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 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 to the podcast! All right, I am putting together a whole CEO series with the podcast. You guys have been hearing me talk to CEOs like Tim Bradley, we've talked to Steve Adele about scaling and being the CEO, and I'm going to also include some reprises of several other podcasts that I have done. But today I want to talk to you about a really important trait of being a CEO, and something that I harp on, I hammer my Master Your Business and 10x Mastermind students. We talk about it a lot, and I'm just constantly reminding them that this is the key to having a successful business. So let's get into it. Let's talk about this CEO trait that is really the difference between someone who has created a beautiful business and someone who is being run over, run ragged by their business, and both could be successful, but wouldn't you rather do it the easier way? Rather do it a way, in a process and a journey that you actually enjoy. Like, I'm all for that. And don't forget that this podcast is over on YouTube if you're listening on a podcast platform. So if you want to watch me go through this, you're welcome to it's been really fun offering the videos and kind of measuring the impact that has had. It's a little different for me to be recording myself and seeing myself, but I know that there's a lot of value there for you guys.

Sari 2:36
All right. So what I want to talk to you guys today about, one of the really important CEO traits is what I like to call constraint. Constraint is about limiting your options. First, actually, I should say it's actually about considering more options. So the best CEOs actually when you are making plans, when you are in the right state, when you're you know, maybe doing end of year planning, or you're doing quarterly planning, you are actually willing to entertain more options than maybe you would otherwise. But then when you make decisions and you narrow down, you set up boundaries and guardrails around the activities that you are going to do, you decide on a vision, right? Where are we going? What is the mountaintop? What is the goal? So we create a big vision, and then we make decisions on the strategies, the priorities that are going to get us there, that we think are going to get us there, entertaining a lot and then deciding on no more than three. The word priority used to just be singular. Wasn't until World War Two that somehow it became plural to priorities. And Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great would argue that if you have more than three priorities, you have none. And the biggest downfall I see, the thing that kills people, that runs them ragged, is they are chasing a million ping pong balls. Oh, I heard about this strategy. Oh, I heard about this. What about this? What about this? And they are entertaining things that they should not entertain. That doesn't mean you can't put them on a parking lot list somewhere, right? You're going to get emails about new products and services and ways to help you and even my stuff, right? Like, I mean, like, oh, she's having this workshop, or this bootcamp or this thing, right? You can say no. If it does not fit within your strategies that you have decided on. That is the mark of the best CEOs. They get laser focused on the vision, and they hold their whole team accountable to staying on track, to focusing on only those three priorities. And your whole team might be all of you, right? It might be a single you, but you're going to wear different hats. Sometimes you're going to be the makers. Sometimes you're going to be the salesperson, sometimes you're going to be the marketing person. Sometimes you're the ops person, right? All the things, you're the delivery driver. But everything is focused on that vision of where you want to go, and you must put on that CEO hat from time to time, at least weekly. Please. To really evaluate, are we on track? Have I gotten off track? Have I gotten distracted, right? And these are the CEO hats that we get in Master Your Business, because we need to remember that that is the most important role that we can play in our business. It's not the making of the product. It's not the sales of the product. First, we define the vision, and then we really narrow down. Inside Master Your Business, we are going to be doing all of this work. And the way that I'm setting it up is we're actually going to start in January with the actual program, but I am giving you three months Q4 of these incredible bonuses, and we're going to start your annual planning in October and bringing in an incredible guest who's going to help us. But it's only inside Master Your Business. So if you want to take a look at that program, go to masteryyourbiz.co.

Sari 6:44
And you can get all of the details and apply. It's an application only program, and we'll make sure that it's a good fit and all that. So go and check it out. If you want help doing this. Here's what I see over and over again. People are posting in our Master Your Business feed or in Fuel, like I heard about this and I heard about this, and what about that? And I'll give my opinion, what I think about it, but I'm constantly reminding people, is that part of your vision, is it part of your strategy? Does it rise the level of your priorities? If not, it's a no. I was so proud of one of our 10x Mastermind students, and all the 10x Mastermind folks go through Master Your Business. It's an invite only thing. And one of them posted their win. And she said, my win this week is constraint. She uncommitted from some strategies, some directions that she was going after doing her numbers, after really understanding, like she tried it, right, she experimented, and then was like, this is not using my time. Well, this is not the best place to be investing resources, and I'm going to uncommit. I think we are so afraid of constraint because there is FOMO, right? Of course there is, you're like, but I can't do that. You can't do it right now. You could do it later, but let's give yourself some guardrails and say for the next quarter I am only sticking to this, and then have a quarterly planning meeting with yourself, if it's just you, and say, is this still working? You got to give yourself time for strategies to work without adding a whole bunch of stuff, because you're going to really diffuse your energy and your resources, and then you're going to say, well, none of it works, but we didn't really give it a shot. So constraint is about setting up those guardrails. Here's our priorities, here's the tactics and activities that we're going to do under those and we're just only going to do that. And this is the hardest thing for people to do. This is CEO level work. This is why CEOs get paid what they do, because they do this really hard mental work of keeping people focused and keeping themselves focused, and really only doing the activities that are aligned with their priorities and aligned with their vision and their values as a company. As you do this, what's going to come up is FOMO. You're going to feel like you're missing out on things. It's going to feel really uncomfortable because you're actually going to be past the idealistic stage, and you're going to be in it, and it's not going to quite be working the way that you wanted it to, and you're going to have a lot of figuring it out, and that's where we have to think like a scientist, right? And so that's just all part of it. And it is the staying in it, the grit of like I am not changing course. I made a decision. I entertained lots of options. Made a decision using facts, verifying it, talking to my coach, talking to my community, and now I am, this is my decision. This is the course that I am on, and I am not wavering, and what you're going to have to do at the beginning, because you are probably really spread out. Most of the people I work with have like, a million different strategies and activities that they are working on, and what you need to do is apply your CEOness, put on your CEO hat, and you're going to need to uncommit. Need to look at it's, that 80/20 rule that Steven and I talked about. It's the Pareto Principle of you know, where is my energy going? It says that 80% of your energy is going for 20% of the results. And we need to be willing to uncommit of that 80%, the things that are not creating the best results in our business. And so you're going to have to stop doing some things like looking at your product mix, looking at your markets, looking at the different sales strategies, your pricing, all of it is on the table, and you have to be willing to, I love this word uncommit. I believe it was in Greg Mckeown's book Essentialism. It's like we do need to learn how to say no and evaluate and say no, but most of us have gotten into a really big pickle where we've said yes to too many things, and so we actually need to uncommit first, then we get better at saying no and making sure that it aligns with the values, with the vision, with the strategies, all of that good stuff. So you're going to have to do some uncomfortable work as a CEO and uncommit from things that are not serving the business. And it doesn't mean you can't come back to them, but we need fewer things that we are doing. As my friend Kristen says, fewer things better, right? We need to do that. That is our work as a CEO. So anyway, I was just so proud of one of our members. I said, you know, I am quitting some of these products. They don't have the margin, they don't have the sales. I am going to double down on the products that I have that are doing really well, that have demand, and I'm going to go figure that out. I'm going to go do the harder thing, because it's way easier to be like, let me just add a new flavor. Let me add a new product. Let me try this. Let me try that.

Sari 12:38
There's a lot of fun and like newness. It's the staying in it, doing the grind, having the grit to stay in it. That's part of being a CEO. And so I want you to think about what do you need to constrain, right? Come and do this annual planning. Work with us in October. It's going to be amazing. This is the work we all have to do as business owners. We need to make plans ahead of time and not just be always like building the plane in the air or throwing spaghetti at the wall. Let's start doing things with more intentionality. Constrain, really focus on the 20% that is getting us the results that we want and expand that, we need to uncommit. We need to start saying no to things that are not aligned with our current priorities. Put them on the parking lot list. You can revisit them and just know that life is trade offs. Your business is trade offs. There is no perfect world where you get all the things all at once. Part of life, part of being a CEO, is understanding that life is trade offs. And really, when you make the decision, you go all in, and you do not look back. You don't second guess yourself. You just get focused and get to work. The root of the word decision, decide is means to cut off, you need to cut off other options after you do the thorough evaluation, after you get support, get ideas, make decisions, cut things off for now and then go get to work and keep the constraint going. Always be willing to say no, always be willing to really guard your time. Be very mindful of what you are committing to.

Sari 14:40
That's what I have for you today on the CEO series. If you are listening to this, when this podcast comes out, I want to tell you about the upcoming CEO conversations that we are having. They're kind of like a fireside chat with me. They are totally free for you to attend, and it's on Tuesday, September 17th, and we have another one on the 19th. There's a morning and an afternoon time. You can come to one, you can come to both. But we're going to be having these CEO conversations, and I really want to help you step into the role of CEO, help you understand what it's going to take and what it means for you to actually lead your business with intention to create something that will last, that goes beyond an expensive hobby, that is a business that you love. I want to help you create a beautiful business. So you are totally invited. If you have a business and you're like, I need to become a CEO. You need to move beyond the maker, the dreamer, move beyond just the passion. And I need to start running this like a business. I really want to implore you to come to these totally free CEO conversations. Go to masteryourbiz.co, and the link will be right at the top to get yourself registered, and I'll put all the links in the description. And let's get on a call. Let's talk about your business. Let's see where you're really at and identify what is the next thing that you need to work on. And of course, I'll tell you a little bit more about Master Your Business, and we can talk about that if it's a good fit. But these are coaching calls. These are for you to get executive level CEO coaching, which is my favorite thing to do. So come bring a problem, bring your vision, bring some strategies you want to talk about. Bring a mindset thing. It's all on the table. So I'd love to see you there. As a CEO, I want you to think about what is one area in your business that you need to say no to? You need to constrain, you need to uncommit. And you know, something just popped into your brain. You're like, ooh, ooh. I don't want to look at that. I've been avoiding that. Or I know I should. I really want to ask you to create the courage and go look at it. You don't even have to uncommit yet. Just be willing to go look at the numbers. Be willing to look at the facts and evaluate like, is it really worth me continuing doing this 10 thing, when Sari is telling me I can really only have three priorities. So think about one thing that you need to constrain on, that you need to uncommit, that you need to say no to. All right, go do that thing. And of course, if you want help, come to the CEO conversations in September. I'd love to see you there. All right, until next time, have an amazing week!

Sari 17:38
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.