Founded On Purpose

Kt McBratney: [00:00:00] Welcome to Founded on Purpose, the show where we get to know the people working to align business and impact, profit, and purpose. I'm your host, Kt McBratney. Each episode, we ask our guests the same set of questions to open up a brand new conversation that digs deeper into what they're building, why, and who they are as purpose driven leaders.

Today, we're joined by Kesha Strickland, CEO and co founder of The Mushroom Meat Co. She started her career as a software engineer, going on to lead product strategy and development before her passion for a plant based diet led her to fall in love with fungi and create award winning, first of their kind beef and pork alternative.

Kesha, welcome to the show.

Kesha Stickland: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me on.

Kt McBratney: There's going to be a lot of meat puns that I'm going to try not to use, but I can't help myself. And I have to say, I think this is going to be. Quite a meaty conversation. I [00:01:00] know, right? This is where I'm like, if I wasn't my own editor, I would insert a sound effect there.

We always start with the first question. And given your background, I just can't wait to dig in. What is your purpose in one word

Kesha Stickland: health?

Kt McBratney: Okay, tell us more. What does that mean?

Kesha Stickland: Okay. So we are, I think, different from a lot of the sort of meat alternatives or meat analog products out there that are really focused on I think a lot of what founders care about, which might be, saving animals.

Or to be honest with you, the planet, and it's not that those things are not important to us. It's about the fact that we made our journey into a plant based diet for health reasons. And when we really started to dive into the statistics out there and talking to people, we realized that was the primary goal of most people that switch was there because they were trying to, either just reduce meat consumption, [00:02:00] eliminate meat consumption, or put.

Bring more, plants and mushrooms into their diet for all of the health benefits that they would get. And, when we set out to create. A product or set of products that could help people, either transition to a plant based diet or simply meet their goals of reducing or eliminating the consumption of red meat, right?

That we, that they were doing it for health reasons, but at the same time, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't like the taste of meat, right? They're eating what they want to eat. Making, they're making a behavior change in order to get something and the thing that they want to get is, an improvement to their health.

Do they have a specific health condition or is it, their doctor told them, Hey, you need to cut back on red meat, whatever that is, I don't want to feed people something that gives them a taste and texture that they desire. Actually being a detriment to their health potentially.

And I felt like a lot of the products out there were that and ultimately the health, one of the [00:03:00] healthiest foods that I've ever heard of is, a mushroom, we're talking about, foods that are healing foods that, you know, yes, they put fiber in your diet, which is great. And they have, complete protein, but it's.

Ultimately that there are bioactive compounds that boost the immune system and improve gut health and aid in weight management all these different benefits But a lot of people think they're weird and they don't get those health benefits because they either eat them I'm gonna eat a few on the side over here I'm gonna put a couple on top of my steak type of thing And so you're not there We're not seeing people eat them as center of the plate items and not get that major health benefit And so by, by making them, more accessible and familiar to the average everyday person who either does or used to eat beef and pork we're taking essentially something that they want to remove from their diet and replacing it with something that they're having a hard time figuring out how they factor into their diet.

They don't have to figure out, how do I cook it like mushrooms? They don't have to go to a restaurant and [00:04:00] go, Oh, I guess I'm going to get the. The mushroom bolognese that tastes funky to me and I'm not going to get that same, experience that all the people around me are having. They're doing something really great for their health, but I'll be honest with you.

We take the friction out. You don't have to think about it that much. And so health drives us, but at the end of the day, we like to call our vision for the future of foods, healthy, craveable and sustainable. People aren't going to make a behavior change unless there's a benefit. And if health's that major benefit, they're not going to stick to it unless it's delicious and they crave it the next day and they want it again.

And to be totally honest, sustainability. Has to, it's a nice to have for most people. So all of those things are built in, but at the end of the day, we start with health because health is the reason for getting people to do something different from what they do every day.

Kt McBratney: And this purpose of health and your journey with health actually predates the company.

Can you tell us a little bit about that of how this Focus on in this [00:05:00] care and truly like a purpose around what health means For you for your family for those around you led you to this point

Kesha Stickland: Yeah, so I have a condition called hashimoto's, syndrome and it's an autoimmune condition that I didn't even know I had.

I just always had, I was always sensitive to everything. I had lots of allergies. I could even have these sort of swelling situations when I was exposed to certain things. I never knew what was wrong. And I had to be very careful sometimes what I ate. And I ended up having a, getting into a car accident.

Really. Major car accident, on the freeway while I was a consultant in the technology space traveling and I was alone. It was the most scary situation ever I survived it with a lot of injuries and had a lot of trouble healing so massive just Tears in a bunch of different areas of my neck and shoulders [00:06:00] concussion, cracked skull, like all these things that were just like insane to try to heal from.

And you never realize, people don't take for granted what our immune system is doing for our bodies on a regular basis until it's just stress to the max.

Kt McBratney: Yeah, we often only think about it when it's in active fight that we can recognize

Kesha Stickland: exactly. And so I just, I wasn't healing. And to make matters worse, come to find out that my whole family was under, in the middle of this health crisis because, I was getting really sick.

And I was like, I think there might be mold in our house because I have a mold allergy and I would get these itchy throats. And I was like, I think that has something to do with why I'm not healing. I was later diagnosed with Hashimoto's as a result of trying to figure out why was I so much more affected by these things than anybody else, but it turns out that we actually had a slow leak in one of our pipes and we ended up with, literally they had to like almost rip our house in half that we had to, remove walls and things like that.

And it was just this devastating [00:07:00] experience. And, one day. And my husband and I are like, sitting, at the bar of this restaurant that we would love to go to and, we're living in a hotel while they're fixing on our house and I, I'm swollen and I'm sick and I've got all these medications and I'm just trying to have a salad and just breathe for a moment and this friend of ours actually tells us, about this healer who healed with food and, took you through a whole detox process plant based diets, all that.

We're like, look we'll try anything, we're all sick, but I was just the worst off. And so we actually went to live with her for about a week in her home where she has this, she practices healing arts. And we, we were introduced to herbal medicine and, plant based diets and the concept of alkalinity and not having the body be too acidic after that, or during that journey is when I discovered mushrooms.

Because a lot of the herbs and herbal remedies she was [00:08:00] giving me were essentially various mushroom extracts. And I wanted, I was like, okay how is it that's helping my inflammation? And why is it that, just basically mushroom juice was so healing. And I was like, maybe we should eat more mushrooms.

And, we, I started cooking more of them. And then I just got this bug. So I've had, fermentation as this long time hobby. And, when I learned that mushrooms were just a different type of fermentation, I was like, I can do this. And so I started, first mushroom growing kits and then learning to grow mushrooms.

And then, my my husband was so excited about it. He's I want to learn this too. It's seeing me grow these like giant. Pink almost flower looking mushrooms and then tasting it means oh my god. It's just like pork. It's fantastic And so we actually ended up going to stay on a mushroom farm actually living there for a couple of weeks and learning how to grow mushrooms and learning how to essentially do all of the lab work that's involved with, taking these initial cultures and growing them into You know the what they call the [00:09:00] fruiting bodies that we all see in the stores and in this process I had this kind of concept this idea that hey Maybe I can use these to create meat alternatives for people who are trying to take some of these in a more inflammatory Foods like Beef and pork and things like that either out of their diet to reduce them and give them something that's familiar because I was learning ways of cooking mushrooms that my family really loved.

And that made them feel like they didn't have so much taken away because we weren't going to make meals for me. And, my husband decided to do it too. And then we had two teenage sons and we were like, they're like, okay what are we eating? So we're all going to get together. Oh yeah. That's really how it got started and, when I learned all these benefits and then I discovered a way that I could, use other types of fermentation to enhance the textures and flavors of mushrooms and give you that same sort of, Chew and satisfaction and the kind of those sensations and the flavors that you get when you're eating pulled pork or, a [00:10:00] piece of steak.

And I could do that with, functional mushrooms that had all these health benefits. It was just like, bing win, right? Why would I not do that and give that to other people who were struggling with some of the same things and maybe, To be honest with you, didn't have the, the sort of crazy willpower that I had to just cut out all this stuff at once,

Kt McBratney: yeah, or even that need, right? It doesn't have to get within this like lens of health. It doesn't have to be quite the healing journey that you had to go through to be better, right? Absolutely. Before I dive into my next question, it could be really helpful for us to anchor in a little bit of a mushroom terminology.

I, there are lots of mushroom products out there. You mentioned mushroom powder as supplements and teas and things like this. When you and I first met I got really excited and I was like, Oh, like mycelium networks. And you're like, yes, that's related to mushrooms. They are not the same thing. So can you tell us quickly, just anchor [00:11:00] us non fungi in the understanding of mushroom, mycelium, and how they're used to make food products?

Kesha Stickland: Yeah, sure. So You'll hear a lot of people talking about, and they'll call almost everything mushrooms and there's very, actually the FDA has very specific, and USDA have very specific, rules for what they call mushrooms. Essentially, they're all fungi. And there's lots of different types of fungi or fungi depending on the way you like to pronounce it.

And yeast Nutritional yeast which a lot of people might have in their cabinet and use as a seasoning and the yeast that you use to make bread. That's a fungus, right? Sadly the mold that was in my house Was a fungus not the kind that you want to be exposed to not so good for the health there are molds that are either benign or good for the health.

And then there are what they call filamentous fungi Which is a whole classification Of fungi that create something that essentially they grow in the ground [00:12:00] and they call it filamentous because they're filaments They look literally stringy, almost like the little strings you find in a piece of meat and they are there as part of, the sort of ecosystem's way of, breaking down rocks and creating new soil and bringing more nutrition into the soil of allowing, oddly enough, trees to communicate with one another through a network that's very similar to the internet funny enough.

And. Essentially what happens when this grows is, it's, this fungus is creating various types of enzymes, and it's usually doing something either, working on something called a substrate. When we grow mushrooms are unique in that it is a type of filamentous fungi that creates a fruit.

Think of it like a tree that grows within the ground and the things that pop up that you might see in your backyard or that you buy in the supermarket. Those are called fruiting bodies, which essentially are just like the fruit of a tree. They're the thing that the [00:13:00] mushroom uses to be able to spread its seeds.

They call spores, but seeds out into the world and reproduce. And they You know, it's actually where most of the nutrition from the from the fungi that grows beneath the ground. So from the mycelium is pushed up into this fruiting body in order to produce, the best possible offspring. And also because they're so nutritious and delicious.

animals consume them and then spread their spores and their waste all over the forest. And so it's this, it's the same kind of process as, a piece of fruit being eaten by a bird and then those seeds go and they get spread and it's a beautiful thing. And so we have these.

beautiful mushrooms that grow. And we, started by growing mycelium. You have to grow mycelium in order to produce mushrooms. And we thought about using, mycelium, which sometimes is used medicinally but it's not typically and traditionally long term eaten as food. We thought about using that.

And I started with actually mycelium. [00:14:00] To create this initial pork alternative that I had. And I really became concerned about having to explain to the average person, to a consumer, even a chef out there, what mycelium was and the hurdle of trying to convince them that this was healthy food, as opposed to taking, a mushroom fruiting body that people see in the supermarket every day that, that has had so much research Put to it where we know, what compounds actually boost the immune system, what are the, anti inflammatory benefits and so on of mushrooms.

I wanted to be able to take something like that, that already has a health halo and make that available to people in new and different formats.

Kt McBratney: Thank you. I feel like that was also like a mini. Science lesson, even though mushrooms aren't plants, but that's a whole nother thing for another day.

We can link to a bunch of mushroom resources. If folks like in the show notes, if they're like, I need to learn more because as you were evidence of it is a fascinating [00:15:00] area to dive into, it pulls you in. I'm curious. So you sit at the intersection of tech, right? Your develop product development, food.

Mushrooms, right? Like production, there's a physical production side of it. So however you want to interpret this question, please take it. I don't know your field as well as you do. I'm curious. What is the biggest missed opportunity in the field based on where you sit?

Kesha Stickland: I actually think it is further back behind the products that you see every day.

If you see most companies that are out there, they're actually not using mushroom fruiting bodies. Even if you hear the word mushroom sort of being thrown around, it's just to make it familiar. They're growing mycelium. And what they're typically doing, mycelium naturally grows. In the ground and the dirt typically but clearly if you're going to sell it to people as food, you have to have various sterile conditions that are not that [00:16:00] right.

And so they essentially typically are grown in liquid in these big things called bioreactors, right? Where they can actually. control, the temperature and all of the growing conditions and give the fungus exactly what it needs and pseudo recreate the conditions of the outside world, but in, in a sterile place.

And I think that is fine. And, I think it's an opportunity for a new type of food, but I also think that it misses the opportunity to take advantage of our existing food system and of the growing methods that people have been perfecting for hundreds of years when it comes to growing mushrooms and mushroom fruiting bodies specifically.

The typical mushroom growing process is actually one that's called solid state fermentation. It basically is a situation where you would take the waste. output from other industries, other agricultural industries. So for example, like cotton waste or citrus [00:17:00] pulp, things like that. And you would actually create basically these little beds almost typical compost beds that you might grow plants in and you grow mushrooms in those.

And what's great about it is they're typically grown vertically stacked so they take really great use of land. You can grow, a million pounds of mushrooms on a single acre. They grow many times faster than plants. They use a fraction of the water as plants. Let's not even compare them to animals.

It doesn't even compare. You go and you look in the produce aisles and mushrooms are going to be more sustainably grown than almost every fruit or vegetable there. And at the same time, they offer things that you get from animal products like vitamin D and, even B12 and things like that.

And so you have this opportunity to use this process that's been perfected to create these products. And if we had more Of an understanding of what an opportunity that is even for farmers that are struggling that are working for [00:18:00] You know the big meat companies that are out there that talk about how you know, they'll get you know a few cents you know for every pound of you know A chicken or you know a pig that they grow and how their families are struggling if you look at The ability to take that same exact space and grow mushrooms in that space and grow mushrooms grow three times faster than a chicken.

They can be stacked vertically. You can't stack chickens vertically on top of each other. And so you're talking about this opportunity to produce much more healthy food and the same space in time, which is a huge opportunity for the farmer. And it's a huge opportunity for people. In the public.

So if you can actually take that growing model right and apply it to something where you can take our technology, which essentially makes mushrooms more familiar and accessible to people, bringing them to the center of the plate. Now you have a situation where you have this already scaled method where we can partner with farmers who are either already mushroom [00:19:00] farmers who wants to sell their excess mushrooms.

Thank you. Or we can actually partner with farmers, and we are, who are transitioning from growing pigs and chickens to growing mushrooms and finding that to be as much as four, four times as much in terms of the money that they can make that they make. Actually can, really support their families and then at the same time, create this food product that brings all these health benefits to people.

There's a huge opportunity to, I think, in our sort of future of food, not forget about the fact that there is an existing supply chain and an existing ecosystem of farmers and an existing way. of growing food that we don't have to throw out there, we were throwing the baby out with the bath water and trying to do everything ourselves when, partnering to just extend these existing food systems might be a better approach.

Kt McBratney: Yeah. And it sounds like you're already making progress in and having successes. In doing [00:20:00] that. I'm curious to get real specific if we can. What was one of your most recent wins? And it doesn't have to be one that is a headline grabber or that would even be measurable quantifiably. But yeah, when was the last time you were like, hell, yes, that's something to celebrate.

Kesha Stickland: I think the challenge that I have is I don't think I, and we, and I'll say we, a co founder and I don't think we celebrate enough our wins. And I think we've done some really amazing things for a primarily bootstrapped food tech startup, we had recently, and I, the challenge is I can't, one of the biggest wins I can't say too much about because of the whole, publicity.

Yeah, but a let's just put it a big food company that's in the top five largest food companies in the world Testing our products and you know having an entire group of experts within their organization get together and look to evaluate [00:21:00] our products as a foundation for replacing an entire line of products That I mean and I mean we've had just under a million dollars of investment and our nearest competitors have had anywhere from 15 to 350 million so to have That validation.

I was just like floored and I feel like At the same time that we have that there are other things I think my second favorite is not that recent. It's actually a couple of years ago we were part of this big upset where we won best meat alternative against like Beyond meat and a bunch of other really big companies with our first prototype which was this pulled pork prototype Which I didn't think I thought it was still half baked to be honest with you, but people loved it But the thing that was so really great about it is we had we were at a a conference, um, plant based world expo.

And we're at the very back when this really tiny booth that was just gifted to us because, we're a black [00:22:00] female led, startup. And, we have all these people coming and tasting our products, sampling it for the first time. And what was really cool was people would look around and they'd be like looking for the founders here and right here, and it was really interesting that I had a lot of women and a lot of people of color come up to me and say, I'm really proud of you. I think that it's really cool what you're doing, but I didn't expect to see somebody like you standing here being the founder, and I just think this is really cool, and I'm just excited for you, and I'm happy about what you're doing, and I think what you're doing in terms of making these kinds of foods more accessible is just Awesome.

But I feel like having a stranger walk up to me and say that they were proud. I honestly would didn't know how to take it at first, but then it stuck with me. And then, in 2024, we won best meat alternative again, some of those same players for our second product. And it felt great. But did not [00:23:00] feel nearly as good as that moment in that ridiculously tiny little booth at the very back of this whole event, just hearing people come up and say, wow, you did this.

And that's inspiring to me.

Kt McBratney: That's so cool. And I think given, your successful career path prior to this chapter, as a first time founder in this space, which you mentioned, there are some giant competitors who have been trying to crack this market and this product with lots of funding. I think it's the meat alternative market is like an 18. 8 billion dollar market. It's massive. So there's that side of it. And also to hear. What I'm hearing is that you felt seen as a person and as a founder and as a whole person and not just someone who could run a profitable company or win an award, but as bringing in different pieces of yourself, is that something you anticipated [00:24:00] coming into this journey?

Kesha Stickland: No, I grew up in software where, I was able to succeed in spite of being a woman and in spite of being black. And I know it worked for a while as a engineering manager at Disney interactive. And I got to tell you, being the only, senior manager in engineering that was, Okay.

A black woman was you basically have to go around proving that you belong there. And you never mentioned the fact that you're a woman. You never mentioned the fact that you're black. It's always, but look, I can still do this too. I can be really good at what I'm doing in spite of it almost. And so you're not. Projecting, I feel like the image of somebody who's proud of who they are and where they come from and how that has actually helped propel your success. I don't feel like I started to look at things that way and started to to have conversations about what it was like to be Transcript you know a woman and a person of color doing [00:25:00] things that people don't expect you to be doing looking The way that you look at a conference when none of the other founders look like you I never started talking about that Into till this journey and when I was in software for 25 years so transitioning into food And kind of starting all over again as this newbie Was the first time that I really started to talk about, you know what it was like to be You know a woman and a mother and a black person in Fields where there aren't a lot of people like you and where people make sometimes assumptions Automatically that you don't know what the heck you're doing.

You don't know what you're talking about I had grown up enough in software that you know, I was working as a consultant to fortune 500s You know helping them Analyze markets, look at white space, use data driven processes to develop new products, giving lectures on disruption, all that kind of stuff.

And, I [00:26:00] use some of the same techniques to look at the market and see, what wasn't, what. Wasn't being provided to people that they needed and wanted to make sure that there was a good size market there wasn't just something that i was creating for me and my family and you know what i walked in front of investors for the first time and they literally laughed at me and didn't take me seriously.

It was eye opening because I had that happen early in my career in software, but I felt like I had proven myself, you know what I mean? And to start going through that all over again was like, it was a shock at first. And I have had to start talking about some of these experiences and, how hard it is.

To be a woman founder of color in the food tech space, especially one that doesn't have a PhD that they would expect to have one when they look at, what our products are and what I've created. It's. It's been eye opening, but it's also been, and it's been humbling, but it's been an education.

[00:27:00] It's actually told me that, taught me that the more that I speak about who I am as a person, and the struggles that I have and that we have as a company, the more people relate to me, the more I get offers of help from other founders, the more we get offers of help, from angels. It's, we're starting to be able to build community and to not be those people who are just like, we know how to do this all by ourselves.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Kt McBratney: Yeah. Self sufficiency is beautiful and resilience and the I've often called it the figure it outness, right? The ability to just figure it out. You're like, yeah, I don't know this yet. And I'll figure it out. And if I can't do it, I'll find out who I need to work with.

And also there's a beauty in, in, in having a community where you can be authentic. You can be true to your purpose for your business and yourself and other things fruit from it that may not be directly what you expected or what you would have even solved for yourself. I think it's such a rich part.[00:28:00]

Of the founder journey and I'm wondering what do you think young software engineer Kesha would think of who you are today as a professional and as a person,

Kesha Stickland: I don't even think I would recognize myself. I wasn't a person. I remember this quote from my grandmother I was raised by my grandparents and who, were, lived through the depression and, were very, old school types, work hard, et cetera, but don't complain.

And don't put your business out in the street. That's my grandma's always saying don't put your business out on the street, right? You know this whole concept of sharing your experiences and even sharing your struggles and talking about Hey, I this is some crazy crap going on here

Kt McBratney: My Grandma's was don't air your dirty laundry.

Kesha Stickland: Yes. And so

Kt McBratney: the grandma isms.

Kesha Stickland: Exactly. You don't realize how much that gets in there. And I remember the first time I started actually talking publicly on social media to other people about some of these experiences. People are like, [00:29:00] what's going on here? She doesn't do that. I spent 25 years in software and had some of the biggest ups and downs and some low downs, and Never talked about it.

I would talk about it at home. Didn't talk about it at work. I didn't talk about it with other women. Didn't talk about it publicly. Didn't put anything on social media. I used to work for Myspace back in the day. Didn't put anything on social media. Did not make your top eight. Nope, did not. So it's I would not recognize myself.

When I look at who I am now and I look back, I realized it was just all growth opportunity. It was all helping me become a more well rounded person and to be less afraid of not being perfect. Like when you are that person who is, doing something that's always doing the first, right?

I'm leading a, team of engineers at Disney and it's all men, and yeah. And all you know, maybe white and a few [00:30:00] Asian men and that's it and me and I and they're like wait She's our new manager like who is this person, and so you I had to look perfect all the time And I was afraid of making mistakes and my mistakes were forgiven like some other people's mistakes were forgiven and I still am in that situation, but I refuse to allow It now to make me feel Bad if I make a mistake because I always learn something and I'm always that much better for it.

But I think I was so afraid of putting myself out there and talking about my experiences because I was afraid of how people would judge them. And if they would judge, the decisions that I made and was I making mistakes and did I look perfect enough? I don't really care about that so much anymore.

Kt McBratney: It's funny. It's almost like our brains were connected like a mycelium network because The next question I had for you was going to be about how you handle failure and how you look at Making mistakes. [00:31:00] So Magically you sensed that

Kesha Stickland: I'm gonna say something really weird but it's I don't like the word failure and the reason I don't like that word is because I think everything is a life lesson, and it's funny because I learned this, oddly enough, in software.

I was, for many years, what they would call an agilist, and studying and teaching techniques that were always about going through these learning loops these feedback loops, where you would take an action, and you would have a, either a hypothesis or a goal that you're trying to meet, you take an action, and then you'd step back and you'd go Did that take me in the direction that I wanted it to go in?

And most of the time, the answer is no. And when you are in, any sort of scientific field, and you're experimenting, most of the time, you have these sort of mini failures, if you want to call them that. But again, it's a learning experience. Because, guess [00:32:00] what? Maybe it took you five different passes, but on the fifth pass, it's an explosion of beauty, right?

There's this thing that you could not have even so much better than you expected And then all those other passes before that you learn something from and so it's always this concept of constantly getting better And that's the way that I feel what we're doing with our business and the way that you know I used to teach my clients as a consultant is Use data, make the best guess, but it's still a hypothesis and then continuously collect feedback and get your products out there early and be willing to risk people saying, eh, it's not quite right because what's going to happen is you're going to get better over time.

You're going to evolve your business model. You're going to evolve your products and you're going to create something that makes the world a better place, but you're not going to do that first time out without. At least having the space and the grace to be able to say, Oh, that wasn't quite right. I need to fix that.

I need to make that better.

Kt McBratney: That's [00:33:00] even how I frame it usually is like the last time someone was wrong because being wrong just means what you thought would happen didn't, which is you're learning something new about what might work. It's not about, it's this view of success to build on what you were saying as an either or, right?

Either you won or you lost. Exactly. And this idea is yes, there are wins, obviously there are successes and everything that isn't a win is more data, is more information, is learning, is something to reflect on. So I so appreciate that, that framing of it. Are you ready for a quick little lightning round?

Kesha Stickland: Oh, go for it.

Kt McBratney: All right. All right. All right. We've covered a lot of really juicy personal things, business strategy, science even, but what you do sounds really fun. Part of what you do is you get to play with mushrooms and eat delicious things. [00:34:00] How does play show up in your work or outside of your work, knowing that a Could work 24 7 and still feel like they need to do more.

What does play look like for you?

Kesha Stickland: It is actually just tiny little bits. I feel like of what I do all day if it were just me i'll be totally frank if it were just me I would probably be working too much and not having enough play and maybe I would go Okay, it's time to go move my body a little bit and that would be about it But my co founder is also my husband and he is like the biggest jokester on the planet and unfortunately he tells these really terrible dad jokes But he does it all day long and it used to drive me crazy before we worked together I'd be like and now it's just it takes the tension away if there's crazy stuff going on it lightens up the situation and we just laugh and I can't even imagine what it would be like to go through some of the crazy ups and downs that we go through without having, without laughing five or 10 [00:35:00] times a day.

It's just, it makes my world better.

Kt McBratney: He beat me to probably every single good mushroom and meat pun out there if he is a skilled in the dad joke arena. Hats off to you. Good, sir. All right, next question. I've got so many. What's a hill you would die on?

Kesha Stickland: I am open to learning. I did not transition to a plant based diet until my mid 40s.

And so I had eaten kind of anything I wanted. I was suffering from it. I didn't know, but I had eaten almost anything I wanted. And I had very specific types of dishes that I loved because they were passed down from my grandma and all of that. And at first I was like, I don't really want to do this.

I don't want to make this change. It wasn't something that I chose to do, but in the process, what I learned was how powerful and how healing food can be and how much of our, the sickness that we have in our society, how many lifestyle [00:36:00] diseases are out there that are really due to food choices that people do not understand.

And I didn't understand. And if I can help. People understand that what they put into their bodies is a huge percentage of their health, even more than moving their bodies, even more than, medications that are there to fix you after it's already broken. Fixing yourself or not getting to that broken state in the first place has so much to do with the food we put in our bodies.

And the hill that I would die on is I'm not ever going to be in a situation where I would sacrifice, what we put in our food and in our products that we give to people in order to, make more money, in order to, even make them. taste better. We have products that blow people away in terms of taste and texture, right?

But we won't put chemically or genetically modified ingredients. We will only bring people food that [00:37:00] makes their lives better and richer. And that's part of our goal to make sure that we are improving people's health while giving them a really fantastic experience. That's the hill that I would die on.

Kt McBratney: There's that purpose shining through. A beautiful through line through this whole conversation. To wrap it up, because I like, I would so go down the mushroom rabbit hole, and I likely will after we stop recording, my browser history will reveal. What is the most challenging thing about your job? And. What is your favorite thing that you get to do as the CEO of the Mushroom Meat Company?

Kesha Stickland: The most challenging thing for me right now is really balancing my time. I'm our chief strategist, but at the same time our chief technology officer. And so being able to make progress on, a new product or a new format, but also being able to juggle all the just responsibilities of running a [00:38:00] business of raising capital of, of dealing with, the weird emergencies that seem to pop up, it just feels like there's not enough hours in the day and, not having the funds at this point to hire.

More people who do a couple of the things that I do is hard. But at the same time, that ability to also have a break from some of the, the chaos of running a business and focus on, creating really delicious food. It's very satisfying. And then the take that, when you create something and then the see how. What chefs do with it. We work with a lot of chefs that are really excited about what we're doing, and we've recently done some demos, cooking demos where we're actually, making food for chefs, which, by the way, at first was really intimidating, right? You're showing a chef how to cook your food and you're cooking for a chef.

And, they're not just judging your product. They're judging your cooking ability. They're judging your recipes, right? But at the same time, To see their faces and see [00:39:00] them get excited and hear them talk about how much they love it and then call other chefs, and talk to them and then have them create something with your product.

And, we did something on a university campus where we had a chef use our products and put them out in front of students and the students come up and we were literally there in the booth. We got to hear the feedback, ask them questions, have them taste it, see their face. See how excited they were.

None of these are vegans and vegetarians, right? These are just students going, Oh, it looks like I got a meat skewer here. Let's go see what this tastes like. Food, yeah. Exactly. Oh, the athletes, the amount of food that they pile in their place is fantastic. But seeing how they are excited about it.

First, they're just like, This is delicious. And then when we start telling them what's in it, you know that what they're eating, you know They are just filled with questions, but they're really excited. They're like I want to see this here again This is so great that feeling of giving somebody something that [00:40:00] all this time and effort and thinking went into Making this food really good for them But just seeing them enjoy it like I was talking about the friction is not there right for a chef They're able to use this to create and create these awesome dishes, the same kind of dishes they've always created.

And for the person eating it, they're just enjoying it. And that's the fantastic thing about being able to bring somebody something that makes their lives better. At the end of the day, they don't have to think too hard about it. They just eat good food. And I just love that.

Kt McBratney: What an experience and what a journey.

How can people follow along? Where can they connect with you and the Mushroom Meat Company on the internet and beyond?

Kesha Stickland: Awesome. So the best place is probably either on our website, which is mushroommeatco. com Or on social media, we're at Mushroom Meat Co on, LinkedIn and we don't use Twitter so much, but Instagram and so on.

You can see some really delicious food. We've actually been partnering with some chefs recently who are [00:41:00] turning our food into fantastic dishes and creating these great videos. And we are a food service. Always looking for more chefs who would love to bring our products onto the menu.

Kt McBratney: All right. Sounds like people can feed their brain to learn more and to learn more about the science and the technology behind it, but also they can whet their appetite by the looking at what's already been cooked up with your products. Absolutely. Thank you again so much. I know for one, not only am I going to be going down a mushroom rabbit hole now that I know the difference between the fruiting body and the mycelium, I think I'm going to go grab a snack, a plant based one.

Kesha Stickland: Fantastic. Ah, thank you so much. This was great. Thank you. Thank you for having me on.