We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Camille Johnson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Camille below.

Camille, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?

When I first came up with the idea for W.T.F., I immediately pitched the idea to my husband. Once upon a time, he was my boss, so I have always valued his opinions when it comes to business. He thought it was a great idea that could help a lot of people, and bought a tripod for me that night. The next few months I spent cooking and creating content and building a foundation on social media. When I felt like I had enough material to work with, I then started reading book after book on how to build an app. I realized that even with a background in the digital world, I was still way in over my head. Not only did I not have the coding skills to build an app, I also didn’t have the capital to hire someone to do it. So then I set out on a crowdfunding campaign, and read books on how to have a successful one. I am very fortunate to have such supportive friends and family who backed my idea to make it a reality. With those meager funds, I hired a freelance developer (big mistake) who said he could have my app built in 30 days. Six months later, he finally finished the app and I was getting ready to BETA test when the developer suddenly ghosted me and took the source code (aka the entire app) with him. Now I was a year over my expected launch date with no app and no money. Luckily, I was able to make some money moves in my personal life and have since hired a reputable company to build my app. Now it is going to be even better than I thought, and I cannot wait to launch this product for everyone who has been so patiently waiting for it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

Let me introduce myself! My name is Camille Johnson and I am a mom of two little boys, an entrepreneur, and food lover.

When I got pregnant with my first son, the only cure I could find for my morning sickness was watching the Food Network. So, being unemployed, broke, and having weird cravings, I got inspired to get creative and start cooking.

We had an EXTREMELY tight grocery budget each week and could not afford to throw out ANY food whatsoever. So after watching a few episodes of Chopped and refusing to go hungry, I started transforming what little ingredients, leftovers, and pantry items I had to work with into delicious home-cooked meals for me and my husband.

Fast forward two years and another pregnancy unemployed (thanks COVID), I still have that knack for coming up with crazy, outside-the-box recipes using random sh*t I find in my fridge. So I figured, why not share these ideas with other people? It helps save money, eliminates food waste, and brings the fun back to cooking (although the cleaning, not so much).

Hence the idea of WTF was born.

It’s the only app on the market that works like a search engine and provides you with recipes containing the ingredients you already have on hand. And because it’s an app, you can think of it like all of your favorite cookbooks smashed into one, accessible at any time, anywhere.

This app has been my brainchild and my passion for the last 3+ years, and I am so excited to share it with the rest of the world.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I feel like my entire life falls into this category LOL!! But seriously, I always joke with my husband that whenever I make plans, life looks at them and laughs in my face and gives me a curveball instead. Before I met my husband, I had accepted that I was going to be a single cat lady with a kick-ass career. Instead, I ended up married, pregnant, and unemployed with 3 dogs within a year. And the same theme kept repeating itself in my first business, my previous career, my living location, and so on and so forth. But if it has taught me anything, it’s that sometimes you have to relinquish control. Just because things don’t go “according to plan” doesn’t mean that it all sucks. In fact, every time I’ve had to pivot in life it’s actually ended up BETTER than I could have ever imagined. I’ll never forget an interview I was watching of Spanx founder, Sara Blakely, about her early days of founding Spanx. She was selling fax machines at the time and just wanted to find a way to wear white pants without them being see-through. She never expected Spanx to be her future, and she said that it was because she was dreaming too small. Life gave her plans bigger and better than she could have ever imagined, and that really stuck with me. So to those who seem to never “be on track”, embrace the pivot and run with it. You never know where it might take you.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

BOOKS. Read ALL the books. The only way to learn things you want to know is by learning from people who are doing it better than you. Books are relatively inexpensive and such a treasure trove of knowledge if you’re just willing to put in the time to read them.

But even more important than books, I feel, is surrounding yourself with people who are where you want to be. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “you are the average of the 5 people you hang out with” then you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t heard of it, then take heed. If you take a good hard look at your inner circle, are they where you aspire to be in 5 years? If yes, great! If not, then you need to make moves to change your circle. I recently made moves in my life to surround myself with affluent people and now constantly talk to, work with, and live around successful and wealthy people. And I can tell you I’ve learned more about money, business, and life in the past few months of hanging around these people than I have previously in my 20+ years of life. Hang out with the people who are already living the life you want. Then do as they do!

Contact Info:

• Website: wtfwhatsinthefridge.weebly.com
• Instagram: @wtfwhatsinthefridge
• Facebook: What’s (in) The Fridge