Formulating Success: The Sweet Journey of NoBaked Cookie Dough w/ Co-Founder Jimmy Feeman

In our factory in Chattanooga, we produce anywhere from like 20 to 40,000 pounds a month. Which is pretty insane.
Yeah. Pretty insane.
20 to 40,000 a month? Yeah. Oh, wow.
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What's up guys? Welcome to Right About Now. We're always talking about what's now.
We're talking about business, we're talking about marketing, we're talking about life. And look, sometimes there's stories behind the company.
And there's a certain product that kind of rang my bell when I was talking with him on LinkedIn. I was like, who's this Jimmy guy? Who's this Jimmy guy? What? Cookie dough.
Hell yeah. I'm going to talk to him.
We got Jimmy Freeman. He is the co-founder

of No Bake. What's up, man? What's up, man? How are you doing? I'm great.
I get to talk business stories in cookie dough. Are you fucking kidding me? This is what I do it for.
Hey, I mean, if you get to eat some good stuff while you're doing the show, that's just a plus. makes it a lot better.

I know.

I know.

Exactly.

I don't have my wife might argue with this but i don't have too many vices but uh cookie dough uh you probably since your company wouldn't call it a vice i just call it you know maybe a vice to my waistline in summer when I'm trying to show that one pack, that dad pack. But, hey, look, everything in moderation, Jimmy.
I love some cookie dough, man. Why is it so damn good? I don't know, man.
There's a few things that they're from your childhood. There's stuff that you just do.
And one of those things for me and my wife, Megan was just eating cookie dough um i don't know what it is my grandma always bakes cookies i usually eat the dough before they became cookies that's how you end up where i am today but yeah everything in moderation right like it just gives me more fuel to go like work out or do whatever it's i guess um but yeah i know i mean you started young You guys, you and Megan, I mean, how old were y'all when this started formulating? 23. Pun intended.
23. I did not have a lot of time out of college to figure out, or didn't take a lot of time, I guess, to figure out that I was not supposed to work for someone else.
And it took Megan even less time to figure out she wasn't supposed to work for someone else. So yeah, it's just one of those things I tell people now and I've seen people post about this recently.
People will talk about it. But if you're going to go for it, the best time to go for it is when you're like sub-25.
Like what do you have to lose? You don't have a car. You don't have a house.
You have nothing. So just go for it.
Worst thing that can happen, you file bankruptcy, you're back in five years. It's fine.
My wife would agree with that. I started when I was almost 40, late 30s, and had all of those things, but still did it.
I don't know if it makes me dumber. I waited.
Everything you said is true, though. It probably added stress to the whole thing because it's not easy.
But when you're young, you do have time to... Look, we all have time to fail.
It's not that You don't have time to fail, but it's usually less maybe responsibilities or other people relying on you,

especially you and your wife being together or a couple.

We'll get to that story, but it does allow you a little bit more, I don't know, focus.

I can't just pull all-nighters for five nights knowing, well, I've got to coach my son's basketball. I've got to do this or that.
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the, the, the, the, the, the, the it's like the combined part of the pressure and the the amount of time you have to put into it right yeah i mean that that's everything dude like you your time slowly compresses until one day you wake up you're 40 you three, four kids, you have a mortgage, you have a bunch of responsibilities, got to coach the kids' basketball team, and then you're like, dude, I got a lot of stuff on my plate. If you start to hunt for your journey, then, by the way, I have more respect for you because you're crazy, and I like that.
Oh, I'm definitely crazy. That's another story for another day.
I want to talk cookie dough. And I will say, when you're telling that little bit there, go listen to Dave Attell sometime.
He has a really funny but nasty version of that. Like, what happens when you wake up, you're at this.
You wake up, you're at that. I like like your life story anyway funny uh and uh a little raunchy but nonetheless jimmy i i gotta know like uh obviously the nostalgia i i think you've already probably gave it a little precursor uh but what what what in the hell made you go down the cookie day river it's a wild it's i mean i guess it's not really a wild story like the beginning of the company is really us just like really hating our jobs so megan came home one day we were living together at the time she was my girlfriend she was like dude i just can't do this anymore uh can't go to the office can't do the thing i'm gonna sell my cookie dough at the farmer's and like sell it online.
I think I could probably make enough money to replace my income. I was like, great, do it.
Who cares? At this point in time, we were both just like real sick of what we were doing. And I'd watched her job hop three times and we graduated like 14 months before that.
So we're talking like 14 month period, you job hop three times, you probably need a different job. I have a hard time reflecting on myself.
So I didn't notice that I also had job hops three times. And I also hated my job.
But we had built by the middle of the summer after I like spent all my time helping Megan basically make cookie dough at night I go to my job during the day eventually I was like this job is stupid I'm just gonna sell cookie dough and I quit my job in July um July of 2017 and it was great everyone thought I was insane insane and also stupid uh my dad called me he was like what are you doing man and i was like honestly i would rather sit on the side of the road sell cookie dough to people from like a back of a truck or like a cooler then go back to that office ever again so i mean it was obvious for us and like i alluded to it was easy if i look back on all the decisions i've had to make across the last eight years, the easiest one was just being like, screw it. I don't want to work for anyone else.
And that like, that took us down that path. The other thing is Megan already had that recipe.
She'd been making nightable cookie dough since she was like 14, same recipe. She tweaked it a little bit.
And then we were off to the races. And it's one of those things where man, looking back on it, things happened real fast.
We executed real fast. We did nothing right.
But the execution is really what matters. Like if you get up, wake up, do the thing, even if you have no clue what you're doing, because we did everything wrong, like everything.
We put it in the wrong packaging, didn't know what a health permit was, like didn't know shit about running a restaurant. But like, all you have to do is be willing to learn and be willing to actually wake up and execute.
So, I mean, that's kind of what made us go down that road is like Megan had a good product. We were both real sick of what we were doing.
I guess that's how you build a cookie dough company. I got to ask.
So I know we'll get to it, but do you get tired? I don't feel like I might not eat it every day, but do you still eat the cookie dough, or does it eventually do all good things come to an end? I still eat it. I'm not the guy that sits sits down and eats it i'm the guy that like snacks on it so like it's in the fridge oh god that's me i'd be snacking on that shit all day i mean like a scoop here yeah yeah i put my glove on and get my you know whatever you gotta do to Make it clean.
The room is fine, but we'll get a snack on it.

Yeah, I eat it throughout the day. And also my kids love it.
So, like, it just kind of stays in the house, but I try to limit it. So, I'm like, guys, we can't eat cookie dough every day.
My daughter woke up the other morning and she was like, Dad, where's the cookie dough? And I was like, it's not. We don't have any right now.
And she gave me this look. How does No Bake, I'd be looking at Dad like, how does No Bake not have cookie dough in the refrigerator? Come on.
She was like, what do you mean we don't have cookie dough? I was like, there's just none in there. You ate all of it.
I don't know what you want from me. Oh, me.
The base, the first recipe, is it chocolate chip cookie doughs that's original yeah chocolate chips the original okay after that megan made confetti and brownie and then we just took those three and like ran with it we have a bunch of other flavors today we've done a bunch of crazy stuff but like those three are still like top sellers that's where all the stuff comes from people like chocolate chip like that's like 70 of our sales 70 of our effort it's which is funny because it's like you take all this time to do all this other stuff when really there's this one thing this one recipe you made it a long time ago when you were a kid and that's the thing that keeps going it keeps like on paying that's funny um but such is the way of life man i mean that's, that's the recipe. What was it like with, you know, those first years? And how long have we been at it? What year are we in? 2025.
We've been at it for eight years. How long? How many? Eight years? Eight years next month, yeah.
I mean, you and Megan must have a strong relationship to have made it through all of it. I mean, a lot of people listening probably have started business with their significant other and not made it or it been like hell.
And yeah, I'm not saying it was rosy. We're going to get to some of that, I'm sure.
But it says something about the relationship. it does.
I also think it says something. It would, it would, you don't necessarily have to go start a business through spouse to make this happen, but you could try it to make sure.
But like if you start a business or something or with someone, and you've probably seen this, Ryan, you'll go out, you find a partner, that person's your partner. Sometimes you know that person better than you know you know your spouse sometimes you know you spend more time with that person than you spend with your kids so when it was me megan we started business together what it did and what it forced us to do is be super transparent like you got to be up in each other's head all the time like you can't lie about stuff you can't hide things from each other you can't just be like i'll leave that at work everything follows you everywhere and so you have to be super aligned and super transparent that does cause you to argue and fight more but i would say that that stuff is healthy as long as you're not letting it like you know blow up your relationship make you hate each other you can argue about stuff like we'll argue about like how to allocate like a hundred grand like oh should we spend it on these ads should we do it on this thing but like we're not arguing about stupid stuff that i see my other friends argue about with their wives which is like i bought like skis and i didn't tell you about it i'm sorry like what are you talking why are you you not tell her first of all or like people wouldn't they go like fool like I've got separate bank accounts we do our separate thing we do our own thing and I'm like dude that doesn't make any sense why are you even married because like at a certain point you have to be like all in transparent like here we are because that's how I run it with like a business partner and so like that's how you run it with your spouse, I guess if they are your business partner.
I trust Megan fully, my life. You have situations where it's like, I'll sign on something.
We'll use my credit. My credit gets jacked up.
I know that Megan's not going to leave me and leave me screwed. Instead, it's like, next time we're going to use yours.
We're going to rotate it back and forth. We're going to use this to our advantage.
Because honestly, you're more powerful as a team than you are as an individual. People don't see it that way, usually.
I think it took the pressure cooker and then the shared experience of our 20s doing this to make all that happen. That doesn't happen overnight.
It doesn't happen normally. Also, to your point, it could completely destroy your relationship.
It would probably cost you the worst. But, hey, it works really well for us.
I don't think it works for everybody, but it's been fun and bad and everything in between. It's good, though, because if it works, having where you're mutually, it mutually benefits both of you pretty equally.
If not, it should be, let's call it equally. And so when you have that built in trust because it's and so when you have a partner, when they're not your partner in life and your partner in business, even when you love them and you trust them, they're mutually separate paths of gain a lot of times.

And so that's where you sort of get that trouble out of the way as long as the relationship is tight, which is what you had.

So that's a good thing.

I just want to get to the story know, to the, the story of the, the bus down by the river. I heard a school bus was somewhere involved in, in the story of no bake.
And we're talking with Jimmy, no bake Freeman. That's I give everybody a pet nickname.
That's yours., Jimmy. I love that.
Jimmy Nobake. I love it.
Jimmy Nobake. Yeah.
Yes. The bust, like, how we came into the picture because of the way we ran the business.
So the first three years we ran Nobake, we built a dessert shop chain, basically. So we built a franchise system, opened a bunch of shops.
So from October, 2017, when the first shop opened to October, 2019, we opened nine stores. And then October, 2019, you know, leads right into March of 2020, which is the first time we had to like switch up what the business did.
And prior to that, you know, like I had actually gotten really burnt out. I hated going to those shops.
I hated managing all the managers. I had a manager call me from jail that was managing our Cincinnati store and be like, yeah, man, wife called the cops on me.
I have to spend the next two days in jail. And I'm just like, what am I supposed to do? He might not have been no-baked.
He might have been too-baked. Yeah, right? So you have like these situations, right? That makes – that fucks up your life.
You're like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do this thing.
So then March comes along. Retail is hard.
Yeah. Ironically, I started to like the fact that we had to pivot to DTC.
And then it was like, all the shops are closed. Yeah.
We're under a lot of pressure, but like, this is working scaled up the DTC business. And then we went to raise money in, uh, the beginning of 2021.
And right before that, during 2020, my pet project during the pandemic was I bought a school bus and I was going to turn it into an RV. Cause you know, everyone's sitting on like TikTok in like March of 2020, April, 2020.
I see the people who are living in the van and I'm like, I'm not one to let you live in the van. I don't get to live in the van.
It was cool. I want to do it.
So you go from there to, I guess I'm going to buy one. So we sold our food truck ironically.
And then I took the cash from that and went and bought this old bus from this church, spent the whole year remodeling the bus. That was just like my, it was my side project and I'm not that handy, but I guess now I am because it didn't work out.
But, um, yeah, we moved onto that bus in March of 2021, um, or March, march april 2021 and then we lived on it for about six months um right around that time my daughter was one year old so we only have one kid um it was it was a challenge but it was also this thing where we had like read the four-hour work week like really bought into the D to C thing.

And we were like,

we can work from anywhere.

I'm going to be able to show up in my office can be in like

Yellowstone national park.

I have news for you.

It can't,

that's a terrible idea.

And it's why we actually stopped,

but it was a fun six months.

It was like a brand experiment.

And like, can you be fully remote? Do you actually have to have any piece of the pie? Ironically, today, we moved all the way back toward... In the third pivot of the company, we moved all the way back toward owning everything.
We do our own 3PL work. We manufacture our own products.
We have a lot of hands-on stuff going on. And I'm there for a lot lot of it there's a lot now where i'm not because i've kind of learned to train people to do the things that i should be training them to do but yeah it was like a good solid year of us like really deep believing the v2c dream which is like i can run my 10 million dollar a year business from Fiji.
And I'll be fine.

And you're in the like brand space.

So,

you know,

like,

I mean,

there are people that can achieve something like that,

but you really got to be in the business,

be doing your thing.

Yeah.

And it's a full time.

It's more than a full time job.

So,

I mean, it was fun.

It's a fun break if you're being,

if we're being honest.

But yeah,

I recommend something like that to everyone. I also recommend building

something that you live in, even if it's like a shed in your backyard, like to every guy, it's like, it's a transformational experience. You're like, I built this thing with my bare hands and now I'm like living in it.
It's satisfying. I don't know why I have no idea why it's satisfying.
It just feels right.

I've actually

been fixing up golf carts in my spare time. I find it very – I go with a dad that's like a master craftsman.
He plays eight instruments. He's a master craftsman.
He can build anything. And I'm the idea, the writer guy.
I'm right. I'm a digital, true that guy.
I'm not the Mr. Hammer and Nail.
But I have found therapy in fixing up golf carts. I have no idea why.
But it's something about working with your hands that is rewarding and learning to be a little handy. So my dad is finally, I think he was always proud of me, but there's a different level of proud now that I can, you know, turn the screwdriver and know how to wire shit.
Yeah. They're like, oh, that's cool.
I love that. Yeah.
The golf thing is cool. You don't understand any of the other shit.
Digital ads, Facebook ads, what? Branding? What's that? Let's talk about the brand. Obviously, no big, the product and what it is describes what it is.
But when you think about your brand, I'm sure you guys have evolved in this. At first, it's like, hey, we're making cookie dough.
You can eat that shit. Let's go.
Let's go.

But now how has that evolved for how you do think about the company and the brand and sort of your, I don't know, customer experience?

It's evolved over time, and it's been really informed by the customer.

Because I think when you start out, you don't necessarily know the know the customer you sort of do and Megan would claim that she does her thought was always that she is the customer I will mark it to myself I totally get that the way that it's evolved is kind of like moving away from that and then moving into like what have we learned and that that's hard to do and I think a lot of brands have to evolve that way because you're going to like build a product right you're going to do your thing like you said you're like hey cookie dough you eat it let's go like buy it try it and then what happens you sell that to one two three million people and those people help inform you like what flavors should you make what challenges are there like around like the product itself that type of stuff and then on the brand side they start to inform you of like what should i be marketing to so like originally nobake was very like uh i wouldn't call it like neutral but we were very like neutral we didn't want to offend anybody like this brand is just like we're making cookie dough it's our thing and then slowly over time we started to realize especially once we got into cpg and the ddc into like having a packaged product then it became obvious that there are a bunch of people out there that are like i'm plant-based i'm vegan i'm a carnivore i only eat meat i only do this i only eat organic food like better for you like worse premium food, whatever. That's when we started to really like craft the brand around like what our mission is today, which is to be chef driven, not lab driven.
So like we made the product in a scoop shop, right? Like we made it for customers fresh. We had nine of them.
That was our core business. That's what we did.
We try to stay true to that even today because it helps us stay like really centered like people will come to me and be like you're gonna make a sugar-free cookie dough are you gonna make like this cookie dough that cookie dough like this certification this bs and it's like no i'm not what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna stick to the thing that we do best which is you make a really really tasty treat like we call like a premium indulgence. And we're going to stick to the chef driven thing, which is that Megan's going to craft these flavors as if she's serving it to you, like in your kitchen.
That just made sense for us. And like, when you stick to your guns like that, and then you craft the brand around it, you start to realize that you're going to piss off some people and that's okay.
Cause those people aren't supposed to be eating your stuff anyways. Like you said, you're like, dude, I love cookie dough.
That's great. Those are the people I'm marketing to.
Like someone likes cookie dough. Great.
And then there'll be someone that would like walk into the scoop shop or something like that. I interacted with one of these people recently.
We're in a food hall downtown in Nashville. We have a shop on Broadway.
So it sees a lot of traffic. You know, there's probably like 15 million people that walk across that corner a year.
Not all of them are coming in my shop. And in fact, some do come in the shop and they're like, Hey, do you know where I can get some ice cream? And I've told our employees straight up.
I'm like, tell them where the ice cream shop is. It's right over there.
They should go to the ice cream shop. Why would you want to serve them? And they don't understand the concept that like you have to turn down people

that aren't your customer.

You have to send them to wherever they're supposed to be.

And that way you can actually get customers that want to eat your stuff.

Which that's a whole nother thing.

And that's something that we,

to this day of like,

I think grown slowly and I wouldn't say struggled to do,

but like it is really, really hard to blow up a consumer brand for that reason you do have to like get in front of everyone that's hard but at the same time like you do want to make sure you're getting in front of the right people and you're not trying to market to everyone you can't be everything all the time for everybody it's not possible so that's kind of how it's evolved i mean we started with like exactly what you And then we moved into like, we have to take a stance on like what we are, or people try to shove random stuff down your throat all the time. Every business owner gets that though, like, who has not had some.
And you got to take a stand for what you are. You got that you got to define it.
Like everybody wants to define you, but you've got to define it and stick to your guns. Like you said.
Yeah. I mean, you know, you're like every business owner has always suggested like, Hey, you thought about this? We thought about that.
I have people ask me if I've ever thought about like food truck. So the other day I posted a video of our food truck on LinkedIn.
I was like, Hey guys, look, there's a food truck. It was there in 2019.
I already did it. Don't want to do it again.
Thanks for suggesting. I'll put it in my, like, I'm never going to do that box.
Um, people really want to suggest stuff to you or they want to suggest stuff around your brand or your product. And it's like your job as I think a founder is to say no most of the time and like stick to your brand your thing like and really

go deep on whatever that thing is that you're doing um and you guys probably see that in the brand space all the time it's like some people are really distracted other people go really deep you just go deep stay true to yourself usually works out it's just kind of hard talking with Jimmy, no bank Freeman.

So, Jimmy, I want to talk some numbers.

Like, you know, I find fascination. Like, we did a Valentine's thing talking about how many billion of this, how many pounds of that.
How much cookie dough are we making? Like, how many pounds of cookie dough are we making a year or a week? Or,'s some numbers that would, uh, surprise and delight the audience. That's actually my favorite number to like focus on.
Um, I made this original pitch deck a long time ago for this tangent where I was like, Hey, like for investors in like, I had one guy tell me it was stupid. I was like, it's not stupid.
It's it's cool i was like we have made like seven elephants

worth of cookie dough it was just like what the fuck is doing to me seven elephants dude but that's what it is 10 000 pounds yeah like it's like a 10 000 pound elephant let's go no right now today in our factory in chattanooga we produce anywhere from like 20 to 40 000 pounds of cookie dough a months um yeah pretty insane 20 to 40,000 pounds of cookie dough a month.

Which is pretty insane.

Yeah.

Pretty insane.

20 to 40,000 a month?

Yeah.

Holy shit.

It's wild to see.

It's been growing really fast. 500,000 pounds of cookie dough a year?

Upwards?

Am I doing that math somewhere in that neighborhood?

Yeah.

This year will probably break like 1, 2 million pounds, which is insane. It's just wild to see.
It also smells really good. What's – yeah, does it smell like I would think that it would smell? Yeah.
It smells like – because I'm thinking like when you make cookies. Yeah, that's what it is.
Yeah. It's that combo of sugar and butter.
cookies yeah that's what it is yeah it's that combo it's actually kind of funny if you go into our bakery i mean we we do our best to keep it clean the one thing that you have a really hard time actually like uh keeping i mean we do it by room by room so it's really just a room where we're mixing but there's flour everywhere the light coating of flour you clean all the surfaces clean everything like you know once a day and then deep clean it once a week but like it gets in the craziest places because every time you turn the mixer on there's flour going in there slopping everywhere basically every time yeah you're like ah we're gonna lose like a tiny bit it's not a lot, so you wouldn't see it or notice it.

But it's over time because you're mixing over and over and over and over again.

There's just a light coating of dust.

But I love it.

Is this a mixing bowl that I could climb into?

Like, is it that size?

I wonder if you could fit inside of it.

That's a good question.

You might be able to.

I'm 6'5".

You're pretty good, dude. You'd have to crouch down.
Yeah. But you could fit inside of it.
That's a good question. You might be able to.
I'm 6'5". You're pretty good, dude.

You'd have to crouch down.

Yeah.

But you could fit in there.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

All right.

So I can get in there and just start going to town.

You know, I ought to fresh my own personal badge.

Yeah, and get sick.

I'd like to make a badge for you to swim in it.

Exactly.

That's what I've been thinking about. Like, ah.
It's like this is like my – you talk about indulgent. That's the perfect word.
This is my dream indulgence. It's like when I really want to treat myself, it's probably some form of cookie dough.
Yeah, man. I think that's going to become a lot – that's going to be a lot more important over the next like 10 years.
People would, I'll pitch investors now and they actually ask me about GLP one agonists like immediately. That's like a big question.
Big question for the food industry in general. but if you're going to treat yourself and you're not eating a ton of stuff like random stuff all

the time don't you want to eat like better food like better tasting food it's like that's that's

where i'm at i'm like if i'm gonna like go out to eat i want to go to like a nice restaurant i don't want to go to like random yeah restaurant so like that's that's the thing like you want it to be good like you want it to be that indulgence like you said where it's like i'm gonna eat this when i want to and like this is the thing i want to eat like feed that yeah i don't want it in between i don't want it like kind of hell like my wife and i joke you know we're both watch what we eat but not anal about it i mean but we're probably i don't know more fit than maybe the average couples our age but we always will say is it worth the calories that's kind of the same and we'll always like we take a bite of something we'll kind of look at each other and go if like if she takes about like is it worth it it's not it's not worth it's not worth the calories you know so i just don't mess with that in between stuff it's got to be all the way yeah no it doesn't have to be all the way like that's just the way it is man like it's like that for me with like every food i'm like if i'm gonna eat it i want it to be good like worth the calories actually matters like if you eating something you're actually like you're just eating it because you're bored what's the biggest thing that surprised you jimmy jimmy nobake. Jimmy with this whole experience

in running the company.

There's always surprises.

Any entrepreneurs, you've got your ups and downs.

The bus story is obviously

great, but

what's been the

180 for maybe what you thought

or expected? The biggest surprise?

There have been two.

One of. The first one's more fun uh so like surprise in the good direction is we started the thing in march of 2017 right out of our apartment which is you're at that point you're just like i'm in an apartment selling cookie dough.
How good could it possibly get? You fast forward all the way to March

of 2018. you're at that point, you're just like, I'm in an apartment selling cookie dough.
How good could it possibly get?

You fast forward all the way to March of 2018.

That month we made like 130 grand in profit,

which was like,

what is happening?

Whoa.

And really what had happened is a lot of money for like a small,

for like a kid,

basically for someone that's like not all figured it out at all.

Like we were doing everything wrong.

We just nailed the product and nailed the brand.

It was basically like the thing that surprised me was like, Oh wait,

you can make a lot happen when you have no clue what's going on,

which is really great.

If you just show up every day and like do the thing, you works don't complicate it keep it really simple just do your thing and for us that was like build scoop shop do pop-up events build brand like and at the time it was like gather facebook and instagram followers and then drive them to facebook events is ironically the thing that we were doing that's how we were making so much money's how we were doing the whole thing. And then you would do like press and you would do brand stuff and you would do Instagram ads and it would all build and build into this thing where it was like driving people to a Facebook event.
This is all you're doing. It was a solid strategy for like 2017, 18, 19.
Worked really well. And I blew my mind that like, this is so easy.
Why do not more people do this? And then I found out why more people don't do it. So like the thing that happens is you're going to get surprised like that.
And then you're going to get surprised in the complete opposite direction, which is that I was surprised it was really easy to make a million dollars. I was really, really surprised that it's incredibly hard to make $10 million.
Like if you're going to go from running like a small business, which is highly profitable and like you have no overhead, like you've just blown this thing up and like it's working and you say to yourself i'm gonna scale because this is the surprise right like i was so locked in on the small thing that i was like we can kick it and like me and megan i mean we went to the moon quickly like with a retail business it's hard but it was like all these different pieces coming together and then we went to the moon quickly. Like with a retail business, it's hard.
But it was like all these different pieces coming together. And then we went to scale, even though it was through like franchising and then it was DTC and then it was grocery, whatever it's become.
Every time we've gone to scale, it has blown my mind how hard it is to go from like, hey, we are like clicking. We have like an MVP.
We have a thing that's working to like let's sell 10 million dollars of that thing in consumer that seems to be the number it seems to be the thing where it's like if you could like fast 10 million sales on like a small item that costs less than 20 like you could break that down to like customers but like it's a lot of customers that shit done if it's 10 dollars it's like you have to sell it to a million people a year. That's incredibly hard to do.

In our pint jar, in retail, it's around $10 on shelf. We make like five bucks on it.
I'd have to sell two million pounds, two million pint jars of our cookie dough a year to break the $10 million mark. It's very hard, but you realize that like, there are all these things in between like the product and then getting to that point is in there.
The pieces get complicated. Everything gets complicated.
Your life gets complicated. You overcomplicate it.
You get debt that you shouldn't have gotten. You raise money from people that suck.
the whole thing blows up in your face and that has been the most surprising thing because i had this plan that i wrote down on a napkin i shit you not to megan where i was like we're gonna build a brand we're gonna open a store and then we're gonna franchise it and sell like we're gonna exit to p whatever the whole like between build store and like exit and sell. It's like, that was my, it was step B to C.
The step like B to Z dude. Yeah.
There's a lot of steps in there that you left out. Yeah.
I left out all the other steps. I was like, Oh, once the first store works, we're clicking, and then we just have to scale.
And I always find it fascinating that I'm like, everyone talks about, like, I'm going to scale this, scale that. No one is scaling jack shit.
And it seems to me that it's just really hard. That's just how it is.
And, I mean, I find it fun because it's like a game, and I've tried to, like, equate like equate this to like a game that we're playing why would you try to make it complicated or boring when it should be like interesting so yeah that's surprising it's weird i wish it wasn't like the ends of it surprising to get to one million and surprising how hard it is to get to 10 that's what what I condensed that down to. And it's true.
It is. Scaling is harder than people recognize, even when you've got it sort of figured out.
Where are we headed, Jimmy? What's going on? I think you're going to capital raise maybe, doing some stuff, looking for some investment. We are in capital raise right now.
Where are we at? Yeah. Yeah.
So we're in capital raise right now. We have a reg CF round on Start Engine going, which is great.
That means that anyone out there, $250, you can buy shares with no bigs. Super cool opportunity.
I'll tell you why. So plans for the company actually right now are over the last three years we had to grow slow we had to get profitable we had to

build something that actually worked and that meant that we now have a 3pl a manufacturing facility

cookie dough line where we make millions of pounds of cookie dough all this stuff that's like been

built as an infrastructure for the brand and so we're actually raising money so we can go out and

Thank you. where we make millions of pounds of cookie dough, all this stuff that's been built as infrastructure for the brand.
And so we're actually raising money so we can go out and acquire other brands. Real pumped about this.
I think that it's going to allow us to go out there and right now help a lot of people who have been in my shoes or are in our shoes a few years ago currently figure out how get themselves profitable inside of like the umbrella that we're creating. So like the goal is to go out, find a brand, maybe they're doing really well.
They have a great product, a great brand and know what they're doing, but they just cannot make money, which seems to be the curse in consumer. Um, and our goal is to fix that same way we fixed it for no bigix.
I busted my ass for the last three years figuring out like how do we get profitable and how do we make sure that like we're doing the right things, spending money in the right places and then growing because that's still incredibly key to being able to actually like survive. We were able to do that and now I'm like okay the okay, the first time that we've had the opportunity to raise, like this is the way to go.
And so we're raising that money, trying to go out there and make some acquisitions. We have a really exciting one that's coming up that I wish had already happened so I can announce it, but I'll announce it soon.
And, uh, that's going to be the first of many. All right.
Um, super, super excited. Are we acquiring other, other cookie dough brands or is it broader than that? It's going to be the first of many.
Super, super excited. Are we acquiring other cookie dough brands or is it broader than that? It's going to be slightly broader.
The first acquisition is actually another cookie dough brand that probably not a lot of people have heard of. They're actually much older than us and around a long time.
it's a very synergistic acquisition because we already make cookie dough.

They sell cookie dough.

But then in the future,

the hope is like cookies,

brownies,

bars,

all the things that we have the ability to make in our facility.

We're going to go after those.

And like I said,

like the thing that I'm telling investors,

the thing that I'm telling our team,

the thing that we're talking about every day,

just like between me and Megan,

is like we have to identify good brands,

good products.

Thank you. telling investors the thing that i'm telling our team the thing that we're talking about every day just between me and megan is like we have to identify good brands good products like i said

earlier like on this podcast that's everything and it's going to become so much more important

especially flavor taste like do you actually like eating this stuff because there's no reason to

like go buy like a ten dollar plant-based better for you snack if you don't even like eating it

Thank you. eating this stuff because there's no reason to like go buy like a $10 plant-based better for you snack if you don't even like eating it and you're on trisepitide and you don't even want to eat anyways like what are you doing go eat whatever the heck it is you want to eat because you're not gonna eat a lot of things like i think i think there's a huge opening for brands like that and a huge opening for people to like aggregate power like we're going to and then be able to build something that's profitable um hopefully help a lot of other brand owners like figure out how to thrive which is our hope I got a new name no breaks no bake no breaks no bake let's go you gotta go fast you gotta keep moving you gotta keep growing no breaks no bake that might be the title of the episode uh it's fun man i love it the uh where can everybody find how many places are we're we're like i'm sure distribution's crazy if you're selling that much cookie dough but where is where are we located we're all where's everywhere we can buy no bag good question so you you actually can buy it nationwide um just in a few different places so we ironically have kept their distribution our distribution is pretty big but it's also small compared to other brands.

DoorDash, GoPuff are both really great instant delivery options.

You guys order stuff on DoorDash or GoPuff, look up our brand.

It's probably in your area.

And you'd find that through Dash Mart on DoorDash.

And then the Fresh Market down in your neck of the woods, my neck of the woods,

really anyone on the East Coast, you can find us at the fresh market.

And then we're sold at a bunch of independent and natural grocery stores

all over the East coast.

Some of the West coast,

I can go on the website and look it up.

We have a really great store finder and it's very up to date.

But my favorite stores to buy it in are,

are honestly my favorite place to buy it in general is the fresh market.

Cause I just liked that store. They were the first grocery store that ever gets chance on us um and i love that place they they have like if you're like the type of person like me that likes to go grocery shopping and find new stuff they do a really good job of that so i'm i'm a real big fan of that store real big fan of sprouts too Hopefully they hear this and you know, it works out this year, but yeah, we're, we're trying to like keep our distribution very, it's similar to our whole strategy.
Very, very deep and very like definitely nationwide, but like very deep on like channels we know work. So it's like that, that door dash location, that gopuff location like that's where everyone's

ordering and and i love that and i love that they're having a good experience so intentionally staying out of big box or big retailers yeah i mean there's one big retailer that we might launch in this year that i i like a lot but we're trying to keep it to places where we think the brand wants. Yep.
Makes sense. Indulge where you indulge.
Smart. It's true, though.
It is. I indulge when I go to the fresh market.
I think of that as an indulgent place. So it aligns with the brand.
Hey, look, on brand, on time, no breaks, no bake. Jimmy, where can i keep up with the brand specifically yourself and everything that you've got going with the capital raise yeah so you can find the capital raise start engine uh go on start engines website and just type in no baked you'll find it if you want to keep up with the brands you can find us at no bait on basically every social media.
That's our handle. So Instagram, Tik TOK, Facebook, all the places you see stuff.
And then if you want to follow me, follow me on X or LinkedIn, and you can see and hear all of the ridiculous stuff I say, and you might like that. So I hope you come and follow me.
Cause Megan and I are both very transparent and partially insane. So I hope people like it.
Yeah, I think you have to be to stick it through together an entrepreneurial journey and just be an entrepreneur in general. You have to have a little bit of a crazy gene.
I'm determined that that's true yeah there's there's a small bit of crazy small bit jimmy it's been fun i appreciate you coming on let's stay in touch brother for sure man i'm i'm pumped i let me on the show and uh i really enjoyed it so let's do it again man yeah we'll stay in touch maybe uh but i, we got to line up that delivery though. I'm sitting here like, all I want to do is eat this can and it's like, it's not cookie dough though, you know? So I'm going to work that out.
I'm going to this fresh market. Oh, it's close.
I will. Hey guys, you know where to find us.
Ryanisright.com. We'll find highlight clips from today's episode, the full YouTube video.
And of course, all the links to no bank, no breaks, no bank. And Jimmy Freeman, all his stuff.
We appreciate Jimmy for coming on and we appreciate you for making us number one. We know you've got a choice, but you've got to keep it right here on Right About Now.

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