Welcome to Season 15 of the Troubleshooting Innovation podcast. Molly Blakeley, founder and CEO of Molly Bz, talks about how she built a nationwide cookie brand from $150 and an InstaPot experiment. Sponsored by CoPack Connect.
In our first episode, we get to know Molly and learn what drove her to start a cookie company from Alaska with $150 in her pocket.
Learn more about this season here, and tune into Troubleshooting Innovation on Apple or Spotify.
Joanie Spencer: Hi Molly. Thank you so much for joining me on this five-week journey.
Molly Blakeley: I’m excited to be here. I think this is so fun. Thank you for asking me to do it. What an honor!
Spencer: I am the one who’s honored. And this is really exciting. This is our 15th season, and it’s cool to see how it’s grown. And I’ve been following you on social media for quite some time, and so this is a super honor to have you on the show and just hear how you’ve built this extraordinary company.
Blakeley: Well, thank you.
Spencer: So, we’re going to kick this off by introducing your product. It’s Molly Bz cookies and that’s Molly B-z. Can you just take a minute and sort of give me the elevator pitch on the brand and on the product?
Blakeley: Okay, so I’m a individually wrapped gourmet cookie company, and I started with my last $150 in a little tiny town in Alaska called Soldotna, and in just three years, I became a national brand.
Spencer: Amazing. You make it sound very simple. Like, that was an elevator pitch, and we went from the lobby to the third floor. And there’s a lot in between.
Blakeley: There’s a lot of story in between there!
Spencer: So, your story starts with the cookies, obviously, but it actually goes back way further. And you were born on entrepreneurialism. So you started this cookie company. They’re gourmet cookies. We’re gonna, over the next five weeks, we are gonna get to know these cookies really, really well. But in your words, you were raised in entrepreneurialism in — and I think I can quote you on this — ‘a full-blown circus of side hustles and big ideas.’
Blakeley: That’s exactly right.
Spencer: Can you walk me through it? And while you do that, I want you to explain the phrase ‘Raised by hustle, fueled by faith.’
Blakeley: It’s a lot to explain in a little tiny bit of time right now! But really, truly, my parents were serial entrepreneurs, and I just really learned not to be afraid to try anything.
So, in Alaska, my mom was the very first female auctioneer in all the Northwestern states. And so from that, she kind of just started birthing other things, and my dad would just get on it with her. So like, one day, she started a gift shop, and then my dad would like help build shelving or whatever. Then she went to a restaurant, and my dad would help place the grill and do all those things.
Then the restaurant was inside a mini mall that had a bowling alley. So then my mom bought the bowling alley without even asking my dad. And then she said, ‘And tonight we have a league, and I’m not sure what that is.’ And my dad came home and went to bowling mechanic school.
And during all of those things — and there were 22 businesses altogether — but in all of those things, I learned every business because my dad was getting all this education, and he was teaching it to me and my brother. So, like, if someone’s ball would get stuck, I’d know how to go and crawl in the back of a bowling machine and figure out whether a pin was in the way, or what to do, and all those things. Then it just became second nature to me. And none of it was scary because I was taught how to do it by my parents. So, I just knew, like, you just go for it, and if it doesn’t work out, then you just go for something else. But you have to at least try. I learned a million different ways to do that.
With the faith factor, we’re a pack of Christians. We love us some Jesus, and so whenever something would go hard or whatever, we would just pray and fast sometimes; tithing is a big part of it. And all the time, we would have breakthrough that would help us get to the other side. So I still do that today with my business.
Spencer: I’ve heard so many stories, and I’ve had a lot of guests on this podcast who have faith really foundational in their businesses. And it’s oftentimes a family business where faith is just a part of that upbringing. So, like in this industry, it’s not uncommon.
I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at your memoir, so I was able to get a lot of background information, but I did see that one of the businesses that your mom started there was sourdough involved. So, baking was always part of this entrepreneurial family of yours. What did you imagine you would be doing with your life? Did you imagine that you would become a baker with all these other experiences that you had, like while you’re fixing the pins?
Blakeley: I was going to go into fashion. I knew I was going to go into fashion. That was my, I was like, ‘Everything is just a segue to me being a fashion merchandiser.’ Because, in high school, that meant I was a professional shopper, and so I was totally down with that. The rest of it all just kind of fell into place. But I used to be known in my family — I have three little ones, well, not little anymore; I’m a grandma now — but I had three kiddos, and I was known for burning cookies. And so the fact that I now own a national cookie brand is a divine thing.
So, mom had Sourdough Sal’s, that was the name of [the restaurant], and they took sourdough bread, and they baked it in coffee cans. And then they would slice it up in big, thick slices — not little ones — and grill them up and put, you know, all kinds of meat on them, make burgers, the Yukon burger, the Alaskan burger, which were half-pound burgers on the sourdough bread and just loaded with stuff. And they were so, so good. But I never really got into baking back then. I watched it, I smelled it and I ate it, but I didn’t bake.
Spencer: Well, sometimes that’s all it takes.
Blakeley: Yeah, seeds were planted.
Spencer: There’s a little bit of osmosis there.
Okay, so let’s kind of time hop to your adulthood and your entrepreneurial journey. What were your businesses that you started? Because I do think that it’s very interesting what led you to those cookies. It wasn’t just on a whim.
Blakeley: No, no. It was not. So, do you want to start with the first business? Because I did 13 brick and mortars altogether. Or we can just start at the last or we can go a little like, skim across them all.
Spencer: Yeah, let’s skim across them all. I think that your journey is really interesting.
Blakeley: It’s something! So, my first one was Molly’s Flower Factory, and I started that because I was actually working at a grocery store flower shop. I was their department manager, and I got to the top of my pay scale, and I was making them lots of money. Like, it’s a big deal in any business if you’re up 2% from the year before. And I was up 110% some months. And so I said, you know, ‘I need a raise. I’m making you guys a lot more money than you’ve ever made in this department, like, I need a raise.’ And they said, ‘You’re at the top of your pay scale. There’s nothing we can do about this. It’s most you’re ever gonna make.’ And I thought, ‘Well, then I’m done.’ And I so I gave them my notice, and I didn’t know what I was gonna do. I just gave him my notice. I was like, it made me mad, you know? And I was like, ‘All right, I’m out of here.’ And I’m like, ‘Now, what am I going to do?’
So, I had all the information from running the flower department, like everything I needed. My mom, who — and dad — who owned this mini mall, had an availability in one of their spots. It was $1,500 a month, is what the people were paying before. And my parents did not give me a deal. They really believed that you had to make your own way. So, I went in there and I rented it out, but it was 3,000 square feet, and I had to borrow $10,000 on my dad’s credit card in order to do it. My parents were divorced by this time, so first $1,500 went to rent, and then I had to try to get flowers and vases and inventory. And I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I ended up, um, because it was a lot of space, I made it a craft co-op. So I rented out little booths, and it filled up all the inventory I needed, and then I made a commission off of their sales, and I also charged them for booth rent. So, that ended up paying my rent, plus I had a waiting list of 45 people that wanted a booth. So, it really did amazing. And the business ended up selling in a year and a half. So, I started with $10,000 and I sold it for 10 times my investment, which was $100,000, when it wasn’t for sale. I got two offers in one day, and I just sold it. So that was the flower part, and it was really fun.
This is before people wrapped vehicles with any sort of thing. But there was a sticker company next to me that did, like, signs and stuff. And I asked them if they take their decals and make my minivan — because it was my personal minivan — I said, ‘Will you make it look like the Scooby Doo van?’ And so they said, ‘Sure.’
They put big stickers everywhere, and we put ‘Flower Power’ on the front and put ‘The petal (like flower petal) to the metal’ on the back. And I drove it all over because it was my personal vehicle. And people were like, ‘What the hell is that?’ You know, because no one had done anything like that before. And then it I ended up getting a second van because we were so busy that the two flower shops that were in town that were my competition went out of business. Like, it was just a really good business. It did really well.
So, I sold it, and then I started a gift shop called Sassafras with four other ladies. And I wanted to be home with my two daughters, but I also wanted to not be bored, so we did this. We were supposed to work two days a week, and then close on Sundays. Our first month of sales, we did $51,000, but like $45,000 of it was mine, and they were pissed. They were not happy at all with me. And so, the competitiveness came in, and one of them offered to buy me out after month two, and I could see that it wasn’t going to go well, so I aborted mission on that.
And then I did one called The Perfect Present. And I took gift baskets that all hang in the ceiling, and then you had all these different gifts, like candles and lotions and everything. You go around and fill up your gift basket, and then I would wrap it, put a bow on it, add balloons and deliver it for you. And so, that one did really well. But I started to get really sick during that time. I was in a pretty abusive marriage, and physically, my body just kind of broke down, and so I wasn’t able to go in there very often. And so a gentleman asked if he could buy all my inventory because he just wanted the position of this building. And I said, ‘Yeah, you can have this spot and everything.’ So, I actually broke even on that one, but I didn’t lose money. So that was really good.
Then we did roller rink and roller derby. My parents owned the roller rink, and the people they had in it were kind of ran it to the ground. And I said, let me take a crack at it. So, I went in there and started doing that and got all the field trips by all the schools and churches. And then we started roller derby. And I did roller derby. I was ‘Molly Dagger.’ I did a roller derby. It was so much fun! In my 40s, broke my arm in two places, rolling around, acting like I know what I’m doing. I’m a big mama, like I was out there, just like this exact size like I am now but rolling around.
Then after that, I did a catering company, and then after that, I did a bar/restaurant and a 33-room lodge. Then I did another restaurant across the street from that. That actually ended up catching on fire in the middle of the night, and I got to watch it burn down on surveillance, which was crazy. And so that one just went away. And so then I just had the bar and restaurant and lodge, and in between that time, I had an entertainment company. I would bring like C-brand celebrities to come and do like events, and then I would put on the event. I would be in charge of the catering and the alcohol at the event, plus the ticket sales. And then I’d also have the after party at my bar. And then people would stay at the lodge. That was called Typhoon Entertainment. So just lots and lots of things.
So, the last one was Hooligans Lodging and Saloon that I had, and I bought it from my mom. Then it kind of went terribly wrong at the end. And so that’s kind of how I ended up in the cookie business.
Spencer: Right, right. Because that’s when you ended up with that last 150 bucks. So, how did the cookies come into the picture?
Blakeley: So, when I sold the bar, restaurant and lodge to this couple that I knew really decently well, they actually fraud me. They asked me to owner-finance it, and I knew them, so I was like, ‘Sure, no problem.’ And then they didn’t pay me. But they said, before we were signing papers, they said that they wanted to remodel the building, and in order to do what they needed to do, I needed to put the building in their name. And I trusted them, and I did that, and then they didn’t pay me.
So I was down to my last $150. I’m a single mom. At this time, my daughters had went on. They’d grown and flown, and I had ended up divorced from my husband. Just with all the stress of money, and he got a promotion and moved to a new city, and so it was just my 10-year-old son and I. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was overwhelmed and scared. I had $150. I got to drive by my old building that even had my mixer in there. They’re remodeling it and putting tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of dollars into this building and not paying me a dime. And it was very hard. But I saw a vision of me selling tacos at the side of the road. When I had the bar, I had these halibut tacos that sold really, really well. And so, I thought, ‘You know what? Obviously, this is a divine thing, and I need to do it.’
So, I got all the permits that I needed to get, and I had a, like, a tent, you know, one of those, like little half tents, you know, to cover me. I got permission from the food people to do like a sanitizer bucket and then a water bucket or whatever. And everything was going cool. I was getting ready to launch. I had used all of my money for all of it. I called people that I owed money to, actually, from the bar that didn’t pay me. I still owed these people money, and I called them and I said, ‘Can I just get a line of credit for $500?’ I promise you, I’ll pay you.’ And they said, ‘Okay.’ And so they give me a week term to pay them $500. That was awesome. So I got $500 in food and, like, the little buckets or whatever. And I went to startup, and I was super pumped. And the city of Soldotna said, ‘You have to have wheels.’ And I thought, ‘What? I see people all around here that do little tent things!’ And they said, ‘Yeah, but they’re just pop ups for one day. If you want to do six weeks total, you have to have something that will roll away and come back.’ And I’m like, ‘So, you’re telling me I have to roll away every night? They said, ‘Yes.’ I was mortified.
I got on my knees, and I just started praying. I said, ‘God, you gave me this vision. You made all this permitting that would normally take months happen in days. I got approved, approved, approved.’ I said, ‘Why would it stop now? Tell me what to do.’ And I heard the name Ken Lang. Ken Lang is a guy back when I had Sassafras that was a friend of my dad’s that sold trailers, and it was 25 years before. So I cold-called Ken Lang, and he said, ‘Oh, I haven’t sold trailers forever, but I do have one left.’ And I said, ‘Oh, well, can I come and look at it?’ And keep in mind, I’m broke. I don’t have two nickels to rub together anymore, and so I’m just going to go cold visit Ken Lang, you know, at his house, at this trailer, and I’m thinking, if we pull down the back of the trailer, then I can pull out the tent and do the buckets of water and sanitizer and everything, and have my little food truck. And I can make stuff at home on a Cottage Law, which is what I have. And then they’ll warm it up at the tent area and then put everything back in the trailer and roll it away every day. This is what my mindset is. I get there, and Ken Lang’s only trailer left is a food trailer. It has a three-compartment sink, it has a refrigerator, it has an area for a grill. Has absolutely everything I need. And I just looked at him and said, ‘Ken, I’m broke. Can I borrow this?’ Ken was like, ‘You can borrow it for six weeks and then bring it back.’ And I said, ‘Oh my gosh.’ So, I called my dad and said, ‘Please bring your truck to Ken’s place. We’re gonna do this.’
And so, my dad hooked it up. We took it to my house, and I went to Joanne Fabrics. I got the 79 cent tempura paints, you know that people would paint on the windows at Christmas. And I painted a big picture of a chicken, and it said, ‘Save chicken, eat fish, halibut tacos’ on the side of the thing, because I’d wipe off, you know. And I opened up, and the first day, Luke and I made $500, and then the second day we made $600, and then the third day we made $700. And someone said, ‘Do you have anything sweet?’ And I said, ‘Hmm. And my son looked at me and said, ‘We should make cookies or something.’ And I thought, ‘Okay, we’ll just start making cookies.’ So, we started making cookies, and things just went from there. It went gangbusters, really. Then I was just throwing, like, brandy in them for, like, a cool flavor profile. And then I Googled, you know, am I doing okay, by putting brandy in them, does it bake out or whatever? And it turns out it doesn’t. And so kind of when everyone is like, ‘Oh yeah, the alcohol bakes out,’ but it doesn’t bake out.
So, when you sell a bar in Alaska, you have to take the alcohol home with you. You don’t get to transfer to the next person. So, I had a garage full of alcohol. I was just trying to do some innovative cookies, and people were loving them. They thought it was so fun. But then when I read that, I actually had too much alcohol in the cookies. I was on Facebook, and I saw a meme and it said, ‘Vanilla extract is made of vodka. Let’s bake!’ And I thought, ‘Wow, huh.’
So, I went on Google, and I started learning everything there is to know about extracts. And it’s basically, if you know how to make extract, you put vanilla beans in a bottle of vodka and throw it in the cupboard for three months, and it comes out vanilla extract. But the problem was, six weeks is all I had. At this time, it was five weeks. And so InstaPots had just come out. I started doing research on InstaPots and how to make extracts in the InstaPot and what to do. And in three days, I took every booze bottle that was in my garage and made it into an extract. And so then I started making bacon and maple cookies with whiskey extract, Kahlua and pumpkin and all these different kinds of things. I got known to be Molly Bz Boozy Cookies. And so that’s how I started, was with these boozy cookies. And people were coming from all over the place to eat these cookies. And they started, like knocking on the back door. We’d have like a line of cars on one way, and then a line of people at the window, and just me and my 10-year-old son were just pumping out tacos and cookies for six weeks. It was unbelievable!
Spencer: What did the timeline look like to becoming a just full-fledged CPG product and becoming an actual brand?
Blakeley: That was in July of 2018. So, I gave Ken Lang back his trailer, and he asked me if I could sell it for him. I found someone to buy it, and I asked him what he wanted. He said he wanted $13,000 I got him $14,000 and said the extra $1,000 is for helping me. And I just gave it all to him.
And then the Kardashians — Rob Kardashian — was doing a Sock of the Month Club. And I was like, ‘I’m going to do a Cookie of the Month Club.’ So I started doing a Cookie of the Month Club. And things are going good. I was doing like, 20 boxes a week, and but 20 boxes a week when you’re making 50 cents a cookie is not a lot of money to pay the bills. And so I’m doing all of these boxes at home, hand mixing — I don’t have a mixer — and then once the cookies were done, I would apply for jobs all night long. I couldn’t get a job at a Panda Express. I had 30 years in food experience, I was like, ‘What is going on?’
So I went to my pastor, and she said, ‘Honey, you’re just supposed to be an entrepreneur.’ And I said, ‘Oh, okay.’ So then I just, like, focused on cookies, and at the three-month mark, almost, to the day, we went from 20 boxes a week to 45 boxes a day. And I moved production into a church kitchen. And then so here I am doing boozy cookies in a church kitchen! The gal there that had the church kitchen, she knew the situation, because the people that fraud me also had fraud her in a situation. So, she was super familiar with them. And she said, ‘See this whiteboard, Molly?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Here’s all of my dry storage. If you need more flour, you write it down and I’ll go get it. If you need more chocolate chips, you write it down and I’ll go get it.’ She said, ‘Whatever you need, you write down here, and we’ll have it here for you the next day.’ And I said, ‘I don’t know if I could pay for it all right away.’ And she said, ‘I know you’re good for it, and I’m investing in you.’ And I thought, ‘What in the world?’ And that changed everything.
And so then I ended up getting into a big box store called the Brown Jug, which is a local liquor store here in Alaska. There’s 21 locations, and they found out about me, and she said, ‘Do you have nutrition labels and UPC codes?’ And I’m like, ‘Yes!’ And I did not.
So I went home …
Spencer: I can see you typing ‘nutrition label packaging’ into Google.
Blakeley: I know! I didn’t know what I was doing! And so people that I had asked to help that had, like, sauce lines that were local and stuff, they didn’t want to help me. It was so weird, you know? And so that’s one thing I promised myself is I’ll never do that. If I have the tea on something and someone needs help, I’m going to help them. And right now, I mentor over 100 people — it’s like 120, I think — for free. I just want everyone to win.
But anyway, they sold out at the Brown Jug of my cookies in 24 hours, 21 locations. And you know, they were three hours away from us. And so I replaced them all double. They ordered a double order the next time, and they sold out again super fast. I was exhausted. My son was exhausted. I pulled him out of school to help. And so we moved to Anchorage, and I got one bakery to help me, and then two bakeries to help me, and then three bakeries to help me, and then four bakeries to help me. And then I Googled cookie factory, and I found out about co-packers. And I ended up finding a gal whose friend had been on QVC and she asked me if I wanted to be on QVC with my cookies. And I was like, ‘Of course I do.’ And so I got introduced to this gentleman named Frank, who helped me get on QVC. And it wasn’t easy.
Every co-packer I called, I went on, I think it’s Partner Slate, and they had all this list of coke packers in 2018 no one was putting Fruity Pebbles, bacon or hot Cheetos on a cookie. And they all thought I had lost my ever loving mind. No one wanted and especially because they were called boozy cookies, they’re like, ‘The liability.’ And I said, ‘No, there’s no alcohol. It’s just a flavoring.’ It was going through one ear and out the other. They like didn’t get it. They were scared. And so I called 100 of them. Then the next day, I called 100 co-packers. And the next day called the same 100 co-packers. And finally, one of them said yes. I think it was just so I would stop calling them.
I finally launched in 2021 on QVC, sold $30,000 in cookies in 8 minutes, and it just exploded from there. Then the Oscars, the Emmys and the Grammys heard about me, and I got to be in the gifting suites for those. Wheel of Fortune had me on the wheel several times. And then we did Snack Magic and Man Crates, and I did a lot of online stuff. And then we launched in stores. We did Target and Walmart, Five Below, Costco, Sam’s Club, just all kinds. I mean, World Market has been awesome for our brand. We just picked up Hucks. We’re doing Costco Canada right now. It’s just amazing. It’s just, it’s just God. Through every single time, I prayed.
Spencer: It is so amazing. It’s such a cool story. And I didn’t know that you had placement in Man Crates too. So, were you pitching those types of gift box ordering companies, or was this all word of mouth, and they were coming to you by that point?
Blakeley: There’s a reason clickbait is a real thing on Facebook or any social media. So if I would see something, I would click on it, and then I would just cold email them. And some of them will reply. But, I mean, I got hundreds of no’s. They had this cohort in Alaska, for Alaska businesses; it was like Survival. They kick you off the island if you they don’t like you. It’s a 12 week thing. You have to come with a pitch deck and and all these things. And I didn’t know what a pitch deck was, and you could, you had to drive to Anchorage constantly. And one person gets $100,000, and so it was worth it for me to do this thing.
I made it to the very last day, and I got second place. So I just worked so hard and drove to Anchorage a million times for second place. And it was such a blow to my heart. I was just like, I just worked so hard to make this work. But there were so many people that had applied, and then lots of people came up to me after I pitched on the final stage, and said, ‘We’re going to invest in you. We love what you’re doing.’ And I said, ‘Great!’ I gave them my card. I followed up with them. None of them invested in me. None of them. The only people that invested in me were just friends and family on Facebook.
Joanie Spencer: See, okay, so like, when I think, when I watch shows like American Idol and the people who are really great, but they don’t advance to the next one, or they are the runner up, I always think, ‘Okay, well, somebody is watching that is going to give them the opportunity that they need.’ Like, these people aren’t gonna just go home and not find work when you get to a certain level. So I’m really surprised to hear that you got second and people reached out to invest in you, and then they didn’t. This, really, just dashes my view as a network TV consumer.
Blakeley: You know, that’s my favorite though. I like it when people doubt me because then I can be like, ‘Oh, we should have invested probably.’ And they had me come back two years later as their keynote speaker, and I stood on the stage there and I said, ‘If you don’t win this, don’t worry about it. No one in this room invested in me, and I’m doing fine.’
Spencer: That’s awesome. That is awesome.
Blakeley: Baby shade. Baby shade out there.
Spencer: Just a little shade. Okay, so I want to talk about your memoir and your parents again, because you said something that really resonated with me. You talked about your mom’s need to grow and your dad’s need to be grounded. How do you carry those two qualities in you, and how did they manifest as you launched Molly Bz?
Blakeley: Right. So, you know, mom was really big about growing into something really big, and my dad was really big about family. And so, we would have family dinner every Sunday or whatever at our house because, you know, dad insisted on it, but mom, she was just constantly getting into new businesses and new businesses, and it like drove her. So I literally have that evenly within me. In my younger days, when I was doing the other businesses, the reason why I was excited about selling Molly’s Flower Factory is because my daughters were so young, I didn’t want to miss anything. But I still had the bug to do it. So, that’s why I did Sassafras, so I could work two days but be home the rest, you know. And so I really tried to make a balance with that. But right now, like, if my son has a football game — because Luke is now 17, and he’s an incredible football player, like D1 colleges are looking at him, and he’s gonna go D1 I’m really proud of him — but if he has a football game, my staff knows, don’t call me. I will be at that game. or I, I skipped the Emmys because my son had a football game. That’s where I’m at right now. It’s nothing is more important to me than family. I’ll still do good. I’ll still be successful. God will still cover me in that. But if my children, or my grandson, now I’m a grandma, needs me, that’s priority. And so my balance is God, family, business, and I think that’s why I’m successful.
Spencer: I would agree. I mean, it’s a formula that I don’t recall I’ve ever heard anybody say, ‘It doesn’t work.’ I’ve never heard anybody say, ‘That’s not the right order. I rearranged the order, and it really worked for me.’ You just don’t, you don’t hear that.
So okay, we are here today. Molly Bz Cookies are sold in all 50 states and in a few countries as well, right?
Blakeley: Yeah. So we have, like, some boutique places in Germany and France, but it’s mostly we’re going into Costco Canada next month. Yeah.
Spencer: Okay, awesome. So, when you look back on all of this, what surprises you the most, and are you where you imagined you would be? Or is it not over yet?
Blakeley: It’s definitely not over yet. There’s so many opportunities that are happening right now as we speak that, in a thousand years, I never thought would be part of my life. Every day I’m surprised.
Imposter syndrome is real for me. When I say things like, you know, Forbes had me as one of the top 150 startups, or Inc. magazine said I was, you know, 2024 business person, or whatever. I feel like I’m making it all up. What else can I say? You know what I mean? And so it’s wild, but I just go for it, and if it doesn’t stick, then I just will pivot and do something else. I know that everything’s going to be awesome because I’ve been told that, God told me it’s going to be awesome. I believe him.
Spencer: I love that so much. And, you know, I was like thinking it was the Emmys. Having your product at the Emmys was the big surprise. But I love that the surprises just keep coming, and you’re getting all of this recognition, and you’re still growing, and you’re not finished. And it’s because you’re still here. If you’re still here, you know you’re not finished. There’s still work to do.
Blakeley: No, we’re just getting started.
Spencer: Okay, and so I think that is a great note to end this episode on. But we’re just getting started, because we are going to spend the month of May together, and we are going to, over the next few weeks, get into growth, expansion and your key learnings from the co-manufacturing relationship. We’re going to talk about mentoring, leadership, and we’re going to talk about, how do you define the limits — or do you define the limits — or do you just keep moving the end zone? So that’s how we’ll finish up the month. But for now, for this week, Molly, thank you so much for joining me. This has been a pleasure getting to know you.
Molly Blakeley: I appreciate it. It’s been a blast. Thank you for having me.
