Jennifer Garner on Rejection, Resilience, and Building Once Upon a Farm

Jennifer Garner’s entrepreneurial story did not begin with a perfectly timed startup idea, a polished pitch deck, or a lifelong ambition to become a founder.

It began, in part, with rejection.

Long before Garner became closely associated with Once Upon a Farm, she had spent decades in a profession where hearing “no” was routine. She auditioned. She came close. She lost roles she desperately wanted. Projects she believed in went nowhere.

In a conversation with Emma Grede on Aspire, Garner described one particularly painful rejection: an audition for The West Wing that she badly wanted. After losing the role, she went to Palm Springs alone for a few days to process it.

Two weeks later, Alias came along.

That experience became part of a much bigger lesson Garner would eventually carry from acting into entrepreneurship: rejection does not necessarily tell you that you are moving in the wrong direction.

Sometimes it is simply part of moving.

“I’m built with a good bounce.”

For wantrepreneurs waiting for evidence that their idea will work before committing to it, Garner’s story offers a more useful framework: resilience is not something you discover after one enormous setback. It is something you accumulate through smaller disappointments until uncertainty stops feeling like a reason to quit.

Before Once Upon a Farm, There Were Flops

It is easy to look at a successful company and rewrite its founder’s history as inevitable.

Garner’s was anything but.

Before Once Upon a Farm, she and her longtime manager Nicole King explored a number of business ideas. There was a content concept. A crafts project with JOANN. An earlier food brand. A beauty idea.

They invested time. They developed branding. Garner did photo shoots, content days, meetings, and travel.

And several ideas simply did not work.

Her reaction is instructive.

“A lot of great ideas happen and very few of them actually turn into something. There’s no shame in the game.”

That sentence gets at something early-stage entrepreneurs frequently struggle to internalize: a failed experiment is not automatically evidence of personal failure.

Garner had an advantage—not because she was immune to disappointment, but because acting had already trained her to separate rejection from identity.

She had spent years wanting roles she did not get and working on projects that did not become what she hoped they would become. Entrepreneurship activated the same muscle.

Try.

Learn.

Recover.

Try again.

Founders often romanticize persistence as stubbornly pursuing one idea forever. Garner’s experience suggests another version of persistence: being willing to let the wrong idea die without letting your ambition die with it.

The Best Business Opportunities Often Feel Obvious in Retrospect

When Garner encountered Once Upon a Farm, the proposition immediately connected with something she understood personally.

Fresh baby food made sense to her as a parent.

Why, she wondered, was preparing fresh food for babies still such a hassle when fresh products for other categories were already readily available?

The company was tiny at the time, but Garner saw a product she personally would have wanted.

That distinction matters.

Some entrepreneurs begin with market sizing. Others begin with technology. Some begin by identifying an inefficient process.

Garner began with recognition:

I would have used this.

That instinct led her to meet co-founder Cassandra Curtis and eventually John Foraker, the former Annie’s executive who would become Once Upon a Farm’s CEO.

Garner and Foraker quickly found themselves talking about something larger than baby food. They discussed whether the company could become a purpose-driven business that helped more families access nutritious food.

By the end of their meeting, Foraker told Garner that he would leave General Mills if she was committed to building the company.

She said she was.

They shook hands.

Garner admitted that she did not fully understand what she had just signed up for.

That may be one of the most relatable moments in her entrepreneurial journey.

You rarely understand the full scope of a meaningful opportunity when it first arrives. You understand enough to recognize the people, problem, and mission—and then you learn the rest by participating.

Do Not Confuse Access With Execution

Garner’s celebrity undoubtedly opened doors.

But opening a door is very different from building a company that deserves to remain on the other side of it.

Early on, Once Upon a Farm expanded rapidly into thousands of retail doors. Garner and the team initially approached the rollout with enormous confidence: they were introducing a new category, Garner could attract attention, and major retailers were willing to listen.

Then came the harder part.

Consumers still had to understand the product.

Retailers still needed the product to perform.

Garner recalled returning to retailers including Target and Publix and receiving a much colder reception the second time around. The company was not immediately being removed from shelves—but it had work to do.

The lesson was unmistakable:

Getting distribution is not the same as earning demand.

Once Upon a Farm had to back up, educate consumers, explain the category, and build awareness.

Entrepreneurs encounter versions of this problem constantly.

Getting a meeting is not the same as closing the customer.

Raising money is not the same as building a viable company.

Launching is not the same as achieving product-market fit.

Attention can create an opportunity. Only execution can preserve it.

Find the Part of the Business Where You Can Be Unusually Useful

One of the most revealing parts of Garner’s conversation with Grede came when she discussed her role inside Once Upon a Farm.

She did not arrive knowing EBITDA, ROAS, every CPG acronym, or how to read every detail of a financial statement.

She learned.

More importantly, she figured out where she could create disproportionate value.

Garner said she and Foraker did not begin by rigidly defining her position. She had to discover where she could contribute.

She eventually realized that years of advocacy work with Save the Children had already given her a playbook.

That work had taught her the importance of relationships, consistency, firsthand experience, and actually understanding the people you claim to serve.

So she applied the same thinking to Once Upon a Farm.

She developed relationships with retailers. She visited partners. She participated in leadership and company meetings. She learned the language of the business. When she encountered something she did not understand, she wrote it down and asked someone to teach her.

That is a valuable model for founders who feel insecure about what they do not know.

You do not need to pretend expertise.

You need to become increasingly useful.

There is a profound difference between saying, “I don’t know this, therefore I don’t belong here,” and saying, “I don’t know this yet, so who can explain it to me?”

Garner chose the second.

Relationships Compound Just Like Capital

Garner also rejected the idea that her involvement should consist of showing up once, taking photographs, and disappearing.

She described retailer relationships that extended far beyond introductory meetings. People had her email. She stayed in contact. She visited stores and facilities. Some partners had been to her home; she had been to theirs.

Her explanation was simple: showing up repeatedly was one of the ways she could help.

That consistency reflects a broader principle she described elsewhere in the interview:

“How you do anything is how you do everything.”

Reputation compounds.

Reliability compounds.

Relationships compound.

One meeting rarely transforms a company. One thoughtful follow-up rarely does either.

But hundreds of moments in which people discover that you actually do what you said you would do can become an enormous strategic asset.

Garner sees the same dynamic in her acting career. Over decades, being prepared, arriving on time, learning her lines, and being dependable built goodwill.

Eventually, people know what working with you feels like.

Entrepreneurs sometimes obsess over strategies competitors can copy: ad creative, pricing, funnels, features.

Trust is harder to duplicate.

Financial Agency Can Become an Entrepreneurial Catalyst

Garner also spoke candidly about a major turning point after the end of her marriage.

Her career priorities had shifted while raising children, and suddenly she confronted a practical reality: she needed to think much more deliberately about earning.

“I have to take care of myself. I have to take care of these kids.”

She and King became more calculated about what Garner’s next professional chapter could look like.

There were constraints. Garner wanted to remain physically present for her children and could not simply spend six months away on a film location.

So the question became:

What kind of work fits the life I actually have?

Once Upon a Farm became part of that answer.

This is a particularly useful entrepreneurial lesson because constraints are usually framed negatively.

Not enough money.

Not enough time.

Family responsibilities.

Geographic limitations.

Career uncertainty.

But constraints can also force clarity.

Garner did not have unlimited freedom, so she and her team became more intentional about identifying opportunities that could create long-term value while fitting the realities of her life.

That is a better question for many wantrepreneurs than “What company should I start?”

Ask instead:

Given my skills, obligations, relationships, resources, and values, what kind of business am I unusually positioned to build?

Starting Later Can Be an Advantage

Garner was around 45 when she became involved with Once Upon a Farm.

In industries obsessed with youth, that might appear late.

Garner sees it differently.

Asked what she had at 45 that she did not have at 25, she pointed to empathy, life experience, toughness, and a greater willingness to simply get things done.

Years of acting had taught her resilience.

Motherhood had broadened her perspective.

Philanthropic work had taught her how to build relationships and advocate.

Fame had given her reach—but also taught her what happened when attention overwhelmed identity.

Professional longevity had shown her the value of reputation.

Those experiences looked unrelated until they suddenly became useful inside the same company.

That may be the most encouraging lesson in Garner’s story for anyone wondering whether they missed their entrepreneurial window.

You are not necessarily starting from zero.

Your previous career may have taught you sales without calling it sales.

Parenthood may have taught you operations.

Community work may have taught you relationship building.

Freelancing may have taught you cash-flow discipline.

A failed project may have taught you customer discovery.

Rejection may have taught you resilience.

The question is not simply what you have accomplished.

It is what capabilities you have quietly accumulated.

Keep Showing Up

Garner’s entrepreneurial evolution is compelling precisely because she does not present herself as someone who instantly knew how to build a consumer company.

She learned acronyms.

She asked questions.

She discovered where she could help.

She watched ideas fail.

She endured rejection.

She leveraged the skills she already had.

And she kept showing up.

That is far more useful to an aspiring entrepreneur than another story about a founder who supposedly knew exactly what they were doing from day one.

Most people do not.

The entrepreneurs who make progress are often the ones willing to remain beginners long enough to become capable.

Garner’s story is ultimately less about celebrity entrepreneurship than it is about accumulated experience.

Everything you have already done—the jobs, disappointments, responsibilities, relationships, mistakes, and skills—may become unexpectedly valuable in the thing you build next.

You just have to stay in the game long enough to find out.