Navigating Motherhood and Entrepreneurship | Whitney Rowell | Miracle Milkookies | Profits on Purpose

Episode Description

In this episode of the Profits on Purpose podcast, host Nate Littlewood interviews Whitney Rowell, founder of Miracle Milk Cookies, a brand dedicated to supporting mothers during postpartum. Whitney shares her journey from a simple blog post to a national brand, discussing the challenges and triumphs of entrepreneurship, the importance of community, and the strategic decisions involved in scaling her business. The conversation covers topics such as bootstrapping, the transition to retail, building a team, and the balance between motherhood and running a business.

Key Takeaways

• Miracle Milk Cookies started as a blog post and grew into a national brand.
• The importance of market validation before production.
• Entrepreneurial mindset shifts are crucial for growth.
• Bootstrapping can lead to organic growth without initial investment.
• Raising capital can help scale a business but should be timed correctly.
• Transitioning to retail requires significant operational changes.
• Building a team is essential for scaling a business effectively.
• Outsourcing production can free up time for founders to focus on growth.
• Understanding your weaknesses can help in hiring the right people.
• Success requires strategic planning and clear goals.

See More from Whitney and Miracle Milkookies

• Miracle Milkookies' Website 
• Instagram
• LinkedIn

Listen to the full episode to discover how Whitney's experiences can inspire and guide you on your entrepreneurial journey. Don't forget to subscribe for more insightful conversations!

I hope you enjoy this episode!

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– Nate and the Profits on Purpose podcast team

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Transcript

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00:00 Introduction to Miracle Milk Cookies
01:42 The Journey from Blog to Brand
05:38 Mindset Shifts and Scaling Challenges
09:40 Bootstrapping and Organic Growth
14:40 Recognizing Market Opportunities
18:38 Raising Capital and Future Plans
23:39 Building a Team and Operational Challenges
27:38 Navigating Retail and Packaging Decisions
28:03 Navigating the Transition to Retail
33:36 Deciding When to Seek Help
36:29 Vision for the Future
39:36 Lessons Learned the Hard Way
42:21 Advice for New Moms in Business

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Nate (00:06)
Welcome to the Profits on Purpose podcast, where we explore the journeys of purpose led founders and the financial strategies that have helped them survive. Guys, I'm your host. My name is Nate Littlewood and today's guest is Whitney Rowell, who's the founder of Miracle Milkookies, a purpose driven food brand created to support moms during one of the most overlooked but also vulnerable stages of their life, which is Postpartum.

What began as a simple blog post and a homemade cookie recipe has since grown into a national brand beloved by moms and their families right across the country. But Winnie isn't just building a business here. Through her podcasts, Message from Mom and her platform more broadly, she's also amplifying the voices of women who are navigating motherhood, entrepreneurship, identity, and everything in between. Today, we're pulling back the curtain on what her journey has looked like from behind the scenes. Whitney, welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.

Whitney Rowell (01:22)
Thanks, Nate. I really appreciate you having me on. It's exciting to be here today. So thank you.

Nate (01:29)
Absolutely. So Whitney, I'd like to start off by going back to the beginning of your startup journey. What was the moment that made you realize that Miracle Milkookies needed to be more than just a recipe on your blog?

Whitney Rowell (01:48)
That's a great question. I do not have a background in CPG or food, but I do love to bake. And I think the first thing that struck me was when a friend made me lactation cookies. I'd never heard of them before. But it was truly the first thing someone had done for me after I had my first baby, and it felt so meaningful. And I wanted every mom to get these cookies or get cookies like it. And I couldn't even find anything like them online.

And so I created my own recipe first, was, guess, I just thought, oh, my friends will see the recipe, share it with their friends, make the cookies for their friends. But when I started noticing, I guess it was a year and a half later after making the cookies or posting the recipe, I noticed that the blog post itself had gone viral. And so many other moms had posted about how they were eating the cookies and making the cookies for themselves and their friends.

So the first step for me was literally I posted a little survey on that blog post and I said, click here if you'd be interested in actually buying these cookies. And I had hundreds of responses from people saying they would like to buy the cookies. Cause that was my first step, just recognizing there was a need and people wanted to buy them.

Nate (03:10)
That is so cool. mean, it's amazing that you're able to like get that market demand and validation before you even went into production, right? That's a step I think a lot of founders skip sometimes, but you, you know, clearly had some, you know, very, very positive indicators that people love the product, right? And before you even started producing it, which is awesome. So what was the biggest mindset shift that you think you had to go through?

In the process of, you know, turning this, turning this from, you know, a personal passion into an actual company.

Whitney Rowell (03:48)
That's another really good question. You know, it's funny because I've always been very entrepreneurial. I started my first business when I was eight years old, selling stationery door to door. And then I had a purse company and then I had a jewelry company in college. I've always been very entrepreneurial and business minded. But I think something that really hit me, because during those phases of my life, I was also in school and I was being supported by my family. I didn't really understand P &Ls and...

margins and all the things that you have to really run a business by if you're going to have a business and not just an idea or a passion project. And so what was interesting, you know, after about six months of running the company out of my house, I was selling cookies at a farmer's market in Dallas and my grandparents actually started this little farmer's market at their church and my grandmother was so cute. She was like, you should come and sell your cookies here. And I was like, sure. And at that point I was like,

I was like eight months pregnant and I had a one and a half year old. So it was like very much like I am my customer. I'm going to sell these cookies. And this pregnant girl walked by. My grandmother grabbed her and brought her over to me. She was like, this is your customer. my gosh. And so it was funny. So we started talking and her name is Natalie Yates and Natalie actually, she was like, you know, I love what you're doing here. She was like, I work in private equity and I would love to talk to you about

your business model and your finances and how you're running this. And I was like, great, because I don't have one of those. I'm just running this. I want to help moms. So we went and had coffee. And she was like, I'm really passionate about this space. And I really want to help. She's like, I've seen so many especially female-founded businesses get taken advantage of. And she's like, know right now this is an idea for you.

but I wanna help you scale this thing." And she said, right now you're losing money. Cause I was like going to Whole Foods and going to Costco and buying all my ingredients in bulk. so she said, the first step for you to scale this business is to outsource your production. You need to find a co-packer, which is someone who can bake your products for you. And you should focus on sales and marketing, which is what you know, not baking and production and scaling a food company.

So that was really hard for me to hear because I was like, I want to make every cookie for every mom. Like I want it to be perfect. It to be soft baked and warm and like fresh and delivered right to their doorstep. And she was like, that doesn't matter. It does not matter. You need to find, you can still find someone who can make a good cookie for you and scale with you. You don't have to be the one doing it. And that was, so that was the biggest first hurdle for me doing that, moving it out of my house, outsourcing production.

Nate (06:32)
I love that grandma was literally your distribution partner. She was in charge of customer acquisition and helped find, I guess, early investors. Did this woman end up actually investing or she's kind of acted more as a mentor?

Whitney Rowell (06:39)
What?

She didn't invest at that time and also I had it's interesting because I had someone at that time interested in investing and she was like you don't need investors right now like you're too small like that no, so I'm sure you know, so yeah, we were that was other interesting thing. It's like these sharks were swimming early on and I was like, nope. I learned from her like you don't need to take on investors until, until it's time to take on investors. And it was definitely way too early at that stage too.

Nate (07:19)
Okay, so you made a really interesting point there about not actually needing investors early on. And I presume that there was a fair amount of, you know, bootstrapped or organic growth that you have been able to achieve. Can you tell me a little bit more about, you know, the growth journey over the last few years, like how you've actually gotten to where you are today?

Whitney Rowell (07:42)
Yeah, no, I think it was, like I said, my background is definitely not in finance and it's definitely not in CPG. I didn't know what I didn't know, but I also knew that like, I mean, personally, I didn't want to take on investors just because I didn't want to give up any equity at that point. We were so tiny. We were like nothing, so tiny. But also,

At the time when we were growing the company it had to be profitable if we were gonna keep growing it because I We didn't have money to invest in it. We didn't have personal money to invest in it My husband was getting his masters. I was supporting our family. We had two little ones I mean it was like and so I was doing marketing consulting which at the time was great, but I Didn't have like a ton of extra money just like throw into this other company So I treated miracle milk. He's like a client and I was like, okay I'm not gonna get paid from it. Obviously

But if this company is going to grow, needs to be profitable. So the model that we had was actually really great because we launched on Shopify direct to consumer. So our customer would come to us, place an order, and then I would place an order with our co-packer. And our co-packer would bake our products and ship our products out. And then I'd pay them at 15. So it was like money in, money out. So there's always cash. had capital that was there just from our customer orders. So if we didn't have orders,

We didn't place orders and then we didn't pair. So it it was, it's a very simple model, but it worked really well for us. Um, starting out because it wasn't, I mean, the packaging itself, I mean, we, just put all the money back into the business to grow it. we really bootstrapped the business from 2018 when we launched until just, um, this past till, uh, really April, 2024, when we started even, well, we didn't get funding until fall of, we're almost 20.

I mean, so the company itself grew organically. We didn't even put $1 towards advertising until that point.

Nate (09:43)
Wow. So you grew through word of mouth referral organic until then or that's

Whitney Rowell (09:49)
Yes,

it was a hundred percent word of mouth. Organic growth, which just speaks to our audience. Our demographic is mom. You know, I think if a mom truly likes your product, they're going to tell their mom friend, mom friend is going their mom friend and it's just going to grow. And truly that that's been the biggest blessing. think it was just our product super niche. So if a customer to someone's coming in, they are really needing that product at that point in time. But also

they're going to tell their friends because typically at this stage of life when you're a new mom, your friends are also new moms or you're meeting new moms. And, and then half our business is gifting. Everyone's always looking for a way to support a new mom. And so we have both sides of the business, is been really amazing. Just, and as a mom running the company, I am live, I am my customer. So I'm able to like talk to it as authentically as I can because I'm truly our customer.

Nate (10:43)
Yeah. Wow. There was so much I want to unpack there. You may not have been a finance expert, but realize it or not, what you just described in terms of the cashflow and the payment terms is absolutely genius from a financing perspective. mean, what you just described where you receive money from your customers after selling the product, you placed a purchase order, you got the manufacturer to supply it. And then I think you said you had net

Do you say 14 or 15 days? 15 days until you actually had to pay for the product. So you actually had what we call in the finance world, a negative cash conversion cycle, which means that you're receiving revenue before you actually have to pay for the product. For a lot of, you know, physical product companies, they actually have a, you know, a significant positive cash conversion cycle, which means they have to pay for the, the inventory and the materials before they sell it.

which as you grow can become a really, really big financing burden for a lot of companies. The other thing that I found really, really interesting about what you just said was how powerful word of mouth marketing was for you. And that I think just speaks to the quality of the product, product market fit. So many consumer brands obsess over the cost of

customer acquisition and marketing and CAC and so forth, but you basically had a situation where you were acquiring customers for free. And it sounds like the way that you were able to do that was just by having an amazing product that you knew your customers wanted and loved. And so your growth costs and your acquisition costs were ridiculously low. So, you know.

Although you might not be a finance expert, you've stumbled into some pretty amazing metrics and numbers there. So kudos to you.

Whitney Rowell (12:42)
Thank you. Well, I mean, I also have to give credit to Natalie for like helping me get that figured out too. Cause I mean, was initially, like I said, paying for a ton of inventory upfront. And then finding a co-packer was a huge lever that we pulled.

Nate (12:57)
Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. So I think you just mentioned that you have since raised money this year. Is that correct? And if so, what changed? Like why after many years of successful growth, did you suddenly decide that you needed an investor?

Whitney Rowell (13:17)
That is a really good question. I, know, we had been bootstrapping the business for a long time and it's been fine. The company has been profitable. And I also didn't realize like the company being profitable was such a great thing. Like I thought that was normal in the company, but also we kept, the company was very small. I mean, we, we, we grew from word of mouth. So you can only grow so much organically and, and we, had seen a ton of, I mean, seven figure sales. It's been great. But I also recognize, and I kept waiting. It was weird. Like I was sitting on the sidelines. felt like watching, waiting for someone else to come in and create a brand that reached mom in the way that she needed to be reached. Like the millennial Gen Z mom. Bobby Formula entered the space, which has been phenomenal.

Freedom mom is kind of grown as other brand in the space but there wasn't like a functional snack brand that was coming in and transforming the space for mom I kind of equated to like the target aisle when you go to target and you look at like the baby aisle at Target it's like so happy and joyful and there's always fun things for baby and kids and and then you go to the mom aisle and it's like sterile and vanilla and all like clinical Nothing is appealing really. I know targets now like making new initiatives to change that but

I happened to get a call from a large hospital group around, it was like January of 2024. And this large hospital group asked me to come in and meet with, it was the vice president of women and family services who asked me to come in and meet with her lactation team. And I was like, this is crazy because there's always been so much red tape with hospitals. And so, but of course I was like, absolutely I'll come in and talk to your team. So I went in there, I brought cookies,

thinking it was just going to be like three people in a room and it was like eight lactation consultants, the vice president of women and family services and they were like, tell us about lactation cookies, tell us about Miracle Milkookies and I was like, my gosh.

Nate (15:26)
Did you have enough cookies for everyone?

Whitney Rowell (15:28)
Yes, but I was like, why do you want me to, like, why now, why are you wanting me to come in here? And they said, you know, we have had a huge shift in our initiatives, in our goals. We're no longer pushing formula on moms. We're targeting and helping support moms postpartum. That's been our initiative. We see your product, your company as a tool to help our moms. Anyway, that was just like an eye-opening light bulb moment for me. And I was like, okay, no one else is doing this. If this...

Massive hospital group with 16 hospitals is asking me to come talk to them about Miracle Milkookies Then no one else is doing this right now I need to start I need to be that functional snack brand that comes and takes a space and helps reach mom in a way that no one has done that before and so I started talking to people in Finance like that my friend's husband's and guys in private equity and venture capital like trying to figure out like what's our valuation like how much we want to raise What does this look like? What do we even need to raise? Do we need to raise?

because I recognize like I said, there's so much organic growth we could do, but I also needed to like, if we wanna scale, we wanna get into retail, we wanna start paying for some marketing, we wanna actually like become a household name and that's where like, that's what I wanted to start doing is changing the narrative here in the US with a product that actually targets and helps mom in a way that no one has done before.

Nate (16:52)
Interesting, interesting. So if I'm hearing you correctly, I guess there was kind of a number of market indicators. You were listening to this hospital group and maybe, you know, other signals out there in the market, which made you realize that there's a huge untapped opportunity here. And it sounds like you gathered that, yeah, I could keep, you know, going organically, chugging along, but that's probably not going to be enough to capitalize the opportunity that we have here.

And now you've raised some money. This was your first investment round, correct? Yeah. Okay. If you don't mind me asking what, what sort of instrument did you raise? Was this a safe, a priced round? Like how was, how was it?

Whitney Rowell (17:36)
We raised through a safe. We raised on a, well, we did a seed round essentially. So we raised, I think we've hit, we raised like 1.2 on a $6 million valuation. Pre-raise about, yeah. So.

Nate (17:56)
That's amazing. Yeah.

Whitney Rowell (18:04)
We'll see how that goes. mean, we have some really exciting initiatives. We're talking to a major retailer right now. Because it does take capital. Go into retail and do the thing.

Nate (18:19)
Absolutely. Lots of it.

Whitney Rowell (18:21)
Lots of it. So, but yeah, we raised through a safe. And so, I mean, I think with the venture firm here in Dallas, Cloud Morrison Seeker, and I really just have loved working with them. They've been phenomenal. actually office in their office. I'm here right now. Yeah, which is great. So they become like a really huge part of my team because it's just been me this whole time.

Nate (18:38)
Amazing.

Yep. Now with a food brand, you've been selling direct to consumer historically. So this product has come from your co-packer straight to the customer's doorstep almost. In exploring retail, we're now going to be getting into a situation where the business is holding a significant amount of inventory and this product is going to be sitting on a store shelf for a number of times, for a number of

amount of time. Tell me what might be going on in terms of the recipe and formulation and how are you thinking about changes to production and the ingredients and so forth as you anticipate this retail rollout.

Whitney Rowell (19:32)
Yeah, I know it's interesting because we like our cookies. The reason I even was wary about moving into a Copac or says I wanted moms to get fresh paint a fresh baked product delivered to the doorstep and we don't ever want to add preservatives into our product or change the consistency of our product in any way because that's like what has brought us to where we are today is like soft baked, fresh baked, handcrafted small batch cookie.

But what I've learned and I'm learning so much because like I'm not again, not an expert, but I did bring on an expert who is helping us on the operation side with our retail go to market strategy. And there are certain things we can do to change the formulation of our cookie where you don't enter, we don't include preservatives, but we can like add all natural ingredients that will help preserve the shelf stability of the product.

Also, retailers were... Yeah, like parsley apparently helps with preservatives. there's a parsley extract. There's some really interesting extracts you can add that will help preserve or removing butter and adding sunflower lecithin. Different things that can help. But the retailers that we're talking to actually like the fact that it's fresh and like the fact that...

So we can, our cookies have a six month shelf life when they're refrigerated. So we are talking about keeping it in the refrigerated section in retailers, which I think, you know, look at Perfect Bar. They've done a great job of that, even though they're a bar and it's a such a saturated market. So I think there's some benefits. I mean, I don't, the other thing is like, we've had a lot of interesting conversations with buyers about, what category are you in?

We're not in the cookie category and we're not in the baby aisle, but there's not a mom category. So those conversations have been really interesting as we've been trying to navigate all this.

Nate (21:35)
So Whitney, when we spoke a few weeks ago, I remember you telling me that you had been running an incredibly lean team up until this point. I gather it was basically just you. mean, I presume you might have had some people helping you part-time or on freelance basis, but you've now raised some money and it sounds like you're bringing on some more help. What have...

been the biggest challenges that you've or surprises that you've encountered as you've gone from a state of, you know, basically being a solo operator for a number of years to now actually having a team around you and supporting you.

Whitney Rowell (22:13)
I think it's been finding the right people, not necessarily even people with the right skill set. It's people who actually like can run with the business at the speed that I need to run. Because right now we're at such a high growth mode mindset. I mean, I've definitely brought on some people who are amazing people and like their resume looks phenomenal and they seem like they can really be great, but it's...

they aren't going fast enough for me to grow this business. so I think, I actually wrote an LinkedIn article about this because I was so fast. Hiring people, yeah, hiring people. I kind of equated it to people who are like, you know, if you're a race car driver, you're running, like it's almost like you're the founder, entrepreneur. like running, you're like, you know all parts of the machinery of your car. You understand the engine, you understand all these parts, but you can't.

work in the pit and drive your car. need people in the pit with you who can help do things very quickly and change things so that you can pivot and do things better and be faster and win. And so I've been, it's been about like, I've been very, very, very careful about like, you know, who I'm putting in the pit with me to help me get this business where it needs to go and understanding too my weaknesses. Cause it's easy to find people.

who like want to work with you. It's just a matter of finding the right people. So to me, that's been the biggest challenge is finding the right people who can like move quickly and also are very entrepreneurial. You have to be pretty entrepreneurial to work for an entrepreneur, a startup, you know?

Nate (23:57)
Interesting. Yeah, no, it certainly takes a certain type of individual for sure. So what would you say is the hardest financial or operational decision that you've had to make so far in this business and what did you learn from it?

Whitney Rowell (24:17)
Man, I feel like I'm always making hard decisions, like every day.

Nate (24:23)
Enjoy your entrepreneurship.

Whitney Rowell (24:26)
Yeah,

it's been really fun. I think the biggest thing has been, you know, because we weren't necessarily selling, we weren't, when I was running the company, just me behind the scenes, I'd never think about retail or how our products was going to be on the shelves or the packaging and distribution. And now that we're

scaling and we just launched on Amazon and we have like, skews we're working on and we have new packaging. Our packaging is like, has to be like right for retail. The amount of money we spend on packaging itself is just crazy. But in, top of that, like dealing with like specific things we have to change or do or work with that fit within like regulations for the FDA and like requirements and things you say.

I think those things can be really nitty gritty and really stressful and annoying and hard. But I've had to like, so we've had to like, we've done things where we've placed massive orders for packaging and then they ended up paying us like, they're charging us like 20 times what we're supposed to be paying because we were working. Or people, yeah, like I mean, or like where I like.

we did a whole box run and the die cut was the wrong size. then the box was... no. So it's just like, and that's, I'm not a, I don't know how to, you know, it's just like, there's a lot of things that come into the behind the scenes of like dealing with like the very minutiae, like the small little details of like getting that package on a shelf or getting that package in a box. Where in the past it was just like, okay, we're gonna put these in brown craft bags. They're really cute with our sticker and they're gonna put them in a box and chip. Now it's like,

everything is very, it's just different than it was before. And so that's been hard because I have to like learn to grow with the business in a way that I think in a different way than I ever have. And it's not my expertise or my skill set. And I just have to like embrace it.

Nate (26:32)
Yeah, wow. Sounds like there's a lot involved with that transition, especially getting into retail, which is not something that I think a lot of founders really think about too much and appreciate it. Can you maybe tell us a little bit more about that? what actually have been the costs of going from a product that was packaged and, you know, suitable for e-commerce to one that is now suitable for a retail environment like

Same product or at least similar product on the inside, but what does it actually cost you to get the product ready for that transition?

Whitney Rowell (27:09)
I mean, so we had to think about the brand and what we were saying in our brand messaging because initially it was like Miracle Milkookies is our brand. We're a lactation cookie company. But now as we transition to we're building out a company called Miracle Mama, which is a line of functional snacks for mom. Miracle Milkookies is our hero product, but we have Miracle Bump, Miracle Boost, Miracle Milkookies. We're launching all these different products under Miracle Mama. So then we had to come up with our brand.

hierarchy and like, okay, as Miracle Mama is a parent company, what brand are we going to market with? It's Miracle Milkookies, because we already know that. But then we have to think through our like packaging, our website, our branding. So I had to hire someone who understood all of the creative and who could help me like from think from, and that's the other thing too, is that you can hire a ton of creative people. I there's so many creative people out there, but someone who has experience in CPG packaging and CPG branding is a whole different thing because you have like,

five seconds to grab someone's opinion on this, like attention on the shelf and then they're out. So we had to make sure, so from the brand standpoint, like paying, we had to pay a lot of money and I still have this amazing woman on a retainer, helps with all of our creative. And then also from like the actual nutrition panel, nutrition facts and what we have to have ready for that. Like I hired a consultant who has tons of years of experience working in

we were with general mills and she like had to analyze all of the ingredients and then also look through every single product that we were putting in our cookies where it was sourced from how was sourced what was actually in the ingredients Wow, did they make our nutrition label? So it's like there's a lot that goes into just like getting your nutrition label ready And then the packaging what you're putting on your packaging what you can say we can't say it's a milk boosting cookie because it's

not necessarily proven that, mean, anecdotally it is, say like can help support milk supply. You know, it's just all those things that go into it. it's, it's, and the other thing I've learned is you always want to be growing and changing your packaging. Our packaging is never going to be it's fluid. So like next time we run our packaging, we're probably going to say no seed oils because that's huge right now. There are no seed oils in our.

products, like didn't put that on our first round of packaging because we didn't think about that. You know, it's like constantly be reiterating, updating, making it better.

Nate (29:40)
Yeah, wow. Yeah, I remember from my time as a founder and entrepreneur and, you know, going through the process of bringing products into the world. There was a number of times, and it sounds like, you know, you've had this realization as well, that there's a number of times where I thought, my God, there is so much work that goes into producing these things. And like you're scrutinizing every word and on an ingredient label.

making very, very detailed decisions about packaging and dimensions and branding hierarchy. And, you know, most consumers will just pick it up and go, wow, that's a yummy cookie. And won't even think about the, you know, months, not years worth of work and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars that have gone into, you know, making some of these decisions. It's quite mind boggling at times. you know, tell me, tell me about

how you approach the decision that I guess you've had to make a number of times now, which is whether or not you should just grind this out and figure out whatever problem it is yourself. you know, oftentimes as entrepreneurs and founders, we have a tendency to want to do that. Like most of us lack in learning and acquiring new skills. And there's often this temptation, even if we don't know how to do something, that we kind of get a buzz from, you know, figuring it out and doing it ourselves. So

How do you decide between that and recognizing, you know what, like this is just not my wheelhouse and it's not an area that I wanna go into and waste time and money in. How have you delineated between those two different paths and what are maybe some of the lessons that you've learned along the way there?

Whitney Rowell (31:24)
Yeah, I mean, I think having like the benefit of not having any investment early on for the first several years was really great because I knew every dollar I didn't put back into like the packaging or the whatever I was trying to do at the time. I had to like could put towards something that could help. I so I did do every like literally I learned email marketing. I learned paid out how to manage paid ads. learned

how to SEO and all these things, but that at the of the day, like, yes, that's such a waste of my time. And so I had to figure out like, hey, who are the people who can really help me move the needle here? And how do we move the needle here? But there are a lot of people you don't need to hire. I think there's also in this day and age where like, you can use chat for so many things. Things that are like non-negotiables for me, co-packer, done, have to have that because I can't produce all these cookies in my house. And then having an attorney.

Because yes, that's another I think overlooked thing. Understanding how our company is set up and how we're going, just dealing with all the legal stuff for me has been really, really helpful. I've always had an attorney even when we had no money at the company. It's been very helpful just for legal stuff. And then also understanding for me now, it's having someone who understands paid ads and paid in marketing because I don't.

and I don't have time to do that. And so someone who can help me scale and like look at the efficiencies and say, your ROAS should actually be this and your CAC should actually be this and we need to change this and this. So those people, so understanding my weaknesses and where I can use help and how people fill in and then also understanding like there's just like, there's a lot of, yeah, there's so many things you can do every day and learn and try to do, but it's like, I also have four children at home. I have a six month old, a baby, and I have, my oldest has just turned 10.

Across the board like I want to be a mom like I started this company as a mom. I'm growing as a mom I'm with my children not like no no questions asked from 3 30 every day to when they go to bed like that's just not So I have to get all this done within that time frame and I need to make sure every single minute is spent In a way that's gonna grow my business And anyone else who can help me do that along the way is great, you know

Nate (33:47)
Got it. Interesting. Interesting. So you've got a lot of things going on here. You've just raised some money. You're in the process of, you know, bringing on some help and expanding the team. There's obviously the retail launch that you're working on. Tell me, what does success look like for you in the next, you know, 12 months or so? And what are the parts of this journey that you're, you know, most looking forward to, most excited about over the next year?

Whitney Rowell (34:15)
yeah, know, think I, it's just now it's funny cause like, I like when you're running a business and you're behind the scenes and it's like, you're in the middle of the weeds every day and it's like the grind, you know, you're like, okay, I've been literally, but it's, it's, it's kind of interesting cause I feel like the past, I mean, every day is a grind. It's hard, but also I love it. but I'm starting to kind of see the light and some of these initiatives we put into place this year.

We're rolling out our Miracle Mama brand next month, August, which is actually World Breastfeeding Month. But also we're partnering with this really cool group called Chamber of Mothers, which is a bipartisan non-political group that just really focuses on helping women's health in America and raising awareness for that. So we're launching a bus tour with them. We are building out a Miracle Mama lounge in the back of their bus. We're the only snack partner for moms. doing

My podcast we're on the road with them. We're launching in New York City and then it went all the way down to Dallas and up through Nashville, back up to DC. And that's going to be a huge initiative for us. Other really big brands and the players in the space are partnering with them. And so it's going to be really great for our brand to get out there. Like I said, too, we're talking to a big retail partner right now, which this retail partner has been my dream since day one. It's actually where I first shocked when I got Brewer's yeast and flaxseed to make my cookies for my baby.

Nate (35:40)
Can you tell us who the retail partner is or is that still confidential?

Whitney Rowell (35:44)
We're still talking to I will tell you as soon as I okay, but it's it's a big Anyway, if we can launch with them, it'll change everything for us And then and then we're also just like doing some really cool grassroots things for moms. We're launching Miracle mama on the move and doing like walking groups and running groups all across the country

with some really cool partners to get women outside with their families to do things and help just change like mental health and support moms in a way that you know hasn't been done. So there's just there's so many exciting things happening right now. We're just like, I'm just excited to see kind of what the next 12 months bring because I think the last 12 months have been like I said, I mean,

putting all the work in and then we're gonna put more work in. It's like, once you start growing, you keep growing and it's just like, I feel like every day I'm like breathing through a fire hose, but it's like so great. So there's a lot of cool things happening.

Nate (36:49)
My goodness, you are a busy woman. There's so much going on there.

Well, you've had a remarkable journey up until this point, and it sounds like some even more exciting things are coming down the pipeline for you here. When you look back on the journey so far and reflect through everything you've learned through here, what is something that you feel like you've learned the hard way that you wish more early stage founders knew about before jumping in?

Whitney Rowell (37:27)
I think I did a lot of things. I mean, I kind of touched on this earlier, but I did a lot of things myself that I probably could have outsourced. think there, you know, I think I even just like the first year, me thinking I could do everything, like bake the cookies myself and deliver them all myself. I mean, we deliver, I deliver cookies like an hour away sometimes to people.

I would do, I did everything because I was like, yes, but I my passion get in the way of like scaling the business. You know, if that makes sense, like I felt like I had to be the first touch point for every single thing. And I think I still feel that way about a lot of things where I'm recognizing like, it's not about me. I don't need to get in front of these people. I don't need to tell everybody. The company,

Nate (37:58)
That's true vertical integration.

Whitney Rowell (38:22)
should be able to run itself without me. And that's been like something I'm really working on right now is like, let's pull myself out of this equation. Let's the company build a moat around the company. So it will be grow. It'll keep continue to grow if, if I'm not even involved. And that's been like a challenge, a really big challenge for me as like founder. But I'm learning a lot in the way, in the process of that.

Nate (38:47)
Yeah, there's, wow, there's so much to unpack there. But I mean, you're absolutely right. This sounds like a remarkable evolution going from a point where, you know, it was, it was your baby. was your passion project, right? And you were at a point involved in every single step of this supply chain, right? The way from manufacturing to the customer's door. And I love what you just said about, you know, actually building this into a real business because, know,

If this is to become a real business, and which I think it needs to eventually, like that's something that we all need to aspire to grow up to becoming, then it needs to be able to run without you, right? Like you need to have the systems and processes and the people in place that, you know, things don't fall apart if you want to take some time off or, you know, hang out, hang out with your kids, your family for a week or two. So if you had a moment alone with a new mom and you're, you're now a mom of four.

So if you had, you know what it's like to be a mom and an entrepreneur founder at the same time, but if you had a moment with a new mom who is thinking about starting their own business, what advice would you give her? Like specifically from a mother or parenthood perspective?

Whitney Rowell (40:07)
That this is my favorite topic because I love helping other women figure out their passion, help them grow. Like I love, I have a group called Collective 31 in Dallas, it's all female founded businesses and we just meet monthly to like talk about what we're dealing with and how we're growing and it helps us all kind of grow. But I love talking to other women and it's funny because I brought a couple to Rogers who was our investor here at Morrison Seeker who have businesses.

Um, cause I'm like, you know, I, I'm so passionate about helping other women build their and grow their businesses. what I, what I always ask first is like, what do you want to do with your time? How do you want to spend your time? Because if you want to, and like, what's your goal here? Because if your goal is to like grow a massive company and build this thing, just sell it, scale it and sell it, you're not going to be able to also do this on the side and have.

We know all these X to X, Y and Z. You're going to have to really be strategic about your time and you're going to have to let go of a lot of the things you're already doing. Because a lot of the time I hear from these moms and I've been this way too. I've had seasons of my business where I've taken a step back where I've let the business run itself for a little bit while I focus on being on the PTA and doing all these things. But you can't do both fully well.

you have to have an end goal in mind that you're excited about. And if your end goal is just to like run a fun side business, then by all means, like figure out a way to do that. But you're never going to like, you have to be really strategic about your end goal. And like that's kind of for me was like, I think as a woman who was trying to be a mom and trying to a business and trying to be a good wife and trying to do all these things, I realized like, I really want to scale this thing to like eventually have an exit. So I'm going to put the next three, five years, I'm going to grind and

My kids aren't going to see me as much as I want them to see me. But at end of the day, we're all going to benefit from this. But that's my end goal. And it's different than someone else's.

Nate (42:11)
Yeah. Yeah. I love that you've been really, really clear about your end goal exiting in, you know, three to five years. And I think very well articulated, you know, there are some real sacrifices and compromises that you're having to make along the way. I mean, it means less time with family on occasions, but no, it's great that you've had that clarity there and you have a plan in place and it sounds like there's some very, very exciting things in the pipeline. So

I look forward to hearing more about it, especially this retail rollout sounds, yeah, very exciting. So Whitney, as we wrap things up here, is there any final words that you'd like to share with the audience? And if not, where can people go to find you? Where should they head to learn more about you? And you mentioned a podcast earlier, let us know where we need to go to buy cookies. Where can they learn more about you? And if you want to...

mention the podcast as well. I'm sure folks would be interested in hearing about that.

Whitney Rowell (43:13)
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me today. And I love chatting with you and so glad we connected. I yeah, you can find our company is Miracle. You can go to Miracle Milkookies or MiracleMama.com. And my podcast is also just now called the Miracle Mama podcast. Keep it simple. And you can find me on LinkedIn at Whitney Rowell or Instagram and yeah, I would love to continue to keep in touch and appreciate you sharing my journey because it's still just the beginning stages, but it's been fun up to this point.

Nate (44:00)
Absolutely. Well, thank you again for joining us. I'm going to include links below in the show notes to everything that Whitney just mentioned, if you'd like to click through and learn more about any of that. But yeah, well, thank you for joining us, Whitney. Great having you and wish you the best of luck with the next chapter in the business.

Whitney Rowell (44:19)
Thank you, Nate. I really appreciate you having me.