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 in.

Sari 0:35
Hey there everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This may be one of the most important episodes you listen to. If you only ever listened to one episode of this podcast, it should be this one. I think it will change your life, your business, if you put this into place. And yes, I mean, we're talking about generosity as a strategy which you might be scratching your head and saying that sounds like the opposite of generosity, with expectations that it will work, but I guarantee you adopting this strategy, as I go more into it, will change your life, which will change your business. Before I jump in, I want to mention that I am working with David Kraybill with Forger. David works with a lot of cottage food producers. That's his area of specialty. And he has a great podcast, I'm actually on his podcast, I think it's a two part episode because it was a two and a half hour long interview. So if you really want to learn even more about me, go deep, he has some great questions. So you can go check out Forger Podcast. But in any case, he came to me and asked me if I could put together or present part of my jumpstart course around how to increase sales at a farmers market, which is actually kind of a nice tie in to what I'm talking about today. But I have a lot of strategies that I have used over the years. I have been, you know, used to do a lot of events at Whole Foods Market. Certainly at the grocery level, I used to work at farmer's markets. I run a farmers market now. I see what works. And I have a lot of great tips, and strategies, and ways to really see that number go up for you as you are investing your time, and your product, and your expertise, and everything into working at farmer's markets. So he came to me, asked me if I could put something together. So we are doing a Increase Your Sales At A Farmers Market Workshop on April 22. It is a very small $17 fee to get registered. And I'm going to give you all my tips and tricks and also give you all my favorite things list that has all the links and all the things that I think you should have and be ready at a farmers market. So the link for that is foodbizsuccess.com/moresales. So you can go get registered if you're doing farmers markets.

Sari 3:28
Alright, let's get into generosity as a strategy. So you guys know April is generosity challenge. It is when I challenge you to be super generous, as generous as possible. And generosity isn't always about money, of course. It could be taking time to write a note to someone and tell them how much you appreciate them. It could be connecting somebody with the right person, right? It could be a compliment, even just a smile, right? So it doesn't always have to, of course be money. But money is definitely one of the fastest ways and one of potentially, well not maybe the most, but a very impactful activity, especially that will affect your business. Because business, by definition is that you are receiving money in exchange for services or products, right? And many of you, including myself, have a block around money. And we have all this crap that we are raised with and we believe about money, and how hard it is. And are we really worth it?And is our product worth it? Is it valuable? Are we valuable? Like there's just a lot to unpack there and opening your wallet, I promise you, is one of the fastest ways to grow your business. So, in addition to the generosity challenge in general and taking that money and going to a farmers market or pop-up or anywhere where you can go support local producers that are similar, just like you, right. You guys are out there asking people to pay for your products. And we need to get in really good practice of not saying, oh my gosh, I would never spend that on my own product. I can't believe people pay me that much to yeah, I spend money, I open my wallet, and spend money on other people's products. Right? We have to feel in line and aligned and in love with our product. We have to believe. We have to believe first that our product is 100% worth it. All right. So listen to that bonus episode that just came out last week on the generosity challenge, please tag Food Business Success at a hashtag. I would love to see your experience. And as part of this episode, with permission, I am including a conversation I had with one of my clients Erica of Southern Girl Granola, and she went and did the generosity challenge last weekend. And so you get to hear her experience. What better way to know that I am talking, I'm speaking the truth. I promise you than to hear it from someone who just did it. Alright, hopefully you don't hear too much rustling around like a beautiful March in a March day was sunshine. But I am just freezing. So I'm literally wearing my big puffy coat right now. Try not to squirm around too much.

Sari 7:01
Alright, so I will tell you from my own experience last year, like I said, I did this whole generosity thing in April. And it really unlocked something for me. And now when I am asked the question, who will be successful in their business? I see so many businesses. I work with so many businesses in my line of work. And I sometimes get that question, how do you know? Like what traits do you see of people who you know will succeed? Or traits of people who are successful? And I can tell you, first and foremost, the first thing is, are they generous? I would say the second thing is, are they enjoying the process? And those two things combined, I think that they absolutely go hand in hand. When you are generous, you actually will enjoy the process a whole lot more, I promise you. So it really unlocked something. I did the generosity challenge. I took the money to my farmers market, I felt the biggest high I've ever felt possibly in my life. But it was so fun. I was absolutely giddy. And I realize that this is how I want it to be in my business. I don't need to do a business so that it sucks all the time. So that it's hard all the time. Yes, we're always gonna have problems, right? Every entrepreneur has at least 10 problems in their business every single day, week, any of it, right? We always are solving problems but I want it to be fun. And I actually wrote a talk for my Life Coach School that I got certified with, for an event that's coming up. It did not get selected. But I thought it was a great talk about how I learned to have more fun because I actually consider myself a pretty serious person. I tend to have more serious traits. But some of you would probably say "what, that's crazy, like she's a really fun person." But I tend to be a little bit more on the serious side. I'm not just like laughing all of the time. I promise. I try to have fun on these podcasts, for sure. As I started being more generous on purpose, and I was willing to put myself in uncomfortable situations. You remember last year my grandmother had passed away and she gave us some money and so I took $1,000 of that money and I gave it all away. Not all at once but over time. I just really enjoyed the process of how can I be really really generous. And I also do it in other ways. I started, every day I would reach out to somebody and I would send them a text. And it would be different people. And I would just say, you know, I'm thinking about you, I really love you, I really appreciate you. So I just started building in generosity into my business. So I was using generosity as a strategy. I was giving before I get. And what I realize is, the more I give, the more I get. But I don't do it because of that, I do it because it feels amazing. It inspires me. It brings my energy up to a whole new level. It helps me to do hard things. It helps me to put myself out there. It brings in so much gratitude into my life.

Sari 10:50
Just like even overwhelmed just thinking about the fact that I can. I have the ability to go out and give away a $1,000. And I continue to do it, I mean that $1,000 has been spent. But I do this on a regular basis because I am so grateful that my life is so blessed, and that I have that ability to do that. I mean, there was a time in my life when I did not have that. I barely had $1,000. I remember when I had $1,000 in my savings account. And that was like a milestone for me that I wasn't just, you know, paying off bounced check fees, but that I actually had money in savings. So there was definitely a time when that was not the case. And man, being generous, it really helps ground you in what you do have, right? And that gratitude that's so important. It gets you out of your own head and having your own little pity party and all the stress and the worry and it gets you focused on other people. It gets you focused on serving, and being aware of people who are maybe less fortunate than you, or people in similar circumstances. And people you can just lift up when we get out of our head and making it all about us. And we look outside of ourselves, we can be so grateful for what we do have. But just the very fact of not making it all about us, right? Making it all about you and your problems and what was you and all the things that are going wrong. Everybody's business, everybody's life has things. We all have stories. We all have experiences that have been challenging, that have really stretched us, and we're all still going. Right? We're still here. So get out of your own head. Stop making it so much about you. And generosity is one way to do that really, really quickly. So when I think about generosity as a strategy, I promise you that you will always get more in return. It will always come back to you. I am going to play you Erica's story because I literally thought I was gonna cry and I had goosebumps. But before I do that, I just got connected. I'm sure it was all on purpose that I heard about this book, it's kind of an older book by Adam Grant. And I've mentioned Adam Grant before and Think Like a Scientist. But he wrote a book quite a while ago called Give and Take. And he actually found, he did all of these interviews with different people in different fields. Like he did a really massive study, and was basically trying to figure out, are you a giver? Are you a taker? Or are you a matcher? And what he found is that, you know, we can extrapolate that this is applicable to like the population at large because his studies were really large. But most people, over 50% of people were matchers, meaning I give something and you give something in return, right? Quid Pro Quo. And then about split, or maybe the givers were a little bit more, but there was takers, and then there were givers. And what he found, so the question was, who do you think makes the most money or is the most successful? So he was talking with like a lot of sales people, with medical students with, you know, high level professions. And I'm curious, you know, if I asked you that, I think about that for a minute. Who do you think makes the most amount or is the most successful if we don't talk about money but is would be considered successful in their career? Is it the givers, the takers, or the matchers? So I don't know, I think I probably would have said the givers just given my experience with generosity. And what he said is that, actually, the givers are on both ends of the spectrum. So the people who were the least successful monetarily in their career were the givers. And then the matchers were in between. And so were the takers. But then there were a certain segment of givers that were also on the highest end of success.

Sari 15:52
And I was like, huh, so interesting. So when we just give, give, give, and we give too much of ourselves, and we over give, then no, of course, our business will suffer, our career will suffer, our health might suffer, right? If we're just always giving to other people and we're not ever replenishing ourselves or do any anything for us. And I'm sure we all know people, and you might be one of those people in certain areas of your life where you just give, give, give. And so of course, that would make sense that you would not probably be very successful monetarily in your career business. But on the other end, the people who were givers with boundaries, so there were boundaries in place that prevented burnout, that those were the most successful people. And I love that, I love that there's actually some science behind it, not just me telling you about my experience. But that, the more that we can lean into generosity with some boundaries, so we have to put boundaries on our time, we can't just give, give, give with abandon without also doing something for our business. And we need to be willing to receive, right? Like we still need to get things, we just are willing to give before we get. And I will promise you that if you give more without expectations, right? If we give without expectations, we give with pure love. We just give from our hearts, we enjoy the process, we have fun doing it. If it's not fun. If you're not enjoying it, then I promise you, you're giving with expectations. And that is when you will be really disappointed because then your expectations won't be met and you'll be out some money or some words or some time. But really give without expectations. And then just open yourself up. I can't wait for you guys to hear Erica's story. To wrap it all up. I think it'll be so illustrative of why this is such an amazing strategy for your business. I would love to hear more about your experiences. And let's just see how much fun we can have in April. It's a challenging time, right? It is a super challenging time. Prices are going up everywhere. We've been talking inside our Food Business Success Group Coaching Calls, we just had a call and we were talking about, is it time to raise prices again, right? The price of everything is going up. And it affects all of us as consumers. So we're all feeling a pinch. Gas prices and food prices and all the things. And so it's really important that we actually continue to stay open to giving and receiving because if we just clamped down and we go into shellshock and we get really tight, and you know, really scares and get in that scarcity mindset, that is not the place that you want to be creating, launching, and growing your business. That is a terrible place to be in. You're going to come across needy and creepy. That's just a turnoff for everybody. So let's lean into generosity even more because we need it even more at times like these. Alright, here's Erica's story. And as I was listening to it again, I decided to do something really generous for her that you guys get to help out with. So listen till the end of the podcast and you can find out how to really go and give some love to Erica and really celebrate what she's doing over at Southern Girl Granola. All right, have a listen. Enjoy.

Sari 20:03
Your like Santa Claus.

Erica 20:04
I felt like Santa Claus and like, so I got the 100 bucks. And I was like, okay, here we go, I'm gonna do this 100 bucks. Yeah, I was always thinking about it. So then I wanted to choose my the small pop-up shop. And there were maybe about 10 to 20 FitClub businesses in there. And so I got somebody to record me talking about the generosity challenge. And then my friend who recorded it, she was like, Erica, wow, this is so neat. I was like, that's not my idea, my business coach recommended it, and I'm just gonna see what it's like. So I walked in and I'm telling the vendor, so tell me what you got here. She gave me little speech. I said, well, this is really great. I'm going to take a card so I can visit your website. But how much is this little bag? And she says it's $30. I said, okay, I'm gonna give you $30. But I don't want the bag. This is for the next person that comes to your table and wants the bag. She said, are you serious? I said, yes, I'm serious. And she said, why? I said, because I'm being generous to other people as a challenge. And so I'm gonna, this is what I want to do. She was just like, oh my god, that's so sweet. She got out, she gave me a hug. Like, this is only the first one and this is aweome. So I go to the next table to do the same thing. And she had something item that was like 50 bucks, I was like, no, I don't want that. Like, what are these other things? She had some waist beads, and they were $10. I said, I'm gonna buy two sets of waist beads for the next people that walked up to the table. And then there was a lady standing there. She was like, not me. Nah, yeah, you're gonna be the next. And then the one more. And then now she was like, that was so nice of you like that's just really nice. And I was like, thank you. I appreciate it. And I, you know, the other lady, she sold workout stuff. And I said, okay, I'm gonna buy this $30 outfit for the next person. They want some to your table. I said, and I should have said this in the beginning, I then started to say, don't tell anybody it was me. Like, just tell them they were blessed with it. Because by the time I got to the next table, the lady who got the bag that I eventually pay for, she runs over to me, she's going, oh, my gosh, you bought me this bag, I love it. Thank you so much. I wasn't expecting that today. And it was just so generous of you. And I gave her a hug,

Sari 22:33
Which kind of makes me a little uncomfortable.

Erica 22:35
I know. But she was just,

Sari 22:40
Now you know, yeah.

Erica 22:41
Everybody was just very grateful and appreciative. And it's not even like it was a lot of money. It was just a gesture. And I gave a couple of people. I just gave away bags of granola to two people as well. And they're like, I'm gonna take a picture of this. Now take a picture with me, I'm going to post it on my social media, so people know about you. And you know, and then the organizer came to me and she was like, I'm gonna do this, like, this is beautiful. I'm going to do this. The next weekend, I go to a pop up. And I was like, yeah, I'm gonna go to a farmers market. Now we need another $100. And I'm going to go to farmers market right now. The people at the farmers market like one lady almost cried. She was like, I haven't even made a sale today yet. Like, you're my first official sale. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna buy two of these in and I just gave her another 25 bucks. So $50 in one place at farmer's market, because she just seemed like she was struggling to get sales. And so, it was just the best.

Sari 23:49
Oh my gosh, do you feel like you're, you know, your business money feels a little more open, free flowing, like, because what you're doing is allowing more money to come into your business too, right?

Erica 24:04
Well, let me tell you what I do feel. I feel more inspired to get my reels done, to make sure I'm doing my post, to make sure I'm keeping it in front of people. Because, yeah, this is a beautiful opportunity to even have my business, that I create something with my own hands that can generate money for me and my family and to bless other people. So it's just really sparks fire in me.

Sari 24:32
So good.

Erica 24:34
I'm so grateful and excited. I've been challenging myself to write down 10 things that I'm grateful for every day. Like it's just, so I wasn't standing at the bus wave for inspiration. I went out and this thing has inspired me a lot.

Sari 24:52
Oh, so amazing. Yes.

Erica 24:57
I had no idea, and at the end of it I got to my check and I was like, I just said, thank you God, thank you. Like this was very meaningful, like I had no idea it was gonna impact me. I'm gonna be honest, I cried when I got in my truck because I have not always been in a place where I could just blow $100. And I'm like, I haven't miss it, I'm not lacking anything. None of that. Gas is high, everything is up. And I can give away $100. I have not been in this position before.

Sari 25:36
It builds your trust with God, with the universe. But like you're taking care of like, you have it to give and Tony Robbins says if you can't give, you know, $10 now, you won't be able to give millions when you are wealthy. Okay, I butchered that quote a little bit, but it goes like this. If you don't give a dime out of a dollar, I can promise you, you're not going to give 100 million out of a billion.

Sari 26:05
Man, seriously, if you need to pick me up, just come back. Like bookmark that part, this episode, come back and listen to that because wow, like so energizing. And what I was struck with was like, I want us to do something really cool for Erica. First of all, you have to go check out her social media, she is killing it over there. And not because she's doing flashy things. She's just showing up as her. She's doing real things, real reels, right? She's just, she's trying stuff. She's gotten inspired. Again, she's just trying it. She's trying different things, right. That's what it takes. So she's doing really cool things. And here's what we're gonna do. I am going to purchase some $25 gift cards from her website. And I am going to put those codes on the Instagram post for today's podcast. So go over to Food Biz Success on Instagram, look in the comments, and I'll put a code for gift certificate there. You can go over to southerngirlgranola.com, use the code. I'm gonna buy $25 gift cards. And we'll just put them in the comments when they're spent, come back over and say, got it, claimed it. Leave Erica a note when you check out and wish her all the best. She is like a single mom, rocking it out, doing everything she can to create this as her business. We have a big goal for her to be able to leave her job at the end of April. So it's a big deal. And I just want to, I'm so thankful for her be willing to share her story with all of you. It just lights me up and then come back and post that you claimed it so we know that one's gone. And I'm going to keep putting them up throughout the day. We'll just see. Maybe you want to grab a gift card, and share it, and pay it forward too. Like let's just see how much fun we can have at this and like really rock her world. What do you guys say? It's me so fun. And I can't wait to hear your stories as well. All right. Until next time, have an amazing, generous week.

Sari 28:35
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 foodpreneurs. 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 foodbizsuccess.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.