Leaving Retail to Pursue Her Creative Business Full-Time with Krystina Benedetti of The Messy Cookie
Episode 517: Show Notes
Today on the podcast we have Krystina Benedetti of The Messy Cookie. She is a lifelong entrepreneur who has grown her love of baking into a business and started spreading her joy through COVID. She has left her full-time job and has built an online business that offers virtual Cookie Ice Nights and she is also making all these amazing custom cookies. We love this girl, she is so amazing!
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Krystina is soon to be a Strategy Academy alumni! She is not even a year through our course, hasn’t even celebrated her first birthday with us, and has already done super amazing things in her business, like putting in her notice to leave her retail job to pursue her cookie business full-time. We break down everything that she has gone through in the last eight months that has led up to the moment where she felt comfortable and ready to leave her job. We talk about what she had logistically prepared for, how she got there mentally, what investing in her business looked like to her, and how she tackled the program and made the most of it to see the most traction. If you are interested in the Strategy Academy, we have a free training video that you can watch here.
The Birth of The Messy Cookie and How Krystina Found Strategy Academy
Krystina starts off our conversation with the story of how she came up with the idea for her business, how she found Strategy Academy, and how it helped her get to where she is today! Krystina has a background in art and marketing and fell on the idea of decorating cookies so she could have a creative outlet. This was when The Messy Cookie was born. Soon, Krystina had people asking her to decorate cookies for all their occasions and her business also offered cookie decorating parties. This was happening in the middle of last year, in the thick of COVID, and Krystina was overjoyed to bring people happiness through beautiful cookies in such a difficult time. She also found that businesses of all sizes were interested in the cookie ice nights as team-building exercises. Her retail job closed during this time so at that point, she was treating The Messy Cookie as if it was her full-time job! She remembers the first time she decided to invest in her business full-time was when a big client from Wayfair reached out to ask her to host a virtual cookie icing evening. She explains that when she realized how viable virtual cookie icing nights were, was when she decided to start laying the foundations to finally be able to dive in full-time. At this point, she knew she had to find some coaching and after doing some research she found Boss Project’s Trello For Business course. Then she signed up for the Dream Job free seminar and was totally hooked because she loved Abagail and Emylee’s vibe. She wanted to sign up for the proper course and even though it was slightly out of her budget, she took the plunge and hasn’t looked back since!
The Lessons Krystina Learned From SA That Helped Her Grow Her Business
One of the most beneficial parts of being a part of the Strategy Academy community for Krystina has been having access to the monthly training calls. These are times where Abagail and Emylee connect with their students live and give tailored advice. Krystina has been so busy building her business that she hasn’t had time to do all the courses offered by SA but swears that the value she has gotten just from the mentorship in these calls has already been worth her money. She also talks about how helpful it has been to be able to post a question on the group, how helpful other members have been in responding, and also how amazing the voice note format that Abagail and Emylee use to answer her questions in have been. In a nutshell, the tailored nature of the advice given in SA has been a huge plus for Krystina.
She gets into a few of the checkpoints she set for herself in the eight months between deciding to build her business up until she could quit her job and actually quitting. She remembers feeling happy having the cookie business as a side hustle at first but believes this was just a story she was telling herself because she was afraid of greatness. COVID played a large role in giving her the nudge, and a lot of her fears were also financially based. That being said, she and her husband do have dual income, but still decided to button down, and Krystina began to set goals for how much income her business would have to bring in. She had the custom order side of the business and the cookie icing nights too, and was also brainstorming about all kinds of other new ideas. This leads her to weigh in on another hugely valuable piece of advice she got from SA. As a creative person, Krystina always wanted to try all the new ideas that came into her head, but Abagail and Emylee explained to her that this approach does one's business a disservice. Rather, fine-tune your main idea until it excels, and then move on to the other ideas you have floating around. This is just what Krystina did and it worked fantastically for her.
The Final Logistical Parts Krystina Put In Place Before Quitting Her Job
So now we have heard from Krystina about the first few stages of building her business using top tips and tricks from the Strategy Academy, and we are curious about what the final two months looked like for her before she took the plunge and quit her job! For Krystina, she needed to have a plan in place for how she was going to achieve her monthly income with different avenues of her new business. She also wanted to have at least two month’s worth of savings in place to see her through the first period just in case. Another thing she wanted to have locked down was a bunch of clients secured in the pipeline. A final logistical aspect Krystina wanted to have in place was more of a general value that would help her implement all of the previous ones. This was her belief in the importance of having a strategy and a plan for how to hold herself accountable to it. Of course, we all want to know that once we take that first big leap and quit our day jobs to pursue our businesses full time, the growing seeds of our new project won’t just go ‘poof’ when we need them most. Here, Abagail helps to set our minds at ease by recalling a watershed moment in her and Emylee’s business. She talks about how there definitely was a time where there was no question about whether they would have enough clients to see their business continue to thrive. There came a time where all the clients they would ever need were just there and all they had to worry about was nurturing them!
What It Feels Like To Be A Full-Time Business Owner
We have now arrived at the present moment for Krystina. Not only did she intend to quit her job and set a plan in motion for how she was going to do that, but she actually did leave and is now officially a full-time business owner! We ask her how it feels and she can’t even put into words how great it is for her that every day she gets to wake up and be the master of her own destiny. But this does not mean that her life has become perfect or stress-free. There are all kinds of new problems she has to deal with. For instance, Krystina fills 80% of her virtual events using Facebook ads and recently ran a campaign that just fell flat on its face. So there are new problems to be solved all the time but Krystina would rather face those than be a slave to a job that doesn’t do anything for her except earn her money! She remembers suddenly noticing that four months had gone past while she was working her old job. This is what time feels like when it is not your own. If you are just living for the weekends, what is the point of anything? On the subject of the stresses inherent in being a business owner, Abagail talks about how this doesn’t actually ever let up. This is the reality of owning your own business, but at the same time it feels so good to begin to trust yourself in a new way and realize you don’t have to rely on systems you grew up to believe were more powerful than you. So we are super proud of Krystina and are so excited for what the future holds for her, and also want to say that what she did is completely possible for you as well! So sign up for Strategy Academy and go from day job to dream job today!
Quote This
I don’t know how many times I told myself I would be happier doing cookies on the side. Screw that! That is the story you tell yourself when you are scared of what greatness could be.
Highlights
The Birth of The Messy Cookie and How Krystina Found Strategy Academy [0:04:05.1]
The Lessons Krystina Learned From SA That Helped Her Grow Her Business [0:14:54.1]
The Final Logistical Parts Krystina Put In Place Before Quitting Her Job [0:32:09.1]
What It Feels Like To Be A Full-Time Business Owner [0:35:40.1]
#TalkStrategyToMe [0:40:52.6]
Find your skillset, and your superpower within that!
Revolve your business and offerings around that superpower.
Figure out how to monetize that offer.
Make sure you are passionate about what you are doing, because you will go through hard times.
Figure out how much you need to sell in order to bring in the income you want.
Make a realistic timeline and hold yourself accountable.
Be OK with things not going according to plan.
ON TODAY’S SHOW
Krystina Benedetti
The Messy Cookie
Website | Instagram | Facebook
A lifelong entrepreneur who has grown to love baking almost as much as she loves spreading joy through her cookies, Krystina relentlessly pursues her passion to enjoy life every day. While it started in graphic design and migrated to the world of wine tastings, Krystina found her entrepreneurial home nestled into baking sugar cookies, cakes and more, and sharing her love for decorating through the world she created of Cookie Ice Nights™, The Paint Night You Can Eat. This venture ties everything she’s ever loved from her past experiences into one giant ball of momentum, and she can’t wait to see how it grows next! She’s getting married this summer to her biggest supporter, and she believes every great thing in life can only be enhanced by the right people. She tries to live every day by something her dad always told her: You only get to go around once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
KEY TOPICS
Starting a business, Business strategy, Overcoming doubt, Online business, Creativity, Cookie decoration, Strategy Academy, Community, Marketing, Virtual events
