DG @DaveGreeny - Twitter Profile

It’s been a little while since I’ve been active & posted anything on here. I went back and forth on whether I should share this, but figured it might resonate with a lot of folks out there who are struggling, hustling, grinding — doing everything in their power to achieve “success”, finish the year strong, and set themselves up for a great 2024. For the last 6 years, I had a simple way of calibrating my life. Dream Pops was #1 — above health, family, friends, fitness — it was the only thing that mattered. I flew across the country and attended every trade show I could. Pitched buyers. Manufactured product out of a tiny commercial kitchen. Scaled into a commercial facility. Got into retailers. Generated as much content for the business as possible daily. Started a podcast. Locked in brand collaborations. Built an amazing team. Pivoted to bites. Rarely said “no”. Meeting after meeting after meeting. ++ Put every piece of my being into breaking through and building a successful CPG company. However, this year stopped me in my tracks. On the morning of September 12, a week before Expo East, I woke up with throbbing pain. I figured I could shake it off since I had 4 consecutive shows the next two months and thought, it couldn’t be “that serious”. I’d ignore the pain and handle it when I got back. After all, I couldn’t miss Expo East, CHFA, our Mondelez CoLab graduation, NFRA and a factory visit.. Before leaving, I scheduled a quick checkup and an ultrasound and didn’t think much of it. This led to a late night phone call with my doctor who told me that I needed to get on an operating table asap. I got the surgery done, and afterwards the pathology report found that I had Stage 1b testicular cancer. Little did I know that every day I waited to have the surgery, there was an increased risk of the cancer spreading to my lymph-nodes and other organs. Fast forward to today - I am going to be okay, the cancer didn’t spread and I’m on routine surveillance and undergoing treatment. However through all of this, I realized that putting your health second, and having tunnel vision can come with an extremely high price tag. Starting a cpg brand is a brutally challenging business. It’s by far the hardest thing I’ve ever done and requires the perfect combination of luck, timing, product, brand, team and timing. ;) But please don’t sacrifice your health in exchange for a hopeful exit or the illusion of “success”. Great things take time. And you can’t sprint marathons. There’s no question that we’ve all been berated by unrealistic headlines and anomalies in F&B the last decade. The paradigm has shifted as have investor expectations. Take your time. Build a business with solid fundamentals. Make $. Go slow. :) Wishing you all a happy and healthy holidays. Please don’t forget to take care of yourself. Health is always #1.