Sometimes we overthink marketing. It doesn’t have to be hard.

I recently had an experience that reminded me of how we often overthink marketing. I observed our marketing discipline in a refreshingly simple form and wanted to share it with you.

I took some time off in Florida recently and spent a sleepy Saturday morning at an outdoor farmer’s market. This wasn’t your typical market filled with produce — it was around the town square of an extremely wealthy enclave of homes. Remember … I was VISITING! This was way out of my league.

My wife became preoccupied with some jewelry, and I was bored, so I started a conversation with a fellow selling granola — Veronica’s Health Crunch. The guy was actually Veronica’s brother. It was pretty cold at the time. It looked like this:

He told me how the healthful and delicious product started, how it’s made, and how it has taken off like a rocket. The little family business is now shipping its granola to big supermarket chains like Whole Foods and Wegmans.

But something didn’t make sense to me.

If this business was growing like crazy and already found their big supermarket chain customers, why did…