 a food business was never on the cards for us. And then when we started making these donuts, we gave them to some friends and it went wild. Super excited. Super excited to have you on board, Makayla, to introduce you. You are the owner of Frankie D's Donuts out in Camor in Alberta. Super excited for you to join us today because I know every time you do a drop of your donuts, it sells out in a matter of minutes, hours. It's insane. Tell me a little bit more about you. Yeah, well, thanks for having me. It's awesome to be here. Just my wife and I started this donut business totally randomly. She started baking in 2019, said that she wanted to get into baking. And the first thing she baked was donuts, which I think is totally random because if you're going to start baking, don't you start cookies or brownies or a cake or something like that? Something a little easier. But she started with donuts. We loved it. Our dog Frankie, she's a labradoodle. She went totally crazy for it, obviously. Loved us being in the kitchen more. And fast forward a few months, I was on the phone with a friend and she works in a kitchen out in a tiny town in Manitoba. And at the very end of the conversation, she was about to hang up. And she said, Oh, I forgot to tell you, like, I accidentally started a donut business. And I was like, what? That's like the best sentence I've heard in my life. So I ran out to feel in my wife. And I was like, Okay, I think we have to start a donut business. Our town doesn't have anything like that here. And it just, I don't know how to describe it. It was like, it was a funny kind of random thing. But it also was there was this feeling that just felt like purpose, like this was something we were meant to do. And as the weeks rolled on, we decided to name Frankie D's donuts after our dog, because she's so obsessed with us baking, we started working with a recipe that this friend in Manitoba sent the altitude of being in the mountains totally changed everything about the recipe. So we spent a few months kind of tweaking and working at it and learning, because we're total amateurs, but we ended up turning into something amazing. And now we have so many raving fans of our donuts in our local town, all the way to like Calgary Edmonton, we've had people from Ontario come and try them now as well. So it's insane. I I'm so proud of you. I'm really, really proud because for and for some of our listeners that don't know, you're you're one of our students in our program. And I it's such an honor to be able to work with you because you are you always take action, right? You the stuff that we teach you are always like, Hey, you know what? Next time you come with the work being done, I can really see your passion in this trade. Well, what a lot of people don't know is that you did not come from the food and beverage space. You're you're not. So my background, I first started in real estate, and then I went into an executive role in another business that was really based on like retreats, workshops, events, online programs, online coaching. I was in that for a while, and then I met my now wife and she has been in a similar industry doing events, workshops, business retreats, coaching, stuff like that all online. People would fly out to different events here, but very much in the coaching mentor type space. And she's had her business for 17 years, we kind of joined forces in that business and brought my talents with hers and created new programs and new offerings for our client base. So that's pretty much what we've been doing. I started going into the e-commerce type realm a little while ago and started working on some different brands and ideas that I had. But a food business was never on the cards for us. It was never something we talked about. It was never something that was like a plan for us to do. We just thought we were going to continue without coaching business. We were going to continue to move into e-commerce in a bigger way. And then when we started making these donuts, we gave them to some friends and it went wild. And honestly, it became, it started with this little feeling that has grown now. And I was talking to a friend the other day that feels like we are obligated to make these donuts now. We have so many fans and so many people that love them. We've converted people that don't like donuts into now donut lovers, which I'm super proud of. And so it feels like this is definitely where we want to go in the future. I love that. And the reason then, because I know that story, it is so inspiring because it's always the other way around. And what I mean by that is like people that are in the food business and everyone's raving about how it's just not that sexy. Quite frankly, like food business is just not that sexy. And like where the shiny stuff is is the e-commerce because everything's going online, coaching, mentorship, like all these stuff, nice and dandy, it's shiny. And for you to come from that space back to this is really inspiring. And then that's precisely why I want to share it with everyone that's watching because honestly, nothing else replaces the feeling and the satisfaction of someone coming up to you, sharing with you how great and how thankful they are for you to create something of a masterpiece. And God damn it, it's a donut. Yeah. And it's like, oh, Jesus, I'm doing something really good. And it feels so good inside. And this is like what true foodiepreneurs have. Nothing replaces that. Nothing replaces that. And really, it just feels like in the business and what we do in coaching, we really look at like who the person is, what are all the strengths and gifts that they have and how do you put that into your business? And so we do that a lot without clients. And I feel like Frankie D's Donuts has been like us awakening like an even bigger expression of our own gifts that are like in the other business, but they just get to like come out in a more creative way here. And like, it's so interesting to have to spend like we go in at 11pm at night, and then they pick up at 1130 the next day, it's like a big 12 hour shift making donuts. We're totally exhausted. We might, you know, we think of quitting a few times along the way. It's getting better as production is smoothing out. But then the customers come and they pick up their donuts and it's like, it's the best feeling in the world. Because we've had people mass-adjust that it was like, they were having a rough time and it was something that they got to look forward to. And it like brings joy to people. It gives them something to look forward to. And we focus a lot on mental health. Like that's a big vision I have for the future is having us, it's not just about the donuts, it's like that they stand for something having something to look forward to having these little moments of joy when life can get hard and busy and stressful sometimes. And especially during the pandemic, like we really were able to provide that to our local community having something for them to look forward to having a reason for them to get to leave the house in the quarantine to get to go and like pick up their box of donuts. So it became something even more than donuts. And I think that's something only kind of the food industry can really provide. I that that is so spot on. And I think that's the reason why you're so popular and it's so community driven is because you truly live your values on your sleeves and you put it on your sleeves. And this is kind of like what you truly believe in. And it's authentic. Something that I've every time I when I when I go out to a nice restaurant, i.e. I always meet with their owners and I know that they're really successful. And I always ask them like, what makes you think that you're so successful? It's because they're truly authentic to who they are. And they're able to really live it and push it out there and have no remorse and have basically 100% owning it to what they believe in. And it's okay to be something that is off or it's not like mainstream, it's completely fine for you. Mental health is a huge thing, bringing the community together and truly being able to do that, not just, you know, lipstick service where people just say it for the sake of saying it. And that's frankly the reason why a lot of restaurant owners fail because it sounds so good when you hear it. It's like the right thing to say. If you don't truly embrace it, it's never going to work because it shows in the action of what you do, the collaborations and everything. So yeah, I just want to be able to kind of extract that out and share it with our listeners because I think like they truly need to understand that whatever values they have, whatever things that they truly drive them, it's okay, just own it. Now you did tell me that you want to quit a few times. What will happen? Well, tell me a story of when that happened. There's probably multiple stories, but I just think that, you know, the food business is so new to us. And one of the challenges very early on was trying to figure out production. So it was one thing when like we gave it to like friends and friends of friends to kind of test it out. We made it in our own kitchen. We weren't like a kind of licensed business yet. And we just like kind of gave it out to like taste test. And we made 40 donuts in our little kitchen in our condo here in Camor. And it was a nightmare. It was just like there were donuts everywhere. We had to clean out our fridge to try and make room for all of the like donuts that were proofing. And it was just, it was a lot, a little tiny fryer with a little pot. And I feel like from there, that's the maximum we got to like, you know, just in our home. And then we moved into one of the local restaurants actually Tavern 1883. They're really what allowed us to then like take the next step to make this an actual business because there were no commercial kitchens in town that had a deep fryer. And so during the pandemic, we met with them and they actually let us go into their kitchen when they weren't using it. So we would go into their kitchen at night. And we've never been in a kitchen before. So it was as funny as like look like having to learn how to use the the commercial dishwasher and being like, So how does this thing work? So actually, that's super cool. Like, I just want to rewind a little bit because you talked about the mass capacity that you faced when during production. And you didn't let not having a commercial kitchen stop you from doing anything. You're like, you know what, I'll just make it and I'll deal with the consequences later. I'm not, by the way, I'm not promoting this. But this is like the added to the GSD mentality, right? I'm not sure if you guys know that get done mentality, right? Exactly. Right. And I love that. And I think like, you know, as startups as business, something that I'm really proud about is being scrappy. That's what it's all about being scrappy. And that's what's going to get you to the next level, something that I can really relate to. Now that you're like, hey, production is at a limit. And were you just talking to a friend that's like, you know, can I borrow your kitchen? Because this stops a lot of entrepreneurs from moving forward because they feel like that, oh, how should I reach out? Like, oh, what if they say no? Like, what was that process like? Sure. Yeah. So I will clarify in the kitchen at home, we weren't selling them. We were just giving them to taste test and get feedback. And then I would send surveys out to get lots of like, I'd ask a lot of questions to get feedback on like, what did they like? What did they didn't like? What would they prefer? How much would they pay for it? Different things like that. And so we had talked to the town of Camor about like, what we would need in order to make this an actual business. And we actually talked about having it in the home, but knowing that we can only make 40 donuts in our little home was like, we knew we wanted to go bigger than that, like from the get go. Because it's a process, donuts take a long time, like so we may as well make more. So moving to a different kitchen, we, you know, I just started talking to friends and to the people that were tasting our donuts. I was like, yeah, this is this is the challenge that we're facing right now is that we need a kitchen with a fryer, the commercial kitchens don't have it here. We're looking for a restaurant. And it just so happened that my friend Maggie, I was sharing this with her the challenge that we were having. And she was like, Oh, I know the manager Tavern 1883. Let me let me message and give you an email introduction. And that was so exciting. We had a couple other restaurants we were talking to, but we went and met with the chef. And she was just amazing. Everything was just positive. It was like, Yeah, we'll make it work. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. And so from there, we got all the permits. We just started learning how to be in a kitchen. She taught us kind of what to do what equipment of theirs we could use what we had to buy ourselves. And then we started getting ready for our first like official donut day. You know what, before we go into the donut day, I want to unpack three things that you talked about that is so, so on point. First of all, it is understanding your customers, understanding your customers. And this is a huge lesson. It's something that I always always preach even throughout our lessons. And every call that I have, I'm like, yo, you got to find out what your customers are wanting. What do they need? Because at the end of the day, the biggest mistake that we make as entrepreneurs is that we love creation. We love making things. And we always have something called the confirmation bias. What does that mean? That means that we only find evidence to support what we believe in it and shut everything off. Yet when you're working in such a vacuum, you're not going to be able to see what is actually the market telling you because as at the end of the day, business is a solution to someone else's problem. So without understanding their problems, how can we make a solution that is fitting to their problem? So for you, when you first created that beta testing, it is so smart because your customers are telling you what flavors they want, what sizing they want, what occasion would they eat this at? Is it going to be for a corporate catering or is it going to be friends and family? Do they want more sprinkles? Do they want this to be healthy? Whatever the case is, they tell you everything. They give you all the answers. But this is a step that majority of the restaurant owners or not even restaurant owners, business people, they fail to take. When we created our ice cream shop, we had more than 2000 surveys. 2000 surveys. Yeah, 2000 surveys because we really wanted to know what is going on in the marketplace. So good for you on that. And that's something that that's the reason why I always teach that. And I always preach about that. Super important. Second thing that you mentioned, which is such a great point, is economy of scale. Because for you to put in 12 hours to make 40 donuts, it's the same amount of work for you to create 400 donuts. Same facility, same thing. You just need to add in more flowers. You need to do this. You need to bake it at the same time. So that's the reason why it makes so much sense for you to actually scale up because what does that mean? That means that now per cost, your donuts are going to be substantially cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. Now people can only do that when there is demand for their product. So we don't need to jump the scale. But something you realized very early on is that you need to create more in order for your costs to go down. So therefore you can actually profit and hire people to do the work for you. And lastly, something that I love that you did was to manifest and put it out there in the world of this. Every time that I have a big goal that I want to reach, I always think about it a few times. And then I tell the world, I tell my friends about it, because that really solidifies what is going to happen. And things will fall into place. And all of a sudden you're like, oh, you know what, you're looking to buying a place. Oh, dammit, I'm just selling my place. And all of a sudden, and this literally happened to me, is because I'm like, maybe I should sell my place. Maybe I should. Maybe I should. Maybe I should. And all of a sudden I'm like, you know what, no one's going to buy it. This is a shitty market, so on and so forth. And then I'm like, you know what, no, I have to do it. So I tell my friends, you know what, I'm selling my place, the guy's buying it, and within a week, that transaction went through. Crazy stuff about being able to manifest things into and attract things into your orbits. Great lessons that you taught us. Thank you, Mikayla. So share with us on your first drop per save and share with us what is a donut day drop and the result of your first one. Yeah. So our donut days is essentially a day that everyone comes and picks up their donuts. So right now we're doing like one to two a month until we move into a new kitchen soon. And then we're going to start hiring so that we can increase the amount we're doing, because right now we're juggling two businesses. So the only way that this business can really scale and grow, we can make more and more donuts as if we hire. So again, talking manifesting, like I'm talking about that a lot. I'm talking to different people about that that's the next challenge, that's the next step that we're facing. So that whoever is meant to start working with us and kind of come into our orbit, that'll start happening because people will start talking about it. Or they'll just think of someone, oh, this person would be great. So I'm kind of just like putting it out there and waiting to see what happens because I've got a few months to go. So the first donut day that we did was August 20th 2020. So we're coming up on a year anniversary here. And something we did from the very beginning is started an Instagram account. So we didn't have the logo yet. We actually called it D's donuts in the beginning. And it just the profile picture was a little D that I made on Canva. That was it. And when we gave it to friends to test, I wanted to have an Instagram account for them to share on to start getting the word out there. So I we sent them boxes of the donuts and I would write what the Instagram handle was at these donuts. And I asked them to share if they loved the donuts. So they started doing that. And we started getting this following and it was only like a few hundred people. But then we would share that we were looking for a restaurant and that we found the restaurant and that the first donut day was coming. And then we opened up pre orders a few days before the donut day itself. So usually the donut days on Friday and we open pre orders on the Monday. And to our surprise it sold out. It sold out within I think it was in a few hours. And it was wild to me that people were buying these donuts because I had to go through, you know, what flavors were we going to do and figuring out what price they were going to be. And then it started with people just emailing us their orders and that went on for I'd say about four or five months. People would email their orders from Instagram. And then we started building the online store and and stuff like that because it took hours to take everyone's orders over email. So yeah, it's kind of progressed from there and our donut days have sold out every single time as we continue to grow our following and grow our production. A big challenge I had personally was that we would sell out so fast that I would start feeling bad about it. And it's something I'm really grateful for and joining your community is realizing that you would share all these stories of people that would sell out within a minute, within minutes. And I started then hearing about more donut companies and other food businesses that had the same and realized that it wasn't a problem. In fact, like it was kind of on brand for us even to be selling out and it was a good problem to have. And we could continue to increase production. But I stopped marketing for months because I just felt like I couldn't keep up with the demand we already had because so many people were missing out on donuts and would email us. And my wife was like you have to stop like someone else has to handle the emails because you just get sad having to tell them that they can't get donuts. Yeah, that's kind of I've overcome that we're now I'm marketing more and really trying to grow out following because we sell out at two donut days a month right now. But if we're going to hire and move to more, which is the plan, then I need to increase our demand at the same time. So it's kind of like the problem has reversed. And now I need to start marketing again. Totally, totally. And it's it, it's really interesting. And it's really exciting actually to be able to grow your brand with you. I mean, when you first joined our group to be able to see you progress, it's really, really interesting and exciting at the same time, because you always come to our classes with so, so much real life questions, you know, a lot of times when people like to ask questions when they're not in it yet. And they're just like, like visually thinking about things, and you just keep asking questions about these stuff. But you're you're so different. You're like, you know what, I'm going to ask a question, I'm going to implement take action, and then come back to the class with new stuff. So that's something that I really appreciate about you. Great, thank you. Yeah, I am learning so much. And it's just so cool to be a part of a community where we're all on the same journey, we're all trying to like grow this food business and, and make something that we love and have other people enjoy it. Like, it's so meaningful. So it's awesome. Awesome, awesome stuff. How, by the way, how would you, how would you rate the community, the community that we have built so far and the course that you've gone through? Like out of 10? Yeah, sure, out of 10. 10. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, it's so awesome. It's just it is really cool to have like, there's such a range of different people in the community too, which is nice to be able to, for me to be able to share insights, like we're only a year in, but for some people that are not where we are yet, I can share some insights. And then there's other people in the community that are way ahead where I'm just so inspired by them. So it's really cool to have that mix kind of going on. So I'm able to like give and receive at the same time. I really enjoy that. Totally. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, because like, like sometimes people would be thinking, especially when they're doing business by themselves is like, why would I invest thousands of dollars in a program like this to get in the community to learn the stuff? But when they think about it, like going through like a post-education, one course is already thousands of dollars. And yet the value that we bring is insane. And why would we want to go into business with no tools, nothing to equip us, and just going in blindly ourselves when we can actually have this kind of stuff and to equip us with everything that we can. Like I know, I just want to leave off with this is that whenever you're in business, business is not like a for like for sure way of having success. The only thing that we know for certain is to be able to stack the odds in our favor. That's what's going to push us and give us more level of success. And quite frankly, anything that would give me and it could me with a higher chance, I would take on any day, any time, right? So thank you for your trust and actually committing as well. Yeah, of course, it came at the perfect time because so we started in August and grew to December. We had three doughnut days in December for kind of a Christmas celebration, which is the most we had done in a month. And they all sold out faster than usual actually. And then we, it was about February. And I was like, oh, there's not any money in the account. Like what is happening? And so I went through like months of just like really figuring out all the costs because I knew our ingredient costs, but I didn't factor in every other cost that exists within the business because to your point earlier, like our coaching business, the profit margins are really high. The costs are pretty low and pretty simple. Like with what we're paying for technology and services. And if we have contractors helping like it's pretty straightforward. In this business, there are so many costs that I hadn't accounted for because they were a little hero there. And so I took kind of an online course started learning about different ways in a food business to start costing started looking at, oh, we're not charging enough, like how much we're charging for our doughnuts, it costs way more than that to even make one. So it just started like shining a light on, okay, are we going to actually turn this into a business? This is like, it's fun. And we love it. And we're enjoying it. But like, we had to kind of a turn a corner and start taking things a little more seriously to make sure that the vision and dream that we have for Frankie D's doughnuts, the only way that's going to come true is if it can sustain itself, if it can grow to that point. So that was a really big turning point. And at the same time, I had stopped marketing because I had felt bad that we were selling out. So kind of seeing your webinar and then coming into the community was just that kind of kickstart I needed to start marketing again, to start figuring out and building this kind of solid foundation so that we have something that can grow into something lasting and keep increasing production and stuff like that. So I love it. I thank you. Thank you. And it's so, so good to be able to and I'm honored to be able to help. So thank you for that. Now, big plans for Frankie D's doughnuts. Tell me, share with me. What are the big plans? Yeah, so we, the dream is to have our own shop. We're still deciding whether it's kind of going to be a shop that we make all the doughnuts somewhere else. And it's kind of just a front where people can come kind of on Main Street, where all the tourists are and stuff like that. But the other idea is to have our own shop and have kind of an event space. So like I said earlier, a big part of Frankie D's doughnuts is to be an advocate and bring awareness to mental health and to be that it's about more than just a doughnut. Like the doughnut represents something far greater, which is having something to look forward to having these moments of joy, where you kind of get the feeling that like everything's going to be okay. Like it's a simple pleasure in life. It's not complicated a doughnut. It brings a lot of joy. And so we want to kind of be a stand for that and also talk about some of the harder things that go on with mental health and make it normalize it within our community. So we're thinking of being able to have event spaces and stuff like that. We also give back to the community or to a cause that's close to our hearts on every doughnut day. So being able to do that in a much bigger way when we had our own shop would be awesome. And then offering drinks and things like that. We have so many cool ideas for different drinks that we want to do to pair with the doughnuts. We also started doing apple fritters recently. So being able to expand our offerings right now, we only do three flavors, three to four flavors each doughnut day. So being able to have a shop where we can feature so many more flavors would be awesome. And then we don't know yet, but something to do with dogs. Like obviously we have doggy doughnuts and little, we just came out with little kitty doughnuts, cat doughnuts. And people are loving that so much. We love seeing all the videos of little dogs eating their tiny doughnuts. And I don't think anything could get better than that until people started posting videos of cats eating tiny little kitty doughnuts. That's hilarious. Your creativity is through the roof and it looks like you have a lot on your plate. Now for people that want to enjoy and see your progression and your journey, how can they find you? Yeah, so you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook, Frankie D's doughnuts. So that's Frankie, F-R-A-N-K-I-E-D-S for D's and then doughnuts, D-O-N-U-T-S. Or you can go on our website, FrankieD'sDoughnuts.com. Or you can go into the link below and I'll make sure that I link you up, make sure that people can show you some love, go and follow Makayla. She's the real deal. Yeah, I think that's it. Thank you. It's awesome to be here. All right, awesome. Take care.