Six Strategic Questions for Business Growth
(Listen on Apple or Spotify. Full transcript below.)
Unlock Your Food Business's Potential with six Strategic Questions for business growth
The most transformative moments in business often come from asking ourselves strategic questions for business growth. But knowing which questions to ask – and having the courage to answer them honestly – isn't always obvious.
In today's food industry, success isn't just about having a great product. It's about making strategic decisions that align with your vision, understanding your true ceiling (and how to break through it), and building a team culture that can sustain growth. The right strategic questions for business growth can illuminate the path forward, even if the answers make us uncomfortable.
The Power of Customer and Partner Evaluation
One of the most powerful strategic questions for business growth that we explore in this episode is deceptively simple: "If we close 100 more deals exactly like the one we just did, will we be happy?"
Think about your most recent partnership, sale, or business decision. Now multiply that by 100. Does that future excite you? Does it align with your vision? Or does it make you realize you might be headed down a path that looks good on paper but doesn't serve your long-term goals?
Understanding Your Customer's Needs
When customers make requests, the natural instinct is to take them at face value. But the most successful food brands know they must ask strategic questions to dig deeper into customer needs. That new flavor your customers are asking for – what need is really driving that request? That new packaging size they want – what problem are they actually trying to solve?
removing artificial limitations
Perhaps the most challenging strategic questions for business growth force us to examine our own assumptions about what's possible. In the episode, Sarah shares a powerful example of a food business that thought they'd hit their revenue ceiling – until asking why, and examining if they had really reached their maximum potential opened their mind to new possibilities and revenue opportunities.
The Courage to Kill Projects
One of the hardest things for passionate founders to do is know when to let go. It can be a very blurry line for founders, so in the episode we explore how to:
Set clear criteria for success before emotions get involved
Recognize the difference between persistent and stubborn
Make decisions based on data, not just gut feelings
Know when to pivot versus when to quit
Creating a Culture of Truth
The final strategic questions for business growth we discuss in the episode might be the most uncomfortable – but they're often the most transformative. “What are you afraid to ask your team?” and “What conversations are you avoiding?”
Sarah shares a difficult question she asked her team during their recent annual meeting, and how the answers to these tough questions can unlock business and team potential you didn't even know existed.
Ready to Dig Deeper?
Listen to the episode to hear:
- Real examples of how these strategic questions for business growth can transform your food business
- Practical frameworks for evaluating partnerships and deals
- Specific strategies for breaking through revenue ceilings
- Actionable tips for creating an open, communicative team culture
- The exact questions they use in their own business reviews
Want more questions? See the full list that inspired this episode here.
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Episode Timeline
00:00 Introduction and Overview of the Episode
02:25 The Closure of Bench Accounting
11:23 Exploring Foundational Questions for Founders
20:50 Understanding Customer Needs
26:10 Reimagining Business Strategies
29:33 Identifying Growth Barriers
33:52 Establishing Project Kill Criteria
39:42 Encouraging Open Communication with Teams
Full Episode Transcript
This episode of the Good Food CFO podcast is sponsored by Settle.
You're listening to the Good Food CFO podcast. I am your host, Sarah Delevan, and with me as always is our producer, Chelsea Stier. Welcome listeners. Welcome back to a brand new episode. And please, if you have a moment, rate, review, if you're watching on YouTube, subscribe. I want to share that we have a goal actually here on YouTube to get to 300 subscribers by the end of January. So if you're watching
Make sure you click that button down below, turn on notifications, and that way you get updated every time we post new content, a new video. Okay. So today, Sarah, in the main episode, we are talking about an article. Yeah. Yeah. I was settling back into my desk after the holidays, catching up on news and things. And I came across an article from a website called The Review.
So I wasn't familiar with the review and in case you are not familiar, it was founded in 2013. It is essentially a collection of articles in various topics or categories, if you will, like leadership, management, entrepreneurship, startup, things like that. And in their starting up collection, as they call it, was an article titled 25 Hard Questions Every Founder Should Ask Themselves.
And obviously I was very interested in what that list of 25 questions was. And so I looked into it and then brought it to you, Chelsea, and just thought this will be really interesting to touch on a couple of these questions here on the podcast. Talk about how they can relate to food businesses, to finance, to being a Baba Yacht or striving to be a Baba Yacht, and also leadership and sort of doing hard things, as you like to say.
Yeah. So really excited to talk through some of the questions that we found most interesting. Yeah. I think it's going to be very fun. I think that we picked some really juicy questions, some ones that are very loaded. And yeah, I can't wait for people to hear. You can like write your questions or write your answers down at home, right? Yeah. And if you want to sort of follow along or see the full list of questions, you can head to the show notes. We've got a link there for you.
So you can get that full list. But before we dive into the main episode, there's some other news from the end of 2024 that I want to talk about today. And that is that Bench, which was an online bookkeeping and tax filing platform, they closed very abruptly on December 27th. There was a closure notice that basically said, you know, we are closed, effective immediately.
and we recommend that you reach out to the modern accounting software provider, Kick, for support with your bookkeeping. And obviously, end of the year, not only for year-end review, finishing your books for the year, preparing for taxes, this is a terrible time to shut down, but they're also – transitioning to a new bookkeeping firm, that's no small feat.
The story gets a little bit more interesting because three days later, so on the 30th of December, Bench was actually purchased by employer.com for a currently undisclosed amount of money, at least at the time of this recording. Now, employer.com are experts in payroll and employee onboarding. So accounting, bookkeeping, tax filing is not their, like...
zone of genius, if you will. It's not what they're known for. So was a really interesting purchase. And what they told customers was, you'll be able to access your files and then you can export them to another provider like Kick, or you can stay here and we'll provide services for you. Yeah. And Sarah, a little background on bench accounting for anyone listening that maybe is not familiar. They were founded back in 2012.
initially as 10 Sheet Inc. and changed their name to Bench in 2013. The company is based in Vancouver, Canada, and they basically paired intuitive software with real human bookkeepers, as you kind of mentioned already. They also had $118 million in total funding, and that includes
60 million, which they got in a series C round in 2021. Now, I'm very interested in hearing your thoughts around
either what companies should do, what they can do, or really what you think about companies that were working specifically in food CPG that were working with Bench. Yeah. I'm not a fan of intuitive software for food businesses. I think that
service-based businesses like mine, right? So the Good Food CFO, for example, sure, we would be fine working with a company like Bench because we have a very straightforward set of books. They're not very complicated, right? They're run of the mill. CPG in particular, farming, fishing, like I'm just thinking about the complexities from the different channels, the different chargebacks.
In farming, like having animals that you then process and turn into a product, right? Being both a producer, if you will, as well as the seller of a product. In fishing, there are strange taxes and things that are associated with using the dock, like just having a business in certain areas. They're all very complicated and there's nothing intuitive about them, right?
Having a business that is complex and trying to fit it with a quote unquote intuitive software is tricky. And then if you don't know if the human bookkeeper on the other side of that software is an expert in CPG or farming or ranching or fishing, there's no confidence for me that they're going to get the books right. We have had a couple founders come to our consulting business using bench and I always recommend that they
move to a fully human bookkeeping firm because I could never get in touch and have the kind of communication with the bookkeepers that I needed to to do my job. I will say that I do think that innovation is needed in bookkeeping, particularly for food-based businesses. Because when I think about QuickBooks, for example, which is the platform
the software that most bookkeepers are going to use that I generally recommend to people for that reason because it's trusted. They're not innovating their software in a way that's beneficial to a CPG brand, for example, or to a ranch or to a farm. They're innovating in ways where I think they're trying to help
humans save time. Like, we can autocategorize this expense and oftentimes it's wrong. You end up shutting those things off anyway. They're innovating their business by adding more services like purchasing MailChimp. So now you've got email and your accounting software in one place. But they're not really doing things that are providing more value to a food founder.
I hope in the future that we're having conversations with some companies that are out there that are doing things specifically for CPG. Like Settle, our sponsor now, they're not accounting software, but they're designed specifically for food. There are other services, platforms that are designed for food. I'm hoping to learn more about those in the future and hoping to share more about those here.
Because I do think that it's needed. I do think that it is so niche and so different that we need our own tools and innovation there. That said, in terms of bench suddenly closing down, that could happen with any business, honestly. If we're being really truthful, you know what I mean? There are ways you can close the business gracefully.
with your customer in mind. You know I mean? With your employees in mind. I mean, I don't know how much the 600 plus employees of Bench, as reported on their website, knew about this closure two days after Christmas and a few days before the new year. But certainly their clients and customers didn't know about it. And employer.com has said that, of course, customers that stay
with them will be able to utilize the bench software and will have access to the same bookkeepers that they had before. So guess that's a plus, but I think it's difficult to stick around for me. It'd be difficult to stick around as any kind of business with a company that suddenly closed that's now owned by a company that has no background in bookkeeping and tax filing and things like that. So I would definitely jump ship.
I don't know if Kick would be the place I would go. It's another sort of intuitive platform. I have looked into it a little bit, but again, I think for service-based businesses, various sort of streamlined, simple businesses, sure, go ahead. But you can get human service for less money sometimes than what they're charging per month. And especially if you're a food business, you need
customization, you need certain expertise, and I always recommend that you seek that out first and foremost for your business. Yeah. Well, Sarah, I will say we hope that anyone who is impacted by this closure has been able to get sorted, get organized, and is, crossed, very lightly impacted by this. Yeah. Not that it's something that
you take lightly necessarily, but you can also file an extension with the IRS. if you're listening, you were with bench, you're impacted by this, file that extension as soon as you can and then kind of get to work finding your new bookkeeper or bookkeeping firm. Well, Sarah, are you ready to jump into some of these questions? Yeah, let's get to it. Good food founders, let's talk about cashflow.
The metric that truly determines your ability to grow your business. We all know that figuring out your true costs, your margins and projecting cash flow isn't always as straightforward as it could be. When your data is scattered across systems, it is easy to lose track and leave money on the table. That's where Settle comes in. Settle is the only platform built for CPG brands that combines inventory, payments and procurement into one unified system. And they offer integrated financing for your invoices to help extend your cash
Runway. Settle helps you make smarter decisions and keeps your business on track to grow sustainably. Head over to settle.com slash good food to learn how brands like carnivore snacks use settle to manage their cashflow and growth. Sarah. So like we talked about in the intro, as you mentioned, we are going to be covering a few questions that came out of an article that you found titled 25 hard questions every founder should ask themselves.
And these questions cover everything from product strategy to co-founder relationships or like team management and even like leader decision making. As I mentioned in the intro, I found this during my weekly review of like what's in the news. It's a sort of beginning of the year, end of the year review. It's obviously a great time to reflect, right, and ask ourselves questions. But as they mentioned in the article,
These are things that are great to ask yourself for a pulse check, as they put it. And I think that that's a great term to use to describe the types of questions. And as you'll hear in some that we're going to highlight today, there are certain times in your business you'll ask this question of yourself. It might be based on something that's happening in your business, or it might be during a quarterly or annual review. The one thing I do want to say, if you click through and you read the full article,
There is a bit of jargon. A couple of the questions, sort of the additional info that's provided to give context. There were definitely moments where I was like, what is this founder trying to say? But we put the jargon aside and can really find the value in asking these questions. And so we chose a selection today, Chelsea, you and I, that touched on Baba Yacht, which is really important to us here. Obviously, finance.
which is really important to us here. And then as you mentioned, like team relations and sort of the difficult things that we often need to do or should do as founders and leaders of a team. Yeah, I'm ready to jump right in here. I'm going to start us off. This first question is actually, if you're following along, you know, in the article or maybe reading the article later, this one was number 22 on the list.
And the question is, if we close 100 more deals, basically like the one we just did, will we be happy or sad? I think this is such a great place to start. If it's not apparent to everyone who's listening, this is a BABOYOT energy question. I think especially in the world of food and CPG in particular, if you think to yourself, maybe you closed a deal with UNFI.
and that's exciting, but maybe the margins aren't great. Or maybe you closed a deal with an independent brand and the margins are strong and they really want your product on shelf. obviously I'm pitting two types of business decisions against each other. I'm doing that to give an example of depending on your business and what your goals are and the kind of business that you want to be running, you're going to have feelings about that deal that you
recently signed. And I think this idea of asking yourself the question, will we be happy or sad is very, very interesting. And I also think that as food businesses with such small margins, typically profit margins, you know, particularly on the bottom of that P &L, we can very easily fall into saying yes to opportunities that maybe we don't love, right?
I've seen that with founders. I've seen that in my own business. In the early days where I'm starting a consulting business and I need revenue and I want to help people and maybe this client is not a dream client of mine, but I need the money. I want the experience. If I signed 100 more clients like that or businesses of a certain type, maybe I wouldn't be as happy as I would be if I
was working with a client of another type, right? Just as like a very simplified example. So I don't think it has to be like a 100 % happiness level versus zero. It could be somewhere in between. But I think gauging that after signing a deal is a good practice and an interesting thing to do. Yeah. And I also love that they talk about, when we're talking about the extra information under the question, is absolutely you're right.
what does the margin look like? How happy does that make you? But they also point things out like, does this feel like a true partnership? Will we be able to do our best work in this partnership? Will we be excited to talk about it on social media? All of those things are things that you should consider. maybe that one, right?
is right for you. I'm not sure. I don't know you or your business. But yeah, would you want 100 more like that? Yeah. And I think too, not only thinking about the deal we just signed, but maybe the relationship that just ended. thinking back to CPG again or a certain kind of partnership, if it comes to an end and you look back and you think, well, that was shorter than I hoped it would be, or we didn't make as much money as I hoped we would,
that just didn't turn out how I thought I would. I think this question also gives you the opportunity to examine what about this relationship made me not so happy or what about this relationship made me happy so that… And why am I sad now that That it's over. Yeah. And so then when you're making future decisions, you'll find yourself making decisions that are making you happier, essentially. Right? Yeah. And I think that
you will never make decisions and be in relationships that make you 100 % happy all of the time. You have to learn what did I like about this, what did I not like about this, what would I do again, what would I not do again. That's part of being a founder and being a part of a team and growing. So don't be hard on yourself if you find yourself in a situation where you're like, you know what, I didn't love that. Here's another perspective too. You might have loved
a certain type of relationship for a while, for years, and you might be changing. You might want your day to day to change. You might be bored with that kind of relationship, whatever that might be, right? And so you might simply be deciding, I want to do things differently. This is no longer making me as happy as it did before. This is no longer as exciting, right? I love that. I love that. So
I guess the next question would be is when do we ask ourselves this question, right? I mean, we've already mentioned after the deal you just made, after a deal ends, what other points might we be asking ourselves this question? I think a great time to ask this question is at year end. We had our annual meeting not long ago and I'll share a little bit more about that I think through this episode as we touch on some questions. But that's a great time to say who are we working with right now?
our clients? Who are our partners? How are those relationships going? Which do we want to and are very excited to invest in and which ones maybe are feeling more like a drag? I will honestly say that none of my clients feel like a drag. don't want anyone listening to think that that's the case, but I'm giving general, you know… And you need to ask that question to verify, I like everyone we're working with. I want to continue doing this and I want to find more clients and partners like them.
If you review that list, the deals you've made, the people you're working with, and they don't make you happy and you're like, I'd like to maybe not do this anymore or that anymore. You know what mean? I think the end of the year is a great time to review it because it's not like you're going to sever ties overnight, but you can start to think about how will I change direction or how will I make decisions differently in the future or what do I want to start focusing on?
you know, in the new year or if you're doing this quarterly, I think that's great too. Um, and doing it in the quarter. So, you know, I would say annually, quarterly, and at the end of a relationship or a partnership are the best times to really ask yourself this question. Yeah, I love that. All right. Well, let's jump right into the next question. If you're reading along, this one is number eight on the list. The question is,
What is the customer actually trying to tell us with this feature request? So in the article, it's a bit tech-focused, kind of software-focused, the way that they're approaching it. But when you and I were discussing it, Chelsea, we asked ourselves the question, how could this relate to a food product or a food brand? And I immediately could think of customers saying, hey, you should be sold on X platform, or hey, you should be in this store, or
whatever the customer request is, maybe they want a different flavor or something. And what they're saying here in the article is like not to pay attention to the feature request as they're calling it, but to instead look a little bit deeper and ask why the customer is asking for this change or addition or something like that, right? Probe deeper into the customer
needs. The questions that are additionally posed in the article are things like, why do they need or want it that way? What are they trying to do or what do they want to do or trying to accomplish? How are they doing things differently than how maybe we thought they would? Here's an example. Let's say you are a peanut butter brand and your customers are asking for peanut butter
pouches, like single serve pouches or something like that, right? That could be an example of saying, why are my customers asking for this? Do they need a more convenient way of consuming my peanut butter? Are they on the go and they need something that they can run with, camp with, whatever? You know I mean? So maybe they're asking for a subscription. Hey, you should create a subscription for your product. Why?
Is it inconvenient for you to get online and buy the product? Do you regularly run out? So asking the why behind it and then figuring out, and those are kind of two very straightforward requests, I think, but figuring out what do they really want and Yeah. And then perhaps making changes. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. If it's worth making that change. Yeah. The other thing they say in the article is that there's almost more information.
in why a user is asking for a new feature than in the request itself. so that digging deeper, I think is really important. But the next layer of that is how do you dig deeper? Right? they don't provide any insight into this, but I think there's like a, thanks so much for sending this request in. May I ask you a few follow-up questions? How are you using the product now? How is it?
Are you running into difficulties using it? Whatever the questions might be to really get to know your audience. That's making me go back to some of the conversations we've had here on the podcast with brand strategists and other types of folk. Knowing your customer is a number one priority. Who are they? How do they live? Where do they struggle? You know I mean? How can you make their life easier or more fun?
completely reminding me of your conversation with Cathy from the podcast where she really drove home that you need to understand how the consumer is using your product because they're not going to use it necessarily the way you envision them using it. Exactly. You may have created this product out of a need in your life or a desire for something in your pantry or your fridge.
But that doesn't mean that that is how your customer is using it. Right? And so getting to know them, yeah, there's huge benefit in that. going deeper, creating a true relationship with your customers and saying, thank you for this request. I want to know more about you. Would you be willing to answer a few questions and we'll give you some free peanut butter or whatever, you know I mean, in exchange for your time? Yeah. I just think it's such a great idea. And it takes away a little bit, I think, of the like…
people are asking for this, I've got to do it. Kind of energy that can be easy to find ourselves in, especially if we're a young brand or we're just starting to get launched. You know I mean? And we want to make our customers happy, but we can't be everything to everyone. So really understanding our customer base will help us avoid spreading things too thin, doing a little bit too much and get really focused on what people want.
Yeah. And so I would say if you want to dig more into this question or this type of work, definitely go back and listen to that episode with Cathy Guzman Galloway. You can search it right on our website. She had so many insights. It was such a good episode. Okay. Well, our next question, again, if you're following along is number 14 in the article. And it is, if I was starting this business again today from scratch, what
would I build to win the market? I really wanted this question in our short list to talk about today, particularly because in a recent conversation with the founder, I heard them say something to the effect of, if I was to do this all over again, I would do it differently. And it wasn't until after we were, the conversation was over and, I was continuing on with my day, I started to think to myself, what changes
would they have made and could they make them now? And if the answer was yes, why aren't they? And so I wanted this question here to pose it to anybody who is thinking about or who has thought if I was going to do this again, right, if I was going to launch this business from scratch today, what would I do? And then go a layer deeper and say, why am I not doing it now? What is holding me back from that?
Why can't I? Yeah. Yeah. And if you're not, as the question says, winning the market, and you could be if you did things differently, why wouldn't you make that change? Why not? Yeah. Yeah. And as a finance person, when you're making a big change, you want to look at your finances. You want to think it all through. You want to understand what those changes would cost you, both in time and personnel and money. But explore that. I think just exploring that.
is a really great thing that would come out of asking yourself this question. And I think it's interesting here that this CEO of Shippo that is kind of further answering this question, that she says that this question helps her resist the sunk cost fallacy, right? That it helps her to essentially stop or not waste any more money on something when she could be making a change.
I think that's a really interesting perspective also. Yeah. There were a couple other questions, I think, in the list, Chelsea, that were sort of geared toward like, what are you not seeing? What opportunities might be available to you and you of have too narrow of a vision to see them? I think that this is closely related to those. Again, I want to say that if you feel this in your business, I would do this differently or
Maybe you heard the episode with Sarah Nathan from Nooish and you're like, logistically, my product is difficult to work with. If I would have made it in X, Y, Z way, why not? Open up your mind and ask those what if questions. What if I was open to changing my product? What if I was open to changing channels? What if, what if, what if?
And a lot of ideas can come to you. And oftentimes those ideas can still be very in line with your vision and what you want to create. So absolutely. And Sarah, I think that leads right into our next question. Speaking of having an open mind, right is number 21 on the list. What's the next glass ceiling? And I'm going to follow up with some questions here to give this one a little more context. number one, do we have a limited market?
two, are some expansion areas blocked by strong incumbents? If we do see a ceiling, what can we do about it? Is there enough time in advance that we can break that ceiling or go around it? Basically, have we made all we can make? Is there a way to make more? Yeah. I love this question for lots of reasons, and I'm going to give a real life example from another recent conversation that I had.
without giving away any specific details. So retail store, amazing product, beautiful design, awesome clientele, sells out of product, right? So naturally they have the capacity to sell more. And so in order to sell more, particularly of things that are made in-house as most of the product is, they need more, they need to invest in the team.
and the equipment to do more. Given the space constraints, they need to invest in an outdoor facility, like a secondary facility. My question to them was that absolutely we're missing out on revenue because of the lack of space and the lack of ability to produce enough products to satisfy the market demand that you have in your store.
But what is the cost of this investment that you're going to make and what is the max that you're going to be able to generate in revenue within the store? Because there will be sort of a max ticket value. It's just that's a natural thing for that store, for the customer. And there will be a physical limitation to the number of humans that can be rung up in an hour.
And if your store is open eight hours, you know what mean? There's a physical limit to that. And so the answer, what we talked about was, A, just recognizing that there is a ceiling to the amount of revenue that you can generate in this space and being aware of the cost of the investment versus that additional revenue. then being open-minded to, well, what other solutions exist to generate more revenue? And can we do it in a way where we don't have to
spend a lot more than this initial investment we're already thinking about making to grow our revenue. And it opens the mind to go, well, okay, there is this other opportunity. And it just so happened in this case, there was a second, we'll call it retail location, that sort of helps us break that ceiling, whether it's this year or next year. And so this is that open-mindedness to go, well, this is
what I am building in this, know, but if there's a limit here, what else have I been dreaming about? What else do I want? What else can I do? here is, yes, here is that ceiling, but over here, there's no ceiling or the ceiling then gets raised or like whatever that looks like. I love that. for, like, that's a retail example, but when you're thinking about
let's say CPG or any kind of food product, right? It might be that you're, you know, hitting capacity in a channel and you didn't think about another channel or a certain partnership or something. know, you know, Chelsea, you've brought me a video, an article, it'll be a YouTube exclusive that we do in a couple of weeks on this very topic of like a ceiling that was hit of sorts and how a founder worked their way around it, if you will.
Yeah. To build a successful brand. Yeah. And so, yeah, so being open-minded, asking yourself this question, have I hit a ceiling? Do I see ceiling coming? And what can I do to kind of keep growing if that's the thing we need to do? Our next question is a juicy one. I'm going to tee that up. And I know you probably have a lot to say here, but this one is number six on the list. And it's
What's the kill criteria for this project? This is juicy and this is really hard. OK, I'm going to say that I didn't have a kill criteria for my food business. And as a result of not having a kill criteria, there was a lot lost there, financially, physically, emotionally, because we hadn't predetermined the end.
And what that created in my experience was, if we just keep going, well, we could keep pushing. We've worked this hard. We've done it for this long. You feel like you can't end it sometimes, right? Another type of situation where we see this is, you you're launching something or you're trying something new and you don't have a kill criteria for it and it's not working and maybe it's draining money on your business or in your business and you just keep
going and it could be because you don't think you can stop it. You might think that, well, the team or the founder or whomever, they're going to be upset if we end this, whatever it is, right? Yeah. What it does is it just creates an unnecessary strain in so many ways. you don't have a, listen, we're going to give this X amount of time to work and this is what working, quote unquote, will look like.
or these are the benchmarks and milestones. And if we don't hit them, then we stop. know? Yeah. It's a tricky thing to do, I think, for a lot of people because anytime you launch something, it's because you think it's going to work. Yeah. You want it. You're like, we got this. Yeah. But I do like that they talk about it from on a project basis, right? Like it's not just about the business kill criteria. It is for this project. And I think that a little bit takes
Like, yes, I hear what you're saying with like, of course you think it's going to work, you're launching it, right? But I think that looking at it that granularly, like project by project kind of takes a little bit of that sting or that ego hit or that whatever out of it. Well, and you lead me to the next thing I want to say, which is when you're launching something, whatever that project is, a product, a marketing department or collaboration, whatever it is,
there should be certain expectations of that project, financial or otherwise, right? And in my opinion, as a CFO, they need to be well thought out and like written down somewhere. Anytime one of our clients wants to embark on a new venture, we usually call them like mini ventures inside the business, we want a plan, a financial plan for that particular venture or project.
And then we know what we believe that project or venture should do. And we also have a sense of the timing in which we believe certain things will happen. And that is what we can measure our progress against. And we might say something like, okay, maybe we want to achieve a certain amount of revenue or maybe we want to have a certain number of customers, right? There are certain benchmarks and maybe we get two out of three. Well, maybe a two out of three, that's a no-kill.
Maybe a one out of three is a no-kill. Maybe anything but a three out of three is a kill. You set the standard. You set what will be a go-no-go situation. But I think there's so much value, and again, I'm biased because I'm a CFO, but in creating that plan and what those expected outcomes are so that there is no emotion. You go, I really wanted this to work, but clearly it's not.
and we don't have the money to continue investing or we're not going to strain our finances by continuing to invest or we're going to modify, you know what mean? Whatever is like. And it goes back to that sunk cost fallacy, right? Like, oh, we got this far. We should keep going. should, you know, and I like what you're saying about it's up to you, right? You get to decide what it is or isn't.
But at the end of the day, you have to decide, right? Like you have to have something in place. And let's be very real here. No business launches things with 100 % success rate. Yeah. We've had things, I was thinking about this the other day, we've had things at the Good Food CFO that we were like, let's try this. This could be great or like this seems like it could be helpful or an opportunity.
of some sort and it didn't work the way we thought. Particularly if it took a financial investment and didn't work or the personal time and ability to fulfill the thing we thought we wanted to do becomes overwhelming or too much or takes away from a core competency that the company needs to have, we've had to kill it. Again, it's a part of figuring it out. It's a part of growing. think especially if you're a young brand, and by young I mean
zero to five years old. You know I mean? You're going to be figuring these things out and you will for the life of your business. Yeah. Well, our last question, this kind of goes towards that leadership, you know, stuff we were talking about. This is number 17 on the list. And the question is, what's one thing I'm afraid to ask my team, but probably should? This is so good.
And I would say like your team, your partner, your consultants, you know I mean? Like anybody. I will share that during our annual meeting, there was a question that I was a little bit fearful of asking, but that felt really important. And that was what's working and what's not working. Because we're open here. We have weekly all team meetings. We have weekly
like sort of departmental meetings, if you will, where we really focus in on certain things and moving things forward. But there's a lot of time spent on, what is the next thing on the list? on ideation, things like that. We don't actively spend a lot of time historically saying what's not working unless something's like really not working. Right. Like, then it's not, nobody's asking it. Somebody's just going, this is not working. But so posing that question for the first time formally in the annual meeting, I was like, what?
What is it going to be? And hopefully I create enough of a safe space where you guys feel like, okay, I can be honest here because that's the point. Well, what I thought was so interesting was that you did pose the question and then we all took a few minutes, right, to write on our own and really get our thoughts down. And then when we presented to each other the things that we thought were not working,
We're all aligned. Like we all were aligned in what is not working. And Emily Anholt, who's the co-founder of Koa actually says, fear often prevents us from uncovering the insights that could lead to growth. And I think that's such a huge statement. those like for us, right? Those insights were, yeah, we all think this thing is not working. So.
Let's get, you know, goodbye. Yeah. And she goes on to say that by leaning into discomfort and asking those tough questions, that is a part of creating the culture of openness and innovation. And so we've committed to asking that question quarterly during our quarterly team meetings to say both what is working and what is not working. And I'm sure they're not going to align completely all of the time, you know, forever, but it was really good to all be on the same page and not just feel like
this thing isn't working and it's not so bad that it's causing a problem per se, but it's just not working. It's either a waste of time or it's a waste of energy or whatever. Sometimes it is the littlest things that you're like, this takes so much time or thought power out of my day and there's no return on it.
Right? Or there's very little return or whatever that I think, yeah, asking that question and not being afraid and getting it all out on the table. think especially right from the seat of a founder is such a huge thing. And I want to take this into a different direction and think about, you know, I'm thinking right now, but if you've got an employee, a team member that you're getting a vibe of like this person isn't happy.
or you know, and no one's asking any questions. I've worked with founders who've said like, I know that they're not happy. And then there's certain characteristics, certain behaviors that are happening, but like, I need them around. I don't want to lose them even if they're right. So I'm just not going to say anything. And we're just going to hope that I can hang on to them for as long as I want. It's like, no, no, no, both of you would be so much happier and so much better off if you have the difficult conversation. We asked the question, hey, are you still happier?
How is this going for you? Through your management and leadership training at Starbucks, are there other versions of this question? 100%. We would regularly, I think exactly what you're talking about, when you noticed that someone either was intentionally not performing to competency.
That's the first place that you would go is like, are you happy here? Because no one's holding you, right? And if you're not like that's, that's fine. And I found that, you know, at least from my position, most of the time, I always tried to come from a place of, yeah, what is it that you need want see, right? Because, again, going back to the insights, right, we find that
The people that are doing the work have the most insight into the right. Right. And so like, for example, as like from my, from my experience, yes, I was a barista at one point, but then I worked at my way up and I was a store manager and I did barista work, but that wasn't my whole job. so somebody who was a barista full time or whatever, they obviously had so much more insight into that role.
then I did. And so if I could really pull from them what wasn't working, what they needed, what they wanted even, right? And going back to the idea of creating an innovation through like the culture of innovation, there are so many times that partners felt comfortable to even just come and tell me these things without asking, without me having to ask, right? Because that is the culture that
was created and there were so many things that they, I guess the right word is created or, or changed that were from them. Right. It wasn't company driven. wasn't, but it made things better. It made the customer experience better. made the partner experience better. It made the store cleaner. made like whatever it was. and that's when
then instead of being scared to have those conversations, you feel extremely proud of the people that you work with because they are just making things better all the time. That leads me to a couple of thoughts. This is so cheesy, the term that's coming to my head, but it's like conscious leadership. What I'm picturing is how easy it is as a founder to be like, well, this is all the stuff on my to-do list.
and my people are competent and they're going to do their thing and you just sort of are in your zones. Yeah. And like really thinking about, what kind of culture does that create? And versus the kind of culture I think we have or that I want us to have. Am I slowing down and stopping and checking in with people? It's like a very simple example, right? Or are we always just working and, you know, doing the next thing?
Yeah. And you even saying that makes me think of the fact that like, you know, I know for my part at least, and I know that I had partners that were like this too, right? Where I'm just going to do my job because I'm just going to do my job. That's just my personality, right? And I'm never going to be like, Hey, this thing really bugs me or Hey, this does not work. know, and, and until somebody says, Hey, how's it going? Or how's your day or, know, whatever. Then I'll be like, yeah, I'm so annoyed because blah, blah.
But I never thought of it as like, that can change because it's just my job. And that's the way that it is. And so I will deal with it. Yeah. I will suffer in silence. Right. And that's my personality. so, yeah, having someone to say, hey, how are you? Or, know, whatever, it can start off as that simple of a conversation. Yeah. And, you know,
as we mentioned earlier, there are 25 questions on this list and there are more questions kind of in this arena. I know one of them is about like, know, am I sharing the vision of my company with my team in a way that allows them to, you know, be autonomous, make decisions, drive things forward, not require top-down decision-making, you know? There's other questions that are related to finance and things. you know,
business jargon aside, it's an interesting list of 25 questions to ask that definitely sparked obviously conversation for you and I, Chelsea, and hopefully for those of you listening. And we've got the link in the show notes if you want to read through the other questions. If you have a moment of like, aha, or like, I want to talk about this more, we want to hear from you because
We do have an idea of maybe answering some of these questions with a couple of founders who are interested in diving into one or two of them. So email us, hello at thegoodfoodcfo.com. If you look at the list and you're like, I want to talk about this or this is having an impact. Or maybe you're like, this is a dumb question. Whatever. We want to hear from you. think we'll talk about the dumb questions too. As you said, Sarah, if you
are listening and you do want to talk about any of the questions, be sure to email us, hello at thegoodfoodcfo.com. And I think we're done. See you guys next week.
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