Welcome to day 8: Episode 280 — How To Master Your Why and Connect With Customers
Day 8 of 30 Days to Prosperity

If you want to build a brand that grows, scales, and earns fierce loyalty, there’s one foundational truth you must embrace:
Your WHY is your greatest competitive advantage—
but only if you communicate it clearly, consistently, and authentically.

Most founders understand their WHY internally.
They feel it.
They live it.
It fuels their passion, their innovation, their mission.
But when it comes to communicating that WHY out in the world—across retail, eCommerce, marketing, distributors, brokers, and even internal teams—the message often gets diluted or distorted.

That disconnect is costly.

Today’s episode is about mastering your WHY, embedding it into your selling story, and communicating it with the same passion, enthusiasm, and authenticity as the founder—everywhere your brand shows up.

Because when you get this right, you unlock a level of customer connection that big brands can’t replicate.

If Your WHY Isn’t Heard, It Can’t Help You Grow

You’ve heard me use this analogy before:
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

The same is true for your brand.
You may have the most compelling mission, the most inspiring reason for starting your company—but if customers, retailers, investors, and partners don’t hear it in the way you intend, it won’t help you grow.

And here’s where most brands stumble.
Think back to the childhood game of “telephone.”
You whisper a message to one person, who whispers it to the next, and so on. By the time it gets back to you, it’s unrecognizable.

This is exactly what happens to your selling story if your team doesn’t know how to communicate it accurately and consistently.

This is why mastering your WHY is not optional.
It’s a strategic advantage.
It’s also why I created the Free Turnkey Sales Story Strategies Course—to help brands translate their WHY into a powerful, consistent message retailers cannot ignore.

You need to understand:
Who your ideal shopper is
Where they shop
What they put in their basket
How they view your product
What problems you solve for them
How to communicate your value in a way that aligns with retailer priorities
Your WHY becomes the lens through which all of this makes sense.

Your Unique Shopper Is More Valuable Than Any Fee You’ll Ever Pay
I say this often because it’s true:
The value of your unique shopper is far greater than any slotting fee or promotion spend you could offer a retailer.
But most brands don’t know how to articulate this truth.
They rely on canned topline reports that retailers already have.
They repeat the same data every competitor is using.
They talk about velocity without framing the impact of their shopper.

Retailers don’t need more data.
They need insights.
Specifically, insights about:
How your shopper buys the category
What drives their decision-making
What other items they purchase with your brand
How your product increases their total basket value
How your brand brings new, incremental shoppers into the store
This only happens when you understand your WHY and embed it deeply into your selling story.

The achilles heal of big brands is that they talk about their shopper generically and in generic terms. The data they collect validate this. But that same data also identifies your shoppers in generic terms. Funny thing about shoppers, they buy what then want and when they want which is always at odds with the shopper data most brands collect.

I can not begin to tell you how many times a big brand claimed that they had a winning product that tested well with shoppers only to see those products quickly die a painful death on store shelves. Don’t make the mistake of letting other brands talk about shoppers in generic terms.

Why Natural Shoppers Are Your Greatest Advantage
Let me take you behind the curtain.

Natural and organic shoppers behave differently from mainstream shoppers:
They are more intentional
They read labels carefully
They avoid highly processed ingredients
They support mission-driven brands
They value quality and transparency
They rarely “settle”
Their basket sizes are significantly higher

In the 2016 Category Management Handbook, I proved something remarkable:
Natural and organic products—despite representing a small share of category sales—drove the majority of topline growth across nearly every category.

When you removed natural and organic items, most categories were flat or declining.
And this pattern has repeated across every category I’ve analyzed since.

This is your opportunity.
Mainstream brands often rely on deep discounts that:
Lower price integrity
Commoditize the category
Train shoppers to chase deals
Erode loyalty
Decrease total profitability

Natural brands—when positioned correctly—do the opposite.
They elevate the category.
They drive profitable growth.
They generate higher basket rings.
They create loyal, mission-aligned shoppers.
This is WHY retailers need you.
But they won’t know that unless you tell them the story properly.

Big Brands Talk About Themselves. You Must Talk About the Customer.
Consider how most big brands communicate:
“Our product is better.”
“Our product has more protein.”
“9 out of 10 consumers prefer us.”
“Our formula is cleaner.”

It’s product-first, not consumer-first.
It’s broadcast messaging, not relational messaging.
And it’s generic—any brand could say it.

Your WHY changes the conversation.
When you speak from your WHY:
You speak directly to your ideal customer’s values
You solve the problem they care about
You show them you understand their lifestyle, not just their need
You build emotional resonance
You create evangelists

Patagonia is the perfect example.
Their products are expensive.
Their margins aren’t always the highest.
But their brand is fiercely loved.
Because Patagonia communicates from their WHY—consistently, authentically, unapologetically.
Your brand can do the same.

Understanding Your WHY Strengthens Your Retail Pitch
When you bake your WHY into your selling story, you don’t walk into a retailer trying to compete with big brand playbooks.
Instead, you walk in saying:
“We bring a unique shopper to your store.

Your shopper buys across the store perimeter, across frozen, across dry grocery.
They fill their cart with premium products.
They shop your store intentionally.
They spend more, return more often, and influence more.
And our brand is a magnet for those shoppers.”

Retailers lean in when they hear this.
Because this is not just a brand story.
It’s their growth strategy - what they want most from brands.
And it’s your sustainable competitive advantage.

Simon Sinek Says It Best: People Don’t Buy What You Do; They Buy Why You Do It. If you haven’t already watched it, go to YouTube and search for:
Start With Why — Simon Sinek (TEDx Talk)

It’s one of the best explanations I’ve ever found about the connection between belief, behavior, and brand loyalty.
People buy based on identity and alignment.
They buy based on resonance and values.
They buy because they see a version of themselves in your mission.
Your WHY bridges the gap between your product and your customer.

Day 8 Action Item: Clarify and Communicate Your WHY
Today, I want you to articulate your WHY using three simple prompts:
1. Why does your brand exist?
(Not what you make—why you make it.)
2. What change are you trying to create?
(In the category? In the world? In the shopper’s life?)
3. How does your product help your customer live their values?
(Think identity, lifestyle, aspiration.)

Once you’ve written this down:
Share it with your team
Embed it into your sales story
Bake it into your marketing
Practice saying it out loud until it feels effortless
Align your messaging across every touchpoint

Your WHY is not a tagline.
It’s a strategic anchor.
It’s how you differentiate.
It’s how you win.

In Closing: Your WHY Is Your Superpower
When you communicate your WHY with passion and authenticity, you don’t just gain customers—you gain believers.
Believers spend more.
Believers stay longer.
Believers tell others.
Believers create momentum.

Now, combine what you’ve learned so far. You know the true cost of your products. You have a solid business plan. You’ve surrounded yourself with talented help and advisors. Use the new items essentials system to help you now Build a Retail-Ready Pricing & Margin Architecture so you can walk into any retailer meeting confident that your pricing strategy supports your growth—without putting your brand at risk. And now, you and leverage the strength of your unique shopper behind your why to increase the value of of your brand to retailers.

Tomorrow, in Episode 281, we’ll go deeper into How to Translate Your WHY Into a Retail-Ready Sales Story—a strategic narrative that increases your category value, strengthens your pitch, and gets more buyers to say yes.

Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it.
Share this episode with a founder who needs clarity around their mission.
And download the series guide to go deeper into todays topic
Your WHY is powerful.
Now let’s use it to transform your brand.

For additional inspiration listen to the following podcast episodes:
Episode 38 Mission Based Brands Connecting with Consumers, Seth Goldman with Honest Tea and Beyond Meat
Mission Based Brand Success Stories. In this episode, Seth talks about the importance of having a mission based brand and how to leverage your mission in your selling story.

His mission with Honest Tea is that he only used organic products. The stares why organic products were not only important to the consumer, but to the environment, to the world we live in. His mission resonates throughout that brand.

And as a result, that brand has been extremely successful. After doing that podcast episode, Seth left me an amazing testimonial. He said that scaling mission based brands takes a specific playbook. Bulletproof Your CPG Brands podcast sheds light on getting on the shelf. It's working for Honest Tea and it's working for Beyond Meat.

Thanks Seth. I cannot thank you enough for that incredible testimonial. This is why this matters. This is why I do this podcast exists.

Episode 58 Start With A Mission – Learn From Disruptive Brands Today, Kyle Garner with Organic India and Climate Collaborative
Start with a mission in mind. What big brands can learn from disruptive natural brands.
The assumption is that big brands are driving everything in CPG. That's not true. And I've proven that on multiple podcast episodes.

In this episode, what Kyle talks about is how he's able to leverage what they learned at a small natural brand, Organic India, and leverage it to change the way that big brands go to market. To change the way big brands think about developing a mission. One of the biggest disconnects for big brands is that they think everyone is the same.

This is why leveraging the strategies that we've been talking about are so relevant. You have a unique opportunity to help educate retailers about the consumer that buys your product.

Episode 50 Life Lessons of Humility Love & Inspiration from Leaders, Sheryl O’Loughlin with REBBL and Clif Bar
Most of us work to live. They inspired live to work with bold mission driven brands that fuel their souls. A true leader is someone who humbly nurtures the creative spark within them to be more and to do more. In that episode, Cheryl outlines where she had that aha moment where she changed the way the brands she led went to market, the way that she led her teams.

How that fundamentally changed the way that she thinks about building a brand. And as a result, she's been instrumental in building iconic brands.

Tip of the day: know your why! How does your mission (your why) align with and resonate with your customers? Communicate in a single voice with the same passion, enthusiasm and authenticity as the founder.

Thank you for listening. This episode has an accompanying video with illustrations and additional information I can’t share on an audio podcast. You can watch it at retailsolved.com/30daychallenge.

You can get the show notes for this episode by going to RetailSolved.com/Session280. Tomorrows episode is How To Convert Your Dream Customers Into Loyal Evangelists.

This episode will build on today’s conversation. Thank you for listening. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode.