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.