Sari
I'm Sari Kimbel, 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 farmers 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!

Sari
All right, you guys, welcome back to the podcast, and today I have a very special guest. Fills my heart to have this conversation today with April King of Better Than Provisions. And April, she and I have been working together for over a year now, and her and her husband, Earl, hired me as a consultant, and we are definitely going to have a podcast with both of them to really go through their business and all the awesome things they're doing, but I wanted to bring April on as a great example of someone who we evolved Our relationship from just consultant to a coaching relationship, and I think it's so important to hear the side of things and what April is going to talk about, as far as how coaching has helped her grow in her business. So welcome April, and thanks so much for being here today.

April
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Sari
Yeah, and, you know, I'll just say, I like, and we say to each other all the time, like, I just, I just love you. And like, it's just been such a fun so much more than I expected, right?

April
Yeah, I would say the same is true. And I'm like, don't get me started.

Sari
You and I have been working together about you becoming, like stepping into, we call it for fun, being a badass boss lady, right? But that entrepreneurship, that co founder, CEO, whatever role you want to put on there. And let's see, how long have you been actually doing your business? Because you guys had already started.

April
Right. So we've been in business for three years, and I think that you met us right around our two year mark.

Sari
So you were at a farmer's market. It had a different name. You made a couple one or two little wholesale accounts. And then, why did you guys want to get help? Why did you hire me?

April
Well, so it wasn't my first experience hiring a coach or a consultant, and I knew that if we wanted to accelerate our progress, that getting someone on board to help us, you know, there's so much that goes into it, right? There'sobviously the knowledge that you have for packaged food business, right? And all the things that revolve around that with, you know, our, obviously, we did a rebrand so our packaging and finances and, you know, knowing what to charge and how to track it, and all of those sort of practical logistical things, right? Because we wanted to make some strides in our business in that regard. So it made sense to us to bring somebody on board that had the expertise that we needed to take the next steps. Because, you know, you can learn anything, right? You can learn anything, anywhere on the internet. You can get all this information. And I have been following you for a while. You know, I had been watching your YouTube videos and I think you started the podcast, though shortly after, we started working together, but I had been listening to you on YouTube, and I was like, wow, she really knows what she's talking about, and it was really helpful. So that's kind of why we stepped into it. Initially, was to get the expertise in the packaged food part of things, and then it became so much more.

Sari
And then we just kept evolving the relationship.

April
Yep, so, and I was scared at the beginning too. Remember, I was like, I don't know, you know, it was an investment. And we, I kind of hemmed and hawed on it. You know, one of the things I think we worked on in our coaching is my ability to have more trust, more trust for myself, more trust for other people. And so initially, I was a little skeptical about working with someone that didn't really know our business, that didn't know me. And so, you know, I had some reservation, some hesitations. And then we, you know, Earl and I just decided we were going to just jump in. And, you know, we met with you, and we really resonated. You're very down to earth, and you're easy to talk with. And so we had that experience initially. And so we just, you know, pulled the trigger and dove right in, yeah, but it was really about moving our business forward faster, you know, like we could figure out all, like I was saying, before we could figure out all of that stuff for ourselves. But how long was it going to take us and how many mistakes were we going to make along the way?

Sari
And mistakes are still going to happen, but then having someone that you can and we'll talk about, like feedback, and have that person along the journey, right? How's your back so? So in the last 14 months or so, how do you feel like, entrepreneurship and stepping like, what do you feel like, has changed in that, in that time for you personally?

April
A lot. I was actually reflecting on this recently and how so since I was in my 30s, so, you know, 15 plus years, I have always kind of had something a little extra going on on the side. And what I realized is that when things would get hard or when I would get frustrated or I would get bored, I would quit. Yeah, I would, I would find a way to to stop. And some of that had a lot to had to do with, like, my self limiting beliefs, right, the things that I believed about how successful I could be, and some of it was that there might have been something personal going on in my life that was, you know, maybe it was self sabotage, but maybe it was just something life circumstances that got in the way, and so ultimately, I would end up giving up on it or trying something new, you know, oh, well, this isn't quite working yet, so let's just try something new. I've done a lot of things. I've done several different MLM businesses in the past. I mean, I've got my health coaching and nutrition practice, which I still have, but there were, there were iterations of that, right? There would be, I would start, like, a program or something, and I would get into it, and, you know, two or three people would enroll, and I would get discouraged, and I'm like, oh, this isn't working. And so then I would try to find something else to do. And what I realized in reflecting on this is that we embarked on this business three years ago, and that's probably the longest stretch for me, aside from the health coaching piece, which, like I said, has been bits and pieces of different things that I've been able to commit to one business. And about the time that you came in, there was sort of this a little bit of a disenchantment with it, because we were still in the same spot, sort of that we were when we started. If we really look back on it, there's evidence that we weren't right, that we had made progress, but it was so small that it was really hard to see. But it was, you know, being the entrepreneur who sticks with it when the going gets rough is who I really wanted to be and show up as. So when we committed to this, I was like, okay, I'm all in. I'm going to go for it, and the entrepreneur piece of it, and really embracing that has helped me to realize that it also matters how you're growing personally, right? You can't grow your business without growing yourself, and you know, vice versa, I suppose it's been an adventure in self discovery and an opportunity to face things about myself and learn things about myself and accept things about myself.

Sari
I mean, one of the things I love about you is that you are willing to go on that personal development journey, and you're open to that, you know, I do have clients that are very strictly consulting, and that's where we just focus on the doing. But as I've been learning about entrepreneurs and myself is that it's always you, right? You're at the center of it. And so if we don't work through the issues and grow as people like we can do the doing all day long, but I think you make bigger strides when you do the inner work, the person

April
Absolutely and that's one of the reasons we chose to work with you, and I chose to continue on going from the, you know, sort of consulting for the packaged food business into more of a personal coaching situation. Is because I know the amount of work. I know that you get it. First of all, you get it. You get it. You get it what it's like to be an entrepreneur. You get what it's like to go through the ups and downs that it brings. And you're also a person that is committed to working on themselves and growing. I mean, we've had a couple of different times where you're like, well, let me rethink that for myself and you know, and come back to the table, and we'd have a conversation about things that was really inspiring to me as someone who's also trying to grow I think that that's kind of one of the keys to a successful relationship, right? Is to enter into it with a partner that has a growth mindset. And so you were, you have been that partner because you also have the growth mindset. And so to see you while you're working with us and helping us to grow, to see you also, and I'm going to get teary, to see you also working on yourself is incredibly inspiring and encouraging, and makes me feel like, you know, it makes me relate to you in a human you know, she also makes mistakes, and she also has things that she's working on kind of a way. And I think that that, for me, is probably the most attractive piece about our work together.

Sari
Thank you, little chills, yeah. I mean, I'm a work in progress, and we're evolving together, I would say,on this journey, one of these days, we're gonna meet in person. I will come down to come to Denver, and we'll just need to set aside like, four hours, right?

April
Yes, over dinner, it'll be nice to give you a hug and say hello face to face.

Sari
So some of the things I've seen which I'm just going to brag on you for a minute, but I have seen such a transformation. I mean, I remember even in the first few months we were working on branding and naming, and you were definitely getting kind of things would happen right outside circumstances. Things would happen, whether it be personal or in the business, and it would kind of stop you, right? And then you take, like, a couple weeks, or even a month or sometimes two, where it was like, okay, I got to, like, get back into it and then you would show up again, and we would get going again. And that totally understandable. It's very normal, very part of the entrepreneurship. But think what I've seen a big shift in the last, I don't know, five, six months has been about like, I think, just you recognizing like I can keep going, and I can keep doing hard things, and I'm going to listen to myself, but it doesn't mean I'm going to, like, totally shut things down. And I've just seen you show up in such a big way in your business. I mean, you guys have done I've seen you been doing reels and, like, just putting yourself out there, making yourself more vulnerable for your audience, and that's really powerful, and I think you've seen the benefits from that. You guys recently did a Kiva fundraising round, and I know that was very vulnerable for you, love for you to talk a little bit about that, but I've also seen you making decisions more powerfully and having difficult conversations with me, sometimes with your husband, with outside, other people. I don't know. How does that sit with you? Do you feel like do you see it too?

April
I do, and I think it, you know, it boils down to making strides in confidence, and again, that piece of trusting myself to make decisions, and it was through the work that we've been doing together that I've had opportunities to make these decisions. And maybe prior to, like, five or six months ago, I tended to take things more personally. You know, when something would go wrong, it would. It would have to me in that, you know, either I did something wrong or there was, you know, there was lack of intention on the other side of it, and it, it would. It would set me like you said, it would. It would put me off course, because I would maybe ruminate on it a little bit, and, you know, maybe wish for things to have been different. And the reality is that when I was in that situation, and what I'm doing more of now is making the decision to just take action, right, not take it so personally. To make some decisions, have difficult conversations, whatever it's going to take to move forward, rather than sit in it and feel bad about it and worry about it, you know. I think a worry was a big part of it, you know. And I think also through this work it, you know. I mean, obviously I have a background in nutrition and health, and that comes from my, and the this business was born out of that, right, and that, you know. But even health coaches and nutritionists have their own struggles and challenges with things like food and self care and, you know, and I think too, through this, and I think the badass 30 was a piece of that too, is that I set some goals for myself that I continually did day after day after day, and I proved to myself that I could trust myself to do these things. But not only that, I implemented some things that have made a huge difference, right? So, I'm on my 100th day of meditating straight in a row. And I have tried meditation. I can't even tell you how many times I tried to bring that in as a tool for my life, because I know the value, and I've of course, recommended it to people. But for myself, I would start it, and then I would other stuff would get in the way. I'd get busy with other things, or I would get bored with it, or, you know, whatever the situation was, and I would start and stop and start and stop. And now I have embraced it as like a non negotiable thing that I do for myself, right? And then I've made some changes to my own diet that I've found, you know, really work for me, and I feel like those pieces, putting those into place, have affected like, how my brain functions, you know, so as I'm building these other skills and having difficult conversations or, you know, making decisions without worrying that it's not perfect. I think that these other life pieces have come and lifted and accelerated that as well, or, you know, enhanced that. So it's just kind of a lot of things all coming together. And I don't I know, like, I know that I could have done these things on my own, but having a coach and someone to not only hold me accountable, but someone to celebrate the small wins. Like, I think we miss those small wins, we look for the big stuff, right? Like, oh, the new packaging is done, or, oh, we're selling on Amazon. Or, you know, I mean, like, we look for those things, but if we really just take a step back, you can see that each day, and I think that was part of the badass 30, right? I made the commitment to make a decision every day, and what I didn't, what I realized through like writing those down, is that every day I do make decisions. I do make choices like, but I hadn't seen them because they were so small and what I felt was like insignificant, and they didn't, you know, was like, oh, that doesn't really matter. You know, I made the choice to get up half an hour earlier. You know, big deal. But the reality is, is that it is a big deal. And when you start to notice that you are maybe already doing what you think you want to be doing, it was just really powerful to see spelled out,

Sari
Yeah, we're doing the badass 30 as a group. And I know you've done it a couple of times, and it was so fun. I just highly recommend all of my clients to it that I work with, and it's something I'm just going to start out every coaching program with, because it's so powerful. It seems so small, like, what these five things, but when you start compounding the days. And you're like, yeah, you would send me screenshots of your meditation app and be like, you know, 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, and now 90 days. And it's like, right? And just pausing, you know, you and I talk a lot on Voxer, and, you know, even text sometimes. But it's like, like, whoa, whoa. I know we've had conversations like, stop, let's just celebrate for a second that amazing thing and now we have so much history together too, that it's like, I know when this big thing happens, when you get a new account, or things are rolling, like, I just, I know you, and like how important that is and what a big deal that is. So it's so fun.

April
Yeah, it's fun to have. And that's another point. A good point is that it's fun to have someone to celebrate those wins with. You know, that's a cheerleader, or someone that's in your corner that knows how hard you're working. And what it's taken for you to get to this place you know, to have that that to have you there to send a message to when something you know, when I get a new account, or even something as something small, and you're there to reinforce it, right? And I think that that's really important in the growth piece is to have someone there that gets what you're doing and gets what you're going through. I mean, you obviously know what it takes to be an entrepreneur. You also know what it takes to be a package food entrepreneur. And there's a lot of things that that come up that, you know, I mean, it's so funny, because I believe that you'd said to me once, it's just kind of like, there's always going to be some problem to solve, right? It's just, it's just a matter of, like, being solution oriented, and knowing that when it comes up, that you can that there's going to be and it's interesting, because I've always been a resourceful person. I've always solved my problems and found a way, but to have the reflection of you seeing it and encouraging it to feed it back to me. It's like, oh, and then you right. So it feels like I'm closer and closer to that really badass status where I'm confident and know that even if I make a decision and it's not, maybe not the right one, like I can always change my mind. I can always make a different decision. You can always make a different decision, you can always back up and go another way. And sometimes those things cost money and they cost time, right? So that happens, but it's just, I think that's the nature of the beast, right? If you want to be in business for yourself, and you had mentioned the Kiva loan, I'm putting myself out there. So yeah, we did this. We did a $10,000 crowd funding loan. Kiva is an organization that gives micro loans to businesses like ours that are trying to make improvements. And we had some marketing goals and some goals to expand our production. And so we needed the funds to do that. And what I didn't realize going into that was how much I'd have to put myself out there, right? I thought, well, because you start out like getting some support from your community, but the support you need from your community and your circle of people is kind of small, so it seemed like, oh, that part will be really easy, right? And then, and then they open it up to their community, and then all of these strangers can help, right? So I don't have to put myself out there that much. I just have to ask a few people. But what, when we got into it, what I realized we needed to do was we needed to ask everyone. And you know, one of those people I asked was, were some of those people I asked for family members, which was really difficult for me, right? And come to find out that even before asking one of my brothers, he was already there and had supported me. And so it gave me an opportunity to ask hard questions and be open vulnerable to, you know, maybe a no, you know, no, sorry, I can't help you right now. But what it also did was show me just how incredible of a community of people I've built around me and I belong to and just how people come together, like it was reinforcing in that way. But yes, I had to. I had to do videos, right? Get on video and talk about what we were doing, direct asks.

Sari
And it's not even the like, the no, it's the the no answer, right? The crickets. And you're like, started, you start making it mean all these things, right? And, yeah, like, okay, am I not going to take this personally?

April
For a person who tends to take things personally, that's really freaking scary, and, but what it did was, then I was like, oh, well, now that I've got practice getting on video, I can get on video.

Sari
I can do that.

April
I still haven't taken your challenge yet to get on video, to do 30 reels in 30 days. But, you know, that's definitely in the back of my mind, like, okay, well, when I do my next badass 30, maybe that will be, that will be it, right? And, and now that I have some experience doing some video, and it's building the muscle. It's building the muscle. It's trying, and I think again, going back to like the coaching piece, it's like, you're, you're practicing. And you're, you're doing these bits of making decisions, or making a video, or whatever it might be to try to get better at it, but you can't be good. You can't necessarily always be good at it when you just start. So you have to, like, try and try and, you know, which is very vulnerable. But the thing that I have seen happen in the past year is we have gotten so much stronger. We built those muscles, and so now when it comes to having to face something going wrong with a market or the packaging, or, you know, a batch of granola. You know, I had to dump 60 pounds because I had something go wrong, right? We were bringing in a testing a new ingredient, and I, well, first of all, I'll mean, I won't make this mistake again, because I decided to do that on a day where I was doing like a full cook, rather than just a test batch. So note to anyone who's listening, if you're trying something new, do a test batch smaller scale before you have to throw out six pounds of product, right? But then it happened, and you know, I think that I handled it so much more. I handled it so much better than I would have ever handled it before.

Sari
I know we were on a phone call, and you're telling me this, and I'm like, she's not freaking out. Like, totally calm about.

April
Yeah, I think girl freaked out a little bit more than I did. He was like, what? And I think it was probably because he his idea would have been to test it in the smaller manner. But I'm like, no, we need to make this granola. We need to get it out. And then, of course, we couldn't get it out because it didn't turn out.

Sari
So, yeah, sure, lessons learned, but you didn't make it mean all these terrible things about you, and you didn't make it mean when Earl was a little upset, you didn't make that mean all these things. I was like, who is this?

April
And what have you done with April?

Sari
Because there would have been a time when that would have, like, devastated you, and yeah, and really, you know, shut you down.

April
And, yeah, yeah. And I would have been like, I can't do this. And, you know, I was that negative sort of self talk would have creeped in, and I probably would have made it mean that, you know, I'm incapable, or.

Sari
Never gonna work.

April
Yes, we've had those days, though, back in the beginning, I was like, that's it. I just want to quit. And I mean, but that's a natural feeling, right? I would assume it's kind of the same for anybody who's venturing, you know, in this direction, trying to build any kind of business. It's just you have those days where you are just exhausted and you know, things aren't working and going your way, and you just, you, you lose a little hope. And I think that working through all of that over the past year has shown me that it's never hopeless, you know? I mean, I know that in other areas of my life, but in this particular venture or area. It's, it's like, wow, you know, we can get through this now. It's sort of like, oh, well. And we have this great branding. So now it's like, oh, what's next? You know, where are we headed? And it's so exciting.

Sari
I see so much momentum. And I would just say, I just kind of got chills again, but I think it's your resilience, right? That, like you're, you have worked that muscle of resilience, and it just comes from practice. It comes from doing little things, like badass 30, like, I think one of yours was like drinking a green drink every day, right? Like, you think, like, what? What does that have to do with building a business, but making a commitment, showing up for yourself, honoring your word, and then when things do go wrong, you're like, oh, I can do that. I can do hard things. I can commit and show up. Because we don't have confidence. People want to have confidence before they've ever started and they've never done it before. That's not the way. It's not the way it works.

April
No, it doesn't work that way. I mean, I had confidence in certain areas, right? And things that I had previously proven to myself. But I, you know, I wasn't certain that I could do this, that we could do this, and, you know, take it to the next level, but I also knew that I was never going to take the business to the next level unless I leveled up myself like I have, and I still am evolving into that person, but I've had to become a better version of myself to show up for the business. In the way that it needs, you know, and also, I think that we are often, you know, we're programmed with that sort of upper limit, that ceiling that's there, right? This is, this is as far as I can get before. I don't believe anymore that I can go past it or that. And I think you likened it to a thermostat in the past, right? So it's set it's got that set point, and you have to move the set point. And the only way to move past, you know, to, I think, bring your business to a place of success that you've never had before, is to move that set point for your own beliefs, your own belief system, your own mindset, how you believe or don't believe it's possible. And I think that, you know, the small things have added up and are moving that set point for us, and, you know, I, wouldn't change it. As difficult as some of this has been, and I'm not going to lie, some of it has been painful, really. But at the same time, I never, I could never see myself going back to work for someone else, right? I could never see myself, you know, getting a job. I love this, and, you know, and it takes a lot of work, right? You've got long days and sometimes sleepless nights. And, you know, I find it funny because, and I joke about this a lot, because people will say, oh, you own your own business. You're so lucky. I'm like, I am. I believe that I'm lucky, but at the same time, I don't know that they fully can comprehend the amount of sweat and and energy that goes into doing something for yourself, right?