Advice Line with Katlin Smith of Simple Mills

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/a5786027017dc7ec

Yeah.
Yeah.
Hello and welcome to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Roz. This is the place where we help try to solve your business challenges, and each week I'm joined by a legendary founder, a former guest on the show who will help me try to help you.
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Simple Mills. Caitlin, welcome back to the show.
Thank you for having me. Excited to be here. Excited to have you back. So you were on the show
Back in in twenty twenty one telling us the story of

I think in your early twenties you were working for at the time for a big consulting firm, you were on the road a lot.
Uh you're eating
bad food, you weren't eating well. Um and so you kind of started to experiment in your free time.
making like grain free, gluten free
paleo friendly recipes and eventually kind of honing in on a muffin mix.
And I think originally you imagined
And I think it kinda
Building sort of the next
Betty Crocker kinda brand.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean my my goal really was and still is to change our food industry to really positively impact people's health and also the planet health as well by making these products that have
what we call astounding ingredients and putting them into these familiar forms that consumers love and that taste great.
It's such a great story. We're gonna put a link to it in in the podcast notes and you should definitely go back and and check out that episode.
Fast forward to today, Caitlin, um
your single muffy evolved into a whole line of
of natural food products that that is sold. I mean, every time I go to the grocery store just seems like there's a wall
of Simple Mills products on the shelves. It's I think that they're in more almost thirty thousand stores across the country, which is amazing. And right it started in l like your kitchen and you know, when you were
Just experimenting.
It did, yeah. It started in my kitchen and it's come a really long way. Today we are
The number one largest natural
Cracker, cookie, and baking mixed brand in the natural channel. So it's the thing that dreams are made of. That's amazing. Um we've talked to lots of food founders, right? And and and almost all of them, including you
struggled at some point to fund.
the production, right? P especially when you're first kind of getting things off the ground. I remember
You almost had to sell like a a lot of equity.
in the company f for that reason.
So
From your perspective, when founders are thinking about like
Finances, how to finance
Especially early on.
Um
What should they be
What should they be thinking about?
Oh my goodness. The funding journey is just grueling. And I think
Today it's probably even harder than it was back when I was founding the company.
I definitely had to do some very creative things on my own side to find the business. So selling my car and maxing out credit cards and and crazy things like that.
But but then I think when you go out to look for investors, it's really talking to anyone and everyone. I mean, I just talked to so many people that at one point
one woman who was interested in investing in us was in a whole food store and
A guy next to her turned to her and said, What do you think of this brand? And she said, Well, I'm thinking of investing in it.
Well, that guy turned out to be our lead investor. So I had talked to so many people that um two of them happen to be in the same whole food store in Charlotte, North Carolina, at the same time talking to each other. So I think resilience is probably one of the largest
Things you gotta have to get funded.
You you've got a whole
suite of products now, right? Muffins, crackers, um

Um, and I'm sure there's a lot more sort of in the pipeline. How do you guys identify and then prioritize
what products to bring to market. Like w what do you sort of measure and when do you know
that the thing that you're introducing
doesn't work. You know,'cause there must be things that you introduce that just, you know
You kind of
Fa phase out after time.
Yeah, I mean innovation, part of innovating, part of being an entrepreneur, all of it is is failure is part of the game too, and knowing when to when to move forward with something or when to not do something is also super important. I mean, I think for us
We we really think first of all we have to be able to solve a problem for people. So it can't just be something that's nice to have or it really has to solve a real consumer need.
And then the second thing that we think about is can we do this with
our ingredient tenants. More nutrient dense ingredients. And then the third thing is look, it has to taste great. This is a food product and and no one's going to eat it if it doesn't taste great. And so that a lot of times is one of the bars that's toughest to hit. So
we really consumer test these products and understand is this measuring up to conventional standards and making sure that consumers will love it when it hits the shelf. Awesome. Um well I suspect
A lot of our callers are gonna have um a lot of questions for you today about how you did it and the decisions you made.
Why don't we take our first call um and find out what is on
Never mind. Hello, uh welcome to the device line on High Built this you're on with Caitlin Smith and me, um
Please tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
Hi Caitlin, hi Guy.
Hi my name is Scott Van Der Broeky and I'm calling from snowy Minneapolis.
Welcome.
Thank you.
I started a company called Upcycle Foods.
In our
First product.
was a soft pretzel made with pure maple syrup and butter
But it was also made with uh
The beer grains that were sourced.
From the brewing process.
Wow, so these are okay, so just to c just to clarify, these are pretzels.
made from grains that are used to brew beer that would otherwise be thrown away, basically. Correct.
Correct. So that's why it's called upcycle food, because you're upcycling
Something that was used for one thing and then you're turning it into another thing.
Yes, and so we we decided to focus on
Beer grains.
Due to the excess amount
of local breweries using these.
In the brewing process, so yeah. And were these hard pretzels or soft pretzels?
So these were soft pretzels, mm-hmm, and then we also had uh you know a pretzel stick.
Pretzel buns were
A large cellar and then uh
Are large.
One pound pretzel.
So you keep saying we're, were is this something that you're not doing right now?
Yeah, we're kind of on ice right now. Uh after we got out of the pandemic, we worked in a kitchen, a rental kitchen, lease kitchen for
Over a year.
Um so I was
You know, doing the sales, I was doing the
uh full production
So I've rolled out thousands of pretzels.
You're baker. So that was uh the the main focus.
Um but one what ended up happening was um
I moved into a co manufacture space
And I would go in there.
From
You know?
when I ended my actual job to
Probably ten PM at night.
perfecting the recipe. And we did get it down. It just got to a scale
Where they could not
maintain if you've ever made a pretzel
The lie process, the application. Right, to get it to get it that brown color.
Yeah, yeah. And and get that Maillard reaction to get that really nice flavor. Caramelization, yeah.
Uh
In that was kind of my Achilles heel, so
So you stop producing them, right, for a while. And and but just before we get to what you what you're thinking about now.
What
Other f I mean, presumably you can do a lot with upcycled grains. Now I mean there are brands out there that are making granola bars and other things. So
You focused on pretzels, but
That didn't work out.
So why not
pivot to another food product.
No, correct. I did uh you know, we we come from
The land of ten thousand food
production facilities in Minnesota, but you're home with Gerald Mills.
Yep, home of a general mills, um, you know, Pillsbury, everything. Uh but I think I I looked at doing pasta, so I did carbonara in a jar with spent grain pasta. Uh we experimented with
Like
uh muffin mix. So I know Caitlin is uh definitely keen to that. So
We did sell those at farmers markets.
But again it was kind of taking that leap into scalability that uh ended up
Keeping us uh shutting us down for a little bit. Right. So
Alright, we're gonna get to uh I've got more questions sorry, but let's get to your question first and see if we can start to tackle that. What what's your question for us today?
So I I guess my question is, uh, you know, with a unique upcycle ingredient like spent grain.
How
Would you go about finding a
A solid manufacturing partner.
Especially with a difficult
Process.
Oh of making pretzels.
All right, Caitlin, I'm gonna bring you in here. We can you can
I'm sure you've got a lot of thoughts on on what he's trying to do here.
Oh my gosh, so many thoughts um and just so much respect for you because that's not an easy thing to do.
Uh so
How similar is your production process to how pretzels are usually manufactured?
It's not very similar.
Um so the bakery I used was
Probably
A little bit smaller at capacity, so
They didn't have the machinery.
That actually
Was skillable.
Um but we did find a process of proofing freezing and
applying lie that actually worked.
So
To your point, it's not very similar to the big guys.
You know, reaching out to those
manufacturers it was difficult at times to get them or persuade them to
um you know take on a y very unique ingredient in
put it into their production.
Yeah, makes a lot of sense. That's a it it's a tricky one. I mean I think
Look, like I it was really difficult for me too to find uh our first contract manufacturer. It feels like I turned over
I think the whole market. I was on, you know, the tenth and eleventh page of Google, which I
I don't think I've been on since, uh, trying to find contract manufacturers and and researching every lead. And it took
a a ton of resilience and and continuing to dig and and I'll tell you, even when I did find someone, there were
A number of compromises involved too.
And you know, I'll say fortunately as as volumes have scaled and all of that.
I found stronger partners to work with. But I mean, I think if I were if I were you personally, I would I would think about
Okay, how do we best fit this into
The
the production equipment the that these contract manufacturers are already going to have
And so is there a way that you can
uh change the ingre you know, for example, dry the ingredients or I don't know exactly what form the ingredients come in.
uh but really fit them into a form that's going to work in their system because then you'll have a much broader
Group to work with. Mm-hmm.
Scott, a c a couple of questions for you. I mean
Why would somebody
Right, like if I if I meet you and you're like, Hey, I'm selling these upcycle pretzels, get your pretzels, why would I buy your pretzel versus one that was made with, you know
let's call it virgin flour that was, you know, also coming out of the oven. What what's the what's your pitch here?
So I I mean sustainability is the pitch.
We wanna take
Up cycle ingredients.
uh and move them into a loop system
To rescue them and the flavor.
Um with spent grain.
Uh it also is
Unique to that bir.
Um, but it's lower in sugar, so there's another plus for dietary needs.
I guess my question for you is i you know, you're focused on the pretzel and you're looking for a co manufacturer, right, to to do the pretzel.
But but I wonder, Caitlin, I'd love to get your perspective on this.
Is there a world where
Іно, мейбі, Прецл.
is the is the issue, not the upcycled side of it.'Cause I know Caylan, you guys are doing some upcycled work.

Is there a world where
Scott.
Maybe
Wanna consider
A different product? I mean I I'm just wanna throw it out there. I don't wanna I don't wanna ran your parade here, Scott, but I just wanna test this here.
I mean I think personally I I really love the idea of an upcycled pretzel.
Particularly one made with beer grains, because there's something about beer and pretzels that goes together and
And one of the things that we think about, for example, when when we develop innovation is do consumers naturally go there?
And so does that sound delicious? And I'm just like, Oh yeah, it's gonna it's gonna pair so well with beer. Like I could almost even picture like a uh a beer tasting where you've got like several different types of beer and several different types of beer pretzel and it just all works really well together. But then again, there's probably also other things that are
uh in that avenue too where
I mean cracker is obviously near and dear to my heart, but uh but it but I go down that same path.
Yeah, I mean look.
I I love pr I love a good pretzel just like the next person does, but I'm just wondering whether that is scalable like easily like
I think
I mean, because there's a lot of things that you could do with spent grain, right? Like we've had conversations in the past about this in various ways on the show.
And I remember somebody w I don't know if it was on our show or somewhere else, somebody talking about
Dog treats from spent grain.
And I don't know. I mean I know I'm throwing a I'm throwing this on whole conversation for a loop here.
Yeah.
But is there a world where you experiment with different
Other things that might
I don't know that might you g g go to a farmer's market and you're selling dog treats, I mean
People might be a bit more willing to
To try something like that out.
No, and that's a it's a great point. Um we did a uh an amazing devil's cake mix.
That
Just was
With
It just was so dark in
succulent when it baked up like similar to a muffin mix. I think the one thing with the spent green
Is
You know, you can't use the full amount into the product. You do need to just
Cut it with regular flour because the structure.
Kinda gets lost.
Um
But
I think the the shelf sta stable
Um
Products would probably be a little easier to produce.
And they they they were.
But yeah, I I think there's a
Substantial.
uh hill to climb when it comes to spent grain with the amount
On the table.
And I think I think one of the things that's interesting about what you're suggesting, Guy, is
This whole leaning into what's
Easily possible.
And so try not to build too large of a hill for yourself to climb.
One of the things that we talk about with innovation is
Is
really how do we lean into nature, lean into what nature wants to do. And maybe the
frame is a little bit different here, but it's like how do you lean into what naturally contract manufacturers want to do? And so what products naturally come out of that.
So you're not you're not trying to get them to do something that's too weird or too hard for their model.
Yeah, maybe the pretzel happens in the future. Maybe the pretzel's the fourth or fifth product, but the first product is s something that is just a little bit
Easier to get off the ground.
And and Caitlin, I was I was wondering about that. I mean when you first started, I'm assuming you've used multiple co manufacturers throughout your
Your business, um
Like
How did you persuade them in the beginning with I mean, I know almond flour was
New on on trend and h how did you
You know, get them to
Sign on with you.
Well, and I think it's it's
Interestingly, not very far from what
From what we're suggesting here, which is that I started in baking mixes.
Finding a manufacturer who's willing to blend together
Flowers.
is a lot easier than finding a manufacturer who's
Willing to make a cracker out of an alternative ingredient. And so it's kind of starting at a place that's a little bit easier and then moving to that.
Difficult place.
Mm-hmm.
For sure.
Um
The brand is called Upcycle Food Scott Van Brooke.
Thanks for calling, man. Congrats.
Good luck. Thank you.
Appreciate that.
Yeah.
Look.
The the idea here is that
You might have a really great idea.
And something that w could work.
But it may not be the first thing that you should pursue out the gate, right? Like
You started with baking mixes and then which was easier than going into cookies and crackers which you now sell.
And and you know, other things, right?
Yeah, so much easier. I mean the it's so much more difficult to create a cracker or a cookie
or a snack bar than it is to create a baking mix which is really just dry flowers blended together.
I mean I think you pretty much nailed it. Take the latter approach. Don't go there immediately.
We're gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, another caller, another question, and another round of advice. I'm Guy Raz, and we're answering your questions right here on the advice line on how I built this lab.
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Roz, and today I'm taking calls with Caitlin Smith. So, uh Caitlin, what do you say? Should we bring in our next caller?
Let's bring'em in.
Alright, let's bring in our next caller. Hello, welcome to the advice line. You are on with Caitlin Smith of Simple Mills. Uh please tell us your name.
Where you're calling from and a little bit about your business.
My name is Tim Taves. I am the owner and operator of Grumpy Dad Sauce Company from Winchester, Kentucky, just outside of Lexington. Our
Or we make hot sauce for people who don't think they like hot sauce and our products are purposely prepared for a place on every table.
Wow, Tim, welcome.
to the show Grumpy Dad Sauce, Lexington, Kentucky.
I love it. Tell me a little bit about how you got into the hot sauce business.
It was
Mostly on accident back in twenty eighteen.
Uh I was working a as a training manager for a pharmaceutical plant.
And
Yeah, as a break from you know just kinda
Take a minute of work. Uh
But um
Uh
Couple of different strains of the hottest peppers in the world.
Mm. Threw them out in the yard.
Yeah, kinda forgot about him.
Ended up losing that job.
And
Had to do a couple things in between to make ends meet. And then
I went out in the back yard.
In the middle of the summer.
And the plants were like up to my waist full of peppers.
Uh Carolina Reaper, Ghost Pepper, and Scorpion Pepper. Yes. The kind of kind of a an insane dude here.
Yeah.
Yeah, I had no intention of eating them at all. Didn't know what to do with them and I've always had
Something where I've wanted to do something else kind of because several different spots along where I've lost jobs and other things. Um so what if I did something where I knew the target?
I wanted to build this and I want to build something for me and my family that I can pass on. So I
Googled how to make hot sauce and started
Trying out sauces with those peppers.
So at the end of that summer I found a different job at a hemp processor that had just got started in town. Everybody at work liked them, but they were too hot. And so I had scale back down, scale down, scale down, scale down.
Reached out to the state as far as how to be fully FDA regulated. Wow.
Um, so between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty, I took all the classes, got certified.
And uh we launched
our first commercial batch in
January twenty one.
Amazing. Okay. So uh so you would you basically Googled it, like how do you make hot sauce? And so I'm assuming it's like
But the peppers and vinegar and
you know, grind it down and then you know, you strain it and eventually you get
Something like Ahtsos. Yep.
Pretty much it's just blend, cook.
And do it uh the way the FDA says to. Wow.
And uh how m and and so where where are you selling them now?

We are in
the farmers market in there in Winchester every weekend, uh
We are in five small
Mom and pop shops in Lexington and a few other places like that. I'm
I have wholesale requests for
There's a lot of those little farms where you know everybody goes to get their pumpkin, those kind of places all around the area. Um
And so
I'm moving from five to hopefully twenty shops in the next year.
plus direct to consumer sales over the internet. My first year
Twenty twenty one. I
Sold every last bottle I I made.
Online just through marketing over a couple of different Facebook hot sauce fan groups.
And sold to thirty eight states and just kinda
Went from there.
Nice. So so are you uh doing like
But
But five m over five thousand dollars a year so far in sales?
Uh yes, this year we're right at five thousand, going to about six. Uh if I hit all those targets with all those different stores that want my stuff, I should be selling about twenty five thousand next year.
Not quite enough to pay all the bills, but
Headed in the right direction.
It's called Grumpy Dad Sauce Company.
I'm assuming your dad.
I'm assuming you're grumpy.
Um
Not exactly. Like I say, when the people ask me about it at the fairs, it's like oh not when I'm making hot sauce. So I find that when uh most dads are grumpy
Because
They are doing something to help make ends meet, keep the family going, paying the bills and all that that they probably didn't want to do.
When they were a kid growing up. Whatever it is, just to pay the bills, the stress of life, all that stuff kinda gets to'em.
And what I'm trying to do
Is
be kind of an inspiration to other dads and my kids to where
You don't have to just do something just to make ends meet. You can do something you want to do, build a business, build something that you can pass on to your family, start scaling up from there. So
Yeah, everyone knows a grumpy dad and all my
The sauces are all themed that way. My mild sauce is Moody Teenager, I got a sauce called Envy, Mood Swing, my hottest one is called Tantrum, stuff like that. So I'm trying to
Trade in on that.
On that vibe of you know family the family dynamic. And you've got kids.
I have two kids, yes. My I have a
Uh, son and a daughter, they're teenagers. We adopted them from our from the state foster care system when they were two and three. My son is really interested in helping and
He w uh next year is one of our two flavors we're we're gonna introduce is one that he's developing a barbecue sauce.
Nice. Okay, cool. And what's your question for us today?
My question basically is and I kinda have two different ones, I I
I had one
Before we got on.
But in the last week.
The last couple of weeks I've lost another job. So
Uh I have financed up and I have enough to scale up to to get the Copacker involved for next year to meet all those demands.
But
My question really is should I just go
crazy and just go all in with it. I know I'm about twenty, thirty percent of where I need to be to meet my family's needs.
Should I just
Scale back on the job expectations and just
double down on the other side of things and get more people involved, uh ask for more annual investors, that kind of thing.
Or uh
How crazy are you?
Should I go with this? How how much further should I go?
Got it. Okay. And sorry to hear about the the
Chob.
situation. But I think this is interesting. I mean the it sounds like
a big part of the motivation around this, not only'cause you like p peppers and hot sauce, but you want to build your own thing. You don't want to be dependent on
An employer who can just, you know.
Downsize and and lay people off.
Yep.
Okay, Caitlin, let me bring you in.
You've been waiting patiently, Caitlin, um all right, Grumpy Dad hot sauce.
Amazing. I love those names, by the way. Those are just brilliant for hot sauces. Uh so I can just see all these different ways the branding could go and uh could be really cool.
But
You know, question for you. What
What keeps you from going all in? What's what's standing in your way?
Who's paying the bills, you know. Yeah what if what if
That loan doesn't come through. What if
I talked to a copacker a couple of years ago and it was a hundred case minimum, twenty five thousand dollars for the loan and I couldn't swing it.
But I found one that's uh gonna scale with me. So
I'm at a place where I think I could do it if I planned it out.
Correctly. If I had you know,
Scalable goals, you know, by this quarter I need to be in these many stores and you know
Incremental increases, but
There's part of me that just wants to just be like
Drop a grenade and and it just toss it out there and
Just go and
Do Uber and
Door dash while to make the ends meet and then do everything else to get the hot sauce out there. So I
That's where I'm kinda at.
Do you have a sense for what you would need in order for the business to be a little bit more stable financially for you?
I know where my bills are, I know my budget, I know, you know, car payment, house payment, all that stuff. I know what it would take to
Fund my family's needs.
So is it like a certain number of retailers or
Uh more total volume of you know, total dollar volume of bottles out the door.
Um either in a combination of wholesale or or retail.
Which is why I'm trying to loop in the Copacker and get him going on and I've
Taught him the recipes, he's ready to roll. Um and we should have that.
Scaled up here before too long. I think that'll be game changing for you. You know
Back in the very early days of my bus of the business, I've I toggled both uh a pretty demanding job and and also
trying to run the business and to be honest, while I was working full time, it crept along at a really slow pace, both because I was doing the manufacturing and and also because I was distracted.
And and I think that there was a point in time where
I
I just made the commitment that okay, this is my number one.
It supersedes all else.
And so where there is a conflict between it
This and that.
Simple mills wins.
Yeah, I agree. I agree with
W with you on this one, Caitlin. I mean I think look
I think you can do a version of both, Tim.
Right. You can go all in.
And and you can also figure out the most flexible way for you to earn
some money, whether that's, you know, Uber or DoorDash or maybe getting a job or part time job with some flexibility. Because
really what you wanna be doing is you wanna be focused on getting this in the hands of people
uh beyond Lexington, right? Beyond Winchester, Kentucky. And I think that
You really need to focus on just getting people exposed.
I mean you you know, even taking a risk of
just sending a bottle, a couple of bottles, or c at least calling some of these places and saying, Can you take some of this on consignment? You know, would you be willing to

And I think a lot of them.
If you we'll take your call. You call'em up and they're they they'd be willing to put put your your bottle on the shelf.
I've got a few of them that are lined up and it's one of those things where I'm either
Making stuff for the for the Saturday market or making it by the case for these and so
The juggling of
Who am I w who am I gonna serve this week is what is what's been messing with me. I've you know
We're moving in that direction. It's just
How do I juggle that for the until the Copecker?
It is fully up and going.
Yeah, that's one of the things I did. I devoted my Wednesdays to just calling up these places and just being like, Okay, hi, I've got this product. Will you take it? I'm gonna send you a sample.
And then the next week follow up with them, Hi, did you receive the sample? Can I get the item on the shelf? And and just kind of blow it out into as many places as you can as fast as you can, but
But to your point, you gotta have the product.
And so Co Man will be in an unlock on that. Jim, how how old is your son?
Uh fifteen. My daughter's sixteen. He's fifteen. He'll be sixteen in uh March.
I got a job for your son
And or daughter.
Why don't you sick them on the website?
I'm looking at your website. Yeah. Need some work. It's hard. You cannot order the sauce on there.
There's off the shelf.
Very inexpensive software.
Whether it's you know,
Shopify Square Space
Square I mean there are all these different br companies out there.
WordPress that make it really easy.
And and your fifteen or sixteen year old's gonna figure out faster than you will.
Yeah. I'm just being honest with you.
Sick'em on that.
Figure this out, make it easy to order it online.
Clean up the website, make it a little nicer.
Just start there.
Yeah, he wants to he was he's uh we've done a lot uh work with like recipes
My sauce was somebody else's uh products, you know, the meats and the the stuff from our farmers market and he's helping with
shoot the recipe videos and stuff like that. So he actually set this this mic up for my for the broadcast today too. So I'm gonna let him let him run with it. And and maybe consider being the grumpy dad.
Making videos, having'em put on TikTok, I
I'm serious. I mean these guys fifteen, sixteen, they know what the they they know how to do this stuff.
Yep.
And you could be sit you know, you could be the grumpy dad in these videos.
Worked for me. Oh my gosh, and what a great learning experience for him too.
Yeah.
I I want him to be as as vul as involved as he can.
Yeah, I mean the the question that you ask
Right, is is should I go all in or
keep doing it the way I've been doing it. And I think the question I don't think is should you go all in or not. You should go all in. I mean you're passionate about this
People are responding to it. You clearly love the process of making this. You've got certified. You've got a brand here.
I don't think the question is should go all in. I mean you are kind of all in, right? The question is
How do you sustain a business that
Look, let's be let's let's be realistic here.
All your bills.
Let's say for at least two years, maybe three, maybe five.
So if you can look at this and say, All right, for five years this thing is not gonna pay my bills.
But
I want to pursue this, and I really think there's potential here.
Then you kind of
reverse engineer it and figure out what you need to do, the minimum you need to pay the bills, but also to really lean in and focus on this thing.
Yep, that's true.
Tim Taves of Grumpy Dead Sauce Company, thanks so much. Good luck.
Thank you for having me.
Good luck.
Thanks, Ben.
I mean right.
You get the grumpy dad?
On the sofa?
Oh my goodness, there are so many things that you could do with that on social media and from a branding perspective. It's it's such a brilliant base to build on.
I mean, you know, that's s something I'd watch. I'd watch a grumpy dad.
I don't know.
Ps sucking out a bottle of hot sauce. I don't know, something.
Something. Yeah. So there's something there.
All right, we're gonna take another quick break, but we'll be right back with one more collar.
Stay with us, I'm Guy Roz, and you're listening to the advice line right here on how I built this lab.
Welcome back to the advice line on how I built this lab. I'm Guy Roz, and my guest today is Caitlin Smith. She's the founder of the natural food company Simple Mills.
Uh, Caitlin, what do you say? Should we take another call?
Let's do it.
Welcome to the advice line. You are on with Caitlin Smith of Simple Mills. Please introduce yourself, tell us your name, where you're calling from, and a little bit about your business.
Hi Caitlin. Hey guy.
Hello, I'm Marissa Gurdian from Chafelqua, New York, and my business is sweet paws.
We are innovating in the pet space with problem solving.
Fashion forward silicone pet essentials.
Our mission is to amplify the joy of pet care.
and smooth friction in the daily routine so that pet families can enjoy more quality time together.
Got it. Okay, sweet pause. Welcome to the show, Marissa. Thank you for calling in. Um
Silicone. So what what kind of things are they? Like chew toys?
So we make everything from chew toys to bath gloves.
Portable pa towels.
Um we have a couple things that are just launching, including a bag charm to hold the used bag on the leash.
So it's kind of
An embarrassment free solution to walking down the street. Freeze up your hands to do other things. And also our new bag opener that opens the bag on the very first try. You're talking about the poop bags.
That's right. I gotcha, okay.
So you got you got the container for the poop bags, which I know very well,'cause I take my dog for
Not just me, my wife and I take our dive for a walk at least once a day.
So I'm very familiar with the boot bags.

Bag opener?
So that's our newest product and the one we're most proud of. We just launched it on Chewy.
It is our
Better bag bag opener.
Okay, it's a better way to open plastic bags.
So
Have you ever struggled to open a dog waistbag? All the time. It's a pain the pain in the butt.
You're trying to open it up, I'm like ripping it, I'm blowing into yeah.
You know I've got oily finger tips or something, like a
You can't open it.
Exactly. I honestly love walking my dog, but I hated opening the bag. And it would ruin an otherwise good thing. I would be on my neighbor's lawn
They'd be pulling out of their driveway, I'd be giving them the wave of shame as I just struggled to open that dog waste bag, and it could take twenty minutes, you know. I wasn't gonna lick my fingers. So um this is a solution that attaches to the leash.
And
It opens the dog waste bag instantly.
You just insert your fingers?
You put your fingers it's like a ring.
I'll show you and I know that I'll try to describe it for anyone listening. But
It's a lightweight silicone device that hangs from the leash.
Okay. Or your keys or your bag.
You put the two finger grips over the end of the bag and with one simple twist it opens the bag instantly. You got the silicone finger grips.
And then we call it better bag, B T R B A G because it's a better way to open plastic bag. It does it on the very first try. No more looking fingers, no more frustration. You can use this in the grocery store. Those are the worst. I can never open those bags in the grocery store. So that actually leads me to my question because this product.
we feel has an application well beyond pet. So even though we launched it with a pet company, we started a separate website to show all the other applications, which are not only grocery, but also household trash bags, office bags, any bags. We even have a customer who used it to separate her coffee filters, uh'cause she had such a hard time getting those apart.
Total pain.
And it really does work on the very first try.
All right, before we get to to your question, just a couple of questions for you.
How did you h tell me about the business. I uh w when did you start it and and how did it start?
So I started the company back in twenty twenty. We got one of the very first pandemic puppies back in March twenty twenty. Yeah and she was a pure delight.
We loved her to pieces. Her name is Soby. Um
Mini Labradle, but she was very nippy. And um so I developed a wearable puppy teether that
Could be worn as a bracelet so that you always had a chew toy handy if the dog was nippy. So you and then you the human would wear it. The dog wouldn't wear it. It wasn't wearable for the dog. The human wears it. The human wear and then the dog chews on the on the silicone.
Exactly. The dog comes up and is nipping on your wrist, you remove it from your wrist and redirect the dog
um when they're ready to play. And that way it keeps them from biting you and gives them something else to chew on. Usually they'll just take it. You either tug with them, um, play fetch, or they'll go off in a corner and chew on this, which is a non toxic human grade material.
Safe enough for human babies.
So um
We pitch it to Chewy. They had nothing like it.
And um all of a sudden
We were off to the races. We developed a bigger version, our chunky teether for
People with bigger wrists or bigger dogs and it went into our paw towels and our spa gloves and you know, d really we just can't make enough products. We have so many ideas. So you're making a bunch of bunch of things now, selling them on Chewy and and give us a sense of of of your revenue right now.
Okay, so we're selling on Chewy.
Amazon
Petco and we're launching with a container store and QVC. Nice. Um revenue this year is approaching two hundred thousand dollars. I think next year we're gonna see a lot more growth.
That's congrats on that. Okay.
And before I forget, what is your question for us today?
Okay, so we just launched our Better Bag Bag Opener, which I showed you, um, which is a brand new product that we think is our best
product yet. It solves a problem for a lot of people.
And it has applications beyond pet. It's easily demonstrable on video.
Yeah. We do have limited resources for marketing.
Um
In the past we've tried to do
Everything.
At once, and I think that resulted in kind of like a little bit of everything was a lot of nothing. We didn't get results.
So this time around we'd like to focus on
One platform to get the word out about better bag.
So our question is if you had to choose just one platform
To get the word out about a revolutionary new product, what would it be?
Interesting. Okay, Caelin, I'm gonna bring you in here.
Let's unpack.
There is a lot to unpack for sure. So I'm I'm curious. So I'm a dog owner myself, although I I don't know the uh dog owner community uh as well as probably you do. Uh so where do you find that these dog owners, first of all, typically shop? And also where do they typically show up
Uh social media wise or online wise, you know, where are you considering marketing to them?
Well, I think we launched this product with Chewy. That's a really good place to be. I don't take that for granted. We feel really lucky about that. We've gotten a good response.
They are.
But I
Beyond that
Probably Facebook, Instagram. Like my whole list is basically all correct answers of great places to go, TikTok. And that's why I I it's hard to narrow it down.
And I do see this product having reached
into grocery for people who have dexterity issues or just the everyday person like me who doesn't like to lick their fingers in public or doesn't want to lick their fingers at all, you know? Um so I so those are the people I really want to reach just to kinda educate them that this
Solution exists to a problem a lot of people have.
Makes perfect sense. Yeah. I mean I think one of the things we thought about
When we had
uh well, we still don't have the largest marketing budget, but but especially in the early days when we had a very, very tiny marketing budget.
was really spending those dollars as close to the person who's going to buy it as possible.
So in our case, we were primarily selling in retail stores. Uh so you think like Whole Foods
And and so what we really invested in were demos in store.
So we would
you know, when you're walking through Whole Foods, you get to try a little bit of muffin, decide if you want to buy it, and then go to checkout.
Now, contrast that to let's just use the other end of the spectrum, uh, which would be like a national ad campaign, like a Super Bowl commercial or something like that. You don't want to do that in the early days because it's
The percent of people who are seeing that.
that are actually going to go and buy it or maybe it's uh or even are going to visit the store that the product's in, super low.
And so when I think about your product, I think about, well, how do you get as close to those
customers that are already, for example, on the Chewy site looking for products as possible. Uh it's a little bit different because it's primarily online.
But but I think the the premise probably still applies.
Yeah, I mean I think it's it's a it's a tricky answer to a very good question, right? Which is where do you
Where do you put your and the obvious answer that you know I think a lot of people would sort of give you is y you know, you pick a social media platform that works best for you. And for but but by the way, how where have you performed the best? What what platforms work best for you?
I I would say honestly we haven't done a good job of
of marketing. So
When we leave it to our
Partners our retail partners.
They're very well equipped to do this on behalf of our products and part of our arrangement with them.
think twenty percent of our payment from Chewy goes back to them as a rebate for marketing. So they d I see it show up on my own feed for Instagram, my own products show up and stuff. But um but when we do it ourselves, like I said, it's almost like we spread ourselves too thin because we don't have enough resources to devote to it. And I haven't seen a great return. And that's kind of um
Discouraging I would say, which is why this time we want to take a different approach and try to put
All our eggs in one basket and try to have a a bigger impact with that one platform.
What w how how give give me a sense of how much money you are able you'd be able to spend on this.
Like
Five thousand, ten thousand, twenty thousand.
I would say about
Five to eight thousand? Mm-hmm.

basically a very small budget.
And you're right. I mean um every person Caitlin, you may you guys may be experiencing the same thing. Customer acquisition over social media has really dropped, especially since the pandemic. Have you have you found that to be the case?
Oh, a hundred percent.
Yeah.
And it's expensive and
Here here's a thought for you.
Uh I
Yeah, because there's of course there's influencer marketing and finding the pet owners and that's certainly
worthwhile, but but five to eight thousand dollars
You know, you you really want to see how far you can stretch that.
And I wonder whether
it's worth looking and I it's gonna sound very self interested, right, because of what what we're doing here.
And I'm not saying our show'cause we w we don't do this anyway, but
But there have to be
Podcasts.
That have you know
ten to fifty thousand listeners a week, let's say.
That are pet podcasts.
Th there there have to be. I mean I I don't know off the top of my head.
But
But there's an intimacy.
when the host of that show we do advertising on this show
When I talk about a product that I use
When they talk about products that they use
Especially if it's to a very, very specific kind of audience.
That could have a pretty
Big impact. You know, we did an episode of the show a couple months ago.
about Bull and Branch. I don't know if you heard that episode. And they're awesome, right? Scott and Missy Tannan. And and and if you remember that episode, they did something really, really risky. I mean they they took a million dollars. They took out
uh SBA loans, they took out a mortgage on their home.
To buy advertising, eighteen months of advertising on Howard Stern show, and the m I think the minimum but buy was a million dollars. It's an insane thing to do. Totally crazy. It was at the beginning of their company, but they really they put all their eggs in that basket. It was very risky, but but it wasn't if you think about it, because people love Howard Stern.
You know, the the people love Joe Rogan. Whoever you there are different people
connect with different people in different ways.
Uh Alex Cooper of Color Daddy. So
There's something about a person and they don't have to be super famous, but if if if you listen to that person,
And you trust them.
And they're talking about something.
that could be useful for them.
it could have a huge impact. I mean the Howard Stern ads that they took out
eventually turned Bolin Branch into a huge brand, which it is today. So there there it may be worth exploring
Podcasts that focus on
On pets and pet care.
That's a fantastic idea.
I love that idea.
The other thing I'm thinking about too is
Really that kind of lifetime value for your customers as well. And so how much you're willing to pay for each person that you're bringing into the loop.
Not spending too too much on each person or each each individual that you're acquiring so that you're able to be profitable on the items too. And so
Are there vehicles within Chui?
that you can market on. Maybe it's similar items in a sponsored way. Okay.
Customers who bought this might also like this item. And then you're
a lot easier getting people to add that item to their cart.
That makes a lot of sense. And they do encourage vendors to
support their in house.
Campaigns and I think going back to what you said about finding people where they already are, you know, that maybe I should think more carefully about that. That might be a better
strategy than starting from scratch on the internet and trying to find people you know out of nowhere.
But I also love Guy's suggestion too. I have to tell you, I can't tell you how many people have told me that they heard about us on how I built this. And so it is it is a fantastic marketing vehicle.
Yeah, especially if you can find, you know and it doesn't have to be a podcast. It could be a it could be a a a great blog or a substack or something. But but where you've got
You know, a a somebody who really has between ten and fifty thousand people.
who are regularly gr consuming their content.
The the cost
For for that ad spend is gonna be very low.
So you may want to kind of experiment, you know, take that five to eight thousand, don't blow it all in one
Show you.
But but
Take a little bit of it and see how how far that gets you.
Those are great suggestions. I would have never thought of that, honestly. So thank you so much.
Cool.
Mercy Girdian, the brand is called Sweetpaws. Um good luck, congrats. We'll we'll be we'll be following you.
Thank you. Such a pleasure to meet you both.
Nice to meet you.
By the way.
The other problem I have is that I only bring I shouldn't say I my wife only
She has always one
Poop bag.
Tide.
To the
We don't have like a
Good case.
But
You know what's so great is that is that in our town
There's like every you know
half a mile or something, there's a like a
Uh
Doggyback station. Yeah, doggyback station.
Great idea. I am wholly reliant on those. Totally. Saved.
Many a sneaker.
Because you don't step and poop.
It really is. Yeah. I I'm very forgetful with the bags.
Yeah.
Totally.
Um, Caitlin, before we let you go, um, I want to ask you w one one last question about
your journey'cause now it's been, you know, a decade, more than a decade.
since you you started. If you were to go back
Right, and sort of visit yourself in that, you know, making making stuff in your kitchen. And you could say, Hey, I'd I'm coming from twelve years in the future here.
Here's I'm gonna tell you.
What might you tell
That Caitlin Smith.
Aside from do it and run faster.
Uh I think that I think the other one just relates back to learning. Uh one of the greatest parts about being an entrepreneur and building a
a growing business is that
You get to learn so much. And so to lean into that, not feel like you have to have all the answers. I think in the early days, I felt like
I needed to I needed to know the answer to everything. And the fact is you don't.
And there are people for that, but also
Um, if you're open to learning, if you're if you're really going out there and seeking that education.
then you'll get there a lot faster.
Yeah.
That's awesome advice. That's Caitlin Smith, founder and CEO of Simple Mills.
Um, Caitlin, thanks so much for
Coming back onto the show.
Thank you for having me. Great to see you.
Uh and by the way, if you haven't heard Caitlin's original how I built this episode, you've got to go back and and give it a listen. You'll find a link to it in the podcast description. And here is one of my favorite moments.
From that interview.
The weekends where I wasn't going to production runs, I was doing demos in the stores. And so my like rule of thumb was if it was a three hour demo, I needed to bake for three hours in order to make enough muffins for the demo. How many muffins would that be for three hours?
I would guess somewhere around like six hundred. Six hundred. Oh my god. Right,'cause somebody would come up and say, Oh that let me just take one for my husband. He's over in in the dairy aisle.
Or the best is the kids that are unsupervised. And they would just eat them. They'd just shove them in their mouth. Steal them off the table. Like you're not supposed to give them to a child who's unsupervised, but sometimes the child takes it and runs.
I also want to share that just this month
Simple Mills announced plans to be acquired by Flowers Foods for almost eight
hundred million dollars.
Caitlyn will continue to lead the brand and if the name of that company, Flower Food, sounds familiar, it's because they also acquired another HIVT alum.
Dave's Killer Bread.
Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. And by the way, please make sure to check out my newsletter. You can sign up for it for free at gyros.com or on Substack. And of course, if you're working on a business and you'd like to be on this show, send us a one-minute message that tells us a little bit about your business and the questions or issues you are.
currently facing because we would love to try and help you solve them.
You can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com or call us at 1-800-433-1298. You can leave a message there and make sure to tell us how to reach you.
And by the way, we'll put all of this in the podcast description as well. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramteen Arablui.
It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Cena Lafredo.
Our production team also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Elaine Coates, Chris Massini, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, Sam Paulson, Devin Schwartz, and Neva Grant.
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to the advice line.
on how I built this lab.