340 - Navigating Entrepreneurship: Insights on Resilience, Mentorship, and the True Meaning of Success with Greg Vetter

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my experience, the foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be on our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started.

Greg Better, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You're a kind of interesting guy. You live in Maryland. You started out in the salad dressing business and then expanded into a whole bunch of other things. You've written a book and you're also sharing your journey with a lot of other entrepreneurs and business people. So I think we're going to have an interesting conversation today. Let's just start off with a little bit about your background. What got you started?

I didn't want to be a failure in my life and I was deathly afraid of mediocrity. So I was willing to take risks and that led me to salad dressing, which is potentially the dumbest thing anybody could ever spend their life dedicating to. And here I am writing a book about failure and then all of the other businesses that I'm in. Wild ride, to say the least.

It sounds like it. Let's start with salad dressings and then we'll move to your organic food stuff that we were just talking about before we started the recording, that which I find fascinating living here in California. You're gonna be 100 miles west of me tomorrow in Monterey County. How do you get into the salad dressing business?

I was selling insurance and it was over top of a bodega overlooking a cemetery. And I thought, I don't know if this is it. And so, every day I would go home at lunch and I would stand on my head with a notepad waiting for an epiphany. One never came, but I would then go downstairs, make myself a big salad with protein on it and use the dressing that my mom had made for me. And one day I walked downstairs and this 2-liter bottle of salad dressing was missing. So I call my wife, I'm like, hey, did you take this dressing to work? She goes, no, I didn't take a 2-liter bottle of salad dressing to work. And she goes, maybe someone took it. I'm like, no one broke into our house and stole salad dressing. She's, I don't know what to tell you, Greg. I didn't take it. So I call some people. I finally get in touch with a guy who was the least likely culprit, ate fast food every day. And he was like, yep, woke up this morning, was jonesing for it, knew the code to your house, hopped on my scooter, came in, took it. Now I'm crushing a salad. I'm like, what kind of man steals another man's salad dressing? And so I thought to myself, it's never gotten old. I've eaten it every day since I was probably 10. Everybody who's ever tried it liked it. I was like, I'm going to start a salad dressing business.

Oh my God.

And so that was in 2009. And then I started cold calling grocery stores, got a meeting, and then we ended up over a 15-year period starting the number one organic salad dressing brand in the country.

Oh my God. And you probably didn't know anything about food production or processing or bottling or all HAZOP and all that stuff and nothing. You had to learn it, learn it on the fly.

The old Google.

There you go.

And you've got AI and just answers pop out. Would you like it in a Word doc? Yes, please. I'm sitting here, I'm like 40 links. What is a HAZOP plan?

Exactly.

Is that addressing? How do I do this? Yeah, it was a wild ride.

Crazy. So then, then you launched into organic produce. Tell us how that happened.

We were trying to sell salad dressing to people and they were like, we're not going to put this delicious salad dressing on a crappy salad. Why don't you make the whole thing? So, we found a giant produce group out in the Salinas Valley that only did like B2B type stuff, selling millions of pounds to Wendy's and Chipotle and McDonald's and stuff like that. And we said, can we carve out a little area of one of your buildings and do this master kit type operation where we design recipes for people, we pack it in a box, we ship it to them, and then it eliminates food waste. It's exactly what every store needs. It's very efficient. You'll save money from a labor perspective. And everybody goes, that sounds awesome. Let's do that. And so, that was 8 years ago. So, then we ended up kind of building out this like giant master kitting operation, which is what we still do. That's one of the businesses that I'm in. And yeah, you know, produce is a— that's a tough business.

It is really tough.

Very short windows of time. There, you gotta be just on it.

And you got all kinds of problems in the fields with, if an animal comes through and pisses on a leaf, now all of a sudden you're looking at salmonella, right?

It's literally what it reminds me of newspapers. Like when you think about someone pitching newspapers today, right? We're gonna find out all of the news in this whole area. And then we're going to immediately write award-winning articles in 1 hour, and then we're going to print it on these really thin pieces of paper and convince people to drop them off to every house. And you're like, that sounds like a really stupid business. Similar when you're talking about produce, right? It's, we're going to start processing in the field and there's only 16 days until it spoils.

That's right. And now we got to ship it everywhere.

Wild business to say. I know.

I, in my former career as a trial lawyer, I did a lot of ag litigation and did a lot of work over in the Salinas Valley. And here in this, in, I'm on the eastern slope of the, or the western slope of the Sierra, the Central Valley below me. So really did a lot of ag work. So I understand the problems and hats off to you for making it work. So you got, so you got the salad dressing business, you got the organic produce business. I didn't have one more business.

Yeah, there's a bunch. So, I started a brand accelerator and really what we figured out in building out an organic salad dressing business was we figured out the playbook, how to create anything and launch anything because we started our manufacturing plants. We did our own sales. We did our own marketing, our own branding. And in developing all of that, you realize that everything is the same template. And the Brand Accelerator was basically taking everything that went right and wrong from building a salad dressing business and then providing it à la carte to people that want to use it. And when I didn't have any money and I wanted to pay people with equity, they said, no, we don't want your equity. And when I didn't want to pay with equity, cuz that was too valuable, I wanted to pay with money. People said, I don't want it. And, and so I was like, I get it.

Right.

So there really should be something that's available. For people that just want one thing. Maybe it's branding, maybe it's sales, maybe it's all of the above. And so then in doing that, we launched a porta-john business and now we're in the wipes business and now we're launching a ready-to-drink vodka brand. And so the list is long. We're, the joke is we're vertically integrated from produce to alcohol to porta-johns and everything in between. But yeah, we're in a lot of stuff.

You sound like a guy that gets bored really easy and has always got these crazy ideas that you act on. Would that be a fair statement? I don't know if bored is the right word, but you want to create.

I don't know if I get bored easily. I think I'm almost forced into innovation. Like I'll, I'll have a good idea. I set it to the side for a while. Then another business will start not running as efficiently as I want. And so I'll start to see if something else. Is having its moment and then it naturally just unfolds. And then the next thing you know, here I am.

So what is it that gets you up in the morning to do all this stuff? You got, sounds like you got 8 or 9 businesses that are in the air juggling. What keeps you going? I got excited.

I got kids, man.

College coming, huh?

I got 4 kids. I think part of it is the kids' side. I really believe in leading by example. Kids just observe what you're doing. It's not so much what you say, but if you act a certain way and then say it, they'll believe it because they know it's coming from a place of conviction. And that's one piece of it. The other piece is I really do want to leave things better than when I found them. So, I really enjoy helping people take their idea and bring it to life. Without trying to screw them over. You know, I don't want to say I was screwed over, but it was a very rocky road for the salad dressing business. And I do think there needs to be a massive paradigm shift in how we're launching brands and investing in brands and investing in people and investing in ourselves. So I'm trying to lead by example that way. And I'm young and I still have energy, so I'm going to use that energy as, as long as I have it.

So what do you think the paradigm shift is that you're thinking about that has to shift?

I think so much— you could probably just boil it down to treat other people how you want to be treated. And I know that's not what happens. If something's not going right, let's just take everything for ourselves, hoard everything, protect everything. We— and I don't think that's beneficial long term because what I've seen is When that happens, everybody gets so pissed and you get— your heart gets hardened, right? And the next thing you know, you have an opportunity to do what's right. And most people don't because they go, that's just how it goes. This, this is the business we're in.

It's tough. It's dog eats dog.

Exactly.

And the universe is a place of limitation, not a place of abundance. Correct.

And I don't subscribe to that.

No, I don't either.

And I don't want to be a part of that. And so, what I'm trying to do is put myself in a situation where when people are reading about entrepreneurs or businesses, there's at least one guy. I'm trying to make it me that got the absolute shit kicked out of them and then continues to try and do what's right. And so I think that's part of it. I do want to leave things better than when I found them.

What do you think, Greg, it is about you that's made you so successful, especially during the times when you're having the shit kicked out of you?

One, I would not consider myself successful. I think success is relative. You ask someone that's got less than me, am I successful? They go, yeah. You ask somebody that has more than me if I'm successful, they're going to go, no.

So, I would define, I would define success for you. You got 4 kids and a solid marriage, and you've a serial entrepreneur and you obviously thrive on what you're doing.

That is the metric for success. Then yes, I'm crushing that because I actually look at success as the 4 things money can't buy, which is your time, your health, your soul, and your children's love. So, by those pillars, I'm batting 1,000 for the most part.

And how did you get there?

What has made you—

what is it about you that got you into that space?

Getting beat down and realizing that those are the only things that matter, that really at the end of the day, no matter what car you have in the garage, do your kids want to spend time with you? Are they happy to see you? Do you have your health? Are you in control of your time? Are you at peace? Can you drive in silence? Right? And so, I think in all of my journeys and trials and tribulations, success has changed, or at least my perspective of it has.. And it just, it keeps get, it gets whittled down or it has gotten basically refined to those 4 things, in my opinion. And, and so now that I know that's what success is, I protect it at all costs. Yeah.

There's a lot of, there are a lot of very wealthy people who are very unhappy.

Yeah.

And you can define, if you define success by how big your bank account is or how, what your net asset worth is. It's a poor, that's a poor way to define success.

And it's like it could go away in a second.

That's right.

And it's then what do you have?

Then yeah, if your identity's wrapped up around money, then you're screwed. But if you've got, you've done a masterful job of really creating multiple identities that all of which support you and give you strength and survive. Where I'm cur— I'm, I, you keep coming back to getting stomped on. I'm wondering, how did you learn resilience? Because that's exactly what it is that pulled you through.

Yeah, I'm really stubborn.

Good.

I'm really stubborn and I'm very competitive. And there's just a part of me that is middle fingers up. And I would say I'm like the modern version of Rocky. Like, I just will not stay down. And Creed's looking at me and I'm like, I keep getting back up and my face is just demolished. And it's like, how is this guy not down? And it's, I'll find a way up. But I do think when I was younger, I chose a sport that was very competitive and very—

lacrosse, right?

Yeah. And very aggressive. And I was always an outsider looking in. My dad's from Ohio. And so I'm from Maryland, which is like one of the hotbeds for that sport. He didn't even know sport was. He dropped me off on my first day of tryouts in 5th grade without equipment. And, and so I really had to battle my way into making teams because I wasn't going to get the political nod. I think doing that over time and figuring out the little stuff that I could control I could be on time. I could be a good listener. I could be very coachable. I'm very tough. I'll work really hard. I'm not going to lose a sprint. This like little stuff begins to show you, okay, you can control some stuff. It may come down to a political decision at the end, but you really can try and set yourself up for success. And when you translate that into business, you wake up every day.

Show up.

You show up, you control what you can control, you look for little wins, you define the wins. You don't let outside forces tell you what's right and what's wrong. And I think over time, that's just a muscle that gets developed, which then turns into resilience.

Yeah, absolutely. It's all those little wins over all the hardship that add up after a while. Yeah. And if you failed enough and you come out of failure, hey, I just failed. No big deal. I can get up and do it again.

Yeah.

Because I've had success.

Yeah. Or I've seen it.

I totally get it.

I was there. I was in line to get into the club. I know it exists. May not have gotten in, but I'm gonna, I'm showing up tomorrow.

There you go. Yeah, I know. I, yeah, I understand. I'm curious. I wanna pivot to listening. This show's called Listening with Leaders. I teach people how to listen, which sounds weird, but really we don't know how to listen. I'm, I suspect that you're probably a pretty good listener. Tell me about that journey, how you learned the importance of listening.

My dad was a really great listener. He really would just help. He would sit there and he would take it in and he would ask really great questions. And he was not listening to basically wait for a gap in what you were saying to tell a story. And then 7 Habits of Highly Effective People had that kind of great defining chapter, chapter.

27 pages. 27 pages. Yeah.

On empathetic listening. And I really Doug Noll, because when you are leading and you're young, you want to be heard. So, you know, that's—

well, we all want to be heard. That's basic need.

And so maybe you're just waiting to speak. And I really just started trying to get a deep understanding of what people were trying to communicate to me so that I could help them solve the problem. Then over time, you just get better at it. I think for some people in my life, it gets really frustrating because they'll rush through a statement and I'm going, what exactly are you asking of me? I already told you. And you're like, I didn't understand.

I have had that happen frequently.

What are you really trying to— so again, over time, I think it just became a skill I developed.

Wow. Another interest that I'm pursuing, in fact, my fifth book will be out next year on leadership empathy. Have you run across that concept? The idea you talked about empathetic listening, which Covey talked about, but I'm curious whether or not that's something that you think about.

Yeah, I think my, one of my, the golden rule, treat other people how you want to be treated.

Right.

I think goes into this concept of, you could say, empathetic leadership, which is, and again, this kind of goes back to being coachable. I've coached a lot of teams, youth lacrosse teams. Every kid needs to be coached differently. I think that's really, in my opinion, the basis of what the empathetic leadership concept is. Again, haven't read your book. You just told me this. I'm applying it to empathetic listening. But with these kids, some kids need to be yelled at. Some kids don't. Some kids just need like an attaboy or quiet instruction when no one else is listening or around. And I think when you're trying to lead teams, if you make almost like the result your goal, Okay, we need to get this done. How can I get everybody on the team to get this thing done? It's going to require different stuff for different people. And I think that's something over time I got pretty good at just because I have brothers that I've worked with. They're very different than me. We had executives on our team that are very different than my brothers and everybody's got a different requirement, or you could even say a love language, if you will. And so you gotta figure out what that is and then try and communicate accordingly there.

I think what you're articulating is something that I strongly believe in, and that is leadership. A large part of leadership is coaching.

Oh yeah.

The hardest job of a CEO is human behavioral change. And the only way you can be effective at that is if you're coaching people not telling 'em what to do, not being an autocrat and working with where they're at. And I think your analogy with the kids in lacrosse is perfect. Everybody's different. Everybody's different. And they need to be, they need to be approached from where they're at in that moment.

And it'd be nice if you could just tell people what to do and they would do it.

Yeah, that, that doesn't work.

That rarely ever happens.

That's right.

And so then you go, okay, and I use this all the time, this concept of effective communication. Which is it's not that you are communicating the way in your mind you think is effective. Are they understanding what you're trying to communicate? Yes or no?

And do they feel heard from their frame of reference? That's a massive part of it.

Yeah.

And yeah, you, you stumbled on some, onto some of the deep secrets that I teach. Good for you. We got just a minute or two left, Greg. I'm curious, what is one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you revealed it to us?

I'm very good at art. Really? Yeah, I'm very good at drawing and painting and all that stuff.

Do you give yourself time to do that?

Yeah, every now and again. I got into doing kind of like interesting historical portraits for a while. So I've done a bunch of those. Do I spend every day doing it? No, but I've learned to listen. Okay, it's time to do one of them and I'll go and paint something or draw something and I'll work on it.

You're right. I would have never guessed that.

Yeah, I'll work on it for a couple of weeks and—

Good for you.

Yeah.

Where do you see yourself in the next 10 or 15 years?

I would like to have built and sold all of the businesses that I'm currently building and have not yet sold. And then I'd like to primarily focus on the I really enjoy the book tour I'm on and—

Oh, good.

And working with entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes, helping them—

Become a teacher and a mentor and a coach.

Yeah, doing stuff like that. We're doing leadership retreats on my farm. I really enjoy that. I really enjoy the mentoring component. And it's not that I have all the answers, but I have a bunch of really great examples of just extreme scenarios that can be applied to basically anybody's business. So, I'd like to be doing that primarily, I would say, in the next 10 years.

Good for you.

We've come to the end of our conversation. I want to thank you so much for your time today. Really fascinating guy. And I love your definition of success. Just keep at it.

Thank you.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team.

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