Latest / The Growth Class with Phil Masiello / Sustainable Scaling: Rethinking Retail Growth Through Wholesale and Walmart with Misha Kuryla

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Sustainable Scaling: Rethinking Retail Growth Through Wholesale and Walmart with Misha Kuryla · The Growth Class with Phil Masiello

• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Hey everybody and welcome back to the Growth Class.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Phil Massiel, and today we're talking about what it actually takes to build, scale, and sustain a beloved consumer brand from scratch.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Back in 2005, our guest today was sitting at home on maternity leave with her first child watching a news segment about a booming cupcake trend.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Out west, instead of just watching from the sidelines, she decided to fire up her home oven.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: She baked a few batches and forced them into the hands of friends, family, and anyone else who would taste them.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: What started as a kitchen counter experiment quickly transformed into a relentless hustle, pounding the pavement for wholesale accounts, pivoting through retail challenges, managing rapid expansion across South Florida and scaling a powerhouse dessert brand that now bakes tens of thousands of fresh treats daily.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: She's the founder of the iconic Misha's Cupcakes, a true testament to what happens when execution grid and absolute operational dedication collide.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: So thanks for coming on to the show, Misha.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that beautiful introduction, Phil.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: That was very nice.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good at the intros.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, I sound great, I have to say.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, who is this girl?
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: I want to meet her.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:33
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: So why don't you tell us the story?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I know I touched on it a little bit, but why don't you tell us the background story?
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: What happened?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: How'd you get there?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: How'd you get to where you are?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And where am I right now?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I I I started when I had my daughter.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: She was five months old.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, I'd heard about sprinkles in California.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh my gosh, I can do that.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because I didn't want to go back to work.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And at that time, I was doing I had been working for UPS and then I was doing real estate.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought I wanted to be a full-time mom.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I realized that I'm that's a lot harder than going to work.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I don't know.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I started doing this and I just did from the house.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: My ex-husband was horrified.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my parents were okay with it, which was surprising.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it just, it just happened, you know.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I I gave a lot of free stuff that first month.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I did this breast cancer event where I donated cupcakes, and that's where I got my first wholesale account.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So it kind of snowballed from that time then on.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: So then, you know, all the other things happened.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's great.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So and then you you you opened up, you wound up with like three stores, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so it that was 2005, and then 2006, I was still doing it from the house, and it was chaotic because people were coming over all the time, and it got to be annoying, like on a Sunday.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we ended, I was like, hmm.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I opened up a warehouse and a kiosk in a mall in 2007, and that was great.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was just it was open every day, with the exception, I think, of Christmas and and Thanksgiving.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it was intense.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking, hmm, I'd rather have a like a real store, you know.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Back in 2008, the dream was to have a store.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: In 2026, not so much.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I opened the store in 2008 and it was a really big hit.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it was cool because when we opened, we put paper on the windows because we were like not open yet, but we were doing all the stuff, you know, to get it ready without parents.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and people were like, knock, knock, knock.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So we would let people in be like, here's your order.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so they thought it was so cool, and it kind of created, you know, that feeling of like scarcity.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, we can't get them.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was 2008, 2009 came along, I got pregnant again, and then 2010 opened another store, 2011 a third store, and it kind of went like that fourth, fifth, sixth, and then up to the point where we had nine stores.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: I like 2019.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we were at nine.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So And then so every time you had a kid, you you opened up a store?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I have nine children.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um can you imagine?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was funny.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel like I would see people and they'd be like, You're pregnant again.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I've it's only three times.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like, you know, I think you have five, so who's talking here?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll tell you, they were rough to carry, man.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was rough on me.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_02: You're not kidding.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: No, raising kids is is very, very difficult.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, people don't uh there's so much that you have to do.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's so much easier to go to work someplace than it is to deal with, you know, kids, especially when you have different ages and they're all coming up and you've got to get them all to a different place and everybody's homework, everybody needs everybody needs something different, and everybody eats something different.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, everybody eats something different, but at the table you're like, that's all you're getting.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: You cook anything else.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not cooking anything else because we didn't we weren't able to do that.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: We had uh we had a vegan, a vegetarian, not even you indulged it all, I see.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we had no choice, you know.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean what they starve.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: My God, it was it was it was unreal.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: That was the hardest time.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: That was the hardest part of uh of raising kids was was meal time.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: The food and cooking for then you guys are seven.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you have a dog or two dogs, right?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know what they get fed.
• 5:45
  unknown: Yeah.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: Dogs are easy.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: Less so than children.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the dogs were easy.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: They would eat the food that I put in front of them.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't care, but you know.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: If only kids would do that.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I know, right?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: You just take them out to to to pee and poop and uh and you know, feed them and everybody's happy.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And they're fine.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Open up the door and let them out in the yard and they're ecstatic.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: You can't do that with kids and diapers.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, you can't.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's laws against that.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: No, I know.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: Especially not on TV, but um so yeah, so so so then so then how has it been going?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like how is life going?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you always have ups and downs in business.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there's been ups and downs for sure.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think that those first years, they it was exciting.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um and you know, when you're really enthusiastic and you feel like all in, yeah, it flows, you know, and and I worked a lot.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my daughter would she jokes about it, she's like, Oh, I don't remember um seeing you my first five years.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh god, you don't remember your first five years anyway.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, but it it's true.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I really was in and I would go to the bakery at four, four fifteen, and then sometimes leave like at seven.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: But in the in between, I would go at four, then come back, get the kids ready for school, take the kids to school while my ex is sleeping, and then you know, then I have to pick them up in the afternoon, that kind of thing.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a lot, you know, and and I really liked working, and sometimes it's actually easier to be there, and so I was.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so and it helped with the growth and I and the excitement of like, okay, we have one store, two stores, three stores.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like this almost like an accumulation, which now I see as like, oh, you know, when you pile stuff on top of stuff on top of stuff, and um and sometimes that's not the greatest thing in the long run, right?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, and and there's been an evolution from when I first started 21 years ago to now with the way that people purchase and um how they want to receive their products.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: We weren't doing deliveries back then, not that much.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um, although I'll never forget my first wedding cake that I delivered with one of the girls that I had this wonderful employee that she started with me in my house.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: We made this wedding cake, it was beautiful, three stories buttercream.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: We had to deliver it from Miami to Kibiscayne, and you have to go over this, you know that bridge, right?
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that bridge.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to go over the bridge and we're going over the bridge.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: And she had it on her lap.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: We were new, we didn't know what to do here.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: That cake was like shaking, and it was I don't know, I'm looking over, I'm like, we're shaking, and she's like, it's moving, it's not looking good.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And we get there and the cake is like this, and the the bride, which to this day I still see her, she was so cool.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, no big deal, don't worry.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, we'll come back.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: We came back, we brought beer, we went and we fixed that cake until like nine o'clock that night.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank God the wedding was the next day.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: But so many times where you like things get messed up big time and you gotta figure it out, you know?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's a lot of that.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, we when I when my first business that I started when I was 27, which was not a it was a disaster, but not because the business was bad, but because I was not a good manager or leader.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, we it was a special Yeah.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was a specialty food business and we we made custom products, custom cakes, custom food, et cetera.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we used to do we had a storefront, you know, which was specialty food, but we also did an awful lot of catering.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh my background was food.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: My background was restaurants, and uh we did an awful lot of catering.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I can tell you that we we took this job one time in uh it was about an hour and a half north of the city.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: We were in New York.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: About an hour and a half north of the city.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, we had so we had to get like we had to get the truck, we had a a a box truck and we had a van, an extended van, and we had like we had to bring everything and we had to figure out how to keep the food warm because, you know, it's cold there.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was, you know, it was going to be an hour and a half drive, and there wasn't, you know, we weren't go we were going to this wedding that was out of it was uh along this river, and uh I think it was uh one of the, if I remember correctly, it was like one of the Rockefeller kids and they had this place that they called a fishing a fishing camp along this river up in Ellenville, New York.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I mean the place was massive, but we knew that we weren't gonna have anything to cook with, and like so I took I took the van and I said, let's just put all the food in the van and just cover the floor with sternos.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and that's what we did, and that became like our hotbox.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: That's hilarious.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, lit sternos.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, it gets better.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Danger.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's nighttime, right?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: We can't see anything.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: We get through the whole thing, we're breaking it down and everything, and we drive back, we get back to the store, it's about you know, midnight.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so I we pulled up to to uh we had back doors that opened up that you could pull the van in.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: We start emptying it.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And this one guy that worked for me is looking at the van, he goes, he goes, that's a weird paint job we have on this van.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said, What are you talking about?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's brown.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, Oh my gosh.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not really.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I went and I'm looking at it, all the paint had like had like bubbled up, and it was all a mess.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh my god, I can't believe it.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I just tried the paint job.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was great on the front, but it got to like the sliding side door, and everything behind that was just like I mean, it looked kind of cool unless you looked up close to it, but from far away it was like, oh, that's a custom paint job.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I bet you didn't do that again.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, no, no, no.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I never took anything that was further than a half an hour away after that.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was just trying to things we do.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you want the business, right?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because it was good money and you know.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I can remember moving cakes around.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like we never we never brought cakes fully assembled.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: We just wedding cakes, we always did them, assembled them there and brought the the stuff because what I learned.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you can't be transporting that stuff.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: No, you know, and and we weren't Googling apparently back then, like how do you transport a cake?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: We were just like, ah, let's go.
• 13:09
  unknown: Yeah.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Did it be like a couple of things?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I've been there.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Believe me, I've been there.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've thanked God for cool brides, though, let me tell you.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: I've done some stupid things with food in my life.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's a yeah.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: So when you got multiple stores, did you have did you go from store to store to store to store, or did you have people that you trusted in all those stores?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's always a problem.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, multiple stores.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: That is the problem.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when you're let's say you have multiple stores and you're fully funded and you're not, you know, bootstrapping and you're like, okay, I have these people, I can train these people, I can do this.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we did.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: We had managers in each store.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we I played around with different ways of of the business model, I guess, for the stores, because initially I would bake everything at this one spot in our main location.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was like, oh, well, maybe what we should do is because the transport to some of these would get messy.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: So the cupcakes and the cakes were getting like, eh.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was like, do we buy a freezer van or do we then just have everything baked here and then they decorate over there?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we did that for a little while.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: We did the decorating over there kind of thing for a while.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: But then like I go to the store and I'd be like, that's not how they look.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: They don't look like that.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: They're supposed to look like this.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So that got annoying.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So then it was like, okay, let's change this and make it so that it everything is done in the same spot.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that was good.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: There was always the transport issues, but you know, we had three vans and we would do whatever we'd air condition and all the things.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, I think it just became that it wasn't just having so many stores, it was all the people.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I would I knew all the people's names because I did the payroll, right?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: So, but then you don't end up knowing the people, right?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: Not in the way that that I knew the people when I first started.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And some of those that were with us back then are still with us now.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: But um it it dilutes, right?
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so in lieu of having like strong presence in each of the stores, you know, you end up going to this store more or that store more or the problem store less or more, depending upon who was working there.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I began to see that like the heart of the business, which really was me, right?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Me couldn't be everywhere.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I I had wonderful people that could kind of keep that going, that that feeling, but also we all were stretched pretty thin.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um and I started to realize that like that essence, that love, that feeling of like this is these are cupcakes, this is love, this is fun, it's happy, it's all that stuff.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: It was like not present in all the stores, you know.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I I don't like that.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: And over the years, there were so many times where we had these cool opportunities to, you know, do franchising, to do licensing, and we did like we did a couple, some guy I laughed now because he wanted to open a licensee, did it in like Bay, I don't know, it was up in the north, like probably 45 minutes away.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they were holding the cupcakes for like days, and we have a strict 36-hour policy.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: So people were kind, they're like, the cupcakes are bad, like impossible, but they were bad.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: So they were keeping them, they were getting old, they were getting moldy, so that didn't work.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then we would have people sign.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a kiosk in uh in Sellgrass Mills Mall.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it was far.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we we would visit, but also they were such a lovely couple, and they tried so hard, but it was expensive.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: So they're purchasing from me and then selling, but then they're paying that high rent of the ball.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we we tried a bunch of different things.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we had a spot in the Miami air, uh, the air their arena when they had the white heat thing, which was awesome.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: We've done stuff at the Marlins where we were there for that what's the all-stars thing, you know, where they're like throwing the ball and it's really cool.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: That was yeah, that stuff.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really I'm terrible at sports.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think I played sports, but I don't watch them.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Although watching those soccer games was hot.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: That was fun.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the uh the World Cup.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that was fun.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was neat.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we had a pool.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: I never paid much attention to soccer until the World Cup.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: We wound up somebody in our neighborhood uh set up a pool, and you know, it was just fun to it was fun to uh just talk about it and do it every day because yeah you know.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're so exciting.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: Did you okay?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: I would watch them in Spanish.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: The reason being is that the English version, so boring.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, oh goal, yay.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: The Spanish version with that long goal, the way they say it.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just awesome.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's so exciting.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's much more fun.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we didn't, you know, we were usually watching it after the fact because some of those games were on like during the day.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so we were watching it on, you know, whatever, telemundo or whatever we call it.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we didn't need the I don't I'm not a big fan of the commentators anyway.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: So it makes no difference to what you know, and I can understand what they're saying.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: I can't speak it, but I can understand it.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's like, you know, but it was fun in in the fact that we didn't pick our teams in the pool.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: It was like generated for us, so you know, you got your team, and then they were like telling you every day, you know, how you did.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I had um I had France and uh somebody, you know, the two other neighbors, one had Argentina, one had Spain.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And what I was doing was before every uh match, yeah, I would do something like I would create an AI image of the people.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like I would get a picture of you know, this guy Matt's wife Allison, she had uh Spain, and this other woman had Argentina, and so I turned her into a um a uh flamingo dancer, and I turned and I turned it you brought the party, I see.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did though.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: I just I would send them out every day to people, depending on the match, who they were playing, right?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I turned like Spain, she became a bullfighter, you know, and she was I forget who Spain, but then it came down to Spain playing Argentina, and uh which was fun.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I was just yeah, I was just creating all these AI images just for fun.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it was cracking everybody up.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they just couldn't wait for the next image to come out.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And oh my gosh.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, Mr.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: Creative.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: I like that.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was hysterical.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: It just makes it more fun.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: That and a cocktail, and then it's that it's a blast.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So like, you know, and then we would all we'd meet in the morning, and I didn't know, you know, I don't I still don't understand the rules of soccer, right?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: All I know is, you know.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you're bringing the ball down, you score, and that's great, but whatever.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, as long as it goes in the not the basket, the thing, whatever.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, whatever.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: The goal.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that I gotta tell you what I like about it is that they're short because those baseball games are like endless.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm with you.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: How are we on how are we on soccer?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you started you you said something.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: I digress.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: You you were talking about the the the uh what do you call it, the all-star game.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, that's right.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Those are fun.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right, because we were in all these different places and and had opened, and you know, we'd have like pop-up stuff and everything.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for for me when COVID happened, it was so life-changing because you had a moment where you stopped and you didn't want to stop.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe some people did want to stop and it and were able to take a break, and that was wonderful, right?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: But for us, it wasn't like, you know, we were rolling in the dough and we could be like, yeah, this takes six months off and it's all good, and I can, you know, find my Zen.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: It was more like, oh, we're like a restaurant type business.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: You got a month and that's it, right?
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: So from 75 people at that time, because I I think at that point I had eight stores.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: We were like, and it was I had five me and one driver and the girl that had started with me, Vanessa, who's been my CO forever.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, like what was that?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: One, two, three.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: So like another person.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was crazy.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I realized like This isn't sustainable.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: These big stores, they gotta go.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but you know, what could you do?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: So the negotiations of the rents with respect to paying them and not paying them because we were closed, so we weren't generating any kind of sales, and then shifting, like when you're thrown into that, I'm pretty good when it comes to emergency stuff.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: And Vanessa and I were like, okay, what do we do?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we we started saying, okay, we'll keep our wholesales because we had Mylams and we had we didn't have Whole Foods yet, but we had other places that we were selling to.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that kept us alive.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I love Mylams Market because they are just a lovely family and they pay every month on time.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's so great.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we said, look, who are the people that are really going crazy right now?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's the nurses, it's all the medical workers, right?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: So we set up a thing where people could donate and then we would match in the same amount of what they donated in cupcakes, and then we would deliver them.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it was great.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: People were wonderful.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we were delivering, and I'm here delivering to hospitals and all this stuff.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And then I realized, like, then they started saying that people with heart problems shouldn't be doing like the whole COVID thing.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I have some stuff, and it was like, oh.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we couldn't get anyone to deliver them at that point.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just like, you know, you figure stuff out and then you have to shift again.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so we did, we figured it out.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: We launched a website that you could actually order from by Mother's Day, and it saved us.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so there were all those things that saved us, right?
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: There was the PPP, then there was a restaurant revitalization, there was we applied for every grant.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was a lot that that kept us afloat, which now we're not so happy with, like the EIDL, which hello, but it kept us alive.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_01: And also at that point, I was like, I don't want to do this anymore.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like we need to change.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: So we closed some stores, and then it was like, where do we go to keep the business alive, growing?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: And how do we do this where we can stop with these stores, but not have so much fallout?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's not like I could say, okay, this store, this store, this store, I'm gonna close.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: No, you have leases, you have, you have rent, you have so these last, excuse me, these last few years have been difficult because as we are re you know, organizing, we're also making changes that have been difficult.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that there's nothing I I don't know.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh this is I've been doing this for all these years, but having a business and and sustaining it through like great times and bad times has got to be the biggest character building or character crushing, soul crushing at times experience and like such a mirror for all of my own issues, right?
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: In which I say, oh wow, these are my employees.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: I have to pay them.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm paying them from my pocket.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: These are my employees.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I want them to be okay.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And then when do you get to a point where it's like, yes, but I do need to make sure that I am taking care of myself, my family, all that stuff too.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, going from this like self-sacrifice, uh, you know, I'm keeping the business alive, to hey, when do we the pendulum swings all the way over here and then it's all the way over here, when do we get to the middle?
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: And now that's where I am, trying to get to the middle.
• 25:48
  unknown: Yeah.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's been quite the journey of ups and downs.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's definitely character building.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: COVID was uh was was a change.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people didn't make it out of it.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but that time flew.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're uh we're just about out of time.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: So any uh any any closing stuff, where can people find you?
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: They can go to what Misha's Cupcakes.com.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Phil.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they can go to Misha's Cupcakes.com.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um we also sell through goldbelly.com, which is great.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: If we if you need us to ship it to you, we can ship anywhere in the United States.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the cool part is as we've closed the stores, we've kept one store open.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: We have vending machines.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: There's two in the in the airport, um D21 and G15 in in Miami.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then we have one at FIU, this the university, and also at Aventura Mall.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: But the exciting part is that we're pivoting so that we focus our efforts on our wholesale.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: And we got into um Walmart.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so now we're gonna be selling them our cake jars.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: Super excited.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna start with Florida and then, you know, grow from there.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So find us in Walmart eventually, like hopefully soon.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: We need an investor.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: So if you know anyone, you let me know.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we need that.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we that's what we're looking for.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: All right, great.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was good speaking to you.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: Good to talk to you.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: You too.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: You're wonderful.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it very much.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: My app my my thank you.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: My pleasure.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have to go, and uh until next time, we will see you later.