Keith Kohler launches his new podcast "How I Financed It" with a candid conversation featuring Ora Organic co-founders Ron and Will, who share their decade-long journey from maxed-out credit cards in the beginning to sustainable profitability today.

The founders reveal how their personal motivations—Will's frustration with supplement transparency during his "junk food vegan" days and Ron's family health challenges—fueled their mission to create plant-based, organic supplements with traceable ingredients. Their financing path unfolds like a masterclass in entrepreneurial resilience, starting with $150,000 from friends and family, progressing through SBA loans, and leveraging a Shark Tank appearance to secure a million-dollar convertible note.

What makes this conversation particularly valuable is the founders' transparency about pivoting when necessary. They explain why they scaled back retail operations despite initial success, focusing instead on direct-to-consumer channels where their marketing dollars worked harder. When the pandemic dried up equity markets, they resisted the common advice to "take a hatchet" to their business, instead making incremental efficiency improvements that preserved growth while achieving profitability.

The conversation offers a wealth of practical financing wisdom rarely shared so openly. Will admits he would have "started with the finance side earlier," focusing on profitability from day one, while Ron emphasizes maintaining relationships through difficult times. Their recent equity financing marks not an overnight success but the culmination of calculated decisions, strategic pivots, and unwavering commitment to product quality.

Whether you're bootstrapping your first venture or navigating growth challenges in an established business, this episode delivers invaluable insights into financing options beyond the traditional equity path. Connect with Keith on LinkedIn at Keith Kohler1 to continue the conversation about financing strategies for your business journey.

Margarita Womack never intended to build a frozen empanada empire. Eight years ago, she was a PhD scientist with Colombian roots who simply wanted to help a friend secure a visa through a small catering business. Today, she's the founder of Maspanadas, with over 50 employees, a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility, and nationwide distribution.

This candid conversation reveals the complete financing journey behind Maspanadas, from kitchen table experiments to multi-million dollar fundraising. Womack shares how she bootstrapped initially through catering and farmers markets, discovering empanadas were her bestsellers and pivoting the entire business model. When expansion required capital, she turned first to family, securing $150,000 to take over an existing manufacturing facility – the first step in a financial journey that would eventually include convertible notes, SBA loans, and a seed round that dragged on for nearly three years.

The pandemic brought both crisis and opportunity, forcing Maspanadas to pivot when it lost most of its food service business overnight. Womack's science background proved invaluable as she methodically tested and validated each business decision, expanding into private label manufacturing while gradually building retail presence. Through it all, she invested "every single cent" her family had, even using her home as collateral for equipment loans.

What makes this story particularly powerful is Womack's honesty about the personal toll of entrepreneurship. As a mother of three balancing multiple roles, she dispels the myth of "having it all," instead describing how she learned to focus on one priority at a time while building a company that now provides opportunities for dozens of employees, many of whom are immigrants like herself. She's even established a foundation to help employees with financial literacy and accessing community resources.

Ready to start your own entrepreneurial journey? Learn from Margarita's experiences navigating the complex world of CPG financing, and discover why persistence, adaptability, and community might be even more important than the money itself.

From a comfortable engineering career to the brink of financial collapse and back again, Myles Powell's entrepreneurial story embodies both the exhilarating highs and crushing lows of building a CPG food brand from scratch.

What begins as a childhood love for family dinner conversations transforms into Myles Comfort Foods, a journey that tests Powell's resilience at every turn. With remarkable candor, he recounts the path from homemade barbecue sauce experiments to landing products in Target and Whole Foods – a path marked by maxed-out credit cards, personal loans, and even debt collectors calling daily at the lowest points.

Powell's evolution is fascinating: starting as a civil engineer who couldn't imagine doing the same job for 40 years, becoming a bootstrapping entrepreneur making sauce in commercial kitchens, then cycling between full-time business ownership and returning to corporate stability when finances became too precarious. The vulnerability with which he shares these transitions offers rare insight into the emotional and financial realities facing food entrepreneurs.

Perhaps most valuable are the hard-earned lessons that emerged from his struggles. "Know your customer better than you know yourself" and "grow within your means" stand as powerful counterpoints to the typical startup narrative that glorifies rapid expansion and massive fundraising. His concept of "the responsibility of freedom" perfectly captures the double-edged sword of entrepreneurship – the autonomy comes with immense accountability.

The turning point comes when Powell makes the difficult decision to shut down operations in 2022, regroup with a co-founder who complements his skills, and relaunch with a more strategic, sustainable approach. This reset demonstrates that entrepreneurial success often requires stepping back before moving forward.

Want to understand what really happens behind the scenes of building a food brand? Listen to Myles Powell's raw, unfiltered story of persistence through financial hardship, the mental toll of entrepreneurship, and ultimately finding a path to sustainable growth in the challenging CPG landscape.