Follow your own Path, Find your Process and Rest!

This is a keynote I gave at the Mid Valley Startup Weekend March 28th thanks to the invitation from weekend organizer and fellow food entrepreneur & catalyst Mike White.

Hi Everyone!

I’m Hannah Kullberg. I’m one of those heart-led, accidental entrepreneurs. I have been involved in business in some form o

r fashion for the last twenty years, thanks in large part to my father, a very intentional entrepreneur. Even though I started out more as an activist, I have come to really love business, business leaders and founders because they are the web of our communities, they are the innovators and change makers. Business also provides economic opportunity to care takers, for the neurodivergent amongst us, for those who can’t work a 9-5, but can put in heart in early mornings and late nights. And I want us to thrive

Last time I spoke at Midvalley Startup Weekend, I spoke about starting and scaling and selling my family’s business. I was asked to share a similar message today, and I’m sure it my old talk some good tid-bits in there, but…

Today, I want to share a different message. A message that feels authentic to me and the clients I serve in, especially given these crazy times we are in. A message that reminds you of your gifts, that lets you know the power of your passion, your inspiration, your intuition. You have all that you need to build the right business for you. You don’t have to do business like “it’s supposed to be done”. I’m here to encourage you to follow your own unique path! 

In perfect serendipity, last night, I had dinner with Dan, the bread man, as he’s known in Silverton. He had THE bakery with traditional sourdough and a popular farmer’s maker booth. He rented a commercial kitchen, owned an industrial sized oven, large mixers and speed racks galore. On the outside, he had a thriving business, but with all his success and growth, he found himself in a grind, burnt out and out of sync with his values. So he sold all his equipment, shut down the bakery and in the past few years since I’ve known him he has been steadily building out an off-grid wood-fired oven and food grade baking cottage. Some may think he’s crazy, but he’s living in alignment to his truth. This reset, scaling back sets him up for more balance and to be a father. And heck he just totally cut out most of his overhead! 

When starting a new business, it's easy to worry if you're doing it right. By all means, there are standard proven true ways to do certain things, like accounting, and methods & systems you can glean from other businesses - this learning from others is something I truly believe in and support that's why I host a resource sharing network for food businesses, they can learn from each other and skip the line so to speak – but I what I have learned is we MUST….

We must always run the information through our own intuition, our own system of checks and balances. 

One of my longer term clients, and dear friend is an amazing mixologist and runs a Shrub business, which are drinking vinegars infused with local fruit and botanicals. Her niche is sourcing directly from local farms on the island she lives on and offering monthly a seasonal product “club”. She’s been steadily growing her business for 7 years from direct to consumer into wholesale. 

A couple years back she had the opportunity to get plus-out into all New Seasons Markets and to do this she decided to co-pack with another local food manufacturing business. Now if you are in the natural product industry, this is the recommended advice, the business pathway most would recommend. It’s what I recommended to her as her business coach!! She raised funds to make this leap. In fact she got a convertible loan from a prominent Natural Products investor and leader, that also came with mentoring support. WOW! From the outside it looked like she had it made! 

The expansion was exciting, she achieved more growth than she expected, but simultaneously she experienced more overwhelm, disconnection and dissatisfaction. She felt like she was being pulled away from her purpose and the many reasons why she started the business in the first place. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to do her business anymore. So together, we worked through a hard year. After years of year over year growth, she pulled back to assess, to re-center and listen in. She even took a full month off in Mexico. 

Our bodies have a yes and no system. Everyone has a different system. Maybe you feel it in your gut. Maybe you know that when your mind starts running looping on the same thing, that its a sign of a “no” or that something isn’t in alignment for or that something needs to be spoken and changed. 

Over this year of slowing down Sascha got intimate with her no with her yes. Sascha landed - for now - on more of a hybrid model that works better for her nervous system. She stopped co-packing, stayed in grocery wholesale, but did not expand, focusing on direct to consumer and smaller boutique retail, and offering workshop that lit her up. 

These are the business stories I want to tell, because they open up the concept of success. 

As for my own path, it has taken a surprise turn into flower farming, a total follow my joy adventure, its’ all new to me, but with an intuitive ease and comfort with plants and floral design. However in the cut flower industry there is a strong “this is how you handle X flower”. Right now its tulip season and the cut flower rule is you pull up the whole plant and cut the stem right at the bulb to get the longest stem length and toss the bulb to the compost. I JUST CAN’T, I won’t. I will not waste that bulb. I’m cutting them shorter, leaving a leaf to give them energy to regenerate for next year. This isn’t tested, it isn’t recommended, but it is aligned with MY values, and guess what I have a market for shorter stem tulips!

What I have come to see is that every business owner becomes an expert in their unique business, their unique process, all the micro particularities of their exact location, product type, market, clientele and values. So never give your power away to “those more experience”. Listen to them, yes, gather the heck out of that information, test it out, but always run it back through your own compass. 

In the journey that is building a business, it's really important to get to know and honor your process. I got to speak at a Food Business Summit last year out in Eastern Oregon and I met an elder businessman. He had run million dollar businesses with numerous employees and to my surprise He told me the key success for him was when he felt overwhelmed when he felt out of control, uncertain about how to move forward in his business, he would tell his secretary - cause it was that era - to cancel all his meetings and go out into the eastern pine forest and sit under a tree. Maybe he'd fall asleep, maybe he would you know just look at the needles, but he would always come back clear. This was his process. 

For me, I've come to know that my process is one that comes in creative waves, and my creativity loves movement.  So, actually, much of this speech today was written while walking in the forest on the land where I live. Some of it was written in bed of the night before, and then I sat down at my computer and edited and refined and re-organized it. I have also learned that it takes time for me to get clear on what a no or yes for me.

So when I ask you, what's your process? What comes to mind? Do you need structured days, with clear plans? Or do you need an open format day to allow creativity to flow in? Do you need a mix? Do you need meetings with a mentor or coach to hold you accountable to your ideas and your visions and strategies you want to implement?

Maybe you don't know yet and I'm that's OK, too. I love working with self knowledge systems that help you discover this, so if this sparks something in you, lets talk after. 

I work most with businesses that are attending regular markets, regularly doing production, managing employees. They are busy, their day-to-day is full. They're delivering orders, fulfilling orders, and maybe they have kids on top of that! For these founders, it's hard to make and take time for them to be with themselves and take a step out of the day. A step back, is probably one of the hardest things to work into your business flow, especially early in a business or when you hit another scale up a moment because there are so many things to do. The to-do list is never ending. And in these states of go go go, it's so easy to say yes to something that's a no. To react to something that you haven't processed fully yet. I believe we need space and time to be thoughtful responsive business leaders. And if we integrate it regularly we won’t have to take major steps back in our businesses. 

So one of my recommendations and one of the practices that I follow is to put in my busy calendar days where I am not filled with production or meetings or deliveries or market, where I can wander and be outside, read a book, be slow, get in my body, and allow creative ideas and solutions to flow in.

You will know, or find what cadence works for you. Maybe it's a quarterly weekend getaway or maybe it's a half an hour walk every morning or both and/or somewhere in between -  a day off once a month with the new Moon - that’s my practice.

As a “high achiever” in America’s educational system, this was not what I was taught. I was not taught to rest or slow down, I was taught to sit down at the computer, be at the desk, to override, answer the emails even when I was exhausted. I would cope with watching shows while doing production planning after a long day of doing production. I would cope with over caffeination and nutritionless snacks. I used to joke that 25% of my body was made Juanita's tortilla chips and tillamook cheddar. This was the young me. Then I had kids and went through several life changes and was forced to learn another way. 

As a business leader and founder I've moved through many transitions. One of the major ones was leaving my family business and going into my own business offerings, I had to go through a major identity change. I went from being the Bean queen to not knowing exactly who I was. I started with offering contract brand management, aka sales and marketing, like I had been doing before.

This was at a time when I was a single mom and had two kids in daycare, which we all know is quite expensive and some personal debt. The backstory here, and spoiler alert for the other talk I gave is, that I was laid off by the parent that had purchased our family business, because that multi-national business had activist investors who ousted the founder, canceled the incubator program we were a part and started selling off half the brands they owned along with laying off a third of their employees. Totally wild and totally out of our control. 

So here I was on unemployment with a clear end date. I had started my own business, had two clients, and a teaching gig, but I needed to fill a pretty large gap in my monthly expenses. I had a month runway, then I had a week runway. Needless to say I was stressed, anxiety attacks hitting on the regular. I found the only thing that would work - naps. Meditative Naps to re-regulate my nervous system. The pounding away at my computer would just get me into more of a heightened state, and leave me without the ability to see any creative solutions. So every time, pretty much every day near the end - I would put on some calming frequency music, lay in bed, close my eyes and breathe. Not very productive right?

I was of course also during that time showing up, putting myself in “opportunity’s pathway”, one of these times I showed up to share about the program I was teaching in, I met an entrepreneur who needed some specific help. The next day or so, I was again in an anxious state - I’m now down to a week and need a solution or it’s all going to fall apart. So I take a meditative nap and during it I realize I might have a solution to her problem, so I get up and go to my computer, log in to my old email to search for the resource. While doing this I see an email announcing that a friend of mine just launched a new business. I reach out over text to congratulate her, she texts back right away asking if I know someone who could do contract sales for their newly funded business. By that weekend, and with one day to spare on my expenses, I had a role that complimented my other roles and more than filled my financial gap. Moreover, I was working with an amazing team of women business leaders. I truly truly believe I would not have gotten there if I had not rested and re-regulated my nervous system. 

So with that I encourage you to rest, walk in nature, listen to your body, sit under a tree, walk your own path because we deeply need unique businesses that are as unique as their founders.