Want to help build your company? Be a good leader? Leave a legacy in your wake?

Of course you do. We all do.

There’s functional skills that every leader needs to have to be successful. But what about the stuff deep down? You know when you meet a person and you think — they are clearly a born leader. Ever wonder what the basic, god-given personality traits are that make up that person? What makes leading so natural for them?

In his book The Intangibles of Leadership, Richard Davis argues that a person with an entire toolkit of learned “functional leadership” skills can still fail if they don’t possess the most important intangible personality traits.

On the flip side, those ingrained with the most important intangible traits will always be able to learn the necessary functional skills to be a leader. So at the end of the day, to lead, you have to have these intangibles.

Think there's room for your business in the natural food industry?  The short answer is yes.

All numbers show that consumer preference towards natural and organic foods is up.  There is both a large and fast growing consumer market for your products.  

But to be able to make educated business decisions, you'll need more specific data than that.  You'll need information on the consumer market in detail; understanding where the opportunities are and what specific target markets are growing can help you understand how you want to develop, position and market your healthy products.

There are many different olive oil grades. Some are more common in retail and others are more common in industrial food manufacturing.

If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is between these olive oil grades, it all how do to with how they are produced. Once you get an idea of how they’re made, you can start to see the differences between each and find which one is right for you — no matter if you’re a retail buyer, if you’re in manufacturing or food service.

“You work in food? How unusual and fun!”

People tell me this all the time. Of course, they’re absolutely right. And I bet you agree with me too.

If you’ve ever worked in the food manufacturing industry, you’ll agree that there’s a lot of reasons to enjoy your job. It’s both what you do on a daily basis, and the overall purpose that you find in your career.

Here’s all of the best reasons why the food industry is awesome — and why it makes a great career choice.

The Grocery Manufacturer’s Association is now helping food brands and distributors select their ingredient suppliers. In a free guide available for download, they outline all of the traditional procurement steps and evaluation standards food company’s now use as they are selecting their preferred ingredient suppliers.

Whether you’re a young food company or a seasoned brand, you can brush up on your skills and make sure that you’re covering all of the necessary QA and procurement steps.  

Amy’s Drive-Thru, an extension of the frozen food brand Amy’s Kitchen, officially opened it’s doors on July 20th, 2015 in Rohnert Park, California, outside of San Francisco.

They serve all-american food like burgers, burritos, pizza, shakes, chili, salads, and french fries — but each with a healthy twist.

More than 95% of Amy’s Drive-Thru ingredients are organic. All are non-GMO.

In collaboration with Nutrition Business Journal, NewHope360 recently released the 2015 Natural Foods Market Overview.

This report releases 2014 sales statistics from 340 respondents who answered questions about their operations. It also provides up to date market information from the natural foods sector, to help you understand today’s trends and grow your business. 

The value of having a mentor is undeniable.

Mentors help with career and personal development in the long-term, and act as role models who have been there and done that.

A recent Harvard Business Review Article ‘CEOS need Mentors Too’ points out junior to mid-level employees who have undergone mentoring advance more quickly, earn higher salaries, and gain more satisfaction in their jobs than those who have no mentors.

If you’re a large food manufacturer, you’re probably debating if going non-gmo is the right move for your business. Like most manufacturers, your decision will have to be based on real business numbers — not just personal values or ideals.

Will this decision benefit our company? Does it serve our target market? Will we be able to survive and continue making profits after a change like this? Is this change to non-gmo sustainable in the long run?

Before you can make this kind of a large and strategic business decision, it’s helpful to get a clear understanding of the steps or “mini-evaluations” you’ll need to address along the way. All of these are big questions, but they can be approached tactfully and smartly by breaking the larger question down into 7 individual parts.

Recently I asked a fun question to procurement professionals on Procurious, an online procurement network:

What is the best thing your procurement mentor taught you?

Think of your favorite mentor in the procurement arena over the course of your career. What did they teach you? How did they encourage your career to grow? What were they like? How did they set a good example for you?

The answers that I received were not only engaging and inspiring, but also included lots of useful career insight that I thought would be great to share.  

Whole Foods is officially requiring all of their vendors to label GMOs or preferably, switch to non-gmo ingredients by 2018.

The supermarket chain has driven the industry’s trends on GMO transparency, and they have set the precedence for the natural food market standards. As a result of their requirements laid out in March 2013, most of their vendors and brands are switching to non-gmo ingredients and making customer’s happy in the process. In just the first 6 months after their original announcement, the Non-GMO Project received over 900 inquiries from food producers as a result of their decision.

Whole Foods has also laid out a secondary requirement for their vendors: if you’re going to switch to non-gmo ingredients, you’re going to need to back up your non-gmo claim with the Non-GMO Project Verification Seal displayed on your products.

How do you know if your company should switch to non-gmo ingredients and get Non-GMO Project Verified™?

The general rule is that if you’re selling to the natural or whole foods sector, you should make the switch. Your marketing department will probably fight the cause for going non-GMO, because it helps maintain sales in places like Whole Foods, and because those ingredients appeal to your target market. In cases like this, your sourcing decisions have also become a form of PR or social procurement.

If you’re weighing the pros and cons right now for your company, understanding some hard facts about how many consumers are looking at non-gmo products, and what the rest of the natural industry is doing may help you decide.

The Non-GMO movement is in full swing here in the US, but for years, GMOs have been banned in many other countries. Their bans have prevented the growth, use and import of products that contain any genetically modified ingredients.

Understanding where GMOs are banned is an important discussion for any brands that are selling their products overseas or are importing ingredients to their home country.

Use the comprehensive list below to know if a state or country you’re working with requires you to avoid GMOs or not:

As we speak, bills that would require labeling of GMOs are on the docket of 30+ different US state legislatures. It’s driven by the Right To Know GMO campaign and by a growing mass of consumers that are pushing these laws towards national legislature at top speed.

Their goal? To get any products that contain GMO ingredients to be labeled as such, so that everyone can make informed choices about the food they are putting in their body (and so that people can avoid them if they want to).

Because of the concerns surrounding GMOs, the reality is that any federal requirement to label GMOs will cause most manufacturers to move away from using ingredients that contain any GMOs in the first place.

All of us in the olive oil sector are excitedly waiting for the next harvest season this winter.

This last years harvest (October 2014 - January 2015) was substantially down from the year prior, and we’ve seen both lack of supply and a resulting increase in prices over this spring and summer.

Every year, olive oil prices are at their lowest between December-January, at the peak of the harvest season. Over the spring and summer, prices continue to slowly rise as the world’s olive oil inventory is used up. In the middle of September, Spain officially announces what their next year’s harvest is going to look like (this matters because they are the world’s price driver), and prices either jump up or drop down accordingly.

Because of this annual cycle, olive oil prices in the summer are often high and many olive oil users look forward to the next season with fingers cross for a good year.