 no idea how, we already had orders and just started going. It's grown exponentially. And like you said, within the first 12 months, we hit $10,000 followers on Instagram and well into a six-figure business within 12 calendar months as well. So it was, it's growing up. Thank you so much for coming on to share your experience with us, Tanya and Chris. You guys are from West Coast Convection and you guys make some really bomb desserts, okay? This is, okay, this is how big this is of a muffin. Like what is this? Tell me, share with me what you guys do. We're good. Yeah, so we do massive blondies and brownies. We're known for making one pound minimum brownies and blondies and we stuff them with all sorts of... Anything you think of. Pretty much anything. We love outrageous and decadent and the bigger the better. Yeah, so you can definitely find, yeah, like you're gonna find like six to eight house cookies that we've baked in house as well, shoved inside on top of donuts, candy, candy bars, pop tarts, anything you think of. Yeah. I love it. And to be honest with you, the reason why I reached out to you guys is because I see your Instagram and it is very, very inspiring. What I was sharing with you earlier is that you guys have so much passion, so much heart in what you guys are doing. And within a year and a half, you guys grew to over 10,000 subscribers on Instagram and is able to build something that you guys have like so much passion for and it pours out in the shows. You guys are super authentic. Can you share a little bit more about how you guys started this journey? Yeah. Yeah, so I actually have had zero baking experience prior to this. I owned a gym and when that didn't really work out with my partner at that time, Tony had convinced me to leave that business which is something I'd spent a lot of time and all my energies and efforts into for about eight years before that. And I'd personally had a lot of experience eating a lot of the treats that a lot of these online companies had made. Some of them I was blown away. Some of them I was very underwhelmed with and kind of thought that maybe there was something that we could do better. And she had quite a bit of baking experience on her own although she's an RN so completely different there as well. And so one day we just decided we're gonna go ahead and try to make something and we made a blondie. And right away we knew that we had something. It was one of the best things that we'd ever had. Had some people taste it. They agreed with us and then we just so happened to go visit my brother and went to a business conference that sort of gave us that little kick that we needed. And just we created the LLC, got the website, did all that in a couple of days and then that was in September of 2019. And by the end of that month, we already had orders somehow. I had no idea how we already had orders and just started going as grown exponentially. And like you said, within the first 12 months we hit 10,000 followers on Instagram and well into six figure business within 12 calendar months as well. So it was a growing up. In this kind of work, you can't just go halfway I think. And for us, especially when it's your side hustle, if you just make it a side hustle and you don't go all in, you can't, I guess in our experience, we had to just, I mean, 16 hour days working two jobs just to get this going. But we did what we could to really take the time and investment to make it, I guess, bigger than we even expected it would ever be. Yeah, just like I said, I mean, it's challenging. There's a long hours working seven days a week, that's 67 hours, so it's gonna do what it takes. You know what? Let's unpack that a little bit more for our listeners because that was a lot of things that you guys shared. So let's go back to the very beginning. I love your story that you know, you tried the gym thing. It didn't really work out. Registered nurse is registered nurse, right? Yes. Beautiful. I love that you guys are coming from such diverse background. Yet it's, you guys can make it happen. And it's definitely a huge risk. And what you guys have done is created a beta product, gave it to people that validated your idea. That is different. And then you got inspiration, that final kick from someone at the trade show at your brother's place. And then you're like, you know what? Balls to the walls, let's make it. And you guys just took action, which is beautiful. When you guys took action, what was it like when, what were you guys feeling like? It's like, is it like, oh, you know what? I feel so much confident in this thing. Or it's just like, I don't know what's gonna work, but I have belief, I have faith. I've been listening to all these inspirational things, but we just got to do it. So I think just kind of like what to touch on, what you said earlier about bravery. And there's something that I repeat fairly often I've written on our board over here and it says that the life that you desire will absolutely take more courage from you. I think that's the one thing that you've got to have is courage. And that's, you know, in large amounts to get what you really want. That in action, which kind of alleviates any fears that you have as well. And so I didn't really know what I was doing. She sort of knew what to do, but she was also working as an RN. And so we just started going to just, you know, if you kind of fail forward, you're gonna make some mistakes, but then you're gonna be able to kind of act on those and iterate and the whole things is an iterative process. You know, just move forward with courage and you'll find your way as long as you're able to learn from mistakes and not lose the enthusiasm. Yeah. And I think the hard part was a little bit too is a little mixed of both. Because he said, you know, did we go in with full confidence or were we like, God, this isn't gonna work. I think for me, I'm a little bit more practical. And there were times where I was like, oh my gosh, but at the end of the day, it was always, no matter what, we were always super confident in our product. And we just said, if we can just get this right and figure out the rules, the regulations, the business aspect, we knew we could do it no matter what, however hard it was. It was like that confidence was always absolutely there, which I think made a difference. And I think it's also just the confidence in yourself as a person, not necessarily in the process of what you're doing. But I think if you believe enough in yourself and you're resourceful enough, you know, that's certainly helpful. And I was definitely confident in what we had as a partnership for sure, that we're gonna figure it out. Speaking of partnership, it's rare to be able to have such good chemistry between a partner like yourself and not have much conflict. Has it always been like that? Or was it like it takes some time to find out all the gears and stuff like that? Because I know for a fact that when my wife and I work on a project together, it never goes the right way. Like just planning for a wedding was crazy because it's like, I have a certain way of doing things. I'm very conceptual, but for her, she needs things like laid out in front of her like step by step. So then like that was crazy. Just imagine dealing with a business like yourself. Yeah, to be honest, we are so similar. I mean, down to the fact that we have the same exact birthday. We are very, very similar in a lot of ways, but where one of us is say more confident at one area, the other one is less and vice versa. So I think that our balance is great. And so obviously with any partnership, any business, there are times where it gets stressful, not at each other, but just the business. But I think for us, we've been able to find that balance really well of how we mix and don't take things personal. And then we, I think we do a good job at separating our business and our personal life. So for us anyway, in my opinion, I think it's pretty smooth. Yeah, I would agree. I think there's definitely some level of luck to it. And then you find someone that just happens to compliment maybe your strengths or weaknesses in the sense that you're not always butting heads and you tend to believe the same things in the same way. But I think one thing that separates this from past partnerships and relationship is the communication. And I think just the underlying level of love that we have is significantly greater than either of us have experienced before. And I think if you're able to build on that and maintain communication, it has been actually very easy. And it's actually really fun. Yeah, it's unlike anything that I've ever been part of. That's for sure. And I think a lot of that's worked, a lot of it's luck. I think we have come the best of both worlds in that aspect. That is super inspiring to hear. Like I'm having goosebumps because, you know what's great. No, for real though, it's something that I personally am guilty of is like my wife always says that I don't communicate enough. And as guys, I feel like, oh, I'm just trying to avoid conflict. And therefore, I don't wanna talk about things that don't really matter for lack of better word. And therefore lack of communication. And for you to actually pinpoint that communication as one of the key things that make this business relationship work, I truly, truly, that is very inspiring because even for my team, I'm always having problems. Like I'm still working on this trade of mine to become more communicative. So thank you. Thank you for sharing something that really works. And for people that are listening that have co-founders, that have partners, being able to communicate things and not take things personally is truly the way to move forward in a business. And even for my partner, business partner, Brian, we are so in sync because he does the operational side of things and I'm very the conceptual guy. So our ways of doing things is just so different but then there's the underlying trust that goes into this partnership. So really, truly, thank you for sharing traits that make this relationship work. And I think just speaking from a male perspective as well, communication isn't always my strongest point. I think having a partner that can kind of call you forward I think is very important and sort of call you on your BS. But knowing that, it's all from a place of love. And I think you have to, like you said, trust that your partner has your best interest at heart and the business has the best interest at heart. So if there's a conflict that arises and your partner does call you forward and hey, look, you're doing this, this and you can't be doing that. It's for the betterment of you, the relationship and then lastly the business because if you can't have the first two you're not gonna have the third one. So. Thank you, thank you. That humbleness to learn, to listen for guys I'm not trying to generalize. I'm just feeling it for myself that it's tough but the awareness to be able to take that run with it trust in the process. Kudos to you, Chris. Beautiful. Thank you. Beautiful stuff. I think that's a gem that a lot of people need to listen to, especially from the male perspective. Cool stuff. So when you guys began, you're like, hey, you know what, within 12 months you're already hitting six figures. Freaking crazy. What was your strategy in building that out? Like honestly, that's like your first month out of the gate most people worry about not having orders and you guys just have orders pouring in. Like how did that pick up? I think there, well, so it's a little bit twofold. One is that Chris had already had kind of, I guess he had a network in the fitness community and although you don't think of brownies and cookies and these indulgent treats, you don't think about, yeah, like fitness people eat this, what? And actually, before I met Chris, I had no idea that bodybuilders and figure competitors and that whole community indulge in this sort of thing. And so when I first met him and he was ordering these treats I'm like, what do you eat this kind of stuff? You have a six pack, how is this happening? So I think that helped to already know kind of how to appeal to that community and just because we love it ourselves too, we knew kind of how to do the social media portion which I think was our biggest, I mean, it still is. Social media is what has helped us, Instagram especially. And so I think that was one thing. And then the other thing which is still on the fitness portion is we sponsored a local fitness competition show and so we were the exclusive baker. So we would travel around to San Diego, Vegas, Los Angeles, to all the shows with them. And so that gave us an instant market, not only at the shows but for competitors and then it kind of gave us a name and some credibility. And we started that just a few months after we, we were just still figuring out the business and now we're traveling around with these shows. So I think those two things really started us like running as soon as we had product. To add on to that, I think too, one thing is we were never willing to let quality slip. So I think we weren't necessarily great marketers but we had a great product. And so we had to figure out, okay, if we can maintain the quality of our product, word of mouth will be some. And I think that the evolution of our business has been such that if you were to see some of the first posts we did on Instagram and things that are terrible and like learning food photography has been very helpful in kind of learning your market with the ages of people that are purchasing a product, the gender and then appealing to that, to the masses that are actually your customers, like whether they want to see what kinds of posts are doing well, which ones are not. And we learned from that, took some online photography classes, things like that. And then eventually we'll get to the point where your posts are gonna have a lot of engagement and you know kind of what your audience is looking for. You know what? You guys unpacked a really big part of like business foundation and what you just shared. Okay, first of all, being able to really pinpoint your target market is really key, right? A lot of people mistake in that because a lot of people that has an idea with a product really comes from internal, not external, not about the validation of what people are liking and actually willing to take their wallet out and pay for. And it's very, very egoistic to think that what we want is what other people want. So first guys, being able to identify your target market so early on within your career is definitely a really smart move on your end. And actually you guys innately did that without, I'm not sure if it's innate or it's just because you have been in business for a while as well, but that's a very, very smart move, being able to understand that. And the second part is really trusting your product. That is so, so awesome because it really is because a lot of people are good at marketing but then yet their product fail. They over promise and under deliver. But for you guys, knowing your customers and then over delivering and really trusting and holding that line of great products and knowing your target audience is so key when creating a business, product market fit. Third thing that I really want to applaud you guys on is that you guys continue to invest in yourself to learn. When you see something that, oh, this is important, you guys invested in course for food photography because it's important you're investing back in yourself which a lot of people are not willing to do because once again, it really comes from themselves. They think they know everything and it's like, hey, you know what, I don't need help. They don't ask for help. And it's just really, really tough to build a business when you don't ask for help. And myself, I'm involved in so many different mentorship and mastermind programs, always continually improving myself, my trade and just being having like the industry know how and that's the reason why I feel like you guys are so good at what you guys are doing. Being able to grow into 10,000 followers and under a year is a massive achievement and that six figure business that you guys are able to build. Insane, awesome stuff. Share a little bit more about the growth of your followers and share more about the marketing tactics, knowing the fact that you guys are going on trade shows all over town, sponsoring that. How did you grow your marketing? We actually, for a good bit of the time for the first six months, we didn't really know what we're doing. So most of the growth probably came in the first 12 months for business, the last six months of that first 12 month period is where we had tremendous growth. Yeah, we didn't have any idea about reaching out to influencers around your product, things like that. We didn't know about sponsoring, post or anything like that. And so how did we... I mean, we just kind of figured out early on a few influencers reached out to us and that's what kind of opened our eyes to, oh wow, we can find these influencers with high followers but not just followers, it's the engaged followers. So we would look through their profiles and see, okay, if you're posting this photo, how many people are commenting and why are you an influencer that we wanna be a part of and also what's your content? Are you... Our motto is spread love, eat brownies. So spread love is, it's super important to us to build a community of people who are do-gooders, like just good people. And so we wanted to make sure that the people that we reached out to or that reached out to us for collaborations weren't just wanting free product one or not going to promote us in the way we wanted. So once we hit our first maybe what 10 or so influencers and we saw the response and like, watching somebody who has, who's maybe insta-famous or whatnot, eat something of ours and just be blown away. It was like, oh my God, this is not only it's fun, it's validating, but as we started doing that more and more followers, more and more engagement. So we kind of just started with the first 10 and realized like, okay, this is for sure something we need to do. And then from there, it was just, I think one seeing what worked and starting it, but also listening to podcasts, reading things on just blogs about giveaways and social media and engagement. Cause again, this was new to both of us. We hadn't done any business with any social media, anything like that. So I think that's kind of how it started. Yeah, I think just learning like even things, simple as like hashtagging, when to post, like if you look at your metrics, like when do your posts get the most views and engagement, things like that. And like even things, simple things like geo tagging, things like that. And then with influencers, giveaways work huge. And obviously you want to find influencers that have engagement with your type of product. Like if someone is, I don't know, we had an influencer like hundreds of thousands of followers, but he was a car guy. We decided to, you know, give him some of our product. You didn't see much of a return on that. And then you have an influencer who's an actual in the food space who has maybe 15 or 20,000 followers, which is significantly less to give them some product. And all of a sudden you've got a thousand, thousand extra followers that are interested in what you have to offer. So I think just, you know, like I said, knowing your market, the big thing is just over delivering, like you said, and we're at very small at the start, no one had heard of us. And then when they try your products, definitely I think they were, they were a believer after that. I think a lot of it comes down to, you've got to have a solid product. Yeah. I love that. Till date, how many influencers have you guys been partnered with so far? Oh, a lot. Just a ballpark. I'd say in the hundreds for sure. We have a core group. So something that we have is an affiliate program now. And so we have paid ambassadors. So in exchange for a specific code for them, obviously they get commissions. So of those, it's very small kind of select group. We purposely keep it small. We have, I think, 300 applications. And of those 300, we took only 10. So we're, again, very selective. We want to make sure it's that loving, spread love kind of motto that they're doing. But outside of the paid ones, we've probably reached out, I would say to about 200 influencers. Some of them we, every so often, we'll just randomly include them again. So it's not just a one-time thing. If they do well, if their photos are good, their content's good, then we're like, oh, we really like them. We keep sending product their way. And they're more than happy to do all of it just in exchange for our product. So that's awesome. Yeah, and to kind of piggyback on that, like another little kind of cliche thing is your Vibe Attractor tribe. Like she said, we've got a core group of maybe five to 10 people that every month we'll send product to that we know just, we call them our fam. So like short for family and they're just always happy to be a part of what we're doing, have the same kind of attitude towards business and life. And just the people, I guess, you call like a ride or die. Like these are our people. They go hard for us, we go hard for them. And I know that the whole thing is you don't need everyone to love you just a few of the right people. And that I think makes all the difference in the world. Thank you so much for sharing all these gems. You guys are so willing to just be authentic of your whole journey because something that I really want to highlight is that you guys were not afraid to reach out. It's like not afraid of getting the nose because quite frankly, a lot of people that I consult with they understand to hear about all these strategies but the fear of getting the no really like allows them to procrastinate. Oh, you know what? I'm gonna have to figure out my product. I'm gonna figure out this. I'm gonna figure out everything before reaching out. And they really delay that process but being able to actually reach out to influencers being able to have the guts to receive that. That's really number one thing, right? And the second thing is that not a lot of people would understand the importance of choosing influencers that align with your own value. This is something that I always, always preach. Never do business with people you don't like let alone for your ambassadors that are speaking so highly of you. And if it's transactional, what's good does it come out of it? There's no good that comes out of it. You must connect and align yourself with the right group of people. That's when you can connect with them. That's when your business can explode in revenue. So definitely encompasses a lot of the theories that I, everything that I preach when I built my ice cream business, the same thing. So really, really spot on there. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And I know you guys do a little bit more now. You guys have your own show that you guys have on your Instagram. Pretty fun stuff. Tell me a little bit about that show. Oh gosh. So, I mean, it started with just the thing is that we just, we love eating our treats and we only really get to eat them when we have new releases. We're trying to be as restricted. Otherwise, we'll be in some trouble. So the very first time we decided to go on and film, we did it and we don't really edit much at all. We just, it's like a one take and we're there. And so it's all very much just as like, if you were to hang out with us just across the table eating brownies, that's exactly what you get. We're silly. We're kind of all over the place. And it's our relationship is exactly what you see. That's how we are. We're just kind of silly and we like to eat. So we said, let's go for it. Let's just try, let's film one. We posted it. And it's, I think that thing you're talking about being courageous because it's kind of like, oh my gosh. It's pretty embarrassing. And I'm like, you know what? Just post it. This is us. This is who we are. Our response off of our first one was so great. People were, you know, we didn't really get much, hey, you know, haters per se, as you would might think maybe, or I guess maybe what we thought, it was all love just people like thinking it was funny. And they're like, oh, we can't wait for these videos. So now it just became something that we do every month. We kind of dress up for each. Yeah. We decided to one, yeah, for Halloween, like we should wear some Halloween costumes for the Halloween video. And we did and that got some good response. I'm like, what if we just start doing every month or just whatever the theme of our limited releases, we'll just do something goofy like that. And it's like now we have people like, I can't wait for these videos. I love watching the videos. And like she said, when we first were gonna post it, I was like, there's no way we can't post it. This is terrible. I can't do this. I was like, just close your eyes and post it. Yeah. And so we did. And it's been a good part of it. Every month, you can look forward to whatever flavors we're releasing. We try to release the taste test about a week or so before to kind of give people a teaser. Not only just photos, because like when we used to order treats from other companies, you don't really know what you're, I mean, you see pictures of it, but you don't really get to see the experience. So this way you kind of get to see it exactly, like in our hands, like how big is it? How giant is my bite that I'm doing? So you can kind of get an idea and like get that food porny kind of like, oh my gosh, that's huge. So it's a lot of fun. We look forward to it every month for sure. I love it. It's so, the reason why it works is cause you guys are so authentic, truly. Like I think if you guys are trying to be something else that you're trying to model off the internet, it's just doesn't work. It's going to become cringy. But you guys, when you guys do it, it's like, it's a relationship. You guys are having fun and it's super authentic. And why people love it so much is because you guys are real. Like the reason why, and that's the reason why I really wanted to support you guys as well because I'm like, dude, these guys are real. They're trying to make a buck and they're trying to make a name and a brand. Doing that. So definitely up on that. For the people that want to follow your journey and reach out and actually order some of these big, like great stuff from you guys, they find you, follow you and support you. Yeah. So on Instagram, we're at West Coast Confection. We have a website to order through which is westcoastconfection.com. We're also on Facebook with West Coast Confection. And then here and there for local customers, we do some farmers markets around San Diego, Northern and Central San Diego. So, and then we also stock actually in a couple of gyms here in San Diego as well. So the gym in Vista, and then at 619 Muscle, which is in the gym in Pacific Beach. It's the best waste part Instagram. You're gonna find all of it there. And you guys ship internationally or nationally only? Both. Both. Beautiful. I really want to try it out. And yeah, definitely go order from them. So thank you so much for sharing your basically secret to success so far. I can't really wait to get caught up with you guys in a year's time and see you guys blow up. Like really, I think it's gonna happen. And yeah, so thank you. Thank you so much for sharing. Any last words for our listeners? I would say, yeah, well, thank you for your time. We appreciate the opportunity to be here. And like, I guess the one thing that we kind of say is just leave people and things better than you found them, be good to the people and spread lovey brownies. That's kind of how we sign it off every time. Yeah. Spread lovey brownies. Sign off. Yeah. Awesome, thank you guys. Thank you so much. All right, take care. Thank you. Bye. Bye.