If we're all sitting and around talking about, oh, I need this manufacturer, like, how are you approaching your marketing strategy or how are you approaching your first new hires?

Where is the conversation that says, how are you approaching culture? Have you thought about this? What are you doing? What are you seeing?

Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. I'm your host,

Jesse Freytag. Today is our seventh episode in the first hire series where we've so far covered

making first hires in marketing, finance, operations, and retail and food service sales. And we've

talked with one of our community brands, Sweet Nothings, about making their first few hires.

Culture comes up in some of those conversations, but I wanted to dedicate an entire episode to Culture.

We're joined today by expert Jennifer Yipes Balendel, owner of Medita Consulting, and our former Startup CPG podcast host to guide us in this conversation, and I'm so excited

to share Jennifer's wisdom with you and have her on the other side of the mic.

When I was the first marketing and operations hire at a CPG startup brand, I had big dreams

about building a culture different than those I had experienced in the corporate world.

Over the next two years and growing to 30 employees,

I wish I could have had someone like Jennifer guide that startup from the beginning. Within our

community of emerging brands are tomorrow's next household brand names. Can you imagine if the

Frito-Lays and Coca-Cola's of the world had these conversations from day one, there's an incredible opportunity

to make change through building not only mission-driven products, but also through mission-driven

teams of humans behind those products. Listen in as Jennifer shares about how to define

culture and key terms, why culture is important in how the conversations around workplace culture

have shifted, biggest mistakes founders can make, the process of developing values and how an

outside expert can help, how culture expands beyond your team members to your customers and

external partners, and more. And stay tuned at the end for a mini interview with Startup CPG Shelfy Award winner Tiny Sprouts.

After recording this interview at the end of last year, I got to meet Tina and Kim in person at Expo West and tried the Tiny Sprouts product, which was amazing.

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