KORE Outdoors Podcast

Heather Kelly
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[00:00:00]

Welcome to the KORE Outdoors Podcast. My name is Christian Rawles. This show's mission is to deliver actionable insights and new perspectives to entrepreneurs working in the outdoor industry. Today's conversation is with Heather Kelly, the founder, and CEO of Heather's choice, the creators of some of the best packable meals and snacks on the market.

I really appreciate Heather's transparency in this conversation as we discuss the challenges she's faced building her business over the past 11 years. We talk about her humbling appearance on Shark Tank. The serious drawbacks of taking on investors too early and the decision to relocate the business to Oregon from her home state of Alaska.

There's a lot to learn from this episode, so please enjoy my conversation with Heather. Kelly.

[00:00:43] Christian: the place where I wanted to start is I'm curious what role adventure has played in your life as an entrepreneur?

[00:00:50] Heather: Ooh. I like this question when I think back to 18-year-old Heather that was learning how to raft, or my first Grand Canyon trip that I [00:01:00] talk about a lot, because it was so formative. I feel like that experience of being out in the wilderness, needing to be a bit self-sufficient, needing to keep your cool when stuff gets weird, has been so informative to who I am today as an entrepreneur and my level of competence, and something as simple as sitting at dinner last night where I am in Austin, Texas with a whole bunch of people who are quite frankly, way smarter than me, way more experienced, way more successful.

But just having kind of a deep seated sense of competence in what I know I'm capable of in really hard real life experiences. Right. And I'm sure that you've had the same outdoor experiences where like somebody gets hurt or the weather changes or whatever happens and there is no option to just throw a fit and like go home.[00:02:00]

Right? You have to stay present and actually work through it and problem solve. And that I think has really influenced me as an entrepreneur.

[00:02:10] Christian: That's great. Okay, so I have a question that I was gonna ask you later, but it just seems like, let's just get into it now. 'cause I'm really curious, you and I share something, um, I think that we share is that we both have taken extended periods away from our business to get out in the wilderness. Like you talked about the Grand Canyon thing, and I, I know that you've done that and other things.

So what do, what do those long adventures play kind of like mid stride, like growing your business, focusing on everything, and all of a sudden you're gonna like call a time out and you're gonna leave for a month. Like, first of all, what does that do for you? And then second, how do you do that? How, like how do you set your business up so that that is a feasible task?

[00:02:49] Heather: Man, I have had the pleasure of going on, I think six month long River trips in the last decade. So this is not just like, oh, I did it once and it was awesome. It's [00:03:00] been a little bit habitual. I'm kind of long overdue for another trip. But even sitting here today, again, I'm like away from the business for a week.

Sure, people can, uh, access me via Slack or email or text or whatever, but even just having to once again, think through the systems in the business, think through the potential fail points for somebody. And systematize it and just kind of be one step ahead of them. Like, Hey, you're going to run into this as a problem, I guarantee it, but let's talk about it now so that you, as the person who is staying to operate the business, feels like you have a sense of support.

And anytime that I have left, like stepped away from my business for a work trip or for a backcountry trip, it's really been just a lot of. Okay, everybody stuff is gonna come up, but here's what you do when the inevitable, you know, hits the fan. And I [00:04:00] think that for me, taking those trips just reminds me of why, why we start businesses, right?

We start businesses so that we can make money while we are out doing something else, and we're not beholden to an hourly wage. But I think a lot of us as entrepreneurs completely forget that we actually didn't just create ourselves a job, we created ourselves a business that in a perfect world, can make money for us, make independent of the amount of time that we're dedicating to it.

[00:04:34] Christian: And when you're on those trips, what is that like for you in the sense of a reset? Because I would imagine, I'll speak from my experience, it's like a total reset to not have an email and a phone, like an email account and a phone to pull me back. So how do you come back from those? Like what is it like while you're there and then how do you come back from those?

Like what have you noticed?

[00:04:55] Heather: Yeah, I'll share this because it feels very accessible to [00:05:00] people. Even this weekend being here in a new place and actively choosing to turn off my cell phone and not check my email and not check social and not open my laptop and be like, not wear my Apple watch, be completely unavailable to the outside world for an entire 48 hours, which maybe isn't, you know, 30 days or a week or 10 days, but even that 48 hours, I was like.

Oh, I did not realize how habitual it was for me to hit refresh on my email or to open up Slack or to look for Instagram dms or to log into LinkedIn and just realizing how much external validation I was looking for all the time, like every 15 minutes. And so then suddenly taking two whole days to be disconnected and [00:06:00] intentionally saying like, I don't need anybody else's validation.

I don't need the dopamine hit of a notification on my phone. Who am I independent of that? And that was so helpful. That might have to become like part of my new weekend routine is just turning off all ways for people to get ahold of me and just getting reconnected to kind of who I am independent of that.

[00:06:27] Christian: Okay, so I have to ask, what did you do during that time, if you don't mind sharing, and who, who are you when you're getting the internal validation?

[00:06:37] Heather: Yeah. So what did I do? I spent about 14 hours sleeping the first night, so clearly I was tired. This hotel room has blackout shades, so that was helpful. Uh, I spent an astronomical amount of time laying by the pool trying to like rid myself of the Alaska white that I have, [00:07:00] just attempting to get a tan.

And then I spent a lot of time doing what, you know, kind of is my favorite thing, which is finding good food, right? I ate tacos for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it was awesome. And the most fun part that I was kind of surprised about was how attracted I was to design. Like I went to one hotel that was designed by this woman, Kate Westerly.

I guess she's kind of a big deal in the world of design. This place is so stunningly beautiful and so inspiring. I was just walking around taking pictures and being enamored with the tiles and the wallpaper and the furniture, and I was like, wow. I love interior design. I love the way things look and the way things feel, and that's really authentic to me.

Doing my best work in my business. Like that's probably my highest contribution to Heather's choice is thinking about [00:08:00] what is the brand? How does it look, how does it feel? How does somebody interact with it? Uh, my best work is not, you know, all things operations and just making the cog turn.

[00:08:11] Christian: Sure. What was the hotel?

[00:08:13] Heather: It was called the Proper. I think they have 'em all over the place, but oh my God, it's so beautiful. It's so inspiring.

[00:08:22] Christian: Cool. Okay. I have a question about the design thing. I'm gonna hold that though 'cause I, I, yeah, I'm gonna hold that question about design and we'll get back to it. So you came into the business with a nutritionist background. I. And so I'm curious because a lot of people that I interview, the product design is a core part of their business, but you have an interesting product that you're designing and that it's food.

And I'm just curious, like what philosophy are you bringing into, or, you know, I'm sure it's changed a little bit over time, but just in general, from start to finish, what is the design philosophy that you brought into, actually, into the nutrition part of, of the business and into your products?[00:09:00]

[00:09:00] Heather: You are right. It's changed a lot. When I started, I was pretty diehard paleo oriented, paleo primal, and kind of my nutritional philosophy. Over the last almost 11 years, which is crazy to say, I feel like the intensity around being grain free or around being dairy free, like that's all kind of softened for me in my own nutrition strategy.

And so now it feels like it's been consistent throughout the journey of Heather's choice and throughout my nutritional journey that, you know, whole foods come first, right? Like it's not super radical, it's not really cutting edge. But at the end of the day, if you believe that every single one of us has our own unique diet, there are as many diets out there as there are people in the world, because your diet is simply what you eat on any given day, then it just kind of once again takes down that intensity of needing to follow any sort of dogma or [00:10:00] any sort of really hip, trendy.

Diet strategy. And I think that for Heather's choice, we've been very intentional about not hopping onto anything that is currently in vogue. We've just backed away from it and said, all right, at the end of the day, are we providing people with Whole Foods nutrition that is macronutrient balanced as best we can, that tastes good and is healthy and is something that we would want to eat in our own home kitchen?

And that leaves the door wide open to do all sorts of new products and to do all sorts of new recipes because we're not shoehorning ourselves into being fully vegan, fully keto carnivore, low carb, high carb, like none of that is even applicable to the adventure menu. And I feel like that gives us a ton of runway.

[00:10:53] Christian: And do you have design criteria beyond that? , Like you only work with certain people, you only type source certain types of food, or is it like, Hey, if I can, if it [00:11:00] tastes good and it works well for my business, we're gonna use it. Do you have other design criteria they pulled into it?

[00:11:04] Heather: Yeah. Something that we've been really consistent about again, is using grass fed proteins. That's something that I will die on the hill for of if somebody wants to go to bat over, like whether or not grass fed is superior to grain fed or, uh, regenerative organic certified beef being comparable to conventionally raised beef.

I'm like, okay, we can have this argument. Uh, and so I do think as a backpacking food brand that's pretty unique that we use a hundred percent grassfed bison in our bestselling grassed bison chili. We use a hundred percent grassfed beef in our shepherd's pie in our spaghetti, or we use wild caught Alaskan sockeye in the salmon chowder.

That's a little bit above and beyond maybe what somebody is expecting when they head out into the backcountry. But I know for myself as a consumer, if I believe that 80% of our health is built off of what we eat, [00:12:00] uh, that shit matters. So, especially when you're trying to perform at a high level out in the wilderness, where again, you need to get yourself out of there.

[00:12:10] Christian: Sure, and I'm gonna go back in time a little bit. So talk about the leap that you took when you decided to take Heather's choice from side project for a couple years to full time. Like what was that decision like for you?

[00:12:24] Heather: wow, that was, I'm gonna say it was a two year process because a lot of people ask me, you know, Hey, I started my own business and I want to go full time with it. How long did it take you? And it took years before I was able to fully just only focus on Heather's choice. So I started this business in the summer of 2014 on a triple dog Dare.

So my buddy Jason saw my infectious enthusiasm about dehydrated food. 'cause I was just yammering about it all the time, giving out samples to people. He was like, Heather, what's it gonna take for you to turn [00:13:00] this into a business? And Jason literally sat me down, got me an EIN number, got me a business license, gave me a place to live.

'cause I was currently just house sitting. I was a little bit in my dirt bag era and bought me a wine cooler size dehydrator at Cabela's and said, you should go for it and see what you can do with it. So that was a little bit fateful. And there was probably two years there that I was running my first business doing sports nutrition and eating psychology coaching, using that money to fund Heather's choice.

And it really wasn't until I got my first Angel investment in 2016 that I was able to go full time with it. So there was a pretty rocky. Two year journey there where I was effectively running two businesses and using the proceeds from one to fund the other one, which was not awesome, but highly necessary.

[00:13:57] Christian: So you brought on Angel Investment just to be able to [00:14:00] help as a bridge, to get you to be able to focus full time on Heather's choice.

[00:14:04] Heather: Well, honestly, angel Investment kind of found me. So I did a Kickstarter campaign in 2015 and the Kickstarter was so that we could have our own custom sized packaging. 'cause you as an outdoors person know that a lot of brands have these like eight and a half by 11 bags that are just obnoxiously large.

And you're like, why do I have to

[00:14:27] Christian: long spoon to make it work.

[00:14:29] Heather: Exactly. So I knew that I wanted the cutest, smallest, littlest packaging that I could get my hands on, because that was gonna be a major differentiator. Like, you don't have to use a long spoon, or you don't have to. Stick your whole hand in the bag and get food on the cuff of your jacket when you're in Bear country.

This was literally a design feature that I was thinking about. Well, to get that custom sized packaging was probably 30 grand. And then also I had outgrown my wine cooler sized dehydrator at this point, [00:15:00] so I did a Kickstarter campaign for, I think it was $48,000, and that attracted a lot of interest from potential investors.

While I was doing that Kickstarter, the Anchorage kind of startup scene was sort of coming to life, and you had angel investors that were starting funds and starting accelerators and like attempting to build a startup ecosystem in Alaska. We kind of got caught in that wave. So I ended up doing an accelerator program on the heels of that, this investment fund approached me to make an investment and that really allowed me to say like, holy shit, I have a couple hundred thousand dollars and like I can do this full time.

This is crazy. So very young, very naive. Heather found herself taking on investors before I really understood what that entailed.

[00:15:50] Christian: Knowing what you know now, how would you do it? Or would you have done it differently?

[00:15:54] Heather: I would've done everything differently.

[00:15:56] Christian: Oh, okay. . Keep going then.

[00:15:59] Heather: yeah. [00:16:00] So I will tell you that it's a really important fork in the road for any entrepreneur and somebody, somebody that I really respect did have this conversation with me at, you know, 26, 27, 28 years old, however old I was. But I didn't understand. I just did not fully grasp what I was signing up for.

And the fork in the road is that okay, if you own your business and you're self-funding it, you own the keys to the kingdom and you can do whatever you damn well please with your business. You can go to work when you want to. You can grow as slow, as fast as you can. You can shut it down, you can do, you can do whatever it is fully within your control.

The moment that you take outside capital from investors, whether that is friends and family, or it is private equity, or it's venture cap, doesn't matter. As soon as you make that commitment, you now have somebody else to answer to in your business. [00:17:00] And there is an expectation that those people are going to get their money back one way or another, and they're gonna get it back either from you.

Growing the business as fast as humanly possible, getting on the unicorn trajectory and selling it for a billion dollars. And then they make their return and everybody's happy. Or maybe they're coming to you as a lender and they have an expectation of how much you're gonna pay them on what terms at what interest rates.

So now you're basically working to pay this money back. Um, or a whole myriad of scenarios in between. And I definitely found myself with outside investors with a expectation that I was going to grow this thing as hard and fast as I possibly could to get them a return on their money. And to be honest with you, I still, to this day, 11 years in, don't know.

That I am fully prepared to do what it would take [00:18:00] in order to make that happen. Like I would need to kill a lot of my darlings in order to make the business hyper scalable enough to make that a reality. So it's a big conversation to have as an entrepreneur of whether or not you actually wanna take on outside capital.

[00:18:18] Christian: So how do you wrestle with that now? Because you're on the train and the train is not stopping and it's not and it needs to speed up. Yeah, it needs to speed up, if anything. So how do you wrestle with that? , And there's gotta be a lot of pull in, in either direction, like to the, kinda like back to the solopreneur just doing it.

'cause I love it in the wilderness idea to the, I am now surrounded by CPG brands that are, you know, shooting for the stars. Like how do you deal with that, that wrestling.

[00:18:46] Heather: Very ungraceful. Yeah. It's, so, even last night, again, being here amongst a group of entrepreneurs who have all been wildly successful, like the guy who's giving the keynote [00:19:00] tonight, uh, from dude wipes, they're probably a $200 million a year wet wipe company. Right? Pretty impressive. Or there's a lot of conversation about CTE foods that went through this accelerator program that recently sold to Pepsi for, I don't know, like $1.6 billion, something epic like that.

So it happens, right? You have brands that get started in somebody's garage. They grow up to be worth a few billion dollars and everybody gets rich and it's awesome. That is probably less than 1% right? Which I can give you statistics on like the experience I've had with Heather's choice and I'm like, okay, okay, I could be at the top 1%.

I could do this batting averages. However, again, the growth trajectory to get there and the amount of capital you have to raise and how fast do you have to move is [00:20:00] like hard for me to even wrap my head around. And as I sit back and look at the business that I've built that has been so rooted in good quality food, first serving our core customers, which are outdoors men and women, and doing all of it from a place of.

Authenticity and transparency and just nobody has to wonder with Heather's choice, like if you wanna know something, I'll tell you. And because I'm such a, all my cards on the table person, I actually don't know if I have what it takes to like play that unicorn game fully. 'cause it feels like it is a lot about leverage.

It is a lot about hype, it is a lot about marketing. It's about raising a truckload of capital and making compromises, which is maybe not even in my vocabulary, in order to get where you wanna go. So it's something I grapple with often of am I committed to [00:21:00] that ride and making the necessary sacrifices to potentially have the massive payout someday?

Or am I forging my own path and trusting that, okay, if I grow this to be a $10 million a year business, cranking out a million dollars a year worth of profit like. Am I gonna be that upset about that? Probably not.

[00:21:22] Christian: So do you have a clear path for you? Let's not call it clear. Do you have a path that you wanna take? Is it that 10 million for the, with a 10% net at the end of it? That's, that's, that's the path you're on.

[00:21:34] Heather: That's, I think that's the realistic path that I'm on, which really narrows the playing field of who I can bring on as investors. Because somebody who's making an investment in a company that's only gonna grow to only only gonna grow to $10 million a year, making a million dollars for the profit, it's not big enough for them to sell it, to make up for the rest of their portfolio.

That's gonna fail, I [00:22:00] guess you know that math, but it's crazy. It's so crazy.

[00:22:04] Christian: But I guess there's something to be said about, I mean, kind of going back to your ingredients, now you have constraints. Now when you walk in a room, you're like, you're off the list. You're off the list, you're off the list. Oh, I can talk to you. You're interesting. Let's go. Let's talk.

[00:22:17] Heather: Yeah. And honestly I think that that's a really good way to put it. And just even making that decision of this is the path that I'm on, that does not mean that I can't take on investors. That just means I'm looking for a different type of investor who's gonna be just as happy being a part of a company that has, you know, a net profit every year and is kicking out dividends to people versus talking to the person that is looking for the next, uh, epic Bar or, or Poppy.

You know, those are two totally different types of investors, and neither one is right or wrong. I.

[00:22:52] Christian: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And it's, once you know what you want and what you, what your business is right for, or what business you're right [00:23:00] for is sometimes the way Right. Because it's, and that's okay. . Was it hard to come to that realization? Was that a hard lesson learned for you?

[00:23:08] Heather: Yes, it's still hard. It's still hard because there's that shiny object syndrome, right? And you're like, well, I mean, would I be that upset if I sold it for a billion dollars? No, that wouldn't, that wouldn't be a terrible outcome. However, I think that for me personally, I'm just kind of trying to settle into like, okay, there is a reality.

We're growing to 10 million being profitable, serving my core customer, continuing to offer the adventure menu the way that I want to. Like that's a good business. And I think that for me, I have been, I wanna say brainwashed, but that's like too strong of a term. But like I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are in the world that I play in of consumer packaged goods who are groomed to believe [00:24:00] either you take this thing to the moon or you might as well fail fast.

Right. And to then decide like, you know what? Yeah, I've been at this for 11 years and it's been epically hard and I've made 10,000 mistakes, but I'm still standing and I still want to keep going because I still have more that I want to do with this business. Even though I have had outside people say to me like, you should just, you should just bankrupt it.

You should just stop. You should just quit. You should just move on. And once again, having to push that outside noise and say like, okay, that is your opinion, but that has nothing to do with me and actually what I'm trying to bring into the world and the experience that I'm having and how much fun I'm having and the people I get to connect with and all of that.

[00:24:49] Christian: That's a really enlightening approach. How do you maintain that? How did you get to that place where you're like, okay, I'm comfortable with this. And I know you said it's, it's a daily battle probably, but in that battle, like what are you [00:25:00] drawing on? Like what are you coming back to to remind yourself like, oh, no, no.

It, I'm sure you hear this a lot, but it's Heather's choice. What we're gonna do with

[00:25:07] Heather: Yeah, I can't believe how often people use that on me. It's

[00:25:13] Christian: I ha, sorry. I had to, I had to get such low hanging fruit. But yeah, I guess the, that's the question is like, how do you, how do you realign with your, yourself with that choice every single day, week, month, that you're like, oh, do I go this way?

[00:25:27] Heather: For me, it's really focused on, I am still learning so much, you know, I'm still learning a ton about business. I'm still loving the people that I work with and loving the experience that I'm having, and that's worth so much. I. Right. Just being able to say like, okay, I am here on this work trip. I am technically working right now, even though I was just laying by the pool in the sun, and now I get to sit here with you and record this podcast and like, look at me.

I'm working, I'm marketing for my business. [00:26:00] And like I don't take that for granted. You know, just kind of that little bit of freedom or the fact that yeah, I can have days that I spend 12 hours straight on the warehouse floor packing boxes, but I'm like, oh my gosh, this is so cool. This is going to, you know, Denali National Park, or this is going to Yosemite, or this is going to a retailer and wherever the heck.

And like, there's just too many points of satisfaction to just say like, you know what? It wasn't a unicorn. I'm just gonna put a bullet in it, be done with it

[00:26:31] Christian: Yeah, you've created a life that you want to live.

[00:26:34] Heather: for the most part. Some days it's not.

[00:26:36] Christian: Okay?

[00:26:37] Heather: Today's pretty glamorous. Other days are not so glamorous.

[00:26:41] Christian: Sure. Oh, so you've created a real life. That's

[00:26:43] Heather: Yes, yes.

[00:26:46] Christian: What do you do on the days where you don't love your business? I.

[00:26:52] Heather: Call my friend Chris, who is absolutely on speed dial and that you'll appreciate this. So Chris and I have [00:27:00] been friends for 20 plus years, so he's seen me from my punk ass skateboard days to college athlete, to starting my first business, to starting my second business. And is somebody who knows who like the real Heather is, right?

Independent of like what I am doing at the moment. And Chris and I started to track it at some point because 2023 and 2024 were. Quite frankly, the hardest years of my life, it was terrible. And he started to kind of reflect back to me like, you know, there's usually like once a month I get a call from you that's like, I hate this.

I don't wanna do this anymore. I quit. Like I cannot move forward. It's too stressful. But then it went from like once a month to once a week to a couple times a week, to every other day. And he was able to reflect back to me like, you know, you're really stressed out. Like if you're [00:28:00] calling me every other day wanting to throw the towel in on this, like probably need to get you some help.

Right. So even being able to be that vulnerable with the people in my world who can just witness like, oh, Heather's not doing so well. That's super helpful because they know like it can get really bad. I can get super stressed out. I can be. Totally at a loss for how I'm gonna possibly move forward and still rebound from it.

And I'm only able to do that because of the people that I have who care about me as a person enough to say like, I know this is bad, but I also know you can get through it. 'cause you've done it a hundred thousand times before.

[00:28:44] Christian: Hmm. Are you willing to talk about what you did to get out of that, those two bad years? Or how, I mean, maybe didn't get out of it, but what was helpful?

[00:28:54] Heather: Oh my God. So 2023 was the year that I was like, I'm gonna go [00:29:00] raise 3 million bucks and like, I'm gonna finally do this. I'm tired of raising 50 grand, a hundred grand, you know, just like six figures at a time. I'm gonna do a seven figure raise and everything's gonna be different. Well that did not work.

You might remember in like March of 23, there was like some bank that collapsed and it was kind of a big deal and like basically all private equity money just dried up was a really bad year for fundraising. Uh, and that was also the year that I was simultaneously preparing for Shark Tank. And so I was raising money.

I had hired a whole shit ton of people. I had like built a bigger team. I had done all the stuff I would do with the $3 million, but before I got the $3 million, which was super dumb. So I was really broke, really stressed out, getting told no by investors that I was flying all across the country to meet with.

[00:30:00] I was preparing for Shark Tank, I filmed for Shark Tank. If you've seen the episode, you know I got my ass kicked and honestly, I came back to Alaska. This is September of 23. Sitting down at a table with my friend Chris, and I'm like, I'm done. I'm completely done like going bankrupt, like using the B word here, and this is over. And he's like, you are so far from bankrupt. You think it's over because you have no money in the bank. But literally like Chris and I sat there with my sweetheart, Brad. So Chris, Brad, my right hand woman, Brooke and I sat at this conference table for weeks just figuring out, okay, who do we slow pay? Who do we accelerate payments from?

How do we defer debt payments? How do we get access to more credit? How do we get our current investors to support us? And so September, October, November, December was like the world's most epic shell game, and we got [00:31:00] through it, but I did not get through that without having sometimes daily conversations about where our cash position was.

And having a whole team of people that were sitting around me helping me creatively figure out how the hell I was gonna get out of, you know, being on the verge of bankruptcy for the 10000000th time. Yeah, that was a big one.

[00:31:25] Christian: what was what, what turned the corner? Like what, what, what were the things that created the, the change? Not necessarily, it could be in you or just in the business. Like what, where did it, when did it turn the corner?

[00:31:35] Heather: oh man. I do think that in end of 23 in tandem with all this, I was also applying for an SBA loan. That was five months of underwriting. The loan was supposed to be $2.6 million and I got a no, uh, after five months of underwriting. And that was yet another point where I was like, I'm done. I'm not [00:32:00] doing this anymore.

I quit. And I called my investor Dan, to say like, I didn't get the loan. There's no path forward. And he is like. No, there's always a way like you'll be all right. And again, having somebody outside myself just say like, you'll be okay. Suddenly you're like, okay, I guess I'm all right. Maybe I'm not freaking out anymore.

We ended up airing our episode for Shark Tank in January of 24, and mind you, I had just gotten through a hellacious year of cash flow in 2023. We did about a quarter of a million dollars in revenue in one weekend when our episode aired. And like that influx of cash was like, oh, thank God. Okay, great.

Finally, I can make payroll this Friday without having to go take out another credit card or without having to like, I borrow and steal my way to get everybody paid. I. Uh, so that was a major turning [00:33:00] point. But then also I would say 2025 things are pretty radically different for us 'cause we just made a massive transition and kind of changed our entire business model and physically moved out of my hometown of Anchorage, Alaska.

So there's still a lot of corners that we are currently turning every day.

[00:33:16] Christian: Yeah, lot, lot lots to touch on there. Um, I've heard the same thing with Shark Tank. I know people have gone on Shark Tank or we have Dragons Den the equivalent here in Canada, and you go on and you don't get a deal or you get a deal that actually doesn't actually go to fruition. But the online sales are just the wholesale sales you, that that episode drives is like worth more than the investment itself.

So,

[00:33:36] Heather: Oh yeah.

[00:33:37] Christian: good for you.

[00:33:38] Heather: Yeah. It was a wild experience. I could write a book about my 72 hours in la but.

[00:33:45] Christian: Yeah. , And what did, the Shark Tank experience, did it change your outlook on the strategy of the business?

[00:33:52] Heather: Yeah, when I went into film, I knew that I sort of had two different [00:34:00] product lines. I had the dehydrated meals and then I had the Packaroons The dehydrated meals are a labor of love. They're highly differentiated in the marketplace. They are an epic pain in the ass to make. The process we go through is super laborious to make these meals, which is why they're so good.

The Packaroons are delicious and they're pocket sized and they're coconut cookies and everybody loves them and they're are gateway drug product and they just like, they could be everywhere. Everywhere there's a cliff bar, there should be a pack aroon. So I knew going into this, okay, I kind of need to sell them on the Packaroon dream.

This is the more scalable opportunity. This is the thing that could grow to be a 50 or a hundred million dollars business in the coming years with the right resources, scaling the meals, that's gonna take a lot more, a lot harder, a lot more expensive, all of that. So I get out there thinking that they're gonna bite on the Packaroon dream. No, no, [00:35:00] no. These people could not care less about the Packaroons because they get pitched on snack foods every single day, but they're completely enamored with the dehydrated meals. And they won't shut up about how much they love the dehydrated meals and how delicious they are and how compact they are.

And oh, you should be marketing this as the best meal in minutes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, oh God, this is not going to plan. This is not going well. And honestly, it was a major turning point for me 'cause I had to fully accept. That I was not just building a backpacking food brand anymore.

Like all of a sudden the gloves came off and it was like, oh, okay. I am the biggest limiting factor in this business. I'm so focused on selling to backpackers and campers and REI customers, or MEC or whatever it is, when in reality there are busy moms, busy working [00:36:00] professionals, college kids, travelers, people who are sick, like the people who rode in after Shark Tank saying, Hey, I have MS and I actually can't stand on my feet for 30 minutes at a time.

I cook myself a meal. I'm so grateful to have this product. Or people who wrote in and said, Hey, I recently had , shoulder surgery and I can't cook for myself and I'm so grateful to have this. Or, I'm Celiac and I'm a FedEx pilot. And during COVID I was flying to Australia and back and they don't give a shit about your dietary restrictions.

And like I had Heather's choice solely for when I was doing my, uh, long distance travels. Like that sort of stuff is so powerful and so informative for me as a business owner of having to say like, okay, Heather, you're 20 something self wanted to be super cool. Wanted to like hang with all your river wrap friends and like [00:37:00] feed your fellow pack rafters, but now this can and is growing into something bigger than that and are you actually up for it? Which is also something that I grapple with. But that was pretty. Eye opening for my Shark Tank experience that I thought I was just building a backpacking food brand and it actually could be a household brand. Yee.

[00:37:24] Christian: That opens up a lot for sure.

[00:37:26] Heather: Yeah. Yes it does. Very

[00:37:29] Christian: have you put, have you started to put those things in place in the sense of changing the direction? Or is it like, okay, phase one, let's just solidify where we're at now, but we know what the next phase looks like, or have you already moved into that next phase?

[00:37:45] Heather: you know, doing this accelerator, which is why I'm here in Austin. You know, that was one of those major first steps. So we, uh, aired for Shark Tank in January. I applied for this accelerator in February, got accepted in March, and then was [00:38:00] thrust into this whole consumer package goods world. And once again, that was really validating of like, oh, these people also see the same thing.

They're seeing that this could be massive and that it could be in everybody's pantry. And like, once again, I'm the limiting factor here. So I feel like I've taken steps towards saying like, what would it look like if I was going to be selling beyond my core outdoor customer base with that restraint again on, okay, well if I'm not willing to compromise how we make the meals and I'm not willing to compromise the quality of the product, and I don't have a solution for scaling that operation, then what?

And so that's, that's where I find myself constantly getting stuck. And I'm sure that you've talked to other entrepreneurs about this, but there's the physical reality that I grapple with every [00:39:00] day of like. Can only load so much stuff in the dehydrator at a time. You know, can only find so many gluten-free certified manufacturers that are USDA inspected that can do kettle cooking and dehydrating.

Like, there's that physical reality that kind of keeps me from jumping into this new world of being able to market and sell to a wider audience of people. And I kind of find myself stuck in that tension often, and I don't, I don't feel like that gets talked about enough, at least from where I sit, of like the physical constraints and the physical reality that you have to grapple with when you're a product based business.

And if you don't have that stuff in place, like all the strategy stuff, doesn't matter.

[00:39:47] Christian: Yeah, you're trying to scale high quality, which is a very expensive thing to try to do. Um, and it looks like you've run into, or you do currently run into, you can't even meet the demand that you have right [00:40:00] now, like lead times is an issue for you. So maybe this leads into the question of, or the story behind moving from hometown Anchorage down to the lower 48 and what went into that.

I'm sure that's a huge process. I can't imagine what that's like, but like what, what went into that decision and then now that it's happening, you're looking, reflecting back on it, like what have you learned through that process of making that decision? Because the entrepreneur's life is just constant decision making, right?

You're constantly assessing, you're constantly making a decision. And it's sometimes good to like look back on some of the big ones and be like, yeah, how, how did we make this decision? What went into it? And then, um, what would you have done differently if now that you've made that decision?

[00:40:43] Heather: You know, there's plenty of podcast interviews that I've done where I was. Drawing my line in the sand of like, I'm never leaving Alaska. Alaska's gonna be home. I will always be here. I'm gonna build this business here. Like all of that is on record. So there's plenty of people who [00:41:00] could dig that stuff up and be like, you said you'd never leave.

And I'm, like I said, I would never leave until it became abundantly clear that I was going to continue to lose my ass indefinitely if I was continuing to be stubborn about staying in my 1600 square foot kitchen in Anchorage, Alaska. Because I don't think people realize, like, I think Heather's choice as a brand presents itself as being bigger than it actually is, when again, physically, the reality was that we bought an old coffee shop in my hometown of Anchorage in 2017, converted it to a manufacturing facility, so like a kettle and a couple of dehydrator in a hood.

And we just figured it out every single day for seven years straight that we were in that kitchen. And it was a grind. So while I had looked at getting bigger buildings in Alaska, I had looked at building stuff. I'd looked at buying, I'd looked at leasing. I had just [00:42:00] scoured, you know, the Anchorage area to figure out how I could get into a bigger facility so I could scale.

Then all of a sudden my buddy Jason gonna bring him up again. He's like, Hey Heather. Uh, I got a buddy of mine who's getting into commercial real estate and he's got this old almond butter processing facility he's looking at in a place called Ashland, Oregon. And I'm like, where's Ashland, Oregon? Uh, came to find out Drew was dead set serious about buying this building.

So Brad and I flew down. This is December of 22 and we tour a big, sexy, concrete block building that has. Floor drains and three basin sinks and roll up doors and like warehouse space and racking, like all this stuff that was, you know, what we've been looking for. And then we went fly, fly fishing on the Klamath.

We went wine tasting and we flew home and we were like, okay, I guess we're moving. [00:43:00] Just like in an instant it just seemed almost faded that that was the decision that was made, like removing the business. The building has effectively found us and like we're going for it. That move took no less than two years, almost to the day.

So

[00:43:20] Christian: If that's big.

[00:43:22] Heather: Yeah, it was massive. So I wasn't able to raise investor capital. I wasn't able to get an SBA loan, but Drew had already bought this building. So we were presented with yet another fork in the road. Heather's choice. Can't afford to take over the lease on this building and can't rent the whole thing itself and scale all by itself. And thankfully the people in my life came to my rescue. The Drew, who owns the building, created a new entity called Ashland Dehydrated that was able to raise its own capital and become the manufacturing arm of Heather's choice. So [00:44:00] in November of 24, my leases were up in December and the new facility in Ashland was not ready.

I was not fully permitted. All the equipment was not in place, and I said, I don't care. We're going. And we took everything from our kitchen in Anchorage and shoved it into a 40 foot shipping container. Sent it via slow boat from Anchorage to Ashland. And my sweetheart, Brad and I, and our dog, uh, got on an airplane with two duffle bags and moved our lives to a little place called Ashland on a hope and a wish that this is all gonna work. It was very risky, uh, but I just knew that there was no world that it was gonna work if I stayed put. And so just had to take a really big leap of faith and say, all right, we're leaving. We're moving, we're partnering with these guys, and we're going to see if we can grow the business in a building that is no less than 10 times bigger than what we were in[00:45:00]

[00:45:00] Christian: Hmm.

[00:45:00] Heather: and located on the I five corridor.

So like way easier access. And it has not been seamless. We're only four and a half months into this journey. But I will tell you that I wouldn't, I wouldn't go back. There's like not a bone in my body that's like, no, I should have just stayed put in Anchorage and kept doing what I was doing. No.

[00:45:21] Christian: And so just to ask about the tactical side of it. So are they essentially a co-packer? Does Ashlyn dehydrated just act as a, as a co-packer for you and you just happen to be in the same space? I.

[00:45:33] Heather: Yeah, so this is important I think, for any other entrepreneurs that do product-based businesses, at least in the world of, uh, I would say most consumer packaged goods or especially food. There is an expectation that there's the brand and then there's the manufacturing arm, and then you probably have like the distribution and logistics arm, but like those are basically three separate business models, right?

Either you're [00:46:00] really great at sales and marketing and building a brand experience, or you're really great at managing line time and manufacturing and throughput and margin and all that. Or you're really great at like getting the product where it needs to go and getting it onto shelf to do all three of those things.

Well, from my experience is damn near impossible. Some people do it, but like there just kind of comes that friction point, that moment in time where a lot of us have to decide, okay, what am I the best in the world at and what am I going to like fully dedicate myself to? So with this strategy now, we effectively took my sweetheart, Brad, who's been the operations guy, who has built every single fiber of Heather's choice as far as like the processes we follow and, uh, how we do business.

We took all of that knowledge and put it into the Ashland dehydrated LLC. And so now that business, the only thing they have to do is focus on throughput, uh, supply chain, [00:47:00] and just getting the product made to spec. Where for me, at Heather's choice, it is now me and my sales gal, Abby. And like our job is just to move the stuff.

And like that part's easy because it's already kind of spoken for. So, um, I spend a lot of time kind of helping support Ashland dehydrated and helping them figure out how they can in fact make more product. But even making more product, I would imagine in that 15,000 square foot facility we can get to my $10 million a year.

Like I think that that's physically possible. Uh, but then what do you do once you've maxed out that building? Do you pick up and move again? Do you start another one? Do you again change the product to fit a co-manufacturer somewhere else and let them make it, and those are the 10,000 little decisions that you alluded to earlier that you have to make as an entrepreneur?

[00:47:58] Christian: There's time along the way. [00:48:00] You can figure it out.

[00:48:01] Heather: totally. I don't have to worry about it today.

[00:48:04] Christian: So Will, I'm just, I'm really curious how this works. Will Ashland dehydrated have other customers essentially beyond Heather's choice?

[00:48:12] Heather: Yep, totally. So that's the beautiful part is that if they're solely focused on, you know, filling up their line time and focused on their throughput, and if Heather's choice right now is effectively buying up all that time, like the only thing they're making is Heather's choice product. As they get more efficient that, and as they sort of build up an inventory reservoir for us that we're paying for, then they can start to sell off that additional line time to other emerging food brands.

And I think that for all of us, Brad, myself, the other investors, all included, it's kind of exciting to think about helping other brands. And I know that for myself, just even being able to share the 10,000 mistakes that I've made and help somebody else not make all those [00:49:00] mistakes, um, is really satisfying.

So yeah, it's gonna be fun.

[00:49:03] Christian: I'm glad you mentioned Brad, because that's a name that I've in in my research and kind of reading and listening to you on podcasts. Brad is a name that comes up almost as much as Heather in the Heather's choice, and it's really interesting. Um, I ran, I ran a business with my wife. And I'm curious how the two of you run a business together as partners out, you know, partners and business partners in life, and then what does that look like, the separation of those two things, and then what does it look like?

It sounds like he runs operations, you run sales, so that may be very clear, but how do you navigate the waters of, um, where your business can slide into every single conversation in your house? What do you guys do to, to maintain sanity in that relationship?

[00:49:46] Heather: Yeah, I don't think that I have fully realized how unique it is that Brad and I have been a couple and worked together for almost 11 years now, and people are like, oh my God, I could never work with my spouse. And I think for [00:50:00] Brad and I, the message that I have relayed to people consistently when they ask about this.

Is that Brad and I, even though we are not married, but like we've been a couple basically since I started the business at the foundation of our relationship, is a ridiculous amount of respect for the other person and a level of respect for, like, Brad knows his shit on the operation side. Brad is the kindest, nicest, most loyal human you will ever meet.

Everybody loves him. Like you don't have to wonder with him. And just that level of respect that I have for him as a human allows for us to get into business decisions or business arguments and to like fight, but to fight fair and to at no point in time, like fight dirty. And I just feel like that is such a critical cornerstone of our relationship, that we do have that deep, deep respect for each other.

The [00:51:00] other factor that I think has been really helpful is that Heather's choice is my business. At the end of the day, I am financially liable for it, and Brad has always been my employee. And I think that that has helped settle a lot of arguments where, yes, he may not agree with the decision that I'm making, but I'm going to bear the weight of that financially.

And that also kind of gives us a place to say like, okay, we're not business partners like you are my employee, and I have to deal with the financial ramifications or the investor ramifications, or whatever it is. Like the consequences are on my shoulders. So I do get final say. However, there's so many areas of the business where Brad is absolutely the subject matter expert, and I might have an opinion, but he's the one that's physically making the thing work.

And so of course I have to lean on his expertise for [00:52:00] 99% of the things operations related. So that comes back to kind of that respect point. And you know, this scenario that we're in now where Brad is being really celebrated at Ashland dehydrated as the subject matter expert and like how to actually manufacture the product is really fun to see and to watch him kind of blossom into his own leadership style with that, while I get to continue doing what I'm best at, which is building the Heather's Choice brand. So of course we talk about business a lot, but it's because we're still learning, like we're still learning so much and we love the people that we work with and we are becoming better leaders every day. And even since we landed in Ashland January 1st, I think it's actually been a pretty big confidence booster for Brad and I both of how much we have actually learned.

Living on the island of Alaska for the last decade, running this business with [00:53:00] little to no resources. We're like, oh, okay. I guess we have learned a thing or two about business and it's been really, uh, validating.

[00:53:08] Christian: That's very cool. Yeah, it's, it's nice to be able to see that all the scars pal off. They, they mean something.

[00:53:14] Heather: Yeah, I

[00:53:16] Christian: even if they don't benefit you immediately, they can benefit other people and that in itself is, means something.

[00:53:22] Heather: it's, I'm sure you have the same experience, but it is so fun to talk to other entrepreneurs and to let them know like, yeah, it's effing hard and it's okay, and nobody has it easy at all. Like everybody has their struggle, but my gosh, you get stronger and more resilient and you know, stuff rolls off your back after you've been in the ring for a while and you just get tougher. And there's a lot to be said for that.

[00:53:52] Christian: Yeah, I mean that's the point of this podcast. A hundred percent. Um, I wanted to come back to it 'cause we, I mentioned at the beginning your love for design and, and [00:54:00] packaging. And I wanted to talk about the packaging 'cause your packaging does stand out and I think that's. Mission critical for CPG brands.

You, you, you gotta stand out. , Talk a little bit about what has gone into, I mean, I know that, I know the early days it was like an Avery label and some black bags you bought on Amazon or something. Like, okay, we could skip over that era, but you gotta do what you gotta do. Right? You gotta sell it. So now that you're in this, um, the mature stages of Heather's choice, specifically this new packaging or the newest packaging design, like what, what are, what went into the thinking behind that design and like how do you approach packaging design?

Um, what are the things you think about? And then yeah, what was the vision that you were trying to bring forward with the newest iteration of it?

[00:54:41] Heather: Yeah. I will also preface by saying that the current packaging design is definitely not our final resting place. I am in the process of the next. Sort of rebrand iteration. Brad will kill me when I'm like changing the packaging again. So by no means have we like met our final [00:55:00] form, but I know that for this current round of packaging that we designed in 2021 and released in early 22, I really, really, really wanted our own version of the Nike Swoosh.

You know, like I wanted something that was just that iconic symbol that you could see it, and if you knew what it was, it just landed. And that's where people maybe don't know this, but you know, the icon we have now is actually an Arctic fox jumping in front of the midnight sun. So definitely calls back to the Alaska roots.

It's very modern, it's very, uh, abstract. But for me and for Heather's choice, hopefully, I've illustrated today that my journey with this business has been nothing short of epic. It has been very scrappy. It has been a story of survival and tenacity for sure. And the fox is like the perfect icon for that [00:56:00] scrappiness and that dogged sense of like, I'm just not gonna give up.

Right? So that's kind of the icon. And then the watercolor splatter that you see everywhere is also really symbolic of how much paint we have thrown at the wall to see what sticks. And you know, something as simple as me starting with the Avery label printer and black bags that I had gotten from a local coffee shop that I quite honestly had like flirted my way into getting a whole case of these things and like selling on the internet and finding out that.

Big game hunters in the Western states ended up being like our first real core customer base. Like I didn't see that coming and I just went with it. It was like totally awesome. Who are you? What are you about? Like it was just such an organic experience to find ourselves with all of these camo wearing folks going on [00:57:00] extended backcountry trips that freaking loved the product.

Like I didn't see that coming, nor was it strategic. It just came to be. So I feel like the current packaging definitely is kind of a testament to, you know, the symbolism of Heather's choice and how there's been a lot of paint thrown at the wall. And then there's also been this scrappiness with the final point being that you now see kind of the main ingredient highlighted on the packaging as well, like the bison or grassfed beef or uh, chicken and the spinach, curry, whatever it is.

And I don't see a lot of that in the backcountry food space. It's like a lot of topo maps, it's a lot of black, it's a lot of masculine. And so we just went completely the other direction and it's very feminine and it's very in your face and it's just a little bit romantic. Uh, so yeah, I don't know that it was overly strategic.

So much is [00:58:00] very, uh, important to us and who we are at Heather's Choice

[00:58:04] Christian: Well, it's beautiful and it's really good and I like it and I will be cognizant of your time. I really wanna ask you about what the next iteration will be, but we'll say that for a future conversation. So I do wanna jump into like rapid fire questions to kind of land this plane rapid, rapid fire questions that they don't have to be rapid fire responses, so you take as long as you want to answer them.

So what was something that you believed early on that you've come to realize isn't true or isn't as important as you originally had thought?

[00:58:30] Heather: I. Really fell into kind of the belief that, you know, growth at all costs was the most important thing, you know, and that was indicative of taking on Angel investment and having that expectation, that focus on revenue, worry about profits later. And if I could do things differently, I would've read the book Profit First and like settled into really thinking about how do I make money and how do I make sure that I'm growing the [00:59:00] business in such a way that it can afford me first and foremost to like pay my living wages.

And that would've been a completely different trajectory for me and the business. And I'm not saying that it would've been better because there could have been points in time when I would've been standing there chopping onions for the 10000000th day in a row. And I might've been like, I quit. I won't do it.

I won't chop another onion to save my life. However, I do think I would've saved myself a lot of pain and agony had I been more profit focused and less revenue focused.

[00:59:37] Christian: Good. What is the best part of being Heather from Heather? Heather's choice.

[00:59:44] Heather: Uh, being so consistently honest and so consistently authentic. And people eat it up because they just, I don't honestly know. I don't [01:00:00] quite understand why it catches people by surprise, but something that feels so easy for me, which is just to be vulnerable hard on my sleeve, like that's who I am, and I swear it consistently catches people off guard or like knocks 'em off their feet.

And we could talk for an hour about building a brand from a place of authenticity. 'cause I hear people talk about it a lot, but I don't think that people live authentically enough to build authentic brands. That's my, uh, preamble to that. So yeah, it feels good just to consistently be myself and know that nobody has to wonder.

I will just tell you how it is.

[01:00:48] Christian: Uh, I appreciate that and I can definitely confirm that that's, you come across as that and it's, and it is great. And it's refreshing and it's impactful. And it's something I say to people when I work with other entrepreneurs is building in public, [01:01:00] um, feels super risky. And it is very vulnerable. But when you're running a small business like that is the thing that people wanna buy from people, right.

Especially if your name's on the packaging, which is a whole nother conversation. But, but you're, yeah, you're doing it. You're doing it. You're a good example of what it's like, um, to yeah. Lead and, uh, show up vulnerably for your customers. 'cause it's infectious. Is that the word? I dunno, maybe it's infectious.

[01:01:31] Heather: you. I appreciate it.

[01:01:33] Christian: Um, how do you wanna grow as a founder in the next three years? I.

[01:01:37] Heather: Ooh, I would like to continue to separate myself from the physical aspects of the business more and more and not fall into the trap that a lot of us fall into, which is like, well, if I'm physically doing something, that means that I'm working right, and I can do that [01:02:00] a lot. Like just once again, kind of needing that sense of like, look, I did something right.

Because if you spend so much time in front of your computer, like you don't necessarily get that same satisfaction as you do working with your hands. But in three years, if I was. At a point where I felt like Heather's choice was successful enough, let's say like it's profitable, it's making money, uh, it's distributed where I want it to be.

The product is consistent, like some semblance of success with Heather's choice. I really do love getting to do more events, getting to do more stuff like this, just getting to really share the experience that I've had and help support other entrepreneurs and other founders because I know how dark, I know intimately, how dark it can be, and I know intimately how alone people can feel, you know, even if they are building something publicly.

Like the stress and the anxiety and the [01:03:00] pressure and the intensity of it all is, it's too much. Quite frankly, it's too much for anybody to endure on their own. And to be in a position where I could help support other entrepreneurs, uh, would be really satisfying and really fun.

[01:03:19] Christian: I agree a hundred percent. It is dark and lonely sometimes.

[01:03:22] Heather: Yeah.

[01:03:23] Christian: there, there are, it sounds like you've surrounded yourself with good people like Chris, like Brad who, uh, like Jason. Is that Ja?

[01:03:29] Heather: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:30] Christian: Is it Jason? Yeah. So it's, it's amazing. Um, you're fortunate to have those people in your life that you can call and they can be those reflection points back to you.

And, and I know you're a part of different, you know, accelerator groups and friends with other entrepreneurs that you can share in that struggle with sometimes. 'cause it's super important to have somebody to share it with. Nice. Well, you brought it up. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. What, what were you

[01:03:51] Heather: Oh, I was just gonna say that it's. Easy to think like, oh, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm like doing this all on my [01:04:00] own. And we, we don't operate in a vacuum like we are. Community built, not, uh, built on our own. And I am a strong testament to that of, like, again, I have a very short list of people on speed dial, but they hear from me when I'm celebrating and they hear from me when shit's real weird.

I'm really struggling. And they get the whole spectrum of it.

[01:04:24] Christian: That's great. That's good. Um, that's, yeah, that's good. You have those people in your life. You mentioned it in your, in your last, um, answer there, , I end every podcast with this question about success. And so how do you define success for yourself?

[01:04:38] Heather: Oh my gosh. Uh, success for me really is around, I wanna say being too dumb to quit, but like in all seriousness. I think about this often in even my journey with fitness or being an athlete or working with people who I was coaching on nutrition [01:05:00] programs or thinking about other entrepreneurs that I know.

And I really feel like success for me is like just continuing to try, try again. And the reason I'm kind of tiptoeing around that is because I also want it to be okay for entrepreneurs to say like, I'm done, right? Like, it has to be okay for people to quit and for people to say like, I am not doing this anymore.

It is not making me happy, it's not making me money, whatever it is. So all that aside, which is completely valid. And I will never tell somebody like, don't quit. You shouldn't do it. You should keep going. Like, Nope, my experience is very valid. for me there's just a really deep sense of like, okay. I'm just willing to keep showing up and keep trying, and you are going to have to drag me off this field before I give up. Whether that's healthy or not, it remains to [01:06:00] be seen. Uh, but I think about that often of just like not giving up on myself and not giving up on my ability to grow into a great entrepreneur or a great founder, or to achieve the health and wellness goals or the financial goals that I want, and just not giving up on myself no matter how many times I freaking fall flat on my face.

[01:06:22] Christian: Nice. That's great. , I wish that for you then.

[01:06:25] Heather: Thank you.

[01:06:26] Christian: Nice. , Heather, where can, where do you wanna send people? Where should people go to learn more about you? Heather's choice. Which Paon should they try first?

[01:06:33] Heather: Ooh, that's a great question. Uh, the blueberry Almond Paon is my lifetime favorite. However, we just released this year a dark chocolate paon that is going to become the best seller. I'll tell you a quick funny story about that. Doing the skew accelerator. Now it's working with this whole mentor team doing a skew rationalization exercise, and they're like, you know, you have a lot of exotic flavors.

You've [01:07:00] got like lemon lavender, you've got snicker noodle, you've got black espresso, but like the bestselling cookies are vanilla and chocolate, and you do not have these flavors. Now. I was like, oh yeah, that's right. Maybe we should just have like a vanilla paon or a chocolate paon. What a novel idea. So, uh, dark chocolate roons are going to become a bestseller very quickly, so people should definitely try those.

The spinach curry with chicken and rice is the meal I always reach for. So if you like Indian food, if you like ginger and turmeric, buy that Heather's choice meal. And the Swiss measly with milk is unbelievably good and decadent. It's got butter powder and cardamom and it's just, ooh, it's a vibe. Uh, where people can find us.

Instagram, I'm probably on there once a week, so don't expect a lot. Uh, I'm currently CEO fundraiser, head of marketing sales support, [01:08:00] uh, box Packer lady. So I wear too many hats to do anything really consistently on social media right now, but Instagram and then also I'm on LinkedIn and try to share content on both platforms.

And then obviously you can go to heather's choice.com and get on the wait list for product 'cause that's where we're at.

[01:08:18] Christian: Nice. Well, thanks so much, Heather. I really appreciate your honesty and just yeah, your willingness to share with people. It's, it's refreshing, so I really appreciate it.

[01:08:25] Heather: Yeah, thanks for having me. I am always honored to get to hop on people's podcasts, so I appreciate the invite.

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We'd appreciate it. , thanks so much falling along and we'll see you next time.