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 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 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
Hello and welcome back to the podcast. Today's topic is inspired by a recent Master Your Business call, where we have, we had a lot of people on the call, and we were talking about the fear of success. Now, what if I told you that I think it's my opinion, that the fear of success, once you are in business and you're kind of doing normal, whatever normal is, quote, unquote, normal operations, that it's actually the fear of success that is going to hold you back way more than the fear of failure. In the last six years, I have had the privilege of coaching hundreds of food founders, helping them move through this part of their business. Now I will tell you, the fear of success is going to plague you at every stage of your business, after you move through the initial fear of failure, where you get over like starting the business, and now you are in business. You have a product. You've made, the investments. It is my experience that it's actually not the fear of failure that is holding you back once you are started. It's actually a fear of success that is keeping you small. It's keeping your actions and your strategies and your thoughts small. And your business is going to require bigger thinking. It's going to require you to become a new version of yourself, and that is scary. I know I have certainly been challenged with the fear of success, and in fact, I would say I'm actually in a new level of that right now, as I'm making some new decisions about myself and the businesses and what I want to do next, and how I want to show up, and what I want those to look like. But I see it all the time with food founders, once you've made an investment in your business, now you have more to lose. Right at the beginning, it was kind of like, well, let's just see what happens. And you, you know, you kind of just sheer will. You find the courage and you push yourself over the cliff, right? But now you have more to lose. And so the fear of success is that ceiling. And in the amazing book called The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks, I've talked about him before, he calls it the upper limit, right? Where we upper limit ourself, where we end up, the danger of this is, if we don't see it, and we don't do the work, then we end up sabotaging ourselves, and we sabotage our success. You might be like, what are you talking about, Sari, I want to be successful that's why I started a business. I want to make all the money. I want to do all the things, being an entrepreneur is going to require you to continually expand. It's you're never done. It's kind of like these rings of expansion, right? When you first start, you're in the center of the ring, and you you push yourself into that new phase of growth. And a lot of people have been there, and you can lean on a lot of other people and systems and books and podcasts and things to say, okay, here's the first things I got to do, right? I'm going to expand and, yeah, it's going to be a little awkward. I'm going to fumble at some farmers markets. And you know, my ecommerce may there might be some challenges at the beginning, or I'm going to go talk to that wholesale buyer. And you know, I know I'm not going to be perfect at the beginning. So you kind of like you do the initial expansion in this circle, and then I think this is where we get stuck, right? We get good. We get into our comfort zone of like, I know how to go to a farmer's market. I know how to do this initial kind of level of ecommerce. I know how to approach local buyers, right? But your business probably needs to scale beyond that for you to be bringing in the kind of revenue that you actually want to bring in. And oftentimes what I see is that there is a fear of, like, it's a subconscious and so you check in with yourself, but there is this fear of, if I grow, and I'm using this term very purposely, because I did not say scale, I'm saying grow. So if I grow, this is like the thought that's in the back of your head, and make more money.

Sari 5:56
I'm already at my capacity. I'm already working so hard, I'm already putting in so much effort into this business, I can't grow anymore. That's the sneaky thought. If I grow more, if I want to go from 50,000 to 100,000. If I want to go to 100,000 to 300,000. If I want to go to 300,000 to a million, I can't keep up with that. I can't work that hard. And that's one of the biggest unconscious beliefs, limiting beliefs that I see in people, that I hear. I pick up on, is like, I can't grow anymore because I can't work harder. So that's a big one. And I purposely use grow because scale is actually a different concept, and I love working with entrepreneurs to talk about scaling, which is about you becoming much more efficient, you outsourcing, you automating, you delegating, you hiring. And it's a whole different level. It's a whole different game of business to scale versus grow. Okay, so let's talk about a few other unconscious beliefs that I know that many of you have and we asked, we did a whole conversation with this in Master Your Business. So I'm using some flavors of the ones that came up, but there's things like, oh, if I am more successful, if I'm making more money, if I'm a bigger business, then the expectations on me, the responsibilities, the growth, like who I'm going to have to be is going to have to change. I'm going to have to be responsible. I'm going to have to actually pay attention to my money and really understand it. I'm going to have to get good with money. And how many of you, because I hear it so much, it slips out. It's really sneaky, but I hear all the time. I'm not good with money, and for you to be in a business where you are making the kind of money that you want, that you're bringing in a salary for yourself and your family, you better believe that that thought I'm not good with money has to shift. It has to start being I am good with money. I'm great with money. I'm figuring it out. I'm learning. I have people to help me be great at money. Those are just a flavor of that, but there's other thoughts that could replace it. And it's more than just thoughts, right? Because your brain is a beautiful BS meter, and you can't just go around the heat, like, I'm great with money, I'm great with money. And, like, if you're not doing anything to get better at it, your brain's like, yeah, that's total BS or not. I'm on to you, right? You're still not good with money because you haven't actually changed anything. You haven't learned, you haven't grown in that area. Another area we talked about working more your time, right? Like, I can't work any more than this is also about how people might perceive you in your friendship circles, your family circles, that I heard a couple different versions of people might take advantage of me, that I'm going to have to be more visible, and people are going to judge me more. They're going to have more opinions about me. And that is true, believe me, right? You guys have I'm putting myself out there, right? You're having opinions about me.

Sari 9:54
And that's something that comes with you stepping into that next version of yourself, right? That you are becoming somebody who's willing to be on social media, who's willing to try things. There was definitely a version of like people will take advantage of me, like outside services, you know, I'm going to be bad with money, I'm going to waste it, or be taken advantage of. And there are a lot of things out there. There are a lot of people making big promises, and this is certainly an area that I have had to do my own work in. And I know I had a podcast about, like, your biggest money mistake, and I shared one of mine where I totally believe this company for PR, and I invested quite a bit of money, and I won't go so far to say it was a scam, but it certainly did not deliver the results that I thought it would. And so yeah, it can be really scary. And the reality is, though, that you can't grow enough. There's not enough capacity in your life. Even if you don't have kids and you don't have a partner and you don't have anybody depending on you, there is still not enough hours in a day for you to be able to do all the things in your business and be able to take home the salary that you probably desire. Getting past that kind of 50, $60,000 hump, like usually people can kind of get there and push themselves, And there's enough strategies and information and other people doing it, I find where people really stall out is right around, like 50, 60,000 and then getting to that 300,000 and that's really one of my specialties, that I love working with entrepreneurs. I love working with them in Master Your Business and one on one, to really dig in and say, we got to create a bigger vision. Remember when you first started this business and you had all these beautiful, amazing, big ambitions, we got to get back to that. We got to get out. We got to grow beyond into a new ring of discomfort, and we got to set a big goal, and we're going to take some chances, we're going to take some risks, and we're going to put ourselves out there, and we're going to look at all of the fears that come up. You know, this business, being an entrepreneur is like 80% of it, as Tony Robbins would say, 80% is mindset, 20% of it is strategy. And I guarantee that there is a place in your business where you are showing up small and you are staying in your comfort zone and you are potentially sabotaging yourself and one of the areas of big growth, but I see that usually needs to happen is that you, as the CEO, the founder, the leader of the business, you get stuck in doing all the little minutia stuff, the like, let me cross this little thing, this check mark, check, check, check, check, and we feel so good about ourselves, right? I do this too, where I'm like, I did this, and I did this and I did this, and look at this long list of things. We get stuck in that. And we're not doing the zone of genius activities. We're not doing the thing that's going to move our business forward. It might be that you're not going and attending that trade show, you're not having those bigger conversations with buyers, you're not going on Amazon or some next level version of your ecommerce. Might be that you're not showing up on social media in the way that you really need to or running ads or doing your emails, right? We get stuck in the like, oh, I feel so good because I got this checklist of things crossed off. But we know, you know, when those things are just like, those are things that need to get done but didn't need to take you all day, and you're going to have to get uncomfortable, right? This is time to expand into that next level of discomfort.

Sari 14:31
So I want to challenge you to first, we have to just see it. Spend a little time like writing down like, what would I be afraid of? Imagine that you have the business that you want, that you are bringing in a salary, profit that you want to put into your bank account. Whatever that big vision is, maybe it's quitting your job and you have the salary coming in, or that it's just funding your life. Or. You get to retire your partner or whatever it is, right? Like, think big, and then notice where in the gap, what are those fears that are coming up, whether it's around money, around time, around what people might think, how you are going to have to show up, some of the risks that you might have to take, just start noticing the first thing is that we got to see it, we got to say it, we got to write about it. We got to speak it and understand that, that those things are in the back of our minds. When we don't uncover them, they are driving our decisions. They are keeping us small, right? Like your brain is always trying to prove your thoughts true. So that's why we got to get in there. We need to examine them. We need to see what's coming up, and then we can make a plan. And this is what we talked about in Master Your Business. Was like, okay, if these are the fears, now you can do something about it. It's not inevitable that people are going to take advantage of you. You can put parameters in place. You can put standards in place. It's not inevitable that you are not going to have any time, and you're going to be the absentee parent or the absentee aunt or uncle, right? That's not inevitable. And our brains like, look at these things as such, black and white, right? It's like this plus this equals that. It's like, that's not true.

Sari 16:39
And I think it's also about finding new role models, finding people who are successful, by whatever standard you want to use, that are living a life that you admire. We have lots and lots of examples in our culture of people who gain success and then lose their friends, lose their families, like, lose their money, don't have any time, right? Like, we got lots of examples of that. What if we could find some examples of people in our lives or around us, right? Doesn't have to be people, you know, but go find examples of people who are successful, who are showing up for their kids, who are good with money, who are making great decisions, who have more time, not less. Those are the people you want to study. Those are the people you want to emulate and learn from. So expanding like actually, this is what success could be, and here's how I'm going to mitigate, here's how I'm going to guard against some of the things that I'm afraid of. And that's where it starts. And I will tell you that coaching with someone like myself, finding a coach, can be the incredible Fuel that you need to get into that next ring of expansion. If you need support to get it past that, that ring that you are in, you are in a comfort zone, right? And if this is speaking to you, you're like, yes, I do have some fears of success, and I've been playing in my comfort zone. I've been playing pretty small. Then I want to invite you to go check out the brand new one on one coaching page with me. Go to foodbizsuccess.com, and at the top of the page, you'll see, Scale Your Biz. And that is my one on one coaching and I'm going to be focusing more on that, because I think it's a really powerful container. And I know for me, I have found, one on one coaching to be the fuel, to be the thing that I needed to help hold me accountable, to recognize where my limiting beliefs were, and to deal with them and to create the strategy that is aligned with my goals, right? Not a cookie cutter strategy, but one that is specific, very bespoke for you.

Sari 19:15
If 2026 is the year for you to get over the hump, to move out of the current circle of comfort that you are in. And if you want to really scale, not just grow, not just do more and more and more, but to actually scale, then go and check out my one on one coaching page. You go to foodbizsuccess.com it's at the top of the page. It says, Scale Your Biz and fill out the application. It's for people who are already in business. If you are kind of stuck in, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50k, and you're like, I gotta get out of this. This is the container to help hold you accountable. To help you develop a big, impossible goal that you're really excited about, and the strategies that you're going to execute in 2026 to get closer to that, to take the big leaps, to move past your comfort zone and get a little uncomfortable, and have someone there really holding your hand, cheering you on, being your coach and helping you celebrate your wins and also learn from the failures. Because if you don't have some failures, if you've not had any failures recently, then you are not taking big enough action, my friend, because we need more failures. So it's not the fear of failure, because you can handle failure, but let's look at where you are afraid of succeeding. Let's get in there. Let's examine it. Let's start changing the thought behind it and doing the action that's required to make it true. That's what I have for you today. Go and examine what are my fears of success? I hope you are up for that challenge, my friend. And until next time, have an amazing week.

Sari 21:11
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.