Episode 16
August 25, 2020

Brainpower and Cauliflower

With Gail Becker, Founder and CEO at CAULIPOWER

About this episode

In this episode, we have an insightful and fun interview with Gail Becker, the founder and CEO of CAULIPOWER. Within its first two years, CAULIPOWER became a top 10 frozen pizza brand and captured over 2% of the $5 billion US pizza market. Known today as the number one cauliflower crust pizza, CAULIPOWER is now the third fastest-growing company of all food brands in the US. Gail speaks with us about how she left her job in corporate America to launch her business, CAULIPOWER, with a mission to reinvent America's favorite comfort foods. Tune in to hear about all of this and more.

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In This Episode You’ll Hear About:

  • How an early start helping out in her father’s store gave Gail an appreciation for owning her own business and led to an independent spirit
  • Why she loves to get herself out of her comfort zone and challenge herself as much as possible and how she started doing that even as a child
  • How her study of political science and journalism lead to a pivotal moment of inspiration with a well-known television news anchor
  • How she transitioned from journalism to politics to public relations and then, after 16 years at a PR firm, was feeling like there was something more
  • Ways her front-row seat within the business world led to great insight and advice for herself later on 
  • The importance of women being at the leadership table
  • How her unhappiness in corporate life, her frustration over how long it took to make a great cauliflower pizza crust after a long day of work, and her desire to honor her father after he passed away led to a transition into entrepreneurship that would change her life
  • Why she just knew she had to start her own company even though she may not have felt ready 
  • How she came up with the name CAULIPOWER and raised millions from one investment fund How the timing of her launch and the ways she has done things differently has lead to incredible growth and an excitingly unique brand
  • Ways she makes sure the taste of their products are always great and how she fought past some hard struggles to get CAULIPOWER into Whole Foods and WalmartWays she works through the highs and lows of building a business and why she sees the lows as gifts in the long run
  • What gives Gail so much joy as her brand continues to build a community around the lunch or dinner table and how she stays connected to her consumers in personal ways
  • How she stays focused on the people cheering her and CAULIPOWER on, why she thinks it’s ok to break some rules sometimes, and what’s coming next for this dynamo company

To Find Out More:

Eatcaulipower.com 

Quotes:

“I have always measured success by how comfortable I can get in things that are inherently uncomfortable to me.”

“I think the day you stop learning and the day you stop caring is the day you have to leave.”

“I think it's actually a reason why a lot of women, in particular, enter entrepreneurship because they want to create the work environment where they can thrive and be happy. And sometimes that doesn't always exist in corporate America. So we're forced to create it ourselves.”

“Women bring a lot to the table, but the corollary also has to be considered. What's missing when the woman isn't there? And quite frankly, I thought it was quite a bit.”

“I realized I wanted to do something more meaningful, something more long-lasting, something that would honor everything he gave me and everything he taught me, and what better way to do that than to follow in his entrepreneurial footsteps?”

“I always say starting a business is like having kids. If you wait for the right time, you're never going to do it. So you can't wait for the right time. You can't wait for that time when you absolutely know, because you don't.”

“There are people who graduate from business school and have an idea and have a plan and execute upon that plan and hire all the right people and all that. And that's great. And that is a fantastic and really smart way to start a business. That was not my way. I had a gut feeling.”

“When I think about the scariest part about starting CAULIPOWER, even today, I think it's how close I came to not doing it.”

“Sometimes you have to break rules. That's your job as an entrepreneur. You follow some, and you break some.”

“I also didn't know that the lows would be surmountable. That you have those lows, but you could also work your way out of them.”

“I think one of the wonderful things about having lows as an entrepreneur is it just makes the highs that much more wonderful.”

“I like how, to me, the dinner table or the lunch table, or any place that we eat together and share food is the most important place in the home.”

“You have to take risks. You have to. Otherwise, you're just going to be like every other company that's currently out there. So do things differently.”

“I can't tell you how many times I would be in the car and just start crying, uncontrollably, because I bet everything that I had on a vegetable.”

Read the transcript

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