Why You Should Ignore Food Industry Benchmarks
(Listen on Apple or Spotify. Full transcript below.)
do you ever wonder what is “common” or “typical” for a food Business? or what the food industry benchmarks are for success?
Recently, on The Good Food CFO podcast, we tackled some of your most frequently asked questions and determined that food industry benchmarks aren’t actually helpful.
THE food industry PLAYBOOK
Every founder I meet is looking for the playbook for building a successful food business.
When you're doing something for the first time it makes sense to look to someone who is already doing it or who has done it successfully for advice. It is a natural thing to do because you’re trying to learn, and you’re trying not to fail.
In the food industry most founders aren't trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of how business is done. They may have an innovative product, but when it comes to pricing, costs, growth, etc. most founders are trying to recreate something that has already been done.
I think that it can be helpful to have a sense of what has worked for other businesses, but to actually benchmark your business against another is not helpful.
striving for what is “Typical” in the food industry
Every week I get asked food industry benchmark questions like…
What investment is needed to start a food business?
What is a benchmark for COGS?
What do you commonly see revenue to be when a company breaks even?
When do food founders typically start to pay themselves?
The often frustrating response to these and many other questions is, “It depends.” And the reason the answer to all of these questions is , “it depends” is because no two businesses are going to have an absolutely identical situation.
Also, it’s important to remember that the “typical” food business runs out of cash and is forced to close its doors within the first few years of opening. That’s a great reason to not strive for what is “typical” or put too much weight on food industry benchmarks.
every food business is unique
I’ve shared, many times, the story of my own food business and the fact that it failed financially despite us hitting “recommended industry targets”. I’ve also shared about the role I was in when I realized that the prescribed 30% Cost of Goods Sold for food businesses wasn’t working, and that we could set our own targets for success!
Food Industry benchmarks should be seen as starting points.
While every food business has the same financial structure - Revenue - COGS - Operating Expenses = Net Income. Every food business will also have a unique vision, unique customers, and unique goals.
That uniqueness should inform the financial targets and internal benchmarks that are uniquely right for your business to achieve financial success.
find your formula
The Good Food CFO is built on the knowledge that every food business is unique, and our tools, resources and education are focused on helping you find your business' unique financial path to success. This podcast episode is a great start for understanding why you should let go of the idea of an industry playbook, or food industry benchmarks, and instead find your unique formula and build your business on your own terms.
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Episode Timeline
00:00 Introduction to Mindset in Business
04:46 Community Engagement and Listener Feedback
10:01 News Highlight: Radical Transparency in Ingredients
14:48 Understanding Financial Questions in CPG
20:04 The Importance of Unique Business Models
29:50 Challenging Common Beliefs of Food Industry Benchmarks
40:10 Empowering Founders to Define Their Path
Full Episode Transcript
You're listening to the Good Food CFO podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Delevan, joined as always by our producer, Chelsea Stier. Chelsea, what are we getting into today? Well, Sarah, I actually don't want to give too much away about our main episode. Okay. But I can say that we are having a really interesting conversation that centers around like mindset and Food Industry Benchmarks.
Mm-hmm. So I'm excited for our listeners to hear that one. We're also going to share a news item that is bringing major BABOYOT energy. But before we get into any of that, I have a new review for you. little surprise element for me. I'm excited to hear the review. Yeah. So this review comes from an active Good Food CFO community member.
Danielle Lutzke, who's the founder of Plantidote Foods, and I think we've shouted her out here on the podcast before. I think so, too. Yeah, and this particular review comes on the heels of the episode that we just did where you shared your take on the CFA Foods acquisition. Okay. So it reads, you must be getting so many emails from founders about what it means to hear you put words to
such a big idea. It's never been my dream to sell to a conglomerate. My dream is to bring good food back to regional. What's awesome about you is that your models and advice help me prove it within my company, who will then go on to prove it to other companies. The team at the Good Food CFO consults and educates on this early and often. So I see the path
before I really start to go down it. Love you, love Chelsea and her perfect probes, thank you, followed by like 20 exclamation points. Dan, I mean, that's amazing. I have actual little goosebumps. Chelsea, do have perfect probes. I'm going to echo what Danielle said there. Thank you for that, Danielle, because one of the reasons we bought
brought Chelsea onto the podcast was so that I had someone to talk to and someone to bring an outside perspective. so it's really, I think, lovely. I just want to touch on that first to hear that you are truly bringing value in the eyes of people to the podcast, Chelsea. So thank you for all that you do, not just to produce this podcast and get our guests here and edit and put it all together, bring news stories to them, but also for asking really wonderful questions during our episode. So thank you for that.
Okay, well now I have goosebumps. Minnie love fest. Then I just want to say thank you for sending us this email, Danielle, because it is so nice to hear from listeners that there is value in what we're sharing and that when we offer tools, when we offer coaching, both things that Danielle has taken advantage of and
I think I've talked about Danielle here specifically on the podcast as someone who has truly made the most of what we offer at the Good Food CFO. And when she joins us in office hours, she is so dialed in. She does a lot of work in between sessions and just the progress, the focus, the information and direction that she gets out of a session to move.
her business forward in the direction that she is choosing. And I think the impact that she's going to have not only on the folks that work with her, but on her community and in her region is really, really wonderful and lovely to see and to be a tiny part of. thank you, Danielle, for what you do and also for continuing to communicate with us when something touches you because it means the world to us. Yeah, we definitely are very grateful.
for anything you send to us, Danielle. We love hearing from you. But I think specifically here, it's like everything that you just said, Sarah, you can see is alive in what she's saying here in this review and that her vision for her business is so clear and that she feels confident in bringing it to life. And I just love, love, love hearing that. And Sarah, like we always say,
Reviews are the number one free way that the listeners, you all out there can support this podcast. So if you haven't yet, share your thoughts with us on Apple, Instagram, YouTube, or just email us at hello at the good food, CFO.com. And maybe we'll read yours on a, on a future episode. Love that. Now to news, Sarah, you actually shared.
this article with me this week. I did. Yeah. So in my inbox, there was an email from Food Business News and it happens to feature a founder and a brand that I know through Instagram. They sell their products in local Arawans here in LA and in many other stores as well. I know that they're a good friend of an industry friend of ours and I thought, how cool to see their name in my inbox. And even more so,
the topic of the article. So it's titled Lexington Bakes, Taking Transparency to Next Level. And as I mentioned, it's featured in Food Business News, and I'm sure we'll have a link to it in the show notes, right, Chels? Yeah, of course. So the founder of Lexington Bakes is named Lex Evan. And the reason I picked this article specifically for this podcast episode was because he's talking about radical transparency.
particularly as it relates to ingredients and how he communicates his ingredients to his consumers, which is not in the sort of standard and traditional way or with any Food Industry Benchmarks. And as you mentioned, Chelsea, that's very BABOYOT energy. I think that, you know, number one, when you have an ingredient list like his that includes regional
producers as well as the highest quality international producers. There's high cost to that, right? So looking at his ingredient list, you've got Chaux Chocolate, Valrhona Chocolate, Straus Family Creamery, Bob's Red Mill, Mount Hagen Coffee, Seed and Mill. These are other regional brands in some cases, right? They're doing things at the highest level of sustainability and transparency and quality.
And so for Lex to be choosing these things, I think is very BABOYOT in and of itself. But then the article goes on to talk about how he communicates his ingredients to his consumer on the packaging and also how he evolves the ingredients, you know, as needed or as desired or as able, you know, based on where he is in the life of his business and sort of what the finances allow for.
Yeah, I loved the idea of having those suppliers right on the package for everyone to see, like, not just what are the ingredients, but where are they coming from? I thought that was so cool. And as you just mentioned, right, between, you know, how he is sourcing them around the supply chain, around what the consumers want, around the cost, I thought there was a lot there that we've
heard before, we've talked about before here on the show, one thing that came to mind was your conversation with Jason from Daio Water, right? Talking about how he had a plan to really impact his margin, like long-term and at each stage of the business. And I hear that, sorry, read, I guess, that same thing here in what Lex is saying, right? Where he talks about wanting to
maybe use different sugars, different types of sugars that he would prefer and thinks the consumer would prefer, but that right now are cost prohibitive. Yeah. And so looking for at what point would he be able to use those ingredients? Yeah. I think it's awesome that the company's products contain over 99 % organic ingredients and more than 30 % fair trade ingredients. It's a commitment right up front. But I think as
I want to read into this a little bit and sort of put this in context in a different way for the founders that are listening. Because oftentimes we're talking about ingredients here, but sometimes we talk about packaging as well. And that's something that came from Jason's episode two, right? You may have an ideal type of packaging, one that is the most sustainable, one that aligns with your vision and mission for your business, but it may be so expensive.
for where you are in your business, the size business that you have right now, that it's cost prohibitive to utilize it or it makes the price of your product a little too high for your target audience. There are founders who say, you know what? I'm going to use it anyway and I will price my product so people can buy it now and then I'll save money or my margin will increase when I scale. And we've talked about it an endless number of times how dangerous that can be, right?
Well, think Lex is an example of saying, what can I do now that is in line with how I want to operate my business? What are the ingredients that I can secure and utilize right now that get me started? And as I'm able, I will introduce even better ingredients in my mind, right? Even more aligned with what my consumer wants. And I think the interesting thing here is that he's
actively communicating this to his audience regularly. So his audience knows that this is not the be-all end-all version of what he's making. It's really good right now. And you know not only what the ingredients are and that they're organic, but as you said, where they are coming from. And because he talks about on social media, the efforts that he's making and what his aspirations are, his audience knows. And I think that that has to be creating a level of relationship that
not many brands have with their consumers. Yeah, I mean, he says it perfectly in the article, right? He's quoted as saying, I spent a lot of time crafting our brand story and why we source and how we source. I try to define everything as best I can so that there's no abstract meaning that is intended to deceive or confuse consumers. Our whole brand is about honesty and transparency.
That's so much. mean, yeah, nothing says BABOYOT like a sentence like that, right? Yeah. The cost of chocolate has gone up so much lately. We know from our friends in the industry who work in chocolate, who create beautiful chocolates, that the cost to make their products is going up. And those founders who are dedicated to quality but also dedicated to
keeping the price point where it's at. In some cases, you can't change your price point as frequently as the cost of chocolate is changing. So he's not going to be using Valverona chocolate in the future, I am assuming as a result of those increases in price, but he's not subbing it out for a lesser chocolate. He's going to probably remain committed to Chaux chocolate and perhaps bring on another equally high quality chocolate. He's considering
swapping out refined sugars for something like an organic coconut or date sugar, right, versus the organic cane sugar and brown sugar that he's using today. And so I love the aspirational quality of this. And I think that that alone is worth sharing this article with our listeners, but also, again, because of the transparency, because of the BABOYOT-ness of it. So I just want to say thanks to Lexington Bakes and Lex Evan, the founder, for all that he does to
I think show the behind the scenes of his business, which is super important if you follow him on Instagram and also talking about his values and how he's marching toward them every single day within his business. It's really cool stuff. Well, Sarah, thank you so much for sharing the article. I really enjoyed reading it. anytime I see anything that's like, BABOYOT, regional, local, I'm like, yes, yes, yes, let's share it as far and wide as we can.
So yeah, thank you. Yeah. And I want to say really quickly that we've got some founders who are sharing articles with us via social media in the DMs. You know, you can send articles if there's something happening in your region. There's a, sometimes we get recommendations for founders that folks think we should have on the show. Like those are always welcome. So please do not hesitate to, you know,
share something with us. With my head down in Excel spreadsheets many days of the week on the consulting side of the business, it's amazing to get an article delivered to my inbox that comes from someone in our community and just brings it front and center. So love that. All right, Sarah. Well, I gave a very small, small tease for this episode. So I know that those listening out there are going in a little blind. Are we ready? Yeah, I think we should get to it.
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Sarah, I want to ask you some questions around Food Industry Benchmarks that we hear a lot here at the Good Food CFO. Okay. First question, what is the typical ad spend for a CPG brand my size? It depends. There's a lot of factors that would go into providing an answer to that question. Okay. Let me try this one. Okay. What is the typical investment?
that is needed to start a business? It depends. That depends on what kind of business you're trying to build. it's a, if it's a CPG business and how big you want that business to be, whether it's a regional food business, CPG or otherwise, like, is it a shop? it a, what are we, what? It depends. All right. Let me hit you with this one. Okay. What do you commonly see revenue?
to be when a company finally breaks even. Okay, you know that that one depends. I mean, that one depends on the product margins of the business, the gross profit margins of the business, and how much the business is spending and operating expenses. So it depends. Okay. So I think you can see where I'm going here, but I'm going to keep going. Okay. I'm sticking with this. Okay. Next question. What does a founder typically pay themselves?
Or another way of wording this is how far into their business is it typical for a founder to start paying themselves? Okay, so this one I can sort of answer because typically founders don't pay themselves for a long time in a food business. how far into the business can a founder start paying themselves or how much they would pay themselves really also depends on
know, cashflow and other elements of the business. All right. Here's one we get all the time. I mean, all the time. What is a benchmark for my cogs? that's huge. That depends. I think here's the thing I'll say about this is that, of course, there are Food Industry Benchmarks. I'm making air quotes for anyone not watching on YouTube.
If you Google this Food Industry Benchmark, you're going to get an answer and it's going to be around 30%. It's going to actually though likely be in relation to a – like if you just use the term food business, it will be for a restaurant. If you Google it for a CPG, actually don't know what would show up. haven't Googled it in a long time. But again, it depends. I don't believe in benchmarking your cogs against another business or an industry as a whole.
All right, I'm going to try one more question. Okay. What percentage of revenue is typically allocated to trade spend for a growing CPG brand? Hmm. I'm sure that there is a typical, again, making air quotes, amount that people in the industry would tell you. I know that I've heard like 12 % thrown around before, but it goes much higher than that. I don't know the answer.
to that because we don't do it that way. We find the right amount of trade spend for a business based on what's happening inside the business. All right. If you, have not caught on or if anybody listening hasn't caught on yet, pretty much every answer to these questions was? It depends. Yeah. Again, Sarah, like I said, these are questions that we get on a regular
basis. And it really seems like, or it sounds like to me that these questions that founders are asking, it's because they're looking for the common way of doing things or like a typical way, the playbook for building a business. And I'm really curious to hear your point of view of why that is. Yeah. I think that
whenever you're doing something for the first time, you're embarking on something brand new, looking to someone who is already doing it or who has done it, quote unquote, successfully is a natural thing to do, right? We're trying to learn. We aren't trying to sort of reinvent the wheel. We're trying to do something that has already been done to a certain extent.
And so I think that it can be helpful to have a sense of a benchmark for things like COGS or things like ad spend. I think that, you know, it can be helpful to take in information from others. But at the end of the day, the reason the answer to all of those questions is it depends is because no two businesses are going to have an absolutely identical situation. And so let's just take trade spend, for example.
If one business is spending 12 % of their revenue on trade spend, and that might be just fine, and they can be profitable and it can have an impact on their business, and another business does the same thing, they could be putting themselves into greater and greater debt each month as they're spending on that trade spend, right? So it just really truly does depend. But I fully understand why founders
look to other businesses as models. I did that in my food business. I did that in my consulting business in the first couple of years as well. And I think what ultimately ends up happening is you through the process identify what might work for you, what could work for you, what does work for you, and certainly what does not work for you. I think the tricky thing is when it comes to finance specific questions, there's a very real reality of like running out of time or running out of money, which
brings me to some of the conversations that we've been having on the podcast lately. I keep referring back to this episode with John Haskell from Ranch Right. You we talked about the common fate of food businesses, the common fate of small businesses and how many of them go out of business. And the number one reason that they do is because they run out of cash or they've borrowed, you know, to operate their business and they can no longer pay their debts.
So I think is really interesting is this idea that people are searching for or wanting to identify what is common and typical for food businesses, yet the common and typical outcome is that food businesses run out of money and close. So if that is the common outcome for small businesses, how can...
Or what would you say to a founder to help them to sort of shake that mindset of looking for the common way, the typical way, you know, finding a playbook that they can use and really doing it on their own? Yeah, I think that's a great question. So I'm going to share a story here. I worked for a food business that, obviously before I became a consultant, that was sort of
among the best of the best in their part of the food industry. And from the outside, other business owners of the same type of business admired that business, admired the founders, thought that they were doing it right. They were the aspirational version of this type of food business. What I could see from the inside was that financially they weren't in a great
position and also their employees weren't super happy. They were for a time and then things started to change probably due to financial stresses and other things. That was a really interesting period of time because even after I stopped working for that company and I always remained tight-lipped and never have really talked about this or shared the company name or anything like that.
But people would still say, you worked for so-and-so. I always wanted to X, Y, Z. They always were X, Y, Z, right? They just admired from the outside something that didn't actually exist in reality. And, you know, because I respect business as privacy and all of that, I would just say, yeah, it's great. But knowing in my mind that
like what was really going on and how much of a shame it sort of was that these really, these great founders who are running really wonderful businesses because they weren't feeling like they were living up to what they were seeing on social media or other sort of social platforms and things that they weren't doing it right or they weren't doing it as well.
And so for me, what that essentially did was solidified the fact that you cannot judge a business by what you're seeing from the outside. And when you start to compare, you know, like for example, if someone had said, what is that business's cost of goods sold? Because I'm going to mirror my business after that. What could have eventually happened was that they would end up in the same financial position as the business that they
admired, right? They would soon find out that, maybe those cogs aren't right for me. And the truth would have been like, it wasn't right for that business either. I think at the end of the day, if you don't know every aspect of a business, right, from revenue to operating expenses to profitability to debt on the balance sheet, you shouldn't aspire
to be like them in any way because you don't know the full picture. And when I founded Sarah Delevan Consulting, we used to have this term called the financial success formula. And what that meant was looking at your business and identifying what your unique business formula was. And if you were able and to this day, if you're able to identify that formula and then create your business
right, to hit the targets that are right for you, you can be financially sustainable and you can be profitable. We don't use that term anymore. That was sort of in the days of like the popularity of courses and stuff like that. But our philosophy is still the same. Business is a math problem and everyone's math equation is essentially going to look completely different. And so you can look to another business and say, what are your cogs?
Okay. Are you profitable? Are you, right? You have to like ask these sort of follow-up questions because you can't just take one element from a business and implement it in yours. Maybe you identify what a, you know, Food Industry Benchmark trade spend is, but then is it for businesses that are wanting to have 10x growth year over year, 5x growth year over year? Like,
What are they aspiring to? There's just so many additional things you need to know and have context for to be able to go, that is something I even want to try in my business. And certainly don't judge your business if it can't afford the same amount of trade spend as someone else. Because again, they might have a lot of debt that they're utilizing for this trade spend and maybe your debt
tolerance is much lower than theirs. That matters. It's going to create a very different financial scenario and neither one is right or wrong. They're just different. Yeah. And I even feel like you can extrapolate even that example out, right, to so many different factors. Like, how many stores are you in? How many, or do you want to be, right? Like, there's so many different things that go into making these decisions. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think, you know, interestingly, this idea of the list of questions that you just asked me and saying it depends, you know, and again, I understand why people are curious. I think it's helpful to have a framework.
to know if like 90 % cogs is right or 20 % cogs is not, I shouldn't say right. are we looking, is it typical to have 90 % cogs or is it typical to have 20 % cogs? Okay, then I can start the math equation using a number closer to one of those two, right? And I can start to build out the financial model of my business maybe with those benchmarks and see what that means for me.
right? And then you might see, okay, it does work for me. That's totally possible. But then you also might see, this doesn't work for me and hmm, what would? Okay, well, if I tweak my cogs and I could get them down to 18%, you know, then that would be better for me. You know I mean? Or hmm, maybe, you know, I shouldn't sell in this particular channel at least right away. Just you can start with a framework that's based on typical and common.
But the recommendation that I would give is to model that out and figure out what is right for your business. And in addition to, I think what we see with founders having these very similar questions, right? Looking for the ways in which things are quote unquote done. I think there's also along that same mindset, some common
I want to say like beliefs about the way things are in the food industry, these Food Industry Benchmarks. First of all, I'd love to hear from you what you think those beliefs are, but then also like same idea, how can we kind of break that mindset? Yeah. Well, I think one of them we talked about with Keisha from Live Loud Foods, right? We sort of dug deep into this idea that
as a founder, you won't make any money until you sell your business. We just recently talked about Siete Foods here and we don't know what their story was, But as part of that conversation, we discussed how CPG founders have realized the thin margins that exist on the national level and in big retail and how difficult it is to
make money, bottom line money, profit dollars, to be able to pay yourself and to be able to continue to grow the business, especially if you're someone who doesn't want to take on a lot of debt. So in an instance like that, absolutely it can look like the only way to make money as a founder is to sell this business to someone else and have them make it profitable on their own. But that doesn't mean that that is the way, the only way.
for a founder to make money in a business. So I think that that's a common one for sure. And we talked at length, I think, in the CIT episode about how I feel about that and the fact that regional brands, know, smaller, quote unquote, smaller brands, you know, can really have an impact where the profitability of the business, the financial sustainability of the business can be a lot greater on a regional level than on a national level. And so if you examine again, what
will work for you and what you want to create, you can certainly generate a healthy living for yourself and give back to the community through employment and other ways, like with a small business. And it doesn't have to wait until you sell it. I think another one would be needing outside investment and this idea that like when you launch a business, you need funding right away. Yes.
a business needs money from the beginning, right? But it doesn't have to be angel investors. It doesn't have to be, you know, investors, you know, outside of yourself, your family, right? A crowdfunding campaign, things like that. And I don't think that it needs to take as much money as people seem to believe that it does, again, because it depends on what you're trying to build. If you're trying to go national,
in year one or two, it's going to take a ton of money. You know I mean? And sanity. Yeah. Yes. Yes, that's very true. And if you're trying to build a regional brand, of course it will take money, but it's certainly not going to be the same as someone who's trying to do really fast growth across the country. So that's why these things depend. But I think to answer your question, those are two really big commonly held beliefs that simply aren't
through 100 % of the time. And I think one of the things I loved about your conversation with Keisha from Live Loud Foods is that when you guys were specifically talking about the commonly held Food Industry Benchmark that you have to sell to make money, right? You have to sell your business to finally make money. Yeah. Where the conversation led was not just about that, but about these other commonly held beliefs and really
asking yourself, why do I think this? Yeah. Yeah. Why do I think this? Do I think this because it is quote unquote the truth or do I think this because it's what I've been told, what I hear, what is in trade magazines and why do I believe this? Yeah. It's such an interesting thing to stop and think about. And I've thought about it a lot since that conversation, this idea that common and typical
does not equal good, does not equal profitable. That was one big takeaway from that conversation. Then the other is this idea that there are things that we, I don't even want to say that we believe, but there are things that we repeat. There are things that we take as a truth without investigating them for ourselves. Also, I think that there is
a certain level of group think that is very real within the CPG industry in particular, where when enough people say it around you, it's sort of like, well, okay, well, that must be the truth and I'm going to say it too, you know I mean? And it feels weird and strange to go, wait, is that the truth - is that a real Food Industry Benchmark? You know I mean? And
I think just reflecting on my own career, I talk about the things that we did wrong in our food business that was sort of like step one of learning that your model won't necessarily work if you replicate another business, especially one that's a lot larger than yours, or blindly chase Food Industry Benchmarks. And then moving into working with
with the catering company that I talk about working for and really seeing what that looked like in that business and how you could look at finances differently. There's so many levels of education that I had before becoming a consultant. And even though I believed, knew, tested, and proved how things could be done, I…
was terrified to talk about it to too many people or too loudly or too publicly because I knew that it wasn't the commonly believed thing in the room or the typical Food Industry Benchmarks. Yeah. And it took a lot of practice saying it out loud to one person and then to another person and then to a small group of people. And not that everyone believed me or agreed with me every time I said it, but then I could
explained to them, well, I have done this before. Here's my evidence. Here's my proof. And I had to exercise that muscle to then be able to eventually come on a podcast or do a workshop or you know I mean? Even say it on social media and just be like, this is true. And I know this to be true. So to have an expectation that a founder would have the courage, the capacity, the space, the time to do that investigation and go or you know what I mean?
or to kind of speak up and go, wait, is it really true in like this big industry of people - is this Food Industry Benchmark real? Like that's an unrealistic expectation, I think. But what I hope that this episode does, this conversation does, and some of the other conversations that we've been having in this vein is that those listening will say, what have I been repeating as a truth or what have I accepted as a truth that
Either I don't wish to be true and so maybe there's a way to make it not true, right? Or that maybe I just accepted without really asking and investigating it on my own. I think if anything comes out of this conversation in this episode, I want it to be that. So Sarah, I think my last question here is really once I'm like kind of
breaking this open in my own mind, right? That I don't have to do things the same way others do. I can look at my own business and what it needs from me, what it needs financially, right? What's my next step? Where can I go next?
I don't know if we need to talk about the next steps here. I think that the process of asking yourself that question is the point of today's conversation, if I may say that. I think that we have so many episodes where we talk about modeling, where we've talked about the essential models. We've talked about that a lot. I think that for those things,
to have an impact on your business, right? For you to be able to go into the modeling scenarios and to create one that might look completely different from any other model you've ever witnessed before, you have to do the work of asking the questions. What am I believing to be true that I haven't tested? What am I believing to be true that I haven't taken the time to really investigate on my own?
benchmarks am I utilizing from other businesses that maybe aren't working for me? I think those next steps and as far as how do we create the business model, we've talked about that. But the piece we've never talked about perhaps, or at least not in this way, is the idea of how do you sort of tear it all down to be able to build something
unique and perhaps more successful than ever before or perhaps more aligned with you than ever before. And the reason I say more aligned is because as I'm saying this right now, I'm thinking about some of the businesses we've worked with who have right-sized and the literal energy, enthusiasm,
et cetera, et cetera, that have improved and just like completely changed 180 for those founders who are building businesses that are so completely aligned with them as a person and with what they want to create in the world, you know, not just financially, but in all the ways. No, in some cases, literally the name of the brand is more aligned. Yeah. Yeah.
So the next step is maybe grab your favorite beverage or maybe go to your favorite place where you think and ask yourself these questions. Chelsea, you and I have been doing this in our work and I would love to hear from anyone listening if you take a little bit of time.
If you discover anything about yourself that you've maybe accepted as truth or believed as true or were trying to make work for your business that just wasn't true, wasn't right, wasn't a good fit, I would love for you to share that with us via email, via DM on social media, whatever works for you. I think this is a really empowering way to connect and sort of break free from Food Industry Benchmarks, if I might. I love that.
And I'll plug it in here. That email, if you do want to reach out to us, is hello at the goodfoodcfo.com. We'll have that in the show notes as well. Well, Chelsea, thank you for asking those questions of me today. I think that this was a really interesting and wonderful conversation. Yeah. I think it was very much in the vein of building a business on your own terms.
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