667: Meet The Founder Who Turned $5 Into Millions of Cupcakes Sold (with Zero Experience)

0:01Today's episode is sponsored in part by Revolve and Spectrum. Revolve is my all time favorite place to shop for my dream wardrobe. Head to revolve.com forward slash gold digger to shop my favorites and get 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger. Spectrum business keeps your business connected with reliable service you can count on. Visit spectrum.com forward slash free for life to learn how you can get business internet free forever. As always, you can find all of our amazing deals in the show notes. Now let's get into it. okay I have been on this ruthless pursuit to purge any clothes that I'm not actually wearing like if I haven't reached for it in months it's gotta go I am trying to be really intentional about what I bring into my closet right now which means I am only buying pieces that I know I will actually wear and use revolve just gets it though I'm literally wearing my brown autri sneakers from there right now and my new suede purse it fits my laptop in it so it's basically a fancy shoulder bag that works for everything.

1:02I love finding pieces like that. Things that look good, but also work hard for my actual life. Their holiday shop is live right now with all the good stuff. Sparkly party dresses, cozy sets, cute gifts, everything you need for whatever is on your calendar. And it's all in one place, which makes shopping feel way less overwhelming. Whether it's a weekend away, a big night out, or a holiday party, your dream wardrobe is just one click away. Head to revolve.com forward slash gold digger, shop my edit and take 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger. Fast two day shipping, easy returns.

1:37It's literally the only place you need to shop from. That's revolve.com forward slash gold digger to shop my favorites and get 15 % off your first order with the code gold digger. Offer available for a limited time. So happy shopping. So for me, the biggest identity crisis was I knew that I was created for more and I just wasn't doing it. And I learned in the process that it was never that I was afraid to fail. It was always that I was afraid to be successful. Hey, my name is Jenna Kutcher and I am obsessed with all things business, marketing numbers, and helping you to navigate both the messy and the magical seasons of this thing called life.

2:17I'm a small town mama who took a$300 camera, grew a successful photo biz, and now I work from home and run a seven figure online business. I teach you the tried and true secrets to building a career you adore. Shy away from the real talk? No way. Money, hardship, growth, loss, and marketing are all topics we discuss here. Think of this as your one-stop shop for happy hour with a gal pal mixed with business school. Pull up a seat, make sure you're cozy, and get ready to be challenged and encouraged while you learn. This is the Gold Digger Podcast. How much money do you think you need to start a business?

2:51$1 ,000? Maybe$10 ,000? $100 ,000? My guest today can tell you that you do not need to go into debt to chase your dreams. In fact, she started her business, The Cupcake Collection, on the last$5 she had to feed her family and turned it into a legacy with over 5 million cupcakes sold. Since then, this incredible entrepreneur, speaker, and community leader has garnered national attention from the Today Show, Southern Living, Entrepreneur, and Business Insider, just to name a few. In addition, her business savvy has earned her numerous titles and awards, including Woman of Legend and Merit, Entrepreneur of the Year, Women's Empowerment Innovator, NAACP Power Shift Entrepreneur, and Black Enterprise Magazine's Family Business of the Year.

3:41Today, she is committed to teaching anyone who will listen about what they can do if only they believe. Most recently, through her brand new book, which comes out tomorrow, called Made from scratch, finding success without a recipe. I cannot wait for you to hear her full grassroots story of success, be inspired through her powerful words, and learn how you can follow in her footsteps to do the same. Mignon Francois, welcome to the Gold Digger podcast. This is something special. If you love Gold Digger, then you'll love the Side Hustle Pro podcast hosted by Nikala Matthews-Akome, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

4:26Side Hustle Pro showcases diverse entrepreneurs who have scaled from a humble side hustle to a full-blown profitable business. Every week, you'll learn actionable strategies to start small and get going wherever and whoever you are. In Nikala's recent episode titled, How to Make Content for Your Business in Less Than One Hour a week, I learned so much about how to optimize recording sessions to get content done quicker, as well as new content creation tech and tools. You have to tune in. Listen to Side Hustle Pro wherever you get your podcasts. I have such a pleasure of interviewing an incredible woman today.

5:06And I'm so excited, Gold Diggers, for you to hear from her. Now, we're going to go into a lot of different conversations. But Mignon, for someone who doesn't know your name and know who you are, give us kind of the story. I know it's long. I know you wrote a whole book about it. But tell us a little bit about you and how you got to where you are today. Yeah, my name is Mignon Francois. I like to say that I'm a mother of six plus one, just so that people ask me about her part of the story, my plus one part of the story. And everybody needs a plus one for a party, right? And I started my business out of necessity.

5:47We were drowning in debt and brokenness. We were losing everything that we had, including the home that we were living in, which eventually becomes the house where our business starts. We start a bakery not knowing how to bake, not even out of a box. And the man on the radio was telling people, hey, you can get out of debt if you have a bake sale. And I'm like, okay, how am I supposed to do that? And I go to my daughters who were baking every day. And I say, what do you think about a bakery? And they got excited and thought they'd love to do it. But secretly, my oldest daughter was really not interested.

6:32So without her, My little daughter's not excited, but I feel like I've told the world that we're going to open a bakery and now I've got to keep my word, which was literally just a little three by five sign that we had hung on the porch. It's amazing what we think people can see. And I think that was long before Facebook and Instagram. My kids were on MySpace at the time. they weren't even really allowed to use MySpace. But it was the knock on the door from a neighbor when I was sitting in my house without electricity because I couldn't afford it, who asked me to make cupcakes for all of her clients.

7:17And I immediately go to God and have this come to Jesus moment of, why are you giving me this opportunity when I don't even have lights and I don't have money. And it just quickened on the inside of me that God feeds birds and he always feeds me. So how much more does he want me to have more than I need? And so I put on my shoes, walked around the corner to the Kroger and bought everything that I could buy with the$5 that I had left. And I turned that five into 60 that day. I turned that 60 into 600 by the end of the week. And I'd been flipping that same money for the last 17 years. We have been voted as the best cake in Tennessee and the best cake in Louisiana.

8:07And we only hold that position in two states because that's the only two states right now where the bakery exists. We believe that we're going to take that position in other places as we move across the country, redeeming the time. And that's our goal now is just to help other people know what they can do if only they believe. Listen, if I could make an award-winning bakery out of nothing, surely there are some talented people who have been sitting on what they have. And I just promised God if he would make me successful, I would tell anybody who would listen about what they could do if they believe.

8:47Okay, there's so much That's the short version So much, okay, so first I'd be remiss to not ask about the plus one So I feel like we have to unpack that Because everyone who's listening said Wait, wait, you just breezed past it What's the story there? Yes, so three of my children You know, I got as a wedding present Three of my children I gave birth to And one of my children kind of adopted us as her own. And so she's the one that, you know, looks the most different. And most people think, oh, she must be somebody's girlfriend. Really, she's just my child that's got the most blonde hair. She's been with us since she was 14.

9:32She's going to be 30. And so we started, she was having trouble in school. And she had come to me as a mentee. And she was working at the bakery on two days a week and then was going to school three days a week. And so I was her teacher of like a real life skill. And they were calling me and saying that she was getting in trouble in school and that she was a problem child. And we were like, no, she's not. We don't know this person who you're talking about. And so then they started calling us and asking us to do parent teacher conferences and asking us to come alongside of her mother. And then she ran away from home one day and her mother came looking for her at my house.

10:18And we were angry because she did not tell us that she had run away from home. And so her mom had said something to me and passed in that day. She's like, you know what, why don't you just raise her because she listens to you. and we took it seriously and said, okay. And we just started taking a greater role in her life and just, she needed just a partner. And so we took her on and she ended up moving into our house along with our children. We were on a family walk just last night and we were talking about that first family walk that she had to go on where she was being pushed literally up the hill after having just been pushed to eat peas.

11:06Like, I hate this place. And yet she probably loved it. No sister, you signed up for this family. So you got to take us all the way that we are. So now she's just a member of the family and one of my children. I love that so much. So another thing that I think we should talk about that I think is so powerful. And I also believe that we as women and entrepreneurs could use it to our advantage is talking about how this little three by five sign held you accountable, right? Yes. If you didn't have that sign, do you believe that you would have followed through on that vision? Oh, that is so good. I think that you're so right about that.

11:49Thank you for giving me something new to think about. That sign did hold me accountable because I really believed that everybody could see it. I'm from New Orleans. We have a lot of businesses that come out of people's homes. There is a candy lady in every neighborhood. And I went to a little small school where the candy lady was across the street. And my house looks a lot like her house where you can knock on the door. We will buy pickles and potato chips. We will buy candy bars and what we call cold cups or frozen cups, you know, little Kool-Aid or juices frozen in her freezer. And I kind of believed that that's what I was going to be doing.

12:33I never knew it was going to be all of this. I didn't start out for it to be all of this, but I think that's where the name of the book Made From Scratch comes from. It was really made out of nothing from the beginning, from the ground. And I started even thinking about what the word scratch means. The word scratch has so many definitions that came to serve me just while writing this book. And a lot of times when we think about things being made from scratch, we're thinking about flour, you know, a recipe. And I didn't have one. I didn't even have a recipe. I just was out there trusting God that he had told me to do this.

13:18And so my neighbor, like I was always using the people around me for whatever they had to offer or whatever they were willing to give. I was one of those people who said, OK, I'll take it. I'll listen. I'll learn from that. And he had a printing company and he wanted to make me a sign so that people could see my little business and my neighbors knew about it. And they were passing it around and knocking on my door. One man knocked on my door at 10 o 'clock at night. It's like, look, what do you have in there? Because my wife is craving. Stop it. We started having all these little cupcake babies around the neighborhood.

14:00But I was like, look, I don't have anything, but I understand. And so I went to my kitchen and I made her red velvet cupcakes at 10 o 'clock at night. Stop it. You know, I love this though, because I think that there's something so powerful about saying your dream or like sharing it, even if it's just in that vision phase, because it's like, once you express it to someone else, you are now on the line for having admitted that there is something more, right? And I feel like so many people wait to reveal or announce until they have it all figured out. And that means they're waiting forever, right?

14:35And so I just love that, like this sign made you feel like I said this thing, I should probably follow through. And now we have an easy way to hold up your phone and say, I really want to learn about or experiment with or become and put yourself like put some skin in the game so that you feel like now people are watching to make sure you do it. I just I love that. Yeah, I really, really thought that putting that sign up meant that the world knew that a bakery is coming soon. And actually, I talk about this in the book, somebody really did pay attention to that. There was a lady, her name was Shelly, and she was coming by the bakery every day.

15:15And when she was using that road, Sixth Avenue North, where the bakery was or is to get to work. And when she saw that bakery coming soon sign, she has this huge sweet tooth and decided, oh my gosh, my world is being made. Someone understands my love language and a bakery is coming soon. And two years later, she knocks on my door and says, your sign is a lie. Your bakery is not coming soon. And I either need you to take that down or open. And I was like, oh my goodness. Well, what is your favorite kind of cake? And she told me it was red velvet. I asked her what time she got off work. And she told me five o 'clock.

15:55I said, can you come back at five? And she said, yes. And so she came back at five and I had red velvet cake for her and her best friend. And they became regulars of mine after that. I invited these strangers into my house and we're eating. You're like, come on in. Yes, yes. We're eating red velvet cupcakes in my living room. And, you know, I think that people often see that a business is coming and they think that it's easy. Or by the time you put up a sign, It's just going to magically happen that people have taken out loans or that they have lots of experience in this. And we trust, we blindly trust that they know what they're doing.

16:39And I just want this book to be an encouragement for someone who just wants to see what they have. Yeah. They just want to try and make it. Just know that there are so many other people who won't give that good old fashioned try. and there you will be left being amazing because you have to learn to serve all these people who really need what you have to offer. And that's what I learned in the process. They needed a bakery in my neighborhood. Yeah, well, and clearly it worked. One thing that I am just, I love about your story and I can relate to is I have never gone into debt for my business. I've been fortunate to do what you did and just keep flipping what I've got to keep earning more.

17:28And really kind of, I mean, I think there's so much skill and deciphering, like what do you actually need to do this thing? Because in a world that is filled with more, more, more and nice to haves, a lot of times entrepreneurs don't really focus on what you truly need to do the job. Talk to me a little bit about this debt-free journey because it is amazing. And especially in an industry like baking where there are a lot of needs. Talk to me about that. That is so good. I didn't choose to be debt free. You know, my mother had raised us to be fiscally responsible and I had gotten myself into some, you know, into a bad place.

18:16But I just I had to bootstrap everything because nobody would give me anything. Nobody was giving me any loans. Nobody really wanted to hear what I had to say about making cupcakes. Now, when they would try, then they'd say, oh, this is amazing. Good luck to you. Yes. You're not walking into the bank with your cupcakes. Like, here, please give me a loan. Literally, that was me walking into the bank with cupcakes. This is what I have. And like, oh, that's so nice. We can buy some sometime or you can give some away, but we can't give you any money. and I was, I didn't have any credit. I didn't have any knowledge of the business.

18:56So there was no reason for anybody to really take a risk on me. So it was going to have to be that I was baking cupcakes, putting some aside. I had an envelope for taxes. I had an envelope for profit and I had an envelope for ingredients and that's how I started it. And I think I just kind of got arrogant at some point that, well, you know what, if you don't want to help me now, don't come look and help me later. And so then it was like, I'm going to be debt free. And I learned, especially during the pandemic, how many people we were looking to, all these big major businesses were closing. And it was making, it makes me sad to see a place close.

19:44And I actually feel like I take responsibility for that when a place closes. Like, oh, I haven't been there. I should have went. I didn't visit enough. Like, I wish they would have told us they needed help. Like we would have bought gift cards. Yes. I would have went. But I realized that a lot of us in the world are living beyond our means. And I didn't have a choice. And I'm grateful. Sometimes your struggle has lessons for you to learn. Right. And I'm grateful to God that I started in the position that I started in because I believe in debt freedom so much that I'm not even in debt to the people who I employ.

20:23And by that, I mean, they get paid every seven days. That was not only for them, but it was also for me because I understand where they are. I've walked in their shoes. And when you're looking for 14 days before you get paid again, or 30 days for some people before you get paid again, or not knowing when you're going to get paid again. You just can't make any plans for your life. And I wanted my team to not have to struggle. So I set up a way for them to get paid every seven days. It costs me more as an employer, but it's a cost that I want to take because I feel like you can figure out five days of your life.

21:05You know, you can figure out seven days. And that's been something that has also been helping and healing them in their own financial freedom journey. That's beautiful. I often think about without safety and security, it's hard to be creative, right? If you are worried about your next paycheck or anything in that sense, it's hard to even think beyond, right? So I love that you are conscious of that and that you've created something that's really beautiful. And I think that's really inspiring for anyone who has a team is to be considerate of that fact. One thing that I'm really curious about is when you started your bakery, you were in your 30s.

21:49Let's talk a little bit about that because I believe that there are two sides of the coin here. I think that there are some people who might be in their 30s or let's just throw that number out as a baseline and they're thinking, I thought I would be further by now. I thought I would have the husband or the family or the house or the job or the million dollars. I thought I would be further. And then there are the other people who might be in that same age group that are thinking it's too late. I'm stuck. I am me. This is my identity. I'm not moving. This, this is it. I guess this is it. Talk to me about this season in your life when you were in your thirties.

22:27And then we're going to fast forward to now because it's another reinvention. I love that. It's never too late to start. I read a statistic that over 94, 94 % of Americans are waiting for some big event to happen in order for them to start living. It's like, I'm going to wait till my children graduate. I'm going to wait till I turn, you know, I'm going to wait till I have this much in the bank. And it's never too late to start is what I've learned. And starting when I did, let me be more prepared because listen, I had something to lose. Not only was I losing the house where the bakery was and I needed, I needed to win at this.

23:14My children needed bill trip money. My daughter was graduating from high school at the time. I was a real young mom. I started out as a teenager, which is a whole other topic. And I just want people to know that you do not know the plan for your own life. So there are no mistakes. I believe that every stupid thing that you've ever had to do is taking you from where you are to where it is that you want to be. And it took me 17 years to come full circle in my kitchen, in this affluent neighborhood where I was living in this torn down blighted house that we were renovating to find out that I had gone to school to study medicine only to end up in my kitchen to use the science.

24:06And I just want people to know that nothing is wasted. I could not apply the science to the human body. I was flunking out of my classes. I was in danger of losing my scholarship at Xavier University. When I decided to move on to something else because I'd gotten pregnant, because nobody prepared me what college was. I went to college early. I started as Xavier when I was 16. So I just didn't know what college was supposed to be. And I got played. And I played. And soon after I'm bringing home a baby and have to figure that whole thing out, I end up meeting and marrying my husband within four weeks of knowing him and had to put my whole college career back on the back burner.

25:00If every single one of those things hadn't happened and if all of the things that occurred in my life did not occur, I wouldn't be mignon. And I'm grateful for those things. I'm grateful for those things because without them, I couldn't sit here before you and say, listen, if you're listening to us today and you don't know what you're eating tonight and you are part of the food insecure community like I was, or you don't have electricity like I didn't have, it's like me too. Me too. I didn't have those things. If you're drowning in debt and brokenness, if your husband and you're a stay-at-home mom has asked you for a divorce or heck you want one.

25:45It's not too late for you to start to get you from where you are to where it is that you want to be. And it was me on$5 walking to the grocery store in my neighborhood because my car was repossessed. Can you imagine? We lived in an area of town where they didn't bus our children in. I had to get my children to school. So some days it was a decision between getting my children to school and having gas for the generator to run our house. And you're going to stay home with mom today because that's going to be education, too. And I think that people, especially women, have to give themselves an opportunity for grace.

26:32and that's something that I've learned in the process as I've been able to meet other women is I wanna give you grace and I want you to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I am enough. Everything that I have is everything that I need and I can do this. Sometimes that's all you have is to say, I can do this. Yes. It's no secret that business owners are under a lot of pressure right now. We're pressured to get more leads, close deals faster, get better insights to create the best experience for customers, and so much more. So how do we manage it all while still ensuring the best customer service?

27:15That's where HubSpot comes in. HubSpot is a customer relationship management tool that is easy to set up, intuitive to use, and customizable to the way that you do business. Drag and drop your way to attention-grabbing emails and landing pages, set up marketing automation to give every contact white glove treatment, plus AI-powered tools like Content Assistant mean less time spent on tedious manual tasks and more time for what matters most, your customers. HubSpot has all the tools you need to wow prospects, lock in deals, and improve customer service response times. Let HubSpot take the pressure off your shoulders and get started for free today at HubSpot.com.

27:58When we were young, we dreamed of castles and fairy tales. And as we grow up, those dreams might shift into building something real, like starting a business. You need a website, payment systems, a logo, and a way to reach customers. It can all be overwhelming and confusing, but thankfully, that's where today's sponsor, Shopify, comes in. Shopify powers millions of businesses around the world and 10 % of all U.S. e-commerce, from big brands to folks just getting started. They offer beautiful, ready-to-go website templates so you don't need design skills to look professional. Their AI tools help with product images, descriptions, discount codes, and more.

28:36Shopify also makes it simple to run email and social campaigns so people can find you. And if you ever feel stuck, their award-winning 24-7 support is always available. Turn those dreams into... And give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash gold digger. Go to shopify.com slash gold digger. Shopify.com slash gold digger.