Stephen Williamson : Co-Founder and CEO of Forager Project

Episode 728

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I’m joined by Stephen Williamson, Co-Founder and CEO of Forager Project—the family-owned, organic, dairy-free creamery crafting premium yogurts, milks, and creamers from cashews and coconuts. Founded in 2013 with his stepson, JC Hanley, Forager Project was born from a bold mission: to flip the dairy model so plants make up 85% of global consumption instead of just 15%.
Before launching Forager Project, Stephen served as Chairman and CEO of Odwalla, helping grow the brand into a $400 million fresh juice leader before its acquisition by Coca-Cola. Guided by a deep commitment to organic ingredients, sustainability, and his “soil to soul” philosophy, Stephen is reshaping what dairy can mean for people and the planet.
In our conversation, Stephen shares how his experiences at Odwalla influenced Forager’s creation, why he bet early on building his own manufacturing plant, and the strategies that helped scale the brand to over 10,000 stores nationwide. We also dive into the challenges of perfecting plant-based Greek-style yogurt, the role of conscious capitalism in decision-making, and how Forager continues to innovate in a crowded plant-based market.
If you’re curious about the future of dairy, scaling a mission-driven food brand, or how to lead with values while winning on taste—this episode is packed with insight. Now live 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, 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. Super excited to have an honor to have our next guest with us here today. He is someone who has really been a legend, and I’ve admired him from afar, and I’m super excited to have him here so he is also somebody who is rethinking what dairy means. And this person is Steven Williamson, who is the co founder and CEO of Forager Project, a family owned, organic dairy free Creamery, crafting premium yogurts, milks and creamers from cashews and coconuts. And Steven launched forger project in 2013 with his stepson, JC Hanley, who actually we had on a few years ago. But we really are excited to have Steven with us here today. So Steven driven by a bold mission to flip the dairy model so plants make up 85% of global consumption, instead of just 15% and before forager, you may recognize Steven Williams’s name. He was the CEO of adwala, helping grow that brand to over 400 million and with an acquisition by Coca Cola. So, so excited to have you here to gain all your wisdom, Steven, and can’t wait to hear all about the journey build building Forager Project. So welcome to the show. Thank you so much for being here.

Stephen Williamson 2:16
Well, it’s nice to be here. Kara, I think, I think we’re similar spirits. Yes, enter the entrepreneurial battles of building beverage companies.

Kara Goldin 2:26
Absolutely. Well, before we jump into all things in your journey, let’s start with with Forager Project. So can you go over the brand and mission and tell people why you decided to do this?

Stephen Williamson 2:39
Well, actually, I think you did a very good job. I mean, we’re very simple. We’re a organic dairy that uses plants, not cows. And the the the problem that we’re trying to solve is, is simple. Eight and a half billion people on the planet, cows are inefficient. And in the history of capitalism, efficiency wins out. Cows require, I mean, they require nine to 10 times more land, nine to 10 times more water. They produce seven to 10 times more greenhouse gasses. And if you just look at a as an example, a gallon of cow’s milk, and compare it to a gallon of cashew milk. Well, a gallon of cow’s milk comes along with a gallon and a half to two gallons a urine, 40 pounds of manure. It’s got a it’s kind of a big waste stream, and a cashew is just incredibly clean and efficient. So the problem we’re trying to solve is global warming, and really about humans living in in sync with nature and and Gary may have worked with 3 billion people on the planet, or 4 billion, but eight and a half billion is just inefficient. And I would just add I love cheese, and I do. I’m not a vegan. I eat many, many, many vegan meals, but I do eat cheese occasionally, and I love cheese, and Gary has its place. It just shouldn’t be the primary or cow based dairy has its place. It just shouldn’t be the primary ingredient. Planche,

Kara Goldin 4:28
yeah, definitely. What was the moment when you had this idea? Do you remember it where you said somebody’s got to go and do this with cashews and with coconuts? I mean, what was, what was the moment? Because you’ve spent time and were kind of in the same neck of the woods, between, between Sonoma and, kind of the Marin County area, but and Sonoma Valley area, so was there a moment when you said, This just doesn’t. Make sense that somebody’s not bringing this to market.

Stephen Williamson 5:03
Well, just to go back and look back for a moment to as I said today, we’re an organic plant based Creamery. When we started forager, the name actually was kind of relevant in that forage is to wander and seek, and I knew that if I was starting this from scratch, I didn’t know what I was going to run into and how it would work. And we actually didn’t start as a plant based Creamery. We started from my own wall of roots making organic vegetable juice. And we started from the basic principle that so much in food is mislabeled, not straight up, is hype, and that we would make organic vegetable juice that was actually vegetables first, which was not what was going on when we founded the company in 2013 but forging forward, it was clear to me that wasn’t going to be a defensible business, a big enough business. And from my old wallet days, we migrated into nuts, and when we started the exploration of nuts, we ended up with the creamiest nut the I could find, which was cashews, and that took us to a whole worldwide tour hunting for the right cashew. And from that, it kind of took us into dairy. And then that was a chance to really look at this and go, What is the problem we’re solving, and how can we be unique about this, and how can we build a defensible business? And here we are today.

Kara Goldin 6:44
That’s That’s terrific. So let’s jump into a Walla, and we’ll backtrack with Forager Project. So your time leading at Walla and the influence that you had, how did that transpire into into Forager Project, and everything that you’ve done with this, because dairy is such a different category. And even though you’re not in dairy, I would assume you’re still dealing with the buyers that are dairy buyers, correct to some extent. I mean, it must have just been, it looks like it’s the same, I guess, for the same buyers. But how, like tell me about those days?

Stephen Williamson 7:26
Well, we’re going back here while I was what we had then would never, I don’t know if it’s possible today, we ended up with a delivery system that we built ourselves that was based around somewhere around 30 different distribution centers around the country. We produced all our product in Dinuba, California, and shipped out to these distribution centers. And at those centers, we had our own trucks, and we did all our own delivery. We had our own coolers. I mean, I look back at that, I don’t even remember selling products into these stores, because it was when we started. It was pre barcode, and our whole point was, we’ll manage the cooler, we’ll manage the space. We’ll own the cooler. We’ll put in the electrical we’ll service this and you are going to make good deal of dough as a retailer. Well, those days are obviously completely different. The whole retailing environment has radically changed, and the routes to market have radically changed, and, yeah, it’s a completely team. Forger is a completely different experience than than Odwalla.

Kara Goldin 8:48
So Odwalla, can you take us back to those early days? What prompted you to start that company? And you touched on this a bit. I

Stephen Williamson 8:56
didn’t start it Kara. I found Odwalla when Greg steltenpohl was the CEO, it was virtually insolvent. I mean, the top people in the company had four or five paychecks uncashed. So they were, they tripped all the companies with Silicon Valley Bank. They were in desperate shape. And I had no experience in food, no experience in CPG. I had been a investment banker on Wall Street, living in Manhattan. I was from the Bay Area, but I found, literally found out about a wall on a plane ride, sitting next to somebody who said, there’s this funky company that’s needs money, you might want to look at it. So I went and met Greg, and next thing you know, I invested in it was a mess. I remember driving home like the second night, and I was crying, going, I. Lost all my money this place is so much personal. How bad could this be? What an idiot. I didn’t do good due diligence. I’ve just taken all my bonuses from my investment banking days and fired them into this company. And what a mess. And it was sort of that point. It’s like, well, either I’m going to just cry, or I’m going to fix it, and went about fixing it. And, you know, I came in as a board member, and CFO became president, became co CEO, CEO, and then chairman and CEO. So I had a long number of different experiences there. And I when at the end of it, I mean, I’ll go into the end of it. So we bought a company on the east coast called Fresh Samantha. And if you go back and you’ll remember Kara, the recall when we had E coli, oh, 15787, and found in our product, our sales dropped 90% and we lost $3 million the first week, and we had after that, I think it was like $11 million in cash. So it was pretty clear. I had four weeks to go before we were dead. We had, at that point, about 750 employees, and we had to dig out. And it was a it was a brutal, brutal experience, and we had a grand jury criminal investigation against us. We had 700 claims, 50 lawsuits. I mean, I was it was like when this happened. I said we used to have a business. Now we have a business that is crushed. We have to reimagine our business, and we have to deal with the forces that will try to crush us. And it became a very, very different experience. Well, part of getting out of that was we ended up buying an East Coast company that got going when we were hobbled. And we really did, we needed the East Coast, and this was a company called Fresh Samantha. And I thought we could help it and go further with it, and so we, we bought it, and in that, in that deal, we ended up getting shareholders from private equity and Kara. You’ll know what private equity is like dealing with. Well, we ended up with an awful partner, and they attempted to fire me, but they did it poorly, and we ended up being rather fast on our feet and selling the company to Coke, which really wasn’t my desired outcome. But you know, desired outcomes in reality can be very different.

Kara Goldin 12:56
Yeah, def definitely. And, and I’m so curious too. Did when coke eventually, they ran the business for a while, and then they discontinued the business for a while. I’ve, I’ve talked to many people, including Seth, who bought the brand, his brand back. Did you ever think about doing that?

Stephen Williamson 13:18
Well, they, they should. They showed it to me, but what they showed it to me late, they destroyed it the you’re super familiar with gross to net. It’s really one of the easiest ways to measure how strong a brand is. The gross to net, when they showed it to me was like 30 points. I mean, it did. They had destroyed the manufacturing. They destroyed the brand. They had cheapened the product. They did. They they just so messed it up. Well, we saw we sold it to coke. I went in there and showed them, this is your galaxy of nourishment. You’ve got this and this and this. You have a short shelf life distribution system. There’s so many other good products you can put in this. This will be the nourishment vehicle for for the country. It can be incredible. And I gave them the whole list of products, and the first thing they did was shut down DSD and shut down innovation, and cheapen the product and shrink the size. And they just made one mistake after the other. But look, part of selling a business is let go. Yeah, I let go and go. And I said after that, Kara, I’m not going to go to food again. No way.

Kara Goldin 14:38
And then here you are. Hey, I’d love to hear your opinion so on the gross to net, for those who are listening, what’s your opinion on gross to net? When? When do you have a problem in a brand when you’re looking at gross to net? And I know it varies based on factors, but what’s your opinion on that?

Stephen Williamson 14:59
Well. I think it’s so category specific. But if you are looking at buying something, you better understand in the category you’re buying at what is the top performer, champion, gross to net, and where’s the company you’re looking at, and what are the opportunities to improve that? Are they sinking? And how much of their their products on deal? Because it’s such an interesting area, gross to net and deals, and people think they’re getting deals, and retailers wanting to be on deal, it’s a that’s a quagmire. So I can’t give you a specific but I can tell you that where we are at forager versus where Coke was with Odwalla was in different universes, maybe different galaxies.

Kara Goldin 15:55
I love that. So when you I’d love you also have your own manufacturing plant in running Forager Project. So can you talk about the process of building your own manufacturing plant and why you made that decision so early on with Forager Project?

Stephen Williamson 16:14
Well, I think it’s probably two things insane, or maybe three things insane. So I look stupid and, and I love to cook, and I just don’t understand. This is just me. Personally, I want to make my own food and, and we don’t have any CO packers. We make all our own food. We obviously don’t grow cashews, but we source the cashews. We have feet on the ground. We are at the soil, at the tree, and I just felt like I wanted to make my own food. I mean, that’s what it comes down. I just don’t There are plenty of successful food brands that don’t manufacture, but for what we do, there was no place to go. Sorry, here comes my dog. Oh, he sits on my I love it. Looks out the window.

Kara Goldin 17:02
I love it. All No no, all good

Stephen Williamson 17:05
he is, by the way, he is on the kids packaging. You’ll see Wallace as my dog. He’s part of the brand.

Kara Goldin 17:14
Oh, I love it. I love it. So when you were first getting started, were there co packers that could do that, could do your product? So

Stephen Williamson 17:25
we opened our plant in 2015 so two years after going starting and when we started, we did use a facility in Southern California, Ted Lehman, who is our head of manufacturing, who worked with me at Odwalla and then ran evolution fresh manufacturing, he and I would effectively rent this facility once or once a week and Go down and make our product. Yeah, I was very straight up with them. The point, some point we will leave you, we will build our own plant, but I still have a good relationship with with the facility we use. And I don’t recommend building a plant before you know whether you got legs, because you can end up building a plant that is useless. So yeah, we wanted to make sure we had legs, and once we felt we had legs, then it was okay. It’s time to build a plant. But we’ve made so many mistakes. I mean, Kara, I’m just a I’m the king of mistakes.

Kara Goldin 18:45
I love it when you think about those mistakes, is there one that you know really stands out as maybe it was a mistake, but it actually really ultimately pushed your product to be what it is today. I

Stephen Williamson 19:02
didn’t think you were going to ask the second part of the question. I was gonna the first part of the question, which I’m gonna answer differently, was one, yeah, and I think you can relate to this in your own situation, with hint. I was not guarding a board seats carefully enough. And you know the board as a CEO matters, and you better count your votes. And I made a mistake in my od wallet days, and that was why I ended up they ended up trying to fire me, and they did it so poorly, I got I got away from it. But as far as is, you know, I don’t know if there are mistakes, but the failures are so many. I mean, where do you start? How about cheese? I felt like, Okay, we should. There’s no good cheese. We can make a great cheese. And. We spent a long time and lot of money, and obviously, I don’t make cheese anymore. I completely messed it up because I didn’t have a big enough vision, and I didn’t build a as I could before it a proper back end manufacturing so I could make the cheese block, but getting from the block into the package, I had to use third parties, and it was a mess. It just couldn’t get the quality you want. Our product is obviously pretty alive, Unpreserved. I like the simple thought. Kara that all good food should become bad food over time, and and it rots, it returns to the earth. And that, that one those wonderful lines about Twinkies that you can leave on the on your desk for two years, and they’re still fine. It’s like, yeah, sure, that’s food. That’s, yeah, that’s a lot of chemicals. And being dyslexic, I can’t pronounce 70% of what’s in Twinkies.

Kara Goldin 21:07
Yeah, you’re, you’re hitting on some some you and I are very, very connected. My dad was in the food business. He had started a brand called Healthy Choice years ago, and so I was probably the only child who had a Twinkie in the kitchen, and my dad was amazed at how long you could actually have it there without a growing mold. And I was like, I am never having and I just was horrified by the sight of that, and the other story, actually, I wrote a book a few years ago called undaunted, and about the building of hint. And one of the stories, it’s partly my story, but it’s partly my husband, Theo’s story, which is that we weren’t using preservatives. Still don’t use preservatives in the hint product, but we didn’t really know how to do that, and so we, we, you know, just decided to watch this, the product on shelf in the Bay Area, very, very closely, and continue to get it tested every day to make sure that there weren’t any issues. But we got a call from Whole Foods early on, sharing that there was this strange cloud, like figure in the bottle and and they thought it was mold, and they needed us to pick it up. So we picked up the product, went and talked to the buyer. The buyer was going to kick us out, and my husband said, so you don’t have mold on any in your store at all, and this is before kombucha. And and she said, No. And he said, Well, what about blue cheese? What about that? Like is that that’s not mold. There’s there’s different types of mold. The most important thing is, is it the kind of mold that’s going to kill you, right? And so by the end of the conversation, we had saved the relationship of the Whole Foods, and just by sharing the fact that, you know, it didn’t look good, we were in complete agreement, right? But it was, and we were going to replace the product, but at the end of the day, we were doing something that was really, really hard, right? And, and the idea that no mold was in any product was ridiculous.

Stephen Williamson 23:31
I mean, our products alive, right? We put cultures in it to grow, to transform the product into yogurt. That is the essence. I like to say we only do 40% of the work the cultures, the 15 billion cultures in there do 60% of the work, transforming the product from six and a half pH to 4.4 pH, and giving it the body and feel and taste. Definitely, we’re just stewards.

Kara Goldin 24:06
Yeah, exactly. So were there any times and growing the brand where maybe a you had gotten some shelf space, and then all of a sudden, the buyer calls you and tells you it’s not working anymore. You’re going to be leaving the store, but we’re not we’re going to discontinue you. And then you were invited back. I remember early on with hint, people had told us that don’t ever get kicked out of a store, because you’ll never get back in and I frequently tell other founders, it just takes a buyer change, right? And maybe a little bit of time, and you’ll get back in. Don’t worry about that.

Stephen Williamson 24:48
Well, I mean, shelf space is valuable, and it’s fought over, and we certainly had many. I mean, I’ve got a wall of failures in the office that. And some of it’s too early. Like, for instance, we went early on protein and failed and failed. We were just too early. So we’ve now come back in and I think the failures actually helped us, because what we’ve ended up creating is unlike I think all of the protein yogurts, plant based protein yogurts that are out there, they get their protein level and they spend the rest of their effort trying to cover up a terrible taste. We took a different approach, which was, how much protein can we get out of cashews? And how do we complement that? And what do we what’s the right protein to add in with the cashews to create an incredibly great tasting, smooth, non gritty, easy product. And by the way, let’s also start with the hardest product, which is unsweetened plain so you have nothing to cover up. And so we did that. We’ve just literally launched it. It’s been out for a couple of months, and it’s doing incredibly well. And you’ll see in the fourth quarter of this year, more of our large tub yogurts coming out, plus cup yogurt, all Greek. It’s really good. We spent a long time on it, and that was a it was a process that that we used the painful learnings of being beaten in our base yogurt by competitors to go, Okay, time to time, to be better and figure out what we did wrong and admit failure. And I think it’s so important to try to understand where you are and admit when you’re failing. It’s hard. As an entrepreneur, all you want to do is be successful and push and push and push, but to look just be quiet for a moment and go, I’m failing. This isn’t working. It’s hard, it’s hard to it’s hard to be honest with yourself, but we’ve definitely had a lot of failures. Kara got a lot of failures.

Kara Goldin 27:30
I love it. So when do you know that you’re failing? I guess is the question. So you know, you launch SKUs, you get them out there on the shelf. Maybe they’re working in some stores, not working in other stores. You know, it’s confusing, or, I should say, other channels. Maybe it’s working in your like, is there a certain metric that you’ve used over the over the years in either of your I think triggers you

Stephen Williamson 27:59
have to look at your today, everyone buys data, and you need to look at your your data and go, if I’m in the bottom 10% I’m done. And if you’re growing, you know, I think you can. You can sometimes convince buyers to give you time. I think you have to be really knowledgeable about the shelf. One of the things I loved about Odwalla is we had our handhelds, and we had, obviously a lot of our sales were on our coolers, but many, many stores wouldn’t give us coolers. So in our handhelds, I made all the route. Sales people rate the space from A to F. And if, when you’re in a D space, and you’re in the ballpark with someone who’s in the a space, you got hope, you got to convince the retailer and show them, hey, look, we’re at ankle space, and these guys are eye high space, and yes, they’re four times bigger than us, but that’s standard for that type of deviation and shelf space. So I mean, we’re always I mean every single buyer meeting I go into I realize we’re there at their gift, if you will, their their their decision making, and we need to be absolutely prepared to be thrown out and understand it’s their prerogative. And I’ve certainly had plenty of disappointing meetings with large retailers. That’s part of the process. I mean, I’ve got tons of products we launched that failed.

Kara Goldin 29:49
Yeah, I Well, I love the fact that you that you keep doing it and you own it and you go, I mean, some of them you just shelf because you said it’s timing, um. Um, might be the issue, but at what point innovation becomes a key sort of topic, I should say, for most, for most brands like and I think buyers often say, what do you have that’s new, right? And that sometimes drives a sales team to come back and say, we have to do something new and new flavor, new, this, new, this. What, Where does innovation play like? Is there certain timing like you must come out with a new product every year, every whatever? Or how do you think about that topic,

Stephen Williamson 30:41
probably poorly. I mean, our CMO Lindsay is like, you’re so undisciplined. I go, Well, I have a vegetable garden. I listen to the soil, and I listened to my plants, and I I I look at data, and I think, well, and then I also think, what can we do? Because I don’t want a combin. And so we have a certain plant we’ve built from scratch, and it does certain things well, and it can ferment, and it can take nuts, seeds and ancient grains and liquefy them really well. We can mix and blend really well. We have certain fillers that work for us, and I think in terms of what we could do in the plant and what’s going on in the market, and react accordingly. And obviously on protein, we were way early, but then I would say we were slightly late, but, but I was okay to be late because I wanted to approach protein from having food be the primary source of protein, not a pea protein isolate, which is what everyone else uses other than soy, ice soy. And we chose a different path. We chose, let’s get as much protein as we can from cashews, and we’ll supplement it with brown rice protein, which works best with cashews. I like food Kara and I like to make good food. And lot of the stuff we’ve made isn’t relevant, but we certainly tried to make good food. Might as well enjoy it when you’re failing.

Kara Goldin 32:35
Yeah, yeah, definitely. How have you balanced scaling with really staying true to your values, you are known as being an individual of strong values and integrity. And which is which, you know, I think, is the is the goal of life. I mean you, you’ve really done a nice job. So, but how do you balance scaling with staying true to your values? Especially as you start looking around, I

Stephen Williamson 33:06
don’t stay true to my values, and everything else falls out.

Kara Goldin 33:12
I love it. I love it. So when you look at kind of the next frontier for plant based dairy, because you’ve definitely been on the forefront of lots of not only development, but also change in the category and innovating for the category. What do you think we’re going to start seeing a lot more of protein? Like you said, a lot of people are doing protein right now. But where do you think this is headed into? Lots of other categories. I think there’s, there’s clearly, you know, global warming is, is something that, sadly, I think, has been put on the back burner for for so many companies and our government and all of those issues. So I think it’s, it’s definitely not a good thing overall. But what do you see as kind of the next frontier for the plant based dairy?

Stephen Williamson 34:18
Well, it’s a tough question, I guess Kara, I think I would step back for a little bit and go, let’s look at the meat side for a moment. I think meat. Try meatless meat, whether Beyond Meat or impossible, one of the two leaders, I think they spent too much time trying to be meat, I suppose, replace meat and I just have not spent a lot of time trying to be a cow dairy product. I’ve tried to be a replacement for it, and that I’m not asking you to sacrifice, but it will be a different experience. It is a different experience. It’s not bovine secretion from from a cow. So, so I just think it’s a replacement. And what I’ve tried to focus on is, how do you make a consumer not have to sacrifice it tastes different, but it tastes great. And so, for instance, we recently launched a line of creamers which just totally fit right within what we do, cashews and coconuts and oats, minimally processed. It really goes incredibly well with coffee and that I’m not trying to be a half and half. I’m not trying to be a crane. But it works incredibly well with coffee and it stands alone. You know, if you, if you, if you look at the plant based dairy, unless they’re additives, we’re deficient in protein and we’re deficient in calcium, that’s just the that’s the reality. And we have tried fortification. Man, I’m not sure I totally relate to fortification. I think this goes back to my Food philosophy. You should have a idea of I want to eat planetary healthy food, and I don’t expect to get everything in one meal. I eat thoughtfully over the day, over the week, and I’m eating a variety of nuts, grains, seeds, vegetables, fruits, minimal amounts of saturated fat, minimal amounts of animal based products, low sugar, no junk. So I hate stevia and monk fruit and Xylitol and being so dyslexic anything is a Rick Attack. Attack a rack of get it. I really think you should be thinking about eating from your pantry and your garden and high quality organic stores, and that should be the basis of the ingredients use in your life. And that should be the basis of ingredients we use in our in our company. And if I had to say, one thing I would love to be able to do is continue to push towards simplicity. I love those that Einstein quote, which I always get wrong, should be as simple as possible, no simpler and and there’s still things we can do to simplify our product, and we’re dedicated to pushing forward on learning because curiosity and foraging are the essence of this company, and that means we’re going to step into bad things at times and learn and try to get better from it.

Kara Goldin 37:52
Definitely. Well, I couldn’t agree with you more. So you know, hint has always been about that as well, and what you guys have done with foragers just, is just absolutely amazing. So last question, one piece of advice you’d give to founders out there, entrepreneurs who are building a mission driven food brand today, I think simple is, is definitely, I feel like the the shortcuts that so many people take, whether it’s with adding sweeteners or or, you know, going out and getting the money that maybe they know they shouldn’t take, and all of These aspects you’ve you’ve lived it, but I’m curious what you’d say about one piece of advice you’d give to founders today, knowing what you know,

Stephen Williamson 38:47
I guess I first of all, that’s an interesting question, but I think if I had to give one piece of advice, it would be maybe the mental model that I’ve used. And some people laugh at me and say, You really shouldn’t use the bottle, but I like it, which is, I feel like, if you’re going and you would relate to this Kara, because you’ve found it hint and been through the ringer, that starting a business from scratch is a bit like going up Half Dome with no ropes. You don’t see free climbers going down, they go up. So it’s head it’s head down. I’m going up. I There’s no, there’s no, no other place to go then go up and and, and they’re going to be frights and disappointments, and this isn’t going to work. And, oh my god, what am I going to do? And I’m the idiot. How did I do this? And the amount of self questioning is enormous, but if you keep the mental model, I got no choice but to succeed. Yeah, I think you have a better shot,

Kara Goldin 39:56
definitely. Well, Steven, thank you so much for joining. Us and sharing all of your wisdom, your journey from building at Walla to reimagining dairy with forger project, such an incredible brand and multiple products that you’ve come out with are just game changing and so tasty, better tasting, I think, than many of the yogurts out there that are not doing a very good job of actually even sort of fulfilling taste for consumers, but for everyone listening, go check out Forager Project, and we’ll have all The info in the show notes too, but thank you again. Really appreciate it, and thanks everybody for listening.

Stephen Williamson 40:46
Kara, thank you for having me. And what I just like to say is, from my perspective, you and I are fellow foragers. We have been through the ringers building companies and the entrepreneurial lifestyle. It’s stops for the Saint of heart.

Kara Goldin 41:03
Definitely, definitely. Thank you so much, Steven. 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. You.

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