It was for this artist, this art installation, and I was to sew 40 outfits, and I got paid pretty well for it, but red, blue and yellow in my future. I also was hired by my art history teacher, a very cool woman who I really liked, and she hired me to design and make her wedding dress. I will tell you from those two experiences where I was mass producing 40 Pinocchio outfits going blind, like not able to see straight from red and blue fabric. Oh my gosh. And then the pressure of delivering this woman's wedding dress, I was like, nope, not, no other jobs after that, I was like, this is a hobby, right? So I want a similar experience for you. Where before you go and like, I'm doing this full time, let's go test it out. Let's see if you want to go to farmers markets. Let's see if you're a digital marketer and you can build an ecommerce business. Let's see if you like going and talking to buyers and getting your product on the shelf. Let's see if you like making your product over and over and over and over again. 

Sari  17:57  
I think back to Channelle on Shark Tank, when she was like this arms made 80,000 biscuits. And I know April has made, I know 40,000 probably more pounds of granola. You can get very old if you are the maker, like it's not for everyone. And of course, co packing is an option, butthere's going to be a lot of repetitive tasks, and there's going to be a lot of putting yourself in uncomfortable positions and getting out of your comfort zone. So let's just test it out. And that's the beauty of having this other financial stream of income where you're not reliant on your business all of a sudden to perform. Okay, so let's say you get through that part and you're like, yes, I like this. I think this has potential. I like my product, like I want to do this. Entrepreneurship is for me. The way I coach people to leave their jobs, to finally be ready to quit. It's not that your business, your CPG business, needs to replace the income in your current job. That's not necessarily what we're going for. I mean, that would be amazing, and sometimes people do have to wait that long, but it's not required. What I want to do instead is set up milestones in the business where we can say it is now operating at this level. There's now repeatability, and there's a faith and trust that if we keep putting, if we were to take the time that we put in our job, and we were to transfer it to our business, that the sales and the income would continue to go up at that new rate with the new time invested. And so I think first of all, it's getting really clear on what is the minimum amount that I need in a financial income coming in. Your business requires some kind of financial runway, whether that's from your job, whether that's from severance or inheritance or borrowing from your 401K or I mean, I've seen it all. I've seen credit cards. I've seen 401Ks. I've seen lines of credit on homes. I've seen people mortgage their homes. I've seen people borrow money from friends and family. I've seen Kickstarters, I've seen Kiva loans. I've seen a lot of different ways that people will create funding sources, but the first thing is really understanding what is the minimum that I can get a buy on, and it may mean that you're going to have to downsize your lifestyle temporarily for a while in service of your business. 

Sari  20:52  
One of the things I really get very worried about when I coach some people where they're like, I need to maintain my certain lifestyle, or more with my business, is that your business is going to require some sacrifice on your part. You are probably going to have to lower your standard of living for a time. You might need to downsize your living situation. You might need to downsize that expensive car. You might look for places of where can I divert spending and resources and put them into my business? Not forever, but we got tonourish. We got to give our business enough fuel to get off the ground. And so what I'd like for you to do is think about, like, really map it out. Get on paper, get really practical. Of like, what is my budget for my life at like, a minimum level, and then what do I need to get my business at, right? So we look at that number. Let's just say, for for E's sake, that you are like, I need a minimum of $5,000 a month for me to be able to transition into full time entrepreneurship. Okay, great. We have where you are now. We have where you want to go, and then we think about what would need to be true for that to be possible, for me to be creating $5,000. 

Sari  22:25  
We need to start breaking it down into unit economics, right? And this is where your cost of goods sold is going to come into play. And we need to see after all expenses, what can I bring in, and how many units of this product am I going to have to sell, and then we just start taking action. And this is where working with me in Fuel, or me as a one on one coach can be really helpful, because I think that there is like, what is the best actions to take? What are going to be the lowest hanging fruit, what are going to be the least expensive? And let's constrain. Let's not try to do all of these flavors and all of these sales channels. Maybe you've played around during the testing phase where you're like, I've tried all of these sales channels a little bit. I want you to actually constrain and say, here's the primary sales channel I'm going to focus on, and maybe you have a secondary but it's a little more passive. So maybe you started with markets, and you're like, yes, this is working. I like doing this. And then you're like, I'm going to focus on creating a big ecommerce business, right? And I may still support it a little bit as a secondary channel with farmers markets, but I'm going to put most of my energy and resources into ecommerce. Fantastic. Okay, great. So now we create a plan, we do the lowest hanging fruit, and we start taking action. Now you don't have to get to the $5,000 a month for you to be ready to quit your job. You're probably not going to have enough bandwidth to do that, although I will say one of the fastest ways that we can do that is by outsourcing, by hiring and bringing in other who's and sometimes having the job provides the constraint and the finances for you to be able to outsource. You're probably not great at it anyway. So why are you bothering with building your own website? I can think of someone I've worked with who has a full time job and he wants to save money, and so he's constantly like, well, I'll just do that myself. I'll do that myself. And then, like, two months later, he's like, I haven't done it. And I love this client. I love this person, but the reality is, like, it takes so much time when you don't know how to do things, so I highly recommend making the investments in outsourcing and finding who's who can do it so much faster, so that you can get up and running and like, do the things that are actually going to create sales. But at some point you are going to reach some maximum capacity where your regular life obligations, what you need to be getting done at work and the business are going to just be like, it's too much, right? Ideally, maybe we don't get to quite that point where we're about to lose it all. We're going to explode. But we want to get to it. We want to see that coming. And so what we're trying to do is create a steady form of income coming into the business that is repeatable. I want you to have a boring business. That is your goal, to create a boring business that consistently brings in money, that there are repeatable things you can do over and over again. You're not like every time you go out to go to a market, it's not drama. Every time you go to get write an email or get online or go visit a buyer, there's not drama. There's systems, processes, and there's repeatability. Like we have seen what's working, and now we're just like, okay, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, to the point where we can see, like, okay, when I put this much time in the business, it creates X amount of sales. Here's what I recommend, because, like I said, you're going to run out of bandwidth of time. Most likely, you can outsource to some extent, but you will run out of time. And so you get the business to a point of like, trusting it, and then we find a way to bridge the gap. So I mentioned a bunch of financing sources earlier. Maybe this is when you run a Kickstarter. Maybe this is when you open it up to a friends and family round. Maybe this is when you decide I am going to take my 401 K and make that investment. This is maybe when you use credit cards, like there's lots of places that you can go get cash that we want to bridge the gap. And then it's a trust, right? It's a trust in yourself that you will follow through, that you will be a good entrepreneur, I have to say, like, you know, I'm on this year of adventure, and there's been some moments of, what if I go to Costa Rica and I don't want to work on my business, I just want to sit on the beach, like, can I trust myself to get work done? And now I'm looking at going to Europe for the summer, and I'm looking at the time zones and all of that. And I'm like, can I trust myself as an entrepreneur, as a CEO of my business, like creating that faith in yourself and some agreements and why I love you to have a job first is because you have learned to self manage. You have learned to kind of do B minus work, right? 80%, it's good enough. It's time to shift. You have learned how to do that, and you have learned how to work in small blocks of time and get big things done and move things over the finish line. And so you are learning the skills of being an entrepreneur, so that when you do hand in that notice and you're like, okay, I am ready. Let's go. I quit. That now you're not just like this ample oodles amount of time. All you need to do is continue to rinse and repeat, and now you have more bandwidth, and so maybe you open up another sales channel. Now you're like, okay, ecommerce is working well, let me go into wholesale now. Let me open up that sales channel, and let's start increasing the revenue in my business, and that, my friends, is how you quit your job in a responsible way that's going to set you up for the most success in your business, where you're not overly anxious and put too much pressure on your business to perform when it's still a baby, right? Babies don't do anything. They just take up, they take up all the things, and they don't give back when they're babies, and so you got to give yourself enough financial runway, enough time to start building a boring business. That's more like it's like a teenager. They can do some laundry, they can make some of their own food, they can do dishes, right? They're giving back to you and the household. Doesn't mean that your business won't need support in this metaphor, but it's going to be a little bit more independent. It's going to be a little bit more trustworthy and repeatable, which is what you are going for. That is the milestone that I really want you to set. That's your goal where you can say, now I can quit my job. All right, I want that for you. I would love to help you with that. I have helped lots and lots of people transition, move into part time work and then quit their jobs and really have a great foundation of a business set up so they can be a full time entrepreneur. If that's something you want, let me help you be a who for you. Go to foodbizsuccess.com. You can look at the launch and grow program to help you launch and get to 100k, Master Your Business to scale and set up foundations for your business, or one on one coaching. Go to foodbizsuccess.com for all the details. Until next time, have an amazing week!