Make a Smooth Transition to Entrepreneurship

0:00When someone can connect with your story, they become a lifelong customer and perhaps even a fan. Hello and welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. I'm your host, Shuang Esther Shan. One of the most important skills for entrepreneurs is problem solving. And that's why we invited Sarah Chisholm onto the show. Sarah's career has been anything but traditional, yet she's continued to find success with her business, Wild Rye Baking, a line of premium cake mixes. From an injury that ended her dance career to working as a pastry chef to sourcing the freshest ingredients during the peak of lockdowns, Sarah is here to talk about making business work no matter what life throws your way.

0:50Sarah, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. So Sarah, your career has certainly taken in many different turns. What is your advice for entrepreneurs who might be set on one path and they actually need to get comfortable with things that are happening outside of their control? I think the advice that I would give is try not to resist it so much and maybe instead think about what good could come from it, right? When I left the world of professional ballet, I certainly didn't expect to find myself here as an entrepreneur and business owner, but I'm certainly glad that I did. And all of the discomfort that kind of happened along the way really shaped who I am now.

1:33It shapes how I approach business. And so I think I spent a little too long being discouraged about how my life path was changing instead of being like, this is cool. This is new. How can I adapt and how can I be excited by the possibilities rather than overwhelmed by them. So I think the only thing I would say is to just, you know, try to switch your mindset as quickly as possible to be excited by what's available to you in life. Yeah, fully embracing those chapters of change. What I find also really interesting is not only did you pivot into culinary arts, you became a pastry chef, but you also had this great idea of actually entering into the direct-to-consumer world, creating a packaged good, which is such a big undertaking.

2:25So how did you pick yourself up and pivot again when you did become a pastry chef to later think about creating a product? Yeah, you know, the reality is you eat an elephant one bite at a time, right?

2:45When I was working in restaurant kitchens, and if I were to imagine, I'm going to start a CPG brand that's going to be direct to consumer. We're going to ship nationwide. We're going to have a wholesale division of our company along with a bulk mix program. I would have become very overwhelmed, right? And thought, I have no idea what I'm doing. I can't do this. I have no skills to do this or to accomplish this. But in reality, So one bite at a time, one step at a time really makes it happen. And you realize, okay, what is the first thing I need to learn about this one specific area? So if it's FDA regulations about selling across state lines, well, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to spend an hour researching this.

3:29And all of a sudden, this thing that I didn't think I could do, I realize I can. And then it's the next bite and it's the next step and it's the next step. And you realize that while it's a totally different world, the CPG world, it's still just business. And it's like, it's just action. And so I switched my action plan from how I would operate in a restaurant kitchen as a professional pastry chef. and I focused my energy to how do I build a business that works for me, that is successful, that can operate in the world. And eventually you look back after taking multiple bites and you're like, we're doing this.

4:08We're making something. One step at a time, one bite at a time. I think it's also so important because it allows you to calm down a little bit and not be intimidated by the overarching goal and turn them into little actionable steps. I think maybe the first step is validating your idea to see if it resonates with more people. So how did you go ahead and actually test out your idea for wild rye baking? If you look at companies that have become very successful, it's very easy to think like, there's no way I could build something like this. But in fact, they all started somewhere and they all started probably as a small business, right?

4:53When I was starting the proof of concept or testing the proof of concept with Wild Rye, I was making small batch baking mixes in my home and sharing them with my friends and asking them to give me honest feedback like, hey, Michelle, your son's gluten-free. Will you please make this and tell me, one, is it easy? Two, does it work? And three, like, would you switch to using a product like this instead of something that you found on the shelf? And so I started there, like, just with my friends, with my immediate community. And then we had enough people be like, I want to buy these from you. I want more of these.

5:31And so I started making larger quantities, again, in my home and hand, like, packaging them and delivering them. And what we found was not only are people loving the product, our quality is better and people want to share it with more people. So that was enough for me to take the financial leap and to make the commitment to go all in on pursuing something because it's not easy when you do decide to take it on. But I knew that there was enough people who were showing me that they loved it that I needed to just find more of those people and Wild Rye could grow. Starting with family and friends is also less intimidating, but I'm sure you had to reach out to that first store owner, a stranger, and actually give them a pitch, maybe a sample.

6:21So what are your tips there to reaching out to someone who is perhaps a stranger who owns a store through a cold call? To be an entrepreneur, you can't be timid. You just have to really believe in yourself and believe in what you do. I would never describe myself as a quiet or shy person, but I have had to push beyond my comfort zone in so many ways to just be like, look, I believe in these products. And so I'm willing to put myself out there because I know that at the very core of our business, what we are selling is worth something wonderful. And so it allows me to handle rejection a lot easier because I know that the product that I make is good.

7:05The pancake mix that we sell, I believe to be the best pancake mix I have ever experienced. And so I feel really good going into a store and saying, I think that you should try this. and I think that your community might really appreciate this. Now, no one's going to know your community better than you, but I'd love to get a shot at showing you what we do. And then you can decide. You also need to remember that you never know who you're going to meet.

7:34So you could be having a conversation with somebody at a coffee shop and they happen to own a store or their friend owns a store. I met a realtor who now uses our pancake mix as their home gifts. And I just had a conversation with them over coffee, waiting in line to get my latte, right? So I run out to my car. I grab a sample because I always keep them there. And all of a sudden, I've made a sale just by being myself and by putting myself out there. I think you just have to believe in yourself. And I think you have to be okay with receiving rejection because if you believe in who you are, it's a lot easier to take the rejection that will inevitably come when you're trying to make a sale.

8:13So Wild Rye is all about giving your customers that premium bakery-like experience. How did you go about sourcing your ingredients and finding the right suppliers? Yeah, you know, I think that there's a lot of background work that has to happen before you take a business to launch, right? Because when your website goes live and you're able to receive orders, if you're not able to fulfill on those orders or to support the demand that is coming your way, I think that's when you can really run into some issues as a business. And so I was like used to working with really small products. I would be making like 10 chocolate cake mixes at a time or 15 pancake mixes.

8:58And we were just using really small quantities. And when we took Wild Ride to launch and went live nationally, I needed to make sure that I had the stability. Our company launched during COVID, which meant we had to tackle a lot of supply chain issues and foresee what might be ahead, which was very difficult. But it actually proved to be very helpful because we needed secure sourcing. So what I did was to look towards the purveyors that I worked with when I was working in restaurants and ask them quite plainly, like, how many pounds of this organic sugar will you store in your warehouse for me?

9:38I guarantee you I'll buy it. I may not have the facility to store it on my own, but if you can store it in time, I will work through it. And so it was really about leaning on the relationships that I had built and working with people that I trusted. I know that that can be very difficult to establish when you're establishing a brand, but I think it's worth the time that it takes to make sure that you have stability when it comes to products, materials, packaging, all of these things that really make your business function. You know, we're a CPG brand, so our chocolate comes from a French chocolatier, and it's been around since the 1800s, and I love it so much.

10:19I wouldn't have chosen that specific cocoa powder if I didn't know that I could also get it here in Arizona consistently for the foreseeable future. Because if we change or alter the quality of our product, then we're not delivering to our customers in a way that feels authentic. So that means taking the time on the back end before launch to make sure that you have those relationships established. Because I even remember our vanilla producer was like, we don't know if we can source this much in this amount of time. and I was like, what can I do? How can we work together? How can I help build this relationship with you so that you might be willing to try a little bit harder for me?

10:59When you make relationships with people and they understand that it's me and my business that they're helping to do this for, I think they are a little bit more willing to work with you. So it really is all about relationships and taking the time to build them. It sounds like you were having a million little pieces of the puzzle to try to make sure they line up perfectly with the right timelines and getting the raw materials to produce the different mixes, which I find is so interesting. And I would love to hear your early days of fulfilling those orders and keeping the production costs low and how you got started on that side of the business.

11:38Scrappy is not a word that like my ballerina self would have ever leaned into because, you know, I come from the world of classical ballet and the more perfect and precise and perfectly prepared, the better. And that just doesn't really translate well into the small business entrepreneurial world. So I had to make some big pivots and I had to embrace being really scrappy. I did almost everything myself in the very beginning. I was receiving orders, making the mixes, and then fulfilling orders from my garage initially. And I was like, okay, this is great. But it was also so exciting because I would see an order come in from someone I had never known in Tennessee or in South Dakota or in Utah.

12:25And that gave me so much excitement and purpose with my business. So we started really scrappy, really small, working out of a very small kitchen facility and just like kept building. And then when we had a little bit more income that would allow for a manufacturing team, then we brought in someone to help. And when we had a little bit more income to allow for meeting more people online and sending more targeted ads and messages and really trying to get the brand out there, That's how we did it. But initially, it started in my home in a small kitchen filling orders out of my garage. So it sounds like you've also been very smart financially to actually build your own runway and grow at a sustainable rate.

13:16For founders in the similar position where they have to bootstrap and manage their own finances, what is your advice for staying disciplined in that area? Well, it's certainly not easy. There is a lot of attractive things about taking on VC or taking on, you know, investment. But there's also a lot to be proud of when you own 100 % of your company. And I really wanted to have as much control over how Wild Rye was messaged to the world, how we grew, how we did business, how we made every mix, like the quality control really was important to me. And so I had to hold off on the things that I would really love, like someone to manage my social media, for example, right?

14:03But I also believe in paying people what they deserve to be paid. And so if I couldn't afford to do it, I realized I had to wait until I could do it in a way that felt ethical and meaningful to me. So I'm like, okay, I'm just going to do this. And I got really good at like organizing my time and knowing that it wasn't going to be forever. If I had to be the one fielding the calls and making the pancake mix and shipping the orders for a smaller amount of time, but it allowed me to own 100 % of my business and then invest accordingly as we grew, I felt really proud of that. And it was worthwhile.

14:40So I think keeping your head down and knowing that if you do the work now, it pays off in the end. It helps, right? And so sometimes my mantra was just like, head down, keep going, head down, keep going. And slowly but surely, we built into something that allowed us to be like, whoa, let's get some newer boxes with some better gold foil and let's use higher quality paper. And, you know, we got to really start to invest in the company in a way that made our products better and also allowed for us to hire more people and pay them fairly and engage with the community in a really authentic and good way.

15:20I know our listeners will really appreciate your perspective on managing your own production and also staying financially disciplined and building your own runway. We're chatting with Sarah Chisholm of Wild Rye Baking. we'd like to take a moment to thank you our wonderful listeners for tuning into the show wherever you get your podcasts make sure to give shopify masters a follow and leave us a review with your feedback for the show thank you so much so i love the idea of wild rye which is when you actually really tapped into the Arizona community to get things off the ground. So talk to us about leveraging some of those local resources and the local community when you're starting to build and grow a brand.

16:14If you've gotten to the point where your proof of concept has been tested and it's about now like getting your product out there, it's easiest to start with the people that you know who you have a relationship with beyond just your friends and your family. And so I would go into the stores that I would frequent all the time and be like, I have this product and I know you've seen my face because I come in here every Monday to get something or to shop for my wine. Can I share it with you? And what is really beautiful about the business community is most people do want to help, especially small businesses, right?

16:53They enjoy meaningful stories. They enjoy familiar faces. And I think we like to support and uplift many of those businesses, right? So for me, it was about going in, telling my story shortly and briefly, but also then asking how I could help support them, right? So it was like, you know, I remember this amazing meat market that is a fine wine store. And they had seen me come in because I just shopped there and I told them about my brand and they were like, yeah, let's give it a try. We love it. And so while I never anticipated having a wholesale division, that was like a whole new world for me, right?

17:32I'm like, okay, this is great. And where can I do this some more? And then I started talking to people who had relationships in the world of TV or radio or they ran a local food publication. And I was like, how can I get in contact with this person? How can I reach out to them and share my story? And so again, it was this idea of how can I be scrappy and be very passionate about what I do and get that word out? It was really, really cool to see the response because most people are very interested in sharing the stories and uplifting the people around them as well, especially if you come in with that type of energy.

18:13I also like the fact that you mentioned not only working with local stores, but also local media, because I think a lot of the times people approach PR and they have really big lofty goals to target the largest publication or an editor that they dream about having them write about their product. So in terms of reaching local media, what's your advice for maybe sending an email, reaching out to writers to perhaps review your product or just to get the word for your business out there? Yeah, I mean, you bring up a really good point that people do have lofty goals. I have very lofty goals. I have big ideas and big dreams of who I would love to see talk about Wild Rye in the future.

18:58But I also believe that the small local publications are valuable as well. And it's certainly a start. I started by sending product to anyone who was interested. So if that meant reaching out on Instagram saying, Hi, I'm a new business. We are a local, like, female-owned company. I would love to send you some product to experience. And all I would like in return is your feedback if you are willing to share it. And typically, people were very receptive, right? So either I was sending a box to the TV studios locally or to Arcadia, which is a local newspaper here in Phoenix, sending like a goodie box, basically, a package of what we do along with a handwritten letter and a little bit of our story.

19:49Usually that opened the door with more interest and more questions and people deciding to feature us. I think that you have to be very brave and authentic when you reach out to people because you may get nothing in response. But if you don't try, you miss 100 % of the shots you don't take. So I was like, I'm going to send boxes to as many people as will send me their address. Right. And I will write a little note and print out our story and include it in the box because I think that we have something that is special. And then, you know, it was also like, if I had a connection with someone through like who we both followed on Instagram, then I would use Instagram and send them a DM and say, we know the same person.

20:37I would like love to share this with you. They happen to be a fan of our product already. If you're open to this and are willing to share it with your community, let me know if this is something I can tell you more about. And so I think really looking to like the local writers, the local chefs, you know, I really was like wild rye is a cake mix that a pastry chef created, right? So how can I get other chefs, really well-respected people in the food industry to get behind my product? Because if I can do that, then I definitely have a leg up on just whatever might be sitting on a grocery store shelf.

21:14And so I was reaching out to chefs and sharing with them. And it was pretty incredible because what we ended up seeing was these people reordering on our website. And I'm like, oh my gosh, if a James Beard award-winning chef is ordering my mixes online, I must be doing something right. And it kind of fortified this confidence to keep going and to eventually tackle bigger networks, bigger presences, and just kind of keep that ball rolling. But I really started small. I think it's perfect because it links back to your first advice, which is take things one step at a time. And I especially like the fact that you did work with chefs for that initial reach out because I think it's tapping into that niche community.

22:00And it's something that businesses don't think about when they think about influencer marketing. It's not just content creators, it's people who have their own communities who might be in the industry that you're working in. So every aspect of production and fulfillment for Wild Rye is still managed by the team. Talk to us about visiting different facilities and making that final call to actually keep things in-house. There's a few different routes that a food brand can go. A consumer packaged good brand could go the route of using a co-packer, for example, someone who you give your recipes too.

22:36They fulfill and like make all of the product and then ship it back to you for fulfillment. Some people even manage the fulfillment. And so that's a very attractive option for a lot of people. For me, I really love the idea that our mixes are handcrafted, that they are artisan. And so to depart too much from that at this stage in our growth feels like the wrong choice for me. So what I needed to find was a space that was big enough that could account for the certifications that we needed and also to find a team that was reliable. Staffing is very important. And so we took some time to find a space.

23:17It was not easy for us to find the right space, especially that could receive these larger quantities of ingredients that could also handle the production once it was made and going out to be sent off via order fulfillment. But I think I just kind of stuck with it. And eventually we outgrew the space that we were in to the point where I was like, I have to solve this problem. I don't have a choice. And I think when you kind of are forced to find a solution, you do. And so it was about finding a space that would work for us and then finding a team that was able to accommodate. And I also wanted to move us into a facility that it would allow for our growth, right?

23:57Because Wild Rye is still growing. We plan to do a lot of that in the coming years. And so I didn't want us to be in a position where you sign a lease and then you have to find a space because you've grown out of it again. So I needed to find a space and equipment that would allow us to grow into it, to double or even triple our production needs as they exist now without stressing the system too much. and again that really taps into like the relationships so if this is where I'm currently getting my flower can I triple this in the next year will you be able to sustain that sort of volume and asking those questions early to avoid getting to that point where you've really built your customer and your order of growth and then you can't fulfill on that that is truly the thing that I'm always trying to keep my eyes on in the future because I want to be able to deliver exceptional experiences for people and to sell out of products really can create some issues.

24:57So leaning on those relationships and asking them honestly, like, can you sustain this volume? What about tripling it? What happens then? It's like the early days when you're coordinating with all of the suppliers to meet different timelines, but now it's on a bigger scale and And you also have to predict your own growth. Yes, I have one other thing, which is consolidating the amount of suppliers that you're working with. If you can get somebody who will do almost all of your ingredients for you or all of your product needs for you, that is even better, right? So especially when we were smaller, people were very, you know, unaccommodating.

25:36accommodating if I was like, I have this organic dehydrated peanut butter powder that I would really like for you to source for me, but I only need like 10 pounds of it. They're like, no, thank you. But now because I have larger buying power, people are willing to like work with you and bring in things specifically for you. And that really consolidates the amount of suppliers I need to work with. So really working on like consolidating the sources that you are receiving from helps when you are growing extremely. Yeah. Saving your own time and also streamlining your production. I would love to also chat about storytelling because I know it's so important for Wild Rye, especially you're in a category with some legacy brands and you really need to get the story across of why you're different.

26:27Talk to us about building an audience and tapping into that customer base for your stories? I think storytelling is so important with brands in a way that was not important maybe when I was a kid. It was just like, well, this is what's available, so this is why we purchase it. But what I look for as a consumer is an interesting and compelling story. If I can meet the founder, even if it's just on social media and hear why they did what they did or why they started what they started, you develop a different attachment to the brand. You know, if you just see wild rye cake mix on the shelf, maybe you think to yourself, yeah, that's a beautiful package.

27:08And I like that there's not that many ingredients. And I love that there's no stabilizers or artificial anything, but I don't connect with it because I don't know about the person behind it. If I can meet you first, or if you can hear me personally telling the story about how I used to work in restaurant kitchens and I wanted to take the magic of baking back home into this very recognizable thing, which is the cake mix and kind of spark the nostalgia and the creativity of what it was like to be a kid and making mixes in your home and sharing it with your friends and igniting that memory within you.

27:50All of a sudden you're like, I can attach that person to this box. And all of a sudden it means something more to me. And I want to experience that feeling for myself. And that is what's powerful and exciting to me. It's like, the goal was never to start a business. I really mean this. The goal was to share what I love with people. And so I have to figure out all of the different ways that I can share this love for baking with the world. And there's many different ways to tell your story, right? You can tell it on the side of your box. You can tell it over social media. You can tell it on a podcast.