Daniel Lubetzky’s Huge Gamble (And the Secret of the Second Act Pivot)

I’ve had a really fun week. Three different major corporate brands wanted to talk about partnerships. It’s been a whirlwind of high-level strategy and green lights.

I’m telling you this not to humble brag, but to impress upon you that you should have fat corporate contracts and big-brand partnerships too! And because I’m so excited w/ this momentum, I’ve restructured my schedule and decided to open up a couple last spots in my corporate contracts coaching program.

6 weeks, hands on, you and me, and the end result? To get you a juicy, life-changing deal with a big corporation. If you’re ready to stop grinding and start scaling, email me at [email protected] with the subject “Coaching”.

We live in a culture that worships the 22-year-old tech bro, but the real wisdom, the hard-won lessons, usually comes after you have taken a few punches.

Daniel Lubetzky is the patron saint of that second act.

unKIND

In the late 90s, Daniel Lubetzky was a man on a mission.

The son of a Holocaust survivor, he wanted to use business for the noblest of reasons: To help bring peace to the Middle East. So Lubetzky started “PeaceWorks”, a business that would sell imported sun-dried tomato spreads in Mediterranean jars.

He then spent a full ten years carrying a suitcase of jars on the New York City subway, begging deli owners to give him a chance. But he was hitting a wall.

The jars were heavy, they broke in transit; the logistics were a nightmare. The demand was minimal.

Imagine a decade of your life spent lugging glass on a humid subway, only to have a merchant tell you no for the thousandth time. After a decade of grinding, he was exhausted. He was working at a 10/10 intensity for a 2/10 return.

The Big Pivot

Daniel’s breakthrough happened when he looked at the trash on his own desk one afternoon.

Constantly traveling, he was living on snack bars, and he noticed a depressing pattern: They were all either healthy but tasted like chalk, or tasty but were just candy bars in disguise.

Lubetzky realized he didn’t need to change his mission, he needed to change his product. While people respected peace, what they actually needed at 3:00 PM was a snack that didn't taste like cardboard.

So he decided to apply his peace mission to a product people bought every single day: A healthy, tasty, transparent, whole-nut snack.

The Big Bet

At that critical, no going back, burn-the-ships moment, Daniel took his hard-eared $100,000 of profits from the jar business and bet it all on a brand he dubbed KIND.

And then he made another, equally radical choice: Clear packaging.

At a time when every other bar was hidden in a dark foil wrapper, Lubetzky wanted people to see the whole almonds and the real fruit. He bet that what you see is what you get was the antidote to the icky protein bars of the era.

Lubetzky was betting that transparency was a competitive advantage.

And he was right.

The Big Payoff

You know the rest of the story.

Today, KIND brand is a multi-billion dollar global brand.

Interestingly, the real breakout happened when the company scaled its sampling budget from a meager $800 to 20 million dollars, eventually landing in every Starbucks in America.

Daniel didn't give up his mission of kindness; he just found a Million Dollar Path that allowed the mission to scale.

The Takeaway

If you feel stuck, it’s not that you lack talent. It very well could be because you are trying to sell sun-dried tomato spread when your tribe is starving for the KIND bar. Sometimes, the million-dollar breakthrough happens when you stop auditioning for the experts and start owning your unique selling point.

What can you do that no one else can?

Do that.

Steal This Strategy

📖 Book: Do Kind by Daniel Lubetzky. Daniel’s manual for building a brand with purpose and the refugee edge. This is the real-world playbook for the second act pivot.

🎧 Watch: Daniel Lubetzky’s Ted Talk. Why the world needs more builders.

🛠️ Tool: Work for Yourself at 50 Plus. AARP Foundation’s toolkit for older entrepreneurs.

About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!