Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. I'm Jennifer Yuppes Blundell. It's been my pleasure to be the host of season two of this podcast, and now it's time to pass the torch for season three. In this episode, I'll introduce you to your new host, Jesse Freytag, marketing lead at LiveBar. She's no stranger

to entrepreneurship and knows what it takes to build a CPG brand from the ground up. She's a curious mind,

a podcaster who loves conversations. So let's meet Startup CPG's new podcast host, Jesse. Hi, Jesse. How are you?

I'm doing great. Jennifer, how are you?

I'm doing fantastic. And it has been such an honor to host season two of the startup

CPG podcast, but now it is time to pass the torch to you for season three.

I'm so excited. I feel really honored to be taking the torch from you.

And I think you're going to be an

amazing host because you will be bringing a deep understanding and passion for startups and CPG brands.

But before we dig into your expertise, tell me, how did you come across startup CPG and what made

you get involved? So I've been in the CPG industry for just almost three years and I was

realizing that it's such an intricate complex industry and I was starting to meet other people that were

willing to share knowledge. And I was like, there's got to be communities out there where I can

chat with other people that are like me and going through the same things. And I initially joined a group

called the female food foundry, a Facebook group, which is also great. And someone in there mentioned

that they were in the startup CPG community. And I was like, oh, awesome. And I love Slack. So I

joined the Slack community and immediately was like, this is amazing. There's so many, there are

thousands of awesome people here. This is so cool. I participated in one of the virtual mixers and that was an awesome chance to actually see people, you know, face to face, at least over cameras and they connect with them. And since then, I've just tried to be as involved as I can and learn as much as I can and share resources that I have because I just love

connecting with other people and then hopefully being able to connect them with someone else

and we can just all kind of share all the great CPG knowledge that, you know, we all have

little bits and we can all put the big puzzle together.

Well, that love of connection is there and it comes through in your professional career

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