Mark: 'The customer is always right.' It's the first rule of business, right? Michelle: Oh, absolutely. It's practically tattooed on the inside of every manager's eyelids. Mark: Well, today we're talking about a founder who built a billion-dollar brand by, in some ways, ignoring what customers thought they wanted, and instead giving them something they didn't even know to ask for. Michelle: Okay, I'm intrigued. That sounds like a recipe for either genius or bankruptcy. Who are we talking about? Mark: That founder is Daniel Lubetzky, and the book is Do the KIND Thing. Michelle: Ah, KIND bars. But what’s fascinating about Lubetzky is that he’s not your typical snack food CEO. I read that he’s the son of a Holocaust survivor, and he actually started his career trying to foster peace in the Middle East through joint business ventures. Mark: Exactly. That background is the key to understanding his entire philosophy. It’s not just about selling bars; it’s about building bridges. And that all starts with his core idea, which he calls the 'AND' Philosophy.

Michelle: Okay, 'The AND' Philosophy.' It sounds a bit abstract, maybe a little bit like corporate jargon. What does it actually mean in practice? Mark: It’s deceptively simple, but incredibly powerful. It’s the practice of rejecting what he calls 'false compromises.' In business and in life, we’re constantly told we have to choose between two options. It's either this OR that. Michelle: Right. You can have something that’s fast OR you can have something that’s high-quality. You can have a product that’s cheap OR one that’s ethically made. Mark: Precisely. Lubetzky says that’s a lazy way of thinking. The 'AND' philosophy forces you to ask: how can we achieve both? How can we make something that is healthy AND delicious? Profitable AND socially responsible? It’s about refusing the easy 'OR' and embracing the difficult 'AND'. Michelle: That sounds great in a book, but hold on. Isn't that just a recipe for a product that's too expensive and inefficient to produce? Why not just make the best-tasting, cheapest bar possible and call it a day? Mark: That is the central challenge, and it’s where the story of the KIND bar itself becomes the perfect case study. When he was developing the first bars, the entire industry was built on a specific model. Michelle: Let me guess: mushy, paste-like bars. Mark: Exactly. They used homogenized pastes of nuts, grains, and syrups. It was cheap, it was uniform, and it ran through the machines like a dream. The industry experts told him, "This is how it's done. You use pastes OR you can't scale." Michelle: The classic false compromise. Mark: A perfect one. Lubetzky wanted to create a bar where you could see and pronounce the ingredients. Whole nuts, whole pieces of fruit. He wanted to make a snack that was healthy AND tasty. But using whole ingredients was a manufacturing nightmare. Michelle: How so? I’m picturing nuts and honey just falling apart on the conveyor belt. Mark: That’s pretty much what happened. The machines would get jammed. The bars wouldn't hold together properly. Some bars would come out slightly overweight, others slightly underweight. It was messy, it was inefficient, and it was far more expensive. His team was telling him it was impossible. Michelle: So he was facing a choice: a cheap, efficient, ugly paste-bar OR an expensive, inefficient, beautiful whole-nut bar. Mark: And he said, "No. We will find a way to do both." He and his team spent an incredible amount of time and money figuring out a new process, a new way to bind the ingredients together naturally. They accepted that the bars would be imperfect, that there would be variance. And then they did something that was considered marketing suicide at the time. Michelle: What was that? Mark: They decided to use a transparent wrapper. Michelle: Oh, I remember that! It was so different. You could actually see the bar. Mark: But think about the conventional wisdom. Food marketers believed you needed opaque, shiny foil with idealized, photoshopped pictures of the product. The logic was, "Real food can't compete with the perfect image." They were told a clear wrapper would look unappealing and wouldn't protect the product from sunlight as well. Michelle: Another false compromise: an attractive, protective package OR an honest, transparent one. Mark: And again, Lubetzky chose 'AND'. They invested in developing a special kind of clear film that had the right barrier properties to protect the ingredients. He made a bet that in a world of fake, idealized food, authenticity would be the ultimate selling point. He bet that people wanted to see the real, lumpy, imperfect, delicious-looking bar. Michelle: And he was right. It completely set them apart. You trusted it because you could see it. So, the 'AND' philosophy isn't just a mindset; it's a design principle that forces you to innovate because you're refusing to take the easy way out. Mark: That's it exactly. It’s a creative constraint that unlocks new possibilities. But it begs your earlier question: if it’s so hard, what on earth keeps you going?

Mark: And that's the perfect lead-in to the next piece, because you're right, Michelle, choosing the 'AND' path is brutally hard. It requires an almost superhuman level of grit. And Lubetzky argues that grit doesn't come from a desire for profit; it comes from purpose. Michelle: Okay, 'purpose.' That's another word that gets thrown around a lot in business books. It can feel a bit hollow. What does it mean for him? What's the source of that purpose? Mark: For Lubetzky, it’s incredibly personal and deeply rooted in his family’s history. It comes from a story his father told him about his time in the Dachau concentration camp during the Holocaust. Michelle: Wow. Okay. Mark: His father was a teenager, starving, barely surviving day to day. The conditions were, as we know, beyond horrific. One day, a Nazi guard was walking by. And for a reason his father would never know, the guard took a risk. He looked around, and when no one was watching, he threw a rotten potato at his father's feet. Michelle: A rotten potato. Mark: A rotten potato. An act that could have gotten that guard killed. And his father said that small, inexplicable act of kindness, that single potato, gave him just enough sustenance, just enough hope, to keep going. He credited it with helping him survive. Michelle: That's... incredibly heavy. It completely reframes the whole company. The brand name, 'KIND,' isn't just a friendly marketing term. Mark: It's the core of his entire worldview. His father’s survival was a testament to the fact that even in the face of absolute evil, a small act of human connection—of kindness—is possible and can be world-changing. That became Lubetzky’s purpose: to build bridges between people, to foster empathy, to prevent the kind of hatred that led to the Holocaust from ever taking root again. Michelle: So when he's facing a manufacturing problem with a granola bar, he's not just thinking about profit margins. He's thinking about that potato. Mark: He's thinking about that potato. He’s thinking about his first company, PeaceWorks, which was founded to sell products made jointly by Arabs and Israelis. That venture was incredibly difficult and faced constant setbacks. He tells stories of having to go door-to-door, begging stores to take his products, facing rejection after rejection. Most people would have given up. Michelle: But if your purpose is that profound, a few rejections from a grocery store manager probably feel manageable in comparison. The grit required for the 'AND' philosophy isn't just about being stubborn; it's about being fueled by something much bigger than the problem in front of you. Mark: Precisely. The purpose is the fuel. Without it, the 'AND' engine stalls. But, as Lubetzky learned the hard way, even a powerful engine needs guardrails.

Michelle: Okay, so you have this powerful 'AND' philosophy fueled by this incredibly deep sense of purpose. But it seems like that could also lead to a 'say yes to everything' mentality. You want to be healthy AND tasty AND socially responsible AND innovative AND... you could just keep adding 'ANDs' until the whole thing collapses. Where are the guardrails? Mark: You have just described the exact trap that Lubetzky fell into, and it nearly destroyed his first company. This is where the tenet of 'Truth and Discipline' comes in, which is really about disciplined simplicity. Michelle: A cautionary tale. I love a good cautionary tale. Mark: In the early days of PeaceWorks, he had one breakout product: a delicious Mediterranean sundried tomato spread. It was doing reasonably well. It was authentic to the brand's mission of Middle Eastern cooperation. Michelle: It made sense. It was on-brand. Mark: It was. But then he got advice from food-industry experts who told him, "More products get you more shelf space; more shelf space gets you more sales." It's the siren song of expansion. Michelle: So he started adding more 'ANDs'. Mark: He went all in. He thought, "We have a great sundried tomato spread AND we can have a black olive spread AND a cilantro pesto." He expanded to sixteen different varieties. And then he made a critical error. He launched a sweet-and-spicy Asian teriyaki pepper spread. Michelle: Wait. A Mediterranean food company, built on the idea of Arab-Israeli cooperation, launched a teriyaki spread? Mark: Yes. He rationalized it. He thought, "What's the harm? If people don't like it, they'll just buy the original." But he broke the fundamental rule of his own philosophy. The 'AND' has to serve the core purpose. Michelle: So his 'AND' philosophy became 'Mediterranean spreads AND... a random Asian sauce?' He lost the plot. Mark: Completely. The quality of the new products was lower, the brand identity became muddled, and customers got confused. They had trusted the 'Moshe & Ali's' brand for authentic Mediterranean flavor. When they tried the teriyaki spread and it wasn't good, they didn't just stop buying the teriyaki spread. They stopped trusting the entire brand. Sales plummeted. Michelle: That’s such a crucial lesson. The 'AND' isn't a license to do everything. It’s a tool to do your core thing better and more holistically. His 'AND' should have been about making the spreads more authentic AND more delicious, or finding a supply chain that was more cooperative AND more efficient. Mark: Exactly. The discipline is in knowing what not to do. It’s about keeping it simple and staying true to your brand's promise. After that failure, he learned to be fiercely protective of the KIND brand. When his team later pushed him to quickly launch dozens of new KIND bar flavors, he resisted, remembering the teriyaki disaster. He knew he had to let the core product establish its identity and trust with consumers first. Michelle: It’s the virtue of restraint. Boundless thinking, which he champions, is powerful, but it's useless without the discipline to channel it. You need both. Thinking boundlessly AND acting with discipline. Mark: There it is. You've got it. That's the whole system in a nutshell.

Michelle: It’s really a three-part system, then. It’s not just about one big idea. Mark: That’s the perfect way to put it. You have this powerful engine—the 'AND' philosophy, which lets you break free from false choices. But that engine is useless without fuel, which is a deep, authentic purpose that gives you the grit to see it through. Michelle: And even with a powerful, fueled engine, you'll crash if you don't have a steering wheel and brakes. That's the discipline and the focus. The wisdom to say 'no' to the things that dilute your purpose, even if they seem like a good idea at the time. Mark: Without all three, the car crashes. The teriyaki spread is the proof. The success of the KIND bar is the proof on the other side. It’s a complete, integrated system. Michelle: It makes you wonder, where in our own lives are we accepting a false 'OR' when an 'AND' is possible, even if it's harder? We're told you can have a successful career OR a present family life. That you can be ambitious OR you can be kind. Mark: That's a great question for everyone to think about. Lubetzky's whole point is that these are often false dichotomies. The most fulfilling path is often the one that finds a way to integrate them. Michelle: It's a challenge, really. To look at the compromises we make every day and ask, "Is this necessary, or is it just the easy way out?" Mark: A fantastic question. And we'd love to hear what our listeners think. What's a false 'OR' in your life that you'd like to turn into an 'AND'? Find us on our social channels and share your story. We read everything. Michelle: This is Aibrary, signing off.