the bossbabe podcast - 231. How To Find Life-Long Mentors + Build A Strong Company Culture with Tiff’s Treats Founders – Tiffany Taylor and Leon Chen

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

It’s so easy to bury yourself in self-doubt, especially if what you’re aiming for is truly unique. The lack of a predetermined path forward sometimes means you need to clear one of your own. That���s exactly what Tiffany Taylor and Leon Chen, from Tiff’s Treats Cookie Delivery, have done – launching and scaling the first-of-its-kind, on-demand delivery bakery that’s grown steadily and thoughtfully since first landing on the early internet in 1999. They keep it simple and sweet, and have earned a loyal fanbase by focusing on what’s really important: customer experience. They join the show today to talk about the inspiration for their company values, the importance of data and technology in their growth, how they went about raising money and why their failures were some of their greatest lessons along the way. Highlights: How a college side hustle turned into a $500 million dollar business! The real, behind-the-scenes of getting funding in your business.   How to find great mentors + when you should NOT listen to their advice.  Links: Tiff's Treats Cookie Delivery – Order with this link to get 20% off! Read their new book! – It's Not Just Cookies Follow: bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie Instagram: @tiffstreats Twitter: @tiffstreats Facebook: Tiff's Treats

We really pride ourselves here in kind of the philosophy of done being better than perfect. One of the things I notice, people of all ages, but a lot of folks starting out in business, they try to perfect something before they even launch it. And we know from failure and from experience that it's more important to get something out there, to get version 1.0 out there because you don't know what version 2.0 needs to be. If you think you know what the done product is going to be, you're going to be wrong. Just get out there, get going and iterate. Put something out there and iterate off of it. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and

paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Hello and welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, the place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning really how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, Boss Babe co-founder and your host for today's episode. So let's get ready to dive in. Now, if I told you that all it took was $20, a cell phone and a dream to start a business that now has over 78 locations

in five states, would you believe me? Well, it's true because that's exactly what happened with owners Tiffany and Leon Chan of Tiff's Treats. Now, it was a little while ago in 1999 when Tiffany stood Leon up for a date and she knew that the one thing to do to win him back was to bake some of our homemade cookies. But she didn't realize that this would then turn into a business proposition too. But you know what? We're not here to hear their love story. We are here to hear their business story and how they noticed a gap in the market, how they built the foundations of their business that they would then go on to raise $120 million for. It's now worth over half a billion. And I wanted to get all the details

on the do's and don'ts of raising money for you guys and understand how they pivoted when they felt like everything was on the line. So enjoy this episode. You're going to want to grab a paper and pen as always, and make sure you grab lots of podcast. It's such an honor to have you on here today. Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you. Excited to be here. I'm glad we could finally make this happen. I'm really, really excited to share your journey with our audience today because, wow, when people look, they might be like oh overnight

success but no this has been you start this business in 1999 right right and I'm so intrigued because I feel like at the moment we live in this like oh the now I want this yesterday or you know the very latest I want it tomorrow whereas I think what's amazing about your journey is you've been building Tiff's Treats since 1999. And it started with $20 and a phone card. And I just want to ask you, now you're valued at half a billion, have 2,000 employees, locations, is it 80 odd locations?

I'm curious, did you set out to build this business so big in 1999? Or was this kind of like an evolving process? Absolutely did not set out to build this business so big in 1999? Or was this kind of like an evolving process? Absolutely did not set out to build anything in 1999. To be honest, we were just two college kids. We were just 19 years old. We were sophomores at the University of Texas. And we were just doing this for, I don't even want to say fun, but just for a pocket change. Tiff, I mean, is that how we started? Yeah, we didn't even want to say fun, but just for a pocket change. Tiff, I mean, is that how we started? Yeah. We didn't have a plan. We got started and I don't know what we

thought it was going to be. It was somewhere between, like Leon says, fun can't really describe starting a business, but maybe we thought it was going to be fun before we started. And then ended up just little by little getting so invested into it. We spent the last two and a half years of our college career doing this on nights, going to school during the day and doing the business at night. And by the time we graduated, we were putting in everything I've put into it this far. We should see where it goes. And so we would just take it little at a time and just see where it went. And I guess we've been doing that for about 23 years. Wow. That is incredible. I want to ask like those little bits of details too, though, around like starting. And like I said, you started at 19 and it was just, I imagine like delivering to people on campus perhaps. And just with you saying like, you know, there's two years before you even graduated, what kind of numbers or scale

are we talking about? Cause just hearing you go like, Oh, I didn't want to, you know, we put this much effort. And I think sometimes again, I feel like we've been through this culture recently of the glorification of raising money and like doing these huge things. And if you have a business, it's not doing like several, several million, is it even worth continuing or pursuing? And I just want to ground everyone back to like what the reality of those numbers look like in the beginning. And when you realize like, oh, you know, this is actually a business and it's might not be doing like, you know, 5 million a year, but it's still a really good business and it's worth seeing where it evolves to. Yeah. I mean, numbers wise in those early days when we were

only doing it part-time, nothing. I mean, Leon, how much do you think we would have been doing at the end of one of those first years? 50,000 max by the time we graduated? I do know the first year when we graduated and went full-time in 2001, I recently stumbled across our tax return. We did $69,000 in revenue that year. And so when we're talking about starting part-time, we're talking about five orders a night used to be, oh, hey, look, we got five orders. Then it became 10. 10 orders became 20. It was definitely not something we set out to scale at the beginning. It was definitely not something that we knew would

turn into anything. When we first started our concept of bake-to-order warm cookie delivery, there's really not much out there that was delivering except for maybe pizza and maybe Chinese food places. Other than that, the idea of delivering hot cookies out of the oven, that just never existed. So we were really just kind of introducing that concept and it was slow and go at first, for sure. To get started, it wasn't for us about how much money we were making. We knew what we were doing, but we weren't concentrating on that when we made decisions to move forward. What we were making decisions on moving forward with was the excitement that people had around what we were doing, both the service we were offering, and we were striking a nerve with people with our brand in a positive way. And we could feel it. And we knew that when it came time

to graduate, we had the choice to either just go for it and see what happened with it full time, or to just put it to the side and say that was something we did in college and then we're over with it. Financially, we should have put it to the side. Financially, it had no legs at all and didn't for years. But there was something else besides that. And we figured out a way to scale back our lives where we had a very minimalist life. We moved in together into a tiny apartment just to split on rent. And our life was easy because we were super young. We were just out of college. We didn't have some lifestyle or family to support that we needed a bunch of money for.

And so in that way, it was freeing to us that we were able to explore doing this and know that we weren't making any money, but it just kept getting better and better. So you're seeing like incremental growth, but the real thing that kept you going was like, do you know what? Like people love this and we love it. So why not keep going? Yeah, we were building this brand based on what we call warm cookie moments. And it sounds corny,

but what we started realizing early on were that people were using this brand, this concept of ordering hot cookies to be sent to their spouse, to their mom, to their dad, to their son, as a way to connect. And we were part of these incredible moments very, very early on. There's tons of stories that we could tell you, hundreds of stories a year that we hear from our customers. And we realized that we were onto something. We just didn't know how to monetize it yet. And it's like Tiff said, because we weren't looking to monetize it, I think it really allowed us to think about building the business in the most special way possible. I think you said, Daniel, early on these days, it's about, oh, how can I grow? How can I scale? Let's go raise some

money. I think a lot of brands are too interested in monetizing so quickly that they forget what can make them special as a company or as an organization, as a brand. And because we weren't out there to scale right away, we really could hone our craft and really figure out a way to make the brand special. I think that's so, so important. I was actually at dinner with some VCs last night and we were talking about this, the glorification of like raising and that's be hitting the headlines like, Oh, I want to do this because I want to be in tech crunch.

Businesses ultimately succeed when they're serving people and they're helping people and they're solving a problem that a lot of people have. And I think raising is absolutely great. And I would love to hear the story about how you guys went on a race. But I also think there's like this pause and this getting to know your business first and really understanding the market of your business and then asking, okay, we want to achieve this with the business. Okay, now we need to perhaps go and raise versus like, how much can I raise to then solve a problem I'm not quite sure about, which I think, you know, we were chatting last night seems to be happening. I think it's going to stop now with where we're heading with the economic climate. We didn't raise our first round of funding until

we were probably about nine years in. And what that did for us was to be able to present to a potential investor, here's the brand that we've built. Here's our customer following. We had built at that point proprietary tech and software that we could show off and say, here's a software that we have built. We're using it, we can expand on it. And it really gives you a better footing to present not the idea of what it could be, but that, hey, we have something real here. And the only difference now is that we want to make it bigger. So let's talk about that. What made you decide ultimately to be like, okay, nine years down the line, where were you at? And where did you realize

that you wanted to go to? Well, we had been expanding slowly. So we didn't open our second location until about seven years in. From there, we were like, oh, let's open a few more locations. And we thought we could self-fund that, which we did by taking out loans and things like that for a time. But then we knew, actually, the decision was kind of taken away from us because the financial climate in the moment was that we could no longer get a loan. So I think it was 2008. Yeah, we were on that time. We were trying to get a loan like we had done before to open up new locations. And suddenly, these bankers that we had had relationships with for a long time were completely dried up.

Absolutely no loan and not even a loan for equipment, nothing. They would loan you nothing. And that was surprising to us. And so we pivoted and we said, okay, instead of getting a loan, maybe we need an equity investor. And so that's what we... We actually signed a lease and didn't have a way to pay for the construction. And so that's when we said, okay, well, if the banks aren't loaning, we should probably talk about getting an investor. And so that, like Tiff said, our hands were forced.

And then I feel like, you know, for me, and I was sharing with the people I was at dinner last night, I feel like, you know, investment VC companies, private equity companies, like, unless you're in that circle, it's actually kind of, and I showed like reading online, it's kind of hard to like find out information about this stuff. So what was your experience? And, you know, we have so many amazing entrepreneurs listening to this. We're like, you know, I've got my side hustle on and growing my business. And, you know, what's next for me?

How do I find out if even raising is right for me or private equity is right for me? I'm just curious around how you started finding out information for yourselves and starting to piece this new world together. Because that's what it is for a lot of us. It's a completely different ballgame, completely different world. It operates completely differently. So how did you find entering into that? And who was answering your questions? How are you figuring this out? You're exactly right. Early on, it shocks me how much... When you think about starting a business and building a business, you don't really think about all the investors and the meetings

and all the stuff you have to do around that. We learned, we got very, very fortunate. When we went out for our first round of funding, we met with a couple of law firms and we didn't have any money to pay the law firms to do the round. But we found a firm that liked our brand. They believed in our brand. They really liked us. And he agreed to do it on contingency. If we raised the money, we'd pay him. And if we didn't, he'd do all this work for nothing. And this guy is still our corporate

attorney to this day. We've raised over $120 million with him since that first million dollars we've raised and used him ever since. And his name is Rick Ressler. And he taught us pretty much everything. I would get a document and I would look at it and it was like a foreign language to me. And I'd be like, what is this? What is a convertible note? What does this mean? Teach me about valuation. We had no idea at that time. I mean, we were probably 26, 27 years old. And so Tiff and I came from a world that was not anywhere like that. And so we were fortunate enough to learn from him. And then throughout the years, as we've added other investors and mentors to our group, we've been able to pick up the phone, send an email, shoot a text, and ask questions. And so it really is one of those things where we learn very slowly.

It's like learning a new language, but we learn slowly. I just love what you've highlighted there. And I just want to raise attention to that, because you said added mentors to your group too too and I think that's just so so powerful and important in business no matter what age you're at whether you're like to say 27 37 47 for me that I feel like that was the biggest thing that I wish I'd known sooner was like how to either seek out mentors or that it was okay to seek out mentors and it was okay to ask questions and that actually questions weren't a sign of weakness but actually they were a sign of strength because then you get to learn from it

versus pretending we know it all and being like oh yeah I know this thing and actually you don't so I think it's just really powerful to call that out straight away and be like this is actually what you need to do to grow businesses you need to be willing to ask questions who are some other mentors that you've had along the way obviously this lawyer sounds like a great mentor in the fact of like how you raise in those valuations. Which other mentors have like supported you on this journey? We've had a lot and we've been lucky to be around people that, you know, one thing I find interesting about good human beings is they want to help you. And so I don't think you have to be afraid to ask.

And I think they get something out of it too. It's fulfilling for them as well. We've certainly leaned on people for our entire career asking advice. We still do. The people change out some, although we kind of keep them along the way, but then we add more in as the different levels of expertise we need. One of our earlier ones, I'm trying to remember how we even met, but his name is Mike Joyce. And he became our real estate broker for our first real location. We were getting kicked out. We were month to month on our lease for our kitchen. And we had 90 days, actually, it was only 45 days. We had 45 days to move to a new space. And we ended up meeting Mike Joyce, who was our broker, but he had just recently gotten into real estate. Before that, he was a

small business purchaser and flipper. So he would buy a small business, he would get it operating really, really well, and then he would sell it. And he had done this several times. So he really took us under his wing, both in understanding the real estate and the negotiation on how to get a lease, but more so just on the operation of our business. And as small as we were, we really used those... He had real world lessons for us. Not high level, not strategy, not pie in the sky stuff. Stuff like, hey, when you say this to this manager, that's rubbing them the wrong way. And this is why. And so just really nitty gritty stuff, which I think in the beginning, especially,

it's great to have that. Because having an eye towards strategy is always great. But if you don't have the nitty gritty stuff figured out, then you really can't mess with that strategy. So getting the right mentor for the right thing at the right time is very helpful. And she taught us a lot about just basic accounting and, hey, here's how the book should look. Here's how you should strive to – here's what a P&L looks like. And she actually introduced us to our first investor as well. And as years have gone by, we've been so, so fortunate. Now we've been able to have on our investor list, on our board, people like the former president and CEO of Pizza Hut. He's a director on our board.

We have a former VP of Globals at Starbucks as an investor, former CMO of Papa John's, former global president of Whole Foods. We've been able to just, we think, just stumble into these amazing people. And each of them offer something different. And it's really awesome. If there's a problem that needs to be solved, we'll sit there and we'll say, who is the best person for this? And we'll say, oh, okay, that's Lee from Whole Foods. He would have had dealt with this. And because of that, we've just been able to be just so, so fortunate in the mentor area. You know, when you ask a mentor for advice, you say you just shared some of the incredible people that you have as mentors and advisors now.

I'm curious, like sometimes if they share advice that you're also like, I don't know if I agree that even though you have all of this experience, are there moments when you're like, it just is not, I hear you, but I just don't think that's right for our business. All the time. Yeah. Okay. Let me talk about that. Sure. The thing about your business is that even though they're experts and they're very smart, they're not in your business every single day. So all they really have to take away is what you've presented them with. And sometimes you're not even presenting them. You're trying to present

them with the full story, but they really can't get that because they're not there every single day. So if something they're saying isn't really hitting the mark for you or just the way that you want to do things, I think that's fine. And you pick and choose what resonates with you. And then also say, okay, I hear why that's smart and why that works. But in this case, I don't think that's going to work for us. And I think that, yeah, sure, that kind of stuff happens all the time. And it's mostly just a factor of that they're not sitting in the office. They don't know the inner workings of it. They don't know every single piece of the puzzle. Do you find yourself sometimes leaning on your own intuition and gut instincts?

I'm curious how many times that you've been up against those hurdles and then like, or if whether you've always agreed on those things, whether your gut instinct has been the same as business partners or whether you've had disagreements around like those aspects. In our book, we actually talk about this quite a lot. And we talk about when one of the things we've learned very early on is if all else is equal, as far as the data is concerned, use your gut. And so many times we have some pretty funny and not so funny stories just based on the fact that we went against our gut. We've learned everything we've learned through failure mostly. And so there are countless times where we have gone against our gut and it's always kind of come back to haunt us. As we get bigger, the difficulty that I'm having as CEO is we need to make big decisions around utilizing data, utilizing real data. But at the end of the day, there is something still there about intuition and we still have to make sure that we listen to that.

Go ahead, Tiff. Well, I was going to say something similar in that I think when you're building a business, it's all gut. I mean, somehow you know what's going on. And even now, I kind of know what will resonate with the customer. So if you're presenting, hey, we should offer this or we should offer that. Sometimes I'll be like, oh, that's a home run. And other times, everyone's really excited about it. I'm like, I know, but I'm just telling you, they don't want that. I just can tell you they're not going to want it. And so that's how you build it. But to Leon's point, as you get bigger, you have to start working with data. And I actually think that's really exciting as well.

So you can have a mix of both and you can always shoot something down just because it doesn't feel like it's right for the brand. And there is that kind of soft, non-measurable something. But you also, as you get big, need to start working with data and making sure that you are making decisions that are backed by real facts as well. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that

this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. One thing I want to highlight that I've heard come up a couple of times during this conversation that I think is really powerful is, you know, outside looking in, you're like, you guys are

valued at like half a billion now. You must have things so easy and so awesome. And you've got to this point, you must like, how amazing. And I'm just hearing a few things where you've really sound like you've had your backs up against the wall. Like, okay, we've got to find a new location in 45 days. We couldn't get this loan, although we'd signed the lease, all of these pieces. And I, I think just grounding everyone who's on this entrepreneurial journey is so, so important that it never ever comes without its challenges, its failures that you get to learn from. Things feeling like, oh my God, is this the end for us? And then you come out the other side. And I just, I love hearing these stories because I do think right now, sometimes with social media is

amazing, but it can be a highlight reel because it is very hard to share some of these longer stories. That's why I love this podcast. And what has got you through some of those challenges? When you've thought, oh my goodness, this is it. This is game over. What's really pulled you through and helped you come out the other side? I would say that the people, our customers, our purpose has really pulled us through. And you're so right. In our book, chapter two is called Just a Couple of Losers because the whole chapter is about a period in time where all we kept doing in our minds was losing.

Everything wrong that could possibly go wrong in a business was going wrong. But then we get these moments. And I'll share a quick story that is in the book. When we realized how powerful our brand was and how special our purpose was, early on, one of our managers answered the phone. That's how long we've been in business. People are calling in their orders.

And this admin at a downtown office called in to place an order. And she got to talking to our manager and they got talking and the manager says, hey, what are you guys ordering for today? And the admin says, well, you know, it's raining today. And our boss here, we always roll our eyes at him because every time it rains, he used to come in and tell us a story about when he was a little boy, whenever it rained, he knew if he was at school, that meant when he got home, his mom would bake him a batch of chocolate chip cookies. That was him and his mom's thing to do together whenever it was raining. She said, well, today's the first day that it's rained since his mother

recently passed away. And so what we're doing here at the office is we're ordering these cookies and we're going to celebrate his mom with him. And those kinds of stories, those kinds of moments, that is what keeps us going when we're going through all the stuff that any entrepreneur would have to go through, backs against the wall. It's because we really felt like we had this awesome purpose. And that's what kept us going. lately is in terms of when those kind of game over moments were happening, what we would do next was whatever step we had to do and there was no other option but to succeed. So we just started really thinking out of the box and it was really just more survival mode. And you just start going into this mode, okay, then we should do this and then we can do that. And how about when we got kicked out of our lease, we were in a commercial kitchen space. We had 45 days to move out. We didn't have the money, first of all, for anybody to lease something

to us. And secondly, we didn't have the time to renovate something into a commercial kitchen. And we looked and looked and looked, couldn't find anything. We found a little house. And so we said, well, this house, which was being operated as a real estate office at the time, we're like, it could be this. And so, and then we just did all these maneuvers to try to get that permitted on time, the drawings in with really no budget at all. And you just take step, step, step, step, step and do everything you can simply to survive through it because there isn't another choice. So the other choice is to go out of business. So you may as well just keep looking forward. I mean, that's kind of, I think at least for me, but I think for Leon too, we just look forward and don't look down on the tightrope. Because if you're looking down, you're going to

fall and we should have fallen. We should have fallen then. We should have fallen 100 times. And even now, we still have moments where it's like, oh man, this, whatever is happening, this is super tough. But we're not considering anything other than just moving forward. I love that. Don't look down on the tightrope. I think that's really powerful. And I think that's just, just again, like really important messaging that, you know, you're always going to have these ups and downs and it's your ability to pivot. I think that I've been learning the most. Your success as an entrepreneur is normally measured by how many failures you can withstand. I feel like your ability to be resistant and determined to get through is really what sets you apart. And

just hearing you kind of confirm that journey that you've been through is really amazing. And I know will be a lot of comfort to people listening. So I want to take us back to nine years after you started deciding to raise that money. Now you've raised 120 million. What was the first round? It was a Series A round for $1.2 million. And we got very, very lucky. And one guy did the whole thing. And we met him for lunch. And we pitched him and he said he would do it. So one pitch, $1.2 million. Needless to say, we didn't realize for many years after that that's not how it normally happens. Now we look back and we're like, oh man, wow, that is not normal. But we got introduced to a guy who didn't even know what Tiff's Treats was, but we joke that his wife was a fan. And she kind of wanted him to take the pitch.

And we think that he did the investment just to impress his wife. But his name's Mark. He's sat on our board since 2008. He came in in 2009 in another round of $1.8 million, right, all by himself. And then he kind of started getting some of his friends to come in with him as investors.

And all in all, he probably put in $5 million himself before we started going out to other investors. And at that point, when you were doing that initial raise, you know, you've got, I think, you know, two locations looking for a third, right? When you decided to do that initial raise, is that right? Just piecing the story together. and so what was your pitch at that point were you like okay we want this money to do what like what was where was the vision because I'm feeling like you know it'd been like a slow nine years you just done like the three locations I'm like what clicked for you guys are you like you know what we are gonna raise a million this is gonna how we're gonna spend it like what was yeah what was going through the minds of Tiffany on point? Yeah, I don't think we had a pitch. And

we were lucky to have somebody who I don't think was needing to have a formal pitch. We sat down in a restaurant and we had our laptop out. And really what we pitched him with was he knew the business. Like Leon said, his wife was a fan. And we pitched him with the custom software we had built and how we thought we could expand easily utilizing that and how that would scale really well. That's the big thing I remember. We walked him through that software piece. So it was almost more like a tech pitch

than a business pitch. And Leon, did we even talk about what we... We knew we had the store on the hook, so we needed money for that one and maybe a couple more. And that was our use of proceeds. Yeah, it was technology and more locations. It really was. And he luckily comes from the technology world,

so he understood how technology could play a very big role in any business. And that's how he made all his money. And so he was a believer right from the get-go on the technology front. And it's interesting because like you say, this was kind of, um, what make mid two thousands. And so you guys were really not, there wasn't much competition delivery, I'm guessing at that point, because Uber Eats and Postmates, none of those existed. Oh yeah, no, this is 2008. We kind of did on-demand delivery before on-demand delivery was even a thing. We didn't even call

it on-demand delivery. We didn't have a name for what we did. We just knew if you placed your order and you wanted cookies hot from the oven, we could get them to you or to someone you order for in about an hour. And so we were on-demand delivery. We used ghost kitchens, meaning when we didn't have a location, we would share kitchen space. We did that before ghost kitchens was even a thing. Again, we didn't call that ghost kitchens because it never existed. So we're ahead of the curve on a couple of things. And that's how Tiff here, the genius, that's how our website is cookiedelivery.com, is because we were so early in having a website. I mean, Tiff, you say we're one of the first to probably offer online ordering, right? It's funny because as long as we've been doing this and we're like,

oh, our website is cookiedelivery.com and we've had online ordering since the year 2000, it really only recently occurred to me that in the year 2000, you could online order almost nothing. Pizza delivery didn't adopt that until much later. Retail shopping, if anybody's old enough to remember, there were a handful, like Victoria's Secret would offer, they transitioned their catalog to online, but you have to take forever to render one image. You have to be really sure that you wanted to click on it before you even open that thumbnail because it's going to take forever. So there were rudimentary sites out there that would offer online ordering, but department stores didn't. So ultimately,

we were actually one of the first companies out there offering online ordering back in the year 2000. Now, granted, it was ugly and it was off the shelf, but it worked. And because at the time, our customer base was students at the university. So we worked. And because at the time, our customer base was students at the university. So we were gathering people that were the same age as us, which we all wanted to use new tech. And that was one of the fortunate things. One of the great things about starting a company when you're 19 is that you're all about the now. And so we always utilize tech. And we'll talk about this a lot in our book. So it's not just cookies. And that's the name of the book, but that's really been the name of our whole journey. It's been the warm

moments. It's been all this, but it's been building software and utilizing what you have at your disposal to create a business. And so that's been a really exciting piece of our journey was creating tech from scratch. I want to come back to the book in a second, but I just have one more question on the investing piece. I'm curious how much your plan has changed since you did the first initial raise? Because I do think people sometimes get really like feeling like they have to like nail down 100% the North Star. And I'm wondering how true that has been for you guys, or how many pivots you've made during these different rounds that now you've been through? Because again, I feel like no one really talks about that.

Yes. We really pride ourselves here in the philosophy of done being better than perfect. One of the things I notice, people of all ages, but a lot of folks starting out in business, they try to perfect something before they even launch it. And we know from failure and from experience that it's more important to get something out there, to get version 1.0 out there, because you don't know what version 2.0 needs to be. If you think you know what the done product is going to be, you're going to be wrong. It's never going to be what you think. You're going to get feedback from customers. You're going to get feedback from employees.

Early on, we very much abide by that kind of philosophy is just get out there, get going, and iterate. Put something out there and iterate off of it. With that said, we did also very early on stick to one of the values of keeping things simple. And we started off with probably six flavors on our regular menu, baked to order, warm cookie delivery. That's what we did. And right now we probably have 11 or 12 flavors on our regular menu. We've spiced things up with new flavors.

But we've really kept it very simple, very much like In-N-Out over there where you're from. Just a very simple menu and simple to operate, simple to do high volume. And it's good for the customers, but it's also good for operations. The simpler you keep it, the better quality you can give, better service you can provide. I love that. So true. We always say like simplify to amplify. Oh yeah. I like that. So I want to talk about culture because I am, you know, 2000 employees, a lot's changed since it was just you guys living together in the apartment. What are the key like points that you have wanted to, well, like feelings, I guess, or, you know, what has been the cornerstone for your culture growing to 2,000 employees? How do you make sure that every employee has the same ethos or

values that you guys have at the heart of this and what's made Tiff's Treats so successful? Yeah, that's a great question because it is so important. And when we were smaller, it was so easy. We were there and everybody was there and it was a family atmosphere and we all sort of by gut instinct knew what was important to us. We all shared that same vision. And that was one of the fun and magical parts of owning a really small business is it's not just the two of you. It's this small group that you sort of start with. But then as you expand, and especially for a business like ours, because we are multi-unit in different cities. So we've got roughly probably, I don't know, 80 people that work in our actual headquarters office in Austin, Texas. The rest of them work either in a satellite office in a different city or they work in the field. So as a delivery driver, as a kitchen, as a store manager, things like this. So we're very spread. And that's where it gets really tricky, number one, and really important for everybody to understand your culture. And one of the things we did when we started spreading out like that was, number one,

we noticed it. Number two, we had face-to-face meetings with key leaders from other cities. We would all come in once a month, hash out problems that we were having, or just even coming up with new operation methods so we were all on the same page. But having those face-to-face in-person meetings were helpful. And then after having done that for some time, we realized that we needed to nail down our values. And that's how we came up with what we call the TIFF's top five. And these are by no means everything that's important to us, but sort of the top five things that we find are important to our business. And from there, we've integrated them into our company so much so that everybody from the store level, we will talk about, oh, that's because we make it right. Or while we adapt and grow,

they'll say that, you know, it just, it'll kind of come off as part of a conversation and say, you know, such and such is happening over here. And that's because we adapt and grow. And so having those pieces of the puzzle really out front has been very, very good in getting everyone aligned with. Not everyone has to agree with them, but if you vehemently don't agree with them, then you know this isn't the place for you. I love that. What are them? So we adapt and grow as one.

What are the key ones that you have? Number one is we make people happy. So we realized that our business is really about a moment making. It's yes, it's warm cookies. Yes, they're right from the oven. Yes, we're on demand delivery. And yes, we're a super convenient gifting option that's both premium but approachable. But really what we're doing is having connectable moments between people. So whether I'm sending

cookies to you, I'm telling you, hey, I'm thinking about you. I care about you. I remembered your birthday, whatever it is. Or even when we're just at home together and ordering together for a snack, we're still connecting, having that warm, shareable moment. And so this is where we call these warm cookie moments. And we didn't always. That was something that was sort of delivered to us by the customers as to, hey, this is why your service is so important to me. And so we make people happy is number one. We make it right is number two. We're a very customer service driven business. And again, not always from the beginning. When it was just me and Leon, I know we would feel if a customer said, oh, you did X, Y, and Z wrong, but it's just the two of us there and we're certain we did it right. We didn't have that

customer service mentality right out of the gate. But we learned it very quickly that our position on the customer service is that if you're entrusting us with your special moment, then you have to feel that you trust that we will take care of you if something goes wrong. If we deliver to the wrong address, if you give us the wrong address, we'll remake it and send it back out to the proper address for free. Because it's not about who was right, who was wrong. It's about the experience you were hoping to have. And we are here to provide you with that experience and do anything we can to recreate that experience if we didn't hit it on the head the first time.

And that's been super valuable to us in terms of customer stickiness, customer loyalty. We've got great brand affinity. And I think We Make It Right is a big piece of that. We Protect the Brand is number three. And that's around a lot of things. But the most important aspect of We Protect the Brand is that there's a book we read a long time ago.

It's called Good to Great. It's a good business book. That's an old one. But they talk about being the best in the world at what you do. And so we kind of adopted that mantra of, look, we're not going to do anything unless we can be the best in the world at it. And that's why we've stayed very simple in our menu.

That's why our concept is very simple to understand, difficult to execute. But we keep things as simple as possible because we have that bar set at best in the world. And that's our quality. And everyone around here rallies around that. We are passionate in the world. And that's our quality. And everyone around here rallies around that. We are passionate is number four. And the best example of this one is our chief financial officer and our chief technology officer. They both had jobs at big corporations making a lot of money. They came and started working with us when we were very small and working for probably half the pay and working twice the hours. One day we would sit around with them.

And one day after a hard day, I was like looking at them and I said, appreciate you guys being here, but why are you guys here? Like, I know how hard you work. I know how much less money you're making. And what they said that day has really been a rallying cry for the company. They both said, look, we're here because we get to make history together. We get to build an industry from scratch. We get to do something that nobody else has ever done before. That's exciting. That's what we want to do. And so

we put that as part of our values because if you're not excited by that, then this might not be the best place for you. And then as Tiff said, we adapt and grow is a big one. And that's our fifth and final value. Yeah, we adapt and grow. So we started an industry that didn't exist and largely still does not. On-demand bake-to-order cookie delivery is not the way bakeries are built. They're not built to bake on-demand like that. They're not built to bake specifically to order like we do. So from the very beginning, we had to adapt our ovens to have five timers instead of one and different pieces of equipment. So it's sort of part of our DNA. But I mentioned it earlier, part of it too is the technology. We always leaned on technology. We knew, hey, this is something

that's going to help us be able to grow a business from just the two of us, we can grow faster if we utilize technology. So we always have, we built our own back in 2005, but we've built upon it year after year after year so that we've got this huge system that really runs our business. And every time a new piece of tech, the cool thing now is that new pieces of tech come out and we can now tie into them. So we actually don't have to build everything from scratch, but we get to tie into new pieces of tech. And so part of our ethos here is just, look, we're going to be looking for ways to adapt our systems. We're going to be looking for ways to grow. That means a lot of change. And so if change is something that you absolutely hate and you want your job to be the same on day

one as it is on the last day that you work here, this is absolutely not the place for you. We're growing, we're changing, and we're going to be making moves to improve all the time. And most people really find that enjoyable or exciting. Everyone's a little uncomfortable with it, but some people absolutely hate it. So it's right there on the board. So we're upfront about it. There's two things as well that you guys have said during this. It's like, one, look, the culture has evolved. We have things in there now that we didn't necessarily start with and I think permission for anyone starting just to be scrappy and seeing what's happening and finding your way but I think what's really powerful about yours is they're kind of like mottos versus just words a lot of companies like some use mottos but

a lot will just use words and they're kind of harder to remember. Whereas I love like these are like, you know, you can live by it and it just pops in people's heads and your employees are reflecting them back to you, which I think is just really, really powerful to create culture, particularly as you like to say, a lot of people being remote, obviously 80 all together, but a lot of people spread out all over the place. And in today's cultures and new companies where we're very, very remote, that's one thing we always think about is like, how can we get the culture to come through Zoom

or to be felt no matter where you're at in our company? And I think that's a big battle for a lot of people, but I love these like little sentences that mean so much more and actually very memorable so that when you're acting day to day, you can like, these will pop to your head.

I'm like, okay, I'm going to do this way because this is the company motto. Thank you. So, so powerful. So I have like one last question that I'd love to ask is like, you know, we have a lot of women particularly, but and men listening to this podcast, really trying to find their way in their own businesses

and support their families and do something and make the world a better place than they found it. What are things that you tell early stage entrepreneurs? Or if you could tell yourself when you were starting out, what would be that message that you'd want to go back to 19, 20 year old Tiff and Leon that you want to impart onto someone listening today? I would just beg 19, 20-year-old Tiff and Leon that you want to impart onto someone listening today? I would just beg 19, 20-year-old me to take it easy. You know, like not everything is a 10 on the scale of one to 10 in emergencies. I really, really think that the business

could have been better off and I would have certainly been better off with my health if I didn't take everything as the most urgent thing in the world. And so that's what I would tell myself. And I would like to tell currently on that not everything is a 10. No, he really does have that in mind, but it is so funny. It's just about personality type. It's either an emergency or it's not for him and always has been. So it's something he has to really think through. And so opposite for me, so this is going to be specific to my personality, but what I would say to myself is, you will be able to figure this out. You will be able to do it. You're going to do it anyway. Relax and have fun with it because you know you're going to do it. You know you're going to make it work. So don't fret so much about whether or not you are capable of doing it. Oh my goodness. I love both of those and I actually resonate with both too.

And I felt like those were just delivered to my heart as well. I'm like, yeah, you know what, just like chill a second. But thank you both for coming on and sharing your story today. It's really powerful. And, you know, I know we'll have helped so many people listening on their journey as to, okay, do I invest? Don't I invest? And how do I work through this? And I just love that you guys have built a company, you know, it's spanning generations. And I think that's also a really good reminder. A lot of us can be in a rush. Oh my God, I have to do this within five years.

And a lot of the stories that you hear right now and actually, you know, since 1999 and still going strong and continuing to become stronger every day. And I think there's some really, really powerful messages in today's conversation. So thank you, both of you. And I would love for you to share where everyone can find you more, your social media handles, and obviously where they can buy your book, which I cannot wait to read.

Yeah. So our book is called It's Not Just Cookies. And it's got a lot of what we talked about today, our whole entrepreneurial story, how we went from how we started to now, how we work together as being a married couple. We go into fundraising, kind of the details of exactly how we did fundraising, sort of tips there. And then also for bakers, we did include over 25 of our specialty cookie flavors, cookies, bars, truffles, so really fun things. And so it's something that even a beginner baker can have fun with. So we've got all these recipes in there, beautiful pictures. It makes for a great coffee table book. But really, the meat of it is about our business stories. We didn't gloss over.

We talk a lot about our failures. And so if you're looking for a real-world story of how a business came to be, that's really what we've put in there, which you can get on Amazon and Barnes & Noble and your local bookstore as well. Amazing. We'll put some links in the description notes too for everyone to grab that. Perfect.

And then also you can find us at cookiedelivery.com. So if you're in one of our areas, we can hand deliver warm cookies to you through cookiedelivery.com or our mobile app. Our company name is Tipsiff's Treats. And we also do nationwide shipping. So we will ship little cookie dough kits,

which you can get from cookie delivery.com and also our chocolate chip cookie truffles. We ship from there as well. So you can get Tiff's Treats in some form or fashion everywhere. At Tiff's Treats is our handle on almost all the social media, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook. I think Tiff, there's a special offer too for Boss Babe. CookieDelivery.com forward slash Boss Babe gets you 20% off your next Tiff's Treats order, whether it's shipping or if you're wanting to send an order to someone in one of our delivery zones or if you're in one of our delivery zones. I love that. And it's just like you say, it's so, so nice just to send someone like that,

those cookies, I'm thinking of you and what you're going through or anything like that. You can just say so much and that's what's powerful. You can say congratulations or I'm here to support you, any of the above. And I know that they're always received well by entrepreneurs on this journey as well. Natalie actually sent me cookies the other day. So I was like, yeah, resonate. So thank you both so, so much. I really appreciate you. And thank you for all of your wisdom. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode on the Boss Babe podcast, then I'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you, we'll send you our side hustle success kit, your simple no BS guide to keeping track of everything that you need to do

to start and grow your business. To access this freebie, all you need to do is leave us a review, then share a screenshot of your review with contact at bossbabe.com and we'll send this must-have kit straight to your inbox Bye.