Getting Fired Might Be the Best Thing That Ever Happens to You with Rachel Mansfield

July 28, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Rachel Mansfield was fired from her job as an assistant to the CEO of a beverage company on December 4, 2015. She was 25, newly married, and had just started sharing recipes on Instagram as a weekend hobby. Her employer told her the account—then at 10,000 followers—was a conflict of interest. She walked ten blocks home to her 400-square-foot apartment, called her parents, and didn't tell her husband until later that day because she felt like a loser. That firing, she says, gave her the push she never would have given herself. "I would have never had the guts or courage to even quit my job to start my own thing ever," she tells Carl Radke on More Life. She collected unemployment for six months, started a small consulting business helping brands with content creation, and never looked back. Today she runs one of the most-followed food accounts on Instagram, has a cookbook coming out, and is co-founder and co-CEO of Caduce, an organic snack cracker brand that launched in Target nationwide in January.

The Firing That Became a Foundation

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What you'll learn

1 (01:02) **Carl Introduces Rachel Mansfield** - Carl welcomes Rachel, a food entrepreneur, cookbook author, and co-founder/co-CEO of Caduce, an organic snack cracker brand, at Soft Bar in Brooklyn.
2 (04:02) **Defining "More Life" and Rachel's Personal Mantra** - Carl asks Rachel for her personal saying that embodies living life to the fullest, a core theme of the podcast.
3 (05:06) **The Origin of Rachel's Food Career** - Rachel describes how she accidentally built a food empire starting with overnight oats in 2014-2015, long before "food influencer" was a term.
4 (10:27) **The Firing Story: December 4th, 2015** - Rachel recounts the exact date she was fired from her dream job as an assistant to a CEO at a beverage company.
5 (12:33) **The Aftermath and Finding a Path Forward** - Rachel describes the pivotal moment of deciding to turn her passion into a business after her parents gave her a six-month ultimatum.
6 (14:43) **Carl Shares His Own Firing Story** - Carl reveals his parallel experience of being fired from his corporate sales job after the first season of Summer House premiered.
7 (19:46) **Opening Up About Disordered Eating** - Carl transitions the conversation to Rachel's past struggles with disordered eating, noting it's a topic closely related to addiction.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Guests on this episode

Carl Radke

Show Notes

Rachel Mansfield has built a career out of being honest about the messy parts—getting fired from her dream job, struggling with food in college, and figuring out motherhood along the way. The mom of three and founder behind the snack brand Cadoots sits down with Carl to get real about all of it. She opens up about the day she got fired with zero warning, the disordered eating she quietly worked through in college, and how a kitchen-counter idea became a growing snack company. A candid look at how the moments that knock you down can end up building the life you actually want.

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