How Ashley Rogers Built A $9M Brand In Just 4 Years 🚀 E98

Speaker 1 Real life experience.

Speaker 2 Really? You need the real life experience. Did you go to college?

Speaker 1 No. I tried.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I barely graduated high school. Yeah, so I feel like to me, but that's like, that's in my blood.

Speaker 2 That's like in my DNA, you know, it's like I figure stuff out and I learn off real life experience.

Speaker 1 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to The Money Mondays. We are here parked outside of the wild jungle, our 26-acre ranch here in Temecula, California.

Speaker 1 We have a special guest that drove out here from Newport Beach, California, and she has been involved in some amazing brands in the CPG space, the retail space, and the food space, ranging from Spudsy, the brand that she helped start, to now Sprinkles Cupcakes, and the new division of what they're offering that not enough people know about.

Speaker 1 And hopefully as of today, everyone's going to start talking about it and everyone's going to start wanting to buy it because Sprinkles is an iconic brand. It's just so cool.
Oh, Roger's handing me.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. We're going to dive right into it.

Speaker 2 I know, should we set these up?

Speaker 1 Absolutely, please.

Speaker 1 So, as you guys know, the way it works here is we're gonna keep the episode to under 40 minutes because the average workout is 40 minutes and the average commute to work is 40 minutes.

Speaker 1 So this episode will be between 34 to 38 minutes for your listening pleasure.

Speaker 1 So without further ado, we're gonna have Miss Ashley Rogers give you a quick two-minute bio so we can get straight to the money.

Speaker 2 Cool. Hi, I'm Ashley.
I was born and raised in Vegas.

Speaker 2 I'm a founder. So I started my founder entrepreneurial journey.

Speaker 2 Well, I guess my my first job, I worked as a cocktail server at the Hard Rock in Vegas.

Speaker 1 Oh, really?

Speaker 2 It was rehab. It's like this famous pool party.

Speaker 1 First place I ever gambled in Hard Rock.

Speaker 2 Yeah, crazy stories, crazy gambling stories I've seen. But realized quickly I never wanted to work for anyone else.
I was raised by an entrepreneur, my dad.

Speaker 2 So I knew I wanted to do my own thing. Made a bunch of money being a cocktail server, traveled the world for 30 days from the money that I saved.

Speaker 2 And when I came back, I'm like, I'm starting my own thing. Started a meal prep company

Speaker 2 making healthy meals before meal prep was cool right to all the cocktail servers ended up selling that to one of my employees nice uh and then started my next brand was a which was a brand called buff bake a protein cookie um i barely graduated high school so it taught me everything that i knew about business um sales marketing logistics everything

Speaker 2 uh grew that for four years got in major retailers like gnc vitamin shop sold that to my business partner started it with five other people too many cooks in the kitchen, wanted to do my own thing, and I knew that I was like the magic in the brand.

Speaker 2 So, 2018 started Spudsy,

Speaker 2 raised over $9 million for Spudsy, exited two weeks ago.

Speaker 1 Two weeks ago, two weeks ago.

Speaker 2 Oh, okay. Yeah, and that I mean, scaled that to 20,000 doors nationwide.

Speaker 2 My investors in Spudsy owned Sprinkles Cupcakes, and so now I'm here and I created

Speaker 2 Sprinkles CPG.

Speaker 2 So now I am running this baby. These are our cupcake cups.
So when I first started, we started with chocolate bars. These are available in Walmart and Target nationwide.

Speaker 2 But I wanted, I really believe in innovation and finding like a white space in the market. So I wanted to create something that did not exist,

Speaker 2 which is the cupcake cup. So it's basically a peanut butter cup, but instead of nut butter inside, it's cupcake frosting.

Speaker 1 Ooh.

Speaker 1 You want to try one? Absolutely. Birthday cake, double chocolate, and red velvet.
All of them.

Speaker 2 Should we get some live on-air feedback?

Speaker 1 I can't explain how many red velvet cupcakes I've had at the Sprinkler's Cupcakes in Beverly Hills on that Santa Monica Boulevard. Yeah.
Oh, my gosh. If you check the cameras, I've been there a lot.

Speaker 1 It's definitely our number one flavor. There's a lot to unpack here.

Speaker 1 Let's walk through. So as you guys know, we cover three core topics, how to make money, how to invest money, how to give it away to charity.
On the make money side,

Speaker 1 By the way, Buff Bake, I used to know so many influencers that would just post about it organically. They did.
I don't know if you were even paying them because I just saw people

Speaker 1 were just talking about it, paying like I was paying a bunch of influencers, and I kept seeing your brand over and over and over. And people were just like eating it, posting about it.

Speaker 1 We'd be at like the fitness conventions and fit con and all these places, and there your product was. There it is, there it is, there it is.

Speaker 1 And I just saw it so often, I was always wondering, like, who was behind it? And there you are. Yeah, here I am.

Speaker 2 I feel like, so when I started that in 2014, I feel like social media was completely different then.

Speaker 2 Like, an influencer wasn't even a thing, it was just more organic where you could send a random person a product and they post it.

Speaker 2 And now it's like turned into obviously a big business.

Speaker 1 For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So when you go from, all right, I'm going to start my own meal prep company, you sell it, how do you decide, okay, I'm going to start Buff Bake? Like, what was the thing?

Speaker 1 Like, what made you click like, this is the market I want to go for?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think starting in food. So it was easy to start, right? You could start a meal prep company in your kitchen.
So it was just an easy thing to start. And then Buff Bake was the same way.

Speaker 1 And since I was already in food with the meal prep it was just like an easy transition to do something else in food got it yep and so when you mentioned the too many chefs in the kitchen when someone out there is thinking about having a business partner i like when someone has one business partner maybe sometimes two yep walk me through what happens when you get to three and four like and you have five people involved in a company yeah I think when you are going in business, because I agree, like I wish I had a business partner and thing, like in Spudsy, I did that solo.

Speaker 2 I wish I had a business partner, but I do have team members within the company who own equity who are like business partners. But I would say

Speaker 2 my biggest advice is like go in with clearly defined roles so you know what's either which, what you're doing and what I'm doing, right?

Speaker 2 Because if that's not clear from day one, like in writing, operating agreement in hand, that's when shit starts getting muddy.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to give you guys a real world example and then let you guys guess and what your thoughts are. So there's two things.

Speaker 1 One's called a scope of work, an SOW, or an MOU, memorandum of understanding. So that's what Ashley's talking about.
Dan's going to do this. Ashley's going to do this.
Let me give you a quick example.

Speaker 1 Let's say Ashley and I, we hit it off today. We're like, you know what? We're going to start a lemonade stand company together.
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 We start our first lemonade stand right here in Temecula, California. That lemonade stand crushes it.
We open it up, and it's called A and D.

Speaker 1 So it says Ashley and Dan, but it doesn't actually say it there. It just says A and D.

Speaker 1 We didn't want to call it DNA because that's, you know. So A and D.
It's original. We're all about originality.
So A and D lemonade stand starts. Temporal, California.

Speaker 1 We start doing like a thousand bucks a day in sales. We decided to open up in Vegas because she's from Vegas.
We open up one in Vegas, then two, then three, then four in Las Vegas.

Speaker 1 We have five locations of A and D lemonade stand.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh, Ashley gets a call from Gary Vaynerchuk.

Speaker 1 He's like, hey, Ashley, I've been watching what you've done with Spudsy and Sprinkles. I want to offer you the CEO role of my overall conglomerate, and I'm going to pay you millions of dollars.

Speaker 1 I need you to travel the world. Will you do it? And I'll give you equity.
Ashley says yes.

Speaker 1 Doesn't even mention to me. That's fine.
She's her own woman. She can do whatever she wants.
She takes this role getting paid millions of dollars to travel the world to work with Gary B.

Speaker 1 I go open up location number six. She's on the group chat, so she's helping me.
I open up location number seven, but she doesn't really respond in because now she's kind of busy.

Speaker 2 And you become bitter.

Speaker 1 I'm getting a little frustrated already. You become resentful over this.
I open up location eight, nine, and ten in Seattle because I have a friend of mine that's out there.

Speaker 1 I open up location 11, 12, 13, and 14 in Phoenix, Arizona. I haven't heard from her in a few weeks now.
She's really busy, obviously. She's scaling and building Gary B's company.

Speaker 1 I opened up location 16, 17, 18, 19, and 20 in Los Angeles, San Diego, Ontario. Boom, boom, boom.
Salt Lake City.

Speaker 1 A year goes by. Ashley's like, you know, I'm actually done.
Dan, I'm coming back. And I've got 64 locations of A and D lemonade stand all over the country.

Speaker 1 Does Ashley still own 50% of 64 locations? Does Ashley still own?

Speaker 2 I mean, I do because from day one, we had an agreement.

Speaker 1 Where?

Speaker 1 Oh, are you saying we didn't have an agreement?

Speaker 1 That's why they should have an agreement for what you're doing.

Speaker 2 Exactly. That's why they should.
I thought we started our company 50-50, is what I was assuming this whole time.

Speaker 1 That's the problem. Yep.
You need the agreement. We assumed.
You need the agreement. I assumed you had 90%.
You assumed you had 50%. No one knows because we didn't write it down.
Yep.

Speaker 1 And then you left me to go work for Gary B. Understandable.
And you come back. Do you own 50% of one location? Six locations? 64 locations? I could argue either side.

Speaker 1 If we went to court, I think I could argue for your side or my side because you're like, well, I'm the A and A and D.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, yeah, but I, you don't even know, you don't even know the addresses of most of these locations. You couldn't be a part of it.

Speaker 1 And you're like, yeah, but I'm the brand, the co-famous I got working with Gary. Yeah, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 1 All of that could have been resolved doing what Ashley said.

Speaker 1 A memorandum of understanding. Dan's going to do this.
Ashley's going to do that. And that removes so much.

Speaker 2 This is our equity percentages, and this is the roles that each of us play. And one of, if one of us wants to go do this, maybe the equity changes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 yes amen yes have fun arguing about that in the comment section who owns 50 of those 64 locations i see it happening all the time though for sure yeah it's a tragedy because it it's we make assumptions and try to be brain readers and think that other people can read our minds of like oh yeah i'm gonna do this or she's gonna do this or and there's also what's called pillow talk Then you're sitting with your husband or wife or best friend at having drinks and they're like, oh no, you built that brand.

Speaker 1 Yep. But Ash is out there in New York City with Gary Vee and her friends are like,

Speaker 1 dan's leveraging you because you're becoming famous on tv because of gary like he's only opening those locations because of you and you're like yeah i should own more yep all these things are happening in our minds well because then you have your people on your side and my people on our side and when i'm thinking in my mind and you it's just like a show yes clearly defined from day one yes yep memorandum of understanding or scope of work all right next question as we go from buff bake and now you get into spudsy yep what was the market there what did you see in the potato snack market why'd you decide to do that and why decided to be a solopreneur?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, I think I was maybe scarred a little bit from the buff bake, which is why I wanted to do my own thing.

Speaker 2 But I do wish I would have had a partner in it. It just didn't happen that way because, I mean, I know what I'm good at, and I'm obviously not good at everything.
No one's good at everything, right?

Speaker 2 And I really lean into my strengths and my weaknesses. I find people that are really good at those things to then run and operate them.

Speaker 2 Started Spudsy because I saw a white space in the market. So I saw all these vegetables popping up that revolved around chickpeas, cauliflower, weird vegetables that weren't appealing to me.

Speaker 2 To me, it's really important to be innovative and create something that's different. So that's what the sweet potato puff was.

Speaker 2 It was, there's a hundred puffs in the category, but there wasn't a sweet potato one. Got it.
Yep.

Speaker 1 And so when you start approaching retailers, someone out there that's watching is like, I want to get into retail stores. I want to be like Ashley and be in 20,000 stores like you got to.

Speaker 1 How did they get into their first one, two, three stores? Yep.

Speaker 2 So I, it's very important, one, to have a plan, right? And to build a story. So getting into your first store, I say it's normally a local store or it's one store.

Speaker 2 And it's really important to get into that store, dive deep, create a data story because you want to be able to have some kind of story to go to the Whole Foods and the Krogers and the Sprouts and say, hey, this is why you need my brand.

Speaker 2 You need my brand. One, because hopefully it's not another Me Too product.
It's something innovative and different. And two, two, it's performing really well in these smaller retailers that I'm in.

Speaker 2 That's why you should take it in in your larger retailer.

Speaker 1 So someone gets into those first few stores. How can they nurture that store?

Speaker 1 How can they make them feel like a lot of times people don't realize you're either paying for merchandising displays, you're paying for the discounts that happen, you're paying for chargebacks if someone wants to return the goods to you.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of money that goes into once you get into the retailer. Where can they learn about that stuff? Do you have coaching or masterminds or like what's how do people understand this stuff?

Speaker 1 Because I grew up selling my energy drinks we were in 55 000 stores

Speaker 2 but i lived and breathed it for half a decade of just like slept around the country carrying cases of drinks into stores and like yeah will you buy my product and like yeah it's funny that you say that dan so it's it's i feel like not a lot of people teach you how to do those things and i've spent thousands hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and advisors basic in real life experience.

Speaker 2 That's basically how I learned how to do all those things. But I also created this little program.

Speaker 2 It's like a mastermind teaching people A to Z how to launch these products into retail.

Speaker 2 So from working with manufacturers to getting into retail to working with distributors and brokers and the whole gamut, because I feel like not a lot of people teach you the A to Z of launching a product.

Speaker 2 So I'm in the process of building out that as well.

Speaker 1 Very good.

Speaker 2 People need side hustle. I read why I do sprinkles full time.

Speaker 1 I get bombarded with these questions all the time. That's why I was wondering if someone actually can teach it that's lived and breathe it.
There's

Speaker 1 a lot of people that can teach things on social media that haven't lived and breathed it and got into 20,000 stores like you have.

Speaker 1 And now even more, obviously, with Sprinkles and other brands that you've been part of. But like...

Speaker 1 The information barrier is hard when it comes to retail. It is.

Speaker 1 Who's teaching it? Like, who's talking about it?

Speaker 2 No, no one's talking about it. No one's teaching it.
And unfortunately, the learning lessons that you have to learn to learn

Speaker 2 are so expensive.

Speaker 1 They're crippling sometimes.

Speaker 2 Crippling brand ruining.

Speaker 2 A lot of the the time especially if you're a small brand that's not well funded so that's my goal and that's what i'm really passionate about is like teaching people those mistakes like through some type of consulting mastermind subscription program is what i'm trying to build out right now

Speaker 1 there's been times i've watched brands go into retail stores and then they don't sell through And then when they get removed from that retail store,

Speaker 1 all of a sudden you get 300 grand with a product back and you don't have 300 grand to either pay for it or cover it or resell it or you can't resell it because it's damaged or whatever like

Speaker 1 what do you do like this happens at walmart a lot by the way if you ship to walmart and your hangers i had in clothing i set a clothing brand and the hangers were the wrong way they would charge you 25 cents per unit well think about my margin on you know a six dollar t-shirt i'm making 60 cents so if i have to pay them back 25 cents they want an actual check by the way So if I ship them 16,000 shirts at 25 cents a unit, I've all of a sudden got to pay them 4 grand on that order.

Speaker 1 I only made $8,000 or twelve grand on the order. Plus, I got to pay sales reps commission.
I got to pay distribution, shipping, logistics, laser six, taxes, fees, marketing, like broker fees. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And what if I ship them a million shirts? Yeah. What if I shipped them, you know?

Speaker 2 And a lot of times you don't find out until last minute. They're like,

Speaker 2 your product's discontinued and we're shipping it back to you next month.

Speaker 1 Also, if you,

Speaker 1 again, Walmart is an example, Costco, Target, similar concepts. They run like an actual machine morning, noon, and night.

Speaker 1 When you think about it, they're doing millions and millions and millions of dollars a a day in revenue. Some of them doing that tens of millions a day in revenue.

Speaker 1 If your truck is not at the bay and they have like 70 bays or 100 bays, if your truck is the wrong bay, you don't get to get delivered.

Speaker 1 Or you got to pay a fee for them to like replace you, a misplacement fee. So if you're at base 70 and you're supposed to be at base 72, your day is ruined.
Totally.

Speaker 1 And again, your margin could be gone in one shot.

Speaker 2 And it's all those little things that no one tells you, right?

Speaker 2 Like even distributors, there are so many hidden fees like in distributors because i think a lot of people think i take this bag and i just send it directly to target that's not the way that it works you have to send it to a distributor and that distributor distributes your product but to your point like the margin is so slim that creating a product that has a good margin from the the start is probably the most important thing right so in my beverage days i had 43 distributors we were in 55 000 stores average distributor was shipping to 1200 to 2400 stores per distributor half of them were budweiser cool sorry half of them were Budweiser.

Speaker 1 The rest were Coors, Miller, Pepsi, and then Southern Wine Spirits. I had to travel to all 43 distributors.
I had to nurture them.

Speaker 1 I was doing what's called ride-alongs, where I'd, let's say Ashley was working on Budweiser.

Speaker 1 I would get in the truck with, like an actual semi-truck, like Budweiser truck, and I would go in there at six in the morning and drive with them until 4 p.m.

Speaker 1 and go visit 20, 25, 30, 40 stores in one day just to make that sales rep like me. Build the relationship.
Right? And here's why. Budweiser is there to sell Budweiser.
That's their main job.

Speaker 1 But it's kind of easy for them because they don't have to even ask the retailer. They can just place the products into the cooler and then charge them later.

Speaker 1 But lots of brands want Budweiser to distribute them. Milk, water, soda, energy, every juice, every category wants Budweiser to distribute them because Budweiser is in a gazillion stores.

Speaker 1 Why would that sales driver care about my energy drink?

Speaker 1 compared to the other 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90, 100 brands that are inside that same Budweiser warehouse, the relationship that Ashley just talked about.

Speaker 2 Yeah, what you being in that car with him for all day long, building a relationship is going to make him want to push your brand to all of the retailer partners that he goes into over these big guys.

Speaker 2 Right. Because really, like, the human and a lot of people don't want the Budweisers to win.
They want these startup companies to win with these true human founders behind them.

Speaker 1 Yes. So over the last three years, I've been investing a lot in food and beverage brands and consumer products because they have interesting multiples when they exit.

Speaker 1 When you get it right, when you get Spud Z, you know, 20,000 stores, you stand out versus the hundreds of other brands, thousands of other brands that are only in X amount of stores or not any stores because it's hard, especially to get into at scale at 20,000 stores.

Speaker 1 Why do you like the food and beverage space? Why do you like this, the CPG world?

Speaker 2 I like it just because I'm so passionate about food.

Speaker 2 I do think the exits are interesting too, but I think we all know that those are anomalies. Like 0.1% of these brands actually exit.

Speaker 2 But, I mean, I've done it a few times. So I feel like I do have that formula now.

Speaker 2 I just, I love food. I think it's, it's fun.
I love the packaging.

Speaker 2 I love putting the branding and the idea and doing the manufacturing. It's just what I'm passionate about.

Speaker 1 I'm going to give you guys a fun fact.

Speaker 1 The reason that you see a lot of food and beverage brands get acquired is because for a large company, like the really big ones that you see, Procter ⁇ Gamble, Budweiser, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Sprite, those type of brands, that you see all of a sudden like, why did that company buy our X-Bar for $640 million or $600 million dollars why did they buy that snack company for 120 million etc here's why for a large conglomerate it takes them on average 75 million dollars to start this brand they move so slow takes them two years and 75 million dollars if they want to start their own version of sprinkles cupcake cups so they would much rather buy them for anywhere from 50 to 200 million dollars save themselves two years and they already know that it's almost free for them to buy what do i mean by that

Speaker 1 let's say budweiser buys sprinkles cupcake cups you're like that doesn't make sense. Why would they buy them? Well, Budweiser is already in, let's call it half a million stores.

Speaker 1 So if this brand is in 10,000 or 20,000, 30,000 stores, Budweiser can just place the products into a lot more retailers.

Speaker 1 So even if they pay them 50 million, 100 million, 200 million, which sounds crazy for the brand that's only been around for one, two, three, four years, they have

Speaker 1 overnight distribution.

Speaker 2 Yep.

Speaker 1 And so instead of them going and spending $75 million to maybe make it work, like Ashley said, there's thousands of brands that don't work out.

Speaker 1 They can buy an already successful brand that's already doing 20 million, 30 million, 50 million, 100 million sales pay them a good multiple 2x 3x 4x 5x 6x but they're actually saving themselves money because they're saving themselves two years of time time headache hiring teams gambling trying to figure out if it's going to work out compared to oh you're already doing millions of dollars with spudsy great i'll buy you

Speaker 1 in all these other stores yep all right let's talk about the investing side why

Speaker 1 Should entrepreneurs and business owners invest into themselves and into their minds?

Speaker 2 I feel feel like for me,

Speaker 2 investing in myself is everything because, I mean, I believe in myself and I know that I'm going to execute and bring something to life.

Speaker 2 So that's like literally how I invest is I invest in myself and every single time that it's paid off.

Speaker 1 So someone that's out there that wants to get into the food and brand space,

Speaker 1 I often tell people that they should go work for a brand because that's the real school.

Speaker 1 You can go to college, you can go to university, you can study online, but going to work for actually for six months, you know, going to work in your office for two years and watching the way you move, and watch the way you deal with the secretary, the buyer, the CEO, the sales rep, the investors, the partners, the media, the consultants, the lawyers, the accountants, like all the movies.

Speaker 1 Real life experience.

Speaker 2 You need the real life experience. Did you go to college?

Speaker 1 No, I tried.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I barely graduated high school. Yeah.
So I feel like to me, but that's like, that's in my blood. That's like in my DNA.

Speaker 2 You know, it's like I figure stuff out and I and I learn off real life experience.

Speaker 1 I tried to go to San Diego State University. So I was 17 and a half and I saved up $43,000 during three years of high school working three different jobs.

Speaker 1 I was working at Qualcomm Stadium selling peanuts and cracker jacks,

Speaker 1 working at Ruby's diner with a sailor's cap on and then working for oldie discount stockbrokers working as an assistant there to the stockbroker.

Speaker 1 And then during those years, I was saving up, you know, 12 grand, 18 grand, 14 grand for the year, which is a ton of money. 15, 16, 17 years old.
Huge.

Speaker 1 Put together $43,000 and I thought that's what I was going to use for San Diego State.

Speaker 1 instead i started printing t-shirts in high school sold a hundred shirts at lunch which 15 bucks a shirt so i sold 1500 bucks i'm like oh my god i'm a millionaire this is it that's it i know i know where i'm going now went to the clothing convention called magic and i wasn't even allowed to go in because i wasn't 18.

Speaker 1 you had to actually be 21 and uh that's where it all started it all started from that moment and i took the money that i had for school and invested it in yourself yeah into the brand and got got two booths instead of one booth i got 20 feet instead of 10 feet i'm like yeah i'm gonna be a big dog here baller yeah i was right next to a brand called fooboo with

Speaker 1 him and john and on the other side was sean john when puff daddy had first launched at the same time 1999 somewhere good brands to be sandwich sandwiched in between they had like million dollar booths next to my little four thousand dollar booth and uh but that's the magic that happened we ended up writing one million dollars in orders only because well the name was fun but because what was the name Who's Your Daddy?

Speaker 1 Like the slogan. I own the slogan for 300 different products.

Speaker 1 So the buyers from all the major chain stores were hanging out in front of the foo boo booth. And so they were just like, oh, what's this funny brand?

Speaker 1 You know, a bunch of high school kids working at the booth. And we just started inter

Speaker 1 and then Mervyn's, Cole's, Dr. J's, Mr.
Rags, Miller's. That's a cool story.
Yeah. It all happened to me.
So that was your first little venture.

Speaker 2 Yes. That's cool.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So we sold clothing.
We were doing that year. We did 9.5 million sales.
Damn. And what year was this?

Speaker 1 Now it became the year 2000, but 1999 to 2000. I graduated high school in in 99.
And then 2001, we started doing like 21, 22 million sales. Wow.
All in apparel.

Speaker 1 And then wanted to launch the energy drink. It took two years because we wanted to go public.

Speaker 1 So we ended up going public April 1st, 2005.

Speaker 1 And that took a lot of work.

Speaker 1 Literally two years of accounting, two years of raising money. Wild.
But it was...

Speaker 1 It's a cool story. Yeah.
And then 2005, 2009, I literally don't remember anything. All I do was sell.
I just drove around to 55,000 stores.

Speaker 1 I didn't go to every store, but I went to every distributor multiple times, all 43 cities, and just spent all the time with them. And I would go meet with Costco and Ralph's.

Speaker 2 I mean, putting in that work, though, and going to all those distributors and building that relationship is probably why your brand ended up where it ended up.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we were the number seven at 900 drinks on the market, and we were number seven, and it was a battle. I had a website back then called energydrinkwars.com.

Speaker 1 And I would just post pictures and videos of us like at retail stores. And then all of our drinks were outside in the dumpster.
So like another energy drink would take us and throw us away.

Speaker 1 So, we'd go take all theirs, like Zion's, the guys at UFC, had a brand, we take all their drinks and put it outside, and we'd put our drinks in there. It was like a, it was a war.

Speaker 1 It's funny, it was war because there's only so much shelf space. There's an old saying, I-level is by-level.

Speaker 1 So, if you go to a cooler and you open up that cooler, or you go to a shelf when you're walking by,

Speaker 1 if you're not above the above the waist is what we call it. If you're not above the waist, no one's buying your product.
No one.

Speaker 1 Like, if you could, I could literally attach a $100 bill to this $5 package or $10 package. I could put a $100 bill on it.
But if I put on the bottom shelf... No one's buying it.

Speaker 1 They won't pay $10 for a $100 bill because they can't see it.

Speaker 2 When you look at the data, it's wild, the velocity difference between the bottom shelf versus the middle.

Speaker 1 I literally will turn down a retailer. Same.
I won't be in it because I'm not going to do it. Yep.
What's the point? I love you, Whole Foods. I love you, Costco.

Speaker 2 If you're going to give me a shot,

Speaker 2 you need to give me an eye-level shot.

Speaker 1 Yes. I need to be above the waist.
Otherwise, there's no point. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because it's expensive going in a retailer on the bottom shelf and then getting discontinued because the product did not sell. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 and then now when you talk to other retailers they're like oh how'd you do over at whole foods like well yep you don't have that data story to go show these other retailers you don't want to explain it because then they're like oh well now she's gonna talk bad about me and my chain story i'm not gonna take that break you don't want that on investing too i also think it's really important to invest in the right people so it's not only things it's like yourself but it's also the right people so talk about team like when someone's first getting going a lot of times they're just doing everything they're a solopreneur maybe they get a partner and they can help split up some of the efforts but what about when when that first hire, they go hire an executive assistant or they go hire a sales manager or they go hire a COO or they go hire that first person?

Speaker 1 When do you know it's the time or do you do it before it's time?

Speaker 2 Both, but I feel like you know when it's the time. Like you're overwhelmed and you know your strengths, right? So you hire your weaknesses.
That's at least what I do.

Speaker 2 But I always get the ground. I would say I'm the solo person in the business for the first six months.

Speaker 2 I get it going and then I figure out what gaps I need to fill first and the most important role I need to hire first, which is normally I'm the best at sales.

Speaker 2 It's normally like the ops and finance side. So if I get somebody else to run that smoothly, I can go out here and sell and market the product and get the revenue coming in.
Yes.

Speaker 1 So here's a big thing.

Speaker 1 Operations and finance is very time consuming and you want someone that knows how to live and breathe it. It's super important.

Speaker 1 I don't run any accounting in any of my companies because I'm better versed to go do, like what Ashley said, is go do the sales or go do the marketing or go do the social content, go to the conventions.

Speaker 1 Me dealing with the accounting and finance is not helpful to the company.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 1 And sometimes like, oh, I can't spend the three grand a month or 10 grand a month or two grand a month or five grand a month, whatever the price is to have someone do that thing.

Speaker 1 But how much are you worth? Totally. Like, would aren't you worth more than five grand a month? Yeah.

Speaker 1 If you know that you can go create $10,000, $20,000, $50,000, $100,000 in sales, then five grand a month is free.

Speaker 2 Well, that person will basically pay for themselves.

Speaker 1 For sure. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just allowing you to unshackle yourself from the office and deal with accounting and spreadsheets and so i go in knowing like okay i what what does my day look like if i'm spending two hours a day dealing with accounting and finances

Speaker 1 what could i do with two hours a day in sales yep all right so why don't i pay that person five grand a month to go do that thing for me unshackle me let me go

Speaker 1 yeah let me go fly let me go sell let me go

Speaker 2 in the business or on the business like you don't want to be in the business on the finance side you want to be working on the business and getting the revenue and the sales coming in. Yes.

Speaker 1 Okay. So you've talked to a retailer.
You're on the shelf. It's working.

Speaker 2 Which is really hard. Yes.

Speaker 1 To get it working.

Speaker 1 Now

Speaker 1 you want to leverage it. You want to go get to other retail chains.
What is that first phone call like? Let's call me right now. Like call me Ashley.
Like I'm the buyer for Whole Foods.

Speaker 1 How do you get your product into my store? Okay. Hey Dan.

Speaker 2 I love to be on the shelf of your stores. Right now we're currently sold in Walmart and Target.
We have a really healthy philosophy. We're exceeding the buyer's expectation.

Speaker 2 We have this amazing brand name behind Sprinkles, iconic 20-year-old brand. We're creating something that doesn't currently exist.
Our innovative cupcake cup.

Speaker 2 Think of a peanut butter cup, but instead of peanut butter inside, it's cupcake frosting. Can I get an in-person meeting with you?

Speaker 2 I'd love to come meet you in person, take you out to dinner, and pitch my idea to you.

Speaker 1 Wow, that was really good.

Speaker 1 What are the price points of these compared to normal chocolates?

Speaker 2 We are in line with our competitors. Yes.

Speaker 1 Are they even normal chocolates? Because there's some chocolates that are very expensive and some chocolates are very.

Speaker 2 This is premium chocolate. So like Linton Ghirardelli, I would say is premium chocolate.
Hershey's is like more on the cheap side. This is considered a premium chocolate.

Speaker 1 Is Hershey's going to buy you?

Speaker 2 We'll see.

Speaker 2 Someone's going to buy us.

Speaker 1 So I asked that question because just recently there was a sour patch strips that

Speaker 1 an influencer created. It created just four years ago.

Speaker 1 This influencer started with no money just had a social media following and started making these sour strips by the way there's lots of other sour stripes obviously yeah

Speaker 1 there's lots of other sour strip companies just recently this summer sold for over a hundred million dollars yep there's only a few skews

Speaker 1 and there's nothing new about it yeah god bless them i'm not saying in a bad way power of social media good branding

Speaker 1 But you have an unfair advantage. You have a 20-year legacy brand that's top, top tier.
Like, it is the number one brand. I can't even name another chain of cupcake stores, right?

Speaker 1 Like, this is the cupcake store. They're the OG.
Yeah. And there's lots of cupcake stores that pop up, but this is the brand by far.

Speaker 1 So, why chocolate?

Speaker 1 Why go down that path? And what does it do for retailers to already have an established brand?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, we didn't want to be in baking because the velocity is pretty low in baking. We wanted to be in a high-velocity category.
And we're an indulgent, decadent brand.

Speaker 2 So, we just love the chocolate category.

Speaker 2 When it was presented to me, it was bars, but I realized quickly that bars, like I said, I'm big about innovation.

Speaker 2 So creating something that brought chocolate and the cupcake together and creating the cupcake cup, like

Speaker 2 was the perfect product for the chocolate category, which is like a higher velocity category.

Speaker 2 Because that's another thing when I create things, like I don't want to create something and know that it's going to be a slow mover.

Speaker 2 I want to go into a category where I know it's a high velocity item and the product's going to move. Salty snack.
Like, most people buy a bag of salty snacks when they're in store, right?

Speaker 2 Chocolate, another big category. Ice cream, another big category.
But ice cream is difficult because I actually looked at the ice cream piece of it too.

Speaker 2 The frozen component, that's another thing you want to look at. The logistics of it.
Does it need to be refrigerated? Is it frozen?

Speaker 1 Like, this would be a great frozen brand, obviously, too.

Speaker 2 But sprinkles could be anything.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It could.
Frozen is a, there's a lot of ice cream brands.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there are a lot of ice cream brands.

Speaker 1 There's like six shelves, like six cooler shelves of ice cream, maybe more now at most chain stores, but they also are owned by the same half a dozen companies like that are just cannibalizing each other and buying all of each other.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 So as you're getting into retail stores with the brand and you're already in, obviously, to the biggest brands, which is Walmart and Target. How did the small stores buy you?

Speaker 1 Do they buy you through distributors? Do they buy you through wholesale? Like, how do small retailers go buy a brand like this?

Speaker 2 So we actually got lucky with Sprinkles. And because of the background and me knowing like distribution, how you have to go through a distributor to get into a retailer, there's like a caveat to that.

Speaker 2 If you're a big brand, right? Like Pepsi doesn't need to really go through, like they go direct, right? So Sprinkles right now, it's actually direct with Walmart and direct with Target.

Speaker 2 And then we're entering three other big national retailers that I negotiated direct on.

Speaker 2 So if you have the power to do that, that just gives you more margin to operate the business, which is what we did with Sprinkles. But again, Sprinkles is the anomaly.
Yep.

Speaker 1 So let's say say someone just got their brand going and a broker approaches them. Brokers take a pretty good big commission or fees or consulting fees, etc.

Speaker 1 How could someone work with the broker and is it worth it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I do think sometimes a broker is necessary. Like we work with a broker both on Walmart and Target.

Speaker 2 It's nice to just have an expert on each retailer, like managing your promotions in store, like you talked about, the in-caps and your promo calendar.

Speaker 2 And when I mean my promos is like two for five or they manage that. But a lot of time, especially for smaller brands, like buyers won't listen to you.

Speaker 2 You send an email like I just pitched you, and they get a thousand of those a day, right? So sometimes you need that broker who has that relationship.

Speaker 1 Just text them like, hey, yes, to get you in the door. Hey, Jennifer, I'm coming.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think a broker's fine.

Speaker 2 And maybe the first year you pay them a little bit more in commission and prove yourself and then you can renegotiate the commission a year later because they do get expensive.

Speaker 1 So you've had a few exits, which is rare. People have one exit in their life, hopefully.
Now you've had a few exits and you're working on an iconic brand that may decide to exit, may not, up to them.

Speaker 1 How do you know when it's time? Like, how do you know? It's like, you know what? Maybe I should shop this deal or maybe I should take that call or that private equity group keeps calling me.

Speaker 1 Maybe I should. When do you know it's time?

Speaker 2 It's it's hard, right? Because it's like you never know when you're going to start going down, right? So the timing of it, I feel like, is an art in itself.

Speaker 2 But I mean, as a founder, you just I mean you you just know you know people will start approaching you right so there's those people in your ear that will start coming to you

Speaker 2 it depends like where you are from a distribution standpoint like are you in your max distribution how much ACV like additional doors can you gain right

Speaker 2 but it's it's hard to know exactly I feel like that part of it and that timing is really an art and you just kind of I'm a big gut instinct person you know you just go with your gut for me personally I know when I'm ready to move on, so that's like a big piece of it, too.

Speaker 1 Emotionally ready to move on. Yeah.
Mentally ready to move on. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Like when I'm ready, I'm ready.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 2 but because I'm, I'm just such a passionate person that, like, if I believe in something, like, you're getting a hundred percent of me. And like, I'm a big work ethic person.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't know a lot of people that can match my work ethic because I'll fucking work around the clock, you know?

Speaker 2 And that's really hard to find. Like, it's really hard to find somebody with a strong strong work ethic now, right?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, I mean, the timing of it is, it's kind of an art, but it's a gut instinct thing. And you, I know what I know.

Speaker 1 So, in the last category, we talk about charity.

Speaker 1 Why do you think that brands should incorporate charity, whether it's for their executives, staff, company to see it or be a part of it, or for their brand, like, you know, like the Tom Shoes concept, incorporating like buy a shoe, get a shoe type things?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, I feel like that is a big emotional thing for the consumer.

Speaker 2 Like, I, we haven't really done a charity component. I've never been part of that.
I love to be a part of that. And that's something that I definitely want to do in my future.

Speaker 2 But with Spudsy, we did this, we had an upside upcycling concept, like where we saved the Spuds. So we used ugly sweet potatoes.

Speaker 1 That's fun. Yeah.

Speaker 2 But I feel, and like all my employees, they get equity in my company. So I guess you can look at that as like a charity piece of it, right? Because like that, people are more invested.

Speaker 2 When you, when you you give in to them they give more to you for sure so the charity piece of it i feel like is huge and i you can look at it as a charity of giving people money or giving people equity or having this cool mission behind your brand that saves sweet potatoes like i think there's different ways to look at it

Speaker 1 so i always ask this one question

Speaker 1 and i've never gotten the same answer before

Speaker 1 So let's say 100 years from now. Okay.

Speaker 1 Ashley, you've got bionic arms. You've gone, modern society has helped with all these different technologies so you can live 150, 100, 200 years old.

Speaker 1 But you've now sold your 22nd food and beverage brand. Damn.
And you've accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars. What percentage of your net worth do you leave to your kids?

Speaker 2 I would say at least half of it, right?

Speaker 2 I mean, I don't want to, I'd want to give some to charity and the things that that I'm passionate about because, like, every single year there's something else that I'm passionate about, but I can't put a number on it.

Speaker 2 Enough that my kids and their kids' kids are set for life. I like it.

Speaker 2 What would you?

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 mine changed a lot because I asked that question so often, and literally, I've never gotten the same answer. Okay.
We've done 99 episodes.

Speaker 1 Am I your 100th? Yeah. That's kind of special, I feel like.
It is. It's gonna rain.
I love that.

Speaker 1 And I've literally never gotten the same answer. answer.
I've heard zero. I've heard 100.
I've heard everything between.

Speaker 1 I also think that I think a lot about how much longer people are going to be living in the future because of modern society, modern medicine, the fact that,

Speaker 1 you know, we'll literally have bionic arms in our generation. We'll have bionic arms.
A lot of diseases will be eradicated. I've thought a lot about inheritance while I'm still alive.

Speaker 1 And major milestones in children's lives. College, well, car first, high school, it's car, college, house, wedding, things like that along along the journey.

Speaker 2 And like you've done the math on it all?

Speaker 1 Just the concept of like

Speaker 1 she might not need it when she's fifty-eight, right?

Speaker 1 Let's say I pass away when she's fifty-eight, like she's gonna be rich because I'm gonna help her with companies or advisor a teacher and or just whatever happens throughout the course of Ariana's life.

Speaker 1 Yep. And my goal is for her to be rich without me.
Right.

Speaker 1 And so her gift.

Speaker 2 Which I think is like a huge gift that you can give to your kids because that gift was given to me. Like even though I came from a successful family, I worked for every single thing I have.

Speaker 2 I love that. And that made me the person that I am, you know?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 So that's, that's a big gift.

Speaker 1 I'm afraid for a society where this is the our societies become a lot of people become wealthy. Mm-hmm.
When you think about it, when like

Speaker 1 Growing up in the past, I'm sure your friends at high school, there wasn't a bunch of rich kids at school because most people's parents work normal jobs and they they make sixty grand a year and eighty grand a year and that was a big deal back then.

Speaker 1 Forty grand a year was a big deal back then.

Speaker 1 Now with cryptocurrency, real estate, investment, angel investments, tech investments, venture capital, like just in general, there's been so many ways for people to make money and build wealth and have exits where it just wasn't the same thing back in back in our days.

Speaker 1 Our parents didn't have social media and venture capital. Those things didn't exist.
People weren't buying hundreds of real estate units like they are now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so I just think about a lot of of like,

Speaker 1 how are kids going to be when they

Speaker 1 grow up in a rich family? It's scary. Yeah.
It's scary. And have a phone.

Speaker 2 This phone thing terrifies me, especially both having girls, like scares the shit out of me.

Speaker 1 Think about it every day. Yeah.
I actually did a post last week asking when is the right time to give a child the...

Speaker 2 What do people say?

Speaker 1 Almost the overwhelming answer was 12. Okay.
Like the overwhelming answer was 12.

Speaker 2 12 is like middle school, right?

Speaker 1 Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And it's like you want to be able to get a hold of them, but you don't want them to have access to this world. Yes.

Speaker 1 I mean, I think my daughter's going to have a much earlier, just not with restrictions. Yeah.
She's not going to have Instagram when she's five or anything. But like

Speaker 1 when a child, once the child leaves the house, I want them to have a cell phone. Yeah.
Not necessarily a smartphone, but I want them to have a cell phone because I do want to be able to.

Speaker 2 Maybe we need to invent some kind of kids' phone. Yes.

Speaker 1 I'm down for that for sure. For a lot of reasons.
Well, because it's there's a lot of there are

Speaker 1 safety requirements and safety ways that people can can restrict children's phones, but kids are getting real smart.

Speaker 1 There's ways to hustle that. Their friends, like they know, they know.
Yes. And they have ways to make money to go buy their own phone that the parents don't even know about.

Speaker 1 They have their own little side phone.

Speaker 1 And so I just try to be realistic about it.

Speaker 1 But yeah, I think that if someone made a smartphone that was really smart, that actually could restrict it without the kids being able to trick it, I think that would be a really

Speaker 1 interesting business. Okay, final question.

Speaker 1 We're going into the new year, and there's been,

Speaker 1 how do I say it?

Speaker 1 An overwhelming amount of pressure for people to validate themselves on social media

Speaker 1 and try to make themselves look like they're super cool.

Speaker 1 What could you say to people that are going through the hard times, the good times, the bad times, and everything in between about why they should be their authentic self when they're dealing with their staff, their friends, their family, and people around them?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I was literally just going to say, like, authenticity is everything. Like,

Speaker 2 I don't know. I'm, I feel like it's really hard for some people to do, be themselves, because they think they have to be all of the things that they see on social media.

Speaker 2 But I, people,

Speaker 2 people nowadays are so smart that if you are not 100% authentic and if you are not 100% yourself, people see that and they don't invest in you.

Speaker 2 Like, people invest in people who are confident and authentically themselves. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So, where can people find you across social media?

Speaker 2 Mine is I am Ashley Rogers, and then there's Sprinkles, Cupcakes, and Sprinkles Chocolate on Instagram.

Speaker 1 How many Sprinkles Cupcakes are there now? Ballpark?

Speaker 2 How many stores?

Speaker 2 There's between 38, 38, and 40.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. They're starting to franchise them now, too.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.
Call me.

Speaker 2 Temecula, here we come.

Speaker 1 I mean, I literally, I can't even explain how many times I've gone to that Sprinkles. Yeah.

Speaker 1 A friend of mine just opened up up a huge membership club called Grabitas right on the corner there on Santa Monica, right across from the Sprinkles. Oh, cool.
Yes.

Speaker 1 28,000 square foot fancy pants membership club. Damn.
It's literally kiddie corner to

Speaker 1 freeze cupcakes, which is great for great for me because then I can go over to Sprinkles and get my red velvet.

Speaker 2 Okay, well now you have the hookup.

Speaker 1 Free cupcakes for life.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, make sure to check out Ashley Rogers. It's I am Ashley Rogers on Instagram and social media.

Speaker 1 If you're interested in learning about how to actually get into the food and beverage game, CPG game she is going to be creating masterminds courses and you know how passionate I am about people learning from experts and she's obviously done it with multiple exits living and breathing in this category make sure to have these important discussions with your friends family and followers about money because we all grew up thinking it's rude to talk about money I think it's rude to not talk about it I think our society it's mission critical for us to have these discussions about accounting taxes finances loans leases cars rent what happens if your friend borrows 200 bucks like just talk about money because it's our real life it is part of our daily lives for everything that we do, from the clothes we wear to the food we eat to the electricity, is money related.

Speaker 1 So, have these discussions. Check out I am Ashley Rogers on Instagram, and we will see you guys next Monday on the moneymondays.com.

Speaker 2 Thank you.