We recently connected with Kristin O’Connor and have shared our conversation below.
Kristin, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
My journey from idea to product has been very, very long. I had the idea to create shelf-stable plant-based bites that are in a resealable container and jammed with superfoods because I was a private chef for actors, traveling all over the world with them to make sure they had perfectly composed meals at any time of day (despite sometimes insane circumstances on my side). I was left with no time at all to make or procure food for myself that was also balanced, nutritious and had vegetables in them. My options were salty, fried snacks or super sugary ones. I didn’t want either. From that, the concept of Super Dirt was formed. I wanted to solve the problem of incredibly nutritious, thoughtful and TASTY food on-the-go, something you can just as easily keep in your car, gym bag or carry on. At the time the concept was created in my mind, I was still working seven days/week for my clients, so the development was slow to say the least. The first thing I did (and have not stopped doing since day one) was TALK. I talked and talked and talked to anyone who would listen about what I wanted to create and then I listened. Any time someone said – you should talk to x about this, I would say – yes please. I made ‘cold calls’ to companies I admired and eventually created a small network for myself of unofficial advisors. My brother gave me my first investment and from there, I hired a food scientist to evaluate my formulas and help me tweak them to make sure they could be produced on a large scale and stay shelf stable. She also helped me find a manufacturer to produce them.
The manufacturer took my formulas and did their own ‘bench top testing,’ they created the formulas in their factory kitchen to see if they would be a consistency that would work with their equipment. Once we got approval for formulas, we had to procure ingredients that were not already used by the manufacturer (for our products there were a LOT of these – mostly because we were putting vegetables and superfoods in our product and not many people do that in this space). We had to get certifications and endless paperwork for approval to send product to the manufacturer. Once all of that was in order, we were able to produce our first pilot run where we tested our formula through the factory to find out how it responded when mixed in large batches and pushed through extruders, etc.
Along side all of that, we were developing what this brand looked like, sounded like and how the consumers would receive it. Were we a ‘serious brand’ were we ‘funny’ or ‘sexy?’ What made Super Dirt, Super Dirt? These may seem like simple questions, but we never built a company before, so we did endless research and built a website around a clean, fun, hopefully at times humorous brand that we hope is relatable and reads the way we intend to be. We worked with designers, web builders, packaging suppliers, raised more capital from friends and people we met who saw our passion and believed in what we could do.
There has been (and continues to be) so much learning in this. Every single day, I am pushed to what I feel is the limit of my mental and emotional capacity – I have dove directly into the deepened of this company and relentlessly committed to brining it to the finish line.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I am technically an Art Therapist. I went to NYU for my graduate degree, worked for a couple of years as a therapist and then decided to throw it to the wind and pitch a cooking show to Food Network! I actually connected with a Food Network production company, developed a pilot and pitched a show for myself to host. It was surreal. Ultimately 12+ years ago, the market was not yet primed enough for my super healthy philosophy on food and cooking. Instead of offering me the show, I was brought on as an Associate Producer. My mom became quite ill during this time and I took her to doctors appointments and to see naturopaths she read about. One of which was Dr. Peter D’Adamo, who created The Blood Type Diet. I met him in the context of being there for my mom (ps- he completely cured her, she is still healthy to this day), but he knew I loved to cook and worked for the production company. One thing led to the next and soon he asked me to pitch him a concept for new cookbooks for The Blood Type Diet. I came up with a concept and he hired me to write four cookbooks (one for each blood type). At a book launch party for those books, a personal trainer came up to me and suggested that we join forces and start a food delivery business together. We talked about this for close to a year, I honestly thought it would never happen, and then one day he called me to say that he was with a client who he told ‘Kristin is the only person that can help you lose the weight you need to lose in two weeks). I took the opportunity and began working for an A-List actor who needed to lose weight for a film. It worked, and I was hired by the production company to cook for him for the duration of the film. At the end of the film, the actor asked me to move to LA with him and be his private chef on a permanent basis. I gave him an unequivocal yes. Off to LA I went.
While working for him, he would comically declare to anyone who would listen how amazing my pancakes or ice cream or cupcakes were. At one point he joked that we should put out a pancake mix and call it His Fav Pancakes. Those babies would have sold!! I did not move fast enough on that, mostly because I got another job putting 30lbs of muscle on an actor in 3 months for another film. I let my life be totally consumed by my day job. It was truly a 24/7 job and I loved it, though always regretted leaving my first client for my second, but everything happens for a reason, I guess.
The pancake mix idea really planted in my mind that I should create my own product line. While traveling with my second client I had the idea to create plant-based, veggie filled bites that were shelf-stable and I could tuck into my purse or carry on no matter where I was going or for how long.
I am most proud of my resilience. The job I had cooking for actors was grueling. I had to be constantly flexible, I was challenged to produce high quality, tasty and very very specific (dietary speaking) food no matter where in the world, no matter what access I had to clean or quality equipment or how much time I had to do it. I could write an entire book about my culinary challenges. The biggest thing was no matter what, I wanted to deliver my food with a smile and never reveal the physical toll it took to deliver that roast chicken and sweet potato croquettes with broccoli rice – hot and perfectly cooked. It gave me confidence and eventually calm – I knew I had been tested in about every way possible (cooking in the Moroccan desert, on a dive boat in the middle of the Pacific, in a cook truck around Manhattan with no running water, in the fanciest kitchen in Paris and 5 star hotel in Moscow, cooking sometimes with tin foil quality pots and pans in an extended stay hotel or with a burn on my leg the size of a grapefruit because I fell into the oven of a galley kitchen during rocky seas). I am proud that I never gave up. Sometimes I was treated like a queen for my efforts and sometimes like the help, but inside I knew exactly who I was and knew that validation or lack of would not make or break me. Only I truly knew what I had to overcome to create at the level I was challenged to and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. Once you know what you are capable of, nothing can stop you.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
I think the biggest lesson to learn in life is that nothing is going to stay 100% the same.
You may have lined up the perfect suppliers for your product, but then covid strikes and suddenly none of the almond suppliers will supply to new/startup companies. They have only enough production to fuel the existing and large clients.
Instead of saying – ok, that’s it, we are dead in the water, almonds are 50% of our product. You have to learn to say ‘ok, then what?’
There are always reasons we should stop, that we cannot keep going or that prove our efforts will fail. A lot of the time, they will. BUT, there is always another path. The difference between those who fail and those who succeed is that those who succeed just keep going. That may seem simple enough, but it really is not at all. It is so hard when you feel defeated by life, global circumstances, access to funds, etc., to just keep going. The thing is, though, there is always a path forward. Sometimes you just have to forge it yourself. You have to believe that you have everything in you to move forward, even if it does not look exactly the way you originally pictured. Sometimes we have to remember that being flexible is the biggest gift in the world. Expect the unexpected. Frustrating, bad, or even scary things will happen all the time, but you just have to learn from these mistakes or circumstances and move forward. One step at a time.
How’d you meet your business partner?
I met my cofounder when I was working as a private chef. She was the girlfriend of my client and would accompany me to the grocery store, chat with me in the kitchen and was generally curious about everything I did from blending smoothies to wedging a wheel of parmesan for a dinner party. Eventually we became friends and when I started building steam with my company and looking for people to invest, she would arrange meetings for me, introduce me to anyone she thought could be helpful and all without asking or even considering she would get anything in return. She just wanted me to succeed.
One day she arranged a meeting at 2pm at Soho House in Meatpacking. I get there and she is in a literal gown!! She had an event later that evening and would not have time to get back to her apartment, change and make it on time when she was fitting in my meeting that afternoon. I looked at her sitting there in her sparkling gown and thought – these are the people you offer things to, the ones who show up even when incredibly inconvenient for them asking for nothing at all in return. It was that day, after the meeting that I spoke to her about being a partner in my business. She was already acting like one so why not make it official?
She said yes and the rest is history!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.superdirtfoods.com
- Instagram: @superdirtfoods
- Linkedin: Kristin OConnor (founder Super Dirt Foods)