Ed Gandia explains why Stoneyfield Farm sold products in Walmart despite seeming to contradict their values. The move made sense once you understood their actual goal: getting organic products to more people, not staying pure.
Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.
Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the High Income Business Writing Podcast, the number one podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. With over 1 million downloads from listeners just like you across 101 countries, this episode is much shorter than usual. Rather than my typical 45 minute format, today I'm sharing a quick tip with you. This is part of the Audio Insights I publish for my private coaching clients every weekday and I thought you'd find it helpful. So here we go.
Hope you enjoy it. Stonyfield Farm is a large producer of organic yogurt and dairy products in the US and and about 12 years ago, they were heavily criticized for selling their product in Walmart stores all over the country. Consumers who until this point were huge fans of what that company was doing, were alarmed and even disgusted with that Walmart move. You know, they were asking themselves, how could they do that? How could Stonyfield sell to the big, bad, evil Walmart? That's not what Stonyfield is about. So why are they selling out? And their founder and CEO, Gary Hirschberg, responded to all the criticism in the popular documentary Food Inc. I believe it was Food Inc. I remember seeing this and I remember thinking, wow, that answer is brilliant. This is a very smart man. Not because what he was doing was a smart PR move or because of the way he worded it. It was brilliant because it demonstrated that he had a very strategic reason for making that move into Walmart. People weren't giving him a chance to really explain. They were just looking at the headline. And it wasn't about profits. It wasn't about market share, it wasn't about the stock price. It was about the company's big why the raison d'. Etre. He explained that he didn't care for Walmart either, but Walmart was now the country's largest grocer. And if Stonyfield could move a ton of product through Walmart, guess what that would be. A ton more organic food consumed in the marketplace. Food that would have normally been conventional food had Stony Field not been on the Walmart store shelves. Because shoppers would suddenly see the Stonyfield yogurt and they would buy one or two to try it. Many of them would fall in love with a product and come back for more, substituting Stonyfield for what they would normally buy, which would be a conventional yogurt which means, guess what? Less demand for conventionally grown products, which means less pesticides used, which means a healthier environment. So in other words, Hishberg saw how scaling up his operation to serve Walmart would translate into a healthier, cleaner environment, which is the company's big why. Most of us start freelancing without a clear vision of our big why, clear understanding of that. We just know how to do the work and we want more freedom and flexibility. So we start offering our skills as soloists. You might think that your big why is freedom, flexibility, a higher income, a shorter work week, creative variety, or something along those lines. And those are great things. But that's not it. Those are just vehicles to get the outcome you truly want. So think of it as a chain. So just like Hirschberg did, the big why is the core reason you do what you do. It's the reason you have this business. Behind that is a set of vehicles that make that happen. And behind those vehicles is a set of strategies, tactics, game plans, habits and processes make it all happen. Most of us only think about the last two links of the chain. We're not clear about our vision, our big why, so we end up making decisions about our business that don't serve us. They sound good. They sound like what we should be doing, what's right. I mean, isn't that what I'm supposed to do? But because they're not tied to or derived from our big why, we end up in a treadmill of disappointment. We end up working hard in a very focused way, which is great. But we're rarely happy with where we are. If we achieve some level of happiness, it's typically short lived. So the message today is clear. If you haven't already, start spending some time thinking about your big why and don't just accept the first answer that comes to mind. That's usually a good start. So that's great. But plant that question in your mind journal on the topic. Let these thoughts marinate for a while, because it can take some time for the real reasons to surface. I know for me that's really kind of evolved over the years as I just kind of give it more thought and it's given it enough time for the real reasons to surface and details behind that reason or those reasons to surface. So the good news is once you have better clarity about your purpose for doing what you do, guess what? All your critical decisions become much easier.
Well, that's it for today. I hope you enjoyed the episode. And just a quick reminder to grab your free copy of my latest book, Earn More in Less Time the Proven Mindset, Strategies and Actions to Prosper as a Freelance writer. You can get your free copy@b2b launcher.com or you will also find the detail show notes to this and all my other other episodes. Enjoy and have a great day.
