Lessons from KIND
Hello, I hope that your summer is off to a great start.
Before I got into politics I was an entrepreneur. I ran an education company that was acquired by a public company and started a national entrepreneurship non-profit. My first book, “Smart People Should Build Things” was about the need to cultivate more entrepreneurs in America. I love entrepreneurship and see it as one of the answers to our problems – indeed, at its best entrepreneurship is solving big problems.
One of the country’s greatest entrepreneurs is Daniel Lubetzky. You know him as the founder of KIND Snacks, the ubiquitous bars you pick up in convenience stores when you feel like eating something healthy (try their frozen snacks, you won’t be disappointed). KIND went from just an idea to a multi-billion dollar business over the past 18 years due in large part to Daniel’s focus and indefatigability.
Daniel’s story starts in Mexico. “I immigrated from Mexico when I was 16, and I couldn’t hold any job as an employee because of my status, a lot of immigrants start businesses because we can’t be employed. I used to drive 2 hours to sell watches at flea markets on the outskirts of San Antonio. Eventually I had a couple kiosks at local malls . . .it was the fancy thing to be at the mall there.”
Daniel went to college in San Antonio and law school out West, and then went to the Middle East to try to bring people together through a non-profit called Peaceworks. “What’s interesting is how little I knew, and hence how lucky I was. Had I known how hard what I was undertaking would turn out to be, I maybe wouldn’t have had the courage to do it . . . that innocence is actually a blessing, because maybe you will make more mistakes but you will do things that are meant to be done but that others who ‘know better’ wouldn’t do.”
While running Peaceworks, Daniel got interested in healthy foods. “I was criss-crossing the United States, skipping lunch or dinner, working at my desk, wanting a healthy snack. Back in the early 2000s, snack options were nothing like today, nothing led with nutrient-rich ingredients.” KIND got started during a dark and difficult time for Daniel. “It was the toughest year of my life. I’d just lost my father. My Dad was my role model and my hero. He approached life with kindness towards all. We sat around the table and almost didn’t launch KIND. I’d just had a business setback. We’d just lost our business on a product overnight. Should we throw in the towel? I’d already been doing this for 10 years. Fortunately we decided to give it a shot. We almost didn’t launch. I almost wanted my team to give me permission to say no, let’s do something else.”
After KIND launched, it grew quickly via word-of-mouth. “We were very true to the brand. This is what it stands for. We are not going to deviate.” Some of the lessons he’d learned running Peaceworks needed to be revised. “I saw everything as an expense. Everyone who tried KIND bars would love it, but I didn’t know better and treated sampling as a cost. In 2008, our budget for sampling was $800 just for product buyers. When we finally brought in investment, we started sampling and you could see the data that it was growing like this. A few years later our sampling budget was $20 million.”
The corporate culture of KIND became something to tend carefully, particularly when you’re the CEO. “When you’re trying to be kind out of fear, it’s not the best motivator. But when you see the power of kindness, kindness is magical because it doesn’t just make the person who receives the act of kindness have a better day, it also helps the person doing the kind act feel better about themselves and it becomes addictive.”
Daniel has now achieved more business success than most of us can imagine. But he’s driven to solve bigger problems,. “I’ve been noticing the erosion of American values like creativity, resourcefulness, respect. Respect is one of the greatest things that America has that we take too much for granted but doesn’t exist in other places. What does it take to respect each other’s humanity and people who are different than them? America has always been the place I’ve drawn inspiration from, and now it’s under threat.”
Now, Daniel is trying to bring Americans together through a campaign ‘Starts With Us’ to encourage civic unity and bridge building. It Starts with Us revolves around 3 values: curiosity, compassion and courage. They are lofty ones, but the message of the campaign is that little changes in habits can change how we operate. He’s certainly right that if Americans were more curious, compassionate and courageous, we’d be in much better shape.
Says Daniel, “We share more values than most people realize. Americans have this beautiful temperament about helping those left behind. It unites us all. Giving everyone a fair chance.”
I believe that, if there’s going to be a positive movement in America, it’s going to be led by entrepreneurs like Daniel who are digging in to try and guide our country in a better direction while also admitting that business – or politics – as usual isn’t going to work. We are in a tough spot with struggling institutions and growing frustration. We need something new.
“The polarization in this country terrifies me . . . what’s happening to our nation is we’re losing that curiosity gene, that self-reflection skillset and muscle that made us the most amazing nation on earth, that hurts not just civilization, that hurts not just being a better parent, that hurts you being a better entrepreneur because how are you going to have drive and creativity if we are scared to debate and to listen to one another and to learn from one another?”
For my full interview with Daniel click here – he and I discuss the path forward and much more.
