These days, Ben Flajnik works part-time guiding bizdev and brand for many food and beverage startups you know and love, but he’s best known for the 5 — yes, 5 — food & bev brands that he founded, raising millions to build them, and exiting 3.
If you’re in the Bay Area, you might remember Ben from his time as the San Francisco Yelp Community Manager, and yes, if you’re a longtime fan of The Bachelor, Ben was indeed on The Bachelor in the show’s earlier seasons. If all of that wasn’t impressive enough, Ben’s resume also includes the title of children’s book author.
I first met Ben while we were both at Yelp back in 2020 — the yesteryears of work from office! It’s been a delight to reconnect with him through HG, and I think you’ll find that his lessons are universal to any entrepreneur, not just those in CPG land. Enjoy listening!
Drop 1. Benefitting from industry legacy, mentors, and your generation’s trend
“What I had were great mentors. People who were willing to help teach the ways of wine making and how to navigate the business… In the mid auhts, the third generation of American wine families were coming to fruition. For us, we were riding the wave of this New Millennial winemaker of sorts, and we capitalized on it.”
Take it back to your team:
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What’s the legacy you benefit from in your industry? Are there legacy mentors you have access to? People who are willing to teach you the old ways so you can invent the new?
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Ben talks about the “New Millennial Winemaker” wave that he leaned into. In your industry, what are the prevailing trends right now? Are you riding them? Are you avoiding them?
Drop 2. A great brand cuts through the noise
“The first brands we launched weren’t very good. We were just good salesmen and came in with the right price point. It was later that we figured out that we needed to work with creative agencies and professionals, and that we needed to create a frame around the story and how that’s conveyed on pack.It’s a step a lot of first time founders don’t take as seriously as they should. It’s what lead to the acquisition of one of our brands.”
Take it back to your team:
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What’s the brand foundation you’re laying now? Do you have a frame for how you’re setting it up?
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How might you run A/B tests on brand digitally before committing to expensive offline work, like packaging if you’re a CPG founder.
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How might you lean on professionals (be they paid or volunteer) to stand up your brand book, brand guidelines, color, fonts?
Drop 3. On big mistakes with new sales channels
“We were killing it out of the tasting room (as a wine brand), and our by-the-glass programs were doing really well in like 15 states. So we thought we’d push it into Kroger and be everywhere. But we ended up sitting on 5,000 cases. We ended up finding a discount retailer, which was nice, but learned a hard lesson.”Take it back to your team:
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As you’re launching a new sales channel, how might you test your way in before fully committing? Is there an advisor who can help?
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What’s your industry’s version of Ben’s discount retailer?
Drop 4. Partnerships? Crawl, walk, run.
“People want to jump to revenue so very quickly that they forget about small steps on that path. You might get excited about being the new meatball ingredient that Ikea uses in all their meatballs globally, but whats just as good in our infancy is being the supplier for one meatball in one store. It lets us start telling the story.”Take it back to your team:
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What’s the “one meatball” approach to a big partnership in your industry?
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How might you partner with the BIGGEST partner by crawling, then walking, then running? What would crawling look like?