Simple Mills Founder: Breaking Free From the Corporate Grind, the Power of Being Scrappy & Disrupting a Category With No Formal Experience – Katlin Smith

Katlin Smith is the founder and CEO of Simple Mills, a healthy
food company that only uses simple whole food ingredients.


Katlin founded Simple Mills after cleaning up her own diet and
seeing incredible results. In 2012, Katlin was working as a
management consultant, traveling often, and relying on convenient
packaged foods to suit her on-the-go lifestyle. She wasn’t
feeling her best and decided to switch to a primarily whole
foods-based diet to see if her food choices were to blame. After
witnessing her own transformation and then feeling restless in
her job, she began experimenting in her kitchen with grain-free,
paleo-friendly muffin recipes to create healthy alternatives to
sugar-packed treats. A buyer at a nearby Whole Foods agreed to
sell Katlin's muffin mixes and placed an order for twelve bags.
Initially, Katlin hand-mixed ingredients in food-grade barrels
due to a lack of funds for a mixer. She demoed her mixes in three
Whole Foods stores and, seeing the demand, quit her day job to
focus on Simple Mills. Over a decade later, Simple Mills leads in
the cracker, cookie, and baking mix categories, selling in over
30,000 stores.


In this week’s episode, Katlin emphasizes the importance of
self-belief and shares advice on building the courage needed to
take significant leaps. She discusses the challenges of creating
her first product without a baking background, perfecting the
taste, and getting Simple Mills into retailers while working
full-time. Katlin shares her corporate experience and the
realities of running her business on the side, including dropping
out of business school, early funding strategies, and dealing
with difficult conversations with misaligned investors. She also
provides insights on avoiding burnout, common misconceptions
about starting a business, her evolving leadership style, and
more.


In this episode, we’ll talk to Katlin about:


* The importance of self-belief in Katlin’s journey. [03:10]


* What helped Katlin during times of uncertainty. [06:06]


* Katlin’s childhood and upbringing. [08:26]


* Katlin’s early entrepreneurial spirit. [11:47]


* Creating the first product in her kitchen despite having no
background in baking. [18:16]


* Hurdles in perfecting the food taste. [21:06]


* Getting the product into retailers while having a full-time
job. [22:37]


* The origin of the name Simple Mills. [29:40]


* The impact an influencer had early on in her business. [31:39]


* Funding the business and the fall-out of their first potential
investor. [34:23]


* Getting $200,000 from her parents and going all in. [40:24]


* How Katlin avoids burnout and stays grounded. [44:22]


* Misconceptions about starting a business. [47:50]


* Lessons learned in the Simple Mills journey. [49:36]


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Follow Katlin:


* Website: https://www.simplemills.com/


* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplemills/


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