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Paul Earle Of GOODLES On 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand

An Interview With Martita Mestey

Build your team. Not even comic book superheroes go it alone all the time, and you shouldn’t either. Figure out the gaps in your skillset, and team up with people who are great at those things. If you find this to be uncomfortable, that’s normal, and get over it. If you find it impossible, that’s okay too, but you may be an inventor and not an entrepreneur.

As a part of our series called “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Paul Earle.

Paul is an entrepreneur, recovering intrapreneur, startup advisor, writer, and educator. When he’s not using his noodle with us, Paul teaches MBA students and executives alike at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in specialty areas of innovation, new ventures, and new brand creation, in addition to heading his own private practice. He has been published widely in a range of esteemed outlets. As a passionate believer in the magic of great teams and great brands, for Paul this a dream come true.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?

Happy to contribute; it’s an honor! I often tell people that “entrepreneur” is an objective description of me, in the same category as “brown eyes, brown hair.” I think I was born with the gene, and many key people around me nurtured it. To point to running a lemonade stand as a kid is, at this point, cliché… but yep, I did that. And lots of other things.

At age 6, I invented this device made with rubber bands and pieces of wood that could hurl projectiles an unusually long distance. It was basically a very crude trebuchet. I had dreams of the mass manufacturing and sale of lots of these. Every kid would want one! My uncle, a lawyer, was so taken by this creation that he asked his colleagues in the intellectual property practice at his firm to “award me with a patent” (wink wink, quotes intended).

Here’s how it all went down. One day, an extremely fancy, formal-looking extra large envelope arrived at my house via certified mail. Upon unsealing this magic package, the first thing that struck me was that whatever this was, it had this extra-thick weighty brown cover… with my name on it! Wow, and whoah! Once I opened this noble tome, I saw a handful of WHEREASes and a few THEREFOREs, lots of fancy words I didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce, and a detailed image of my invention that I had hand-drawn myself, replete with written explanations of each feature. At the end of this document, which spanned many pages, there was a gold foil seal, and under that seal, not one but two small blue cloth ribbons. It had to be official! How could it not be? I was elated, teeming with energy, and ready to make my mark. And then I turned my attention to other extremely important things, like baseball cards and comic books.

I didn’t figure out until many years later that of course, what I received was actually but an extraordinarily kind and creative act that my uncle and a few of his cohorts cooked up for a little kid. I did not actually hold a United States Patent. But I guess that was my first foray into the world of I.P., and for sure was a harbinger of sorts (more on that later).

Other entrepreneurial adventures as a “ute” (thanks, Joe Pesci) include, no kidding, (a) busking for money on the streets of downtown Chicago at about age 11, which nearly got me arrested several times, and (b) co-founding a newspaper in high school, which went on to win a bushel of awards in journalism, and a formal commendation from the Lieutenant Governor recognizing both the quality of our product and our enterprising spirit.

Oh, and about that lemonade stand. One of my regular customers was the late great Chicago Cubs announcer and tornado of joy, Harry Caray. He lived right down the street. He always asked me– an impressionable youngster, and way underage– to create a “private reserve” of spiked lemonade just for him. I won’t say whether I eventually did, or didn’t.

I loved my interactions with Mr. Caray. He was really great. And a generous tipper.

Can you share with us the story of the “ah ha” moment that led to the creation of the food or beverage brand you are leading?

Well, there are two. The first was meeting my GOODLES co-founder, Jennifer Zeszut. We had a special chemistry and shared a vision of what this could be from the very beginning. I guess I just got lucky. I remember specifically where I was when Jen called me and said “Let’s go.” It was one of the most fortuitous events of my entire career. (For those who are wondering: it was a frigid evening in late October 2020. I was shivering in the bleachers at my son’s travel baseball game in a remote area of northwest Illinois. This call for sure distracted me from my worry about early onset hypothermia).

The second “a ha” was actually a long hunch that emerged from a project with Northwestern University and Forbes where I was studying and profiling many other breakthrough startups and their founders. I was able to spend a lot of time with consumer product legends like Jeff Raider, Craig Dubitsky, Jaime Schmidt, Eric Ryan, Tim Brown, John Foley, Ashley Thompson, Livio Bisterzo, Sheryl O’Laughlin, and so many others. Based on those conversations and my own past experiences as a practitioner, I began to connect some dots and piece together a “playbook” for turning categories upside down. I became emboldened and energized and thought: Hey, I have ideas; I can do this too. From there, aided by a few Northwestern MBA students, I began looking for category gaps and started to sketch out a few new brand concepts. One of them was this crazy notion of disrupting the duopoly in boxed macaroni and cheese.

Each idea that emerged from that process was a composite of many different influences. There are at least 20 different influences hardwired into the GOODLES brand. Blending influences this way is similar to how new works in music are created. Bruce Springsteen’s “Born To Run” was directly inspired by Bo Diddley, Elvis, Sam Cooke, and many other artists he was digging at the time, not to mention his own personal relationships, several of which were quite complicated. All of this was action-packed into four minutes and thirty seconds, now an indelible mark on popular culture itself. The Beatles created their music in the same fashion. Each song is a very special stew of a ton of stuff; immersive worlds that we are still, to this day, discovering and trying to unpack. And as if the compositions weren’t enough to differentiate, the Beatles also constantly experimented with all kinds of unusual instruments. Great brands are no different: they require many influences and instruments!

As business people, we need to fill ourselves up with inspiration from the world around us, especially those in the creative arts and in human relationships. Only then will fresh new combinations emerge.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

We almost made a ton of early mistakes on GOODLES, but because Jen and I are great partners and openly talk through everything big and small, without ego or hubris, we avoided doing anything too detrimental. (So far; I will knock on wood as soon as I finish typing this). Some of our near mistakes were actually a lot of fun. One of the great traditions on GOODLES we established early is the creation of clever names for our product varieties. Life is too short for descriptive SKU names that are boooooorrriiing. Each time we have to (no, get to!) name a new product, there is an avalanche of ideas from all corners, and most are really entertaining. For example, our parmesan asiago product is called TWIST MY PARM now… but we came thisclose to calling it KISS MY ASIAGO. Our vegan product, VEGAN IS BELIEVIN’, was almost called ARE YOU VEGAN KIDDIN’ ME? Maybe one lesson is: if your product name has an obvious derivative of an expletive in it, reconsider.

On the topic of mistakes, some things that you think are mistakes actually may be gold. Paul McCartney said that “in recordings, whenever we’d make a mistake, often we’d say ‘hey, that’s good,’ and keep it.” For example, that weird sound that opens “A Hard Day’s Night” is an obvious mistake. It’s now iconic and is a key part of the song’s magic. The opener is a hybrid guitar-bass combo and has been analyzed by countless music scholars. In an interview, George Harrison, who played the guitar part, hesitantly called it a “G with an F on top,” but admitted he wasn’t totally sure how to define it. So he deferred to McCartney, who played the bass part… and couldn’t precisely define it either. The next time you make (or observe) what looks like a mistake, pretend you’re the Beatles: should you keep it?

What are the most common mistakes you have seen people make when they start a food or beverage line? What can be done to avoid those errors?

The most common mistake I see with aspiring new business creators both privately and in corporate circles is analysis paralysis. Don’t think; make. Don’t talk; do. As far as I know, no consumer has ever walked into a Target and purchased a positioning deck or focus group report. In the very early days on our mac and cheese journey, “pre everything,” we had this amazing name GOODLES and an incredible design vision to help people really see and feel how this could change the category. We weren’t talking about “mac and cheese disruptor XYZ” as a hypothetical abstract. Soon after that, we also had a delicious product prototype. This was all right out of the gates, early not late; there was little traditional planning. The point: if you have an idea, call it something fast, bring it to life visually, and make something. One of my favorite creative people, James Patterson, is often asked for advice on how to write a book. His answer is the same, every time: “Go write the book.”

Let’s imagine that someone reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to produce. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?

I think I answered that one immediately prior!

Many people have good ideas all the time. But some people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. How would you encourage someone to overcome this hurdle?

If you’re a creative person, then you’d better go find a partner who is good at the business side. GOODLES isn’t GOODLES without Jen. She’s the ultimate force multiplier, marshaler, a five star general, and the best leader I have ever seen. Conversely, there are many folks who are great strategists, or engineers, or have other superpowers but lack the chops on the creative side, and as a result, struggle to get people emotionally engaged in their business. I’ve seen so many otherwise good ideas fail because they fall flat emotionally. In sum, don’t team up with someone exactly like you. Figure out where your shortcomings are and solve for those.

There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?

This is a tricky one because, from time to time, I myself happen to advise others on how to create something from nothing. So you won’t hear me say “never hire consultants.” What I will say is this: make sure that the person or team you hire can bring something new, something you don’t have. What is their superpower? If they say they are awesome at everything, don’t believe it, because that’s impossible. I’d also make sure they are what I will call “feral cats”; they have actually produced things, been in the arena, operated in the wild, and figured things out on their own. Too many consultants are well-fed “house cats.”

What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?

My answer to the question of “bootstrap or VC?” is… you guessed it, yes! You need to do both. In that order. Invest what you can out of your own pocket to get your idea prototyped in one way or another. There’s no formula there; just figure it out. In my early years as an entrepreneur, I once offered to barter my car for design services, no kidding; the design firm demurred (thankfully), and we worked out a reasonable payment plan. I have invested my own cash in every one of our venture projects. If you simply don’t have any cash, see if you can scrape together a few bucks from friends and family. I am deeply sensitive to financial limitations readers here and everywhere may face, and don’t have a good answer for not having any cash other than finding a way. As long as it doesn’t involve too much credit card debt. And is legal.

When you have your prototype and vision worked out, and it’s time to grow, you have to raise outside capital. A Northwestern colleague of mine often talks about “the founder’s deadly embrace.” You love so much that in “protecting” it, you smother it. This happens all too often. The old adage that a lower percentage of something is worth more than 100% of nothing is absolutely true. If your brand becomes successful in part because you have great financial backers, you will never lament that dilution. As long as it’s not crazy.

Can you share thoughts from your experience about how to file a patent, how to source good raw ingredients, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer or distributor?

Each node of this question is a totally different adventure and its own deep rabbit hole. And aside from the patent question, the answer being “hire a good lawyer!”, there is no clear formula or three-step process for any of these activities. I’m going to punt on this one, and move on to the next!

Here is the main question of our discussion. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand” and why?

  1. Identify a pain point. What categories need a better, more contemporary product solution? Are there categories that are visually ugly and could use a makeover? Is there a sourcing opportunity? (“Better things made in a better way,” as the Allbirds founders say)
  2. Create a great brand. What’s your product going to be called, and can you get the trademark? What is the design world? Is it deep and immersive? How to engage emotionally? Your brand cannot suck. In fact, “good” isn’t even good enough. It must rock. Your journey ahead is going to be difficult enough on its own; you can’t walk onto the field with a lackluster brand.
  3. Build your team. Not even comic book superheroes go it alone all the time, and you shouldn’t either. Figure out the gaps in your skillset, and team up with people who are great at those things. If you find this to be uncomfortable, that’s normal, and get over it. If you find it impossible, that’s okay too, but you may be an inventor and not an entrepreneur (the two are related but different).
  4. Develop an incredible product. About ten years ago, many smart people believed that new brands could succeed if the product was just average, but you excelled at everything else– the name, design, newfangled business model, raise gobs of money. Those days are looooong gone. Consumers and retailers demand amazing products, not just okay ones. There must be something massively better about what you’re making, how you’re making it, or… something better. Commodities must be transformed into desirables, as my friend Craig Dubitsky often says.
  5. Get it out there. One reason why today is such a great time to start a new business– despite all the headwinds you hear and read about on the news, constantly– is because you can build awareness quickly relative to the olden days. Social media has its limitations, but you can get your brand out there in front of a lot of people overnight if you do things right. This dynamic is even further amplified if you bring in a famous person to your business. On GOODLES, we partnered early with Gal Gadot, who has been an amazing collaborator and has helped rally her tens of millions of fans to support the brand.

Can you share your ideas about how to create a product that people really love and are ‘crazy about’?

We often talk about going for an “Oh No You Didn’t” reaction on everything we do, including product development. There is a lot of research, development, and skill that all go into making our product and I can’t get into the details on that, but I will say that we’re going for that almighty “yes, and.” Yes, it tastes incredible, and it’s great from a nutritional standpoint. We are aiming to surprise and delight at every turn, starting with the food itself. People often compliment us on our branding, which I love, but actually, at our core, we’re a product company! Every company should maniacally, and passionately build the best mousetrap they can. This seems obvious but there was a time not too long ago when the prevailing view was: if you have a cool name and “consumer experience,” you can get away with a “meh” product. “Good enough” is not good enough. Actually, great branding and marketing will accelerate failure if the product sucks; you’re building expectations and then not delivering. There are, however, some exceptions: the product can be a commodity if there is a social mission that is robust enough (think, Tom’s Shoes and others). Generally, however, your product had better rock, and the bar is extremely high. At GOODLES, we never cease to be amazed and blown away by fan mail that comes in through various means. A few people like our product so much, they actually use expletives. That should be the bar for you: is your product so good that a consumer will say, “it’s (expletive) so (expletive) good”?

Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?

Well, I’m actually not trying to “make the world a better place.” That phrase was widely used as a punchline in a hysterical “Silicon Valley” episode, and I always advise my students and clients to get a little more grounded and a little more specific. I don’t think it’s a brand’s job to make the entire world better. Let’s start with making product categories better. We’re definitely doing that with GOODLES, where people now have great taste with less compromise, and a fun joyous design world to make their cupboards a little more interesting. All of our venture projects aim to make respective product categories better places.

If the question here is getting at social and community mission, we take that seriously. GOODLES has been partnered with World Central Kitchen from day one, and we also actively support food banks around the country. We support other non-profit organizations in the Santa Cruz, California community that have little to nothing at all to do with food. We also aim to be as thoughtful and as responsible as possible when it comes to materials sourcing. Our parent company is called “Gooder Foods,” with “Gooder” meaning lots of things. Brands today must be good citizens; this is no longer a “nice to have,” as contemporary consumers and retailers demand it. And it’s the right thing to do. I’m involved in a different venture whose entire “raison d’etre” is driven by community give-back. Degrees of social mission can vary, but this has to be in there in some meaningful way.

You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

The world needs entrepreneurs. Doers who change things, who move industry and society forward. If you have an idea that can make a real impact, I think you practically have a contract with the world, nearly a moral responsibility to try to get it produced. It has always bothered me to hear people complain about what “they” are going to do about problem XYZ. Who the heck is “they”? Is there a giant secret office somewhere? I suggest that you can be “they.” As the founder of LCD Soundsystem once said, “the best way to protest is to make something.” If you see a problem to fix, something that could be better, try to do something about it. You may not succeed every time, but you won’t regret the effort. (Oh, and by the way: you might succeed).

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.


Paul Earle Of GOODLES On 5 Things You Need To Create a Successful Food or Beverage Brand was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.