Margaret Rudkin started off searching for foods that were tailored to her son's needs as he had many allergies to the foods that were available. She was unable to find foods that fit his diet so she created her own, experimenting with different bread recipes that would not trigger his allergies. They had a family doctor that would come in check to check on Margaret’s son and prior to her making the bread that fit his needs he was not progressing well in terms of health.
The doctor recommended that the son be on a very strict diet of minimally processed foods eating fruits and vegetables but was not enough to make significant improvement. After he was regularly eating the homemade bread which was made from stone-ground whole wheat bread that contained all its vitamins and nutrients, she made him the doctor saw significant improvement in his health and asked what changed and Margaret told him it was the bread she made so he tried it and found it very tasting.
This was in 1936 so at the time commercially available bread was mostly processed that was bleached known as white bread so a lot of its essential nutrients and vitamins were stripped out of it. Before she created the recipe that worked for her son there were many people that doubted that nutritious bread could be made that would be delicious, including her doctor. This just emphasizes the importance of the belief that you have within yourself to make the vision or idea come to life by being committed to it. It's not important what others think because they're the ones not doing the work but what is vital you figuring out the potential or what can be done.
Having a reason bigger than herself
Margaret had no baking experience prior to this, it started off as a necessity to meet her son's dietary needs. She figured out a way by just trying, doing and coming up short to eventually find what suited him. Back in 1936, really the information that was available was through books and asking other people that have baked before. It's not like what we have today with just a few words we can search different things on the internet that provides us information to get us going.
Her willingness to just try and not worry about not having experience. Too many times that mental block of I don't know how to do something prevents us from even trying. But we all must start somewhere, remember we all sucked at what we did, at some point we were all bad or terrible and things just didn't come together.
For Margaret she had a reason other than herself to consistently figure out a way to do this, it was her son's health that drove her to figure out a way to make it happen. In having a reason bigger than yourself is a very powerful force because those times where you don't feel like doing it, you're reminded that it's more than just you, it's going be beneficial to others.
Where just being self-serving you might tend to take a day off here and there, and instead you'll be more inclined to say you know what I got to put my wants aside for the betterment of what others need of me. Her commitment to quality ingredients and products allowed her to create a very successful business.
Working to figure it out
As she was figuring out that winning recipe, her first loaf of bread was hard as a rock and about an inch thick, but she consistently tried different things to eventually find the recipe that's used today. This takes putting up with a lot of disappointment but being able to evaluate things in objective ways to see the good and the bad of how things can be improved as opposed to just being dominated by emotions because in times of coming up short the tendency is to just feel down.
This is such a great lesson in whatever we do when we come up short. It's natural to feel down but find a way to really self-assess where you can put some room in between yourself and the outcome. Where instead of the default mode being negative coming of saying I'm not good enough, the focus should be what is wrong, how did it go wrong and how can it be improved.
It’s important to find what went right because you can build on that as opposed to just starting over completely. This builds you up instead of tearing you down where you can fuel that belief within yourself. That is the positive momentum that can be built on. This grows your confidence that it can be done and will give more effort in the process. Essentially what it comes down to is you get a little bit better and a little bit better to where eventually that all adds up that makes a huge difference in where you were to where you are now.
Margaret knew that there was a big need for the bread she came up with and what helped her business get off the ground was the son’s doctor asked if she could bake the same bread for his other patients that had similar allergies, which agreed. In the beginning she was doing all of this out of her home kitchen and back then she was a one woman show.
She then decided to sell her bread to the grocers trying to convince them that people would buy them but they're very reluctant to do so. She was able to convince them by just giving them a taste of her bread and that sealed the deal. Sometimes words are not enough to really get people on board, but they must use some sort of their senses to really experience it.
Margaret provided a high-quality bread which separated herself from all the other commercially available white breads that were on the market. Instead of just being dictated by what the grocers wanted she set a high standard for her bread to be sold at $0.25 a loaf when other commercially available breads were sold for $0.10 a loaf. This was 150% higher. This might make a lot of people hesitate to see such a big price disparity between two products but when people gave it a try and tasted the higher quality many people eventually paid for it.
This resulted in the grocer being sold out of the loafs she provided, requesting more and then just through word of mouth the demand just came pouring in. With such a big workload that she now took on she had to find ways to produce bread on a mass scale. Margaret only had a high school diploma and was trained in bookkeeping at a firm which she eventually left to take care of her family. Her lack of not knowing did not stop her.
Desire led the way
Along with not knowing how to bake bread she also did not have experience in manufacturing, marketing, or pricing but eventually she figured all that out. She didn't need some sort of institutional education to give her the confidence that she could do it. It's just enough desire to do something and it can be done because it will drive you to find out how. To discover the information and get started and that is what Margaret did.
Let's not let lack of experience or not knowing how to do something prevent us from pursuing what we want. We've all been conditioned to see the credentials that somebody has to prove their worthiness, and this is understandable for certain occupations such as being a lawyer or a doctor or a dentist or working in finances because it's people's lives that are very directly impacted. But that shouldn't be the determining factor in wanting to get started. You don't need to go to business school to start a business, it's going be helpful but it's not the factor that's going to determine whether you're going to do well or not.
Lack of knowledge should not be a deterrent. Now if you lack that the desire and the commitment to it then that's a completely different story because things aren't just going to be handed to us, we got to go out there and make it happen and that involves being disappointed, falling flat on our faces and just failing repeatedly.
As the business grew Margaret sought help and she found a miller to stone grind the whole wheat and soon her kitchen could no longer keep up with the demand so she moved it to her garage. Then in 1940 she eventually opened her first real factory. For the first four years of her business, she ran it out of her home, and it shows the importance of being able to handle the demand that you do have. Growing too quickly can be very overwhelming as there's a lot of moving parts they need to be synced up.
Building and sustaining momentum
Margaret was such a pioneer as she helped to bring about the access to healthy foods. She understood the value that she brought, that food being wholesome and good for people. That there should be a premium on the products that she made but it was well worth it. Are people willing to compromise paying less at the expense of their health?
She expanded beyond just the first bread recipe, Pepperidge Farm eventually made more than 50 products by 1960. And during this time their products were sold through 500 distributors and 50,000 stores across the US, and they had revenues of $32,000,000 that year. This is extremely impressive.
In January of 1961 Campbell Soup bought Pepperidge Farm for about $28.2 million worth of Campbell stock but Margaret continued to run the Pepperidge Farm as its own subsidiary of Campbell. She was elected to the Campbells board of directors and was the first woman to do so. She was a very hands-on leader that personally designed manufacturing setups as she knew exactly how the bakery equipment would be situated to support the most efficient and effective ways to process their products.
Margaret is a very great example of exceptional leadership where she gave a lot of opportunities to women, as many of the people that worked in her factories were women. And this was in the time of the 1930s to the 1960s that women really didn't work let alone hold leadership positions, but she really paved the way and was a great example to many other powerful women.
Barriers can be seen as simply a way to intimidate everybody who's on the outside to make them doubt themselves that they can't do things. Being excluded does give a bit of a not feeling worthy enough but know that we are enough that we are capable if we're willing to break down those barriers. It's helpful to see others who look like us whether its young girls looking up to powerful women whether its brown people looking up to all the brown people who had lots of success.
It gives that example of it can be done. But even if there isn't somebody that looks like you, yet you admire them and what they've done know that you can do the same, that you can forge your own path. We don't have to look like everybody else to know that we can do what we really want. It's just important to really build yourself up to be empowered through your self-talk, your behaviors, and actions.
Final thoughts
Too many times the excuse is used of I don't know how, or I don't know where to find what I need to get started. We all have hopes, dreams and aspirations but the difference between those that pursue them and those that don't is a strong enough desire to go for it. To go through the hard parts were their experiencing the drought and can work through it to figure it out. Margaret Rudkin is such an amazing person because of those intrinsic things, all those fantastic traits that she had the things such as grit and resiliency, overcoming failure, overcoming setbacks to just grow in every which way you can.
If you need something that's not available out there, search for it or build it yourself. The easy thing is to just buy what you need whether you have the funds or not, but the rewarding thing is creating it yourself. Making your idea or your vision come to life, obviously it's going to be very difficult, and it can be very long with a lot of setbacks and heartbreaks but being committed to it is going to make you a better person. It makes you more disciplined and accountable that's going to serve you in whatever phase of life you're in. Through our hardships we find out who we are and what we're willing to do to better ourselves. The more you act and find ways to overcome the challenges you're facing.
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