706: Daniel Lubetzky - KIND Snacks Founder & Shark Tank Investor on Kindness, Grit, Values-Driven Leadership. and Building a Billion-Dollar Brand

Ryan Hawk (0:00)

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Welcome to The Learning Leader Show presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader, Daniel Lubetzky, graduated from Stanford Law School. And then declined lucrative job offers to start his own business, only paying himself $24,000 a year for a decade. But then he founded KIND and grew it into a snack brand that Mars later valued at $5 billion and went on to acquire. Today, he invests full-time on Shark Tank. And he's the son of a Holocaust survivor whose story has shaped everything Daniel has built. During our conversation, we discussed the difference between a scarcity mindset and one of abundance. Daniel shares a fascinating story about how he changed his mind about giving away product and how it changed everything for KIND. Then he talks about the three must-have attributes in an entrepreneur he'll invest in on Shark Tank. And towards the end, he gets really jacked up talking about the four Cs of a builder's mindset. So good. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Daniel Lubetzky.

I saw that picture over your right shoulder.

I did a lot of studying leading up to this conversation, and that happens to be a picture of your dad. And this just blew me away. I mean, they're in your dad, his brother, and your grandfather. So your dad's dad. They're together, but they're in, is it pronounced Dachau?

Daniel Lubetzky (3:24)

Dachau.

Ryan Hawk (3:25)

Dachau. OK. And they're on a death march to be pushed off of a cliff?

I mean, I was floored. So what happened?

Daniel Lubetzky (3:37)

Yeah, so as the Allies, the Americans and their Allies, were advancing to liberate both the concentration camps and the whole content of Europe away from the Nazis, and their partners, Hitler's people, him and his people came up with something called the Final Solution because they didn't have enough bullets to kill all the Jewish inmates they had in all the concentration camps. They were going to walk them up the cliffs and then push them off so they would all die from the mountains. And my dad at that time, he was 12 and a half years old when he was entered into the concentration camp. My grandfather lied and said that he was born in 1927 instead of 1930 so that they would let him work. So they thought he was 15, but 12 and a half when he got there, 15 and a half when this story happens. But he is six feet tall but weighs less than 70 pounds. Like he's almost not alive. Like he is one of those people so emanciated and they start walking them. He has no shoes. Part of what my grandfather did is get him some makeshift stuff because a lot of people died on the way. Forget about being thrown off the ravine. They died from exhaustion. It's winter conditions. People are exhausted. They have no coats or anything.

And as they get towards the top, a very big snowstorm takes over the place. And the Nazis keep marching because they figured, these guys are going to die in the storm. My father, my grandfather, my uncle hug and say goodbye to each other. And the snow covers them, but it forms some sort of igloo-type situation where they stay warm with each other's bodies. They pass out, but hours later in the morning, they wake up, cover out the snow, come out. Can you imagine all these barely human sub-human figures coming out of the snow? And they look and the Nazis are gone because they kept advancing because their allies were coming. So they were starving. They started walking towards the town to try to get some food. They start walking on the roads and they see these tanks approaching and they're like, oh, shit, there's the Nazis again. But it wasn't the Nazis. It was the Allies. It was the US. Allies. What's really funny about the story, Ryan, is they were all Japanese Americans. It was the 442nd Battalion, 556th Regiment. I hope I'm not messing that up.