#072: Sage Spoonfuls - Founder & CEO Liza Huber

Liza Huber is the founder and CEO of Sage Spoonfuls, a healthy and simple solution to making your own baby food. Fran Racioppi travels home to suburban Boston to meet Liza to discuss creative financing to retain equity, transition from acting to manufacturing and how an order from Buy Buy Baby launched the brand to a new level. 

Liza also discusses her son's diagnosis with Cerebral Palsy and what it taught her family about finding solutions when you won't take no for an answer. 

Liza starred on NBC's hit daytime television show Passions. Today Sage Spoonfuls is available in Buy Buy Baby, Pottery Barn, Target, Walmart, Bed, Bath & Beyond and on Amazon. Liza is one of Forbes “Female Entrepreneurs Rocking The World." Learn more about Liza at sagespoonfuls.com and @sagespoonfuls and @lizahuber. 

Read the full episode transcription here and learn more on The Jedburgh Podcast Website. Check out our video versions on YouTube.

Highlights: 

-Why as parents we research the best of everything until it comes to solid food. (5:51)

-Liza shares her emotional story of giving birth to her son Brendan, who was born premature and with Cerebral Palsy. (9:07)

-Sage Spoonfuls started as a cookbook and storage jars; Liza’s launch plan very quickly put them in Buy Buy Baby propelling the brand into the market. (15:25)

-Fran challenges Liza to break down her process for scaling Sage Spoonfuls across people, process and technology. (19:31)

-Liza shares her lessons in accountability and how not focusing on verifying the details resulted in cost overruns and lost productivity. (22:02)

-Creative financing is imperative for entrepreneurs to raise capital without giving up equity; Liza shares methods she has leveraged to fund the business. (33:43)

-Liza discusses the importance of fear, failure and how to make your mistakes early and inexpensively. (42:30)

-Liza shares her favorite memories of daytime TV, her four lessons for starting your own business and her assessment of current economic policy on small businesses. (48:25)

Quotes: 

-“There really must be a better way for busy parents to provide the healthiest food possible for our children.” (7:19)

-”The point was just to keep him alive.” (9:22)

-”I am the epitome of the true entrepreneur who just builds the plane as she flies it.” (15:58)

-”Right from the get go I knew that I wanted to remain 100% owner.” (20:11)

-”Don’t ever take your finger off the pulse of every single level of your business.” (23.21)

-”Try to keep your mistakes as inexpensive as possible.” (42:57)

-”You have to fall in love with failure, because failure is how we learn.” (46:03)

-”There’s never gonna be a day without problems. And there’s never gonna be a day without a little success.” (47:23)

-”Keep it to yourself…launch, land and expand as fast as you can.” (55:54)

-”There is no one solution when every single link in the chain is broken.” (1:02:18)

Liza’s three daily foundations to success:

-Commit to the critical task list

-Do the thing you would do if you had 20 seconds of wild courage

-Put away the phone and spend time with the kids

This episode is brought to you by Jersey Mike’s, 18A Fitness, and Analytix Solutions