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Welcome to the Whisk Podcast the Sweet spot for sales, marketing and business development Professionals to learn industry experience through guest interviews. We believe that the commitment to learning and testing new strategies combined with old school tactics will propel your career and company forward for many years to come. I'm your host, Melissa Wedman. I'm an obsessive learner, passionate about small business success proud Oklahoman, Country Girl at Heart, Mama of two and the founder and CEO of Mollycoddled Hash Slinger, an artisan candy company whose pure Focus is to keep our clients top of mind with people important to their company. Through our customizable commercial gifting program. You're in for a real treat with today's episode. But before we dive in, would you share us with your friends? Screenshot the image of this episode and share us in your instagram stories and tag @thewhiskpodcast? We'd love for you to share us through the link in this podcast or on Facebook and LinkedIn by tagging our candy page at mollycoddled hash slinger. Now let's get to the good stuff. It's Melissa here, the head sugar slinger of Mollycoddled hash slinger and the podcast host of The Whisk Podcast. This is our very first podcast episode and just wanted to take some time today to introduce you to our candy company and why we're starting this podcast and what you can expect by subscribing and listening to our episodes. So let's get started with a little bit of history about Mollycoddled hash slinger. And yes, I know it's a mouthful. We actually had several people in the early days. Encourage us to change our company name. But you know what? I'm a pretty stubborn country girl, and there was just no way I had too much rapport from other customers that absolutely loved our name and love the uniqueness. So the name stuck. So you're stuck with saying a mouthful mollycoddled hash slinger and I dare you to say that 10 times fast cause it may be a little bit of a tongue twister, but anyway, so a little bit about us, we actually commercially started producing our artisan candy back in 2011. But let's backtrack on up before that. When my daddy passed away back in 2011 I really was just kind of searching for something to gift to friends and family for the holidays. And my daddy loved everything Caramel and so I was playing in the kitchen. I've always kind of been a foodie. My daddy was a foodie, and it just kind of runs real deep in our family. And so, by trial and error created our signature caramel the salted whiskey caramel. And so our company was born just by giving those to friends and family, and one thing led to another, and I quickly found myself making caramel to all hours of the night. Um and then we were able to commercially launch through, um, an incubator program in Tulsa, Oklahoma a short time later. So we have kind of just hit the ground running ever since. And I'll talk more a little bit about my industry experience. That kind of gave me an advantage, if you will, to starting our commercial candy company. But really, what we stand for is to make old school candy with new world profiles. So the salted whiskey caramel is our signature. We have salted apple caramel and bourbon pecan toffee and gooey goobers. And we love making limited edition yummies too. And we're excited to see where the future leads us now, Mollycoddled hash slinger. Obviously, we sell our candy through our website and vendor events and things like that. But really, what our focus is kind of led to over the years is to offer a commercial gifting program. So through my industry experience and previous work, experience is in the kind of gift product markets. I really just love providing a service and giving that personal touch to others. So that's kind of what led us down that rabbit hole, and that's where a whole another episode. But if you're interested in a little bit about what we do, I just double dog dare you to go ahead and go to our website and check that out. Um, so anyway, a little bit about me, I am a mom of two, um, got a redheaded daughter so you could only imagine what that life can be like at times, although I love her dearly. And, um, unfortunately at her young age, not quite to the teenage years were already finding ourselves butting heads at times because, honestly, we are two peas in a pod. She's got Mama's little entrepreneur brain and stubborn streak. Um, And then we've got a little guy Jack, and he is so much like his daddy and so much like both of his grandpas. He's just a bundle of fun. And we call him Bulldog because nothing stops that kid. And he just always is bulldozing his way through everything and having a blast. Um, so my industry experience just to give you a little bit of background about who the heck you're listening to, Um, I have always, honestly been I guess it's just a God given instinct or talent or whatever you wanna call it. But also learned from my dad, um kind of been that entrepreneur, that side hustler, the sales person from a very young age and one of the earliest things I can remember is being an elementary school and having a little bit of ah, job fair business creation type thing at our elementary school. And I created little stress balls out of corn starch, flower and balloons and was selling those and made pretty good extra money. Well, fast forward to the early nineties when Ty Beanie babies at the market, and I'm sure a big chunk of your listening know what I'm talking about. My aunt and dad used to take my brother and I to go stand in long lines at places like Cracker Barrel and Hallmarks and other retailers that carried Beanie Babies at the time. And then my daddy would take me along with him to gun shows or antique shows where we could peddle those Beanie Babies and make some money. And that was, you know, he always just kind of stood back and let me do my thing, but always had this grin on his face. At one time, Daddy and I went to a garage sale. I'll never forget this. I think I was maybe fifth or sixth grade. Okay. Linta Garage sale, digging through stuff cause Daddy would always buy stuff and sell on eBay. Make a little extra cash for our family. And I found what looked like a white polar bear Beanie Baby. But that tush tag soniya and didn't have read letters that just had black and white letters. So it said Ty. But of course, this was before the world of Google, and I was not quite convinced it was a Beanie Baby. So I went ahead and bought. It was like, I don't know, 1/4 50 cents, something like that. But the dang thing. I had a little bit of a black smudge on its back, Take a home spot, cleaned it very carefully and started doing research. Well, come to find out it was a chilly the polar bear Beanie Baby, which was a first generation super rare Beanie Baby. Well, that next month Daddy took me to the traveling flea market. That would come every I don't know, one weekend a month and found this vendor that was notorious for having the biggest Beanie Baby booth there and showed her what I found in her jaw Dropped will. She immediately offered me $100 cash. Well, here I am, this elementary school age girl with my daddy standing behind me, and I said, Ma'am, I'm so sorry, but it's worth much more than that. I know that this is a first generation Beanie Baby. We'll never forget that look in her eye. Like she realized this young gal knew exactly what she was talking about. I negotiated with her and ended up getting $500 cash and a pick of any five Beanie Baby she had out on her table. Now I didn't pick Beanie Babies that I personally wanted, like most kids probably would've. I picked what I knew was worth money and turned around and sold. Almost all of those have made even more profit. So that was kind of the start of my entrepreneurial experience. Is a young kid. It's kind of bulldozed into other things. I have a degree in horticulture, so actually had a landscaping business through college. And for a little while out of college, I have meme. Most of my recent experience has been 15 years as a field leader with a direct sales company. However, about two years ago I stepped away from that role to be able to grow the candy business as the CEO and the CMO and all of those hats that small business owners have to wear. My husband, Justin. We have been together for like, 17 ish years, and he is our head sugar daddy. That's kind of a self proclaimed title that he's given himself as the CFO and we run this company together, so that's a little bit about me and you know our company and all that good stuff. Of course, there's more information about our company on our website. But really, since I stepped down from my leadership role from the direct sales company after so many years, you know, my passion with that was coaching and training new sales directors and consultants that would join our team. I love the product. Don't get me wrong. But my passion was watching others grow and helping them create a life for themselves through their independent business. And so when I stepped away from that to grow mollycoddled hash slinger, I kind of had this void in my heart. And so this podcast idea has kind of been on my mind for a couple of years, but I really didn't have a clear mission of which route. I wanted to go with that until I was listening to a couple of other podcast industry related and it really just all of a sudden, that light bulb, Or maybe it was God speaking to me, went off of Okay, I need to be able to give back through this podcast. I need to be able to use my experience interview other guests that have way more experience and success than I even have to be able to help sales, marketing and business development professionals and how that kind of comes full circle for our company. Is there a commercial gifting program? Those roles are often the roles I work very closely with for corporate gifting needs, through sales, marketing and business development professionals that are looking for a unique, easy gift to give to their clients or referrals. And so this podcast is really going to be just for you. This is not gonna be anybody selling an expensive course or, you know, I haven't published any books or anything like that. I'm truly just wanting to pay it forward and give back to those roles that have helped our company becomes successful So you can expect to hear actual tactical information that, you know, experiences that have worked for both myself and my companies over the years or our guest interviews that were interviewing. I want you guys to truly be able to listen to this and parallel what you're hearing from these interviews to make it work for your specific industry in your role. So our goal is going to be to launch a new episode each week, and we're going to try our best to alternate between sales, marketing and business development based episodes. Now, some of our guests, like we've already got a few scheduled, are going to be able to share a lot of information and tactics that correlate and relate to all three of those. Because, let's face it, those three truly are related and work closely together in most company rolls. Okay, so that's what you're gonna be able to expect. I don't want this to just be one more podcast added to your list. That doesn't really have a lot of useful information. Um, I want this to really be things that you can utilize an implement. It might even be a PdF file of an outline to use for a new tactic that's provided by a guest. But most importantly, I want you to be able to listen to these episodes while you are doing your daily activities. You know, for me personally. And don't laugh. When I say this. I mostly listen to podcasts. What? I'm in the shower in the mornings. Um, I try to find those gaps of time because I see a value of being an obsessive learner and constantly trying to learn new things to make my career advance in my business. Grow So I hope you see the value in the same thing. I hope that you share us with your friends and, um, you know, co workers or business acquaintances. So please go ahead and subscribe to the show. Follow The Whisk Podcast on Instagram we're also on LinkedIn and Facebook and instagram for Mollycoddled Hash Slinger. Yes, I know it's a mouthful. Mollycoddled is one word. Hash slinger are two words and of course we'll have the links to all of that good stuff in the show notes as well. I also would love to hear from you guys if you're listening to this and you think that you could provide some valuable information for our listeners as a podcast guest on our mollycoddled hash slingers website under the whisk podcast tab, there is a quick form for you to complete thio apply to be a podcast interview A and I would absolutely love to chat with you and see what you could bring to the table for our listeners as well and I always believe that. You know what? Whatever you give, give give eventually you'll get back. Um, so paying it forward is a crucial part of our world in our lifestyle, and I invite you to be a guest if you've got some actionable tactics that you can share with our listeners. But as I ramble and I promise I will try my best to talk a little slower during our regular interviews, um, I will go ahead and sign off for now. But like I said, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to our intro episode for the Whisk podcast. Um, I really just I'm so excited to be able to share what's been on my heart for a long time and pay it forward for sales, marketing and business development professionals. And, you know, I'm pretty sure will probably have some small business owners listening in to, as I know for a fact those of us that are small business owners absolutely have to wear many hats until we can scale and grow to the point to hire those those rules outside of the company. So have an awesome day. Y'all and I will see you at our very first official episode. Coming up. Thanks again for listening to the Whisk Podcast, produced by Melissa Wedman and Mollycoddled Hash Slinger LLC. Our Music Today is licensed under Creative Commons attribution 4.0 from www dot in comp tech dot com by American composer and artist Kevin MacLeod. Song. Onion, Capers.