Ep #256 Follow the Frustration: What Do You Need to Stop Doing?

It's so good to say "yes" to a lot of things when you start your business, but what are you still doing in your food business that you need to STOP doing or change how you are doing it? On this podcast episode I share a very recent experience in my own business where I made the tough calls as a CEO and business owner to change something when the numbers didn't make sense. If you aren't sure what you need to stop doing, follow the frustration, resentment or bitterness and give yourself permission to explore what needs to be different. This is an important message for all cpg food founder in business.

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Transcript

Sari  0:00  
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 Kimbel. 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 journeys 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. I'm really glad you are here with me today, and we are talking about something that is super important for all in business founders. So if you are just launching your business, this is a little more advanced episode, but if you have a business, if you have been in business for a year or more, this is really important episode to pay attention to, all right, let's jump right on in. Let's talk about what are the things that you are doing as an entrepreneur that you need to stop doing, or you need to radically change how you are doing it. I promise you that once you are in business, you start saying yes to a lot of things, and at the beginning, that's a good thing. I want you to try different things out. There is going to be a little bit of a hustle. There's going to be a little bit of, like, I'm pushing myself into discomfort and new areas in for my business, right? I'm going to say yes to some things. I'm going to, you know, try to do things that seem like they have a good return on investment, or ROI. I'm going to do things that feel good, like it feels like a yes in my body. And you're going to try a bunch of stuff. But what often happens, and I coach on this in Master Your Business, and with my founders in Fuel who already have businesses, and sometimes I got to turn it around and coach myself on this, because I am just as guilty of doing too many things, of saying yes and yes and yes, and then never taking things off of my plate and not being in alignment with the right things, like not looking at different timings of the year and seasonality and data numbers as you do things, you're going to get more information. And and so how many of us just keep piling on without really looking at things and saying, does this make sense? Why are we doing this? And I think so much of the time, our social self also has a lot of shoulds involved, right? I should continue doing this farmers market because I committed for the season, I should continue this path to try to increase my wholesale accounts. I should continue doing the social media strategy, because I hired the social media person. There are things that we just keep doing because, frankly, most of us are people pleasers. Most of us want to be liked. We want to keep doing things that seem to be making people happy, even if like, that's a subconscious thing. I don't think we're overtly being like, I'm only doing this thing that I really dislike doing, but it makes her happy, so I'm going to keep doing it. But underneath, we're kind of a little bit afraid, or we don't want to look at like I'm going to have to have a difficult conversation. 

Sari  4:05  
So I do have a personal story that I'm going to share with you, and it literally just happened yesterday. So we have been promoting our latest program, the Sales Channel Challenge, and it is a three day training that really takes you through the three main sales channels and really helps you understand if you are just launching or thinking about launching, or if you are new in this industry and you want to expand. You know, really helps you understand what is it you need to know to be successful in each of those sales channels, to be profitable and to be legal, to be safe and to have confidence in your next steps. So we did this last Spring, and it was amazing. We had such a great turnout. The participants were really engaged. I really enjoyed creating the content. It took all these things that I had done in years past and kind of put it all into one awesome, this challenge, or like, three day masterclass, and it was so much more. It's not just a webinar, right? It's like a really deep dive. Super valuable. I'm not holding things back like you're going to get everything you need, and really transparent on what it takes. So super proud of this program. We had incredible experience of it in the Spring. And you know, you guys know, I've been in Europe over the summer, and I came back in mid September, and in my head, I was always like, we're going to run this program again in the Fall. We'll do another live version of it, so you can go and get the regular challenge anytime, and get the recordings, but it's like, it was really fun to do it live. We'll make it that much better, right? We're going to, like, add all these things and do extra things. So I put it all together. It feels like, like, in my body, it feels like a yes, I'm like, great. You know, this could be great timing the Fall. Like, if you're thinking about starting a business, maybe for the next year, you can start getting the information. If you are in early stages again, you can get more information. So you can start really coming up with your strategy, your roadmap for 2026, so I line up everything. I get Bianca back, who's my amazing social media manager, and she puts together great content. And even people are like, telling me, like, oh my gosh, your social media is amazing. Like, I'm really enjoying it. And so we're putting together fun content, we're doing some new things. I'm putting together emails, and we're even segmenting lists, like, we're doing it better than we've ever done, and we actually had more time than I've ever given us. I am definitely one of those, like, I'm a high, quick start, and I act quickly, and sometimes, oftentimes, I don't give my team and myself enough time to, like, really execute well. But that was not the case this time. So I am writing emails from a place of, like, gratitude ahead of time and envisioning how helpful this is going to be and how cool it's going to be to show up, you know, six months later and revisit some of the content and just like, take it from, I would say, like a, you know, maybe it's like a minus to like a plus, you know. So and my like, achieving driver personalities, like, all right, this is going to be awesome. We're doing all of this, and I thought it was a great offer. We're doing some fun giveaways, all these things. And so we launch it, and the emails start, and the social media and all the things. 

Sari  8:11  
Is your delicious dream knocking at the door? Well, maybe it's time to answer that call, and the best way that you can get the information that you need to know to design your personalized roadmap to launch or grow your packaged food business is to come to the live sales channel challenge. This is the most value packed training we offer at Food Business Success, and you get all the knowledge that I have with my years of experience of helping hundreds of people start, grow, and scale their delicious product based business. The live version only happens twice a year, and this one is coming up on April 21st through the 23rd. You don't want to miss this, because for a $27 investment and three hours of your time, you are going to walk away with the knowledge of what it takes to be successful, whether you want to sell to farmers markets online or into stores as a wholesaler, this information is so critical for you deciding on whether if now is the time to launch or grow your business, don't put this off. Go to foodbizsuccess.com/challenge. And if you are one of the first 20 people to get registered. You are entered to win a VIP strategy session with me. Answer that call the knock of your dream, that saying, now maybe now is the time, and I will see you there. 

Sari  10:00  
It's just crickets. It's pretty slim. A couple people sign up, which is amazing. I'm so glad, if you were one of the people who signed up. Amazing. And I'm putting more and more effort into it, right? It's starting to take up more of my brain space. I'm starting to, you know, like, what the heck? Like, what's going on? Why aren't people signing up? I'm thinking about adding this and this and this, and then here we are. We get to Thursday before, like, the Thursday before we were supposed to go live. And it takes an incredible amount of energy and effort to put on these programs, right? I take them very seriously. I really want to over deliver in value. And so I had a whole plan to basically all my Thursday and Friday, and most of the weekend, it was going to be spent all on perfecting and revising and meeting with April. And, you know, it's like, where can we just make this a little bit better, right? And basically, my whole, like, four days, no weekend was going to be booked for this. And on Thursday, we have six people signed up, and I was just in a funk. I woke up, I was very emotional. And I loved April, this long, emotional, there were tears, there was ugly crying before that, and I was like, I have never done this before. And never in the six years that I have been running Food Business Success have I ever canceled, like, stopped doing something, or kind of radically changed how we're doing it. I always am of the mindset of like, even if there's only one person who signed up, I'm going to show up and like over deliver, and there's going to be great learning in it for me, and that one person, or however, you know, six people, are going to get this amazing experience. And I think that there is a place for that, right? Like I said, if you are brand new in this industry, if you're brand new in your business, you got to try a bunch of stuff. And you do, you got to show up with an amazing energy, you know, you go to that market, that holiday event, whatever it is, and you think it's going to be amazing, and you're stuck. They put you in some corner, you know, booth off the beaten path. It's like you still got to show up with an amazing energy and try it out, and see what you can overcome and give it your all. And to use this metaphor, right, if you're going to a market, that doesn't mean that after a few tries and you keep getting the same results that you keep doing it. As business people, we have to be willing to look at the numbers to say, does this actually make sense financially, and not just financially, but energetically, I was thinking about the cost, right, the cost of my energy and the opportunity cost of like, where else could that energy go? I mean, I have not been able to record a podcast in several weeks, even though there's a lot of shoulds in my brain, right? But one of the things I'm committed to after coming back from this year of adventure and my summer in Europe is not overworking. Is not forcing myself to do stuff out of shoulds. It's like, if I'm feeling inspired and excited and following the energy, then it's a heck yes. But lately I just haven't had that energy, because everything's been focused on the challenge, right? Fortunately, I had a lunch already scheduled with a good friend of mine who is a coach, and I was just like, I'm sorry to make it all about me, but can we make it all about me. I would really love some coaching. And she helped coach me through. I mean, there was a lot of shame that was coming up, a lot of guilt of like, oh, but I promised April this time, and I promised you all that you would have these live trainings. And I'm supposed to do this, right? I'm supposed to follow through. I want to be in integrity, right? I said I would do this, and so I must do it. And yet everything in my body was screaming, stop. Look at this. Like, this is your moment. This Thursday is an opportunity for you to re decide, for you to look at the facts, the circumstances. Like, there was nothing wrong with the hypothesis. My hypothesis was like, this will be a really good time. People will have some bandwidth. People who are curious, will be excited. I thought that there would be more demand, and I was wrong, and that's okay, right? You're going to make so many of those assumptions. You're going to test a lot of things. It doesn't mean that you don't take the risks. But I think the smart business putting on our business entrepreneur CEO hat is that we have to be willing to not just bulldoze ahead because we said we would, because we signed up for those 20 markets, or because we signed up with that, you know, that outsource person that's going to do XYZ, or you signed up for a distributor that made all these promises that seemed like the right thing at the time, but now you have new information, and we do ourselves such a disservice by not being willing to entertain and give ourselves permission to say, what if I stopped this or I changed it. Unfortunately, I'm so grateful I had a coach there to help me look at and give me permission to say, okay, what if you did change it? What if you did cancel it completely? What if you did change it? Is there a way to still offer value without putting out so much effort, right? The effort has to match the return on investment, and that is us standing in our power as a CEO, making powerful business decisions that we have to know and be willing to walk away from things and pull the plug when it's no longer a good fit. But so much of the time where we just say, well, I committed to it, so I'm just going to keep doing it right. We just keep going and going, going. As I sat with it and I felt the big feelings of like, because I'm a, you know, I'm a performer. I am really into integrity and like, I do what I say I'm going to do. And so I felt the shame, I felt the guilt, even I like, feel that coming up emotionally right, like I felt that, like I'm going to disappoint people, and what will people think of me? And all of that right, which is all coming from my ego, and I recognize that. And so it's like seeing it and feeling the fear and like, what if people then reject me. All that stuff, right? So it's feeling those feelings. And again, I was being witnessed, and I had someone holding space for that, which is super helpful. And so then she said, okay, what if you, you know, you let all that go. We felt it. We felt the fear. We felt the disappointment, all the anger, the bitterness, all the things that are coming up and then, what could it look like? Where does it feel more free? I love that from Martha Beck, she says, turn to the emotion that feels most free, like the situation, what feels the most expansive, what feels the most exciting, what feels the most free. And so as I just kind of played with it, right? I was like, I wasn't committing anything yet, but I was like, okay, well, we could do it this way. We could shift it. So we're still going to run this kind of live program, but we're not going to do live training, so we're going to offer the pre recorded videos, which are incredible. I mean, they are so good. Like, people who took it last year or last spring were like, this is amazing. I am so glad I took this. This was so much valuable information. And so we're going to run that. That is the simplest way I reclaim all that time, those four days. And we are going to open up the community, which was by VIP only. And now everyone who signs up, I'm actually going to release this a day early, because I'm hoping that you might be listening, and you're like, actually, I do want that, that starting Tuesday, if you're listening live, October 21, we're going to drop the first video. And you also get to join the private community. So you get to ask questions. We'll be having conversation.

Sari  19:46  
April and I inside the community, and so you get access to that for the whole week. I feel like that is actually really giving a ton of value. You're still getting the training videos, that I normally sell for $27 for those three videos and the workbooks and the the final like, put it all together roadmap, which is incredible. And you're going to get access to this private community inside Kajabi. It's not a Facebook group, and April and I will be in there. And there's also an option, if you want to add on a 30 minute call with me, where you can really get more clarity and we'll go deeper dive. That felt really good. And so I played with like, do I just cancel the whole thing altogether? And I was like, no, I think we can actually, I can deliver it in this way. And that felt expansive. That helped me to lean in and be like, yeah, that feels really good. And yeah, I'm going to be sending an email out. I wrote it last night, and April's helping me tweak it. So you guys are going to be getting this email where I talk about this some more, because all of you are doing, if you're in business and you've been in business for a little while, you are doing something that you know you need to stop doing, or you need to change it, and whatever popped into your mind right then is what you need to turn towards and just give yourself permission to say, okay, what if? What if? What if I stop this? How does that feel? Or what if I change it like, what is it about this that feels so heavy, that feels so not in alignment, and something that was a full heck yes in alignment six months ago or a year ago or even three weeks ago might not be any more based on new information, right? I'm all about committing and going all in. And there needs to be this flexibility as an entrepreneur to say, oh, wait, that's not working, right? It's the fail fast model that says I'm willing to do the hard thing and say no, even when there's sunk costs in and that's a really big deal as a business owner, is we're like, but I've already put all this energy, I've put this effort, I put this time, this money, these resources, into this, and that is the bravest and smartest thing that you can do as an entrepreneur, is to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, sunk costs. Do not make my decisions for me. I'm willing to re evaluate. On occasion, I want to go all in and then I'm also willing to evaluate and say, is this still working? Is this still a full body yes, is this still in alignment for the goals that I have, for the big, impossible goal? 

Sari  22:47  
So I made the decision yesterday to make this change. And what was so interesting? I mean, it was some work, right? I had to go in and change the website and change people's offers and their access to things. And I had to write some emails, but it was coming easily. It was like, yes, this is in my flow. This feels like energetic. I'm feeling lighter and more joy by doing this, and I'm releasing the attachment, because clearly there was an attachment to a certain number of people joining the challenge this Fall that I had attached to it. And that's just repelling energy. I will totally admit that I was really doing my best to not present with that, and it was there, right? And so then I get to the opportunity to clean it up and say, okay, I don't want to go in, like if I had forced myself to do this, which is what I have always done in the now, well, now I'm in nine years of being an entrepreneur. Is I would just push. I would just say, well, but you said you would, and so buck up Sari and have a good attitude about it. And I would do, you know, some my mindset training and use my tools and like, you know, do all the things to like, be in a better place about it, and do my best. But I can tell you, Icould not get there and I didn't want to get there. If I had forced myself to do those four days of prep that I had planned to get ready for this, I would have shown up on Tuesday, and even though I would have been smiling and like, hi, okay, let's go. You guys would have felt the energy of bitterness and frustration and resentment. And so what am I winning there? Not only am I giving up the weekend, those four days and opportunity costs of like, where else could I be spending. Time, including recording this podcast right here, which I could argue has way more value than the sales channel challenge, like redoing it one more time, and the repelling energy that you guys would have felt, who do take that course, and then we turn it into evergreen and all that, and then I'd be like, why isn't it working? Because I showed up with all those terrible emotions underneath that I had, like, stuffed down, and that's just not a win. And so I am feeling super proud of myself, like, really, I woke up today and I was like, I have never done this before, never canceled a thing, never changed it. I just pushed through. And I am breaking that pattern today, because I coach people on this all the time, but doing it for myself much harder, right? So I am breaking the pattern, and I'm saying, no, this does not make sense, and I'm not going to push and force myself to do it when it's not in alignment, when that is not where my energy is at, and not going to do something where I feel resentment and bitterness and frustration. So I would love to invite you to look at your own emotions. Where do you feel some bitterness? Where do you feel some frustration? Where do you feel some resentment? Go there. That is your signal. That is the the yellow to orange, and then it becomes like a bright red flag. I mean, it has been that way for me all week. It went from like yellow to orange, and then Thursday was like red flag.

Sari  26:41  
But I usually just ignore them and I just keep going. But you get the opportunity to look and say, where are my flags? Where are those emotions coming up? Let's go there. Let's at least just entertain it. Doesn't mean you stop immediately, like I did. You might not need to do that, but sometimes it's just becoming aware of it first and then making a plan so that you can stop or change it with integrity. I'm not a big fan of just like running away and creating a dumpster fire and burning bridges. And I think that there are ways that you can stop and change things from a place of integrity, and that I'm a big advocate of and so I had to sit with like, how can I do this from a place of integrity, so that I feel on Friday when I'm recording this, I feel energized, I feel excited. I'm like, I'm going to share this with you guys on the podcast, because this is actually going to be more helpful for so many of you. And if you need to stop doing more things, and you need some support, like I had support from a coach, and if you feel like having a coach to help you make some of these decisions, walk you through, getting into more alignment with your goals, and make sure that all of your activities and your actions and your commitments line up with your goal. I want to invite you to go check out the brand new one on one coaching page, and I put together new offers, and I'm very excited about it, because I love coaching with founders, one on one. So if you are in business and you feel like you need some more support, go to foodbizsuccess.com, and at the very top of the page, you'll see Scale Your Biz One On One Coaching. Go click there and you can learn more about my one on one coaching containers. I also offer just a single strategy session as well. That is an option if you're looking for just a laser focused, let's get some questions answered and make some decisions so you can walk away with like, now I know what to do next. And if it feels good for you and you're like, I'm actually curious now about this Sales Channel Challenge that is an option for you to come and join us at any time, but if you're listening to this, when it comes out, we are going to be dropping the videos October 21st, 22nd and 23rd and the community for the challenge will be open all the way through Sunday, and you can go to foodbizsuccess.com/challenge. Okay, be brave. Go. Look at what you need to stop doing or change it, and until next time, have an amazing week. 

Sari  29:31  
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.