What’s something you wish you could have told yourself when you were first starting out?
I started doing this just because I really like the idea of the product. Technically, I thought it could become very big, but I sort of have this Scandinavian mentality of being modest. So I didn’t really plan for the company to be successful, and that caused us a lot of difficulties in the beginning. The plant wasn’t big enough, and we didn’t have enough people working. When you start any kind of venture, you have to plan for success and then just be only a little bit disappointed if it’s not successful.
My background was in business, but I was always a poor fit with the business world. I had a horrible job and I was useless at it, an extremely poor fit. I probably would have gotten fired. I had a hard time finding a job, and the only people who wanted to hire me were these consultants. That’s kind of when the yogurt started happening. When I came up with this idea, there was a bunch of things that seemed to make it a good one. What tipped me over was when I was starting thinking about it more as a business than just a hobby. I realized that, and I guess this is important for any creative endeavor, I felt really good about failing. I didn’t feel good about the failing itself, but I realized that if it failed, I could sort of walk away from it with my head high, that I tried something worthwhile, you know? Being risk averse myself, I felt like that was a good thing to try. If I had tried something just for the money, or done something that I really didn’t believe in and failed, I would have walked away from it feeling very awkward and embarrassed.
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