ZeroCarb LYFE - Scaling Strategy: E-Com, Foodservice, and Retail Realities

I think a good spot to start would be actually before Zero Carb Life, before it was actually really a company.

Mohammed Ali had created this incredible, unusual product, for the listeners who might not be aware, a pizza crust that made primarily... was made primarily from chicken.

So when you encountered what Mohammed had created, what did you see that made you think, "There's a real business hiding inside this"?

Yeah.

So Mohammed had, uh, had invent-- he's, you know, an accountant by profession and, uh, but just had a lot of creativity around food, uh, you know, like a lot of people have their hobbies, and that really is what turns into their-- what ends up being their life choice for career or for business.

So he had this invention, uh, which he had worked through, through s- a lot of iterations, and, um, he did it out of need.

You know, he loved pizza, and he ended up, uh, finding out he was diabetic, and he wanted to make a change, uh, in his diet, but at the same time, still enjoy something he loved.

So he started playing with that on a kitchen top level.

Um, during that, up to that period where he was doing that in, in parallel, I had been, uh, like I think we had talked previously, Rose, I had been at, at Kraft Foods, ConAgra Foods, Dean Foods, sort of going through that journey in corporate America of learning and succeeding and growing in my career, which, uh, then resulted in thicker golden handcuffs, as we call them, where it's harder and harder to leave, uh, the role of corporate America.

Yes.

But always wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Um, my, my journey in entrepreneurship started with consulting, where I left corporate America and actually, uh, grew a consulting firm to two offices globally, and then realized I wanted to really get into startups and started scoping the right level of startups, especially with food was my focus.

And so I had this understanding of the market, but there's a lot of people who have ideas, uh, but they don't know how to commercialize.

They don't know how to have a family of patents around them, and some of them don't even know how to take it to scale.

Mohammed was one of those people.

He was able to do something very unique on the kitchen top, but to take it to scale, he didn't have that experience, obviously, because he wasn't a food guy, you know, originally.

So, um, that's where I realized this could be a huge opportunity.

I also saw something very specific in his, um, in his product, which could end up being a, a technology on the commercial scale that I, I could help invent, and then that could lead us to many product forms.

Because, uh, previously, uh, in my previous life at Kraft, I l- learned and, and discovered, and one of my patents is, is in that, you know, is, is how to use time and temperature.

It's owned by Kraft, but it's with my name.

But it's, uh, how to use time and temperature to manipulate ingredients and give the same taste of full fat with one third, you know, up to one-third less fat.

Um, and that's actually what led to understanding that time and temperature can be used instead of adding ingredients, adding things that are necessary to get a certain taste profile when you wanna make something healthier.

And that's kinda what Mohammed was doing when he said he was doing it on the kitchen top.

I said, "Well, what are you using as a binder?" He's like, "There's no binder." I said, "He must not understand what a binder is 'cause he's an accountant." So I started explaining it.

So, "But no, I understand what a binder is.