The Code To Winning - HOW MY KIDS BUILT MOKIPOPS: STORY OF RAISING ENTREPRENEURS || AMBER KHAN-ROBINSON || EPISODE 089

Episode Date: October 6, 2026

In this episode, we sit down with Amber, co-founder of MOKIPOPS, to talk about how a simple homeschool project with her three children, ages 3, 5, and 7 at the time, turned into a thriving frozen fruit bar company. What started as a fun way to teach her kids about food, creativity, and hard work quickly became something much bigger when her then 7 year old son asked a question that changed everything: "How can we make more money and not be at every single event?" That one question sparked a serious commitment to building a real, sustainable business for the sake of their children and their family. We dive deep into what it really looks like to raise entrepreneurs from an early age, how Amber and her family taught their kids about business, money, and responsibility while still keeping things rooted in creativity and fun. From humble beginnings in a home kitchen in 2016 to hand molding every single popsicle themselves, MOKIPOPS grew through grit, community connection, and an unwavering commitment to quality. Amber shares how understanding her children's strengths, curiosity, and ideas played a central role in shaping the direction of the business, proving that kids are capable of far more than we often give them credit for. Today, MOKIPOPS has sold hundreds of thousands of natural frozen fruit bars and has grown from a shared facility into their own dedicated factory, now using automated machines that produce thousands of pops per hour. Along the way, the brand has caught the attention of major names like GoDaddy, the Atlanta Hawks, Entrepreneur Magazine, Atlanta Magazine, Southern Living, VOXAtl, and the Atlanta Small Business Network. This conversation is a powerful look into what it takes to build a family business from the ground up, the importance of listening to your children, and how raising young entrepreneurs can change the entire trajectory of a family's future. Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:37 Amber's Background & Moving to Atlanta 06:03 Travel Aspirations & South Africa 09:37 The Origin of Moki Pops 12:58 Branding & Legitimatizing the Business 19:13 How Hurricane Irma Changed Everything 24:11 Scaling & Working with Major Brands 27:27 The Reality of Parenting Kid Founders 31:42 Why Kids Should Build the Business 37:18 How to Raise Confident, Creative Kids 41:54 Advice for B2B Distribution & Paperwork 44:26 Learning from Failure & Sharpening the Sword 46:20 The Future of Moki Pops & Getting Kids Off Devices 50:44 How Gen Z Uses Technology & AI 54:04 What Winning Means to Amber

What's one failure that turned out to be one of your greatest teachers? Get these kids off advice and get these kids working. Get these kids creating. Get these kids engaged. If you could leave advice to one an entrepreneur and a parent that could be raising the next entrepreneur, what advice would you give them? It could be two answers. It could be one answer.

What advice would you give those parents on trying to raise confident, capable and entrepreneurship of kids. Just listening to like giving them time, like sitting down at any child that you talk to, like I want to say almost 100% of all children that you talk to. You allow them to speak, give them space to be heard. You're going to hear their creativity come out. The code to winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. We have a very amazing guest that's join us in studio today. She is the founder of Mocky Pops.

We're going to learn a bit more about this beautiful, amazing founder story, a company that began in 2015 when young founders created a delicious, all-natural frozen treats in their own home kitchen, quickly developing into a passionate local following as well.

So, yes, it's a very, very exciting story. We're going to learn a bit more about that. We have in the studio today. Amber Con Robinson. How you doing today, Matt? I'm well. Thank you for having me. How are you today?

I'm doing great. I'm doing great. It's been, I love Atlanta. I've lived in Atlanta when in 20, I think 20 or 2021 are on Duluth side. So I don't know. Is that kind of Atlanta or is it the elsewhere? No, anything outside of Atlanta is not considered Atlanta here. Atlanta people don't want you to claim the suburbs.

So there's a whole song about it. You know, Marietta is not Atlanta. Cater is not Atlanta. Marietta is Marietta County. That's true. So are you from Atlanta? I am not. I am originally from I was born in Cleveland, Ohio.

Oh, wow. By way of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I've been here, graduated high school here. What made you move to Atlanta? My parents brought us here in high school for the private school. Okay. They wanted us to attend. and so that's that was back in you know eons ago you know and so that began what now is home for me

so I claim Atlanta as my home oh of course I mean here I think like maybe about 36 37 years I was going to say you're 31 that I'm 31 yeah oh okay yeah yeah I am I'll take that Keep the compliments. I'm serious. I'm serious. I would have never guessed when you said 36. Yeah, yeah. I think I graduated.

Someone counted recently 34 years ago. Yeah. Wow. Well, some of us are aging like fine wine. Are you just showing off right now? Is that what you're doing? Yeah. No, that's interesting.

So you've always stayed around east side. When I say east, like eastern time, like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Atlanta side and all that? Yeah. You've never went to the West, like California, Texas and all that kind of stuff. I've been to California once or no twice and I loved it. It felt like felt very different over there. I've been wanting to get back, you know, but I've been entangled, you know, in, in just family life here and business. So I haven't had the opportunity until more recently to travel as much as I've liked. And so I've been Northern California, like San Francisco in Oakland. I absolutely loved it in San Diego.

So it's nice. But I would love, my daughter who's 14, her algorithm on her social media feeds her a lot of Western destinations, Western American destinations. So she'll send a text, can we go to Oregon? I'm like, okay, what's in Oregon? She's like, oh, she sends me pictures of the mountains and the lakes and so forth. She's like, oh, can we go to Lake Bomb? Or however you say it, is that how you say it?

I think that's how you say it, yeah. Yeah, and so she's like, well, it connects to Canada and we can go up here for this. And I'm like, okay, so I'm getting educated on the Western Destinations, Yellowstone Park. Yellowstone. You should try that. I've been there. I went to school around the Utah, Idaho side, as well. well. And I live in Salt Lake. So if you guys want to do like snowboarding and skiing, especially in the winter, like there's like park city down by Salt Lake. So speaking about that, that's a very good destination. I'm surprised I didn't mention that. She mentioned Yellowstone. That's close enough, though.

She probably knows about it. I'll ask her. But in Utah also they, I saw like some cliffs and you like go in between kind of like a canal. Yeah. Like that looks beautiful. Just all of that. We'll do it soon enough. No, no, Utah's known for their landscape. It's one of those like very outdoorsy states. So it also has the perfect weather for all four seasons. Like it has a very good summer, not so hot. Like right now, I think things are going about like 80, 80 degrees. And it has very good snowing winter where it's not like as cold as like your Montana and Idaho, but still relatively cold. But then so much of snow, people like see in the mountains as well.

So it's very outdoors of people mountain by it. Like they hike. Also, like, just the terrain. Everything just looks so beautiful. Mountains are amazing there. So, yeah, it's like, yeah. Even the Wyoming's and, like, the Yellow Stones. Very.

So I'm originally from South Africa. So I don't really get fascinating when I see, like, some of these sons or, like, these, like, animals and stuff. You know, my cousin was a lion, all right? And, like, my mother. He was what? A lion was my cousin. Okay.

And, like. What? I'm just making a question. Okay, like what? Okay. No, no, just remind you when I first went on dates in college and I start saying I'm from a hut and like, you know, we had a babysitter who was a leopard. And like you saw them like this AI stuff and like they're like, are you for real?

Right, right. But yeah. So I have been very intrigued by South Africa recently just doing a little research because I want to travel there. Just based on it being foreign enough but similar enough to American culture that is not so much of a shock.

And then I love Amma Piano music. And I hear that the origin comes from South Africa. 100%. 100%. So I often tell people that South Africa is not first world, but it's not third world. It's like second world.

So when I tell them, that it has a lot of Western influence in terms of like you look at your Cape Town it has both like African heritage but also a lot of like European kind of influence as well it's to me it's probably the best city I've ever been to is Cape Town because it has again like some of the best views of the ocean

some of like the best like it's just city in terms of like culture and I'm from Johannesburg as well which is like I'll say Johannesburg is like a combination of Philadelphia and like New York but not New York in the sense of like skyscrapers but it's like the New York of Africa so

you're not going to get a shock or all if you go to like your Durban Kateon, Johannesburg because of just how the city life is like so you'd be like oh wow this is actually very nice you know so it has the kind of culture and yeah I'm a piano just like musically we are I mean I don't know if you know Tyler as well

and black coffee we have yeah so these are so that I'm probably my accent, people are like, oh, no, yeah. I've heard Trevor Noah speak. I'm like, yeah, he's from Johannesburg as well. So, yeah. Yeah. So I'd love to, it's on my list, my destination of places to go.

You're not going to miss out. And when you're there as well, there's also walk with Lions Park and all these different stuff. There's the game reserves, national game reserves, where you can actually, like, watch in, like, actual wildlife take place, lions, capturing buffalo. zebra. Behind the glass. No, it's just open.

Like you're in a car and there's no behind the glass. But it's usually safer because they say don't move whenever like a lion's looking at you because I think it's picturing a car as like one big object. So like making movement or like hand stuff, then it can try and identify there's a human inside there. So that's why you used to when they come super close to a car, everyone has to stand still because it like does a confusion of all this is way too big for me to capture. What the heck?

You know, there's a curiosity among it. Oh, okay, okay. And it loves American blood as well. So. I can say, okay, I might not do that part. Yeah. Also stuff. Sorry about that.

Now let's get back to what we're here for, right? No, no, I love it. I love it. Great. Can you tell us for those that haven't heard about Mocky Pops? What is Mocky Pops? So Moki Pops is an all-natural

handcrafted popsicle company that my children started back in 2015 when they were ages three, five, and seven. And it started just like as a homeschool activity that just something to help to get them off of electronic devices. Right. So when, you know, during that time, kids loved, I mean, even more so now, kids love to scroll. And I remember there was an actual moment in time where I was doing hair because that was something that I did with my children, like just being a homeschool mom. I won't say homeschool, but like at home mom. I would just like have friends come over and I would do their hair.

And I just always felt guilty when they would be on electronic devices. And I said, okay, we're not going to do this all summer. So you have to come up with something to do that's creative. And immediately, they were like, can we start our own business? And the reason is because they had recently gone to their cousin's shark tank style presentation at Georgia Tech and they won first place. And they got inspired by that. And so I said, okay, okay, start your own business. What would you like to say?

or do. They're like, well, can we sell popsicles? Let's sell the popsicles we already make. You know, so we were making them already for our family for like a year and just like eating them and I'm taking them to like potlucks, you know, because we used to go to a lot of potlucks of friends. And so they made 85 popsicles, took it to their first event and sold out in 45 minutes. And they had three flakes.

It was hibiscus lime peppermint. It was a mango version of something. And it was some kind of like avocado something. And they sold all of them 45 minutes. And the next, they were inspired by that. In the next week, they made 300 popsicles and sold all of those in two and a half hours. And so my husband and I was like, okay, maybe they're onto something. And they kept getting invited to more events.

Every event we went to before the end of the day, we were invited to more events. So we just kept following the energy. And before we knew it, you know, it just became like a regular activity that we did. And when we, you know, we probably went to three to five events per weekend. And we were making all of these at home in our home kitchen had no idea about, you know what we should really be doing you know there was no real commitment to even doing it or finding out more information we were just kind of following the energy um and then we got recognized by our local chamber of commerce for their youth entrepreneurship because they were just kind of

becoming known really quick these cute little three siblings in making and selling popsicles around atlanta and um when the they gave them the award in front of like 200 people. It kind of sent the signal to us that, okay, maybe this is something legitimate, right? And so we took it more seriously. That's when we, oh, wait, wait, wait, let me back up for a second.

So my background is advertising and graphic design. We have a degree in that, right? And so when I first gave them, when I asked them what they wanted to do and they wanted to start their own business, I gave them a lesson on advertising and branding. I said, you got to come up with a name that is indicative of kids and it sounds fun and like it looks fun. And so that's how they came up with the name. First, it was Kimioki-Moki, which is kind of like a family name that's played around with. So they wanted to call it Kimioki Moki Pops. I was like, eh, it's a little bit too long.

We'll always have to explain how to say it, so let's shorten it. And so Kimioki Moki came to Moki Pops. And then they came up, played with the branding and came up, came up with the different local styles. And that bled into when we went to the Chamber of Commerce Award and award ceremony. and that's when it kind of legitimized the branding of it. And then, so that was probably about a year into Moki Pops, and my son who was seven at the time,

he said, how could we make more money and not be at every single event, like verbatim, those were his words. Because we were going to like five events at a time, five events like a weekend. And everybody was exhausted. They were exhausted. it'd be like, you know, in the Atlanta heat, you know, two events. We might go to an event in the morning and halfway through the day.

We go to another event and stay till 12 o'clock at night. So my son was, he still has that same mind now, but he's always like, how can we refine what we do, make more money and be smart about the process, you know? And so when he said that, that kind of sent the signal to us. Let's be more intentional about what we're doing. Let's see how far we can take this. Let's be more like legitimate. So that's when we said, okay, let's get our license, our business license.

Like we shouldn't have had it before then, but we didn't. But we had no idea. We were just doing it as a homeschool activity. Right. And so we got the business license. We went into a shared facility where we were making the pops. And we got all the licensing around Department of Agriculture and so forth like that. And then it just started taking off more from there. And, and, you know, once you do that, then you kind of get recognized as a, you know, as a business. It just kind of started spreading. And then when was the moment did you realize this is now becoming a real business rather than just a fun family project? Just the recognition. I think one of our first customers was Google. Interesting.

It was Google on a local level. It wasn't. Oh, but still. Yes. So we made a delivery to them. We're like, oh, like they like our popsicles. But when we were there, I remember it was some young people that were in charge of bringing them in, probably like in their 20s or so. And they were asking them, I think I have a picture of it.

Do you all have social media? And I was like, no, we don't have any Instagram or anything like that. There's like, well, you need to have Instagram because it's, in modern time, it's your visual resume. And I think that night I went home and I like. set up the whole Instagram and started taking pictures and making posts and so forth. And that's when things started jumping off, right? It was not, none of it was like intentional. We're trying to build this big business, right?

And so the response that we were getting from social media or Good Morning America contacted us in Entrepreneur magazine. and we were on a lot of different media formats, you know, started in that era. And it just kind of, we were just following the energy, you know, at that point. And then it was a point for me, you know, where, you know, because they started it. We followed the energy, my husband and I, but mainly me because my husband was still working full time. And I was working full time making this happen with the kids in tow, right? And it was like, we're making popsicles and we're going out to events. We're having fun.

But then it got to a point where I said, what am I going to do for myself? Right. And I was just, it was kind of separate from Moki Pops. but the answer in that in that moment of reflection was okay well what I was asking myself is where am I going from here for myself and then where am I going with my children because I wanted to so I wanted to put my children on this track you know like people put their kids on tracks of like a medical track you know to go towards med school or the engineering track or or sustainability track. And there was something that happened to us where a storm hit our house. And this was in 2017, I think,

on 9-11, 2017. Hurricane Irma, like, hit our house and there was three trees that fell on our house. Oh, my gosh. And it was very tragic and traumatic, you know, overnight. And let me just tell you. into that story right quick. So the interesting thing is my mom was staying with us and we kept making fun of my mom because the storm was coming and she kept saying, we've got to go. We've got to go to

a shelter and seek shelter because the storm is going to be really bad. Right? And we were like, it's not going to be that bad. So my mom went out to like Walmart, like to their camping section and like bought all of this stuff. In my mind, she had like a raft and she had like, you know, all kinds of candles and flashlights and all of this. And when she came back, she had bags everyone. She's like, we've got to like seek shelter.

Like, it's not going to be bad. Like, just chill, ma'am. And so then it's like the power went out, right? And so then the family convened and we made this prayer in our children's room. And we're like, you know, God can please keep the family safe in the process. It was, it sounded like a tornado outside. And when all the power went out, we had a lot of friends that lived in the neighborhood.

We went to our friends house because we said we wanted to give everybody popsicles. So the popsicles, they were going to end up melting. So we said, let's just give out the popsicles to everyone. And when we left to give out the popsicles and like, you know, everybody's playing music. and like having fun with the free popsicles. We get a call from the next door neighbor saying the storm got you off. Like, and we came back and we had all these trees on the house. And so when we left there, so when we got back,

and I'm kind of like losing my train and thought like, like, why, I hope you cut this part out. But like, I'm losing my train and a lot for a second. But the whole point is that. But when the storm hit, oh, then we had to relocate to another area of town, right, temporarily. And we ended up staying in this mansion house up in Bucket, a very wealthy area of town, which was the daughter of Ted Turner. So they had like a house, they put us up, but my husband was connected to them through his job. And I was really impressed by the family because even though they were wealthy, they had a certain track for their kids. Right.

So everything that they did was that this family was about sustainability. And everything that they did from vacationing to their lifestyle, all was based on this whole theme of sustainability. And when I was thinking about later, what do I want for my children and how do I guide my children in a certain direction? I said, okay, I need to give them a track. That was just where I was thinking.

And then I was like, wait a minute, I already have a track with them. We had this mokey pops that was in the background of my, of my, it's not in the background of my life, but it was in the background of my thought process. And so I said, well, I already have, well, I already have something. Maybe I can just put more energy into that. And then likewise, because I was a stay-at-home mom, I didn't have a regular job, really didn't have a regular job ever in my, my,

married life. I was like, well, how can I build something for myself to have secure retirement? Right. And so when I, I mean, it just in that process, it all kind of came together at one time. And it made me realize that I wanted to commit to building mokie pops. And so when I, so from that, like, I started putting all my efforts into it. Now, mind you, my background, even though it's graphic design and advertising, I've done a lot of building different brands that I've started. Like, just every time that I create something, it's fitting for my life in that moment. So Moki Pops was a way to bridge my family life and to make money at the same time. And I just started putting a lot of effort into Mokie Pops. and it was fun.

It has been fun. It's been 12 years of building it. We went from the home kitchen to now we're operating a facility locally here in Norcross. And our business, our brands that we sell to are Atlanta Hawks and City of Atlanta, Emory University, Delta Airlines, and a lot of great brands. We just did Waymo and it's been fun. And now where we sit is being able to expand the company and go into full retail. Wow.

Yeah. But adding on that, what's the biggest challenge of now growing a food manufacturing company? The challenge is the scale. When you're too big to be small and too small to be. big, you know, and it's that in-between phase of, like, do we make that big enough leap, you know, and that process of making the leap is uncomfortable at times, you know, because, you know, you don't have all the resources that you need, but then you've got a lot of resources and you're trying to make the resources that you have make sense, right? And so it's been,

like the intentional part of scaling has been for the past two years. You know, and we have been looking at investors and looking at, so there's been two different parts. One is us building it ourselves. Exactly. And then the other is bringing others in to help build us, right? So initially we had the vision of being the Willy Wonka of Pops. So like having our own factory, building it so that we could have all of our community come in. We're employing the community.

And then there came a part where we were like, okay, we can do that and be in that grind and dedicated for the rest of our lives. You know, or we could build it in a way that we are still, we're benefiting from, from from what we have built like we're getting a copac for instance and we're just having others to come in and help us so that we could still have a better work life balance essentially and usually people from the outside they often just see like you know the manufacturing company they see it like booming they see you know Atlanta Hawks they see all these connections and retail and so forth so they see the final product however what don't they see behind the scenes um the work life balance you know

that um having kid founders because secondly i'm not the founder you know i'm the owner of mokypops the kids started it they're too young to put on the paperwork to be owners otherwise i would have put that um but the the work life balance is challenging. You know, in all the other brands that I have made and I've run for,

you know, a number of years, this is the one that has gotten the furthest, right? And we've been doing it for 12 years and raising kids

or raising entrepreneurs in the process. Like, I don't know how many people actually do that. You know, it's really parenting

kids in business. You know, where yes I'm the entrepreneur their entrepreneurs also but they're also growing up in their minds as children do their minds are changing they're growing and so just that challenging part of like how much do I give to business and how much do I give to family you know and that balance has been probably the one of the top three challenges you know through our whole process and it's obviously I love it so much and it's obviously been

amazing just the trajectory of where it started to 12 years into it and it's a very unique setting because we have your children that are founders you as the owner and so with that structure what lessons do you feel like entrepreneurship and leadership has taught you in that process the lessons of entrepreneurship and leadership yeah um that i mean there's so many right there's so many lessons i want to say the lessons are like they're they're daily at this point um but you know nothing's an overnight success you know it's it is the the one percent that happen like on a daily basis. You know, as long as you, and this is what I tell them, I just had a meeting with them last

night, you know, like as long as you're moving forward doing something every day, you're moving towards progress, right? That, that 1% is going to eventually get you to where you need to be, you know, but if you don't do anything, if you're just talking or just hoping and wishing, you know, that's not going to get you to, you know, where you want to be. And the thing is with modern day, with the kids of this generation, those Gen Zers, they different. In what way? They are different.

Like, parenting, Gen Zers, like, I don't want to turn this to a parenting podcast. You've listened. The mic is yours. Talk and speak your mind. I mean, I think that's, that's the challenging part because they want, um, They want instant gratification, right? And I've done me, I can't say I, like I am not a single mom. I've been, my husband and I, we've been married for 20 years, and we are partners in this.

And partners in Moki Pops, we work exceptionally well together, who we are on the outside is, who we are on the inside, like how we run our lives. But I'm saying that because I feel like I haven't even mentioned him. You know, so far the interview is not me by myself. But just parenting them, the Gen Ziers, the instant gratification is absolutely insane. Like, just that they feel entitled that success is going to happen overnight. Now, mind you, my kids have worked for 12 years. So it's not instant gratification. You know, it's been a lot of patience that they have practiced and, you know, have given to us.

So that's probably the challenging part is like helping them to understand that it's still coming, that there's a vision. They understand the vision, you know, but if I'm sometimes having, my moments of like, you know, like there's challenging things that happen in business, whether equipment fails or whether a deal that we're working on doesn't exactly come through or doesn't come through in a time fashion that we're looking for, then all of that, you know, impacts, you know, the, how they feel about business, you know. And so, you know, they're like, well, you know, if it doesn't come. come in and we're not doing these magnificent, you know, vacations,

you know, things that they see on social media, then they think we haven't gotten at all. So that might, that's a challenging piece sometimes. Which kind of even leads to the question I wanted to ask, why is, was it important that your children actually built the businesses that are simply watching you build it? So they, one, you know, initially it was to have them, for them to have something to do, right?

that was hands-on, something that they could use their critical thinking skills. And then also just them learning real-life application to, you know, it's not just theoretical lessons that you learn in school, like making school feel real or making it come to life, right? So in school, there's a lot of theory for kids and they feel disconnected from the lessons that they learn. But this was real life for them. This is real life for them. So every day, they're, they've been learning, you know, what it, what their actual math lessons are, you know. That's fascinating.

It's, it's, and the cool thing about it is now that their ages 14, 16, and 18, I hear. all the things that we've been teaching them or the times when we think they're not listening and they hear it come out of their mouths has been like, okay, they've been listening or, you know, they got that lesson, you know, but it's part of their regular speech now. Wow. Well, and

what you say about, they started at a very young age. How old are they right now? 14, 16 and 18. So one just graduated high school. It's almost like you're just born an entrepreneur. Boom, straight up there. I just, you got to love it. You, I just, the parenting from you and parenting from the previous people you just met downstairs,

I'm just like mind blown of just how important like parenting has been and the impact is going to have on passing over that knowledge to the next generation. because it's pretty much shaping out, not just one generation, but the next few as well. And I just feel like these two episodes have been such a lesson, like, for me as well, because I feel like my parents also did the same, like they instill just the natural belief. I've never not believed in anything because I often say the one thing, and my parents are like, yeah, you can do it. And I think it's important because if you don't teach somebody they can't do it, then they don't have that limitation within their head that I cannot do something.

But like, I want to, you know, I want to do this thing. Yes, you can do that. I want to do this thing. Yes, you can do that. And just naturally, because of that confidence instilled from parents, it's such an underrated lesson that's being taught to kids because then you don't have that limitation. You don't have people telling you that, you know, you're incapable of, you're deprived of

and all these kind of stuff. So what lesson would you feel like your kids have learned in these years about entrepreneurship? Exactly that. That they're, that they can actually dream something up, create something, and bring it to life. That they are capable, even at a young age. And I always like to say that kids are a lot more intelligent than adults give them credit for, at least in America, right? It's not, you know, they don't have to like go through high school and graduate and then, boom, you're supposed to be magically this great person. after high school or after college.

Like your minds work now. At a young age, you are capable of creating something that you can bring to life and that can be a value to society. And so, yeah, essentially, you know, that part I love for, like, all children, just being able to understand that their creativity has value. What advice would you give those parents on trying to raise confident, capable, and entrepreneurship kids? Just listening to, like, giving them time, like, sitting down. Any child that you talk to, like, I want to say almost 100% of all children that you talk to,

you allow them to speak, give them space to be heard. you're going to hear their creativity come out. All I'm thinking about this and what if we can do this? And all of that has value. And if you follow some of that lead as parents, giving them confidence that they are being heard by showing them that you're listening to them and showing that you're listening to them

by having them lead you to some type of creative project. then that gives them confidence. And that shows them even how much more you love them because you value their ideas. So I've talked to a lot of kids over the years. We've done some presentations in schools on entrepreneurship, as Moki Pops even, and just hearing the excitement of, like, just no limitation.

kids don't think with limitations that adults have. I can't do it. And if you give them that space, then anything is possible. It's unbelievable. And has running a family business often brought the family closer or has it created very unique, unexpected challenges? I know you're very authentic. I'm asking the question because I'm going to get a straight answer with you.

No, it's definitely so in, Let me think about that for a second, like what angle I want to come from. It's definitely made us closer. I mean, we've had some very unique close experiences, like whether we're traveling from Moki Pops. You know, we've done some unique trips based on the business. but also over the years you know it

makes it where the kids you know they want their own space I think more than the average kids my kids are just like you know hey I want to do something different you know or when I say do something different like they want to have their own space

to to like my oldest daughter wanted a regular job outside of monkey pops. Even though she still works with monkey pops like almost full time, she still has a regular job herself. And that she just wanted a different experience. Like what is life like outside of monkey pops? And we, even over the, my husband's been working full time with monkey pops since 2019. So that's what, like seven years. Yeah. So we're always around each other, you know, and it's a blessing that we have a great relationship, you know. And so there's times where it's just like, okay, well, you know, sometimes we, you know, need to do things, you know, differently, like do things apart, for instance.

So sometimes it gets, it gets interesting because we're like, business didn't have any boundaries. I think that was a challenge too. Business didn't have boundaries. So it was like business during the day. It bled into the nighttime. We're doing, I'm doing like operations during the day. And then in the evening, the family is doing production until like midnight in the facility. And so we're in that sense, we're always together.

And then we'll turn that around and do some events together. So yeah. No, I love that so much. And obviously with one of your first clients being Google, despite it being like local Google and to right now bigger corporations, even like Atlanta Hawks as well, what is that one important tool you can try and give to people that want to try and distribute their products to bigger corporations as well?

To legitimize your business, get the insurance, get all the certification. so that they recognize you, you know, as being able to come into public spaces. What I, there's a lot of small businesses, even friends of mine and people that I know in a community where they get comfortable just doing it on a small scale, right? Like they're still making things out of, making food out of their house and selling it or people like, you know, not have. having the proper labeling or proper ingredients and so forth, inconsistent ingredient. Like if you don't have the insurance, you don't have the facility that you're operating out of, you've kept yourself off at a certain level.

And if you just get recognized, because really the difference between those that have larger customers and stay small is the paperwork. I love that so much. I think it's just fascinating. And would you say that networking is just as being vitally important regarding that? Because sometimes people don't want to get out their comfort zone. Again, you're okay with just having a small mar-par company with your family member supporting you. How important is networking being as a follow-up question to that?

Networking is definitely important. It's very easy to get, you know, caught into like a little box space. but when you like get out and you you know meet people you just never know who you're rubbing shoulders with you know there's um everywhere you go in our case everywhere we go there's always someone who's connected to someone you know and it gives us the opportunity to get into more spaces kind of leaping into like whether we're meeting someone in manufacturing or meeting someone who's just a customer themselves, but we're always meeting someone.

For that reason, we pretty much know a lot of people and a lot of spaces that help us through business. Unbelievable. What's the one failure that you feel like has shaped? I'm going to cut that out. I'm going to re-ask it again. What's one failure that turned out to be one of your greatest teachers? I don't know.

Like, a failure that turned out to be one of the greatest teachers, moving fast, right? Like, my husband will always say to me, you know how to get into the rooms, to speak to the people, to gain the attention for the business. but when you're not ready to be in the room, then you know,

you've got to kind of stop and sharpen your sword before you get there, you know, so that you're ready for the opportunity that's presented. And then, you know, I've been in the room, we've been in a room with some great people to take us forward, but we haven't always been ready, you know. And so, like, even more specifically over the past year, it's made me, in particular than everyone else, pause, pull back and like sharpen the swords,

put things in place, even though we have been doing it a long time and I was very confident about the brand, confident about what we were doing, and realized that they were missing pieces. You know, and so it's just been going back and like filling those pieces in to move forward. Where do you see Moki pops? Moki pops, that's for correcting me. I think it's my accent, so I get an exception, right? You do. You do. You do.

Where do you see Moki Pops in the next five years? We wanted to be a household brand. You know, we want to be able to go into the larger retail spaces, which is what we've been positioning ourselves doing for the past couple years or the past year, to work on the branding, working on the packaging so that we can go into the retail shelves so um we've been meeting with the right people you know all the large brands um and they have given us the input that we need and we've been executing that so and then what impact do you hope mokie pops leave beyond selling just fruit bars frozen fruit bars um that kids who are entrepreneurs i mean

just the creativity around kids literally being able to be involved. That's kind of like not what I want to say. You see, can you cut that out? I got you. Mainly that get these kids off of devices and get these kids working. Get these kids creating. Get these kids engaged. You know, that a lot of the,

children in the current generation and younger so we talk about gen Zers down to alpha-gens that as much as they want and I'm tying his social media in because it's really to me like I have a lot of conversation with my parenting peers about this but getting them off of the devices is so easy to scroll so easy to waste time but you can get so caught up and being consumers that you never create. And these kids these days, they have so

much creativity. And they really want something greater than what they're experiencing. And if we just they don't know what they want. Because they will, my kids all the time, and I've learned a hard way.

But I gave them too many options in the beginning. And the too many options, they would tell me they didn't want something. They didn't want to do something great. Like some of the opportunities that people in the outside look in, let's just say, oh, I'll give you an example.

We might do something with one of the big brands. They're like, oh, I don't want to go to that. And I'm like, who would say no to that? You know, and so they don't know what they want, but then when they do it, they're like, that was amazing. That was a, that was a, fun experience and they learned from it. And there's a lot of times where kids just don't know what they want.

And if for parents, we push them to do things that we know will be good for them. And then, you know, then they'll learn. But getting them off of those electronic devices is in modern times is key. I couldn't agree more. I feel like sometimes it's one of those like shut up device or call me bothered devices. play with this thing like you know keep yourself distracted rather than um teaching because kids are very as much as we speak about jane zy i think it's one of the brightest generation in terms of like the utilization of understanding technology and like the world as well i think the potential they

have the greatest potential i would put it that way they do and it's and it's funny you mentioned that even because the way that they catch on to information is so much faster like there's even times where I assume that I have to explain a lot to them, and they don't. They just get it faster. And I'm like, I'm amazed just like how quick they absorb information and that they can execute, right? Like, I just think even when I was younger, when we were given directives, it might, you know, the process to get things done was, it was just, it just took longer. And for them, you know, they can execute something like without thinking about it so much, right? We put so much thought into getting something done that it's just innate for them.

And one of the examples of that is with AI, right? I kind of assume that my children and their generation that they're like these AI kids and they want, you know, they use AI and that they're going to grab hold of it and want to use it as part of their everyday life. And every time I talk to them, any kid about AI, they're like, they don't really think of it as using AI. They just do it. It's just part of, they execute with it without thinking about it. And they say that we put too much attention on AI. Interesting.

Right. It's just like, why do you always talk about AI? like, but they use it as part of their everyday life without having to talk about it, you know. And so, and they're just executing things a lot faster. 100%. No, I couldn't agree more. And just to the last two questions, if you could leave advice to one, an entrepreneur and a parent that could be raising the next entrepreneur, what advice would you keep to give them?

it could be two answers it could be one answer minute ask that one more time if you could give advice to an entrepreneur if somebody listening out there that's an entrepreneur if you give advice to them right now what would the advice be and the follow-up question if you give a parent an advice about raising the next entrepreneur what advice would you give them

two questions can be two answers or one answer up to you I love the way you say entrepreneur I was trying to grab one I was like what word is that entrepreneur sounds like yeah yeah it's like I mean, it's pretty much the same what I'm saying, like, just really listening to their creativity and giving them the space to create, you know, and like encouraging them and being present with them. A lot of times we're just as distracted as the kids are, right? Even in our parenting kids who are, I mean, parents who are scrolling just as much as.

the kids are. But also take the steps to make what their little small business, even if it's a lemonade stand, you know, go through the process of legitimizing that lemonade stand. Like, give it a name, you know, even if it's, you know, the child's name plus the lemonade and go to the Secretary of State website and create like LL. see based off of it and, you know, take the child through that process so that they know that what they have is a real business and they can help there, that they have a business. Love that so much. I usually always ask this question to everyone I end up interviewing towards

the end because it's the coach winning insight you need today to seize the world tomorrow. For Amber, what does the term winning mean for you? Winning to me is having successful children, like raising them to be good humans. We're doing it. My mode that I chose was through entrepreneurship, you know, but there's spirituality and there's morals and there's family life and ethics, all of that blended, but to make them a good human being in the process. And then inside of our brand itself, winning is, you know, that we have built a business that people value and that they see us as authentic people behind the brand. That who Moki Pops is is who we are as people and we're giving you a piece of who we are

with every popsicle that you eat. I don't know that we've made it clear that Mokie Pops is that Mokie Pops. is a popsicle. I think we did. Although I asked towards the end, regarding the bars and stuff like that, I think it was very clear. I think we kind it in the beginning.

Okay. Yeah. And also with the answer you've been giving, you've been touching a lot on, like, popsicles because you went out to the neighbors during the hurricane, a few popsicle examples as well. Okay. Okay.

And speaking of Mokie pops, if you could let our viewers know where they could get a hold of Moki Pops, if they want to try and, like, do something, a function of party, your social media, so on and I get in contact with you. If you give that awful Mokie Pops, get out of viewers know that as well. Yeah, well, Mokie Pops, if you want to find out more information about us,

our website is MokiPops.com, and you can follow us on Instagram. We'd love for you to follow us on Instagram at Moky Pops. It's M-O-K-I-P-S. And when you Google us, you can find all kinds of things about us. We're on LinkedIn, Facebook, all of the social media platforms. Awesome.

The coat-winning insights you need today to seize the world tomorrow. Amber Kahn Robinson, thank you very much. Thank you.