Loren Castle didn't know what she would do after she graduated from the University of Southern California in 2006. But just months after finishing school, she got diagnosed with stage 2 Hodgkin's Lymphoma and had to undergo six months of chemotherapy.
It was at this time that she started focusing on cooking and eating healthy, including looking for healthier baked good options that didn't use ingredients like bleached white flour. Castle started baking her own versions of popular cookies using ingredients like oat flour, eventually amassing an entire binder full of them. In 2010, after years of seeing how beloved her cookies were by family and friends, she started selling them at New York farmer's markets. They were a hit there, too.
By 2011, Castle's new company, Sweet Loren's, was selling her unique cookie dough at her local Whole Foods. The company has continued to grow over the years, and its now vegan, gluten and allergy-free products are sold at 35,000 grocery stores around the country. Sweet Loren's is projected to bring in $120 million in sales in 2025.
Here's Castle's advice to other entrepreneurs looking to find similar success.
'You have to be so obsessed with your idea'
The No. 1 question Castle would ask budding entrepreneurs as they dive into their business is, "how bad do you want this?" she says.
"I think being an entrepreneur is romanticized," she says, adding that, in theory, everyone probably wants to start their own business and have it explode. But to really find that success, "you have to be so obsessed with your idea," she says.
Throughout her 15 or so years of running her business, Castle has had to work through multiple challenges and hurdles. She needed to tailor and change her packaging from tubs of cookie dough to pre-cut pieces. She needed to make enough in sales to finally hire staff. She needed to change the factories she worked with five times to find the right one.
You have to be passionate enough about your idea that you will be able to stick it out through "all of the hundreds of hurdles and fires you're going to go through," she says.
'If there's a real need in the market, people will embrace it'
Another thing that will help you find success is filling an actual gap. "If there's a real need in the market," Castle says, "people will embrace it."
It was hard to find a healthier version of refrigerated cookie dough when Castle launched her product. Over the years, positive feedback from customers helped her find another gap to fill for those with allergies and dietary restrictions.
But it's really this intense devotion to her idea that pushed her to the level of success she's reached. "You have to want this really bad," Castle says.
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