In this episode, Ken Meyer shares his journey from growing up on a family farm to leading at Whole Foods and beyond. He reflects on how hard work, humility, and a people-first mindset shaped his 24-year career and guided him through major transitions from building teams to leading Whole Foods’ sale to Amazon. Ken discusses how trust, transparency, and empowerment drive lasting culture, why great leaders learn through failure, and how success comes from focusing on purpose, staying curious, and never losing sight of what matters most.

Key Takeaways:

• Lasting leadership begins with hard work, humility, and curiosity that keep growth grounded in purpose.
• Empowering people through trust, transparency, and context creates a culture where teams thrive and leaders emerge.
• Successful transformations happen when leaders build trust, communicate openly, and stay true to shared values.
• Fulfillment comes from focusing on what matters most, helping others grow, and creating impact that endures.

Chapters:

1. 00:00 - Introduction
2. 03:45 - Lessons from the Farm
3. 09:30 - The Power of Trust and Empowerment
4. 15:11 - Leading Through Transformations
5. 22:44 - Purpose and Fulfillment

Listen to our podcasts at:

https://www.shorecp.university/podcasts

You'll also find other Microcap Moments episodes, alongside our series Everyday Heroes and Bigger. Stronger. Faster., highlighting the people and stories that make the microcap space unique.

Other ways to connect:

Blog: https://www.shorecp.university/blog

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Shore Capital Partners: https://www.shorecp.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shore-university

This podcast is the property of Shore Capital Partners LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, or a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the “Terms of Use” page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:18

Welcome to Microcap Moments, a podcast from Shore Capital Partners that highlights the stories of founders, investors, and leaders who have taken on the challenge of transforming ideas and small companies into high growth organizations.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:33

The journey of building and scaling a business takes one down many unexpected paths.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:38

It's a journey where we learn from our mistakes fall down often, but have the entrepreneurial grid to pick ourselves up and persevere.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:45

Within this series, we will share these stories of success and failure of the challenges and the rewards faced by those who dare to dream big and through their lessons learned.

Michael Burcham: 00:00:56

We hope to inspire others who are on a similar journey of becoming, growing and leading.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:02

In this episode, I talk with Ken Meyer, Executive Partner with Shore Capital Partners.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:07

Ken shares how his career in the food business, including 24 years with Whole Foods, all started on his family farm, which itself was deeply rooted in his family's work ethic.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:18

He talks about his realization through early internships that food is really about people and how that recognition ignited his interest in the business of food and the people who make it happen.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:29

In fact, Ken's first break in the food business wasn't so obviously about food at all, but it was definitely about people.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:35

Ken was managing and scheduling labor for a retailer who, unbeknownst to him at the time, was preparing themselves to sell to Whole Foods.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:43

Fast forward a couple of decades, and it was Ken, who after helping Whole Foods scale, initiated and led their sell to Amazon.

Anderson Williams: 00:01:50

He describes his career success as being deeply connected to the culture they were building at Whole Foods and the people he was able to impact with that culture, from customers to communities, to the team around him.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:01

He talks about the importance of deduction when you lead and grow a business, and understanding which opportunities are really distractions and which ones may be showing you the path ahead.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:11

And finally, Ken shares that the accomplishment he's most proud of is that his kids are proud of him.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:17

That they've come to understand the real meaning behind bagging groceries, and with that, the meaning behind Ken's entire career.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:25

Welcome Ken, and to get us started, will you just introduce yourself and give us your name and what you do with Shore Capital?

Ken Meyer: 00:02:31

I'm Ken Meyer.

Ken Meyer: 00:02:33

I'm an Executive Partner at Shore Capital and, uh, joined Shore about a year and a few months ago.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:38

So you spent about 24 years at Whole Foods and now support the Shore food and beverage investments.

Anderson Williams: 00:02:46

How did you get into food and beverage in the first place?

Anderson Williams: 00:02:50

What drew you to that from a career standpoint or a personal interest standpoint?

Anderson Williams: 00:02:54

What was compelling about that to you?

Ken Meyer: 00:02:56

Well, it goes back to how I was brought up and I grew up on a family farm, so I had this understanding and the benefit of really connecting closely to how food was growing and created and power of that.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:09

And as I went through that as a young teenager, I started really appreciating that and found an opportunity to then go to school to study that.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:18

So I studied food retailing, food systems.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:20

And did some internships, one in Seattle, one in New York City.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:24

And I realized growing up on a farm, you work really hard.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:27

Working in retail if you work really hard, you create opportunities.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:30

And I knew I could translate that over.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:32

And I loved the connection to the food and the relationship to where it came from and what it does for people.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:36

And then I also loved the connection of working with people and realizing the power of what that means to be on a team, work with people.

Ken Meyer: 00:03:43

And that's really what drew me into the food business.

Anderson Williams: 00:03:45

Yeah.

Anderson Williams: 00:03:46

And how did you find that transition from the family farm to the business side of food or agriculture or otherwise?

Anderson Williams: 00:03:55

How did you make that transition and what maybe surprised you as you moved from the heart of being on a farm and being a producer to the business side of food?

Ken Meyer: 00:04:04

I think the benefit of growing up on a farm, you understand at the beginning point of the food system, you understand it in a very deep and meaningful way.

Ken Meyer: 00:04:14

So having that perspective and then going into the retail side of it where you're transacting, building a business, selling product, building a relationship with the customer.

Ken Meyer: 00:04:23

You have that beginning point, which is really powerful and understanding.

Ken Meyer: 00:04:26

And then as I sort of realized, wow, this is about people.

Ken Meyer: 00:04:30

It's about the people that you work with, the people that are producing product for you, the communities that you're in, it's about the customers that you have.

Ken Meyer: 00:04:37

When I realized that sort of stakeholder understanding, like it really gave me this connection deeply to wanting to pursue that even further.

Anderson Williams: 00:04:45

Was that through your studies that you kind of got that awareness, or how did you get to that point?

Ken Meyer: 00:04:50

Look, I'll be honest, whether we edit this or not, like I think this is worth knowing like I barely graduated from college, but I got out and I'll say I learned a ton while I was in college, but I also really realized that by the internships that I did.

Ken Meyer: 00:05:04

By actually going out and working in Seattle, Washington for a small retailer going to New York City, working for a really well known family retailer, and I realized, I said, oh, this is good.

Ken Meyer: 00:05:15

If I work really hard, I can build relationships with people.

Ken Meyer: 00:05:18

I can find my pathway here.

Ken Meyer: 00:05:19

I never knew like where I was going.

Ken Meyer: 00:05:22

I only knew that I loved what I was doing and I think that's what kept me focused on being in the realm of what meant a lot to me, and that's how I sort of pursued my career.

Anderson Williams: 00:05:31

Yeah, and how did you get to Whole Foods?

Anderson Williams: 00:05:33

And you were there, as I mentioned, for 24 years.

Anderson Williams: 00:05:36

What was Whole Foods like when you first got there?

Ken Meyer: 00:05:38

Yeah, I mean, I worked for a retailer in New York City called D'Agostino and we had hired someone to do labor and logistical planning for us, and they trained me on that and so I learned this really interesting skill for the business and the consultant that worked with us called me up one day and said, Hey, these guys in Washington DC are looking to hire somebody to do this work.

Ken Meyer: 00:05:56

I don't want to do it.

Ken Meyer: 00:05:57

Would you want to do it?

Ken Meyer: 00:05:58

And so what it was was it was Fresh Fields, which was a company that was bought by Whole Foods.

Ken Meyer: 00:06:02

What I didn't realize at the time is they hired me to help prepare to sell the Whole Foods an so, I went down and I actually was in a relationship with my ex-wife at the time and her and I, I always joke 'cause she worked for the CIA, wrote the President's Daily Briefing and I used to tell her I would never live in Washington DC 'cause I live in New York City.

Ken Meyer: 00:06:21

Next thing you know, I'm moving to Washington, DC and starting my career.

Anderson Williams: 00:06:24

Never say never.

Ken Meyer: 00:06:26

Exactly, that's the one lesson I can tell everyone.

Ken Meyer: 00:06:28

Never say never.

Ken Meyer: 00:06:29

'Cause it's always the things you don't expect happen.

Ken Meyer: 00:06:32

I ended up going down there and doing that work, and that's how I sort of began my career with Whole Foods.

Ken Meyer: 00:06:36

And I thought when the merger happened between Whole Foods and Fresh Fields, I thought I was gonna be one of the first people that they were gonna fire because why would they need a guy doing labor scheduling?

Ken Meyer: 00:06:44

But what I didn't realize is they had sort of an idea of how I can help them in their business.

Ken Meyer: 00:06:48

And so I was able to stick around through the merger and start a career with them.

Anderson Williams: 00:06:52

Yeah, it's amazing.

Anderson Williams: 00:06:53

And I'm gonna jump forward and then I'm gonna come back to your time.

Anderson Williams: 00:06:56

'Cause you also were a part of Whole Foods as Amazon purchased Whole Foods.

Anderson Williams: 00:07:00

Talk a little bit about those two bookend kinds of sales and integrations in your career.

Ken Meyer: 00:07:05

I mean, it's interesting because it gave me early days what it means and feels like to be acquired by somebody.

Ken Meyer: 00:07:11

But then we went and started acquiring a lot of companies that I was involved with.

Ken Meyer: 00:07:15

So we acquired over 24 companies during my time at Whole Foods.

Ken Meyer: 00:07:19

So I was able to take that beginning point of being someone who is on the team but not leading to know that experience.

Ken Meyer: 00:07:25

And then on the other side of it is I was the one that really sort of initiated the process with Amazon and led that beginning negotiations and created that opportunity for us to then go to a very large organization and navigate that process.

Ken Meyer: 00:07:37

It was like truly like two bookends of an experience and a lot that happened in between.

Ken Meyer: 00:07:42

But I learned a lot about how do you create the transparency in a process so that you can build trust, and when the trust is built, you can then find common ground to then negotiate and create a really good combination of an organization.

Anderson Williams: 00:07:56

Well, I would pull on that a little bit more because I have to believe, I don't know about from the Fresh Fields to the Whole Foods transition but I imagine that there were a whole lot of questions within Whole Foods with the Amazon transaction, and how do we stay Whole Foods if we're gonna be a part of this giant company, and this is a tech company.

Anderson Williams: 00:08:14

So talk a little bit about that trust conversation that you all had to have with your people during that transaction.

Ken Meyer: 00:08:22

I think the understanding of what it means to have a big organization like Amazon come in and buy another big organization like Whole Foods, like there's a lot of fear.

Ken Meyer: 00:08:30

So fear is always present in that process.

Ken Meyer: 00:08:33

And how do you address that?

Ken Meyer: 00:08:34

And a lot of it was, we were, as an organization, very transparent.

Ken Meyer: 00:08:37

During the deal process, there were only six of us that knew that it was happening in Whole Foods and six of people in Amazon that knew it was happening, so no one knew.

Ken Meyer: 00:08:44

We had to keep that very quiet during the process of negotiating the deal, and we did a lot of back and forth to negotiate that deal.

Ken Meyer: 00:08:51

Once it was announced, our goal was really to create an understanding of how we were gonna create a company together.

Ken Meyer: 00:08:56

And to the credit of our leadership and Amazon's leadership, we said, how do we do that?

Ken Meyer: 00:09:00

So we said, we have values in Amazon and we have values in Whole Foods.

Ken Meyer: 00:09:04

Let's create the values of how we want to combine these companies.

Ken Meyer: 00:09:06

And we went through a whole process with our stakeholders and team and built an understanding of common values.

Ken Meyer: 00:09:12

And that was really like meaningful to everybody 'cause it wasn't Amazon coming in and saying, this is the way it is and Whole Foods.

Ken Meyer: 00:09:18

Fighting that the whole time it was like, okay, how do we mutually come together and create a team and a solution that we can really thrive on?

Ken Meyer: 00:09:25

And it was certainly the intention and the way in which we navigated during the time that I was there.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:30

So I wanna go back to your time with Whole Foods prior to Amazon.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:35

24 years is a long run with one company.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:37

You came in through the initial acquisition with Fresh Fields and you were doing labor and logistical planning.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:44

Talk a little bit about your growth and career evolution within the Whole Foods experience.

Ken Meyer: 00:09:51

I always joke with people that I never realized I was there that long until I left.

Anderson Williams: 00:09:57

That's a great sign, by the way.

Ken Meyer: 00:09:58

And it was always, I was like, holy cow.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:00

I was there for a long time and I did a lot of stuff.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:02

And they're like, yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:03

And I'm like, I never thought of it that way.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:05

And I think what happened for me was I, again, the way we were building the company was all through operations.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:10

And so I knew, and someone very wisely, one of the leaders of the company said to me, Hey Ken, you know, if you want to have an opportunity and career with Whole Foods, you have to go in and run a store.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:18

Our leadership runs stores.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:20

And I was like, yes, I wanna run a store.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:22

So I went in and ran a store in Georgetown, in DC.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:25

It was a really bad situation and I went in and just realized this is an incredible opportunity to be able to be empowered, to build a business, be empowered to make decisions.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:35

And one of the things that to understandable about Whole Foods culture, that I think is really one of the beautiful things.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:39

It's an context and an empowerment culture.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:42

So we give lots of context.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:44

We create lots of transparency, and we empower our people to make the best decisions possible.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:49

We use failure as a learning mechanism, not as a punishment, and it really allowed us to build teams and build thriving businesses by doing that.

Ken Meyer: 00:10:58

And so I discovered that very quickly and then realized that my store, that I had 36 countries working in my store representing because I'm in Georgetown.

Ken Meyer: 00:11:06

World Bank, IMF, all the embassies, all these people were here from all over the world and I had this beautiful culture of people here.

Anderson Williams: 00:11:13

Wow.

Ken Meyer: 00:11:13

And when I realized that, I said, okay, how do we leverage all this into what we're doing here?

Ken Meyer: 00:11:18

And we put up on the entry in the store, everybody's language for welcome and when they left everyone's language for thank you, it made this immediate connection to the team and to the community.

Ken Meyer: 00:11:27

The community loved it.

Ken Meyer: 00:11:28

And so we really took that to heart and then built an enterprise around that and then as that progressed and succeeded, I then had opportunities to go in and I went to Austin, Texas to be the vice president of the Southwest region, the oldest region in the country.

Ken Meyer: 00:11:42

They wanted to change and they wanted some new perspective, so I was able to go into that.

Ken Meyer: 00:11:47

And then we bought a company in Atlanta and I got to go to Atlanta and do that.

Ken Meyer: 00:11:50

And I always say this to everyone.

Ken Meyer: 00:11:51

People say, well, how'd you succeed and grow?

Ken Meyer: 00:11:53

And I said, the main thing I did was I focused on doing what I was empowered to do really, really well and build a team around me.

Ken Meyer: 00:12:00

And I am only successful by the team that I built.

Ken Meyer: 00:12:03

And that's where I think I was able to see people's capabilities and help be a catalyst for them to be more successful in what they wanna do and achieve what they want to do, which then built the team for me that helped me succeed in what I was doing.

Ken Meyer: 00:12:15

So I've had the benefit of working with amazing people.

Anderson Williams: 00:12:18

Yeah.

Anderson Williams: 00:12:19

Say more about, maybe it's in the context of building teams, but you said something before about a context culture.

Anderson Williams: 00:12:25

I haven't heard context in that sense.

Anderson Williams: 00:12:28

Tell me more about what you mean when you say context in regards to culture at Whole Foods.

Ken Meyer: 00:12:33

Well, to give context around that, when we merged Fresh Fields, merged with Whole Foods, this is an interesting thing.

Ken Meyer: 00:12:39

All they cared about was making sure everyone had email.

Ken Meyer: 00:12:42

And I'm like, email and this is, we're talking about way a long time ago, in the early nineties.

Ken Meyer: 00:12:47

And what I realized was Whole Foods believed, and we believed that you have to provide lots of information and understanding to people so that they can build an understanding on their own about what's happening and not be fearful of giving them too much information.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:01

So we had open books.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:02

So if someone wanted to know how much someone else made in our company, we published a book that someone could look at.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:06

If you wanted to read anything that we wrote, other than a handful of things, it was always available to people to read.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:11

And we just wanted to build that trust.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:13

And that's the context.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:14

So when someone understands where we're going, what the mission, purpose, uh, is, and why we made a decision.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:19

So we would make a decision three ways at Whole Foods.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:22

We would do it through consensus, consultive, and command.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:26

Very rarely did you make a command decision.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:28

'cause that was always for safety and the welfare people, consultive were you wanted experts to give you advice, but ultimately you had to make the decision.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:35

Most of our decisions were made on consensus, getting the entire team to buy in and agree to it.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:40

Took time and took context.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:42

And then once we did that, we communicated that very clearly out.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:45

How do we get to this place?

Ken Meyer: 00:13:46

Why did we make the decision?

Ken Meyer: 00:13:47

What does this mean for you?

Ken Meyer: 00:13:49

How can you make it better?

Ken Meyer: 00:13:50

How can you have a part in this in the future?

Ken Meyer: 00:13:52

By doing that, giving that context and empowering people, they then go on their own and make the best decisions for the organization.

Ken Meyer: 00:13:59

Versus saying, do this, you have to be this way.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:02

Follow this guy.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:03

Like obviously those exist to a certain context, but truthfully, the best thing is the more communication you have, the more transparency you have, the more understanding you have.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:10

Leaders, team members, they buy into that and they commit to doing what's in the context of that direction.

Anderson Williams: 00:14:17

And at this point, you've worked and seen a lot of companies, a lot of different sizes.

Anderson Williams: 00:14:22

Why don't you think more people do that?

Ken Meyer: 00:14:24

Well, it's not easy.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:25

It's not easy.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:26

And Shore has this incredible process of finding really great founders and great platforms to build to then create these enterprises.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:35

A lot of founders are very much wanting to own every component of their business, and they're not comfortable giving that out to anyone.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:42

In some ways it's rightful.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:44

They're not wrong.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:45

But I think if you're going to scale and build an organization that's spreading out, you can't have everything funnel up to you.

Anderson Williams: 00:14:51

Yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:52

And so I think a little bit is, I think leadership sometimes has fear.

Ken Meyer: 00:14:56

They don't want mistakes to happen versus let them be learning mechanisms and they wanna have the control.

Ken Meyer: 00:15:01

So that's a different style of leadership.

Ken Meyer: 00:15:03

I think it's hard for organizations to get there.

Ken Meyer: 00:15:05

I find more are wanting to be in that place, but find it difficult if it didn't start in the beginning.

Anderson Williams: 00:15:11

How do you think about or talk with other Shore folks about it, CEOs or otherwise, that conversation with a potential partner who is a founder, and to your explanation, you know, rightfully it's kind of held things together.

Anderson Williams: 00:15:24

They've really muscled this thing.

Anderson Williams: 00:15:26

They've built it over years, maybe built their life around this business.

Anderson Williams: 00:15:29

How do you help them transition to that platform thinking and any thoughts on how you would recommend or advise having those conversations with the founder who's considering a private equity backing and considering becoming part of a platform company?

Ken Meyer: 00:15:44

We deal with it all the time, and I think the thing that I move to with these founders.

Ken Meyer: 00:15:48

What are the constraints that have prevented you from going and becoming either bigger or different or evolved?

Ken Meyer: 00:15:57

Like what's stopping you?

Ken Meyer: 00:15:58

And when you do that, they have this reflection process.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:01

And this is where I think it's an important thing because how self-reflective a founder is tells you a lot about their ability to transition into a bigger organization.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:10

And if they struggle with sort of saying, oh no, you know, we don't need any of that, I've got this all figured out.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:15

Then you kind of start having these markers of saying, you know, this might be a difficult transition for this person, but what I find more times than not, founders feel constrained.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:23

They don't have the capital, but they don't have the resources.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:25

And a lot of it's the resources is the team, the expertise to level up the business.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:30

And I think what we are able to do is really talk about that relationship that we build from the beginning of trust, that ability to help them provide better resource, team, and structure and then fuel their growth, not just with capital.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:43

'cause capital's everywhere.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:44

Like capital's not a unique substance, but intellectual understanding of a business capabilities to build team capabilities, to build better ways of working, better mechanisms.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:55

Those are the strengths that Sure has.

Ken Meyer: 00:16:57

That I think make us so successful and so unique.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:00

And I think it's also from the top where our culture is our culture.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:04

I always say to people, how'd you end up at Shore?

Ken Meyer: 00:17:06

You know, Justin and I met several times.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:07

Breakfast, lunch, called me up like, and it wasn't until I came in and met the team and said, ah, this is a lot like Whole Foods.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:14

The thinking here, the ability to help a small founder be able to grow their business and realize a greater potential.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:20

And that's when I really sort of saw how we can do this.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:23

And so not every founder works and some, you know, we realized, maybe it's different lane for them.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:28

Yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:28

But a lot of 'em are really, they love the structure that we provide.

Anderson Williams: 00:17:31

Yeah, I think that maybe your experience, you mentioned before that I don't know that everybody would necessarily understand myself included, but that Whole Foods was acquisitive and so you were experiencing the acquisition integration process as part of Whole Foods.

Anderson Williams: 00:17:45

It's, most of us just know it as this big brand.

Anderson Williams: 00:17:48

In reality, your process in the years you were there, there was a lot of this kind of acquisition and integration going on, right?

Ken Meyer: 00:17:54

Yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:17:54

I mean, there was 27 stores when Fresh Fields was bought by Whole Foods, and we doubled 22 outta 22 stores literally overnight.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:01

And then from there for the next several years, we bought geographical positions all over the country, which then became the foundations for our regions.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:09

So then we had 12 regions.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:10

Once those regions were established, we'd buy smaller groups of retailers that we knew.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:14

It's also to know, like we couldn't just buy any retailer.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:17

We had to buy a retailer that had very similar values, quality standards as we did, because otherwise it was such a big transition.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:24

And then we built stores, and then we built stores on top of those foundations.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:27

So you had to get a founder that was really willing to go and be part of what we are doing.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:33

Truthfully, most of the founders chose this as an opportunity to step away.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:37

What we found is the second tier of leadership.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:39

All rose up because they were with a founder that was sort of like holding them.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:43

Whereas when they saw the whole Foods culture and empowerment and context, they just, they thrived.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:48

And that's, which is what I did.

Ken Meyer: 00:18:49

I was sort of under the radar person in leadership and then I realized this is exactly how I wanna be as a leader and be as a team member.

Anderson Williams: 00:18:56

Yeah, what did you learn about finding the right founder or team in the Whole Foods process?

Anderson Williams: 00:19:02

That is informs how you support Shore companies as well.

Anderson Williams: 00:19:06

Just in you referenced it, the challenge when you don't find the right founder and the right team that those struggles last year trying to integrate and align and all of those things.

Anderson Williams: 00:19:15

So just any thoughts on what that looked like for you at Whole Foods, but then also maybe how you coach with Shore companies as well.

Ken Meyer: 00:19:21

I think, and it's an interesting thing because I focus a lot on what's called EQ.

Ken Meyer: 00:19:27

We all know what that is, emotional intelligence 'cause that tells me a lot about who that leader is, that founder is.

Ken Meyer: 00:19:33

And that's what we would focus on a lot.

Ken Meyer: 00:19:35

Obviously that's, you know, is it a great business?

Ken Meyer: 00:19:38

Is it operated well?

Ken Meyer: 00:19:39

Does it have the potential to be more, but then if you're talking about founder to joining, whether it was joining Whole Foods or joining Shore, like I really focused on that because it told me so much about how they would be able to succeed in the environment that we were creating and building.

Ken Meyer: 00:19:54

And the advantage of Whole Foods is the culture always evolved.

Ken Meyer: 00:19:56

It always changed.

Ken Meyer: 00:19:58

Every time we made an acquisition, it created another level of uniqueness in the same way we do at Shore that is true.

Ken Meyer: 00:20:04

Whenever you start with your platform, you add a company, you add more companies, that culture is always evolving.

Ken Meyer: 00:20:09

That leadership has to be able to be evolving and adapting and willing to allow the organization to get bigger than them.

Ken Meyer: 00:20:17

And I think that's where the EQ comes in 'cause a lot of times the organization and the person, they're defining of each other and it's the leaders that are able to step back and say, okay, I want this organization to grow.

Ken Meyer: 00:20:27

I'm okay if I'm not totally tied to that anymore, but I know what I did to get it to that point and that's the thing I look at.

Anderson Williams: 00:20:34

So I wanna switch gears a little bit because you've also invested in a couple of other and started some other companies with Midnight Ventures and Primo Fair.

Anderson Williams: 00:20:43

Will you talk just a little bit about that and how that extends your work in food and why those are part of your journey at this point?

Ken Meyer: 00:20:50

I look at my body of work and the world today as a function of all my passion.

Ken Meyer: 00:20:55

I had the benefit of overseeing and leading our venture group.

Ken Meyer: 00:20:58

And so we were funding lots of small companies to help grow them.

Ken Meyer: 00:21:02

And when I left, we founded this group, Midnight Ventures, to be able to be in the food space, investing in very young startup organizations.

Ken Meyer: 00:21:10

And I have a great team around me that is super smart, young, and we pretty much see every interesting product that's coming into the market now, which is really fun.

Ken Meyer: 00:21:19

Really fun.

Ken Meyer: 00:21:20

They love to have us consider them.

Ken Meyer: 00:21:22

Primo Fair again, I sort of look at my body of work at Whole Foods, I had the UK group, I used to oversee that group as part of my team, and I used to joke, I'd go to the UK for two days and then I'd travel for two weeks visiting all of our producers in Europe and getting to know them because they were making product for us.

Ken Meyer: 00:21:39

When I left Whole Foods, I sort of said to myself, how could I build an enterprise around this?

Ken Meyer: 00:21:43

That allows me to continue to do that, but in a different sort of space.

Ken Meyer: 00:21:47

And Primo Fara was built on the premise that there's a lot of really amazing European food companies that want to have business opportunity in the US but they don't have the capability to do it.

Ken Meyer: 00:21:58

And so what we have done is whether they're $300M, $400M company in Italy, or a $5M company in France, or a $100K company in Italy.

Ken Meyer: 00:22:07

If the product is really interesting, we bring that product into the us.

Ken Meyer: 00:22:11

We buy product, we're like a traditional distributor, but we also then work on only marketplaces.

Ken Meyer: 00:22:16

And so one of my partners was the founder of iGourmet.

Ken Meyer: 00:22:19

He realized that his business was being constrained to grow because of Amazon and Walmart and all these marketplaces, the dot coms.

Ken Meyer: 00:22:27

And so our business model with Primo Fair is we work with brands only on marketplaces before we go into physical retail, and it creates this whole opening of enterprise for them that they never thought about, even if they're in physical retail in the US right now.

Ken Meyer: 00:22:40

So it's a great way for me to stay connected to all my European producers.

Anderson Williams: 00:22:44

When you think about that work from the investor perspective, and you think about what you know and have seen from the Executive Partner perspective with Shore

Anderson Williams: 00:22:53

as well as your own operating experience.

Anderson Williams: 00:22:55

What have you learned about building something that lasts from all of your experience?

Ken Meyer: 00:22:59

Well, I think you can use these words any way you have to have grit and you have to be tenacious and grit, meaning you're gonna have lots of rejections 'cause you know, either people don't understand what you're trying to do or they don't believe in what you're trying to do, but you have the conviction to be able to pursue it.

Ken Meyer: 00:23:14

The tenaciousness is you have to open every door and push through every door and not let yourself have a door closed and not go to the next one and open it and I think that is such an important thing that I've learned in all my business.

Ken Meyer: 00:23:27

So whether it's my work with Shore, work with Primo Fair or my experiences and work with Whole Foods or my work with Midnight, is that if you really have conviction with what you're doing and you really believe in it, you have to stay in that journey.

Ken Meyer: 00:23:39

It's easy to get sidetracked, and I always say, um, success is about deduction.

Ken Meyer: 00:23:44

Meaning you have to deduct things that you're doing that aren't lining up to how you're gonna succeed 'cause we have a tendency to get distracted very easily.

Ken Meyer: 00:23:52

And so instead of, you know, no road to success is straight, it's always a weave, but it's also to what degree do you weave and let go of something to then continue down the pathway of where you're going.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:02

And having that conviction and believing what you're doing is really important.

Anderson Williams: 00:24:06

Now, I gotta believe that when you fail to deduce in those early days is when you grow and then that system isn't ready to scale because it's noisy and it's got multiple parts and factions and fractures and those kinds of things.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:18

Yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:18

Yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:18

And I see that all the time with Midnight, where these founders have a great product and then all of a sudden they're like, well, we've got this one and this one, this one.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:24

And we're like, you haven't even gotten down 10 yards on the first one.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:28

I always want an inch wide mile deep versus inch deep mile wide.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:32

And that's again, founder focus, business leader focus, is really important.

Anderson Williams: 00:24:37

So when you think about your career, what have you accomplished that you're most proud of?

Ken Meyer: 00:24:43

My most proud is that my kids are proud of me.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:45

That's it to me.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:47

It's always funny 'cause people are like, what motivates you?

Ken Meyer: 00:24:49

And I said, my children motivate me.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:51

They are my, the center of my world.

Ken Meyer: 00:24:53

And for them to now be very interested in what I'm doing and versus, oh, you're just a guy who works at a grocery store, you know.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:01

You bag groceries and, and.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:02

Like I would bring them to openings all the time, and all I would do is bag groceries.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:07

And they're like, oh, all you do is buy groceries, dad.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:09

I'm like, yeah, but I'm talking to the customer like, but you're just bagging groceries.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:12

So for me it's really like that's my biggest accomplishment is the ability to have them see and connect to what I'm doing and understand that it has this deeper meaning.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:21

Yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:21

And that I'm doing something meaningful.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:23

That's awesome.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:24

Well, just to go further on the family side of things, does your family that was on the farm recognize the connection as to.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:31

Oh yeah.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:31

Where you.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:32

Yeah, growing up on a farm, I mean, here's the thing.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:34

My dad was the only one in his family who left South Dakota to go to college.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:39

He went to graduate school and then went in the Peace Corps, was in the first class in the Peace Corps.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:44

Went to Africa, worked in Africa, and then came and worked for Kodak.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:48

So we moved to Rochester, New York, but he said we're gonna have a family farm so you can experience what we did.

Anderson Williams: 00:25:54

Oh, wow.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:54

As a child growing up and it ended up being a very big farm.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:57

And we actually did something very interesting.

Ken Meyer: 00:25:59

My dad, early days, he had this very large group that he worked with and we were raising hogs and he created the first, in my mind, like one of the early days, CSAs Community Supported Agriculture.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:09

Yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:09

He would go in and with an order form and people would fill out the order form and we would custom butcher hogs for the, all the people that worked for him and they'd come on a Saturday morning, 30 cars lined up, picking up their orders.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:19

And so we started this whole little enterprise doing that as kids.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:22

And so for him to see what I'm doing now and my mom, they totally see the connection.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:26

They knew like that there would be something there for me.

Anderson Williams: 00:26:29

Well, and he carried that value from his own background, right?

Ken Meyer: 00:26:32

He totally.

Anderson Williams: 00:26:32

He didn't have to do that.

Anderson Williams: 00:26:33

He was working for Kodak and doing these other things.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:35

I know, he knew the value of like what it meant to work really hard.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:38

So I got to play sports if I worked milking cows at 3:30 in the morning.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:42

So I would get up between 3:30 and 4:00 in the morning, milk cows, go to school, play sports.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:47

That was the way, and I didn't know any better.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:49

Like I thought that's what everybody did.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:50

And so you learn that discipline of hard work.

Ken Meyer: 00:26:53

I think they recognized that that was what I carried into my career and I never really, it really wasn't about the titles of what I had over my career.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:00

It was really about the opportunity to do interesting things.

Anderson Williams: 00:27:03

Yeah.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:03

And work with great people.

Anderson Williams: 00:27:04

Yeah.

Anderson Williams: 00:27:05

What's the best advice you ever got?

Ken Meyer: 00:27:07

Oh.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:08

You know, I remember working in New York and there was a job that came up and the president of the D'Agostinos came in and I said to him, I said, why didn't I get considered for that job?

Ken Meyer: 00:27:17

And he said, no one's gonna pick you.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:19

You gotta raise your hand.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:20

It was interesting.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:21

It was the first time someone said to me like, no matter how good you are, you've gotta show up.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:25

And I think one other little nugget that I think was really great advice was, and I give this as much as I had gotten it, carry it forward, is a lot of people always ask me like, what does it take to get to where you are?

Ken Meyer: 00:27:34

And I say, it takes you focusing on what you're doing today, not thinking about what you want to do tomorrow or next week or next month or next year.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:42

Be really successful in what you're doing today.

Ken Meyer: 00:27:44

That creates the opportunity and so often it's hard because we're always looking at what's next versus what we are, and then we wonder, why aren't we doing better here?

Ken Meyer: 00:27:51

Why can't we get this recognition?

Ken Meyer: 00:27:54

It's like, because you're busy not focusing on what you're doing.

Anderson Williams: 00:27:56

I gotta believe that ties to working on a farm, because you can't be looking ahead and forget to feed the animals, or.

Ken Meyer: 00:28:03

Yeah, you've gotta be very present.

Ken Meyer: 00:28:05

You've gotta take care of the things that matter the most each day and doing 'em at the highest level, like striving for excellence.

Ken Meyer: 00:28:12

That was the other thing that I was taught very young in the retail business, was that, you know, someone would say to me, there's a place for everything, everything has its place.

Ken Meyer: 00:28:19

And why did that matter in retail?

Ken Meyer: 00:28:20

Because if you didn't execute really succinctly what you were merchandising in that store, the ability to maximize the sales or get the customer experience to where it was, you could never do that.

Ken Meyer: 00:28:29

And I love that sort of mindset, and that was a discipline that I think has helped me most of the time.

Anderson Williams: 00:28:42

If you enjoyed this episode, check out our other Microcap Moments episodes at www.shorecp.university/podcasts or anywhere you get your podcasts.

Anderson Williams: 00:28:52

Here you will also find our Bigger.

Anderson Williams: 00:28:54

Stronger.

Anderson Williams: 00:28:54

Faster.

Anderson Williams: 00:28:55

and Everyday Heroes series each highlighting the people and stories that make investing in the lower middle market unique.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:01

This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners and recorded in the Andrew Malone Podcast Studio with story and narration by Anderson Williams.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:09

Recording by Austin Johnson.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:11

Editing by Reel Audiobooks.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:13

Sound design, mixing, and mastering by Mark Gallup of Reel Audiobooks.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:17

Special thanks to Ken Meyer.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:19

This podcast is The Property of Shore Capital Partners, LLC.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:22

None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security.

Anderson Williams: 00:29:31

See the Terms of Use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.