33. Building a Sweet Business: How Cookies & Dreams Scaled from Local to Nationwide
EPISODE 33
In this episode, we dive into the inspiring journey of Steph Sellers, founder of Cookies and Dreams, and her mission to spread joy through gourmet cookies. As she navigates the ups and downs of entrepreneurship, she shares valuable insights into building community connections and the realities of running a successful business.
Catch the Conversation
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Steph Sellers is the founder of Midwest based, gourmet cookie company called Cookies & Dreams. Her baking journey started at the local farmers market as a young college graduate & continued over many years, a few restaurants & lots of ups & downs. After a particularly tumultuous year, Steph knew she needed to try something new if her restaurant was going to survive. She came out with a menu of 12 gourmet cookies to sell at her restaurant's bakery & the rest, as they say, is history. The cookie concept took off quickly! Later that year, she opened her first stand-alone brick & mortar store for Cookies & Dreams & began shipping nationwide. While the Cookies & Dreams journey has also been full of highs & lows, Steph & the Dream Team now run 2 successful brick & mortar locations, ship nationwide, wholesale & offer fundraising opportunities with their giant, gourmet cookies.
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0:04 - Women Entrepreneurs Growing Successful Businesses
11:28 - Crafting Successful Businesses
17:42 - Strategic Business Growth and Stabilization
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Julie: 0:04
Welcome to Figure 8, where we feature inspiring stories of women entrepreneurs who have grown their businesses to seven and eight figures revenue. If you're in the mix of growing a bigger business, these stories are for you. Join us as we explore where the tough spots are, how to overcome them and how to prepare yourself for the next portion of the climb. I'm your host, Julie Ellis. I'm an author, entrepreneur and a growth and leadership coach who co-founded, grew and exited an eight-figure business. This led me to exploring why some women achieve great things, and that led to my book Big Gorgeous Goals. Let's explore the systems, processes and people that help us grow our businesses to new heights. If you're interested in growing your business, this podcast will help. Now let's get going.
Julie: 1:04
Hello and welcome to this episode of Figure 8. Today I am in conversation with Steph Sellers of Cookies and Dreams. Steph has locations in Iowa and she started baking as a kid and selling her baking at local fairs and farmer's markets, and soon it became a full-time baking business. Today she has a couple of physical locations and a team and she is growing after navigating lots of bumps and tumbles in her way to her own world domination. So welcome, Steph. Thank you for joining me.
Steph: 1:46
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Julie: 1:49
Ah, it's so good, yeah, yeah. So tell me about your journey. I see you there in the bakery. I can see the hustle and bustle going on in the background, and what an interesting business.
Steph: 2:02
Yeah, yeah, it's certainly been a wild ride, like many entrepreneurial journeys have been, and, of course, they're all unique, although ours has certainly had a lot of ups and downs, significant hills and significant valleys, significant hills and significant valleys. And we so, based in Iowa, we do a mixture of retail and e-commerce, which offers its own set of challenges as well, but we bake gourmet cookies, which I feel like everyone associates with I don't even want to say it, but we're going to say it crumble, but everyone associates it with that, but we, we have our own spin on it. Um, and our goal is really to make people happy, like that's, that's what we do, and I feel like sometimes people try to dance around why, their why? And, at the end of the day, that's, that's our, our why is we? We like to bring joy and connection to our community and in to our guests.
Julie: 3:09
And I feel like that kind of fits with a cookie, like it's something, it's homemade, it's made with love and it's made to be enjoyed
Steph: 3:17
Absolutely, like have you ever been sad eating a cookie? It's so we really like to drive that home of like this is supposed to be happy, it's joyful and it's so special too, because so many of our guests have come to us when they were getting married and then we make their baby shower cookies and then their first birthday cookies and their you know, their family and their friends cookies or cookie cakes. So being able to create that connection within the community just is so special and it makes a huge difference in the success of of who we are, and so that's a big part of what has made us successful, despite some of the challenges that we've had, which which is another side of the story, of course but being able to to really connect with our community has has allowed us to overcome a lot of that.
Julie: 4:14
As a bit of a baker myself, I think that lots of people have a dream of like sharing their baked goods with more than just their family or maybe their friends. How did it turn into an actual business for you? Because I think you know lots of people sort of think about the idea, but you went ahead and did it like you're. You got a real bakery with employees and you know all the things that comes with.
Steph: 4:46
Yeah, that's a great question. So I actually very first got my start when I graduated college, all the way back in 2010. So a while ago and I had my very first job at Wells Fargo. I'm like fresh out of college with a business major, like I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this. And I worked at Wells Fargo. After three weeks, they laid off all of all of us in their branches because of a merger with Wachovia or something. Essentially, all of our positions were redundant.
Steph: 5:19
I was already doing a lot of baking on my own and I thought you know what, I'm gonna need some extra cash. So I started baking at the farmer's markets and that took off really very quickly and I thought you know what this could actually be a thing and I was at that point in time I was very young, very inexperienced and wanted to be cautious, which was smart at that time. So I opened a little studio bakery. I didn't have like retail hours, I just took orders, did special events and I like very rarely had hours on the weekends for holidays and stuff. And then I wholesaled to other restaurants and places in the area and I did that for three or four years and there were some really good things about that and some not so good things. Like some of the good things were, I had some flexibility in my schedule. I was able to learn a lot about business and learn things very quickly, really hone my baking skills at that point, because I'm completely self taught school of hard knocks all the way. And the other side of it is that I was doing everything and so I became burnt out and ultimately I sold that business and just decided I didn't want to bake anymore at that time.
Steph: 6:38
Actually, I took some time off and eventually, to make a long story short we opened me and my then boyfriend, we opened a cafe and I started baking again and that quickly grew and so we decided to open a bakery in a restaurant and that went from zero to a thousand in like three seconds flat. It was supposed to be just a small little bakery and then all of a sudden it was like a bakery, a restaurant and a brewery and it was like six thousand square feet and although there was certainly a lot of lessons and a lot of fun and a lot of growth with that, it was a lot um right, and so there was a lot of good and bad with that side of the growth. However, the bakery that was inside the restaurant was very successful and we sold cookies as one of the items on our bakery menu. So, after a really, really tough season, I was looking at our P-Mix to see what are we selling. What do we need to go hard on this winter? What are our opportunities? Because we can't have another winter like we did last winter. Like we're baked in Iowa, it can get nasty here and that can really affect small business. So our top selling item in the entire building was a chocolate chip cookie, and that sparked the idea for cookies and dreams, and I came up with a menu of 12 cookies, all different kinds and flavors. Some were filled, some were not filled.
Steph: 8:15
Um launched that in January 2020 and the rest is history. Honestly, it it took off very quickly and um, um and so the journey was, you know, to get from the dream of like I want to bake for a living to actually having a couple of bakeries employees, you know, selling nationwide it. I mean, it was all over the place, ups and downs and sideways, and so those types of journeys I I think are not linear and while some people may look and have looked at Cookies and Dreams and seen an overnight success because it was very quick. It certainly was not. So I certainly advise people to always look at that. The journey is never linear and it's never overnight, despite what it may seem.
Julie: 9:02
It's so true. It's so true because they see that moment of success, but not all of the things and like with, in your case, the different iterations of a bakery that led to you actually having this business at this at that exact time. So I'm also interested because, obviously, January of 2020 was an interesting time to unknowingly be starting a business and the fact that you decided to ship your cookies all across the United States. Was that something you decided because of the pandemic, or was it before that, when you started the business, that you decided you would want to have that kind of an e-commerce arm?
Steph: 9:44
It was actually it was something we wanted to do, or I wanted to do, but I wanted to gauge local interest first and we had a platform with the restaurant, which we were fortunate to have. But you know, I think that that people could find that platform on local farmers markets and doing pop-ups. I think it's really important to test your idea before you invest you know, a hundred hours into creating a website. You need people to come to the website.
Steph: 10:12
Like having a website is great, but people need to actually visit it. So the goal was always to do e-commerce, but we really needed to like, get our ducks in order and gauge interest. What's going to sell, what's going to resonate, how is this going to work logistically first, and so it kind of coincided with COVID in a really unique way, just by happenstance. But we felt like we needed to test it on a retail or local basis first.
Julie: 10:45
Yeah, I always think it's so interesting how, like, how luck and circumstances play into kind of what happens for you as you go down those paths right, and so the fact that you thought about shipping at all um and and looked to, you know, cookies is a more durable product. There's some baked goods that would be a lot harder to ship, like all of those kinds of things, like the sort of like luck that pairs with the hard work, taking the opportunities and then being able to actually capitalize and grow because you have, you know, positioned yourself well.
Steph: 11:27
Yeah, i t's never like a single approach, like you testing and getting feedback. It not only helps you as your business, but it helps create that community that I think any business needs to be successful, because people don't just want to buy from a brand anymore, they want to buy from a person, they want to know your story, and so and I think we're seeing more of that and that's becoming more common, which is great because it shows people that it can be done and it shows people that it's not just all like rainbow sprinkles and chocolate chips, like this is. This is hard and there's a lot of bumps in the road. So I'm I'm really excited to see a lot more brands and a lot more people kind of showing behind the scenes and sharing their story of you know, this is why we're doing it. This is what it looks like. You know, this is when we cried, this is when we laughed, all of those things.
Julie: 12:17
And we did cry.
Julie: 12:18
We might not tell you about it all the time, but we did. Yes, yes, yes, yeah. I think it's interesting, though, because the idea of yeah, telling that story you're not just trying to sell a product you're trying to like be real. And one of the risks, I think, in entrepreneurship is you start a business because you love something and then you end up like not loving it as much because the reality of business you know, cookies are great, but it's a business like anything else and you have problems and challenges and things you probably don't like about it, which is totally normal, but sometimes, when it's about something you love, it can be hard.
Steph: 12:57
Yeah, and that's a really good point, because I think, as entrepreneurs, we should be passionate about what we're spending so much time working on. And that can be a tough thing as a business owner, because, you know, I bake or I make cookies because I love it, but there's so many parts of it that I don't love. And so that's a great point, because I think, as leaders and business owners, you almost have to structure your job intentionally to where you still have time to do the things that you love. Otherwise, you're just going to get burnt out, you're not going to love it anymore and the business is going to run you rather than the other way around. You have to set up processes and systems in your team to do things so that you can still do what you love, because without you, you know, of course, the business wouldn't exist, but but you need. You need to be able to do that for yourself.
Julie: 13:52
Well, it's like the, the, the, the two-sidedness of without you, the business wouldn't exist, but it needs to be able to exist without you.
Julie: 14:01
Like the two sides of that coin are so interesting.
Steph: 14:04
Yes, yeah it's, and that's a tough one, because you, on one hand, you love it you wouldn't have started it if you didn't and so you want to put yourself in the business. But at the same time, as a leader and a smart business owner, you have to set up those systems and processes to where it can run independently. And that kind of goes back to like why are you starting this business? Are you starting a job? Are you starting something that you want to be a legacy for, maybe your children? Are you starting it because you want to sell it someday? Most people don't think about like. I think in business class they always go over. This is how you make a business plan and you have to go over your exit plan. And everybody's like why, why do I need to talk about my exit plan? But you do, because it structures how you're going to run your business and how you create it. So that's something that I think a lot of us are guilty of overlooking.
Julie: 15:00
Well, and even things like are you able to pay yourself, you know, a wage that would be comparable to hiring an outsider to do the job that you're doing?
Steph: 15:09
Right, yeah, and what's the payoff? So, like, if I hire somebody to do this job, what does that free me up to do? Does it free me up to create more revenue, because that's that's why we're all here, right, like, we want to grow. So they're not easy answers to, to to work on and to figure out, um, as entrepreneurs, but those are, I think, some of the skill sets that aren't talked about nearly enough. Yeah, um, you know we, we hear about your business plan and marketing and the latest trends on Instagram or TikTok. Um, but some of those questions are the ones that I think need to be a little bit more focused on.
Steph: 16:21
Oh, absolutely so. At that point, scaling you have no choice but to create those systems and processes, and I think having a solid team from the get-go is what's going to allow you to do that, because there's a certain point where you cannot do all of the jobs and your team needs to help you create some of those systems and processes and help you document them, because you cannot be good at everything. So I am a big advocate in this and I haven't always done this, but, um, you need to hire slow and fire fast, because that is going to make or break your business from day one. Um, and those are some of the mistakes that we made in the very beginning, where we were just hiring bodies because we needed people and they ended up being very detrimental to the business. So that's something where you need to hire a good team from the get-go. Even if it takes a little bit longer, you're going to grow faster at the end of the day because you have the right people in place.
Julie: 17:27
Yeah, and now, often you know growth and scaling up is a bumpy process. You have to try things and learn from them and you know you feel like you're doing the dance of two or three steps forward and five steps back, and two or three steps forward and one step back. And what has that been like for you as you've been growing the business?
Steph: 17:46
Yeah, so we actually grew to some other locations. We have two locations now and we ship nationwide, but at one point we had, I think, five locations and that was just we were not ready for the growth. It happened incredibly fast and we didn't have the right people in place, and so it just it just fell apart. It just did not not work. And so we've we scaled back rather quickly, honestly, kind of like brought things back to center and have been stabilizing and then growing what we have where we already have the infrastructure in place for like, for example, we do some wholesaling and some fundraising and then the e-commerce, and so we already have that infrastructure in place. And so that's our areas of growth for right now, while we're still trying to stabilize and try to figure out our next move.
Steph: 18:45
In the beginning it was like let's do everything all at once and be all of the things to all of the people, and it just it was not good. I feel like a lot of people say one of the easiest ways to fail is to grow too quickly, and we've been very fortunate that we did not succumb to that, because it was a very quick, unstable, irresponsible type of growth. So, um, we learned a lot in that process and I think that's what has allowed us to stabilize and still continue that growth, but in a smarter way, because a lot of people they see growth and they think more locations, more products. But that's not the case. Like what do you have in place currently that you can grow, that you already have the infrastructure. You don't need a lot of additional investment or team members or anything you have to like.
Steph: 19:48
I think a very strong skill set for entrepreneurs is their scrappiness, just like straight scrappiness. You have to look at what your opportunities are here before you want to go big, big, big, and there's also a lot of value, I think, in. You know, and this isn't for everybody. Some people do want to be the biggest, but we want to be the best. So that's where we're at, and so we're still certainly a good size and and have been able to grow, but we're going to grow a lot smarter moving forward.
Julie: 20:25
Well, it is not dissimilar to the higher slow fire fast. You know, it's the, it's the grow with a bunch of thoughtfulness about it and don't be afraid to pull back when the path doesn't look like it's quite the right one
Steph: 20:39
Yeah, absolutely so.
Steph: 20:41
Um, playing the long game, because that's you know, you could easily take a look at, at what happened and us opening a bunch of locations and then closing them and scaling them back as a failure. But it's really just a redirection, um, and kind of getting back to who do we want to be? Um, and and there was a lot of pain with that there was a lot of removal of people that were not good for the business, um, which was painful and and difficult. But you know what's your goal? And that kind of goes back to originally, like creating that business plan who do you want to be? And what's your plan here?
Steph: 21:22
Like, do you want just a job? Do you want a legacy? Do you want to sell? What do you want to do here? Is it short-term, long-term, do you want to get acquired? Right? So, being clear on on that and that's not to say that can't change along the way, but you, you need to look at the, at the long game when you decide you want to scale for sure.
Julie: 21:44
Yeah, yeah, and really figuring out, I think too, like you've got, you've got to take the chances, so, so what are the right chances to take?
Julie: 21:53
Cause there's like a point where you're like I think I did the wrong thing, so how do you have that assessment for did? Am I just scared? Is it really the wrong thing? Like, how do you determine those different pieces Right? Because I think there are those moments where you're like I feel like, oh my God, the bottom's falling out, but really you're doing the right thing, versus understanding that you do need to pull back and make changes.
Steph: 22:18
Yeah, yeah. And that's a great point too, because I think, as business owners, when you're trying to grow and trying to scale, you're always going to feel like you're drowning, like know that, that's normal. Number one.
Steph: 22:33
Um, if you're, if you don't feel like you're drowning, then you know..
Julie: 22:37
You're about to.
Steph: 22:39
Yeah so, um, that that's normal, um, but that kind of brings in another point of having a strong support system and mentors that are outside of your business that can offer you advice, because you can't read the label when you're inside the jar and so you need people from the outside looking in to help advise you. And it's a lot like raising children. It takes a village. So, um, I have a two and a half year old at home and I feel like business ownership and raising a toddler has a lot of similarities. You know, you always feel like you're drowning, you don't feel like you're getting any sleep, you know you're not qualified to do what you're doing exactly.
Julie: 23:27
Yes, a lot like motherhood, for sure.
Steph: 23:29
Yeah, so having having that support system and some really good mentors is super, super valuable, and I know that there's resources out there through various small business organizations, but it could be just friends and people that you find through networking, family members and stuff, just people that can give you advice, that are not in it.
Julie: 23:57
It's that balance of, like, people who have more experience than you, people who have different experience than you, people who just look at things differently.
Steph: 24:07
Absolutely. Yeah, it's. It takes a village, whether you're running a business or raising children. It's not something that you can do on your own. In some entrepreneurs, I think we can be very hyper independent, right, and that can be it's. It can be hard to ask for help, so, but it's, it's absolutely necessary. You, you can't do it alone.
Julie: 24:31
Yeah. Well, and I think the idea that you've got and the mission you've got to be the best. Not the biggest. But that feels very customer focused, and value focused for you, in terms of how you're going to the market.
Steph: 24:55
And we, actually I'm a stickler and we say guests and not customers, because customers implies the transactional and a guest is somebody that is coming into our home and we are providing them with hospitality, you know, think of it as somebody that's coming into your home and you just bake them a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies and you know you wouldn't just expect them to be like, okay, give me what you have and I will give you the cookies. It's more of a hospitality and connection which really comes back to creating that community of people, because that's just you. You have to. You, you need people that are going to fight for you and show up for you.
Steph: 25:35
And as businesses, sometimes you make mistakes, that's, that's a given. But when you have that community surrounding you, then it, it softens that just just a little bit. So so yeah, I'm, I'm a bit of a stickler in within the business of we say guests instead of customers, because it truly is, especially with baked goods. You know it's, it's we don't want it to be transactional at all.
Julie: 26:04
Right, well, and that's sort of what you talked about earlier of. You know it's the wedding and then the baby shower and then the baby's first birthday and, like you, are creating those moments with people where your cookies are showing up at important times in their lives.
Steph: 26:20
Absolutely, and that's just it.
Steph: 26:22
Like just this week we got invited to somebody's wedding, which was so fun and it just means so much to us that we can play a role in people's lives. And you know I always say that we make cookies but we don't sell cookies, it's we sell. We sell that. We sell the people inviting us to our their wedding because we've played an important role in their love story and in their lives. And you know we have a guest that is such a big fan of ours it's like he showed me his phone and all of his pictures are like our cookies and he brings them to everybody he knows and because it creates joy for him to share the cookies, um, just like it creates joy for us to share the cookies.
Julie: 27:12
I think that's so interesting though, though, that the spreading joy, because it's like such a different I mean when you think you ship nationwide like it's joy showing up on people's front porches and in the you know lobbies of apartment buildings and all of the different places those people live who are ordering from you.
Julie: 28:01
What do you see for the next couple of years?
Steph: 28:04
That's a great question. So right now, for this year, we're really going to be working on growing our e-commerce side of the business, along with our fundraising. So with our fundraising, we offer a couple different options, but one of them is like hink Girl Scout cookies, but with our cookies. So we help support schools and charities and organizations in that way and it really helps us be a part of the community, and we'd like to turn that into online as well for e-commerce. Right now we just do it locally, but we'd like to be able to offer that nationwide, just to expand that reach. And we would love to expand to another location, probably not this year, but maybe in a year or two, once we're able to do a little bit more stabilizing and just deciding on where that is.
Steph: 29:04
I'm a big advocate for owning your backyard before you go. So whether that's still in the realm of our backyard here in Iowa or in the Midwest, we'll have to see. But for right now, we really want to focus on the things that we currently already have the infrastructure in place for, like e-commerce, like fundraising. We do a fair amount of wholesaling, so that's something that we'd like to take a deeper, dive into and then decide what is the next step in terms of a larger retail footprint.
Julie: 29:40
Yeah, and I think I mean I think it's really interesting. You know the fundraising idea as somebody who had a big fundraising part of my business when we had Mabel's Labels. Fundraising was a big piece of what we did and it's nice to be able to give back to organizations that are working in different communities.
Steph: 29:58
Yes, absolutely, and we do a lot of schools, which is great, and it's it. When the kids are doing the cookie sales. It offers so much value to them too, because they're getting out there and they're, they're hustling and they're trying to raise money for their schools, for a trip or for, you know band instruments or whatever it happens to be, and so it's a big ripple effect of what all of the good that can come out of that.
Julie: 30:28
Yeah, good. Well, I'm really excited to see where Cookies and Dreams goes and grows for you next, Steph, and I hope that people all across the US find you for the e-commerce and get some of your delicious cookies delivered to their front porch. And thank you for joining me today.
Steph: 30:47
Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Julie: 30:49
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please remember to hit subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you won't miss any episodes. Figure 8 isn't just a podcast. It's a way of seeing the Big Gorgeous Goals of women entrepreneurs coming to life. If you're interested in learning more, you can find my book Big Gorgeous Goals on Amazon, anywhere you might live. For more about my growth and leadership training programs, visit www.juliellis.ca to see how we might work together. Read my blog or sign up to get your free diagnostic. Are you ready for growth? Once again, that's www.julieellis.ca. When we work together, we all win. See you again soon for another episode of Figure 8.