![]() It teaches you gratitude when you get the thing. If you’re really committed to being debt-free, you might not always have what you need and things might take a little longer. It is easy to get credit cards and run up debt and all of that. What is the most challenging thing about running the company?Ĭash flow. ![]() We still bootstrap everything, though the company does have a credit card, which we use just for convenience and to earn frequent flyer miles. I would recommend the first thing any business should hire is an accountant, even if it’s just consulting with you quarterly or at tax season. I bootstrapped it just like that guru on the radio was telling people to do. And I’ve always bought my equipment used, at auctions and on eBay. I had a dorm-size refrigerator and a KitchenAid mixer when I opened what would eventually be a multi-million-dollar company. You can just start from where you are and it will be enough. I started! Sometimes, we think we need everything perfect to be in place. What’s the smartest thing you did when you were first starting out? Though I don’t see it as a mistake, we, along with the city, ended up creating the rules of what not to do when you decide to create a food truck business! At the time, Nashville hadn’t seen anything like that. I converted a school bus into a mobile bakery. Every little thing that happens is necessary to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I believe that mistakes are never tied to dreams. What’s the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting out? I continued to flip the money like that over the next 11 years. I took $5 out of that, went back to the store, and by the end of the week I had turned it into $600. I closed the door and started right then with the $5 I had to use for food. She knew I couldn’t afford to do all 600 at once. She said that every time I made some, she would pay me. She said she wanted to give my cupcakes to all her 600 clients for Christmas. I was sitting in the back of my house with no electricity, praying and asking God what to do. They would try them and come back for more. Whenever new people would come, I would ask them to try my cupcakes. I had started making cupcakes for the neighborhood. Browse your top business credit card matches for free and apply in minutes! Find my top options It all made sense to me all of a sudden! I’m not really a baker – I’m really a food scientist!īusiness credit cards can make sure you always have emergency cash on hand. ![]() All these years later, the science of balancing equations came to my mind and I realized what we were doing was creating a chemical reaction. I had gone to school for pre-med biology. I knew that if I wanted to make a business with this, I needed to make it consistent and add science to it. She would tell me over the phone, “Open up your hand and go to the first line and that’s how much of this you need.” I made my first successful cake over the phone long-distance with grandma. She doesn’t really have any recipes, she just kind of throws everything in there. I enlisted the help of my grandmother who is a well-known baker. I decided to have a bake sale every single day, though I didn’t bake at all – not even out of a box! I went and bought books and magazines and turned on every cooking show. I was listening to this financial guru on the radio who was telling people to have a bake sale. I wanted to regulate those things for my family. Our electricity and our water weren’t regular. Times were hard and I was trying to make ends meet. I was a stay-at-home mom, or as I call it, “a household manager.” I graduated from college and had my degree, but I was at home raising my children because that was what was important to me. ![]() A true rags-to-riches story, Francois attributes the tremendous rise of her business to strong faith and a conservative financial approach. Mignon Francois is the owner and director of The Cupcake Collection, a boutique-style bakery in Nashville that sells homemade cakes and cupcakes baked fresh daily.
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