Transcript of Daniel Lubetzky: He Almost Quit After 10 Years, Then Built KIND Snacks Into a Multibillion-Dollar Business | Entrepreneurship | E421

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Northwest Registered Agent, Whatnot, Mod, and AG1. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at northwestregisteredagent.com/yapfree. Whatnot helps sellers grow through live shopping, community, and real-time connections with buyers. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in in the App Store, download, and you can start selling right away. Mod connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers for modafinil to support sustained energy, focus, and alertness throughout the day. Visit mod.com for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code PROFITING. See their website for important safety information. AG1 Next Gen supports your nutritional foundation with vitamins, minerals, pre- and probiotics, and superfoods. Go to drinkag1.com/profiting and get a free immune support bundle with your first subscription order. As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.

10 years of failures taught me enough to then turn Kind into $5 to $7 billion company, depending how you calculate it. We had almost no investment and we had generated billions in sales, cash flow positively, profitably, because Of all the lessons I learned from Peaceworks.

Daniel Lubetzky spent nearly a decade struggling to make his first business work. Today, Daniel is here to share his hard-earned lessons from those early failures and how he turned them into the foundation for the massive success he had with Kind later on and all the ventures that followed.

The mission was super powerful, helped keep me going through, but it is not enough, literally, because at the beginning in my Peaceworks journey, I didn't obsess about the quality of the products, which upon reflection is, what an idiot, how did I not know that?

You were selling premium Mediterranean spreads, but you tried to sell them everywhere.

I had a Stanford Law degree and I was selling sun-dried tomato spreads in the streets of Manhattan, going door by door, opening a jar of sun-dried tomatoes. I thought that tenacity and resilience was everything at that point. I thought persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence. And it took me a long time to learn that The objective is not to push product wherever you can. The objective is to—

There was a period of time where you only spent $800 on samples.

In the Peace Rocks years, I had taught myself that any sampling was a cost center, and I hadn't realized that it's also an investment for people to try your product. You know, in finance they say cash is king. What I say in consumer product goods—

Daniel, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

It's such a pleasure to be here, Hala.

I'm so happy that you're here and you're so successful. I mean, you had a nearly $5 billion exit with Kind. You're full-time on Shark Tank now, but a lot of people don't realize, and I myself didn't realize that you actually spent a decade of your early career trying to foster peace around the world and you had this big mission.

Well, my entire life, not just a decade before and after and still today, but yeah, a lot of people don't realize that. Prior to Kind, I had a decade of failures trying to build a business that wasn't panning out. And thanks to those failures, I learned the lessons to eventually figure it out with Kind.

Yeah. And you graduated from Stanford Law, you had really successful parents, and so you really could have taken the easy route. So once you graduated from law school, what made you think, okay, I wanna be an entrepreneur and I want to focus my mission around peace?

Well, when you say really successful parents, definitely successful in the way that they're the most amazing parents in the world. But my mom only had a high school education and my dad only had a 3rd grade education. And in spite of that, my dad built a really significant business. But believe me, when I graduated from college and law school and then I tell them I'm not gonna pursue a legal career, they're like, what? Are you crazy?

Yeah.

So, I think it was just driven by my dream of— my father was a Holocaust survivor. He was in the Dachau concentration camp. And I early on figured out that what gave me the most meaning was building bridges to try to prevent what happened to him from happening again to other human beings. Yeah. And I had this idea for right after law school, there was a breakthrough in the Camp David negotiations in the Oslo peace process. And I had an idea for how to use business to bring people together. So I decided to try to try it out and see if I could build a business out of bringing Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Turks to trade with one another, to shatter stereotypes, to cement relationships, to discover each other's humanity while making money. And that was the goal.

It was so cool to learn about Peaceworks. Like, I think it's just such an incredible mission. Talk to us about why the mission wasn't enough.

Yes, it's very well framed the way you asked, Hala, because the mission was super powerful, helped keep me going through, but it is not enough, literally, because at the beginning in my Peacework journey, the mission was so overpowering that I didn't obsess about the quality of the products, which upon reflection is, what an idiot, how did I not know that? But I thought the mission was gonna carry through everything, and the mission is important, but it cannot be a crutch to being best in class on the other things you do. It's nice to have a mission. I think it gives you a lot of fuel to keep going. It attracts team members. It gives people loyalty to your mission. But the product and the service needs to stand on its own, and you just need to get it right on so many fronts, which I didn't. The brand that we started with was called Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmoumkin's World Famous All-Natural Gourmet Foods.

Hmm.

And I should have—

That's a pretty complicated name.

And I actually thought, I on purpose came up with a silly name because I thought it was gonna be so silly that people would—

Yeah, you thought it would be good marketing.

Talk about it. But people were just like, what the hell? And they would just move on. And in terms of the mission not being enough, before I was on the stores, Hala, I started in trade fairs in Manhattan. I would put a little street fair booth thing, and I had my Peaceworks products on the shelves, and I would start talking about the mission, and everybody was riveted and loved it, found it fascinating, and then they kept walking.

It wasn't enough.

It was not enough. And when I learned is when I started talking about the features of the products and letting them try. Back then, I had skincare products like a hand treatment cream with avocado oil, and I would start talking about the features. Then people would try them like, oh, the product's actually good. And eventually, the sundry tomorrow, let me try it and experience and focus on the product features. That's what actually gives people a reason to buy and buy again.

Yeah, it's really interesting. I'd love for you to spend some more time on what the mission was with Peaceworks. Like, what were you really trying to do and why did you think that commerce would be like the solution of actually bringing people together?

Something very important to understand is that commerce is not sufficient but it's necessary. It's a piece of the mosaic. When I was in college, I wrote my thesis on the influence of economics in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. And one of my professors found it the stupidest thing in the world. He gave me a B- because he said, why do you think that economics is going to solve this issue? And I was like, no, it's not going to solve it. Read the thing, Professor Davos. I'm outing him. It took me a while to to come to terms with the fact that he was really not very supportive. The other 2 professors wanted to give me a master's honorary thesis. It was a 268-page treatise. It actually became very popular in medical circles because if people are having problems with insomnia and they couldn't fall asleep, you'd give them this thick thing and they'd fall asleep right away because it was so theoretical. But I really did work very hard on it. It was the first time that I became a nerd. Up until that period, I was just breezing by. And then I became so intellectually curious about the theory of the economics of peacemaking.

How can you use market forces to channel market forces to bring people together? And I fell in love with the concept of channeling market forces in a way that does something good for the world, because then you're achieving sustainable, scalable growth.

Yeah.

Like, I've also set up a number of nonprofits like you have. Every year you need to pass around the hat. It's not— it doesn't sustain itself. But if you're able to make something that in the process of being made is bringing people together.

Yeah.

And that every jar you sell, it's actually fostering more cooperation. And the more you grow, the more people you bring together. It's beautiful. And so for me, that's what made me fall in love with the model. And that's why I tried it out with a lot of mistakes and a lot of lessons. But—

Yeah, it's super cool. So you get people from Israel, Palestine, Lebanon to actually create products together?

Not Lebanon yet. One day Lebanon. But back then there was no ability of mine to bring in Lebanese or Syrians because there was no peace. But it was Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Turks.

Really cool.

I'll give you a very— bring it to life. The glass jars we used to buy from Egypt instead of buying them from Italy or Portugal. The sun-dried tomatoes came from Turkey. The olives and olive oil and eggplants came from Palestinian farmers and Jordanian farmers, and it was manufactured in an Israeli location in Neve Yehuda. And the whole concept, we developed relationship between Palestinians, Israelis, Turks, Jordanians, and Egyptians that through generations— Help people discover each other's humanity, break bread together. And also, as you gain a vested interest in making money together, then you have each other's backs because you need each other to grow. And that was the model, the theory of economics of peacemaking.

Yeah. What's up, YAP fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become. That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself, and use it to make videos on demand. So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible, and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content. And you guys know I'm always looking for tools that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. 30 million people already use it, from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first 3 videos are free at heygen.com/profiting. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N.com/profiting. Heygen.com/profiting. Yeah, fam, you know October hits different. The season shifts and suddenly when your alarm goes off in the morning, your body's like, absolutely not.

But when you have the business and a million decisions waiting for you, you cannot start the day already feeling behind. And that's why AG1 has earned a real spot in my morning routine. AG1 Next Gen is a daily foundational nutrition drink with 75+ ingredients including vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics and superfoods. AG1 Next Gen is backed by 4 separate gold standard clinical trials and key nutrient levels improved within 3 months of consistent use. Plus, it's formulated to support immune defense, which is really important this time of year. Yeah, fam, if you want to start your mornings off right, go to drinkag1.com/profiting and for a limited time get a free immune support bundle including a bottle of omega-3 fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3 K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen, or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/profiting. drinkag1.com/profiting. Hey, young improfitters. You know, hiring reminds me a little bit of dating. You can get a lot of potential candidates, but you still might not find your right match. And when I'm hiring at YAP Media, I don't have time to just hope the right person sees our job posts. And Indeed Sponsored Jobs helps me get in front of the right people.

Sponsored Jobs boost your job posts in the search results so you can reach the people who actually help your business thrive. Plus, you only pay for results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all of your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 Sponsored Job credit to help give your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast, Young and Profiting. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need the right hire fast? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. You know, I've heard you talk about this on other podcasts and I, and I felt like the hosts were kind of like breezing by it, but for me it's like so personal and I'm so inspired by it as I'm, you know, 100% Palestinian, and I know that you're Mexican Jewish, which is really rare and interesting. And it's just so cool that, that, that you put so much focus and so many years of your life dedicated towards trying to foster peace.

And like, I really, really respect you for that.

Thank you. And, and sometimes people, I used to go on dates when I was living in Manhattan, and some of the dates were like wondering why I was so quote unquote altruistic and doing things for the others. But it was not that at all. I was doing it for myself. Because I understood what my father went through. And even though he's not Israeli or Palestinian, he was Jewish and he was in a concentration camp. And anytime you dehumanize any other human being, it comes back to bite you. And this is really important to understand, for all of us to understand, because we're living in an age of social media with so much dehumanization with the other. It's so easy to dehumanize the other. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And before you know it, that hate, it's you. I've seen it happen in so many countries where they allowed hate to take hold of them. And first you hate the significant other, then your neighbor, then you start hating yourself.

Mm.

Hate is all-consuming, and so is love. And what we need to do is find a way to discover each other's humanity and to build together, to find ways to build together rather than tear each other apart. So I don't do it for somebody else's sake. I do it so that my children will inherit a better future.

Yeah. And how did you first start learning about Palestine and Israel? Like, and how would you feel that your father who went through the Holocaust, how do you think he would think about the situation right now in Gaza, for example?

Well, that's 3 very different questions. Very, very different questions. First of all, my father was very rare because in spite of all of the horrors that he went through, he was a human being with a lot of love. He loved being Jewish, but he loved being human.

Yeah.

He treated every person with respect and kindness. He didn't— and Lonnie Ali, the widow of Muhammad Ali, and I are very, very good friends. And she told me that Muhammad Ali never knew a stranger. And when she first said that, I didn't understand what she meant. I was embarrassed to ask her. And then I processed it. He never knew a stranger, meaning Every human being, when you first meet them, you're human with them and you connect with their humanity. That was Muhammad Ali. That was my father. And so he was very proud of me, even though he was like, why are you leaving the law? He loved the fact that I was building bridges because he and my mom were bridge builders. And you and I were talking before we started the show about the values that unite us and how your parents taught you that and they taught me that. And at its essence, how we teach our children to respectful of other humans stays with you probably for the rest of your life.

Yeah.

So that was the first one. In terms of what's going on in Gaza, I think my dad would be heartbroken about what happened during October 7th, heartbroken about what happened after October 7th, and heartbroken about what's happening now. Because what basically was happening is that people with an absolutist vision, that they deny the humanity of the other side.

Yeah.

hijacked the process and turned a lot of the world into us versus them rather than building together. And right now, I'm literally, I just came, I was in DC the last 2 days at a conference where we're trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together and help Palestinians in Gaza develop an entrepreneurial economy and help them build together and help Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Turks, Emiratis, who in my opinion, the United Arab Emirates are the most important leaders bringing people together, how to build together rather than tear each other apart. You asked about how my dad would react to that, Gaza, and there was something else that you asked.

No, that was it. It was basically like, how would your dad feel about everything, which you explained.

He was proud of me trying things out. He wishes I— at the beginning, he was worried. For many, many years, he was worried about me leaving the law to try these things. Yeah. Hala, I had a Stanford Law degree and I was selling sun-dried tomato spritz in the streets of Manhattan, going door by door, walking door by door, opening a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, paying myself a $24,000 salary. So for many years, my mom and dad were like, oh my God, what is this guy doing? Then I built with my friend Mohammad Darawshe a movement called One Voice. And I remember they came 2 months before my dad passed away. They came to LA to an event where Mohamed and I spoke. My dad's eyes watered a little bit, and he got emotional. And I remember he kind of saw where I was heading and why it was important. And he was proud, and my mom was proud. It was interesting because they were very proud of me no matter what I did.

Yeah.

All the crazy things, they supported me. And I think that gave me a lot of conviction to try things out.

Yeah, that's incredible. And your dad was such a big influence on you. even though he went through the Holocaust, he was never bitter about it. And you've got some really great stories about the humanity that he felt even when he was being persecuted in the Holocaust.

Yeah, I mean, there's many, but the ones that I gravitate to the most, because one is very quick to tell, the other one's very, very painful and deep. But the one quick to tell is when he was in Dachau, in the concentration camp, and he was very undernourished. When he was liberated by American soldiers, He weighed £70, and he was 6 feet tall. Oh, my God. So he was almost less than alive. And a German soldier, when people were not watching, threw a potato by my dad's feet. And that was a very important moment in my dad's life, the way he told it to us, that that potato helped sustain him. And the way he constructed it, it helped sustain him both because of the calories that he needed desperately, but I think also because that German soldier looked at him, and even though he was almost less than human because he was so almost a— the German soldiers saw his humanity and helped my dad keep going.

That's a beautiful story. And you've kind of taken this, like, that kindness and turned it into a brand, right? And your dad's kindness. So tell us about that, like, what you saw in your dad in terms of his kindness and how he didn't let everything turn him bitter.

A lot of people don't know that Kind was named after my father. He passed away in 2003, and in 2003 was probably one of the hardest years of my life and weirdly probably one of the most successful years of my life. And so for anybody that's struggling a lot, I assure you I would've never been able to know that in 2003 I would launch what became Kind and turn into a multi-billion-dollar company after 10 years of barely, barely making ends meet. and that I would build the One Voice Movement and meet some extraordinary people, build a movement of close to a million Israelis and Palestinians mobilizing against extremism.

Mm-hmm.

Grow personally so much in a year where my business was suffering so much. Hala, we had a very big setback, and we almost threw in the towel after 10 years of Peaceworks work, which gave me a lot of meaning, but it was very— I was making so many mistakes. We had the idea for what would become Kind, and we went around the table and voted whether or not to close the door or try things out. And we voted to try things out one last time, and lo and behold, it became Kind.

Wow. I didn't realize that Peaceworks kind of evolved into Kind. I didn't realize that.

Peaceworks incubated— Peaceworks, only a handful of investors, my best friends, Gregorio and Jaime, had believed in me, and they had put in $75,000 in the company, and that investment had not gone well. So when we had the idea for Kind, we seeded KIND within Peaceworks. Mm-hmm. And that $75,000 became tens of millions of dollars. So ultimately, the loyalty of my friends paid off. But back when we were deciding whether to go or not, and my dad passed away, and we were trying to come up with a name for the company, the idea for KIND came to, uh, my colleague Sasha and I were brainstorming. And it was really funny because all the other names were very explicit, descriptive, dumb names. It was like Fruity and Nutty, Nutty and Fruity, Fruitalicious, Nata Loco, Loco Lapa, all these like very non-creative names. And then Kind was because it was in honor of my father, who in spite of all of what he suffered, just— he saw it as his mission to— he didn't say that to us, we just saw it.

Yeah.

That he was just kind to everybody. He treated everybody with kindness. And so, it was about being kind to your body, to your taste buds, and to your world. And in retrospect, it makes all the sense in the world. But back then, it wasn't obvious. We almost didn't do it.

It was a really original concept back then. When you were walking through the grocery store shelves, like, what did you feel like was missing?

So, the idea for the product came because I was, as I told you earlier, walking up and down the streets, skipping lunch, skipping dinner, going, crisscrossing the country, selling to every store everywhere I could find. And very often, I was hungry or working on the desk very long hours, and I wanted a snack to fill me up that I didn't feel that tasted like cardboard or that was all plasticky or full of carbs. And so, the idea came from what I felt was a need in the marketplace when I was walking through the stores. And back then, there was no healthy snack segment. There was no set of healthy snacks.

I remember when KIND came out, it was like, the new, like, the actual healthy snack available.

Yeah. Even at the beginning, Hala, they didn't know where to put it. Like, the buyers said, this looks good, but I don't know where to put it.

Is it the nut section? Is it the chip section? Yeah.

Yeah. And we got lucky because they didn't have a place to put it. So, it was like, all right, give us an end cap, give us a shelf talker, give us a little spot to put the product. So, we had what's called a POP display, point of purchase display. Where it really stood out.

Yeah. It was like premium.

Had we had a space on the shelves, maybe it would've not grown as much.

Yeah.

But people would see that little, uh, block of product and they would gravitate towards it.

That's so cool. What's up, YAP fam? If you're building a personal brand, you already know how hard it is to stay consistent with content when you're also trying to actually run your business. I love creating content, but realistically, I'm not trying to sit in front of the camera every single day. I need time to work on my business. But the problem is consistency matters. The more people see your face and hear your voice, the more familiar you become. That's why HeyGen has been such a great tool for me. You can record just 15 seconds of footage, create an AI avatar of yourself, and use it to make videos on demand. So instead of constantly filming from scratch, you can create more content, stay visible, and keep showing up without making your entire life be about generating content. And you guys know I'm always looking for tools that give entrepreneurs more leverage. HeyGen is definitely one of those tools. 30 million people already use it, from solo founders to 85% of the Fortune 100. Your first 3 videos are free at heygen.com/profiting. That's H-E-Y-G-E-N.com/profiting. Heygen.com/profiting. Hey, young and profiters! As an entrepreneur, my days are absolutely jam-packed, and I usually start my day off with a coffee or an energy drink, and then by 3 PM I'm crashing.

And that's why I wanted to tell you about Mod. Mod connects qualifying patients with licensed medical providers who could prescribe a once or twice daily modafinil drink designed to help keep you energized, focused, and alert throughout the day. Here's the thing, YAP fam, energy drinks with caffeine temporarily block adenosine, which is a chemical that makes you feel tired. Once the caffeine wears off, it all comes crashing down at you at once. Modafinil works differently. It engages multiple pathways in your brain, and it helps you achieve a steady energy and alertness for 10 to 12 hours. Modafinil was invented in the 1970s and has been used in high-stakes situations where concentration and alertness are critical, including by soldiers, pilots, and astronauts. Visit mod.com— that's mod.com— for a free consultation and get 10% off your first order plus free shipping with promo code PROFITING. That's promo code PROFITING at mod.com. See their website for important safety information, and we thank MOD for sponsoring the pod. Hello, young and profitters. If you're running a business, getting website traffic is only half the battle. The real key to profiting is turning those visitors into paying customers, and I know checkout friction can quietly kill your sales.

That's why I always say serious entrepreneurs build on Shopify. Shopify is a commerce platform that helps you launch and run an online store without needing to be super technical. You can build your storefront, manage your business, and make it easy for people to buy. And here's the major advantage. Shopify Checkout with Shop Pay converts up to 36% higher than the competition. With Black Friday coming up, now's the time to get your store ready and simplify your checkout experience. If you're ready to launch your business before Black Friday, go to shopify.com/profiting to start your free trial. That's shopify.com/profiting. Go to shopify.com/profiting today to hear your first— So I wanna spend a little bit of time before we go into the Kind story. Let's talk about the failures that really set you up for success for Kind. So we're gonna play a little game called Failure File. And I'm gonna give you a couple scenarios that I read about your failures. You tell me, you know, what was the big lesson that you learned? What happened there? Um, and maybe even like how that helped you in the future with Kind.

Sounds good. I love that you're playing this game 'cause nobody's ever played it with me, so I like creativity. Yeah.

This is called Wrong Shelf. You were selling premium Mediterranean spreads, but you tried to sell them everywhere, even convenience stores where they didn't belong. What did that teach you about focus and distribution?

It's crazy to think how little I knew. Like, I didn't understand the difference between a convenience store and Macy's and Bloomingdale's. It's stunning that I was so stupid if you look back. And it's fascinating, by the way, because anybody that's— well, I also don't know about that stuff. Guess what? That kept me going. Because had I known how little I know, maybe I wouldn't have had the guts Mm-hmm. To try it out. But I was trying to put these Mediterranean spreads everywhere. So, I would go to Macy's and Bloomingdale's, try to put it in their gift baskets, try to put it in those fancy department stores. I would go to the natural stores, to the supermarkets, and I would go to the convenience stores where they only sold not specialty products, and I would try to get everywhere. And at the beginning, I thought that tenacity and resilience was everything. At that point, I thought, Persistence, persistence, persistence, persistence.

If I just work harder and harder, I'll make it.

Right. And, and so the best example of that was when I was walking on 84th and Broadway and I met Mr. Kim. And he was a shopkeeper that said, I'm sorry, but your product does not fit with my products. But people come here to this little Korean bodega to buy toilet paper, ketchup, milk, just essentials. Yours is a specialty sun-dried tomato spread. Back in '93, nobody knew what that was. And I'm like, Mr. Kim, try it out. He's like, no, thank you. I'm like, try it out. No, thank you. I force-feed the poor guy. He says, no, thank you. I literally follow him, Hala, down the stairs. And it's kind of like— it's not like regular stairs. It's one of those makeshift that you go like that,

like

fireman stairs. I go down to the basement. I will not leave till the guy gives me an order. And he finally gives me an order. And he finally writes me an order for $36. And I leave, and I'm like, Daniel, you're going to win because you never give up. And I was so proud of myself. I swear, I remember walking taller and thinking, this is what I'm going to win. But it was not the right answer because a week later, not one of those jars has been sold. I walk by 2 weeks later, they start accumulating dust. A month later, not one jar sold. A year later, not one jar sold.

Oh my God.

And the product looked horrible because it gets too much dust and the sun messes the labels and it starts looking bad and looks bad for Mr. Kim. It's not fair to Mr. Kim. And it took me a long time to learn that the objective is not to push product wherever you can. The objective is to be strategic and understand where should your product live. And it's not just to push the product, it's to pull the product.

Mm-hmm.

In our industry, in the consumer packaged goods industry, A lot of young entrepreneurs focus on pushing the product onto the shelves. They don't think about how the consumer's gonna pull off the product. The first sale is interesting, the easiest sale. It's the second sale and the third sale that matters because the problem is to get off the shelves so that they reorder. And so you need to develop the sophistication to understand where your product should be and where it shouldn't be and when, because maybe it was meant to be in a convenience store 10 years later, but not when it's being discovered. You need to go into discovery places— Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, now Costco. Where, where can people discover your product that are going to try it and then tell others about it? That's one of many lessons.

So good. So it's basically don't just sell in, you need to make sure you're going to sell through, right?

Sell through. And don't just have grit, have wit. Think strategically, learn, study, What's my migration strategy? Where should I start? Where should I continue?

Okay, the next one is mission creep. You expanded Peaceworks into places like Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Mexico before your core business was proven. What did that teach you about expanding too fast?

So I was in love with the mission, and so we started in the Middle East, and then we like— also was a young guy traveling, going to Indonesia, running. I was training for a marathon. I remember I trained in In the Sinai, I ran. In Yogyakarta, I ran. In Sri Lanka, I ran. I was running, having fun, starting ventures all over, running the business to the ground because I was so overextended trying to start all sorts of ventures. I was so in love with my mission that I wasn't focusing enough to make one of them win.

Yep.

Had I spent more time on Moshe and Ali's, maybe I would've had more chance for that business to take off. But instead I was trying all sorts of new ventures. By the way, the whole business was a million-dollar big company. At one point we hit $3 million, it went back down to $1 million, but it wasn't a big-scale business. Yeah. Each of these sublines had hundreds of thousands of dollars, which means you're spending way too much money in logistics, you're spending way too much money in the warehouses, you're spending way too much overhead. It's just, it's not, scalable and you're not leveraging through enough economies of scale. So focus on one venture, get it right, win, dominate, and only start the second line extension or venture once you're dominating in— you have to earn the right to expand.

Yeah. You basically needed to— it was okay to experiment in the beginning, but at some point you should have focused on a winner.

question of experience is a great question, Hala, because you're right. It's not like Moshe and Alice was setting the world on fire. So you do as an entrepreneur, one of the greatest strengths of an entrepreneur is that we're very creative, resourceful, and we pursue every opportunity. One of the greatest weaknesses of an entrepreneur is that we're very creative, resourceful, and we pursue every opportunity. You have to have the experimentation and the creativity because Otherwise, Kind would've never been born. Otherwise, I would've not gotten into Starbucks. There's so many things where you have to try things out. You have to break the rules and level the playing field for your creativity. But at some point, that creativity and entrepreneurialism can also kill you if you're just trying every single thing that comes to your head. So, there has to be a creative element and a discipline element, and they need to— Like the little devils, angel and devil fight in your head. You need to find the balance between the creativity and the discipline.

Okay. Spraté. Is that how you say it? Spraté?

So you developed— Spraté.

Spraté. So you developed a whole new food category, Spraté, which is spread plus pâté. And then you had to teach consumers what that meant.

Yeah. Keep it simple, stupid. Don't, don't try to overcomplicate things. We had this sun-dried tomato spread that could be used as a spread, as a pâté, as a sauce, as a dressing. You could use it. It was very versatile, and it was very versatile. So instead of just calling it spread that you can use in versatile ways, I came up with a new name. I thought I was so creative. I called it Spraté, and I trademarked the word Spraté. And the problem is people walk on the shelves of Spraté, I have no idea what Spraté is, let me go to something else that I do know what it is. So the word Spraté Spraté got in the way, and it's very costly to educate consumers. You wanna try to find consumers where they're at. What are their needs? What are they looking for? And then ride those vectors rather than create a whole new category called Spraté.

Yeah, that's a really great lesson. I'm sure that really helped you with Kind later on too, just making sure that—

Think about it.

All the descriptions were just clear and—

100%. Everything that we did right at Kind was thanks to the lessons of everything we did wrong at Peaceworks. We went from Moshe Pupi Kamali Mishmunkin's world-famous all-natural gourmet foods to Kind.

Yeah, Kind Bark.

I mean, we went from tons of products, tons of categories, to only 8 flavors. And the brokers and the stores would knock on us and say, this is great, give us more. And I'm like, no, we're going to stay disciplined. It took many, many, many years before we expanded Kind. We stayed to 8 flavors, 8 products for, I don't know, 5 or 10 years. We did not add something because I had learned the lesson of trying to trade too many products.

Yeah. Okay, last one. It's called Pesto Blind Spot. So you personally did not like pesto.

I love your research, Hala. You did a hell of a good research.

It's what I'm known for.

Do they tell you that joke? Hala, you did a hell of a good research.

Oh, hell of— no, I never heard that one before. For real? No, no, I've never—

yeah, you got it. This is a very interesting story, and I almost never have told it, so I'm glad you asked it. We had a— when I first was doing research, I graduated from Stanford Law School, and I was trying to come up with this Peaceworks thing. I didn't have a product, so I was doing research, and I went into a store in Tel Aviv, and I found this obscure-looking jar of sun-dried tomato spread, and I downed the whole thing. It was delicious.

Mm-hmm.

I went back to the store, And there was no more product, and the company had gone out of business. So I'm like, okay. And eventually I met the manufacturer, and I found out that part of why the reason he had gone out of business—he was buying his glass jars from Portugal, his sun-dried tomatoes from Italy, his olive from Italy. So, and I taught him and showed him how he could buy the glass jars from Egypt, the sun-dried tomatoes from Turkey, the olives from Palestine. And so we ended up doing this joint venture. The product was fresher, lower cost, and that's how it started. But I was obsessed with the sun-dried tomato spread. I just wanted to make the sun-dried tomato spread. And he said, well, try this other thing. It's called basil pesto. And I'm like, Yoel, that tastes like grass. I hate this basil pesto. I'm not buying any of it. He said, Daniel, please trust me. It's an important product. Mm-hmm. I'm like, Yoel, no. I'll do the sun-dried tomato. If you want, I'll do the green olive spread. It's tolerable. The sun-dried tomato's my favorite. The green olive is good. This basil pesto thing, I don't like it.

Daniel, trust me, it's important in the marketplace of specialty foods. Try it. I'm like, fine, Yoel. I ordered 800 cases of sun-dried tomato, 400 cases of olive spread, 100 cases of basil, just because Yoel was pushing me. First month, second month, 3 months, basil pesto's outselling the others. Not 1 to 1, but 10 to 1. By the time that, like, it scaled, basil was 80 or 90% of our sales. And it tells you, listen to yourself, but not too much.

Yeah, the market's gonna tell you what they want.

Listen to the market, also listen to others. Like, I'm a very, instinctual entrepreneur. I listen to my gut. I like Motion Alice and the Sundance Tomato. I like kind of, it's worked, right? It's, it's helped me. But you have to be careful to check that with other consumer flavor profiles and with data because your gut alone is your gut. And yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so many failures and, and you were doing Pieceworks for a decade. You paid yourself $24,000 a year. Which is a very low salary. And so you were really struggling for, for many, many years. And like you said, it, it was just like a million-dollar business, which like, you know, as me, an entrepreneur, it's like a million-dollar business is good, but that doesn't—

We're doing a million in revenues.

Yeah. Oh, so it was like even less profit.

Yeah. The profit was, by the way, I was very proud that we eked out a profit always. It was very important for people that are starting up. Don't get an overly fancy office. Don't get an overly fancy desk. Just tighten your belt so you can invest the money where it matters. So we actually managed, even when we're— our sales trajectory was $33,000, $226,000, $400-something, $660,000, $860,000. Then we hit $1 million and then we got stuck around the million mark. Yeah. And then one year or two, we got to $2 or $3 million, went back down to $1 million. But Either those are the top line, the revenues. The profit was often 10 to 15%, which for a small business is very impressive that I managed to eke out a profit.

Yeah.

Because we were really, really resourceful and I was paying myself a very small salary, but we had a profit. But the other problem is that when you're growing, what you don't realize is you need more inventory. You need more accounts receivable.

Especially with a product business.

You need more working capital. And so even if I had a $50,000 or $100,000 profit, I had to put it, first I pay taxes from that profit. So now I only have half of that and then I need to take that and put it in working. So even though I'm technically profitable, I barely could make ends meet. Yeah. Because every last cent that I had, I had to put it into inventory, into working capital.

You would've made more money as a lawyer.

Yeah, for sure.

You know? So I actually was interviewing Kevin O'Leary very, um, less than a year ago, he was right in that seat where you're sitting. And he told me, Hala, if somebody who's listening has a business and in 36 months they haven't grown, they have no profit, they haven't figured out customer acquisition, they should take their business idea and shoot it behind the barn. That's what he, that's what he told me.

Yeah.

Now you did your business for 10 years.

Yeah. I, I think in general, Kevin is actually, an incredibly important force in Shark Tank and in the world because he tells it like it is. And it's very valuable for somebody to be ruthless and tell you what you need to hear. And I think as a rule of thumb, he's correct. But the problem is you never know.

Yeah, you never know.

To your point, those 10 years of failures taught me enough to then turn Kind into a $5 to $7 billion company, depending how you calculate it. It was a high, probably the most successful company in terms of investment in capital to growth. Like we had almost no investment and we had generated billions in sales, cash flow positively, profitably. So very well run, partly because of all the lessons I learned from Peaceworks. And had I given up, forget about 3 years, 10 years, 9 years later,

kind

of would've noticed. So there's, it's impossible to answer. I think as a rule of thumb, if you're not gaining momentum after 3 to 5 years, you need to pivot.

Yeah.

But more than that, I think you need to really listen to what the market is telling you. And it's so hard. It's so hard to know when to throw in the towel, when to just pivot, or when to just keep going and be patient.

Yeah. But to your point, something that I think is so important is that your experiences actually give you profit and not just financial profit. Like your experiences are allowing you to get the knowledge, to get the experience, the leadership skills, the, and you are kind of in the same industry. So it really helped you in terms of like how to do distribution correct. And, and all that.

And Hala, there's data that's fascinating. I'm trying to remember where I came by this data 'cause it was just within the last year or so, but it's fascinating. The likelihood of first-time entrepreneur in any venture succeeding is close to none.

Hmm.

But by the time that they've tried it twice, it doubles from 10% to 20%. By the time they're that third-time entrepreneur, it triples from 10% to 30%. There's still 70% chance that things are not gonna pan out, but you're 3x more likely to figure out. So the more you put on those reps,

Mm-hmm.

and, you know, on Build or Break, the podcast we just launched, The common theme, uh, of all these fascinating, incredible people, they put in the work, they try things out and things don't work out. They try again, they try again. You just keep trying. You just keep never giving up because eventually, and you only need one to win.

Yep. So true. Uh, something that we didn't get to talk about offline, uh, before this interview is that I actually also started my company, uh, the year my father passed away from COVID Mm-hmm. And when he passed away, it was in 2020. I had my podcast, my podcast was already getting really big and he saw that, but I didn't have my company yet. And when he was in the hospital battling COVID and I couldn't see him and stuff, that's actually when I first started YAP Media, which is now, uh, you know, almost a $10 million company. And I have a podcast network and a social agency and all these things. And I remember when he passed away, it felt like I had this like resurgence of like, okay, like I'm doing cool things. I've got a great corporate job, I've got this cool podcast, but like, I could be doing so much more. My dad overcame so much growing up in such extreme poverty in Palestine, moved us to America, became a surgeon, became chief of surgery in many hospitals, and built a medical center and did all these amazing things that it made me feel like I needed— I had so much like privilege that I needed to do it 100 times bigger, like for him.

And I heard you say something on a podcast that like, I was like, oh my gosh, I feel that way. is that you felt like when your father died, like a piece of him like lived in you basically, or like burned a deeper fire in, in you. And I feel the same way. So I'd love for you to tell us about like when your father passed away, how did that give you the drive to like give it another try and really start Kind?

Well, first of all, it was very beautiful to listen to you talk about your dad, and I just, I'm 100% certain that your dad loved you so much because you see it in who you are, right? Like, you have all this love inside you and all this self-confidence, and that came from your parents. And I'm sure he was so proud of you, and that gave you—

Yeah.

That. And yeah, I think that, um, when we're blessed to have parents that we love and that love us, that is one of the greatest sources of strength for an entrepreneur. And when you need to do stuff in their memory, in their honor, and you can feel them inside you. In the Jewish tradition, when somebody passes away, you do something for a year called Kaddish, where you do these prayers. Mm-hmm. And you're supposed to do it 3 times a day, these prayers. And what it does is it focuses your pain on that moment and helps you meditate and grow. I'm not a very religious person. I don't pray that much. It was very difficult for me to connect with what would God want me to be praying to God. And once I connected to that bigger picture, but what I did very frequently is I connected inside myself. I felt my father inside me, and I do believe that we have souls, spirits, some energy, something that connects us. And I think when my dad passed away, I felt carrying him inside me. And it's not just his lessons and his memories and the memories of him, it's also his energy.

I felt like I had him inside me. And I asked myself, particularly that year, but also multiple times a year still today, when I go to temple, which is not very frequently, but when I go, I close my eyes and I think, what would my dad want from me? Hmm. What would he expect me to do and to give to the world? How can I be a better husband to Michelle? How can I be a better father to each of my 4 kids? And I go through each of them, and I think, oh, I need to be more patient here. I need to be more supportive here. I need to be more loving here. With my team, how can I— because I'm a very driven, impulsive, impatient person, ADHD. Yeah. How can I be more grateful? How can I express more gratitude? Because it's just not in my nature. I'm not a bad person, but I'm a normal human being. I make mistakes like everybody else. And a lot of people that are very driven, we have the mistake of not— like my grandmother used to tell me, take a minute to smell the flowers, to just pause and just appreciate life and appreciate one another.

So I try to reflect about— and it helps me a lot. It helps me remind myself why we're here. Because I, like every human being, have an ego, and I have a big ego. And that ego, before you know it, like my friend Eddie Margain from here says, ego is not your amigo.

I love that.

And it's very true. Like, there's something about self-confidence that's good for you and about needing to prove yourself that I think is healthy, but it can very quickly turn into chasing fame, chasing metrics that are superficial, and it can really catch up with you in jealousies and this and that. All of us need to constantly keep it in check and expunge the bad stuff. It's not something, at least to me, trying, aspiring to be kind, aspiring to not dehumanize is a work in progress. Something that's very important for all of us to understand, you're not a bad person if you stereotype. Every one of us stereotypes. It's just part of our brain, our heuristics. Our brain taught us pattern recognition, generalizations. We all generalize. But what you need to do is figure out which generalizations are valid and which are not. And stereotyping a human being wherever they come from is not healthy. It's gonna make you not be fulfilled in life and not successful in life. So you need to expunge some of these things. And it's an active work because with social media, we're all being told us versus them, us versus them.

Yeah.

It's work to try to really actively expunge the bad stuff and remind yourself why we're here.

Yeah. You brought up ego. So there's one story that you tell that I just absolutely love that I want my listeners to hear about your grandfather and a penny. Can you share that story with us?

Yeah. My grandfather from my mom's side was a cattle rancher. He was a a cattleman, and he was very tiny, but he was like, like as a little kid, he passed away when I was 7 or 8 years old, but I remember with his 2 fingers, he, he could like, he was very strong.

Mm-hmm.

And he had a proverb that a man that's too arrogant to bend over to pick up a penny is not worth a penny. In Spanish, it's akin to a nickel, but Un hombre demasiado digno para agacharse a levantar un quinto no vale un quinto. And the whole point is, if you think you're so special that you don't need to worry about not wasting that piece of bread or whatever, who are you?

Yeah.

Who do you think you are? But also for business, it's a really good tool because if you stay strict scrappy and not waste, then you can invest in the right places and grow. So I think resourcefulness and scrappiness are a very good tool for growth. And it's not the same as stinginess. Like, I give more than $25 million a year in charity. And by the way, I think this is the first time I share that, so now you have news. I spend on myself less— a fraction of that. But I will not waste that last piece of cheese or cottage cheese or yogurt. I'm like, guys, why are you throwing? I, I don't know. I'm very proud to not waste. I, I don't see why that should be something like, oh my God, who's this person? I admire people that I don't— that don't waste. I'm sure your parents were like that too.

Yeah. Very, very similar. I think it's like the way that we were growing up. Yeah. Yeah.

But I think all of us should, inspired to live by that, uh, proverb from my grandfather, to, to not feel that we're so above it, but to have the humility to pick up that penny. And another proverb that he had is like, mind the pennies and the dollars will mind themselves. As a business person, don't be penny-wise and dollar-foolish. That's also true. But if you worry about the specifics, the big picture is going to work itself out.

Hmm. I love that advice. And I think being resourceful is very important, especially when you're first starting out as an entrepreneur and you don't have a lot of capital or sales coming in. Um, but in Kind, I know that there was a period of time where you only spent $800 on samples.

Yeah.

And I think you were already making like $800,000 a year in sales or something like that.

I love, I love, you did amazing research. Whoever's on this, you should know Hala does her work and it's very valuable.

Thanks.

The story is like this. At Peaceworks, we developed a lot of good habits and some bad habits. We were not wasting, but we also had what I would call a frugal mindset, not a resourceful mindset. So, in your culture of spending, there are actually 3 cultures: frugality, gluttonous and resourceful. Frugality is when you will not waste a cent, but you will not invest a cent either. You're just cutting costs at all costs for everything. What it does, it helps you survive, but it doesn't help you fulfill your potential.

Yeah, develop.

Because you're not investing in your growth. On the opposite spectrum is a wasteful mentality, a gluttonous mentality where you're just spending and you have the ping pong table and you're eating cupcakes on the ping pong table and the, like, like you're just wasting resources and not That is the worst because you're going to go out of business. Yeah. The magic is a resourceful mindset where you're not wasting, but you're being smart about stretching those dollars, about being resourceful. And the perfect example is sampling, where in 2008, our sampling budget was $800 because in the Peaceworks years, I had taught myself that any sampling was a cost center, and I hadn't realized that it's also an investment for people to try your product. And once we started investing in giving people free product to try, for every person that tried a Kind Bar, 9 out of 10 would love it. And within 2 months, which was a really good ROI, it would pay for itself because people would go and buy more and tell their friends. All of our source of marketing at the beginning was word of mouth. And we were very lucky about that.

And so we grew a lot organically. And then we learned, oh wow, sampling is not a cost center, it's an investment, it's a marketing function. And that first year we went from $800 to $800,000.

Wow.

In, in, in, in sampling. And within a few years we were giving $20 million of product for free. And that's what helped the company grow like crazy.

That's amazing. And it goes back to the, the mission is not gonna sell the product. The product is gonna sell the product.

100%. That in, in, in the consumer product goods industry, you know, in finance they say cash is king. What I say in consumer product goods, product is king. You can have the best marketer, the best salesperson, the best supply chain. If the product is not the best, forget it. You're fighting up a uphill battle.

Uphill battle, yeah. Something else that I loved about the branding of the Kind Bar is that you had this translucent wrapper, clear wrapper, and you could like actually see like all the nuts and the berries and all the good stuff that was in there. Was that on purpose?

Yeah, 100%. The concept is the brand of Kind at its essence is about transparency. Transparency in the wrapper so you can see what you get, transparency in the way we make the product, so it's all whole nuts and fruits. By the way, I sold KIND. I'm not, uh, I don't have a financial stake anymore.

But he still, he still brought me a KIND bar today, so he's still a supporter.

I still love letting people know. It's your baby. It's, yeah, it's still, um, I'm very proud to be able to share the product. But it was about transparency in the way we shared the names. It was transparency in the wrappers. You could see what you're eating and what you're getting. And it was a transparency in the way we communicated. It became a— and what I find is that A lot of founders and CEOs' personalities and values become imbued in the culture of the company. So for me, those were values that were very important. And so we created a culture around it and transparency in communications became a key thing that helped us outperform our competitors because we had a very tightly knit, it was kindness, transparency. There was no hierarchy. Everybody was in it together. Whether you were the president of the company or the janitor of the company, anybody after 6 months of working full-time at Kind was eligible to get stock options, and you would vest over a period of time. And everybody earned ownership in the company, was a fellow owner. We're all in this together. We're all in the trenches together.

We're all equals. Everybody had the, at least as an aspiration, an equal voice in being able to challenge the dogma and— notice when we were not doing things best in class and celebrate when somebody noticed, oh, we could do it this way instead of that way.

And

so there's a lot about that transparency and that candor and that hearty debate culture where we would debate things to get to the best answers.

When I hear you talk about kind, something that comes in my mind is this idea of like kind leadership. And I know that you often talk about like the difference between kind and nice. So help us understand, like, what is a kind leader versus a nice leader?

A nice leader doesn't cause problems. A kind leader solves problems. A nice leader is very polite. A kind leader is very honest. So a nice leader is not gonna tell you things that are gonna hurt your feelings. A kind leader's gonna tell you things that you need to hear so you can do a better job and you can grow.

Hmm.

A nice person in the party is not gonna make you feel awkward by letting you know that there's something in between your teeth.

Hmm.

A kind leader's gonna tell you, you know what? You have something in between your teeth.

You gotta go to the bathroom.

Yeah. Because otherwise you're gonna be the entire party with the thing in between

your teeth.

A nice leader doesn't bully people, but a kind leader stands up to the bully.

Hmm. I love that. Kind ended up growing. Is there any lessons in terms of like, Well, first of all, how long from when you pivoted Kind did it actually really start to grow? Like how long did it take where you're like, oh man, this is the way better idea that we need to lean into?

So Peaceworks from '93 to 2003 was 2 steps forward, 2 steps back, 2 steps forward, 1 step back. Like, you know, it was barely surviving. Kind every year, boom, boom, boom. Doubled in growth, doubled in growth, doubled in growth. For the first 10 years, on average, we grew triple digits every year, and we did so cash flow positively so that we were getting more cash in our pockets and profitably. So in the P&L, we were making money, and that's what made the company grow so fast and so big.

How hard was it for you to maintain being CEO through growing the business so large, like from growing a $1 million business to a business that was making millions and millions of dollars?

It's an excellent question. It was so much fun because it stretched me and grew me and made me learn so many different things. And at the same time, it was thanks to the people I surrounded myself that I was able to do it. So there were people like John Leahy, Ellie Lanning, Justin Mervis, and many others that without them, there's no chance Kind would've fulfilled its potential. So what it means to be a CEO, because the word CEO Sounds like, okay, you're a CEO, you're a CEO. No. Well, what does it mean? Because for example, John Leahy was my president, but we were running the show together. Even Eli, you could argue, was our third person running it with us. And when I was a CEO of a one-person operation, I was a CEO to myself. One of the hardest things is when you hire your first team member, because now you're a CEO to yourself and to them. Being the CEO of a two-person operation is super hard. Especially for me as a 25-year-old that didn't know how to empower people and delegate. And it was a tricky thing when you're 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 people, very different.

They're all reporting directly to you initially. And it just takes a very, very essential set of skills. How do you empower people but still coach them? I couldn't afford to hire very senior people, so I had to still coach them, teach them. But how do I do my— So it's a completely different set of sets of challenges. Then all of a sudden, you need to build a structure, right? Then once you're 20, 30, 50 people, now you have direct reports, and you need to find people that are better than you at each of those tasks, but you still have a lot of knowledge to impart to them. You need to find that balance between guiding them. And the more that you grow, the more that you need to contract yourself. It's fascinating. The more that you're advancing and the company's getting stronger and attracting talent and it's growing in size, you as a leader need to pivot from doing all of the stuff. By the way, I, it was never very important. I was never beneath picking up the boxes and doing— Yeah. Like rolling up my sleeves. I, I want a team of doers and that was a culture that we created at Kind.

But you also need to start elevating your leadership to create ensemble orchestra rather than to just want to do everything yourself. And I think John and I together were insane, but Mike, who came after us and became our CEO, what he was great at was building ensemble orchestra, an ensemble team, the best cast of leaders for each of the departments and to take us to the next level. And as you continue growing, you need to continue letting other people grow with you and grow and let them lead. And so your role becomes more presidential in the sense of creating a culture, being there for everybody, setting the tone. And obviously it depends on your personality. I was really good— and your skill sets. I was very good marketing. I was good at culture. I was good at new product development. But John Leahy was 2,000 times better at sales, 3,000 times better at supply chain and operations, 3,000 times better at finance. So, John owned all of those things. By the way, John owned every department, like it reported to him, but the departments where I was good at adding value had dotted lines to me.

So, it really depends what your skills are, but in all of the cases, as you grow, your role completely evolves.

The coolest thing about being a founder is that you can grow a company where like the whole company's designed around your best skill sets. Like, you get to decide, like, if you're gonna run sales and marketing and somebody else runs finance and ops.

But it's hard because how do you learn to have the self—

Awareness.

Introspection, self-awareness and the introspection to know this person's better than me at this. And by the way, it's easier said than done, but we talked about ego earlier. I founded this nonprofit, the One Voice Movement. Mohamed Darawshe and I co-founded it. And there's periods where it took me a long time to acknowledge that I was jealous. Why I was jealous, I don't know. He and I were doing God's work, but sometimes I felt that I deserved the credit, and I had that insecurity. And it took me a while to expunge that from me. And so I think every one of us has those insecurities. And what I coach my team is find somebody that's better than you.

Yeah.

It's hard. It's hard because then they might upstage you. You might be intimidated. But ultimately, a great leader develops the self-confidence to know that their success is your success. And then certainly in my book, those are the people I want to grow and invest in. But an insecure person might not want to have somebody that's going to upstage them. Yeah. And so it requires a lot of self-confidence to try to build greatness. In management, what I explain is we are only as good as our weakest link. So if I score myself as an 8, to not give myself a 10, and to develop— because my ego is wounded, I don't want 8s, 9s, or 10s because they're gonna upstage me. I only bring 7s, and then the 7 brings a 6 and a 5 and a 4 in terms of performance. Before you know it, you are failing. Yeah.

Yeah.

And think about it the opposite way. If you're always trying to bring in talent that's better than you, imagine— and that was what we built at KIND, where we believed so much in everybody who's working for a greater goal. And before you know it, it's a machine because you're bringing greatness and people that are better than you, and they're lifting you up, and they're teaching you, and you all wanna learn from each other and be surrounded by that greatness. But that's a culture that everybody needs to be comfortable that they wanna be stretched.

Yeah. And to your point, it requires you not having an ego to know like, okay, I'm gonna hire somebody who's smarter than me at this and might even tell me what to do, even though I'm the CEO and the founder.

And by the way, that even that is not so easy either because yes, and sometimes you know better than them because you've done it all your life. And so it's, it's also, I'm not saying, all right, hire that person that's smarter than you and let them run with it, give 'em the space. But sometimes you do need to coach 'em because to your point, you're the founder. You're the CEO and sometimes you might know better than them. Yeah. So it's not, it's not,

it's not black and white.

Yeah.

So was there ever a point where you took out an, sort of an investment? Did you get an investor in kind at any point? And then when you sold, like what was that experience like?

Many different examples.

Okay.

After my seed investors came in, nobody wanted to invest in me. And what's interesting about investors is it's very funny. They're like sheep. Nobody wants to invest in you till everybody wants to invest in you. So for many years, nobody wants to take a look at us. I gave up trying. I got lucky. That's why I owned 80%, 90% of the company, because nobody wanted to invest in me. But once Kind started showing up in the data, everybody's calling us. Everybody wants to be our friend. And guess what? We don't need them because we have money.

Yeah.

At one point, I brought in an investor Uh, and this investor did not behave very well.

Okay.

So they agreed to be a minority stakeholder, and months after bringing them in, they saw that this thing is—

Yeah.

Going places, and they tried to push me out, and they tried to force me to sell them a controlling stake in the company. And I'm like, that's not what we negotiated. And they're like, yeah, well, take it or leave it. And I'm like, well, I'll leave it. And they're like, okay, well, we're taking all the 3 or 4 people we found for you, we're taking them back with you. So I had many nights without sleep because I felt like I brought in a traitor into my organization. Yeah. So when you bring in an investor, make sure that you do the research. How are they gonna behave during difficult times and what's their value set? And do they have the right value set? Because that matters so much more than if they're gonna give you a valuation of this or that. Like, yeah, valuations matter, but much more matters Are they going to add value, and are they going to approach things with integrity? And a lot of investors are very, very— they just care about the money. It's disgusting, honestly.

Yeah.

We eventually bought them out. And there were a lot of difficulties because they really squeezed me. But we bought them out, and we brought in another investor. And this other investor, BDT, super long-term oriented, best investor in the world. So it really depends what's the value set of the investor. BDT was an amazing investor, and the way they handled themselves is they would put my interests first, which is hard to believe, but they were building a long-term reputation, a long-term culture where they wanted to know that they are the entrepreneur's best friend. And they did that to me. There were 2 or 3 junctures where my interests were not perfectly aligned with theirs, and they were my advisors and my investors, and they always guided me the right way. I will never forget it. I'm very loyal to them. I'm an advisor to them as a result. Byron Trott, Greg Lemke, and, um, Michael Dell. Now it's Michael Dell's, uh, investment platform. Very long-term oriented. I think the difference between most investors and entrepreneurs is that we as entrepreneurs are relationship-oriented and long-term oriented, whereas investors tend to be very transactional and short-term oriented. They're just doing this transaction.

And with Baron, Greg, and Michael Dell, who's like best in class, they're very long-term oriented. Their culture is a culture of long-term relationships, of doing the right thing for the long term.

Yeah.

And that makes all the difference.

What questions— like, if somebody was speaking with somebody who is interested in investing in their company, what questions do you feel like they should ask to make sure that the person is long-term oriented.

I don't think they should ask them to the investors because most of these investors are gonna know how to answer whatever they want. I think you need to ask around. You need to look at other companies that these guys have invested in and discreetly, quietly, and confidentially try to get a sense. And ideally companies where things have not necessarily gone great. By the way, not all, uh, entrepreneurs are perfect either. Like we've had problems with— like, the other thing you need to do is put things in writing and make them very clear. Make sure that you have a good lawyer because if you enter an agreement that's not good for you, I've, I've tried to help so many entrepreneurs that got in trouble, and if they got screwed in the legal terms, it's very hard. Don't have too big an ego that you don't understand that the investors do need minority protections to protect their investment. but also protect your rights and find the right balance. Yeah, get a lawyer that's going to help you find what's fair for all sides and think that way. Don't think me versus them, but do prepare for the downside.

So try to set the culture and the journey for everybody to benefit, but protect your downside by making sure that if you think of a worst-case scenario, you're protected. Yeah, does that make sense?

Totally makes sense. So did you always imagine that you were actually going to sell Kind? Were you always like, okay, I'm going to have Big exit.

Hala, the most interesting thing is I don't think I thought about it that way. I did, when I built Kind, I was hoping I'd get $10 million in sales. I think that was a number that I was like, that would be success. And then we got to $10 million, then we realized, oh wow, we can get to $50 million. Then we got to $50 million, oh, we can get to $500 million, we can get to a billion. But—

So cool.

It's very cool too. And you're, you're saying that it's so, By the way, the numbers are useful and obviously they help you have a good living, but the journey that you have of having built from nothing a $10 million platform, that's insane. And for people that have the backbone to accept all the vicissitudes of an entrepreneurial journey, because you're gonna have high highs and low lows, there's nothing more exciting. Once things started going, I really wasn't thinking about it.

Yeah.

So there was a situation where we almost got bought out early on, and I almost sold the company for like $20 million for 50% and would've been another 20. And that didn't pan out, and I'm lucky it didn't pan out. It's not like I wasn't working at this big CPG company, got cold feet, and I got so lucky. This was before I brought in institutional investors. But then once I started growing, it was just so much fun. That was just focused on fulfilling Kind's potential. And then when we finally, um, grew a lot and started growing internationally and started seeing that we were not able to fully control our brand internationally, that's where I started getting cold feet. Because we would hear stories where our product was being sold in countries where we were not there. How is the product getting in there? People would literally go to Costco buy entire containers and ship containers to China, to other countries, and then sell the product without us being able to be in control of our own destinies and manage the brand and shape the brand as we wanted. And so, we wanted an international partner to help us catch up with that.

Yeah. And then, that's when you decided that you were going to sell.

That's when I decided that I wanted to have a strategic partner, but even that journey was a very tough journey. Even that journey involved many days where I said, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not doing it till the last minute. Till the very last minute when we signed. I remember I called my management team. I was like, I'm not doing this deal. I got cold feet. I'm like, I saw this, this, and this from them. That's not what I want. We're not doing this. And my team is like, what are you talking about? They wanted some liquidity.

Yeah.

And so I'm like, well, this is not just my journey, it's my team's journey also. And they want liquidity. So I hardly considered in their journey. But it's a very tough thing for an entrepreneur to decide. Yeah. And even today I ask myself if it was the right decision or no. But at that point, we wanted to sell a minority stake to a partner, international partner that will help us grow globally. And what we realized is that all of the best-in-class partners wouldn't do this unless we were giving them a path to own the whole enchilada. So we eventually caved and did that.

And you sold your last stake in the company fairly recently, right?

Yeah, like a year and a half ago.

How does it feel to no longer have ownership over your baby?

It's very weird. It's very hard. It's a good company with good values in terms of like they care about the long-term orientation of the brand. They have a lot of high integrity, but it's still not your baby, and it's hard. By the way, I think they're doing a very good job with new product development for the most part. In terms of protecting the brand integrity, very good job. But that culture, that entrepreneurial zeal that an entrepreneur creates, it's gone because you're now part of a gigantic behemoth.

Yeah. But it gave you the bandwidth to do things like Shark Tank, which was—

Shark Tank, I started earlier, but it gave me the bandwidth to do a lot of civic work, to start other ventures, to spend, to get better health. 'Cause when, I don't understand how you look so good. when you're in your like high growth stage. Because, and I, I don't, I'm not saying that too jokingly, I'm serious. Because when I was running Kinda is, like I joke that I look like a ghost raccoon. I had, I was working so hard and I was losing sleep over, because I had all the eggs in that one basket. So if one, if we lost one account, oh my God, it was like, I was so scared.

Mm. And, and So much stress.

I was so stressed and working so hard, I was sleeping 4 or 5 hours a day. Terrible sleeping habits. And so consequently, you don't work out because if you have half an hour more, you hit the snooze button.

You want to sleep.

And so you don't sleep. Easier said than done when you're starting your venture and you're in your vital, you know, 20s, 30s, even 40s. You need to win, you need to build. Of course you need to do that. But if you can give yourself just a little bit of that Exercise and sleep, it goes a long way.

I totally agree. Okay, so let's talk about Shark Tank. I wanna, I want to really understand what it was like to get that, you know, initial interest from Shark Tank. It's such a legendary show, especially for entrepreneurs.

Yeah.

And you also being from Mexico, I feel like it's just like really special that you get to be a representative on Shark Tank. So how did that feel?

So, when they first reached out to me, I didn't quite understand it. I was kind of excited because— I was very excited because I discovered Shark Tank late. I was on a plane walking. I think it was an international flight. And all of a sudden, I see this format of people sitting down and talking, and I'm like, it's not a movie. What the hell is going on here? And so, I asked, what is this? And they said Shark Tank. And I started watching it, and I was like, I was mesmerized. I loved it because as an entrepreneur, I love the stories. And I had so many stories to tell, right, of all my mistakes, of all my failures. And I wanted to give back and tell these stories. So when they invited me, I was so energized and so honored. And Barry and Tiffany and Holly and Clay and you and the different producers interviewed me in series.

Mm.

And you first get a Zoom interview, then you get a— in-person interview, then you go for dinner. Like, they're very serious and methodic about this. And it was really energizing. The funny part is I show up for my first day of recording, and nobody's ever accused me of being shy or quiet. I talk too much, right? And I love people. Yeah. I'm on the first segment we record, and I feel like I'm interrupting too much and I'm being rude. And the producers are like, Daniel, you need to wake up. I'm like, what? Yeah, you need to give us more. I'm like, what do you mean? I'm interrupting. I don't want to— no, no, no. Just say what— because one thing that people don't understand, first of all, it's very real. You've never seen those entrepreneurs when they show up. And the Shark Tanks really are trying to get their questions in. And ultimately, the producers turn off the mics of the Sharks that don't get their questions in. So it's not as filled with friction in the experience to the user. But if I'm trying to ask a question, and Kevin, and Laurie, and Barbara are trying to get their questions in, and Robert, whatever, you are pushing in to get in a question that matters to you.

And so you really need to have the gumption to throw yourself in. Stephen Bartlett, who's in this season, told us that that's not how it is in the UK. They're very polite, my darling.

Oh, really?

They apparently say, you're going to start with the first question, and they're like, They're very orderly. It's very funny. But in America, it is just free-for-all. It's like my dinner table, like the kids, like who can get their questions in. And it's a big studio, and the studio sucks out a lot of the energy. So you really need to lean in and stand up and speak, and you need to be witty, and you need to be quick and see the patterns and decide whether you're going to invest. And there's all these strategies. So it is very stimulating. I enjoy it a lot.

When you first saw like the first couple of episodes, were you— that you were in, could you stand to watch it? Or were you like, ah, I messed up here? Or, or did you, did you learn anything about like what you need to do better?

It's interesting. I, as a general rule, I cringe a lot when I see myself.

Me too.

But on Shark Tank, I think I enjoyed it because Yun and Clay did such a beautiful job. They do a really good job at making sure it's not a punch below your belt waist belt show, right?

Yeah.

Like, whether you're the entrepreneur or the shark, it's really above board. It's a really— it's a long-term oriented show. It's kind of like the Kind Values, Entrepreneur Values. They really are trying to do it the right way. And so, they— there's maybe been 2 or 3 moments where I felt really deeply uncomfortable. You know, I've been 8 seasons, countless shows, maybe 3 or 4 moments where I felt, uh, But almost always I'm fine.

Okay, let's play another game. It's called Shark Quickfire.

Okay.

Okay. So who would you say is the funniest shark?

That's a very hard question because they're all very funny, but I think Kevin wins it. Daymond is hilarious too, but Kevin is— they don't understand this about Kevin. He's hilarious. He really like, he's a tell-it-like-it-is guy, but he also, he's just very funny.

Everybody thinks he's mean.

It's between Daymond and Kevin.

Kevin was so cute and nice when he came. And Damon's very— Damon's been on the show too, and he's really, really nice. Who's the most intimidating?

Well, Mark was.

Really?

Mark. I love Mark. I look up to him. He's one of my few mentors that I sit down with him, and I learn a lot from him. I love him. Um, there's a handful of mentors that I love learning from, but that are intimidating to me. And when I'm with him, I wonder if I'm doing— having that impact on others, 'cause I don't wanna be intimidating.

Yeah.

But Mark's like—

He can be really intimidating. Yeah.

He processes so fast. But, you know, the guy's so loyal and he's always doing the right thing for the right reasons. Very long-term oriented, very good values. But he processes really fast. Like, he would see something that would take me 3 more minutes before, oh, shit, that's what he was going after. That's what he was— Like he, he has very good pattern recognition.

Yeah. He's based in Dallas, so we're trying to get me to interview him. He, we haven't secured an interview, but he always responds to his emails.

Isn't that crazy?

He'll always respond to his emails. And he

directly,

he, he, I know. And it'll be one-word answers like, ask in a month. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like it's like one-word answers.

Email me and I'll try to help.

Oh, thank you. What's an investment that you were most wrong about? The worst investment that you did on Shark Tank?

Well, the thing is, they're closed, right? Because there's investments that— there's 3 or 4 levels. I'll answer this in a way that will be interesting to your audience. Yeah. Sometimes entrepreneurs work really hard to get on that stage, and their film and their show doesn't air. Their episode doesn't air because the producers reserve the right for it not to air. And it might not air because it was just really boring, which is rarely the case, but it can be. Or it might not air because the entrepreneur didn't keep their word, or because they found out something bad, or something else will happen.

Okay.

And so, there's one that I agreed to the deal on, but it never aired, so you wouldn't know about it. So, that's, that's a cheating way to answer. Every one of the deals that I've done, there's one that aired and didn't close because the entrepreneurs retraded. I really wish I would talk about it because I'm upset that they did that, but I'm gonna be nice to them and not say it. So once in a while you get the data because you have the right on due diligence to, to look at the data. And if the entrepreneur tells you, hey, I sold $4 million and they only sold $2 million.

You can, you can back out.

You can not close the deal or say, I, this information's wrong, we need to retrade. I don't like retrading, so I just don't close those deals. Those have happened a couple, but a couple times the entrepreneurs tried to retrade and say, oh, we gave you too good a deal, now we want this. And those, I think those are the ones that bother me when people don't keep their word.

Okay, last couple ones. What founder trait makes you lean in immediately? Like you see them on stage and you're like, oh, I like this person.

I look for people that I enjoy working with that are high integrity. High integrity still should always be the case. But this thing about me enjoying working with them, I've realized sometimes the people that are borderline annoying are driven and are getting shit done. Sometimes that's what you need.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I think I always explain about how a great sales— if you have a lame salesperson that doesn't go out and just lazy and doesn't do the work, of course you don't want that. If you're an annoying, persistent one that's driving you nuts, They're getting the stuff done, but they're annoying people. That's also not optimal. The ideal is someone that's working really hard, pushing the envelope, but being loved for it. That's where the magic is, and it's very hard to do. So I want this person. I want the entrepreneur that's persistent, resilient, but adorable. But it's very hard to find. If I only have this option and this option, I'll take this option.

You'll take the annoying one, yeah.

Because they're at least driving. I don't want annoying, but at least they're driving. You need somebody that's driven.

Yeah, I love that. So now that you've sold Kind and you've got more money in the bank, are you going back to your original mission with Peaceworks? Tell us about Peaceworks 2.0 and your Builders Movement.

Well, more broadly, yeah, I, I realize that we're living in an age where a lot of people are being told to be victims and to not have agency and to, it's us versus them, us versus them. And that is so dangerous for society. And so Builders is a movement to try to help all of us build together rather than tear each other apart.

I love that. So it's builders versus destroyers, right?

Right. But because nobody has to be a destroyer. Like, yes, builders versus destroyers, but a destroyer is someone that chooses when they wake up in the morning to deny the humanity of the other and to divide, demolish, and diminish. It's a choice. You're not born a destroyer. People have the choice to become builders. A builder's a person that wakes up and says, how can I elevate humanity? How can I build together? How can I work with others to solve problems together, to unite society and help? And so it has 500+ incredible movement partners from Mark Cuban to Chef José Andrés, from Lonnie Ali to, I mean, an incredible roster of people, Liv Schreiber, Just an incredible group of— it's like the Avengers of the builders, trying to find a way to empower all of us with a toolkit. And Build or Break, the show that I just launched, spotlights conversations with the most fascinating builders that talk about their things that could have almost broken them, but how they overcame that and built something incredible instead. And they give you practical tools and stuff. In terms of Peaceworks 2.0, It's very appropriate that you're asking about that because for the last 2 years behind the scenes, I've been working with an incredible group of Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals to try to help the builders in Gaza reclaim their lives.

Because

a

lot of people don't understand that besides the devastation of the war that was when Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded with so much force and destroyed so much of Gaza, It's not just the destruction that happened in the last 2 years. Prior to that, Hamas had taken over the land for, I don't know, like 17 years and sapped out the energy from the entrepreneurial spirit. And there's a lot of destruction, corruption, and forces that have prevented that entrepreneurial spirit, which Palestinians in their nature are very entrepreneurial. But in Gaza, we need to revitalize that.

I love that.

And so we have a whole methodology to create a builder's village, and a builders' ecosystem to try to help invest in entrepreneurs, help provide them loans, help provide them know-how and experience for them to start rebuilding their societies. And I'm really excited about the potential. It's daunting and very challenging to navigate so many challenges, you can imagine. Yeah. But I'm really bullish about the opportunity to demonstrate the potential of builders in Gaza to provide a contrast to to all of those alternatives.

It's so amazing. I would love to help you with that in any way that I can.

Like, seriously. I'm absolutely going to recruit you.

Yeah. If you could wave a magic wand and foster peace in Israel and Palestine, what, what, what is the future that you imagine there?

Honestly, imagine that what we did in with the Builders Village in Gaza, which starts with 5,000 people, then it's 25,000 people, then 100,000 people, then a million people, and then you expand it to cities across Israel, across the West Bank. Eventually you expanded across the Middle East. And there's so much entrepreneurial spirit in the region. There's so much beauty inside the people there and so much magic. You could create an incredible region. I mean, the oil and the gas can be a building block for greatness. It shouldn't be something that detracts from them. So right now, the Emiratis, What's interesting, Hala, is that the countries around her have figured this out and they've turned against extremism. And right now, the people that are in leadership in the Emirates, in Saudi Arabia, in Bahrain, in Jordan, they want to create a future of builders. They want to work together to build a better future for everybody. And so all it takes is for them to continue gaining momentum. and to prevent the people that want to divide, demolish, and diminish, the destroyers, from, um, on doing that. And I, I really do think it could be a thriving region, but it's gonna probably take, just to be clear, generations for this vision to be fulfilled.

But we're gonna start tomorrow. We have to start today so that, yeah, 20 years from now, this is a shining example to the world.

Yeah, I mean, my dream is for it to be One state, I don't care what it's called, where everybody has equal rights. And—

The problem with one state is that both Palestinians and Israelis have national aspirations to have their own homeland. So it could be a confederacy, which is the closest to what you're saying.

Yeah.

Where Palestinians have their state that they call Palestine, Israelis have their state that they call Israel, and they all are part of a confederation.

That's a good idea.

I think Jordan, Palestine, Israel, each are very small pieces of land, they should all form a confederation and create an alliance. But you need the builders to win. Right now, you have extremists in all of these societies trying to bring them apart. But that, I think first you need to fulfill the hopes for self— for sovereignty from each of the peoples, and from self-confidence, have the builders build together and create a confederacy.

I feel like we could talk about this for hours, but Daniel, you've done such an incredible job. This has been such a great conversation. I end my show with 2 questions that I ask all of my So, my guess, uh, the first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and profiters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

Follow us on Build or Break. I promise you the, the stories that we are telling, go to Build or Break wherever you get your podcast after you follow all of YAP Media's content, then do Build or Break also. But we like have everyone from Mark Cuban to Matthew McConaughey talking to us about Some of the most— Kevin O'Leary was crying in the show telling us some of his biggest confessions. And it was very, very powerful to learn the lessons that these amazing people have learned. Join the BUILDERS Movement because it really is going to provide you a set of tools for you to build. And start by just looking at people in their eyes.

Mm.

And look at them with humanity and treat every human being with respect. Because I'm telling you, that's going to make you so much more effective in your daily job. Treat every one of your team members and every person you come across, look at their eyes and just give them love. Just for one second, look at their eyes, give them that smile, give them that authenticity. It's going to make you more fulfilled, give you more energy, and give you more purpose and more ability to execute.

And what is your secret to profiting in life?

Think holistically and long-term. Don't think in a narrow-minded way. How can I make more money tomorrow? You know, at Kind, I almost never looked at the financials.

Wow.

Never, almost never. Of course, I had Zahid Ibrahim doing that, and he was the best CFO you could have found, but— and John Leahy. But once in a while, I looked at it, but I focused on how do we create the best product, how do we create the best brand, the best story, the best culture, the best team? And I knew that if we did that, the financials would come. It's not that the financials don't matter. The financials matter a lot, but the fundamentals matter most. Think long-term. Um, just think holistically in your own life. Well, as far as we know, we only live once, so do it for more than just making money. And—

So good. What a great episode. Daniel, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting Podcast.

Thank you. I'm so excited to meet you. I'm, I think we're gonna have a lifetime friendship.

Yeah, likewise. What a deeply inspiring conversation with Daniel Lubetzky. Most people look at a multi-billion dollar exit or a seat on Shark Tank and assume success was just a straight line. But when you hear Daniel's story, you realize so much of what he built came from a decade of painful, messy failures. One lesson that really stood out to me is that a noble mission is powerful and it's respectful, but it can never make up for an inferior product. Daniel learned this the hard way when he was selling products with confusing names and pushing jars onto shelves where they simply did not sell. His mission gave him fuel, but the product still had to earn the customer. And that's why I loved his point about pushing versus pulling. It's not enough to just be pushy and get your product on the shelf. You need to create something that customers actually want to pull off the shelf and come back for again. Daniel also made such a smart distinction between being frugal and being resourceful. Frugality can keep you alive, but if you're afraid to invest, it can also hold you back so you never grow. Kind once only spent $800 a year on sampling because Daniel saw it as a cost center.

Then he realized that 9 out of 10 people who tried the bars loved them, and sampling could actually drive many repeat purchases. Once he saw the return, he was willing to invest much more. That's what being resourceful really means. Stretch your dollars, protect your cash, but when you find something that truly works, Don't be afraid to put your money behind it. I also loved Daniel's distinction between nice leadership and kind leadership. A nice leader avoids hurting your feelings. A kind leader tells you what you need to hear so that you can grow. That kind of leadership takes courage. It means giving honest feedback, putting your ego aside, and being confident enough to bring people in who may be better than you in certain areas. That's what true leadership is. To every single one of you tuning in today, thank you for investing your time with us. I hope Daniel's story gives you a new way to look at failure, not as wasted time, but as experience you can turn into better judgment, better decisions, and eventually better results. If you got value outta today's chat, make sure you hit that follow button, share this episode with a friend, and drop us a review.

We've been doing so much in-person interviews this year, so if you're a video person, go catch the full visual experience over on YouTube, Spotify Video, and soon to be Apple Video. Just search Young and Profiting. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn at Hala Taha, or find me on Instagram and TikTok @gapwithhala. Until next time, this is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.