Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / Selling cookie dough on 4/20 day in San Francisco lead this Founder on the entrepreneurial path, with Doughp’s Kelsey Moreira

Transcript

Selling cookie dough on 4/20 day in San Francisco lead this Founder on the entrepreneurial path, with Doughp’s Kelsey Moreira · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Kelsey Moreira for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. I'm your host, Doon Roshin, and joining me on today's episode is Kelsey Moreira, founder of Dope. Dope.
• 0:25
  Serving up nostalgia with every scoop and curating special moments of self-love, Dope is the legit cookie dough company that burst onto the dessert scene in 2017 in San Francisco. After a journey in self-discovery and sobriety, Kelsey renewed her love for baking and inadvertently created an amazing edible cookie dough recipe from scratch that can be enjoyed either raw or baked.
• 0:49
  Kelsey recently took dope on ABC's hit show Shark Tank and she was named Forbes 30 Under 30 for how quickly she's grown this business and her mission-driven mentality behind it.
• 1:00
  In this episode, you'll learn how to start a dessert brand, what happens when you don't strike a deal on Shark Tank, and how Kelsey is driving growth online. If you know someone who would benefit from hearing Kelsey's inspiring story, please do share it with them. This is how we find new ears and empower more women to launch businesses. This is Kelsey for Female Startup Club.
• 1:24
  Kelsey, hi, hello, and welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. Hey, I'm so happy to be here. I am so excited to be chatting to you today. I haven't actually spoken to someone who's based in Vegas before, so first time for everything. Very excited. Welcome. The showgirls and the gambling table are coming in shortly, and yeah. I live in a casino. No.
• 1:48
  Some people don't know that there's life outside of the strip of Las Vegas, but yes, we live here near Red Rock Canyon. It's super nice. Like living in the desert is awesome for the weather and everything, but good outdoor stuff to do and more than just gambling, shockingly. So yeah. I bet. I've heard great things. I hear it's so beautiful. I've only actually been to classic Vegas, but I would love to go back and explore, you know, all the outdoors nature stuff just sounds amazing. Yeah.
• 2:15
  Yeah. Let's get started by having you introduce yourself and what your business actually is. Yeah. So I'm Kelsey Moreira. I'm the founder and fearless leader of Dope Cookie Dough. We sell edible and bakeable cookie dough and we're on a mission to make the world a little sweeter. So we raise awareness around mental health and addiction recovery, raise funds and just otherwise get the community involved in breaking the stigma around those issues while we sell cookie dough. So it's worked out pretty well.
• 2:41
  Oh, I love that. That sounds so cool and so delicious. What a fun job to have every day. Can we go back to life before you started dope and talk about what was happening in your life and what was getting you thinking about starting a business in the first place?
• 2:58
  Totally. Yeah. And I mean, it's crazy to think back. We're about four years into the company now, somehow made it on Shark Tank, Forbes 30 under 30, and now sold nearly $3 million of cookie dough last year. So when I started, if you rewind four years ago, I had no idea it would become what it is today. I had been working in high tech for about 10 years, started my career at Intel. When I was just 16, I got an opportunity to be an intern, which was
• 3:23
  crazy. It was like just in high school and they were like, Hey, do you want this internship at Intel? And my dad was like, yes, she does. You know, it was like a neighbor had come over and told us about this opportunity. And he was like, you have to do this. And, you know, sure enough, it would turn into a 10 year career for me and really felt like it was going to be my path forever. You know, like how cool I had gotten started so young. I worked through all the school years and every summer.
• 3:45
  And then graduating college, you know, just became a full-time employee. So it was paved out, you know, it was like, I could just keep going on this path. But one thing that had come on with this sort of like high stress corporate life was all this anxiety and pressure and sort of like self-made perfectionism issues. You know, I've had a lot of anxiety through my experience.
• 4:02
  childhood and then jumping into corporate America at such a young age, like my anxiety and mental health really suffered from that. And I leaned on alcohol through the years to just, you know, numb and just pass the time outside of work. Everything looked all shiny at the job, but I had developed a really unhealthy relationship with alcohol. And so in 2015, I made the decision to get sober, like enough's enough.
• 4:24
  alcohol is not doing shit for my life and I need to get it out. And it was the best decision ever. Like my life completely blossomed from that moment. And I was baking nights and weekends, you know, really figuring out what made Kelsey, Kelsey and being in the kitchen was absolutely that I love making desserts for people. I love making people happy with food. It has such strong ability to evoke memories and emotions and whatnot and cookie dough in particular.
• 4:47
  I found a way to make it safe to eat. And it's like you take one bite of that and someone's going off about, you know, a memory of making it with their grandma or with their dad growing up or, you know, just that really like special bond that people have with food. And enough kind of like side passion of making desserts, bringing them into the office. And people started kind of nudging like, you should sell this stuff. You know, this would be a cool thing to sell on the side. I never really thought about making a full meal.
• 5:12
  food business. I mean, I work in tech and this is my life and I'm just going to be here forever. But I just loved it. You know, I was just getting enough joy out of the time in the kitchen and what I was doing with desserts that after being relocated to a new job in San Francisco within Intel, I was just surrounded by all these entrepreneurs buzzing about how their idea was the coolest thing in the world. And I just thought, what a fun path to take. Maybe I really can do this. And yeah, from there, just set off to figure out what it would take to start a business.
• 5:41
  nights and weekends doing the licensing and got a little wooden cart built, you know, to serve my cookie dough out of and got a commercial kitchen, went and made 100 pounds of cookie dough and set my launch day and went off to sell. We sold out of 100 pounds of dough in like three hours. And I was like,
• 5:58
  Okay, this is the thing. I need to figure out how to do more of this. So it just grew from there. Wow. Yeah. And when you're saying, you know, you're 100 pounds of cookie dough, had you already quit your job yet? And was that like at a market or something? Or what was that day like?
• 6:13
  Yeah, I was technically less established that day. I didn't, I wasn't at a market. I was at a park in San Francisco. It was 4-20-2017. And Dolores Park is like a famous park in San Francisco. And so I was still, it was perfect. You know, lots of willing participants to try some cookie dough, which was fun. That's so cool. This idea had really struck in February of 2017, where I'm like, I really think like other people love cookie dough.
• 6:39
  I was baking vegan at the time. So my recipes, because I was not such a great vegan, had butter in them, but no eggs. So it was like more part-time veganism. I highly recommend it. Butter is awesome. And so my recipes were like, you know, safe to eat raw, but I could also bake as much as I wanted. And that was sort of like that kickoff of like, I should try and do something. So I was still working at Intel and I knew my sabbatical was coming up. 4-20-2017 was the first day of my sabbatical with Intel. I was getting 10 weeks off.
• 7:08
  I had planned a trip around the world. I had this whole Google sheet mapped out with where I was going to travel to. And then when this idea hit, I was like, delete everything. We're just going to start a business instead. So I used the 10 weeks to put some feet on the ground and figure out if this would work. So I got a commercial kitchen, made the cookie dough, got the licenses that I need to be an approved business in San Francisco and a health permit for the kitchen I was using and everything and what I would be making.
• 7:32
  And then just went rogue on 420 and was like, I'm just going to sell at Dolores Park and see what people think. I had this cool cart that was totally collapsible, which was awesome. I could break it down. My stepdad is like a super fix it guy. So he helped me like orchestrate this magical cart that was on wheels that I could like basically break down and put into a vehicle.
• 7:52
  So the first day set up sold out three hours, like I said, which was awesome. And then just got to thinking like, where else will this work? And so for those 10 weeks, I really started on catering, you know, doing pop ups at any business that would let me come and do, you know, a birthday or office treat. You know, lots of tech offices in San Francisco were doing like the office happy hours and stuff. So they would bring in a dessert to do something nice or after a conference.
• 8:15
  And I wrote a food park in San Francisco and was like, Hey, I have this company dope. I sell edible cookie dough. Um, would you have a space for me? And I was literally thinking like, there's no way they're going to respond. Like there's so many cool food trucks in this food park. And I don't even have a food truck. I would just be setting up like a tent and like table with my cart. And I've got a response back in two hours and they were like, cookie dough. We love it. Can you start tomorrow? And I'm like, Oh my God. Like,
• 8:41
  Like, can I start tomorrow? I don't know. Exactly. I was like, Oh, crap. Like, I really need to like formalize this. And like, I need a week because I need to go make some more cookie dough. But yeah, I got started there. And, you know, so scrappy in the beginning, just doing what it took to make it happen. And on a shoestring budget, I think I started the business around $2,500 in the first month or so invested.
• 9:04
  like deposit you have to make in the commercial kitchen and ingredients to start getting going. And then equipment I needed for the, you know, food truck park to be able to have my little tent set up there. And a wagon so I could cart all the ingredients from San Francisco over to Oakland to make the cookie dough at the kitchen and then cart it back in the school wagon. I saw some old photos of me just like completely bruised up and like covered in flour. But like I'm super happy and I'm carting back my cookie dough back to the city.
• 9:30
  So just a ton of fun. I was running it out of my apartment through the week, you know, packing up for the events and stuff from my apartment in SF, which was like a shoebox, you know, but you just do what it takes in the beginning to make it happen. Oh my goodness. You must've been eating so much cookie dough. Holy cow.
• 9:46
  Yeah, crazy. But also like working out so much like lifting everything, you know, because I was hauling equipment to an event through like a 1904 elevator, which was like so tiny. And I'd be like hauling in all this heavy equipment and stuff to load up into a lift or an Uber, go to the event, unload, you know, load back into a lift and then back at home, you know, by like 11pm and
• 10:07
  get up and do it again the next day. So it was such a grind. So I was like eating a bunch of dough, but also like they used to call me like mini Hulk at the food park because I was like so strong from from lifting everything myself. I'm like, No, I got it. I'm like this tiny I'm like five foot two, you know, tiny girl lifting all this heavy stuff. And like, you know, 30 pound jugs of cookie dough. Yeah, it's food memories.
• 10:31
  And like, what were people saying? Was it just clear that you had struck gold with this idea? Was everyone super into it? Or did you have to kind of tweak and iterate to find the gold?
• 10:42
  Yeah. I mean, luckily I hear some people, you know, if you're doing a new innovative food concept that's never existed before, I mean, edible cookie dough is still like a new concept, but it's not that like I look at all the upcycled products or something, or they're just making something completely new that's never existed. Tons of R&D, like they're putting in like years in some cases. You know, I've got a friend, Lauren of Loka Food, and it's like a potato queso. You
• 11:07
  a plant-based cheese dip. And that process, like she's still going through co-packer trials and stuff. And my process to get my recipe, I mean, I was already making it because that's a long time chocolate chip cookie recipe I had had and had made for many years. And I just made a way to make it safe to eat by replacing the eggs. So I still serve the same recipe for like our chocolate chip and s'mores and everything. Like we've had a lot of the flavors for a long time since the beginning.
• 11:36
  And minor tweaks like change the amount of salt or something once we had to scale up quite large, you know, doing 200 pound batches versus a three pound batch at home is a different game, but still preservative free still with ingredients that you'd find in your kitchen. So yeah, it was pretty quick to like the recipe we had and the feedback off the bat was just mind blowing, you know, everyone loved it. And like, it wasn't too sweet. Um,
• 11:58
  In the beginning, didn't have much competition. You know, you couldn't go to the grocery store and find edible cookie dough. And now that more have started to come out, we do get a lot of feedback. That's like the competition sort of tastes like cookie dough frosting. And then ours, they're always like, it tastes like homemade cookie dough because it really still a recipe that you could have made at your house. So not too many crazy iterations on that. We just keep coming up with new flavors. So we release new seasonal flavors almost every month. Yeah, I love that.
• 12:24
  And so in the beginning, it's just you, you're carrying all this stuff around, logging it back and forth, obviously a hard slog, obviously lots of hustle. At what point can you start to scale it and how do you scale a business like that?
• 12:39
  I think I hit the first point of like, okay, I need to figure out how I'm going to get some help because I can't keep growing the business if I'm the one working in the business every day. Because like you said, it was literally blood, sweat, tears, bruises to like get through the first two months. And then I had one week about two months in where I had an event every single day for seven days in a row.
• 12:58
  including one that was like serving 800 people. And it wound up by myself because a friend that was going to help me bailed. And so I had to serve 800 people at this office alone, which like, that's a lot of cookie dough scoop. But I'm like, big smile on, like talking to the crowd, trying to like tell the people who are waiting, you know, I'm getting with you as fast as I can. It was crazy, but got to the end of that week.
• 13:20
  Took a very long nap. And then I woke up and was like, oh, crap, I don't have any events this week. Like I was in it so much that now all of this momentum and bookings I have, like there's nothing else this week. So I just had the food part that I was working at.
• 13:36
  And I kind of had this light bulb go off that like I could use some help on continuing the outreach with catering. So I had a friend join sort of as like a catering events admin assistant kind of stuff for bookings and invoicing. And then got my first part time employees to start working the food park because we were able to go seven days a week at one point.
• 13:55
  I had two employees that were just kind of trading days and whatnot. And then since it was still like prepping for the event at my apartment, I think back now how insane it was like they both had keys to my apartment so that they could come in and restock cookie dough and everything during the week. If I was out at a different event or something, just crazy what you do to make it happen. But yeah, it was kind of that moment of like, okay, I'm going to need some help if I can grow this. And then
• 14:19
  We really leaned into brick and mortar storefronts for the first three years. We're now exclusively direct to consumer online. So we ship nationwide in the United States, and we're working on getting into grocery stores. But the storefront side, there's a very obvious path there for needing help and needing staff because most of our storefronts open 14 hours a day, seven days a week, definitely open on holidays because those are the busy days when people want to come to a tourist location or whatnot to try out some cookie dough. So
• 14:46
  And yeah, the staffing grew from there. And it's an interesting journey. I have never actually directly managed someone at Intel in all those years. I'd run teams or been a project manager, but direct employee underneath me hadn't happened. And so it's funny to go into starting your own business because suddenly you're the ultimate manager to everybody that's going to join the company.
• 15:07
  It took a lot of professional development, trying to work on how to be the best manager I could be as well and understand what that took, which all of it requires a little bit more help once you get there. But I certainly let the sales lead me to that. It wasn't day one that I said, okay, I'm going to hire a VP of marketing and a finance person and a this and that. You do it all in the beginning. And then you figure out, okay...
• 15:29
  I hire for what you suck at, you know? I hire for things that like I could learn, but maybe like don't need to, right? Like accounting, for example, I hired an accounting partner really quickly because it wasn't going to be an area of bookkeeping and whatnot that I wanted to like dig into and learn. And it's an area you don't want to mess up, like hire a lawyer, hire an accountant, if that's not your core competency. Whereas marketing, I was able to support more heavily for the long run because I really love that area. Came more naturally to me. Right, got it.
• 15:58
  And so when you were kind of getting into this switching moment from going all these storefronts that you have and doing more events and that kind of thing to then switching to direct to consumer, selling exclusively online through your own website, was that driven by demand? People saying, hey, can I buy this online elsewhere? Or how did it come about that you made the switch?
• 16:20
  Yeah. And I think it ties to like sort of the beginning of the company where it's like, how can I even sell this? You know, what are the ways that it will work to sell it? It was probably six months into the company that I got my first call of someone saying, hey, do you sell wholesale? I'd love to resell your product in my ice cream shop. And I'm like,
• 16:36
  Yes, of course we do. You know, it's like you just go on and Google like how to get wholesale pricing and like, I'll send you my pricing after this call. Thank you. So we start to dabble in everything in the beginning. It was like catering, e-commerce. You know, we had it available on our site pretty much from the beginning that you could order it online, but it just wasn't our focus. And, you know, you can have something puttering along sort of on the side, but it's only once you really put some focus and attention on it, particularly for online, once you start putting some advertising towards it.
• 17:06
  it won't really be such a significant part of your business. So the big shift happened around November of 2019. My husband had joined the company as co-CEO. And it was like a breath of fresh air to have someone who's got such a operations and finance mind join my sort of like dreamer salesy marketing mind that I have and kind of break me down to reality with big decisions and the financial side of things. So we had to sit down late 2019 and I was like,
• 17:33
  We need to get another channel to be large enough to help support how big the brick and mortar has become that like we can't have the storefronts be our everything. And it's literally, as anyone listening to this knows, like a fortune teller, because just a few months later, we would be forced to only rely on something else besides storefronts.
• 17:51
  with forced closures with the quarantine. So we luckily had gotten all those engines moving at the very end of 2019. And it gave us just that runway we needed. We went from, I believe we did 19,000 in sales in January of 2020, 49,000 in February, 180,000 in March, and this is all online. And then 375,000 in April of 2020.
• 18:15
  So this transition for just like four months or so from that November discussion was absolutely insane on the operations side for one, but so telling on the financial side to say, this is really viable as a great channel for us and
• 18:33
  And then of course, in March, you know, we faced the shutdowns with quarantine. So mid-March, you know, we had like 24 hours notice that we had to shut down our storefront for sort of an undetermined period of time. Like none of us knew what was going to happen. It was just this like these mysterious emails coming from, you know, your mall management and whatnot that like...
• 18:50
  The governor has pushed out a mandate. Everything's going to close by noon tomorrow. So we rented a U-Haul at like 5 a.m. that next morning and went down and moved out as much as we could from the store so that we'd be able to keep filling our online orders. Found a commercial kitchen within a day that we could move to in northern Vegas here in Nevada.
• 19:10
  And just shifted our entire operation because we were running graveyard shifts at the time to be able to keep up with our online orders and like produce through the night pack and have everything ready for the pickup by like 10 in the morning. It was madness. It was absolute madness. I cannot believe we survived. I mean...
• 19:25
  Is and I, my husband, we were doing some of the graveyard shifts. And then you're also running the business. So like all day we would need to work. So we, some mornings came home at like five in the morning, slept for like three or four hours, and then we just have to get up and be back in meetings and doing the day work of keeping the business running. So.
• 19:42
  It was a dark time, but also really awesome that we were seeing something work so well online. So the trials and tribulations all through the year, you know, realizing that like with the store reopening and tourism still taking such a hit, which still today, you know, we're not back to normal. Things aren't flying again. So yeah.
• 20:00
  Yeah, we just had to make that decision that it's only going to hold us back and sort of drain us of the capital that we do have if we have to keep operating the store at a loss. So we made the decision to close the store. It was very emotional as an entrepreneur because you put like your heart and soul into something, especially, you know, it was like this dream I had had to bring a booze free cookie dough bar to the strip.
• 20:22
  And like, it looks so awesome. And, you know, we went all in with our neon signs and stuff that people could take pictures in front of. But, you know, just made the most sense. Like if I wanted the mission of what DOPE stands for and believes in around mental health and addiction recovery to live on and like honestly reach more people, I needed to be able to focus on e-commerce. And so we did that and just not looking back, you know?
• 20:44
  All systems go. It sounds incredible though. Wow. That sounds like crazy growth. I want to dig in a little bit more to your marketing side of things for the e-commerce store. So when you were growing like those crazy month after month, you know, doubling, doubling, doubling, was that just a hundred percent ads? Is that it?
• 21:03
  I mean, not 100% ads because there are one like return customers, people start to come back to buy again, typically within one to three weeks is like our return customers cycle rate. So if they're going to rebuy. So that started to help as well as things were building. Then it was like people are coming back to buy or gifting seasons come, you know, or they're buying it for Mother's Day, maybe or things like that. So started to have a little bit of a role in there. But certainly 80 to 90% was coming from ads. And then word of mouth, you know, literally.
• 21:29
  We definitely are a very like social share worthy brand. Like we love for people to be able to share it. And so that starting to build was just this great momentum, you know, of like more and more posts every week getting put out their stories with us getting tagged, um, of people enjoying it. And then all their followers saying like, Whoa, this is so cool. Like a cookie dough company can ship to your house. And it was just wild to watch it. Like every week we're like, Oh my God, like 400 boxes are going up this week. You know, and then all of a sudden it was like 3000 boxes a week in April. And we just couldn't believe it. Wow.
• 21:58
  So crazy. But yeah, paid ads are the big thing there. Like Facebook, Instagram, and Google were our big focus points. And if you're to fast forward to today, is that how you're still acquiring new customers? Or do you have different channels that are performing really well for you at the moment?
• 22:15
  Yeah, Facebook's still our biggest spender for sure. So we're putting around $100,000 a month on Facebook ad spend. We do a smaller amount on Google and then testing on YouTube. But what we found with YouTube, for anyone that's advertised there, you'll see it's more about
• 22:30
  you get to these areas that are more brand awareness and like helping the halo effect, like overall, someone's exposed to it on a YouTube ad, then maybe they're more likely to purchase when they are retargeted and they see a Google ad or Facebook ad. So we sort of have some areas now that like, because we've gotten to this level of spend, it's like, you can see the incremental performance, like grow on Facebook, because we're running ads in new areas that people are getting exposed to the brand.
• 22:56
  one brand new area we've started to push into is tiktok and we're seeing great performance there both on the organic side and the paid like tiktok is just crushing it it's so cool um we got launched on tiktok maybe two weeks ago he's so cool it's so neat it's just like
• 23:12
  It rewards interesting stuff. You know, at the end of the day, if you put something interesting out there and enough people find it fascinating to watch, it just helps to fuel it and fuel it because TikTok will keep sending it out to larger groups of people and seeing how it performs and how much they engage with that content. So we had an influencer's post get like 500 views overnight. She did some behind the scenes filming with me at our facility here. Yeah.
• 23:37
  And it was just so neat to see those sessions like go up like crazy organic sessions to our site from people checking us out. It's awesome. Wow, that is crazy and sounds totally amazing. And I guess when those kinds of things happen, it's all about doubling down and going really deep into those things that are working.
• 23:56
  Yeah. And figuring out like how to make damn sure you can keep up on the fulfillment side. Because when it starts to go up, you're like, oh my gosh, like, you know, are we going to run out of this flavor? And like, you know, we called our co-packer, like do whatever it takes to get more red velvet cookie dough because we cannot sell out right now. So, yeah, we've really been like...
• 24:15
  We've really been on it to just make sure you can keep feeling what's happening and ride the wave when it comes because it's so neat to see a large influx of people coming to your site that have otherwise never found out about you. Right. Totally.
• 24:30
  You mentioned in the beginning you were on Shark Tank. So I'd love to talk about the Shark Tank episode and, you know, what happened and what you think of the experience in hindsight. Yeah, totally. Hindsight's 2020, as they say, but I'm still very glad that I went on the show. It was super fun. I went through an open casting call, sat on a curb in San Francisco at like six in the morning and gave it my shot. You get like 90 seconds to tell them why you'd be, you know, the best entrepreneur for the show.
• 24:55
  And at the end of the 90 seconds, they were like eating the cookie dough and like called over the executive producer Mindy to like come and try it. And she's like, oh my gosh, like this is so good. I've had this other cookie dough company and this one's so good. I'm like, okay, my 90 seconds is up. Do I need to like leave or is it okay that I'm still standing here, you know, but it was a good sign. I just felt like, okay, that went well.
• 25:15
  But they're just like this huge leave you hanging kind of thing. You know, you just wait and wait and wait. And you start getting all this like mental talk that, you know, it wasn't good enough and they don't want you. And then you get the call back and you're like, oh, my God, I can't believe it. And then submit, you know, a video submission and then more paperwork. And I think I signed away my first born child. It was like...
• 25:34
  such an extensive contract. And I was, I was not taking my own advice that I have now. I don't even think I had a lawyer read the contract. I just remember being like, you know, it's Shark Tank, like there's no way I can redline their contract. They're going to be like, yeah, just sign it or don't come on the show. So
• 25:50
  I was just so excited about it and signed away to get on and slowly but surely got through all those rounds and phone interviews and whatnot. And then was chosen to film for the show. And the date to go down and film was actually like the day before my three year sobriety anniversary. So it was a really cool like aligning of things. It was like, OK, I'm doing something good. I'm doing something right here.
• 26:11
  And we had launched our Dope for Hope initiative within the company to really have an impact on mental health and addiction earlier that year. So I was just so passionate and excited. And, you know, you know your business better than anybody else. So going up in front of these five, you know, crazy, wealthy and experienced and successful entrepreneurs,
• 26:30
  It was just like, yeah, I can't wait to tell them what I'm doing. You know, they're totally going to want a piece of this. And then in the episode, I was really proud of myself. I knew my numbers crazy. I didn't mess up my pitch or anything. And then they all ended up going out for reasons around it, not being healthy. I was like,
• 26:48
  you know, with the obesity epidemic, and it's cookie dough, and, you know, it can't get behind companies that say, let's eat more or something. And I was like, what's happening? You know, my brain was just like, cannot compute, like, I didn't expect to be debating that it was like, cookie dough, you know, like, it is a dessert, and, you know, an indulgence, and all the work that we do for your mental health, and that, you know, you can treat yourself once in a while with some cookie dough. So,
• 27:11
  I still, you know, left feeling really confident. They had said just great things. I still will save all those quotes that I got from them saying complimentary stuff about my skills as an operator and sophistication as a store owner and whatnot. But yeah, didn't want in. And then so when I turned, I like waved and clicked my heels and like started walking down the hallway and everything and the doors closed behind me.
• 27:33
  And I just lost it like full emotional cliff dive, this build up you have like this moment is the moment and I'm going to do it. And you think it's going to end one way and it totally goes another way. And I was just in hysterics, you know, and the camera is so close to your face and they're walking backwards so close to you to get every emotion and reaction. And I was just like a mess. I was like, please, you know, trying to hide behind the producer and stuff to get out of the camera.
• 27:58
  And then they ended up not airing that, which like a big applause to their team, because that would have been great television. You know, it's like, here's this entrepreneur, like really feeling the feelings. And it certainly shows how emotionally attached entrepreneurs are to their business. But yeah, they didn't air it. So that was like forever kind of this little known fact about the show that I look so confident during the set. But at the end of the day, you know, we all have feelings and we all have emotions about what we want to happen. And, you know, when those expectations are not fulfilled.
• 28:28
  And what was the impact, though, of it still going to air and, you know, the after effect of being on the show? Because I'm sure it still drives, you know, crazy awareness and crazy attraction to your brand and to your business.
• 28:42
  Yeah, it's absolutely worth it for that side as well. I mean, when you're done filming, you're told, you know, this may or may not air. They do film more than will air in a season. And if it doesn't air, you can never speak about it again. So needless to say, I took like a mental health day the day after filming, because I was just so destroyed from like, oh, I didn't get a deal and now will they air it? But it is a television show. You know, they want entertaining people and good entrepreneurs and bad entrepreneurs. You know, they like to show kind of both sides. And I was certainly trying to make it
• 29:11
  entertaining at the least. So it did end up airing. I got a call two weeks before it was going to air and we got together a little viewing party. I think we had like 50 people, you know, come over to watch it. And it was a blast, like so surreal to see it go live on television. And then your phone's like dinging with all these messages and Twitter messages and
• 29:29
  The internet was genuinely like so nice about the episode. Like I was like, oh God, you know, someone's going to like destroy me for like my haircut or that my like shirt looks stupid or, you know, something. But no, people were so nice. Like there was no internet trolling from that episode really. It was just...
• 29:45
  how did she not get a deal? Like that girl knew her stuff. And like, how did she not get one of the sharks? So very cool to see that. Very cool to see like the traffic on your site pickup. The only regret I have is that we didn't have such a focus on e-commerce at the time. So many people, when it still continues to rerun, don't assume that we ship, you know, they think we're just storefronts. We were on there raising funds to open the Las Vegas store. So there's not really this instant like,
• 30:09
  oh, I could send this to, you know, my grandma, like in New Hampshire or whatever. It's like, oh, I'll see them when I'm in Vegas next time. You know, I think some people see it and just assume it's for stores. So we still get a great pickup, like days that it airs, we get another, like, you know, 10,000 sessions to the site or something. They have rerun it a number of times every like month and a half or so, it seems we get a big influx of Shark Tank viewers who are like, hey, we just saw you on the show. And, you know, it's awesome when they make it to our site. Now
• 30:39
  That's a really interesting insight for anyone who's also in that like brick and mortar space and to make sure that you think about the future of your e-commerce if you're planning to go down that route, which I'm sure these days everyone must be thinking that way. Yeah. Wow. What advice do you have for women who have a big idea and want to launch their own business?
• 31:00
  Advice number one is just do it. Advice number two is read this book, You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero. I read this book a couple months before I ended up quitting my job and it was a great book. You know, you have to get yourself mentally in a place where you're ready to go after your own thing and make your own. And the book really helped with this like internal confidence that you're not going to be
• 31:22
  If I'm doing what I love and what I'm passionate about, everything else will fall into place, you know, and like that you have this intrinsic capability to generate wealth and like you will be able to find a way and knowing what your backup plan is. Like for me, I was like, I'm going to go, I'm going to try this thing. And if it doesn't work, I can either go apply for another job at Intel or I can take that experience and go find another position somewhere else. Know that even because you're sitting there thinking of a cool entrepreneur idea, you
• 31:49
  you're probably a really employable person. You've got a lot of skills and interest and creativity and capabilities that would make you employable in the future. And having your own venture for any period of time is a great thing to put on your resume that you had the gumption and the wherewithal to go and try and start something and create it no matter how it really ended. As long as you learn from that experience, it's a valuable add to your resume. So I think of it like you're just career building, if nothing else, you're going to be better off in the future.
• 32:16
  And then the upside is like, holy cow, you might make your passion your life. You know, you might wake up every day and get to talk about cookie dough. Like, I don't know how that happened, but it's real life now. It's really all in your hands. That's amazing. I love that. That is so cool.
• 32:33
  We are up to the six quick questions part of the episode. I ask every woman on the show these same quick questions at the end so that in a few years time we can look back and see if there were any trends or interesting things that came out of it. So question number one is, what's your why? Why do you do what you do?
• 32:50
  to break the stigma around mental health and addiction recovery. I feel like after getting sober myself and realizing that I was not the only person going through something like this, yet I felt so alone when I was, it's like there just needs to be a bigger platform for this. So we all feel a little less scared to talk about what's not so shiny in our lives. Great mission. Great purpose to have. Yeah. Question number two is what's the number one marketing moment you've had that's made the business pop? Hmm.
• 33:20
  I mean, it's given to say Shark Tank, probably. That's certainly like one big ongoing thing that becomes sort of a badge of honor for the company that has the biggest impact. We've tried some work in the newsletter blast, you know, working with a large newsletter to be a sponsor or whatnot.
• 33:36
  Those are good, but yeah, the long lasting and like really getting to get your story out there. Like I really shared my story on Shark Tank and now that continues to rerun globally. You know, we get messages from people in India, Australia, all over the world saying, wow, I love what you're doing and I'm inspired to start my own. Literally, I just got an email like that. Someone starting a cookie business in India because she saw what we did on Shark Tank and wanted to write and say that she's doing it. So yeah.
• 34:01
  Yeah, it's pretty cool. I love that. Wow. That's so special. Wow. I love that. Yeah. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What are you reading? What are you listening to at the moment? What email newsletters do you subscribe to?
• 34:17
  Yeah, I subscribe to the morning brew. It's a great quick, while you have your morning coffee way to get the news and been there for a few years. I know they just got bought for like $75 million by business insider. Crazy for the founders of the morning brew. But hopefully they keep this quick, funny, bite sized version of the news that's really easy and digestible, but like really based in information, not just fluffy stuff. You know, I don't need to read Cosmo in the morning.
• 34:43
  No offense if Cosmo's listening. But yeah, so I do the morning brew and then I'm hanging out on Clubhouse. So I'm trying to get more involved there. Clubhouse is basically a live podcast that you can chime in on. So you're able to get in the room with some really interesting experts. And I found a group of Shark Tank alumni that are doing some sessions on there. So there's just some fun stuff on there to really get in front of new people in an authentic
• 35:07
  knowledge sharing way. Like everyone's there to just share and engage on topics they care about. And most of the time feels less salesy. You know, people aren't just like trying to push their product. There's no ads going on. It's like a social media platform that's pure for the moment. I have found a few really interesting conversations that I've loved like listening into and being a part of. And you're right. There's crazy people that you come across who are in these chats and you're like, oh, yeah.
• 35:33
  This is so cool. It's an interesting like rise to its success. I'd be interested to look back at how they've really gone about reaching this kind of mass, mass, mass kind of exclusivity and desire. Like every other moment I'm on my social media and I see people being like, do you have an invite for Clubhouse? And I'm like, I'm pretty sure I've heard them talk about that there's a back door and you just sign up and they'll let you in anyway. Yeah.
• 35:58
  Oh, funny. Yeah, it is exactly that, though, that's made it so hyped is like, anything in history, if you look at like really successful stuff over the last five to 10 years, it always has had some element of like sign up for the exclusive blank or like sign up to be the first or you have to tell someone else because we all want to feel this elevated sense of like coolness that like we knew about something. And now we can share the opportunity with someone else that elevates you somehow in the societal hierarchy. So yeah.
• 36:25
  Though in a weird way, it's a chance to level the playing field. And you're, you know, in a room with the sharks, the shark tank are actually on there too. So like, you can jump in a room with them. Perez Hilton was like leading a small chat the other day. So it's leveling. But at the same time, you felt like you're in the club, like you're cool that you were let in. So they did a great job, just the hype factor overall. Totally. Anything you can do as a business to make people feel like they got the in, they got that inside scoop as a win. Yeah.
• 36:52
  I mean, the Elon Musk conversation when he was talking, I forget who he was talking with, but, you know, that conversation and you see all the people joining the chat and then them being like, we're having some tech issues. Like, this is the most time, like most amount of people that everyone has been joining. And I was like, oh, this is weird and cool to watch in real time.
• 37:11
  Totally. He just announced he's doing one with Kanye West or something. And I'm like, oh, they're going to destroy the app. Like the app is not ready for that. I don't even know what's going to happen. Oh, my God. It's definitely going to break. Holy moly. Yeah. Question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM or your PM rituals that keep you feeling happy and successful and motivated.
• 37:31
  It's like cheesy and cliche to say self-care, but when you're grinding as many hours as you are, being okay with the roller coaster is really important. Like I found the ups and the downs of intensity with the company sometimes allow for me to stop at 3 p.m. on a weekday and have that afternoon to go for a nice run or make a really nice dinner and watch a show, like turn on the television. And then there's periods of time that are like,
• 37:55
  I have not turned on my TV for the last three weeks, you know, and it's just been in the office till 9pm. And I guess I just have found, if I don't fight it, if I just know that this is just the phase that I'm in, it doesn't hurt as bad. You're not like, oh, I'm suffering. I'm like not able to relax or do the things I want. And just focus on where can you, you know, like this morning, got up at 430. I took a bath.
• 38:18
  and like got to relax in the morning. And then I started work. I sat down here at like 645. So you have your times that you can carve out and what do you do with them? You know, what's going to be recharging for you? Like, I'm not upset with myself that I didn't go to the gym this morning. I was really tired from sitting in a chair until 9pm yesterday in my office. So I took a bath this morning, you know, so it's like trying to find the nuggets that you can and not being so resistant to how much work it really does take to get where you are and to get where you want to go.
• 38:49
  Question number five is if you only had $1,000 left in your business bank account, where would you spend it?
• 38:57
  been there. I mean, we have been there. The financial situation of a company is so interesting because you have to be so tight on your forecasting and your numbers to know what's going to happen with your business. And at the end of the day, when it does start to get low like that, you do whatever it takes to stretch out payments with vendors that can accept it, that can accept longer terms to get paid or...
• 39:21
  ask for those extensions like it's very easy to get caught up in this like no we're going to go under because this is due on the 25th or whatever and you know we went through a period like that we had overspent to build one of our stores and it was like we got really close but it just took I'm gonna pay you this is gonna work out but here's what I can do you know I cannot pay the full thing today but I can pay you half today and half in 30 days or something so we have gone through periods like that if today we only have a thousand dollars left um
• 39:49
  I'm a big proponent of the don't cut the marketing budget when you're at the final stretch, just spend it responsibly. You know, if you had just a little bit left, spend it ideally in an area where you've done some testing and have a sense of what the return could be. So you can start to grow from there. You know, that new customer acquisition is really important if you're doing it in an area that you know can provide.
• 40:07
  perform and that you have the tools in place to make the most of those customers. Like retention marketing is everything. If you spent those thousand dollars to acquire a hundred customers, and then you spent nothing on being sure you could retain them and like get them to repurchase again, it's all for not. And you're going to keep spinning your wheels. So that's one big kind of like I'd spend 800 on prospecting and 200 on retention marketing, you know, and make sure I had something still going to make sure we were going to get it to continue. Yeah.
• 40:35
  Right. That's a really good insight there. Good tip.
• 40:39
  Question number six. Last question is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset and approach when things go to shit as they inevitably do? Yeah, they inevitably do. Depending on how go to shit it is. I'm like, you know, the fight or flight thing. And it's like, I just drop into fight mode and it's like, we're just going to do it and figure it out. It's like those days I was telling you when we're doing the transition, like having to leave our store and go to a co-packer and we've been doing graveyard shifts.
• 41:07
  It was crazy. And like, I really thought like the ceiling was gonna fall when and like ceiling was on fire when we got told we had to shut down the store. But you just jump in and do it. You know, there wasn't like, I'll just throw up my hands and give up. It was like, we just got to keep going. A marketing campaign doesn't pan out.
• 41:23
  What did we learn? You know, like, great. Now we know. We paid to learn. We paid to learn that that isn't going to be a good area for us. And let's make a better decision next time. So I just try to do a good job with like postmortems, understanding, you know, what went well and what didn't and being sure that you can make better decisions in the future.
• 41:41
  denial failures like shark tank i think of you know with like getting told no there but it's just being able to like reset yourself ground yourself in what you have been able to accomplish and then i got another investor a couple of months after the filming so i kept on and you know believed in what i was doing and made sure that someone else did too so just keep moving keep on moving
• 42:02
  Kelsey, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Female Startup Club today. I have loved hearing about your company and it sounds so delicious. I'm excited to keep watching you grow and for all the cool things that come next. Awesome. Thank you so much.
• 42:21
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 42:45
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 43:08
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 43:24
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 43:49
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 44:11
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.