When Margaret Wishingrad decided to reinvent cereal, she had no food background, no manufacturing contacts, and no business plan.
What she did have was “naivete, a dream, and delusion.” So, Three Wishes Cereal was born.
I couldn’t stop smiling through this conversation. Partly because Margaret is pure sunshine. And partly because she took me right back to my own food CPG roots, and my time at Perfect Bar.
Perfect Bar is where I grew up professionally. It’s where I stopped being just an executor and started becoming a strategist, and I owe so much of that to my team and my leaders there. On a small team, everyone is scrappy, everyone is gritty, and everyone is a generalist. You figure it out because there’s no one else to do it.
Now, 18 months after quitting my last full-time job to go out on my own as a consultant in search of a more balanced life, Margaret’s work approach of going for it and figuring it out along the way really hits.
In defense of the generalist
Lately I hear a lot about niching down, especially once you make the jump to contract work: you need to get tight, get specific. You need to become the expert in one thing.
Meh.
I think being a generalist is your (and my) greatest superpower. And Margaret agrees.
It lets you pivot and readjust. It lets you take it day by day and not get too attached to anything, which helps when you’re building something for the first time.
When you go through any kind of rebrand, you pull from your lived experience, but you’re mostly standing somewhere you’ve never stood before. If you’re not a generalist by trade, that can be really, really hard.
Just ask any entrepreneur. Last week I joked on TikTok about sending an email to my entire list. When it’s just you, you’re the CEO, the CMO, the CTO, the lifecycle manager, and the social media manager. You wear hats that fit awkwardly and sit nowhere near your zone of genius, and you wear them anyway.
I am able to figure out whatever I need to figure out.
The case for staying a little naive
And the delusion? She’s grateful she didn’t know what was coming. “When you know what to expect, you have the ability to be fearful,” she told me. Some of the most brilliant people never start their own thing, she thinks, because they’re “almost too smart for their own good.” For Margaret, it was “a delusional thing that paid off.”
We love a little delulu.
What else you’ll hear in this episode:
Launching a food brand in the middle of COVID
The Central Park stroller moment that sparked Three Wishes
Building a company with your husband
Two years of no’s (and “that’s a cute idea, sweetheart”) on the way to launch
Why she’d hire for grit over skills every time
Listen and watch here
Cat
P.S. In honor of this week’s full moon and inspired by Margaret, here’s my dose of delulu:
I’m looking for a Season 2 sponsor for It’s Called a Re:Brand.
If your brand believes in women rebranding themselves and their industries (or you know one that does), hit reply or email [email protected] so we can chat.
Now your turn. What dose of delulu are you carrying into your next thing?
