Full 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 Kimbell. I have guided hundreds of food brand founders to success as an industry expert and business coach. And it's gotta 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 0:49
Hey, there, welcome back to the podcast. Okay, I'm coming in a little raw today, so it's like you're getting the vulnerable, the real me here. So I'm recording this on Wednesday, the 12th, which is the same day that I recorded the live version of the Hard Times Ahead call. And I'll give you a little bit of backstory. And it's so funny, it's like, it's almost like the universe conspired in my favor. I like to say it's always conspiring in my favor. It's like it was planned this way. And yet, it was not at all. So I wanted to really show up and serve you guys, you know, so many of you are reaching out to me, my clients, members, people in our private Facebook group, and saying, you know, I am freaking out, I don't know what to do, better prices, flour, eggs, shipping, gas, like packaging, on and on and on, right? All the things that are happening as a result of inflation, and other things going on in our world. So one thing I'm not here to do as a coach is to tell you to just think like none of this matters. It's just daisies and unicorns and rainbows, right? No, let's look at it as the facts, the circumstance. And then we can decide how we want to deal with it. But I'm not here to argue whether this is a hard time or not. If you feel like it's hard time, if you're looking at the facts, and you're saying butter is increasing by three times, then that's a fact. Okay? I wanted to put out this training call. And it was really twofold. So one part of it is about managing your emotions and your mind. And then the second part was giving you some strategies of what to do and how to see if you actually need to do a price increase. And then what to do if you do. I actually invested quite a bit of time into this. I put up videos. I put out ads. I usually don't run a lot of ads but I wanted to potentially reach more of you, right? To expose more of you to how I help people. And this was a free call and I just wanted to get lots of people to come and join me and ultimately, I want to help you feel better, right? Because if you feel better and we bring the emotion down, you can make better decisions for your business. You can enjoy your business which will keep you in it longer. Making decisions for your long term, right? And helping you weather this little rocky road that we're on right now. So I put a lot of effort into it, all the ads, the promotion, and then setting everything up. So in my platform, there's you know, all the like the confirmation emails, and then the reminder emails, and then after the workshop, the sequence of emails that goes out, and I did a special offer for the Pricing for Profit Workshop in there. And just by the way, I'll let you know that you can still get the replay through the end of today if you want the replay because of what I'm going to tell you next. I went ahead and extended how long that would be up so it's at foodbizsuccess.com/hardtimes. All this work, a lot of energy, right? And not to mention the actual presentation, right? I want to show up and give all of me, give great value , be entertaining, you know, be real, give you real tools, and have it be an interactive fun, good investment of your time. I have all the emails done.

Sari 4:57
I actually had a client call that morning so I didn't have a ton of time to be checking email. So I don't know, so I'm getting ready to go on and getting myself pumped up. I have like a playlist and I listened to. You guys, if you're ever having to go into like a buyer meeting or do something hard, get your energy up, get your state up, right? So I'm listening to my Webinar Jam mix and getting all pumped. Well, what's funny is I actually had this thought in my head, I'm like, I should test that link. Make sure everything's working okay. So on my phone, I go into the email that says, this is starting in two hours. And I, I click on the link, and it seemed to work like, but I realize now that I must have just been because it was my own link. In any case, we get on, it's time, and there's were there was a handful of people on there but they're like my usuals, or my members inside Fuel. And I'm like, where is everybody? This is interesting. I had a lot of people sign up for this. And I'm like, okay, it's fine. Like, we just roll with it. It doesn't matter. Like, I decided ahead of time, I'm going to be super proud of myself. Whether one person shows up, 40 people show up, zero people show up, I will still deliver a high quality presentation because I'm going to make myself proud. It's not about getting appreciation or a claim from anybody else. Was like, that's cool, I'm on, let's go. So we have a great call. I give them some amazing strategies. And everyone's like, thank you so much, great, da da da. So I get off and end the call and I check my email. Well, there's tons of emails in there from people saying this link doesn't work. This isn't working. This isn't working. So the link that went out two hours prior that said join here, did not work. And my immediate reaction was just head in hands, just like, what? No. My stomach drops. I feel like I want to vomit. I was even just prior to that, before I check my email, I was sending a friend a Marco Polo. And I'm like I was, I really thought more people will be on there. And then I was like, oh, this is why. I have that initial, you know, it's probably 10-15 minutes. I mean, it was a comp like my face was warm. My, the vibration in my body felt like everything was speeding up. I was probably breathing shallower. I was really beating up on myself. I was not kind. And there were lots of thoughts about, you know, oh my gosh, you're such an idiot. I cannot believe you did this, all that work. I wanted to blame somebody else. You know, I'm like, whose else's fault could this possibly be? Like did I check these? I know, I checked them all the things, right? And then, I was trying to decide what to do. I already sent out the replay link. And I was like, huh, what if there's an opportunity here? I mean, think about this for a minute. So ironically, so I say it's like it was planned this way, but it wasn't in this presentation. I'll give you a little some highlights. I talk about feeling your emotions and processing them much like I just described, right? Like, I feel nauseous. There's anxiety, like my stomach tightens up, my throat gets kind of tight, I get a little hot, like my feels like my energy is higher, like faster. And so I talked about how invincible we would be as entrepreneurs if we were willing to feel any emotion. If we were willing to feel hurt, fear, anger, disappointment, sadness, humiliation, embarrassment, rejection, judgment. Like think about it, if you were willing to feel any emotion, you would be willing to do anything. You would try anything. And, you know, I tell you guys, you know, I talk about successes built on a pile of failures and go after the no's, get 100 no's, and it's all about failing forward. But man when you're in it, it's so hard. It feels terrible. And I literally was just giving a talk about, okay, so you have an emotion. So I'm like I should probably listen to my own presentation. My own tools and think like, alright, I'm having emotions. What am I feeling right now? So I stopped and checked in. Yep. Okay. Here's how I'm feeling. And then another piece of the call was about that chatter, right? That runs around in our head. And how negative and how terrible we are to ourselves. And we say things to ourselves that we would never say to somebody we love. We would never say to our best friend. A lot of times, they come in as sneaky questions, negative bias questions. Things like, how are you so stupid? There's no good answer to that question. There's no answer that's like, you come out of there feeling good about yourself, right? It was questions like, well, you know, will this ever work? Will anybody ever want to work with me after that? I mean, my goodness, my brain went to the worst case scenarios, which is also something we talked about. I swear, I was like, literally reliving everything I just put together. So I was like, okay, worst case scenario, right? And I was like, what's, what is this? What am I making this mean? You know, I was making it mean that there would be everybody's judging me, thinking terrible things about me, I'm a total failure, you know, they're rejecting me, I'm being judged and feeling judged. And the reality is, I'm like, well, the people who were there already like me and trust me and know my work, and they don't care. And the people who couldn't get in, I mean, they're gonna have thoughts about it, but I can't control that. All I can do is control a response to it. So I decided to record a pretty raw, in the moment videos. So I recorded about a five minute video. I will put the link to that video, if you're curious if you want to watch it. It's unlisted, but it's on my YouTube channel. So the only way you can get to it is through this link. I realized, like, oh, this is like an opportunity for me to model what it looks like to put yourself out there, to put all this work into it, and to show up for yourself. And I would not call it an outright failure because the presentation was amazing. And I love the people that were on. But the fact that, you know, so many people were wanting to get on live and couldn't be there. And I wanted people to be there live. The link didn't work, that was on me. I take ownership on that, right? It obviously didn't get checked. I wanted to model that for you guys. So I shared a video recorded that kind of processing my feelings, apologizing, taking ownership for it. Here's the replay. And I'm going to extend the replay time so you can still get that. And the other piece of it was asking yourself better questions. So again, we talked about this on the call. And when those thoughts are coming up, those negative biased questions, sneaky negative thoughts.

Sari 13:09
Man, they really get you, right? It's like, we never want to do anything in our business or our lives that's risky. Not because, I mean, it sucks when other people laugh at you, or think something ill of you. But it's more about what we're gonna think about ourselves, and all the terrible things we're gonna say to ourselves. I kind of went through an exercise about, let's ask better questions. You know, how does this mistake, "mistake", serve me? How is it for me? How was it for you? And that's why I decided to record that video is to say this serves you because I can model it for you. I can show you what it looks like. It also, lets you see the side of me that isn't perfect. I think it can be easy for outside people to see me where I'm at now, you know, and it's been a six year journey to get here, six, seven years. They might look at me now and say you're so perfect. You do everything right. And I just want to tell you, I do not, my friends. I do not. I am in no way perfect. And there is that part of me though, that cultivates that persona. And I think that this is a really good opportunity. This is for me, to allow me to show you that I am not perfect. I make mistakes, you will make a ton of mistakes. And here's ways that you can handle it with grace, with problem solving. And I will tell you, thank goodness for coaching. Oh my gosh. I had a coaching call with my personal coach shortly there after this call, and it could not have been better timing, right? I, we talked, we processed the feeling more even after the video and sending the email. I was like still pretty, like I just, there was definitely some shame there, was a big piece of it, like shame of like messing up and there's something wrong with me. You know, how could I have done that, I'm so stupid. Those kinds of things. And so I had a little cry, right? Sometimes we just gotta get it out. We talked about, she was like, okay, what can you do physically, sometimes, that energy like gets stuck in your body, and it's just like circling around, and then your thoughts keep reinforcing it. And literally like shaking it out of my body. I was thinking about Taylor Swift, like shake it off, right? And like literally physically doing that. The other thing we did, so good little cry. That was a definitely a nice release. I definitely felt some relief there. Naming the sensations in my body, the vibrations, what was happening, but also naming the emotion. And realizing that there was some shame there that I needed to process. And kinda feeling that.

Sari 16:16
Shame is one of the worst emotions. I just, I do everything in my power to avoid feeling shame, but think about what you would be willing to do if you were willing to feel shame. And so apparently, I'm willing to do all of this and feel shame, and process it and allow it to ease up. The other thing we did, she mentioned something about what does that voice sound like that? Is it a critical voice? Like when you see the emails that people are trying to get in and head in hand. And what is that voice saying, right? Those thoughts. And it made me think about something I heard from Mel Robbins, who's an inspirational speaker, kind of mindset speaker. And she talks about with her son naming his anxiety, so and then her son would talk to Oliver, the name of the anxiety. So almost depersonalizing it, because in my head, that voice feels like it's me, and it's so critical of me, right? It's telling me how stupid I am. And I'm never gonna get it right. And like, I might as well just close up shop now and what are all the people thinking, right? And we were actually talking about this on the call, like, you guys probably don't even care. Like you're like, oh, okay, I was gonna do that for an hour. But I guess I'm not, right? Like, your thoughts about it are probably not that much. But in my head, I'm like, oh my gosh, right? I'm the center of the universe in this moment. And everyone must hate me, right? Or everyone's thinking terrible thoughts about me. The reality is, I know, you say it out loud. You're like, oh, okay.

Sari 18:05
But this voice is so critical. So we were talking, I was talking with my coach. And I said, I feel like maybe I should name this critical voice in my head. Because there's almost like there is a persona to her. It's very, like buttoned up, perfectly tucked in shirt, perfectly pulled back hair, almost like a librarian or something, right? There's definitely like an image I get. And I was like, I feel like I just need to name her. I was like, I'm gonna call her Agatha. It just sounds like the perfect name. And if your name is Agatha, please do not take any offense. But I just felt like that was a name that resonated for me that I could be like, okay, Agatha, I hear you, I recognize that you are upset. And you're freaking out. And you're thinking that a tiger is chasing you, right? You're having the same body experience, the same stress. And there is no tiger. And let's talk about what the facts are, this happened. And now what am I going to do about it? And giving her some love and some compassion too, right? Like, again, we say these things we would never say to a best friend. So how can I befriend this person, this part of me, this critical voice? Because if I can step back and have some compassion for her, which really starts from curiosity, I think about why is she so critical? Like what is the point of that, right? It's already done. I can't go back and change it. So what is the point of beating the crap out of myself? Well, a lot of it comes down to birth, right? I'm questioning if I am not perfect, if I didn't do it exactly right. If I didn't, you know, check the links and not have any mistakes, then if there are mistakes, then that must mean that I am, there's something flawed with me, there's a value question, right, a worth question. And I don't know if any of you guys can relate to that. I'm guessing almost everybody can, if you're honest with yourself. Most of us do have some piece of that where if we get it 100% perfect, now we've proven to ourselves that we are worth, we are worthwhile, we are worthy, we are enough. And so conversely, if we don't get it right then it means we're not. And so we can understand, I can understand Agatha, where she's coming from. She's trying to keep me safe. She's trying to motivate me to never mess up again. Because see how terrible this feels and see how much you're gonna beat the crap out of yourself. So never do it again. And so I can come at her with some love and some compassion and say, I hear you. It is upsetting. I know you're hurting, it doesn't mean anything about our worth. And we're going to feel these feelings. We're going to see what we can do, what meaning we can create from this? How we could actually serve better? I mean, this podcast is coming out of this. Even if it's just that I can fail and get back up and I can survive this. I'm showing to myself, I'm proving to myself, I can do this, I can try, I can risk. And I can get back up again. And so can you. And I really hope my intention is that if you are experiencing something where you messed up, or it didn't go the way you wanted to, I mean, the irony is the whole call was on hard times and the plan not going the way that you planned it to go, right? When you started. No one anticipated a pandemic, followed by a recession, and supply chain and all the things. That was not in the plan for anybody. I'm quite sure of that. The whole talk was about how to maneuver that. How to lower emotions? How to ask better questions? How to process that emotion so that we can then create meaning in the work that we're doing, and really show up as the best versions of ourselves. So that's what I have for you today.

Sari 22:43
I totally derailed what I was going to do earlier. And I just thought this would be a really good episode to capture in the moment. I'm feeling a lot better. I still get a little bit of a sucker punch feeling when I think about it. But it's done. There's nothing I can do about it. And one of the best phrases you can have in your arsenal as an entrepreneur that I learned from my coach, it is what it is. Accept it, surrender to it, allow it, make peace with it, move on. Problem solved from there and make meaning out of this. You can do hard things. Until next time, have an amazing week!

Sari 23:29
The smartest thing you can do as an entrepreneur is to invest in a who to help you with 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.