Saskia Sorrosa: Founder & CEO of Fresh Bellies

Episode 652

In this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Saskia Sorrosa, Founder and CEO of Fresh Bellies, a brand transforming snacking with real, whole-food ingredients and bold flavors.
Saskia’s journey—from NBA marketing executive to Shark Tank entrepreneur—is all about challenging the ultra-processed food industry. We dive into why Fresh Bellies is disrupting snacking, how she scaled into 6,000+ stores, and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
If you’re passionate about health, entrepreneurship, and making an impact, don’t miss this conversation! Now on The Kara Goldin Show!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. I am super excited to be sitting down with Saskia Sorrosa, who is the founder and CEO of Fresh Bellies. And if you are not familiar with Fresh Bellies, you’re gonna be super excited to hear all about it. And you’re gonna be running out to stores, going online and grabbing multiple bags of it, because it is really, really amazing. So redefining, redefining healthy snacking with real Whole Foods and bold, globally inspired flavors Fresh Bellies, is on a mission to challenge Ultra processed foods and has grown significantly into 1000s and 1000s of stores nationwide. Today, you can find it in places like, but not limited to, I should say, Whole Foods target, Kroger, Walmart, I would imagine a few other stores coming very soon. And of course, online Saskia journey is just absolutely incredible. She was born in Ecuador and moved to the US and had a thriving career in the NBA. I can’t wait to hear about that, and decided to make the leap. Went through the Chobani incubator program, also was on that little show Shark Tank, and just so much great about her overall experience. And she and I recently connected at Patty Sellers event. Journey fellow is one of the things that she’s involved in, and really, really terrific. So we’ll get her to chat about that a little bit more too. So welcome Saskia. How are you?

Saskia Sorrosa 2:26
Thank you for having me. I’m great. I’m excited to be here and talk to you today. Super

Kara Goldin 2:31
excited to have you here. So first of all, let’s talk about Fresh Bellies before we even get into your experience fresh belly. So what is it? Can you talk to us about what is your 32nd elevator speech?

Saskia Sorrosa 2:44
Yeah, so we are a line of minimally processed snacks with globally inspired flavors. So all of our snacks are freeze dried, which is significantly better than any other way of processing. It retains 90% of the nutritional value, more so even than baked. And so they’re crunchy, they’re not chewy, and then they’re all seasoned with an herb or a spice that you would typically find in Latin American kitchens. So they’re truly crave worthy snacks for and they’re great for on the go, if you’re out hiking or just on a road trip, or for an everyday snack, They’re nutritious and really satisfy that, like snack wanting to snack on something that’s good for you.

Kara Goldin 3:25
So where did the idea come from? You didn’t graduate from school and and start a food company. I mean, what? Like? How did this all come about? Yeah.

Saskia Sorrosa 3:37
So I was born and raised in Ecuador, like you mentioned, and I grew up around food very differently than I now realize. People grow up around food here. My dad was a banana farmer. We spent a lot of time at the Banana Farm, you know, eating fruits straight from the vine. And when I moved to the US, I became hyper aware of how much of our food system here revolved around Ultra processed foods. And, you know, when I had my own kids, I wanted them to have a similar experience around food that I did, which was, you know, closer to the food source, eating whole foods, and also super flavorful, you know, not just salt or sugar, but actual flavor that trains palettes and also that exposes you to all these things that hopefully you’ll eat as you get older. So that that was the inspiration for it is, I really wanted my kids to have an experience around food similar to what I did, and I just couldn’t find it in the stores.

Kara Goldin 4:32
So Ultra processed foods, you touched on this, but the US is, is known for probably having, if not, the most Ultra processed foods available to consumers, but many of them start here, right and then go outside of the US and are, you know, exported into other countries, sadly, and I believe, fueling a health crisis, not just for consumers in America, but worldwide. So. So what’s the real problem that you see, and why hasn’t the food industry changed despite all the research?

Saskia Sorrosa 5:06
Yeah, so you know now we all and in fact, in recent weeks or in the last few months, there’s been a lot of news around Ultra processed foods. It’s something I’ve been talking about for a decade here in the US, but really now it’s come to the forefront, because there’s so much evidence now of how much it affects our health, right? And it’s all these preventable chronic diseases that we’re seeing more and more of, both in children and adults, that could be prevented with the right diet, or with, you know, sort of minimizing these ingredients that really shouldn’t be in our food system. So I think we’re at least more aware of it now than we were a couple of years ago. But there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to take some of these things out of the the American food system. I mean, outside of the US, you don’t find dyes in foods, right? Like candy for children, doesn’t have red to I 40, or any of these things that we find here, and there’s a reason for that, right? They’re, like, linked to cancer, but here we’re still, you know, that’s what we that’s what we serve kids. And every Halloween, they’re having these candies that are not just sugar, but like, terribly bad for them. So I think the food system still, there’s a lot more that needs to be done to start to clean what we put out in stores and care, we need to care more about what we’re putting in our bodies and the long term effects of that than making a profit. And I think right now, that balance is a little bit tilted

Kara Goldin 6:35
so margins in any industry, any physical goods industry, I should say, and especially in grocery are brutal. How do you keep Fresh Bellies profitable while continuing to scale aggressively as you’ve done? Yeah, we’ve

Saskia Sorrosa 6:51
been super mindful about the way that we’ve grown. We have operated super leanly from the very beginning, and we’ve had a line of sight to making sure that we reach profitability from the start. And so everything that we’ve done from day one has has revolved around making sure that we’re improving margins and getting them to the place that we know will get us to that break even point in looking at every part of our supply chain so that we can be efficient in what we’re sourcing and how we’re sourcing it, and what the costs are, and how that’s going to, you know, impact our cods. And so it’s not something that we started thinking about after, you know, we brought this product to market. It’s something that we were super mindful of from the very beginning, and that’s really allowed us to get to where we are. I mean, in the just in the last five years, we’ve improved our margins 30 30% and so we’ve gotten to a place where we’re now in a really, you know, we have really healthy margins. We have, you know, we’re doubling our growth, and we’re doing that without having to continue to delude ourselves or raise a ton of cash to stay in operation.

Kara Goldin 8:02
That’s incredible. So how have you funded it to date? Yeah, so we’ve

Saskia Sorrosa 8:06
done a couple of rounds to date. Most of our investors have been family offices in high net worth angels, and we have a few VC funds that are part of our cap table as well. But we we haven’t raised as much as most of the companies in our space have, and again, we’ve been super mindful about that, because we wanted to make sure that we could hit our milestones and get to the place that we wanted to before we were bringing in a ton of cash.

Kara Goldin 8:33
So prior to this, you had a cushy maybe is not the the best word, but a nice role within the NBA as an executive. Why would you walk away from that and jump into the food industry? I mean, it’s, it’s, I mean, there’s a lot of people who aspire to do what you did before, and I think it’s the story of entrepreneurship, where people decide it’s now time that I need to go do this. Was there a certain point, any moment that you remember that you just said, Okay, it’s time I need to go do this?

Saskia Sorrosa 9:11
Yeah, there definitely was. I will preface that though, by saying that I thought I was going to be a lifer at the NBA. I mean, it was truly my dream job. I absolutely loved the work that I was doing, and I loved the organization, and I had, you know, risen through the ranks over the years. I was really happy, but after having my first daughter, was when that inkling of, Gosh, I really want to do this, and I feel like it’s doing something good for the world, and that’s my calling. But I didn’t, but, but then I I went back to the Why would I leave this perfectly good job to go start some, you know, something that I don’t even know if it’s going to work. And then I had so I went back. I took six months maternity leave with my first, went back to work, and then when I had my second, and took six months maternity leave again. That’s when I. I said, you know, it hasn’t gone away like this itch of having to do this, and this calling is still there two years later. And if I don’t take a chance now, I think I might not ever be able to take a chance. And so I came back and gave my resignation after my six month maternity leave and decided to do this full time.

Kara Goldin 10:20
Did you have any idea what you were getting into? I mean, this is a physical goods company. It’s dealing with an entirely different group of people, consumers. I mean, not just consumers, but also, you know, the the grocery consumers that are buying grocery store buyers that are buying your product too. So did you have any idea what you were going to be embarking on?

Saskia Sorrosa 10:45
None whatsoever. I mean, what my husband and I joke about it even today, where, you know, I when I left, I had this, this really cut out, like, precise timeline of, like, when I was going to be making X amount of money and when I was going to be selling the business. And none of that panned out. I mean, you know, everything was out the window the second I started doing this full time. But I think that’s part of the beauty of entrepreneurship, is just you don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s why you take that initial jump, right? Because you’re sort of, you have this idea in your head of what you’re pursuing, and even if that turns out to be different in the end, you’re already in that on that path, and so it’s okay you then start figuring it out. But I think if I had known all the things that I learned once I was in it, I probably wouldn’t have taken that, you know, that plunge. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 11:35
definitely. So what was the first big break that put Fresh Bellies on the map, and how did you leverage it for even more growth? So

Saskia Sorrosa 11:44
it was, was actually our pivot, something else that you learn in entrepreneurship, right? Like these, these quick pivots that you have to make to survive. So we initially started as a perishable baby food company, and we started selling at farmers markets, and then, you know, we pretty quickly got into some regional grocery stores, and I realized right off the bat that that just was not a space that I wanted to, that we wanted the business to play in. Perishable is super expensive. It’s a really difficult category. There was a lot of clutter in the baby food space, and the customer life cycle of babies is really short. You know? It’s you’ve got them for six months, so you’re constantly having to acquire new customers. So it just didn’t make sense for us. And when I looked at, okay, well, this mission is, you know, I still want to pursue this mission. Where can we make the most impact, and where is there the most white space that was snacks? And so in 2019 we made the pivot to snacks, and we started with children snacks, and that’s what put us in the map. In a big way. We went from, you know, maybe being in 100 200 stores with our baby food, to 2000 stores halfway, you know, halfway through 2019 with our snacks. And so I think if we hadn’t made that pivot and that quickly, we probably wouldn’t have a business today, you know, we’d still be struggling with something that just was really difficult to execute.

Kara Goldin 13:05
Yeah, definitely. So retail versus D to C, what which channel has been kind of the biggest game changer for you? And what do you think the strategy is for winning in each

Saskia Sorrosa 13:18
so we are heavily wholesale. So retail, we’re still in retail. DTC is a smaller percentage of our overall revenue, though it’s an area that we want to continue to grow a little bit. Up until today, it’s been growing organically. I think the winning strategy for retail, which is, I would say, where we have the most experience, is really having that differentiating factor. So, you know, we didn’t invent a way to produce or process food. Freeze Dried has been around forever, but what we added was the layer of flavor, right? Like no one is seasoning freeze dried fruit, and certainly no one’s bringing in these global flavors to it, and if you look at the kids category, there’s nothing even remotely similar to it, right? Like you find a lot of yogurt melts and a lot of puffs, a lot of granola bars, but there’s nothing of like Whole Foods That Are freeze dried and then seasoned with chili or cardamom. And so I think that’s key to retail, is you have to have a really unique differentiating factor that makes buyers say, I there’s just nothing else I can buy that can replace this. And I think that’s also what’s helped us stay on shelf, right? Not just that customers are buying it, but it’s really hard for someone else to come and replace us, because there’s just nothing even remotely similar to what we do. So

Kara Goldin 14:37
where do they place you on shelves? And for those who have not been kind of in the food industry, I mean, that’s a that’s something that is always, you know, maybe the founder thinks that they should be in one area, and grocery buyers are like, you’re not going there and or maybe you want to be in two areas, but they don’t want you in both areas because one buyer got you four. First, I don’t know, like, what have you seen? Yep.

Saskia Sorrosa 15:02
So the kid line is typically in the toddler snack aisle, so we’ll be next to these things like yogurt mouths that I mentioned for kids. And then the adult line is, which is the new line that we launched last year. That line is either in the Healthy Living set, like heb has is in the healthy living, gluten free set. Sometimes it’s in the dried fruit set. So it really depends on the buyer, where they want us and where they think it makes the most sense for the adult. But on the kids side, it’s always in the toddler snack

Kara Goldin 15:31
aisle. That’s so interesting. So Shark Tank, that’s the dream for many, many entrepreneurs to get a chance to be on there. Can you talk to us a little bit about what happened?

Saskia Sorrosa 15:44
Yeah, yeah. So that was something. It was so surreal. I the way it happened was I received an email from someone who claimed to be an executive producer at Star tank to our customer service email, and I blew it up. I mean, I blew it off. I thought this is for sure, a scam, I mean. And then I was like, You know what, I’m just gonna look him up on Google and see if this, this person is legitimate. And he happened to be the executive producer of Shark Tank, so I wrote back, and, you know, started the application process to be on the show. But that’s how that came to be. The actual experience was just like what you see on TV. I mean, people don’t think it is, but it truly is. You, you know, you have time to prepare your pitch, and you know, they’re very helpful in this process. Once you make it to the end, and you’re one of the contestants, and you go in and you have X amount of time to pitch, there are no do overs if you make a mistake anywhere in that process that that there’s that’s it like. And then once you’re done, they cut that hour recording into 10 minutes. And so you don’t know, you really happen. Nope, you really don’t know, yeah, how you’re going to be portrayed once it’s aired. You know, are you going to how you’re going to sound? It really is nerve wracking, but it was a great experience in that it really taught me to let go of so much. There was so little control I had, you know, for that experience. And as an entrepreneur, I think we want to control everything, and we want to have our hands at every part of the business. And this was one of those moments where I had to say, you know, I just, I have to let it go, and I have to trust that I did my best and it will be okay.

Kara Goldin 17:29
Yeah, definitely. So you did not end up doing a deal with one of the sharks. Is there anything that you would do over again on that day? Um,

Saskia Sorrosa 17:41
you know, maybe not have gone on at that time. We didn’t have our snacks yet. When I went on to the show, we were still baby food. So it was a very different it was a very different business. But other than that, I don’t think so. I think it re airs all the time, and we have people every time it re airs. We have people reach out. And I think the mission, the core of our business, is still there, and it still resonates, even though it’s a different product today. So I think the way we pitched it, I wouldn’t change. Maybe I would have changed the timing of it, perhaps gone on later when we had the snacks in the market. So

Kara Goldin 18:16
how have you gotten the word out about about Fresh Bellies. You know you are differentiating, but maybe some people think that you’re just another dried fruit company in a bag. I mean, how do you get that message out there when you are doing something that’s really different?

Saskia Sorrosa 18:36
Yeah, so in store is the biggest way that we do that, pre pandemic, there were a lot more demos that we used to do and in store presence that we had where people got to try all our product. Since then, it’s a lot of in store promos or call outs. And then social media is a great way for us to do that as well. And what we always call out is the flavors, right? Because that is really that, and that there’s just three ingredients in there, or just four ingredients in there. And those things, immediately people gravitate to that, that, you know, it’s not a whole science experiment of a label, it’s just strawberries, balsamic vinegar and coconut oil. So those are the thing. We use that on social media every time you know we’re doing ads or we’re communicating with our customers. And then the other thing is, we’ve partnered with some of our retailers too. So some of our retail partners do ads on digital and on TV, and they invite us to be part of those efforts. And so that helps us get our word out as well. So

Kara Goldin 19:42
many people think launching food or a beverage brand is, you know, super sexy. It’s a piece of cake. As you and I were talking earlier, or, I think you mentioned during what, while we were recording that. Uh, you know, things don’t happen as fast as as you think, necessarily. That’s a big lesson learned. What’s the one thing no one tells you about, kind of the the most challenging side of the business, I won’t say the ugly side, but, but maybe you know something that’s been kind of challenging about it that you didn’t expect.

Saskia Sorrosa 20:21
I, I mean, I think number one is probably how difficult it is to break into the food industry as a startup brand. There are legacy brands that have been around for decades and decades that really monopolize most of of the aisles in the grocery store and can sell very cost efficiently and make it hard for a premium brand that’s bringing better for you, ingredients and products to the market to sell at competitive pricing or prices. I think that was the biggest awakening for me when I broke into the space, was, wow, you know, there really are just these large CPGs that control most of these aisles in the grocery store. And it’s, you know, you sort of have to elbow your way into into those spaces, yeah, to make an impact. And it doesn’t get easier as you grow.

Kara Goldin 21:23
No, it’s like you It’s so true. So and you have to have not just merchandisers, but brokers, especially as you continue to scale. And it just costs money, right? So I think that that’s another piece of it that we didn’t expect either, how expensive it is

Saskia Sorrosa 21:42
all the players, yeah, everyone takes a cut, right? No, it’s

Kara Goldin 21:47
so, it’s so, so true. So, so if somebody handed you ten million today, how would you deploy it for Fresh Bellies at and so what, what do you think you would do today that? Gosh, I wish I just had this cash to be able to do it, because often that’s really what it takes in order to scale.

Saskia Sorrosa 22:07
Yeah, I would say we would scale our direct to consumer part of the business, which you know, is just not as big as it, as we know it could be. And then innovation. We have so much innovation that we’ve worked on over the last two years that we want to bring to market, but we’ve, you know, sort of done, done it slowly, or are bringing it to market. We’ve paced ourselves and how we’re bringing it to market. But I think those are things that really would make a huge impact in the snacking space. So bringing those to market, you know, getting everything together, and then I would say, you know, building the team super thoughtfully, you know, bringing in the right people to help us get to the next level. Yeah,

Kara Goldin 22:54
no, it’s, it’s so so, so true. So you’re always, like, trading things off right in order to, I completely get it so it’s, it’s really, really challenging. So when you think about, you know, the journey that you’ve taken to date, and you kind of look back on on maybe a regret or a mistake that you made. I use this as an example. You know, one of I was just on another podcast. I was talking about this, the founder of bowl and branch was talking about when he was creating merchandise for for bowl and branch, he figured that everyone had a bed skirt on their bed, and so he had grown up with bed skirts on his bed, and he thought everybody needs bed skirts, so we have to make like, lots of bed skirts. And it ends up that people don’t really change out their bed skirts. Some people just have one bed skirt and that’s it. Unless it gets dirty, it never comes off. But so he bought way too much bed skirts. He thought this is going to be a huge success. We’re going to do bed skirts. And he still has bed skirts today from that original run, which I thought was so awesome. I mean, clearly there’s flavors that I created for hint that I thought were going to be amazing, and they didn’t do so great. But it, you know, we moved on and it, it was all figured out eventually. But is there anything like that that you thought was going to be massive and it just or you had too much of it? It wasn’t that it didn’t sell, but maybe it wasn’t exactly how you thought it was going to turn out. Yeah, I

Saskia Sorrosa 24:33
mean, I would say for sure, we had a we always wanted to have both fruits and vegetables, because we just thought like the balance of the two was super important. And we launched, when we launched the snacks, we launched a beet flavor that was one of our core products, and it had time in it. I’m a huge beat lover. I mean, I just, I love beets and everything I could eat them every day. And I love that product. I was like, this is incredible. Like, no one. Has freeze dried beets and now they’re seasoned. Everybody’s gonna buy it. And it didn’t turn out that way. I mean, we had a lot of customers who would write to us and say, This tastes like dirt. I don’t know if you know, if the beets are dirty or they weren’t washed. And we’re like, no, that’s, you know, it’s just like the earthy flavor of beets. But we realized really quickly that that probably wasn’t going to be a universal flavor for people. What’s funny is that, so we discontinued that, that particular flavor, and we replaced it with other flavors that now sell really well. But what’s funny is that when we discontinued it, we had people writing at who did buy it, writing us, asking, where? Yeah, where did the beat flavor go? Why can’t I find find it anymore? Yeah, but that was I feel like early as an entrepreneur, you sometimes use your own to your other to your other guests, like comment right like you sometimes use your own experience to influence or to inform the things that you’re gonna bring to market. And you learn as you grow and you scale a business that you just need to listen to the market. You know, the ME TOO research, not me too. The me search is what I call it. The me search is just not really helpful if it doesn’t apply to what what the trends are saying and what the consumers are saying they want to see from you.

Kara Goldin 26:18
Yeah. I mean, I remember with hand I grew up in Arizona, and we had a lot of Hispanic overtones in our food, right? And spices and things like that that I didn’t realize the rest of the US was not really experiencing. So my mom used to make hibiscus iced tea all the time, or sun tea and and so we came out with a hibiscus flavor, and no one knew what hibiscus was or what it tasted like. I mean, this was probably 15 years ago, and so it sold to some extent in the southwest, but Whole Foods had rolled it out across the US, and we couldn’t sell it in New York. And people were calling us from there and reaching out to us from New York stores, and they’re like, What is this flower? Water? Like, what in the world are you doing? And we love the Blackberry, but the flower like, What are you talking about? We’re like, You should taste it, and they’re like, No way, I’m not drinking flowers, like they just couldn’t get it. And it was so funny. And, yeah, and so, I mean, I think it’s, it’s to what you’re saying too. It’s kind of a story of, you know, you could get people to love certain flavors, and you could do taste testings and trial but it just takes money. And if no one else is doing it, and you’re the only one doing it, the education is really expensive, right? And so, yeah, so we such, such a similar experience in many ways. But anyway, back to fresh belly. So couple things that I noticed in in some of the research I was doing on you was the NFL Players Association accelerator. Can you talk a little bit about that, and maybe accelerators in general, how they’ve been helpful for you? Yeah,

Saskia Sorrosa 28:13
so we, that was an accelerator that’s put together by the players NFL Players Association, and they invite, I think it’s typically eight brands to come and pitch to the to the panel, which includes some of the NFL players or retired players. And then they pick a winner. And then part of the what you win is a spend, marketing spend, to use some of their NFL players in campaigns or across social media. So you get, like, marketing dollars to use some NFL assets, which was incredible that it was a really, I don’t even remember how I got connected to the NFL for that particular event. I It was last minute. I flew out, I pitched and all of the companies that were, I was the only consumer packaged goods company. Everything else was like health and wellness technology company or some workout equipment. And so I pitched, and I was like, I mean, what are the chances that I’m gonna win? It’s like, so irrelevant to everyone here. And we finished the pitch, and then they said the judges were going to deliberate. I I’m like, I’m going to go to the bathroom. It’s, you know, was taking a long time, and I’m in the bathroom and they’re calling my name. They were announcing the winner, and they were calling my name. I was taking my time in the bathroom because I, I was I just did not think it was going to be me. They had to come get me out of the bathroom to come receive the award. So it was a really unexpected, you know, one of, one of those unexpected things that happened throughout my journey. And it was great. I mean, we were able to get some of the NFL players to use the product with their children and post across social media. It was really a fun execution. And then I think some. Operators in general, I would say, are good, but they’re also super time consuming, depending on the accelerator. And I learned that, you know, early on, I would love to do all of them, but there’s only a limited amount of time I have as the founder and as the person running the business, and so you just have to be super smart about picking and choosing and then deciding whether or not this is something you can allocate time to when you have so many other things that need to get done. I think early in your journey, they are helpful.

Kara Goldin 30:34
Yeah, definitely, so and you were part of the Chobani incubator as well.

Saskia Sorrosa 30:39
Yeah, the Chobani incubator, I would say, was the first time that I started to build a founder network. Many of those founders are founders that are, you know, good friends of mine today that I rely on for so much as we’re scaling together. As I would say that that’s one of the ones where I got the most out of because just, I mean, Giovanni was great, and they shared so much of their knowledge and information with us, but that founder network, I think, is critical to get you through the journey that is entrepreneurship, and all the challenges that you face as you grow, and sometimes you feel like you don’t have answers, or you’re you’re in it alone. So to have this network to tap into and other ears on the ground, it has been incredibly helpful. And

Kara Goldin 31:27
another, I guess, founder network that you’re now part of too, you were named in 2023 2024 the journey fellow for your work and Food Innovation and social change, that’s Patty sellers and Ninas right business now, they were both known for Fortune, most powerful women, and then they launched the journey, fellow network, and different than just food, right? You’re doing, you’re seeing and experiencing a lot of other founders in different industries. What is the experience been with that as well? That

Saskia Sorrosa 32:03
has been life changing. It really has i i remember in our first get together, when, when they announced our class and we had our first retreat, I was sitting around the circle with all these incredibly accomplished women and and I kept thinking, what am I do? Like? What? How am I here? And they must have made a mistake. I cannot believe that I’m sitting with these women. I felt completely out of place. And it has just been this tribe of women that are there for you and for each other, no matter what I mean, anything that you need. There’s someone there to help. They’re constantly rooting for you and, you know, pushing you forward. I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s just like the energy that you need every, you know, I always tell them, like, when I get together, when we get together, or we have a call, or journey, has one of their retreats, it is just the energy I need to have, you know, to then push to the next until I see them again, because you don’t have that every day, right? It’s just like, as a founder, you’re working so much in isolation, and there’s so much that you have to hold in, especially, you know, for your business, for your team, for your investors, as you face challenges, you have to, you know, be super stoic and really thoughtful and calm and collected. And so to have a place where you can just on, you know, let those things go or share them with someone else, and, you know, receive feedback in a super safe environment is priceless. I mean, you just it’s almost like mental health to have these women in your corner? Well,

Kara Goldin 33:43
I found too, that even being parts of groups like that, that not only people that are kind of on the same everyday journey that you are in terms of being a founder, but sometimes when you don’t have people all sitting around trying to talk to grocery buyers right there in different industries. It kind of helps you think about different ways of doing business, and maybe even connections that they can make as well. So really incredible. And of course, I love patty and Nina. Those guys are awesome. So super, super, yeah, super fun. So well. Saskia, sarosa, thank you so much for joining us, and Fresh Bellies is absolutely awesome. I’m so excited for everyone to try them and continue enjoying them. So thank you for doing everything that you’re doing, and good luck with everything super thank you so much for having me. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms. At Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to. DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint, we are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. Bye.

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