STEPHANIE LIND: ELOHI / 9 NO’S TO YES / ALL YOU HAVE IS A 2 WEEK CONTRACT

·1 hr 3 min·4 clips

Stephanie says plant-based food's collapse had "nothing to do with whether or not it's healthy."

1. Fell Into Food Podcast centers on Stephanie Lind's route from Girl Scout cookie sales to food-and-beverage strategy. 2. Jeff Fell hosts, and Stephanie Lind appears as founder and CEO of Elohi Strategic Advisors, with roles at Frito-Lay, Nabisco, PepsiCo, and Impossible Foods. 3. The episode asks how a sales-driven career became food consulting, and why Stephanie keeps saying "I can't help you" to bad-fit clients. 4. Stephanie starts with age five, when she sold Girl Scout cookies by phone and in a red flyer wagon. 5. Her mother, who worked in real estate and later sold ads for a CBS station, refused to take the cookies to her office. 6. At 16, Stephanie rode with her mother through southeastern Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, and southern Illinois on sales trips. 7. Her mother told her selling is hard and that she needs "nine no's to get to the yes." 8. Stephanie says that advice stuck because her mother was a force of nature and because math and puzzle-solving mattered in sales. 9. She describes an archaeological dig in Idaho, work on the House Select Committee on Hunger, and a college plan to go into nonprofit work. 10. The 1992 recession pushed her into Frito-Lay, where she drove a truck and sold from a mobile warehouse. 11. At Nabisco, she inherited a customer nobody wanted and built an EDLP program that others said would not work. 12. She says she spent months negotiating with a buyer who lined vendors up from Wednesday to Friday and gave her no easy path. 13. The program eventually sold, trade spend went down, and sales went up. 14. She argues that sales works best when a manufacturer understands customer needs and the guardrails of its own system. 15. Stephanie says big-company selling at PepsiCo was complex because she had to manage Tropicana, Gatorade, Frito-Lay, and Quaker across different P&Ls and marketing teams. 16. She says she founded Elohi in 2015 after deciding she would not work for "any more assholes." 17. She later joined Impossible Foods as head of global sales for the 2018 launch while still owning Elohi. 18. Stephanie says companies trust outside voices more than employees, and she ties that to fear, politics, and the reality that "all any employee has is a two-week contract." 19. The conversation is blunt, sales-oriented, and built around first-hand examples from food service, retail, and plant-based launches. 20. Listeners who like food-industry strategy and direct career stories will fit this episode, while people avoiding sales politics may skip it.

As heard by us

Senior food work meets its leverage test in relocation, buyouts, and politics.

The episode looks at the hidden cost of staying in food once someone moves up the ladder: relocation clauses, buyouts, and the politics that make honesty expensive. It works best when it gets specific about being fired, leaving a role, or realizing fast that a job is not a fit.

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Why you'd press play

If your job comes with strings, this one will feel painfully familiar.

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