Ep 274 | Katlin Smith

Jun 24

Breaking Free From the Corporate Grind, the Power of Being Scrappy & Disrupting a Category With No Formal Experience

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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. Back then, Katlin couldn't even afford a mixer, so she hand-mixed almond flour and coconut sugar in food-grade barrels and did whatever she could to create these mixes in a commercial kitchen. She started off demo-ing her mixes in three Whole Foods Market stores and, as she saw the demand, realized she needed to go all in and eventually quit her day job to focus on Simple Mills. Over a decade later, Simple Mills has claimed top spots in cracker, cookie, and baking mix categories and sells 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 in life. She opens up about the challenges of creating her first product in her kitchen without a baking background, perfecting the taste, and getting Simple Mills into retailers while working full-time. Katlin gives us details on her corporate experience and the realities of running her business on the side, including dropping out of business school, how she funded it in the early days and how she dealt with difficult conversations with investors who didn’t align with her values. She also shares insights on avoiding burnout, common misconceptions about starting a business, her evolving leadership style and so much more.

Show Notes:

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]
How she navigated having a commercial kitchen and then co-packer. [26:07]
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]
Common misconceptions about starting a business. [47:50]
Lessons learned in the Simple Mills journey. [49:36]
Katlin’s future plans. [51:42]

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