Laurie Sutton with Bananas and Beehives

Intro: [00:00:08] Coming to you live from the Business RadioX studio in Woodstock, Georgia. This is fearless formula with Sharon Cline.

Sharon Cline: [00:00:18] And welcome to Fearless Formula on Business Radio X where we talk about the ups and downs in the business world and offer words of wisdom for business success. I’m your host, Sharon Cline. And today on the show, we have the owner of a local eatery in downtown Canton, Georgia, called Bananas and Beehives. And they serve pastries and coffee and ice cream. And they just won a spot on the top ten Atlanta Eats of Canton, which is very cool. Welcome, Laurie Sutton. Hello.

Laurie Sutton: [00:00:46] Hi. How are you?

Sharon Cline: [00:00:47] Good. How are you? How did it how did it feel to win?

Laurie Sutton: [00:00:51] I don’t know. It felt great. I didn’t even know that that was a thing until somebody sent it to me and said congratulations.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:01] The word got around. You didn’t even have to do anything for it to come to you, Right?

Laurie Sutton: [00:01:05] It was awesome.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:06] So congrats. That’s great.

Laurie Sutton: [00:01:08] When you feel good, it’s always good to have a little reassurance from, you know.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:13] From the public that you didn’t even have to ask for, right? No. I mean, that’s probably the highest compliment, I imagine.

Laurie Sutton: [00:01:20] Yes.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:20] Well, I have been to your to your bakery. It’s sort of a bakery, but it’s kind of an ice cream place, too. How about you let me know what you would describe your your shop as?

Laurie Sutton: [00:01:31] So we’re a small batch bakery that we also do a lot of wholesale, primarily wholesale right now. We kind of have outgrown our kitchen, so we bought a new space and we’re in the process of renovating it and turning it into a production kitchen. It won’t be retail, but it’ll be where we produce everything.

Sharon Cline: [00:01:53] It’s in Woodstock, right?

Laurie Sutton: [00:01:54] It is in Woodstock. So we’re very excited. It’s very centrally located to pretty much all of our customers.

Sharon Cline: [00:02:02] So you need more space because you’re growing, which is like the dream is.

Laurie Sutton: [00:02:06] It is it’s it’s great. It’s it’s more than what I had hoped for.

Sharon Cline: [00:02:11] Well, you had started at like, I was looking on your bio a little bit about how you really had a passion for baking, but also just like the perfect cookie. Is that what started the whole.

Laurie Sutton: [00:02:22] Right. So I’m from New Orleans and my I come from a long family of chefs and cooks. And, you know, my parents, my mom loved to cook and she, you know, cooked for an army and she would never let me in the kitchen to help her. But after everything was done, I could have it to bake. And so at four or five years old, that was what I knew how to do was cookies. And I just perfected over the years. And, you know, everyone’s always told, I’ve always heard from everybody. Do what you love. Baking is what I love. And so.

Sharon Cline: [00:02:55] So that’s how it all got started.

Laurie Sutton: [00:02:57] And all got started.

Sharon Cline: [00:02:58] So what was your perfect cookie recipe like? What was it that you loved to make?

Laurie Sutton: [00:03:03] Chocolate chip. Chocolate chip Bacon was my favorite.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:07] Is that what you started here too, as well when you started the bakery?

Laurie Sutton: [00:03:11] Chocolate chip and peanut butter. And so my whole idea was I was going to do croissants and cookies and, you know, I love croissant, I love Almond Crescent especially. And you can’t really find a good croissant. It’s everything’s, you know.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:29] Factory made, factory made.

Laurie Sutton: [00:03:31] And it’s just that has no flavor or taste. And so that’s what I wanted to do when I said, you know, we need a good croissant place. And so that’s what I started out. And then it kind of just know we opened in 2020 and we had to pivot a lot.

Sharon Cline: [00:03:46] Let’s just talk about the pandemic because it affects everybody’s business that’s been on the show. So how did how did you kind of manage what did you do right at the beginning of the pandemic? You opened.

Laurie Sutton: [00:03:56] We did. We did. It was it was a challenge, but it actually kind of worked in our benefit because we weren’t hit so hard in the beginning and we had time to adjust and we had time to realize that, hey, you might have to pivot and and this is what you need to do. And, you know, people kept coming to us and saying, well, you know, we like Christians and we like cookies, but can you do this and can you do that? And that kind of led into a whole, you know, barrage of different things that we do. And and we’re still trying to test the limits and do different things every day.

Sharon Cline: [00:04:33] So initially you were going to have like the croissants and the cookies. But then as the pandemic happened, you became more retail because people weren’t coming into the shop.

Laurie Sutton: [00:04:43] Right. Right. We we thought as we grew and got our name out there, that we’d have that organic foot traffic from being in a downtown area, you know, And there’s a lot of offices down there. Offices were shut down. There was the courthouse down there. The courthouse was shut down. So we just didn’t have that foot traffic. Another reason why I wanted to open a business and do what I love doing is I wanted that community involvement. And because we didn’t have that foot traffic and we didn’t have the people coming in, I didn’t really get that. And probably about two months after we opened, a friend of mine suggested I join a networking group and we joined the networking group and it just took off from there. And now we get that community involvement tenfold, really because it’s mostly with other business owners. And and so my fear is I can see that everyone has those fears and my accomplishments. I can see other people have this accomplishments and I don’t feel so alone.

Sharon Cline: [00:05:43] That’s awesome. It’s such a power to know that you’ve got support in your in your community right there next to you that if you were to ask someone down the street, Hey, I need this help, but you know them and they would be happy to help you.

Laurie Sutton: [00:05:55] Exactly. Exactly. It’s it’s it sometimes I feel like I’m dreaming. Oh, but what.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:01] A great.

Laurie Sutton: [00:06:02] Story that makes me so happy for you. Thank you.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:05] So, how did you come to Georgia? From New Orleans, then?

Laurie Sutton: [00:06:09] So I got married to a South Floridian and we moved to South Florida in 2004. It was a huge culture shock. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to. Yeah, well, I think anywhere coming from New Orleans is just a huge culture shock. And I just I didn’t care for South Florida. The only thing that I liked was the weather. It was very consistent, but I just didn’t like it. And so my husband told his business that he wanted to transfer and North Georgia was the first place. And his brother actually is a pilot and he was his hub was in LA. He worked for Delta and so he lived in Canton.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:49] And that’s how you ended up.

Laurie Sutton: [00:06:51] That’s how he ended up in Canton. And we love it.

Sharon Cline: [00:06:53] Yeah. It just unfolded for you like that.

Laurie Sutton: [00:06:55] It just unfolded like that. And we love it here. I mean, it’s it’s very similar. The people are so nice, like they are in New Orleans. And it’s just we just love it here. It’s more rural than their.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:07] Truth and more rural than even downtown Atlanta, I imagine.

Laurie Sutton: [00:07:11] Right.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:12] So I saw that you said you were a small batch bakery. So are you. As you get your facility here in Woodstock open, will you become a bigger batch bakery then?

Laurie Sutton: [00:07:24] Definitely. I think we probably are more of a bigger batch bakery.

Sharon Cline: [00:07:28] Yeah, cause I was thinking, you know, you also have other items on your menu than what I just talked about. Like, I know you’ve got this incredible bread that you have that I’ve had before. It’s really and you do coffee all the time. Like I think coffee and pastries and cookies sound wonderful together. But yeah, So I imagine you’re really expanding so much.

Laurie Sutton: [00:07:45] We are. We are expanding. You know, most people I love dessert. I’ve always loved dessert. I love baking. I love the science, trying to figure out, you know, how to do it and what makes this happen or that happen. You know, a lot of people like coffee with their dessert. I like ice cream with my dessert. And so that’s why I wanted to throw the ice cream in there as well. But we get a lot of people asking us about lunch. And so when we get our new place up and running, we’re going to turn the bakery into a quick lunch spot in downtown Canton. So we’ll have the, you know, the croissant sandwiches and the brioche sandwiches and and things like that.

Sharon Cline: [00:08:28] It’s so perfect. Like you said, there’s so much foot traffic right there.

Laurie Sutton: [00:08:30] Right. And the courthouses open up again. And so now we’re seeing a lot more people and. But it’s definitely we’ve had to pivot, and I think that’s been a great learning experience from us for us, because neither one of us have ever owned our own business before. So we’ve had to learn a lot. And, you know, I say for anybody that wants to do something, just do it. Don’t worry about getting your ducks in a row because you’re never going to have them in a row. If you’re doing something wrong, somebody will let you know.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:04] Where did your name come from? Bananas and beehives.

Laurie Sutton: [00:09:07] So I wanted something cute and catchy. I didn’t want something that tied me to something, you know, like a cake.

Sharon Cline: [00:09:13] Or a crescent place or something.

Laurie Sutton: [00:09:15] Like Laura’s croissants or whatever. I wanted something that we could do events because we do do a lot of events birthday parties, baby showers, both in site and offsite or on site and off site. And I used to read a lot of blogs. I used to read a lot more. I don’t have time to read the whole business, but I used to read a lot of blogs. When blogs first became really big. I was big on blogs, and I read this blog that this young lady wrote about banana bees not liking bananas, and they get very, very unhappy if there’s a bananas around. And it wasn’t a true story, but it was a very cute article. And one of the paragraphs started out bananas and beehives. And it was at that time that I was searching for a name and I was actually trying to find a one word name like Flower With, and everything was taken. And I thought, Oh wow, that’s kind of cute and catchy, and I could do parties with that, you know, And.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:11] No one had it.

Laurie Sutton: [00:10:12] I looked it up and no one had it. And I thought, Yes, this is it. And so I took out all the domain and the social media accounts and and then ten years later, we opened. But listen, that is.

Sharon Cline: [00:10:26] That is like the American dream. Like you followed something that was inspiring for you. And now there’s a whole like you have a website and physical store and now you’ll be, you know, having expanded. And I mean, how exciting is that?

Laurie Sutton: [00:10:39] I know. And there is a little something to that. So our name has beehives in it. And so when we first opened, I didn’t realize how many beekeepers there were in North Georgia. There’s quite a few. And so I guess when they saw, oh, beehives, I wonder what this is. They all came to check us out. So there is a little bit of truth to bananas and beehives. So bees can be temperamental. And if they’re unhappy, they release a fair amount and it smells just like bananas. And that is true. I did research that and but it has nothing to do with our name. I found that out after we were opened by a couple of beekeepers.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:14] So now you have some trivia. You can win a big contest with that one.

Laurie Sutton: [00:11:17] I know you useless knowledge, but that’s all.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:21] My brain has in their.

Laurie Sutton: [00:11:23] Mind so.

Sharon Cline: [00:11:25] Well. So I know that you said that you were going to be doing lunch, but now you’re going to be opening five days a week. So how does that impact your your life? Because if you’re busy now, what do you hire more people? How will you manage it?

Laurie Sutton: [00:11:39] So at the moment, as crazy as this may sound, it is just my husband and I, we have done everything my parents do come in and help when I do events. Sometimes I grab my daughter and make her come with me. She’s a schoolteacher, so she’s available. A lot of the times that my events are going on. We don’t have the room to hire anybody right now. We’re kind of excuse me, which kind of tripping over each other.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:06] Yeah, I can imagine.

Laurie Sutton: [00:12:07] And so once we have that production kitchen and we turn our current space into just the lunch space, we’ll have more room. And so at that point, yes, we’re going to hire people and then we probably won’t be there much. Yeah. Is my plan.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:25] Going to take a break.

Laurie Sutton: [00:12:26] Now? We’ll be at the production kitchen.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:30] But that’s awesome. Because think about like this is such confirmation that it was needed in this area that that what you’re making is is desirable and successful and people and you’re growing. I mean, that’s the dream for sure.

Laurie Sutton: [00:12:42] Yes, definitely. I remember I used to make things, you know, for friends and family and everybody would tell me how good it is and, oh, you should open up something. And I always thought, Oh, are they just telling me that, you know, your friends, they have to tell you it’s good.

Sharon Cline: [00:12:57] They want you to bring things over more.

Laurie Sutton: [00:13:00] I remember one of my friends, I remember her when I told her that we rented a space and we were opening a paper. She says, Oh, no, I’m going to get huge now. Oh.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:08] You’re not going to bake just for them, right?

Laurie Sutton: [00:13:11] And so, yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:13:13] Where do you get your recipes? Like, how did you kind of perfect things? Like I’ve seen croissants being made or in the process of being made and they’re labor intensive.

Laurie Sutton: [00:13:24] The croissants. Yes, they’re very labor intensive. It used to take me two days or three days to make them, and now I can do them. And pretty much in one day I make the dough. Wow. Yeah, it’s. But it’s all day from like, wake up to nighttime. It’s an all day process as far as the recipes go. I’ve just kind of I’ve lived in three states now, and the humidity and the climate is slightly different and all three. And that affects baking a lot. And so, yeah, so I’ve just had to learn how to make those adjustments. And as far as the recipes go, if you know what to use and when to use and how much to use, that’s just kind of a natural thing. It’s the ingredients. The ingredients is what makes what you’re eating. If you don’t use good ingredients, you can have the best recipe and it’s not going to matter. So it’s the ingredients that matter.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:24] What kind of ingredients would you say is worth investing in?

Laurie Sutton: [00:14:28] You get what you pay for. You know, like you use a good butter, use a good vanilla, you know, use a good flour, know what kind of flour to use, depending on what you’re making. And but yeah, it’s definitely. You mean the brands. Oh, the brand. So the brands I use, I use Plugger, which is a European butter or any European butter, you want it to be a high butterfat content.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:53] I had no idea that European butter was like that. This is what butter is important.

Laurie Sutton: [00:14:56] So I like especially in croissants, I mean.

Sharon Cline: [00:14:59] That’s all butter.

Laurie Sutton: [00:15:00] It’s all butter, It’s layers of butter and dough. And so.

Sharon Cline: [00:15:04] Interesting European butter is.

Laurie Sutton: [00:15:05] What as opposed to as far as vanilla goes, I use a very good vanilla expensive and I use Nielsen Massie’s Madagascar bourbon. And yeah, I mean, those things make a huge difference. So like I said, you get what you pay for and you can taste it. You know, it’s what.

Sharon Cline: [00:15:28] Are what are your top sellers? If someone were new and wanted to come to your shop and kind of get some of the most popular items, what would they be?

Laurie Sutton: [00:15:38] So probably our we sell a lot of croissants and then cookies and then bars. Those are probably our top three sellers. We do sell a lot of bread. What I get the compliments most on are the croissants and the cookies. I do. I hear so much that our croissants are better than the ones that they’ve had in Paris. And I keep telling my husband we need to go to Paris because I’ve never been to Paris and I need to see about these because you just got to.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:08] Hire some people and then head.

Laurie Sutton: [00:16:09] Out for what I know.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:12] Well, so what has been the most rewarding part of having your business? Like what? What? What drives you makes you the happiest.

Laurie Sutton: [00:16:22] Making other people happy. And when I sell something to somebody or give something to somebody because we do give away a lot and they and I see the joy in their face and or the happiness and they say how this is great, or call us. And we get phone calls from people just making people happy. It does it for us. Oh.

Sharon Cline: [00:16:44] But you also what I like about your business and I had looked online a little bit that you you are involved in lots of different kinds of organizations, but also events. And I think that’s really important to you’re you’re supporting you support each other. But can you talk a little bit about the events that you tend to to support?

Laurie Sutton: [00:17:04] We pretty much support almost any anybody that comes to us and asks us for their support. We we try to be as helpful. We want that community involvement. And so usually whatever they ask for, we pretty much try to accommodate. And we wanted that community involvement and to be able to give back.

Sharon Cline: [00:17:27] I know a lot of companies don’t. So I think that’s really impressive. And I think if more companies knew what it felt like to really give back, they would do more.

Laurie Sutton: [00:17:34] Yeah, it does. It’s that in itself is just rewarding.

Sharon Cline: [00:17:39] So would you say that you have something that’s sort of been the biggest surprise of opening your own business? What’s been the most surprising aspect of it?

Laurie Sutton: [00:17:49] Um. The fact that I’m working 24 hours a day.

Sharon Cline: [00:17:57] That’s something I’m going to ask you about is the balance, because we talk about this on the show all the time, work life balance. When you’re a business owner, how do you do it?

Laurie Sutton: [00:18:04] It’s hard. It’s hard. And, you know, we’re we’re almost three years in now, and I’m still trying to figure that out, that balance. One of the things that we did, we were talking last year, early last year, probably about a year ago now, you know, we can’t go on like this. We have to figure something out. We have to move to a bigger place by a place, you know, And we kept getting more and more wholesale accounts and we thought, you know, maybe we’ll just and people kept coming to us wanting to rent our kitchen. And I thought maybe we should just buy a space and turning it and turn it into a production kitchen. And so when people say, well, how do you balance? I say, well, you just start a new business. And it kind of.

Sharon Cline: [00:18:49] Counterintuitive.

Laurie Sutton: [00:18:51] Kind of sounds counterintuitive or productive, but it’s actually going to help us because it’ll be a bigger space so that we can hire people to do what we do. We’ll have more ovens, more refrigeration and just a bigger prep area because our biggest problem right now is time and prep area. We do not have enough prep area and it’s one of the reasons why we kind of cut back our walk in hours to do our wholesale accounts because we are just spread out all over the shop when we’re doing these orders.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:26] And so it’s crazy to think that you had started thinking that it would be more of a walk in, kind of like sit down and have coffee and pastries in your shop. But it’s actually become something so much different.

Laurie Sutton: [00:19:37] It has. It has. I tell people that we opened in 2020, in the height of the beginning of the pandemic, and we quickly had to take a left turn from there.

Sharon Cline: [00:19:52] Well, if you’re just joining us, I’m speaking to Laurie Sutton, who is the owner of Bananas and Beehives in downtown Canton. So what would you say is like a misconception that you think is in your industry? What is there anything that you’d like to address that you think people don’t know about what it’s like?

Laurie Sutton: [00:20:09] I don’t know.

Sharon Cline: [00:20:11] Oh, good. I did something kind of question. Well, I was thinking that, you know, I’m assuming that people don’t know, like, the ingredients list. Like, I don’t know that I, I appreciate you pointing that out because how would I know that I’m even having something that’s actually extra special.

Laurie Sutton: [00:20:28] Right?

Sharon Cline: [00:20:28] Bourbon kind of vanilla or flour or incredible butter. I wouldn’t know to even appreciate that. You know, it tastes really great. But I love that you kind of talk about how much you think about the back end of it, right? I don’t think that I had an appreciation for that.

Laurie Sutton: [00:20:45] So, yeah, I think I guess that is kind of a big misconception that people don’t. And it’s probably why a lot of people don’t bake. You know, you have a lot more cooks than you have a lot more restaurants than you have bakeries. But yeah, I mean, even with restaurants, it’s the ingredients that you use and that that definitely make it. And yeah, a lot of people just think butter is butter. Exactly. Because if I.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:07] Try to make a on, it’s not going to be the.

Laurie Sutton: [00:21:10] Same right You know makes a lot of love.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:12] Also you put love in something.

Laurie Sutton: [00:21:15] Patience, love and patience. Yeah. I look back I think back to when I first because before we opened the bakery, I had never made a croissant before. I made a lot of desserts, but I never made a croissant. You know, just the thought of rolling out dough for hours at a time. And so I did a lot of research, and the first thing we did was bought a cheater. We ruin the dough through.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:38] Right?

Laurie Sutton: [00:21:39] And so that definitely is time saving. And but yeah, just just the thought process and stuff, which is probably why a lot of people don’t do it. But any of I said I have for anybody wanting to get out there and bake is buy good ingredients. It makes a difference.

Sharon Cline: [00:21:55] Interesting, because I don’t know that I even have good you know what I mean? Like, I don’t know. Of course I don’t bake for anyone else, really, but I would want it to be amazing. So. And you take pride in it, obviously. Yeah. In your products.

Laurie Sutton: [00:22:07] Well, another thing that we’re going to do in the production kitchen is something we wanted to do in the in the shop is whole classes like how to make croissant classes and how to make sourdough classes and things like that. And we never was we never were able to bring that to fruition in the shop because it just wasn’t big enough. The kitchen was too small and but we’ll have a lot more room and so it’ll be a learning kitchen as well. Oh, that’s for anyone else. If you want to come and give a cooking class, you’re more than welcome. No, I will take a cooking class.

Sharon Cline: [00:22:43] I don’t bake for people who, like, really care about the results.

Laurie Sutton: [00:22:48] I’m fine.

Sharon Cline: [00:22:50] I love baking. But it’s interesting how I don’t really want to have a thousand baked goods around because I’ll eat them all. Like, how do. Do you ever get tired? Like, are you like, No, I’m not. I’m not. I don’t need a croissant because I’m in them all day long. But like, is that something that you’re sort of like you don’t really feel the need to eat any of these things, Like people who are in coffee shops. They probably don’t need to be drinking coffee all day because they’re in it all day, right?

Laurie Sutton: [00:23:13] Definitely. I don’t eat. I can’t even taste test anymore. I live on a wing and a prayer. You know, when you you know, before we opened, when I was baking here and there at home or for friends or or whatever. I did. I you know, I had my go tos. I loved Alman croissants. I loved cookies, just chocolate chip. I mean, I can eat chocolate chip and milkshake any day, but now that I’m around it all the time and, you know, now that we’re getting busier and busier and busier and the quantities are getting up and up and up, and I can’t keep up with the quantities or I’m having trouble keeping up with them. Yeah, I can’t eat it. My go to food is Mexican, and I keep telling my husband and this has nothing to do with anything, but I keep telling him I need to go get a job at a mexican restaurant because maybe then I won’t crave it five times a day. Yeah, but yeah, if you’re around something every day, I think that you kind of, you know, get.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:13] Desensitized or whatever.

Laurie Sutton: [00:24:14] Right? Definitely.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:16] I need to work in, like a chocolate place, then I think something like that. Well, baked goods in general.

Laurie Sutton: [00:24:21] Do you want to give up chocolate though? I don’t.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:24] Yes. I think for a short period I’d probably do me good. What do you do for marketing?

Laurie Sutton: [00:24:31] For marketing? Well, so we’ve tried a little bit of everything. We’ve been in quite a few magazines, the local magazines, family life and enjoy Cherokee and things like that. We’ve also been in.

Sharon Cline: [00:24:46] Some.

Laurie Sutton: [00:24:47] Neighborhood magazine. We’ve done social media, we’ve done Facebook and Instagram, things like that. I can’t remember anything else that we’ve done. We haven’t done any marketing lately. The last thing we did was family life.

Sharon Cline: [00:25:01] Okay, But it’s obvious that you don’t really need to exactly, because you have done so much in the community.

Laurie Sutton: [00:25:08] Right? Because that definitely, definitely we I tell anyone now that’s looking for looking to start a business, just do it. You can research for years. I mean, I’ve been wanting to do this for a very long time without saying my age a very long time. You can research all you want and you’re never going to figure it out until you jump in the pool and start swimming. But that’s the first advice. Just do it and you’ll figure out what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong and what people want and what they don’t want. And the second piece of advice right on up there with the first piece of advice is network. I mean, that changed it for us. Our very first network meeting, we were approached about wholesale and that had never crossed my mind. And I thought, okay, sure, we can do that. And then it took them actually, I think, two or three more times until they finally showed up at our shop and said, we would like you to wholesale for us.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:03] Wow. And where do you wholesale?

Laurie Sutton: [00:26:05] So our very first customer, that one was at Reformation, which we truly love. They were a godsend to us and we still wholesale to them. We also wholesale to Alma, Coffee Jacks, Coffee Bazaar, coffee Whitetail Coffee, Woodstock, Beer Market, Circle of Friends Reeves House. We I think we have about 17 wholesale customers right now that are actively and we have two more that we just got black rifle coffee and I don’t want to leave anybody out. That’s okay. I think we have 17 now that we actively do on a weekly basis. And but yeah, it all started with reformation. And I just remember when we first got our license before we started.

Sharon Cline: [00:26:55] Really baking.

Laurie Sutton: [00:26:56] Before we even opened our doors, when we first got out, when they came and did our first inspection and everything, I remember her asking if we were going to do wholesale and I said, No, why would we do wholesale? We have a retail shop and we had to quickly change our license after we started that. And yeah, it’s just it’s changed everything and for the better. We love it. And so but definitely I my best piece of advice is, you know, market yourself of course, with, you know, Radio X and Business RadioX and, and magazines, local magazines and stuff. But network, network, network, that’s how you’re going to get your name out there. And I mean, it definitely helped us and put us in a whole new, you know, a whole new place.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:41] Yeah. Yeah. Different direction completely.

Laurie Sutton: [00:27:44] Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:27:45] So you said you love it so much. So what is it like being working with your husband? You know, all the time? Because I wonder what that would have been like for me if I had had the same scenario. Would I be like, super happy or not super happy?

Laurie Sutton: [00:27:59] It’s a challenge. I’m not going to say it’s not. It’s definitely a challenge. But we finally have come to a place where we can work together. I probably just need to trust him a little bit more.

Sharon Cline: [00:28:13] Well, I had someone on the show recently that talked about how their partner has so many strengths that they don’t have, and it just really balances out so nicely.

Laurie Sutton: [00:28:21] Absolutely. Yes, he does. He definitely you know, mine is the creative I’m the the think outside the box. Yeah. The creative on what you see in the shop. All of that. And he’s more of the behind the scenes. He kind of fills in where I need help. He does bake. And by baking, I mean put it in the oven. But that isn’t very important. It’s a very important thing to do. But he’s also he’s the financial guy. And so he’s the one who’s made this dream of mine happen.

Sharon Cline: [00:28:56] I would have thought, Right.

Laurie Sutton: [00:28:57] I know who would have thought so. But yeah, it’s been it definitely is challenging. But, you know, you come to a place where you say, okay, you know, this is my lane. This is your lane. This is when we can mix lanes. Yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:11] And you complement each other that way. Do you ever go to some of the places where you wholesale and say your things?

Laurie Sutton: [00:29:18] Well, every time we deliver, yeah.

Sharon Cline: [00:29:21] I mean, like, if you’ve ever got a black rifle or whatever or I don’t know any of the coffee places and you’re like, Oh, there’s our stuff.

Laurie Sutton: [00:29:27] Yeah, that’s so. Absolutely. Absolutely. We have. And, you know, it’s kind of come back to us also. We have people that see our stuff or have our stuff eat our stuff in other places, and they come and check us out. Oh, you really are here because we have our address and everything on each package. And so yeah. Or they’ll say, Oh, we wanted this, but they didn’t have it, so we just came to see if you had it or something like that. So we get that a lot and it’s, it’s nice. It’s nice because, you know, obviously, you know, your products are selling because they keep ordering more, but you wonder who’s buying them. And so we do get to see that sometimes.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:05] That’s so cool. And I think how neat it is that you are in have a physical store that people can talk about years from now. Oh, I walked by here when I was a little kid, you know, and here it is. It’s just neat that you’re part of now a community and a history.

Laurie Sutton: [00:30:19] And we love that. We love being part of the community. And the community has been so welcoming, welcoming to us. It’s it’s awesome.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:27] So is there anything the show being fearless formula, is there anything that you’re not afraid of anymore?

Laurie Sutton: [00:30:33] Oh, everything I’m afraid of. I don’t know that I’ll never not be afraid of anything.

Sharon Cline: [00:30:42] I’m laughing because I told you before the show started that sometimes I’m like, they changed the passcode for me to get in there because they figured it out that I’m not even supposed to be in this building or something. Like, I have irrational fear, But no, seriously, Like, it’s something I think about is, you know what? If this all falls apart or what if it ends and.

Laurie Sutton: [00:31:00] I have most of my fears are irrational. Yeah, I think I feel that, too. Every time I make a delivery, I think, what if they don’t like it? Or what if I did something wrong? Or did I forget the sugar or, you know, or. But you do it anyway.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:14] But. But look how you’re still doing it anyway. Yes, I suppose they haven’t kicked me out of here yet.

Laurie Sutton: [00:31:18] That one’s like I said before, once you jump into the pool, you you have to swim. And and so I think that’s what I’m still trying to do. Just stay alive and, you know.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:29] And and watch it.

Laurie Sutton: [00:31:30] Grow and watch it grow and be helpful and just try to be involved. And and I would love to get more involved. You know, I just I don’t always know the right avenues to take. And but but.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:45] You look it’s like sometimes things are coming to you as well, you know?

Laurie Sutton: [00:31:49] Right.

Sharon Cline: [00:31:49] Which is so cool. Well, it’s so exciting. How can people come see you or get in touch with you if they want to.

Laurie Sutton: [00:31:56] So they can call us at the shop, They can email us, they can message us on social media or Facebook or Yes, like you did. They can come to the shop. Yeah. We would love to meet anyone. We everyone that walks through our door or we say, Have you been here before?

Sharon Cline: [00:32:16] Yeah. You ask their story.

Laurie Sutton: [00:32:18] We ask their story.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:19] They can hear your story.

Laurie Sutton: [00:32:20] So it’s it’s it’s been fun to get to know people and you know, and you you get that clientele that just comes back. And we have so many now that they don’t stay, they just call and they say, hey, we need this. Can we pick it up on Thursday? And so we do a lot of that. And even though we’re only open a few days a week, we are there seven days a week, pretty much almost around the clock. And yeah, and we take orders, not just wholesale orders. So we do orders also. Yeah. So stop by. Say hi. We’d love to meet you.

Sharon Cline: [00:32:51] Well, Lori, thank you so much for coming on to this show. It’s been so nice to chit chat with you and kind of hear your back story. And now I feel like I can have an appreciation for what I’m eating when I’m there.

Laurie Sutton: [00:33:00] Okay, Well, thank you so much for having me.

Sharon Cline: [00:33:02] You’re welcome. And thank you all for listening to Fearless Formula. I’m Business RadioX. And again, this is Sharon Cline reminding you that with knowledge and understanding, we can all have our own fearless formula. Have a great day.