Full Transcript

Sari 0:04
I'm Sari Kimbell and I've done just about everything in the food industry. I have helped hundreds of packaged food business entrepreneurs and now I want to help you make your delicious dream a reality. Whether you want to be successful at farmer's markets, online, or wholesale on the store shelves, Food Business Success is your secret ingredient. I will show you how to avoid an expensive hobby and instead run a profitable food business. Now let's jump.

Hey there, welcome back to the podcast. Before I get started on talking about having more fun in your business, I wanted to read a review from Chrissy and Stacy of Grandpa's Steak Butter. And honestly, I can't think of two people that I have more fun with as we build their business. So they say "Our family started grandpa's steak butter a couple of years ago, and there is no way we would be where we are today without series knowledge and connections. Not only did she help us get our company off the ground, she continues to help us daily. We always have so much fun and we learn to not stress that the small things might not go exactly as you planned. It's all a big learning experience. And I think it's critical to enjoy what you're doing and to have fun doing it. Sari makes that part very easy, I cannot recommend her enough." Thank you so much, you guys, I have had so much fun working with the both of you and creating this this business. We started from just an idea- that family recipe. And I worked close to well, I think probably two and a half years that we've been working together. And I just love it. So it's so fun to think back over all we've accomplished in that time from you guys. Making it yourself in a kitchen and then we just moved you into co packing. You guys are in a ton of butcher shops, and we are talking to some big retailers. It's just phenomenal. It's so awesome. And I'm proud to be along in the journey with you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, I want to encourage you to take just one minute and leave a review in Apple iTunes. It's super easy. You go like you're searching for a new podcast on your phone, in Apple iTunes or Apple podcasts. And then you type in Food Business Success, scroll to the bottom, leave a five star review. I would love to read it here on the podcast. And it really helps other people just like you who have a delicious dream to find me so that they can get started on their business as well.

All right, let's start talking about how to have more fun in your business. You guys, I am on fire today. I have purposely really gotten myself into a state of fun. And that's what we're talking about today. So you guys are gonna get a lot of energy from me today. And I purposely was like, you know, last week's episode was really timely and really good about when bad things happen. But I also want to come back and give you something light. And let's talk about having more fun in your business. Because when you think about your business, to start or grow your packaged food business, do you think of fun? In the same sentence? Are you having fun? I don't if you're if you're not, I'm going to ask you to really consider why not? Why are you making your business so serious and so heavy? One of the highest compliments any anyone can give me, especially in my business, when they you know I have people tell me a lot of great things about working with me and how much it's helped. But honestly, the number one compliment someone could give me is that I had so much fun. And that really is my goal with creating Food, Business Success. Listen, you got to still do the work. You're doing the work and you're getting expert guidance to help you do the work better. And one of my biggest goals that I don't talk about probably that often is to help you have more fun.

When I think about my clients who are crushing it that are really doing amazing things in their business that we've started from nothing. We've launched it. And these are both one on one clients and my clients inside Food, Business Success, but when I think about the people who are the most successful right out of the gate, it is people who are having more fun. They're not relying on their business to give them fun or to give them success. We become so entitled, we think that our business should do something for us. That's not the way it works. We need to give ourselves the success ahead of time. And then when it happens, it's just extra fun. But did you know it is possible to be having fun right now in your business? I think about Brian with Barfly Salsa, right that he's going out and selling to breweries, his favorite place in the world. And he's having tremendous success because he's just having fun. And then Chrissy and Stacey have Grandpa's Steak Butter. And the years I mean, we've probably got to be, at least, we're going on three years now. And they are some of my favorite people to talk to because we're always having fun. Even when bad things are happening. That's the thing. Just because you're having fun doesn't mean that you're immune from the bad things. It's just how are you going to deal with it? Yeah, we had some issues with production. We tried a co packer it wasn't a good fit. We moved to a new coal packer. And the entire time. We're having fun. We're laughing about it. We're not taking it so seriously. Think about Rachel with Life's A Buch and how much fun she has at our farmers market booth and how much fun she tries to make her work right when she's going in and bottling kombucha and she's got music on and her and her employees are laughing. Think about Brady and, and it's interesting. I don't know if he listens to this or not. But when I first met Brady, he was having so much fun in his business. And it showed. He would be at farmer's markets, handing out samples and just tagging it up. He's such a great salesperson. He was having so much fun. And I can pinpoint when he stopped having fun. And when things got hard. And guess what? The business got hard. He started putting a lot of responsibility on the business to do something, to be something for him that it just wasn't at that time. And I think he's starting to get it back. And I'm really happy about that. But I can see when clients have fun. Like Jessica with Fireworks Butters. We did a photo shoot and we had so much fun. And she's having so much fun at farmer's markets getting her butter out there. And Tiffany and Ben with Hustle & Brussel Sauce, and we went and bottled and they're just smiling and laughing. And they're not too worried about the timing. And they're just having fun. And that's when things just kind of come together. There's more ease, there's more flow. Right instead of holding on so tightly.

I've been thinking a lot about my clients who struggle, and my clients who it just takes a long time, it feels really hard. I think a lot about them, like how can I help them to get there faster, but have more fun. And I will say that when you put a lot of pressure on your business to deliver especially financially, or to deliver some amount of respect or success, or that people will see you differently and that you'll be able to prove yourself when you put that on your business. It gets really hard. And yes, some of these clients I mentioned, do you have more financial wealth, right that they have other jobs. They are not relying on this business solely for their financial income. And then some of them aren't. Some of them. This is their only job. Rachel is a great example of that. This is her work and she started with another job. But she quickly, she was having so much fun in her business that it quickly transitioned to being her full time thing. That said I do think if you can create a little bit of a runway with yourself financially to not put so much responsibility on your business to deliver financially right away, I think it is easier to relax a little bit. Is it worth it for your business for you to go drive for Uber or to do Instacart, or to do some other side hustles, so that you can build up some, some a little bit of financial padding. When you're just barely making it by in life. And then you want to layer on a CPG business that frankly, you are in packaged food, it takes money upfront. And I do see where that creates a lot of stress.

But it can be done either way. And so I want to give you guys some tips and some ideas on how to have more fun in your business. The other joy killer, the fun killer is comparison. Compare and despair is a thing and I will tell you it is the biggest buzzkill. And I see it become a dream killer for so many people. And I hear it sometimes from my clients, whether they're inside Food Business Success, or one on one clients, that it should be happening some other way because look at so and so or that you are not good enough, you're not doing enough, you're not doing enough social media, they're doing it better. They're so much farther along than you are. Listen, comparison will rob you of your dreams, you need to focus on you. And what you're doing, you bring a very unique skill set, your experience, everything to the table. And one thing I really value inside Food Business Success is that we create a customized roadmap for you based on your goals, based on your experience, your talent, your finances, everything that you're bringing to the table. And then we just create a business that's for you, not for anyone else. So I highly recommend how can you get out of the comparison trap. Just just stop. Stop looking at other people's social media, and comparing yourself to others. Having fun in my business doesn't come super naturally for me. I would say on the scale of where I land is that I do tend to skew more serious. And it's really only in the last few years that I have started to have so much more fun in my business. And I can see when I was holding on so tightly, and taking it so seriously and it was so hard. And when I let go and I started focusing on fun, and being the fun. That is when my business exploded and opened up.

And you can go back and you can look at some early social media stuff where I was really not having fun. And now I'm like doing reels and doing YouTube videos and just having more fun. So here's, here's some of my thoughts and ideas on how to create more fun in your business. Find the fun zone. I have lots of checklists, right in Food Business Success, there's a lot to do. And it can get really overwhelming when you look at the whole thing. That's why I tried to break it down into modules and smaller chunks. But even still, it can feel like a lot. And when things feel heavy and not fun, we tend to avoid them. We procrastinate. We find any other thing to do. Or it just feels terrible. It feels like drudgery, right? Can we find our fun zone. That's what I want to challenge you to do. That you start to make easy things. What I find is if I make easy things more of a challenge, more of a game, do set timers and be like I'm gonna get it done in 25 minutes. I think about my clients doing weekly cash flow, right? And I know that's not fun for them. But how can we you know, make it a game, right? It's not challenging to go back and, and do QuickBooks, but it's kind of boring. It's monotonous, right? So creating some challenge in there, timing yourself. Maybe I'll talk actually more about like adding music or something else to kind of stimulate you. Having a reward at the end can always be helpful. And then the opposite is true that when something is too hard, we are not having fun, right? Like our brain does not like to spend that much energy on something to figure it out. So that's why I really encourage you to break it down into smaller steps which is what I do in Food Business Success. Or you go find an expert. You get help. You find a community.

So when somebody is too hard, don't sit there and try to do it yourself. You're never going to get there, it's just gonna sit there, and then you're gonna start resenting it. It's like, Oh, it's just too hard. I can't figure out my license, or I can't figure out this formula, or scaling up or something like that, right? So there's a lot to figure out. And there's so much you don't know that you don't know. And this is where I really encourage you to find experts. To get help. I have so many free resources on YouTube and the podcast. There, there are other consultants as well, or come join me inside Food Business Success where you get expert help. So create a zone of fun. I also find setting timers, I mentioned that but when I have difficult tasks to do, I will say I'll break things up typically into like 25 minute chunks. Or I'll challenge myself and be like, I want to get this done in 15 minutes. It's amazing the things that sit on my to do list because they feel really hard and challenging. And I don't know, and then I actually just do it. And it's like, oh, that took me 10 minutes. Why on earth was I resisting it so much? And it feels so amazing to cross it off, right? And I am gonna have a whole podcast about productivity and some of the tools that I use, and how I have like, become 10 times more productive. in my business people are always saying how on earth do you do all that you do. And I will share those, some of those productivity hacks with you soon.

Pair things with what you love. So on Friday afternoons, I do planning. And man that used to be a grind. I really did not like doing that. And I would procrastinate, and I would find all sorts of other things to do. And I finally sit down and it would just feel blah, hard. And what I did was to pair it with things that that made it more enjoyable. So I love I'm a tea drinker during the day. So I would make like a delicious cup of tea. And then I would have like a little snack that I couldn't have earlier in the day, I could only do this when I am planning. And this is really where like increasing your central awareness, right, like opening up to the other senses. Maybe it's having I have a playlist that's instrumental that I love. And I would save that for Friday afternoons. I don't listen to music often when I work, but I can listen to it in that particular setting. And so I would put on that music and like I would actually start to look forward to that time. It was so interesting. You could also think about like lighting a candle that you love or creating some kind of smell right? You could listen to music, something fun ahead of time or watch, I for those of you know me, well, I love corgis. And actually, I should point I should give a shout out to Ryan of Pup N' Pepper, he is so much fun to I'm having so much fun working with him. And he has a Corgi I was like oh my gosh, we are meant to be we this is like yeah, Kismet that we we have come together. Sometimes what I'll do to like, get me back into the fun zone is go watch some Corgi videos. Go you know, do hashtag Corgi and go watch some reels. It delights me and it totally raises my my mood. And I will say like I said at the very beginning, it's Saturday morning when I'm recording this and I generally actually really enjoy recording the podcast, but I was like I wonder if I can get even more in the fund zone before I get on this podcast. And so I turn on some favorite music of mine. I danced around. It was a little silly and I tend to be a little bit more on the self conscious side but you know, just nobody hears. So now you guys know but I just danced and I actually cleaned which you know isn't that exciting of an activity but I was like wow, I might as well pair this with cleaning as I'm getting in the mood and raising my energy level into fun. And I hope that's coming through now right now in this podcast.

Okay, here's the next one. Get out of isolation. Find other people. Find a tribe. It is so lonely. So exhausting. It brings you down when you don't have other people around you that can are going through a similar experience. And I will say we added group calls a couple of months ago in Food Business Success and they are amazing. I love them. That is one of my favorite things that I do twice a month. It's just to see who gets on. And then we have these awesome conversations. And I can see, it's not just me talking, it's, it's you guys. It's it's people, just like you going through starting and growing a packaged food business helping each other. And I just can feel it, I can see energies rising. I can see more smiles. And I can say that from my own experience, I'm in a mastermind and I get on the group calls and there's just something so connecting, it feels like, Ah, this doesn't feel so hard. I'm not the only one. There are other people who care about me and want me to succeed, and I care about them. And like we're all just right, raising the vibration, right? We're having more fun. I would encourage you to keep things simple. You guys, overcomplicate things, so much. I do to. Keep it simple. Do not add all these layers of complexity of like, well, then I'm going to do this. And then I'm going to layer on this website. And then I'm going to do this funnel. And then I'm going to have this other sales channel. And then I'm going to add this and I'm going to do eight sizes and four flavors and keep it simple. Get really good at that one thing before you move on to something new. Keep it clean, keep it simple. When it starts getting muddy and confusing, your brain is like I'm out. That is way too hard. And again, as really one thing I tried to do in Food Business Success is say, no, we're not going to do that right now. We're going to a parking lot that we're going to put that on a future plan, like we can come back to it. But right now let's focus on these next four things, we're going to keep it really, really simple.

This kind of has two pieces to it. But don't take things so personal. You guys, nothing is ever about you. I know you love to think that like the world is out to get you or something that happens right when bad things happen, that somehow it's personal. And it's just not the best gift I got in my 40s is realizing that it wasn't all about me. And if I can give you that gift pulley, I give it to you on a silver platter. Please if this, if you can learn this gift, if you can take this in and internalize it, receive this gift that it isn't about you. I'm coaching, a colleague of mine we're working on she's trying to find a new job. And we had, we had a week we have weekly coaching and there was an incident at work. And she made it all about her it was with management. And she felt purposely like overlooked and ignored. And she was like really making it mean all of these horrible things about her and about them. And then a couple of weeks later, something happened. And it was like we realized it was never about her at all. It was so interesting to kind of watch her brain break about that. And I was like, do you see that it's possible that in everything, it's really not about you? We always try to make ourselves the center of attention, right and that people are doing all of these things because of us or judging us. Like I said, I tend to lean towards more serious and I have been there have been times in my life where i'm i've been much more insecure. But when I realized that nobody actually really gives an F what I do, I can go out and record this podcast, I can go on YouTube, I can go on social media, and I'm just a blip in people's lives. Nobody cares what I'm doing, and nobody really cares that much what you're doing. So if we can release some of the personalness, like when bad things happen, like let's just take you know, the the licensing department and they reject your license. It's nothing personal. And we can just say, Okay, now what do I need to do? How can I have more fun doing that? So letting go of taking it personal.

And then the flip side of that for me is actually or even maybe it's on the flip side, but it's like going one step further. It's not about me. And actually Who is this for? You are starting a business because you have a mission to have an impact on others. You want other people to get amazing, you know, you want other people to enjoy your product. To have an experience with your product, right? Like to you are trying to serve people. So we can get out of ourselves, and stop making it so serious and stop making it all about us and remember why we are doing this. That we are doing it for other people. I am not doing Food Business Success for my help. It's because I have a mission and a passion for helping you entrepreneurs, who are so passionate about your product, and you really want to start a packaged food business. I am willing to mess it up, to get it wrong, to look like a fool sometimes I'm willing to do all of that because I can see you I know you. I know how much this program has helped hundreds of people launch and grow their business. So I'm willing to do it all and I'm willing, it just lightens the mood, right? It makes it more fun. It's not so serious. It's not so personal. I'm not so worried about what other people think anymore. I'm just going to show up. I'm going to picture you, I get there's so many of you, I can just picture and go, I'm doing it for her. That's why I'm doing it. And it's it does, it makes it so much more fun.

And remember that nobody has a gun to your head. Nobody's making you do anything. You are choosing to do this business. And part of being an entrepreneur is that it's not all the fun sexy stuff, right? It's not just the making of the product, which is probably why you're here because you love making the product. I get it like it's that passion. But then you're like, oh, there's all this other stuff that I have to do. Yeah. Welcome to being an entrepreneur, all the hats, right? It's not just about making your food. But we can make the other stuff more fun too. Learning and growing can be fun. Challenging your mind as a what can I get out of this today? What is one small nugget that I can walk away with here? Whether you're watching one of my videos or at a farmers market, right? Anything that feels a little hard, say what's one thing I can learn here? How can I grow? How could I make one small change? Remember, your business doesn't owe you anything, stop making your business responsible for your happiness. You are responsible for your happiness, you are responsible for your experience in the world. And you can create success, and fun and reward and pride. I know so many of you guys start a business because you think it will make you feel a certain way. Like in the future when I'm this when I have a you know when I've replaced my income with this business, then I will be happy. I will feel successful. I will be proud. I will have fun. No, no, no. Oh, how can you start feeling successful today? In small wins, right? That's how we that's how we do it. We celebrate small wins, go back and listen to that podcast. We have fun now.

When I started having fun in my business two years ago, that is when my that is when it was fun. And I didn't have to wait and achieve anything. And I don't know that I ever would have. Right? I had to say how can I have more fun now. And the last thing I will leave you with is be the fun. It is nobody else's responsibility but your own to be fun. Do not look to anybody else or any outside circumstance and say, well, that party wasn't fun. If that party wasn't fun, it's because you did not bring the fun. I can have fun anywhere I go. And again, I'm not like the super gregarious class clown but the more I can release and say I can be the fun. I'm going to go to this party. I'm going to go to this event I'm going to show up on I mean, what if I showed up on YouTube and you guys were like, and I was so not having fun? You would totally be able to tell right? Or I was I remember at Whole Foods Market, I used to say I had a team of five as the marketing director, and I would say, you guys are not saving lives here. We're, we're selling groceries. We everybody would get so serious. It's like, Come on, guys. We're having fun. This is fun. We are, we are doing the artistic part, the marketing part of Whole Foods. This is amazing. Let's have a little more fun, right? And we would do games, and we would do challenges and contests. And we would just try to have a lot more fun and not take things so seriously. And I remember, I don't know if it was at Whole Foods or a job prior. And I've been there now actually. But you know, in Seattle, there's Pike's market place. And there's that fish booth, right? Have you guys ever seen that video or been there? And they're having so much fun. They're, they're like shouting out the fish name and they're throwing the fish and then another guy's catching it and wrapping it up and they're ringing bells. And actually wholefoods tried to bring in some of that same stuff. I don't. I was there pre Amazon. So it was it's different now, but we definitely were given a lot of room to have more fun. Back in Seattle, right? There's like a ton of other fish booths. But this one had a huge crowd. Always. People just coming to watch them throw fish. Same job, right?

I could do it. Like, what would you like today? All right. Here's your halibut wrap it up. Thank you very much. Or I can be like, HALIBUT right? And they're like, they're shouting and they're laughing and then fish is fine on the floor. Cuz the guy missed it. It's really fun. When you're at a farmers market. I know I've talked about this a few times. Certainly in the farmers market masterclass and there's a podcast with Nicole think about yourself, you want to go talk with people who look like they're having fun, somebody who's looks bored, or doesn't want to be there or just looking on their phone, you're like, I don't really seem that fun. I don't really want to get in a conversation with them. How can you make whatever you're doing more fun? And you get to bring it You are the fun? Alright, you guys go out there. have more fun in your business. If you want help from me, if you want to have fun, inside Food Business Success, go and apply on the website. We'll get on a call and we'll see if it's a great fit. And until next time. Have an amazing, fun week, and I'll talk to you soon.

Are you ready to start that delicious idea that you make in your home kitchen or grow your existing packaged food business and take it to the next level. The most successful food business entrepreneurs have support, guidance, focus and accountability to help them make it happen quickly without wasting time or money. Plus, I think starting your packaged food business should actually be fun. Food Business Success is your secret ingredient to creating your food business dream. Please don't go this alone. Check out the private free Food Business Success Facebook group to connect with other foodprenuers, get your questions answered quickly, share your wins and receive special training and tools I only share inside the private community. Just search for Food Business Success on Facebook, or get the link in the show notes. Curious about how Food Business Success can help you? Head over to Food Business success.com and fill out the application to see if you're a great fit for the program. Together let's make your food business dream a reality.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai