Podcast appearances and mentions of katlin smith

What if we can have it all? According to Katlin Smith, Founder and CEO of Simple Mills, eating in a way that's healthy for our bodies and the planet shouldn't be about compromise. In this episode, Katlin takes us through her journey of building a good-for-you food brand that would not only compete in flavor with other health companies but with the status quo. Katlin was pretty green when she started Simple Mills, and, through savvy, sheer determination, and a bit of luck, she figured out how to bootstrap a food business, navigate product development, marketing, and fundraising, hire the right people, and scale the company to what it is today: The number one baking mix, natural cracker, and natural cookie brand. A few years ago, the company also tacked on a bold environmental mission, and they are currently working to support not only their agricultural supply chain in adopting more sustainable practices but the broader ecosystem. If you're looking to learn the ins and outs of building a food brand, or just hear from a founder who has navigated it all and come out swinging, this episode is for you. Key Topics: Casting a Wide Investor Net: The sheer volume of people Katlin spoke with ended up securing the company their first angel investor. But Katlin also speaks to the importance of being selective about who you take money from and the terms of the investment. Prioritizing Product Taste: A key takeaway is the necessity of prioritizing taste in product development. Katlin emphasizes that regardless of health benefits, a product must taste exceptional to succeed. The Importance of Hiring Wisely: Establishing a team with diverse and complementary skills is crucial. Katlin's approach to hiring illustrates the benefit of surrounding yourself with individuals with the skills you are looking for and whose strengths balance your own, creating a robust foundation for sustained business growth.A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: The company's dedication to regenerative agriculture showcases a forward-thinking strategy that not only supports environmental health but also enhances long-term supply chain resilience. This commitment illustrates the potential for businesses to drive significant ecological impact and serve as an example to help shift the agricultural sector towards greater sustainability.Maintaining a Long-Term Vision: Katlin's commitment throughout her journey to making healthful food mainstream without compromising taste or quality reflects the importance of a long-term vision. This content is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal, business, tax or investment advice, or be used to evaluate any investment or security, and is not directed at any investor or potential investor in any investment vehicle sponsored by S2G Investments, LLC or its affiliates (“S2G Ventures”). Investing involves risk, including the risk of loss. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent the views of S2G Ventures. Specific companies are mentioned herein solely for educational purposes and should not be construed as an endorsement of any particular company or investment. Please note that S2G Ventures may maintain investments in the companies mentioned herein. For more important information, please see www.s2gventures.com/disclosures

In this episode of The Art of Being Well, Dr. Will Cole sits down with Katlin Smith, the Founder and CEO of Simple Mills. Katlin shares her inspiring journey from creating Simple Mills in her kitchen to making it the #1 cracker, cookie, and baking mix brand in the natural channel, now available in over 30,000 stores. They discuss her mission to revolutionize food with nutrient-dense ingredients, the power of regenerative agriculture, and how Simple Mills is building a sustainable supply chain. Tune in to learn about Simple Mills' innovative approach to improving human and planetary health through creative, health-focused snacks. For more details and resources, visit www.drwillcole.com/podcast.Head to your local Whole Foods, Walmart or Target to shop Simple Mills. Products are also available for delivery on Amazon. Visit www.simplemills.com for more information.Please note that this episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to in this episode.Produced by Dear Media.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Do you have a side hustle or dream of turning your passion into a full-time job? Katlin Smith, the founder of Simple Mills, transformed her health by eliminating processed foods and embracing whole foods. This change not only revolutionized her well-being but also inspired her to create healthier baking mixes using nutrient-dense ingredients. Despite having no formal baking training, her experimentation led to success. Discover the determination behind getting Simple Mills into Whole Foods, her insights on risk-taking, and the importance of continuous learning and leadership. Learn about her marketing evolution, personal routines, and the mission to make real food accessible and appealing. Follow Marianna: @marianna_hewittFollow Simple Mills: @simplemills This episode is brought to you by Simple Mills Produced by Dear MediaThis episode may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products and services. Individuals on the show may have a direct, or indirect financial interest in products, or services referred to in this episode.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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]This episode is brought to you by Beeya:* If you or anyone you know have been struggling with hormonal imbalances and bad periods, go to https://beeyawellness.com/free to download the free guide to tackling hormonal imbalances and to learn more about Beeya's seed cycling bundle.* Plus, get $10 off your order by using promo code BEHINDHEREMPIRE10Follow Yasmin:* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yasminknouri/* Website: https://www.behindherempire.com/Follow Katlin:* Website: https://www.simplemills.com/* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplemills/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest today is Katlin Smith, founder and CEO of Simple Mills. Simple Mills are Clean, nutritious foods for a better life - it's that simple. I'm a big fan of their products. We discuss the insight and inspiration behind founding Simple Mills, her approach to raising capital and picking the right investors, how consumer preferences have evolved since she first got started, her approach to nutrition and thinking about better-for-you products in general. Some of the questions I ask: What was the inspiration behind starting Simple Mills? You built a large company without raising too much outside capital. What was your strategy and for someone starting a consumer brand today, what suggestions would you give them? You've been able to grow your company to incredible heights. How have you thought about the shift in the number of brands that are focused on better-for-you products and people that have dietary restrictitions or sensitivities? How has Simple Mills evolved to focus not just on people's health, but also the planet's health? How has consumer preference evolved since you started? How Simple Mills has evolved not just people's health, but also planet's health?How do you think about your own process for creating your products and what are some of the changes you've had to make? Conscious capitalism How do you think about ingredient choice and sustainability? How has your mission evolved? As a consumer, how have your preferences changed when eating or deciding new products to try? With conventional and natural grocery blurring, how do you approach your retail strategy? There are lots of narratives when it comes to nutrition and what is and what isn't good for you. What's one aspect that you think might be overlooked or misunderstood that's your belief? What were some lessons that you learned throughout your journey in the tough moments? What's one book that inspired you personally and one book that has inspired you professionally?All we can save - truth, courage The Art of Possibility What's one piece of advice for founders? What's the best piece of advice that you received?

The 72-year-old Smith is a resident of Vancouver and has devoted her professional and volunteer time to community service. https://bit.ly/3zoouut #ClarkCountyCommissionOnAging #SilverCitizenAward #KatlinSmith #OlderAdults #AboveAndBeyond #CommunityService #FISHOfVancouver #FoodPantry #VancouverWa #ClarkCountyWa #ClarkCountyNews #ClarkCountyToday

On this episode of the Regenerative Rising Podcast – Elevating Stories, Activating Change, host Nisha Mary Poulose, the newly appointed Executive Director of Regenerative Rising, speaks with Katlin Smith, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Simple Mills, about nutrient rich foods, its link to regenerative farming and what it takes for a business to keep […]

Katlin Smith, founder and CEO of Simple Mills, wowed her first buyer with a muffin recipe using almond flour. Now the Chicago-based natural baking brand is the category leader in baking mixes and crackers. Its products are in more than 27,000 stores, from Whole Foods to Walmart.Smith, who had her products in just four stores when she started at Chicago Booth, was a co-winner of the 2014 Edward L. New Venture Challenge. The NVC helped her understand the importance of spending on marketing for her brand and how to make a case to investors, she said.Still, the first funding round was tough. Her parents mortgaged their house to give her $200,000 to get her company to a point where it could raise money.“It's hard to sleep at night when you know your parents' retirement hinges on your business doing well,” Smith said.In this episode, Smith tells the story of her startup journey to Chris McGowan, an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Booth, Investor in Residence at the Polsky Center and general partner of the private equity firm CJM Ventures. McGowan is also a former board member of Simple Mills.They cover why everyone should have a leadership coach, the mistakes Smith made when hiring, and how she is broadening the ambition of Simple Mills to shape how food is grown, through initiatives to help farmers employ regenerative agriculture techniques.

According to a 2016 study, 58% of Americans' calorie intake, on average, comes from ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed foods account for 90% of the added sugars Americans eat. In this episode, learn from Katlin Smith. Katlin is the founder and CEO of Simple Mills, a food company that focuses on nutritious baked goods, like crackers, baking mixes, and more and distributes in more than 20,000 stores. Kaitlin previously worked in consulting. "When you extract too much from your team or from the land, it has long-term downstream implications," says Katlin. "I think about us as advancing the holistic health of the people on this planet as well as the planet itself. We do that by changing the food that people eat."

In 2012, 22-year-old Katlin Smith was growing restless at her consulting job, so she started experimenting with grain-free, paleo-friendly muffin recipes in her Atlanta kitchen. A buyer at a nearby Whole Foods agreed to sell Katlin's muffin mixes and placed an order for twelve bags. She then hustled to expand the business: hand-mixing almond flour and coconut sugar in food-grade barrels, slinging wardrobe boxes of muffin mix into a rental car, and standing by helplessly while shoppers scarfed down more samples than anticipated. 8 years after launch, Simple Mills has expanded to include cookies and crackers and other treats; it's available in 28,000 stores and does roughly $100M in annual revenue.HIBT Virtual Event with Jay Shetty - information and tickets at: https://nprpresents.org

#28: In today's episode, I chat with the Founder + CEO of Simple Mills, Katlin Smith. Katlin fills us on on the back story of one of the most popular gluten-free brands. We chat why she started her company, what is was like expanding her brand and product line over the last few years and really what makes Simple Mill's products stand out on shelves. Katlin and I dive into ingredient pet peeves, COVIDs impact on their business, the hardest part about her job and hints on what new products are coming out soon. Katlin also shares her go-to oil right now, which I cannot wait to try.This episode is not sponsored by Simple Mills. I love and use their products every single day and they make the most delicious gluten and grain-free eats. A few of my favorites are: Farmhouse Cheddar Crackers (they taste like cheez-itz), Banana Bread Baking Mix, Pizza Dough Mix, and their Soft-baked Peanut Butter Cookies. You can also find me baking/cooking with their products over on my blog.For more from me, I'm over @rachLmansfield + rachLmansfield.com.Thank you Spindrift for sponsoring this episode. You guys are the real sparkling beverage MVP. No natural flavors, just sparkling water and real fresh fruit. We are huge Spindrift drinkers here as you guys know. I link to them over on my shop page and you can snag them in many retailers throughout the country.

This podcast episode is sponsored by Simple Mills, a company on a mission to make healthy eating simple so people can thrive. While we’re sheltering and baking our hearts out, Simple Mills’ super easy baking mixes have made us look like pros when we post the finished product to Instagram. From bread, to muffins, to pizza dough and more, Simple Mills baking mixes have 25% less sugar than other baking mixes and use only simple, whole food ingredients. Visit them at simplemills.com or follow them on social @SimpleMills for wellness tips and delicious recipe inspiration. Welcome to the Daily Distance, a new daily series from the creators of #WeGotGoals. In these short episodes, we’re bringing you one daily goal you can set for yourself during this chaotic time- one actionable thing you can do to move your body, connect with a friend, prioritize your mental health, get some work done, and practice a little bit of self-care. Today's special guest is Katlin Smith, CEO and Founder of Simple Mills. She comes on to share her secret weapon in supporting organic farmers, avoiding the grocery store, and avoiding a cooking rut: farm boxes. We chat about what surprising ingredient she's mastered cooking with, how she stays creative in the kitchen, and why it's so important for her to support the food service industry right now. Resources: Katlin's previous episode of #WeGotGoals and her appearance on our #FearlessFriday series (plus, our first-ever interview with Katlin) The Chicagoland farm boxes Katlin personally recommends: Local Foods (they're currently revamping their farm boxes, but never fear—you can still get all your locally sourced grocery must-haves via Mercato), Fresh Picks by Irv and Shelly, and Green City Market. Simple Mills on the internet: their website and their Instagram. In addition to their website, you can buy Simple Mills online via Amazon, Thrive Market, and Target. If you love this episode as much as we do, subscribe to the #WeGotGoals podcast wherever you like to listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify (and hey, leave us a rating while you’re at it!).

In this episode, we examine brand-building and retail strategies for center store grocery in interviews with the founders of two category-leading brands: Katlin Smith, the founder and CEO of fast-growing baking mix brand Simple Mills, and David Eben, the founder of Carrington Farms, a leading brand of organic seeds, grains and oils. Smith is the founder and CEO of Simple Mills, a brand of natural baking mixes, crackers and cookies, that she launched in 2013. Over the past six years, Simple Mills has become one of the leading natural brands in the spaces in which it plays. Its products are distributed in over 13,000 conventional and natural grocery stores including Whole Foods, Sprouts, Target, Kroger and Safeway. Smith was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2017 and based on what you’ll hear in our interview, it’s easy to understand why. Smith spoke about the origins of Simple Mills, how she assessed the opportunity for a better-for-you baking mix brand, what her first year was like and her definition of entrepreneurial commitment. Carrington Farms,  a leading brand of organic seeds and cooking ingredients, actually started out as a tea company. Founder and CEO David Eben discussed the brand’s evolution and how its portfolio has grown over the years. Entrepreneurs would be advised to take note of David’s advice on working with retail buyers and why it has been and continues to be a key part of the company’s business and innovation strategies. Show notes: 1:34: New Kids on the Block -- The hosts chatted about new team members at BevNET HQ including those in marketing, sales and with our NOSH vertical. They also riffed on a bunch of new products sent to the office this week and how some are advancing the categories that they participate in. 16:51: Interview: Katlin Smith, Founder/CEO, Simple Mills -- In an interview recorded at Natural Products Expo West 2019, Smith spoke with BevNET CMO Mike Schneider about her background in management consulting and how it played into the development of Simple Mills. She also discussed the day-to-day grind of her first year in business and how she stayed motivated, how she learned to most effectively present and communicate to investors, retailers and consumers and explained why leadership is about being "willing to change.” 34:09: Interview: David Eben, Founder/CEO, Carrington Farms -- Also recorded at Expo West 2019, Eben spoke with Taste Radio Editor/Producer Ray Latif about Carrington Farms’ evolution from a tea manufacturer to a stable brand for natural and organic ingredients. Eben also discussed the importance of retail buyer relationship, why product development is an “up and down” process that involves both suppliers and retailers, how a crispy quinoa puff was reborn as a crouton, and how to stay relevant with consumers. Finally, he spoke about the company’s charitable arm, Carrington Cares. Brands in this episode: Nick’s Sticks, Vital Proteins, Spudsy, Recipe 33, Pizootz, Ugly Drinks, Banzo Bites, Rachel’s Overnight Oats, Simple Mills, Carrington Farms

Katlin Smith and Jenna discuss Simple Mills’ mission to revitalize our food system as well as key lessons she’s learned on developing a growth mindset, diminishing your ego, and consistently elevating your standards. 

Katlin Smith, Founder + CEO of Simple Mills, chats with Elisabeth about building + growing Simple Mills, a natural food company that offers baking mixes, crackers + cookies. One of our favorite quotes from the podcast: "It's really easy to believe that the things you look back on that you think made you successful are going to be the things that make you successful moving forward. Oftentimes, [they] are not.” Notes:-- Connect With Katlin: @simplemills + simplemills.com-- Book Recs: The Art of Possibility By Benjamin Zander + Rosamund Stone Zander-- Podcast Rec: Ted Radio Hour-- Careers At Simple Mills

Katlin Smith believes that a healthy diet means a better life, and she has the degrees to prove it. Find out how Katlin created Simple Mills while still working full-time, why she believes eating better is better for physical and mental health, and where her company is going next.

By now, you've probably at least heard of Simple Mills: The line of gluten-free and paleo-friendly cookies, crackers, baking mixes, and frostings taking over grocery aisles around the country. But we bet you didn't know the story of the brand's founder and CEO, Katlin Smith. Smith launched the health food brand at the ripe age of 24 after seeing how cutting out dairy and gluten completely transformed her life. She first set out to, as she says, "raise the standards of what healthy food looks like" by cooking up GF-muffin mix in an industrial kitchen on the weekends while balancing a full-time job in consulting. Back then, she couldn't even afford a mixer, but Smith didn't let setbacks stand in the way of her goal to add more nutrition to the center aisles of the grocery store. She started off demo-ing her mixes in three Whole Foods Market stores and the rest is history. Now, Simple Mills has 28 products sold in 12,000 stores across the country (and we're not talking specialty health shops either—you can find the brand in Target and Kroger.) We asked Smith for her best advice on creating a product that will have real traction and handling stress amidst 15-hour workdays. Tune in to learn her favorite meal prep hack, her take on the biggest trends in health food, and why you'll never find turmeric in her products. OMAX is now offering mbg podcast listeners an awesome deal: 70 percent off a one-month supply of Cognitive Boost, plus free shipping and a 60-day money-back guarantee. Go to omaxboost.com/mindbodygreen to take advantage of this great offer. To contact Jason with comments, questions, or speaker ideas, please e-mail podcast@mindbodygreen.com. For all sponsorship inquiries, please e-mail sales@mindbodygreen.com. Want to join our podcast email newsletter? Sign up here!

If there's one thing I've learned from listening to over a year of #WeGotGoals, it's that building a business or achieving a major goal is rarely as easy as these rockstar goal-getters make it seem. But for Katlin Smith, keeping things simple is the secret ingredient to her success with Simple Mills, an all-natural baking mix and foods company that uses recognizable, natural ingredients in place of things like high-fructose corn syrup and artificial ingredients. Smith started Simple Mills in 2012, right after she began cleaning up her diet and cutting out processed food and sugar. Almost instantly, a lightbulb went off in her head. "Growing up, I learned okay, food affects your weight, it affects your digestive system. But never did I think that food could affect your immune system or the other things we're learning about now, like anxiety, depression, or cancer. And it was just stunning to me that food can affect those things." Armed with these realizations, Smith realized she had to do something to change how people eat — and thus, Simple Mills was born. And even though the premise of Simple Mills was — and continues to be — clean, nutritious foods for a better life, Smith has never shied away from a great mission that expands beyond the grocery store aisle. In fact, once she realized how much her health was affected by a clean, unprocessed diet, Smith went home and did something I truly identify with: she made a list. But not just any list. "I brainstormed 10 different ways that I could impact the way that people are eating and what they're eating and how many kinds of whole foods they're eating," Smith shared. "It ranged everything from going and getting my master's in public health to starting a natural food company that would help change what people are eating." (Spoiler alert: that last one is the idea that won out) Recently, Smith was able to participate in a life-changing trip made available through her inclusion on the 2017 Forbes' 30 Under 30 list. With about 85 other attendees, Smith traveled all over Israel, including at the Syrian and Jordan border, learning about all the complexities behind the conflict in the Middle East. Seems heavy for something that looks like a press tour on the surface, right? Yes — but according to Smith, the trip helped open her eyes to the larger complexities facing the world, in addition to sparking ideas for how she and Simple Mills can have an impact in spaces larger than grocery stores. "There were two key realizations for me on that trip," Smith reflected. "The first was that what we have today we can take for granted really easily, and things can change. The other thing that I really thought coming out of that trip was just how not simple conflict is." Even more surprising about the trip? It was entirely paid for by Schusterman, the company who invited Smith and the other attendees. So what was the catch? No catch, revealed Smith — just a firm reminder that with great power comes great responsibility, and all the standout attendees on the trip had the means to truly change the world. Fresh off the trip when we talked, Smith takes that responsibility incredibly seriously and intends to start by using Simple Mills as a platform to change the food industry. From there, the sky's the limit. "I do plan on doing more things with my life than just Simple Mills. There are a lot of problems in the world, and a lot of problems to solve and I think that if you have like the energy and the resources to impact the world, you absolutely should." We can't wait to see what Smith does next. Listen to Katlin talk to me about her goals on this week’s episode of #WeGotGoals by downloading his episode wherever you get your podcasts. If you like the show as much as we do, be sure to subscribe and leave it a rating and a review. And! Don't take out your earbuds before you listen to the end of this podcast — we've got a real-life goal from a goal-getter like you that you've got to tune in for. ------- JAC: Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com on which we talked to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristin Geil and Maggie Umberger. MU: Good morning, Jeana. KG: Hey Jeana. JAC: Good morning MU: Kristen, this week you got to speak to Katlin Smith, who is the founder and CEO of Simple Mills. KG: That's right. Maggie. I got to chat with Katlin Smith who has been a friend of aSweatLife for awhile and it's been so exciting watching her company grow from when she first founded it back in 2013 while she was still working as a full time consultant at Deloitte. It was really interesting and inspiring to hear her talk about how she would wake up at 4 in the morning, bake for a few hours and then go right to her full time job and yeah, I think we got a lot of great information out of her from this interview. JAC: And we've talked to Katlin a few times just through the years and seeing the company grow, but this is really the first time we've heard her talk about how she's really introspective. Can you speak to that? KG: Yeah, so Katlin is a self described introvert, which I always think is really fascinating for people who are entrepreneurs and CEOs who—she also mentioned she's in meetings, you know, 70 to 80 percent of her day, so I was really interested to hear how she balances that side of her personality with being such a forward facing public persona. So we got to talking about what helps her recharge from being in front of people all the time, always talking, always in conversations and I think the tips that she offered for how to recharge as a business leader who's an introvert will be really helpful for our listeners. MU: Speaking of being a business leader, she was one of Forbes’ 2017, 30 under 30 business leaders. So she just came back from an incredible trip to Israel and you got to speak to her just off of coming home from that trip. KG: Yeah. So Katlin was one of Forbes 30 under 30 last year and one of the perks that she was offered is that another company sponsors a full-blown trip to Israel for anyone who's graduated, so to speak, from the 30 under 30 class. And this company covers everything from airfare to hotels to experiences. And Katlin was talking about how amazing it was and how they kept blowing her mind with all the different experiences that she and I think it was roughly 80 other people got to have. But when she and her other travelers, we're asking the trip leaders, you know, what's the catch? Why did you bring us all here? The trip leaders, were simply saying that they wanted these business leaders of the present and of the future to realize how much power they truly have when it comes to changing the world. KG: And you know, she quoted the old Spiderman line with great power comes great responsibility. And I thought that was really interesting because Katlin started Simple Mills, she said, to change the way people eat, which is not a small feat in and of itself. But now after this trip, it really seems like she's thinking much more globally about how she and her company can impact the world in ways beyond just how we eat and where we grocery shop. JAC: And it's important to note that what simple mills makes is baked goods and sort of the Betty Crocker-esque products that are gluten-free and made out of whole foods and whole ingredients. And as someone who eats gluten free, it was incredibly impactful for me because I am an added Cheezit in years and Simple Mills has a product, a cracker, that's just like a Cheezit. So can you talk a little bit about why she started down this journey to make this gluten-free whole food option? KG: Yep. You'll hear the full story in the interview, but she was suffering from things like joint pain and seasonal allergies and she was trying to think of different ways that she could remedy herself and different ways that she could eat and live her life so that she could feel the best possible. So that's really how Simple Mills started. But she, this wasn't her only idea. She, at one point she said she brainstorm 10 different ways that she could change the way the world eats and Simple Mills was the one that stuck. So it's a really interesting story and I think people are going to love this interview. MU: We cannot wait to hear it. Here is Kristen with Katlin. JAC: Hey, stick around. At the end of this episode, you'll hear from some real life goal-getters who will tell you the goals that they've achieved and the goals they're going after. KG: Welcome to #WeGotGoals. My name is Kristen Geil and I am here with Katlin Smith, the CEO and founder of Simple Mills. Katlin, how are you? KS: Doing great. Thank you for having me. KG: No problem. We are super excited to have you here on the podcast. We've had you on a panel to speak before, we;ve featured you on the blog several times, but this will be the first time that we really get to sit down and hear your story in an audio sense. So we're really excited. First of all, let's start off with the big goal that we ask everybody about on this podcast. What is a big goal that you have worked toward in the past? Why was it important to you and what did you do to get there? KS: Yeah, so that's that. That will probably be a pretty long answer. I think starting Simple Mills was a huge thing for me. So I started this company about five years ago. So around that time I cleaned up my diet. I took out a lot of the processed food, a lot of the sugar, and when I did my joint pain went away, my seasonal allergies went away. I had loads more energy and it really shocked me because I, growing up I, I think I learned about, OK, food affects your weight. It affects your digestive system, but never did I think that food could affect your immune system or that, the other things we're learning about now, like anxiety, depression, cancer, all of these things that we're seeing skyrocketing rates of. And it was just stunning to me that food can affect those things. And so once I learned that I felt a, I felt like I had to do something, like there was just no option about it. It's funny because sometimes people ask me like, oh, how did you decide? Like how did you know if you were going to start it or not? And in my mind there was no option. It was just like I have to do something about this. And so I actually went home one day and I brainstormed 10 different ways that I could impact the way that people are eating and what they're eating and how many kind of whole foods they're eating. KS: And it ranged everything from going and getting my master's in public health to starting a natural food company that would help change what people are eating. So it was the natural food company route that I went. And so the whole idea for simple mills is starting this food company that makes all of these kind of traditional things that you love eating, that are convenient to eat, that are tasty to eat. And instead of making them out of tons of carbs and sugar and processed ingredients and things you can't pronounce, making them out of things that you actually want to be eating more of like almonds or coconut flour or sunflower seeds, but putting it in that same like recognizable shape, texture, flavor, and my thought with that and, and I think what I've seen over the past five years is that by doing that, you're able to slowly change what people are eating so that it's not just, okay, you have to go and follow this, like this polarized diet of gluten free or Paleo, which our products are, but instead it's, here's a product that here's a way to like, eat, eat really great food without necessarily sacrificing the convenience or the flavor or what have you. KS: So yeah, I mean the big goal, it's changing what people eat and changing the expectation of what people eat. The second thing that I'll say about that is that when you change what's out there, and I, I really didn't, I kind of underestimated this in the beginning, but when you change what's out there, you change the average of what's out there. So when you look at the shelf now in Whole Foods or in Jewel or Target or Kroger, which are all places where we're sold. We've raised the average of what's sitting on the shelf and so what that means is that other players who are sitting on the shelf also have to change their game and so if consumers come to expect, OK, maybe this shouldn't have so much sugar or maybe this shouldn't have as many processed ingredients then other players will change what they're doing as well. And so I like to say that a rising tide raises all boats and so part of our mission is not just changing what our consumers eat, but changing what our competitors’ consumers eat as well. KG: Thinking back to when you first had the idea for Simple Mills in 2013, now we're super used to seeing things in the grocery store aisles like ice cream alternatives or dairy free milk or gluten free everything, but that wasn't the case when you first had the idea for Simple Mills. Was that an advantage or a disadvantage being kind of a outlier in the food industry when you started? KS: I think that we came in at just the right time. I think that if we had come in three years earlier, it might've been too early because what really happened and the reason why we, why we see that today is there's this general awakening that's happening, that's happened with me personally and it has happened with a lot of our consumers, which is that people are realizing that the food that they eat affects how they feel and what they're able to do on a daily basis, and this has been in large part enabled by influencers, by people talking online about their diets. This has been kind of something that's come about at the same time that kind of this entire influencer community and people researching, well, what if I, what if I tried this, what happens? And and researching it for themselves versus relying solely on the advice of a healthcare practitioner. And so I think that without that trend, next to kind of putting our products on the shelf, I'm not sure that it would have taken quite as quickly, but now that people are making that association, it's been. It's been a lot easier. KG: Let's go back a little bit. You said that when you brainstormed these 10 ideas that you could change the way people eat, one of them was creating a natural foods company. Were you into baking and cooking growing up, or was this just more of a whim that you decided to act on? KS: Yeah, no, I was not into, I was not into baking growing up, which I feel like is a very unpopular answer to that question. But it, it really goes back to the determination and the belief that this needed to happen. I was and will do whatever it takes to, to make this idea possible and I think that that's one of the things that, you know, you talk about goals, or starting businesses. I think that there's just a lot of determination and discipline required to make any one of these ideas of success and so it takes doing the things that you did you don't necessarily want to be doing. So like for example, I, I'm an introvert. You wouldn't guess it, but I'm an introvert and I, I hate cold calling. It is like the worst, worst, worst thing to do in my mind. KG: I got chills just hearing you say that I'm the same way. It sounds like the worst punishment somebody could give me. KS: Yeah, exactly. And so like for the first year I actually had to assign an entire day per week to cold calling and I think that, not to say that baking was like cold calling, but it wasn't a passion of mine but I probably went through 90 different recipes just to get the first iterations that tasted really awesome on the market. You do what it takes to make it work. KG: When you had the idea for Simple Mills, you were working in consulting and that had been your background for awhile. How did that help drive you and creating simple mills? What traits could you develop? What skills have you learned that helped you when you decided to get this business off the ground from a side hustle to a full time job? KS: Yeah, so I don't think I would be here today or at least be where we are today without my background in consulting. It was just such a fantastic place to start my career. So I started as a management consultant at Deloitte and was there for for three years. I think one, it taught me a lot about hard work, analytics, what it like, just general professionalism, like basic skills that it takes to be a successful CEO, honestly. There’s—I will say that there's other things that I've had to learn on the other side in order to scale past the first point in the business, but I think consulting really got me through the first stages where it helped me attract investors because I had my stuff together. I could develop a model, I could figure out what my cost of goods was. I could figure out a supply chain. So it gave me a lot of the business, the business fundamentals, KG: And at some point you decided to go back to business school to learn the things beyond the fundamentals. What was it like running a company and going to business school at the same time? KS: Yeah. So I, about a year into the business I—well I guess we were just starting in our first stores. Yeah. So when we were starting in our first stores, I started at Chicago Booth to get my MBA and it was—I started out as a full time student and the business just kept getting busier and busier and busier. I think what became really important was having a clear prioritization of what mattered. So I think that a lot of people go to business school and say like, I'm going to start a business while I'm in business school and they try to do the business 100 percent, and they tried to do school 100 percent, and the social component 100 percent. For me it was the business gets number one period, and then anything else on the side that's, that's good too. KG: It’s a bonus. KS: It’s a bonus and so I went from taking three classes to two classes to one class and then that last class I think I attended about half of the actual classes themselves. Yeah, and it's not to say the program’s not amazing because I learned so much in that short time I was there, but I, I really had to focus on the business, and so when it came to, I need to make a customer phone call versus go to class, it was customer phone call every time KG: Last year. You got a really exciting honor in 2017 when you were named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list, what was it like getting that phone call? KS: It was really incredible. I just couldn't believe it. A lot of things. A lot of things that in building the business are very humbling because it at the end of the day, like I think that if I had looked at somebody on the Forbes 30 under 30 list five to 10 years ago, I would've thought, oh my gosh, and put that person up on a pedestal. But I think through this process you, you learn that the CEOs, the entrepreneurs, the people on that list were all just real people. KG: How did things change for you and Simple Mills after that award? KS: It made it a little bit easier to get press, but I don't think that there’s—this goes back to this other theory that I don't think there's any one thing that makes breaks a business. It's really easy to look at things and say, oh my gosh, this is going to be the thing that makes it. Or this is going to be the thing that that breaks it for us. And that actually creates a lot of stress as well but I think that businesses are made by a million tiny good decisions and just netting out on the positive end of that. So you'll still make bad decisions, you'll still have bad things that happen or things that you at least perceived to be bad things, but there's a bunch of tiny little things have to go right. KG: You were telling us before we actually started recording that you just got back from a really exciting trip to Israel. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? KS: Yeah, yeah. So I was out there with 85 Forbes 30 under 30 I guess, winners from the past couple of years. We were there with an organization called Schusterman and we were traveling around all over, all over Israel. We went to the Syrian border, the Jordan border. We spent a lot of time in Jerusalem and we had a, we actually had a guide the entire, the entire trip who was telling us all about the complexity of the region and, and just, it's really stunning because I think that it's really easy to look on the conflict in the Middle East and, and kind of simplify it from over here and also to say like, oh, that's just, you know, they have conflict, we don't have conflict. We're kind of in a way, we kind of look at it as we're above that. We're like, oh no, we know better than to have that level of conflict in our country. KS: But I think what, what really there were two key realizations for me on that trip. The first of which is there was that what we have today we can take for granted really easily and things can change The other thing that I really, that I really thought coming out of that trip was just how not simple conflict is. And for example, in the Middle East, like how much the conflict is connected to personal identity and, and even like the soil itself and the land itself. And it's just very easy to say like, oh yeah, all it takes us like a peace treaty and somebody can just come in and work that out. KS: But even as we're establishing the embassy in Jerusalem and it's causing this uprising, it you can see just how not simple it is, is it's not as simple as drawing lines and boundaries. But just really such a phenomenal trip I was sharing that they Schusterman actually pays for the entire trip, which is just stunning. The entire trip we were sitting there asking, so what is the catch? What is the catch? Why? Why do you bring us out here? And they said really for two reasons, one, for you to understand the complexity and for that complexity to color the decisions that you make, the degree to which you impact the world and, and, and the second is you guys are all poised to make a really positive impact on the world. And with great power comes great responsibility and, and that’s—so go out and do amazing things. KG: No pressure. KS: Yeah, no pressure. KG: Well, with Simple Mills though you had already had a big vision in mind to change the way people eat. Was it interesting to think about how you can change people's lives outside of your products? KS: Yeah, I think for, I think for me, my lifelong mission has always been to to leave the world in a better place than I found it with everything that I do. I think for right now I see so much potential for Simple Mills to impact the food space, which I consider extremely important. It impacts everything that—how we feel, our personal relationships. For example, if you're more anxious, like how, how that's going to impact your personal relationships, your personal happiness. I think that there's so much there and there's also so much left for us to bite off and chew. So first of all going to focus on that. That's my disclaimer, but I, I do plan on doing more things with my life than, than just Simple Mills as well. There are a lot of, a lot of problems in the world and a lot of problems to solve and I think that if you have like the energy and the, I guess like the resources to impact the world, you absolutely should and really take advantage of all of the people who have invested in you that this brings up another point which is there's this experiment out there where they put two people in a room to play Monopoly and they give one person more money and another person less money and we'll just use money as a, as an analogy for now, but more resources and they have them play the game. KS: And inevitably the person who had more money coming into the game wins the game. And they always ask the person who won, OK, so why did you win? And they always point back to, oh, I made this particularly great decision here. Or I got really lucky with that roll of the dice. But they never point back to the fact that they started the game with more resources. And so the interesting lesson there is that we kind of overlook the role that, that resources play in how people arrive at their, at their destinations, and so particularly if you're sitting in a place where you've had a lot of people who have invested in your education, who have invested in, in your learning, you have that much more responsibility to use those resources and, and to kind of bring other people up and along and, and invest in other people. KG: Who invested in you early on? Not moneywise necessarily, but time and energy and support? KS: Oh my gosh, there's been so many people that it's like you can look back to so many people who have, who have changed the way that you operate. I mean, and even started certainly with, with your parents putting in just like so much time and effort. I do remember this point in time when I was in high school and my mom looked at me and she said, You're gonna do, you're gonna do great things. And I think that was actually a self fulfilling prophecy. I don't think necessarily that I was going to do great things. But because she believed in me and believed that I was going to, that I felt like I had to. So I think that's one. I mean I also, I think more recently another, another one has been one of my mentors. So I met my professional coach, I guess I was about a year into the business and we instantly clicked and I realized that she just had such a phenomenal understanding of people and how people operate. KS: And I said, I have to work with you. I, I, I don't understand these things very well. Let's, let's work more on this. And so since then she's actually been my coach and now is a coach for our entire 35 person team. But I think I think working with her, and we can talk more about this, but I think working with her has really helped develop me into a leader who can lead a team of 35 versus lead a team of four to five. But again, there's just been so many people throughout my history that I can look back on. KG: I'm really curious about this professional coach, especially since you have a background in management consulting. Were you just super aware that this existed and this was something you could benefit from or how did you find out about her even? KS: Yeah. I had no idea that that really existed and actually at the time she wasn't even a leadership coach. She was an operations consultant. Today she has a, a very large leadership consulting practice that works for a number of entrepreneurs here in Chicago and other cities. But I think there is—I had a business school professor who said that being an entrepreneur is one of the most downwardly mobile professionals that are out there. KG: That's encouraging. KS: Very encouraging. So I mean I think going in knowing that is actually really helpful because it helps you realize that you shouldn't take being the CEO of a company for granted, that just because you started the company doesn't mean that you stay in that role, and that many, many entrepreneurs don't make it because you have to grow super quickly. So where if you were in a large corporation going from managing, you know, two people to 10 people to 20 people to, you know, maybe 100 people might take a number of a number of years and career moves. Like that might be a 10 year shift. You're making those shifts super quickly as an entrepreneur and so you need something to help accelerate that learning or you just might not make it, and so when I met her I realized that she had the capacity to accelerate my learning and so that's why I started working with her. KG: You're getting a crash course. Sounds like. KS: Yeah, there's something to be said for. I still believe that most things that you learn, you learn off of your mistakes, but there's something to be said for learning off the first time you make the mistake versus the fifth time. KG: Well we spend a lot of time on this podcast talking about your successes and goals you've achieved, but what was the time when you failed? KS: I think for me, the greatest failures in this business have been failures as a leader. They've been places where I've come home at the end of the day and thought, you shouldn't have said that or you shouldn't have said that that way. And knowing too that you impacted somebody else's day. Those are the toughest places because you can't really take it back. You can only move forward. There’s been times where you know, you call somebody out in a meeting and and you know that that wasn't the best way to handle it, for example, and the only thing that you can do is learn from it and say there's a reason why this happened and I'm not gonna do that again, or I won't do it this way again, and then you move forward. KG: You've also mentioned being an introvert just even on this podcast, yet you traveled with a bunch of strangers to Israel and you're the CEO of a 35 person company. What do you do to sort of give yourself that time to recharge when you're spending all of your day in meetings, talking to people like me talking to the press, all of that. KS: Yeah. I think the. I think the recharging is super important and actually a number of my entrepreneur friends are also introverts. It's quite funny that we were like this class of, I’m sure there are extroverts out there too, but we’re this class of people who do spend their entire days talking yet their preference is not to. I think first of all, making sure that you allocate sufficient time for thinking and so I have a couple things that I do to make sure that I fit that in. The first is I love flying and I love sitting on a plane because no one, no one talks to me while I'm sitting on a plane. There's nothing to interrupt me. There's no phone calls, there’s text messages. I can sit there and I can stare out the window and think about what problems we need to solve or how to solve those problems. KS: Another is taking decently frequent but short vacation. I like to think that vacation if done right, is actually something that helps your job versus versus hinders it. And so I'll take for example, a long weekend to somewhere in Arizona where I'll go hiking. I'll spend time reading, reading books that helped develop me professionally and personally and develop the way that I, the way that I see the world. And and so then as a result of that, you can kind of create faster learning cycles so that you can learn from the things that you're doing a lot faster. So I might take a particular concept. So for example, one concept that has required a lot of continuous work on my part is this idea that perfectionism is not on the excellence scale. So … KG: I need hear more about this. What does that mean? KS: It's that, it's basically that if you create a spectrum of from not excellent to excellent, perfectionism doesn't exist on there. And I think growing up in consulting or even a lot of corporations believe this, there's like this belief of no defects. So if you make a mistake, it's not OK. And so then you live your life trying not to make mistakes versus trying things out. And what happens when you try things out is, is you do make mistakes and, and it's OK sometimes or a lot of times you learn from those mistakes. And or you figured you figured out something that you wouldn't otherwise instead of spending your time optimizing something that doesn't need to be optimized. And, but this is like, this is like a lifelong skill, this isn't a OK, just get the concept and all of a sudden it's in place, it's that you have to try it, work on it, go back, relearn it, and then continue to iterate on the concept for, to, to really get it. And so then I'll read books on this topic and then go into real life, try to apply it, and then next time I go on vacation, read more books on it and recognize where I, where I haven't quite lived up to it and figure out ways to do it better moving forward. KG: That idea of embracing mistakes as learning opportunities, is that something that trickles down to your team at Simple Mills? KS: Yeah. We've actually, we've actually done entire trainings on perfectionism, but part of, I mean, part of it there is we are a very, we’re a very high achieving group and so we actually did, we did studies on, on our levels of perfectionism and our levels of perfectionism are actually higher than the doctors going through Harvard Medical School. KG: Wow. KS: So that's a problem. KG: Oh my gosh. KS: Again, not on the excellence scale. KG: Wow, that is crazy. KS: Yeah, and so we've had to. We've put a number of things in place to say, OK, it's OK to skin your knees. It's OK to make mistakes. It's OK to come out and say something, even if it's even if it's in the end, not right. And so really embracing, embracing failure and saying that's OK, or embracing it when somebody goes out on a limb and and not quickly shooting down the idea or saying no and making it a little bit more comfortable to be wrong. KG: All right, let's end with the other question that we ask everybody else who comes on this podcast. What is a big goal you have for the future? Why is it important to you and how do you think you'll get there? KS: So I, I, I am so incredibly passionate about, about changing the way that people eat. It's, it is a huge mission for, for me and and Simple Mills. I think that there's still so much that needs to be done here. We've, we've made such great progress in the past five years, so we're in, we’re in about 13,000 stores. We are the largest natural baking mix brand, the second largest natural cracker brand, which is, which is really neat to see, but I feel like we're just at the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more that we can be doing in terms of brand awareness and getting our products out there, but even more than that, I think there is so much more that we can be doing to to really change the way that people are eating and helping more people eat simple ingredient real food and so while I won't completely share exactly how we're going to get there, I think my mission is really democratizing real food and there's a lot more up our sleeve. KG: What do you mean by real food? KS: Making it something that that's accessible to a lot more people. KG: In terms of accessible at grocery stores, price points, just it being there in general, all of the above? KS: All of the above. Making it easy, making it so that having real food in your pantry is a, is a common occurrence. KG: Well, we can't wait to see how you get there. I know we'll be keeping our eyes on you for the next few years to come and beyond. So Katlin, thank you so much for being on #WeGotGoals today. KS: Thank you for having me. CK: Hey, goal getters. Cindy Kuzma, co-host and producer here just popping in to let you know that we are about to play another one of your goals. That's right. A goal that was set and crushed by one of you, our listeners. This one was recorded during one of our live sessions at the Hotel Moxy and we also recorded a few more at the Michelob Ultra Fitness Festival at the end of SweatWorkingWeek earlier this month. Start thinking about whether you have a goal you'd like to share with us too. Soon, we’re going to have a way for you to send in your goals and you could appear right here on this very podcast. In the meantime, thank you so much for listening and here's our next real life goal-getter. CK: Tell me your name again. J: My name’s Jose. CK: Jose, it's good to meet you, Jose. Jose from Chicago? J: Yeah. Jose from Chicago. CK Okay. Tell us, Jose, either about a big goal that you reached and how you got there or about a big goal you have for the future, one or the other. J: Um, so I guess the biggest goal that I have reached already was I joined the military when I was 18 airborne infantry and I made it back in one piece. So that was a good goal to have. CK: Yeah. Yeah. So where did you, where did you go? J: Um, I was stationed in Anchorage, Alaska and I deployed to Iraq for 15 months and I was in Afghanistan for a year. CK: Oh my gosh. Wow. So how did you do that? You know, I mean, obviously some of it is just being in the right place at the right time, but um, you know, what do you think were some of the things that lead to you having a successful military career? J: Oh, definitely. Um, the team that I was on in the people that I worked with. Working in a team and being able to get each other's backs like that definitely protecting each other when you're not looking, um, helps for survival and also just all the training that we did, like constantly training all the time, all the time for every possible scenario that you could possibly imagine. CK: Wow. And does that training and that experience, I mean as, how long have you been back now? J: Um, I got out in 2010 like late 2010. Yeah. And I've had actually, now that I think about it, every job I've had outside of the military has been like in the service industry, like restaurant or a bartender or a or something like that. So like working in some sort of team capacity I guess. CK: Yeah, and you have to think on your feet and be prepared for anything and react to what's going on around you. So I'm sure that training serves you really well. J: Yeah. CK: Well thank you for your service, first of all, and congratulations on being here and, and on your new job here at the Hote Moxie, right? J: For sure. Yeah. Yeah. CK: Well thank you so much for sharing your goal with us. Really appreciate it. CK: This podcast is produced by me, Cindy Kuzma, and it's another thing that's better with friends, so please share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and while you're there, if you could leave us a rating or a review, we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to J. Mano for our theme music; to our guest this week, Katlin Smith; and to Tech Nexus for the recording studio.

On this episode of the Becoming Fearless Podcast, Annie interviews Katlin Smith, the Founder and CEO of Simple Mills, a natural food company. Katlin, a former management consultant, lived with joint paint throughout high school, and in her search for a solution, learned about the incredible effects food can have on the human body. One of the core values of her company is, “The food you eat makes a difference in your life.” Katlin bootstrapped Simple Mills while still working her consulting job, and today Simple Mills products are available in more than 8,000 retail locations. Tune in as Annie and Katlin talk maintaining balance, establishing company values, learning by doing, and the importance of focus.

Katlin Smith is the founder of Simple Mills, a food startup that only uses simple, whole food ingredients. While working as a consultant, Katlin discovered she had a gluten-sensitivity and started experimenting with her almond-flour baking mixes on the weekends.  Shortly after launching her almond flour muffin mix, it became the best selling muffin mix on Amazon. Simple Mills is now in over 2,000 stores nationwide, including in Whole Foods and Mariono's in Chicago.  listen on itunes listen on stitcher In This Episode You Will Learn: How she came up with the idea for Simple Mills? Why it's important to be the "chief sales officer" as the founder of a startup? Why she started with baking mixes? Why nuts are so expensive? What she loves about being an entrepreneur? What the process is like to bring a new food product to market?  How she has found and cultivated her advisors?  How the challenges of being a founder change as your startup grows? How she approaches getting into new stores? Why she thinks Chicago is the easiest city to network in?  Favorite Books: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead by Brené Brown What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful by Marshall Goldsmith Miscellaneous Things Mentioned: Simple Mills Pancake & Waffle Baking Mix Simple Mills Sea Salt Almond Flour Crackers John Foraker, CEO of Annie’s Homegrown