Season 03 Episode 16
Mignon Francois, Baker and Business Leader

Stephen Roach: Mignon, it’s an honor to have you here with us today on The Entrepreneur Studio Podcast. Thank you so much for making the trek to Oklahoma City.

Mignon Francois: Oh my gosh, I wish I knew the words to the song.

Stephen: Yeah, me too. Well, you have such an incredible story of faith, of resilience, and of this made from scratch entrepreneurship. And my understanding is that you began the cupcake collection with your last $5, no recipe and no business experience.

Mignon: None.

Stephen: But today, you’ve sold over 5 million cupcakes, you ship nationwide and you have multiple locations.

Mignon: Yeah.

Stephen: So let’s go back to the beginning. Talk to me about those early days. And what exactly happened that launched this cupcake making empire you have?

The sweet dream comes true

Mignon: I was drowning in debt and brokenness. We were losing everything that we had, including the house where the cupcake collection exists today. There was a man on the radio that I followed, Dave Ramsey. He was telling people they could get out of debt by having a bake sale or garage sale. Problem with the garage sale that we sold everything we had to get to Nashville, so can’t do that. Problem with the sales, I didn’t know how to bake, not even out of a box.

But I had these two daughters who were great bakers, and I brought the idea to them, and they liked it and said that they would do it with me. But shortly after we got started on the idea, my oldest daughter let me know, “Hey mom, I’m really not interested in your little bakery idea, and I’m going back to New Orleans where we’re from.” So without her, my younger daughter really wasn’t interested. So I felt like I had told the world that I was opening up a business, and I was hearing people scream they’re debt free. I wanted that. And so I decided to forge my own path, and so I began to study and learn and practice on my neighbors. It was a neighbor who knocked on the door one day, had been receiving my cupcakes that I was making at the time. I only had one kind that I made. It was a little lemon drop cupcake that I bathed in a lemon juice-like icing, sugar, whatever.

Stephen: Wow.

Mignon: And she wanted to buy them for all of her clients for the season. But when she knocked on my door, I didn’t have electricity. I was sitting in the back of my house counting out money, stuffing envelopes, trying to figure out what I could do to make the ends meet when I realized I only had $5 left, and I hadn’t fed us. I hadn’t left anything for us to eat. So when she asked me for this, imagine I’m sitting in the dark in my house counting by the light of the window, and I have $5 and I say, “Okay, I’ll do it,” and go to the store with that $5. I bought all the ingredients that I could buy with that five. I turned that five into 60 that day, I turned that 60 into 600 by the end of the week, and I’ve been flipping that same money for the last 17 years.

Stephen: Wow, that’s incredible.

Mignon: Yeah.

Stephen: So you mentioned Dave Ramsey. Was that a big influence on you during that time?

Mignon: Oh yeah. He was talking about things that I had been raised on. So being in debt and not having enough was not the plan that my parents had for me.

Stephen: Sure.

Mignon: But studies say that you will only go one or two quintiles above or below wherever your parents raised you, and that moving out of the middle class is even harder because you kind of just stay in the middle. So being in this place I was in, I was following statistics, basically falling below what my parents had set up for my life. So I really wanted to be out. I wanted to do what my parents had set us up for. I had gone to college, I had been taught about debt, I had been taught not to be in debt, and I felt like if I ever get out, I will never come back here. And that’s what I set my mind to do. I set my mind to get out of debt. I set my mind to own that property that we were living in, and I wanted to own my labor.

Stephen: Wow. So some of the financial principles that you put into place during those beginning years, do you still follow those today, just on a wider scale? And if so, give me some examples about what you learned during that time still apply to your business now.

Embracing abundance

Mignon: Yeah, I think it was just a confirmation of the things that I was raised on. So the borrower being slave to the lender was something that was huge in my life. I didn’t want to be enslaved. I am the granddaughter of enslaved people, so I didn’t want to return to enslavement by choice, right? I had learned that how you invest the money comes back to you. Your goal is to double it. So all these were biblical stories. There’s a story in the Bible of a shrewd manager who goes away on a long trip and he gives each of his three, I’ll call them employees, a piece to be responsible for, one talent, one five talents and one 10 talents. And when the manager comes back, the two with the higher amount of talents had doubled the money, whereas the one with only one went and buried his gift, and he was called an evil man for not having at least put the manager’s money in the bank where it could grow interest, which let me know that it doesn’t matter how much you get, your job is to double it.

And so that was something that I learned. And so in the process, I learned that debt wasn’t my calling in life. But more than anything, I was sitting in church one day and the offering plate came by, and I remember having a conversation with the Lord about the offering plate. I was like, “God, I really want to put some money in this offering plate.” And I felt the spirit of the Lord say, “Well, put some money in the offering plate then.” I was like, “But I don’t have any money to put in the offering plate.” And I felt God say, “But you have that $60 that’s in your purse.”

Stephen: Oh wow.

Mignon: And I was like, “But that’s all I have.” But the question wasn’t is that all you have, or is do you want to put something in the plate? And so I just felt God saying to me, “What is that $60 to you if I don’t bless it? So you can either give it to me... You could give...” He wasn’t even asking for all of it. Just give an offering or keep it for yourself and figure out what you’re going to do with it. So I made a decision to put it all in the offering plate.

And when I went back to my seat, it quickened my soul to pick up this card that was on the back of the pew. And I felt my spirit say read the Bible verse. So I just read it on the card, and it said, “I give seed to the sower and bread for food, and I will increase your store of seed for God loves a cheerful giver.” And so I was like, okay, I read it. And then God said, “No, go read the Bible verse.” So I picked up the Bible and I went to the actual verse in Corinthians and I read the whole entire thing. And it said, “I will make you rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and so that people will pray on your behalf to me because of your obedience to what I’ve told you to do.” And it ended with, “Thank God for this indescribable gift.”

Stephen: Wow.

Mignon: And so many times, as I’ve been walking through the challenge of being an entrepreneur, I’ve heard things like that, just come to me. Traveled to Philadelphia just to go to a church service they were having, their 16 year anniversary. I followed them on YouTube and thought, I’m going to go and be in the room. And the sermon was about reaping and harvest, and his prayer for the people in the room was that you’d be reaping and harvesting at the same time that your blessings would be flowing so quickly. And my word for the year, that year was quickly. And so it’s just been a myriad of ways that I’ve seen God say, “Give and I’ll give it back to you. Press down, shaking together, running over will men pour into your bosom.”

So it’s like you give, you give to God, you’re generous in your giving, you’re pouring out into other people, and it’s not God that’s going to give it to you, but people that will give to you in the manner of coming to your business, supporting your brand. Whatever it is that you put your hand to do, give, and I’ll give it back to you, press down, shaking together, running over back in good measure.

Stephen: Okay. I’m going to reflect back to you some of what I’m hearing because I think I’m collecting some ingredients here that’s maybe some ingredients behind the cupcake collection. And these ingredients that I’m hearing are faith, risk, generosity, intuition, courage. Come on. All these things seem to be some of the mindsets and some of the practices that have guided you as an entrepreneur, as someone who started from $5, made it 60, gave it away, made it 600. Now we’re at 5 million cupcakes, which by the way, I’d like to make it 5 million and one because I need one of those.

Mignon: I brought you some.

Stephen: We’re going to get there soon enough, right? But I’d love to know more about some of these mindsets and practices that have guided you. And maybe we can start here. One thing I’ve heard you say is that we aren’t so much afraid of failure as much as we are afraid of success. And here at The Entrepreneur Studio, our tagline is, success is no accident. And so I’d love to know why we tend to be more afraid of success than failure. I think you said because success requires something of us. Talk to me about that.

Thriving instead of surviving

Mignon: Yeah, because success means I have to get up when I’m tired. Success means I have to go and I don’t feel like it. Success means I got to keep going when I’m hurting, when I don’t have enough, that... People tend to say, “Well, if this doesn’t happen then I’ll do this,” but I think that’s the cause for the failure, the doubting. I’m going to take it back to my background and that is a religious and biblical background that says Mark 11:22 and 23, have faith in God. If you believe and do not doubt, you could tell this mountain to move from here to there, and it would be so.

Mignon: ... mountain to move from here to there and it would be so. And so essentially, I paraphrase that to say, “Speak what you seek until you see what you’ve said.”

Stephen: That’s good. So one thing I want to ask before we get too far ahead is how did you know that you were no longer just making cupcakes for your neighbors, but now you had an actual business on your hands? What was that transformation like?

Mignon: Yeah, so we were getting popular because people were walking down to our house and having cupcakes. This was the first time that I had a line in my house. I saw out the front window, the Nashville electric service truck rolled by, and I immediately began to panic because understand my experience with the Nashville electric service was they were coming to cut off my lights and we had been disconnected so much that they had to replace the pole on my house that brought the electricity because we had been disconnected so many times. So when I saw that truck come by, it’s my first time having people in the house and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, they’re about to cut my lights off of all these people in here.” So I signaled to my husband at the time what was going on. We sort of spoke without a language and left one of my older sons in charge and ran out to the back where they were just about to get into this bucket truck and go up and disconnect, begged them for mercy.

Please don’t cut off my lights. This is my wife’s first time having people in there. She’ll be devastated you cut off the lights and the guy who was training someone else that day said, “I got a family too. This is my job and I can’t worry about feeding you and not feeding my own family.” But the guy who was training with them, this was his first day on the job, he’s like, “Man, can’t we just give them any kind of leeway? There’s some kind of leash to help them out.” And so the man said, “Listen, I’ll give you 30 minutes. I’m going to run to East Nashville and cut off somebody’s lights and then I’ll be back. You got that much time to raise the money.” And so he went away. He said, “When I come back, there needs to be a receipt rolled up in this chain link fence.” And so when he came back, I had paid the light bill, two grand.

Stephen: Wow.

Mignon: And it was a combination of the people who were in the store and me calling my angel investor, who’s my mom. She had no idea I had opened up a cupcake business because I had dared my children to tell her what was going on in our house. What went on in our house, needed to stay in our house because if my mom had found out that I was running a business, she would’ve probably likely came there, picked up her grandchildren, said, “I don’t know what you’re doing with your life, but they’re coming with me. You all can sit here and play it life if you want to, but I’m taking them.” And so I dared them not to tell her. So I had to go plead my case and, “Mom, I need your help.” She didn’t ask any questions. She just said, “Where do I need to wire the money?” I gave her a complete plan for how I was going to pay it back, and just a couple of weeks I was able to pay her back in full.

Stephen: Wow.

Mignon: It was then that I knew that I had a business.

Stephen: Wow.

Mignon: That could not only allow us to survive but thrive.

Stephen: I love that not only to survive but to thrive. And that seems to go back to some of what you said earlier, I’m not called to be in debt. And that just goes back to the mindsets that we’re talking about. It’s like even in the midst of lack of desperation of not knowing where the next meal is coming from, in some ways, you had this mindset, this faith, this resilience that said, “No, this isn’t my life. I’m not just called to survive but to thrive.” And I think that that’s a key mindset for entrepreneurship in life in general, but specifically for the risk-takers for those that are doing something that hasn’t been done before. And even like you said, statistics may say that people don’t often move incrementally that much beyond their family of origin but yet with this resiliency, this faith, I don’t know.

Mignon: I believe something about my lack. I believe that my led to looking for the lesson. And one of the things that I’ve always encouraged my team and my children, whenever we’re going through anything, look for the lesson. And we’ve learned so much about what these trials do. I’ve gotten inscribed on my wrist of a couple of sweatshirts that have James 1, 2:4. And it says, “Count it all joy. When you experience trials of many kinds, knowing that these trials come to increase your patience, your perseverance, and when your perseverance is mature and complete, then you will lack nothing.” So if I’ve learned to do like Simba in the Lion King, laugh in the face of danger because I’m learning that those things are meant to make me strong for something that’s coming that I cannot see right now. And I think that’s been one of the best lessons that I’ve been able to learn, that when we have these trials, they’re sent to teach you something. And if you look at it that way, I believe you get through the problem a lot easier, a lot faster.

Stephen: Wow, that’s so good. So much about the perspective changes the outcome of the experience. Well, one more question I have to ask about these early days is you were managing what became a successful business while at the same time you were a mother of six children. How did you do that?

Mignon: So I was a stay-at-home mom. And my life was taking care of my children. I think hunger makes you make hard decisions, and hunger was driving more than anything. And so there were times when I would get up in the morning in the middle of the night thinking that I was supposed to be checking the doors or making sure I turned off the stove and things like that. Remember, my ex-husband was the breadwinner of our family. He had come home one day, this is 2008 in the midst of an economic downturn, country’s in a recession and he’s in the building construction house flipping business. And he just looks gray. He looked dirty, but he should kind of be sort of pink. And he just looked like he was dying. And what I realized in the process that he was dying, not physically in the earth, but dying to me that our marriage was going to be ending soon.

And so this opportunity that I received to be able to learn how to make cupcakes was an opportunity for me to not only contribute to my family, but also to learn how to take care of me and then to use it to help other people who were going to need to know what they could do if they believed. And as I was sitting in my kitchen early in the morning at 3:17 morning, I was being awakened every night like clockwork because sometimes I would hear an alarm that wasn’t set that would say, “Get up.” And one day I was sitting there watching a PBS special, the man on the TV said, “The morning breeze has something to tell you. Do not go back to sleep.” I did not know what the heck he was talking about. But then he began to explain, you think you’re getting up to check your windows and make sure... I was like, “Oh my gosh, he knows my life.” And he said, “But this is the only time you’ll be silent enough for God to talk to you.”

And so I realized that I needed to come to these 3:17 moments and hear God. But I remember my first time coming to hear God. I was like, “God, please don’t talk, but I do want to hear what you have to say.” And there was a Bible sitting underneath the coffee table. I pulled it out, opened it to wherever it would fall, and I got my first indication that God loved me. Chapter 3, verse 17 of this particular book begins to lead into the plans that God had for my life and that he was about to show me that he loved me. And it was there that I got the instructions. I began to write everything that came to my mind in those I would bring up the sun. And I had read through the whole Bible this way going through each book, chapter 3, verse 17.

If there wasn’t a chapter 3, then I’d go to verse 3 and read through 17. I had a system and I would write down everything I learned, and I understood that this was an opportunity for life or death. In one of the last verses that I read, Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 19, and then Joshua 1 and 9, “I set before you life and death, blessings and curses, choose life so that your family might live.” And I think there have been many times that God had given me ideas and I would start them, but I would never finish. I became an expert at starting, suck at finishing, but I was asking God for something to help me make ends meet. And I felt God saying, “You keep coming to me, asking me when I’ve already given you the ability to do it yourself. So this is the last idea that I’m going to give you. If you don’t do it, that’s a choice to die. If you do it’s a choice for life.”

So it wasn’t about whether or not how my children felt about it, how hard it was going to be, because this was about our life and our livelihood. And so I said to God, I prayed in that moment, said, “God, if you will make me successful, I will tell anybody who will listen about what they can do if they believe.” And I take every opportunity, every platform that I’m given, every chance that I have to open my mouth to say, “God did this for me. And he will do it for you too if you ask.”

Ingredients of inspiring leadership

Stephen: Wow, that’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Well, I want to talk to you a little bit about your leadership practices and back to what we said a few minutes ago, running a successful business, six kids at that time, I think you told me before the show seven kids now.

Mignon: Yeah, seven now. Yeah.

Stephen: But you had six at the time. And also I think circumstantially, you were beginning to lead more and more both at home and in the business. Talk to me some about these leadership practices that you have. I know your faith, as you’ve mentioned, is such a foundational part of that. What are some of the, forgive the pun again, but what are some of the ingredients of this leadership? What have you learned over the years that you feel makes a great leader?

Mignon: Oh, yeah. I believe in not the golden rule, but the platinum rule. I believe that you do unto others as they would have it done unto them. So what I value is not necessarily what you value. So if I say to you, “Let me make it right, let me offer you something,” that’s not necessarily anything that you value. So instead of just offering you something, I can ask you, “How can I make it right?” That way I’m on the same page as to what you value.

And one of the things that I’ve learned in the process is that as we’ve made missteps, because I don’t believe there are any mistakes, I believe every stupid thing that you’ve ever had to do is taking you from where you are to where it is that you want to be, and that there are no mistakes, they’re just necessary. Remember I told you my lack led to me looking for the lesson. And so what I’ve learned in the process is that if I offer you what’s valuable to you, you’ll appreciate that more. And a lot of times, as we’ve made missteps, people just wanted me to know.

Because they had so much investment and they had valued so much what we were doing in the community. Community is a big thing for us. We have our mantra in the bakery is circle. Everything we do draws a circle. And so it’s represented by community, integrity, respect, celebration, leadership, and excellence. And so when you’re working in my business, if you need an answer and there’s nobody to tell you what to do, measure it against the circle.

Is it fostering community? Is this integrity? Does it respect you and the people who you work with? Is this celebrating something? We want to celebrate all of life’s accomplishments. Are you effectively being an effective and competent leader in doing this? And is it excellent? Is what you’re asking yourself should I be doing, is this excellence for you and for the people who you serve? And so those have been some of the greatest things. But I am very proud that my team knows our mission and our vision. You could walk up to any person on my team and ask them the mission and vision of the Cupcake Collection. I almost want to test it and say, “Hey, hey, Tanisha sitting over there, tell them our mission and our vision.” A vision is something that should take you a lifetime to get there. And a mission is how you’re getting there. And so we want to be a lighthouse in the community to show other people what good business looks like and light the way for other entrepreneurs to know what they can do if they believe. How are we going to get there? By-

Mignon: ... to know what they can do if they believe. How are we going to get there? By doing what’s right, because it’s right every single time.

Stephen: Wow.

Mignon: And when they are looking at what it is that they have to do, they measure it against that, you don’t need me to be in the room. And the other thing is, I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room. So when you come to me with a problem, you should also be coming to me with the answer. Like, don’t knock on my door with a problem unless you’ve already gotten an answer, which makes them come to the office door and they look and they say, “Nevermind, I’ll be back.” So that’s something that they’ve learned, to bring solutions when you have problems.

So many lessons that I could say, but one that I also want to make sure that I include is, they know that they are in the business of their own labor. I believe entrepreneurship is true freedom. Being the daughter of a man that was born on a sugar cane plantation, my father was born on a sugar cane plantation in Louisiana.

And what his parents didn’t have ownership of, he was able to do. He was able to decide how he wanted to work, make a living. My parents climbed the corporate ladder. But what I have is something they didn’t have access to. I have more freedom than my parents of the sixties and seventies had as black people in the South. And so now that was one of the reasons my mom didn’t want me playing at life or playing at business. You go to a company, you work 35 years, you draw your pension, you climb up the corporate ladder. What I’m getting to do is build the ladder.

And I get to hold the ladder so that my team climbs in safety. And so what they know is that I’m not their boss, I’m their client. And the business that they’re in is selling to me their labor, to take care of and steward over the clients of The Cupcake Collection.

And so when you see it that way, you know that I decide how I’m going to run this front end because I’ve got to make sure my client, my one client, Mignon Francois, or The Cupcake Collection needs need to steward over this well, and because of that, they take ownership of their jobs, they bring ideas. They love the business.

They even go out and get business. One of the girls, she’s a cashier on my front end, made a huge deal, a huge deal because she had a second job working at an ice cream company that also had a store in New Orleans. She knew that we make king cake cupcakes and that they were making a Mardi Gras shake. She knew that the president of the company was going to be coming to Nashville to visit their store.

She bought with her money king cake cupcakes from the bakery, traveled them down to her second job, gave them to the founders of this company, and in effect brought two brands together. And now we supply king cake to their milkshakes in New Orleans. That’s what I mean by owning your labor. And she didn’t have to ask anybody. We in fact didn’t even know anything about it until the deal was ready to be made. She said, “I’ve done this thing.” And she ended up being our team member of the quarter when she did that.

Stephen: That’s so amazing. It’s like that model seems to draw out the creativity and some of the business acumen even from the employees, no matter whether they’re a cashier or someone running the company, whatever it is. Rather than just looking at them as a hired hand, you’re kind of bringing dignity to them and you’re drawing out some of the entrepreneurial gifts that they carry. I think that’s a beautiful model there.

Mignon: Yeah. One of the things I’m current... So every morning before we open the store, is to have a team huddle. We pray together as a team, not only for ourselves and for the business and for our customers, but one of the things that... So there’s a lesson every day. And one of the things that I’m teaching them right now is you are the answer to someone else’s problem. So that means every experience, every tragedy, every trial, every win, your life experience, your family experience, the jobs that you’ve had before now are all being cultivated so that you’ll be the answer to someone else’s problem.

That being me as the leader of this business or the customers, the clients that come in, your showing up here is being the answer to my problem or their problem of celebration. I need a cake, I need it to feed my family. I need it to not have these certain allergens in it. Whatever the case might be, we are the answer to someone else’s problem. And even as you move on to another place, you take this place with you and all the things that you learned here to be the answer to the next problem that’s coming in the future.

Creating a joyful experience

Stephen: I can’t help but think as you’re sitting talking, what began as the only solution you knew to meet the problem that you were facing, now it has blossomed into this beautiful business that is helping to solve problems for millions of people. And that’s a wonderful thing. And one thing I know about you and about your business is that customer relationships, we’ve talked a lot about your team, but this spills over into your customer relationships as well.

And I think I’ve heard that giving customers an experience of joy, I can see you smiling right now for our listeners, they can’t see the smile, but talk to me about your customer experience of joy, why that’s a value for you, and also why being customer-centric is just important as an entrepreneurial value.

Mignon: I believe there’s a song that says what the world needs now is love. This was a way... It’s like everybody’s looking for joy and you can’t find it. I believe it’s in our cake. Cake is my love language. I believe that cake takes you back to a time and place where somebody saw you. That’s what celebrations are all about. That’s what celebration cakes are for. You can’t just throw a cake together. It takes time.

It takes time to gather the ingredients, to bake that thing in the oven, for it to rise and to cool before you can decorate it. And beautiful cakes have a lot of intention behind them. And so my grandmother, who was one of my favorite people in the world, would always make me a cake if I requested it. At that time, she lived about two hours away on the bayou, and I would call her on the phone and say, “Grandma, I’m coming. Can you make me a cake?” That was going to be a coconut cake every single time, my favorite hands down.

And she would do it. And to know what it took for her to do that for me is what I want to be doing for other people. And so the way that you feel joy is that somebody has taken the time... Listen, if you are mad when you’re making a cake, it shows up in the recipe. It’s crazy. But when I have people who come to my place and they say, “This reminds me of something my grandmother used to do.” And I sense the way this makes them feel, because she’s been long gone.

When I see an elderly woman getting out of the car on a cane and smack the boy on the hand that said, “Grandma, I’ll go get it for you.” She said, “No, I’m going in there myself.” Because she wanted to see it in action. She wanted to see what it was that we had made on the inside of that place. When I see a little kid come in and look at my case and their face lights up and they pick the one, “Is that the you want? I will dig through all the cupcakes to get you the one that you want.” Because I just really feel like that’s what cake does. It allows someone to see you and celebrate you. How many times have we sat over cake and been sad, talked about what was going on today? I believe that cake brings you to conversations. And recently they created something, a little saying at The Cupcake Collection, the Cake Eating Social Club. And I just feel like the joy of it is taking you back to a place where somebody made you feel seen.

Seizing opportunities for growth and learning

Stephen: That’s really good. That’s really good. Well, I want to talk with you a little bit about the growth of your business and the expansion, kind of the scale, because you started at home. Now, let me get this straight as well. Your shop in Germantown, in Nashville, you started that in the house that you were living in at the time, and that’s still the location there, right?

Mignon: Yep. That’s the house that we were losing when we started The Cupcake Collection. As a matter of fact, on the day that we opened the store, November the 9th, 2008, the house was up for foreclosure sale in December. It was to go to the courthouse steps to be auctioned. It never made it to the auction steps.

Stephen: Wow. And that’s still where the business is-

Mignon: That’s where our main location is today. We have more than just that location.

Stephen: And that’s what I wanted to talk about. You also have a shop now in New Orleans, right?

Mignon: Yep.

Stephen: You went back to the roots? You’ve got-

Mignon: Yes. I didn’t want to be building success and not also be able to teach what I had learned to my sisters. And so I believed if you were connected to me, there should be some benefit of the connection. And so I wanted to go back and teach them what I had learned.

Stephen: And that really speaks into your family involvement with the business that I believe a lot of your family members work in the business or run it with you. Is that right?

Mignon: Yep. So all of my children that live in the city have some sort of hand in doing what we do. My son, Dylan, is the COO of the business. My daughter, Jusilla, is the chief sprinkle specialist, who’s the director of operations. And then my son, Xavier, he’s the production manager. And then that number seven, our number seven, she’s an assistant manager, and now she’s just taken over a new store.

Stephen: Okay. Well, talk to me about how you knew it was time to grow. How did you know it was time to expand? I would imagine raising six or seven kids and running a single shop is a pretty full-time endeavor. But what was it that let you know it’s time to expand?

Mignon: So we sell out of cupcakes generally every day. And this was something that people were asking us for, “Can you come closer to where we live?” And so for a while I had a cafe that did sandwiches and soups and salads. So you can always say, I eat salad so I can have cake. So I was able to build that. But in the process of getting a divorce, it was more important that I’d be home for my children. So when we scale back again, and that kind of kept happening to me, we’d go out and then we have to scale back. And then we go out and then we’d scale back again.

When I moved it to New Orleans, I saw myself beginning to build wealth, compounding what it was that we had done. And so in the spirit of the way that I had run the business debt-free, I went down there and I built that store out with cash. And for seven years we’ve been in New Orleans.

It was just the people were asking, but I wanted to go back and redeem the time. New Orleans was specifically important to me because that’s where my roots are, it’s where I’m from. And I believed, like New York, if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere, it was up to you. And so New Orleans being like a food mecca, I believed that if we could make it in New Orleans, that meant we could make it anywhere. And so I wanted to go back home to New Orleans, A, to teach my family. B, to prove something, but A, to give back to the city that raised me.

We had seen so much change after Katrina, and I didn’t want to be complaining about what I saw if I wasn’t going to be a part of the narrative. Just like I tell my team, “Do not knock on my door with a problem unless you have a solution.” I wanted to be a part of the solution. I wanted to be a part of keeping the city sweet. We had had a lot of bakeries when I was growing up, and it just didn’t feel like the same place that I’d grown up in. So I wanted to bring my brand home to New Orleans.

Stephen: And now you’ve also got two new shops that you’re opening in different parts of Nashville, is that right?

Mignon: Yeah.

Stephen: Tell me about that.

Mignon: I’m excited about those. So we just opened a shop on Sunday in Hendersonville. We were supposed to be open back in October, November, and it just kept getting pushed back and pushed back and pushed back. But finally we opened this past Sunday, and then we have another store coming in South Nashville. Essentially it puts us in three points in Nashville. We’ll be in the north, we’re in the middle center, and then we’ll be in the south.

Stephen: That’s great. Well, practical question, what would you say from your experience in opening multiple locations, what would you say would be an essential key that entrepreneurs might need to implement in their businesses if they’re wanting to expand, if they’re wanting to go past just a single mom and pop kind of shop into a nationwide business model, what would you list as a key ingredient?

Mignon: Yep. Know your numbers. It was important that we watch our bank accounts, especially the way we were doing this. We were coming out of our own pockets to get this done. So we’re building it from scratch. And so it was important to watch the bank accounts, not just to look at profit and loss sheets and balance sheets and things like this, but to actually know what the numbers were in the bank. And then we set up four different bank accounts. We had an operating account, a savings account, we have a tax account, and a, how do I describe it, kind of just like an investment sort of account. It’s where, when...

Mignon: Just like an investment sort of account. It’s where when one spills over, you put it into this one and this is where your overflow is at. And so, having those made it such where we’d never be in a position where a bill or a tax surprised us because we were always going according to these bank accounts. Profit First talks about this concept a lot, and Donald Miller, How to Grow Your Small Business, he talks about this a lot. And I’ve had the privilege for the last three years of being mentored with him, and he’s taught me a lot about how to run a small business, literally on the ground running. I would say the biggest thing is know your numbers.

“Finding Success Without a Recipe”

Stephen: So good. So good. Well, one thing I want to make sure we give some time to, and you’ve already talked about it a little bit, but it’s this heart to mentor others that you have. And I believe I’ve heard you say that your favorite responsibilities are giving hugs, listening, mentoring your team, as well as up and coming entrepreneurs. And I’ve heard you say as well that you want to do for others what has been done for you. You’ve mentioned that several times in our conversation. But what are some of the ways that you’re currently leveraging the Cupcake Collection to help others on their journey of entrepreneurship?

Mignon: Yeah, I love this question. We have a scholarship in our name. We’re getting ready to expand that. We’re excited that this year you’re writing in for that scholarship, writing essays I’m getting to. I receive letters out of the blue from people who receive money to make the ends meet. So that’s what my scholarship does. It doesn’t provide an entire education, but it helps you make the ends meet.

So when I was in college, I was in danger of not walking across the stage because I had a balance, and my father came through and paid the balance for me. Everybody doesn’t have a father. Some kids don’t have mothers and they don’t have parents. If they do have parents, they don’t have parents who can afford to help them make ends meet, so my scholarship helps you make the ends meet. And so that’s one way that I’m really proud that the Cupcake Collection is giving back.

And then I get the opportunity to serve as an advisor on many of the boards that help entrepreneurs. So, I just rolled off of the Entrepreneur Center board where I had been on the advisory board for the last several years. And now I’m rolling into a new one, which is named after a friend who recently passed. His name is Darrell Freeman, and he was known very much so in the Nashville community as being an angel investor, a leader, a businessman. And so, his incubation center just opened on the campus of Fisk University, which is a historically black college right down the road from me on Jefferson Street. I’m really proud to begin to serve them as well.

Stephen: That’s so good. Well, we’ve talked a lot about your story, about just this journey from selling cupcakes out of your home, to multi-location businesses. A lot of this story you’ve written down in your memoir, which is called Made From Scratch: Finding Success Without a Recipe. And I’ve read it’s amazing. I love it. I had so much fun-

Mignon: Thank you.

Stephen: ... just following your story. But tell our audience a bit about this book.

Mignon: Yeah, I feel like it’s a playbook. I feel like it can show you my faith so you can tap into yours. My biggest thing is all you have is all you need to get you from where you are to where it is that you want to be. I started this business with a dorm-sized refrigerator and a KitchenAid mixer. Like, yes, you’re going to need a big commercial refrigerator. Yes, you’re going to need big commercial mixers. Yes, you’re going to need dog baths for all of the people who are going to come and have their dogs groomed at your grooming service, and vans in your fleet, and limousines in your fleet for the business that you want to start one day. But you don’t need those things on day one. So everything that you need one day are not the things you need day one.

Stephen: So good.

Mignon: And that’s been one of my greatest takeaways.

Stephen: Amazing. Amazing. Well, I just have one last question that I want to ask you as we’re wrapping up the conversation. And if you could take everything that you’ve learned over all the years and distill it down to one practical takeaway that our audience could put into practice today that would change the course of their business, what would you tell them?

Mignon: I would tell them speak what they seek until they see what they’ve said. I believe that the power of life and death do actually lie in your tongue, and we create what we want to be a part of by the words that we say. I believe I’m going to take you right back to the Bible, where we started out at. God in the creation story gave us an example of what it looked like to be creators. And so all this stuff that he called out of his mouth and said, “Let there be, and it was so.” And I think was our indication that when we speak, we can call things into existence and it will be so.

But I hope that people hear me say that whatever was created all those thousands of years ago exists today so that you can make whatever it is that ... Everything you needed to make an airplane was created thousands of years ago. There’s nothing new under the sun. We don’t have another boom of creation. So, everything you needed to manifest what it is that you want to be a part of today was put on the Earth thousands of years ago. It’s just waiting for you to show up to it so that it can present itself.

And so, there’s a Bible verse, Genesis, chapter two, that said, “No shrub had sprung up. No grass had come,” even though Genesis one says that God spoke it into existence, and it was so. When you get to Genesis Two, it said, “No trees were here, nothing had grown yet because God didn’t have a man to take care of it.” And so, once he created Adam, then Adam’s job was to steward over it and have dominion over all this stuff that God created, which quickened in my mind to understand that because God said it, it was so even if you couldn’t see it.

And so sometimes as entrepreneurs, we believe that when we say we’re going to start this business, it should just be ready. It should appear. All of the things should just be in place. And we get discouraged by the fact that we can’t see it. But if God said it, “It is so, even if you can’t see it,” it just requires that you show up to it so that it will manifest. And we see this as an example in Genesis, chapter two. The Bible says that even though I had said let there be, and it was so nothing actually came up until I had a man to take care of it.

God is asking us to show up to the business ideas that are in our mind, because we’re arrogant as human beings to believe that we come up with this stuff anyway. It’s God who whispers these things to us and says, “I give you the desires of your heart. I tell you what it is that you want to make. And then I ask you: do you want to do this with me?” Because we have the ability to say, “No, I’m not really interested.” And then we get mad when we see someone else doing our idea because it doesn’t require us to do it. Anybody can do it, but it’s been offered to you. So, are you willing to say yes to the opportunity to collaborate on business with God?

And that’s what I believe happened to me at the Cupcake Collection. I heard that whisper, “How do you feel about making some cake and bringing joy to the world? And it will cause your family to thrive.” “Okay, God, I think I like it.”

Rapid fire questions

Stephen: That’s wonderful. Well, Mignon, this has been an incredible conversation. I only have one last thing I want to do before we end our time together, and I have some rapid-fire questions for you.

Mignon: Oh, I do so horrible at these. Okay, I’m going to try.

Stephen: All right, well, here we go. I’ll throw you a softball. The eternal cupcake debate: chocolate or vanilla. Where do you stand?

Mignon: Vanilla. I believe you can tell how good a bakery is on the most basic thing that’s not hidden by any of the other flavors. But if you want something that’s so yam good, you should try our sweet potato cupcake. That’s what I believe.

Stephen: Okay. Well, maybe this will lead into the next question, because the next question is: what’s the weirdest cupcake flavor combination you’ve ever tried that surprisingly worked?

Mignon: Oh, I would say, again, it’s our sweet potato cupcake. We have this thing called the Sweet Potato Challenge, billboards around the city, “Come and try it.” And then we just want to get your natural reaction on a camera. Most people are like, “Sweet potatoes. I don’t eat sweet potatoes, I don’t like sweet potatoes.” And they are so pleasantly surprised. I don’t think I’ve ever met a person who did not like it.

Stephen: Okay. Well, off-the-cuff question, did you bring me a sweet potato cupcake today?

Mignon: I did. I did. Maybe you should take the Sweet Potato Challenge.

Stephen: Hey, there we go. All right, well here’s one for you. If you had to trade your favorite cupcake recipe with another baker, whose recipe would you choose?

Mignon: I believe ours is the best. I don’t know I’d want anybody-

Stephen: You’re not trading.

Mignon: I don’t think I want anybody else’s, but if I could bring my grandmother back for a day, I would trade something with her.

Stephen: Yeah, fair enough. What is a book or a quote that has inspired you recently?

Mignon: Oh, there are so many good ones. A quote that inspires me, “If you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you’ll be successful,” Dr. Eric Thomas. And he just wrote a book called You Owe You. Yeah, that’s one of my favorites right now. I got a lot. My all-time favorite that I mostly will always recommend is The Success Principles: How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be, Jack Canfield. That’s forever a favorite of mine.

Stephen: Top 10, yeah.

Mignon: I could go on and on.

Stephen: Yeah. Favorite dessert outside of cupcakes?

Mignon: My favorite dessert outside of cupcakes. I’ve been accused of loving everything. I have a huge sweet tooth. Favorite dessert outside of cupcakes. I’ll have to go with pralines, generally mispronounced as pralines. Pecan candy, which is a New Orleans original, indigenous sort of candy to our area. I would say probably pralines.

Stephen: Okay. Well, what makes your sweet potato cupcake the envy of all other sweet potato cupcakes?

Mignon: I don’t think there’s any other one in the world that doesn’t want to be this one. I always tell people, “If you ever meet another sweet potato cupcake, it wants to be this one because we are the originators of the sweet potato cupcake.” I think it’s just the surprise that it is that you’re thinking something savory and then you get something sweet. And pairing it with our cream cheese icing, I hear there’s just nothing that compares to it.

Stephen: Oh goodness. All right. Well, I can’t wait to try it. So last question, and we talked about this a little bit, but what’s next for Mignon Francois and the Cupcake Collection?

Mignon: Oh, what’s next for me? I am going around telling others what they can do if they believe. My biggest joy is getting a chance to take stages and to talk about what it is that we’re creating. And so, I’m currently working on an experience that people will be able to go with me to make their own made from scratch story. So I’m really excited about launching that in 2024.

Stephen: Amazing. Well, Mignon, thank you so much for spending this time with us today on the Entrepreneur Studio Podcast. It’s been an incredible conversation.

Mignon: Thank you for having me. Now, let’s get to eating cupcakes.

Stephen: Let’s do it. All right. Woo-hoo.