Ep. 61 Cookie Cutter Creation with Melanie Beth of Killer Zebras

I am here with Melanie Burns today of killer zebras. I am so excited to have her share her story with us and what has led her to create this amazingly fun and just vibrant business. And so, Melanie, I'm going to have you dig in and introduce yourself and your family and any maybe fun facts that you want us to know about you.

Well, my name is Melanie. My company is Killer Zebras, which I'm sure we'll get into. That's always the number one question. I get asked the name, but I'm married. My husband and I have been married. Jeez, I think this year is our 19th anniversary.

Same here.

Yeah. And we have three kids. My oldest is 14. I have an eleven year old and an eight year old. I'm trying to think if there's any fun facts. I don't know. We're kind of a regular family. I don't know, family with a cookie.

Business called Killer Zebras.

Yeah, well, I didn't say I was regular exactly.

Okay, so let's dig into that. Where does killer zebras come from?

I get asked it a lot, and I think people anticipate there's some cool story behind it, and it's not that. So I'm an avid reader. I love books. And there's an author, her name is Robin McKinley. She kind of wrote a lot, like in the some in the 90s mostly. She writes a lot of fairy tale retellings and things like that. And she was my I think of her as my her books were my Harry Potter. Harry Potter is a thing for a lot of people that introduced them to reading in a way that made them love reading. Her books were that for me, it was my first kind of foray into adult books as opposed to little kid books. And anyway, she has a book called Sunshine, which, if I'm being honest, is actually not one that I really recommend to people. She has wonderful books. It's not one of my favorites, but in the book there's a baker whose name is Sunshine, and she's kind of known in her small town for these elaborately baked goods that she does, and she has one that's a cookie called a Killer Zebra. Okay. And I had actually just finished reading that book when I was opening up my business, and I was looking for a name. And to be completely honest, it was very small at the time. I didn't anticipate where it would go, and I really just kind of thought it was funny. So I was like, yeah, let's call it killer zebras. And I still get a laugh out of it. I got to be honest, it was years before I could say the name without kind of laughing a little bit. I call up my suppliers and say, hey, I need to order XYZ. They'll be like, oh, sure, what's the account? And I'll say killer zebras. And I said, it took me years before I could say that without a little bit of a laugh, and there'd always be this really long pause, and they'd be like, is that spelled like it sounds? Because they're trying to not be rude, but they're also like, what did I just hear?

So what year was that?

Well, okay, so we're about to have our anniversary of my shop coming up, and that's nine years. But that's not nine years that I've been Killer Zebras, because my business has been kind of of a progression. So I've been working under the name Killer Zebras for probably 13 or 14 years. Okay. It was just kind of a different business at the time.

Okay, let's talk about the progression. So if you don't mind, can we go to the beginning? What stage of life were you in when you started Killer Zebras 1314 years ago?

So killer zebras start right now. Killer Zebras is cookie decorating supplies and education and all of that kind of things, but it started as me just selling cookies. Okay? So at that point, I've always been really into anything. I like to make things with my hands. I love being artistic, I love creating, literally anything. But I was working full time and I needed a creative outlet. I was a hairstylist for, like, ten years, and then when I was pregnant with my first, money was tight, so I had a second job. So I was working at the salon nights and weekends. Most of my first pregnancy, I worked full time at an office because I had a background in computers and stuff like that. So I was able to easily get a job at an office. And then I worked nights and weekends at the salon, and I was pregnant at the same time. And I just sort of desperately needed an outlet of something because I love to create. So shortly after my first son was born, I had stopped working at the salon because it was just too much. But that's when I picked up the cookie decorating. It wasn't really a thing at the time. This was like 14 years ago, so cookie decorating wasn't really a thing. Most people had never even heard of it or seen them. I just happened to see a picture online somewhere. I don't know, it just looked intriguing. I played around a little bit with cake decorating back when I was in high school and here and there throughout my early adult life. And I liked the baking aspect. I really loved that, being able to be creative, but I didn't love the big scale of it. And when I saw this picture of a cookie, I thought, that looks really fun. But again, it wasn't really a thing, so there weren't a lot of resources online.

So I just found a sugar cookie recipe. I had to do a little research to even figure out what kind of icing it was because none of that stuff was readily available. So I found a royal icing recipe and I just started trial and error playing with it and I just kind of fell in love. I loved the edible art, but on such a tiny scale and how I could get in and be so all these teeny tiny little details. Anyway, so I just started doing that kind of as a hobby in the early days of and it helps a lot because I had really bad postpartum depression, okay? And like I said, I needed something. So I was just kind of doing that in the background. And when I started to get kind of good, I had people say, well, can I get some for a baby shower or a birthday or whatever. So I started taking small orders here and there in the background. And that's when I was like, well, if I'm going to do that, I should have a name. So that's when Killer Zebras came to be, but I didn't really take it on. So I eventually got laid off from the company was downsizing and the office I was working for. So I got laid off and I found a new job relatively quickly. But in that downtime I was like, well, as long as I'm not working. So I started really throwing everything into just learning how to do it. And I found that I could do all kinds of things because, yeah, it's just putting icing on a cookie, but like there no in its simplest terms it is. But I started finding I started having ideas because again, there were no resources online. When I teach classes now, a common thing that I hear is, oh, I've never seen this technique done this way or I've never heard of anybody that does this thing this way or that kind of thing. And I always tell people that's because I had to literally make everything up myself when I was learning. So I just figured out what worked for me and now I kind of do that. But it means I don't necessarily do everything the same way that's become now that it's really popular, there are certain techniques that have become this is how you do it. And I don't necessarily do things that way. And I mean, whatever, if it works, it works. But I just have my own methods that I had to make up myself. But I started finding that I could do. And that's how I started leading into the business that I have now is because I sell cookie stencils now. That was actually the very first thing when I opened up beyond just selling cookies. I had started posting my cookies online and it was with the intent of getting more people to order actual cookies. I started growing this social media following, but I was hoping to get more orders for cookies. But what I was actually getting was more and more people were starting to pick up the art and they would follow me because they were wanting to understand how I was doing what I was doing. And so I would frequently get messages or comments from people that would say, like, oh, I really love this cookie shape. Can you tell me where you got the cookie cutter? Well, I couldn't because I was literally bending my own cookie shape out of tin. This is before 3D printers were readily available to have in your home. So I would either cut it out of cardboard and then exacto knife my cookies, or I had some basic shapes that I came up with that I literally had strips of tin that I would bend into my own shapes. And then I would have people say, oh, I love that pattern. Where can I get that stencil? And I would have to tell people, well, you can't get it anywhere because I made it myself. And my very first stencil that I made for myself, I literally exacto knifed out of cardstock. And then one year for Christmas, my mother in law got me a silhouette machine, and I started cutting sort of simple designs out of that and it just sort of progressed. But anyway, so my social media became instead of getting people that wanted to order the cookies, I just had overwhelmingly people that wanted to know where I was getting my products and how I was doing the things that I was doing. So I told my husband, I think I'm going to open an Etsy shop. I was like, I'll just do an Etsy thing. Maybe it'll bring in some funds, money to kind of fund my hobby. That was my goal, was just like a few extra bucks. And I love to tease my husband because his response was cookie stencils. Really? I mean, he's very supportive, don't get me wrong, but he was sort of like, what? I don't get it. And I'm like, that's okay, you don't have to get it. I'm just going to do this and we'll see what happens. And it just exploded.

Okay, there are a couple of words that came to mind, like, you're an innovator and you're doing things your way. You're figuring them out. So much so that people are starting to ask you, well, where did you do that?

Get that?

How did you learn this? Well, you figured it out kind of thing. You saw a need and figured it out.

I've never been a very good student. I have six kids in my family, okay? So we have a large family. I'm one of the youngest. I'm second youngest. And as with all big families, there's not enough time to go around for parents. And especially being one of the youngest, I was that kid that had to figure everything out. Like literally everything I had to figure out because I didn't have anyone. Literally even the most basic things in life I had to just figure out for myself. And so I've become this person who just does that with everything which has its benefits and also has its drawbacks.

I was going to say there's two ways to look at that. You can be like, I had to figure everything out, like the negative side, which there's some truth to that, right? But let's look at the flip side of what it's provided for you and opportunities and growth and mindset and ability in having to do that. Look how it's developed you and what you've been able to do with it.

Now, it really is a blessing and a curse, but the blessings are really there. But like I said, it means I'm not a good student because I sit down and someone starts explaining to me how to do something and my brain immediately goes, well, actually, I would start doing this even if it's not right. I'll figure it out with trial and error. But my brain immediately wants to just figure it out on its own, which can be rough sometimes. But it does mean that I think that some of my stuff, my designs and everything stand out a little bit from other people's because there's a uniqueness to it. One way in which that applies that whole, like figuring things out for myself is I'm not really good at following trends because I don't necessarily care very much about what anyone else is doing, which is good and bad. Because it means when there's trends that people are like, for example, when llamas were everywhere, do you remember? There's still a little bit, but there was a point in time where it just exploded and everything had llamas on it. Every toy was a Llama, everything was llamas. And I was so late to the game on that, and I had people going, do you have any Llama cookie cutters? And I'm like, why would I have llama cookie cutters? It's so random. But I was late to the game because I don't pay attention. So it's good and bad. It means my stuff is a little different because I'm out here doing whatever I feel like doing. But then sometimes I also miss probably the things I should be doing. Because people when something's really trendy, when pineapples were on everything, every little kid was having a birthday party with pineapples. And so people needed pineapple designs, you know what I mean? So it's good and bad, right?

And also, you can be a trend setter with your creativity, your uniqueness, your thought process. I imagine you are setting trends and you may not know it or realize it, but I would suggest that to.

You, if I am, I'm probably completely unaware because I don't notice those things. My husband teases me for being just completely oblivious to so much of that stuff.

Because you're on to the next one, right? You're onto the next my mind is.

Out there in a completely different world than everybody else. But the benefit there's. I also don't know. Like, when there's drama going on, I never know about it. I have a couple of friends in the cookie community that will text me when drama is happening because they know that I have no clue. Did you hear about this? And I'm like, of course I didn't hear about this.

I was over here mixing up some frosting. No, nothing. You can we go back to the part where you talked about needing a creative outlet? Why do you think you needed a creative outlet? And why does creativity fulfill that need that you felt?

Well, for me, now here's where every person is different. Everybody needs an outlet. Not everybody needs a creative outlet. I think of my drive to create. Is it's like on hyperdrive? If I go for too long without doing anything with my I have to make. I've always been that way. I have to be drawing, I have to be building, I have to be making. And if I don't for a long period of time, for whatever reason, you know, life happens. And sometimes you just can't do the fun things. It's like it comes exploding out of me because it becomes so pent up. So with each of my pregnancies, I had pretty rough pregnancies. And you hit that point towards the end of the pregnancy where you just can't really get up and do stuff. It's hard. I was on bed rest, especially with my first my first pregnancy was awful. And then you have a baby and you're healing and you've got a new baby and you're not doing those things. And so with my daughter, who's eight, when she was born, it was like I was almost vibrating with the need to do something. And when she was like probably two months old, I just made this decision that I'm going to completely redo my kitchen. And I pulled everything apart. I completely refinished the cabinets and everything, and it was like a massive undertaking, but I just had to I had so much. And then when that finished, my husband was like, all right, fine, you can finally relax. And then a month later, I was like, we had this big wall in the living room that I was like, I've been envisioning built in shelves there. So then I did like we didn't have a proper mantle, so I ripped the whole wall out. I built a mantle. I built these built in shelves, the whole thing. And it took me probably a few months to finish, but if I go too long but that's how I am personally, because I'm like that. And I really mean creating anything. I love to build, I love to do anything with my hands. But for me, that drive, that need. Like I said, when I started Cookies, I was working two jobs. I was exhausted. It was a really bad pregnancy. I was in a lot of pain, so I really wasn't able to do very much. And then I got put on bed rest. I had a rough delivery, so it was a really long recovery period. So it was like that need to it's like I have this drive inside me to create, no matter what I'm creating, have this drive in me to just do that. And so getting that out of me after like I said after he was born and I finally had a minute to sit and do something, I was like, I have to do something. Like I said, not everybody's like that, but everybody has something that fulfills that kind of need inside them. And I am such a big proponent of, you need to figure out what that thing is, and you need to do more of that thing because it makes such a difference in your overall mental health and everything to be able to do the thing that drives you.

Amen. To all of that, I'm like, thank you for nailing all my points. ABC and D all the way to Z. Right? So why do you think it fulfills that need for me?

I don't know. Like I said, it's just a driving force. It's been that way since I was a little kid. I was that kid that was, like, down in the basement cutting up scraps of paper and gluing things and whatever, and I would grab my mom. My mom sews a lot. That puts it mildly. My mom sews all of her own clothes. She sews everything. Right. I actually don't think I've seen her in something that she purchased from a store since I was probably, like, five. That's amazing. So she sews a lot. And so I'm not even much of a sewer. Like, I can sew because I was raised by a seamstress. And my sisters are all amazing at sewing, and I have the ability, but I have no patience for it for whatever reason. But I used to take my mom's scraps and I would sit and I would try and make dresses for my dolls, which were awful because I didn't know what I was doing. But like I said when I was a kid, it's just the thing that drives me. It's like I can't stop myself from just it's innate. Yeah, I think my personal drive like that is probably a little bit more extreme than the average person. And I don't know why that is the way, but it's just how I am, and it's how I've always been.

Okay, so let's walk through kind of your process of what you've been able to figure out and create because of that. So you started with the cookie decorating and moved into the cookie cutters and bending your own tin or cutting out a cardstock. So I know you've mentioned some machines that you work with, and I am like a geek over here. I'm like, Wait, you talk about lasers and 3D printers. We have a 3D printer. I've got a vinyl cutter. I want a laser. I've got a CNC router.

And these are things I don't have a good excuse to buy a CNC, which is why I don't have one. But I'll find one. I will find a good excuse and.

I'll get I am like, oh my gosh, there's no excuse needed. You just need to have one.

Well, when you have all the lasers and the 3D printers and I got to find a place to put such a big machine, I've already decided someday I'm going to retire. And I just want like a massive shop with all the cool toys. I want a giant CNC. I want all the stuff that's going to be people are going to come over and people always assume all those toys are my husband's, but I'm like, no, those are my toys.

Our shops will be right next to each other because when I got my router, I had to figure out how to use it. I mean, instructions are not in my language and this not in my skill set, but I had to figure it out. So you had to do a lot of figuring out.

Yeah.

Let's talk about moving into those pieces of equipment. At what point did you decide to go from handmade to laser, three D and whatever your process is now?

Well, so, like I said, my mother in law had got me a silhouette machine for Christmas and I was using it. I started out with cardstock because, you know, those machines, those machines are capable of a lot, but they can't do a lot of really thicker materials and stuff. So I was doing my own out of cardstock. But the thing with cardstock is it doesn't last very long. You can only use it a few times and you can't wash them, so it's only good for the one time. Yeah, but anyway, so I was doing that and I found some really thin plastic that I could cut out and that's what I was using. But I didn't love the flexibility of it because it had to be pretty thin to be cut out on a silhouette machine. And so when I opened my Etsy shop, I was only on Etsy for maybe six months tops, because I had enough business that I was like, I'm just going to switch to my own website. So when I opened up Etsy, I was cutting stencils out of that thinner plastic using my silhouette machine. But there's so much weeding, it would take a really long time to clean them up and get them ready and everything. And again, I didn't really love because as much as I love making and figuring out things I'm all about, like, how can I make this better? Because the thing is, this is what I always tell people. I actually use my own products, so I'm not going to make something that I wouldn't personally want to use. So anytime anyone sees a shift in my customers who've been with me a long time. They've seen small progressions of the way my cutters are shaped or the way built or the way my stencils are done or whatever. And that's because I'll be using them and go, hey, I would actually rather this would be better. So I'm constantly doing that. But anyway, so I didn't love the thinness. I wanted something thicker. And it was clear after a few months that I had enough business that I needed to. It was just taking way too long on my tiny little silhouette. So we upgraded to it was still a machine with a blade on it. It was called a silver bullet. It's kind of like more of an industrial grade, kind of like a cricket or a silhouette, but bigger and more powerful.

Is it 24 inches long or like.

Yeah, it was 24 inches long, and I could do up to, like 96 inches, I think, the other way. Anyway, so I upgraded to that, and that was a big deal because we didn't have a lot of extra money at the time. So when I started my business, it was literally with just what I already had in the house. And so that was my first major purchase. And it was like, at the time, it was, like, $1,100. And it was like, okay, I'm going to invest in my own business. And that was a big step for me because that was the first major purchase that I did. But anyway, so we bought that machine, and then I used that for a long time, a few years maybe, trying to think of when I got my first laser. Not sure. I don't remember exactly when I got it, but I think I used it for two or three years, and it was much better. And I was able to upgrade the plastic to a thicker plastic, but it's still, like, the weeding time. Anytime you work with a blade, it's just different than lasers. And so the cleaning up of the stencils and it was all, like, a big process, and business kept growing, and I just couldn't keep up. And then we were going to a big convention. We had one planned, and we were, like, still several months out. And my husband was like, you should get a laser. And I was just like, oh. So I started looking at them, and the price tag was like, no, I don't need that. I'm okay. The other thing is, I didn't grow up in a household that had a lot of money. And I have this sort of frugalness that's just, like, built into me of, don't spend money on things that you don't need and don't spend more money than you have to. And it's been a shift. My husband's family has a different mindset of if you're going to buy a thing, buy the best version of the thing that you can. So that way you won't have to replace it for a lot longer, that kind of thing. And it's been a shift because that's a hard mindset to shift into. So my husband's like, you should buy this really nice machine. And I was like, I can't swallow that price tag. And so we went to some maker show in Seattle and we got to actually see them in real life. And so we initially purchased a less expensive the first machine we got was an epilogue.

I've been to an epilogue dealer.

Epilogues are fantastic. They're amazing. But I got the price tag for that and was like, absolutely not.

It's a little shocking.

It was huge sticker shock. And I was like, no way. So we actually purchased what's it called. They're smaller. I can't even think of it. The name is escaping me. But they started well, yes and no. So we purchased it, but this was before they were actually available. And we were told a date, okay, we'll be releasing them by this date.

Oh, I followed all of that.

Yeah. So we had actually purchased one, and then they kept moving the date out, and then they started changing the specs. Like, actually, the bed is going to be this size. Actually, they started changing it, changing it, and it got to the point where they basically emailed everyone out that had purchased one. And then it was like, we realize we've made all these huge changes not just to the timeline, but also the physical product itself. So if you want to back out, you can do that with no repercussions. And we were like, yeah, let's just back out. Because I was like, especially the specs. That's what was really getting me, because it was no longer what we needed it to be. So we backed out, and my husband convinced me to just go for the nicer one. And at this point, the show that we were purchasing it for was like a month away. Oh, gosh. Or rather, it was a month out from when we would receive the machine.

Yeah.

And I was like, fine, whatever. So I just swallowed it and I just went for it. And the machine came and holy crap, if I didn't bust out everything for that entire show in that month leading out, once I had the laser because the laser was like 100 times faster and I didn't have to sit with an exacto knife and weed everything out. And so cleanup was a breeze. And it was like within a day, I was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to love this trial and error to figure out how to use it. But once I got my settings dialed in and everything, it was like a dream.

Because it's not something that you just plug in and all right, let's go. Right? There are so many settings.

There's so many settings. There's so many factors you have to take into account. And it's. The whole thing. You have to have ventilation and you have to have an air compressor, and there's a lot that goes into it. Not to mention because I was still using a silhouette before I had the laser. Well, I had Silhouette, and I also had the other machine, but I was using the silhouette software still, which is fine, but it's not great. And so I had to switch over to something different. So I use Illustrator now. But that was a progression because I didn't know graphic design when I started all this. And so that's been a progression of me teaching myself how to do all of that. Luckily, I was far enough down the line that when we got the laser, it wasn't such a huge leap. But I did have to figure out Illustrator because I hadn't really used it that much.

This is not a small program to figure out.

No. Illustrator is not like, oh, I'll just dive in and just no. Yeah, so that was a huge learning curve. Every step of the way has been.

Such a it's amazing to sit here knowing my personal journey with some of these machines and pieces of software, because every time it felt like when I got a new machine, it was a new piece of software to learn. And Illustrator is not just a learn in the day kind of thing.

Yeah, it was definitely a learning curve. So that took a little time, but, yeah, once I did get it all, all the settings, all everything dialed in, and then I had to take all my designs and put them into Illustrator. And it was a process. But, yeah, once I had that going. So now we have five lasers, because that was years ago. But that first one, that was such a big step, getting that first laser, which I'm so glad my husband convinced me to do.

Right, okay, so one of my questions for you is what fears have you had to overcome through this whole process? And so you talk a little bit about the spending money or investing, that sort of thing. How have you worked through that in order to grow your business, and how has that benefited your business by working through the fears or the question marks of it?

The spending thing is definitely an issue, and I still revert back to my autopilot, which is don't spend money on things. A lot of the time, my husband's been really supportive. That makes such a huge difference. And he's always there pushing me, especially when it comes to spending money, on something that will make things go faster and make my life easier and give me more time. In the day. He's like, Just do it. You can do this. But in terms of other things, I didn't have a particular fear of starting the business. It was exciting, and I've always kind of, I guess you could say, been business minded.

Yes, I can hear it as you explain different things. You're very business minded.

Yes, but even I was that little kid that was out. I don't have any money and I'm too young to babysit. So I would make random things. And my sister and I laugh about the time we tried to start a perfume business. I was probably like five or six, and we picked all the petals off my mom's tulips and to make this perfume, which was essentially just water with some tulip petals and I think maybe a little soap or something. I don't remember what we put in it. And we had them in little baggies and we tried to go door to door selling them. And when I was like twelve, I said, I want to make some money. So I made up a flyer about myself kind of babysitters club style. I was really into those books when I was younger and I just went to all the houses in my neighborhood saying you need a babysitter. But that's always been me. I've always been doing stuff like that. And I don't I don't know what that drive is. I don't I don't consciously do. It's not a conscious thing. It's just what I do. So putting myself out there in terms of like, starting a business wasn't necessarily difficult. I would say there's kind of maybe two main things that I do struggle with and some I still struggle with. One is just being in front of the camera. My husband's always telling me, you got to get in front of the camera more. But I don't love being on camera. It's gotten a lot easier. I used to be really self conscious about my voice because I know my voice is a little bit deeper than a lot of women's. And I've commonly had people see me online or whatever and then meet me in person and say, oh, your voice is not what I was expecting. Like my voice doesn't match my face. I don't think they mean it as an insult. I think it just catches people off guard. I've been told that they see me and then they expect me to have some high girly voice and I do not have that. So it's just little stuff like that. Stuff that mostly other people don't even notice or care about or think about. But we all do that to ourselves. We overthink things and we have our own little self conscious things that we all so that's been a thing, is trying to get in the front of the camera more and it's getting easier. But if I go too long without being in front of the camera, I start to revert and go, no. Yeah. So I'm trying to do that. I think another thing, and this is really for creative people, there's a certain amount of like when you create things, it comes from somewhere in your soul. So it's like sharing those things is a little bit like sharing some deep part of your soul that feels so personal and so it can be very so if you put it out there and people don't respond well to it then, especially because people online, thankfully I have a really great community cookie. People are just the nicest. I get very few trolls or anything like that on my social media, but they do happen. And even if it's not me, everybody sees it all the time on the internet. People will put something out there and it's like people on the Internet forget that there's a real person on the other side of that screen who put this thing out there that meant something to them, even if it doesn't mean anything to you. And trolls on the internet will just go and just tear people to shreds. And so when you create something and you put it out there, it's like you're letting yourself be vulnerable. And that's something that I've always kind of struggled with, like allowing people and some of that comes from I always felt a little bit different. Even as a kid I felt like my brain kind of worked differently than other people and maybe my interests were different than other people. And so I really closed myself off to allowing people to see what was really inside of me. And so putting that stuff out there, it's gotten so much easier. But there was a time when it was really a struggle to put something out there because you don't want that fear. It's that fear of rejection.

Yeah, well, and my question for you was how do you care for your mental health through all of this? Because you are being vulnerable. There are trolls, there's rejection as much fun and positivity out there. There's the other side of the coin. So how do you handle that? How do you work with it? Do you work through it? Or do we just bury it and say have a nice day, I'll take care of you in ten years when you resurface?

Well, I've done it both ways. Burying it isn't great. Some of it is just when you do something often enough, it becomes easier. So it's always kind of amazing. Like, when I put out new designs, it's always kind of amazing to me because sometimes I'll spend hours on something that I think is really cool and then I'll have another design that was like an afterthought, and it took me, like, 30 seconds to put together, and I put them out. And then the thing that was an afterthought will end up being the more popular. And I'm like, I don't understand, but whatever. And that gets easier with time of just putting it out there. It's not as hard. But I do talk openly about mental health. I know a lot of people don't love talking about that, but I've had my own mental health struggle since forever because I was diagnosed with depression as a teenager, and it's been just like a long road, and I've been through periods of my life where life is busy and I have things to do. So you just shove it all down and you power through, and that will get you through for a little while, but ultimately you're worse off. So I'm trying to be a lot more proactive now, because that isn't the healthy way to deal with things. The thing with mental health is everyone's case is so drastically different that you can't compare any two people. But I finally agreed to start going to therapy. I say agreed, I finally was like, I just have to do this. So I started going to therapy several years ago, and that's been such a great help. I know there's a lot of people like I said, I do talk openly about mental health. I'm one of those people that's like, you can literally ask me anything, and I'll tell you an honest answer. Therapy is something a lot of people don't like. I don't know why. To some people, it's kind of a dirty word for some reason. I don't know why. But I've also talked to people about it who said things like, well, I don't think I could be totally open and honest with someone like that vulnerable side of like, I have all these things deep down, but whether maybe I'm self conscious or embarrassed or whatever to actually vocalize them. And the truth about therapy is you get what you put into it. So if you go and you're not honest and you're not fully committed to, I want to be better, then it's kind of a waste of time, because you have to actually want to make improvements. I think therapy is such an amazing thing. I think finding time for yourself, that's not something I'm necessarily super great at.

I constantly feel like I have 87,000 things on my plates. And especially as a mom, you always somehow put yourself at the bottom of the list because you say, oh, I have to do all these other things, and my kids need this, my husband needs this, and the house needs this, and the business needs this. And then you put yourself at the very bottom. And I think about it like, how I don't know if this is true for other people, but I think of it the way I clean my house when we clean the house, especially when the house is particularly messy, and it's like, oh, my gosh, it needs an overall. So you start cleaning the public areas. You've got the living room, the kitchen, the two things when people come over and they see those spaces. So you start cleaning, and here's this box of random stuff that I don't necessarily know what to do with right now, but I can't have it sitting out. And then the kids will be cleaning, and I'll say, Go clean your rooms, and they come back. Okay, but here's all these things I don't know what to do with, and somehow it always is. Just go put it on my bed and I will figure it out. The master bedroom for most people is the one room that nobody really goes into unless you live there. So, like, here's this bin of stuff. I don't know where it goes. Go put it on my bed. I'll figure it out. And at some point you're like, wow, my house looks really great. But if you go into my bedroom, it looks like an episode of Hoarders because it all got dumped there because who really cares about the master bedroom and all the kids? I don't know what to do with this. So I put it on your bed and then you walk in and it's just overwhelming. And then that your bedroom is supposed to be this place where you relax and where you can breathe for a moment and you go in and it's chaos. So I don't know if this is how it happens for other people, but this is how it seems to happen for us. And I just go in and it's so much stuff because I'm like, I don't have the energy to deal with this. So you just move it to the side, put it on the floor. Yeah, just put it on the floor. Just put it in the corner. And at some point you're like, how did this room end up this way? The rest of my house looks okay, but this is horrible. So I feel like how we take care of ourselves is like that oftentimes.

Yes. Okay, so name of this podcast is Elevate the Individual with the thought being that we work with the mother first and we help her in her mental health journey with whatever needs she may have first. Because when you have a mother that takes care of those needs and maybe has a creative outlet right, to help with that, you can elevate the family. There's a direct relationship when a mother is getting the help, the support her needs met to the health of the family. That family then goes out to the community and shares their influence. And so that's such a great visual of what you've described. And I know when company comes over, I'm like, okay, kitchen, living room, I don't know what to do with that. Put it in our room. Just close mom and Dad's door and we'll deal with it later. It'll come back out actually later and make a bigger mess.

Hit miss for us if it comes back out, a lot of times it just stays there. And six months later I'm like, do we even use this stuff?

Right? Yes, I totally get it. And so this is why I love focusing on mothers that are curious about their creative outlet or are in it or making it happen, because I think it can be so valuable. The things that you described in your mental health journey and what you've described in your creative pursuits, I think they parallel. And the things you learn in both journey can help and cross paths and translate really well. And so I love that you're open about mental health and sharing that with others because.

I don't know, there's no.

Greater group than mothers who need help.

With their I think a lot of people are uncomfortable talking about these things. But I also think that almost every mom I would argue every mom feels like this, at least sometimes. And it helps to hear it from other people that like, oh, I'm not the only one that feels this way. I really think the whole self care thing, that's been a journey for me that I've been working on, and I feel like I've come a long way, but I can tell you the moment I decided I had to make changes. So when I started the business, I literally started the business, not the cookies, selling cookies, but the supply side. I started it the same month I found out I was pregnant with my youngest. I probably found out I was pregnant like a week or two later. So it wasn't the best timing, but it was what it was. And so that means I was starting my business pregnant and then with a newborn and all of that and babies, you don't get any sleep and you're exhausted. And my husband at the time so my husband now works full time for killer zebras. But when I first opened the business, and for several the first, maybe five years, he was working his own job and the job he had would take him away from the house. He managed three locations, but one of the locations is like a three or four hour, like three hour drive, I think, away from where we live. And so once a week, like every Monday, he would drive out there. He would work for the day, he would stay the night, and then he would work the next day and then come home in the evening. So I'd have like two solid days without him, which meant two days of a toddler, a kindergartner, and a newborn baby.

So he was like the manager's manager, but sometimes they would have problems. So the manager, they had a thing where the manager was stealing stuff and so he had to go out and he had to let her go, but then he had to stay and be the manager until they could find a replacement. And then he had to stay so he could train the replacement. So sometimes he would be gone for weeks at a time. He'd come home on the weekend, but otherwise that was it. Thankfully, that didn't happen too often, but it was often enough. And so he would be gone for weeks and I'd be home with my baby and my toddler and whatever, and I was exhausted, so I didn't have time during the day to do the business stuff. So I would do the mom thing all day long. I would finally get them to bed, and that's when my work day started. And so then they'd go to bed and I would be up 2347 in the morning sometimes. And my oldest was in kindergarten, so I'd have to get up. By the time I get him off to the bus, my other kids are waking up and then you just start the mom thing. And so I survived for a really long time on very little sleep. I'm naturally a night owl, so the staying up late thing wasn't necessarily hard. But you need sleep. Yeah, but the lack of sleep started to really get to me. And it's not an exaggeration to say that I averaged going to bed around five in the morning. Wow. But then I would have to be up whenever my kids got up. The moment I said, the exact moment that I can pinpoint, the moment that I was like, I have to make changes. I'd been running on this for years. At this point I don't do hair anymore, but occasionally a friend or family member, whatever. Anyway, my sister had texted me at some point in the week and said, can I come on Saturday morning and get, like a haircut or whatever? And I'd said, sure. I'd kind of forgotten about it. I'd gone to bed really late on Friday night and then I wake up one of my kids, I think my oldest had come in to wake me up and is like, Wendy's here? She says she's here for a haircut. And I was like, oh, crap, I got to get up. And so I drag myself out of bed and I go downstairs and I'm getting everything out. And I realized that I was literally hallucinating. Like, I was actually hallucinating from lack of sleep, but I've never experienced anything quite like that. And that was my moment where I was like, oh, this is not good. I have pushed it way too far. And that was when I said, all right, it's time to make changes. And sleep was the first change. And I'm not going to pretend like I'm perfect at that now, or that I go to bed early, but I can tell you I don't go to bed at 05:00 in the morning anymore. Yeah, but I've started prioritizing sleep, which was the big that was my big number one. Once I started getting sleep and my brain was a little more clear thinking, everything else started to be a little bit easier. But I really believe that moms tend to put themselves last. But we all want to be good mothers. But how can we do that as well as we want to if we're not taking care of ourselves at all? We're so much more effective and able to do the things we want to do when we have the energy and the mindset and the mood and literally everything, when we feel like we are capable.

We have needs too, right? We run around meeting the needs of everyone else, but we're human and we have needs as well. So amen to all of that. I'm like, all right, that's the message right there. With all of this and where you've come from and where you're going, what do you see for the future of you and your business, your family, and the social platform that you've created?

I can honestly say I don't know, but I don't say that in a bad way. I've always been kind of like, let's play it by ear and see where it goes. Especially because from a creative standpoint, I have to be excited about the thing that I'm doing. I don't have to, but if I'm not excited about the thing I'm doing, I won't do it as well, if that makes sense. I think when we are genuinely love what we do and get excited about things, I think that shows through in what we're providing. So I started with the stencils. I decided I only did stencils for the first maybe a couple of years, I don't know. And then I started adding cookie cutters, and that was its own learning curve because I had to learn how to 3D model and all that stuff. And so I added the cookie cutters, and then I've slowly added in other products that I think are fun. But it's been this like, when I added the cutters, it was like I started having ideas, and I was getting excited about that. And I initially started approaching other people who already did cutters because I thought, I don't know if I want to take on a whole thing. Maybe I can just coordinate with someone, but it's too hard, especially when you start having a lot of ideas, and I'm like, Forget it. I'm just going to do it myself. And that's how it's been. So one of my more recent additions to what I offer is color theory classes. Yes, I love color. I'm completely obsessed with color. And that's one of those things that I've been asked for years. I'll post things and I'll have people say, how do you make your colors match so perfectly? Maybe I'm doing I did Seahawks cookies a long time ago, and they have a very specific shade of navy blue and a very specific bright green. And people were like, how did you get that so perfectly? Because I'm really particular about my colors. I started to realize there's really a lack of because I just do it. I don't think about it. I don't think of it as being something difficult. Once I really started realizing how much need there was for color education out there, I was like, well, I guess I'll do a color class. I did one and I've gotten so much feedback from that that that really kind of spurred me to start doing more and more color education and offer products for color. And it's a lot of fun because I have a passion when it comes to color. I can't believe it didn't occur to me before now that to apply that, but sometimes, like I said, sometimes I just do things and I forget that not everybody just does those things. So I need people to be like, hey, this isn't a thing that everybody just does. Maybe you can tell us how to do it. So I'm having a lot of fun with the color education, but like, a couple of years ago, I wouldn't necessarily have thought that's where things would start going. So I don't know where things are going to go from here. I'm just going to keep doing what drives me and what I feel passionate about, and I'll see where it goes.

That's a great method right there. And the color theory is fascinating to me. I've watched some of your videos, and is it your color wheel that you use or the color chart?

What is it called? I think you're thinking of the color wheel. Yeah.

Okay. I was watching it and I was like, how is she even seeing that? She's like, okay, it matches in here, matches in here, so we need to do this and that. It's fascinating. It's not something like you're saying it's innate to you, but it is not to a lot of people. And so the fact that your road has led you to this, and now you can develop a system to educate and share that knowledge with other people, it's amazing. And you've done that through trusting your gut, listening to your intuition, creating, creating, creating, creating, creating, and then responding to questions and requests. It's a beautiful process and journey that you've been on. And I'm fascinated over here of where you've taken this process. And so when you say, I don't know where I'm going, but as long as I do it with my passion and things that I love, then, yeah, you're going to create some pretty cool things for the rest of us.

That's my hope. Yeah. My hope is that if I go where I'm feeling passionate about that it'll show through in the final product. Because like I said, I don't do things just to do them. I only do things when I actually care about it, and then I put everything, all of myself into it.

I love it.

I love it.

Okay, now you mentioned conventions. Do you have any conventions coming up?

I do. There's a lot of conventions, but it's so much I love doing conventions, but it's a lot of work, so we really only do one, and that's so there's actually there's one earlier this year in Ohio, and we're actually leaving I fly out in oh, my gosh, just under two weeks. I'm leaving for Orlando because there's cookie con in Orlando. So I'll be teaching color theory classes, and then we have, like, a booth where I do demos and all the stuff. It's a lot of fun. The cookie community is literally the best I cannot even stress it's, the best community to be a part of.

And they have a great leader in you in facilitating a lot of that. Again, you do it with love and passion. So when you bring that to the table, people respond with it. I hope. We've always got our trolls. We've always got our trolls, and that's fine. But the love and the passion you bring is amazing. So thank you for just joining us and sharing your creative thoughts, your creative process, because I think it is so important and valuable that we have mothers who do have their creative outlets in whatever way that speaks to them. I think we can lift families and community with that. So thank you, Melanie, for joining us today.

Yeah, glad to be here.