Founders have the platform to really speak out and be change agents. Beyond just your product and what you’re trying to do in the market, you have the power to shift conversations about so many pressing issues we have today. Taking us into this conversation, Elliot Begoun interviews John Foraker, the co-founder and CEO at Once Upon a Farm, about the story of when he decided to be a part of the change and have his voice be heard with everything that is going on. He then talks about the importance of having and being authentic leaders, learning how to stand up for values, and calling out those who are not doing their jobs well. Join this episode as John imparts more advice to founders and leaders out there, whether you are in the early stage or already at it for quite some time.

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Leaders As Change Agents: Letting Your Voice Be Heard With John Foraker

We feature your questions raw and unfiltered. Before I turn it over to John though, we’re doing something a little bit different here. This is not your typical conversation about founders, best practice entrepreneurship, leadership lessons, or all of those things. If those come up, cool, that’s fine. John’s used his platform of late to speak, as I would say, truth to power and talk about what’s going on in our society both politically and civilly. I reached out to him and said it would be great to have this conversation with all of the founders participating because you all have a platform. As founders, you have the opportunity to decide to be change agents beyond your product and what you’re trying to do in the market. That’s where I want to see us take this conversation and take this talk, but whatever questions you put up, we’ll do our best to address. If you disagree with me and think that I’m full of shit and this isn’t the direction you want to go, we’ll go whatever way you take it. Without further ado, John, why don’t you introduce yourself to maybe the one person in this industry who does not know you?

I’m John Foraker, I’ve been in the industry since ‘94. Most people know me as a person who was at Annie’s forever. I got together with a few of the people at a company called Once Upon A Farm. I did three years at General Mills too after I sold Annie’s to them on the US leadership team there, which was a fun experience. I learned a lot. That’s me.

When did it click for you? When did you finally said, “I’m tired of not saying something. I need to have my voice heard. The stuff that’s going on in this country is absolutely crazy. It needs to change, and I need to be a part of that change?” When did you finally hit that breaking point where you outed it and it became part of your normal conversation?

I’ve believed for years that leaders needed to be authentic and lead with their real values and lead their companies that they’re driving with their real values. We started doing a lot of that stuff maybe in the last ten years I was at Annie’s. We were one of the first brands that celebrated Pride Day in social media with all of our boxes lined up in rainbow color. That was way before anyone was doing stuff like that. We took all kinds of shit for it. I didn’t give a crap, honestly, because first of all, I had a lot of friends in that community.

Secondly, I knew that our brand stood for inclusion and I couldn’t care less if there were people that didn’t like it. I’ve operated that way for a long time. These last few years, it’s gotten a lot more personal. The time that I said I am losing my mind and I have to speak up was when we were having the most obvious rounds of child separation at the border. I was sitting there one day and going like, “What is happening?” We’re a brand that speaks to kids and parents. Eighty percent or more of our consumption is kids age 1 through 4. I know, without even having to ask our consumers, that the vast majority of the moms that buy our products are appalled by that.

I looked around in the landscape of where CEOs talk and nobody was saying anything about it. I wrote an article called Where Are The CEOs? I posted it and it got a lot of traction, both positive and negative. I feel now is the time where we have to stand up. I posted on LinkedIn something to the effect of I’ve hired hundreds and hundreds of people. I’ve made lots of hiring mistakes, but I’ve never hired anybody as grossly incompetent and as dishonest as the person we have running the country. All you CEOs out there, I know for a fact, you try to hire the right people too. High integrity, honest, hardworking. If any of us had somebody like that that we hired, they’d be fired in 30 minutes, if not by the end of the week.

I feel from a personal standpoint, we need to stand up for the values that we believe in and people say that’s political. Honestly, I’m not sure I see it that way. I see it standing up for values. If people think your values are political, then so what? I’m not going to ever say it’s okay. I couldn’t care less what letters behind somebody’s name. If you have somebody that’s in a place of public trust and they’re grossly incompetent, they should be called grossly incompetent and we should be honest about it. That’s where I’m at. Hopefully, others will feel that confident in their ability to do that as well.

A couple of things that come to mind and I do think an important point you made is it’s not necessarily political. It’s values-based. It’s values-based to you as a person and to Once Upon A Farm. It’s what you do. It’s how you behave. Speaking up for that is not disingenuous. It is the epitome of authenticity. It’s scary as hell because there is blowback. You have the benefit of being around a little bit and you can put up your middle finger and tell people to do what they need to do when they blowback. There are a lot of founders that haven’t necessarily earned that place in the industry yet. A couple of quick questions before I turn it over. One is when you decided to begin to speak out, did you talk to your fellow cofounders? Did you speak to your investors or did you let it rip?

I don’t know that I had an overt conversation with them, ask them permission to say that I wanted to do this, but they all know me and I have a track record of saying what’s on my mind and being apolitical. I don’t feel I’m a political person. I feel I’m a values-driven person to the point you made. They know I have strong values and I’m going to talk about them. No, they didn’t. I want to drive positive change and have an impact not just at the company that I’m running now, but hopefully more broadly. This industry is one of the most amazing industries. I’m biased, but it’s because there are many people that are drawn to this industry because of values and the fact that they want to make life better for people around them, on the planet and the environment. If there ever was an industry that should be speaking up, it’s ours. I hope that more people will.

What’s been the biggest surprise since you started doing that? I shouldn’t say started because to your point, I’ve been around you enough. I’ve seen you speak to audiences before where you’ve let it rip. You’ve never held punches, but this has been, at least in my perception, your most overt or most strongly-worded set of advocacy or set of opinion. What’s been the biggest surprise in terms of blowback or feedback, both may be positive or negative?

I would say it’s probably been that most people respect the place I’m coming from. There are flame throwers and people that block you on LinkedIn and whatever. Who cares? There are always haters. I’ve always believed that and I don’t pay attention to them. When you are able to talk about issues that are fundamentally values-driven. Let’s spend a second on food insecurity here in the US. We had bad food security, insecurity problems before COVID. They’re dramatically worse now and they’re going to get way worse. The only thing holding the country together from a food security standpoint, as bad as it is, is SNAP. The SNAP Program is under political attack constantly by people that are trying to take it away, make it harder to qualify for, make it so complicated that people can’t figure it out.

I don’t know how anyone who thinks of family and the neighbor down the street, what happens to them when they lose their job and taking confidence in knowing that they can keep their kids fed. I don’t know how anybody could be against that program. In this environment, I feel we have to speak up because the people that are for ripping those programs apart and dismantling them, they’re vocal. When I’ve explained things like that to people who are questioning me and they know that I’m not coming at it from a political perspective, I’m coming at it from a core set of values about what it is to be a human in the world, they respect it mostly. I would also say for every one person that loses their mind, there are probably 5 to 10 who say, “I get where you’re coming from. I support that.” It’s much more positive than negative is what I would say.

One of the most disheartening things to me is that we used to be a country that could disagree with each other in civil discourse and sit around the table and talk about what we believed and how those beliefs may be different from the other person sitting next to us. We’ve come to this place now that scares the shit out of me that other people, it’s either you’re with us or you’re another. We fiercely self-identify with those things that we take any disagreement, any dialogue around things, be it political or be it even values-based, as an affront to our self-identity. We’ve become a nation fixated by that. I have three grandkids. One of the things that we tried to instill in them is this belief that you should have a strong opinion.

Build an opinion, have a strong opinion but hold it loosely because you’re going to find out that a fair number of your opinions are fucking wrong and you’ve got to be okay with that. You’ve got to be able to accept the fact that you’re wrong. A question here is if you were to give advice to early-stage founders who are still in the hunt for capital and doing all of those kinds of things, but have something to say and want to say, what would that advice be?

It depends a little bit if it’s them wanting to speak on behalf of the brand and business they are creating, which could be separate and apart a little bit from their own personal opinion and view and how they do it. I would say think through the points that you want to make and the values that those represent, and the venues in which you do it. Even when I’m angry, I try to come off, at least as professional. Sometimes I probably don’t drop an expletive or something in my writing, but try to come off as professional and reasonable. You’ll find that the vast majority of the time, people will respect that even if they disagree with it.

Particularly in the capital area or the customer area of the industry, people know that people have strong opinions. If you’re speaking from the heart and about things that you do care about, and especially that are linked to the core of what you’re trying to do in your business, they’re going to respect that. Be prepared for the 1 out of 10 that won’t, and that’s the cost of speaking up in a free society. There shouldn’t be a cost, but there is. You have the right to do it.

You should invite that in. Those are people that you can dialogue with and invite in and take the high road. I’ll add a couple of points that first of all, I’m a big proponent of the word ‘empathy’ and the use of empathy. As you reach out and as you find your voice, finding it from a place of empathy and understanding who’s going to be receiving this and how it’s going to be received. I’m not suggesting you placate, and I’m not suggesting you necessarily tone down your message. I encourage you to understand how it’s going to be perceived and received and reacted to through the eyes of those getting it and be ready for it, be prepared for it and then adjust accordingly from there.

From a business standpoint, plain and simple hardcore capitalism, the best marketing tends to be polarizing. You’re not going to satisfy everybody. If you’re speaking the truth, if you’re standing for your brand values and how you want your brand to show up in the world and you’re being authentic about it, then those that you lose will be more than offset by those that you gain. One last thing is don’t do it to posture. That’s the worst thing and we see it too often. It’s like you have FOMO that you aren’t taking the swing of the plight. That’s not where this should come from. This should come from the heart. This should come from a true need to speak values. What you said, John, is so important. It shouldn’t be political. It should be values-based. Another question is from consumers, have you gotten any consumer pushback that you’ve had to address from some of your conversations that you’ve been having?

I would say not as much at Once Upon A Farm as I did at Annie’s. It’s primarily a factor of Annie’s being a lot bigger business. At Annie’s, we definitely got push back for positions that I was taking that were aligned with the company’s values. To your point, for every one of those, there were multiple people who were on the other side of that and saying, “Thanks for speaking up. I’m going to tell three of my friends about it.” It overall worked to our benefit. We live in a time where it’s a very polarized world, but we also live in a time where consumer’s expectations of the leader is to be authentic and to take positions on tough issues in society have never been higher.

There’s a global PR firm named Adelman, you can google this. They’ve done a bunch of research on this. A significant majority of consumers want to know what a company stands for and want to know what the CEO thinks of issues that are facing society relevant to the brand. Whereas 10, 15, 20 years ago, it was okay and it was perceived as okay for CEOs to be quiet and never to try to stir the water no matter what, on any issue. That basically was the way most big companies and companies operated. That is not the case anymore. For example, take a look at General Mills and Jeff Harmening, who’s an amazing big CPG leader over there, came out with a strong platform on systemic racism and anti-racism stuff that a big company probably never would have done 5 or 10 years ago. There’s no question they’re going to take a lot of heat for that, but I know Jeff and I know exactly that comes right from his heart. It’s not political. That’s the way the guy feels. That’s the way the vast majority of his employees feel. They’re willing to take the hits if they come for that. They know they’re on the right side of history.

It’s important to call out. It’s scary to do it. It is frightening. I’ll tell everyone reading personally that I spent a lot of my career fearful of being too strong in my opinions. I spent quite a bit of my career, almost twenty years of working for a company that was conservative. I was somewhat of the outlier and in many ways, more than some of my values and beliefs. I kept those internal and that doesn’t benefit anybody. There’s a way to approach it that is not antagonistic. It’s inviting dialogue. I’ve learned to have that conversation learn to accept the blowback, but I invite the conversation because as I mentioned, I have an opinion. There’s no question I have opinions, but I hold it loosely enough that I’m comfortable to listen to what somebody else has to say. If I find that what they have to say is compelling and fact-based and makes me reevaluate my opinion, I’m cool with that.

We have a question here from Adam. It’s good to hear from you. This is a long one. Forgive me, but Canadians like to write long questions. “Do you think you would have changed your communication style and been less of an activist if you were at an earlier stage in your company with fewer resources?” Continuing on, “Being early stage is precarious. You have to be careful to not ruffle too many feathers that may scare away investors or other stakeholders in the natural products industry. We are a challenger against the status quo in the seafood industry, which is riddled with human rights and environmental abuses. We are being very careful how we talk about that as part of our brand story until we are larger and it feels safer to share these messages that challenged the larger brands in our space.”

I’m not sure that I would have approached my communication style any differently. I hear where you’re coming from with that, with respect to not wanting to ruffle the feathers of the big players in this space. I would suggest though, maybe you’re missing an opportunity because of the fact that there’s a counter-narrative to the conventional, we’re okay with it. The way this industry operates is something that probably a lot of consumers would be interested in hearing and it might help you. I’ve talked to many buyers in many different categories of retailers and I can’t even think of one time I heard somebody say, “I didn’t bring that brand in,” because they had strong opinions on something that’s values-driven.

Mainly what they care about is the brand connecting with a core set of consumers that they want to have in their store and that they want to serve. If your strong opinion and message on improving the health and safety and human condition of that industry is something that you think consumers are gravitating to, that’s probably a great thing to wrap your brand around and talk a lot about. That’s the way I would see it.

Adam, I’ll add my two cents for what it’s worth. You’re in the perfect position to have that conversation. You’ll regret not doing it sooner rather than later. Both consumers and buyers want to hear from their brands. This is anecdotal. I don’t have data sitting in front of me to back up what I’m about to say, but more so than ever, I believe consumers are making emotional choices with their brands. It’s a motive anyways, but they want brands to stand up for the things that they believe in. They want brands that represent the values and the good things in the world. You have an opportunity to do that. Will you potentially alienate some people? Yes. I only disagree with John slightly in the fact that I have seen buyers or other people say no to brands because they’ve been vocal about values, but those tend to be values that are less aligned with the ones that we’re espousing. They tend to be those that in my opinion are more arcane and outdated or close-minded.

Those that are open, especially in the natural products industry, it can be there. To my earlier statement, the best marketing is polarizing. If you put a stake in the ground and say that your brand stands for all of these things, not just the sustainability of the way you are harvesting your product, but the way you’re treating your people. Also, the way you’re treating your supply chain and the way you show up in the world. I would go in and go hard. I’m going longer than I planned here. The last thing about that is that if you do that now, the people that come around you are going to be the people who are aligned with you. If you don’t do that, if you hold that back, what you might find is that you have investors and others who, as you begin to vocalize that aren’t as aligned as you hope they would be and aren’t with you to have this conversation.

You have the opportunity to shape it now when you’re early yourself. I’d go all in. Another question here is regarding overall the conversation and around race. We had an interesting conversation with Lara Dickinson of the JEDI Collaborative around this already once. If you haven’t read that, I would urge you to do it. This question basically is a lot of people are putting Black Lives Matter, things like that. We don’t know how to show up at this time. What do we do?

It is a difficult time figuring out how to get communication right around it to reflect what do you believe. To be an ally in change is important. I have a couple of suggestions. First of all, there are a lot of resources and people you can talk to out there. You can have an open conversation with about how you should show up and that’s important. The most important thing is to do something. I’m a big fan of social activism in online communities and blackout days and things like that. That’s fine because it’s showing it’s a signal of support. To me, the most important thing is you do something and take some action. At OUA Farm, what we did is announced an entrepreneur ally program, which is a new thing that we created where we basically took the opportunity to reach out to three great black entrepreneurs and company owners who have great brands that we think can be way bigger. We said, “How about we are your formal allies now like allies in wartime?”

That means what are you doing if you have an ally in wartime? You ask for their help. You can count on them to be there. What we’re going to do with these companies is allow our people and encourage our people, which won’t be hard because everyone in our company wants to be actively involved to help them with all the issues and business problems that come with scaling a business. It will be a cool program. We’ll see how it evolves. That’s doing something. Don’t let perfect get in the way of good. Take action. Even if it’s small, do something. Show up, let your people go to a rally. Take action and be there. This is a monumental time in our nation’s history.

You want to be an ally and on the right side of history and encourage the movement to continue in a productive way that gives the same opportunity to everyone in our country. Black lives matter and people who say all lives matter, okay, but all lives can’t matter until black lives matter. Let’s take care of that one. We’ve got a lot of work to do in that area. That’s an important movement that everybody should be involved in some way, companies or individually. It’s a seminal movement.

I’m going to push everyone a little bit harder. Doing some of the things on social media, all of that is the easy way out. I would encourage all of us to force ourselves maybe to be vulnerable and have some of the uncomfortable conversations. I’ve been trying to do that. I’m having conversations with some of my black friends about what this means to them, what’s going on. As a middle-aged white dude, I try to muster as much empathy as I can and maybe I can grab a little bit from antisemitism or whatever. I don’t have any real understanding of it. Having that conversation, talking about it, talking about what’s going through and how I can get involved and what would be meaningful for you. How can my business get involved and what would be meaningful for you and for the movement is the better way to do it? It’s less comfortable and you’re going to have conversations and maybe find yourself doing things that you haven’t done before, but that’s cool. Quite frankly, that’s how change happens.

I don’t have any problem with the social stuff, but if that’s where you stop, I agree. You’re taking the easy road. That stuff’s easy to do. Get involved, take some action, do something tangible. Try to change the hiring makeup of your company. There are a million things you can do. I agree in talking to folks in the community and getting their perspective on it is a super important way. With the privilege that I grew up in, there’s no way I understand, even though I can read and I can listen, it’s not my lived experience. I have to talk to people who have it and empathize with them and learn from them in that context.

Even then, it’s still a fraction of understanding. It’s insight because we haven’t and that’s okay. It’s not something we should be ashamed of either. There’s nothing wrong with admitting the fact that we’ve been privileged not to have to do that. Where I think it’s wrong is to stop there and to hide in that privilege and do nothing or use the label of being privileged to avoid having the conversation. Here’s another one that is a question and this one is more about climate and climate change. There’s a lot of climate change deniers and there’s a lot of backlash about some of the business costs that are coming around that but it’s an imperative and climate change is real. This was an anonymous question. “What advice would you give me towards having started that conversation and speaking out?”

In the industry, there are a lot of places to get involved with and climate collaborative is one of them, but every business needs to have a point of view on what their own business practices are doing to contribute to being a solution to that problem. Your consumers are going to expect that you have a position on it and that you’re actively doing things and working hard in that regard. To me, it’s anything. There is a lot of science deniers across the spectrum. It’s one thing to be a science denier on the issue of climate change twenty years ago. Even then, you could arguably say that that was outlandish. The idea that you would take that position now with all of the data we have is crazy. Stand up for it and adapt your business practices, try to be a part of the solution.

I want to echo the point around climate collaborative and to go back to the prior one that JEDI Collaborative. One of the great benefits break forwards into working in the natural product space is that as an industry, we show up in general. I’m proud because we’re showing up more than we ever have. There are resources out there. You do not have to fight any of these battles on your own. I would encourage you to investigate those and talk to the people and look at the materials and look at those kinds of things because you’ll educate yourself along the way. You’ll also lend your voice to a larger chorus and that can affect change as well. Here’s one that’s a little bit off of what we’ve been talking about. “As you look back through your career as a leader, what have been some of your greatest lessons that you’d want leaders and entrepreneurs of now to know?” That’s a great question.

I’ve learned a lot of lessons because I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I’ve had a long career and I’ve tried a lot of things and made a lot of mistakes. I would say at the highest level, it would be something related to what we’ve been talking about, which is think about your core values as a person, as a leader, the core values of the company that you’re running or that you founded. How can you drive the business to forward those values and to bring and help make the world a better place? To me, the concept of purpose-driven business is powerful and it’s not the only solution to our world’s problems. The government is a big one, but the private sector and purpose-driven businesses are a key to a better world for all of us and we’re all in a position to do it.

Understanding the power of that and harnessing that for your brand and your business brand and success is probably one of the biggest lessons and things I’ve learned the power of overtime. The second, which is probably equally important, is hire the right people at the right time for your business. What that generally means is hire people for where you want to go, not where you are. That’s the second biggest lesson I’ve learned over time. People are obviously everything and you can get a lot of work done in your company and you can set a vision and all that stuff. The companies that have great people and great cultures are the ones that usually are going to win, even if their product’s not as good. I’d take a great team and culture over the best product every day because our team would probably win and so I’ve learned that too.

I’ll go back to your purpose-driven and the impact that commerce, in general, can have. I always laugh at this 35-plus years ago when I remember when I was newly dating my then-girlfriend, now wife of 30-plus years. My in-laws were fearful of me, maybe justifiably so, but I was the antithesis of what they thought their daughter would wind up with because I was a business guy. They were in healthcare and academics. My conversation with them has always been that I’m a business person, but you can do a lot of good through commerce. That belief, that thesis stands as strong now, maybe even stronger that good economic model that is also a good conduit for change and for betterment is going to be the most powerful force.

Let me add a thought to that. A lot of times, entrepreneurs, people starting early-stage companies will come up to me and they’ll say like, “I’ve got this initiative that I care about. It’s linked to the brand and my business model can drive this change. I feel bad because that change is small because my business is small and the impact that I’m driving is therefore small.” I always tell them that’s never a reason to be to not feel good about what you’re doing because small things grow. A great example of that is I remember when we were moving the whole business hard toward organic in the early 2000s.

There was a point at which we came across a small wheat farm and we were trying to get this wheat farm to grow basically organic regeneratively. It was a shit show. It was complicated. It was small. We worked hard on it and it felt it wasn’t a lot of impacts, but it became an important thing for us. As we grew, it became bigger. Many years later, we were acquired by General Mills and then we helped forward that thinking inside that organization. Two years later, they announced that they’re going to do that on 1 million acres largely to support the ecosystem and the supply requirements of the brand that they bought. That’s amazing. Acorns grow into oak trees. Plant big ideas and always don’t let that hold you back.

That’s a great story that we can push and point to a bunch more. Jamie has an interesting question. I get this one. It’s tough. “I’m a founder of a small business, small company. As I begin to grow, I’m confronted all the time with things that I find are anti my values, that don’t fly in the face of my values. I’m having to make decisions to say yes to deals and yes to things that I don’t think are right. How do I deal with that?”

It’s a little hard without knowing the specifics of exactly what each decision they’re having to ask. I would say this industry is changing and is changing a lot. Big industries change slow. The way they do business changes slow. Business practices change slowly. There’s a degree to which you have to play the game a bit. Somebody asked me one time what it felt like to grow. He’s from a small business to medium-sized business, and I told him it was going through a spanking machine. You have to get set up at unify and you have to deal with the deductions. You have to do all the stuff that are pain points for small entrepreneurs are things that many have gone through before. Persist and try to change the model in ways that you can still succeed with your business without compromising whatever value that is.

I always say, “Don’t let perfect get in the way of good.” You can have such strong values that nothing ever happens or you can hold your values and persevere. Sometimes you’ll have to carve a corner and agree to something that may be from a business practice standpoint, I’m not talking about unethical stuff. I’m talking about signing off on swatting deal or something that you don’t think was right because of whatever the situation, but you might have to do it to move the business forward. That’s about the best answer I can give with that level of specificity.

I’ll add to that a couple of things. One is the idea of the analogy of building value guardrails. You’re going to scrape up against your guard rails. You have to. It’s a business of trade-offs. Sometimes you have to understand, is this worth the trade-off or the outcome? Can I affect more change if I accept this? I’ll give you a concrete example. I’ve talked to a few brands that have decided that wanted to do all compostable packaging because that was part of their core belief. They’re regeneratively growing products. They are doing so many other things well and are bringing good, healthy, clean ingredient food to consumers.

They wanted that packaging, but the packaging was expensive. The packaging at the time also didn’t extend the shelf life. What has happened is that that by doing that, which was definitely part of their core values of sustainability and fighting for what’s right in the environment, they would have limited their ability to get everything else they’ve created into the hands and mouths of their consumers. It was a necessary trade-off, but it’s not a necessary trade-off where you throw up the white flag and say, “I give up on it.” They’re continuing to advocate and work with suppliers to try to find a packaging solution that meets both the shelf-life requirements and the cost requirements. It’s their commitment that when they do, they will bring that forward. The mindset I would encourage all founders to have is don’t fall on the sword of absolute. There are certain elements of your values that should be absolute.

There are others that are relative and you have to have some ability to understand and look forward and say, “This is a relative value. I’m going to come back to it. I’m not giving it up. I’m not putting it on the shelf. I’m not phoning it in. I know that if I throw myself on the sword at this moment in time, I go nowhere and have no impact.” That’s a hard business lesson to do. A lot of us go home and feel like you’ve got to shower to get the slime off you when you make those decisions. You’ve got to live to fight another day if that’s what you’re thinking about doing. To John’s point, having a firm absolute I’m not going to engage in anything unethical, I’m not going to do anything that promotes things that are absolutely antithetical to what I believe in, but there are relative values within. Here’s another question and it’s another one anonymous. The question is, “When my cofounder and I disagree about a particular value that I feel strongly about and I don’t want to speak out about and she doesn’t want me to talk about, any advice there?”

If it’s speaking for the brand, and this is going to be a formal statement that you’re going to staple onto the forehead of the brand, it’s important that you’re together on it. If you’re not, it can end up backfiring on you later. If you’re one of the cofounders speaking individually about the things that you care about, there should be no whole bar and you should be able to do that. I would encourage you to do that. That’s the best advice I could give there.

I would give the same advice, anonymous. Not that you asked me. First of all, have a conversation. Tell your cofounder why you feel it’s important, and if you’re not unified, then don’t speak as a brand. Speak as a person, but let your cofounder know that that’s what you’re going to do and that you’re not going to speak as the brand. That also gives them the opportunity to rethink that. I would also encourage everyone to have conversations like this with your cofounders or with your team or your investors sooner rather than later and lay out some of those core beliefs. John, I’d love you to weigh in on this, but a mistake that a lot of early-stage companies make is they wait too long to start thinking about their values and the culture they want to create.

They’re heads down. They’re trying to get their velocity to grow and they’re trying to win their next investment round. They’re not having the dialogue about, what is the culture and what is this brand going to be? What’s it going to be like to work here? What do we stand for? Not having that conversation sometimes means the horse gets out of the barn and then suddenly you are strapped to a culture that you had no intention of building and you have to figure it out and walk it back. Do you agree with that?

I couldn’t agree more. That is true. I’ve written about it and talked about it a lot, but the first 7 or 8 years I was at Annie’s, we hadn’t spent a lot of time articulating culture, articulating core values. As a result, there was a lot of opportunity that we probably missed and risks that we took in the business. Once we did that, by the way, and locked that down, what are the guardrails on that windy road that we’re not going to compromise on, the business took off. We started talking about those values to our consumers. They loved it. I decided to come over to OUA Farm, I got together with the three other cofounders and we wrote them all down. We got it from day one. It is one of the most important things to do early. It’s much easier to do early because it’s you and your cofounders writing what you want this company to be. It’s your creation. You should set the culture and not let it evolve without intention. It gets a lot harder to do that later to your point if you’re trying to correct a culture that’s developed without intention.

A couple of things to add there is that one of the things that a lot of larger companies buy with a brand is the culture. We see the culture often fall apart after that. Culture is something that adds value to an organization. A good, vibrant, healthy culture does that, but I’m a big fan of using these to be actionable, John. Specifically, if I am an early stage brand and I’m now thinking about what we said, any tips in terms of how I turned that into action? What process would you recommend to have this conversation that begins to codify what those values are?

The beauty is there are many examples. You can literally look around at companies that you admire, look at how they’ve articulated their culture, their core values, their intent. There are a lot of models you can look to. What I’ve found a good process to do is to get the founder group or whoever you want to be involved in that culture setting and get offsite for 1 or 2 days and talk about it. It can be as simple as asking some big, high-level questions and then talking for a few hours about it. “What are the three most important things that we want this business to stand for? What are the things we want the work environment to be like?”

You start writing that stuff down on big sheets of white paper and then you can bring it all together in a mission statement, a vision set of core values. I would lastly say there are tons of experienced people out there that have seen lots of early-stage companies that can help you too, that can help guide you through a process to get that feedback too. It’s almost like bringing in an outside moderator and to help the team develop it. Somebody like you and others that have done this before. That’s also helpful.

Have a damn conversation and write it down. You can formalize it as much as you want. There are some great books, there are some good resources. If anyone wants to ping me, I’ll suggest a few, but you don’t have to overcomplicate it. If you take a piece of paper out and say, “What do we stand for?” I use a simple thing, which is a sheet that says, “Here’s our purpose. Here’s our vision. Here are our core values. Here are the outcomes that we’re trying to achieve,” and aligning on those. A mistake that I see so often is that people start getting too wordy about this. They start making it fluffy. This is not something that has to be long, detailed. It just has to be core. It should be something that you could immediately grab from the top of mind to be able to say, “This is our purpose. This is our vision, and these are the things we stand for.” I would encourage everyone to work on that. Jeremy has a question for us. “Why do you believe many founders are hesitant to speak out or take a public stance against systematic racism?”

As we’ve alluded to, it’s been a sensitive topic. A lot of folks don’t know how to start the conversation. That explains why it hasn’t happened up to this point. I will then pivot over to you have to speak up now. There is no reason to not be an actively involved ally in trying to solve this 400-plus-year-old problem here on this continent. I don’t think there are any excuses now. Just because it’s uncomfortable doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t get involved. Know that this matters to your employees. It matters to your consumers. It matters to all your business partners.

Many people have trouble articulating that or are afraid to but know that they do and be part of the solution. This is one of those things where there’s a side of right and a side of wrong. It’s not okay in my opinion to be on the side of right and quiet. You need to be on the side of right and active and an ally in making a change to make it better because that’s the only way it’s going to get better. We’re going to continue the momentum that has started through there’s this tragedy that is at least bringing the hope of a broad awakening that can drive the systemic change that can make this country fair. To give everybody an equal shot and to live up the values that we were all taught this country had, but that hasn’t been evident in the way that it’s manifested through society. I don’t think there are any excuses in this area anymore. You have to be active.

The only thing I’ll add is that my belief, and no data to back it up, is its perception. Fear and vulnerability and all of that enter into it. Sadly, and this may not be a popular thing to say, I also feel ignorant. There are unfortunately enough of us out there who don’t understand that there is systematic racism, but they don’t get it and they’re not having that conversation. Educate yourself. Take the time to learn. John, I’m going to return this favor. I’m working feverishly on building the virtual soapbox that you’re going to be able to stand on here to take us home, but I’m going to stand on mine for a moment and talk about that word ‘ignorance.’

I feel that that deep down that’s one of the fundamental challenges we’re having as a society is that we have a pandemic of ignorance. As a society, we’re not taking the time to educate our people, ourselves and leaning into critical thinking. We have much confirmational bias out there that we’re letting others do that thinking for us. If you’re not speaking up against systematic racism, if you don’t feel like you have a voice in that, it could be because you honestly don’t understand it as well as you should. I will tell you again, being completely transparent, I’ve been working on educating myself more. I feel like I’m fairly self-aware and have been somebody who has been willing to have these conversations for a long time.

I will also admit that I still have a lot left to learn and I’m trying to learn to understand better so that I can use my voice in my position to be a better agent of change. It’s fear and it’s vulnerability and I do think ignorance is. I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. It’s what the word means. It’s a lack of knowledge, lack of understanding. I’m going to turn it over to you. I’ll deal with the remaining couple of questions. I feel we’ve covered them. I’ll let you talk about what’s top of mind. What are you thinking? What do we need to do galvanize this? There are a lot of readers that will be reading this. We’re sitting here having this conversation worried about rolling blackouts, hoping we get this in during one of the worst heat waves on history because there is no climate change and there is no global warming. Take us home.

By nature, I’m an optimist and I’ve always looked at a glass and looked at the half-full part. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t recognized the half-empty part and been driven by it. This industry is uniquely positioned as we’ve talked a little bit before on as being values-driven. As a result, we’ve attracted thousands of people who care about making the world a better place for their kids. I have four kids. I look at them and I look at the way that they respond to diversity, the way that they’re empathetic, the way that their generation is, in many ways, better enabled to drive the positive change that we want. Maybe my generation, the generation before me.

We’ve got to stand up for them. Collectively, don’t be shy about driving your voice and your audience to drive the positive change that we want in the world. Our kids need us too. The problems that we have are big, but the opportunity for change from this industry to drive better outcomes for the environment, for better outcomes for health, for better access to food for everyone is massive. Get involved. The last one thing I wanted to go back and tell you one fact on SNAP that you didn’t know. I want to ask all of you to advocate for SNAP in your communities and in whatever political process you’re involved in. If you think of every meal that every food bank in the United States gives and develops and think of the hundreds of thousands of people at food banks, SNAP delivers 9 for that 1.

That one program has more to do with keeping people fed in this country, in this adversity than anything, and it needs all of us to stand up for it. I’d leave that one last ask. Take the opportunity to do that. We’ll all benefit from that. Anyway, enjoy the growth of your business. The outlook for this industry is unbelievable. There’s nothing about COVID or this recession that we’re going through that’s changed that. If anything, it’s doubled down the impact and the opportunity for healthfulness and the growth of this industry. We have a lot to work through, but we have a lot to be optimistic about and I want to thank you for the opportunity to share. Thank you, Elliot, for having me.

John, I can’t thank you enough for doing this. I appreciate you speaking up and being a leader in that and helping show all of us how we can stand up and do it. My kids are similar ages as yours. We have a grandbaby and I’m a big believer that out of the greatest periods of disruption come the biggest change. That’s how I put my head down on the pillow at night. God knows we’re in a period of disruption. Officially, 2020 is a four-letter word. I appreciate you being here, taking the time out of your schedule.

Thank you and peace to everybody. 

Important Links

• John Foraker

• Where Are The CEOs?

• Lara Dickinson – Previous episode

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