Ella Mills is the co-founder of Deliciously Ella, which began in 2012 as a simple blog sharing healthy recipes. What started online quickly grew into bestselling books, a #1 mobile app, and eventually a retail brand of healthy snacks. In 2024, Deliciously Ella was acquired for an undisclosed sum and today Ella is building her next venture, All Plants.

Her journey is inspiring, and in this episode we explore every milestone: from securing her first Starbucks listing, to navigating a failure that nearly sank the business, to proving how an “average” person can create a truly global brand.

Ella's podcast, The Wellness Scoop:
https://open.spotify.com/show/7F6YqGJ06UEuD7qG81tFHw

Timestamps

00:00 - Intro
01:01 - The Deliciously Ella founding story
06:16 - When did the Deliciously Ella blog start to take off
11:22 - Dealing with overnight attention and success
13:33 - How can an average student become so successful?
15:03 - How to nail a successful book launch
17:16 - Scaling a personal brand
21:08 - What’s it like running the business with your husband?
24:00 - Going from recipe blogs to making retail products
24:53 - How Deliciously Ella landed in Starbucks
33:18 - Building out the product range
35:04 - Behind every success is a bunch of failures
41:07 - Managing risk vs return when scaling a startup
45:29 - How to make products that are successful in retail
49:53 - Why Ella took over a new brand after selling Deliciously Ella
52:30 - Where is the plant based market headed?
56:22 - Why Ella started a podcast?