Christy Goldsby Transcript
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everyone. You are listening to Radio Cherry Bombe and I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City. Each week we talk to the coolest culinary personalities around, the folks shaping and shaking up the food scene. Today's guest is Christy Goldsby, the founder of Honey Mama's. If you haven't heard of Honey Mama's, it's a line of cocoa truffle bars that you keep in the fridge. Think better for you chocolate bars with nourishing ingredients. I tried my first Honey Mama's at the Portland Oregon airport years ago, I remember this well, and I was instantly hooked. The brand has grown over the past decade from a local fave to a nationally distributed darling. So, I'm very excited to chat with Christy as part of our ongoing series with forward thinking food entrepreneurs. Christy and I recorded this interview right after our Jubilee Conference because she was in town so Christy refers to the conference a few times, including the keynote talk from Rachael Ray.
Thank you to today's sponsor Brightland, the modern pantry essentials company. We have a serious crush on Brightland here at Cherry Bombe. Brightland was founded by Aishwarya Iyer who, believe it or not, was my intern when I worked at Lancome back in my beauty industry days. Aishwarya and her small but mighty team have built a beautiful company with consciously crafted products I love and use regularly, from the extra virgin olive oil that started it all to Brightland's fruit forward vinegars and floral honey. Everything is sourced from family run US farms, is super fresh, and is truly delicious. A great introduction to the brand is the mini essential set, which features four of their best sellers, two extra virgin olive oils, plus a raw double fermented berry balsamic vinegar, and a raw double fermented citrus champagne vinegar, all made in California in small batches.
There are so many things you can do with these four products, from drizzling over salad greens and tartines to mixing into mocktails. You can order the mini essential set direct from their website, brightland.co. Use code CherryBombe 10 for 10% off the mini essentials now through the end of June. That's Cherry Bombe 10, and it's the number ten, 1-0. There's a lot to discover and love on the Brightland site, including recipes, so be sure to visit. You also can find Brightland at your favorite specialty food shops. And now let's check in with Christy Goldsby, the Honey Mama's mama. Christy, welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe.
Christy Goldsby:
Thank you. It's just so much fun to be here.
Kerry Diamond:
So, you are the honey mama.
Christy Goldsby:
I am the honey mama. I will take that title happily.
Kerry Diamond:
Does everyone call you that?
Christy Goldsby:
We do trade shows all the time and things like that and they're like, "Where's the honey mama?" And I'm always raising my hand. I suppose I'm that honey mama.
Kerry Diamond:
They're are worse nicknames.
Christy Goldsby:
It's a fun name. Yeah. It's definitely one of the reasons that I chose the name is I like the tongue-in-cheek. Any reason to laugh and enjoy a moment is what I'm mostly about.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you wind up starting Honey Mama's?
Christy Goldsby:
I wound up starting Honey Mama's after... Gosh, I was 44 when I started Honey Mama's. I had had quite a lot of different things happen in my life before that point. But essentially the short story is, I grew up in a family that everything took place in the kitchen in my whole growing up experience, both my mom's side and my dad's side. My grandpa owned a donut shop when I was little.
Kerry Diamond:
What happened to the donut shop?
Christy Goldsby:
I think it actually burned down.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, geez.
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah. And then he ended up just changing careers altogether after that. But that was a big influence on her. She always was an amazing cook. There was six of us in my family. So, we spent a lot of time either eating or cooking or cleaning up. And of course doing tons of celebrating, always in the kitchen and-
Kerry Diamond:
Two parents, four siblings?
Christy Goldsby:
Yep.
Kerry Diamond:
Got it.
Christy Goldsby:
Two parents, four siblings. My parents were from Oklahoma. And hence, this comes to Honey Mama's name. We've got definitely some southern roots with the tongue-in-cheek playfulness of that. But the roots in that food and enjoying... Definitely a language of love, I think there, and just having a lot of fun with it. And my mom was really an inspired cook and always was, and she just brought us into it from a really early age. And so I was always very comfortable with that. When I was in high school, I worked every front of the house, back of the house, you name it, in pretty much every restaurant in Portland. Really influenced by this one central hub family-run restaurant that I worked at through high school and then came back to after college and worked at for just a little while.
And this woman who ran it, she actually was quite similar to Julia Child. She had, I think, eight kids. They all worked at the restaurant. It was just this neighborhood hub. So, fast forward, just a little bit. In early 2000s, my mom, my sister and myself were all at this crossroads in our lives. I've always worked in food and loved food, but I didn't go to culinary school or anything like that. But I definitely just was surrounded by food and worked in it and everything else. And so we were at this crossroad. She was a drug and alcohol counselor at the time. My sister was running an environmental education program, and I was working for a dance company. We all were ready for a change. And I said, "Hey, what about the idea of starting a business where we make a few of our family favorite things," this was before food carts were happening, "and we maybe do some sort of food cart type thing if we make this spaghetti and barbecue meatball thing?"
We also do this buttermilk chocolate cake that my mom made for us for every party and everything else growing up. And I was like, "We literally could sell those two things and just have this little business." And then we could be a part of the community. We could have a lifestyle that was enriching and then come together as two generations in a family and celebrate that. And we ended up starting a bakery called Blue Gardenia. We started at the Portland Farmer's Market. And my husband also was just a at-home coffee roaster, and he was part of this as well. It was in 2004, I do believe. We started at the Portland Farmer's Market with baked goods, some pastries. And we ended up doing the Farmer's Market for about a year.
And then we opened up a brick and mortar space on Mississippi Avenue in Portland in 2005. And it was definitely an MBA in business for sure. An experience in working with your family, for sure. And also one of the most amazing times in my life, I had two little grade school aged daughters at the time. It was just an amazing experience. We sold really beautiful foods. There was just this tremendous community around that. It was in a really fun part of Portland. And so that was my first really entrepreneurial experience in food. And it was a lot of hard lessons, definitely. Ended up leaving the business a few years in, well, about five years in actually, just because it was such a challenge. We started having so many challenges working together, and also I recognize that how can we maintain family relationships and who wants to keep running this?
Kerry Diamond:
It's so hard. I had my own restaurant-
Christy Goldsby:
It was intense.
Kerry Diamond:
... in a coffee shop with my now ex-boyfriend and it just was so hard. I marvel at people who do it and do it well.
Christy Goldsby:
Me too.
Kerry Diamond:
Yeah. Working with spouses, best friends, family members.
Christy Goldsby:
It's crazy.
Kerry Diamond:
Yes.
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah, really good, really good, important experience. Wouldn't probably ever do it again. Do have good family relationships with my family still, so that's good and I don't regret it, but I did feel like that I was interrupted in a process at that time where I was really, really enjoying what we were doing. And we ended up, during that time, we met a local grocery chain called New Seasons in Portland, and they had approached us and said, "Hey...." One of the owners came in all the time and he said, "Would you guys be interested in selling your cinnamon rolls and pecan rolls?" We were kind of known for those. And he said, "Would you be interested in making them into four packs and par-freezing them and selling them frozen, so gourmet cinnamon rolls and pecan rolls out of our freezers at New Seasons?" We did it. We got a grant. We got some grant money.
We built out a whole freezer area in the kitchen space, the bakery space. And that was the first dipping of my toes into CBG at that point. And I learned about what that was like to work with grocery stores and sell products to grocery stores. And I got pretty excited about it because what happened for me was this light bulb of the community and experience that you have when you're in a bakery or coffee roasting a coffee shop is so unique. And I loved the idea of bringing an element of that in some way to grocery store shelves through these nostalgic, really delicious gourmet products. So, we did that. We did cinnamon rolls and pecan rolls in probably 30 or 40 stores locally.
Kerry Diamond:
And that was just because that person walked through the door and said, "Would you consider doing this?"
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah. And they really gave us the opportunity. And much to my sister's chagrin, I think is that I'm always like, "Well, absolutely," and then, "Yes, we'll figure it out later." I was just watching the Julia series, Pertinacity. I kept thinking about-
Kerry Diamond:
I'm a, "Yes. We'll figure it out later," to my detriment. Yes.
Christy Goldsby:
... when she's so worried about that she's lied to her husband and he is ordering caviar and she's like, "He has no idea what I've gotten us into." And so anyway, that's kind of me.
Kerry Diamond:
And was that successful?
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah. It was successful, actually. We had quite a bit of success with that. And Whole Foods. We were in local Whole Foods.
Kerry Diamond:
So, that was your first experience either wholesaling. Before that you were only making product that you were selling directly to a customer. Okay.
Christy Goldsby:
Exactly. Yeah. So, we had our brick and mortar space. We did the Farmer's Markets locally, and then we would do some catering and stuff like that, but that was the first totally different branch. And so we really wanted to get the coffee beans into the grocery stores and the cinnamon roll. So, that became this whole business model. It was way too much of a business. It was too much for all of us to handle and none of us had done it before. And so it was just a lot. We'd been in the stores for about a year or so, and I ended up pulling away from the company. My sister ran it. At that time, my very best friend in the world was going through a pretty intense health crisis. And she had these really crazy symptoms and she'd keep going to doctors and they couldn't figure out what was going on with her.
And she was about to go to the Mayo Clinic for all these tests. And she was losing the ability to move half of her face. And it wasn't strokes or anything like that and all sorts of crazy symptoms. And so her Tau Chi teacher said, "Hey, I did this cleanse, and I was very, very ill and it actually cured me." She says, |I'm going to try this thing." And I said, "Well, I'm going to do it with you because I'm going to support you in this process," and started doing that, I think, a couple weeks later. It was called the Body Ecology Diet. And it's all about gut health, getting rid of the... Or just probiotic health essentially, and cultured vegetables and all this stuff. And so neither one of us had ever eaten like that before at all. I was about three weeks into this cleanse with her. Pretty miserable.
Kerry Diamond:
You were just doing it to be a good friend.
Christy Goldsby:
I was just doing it to be a good friend. And I was-
Kerry Diamond:
You were miserable.
Christy Goldsby:
Oh, my. Those are really, they're not easy. And I had done some fasting and stuff like that. But when I did that with her, I not only watched her completely turn her health around with that cleanse, but I felt like such a different person. I had struggled with anxiety and depression off and on forever in my life. My energy had just, I think from having the bakery too, was just so tapped. My cortisol levels were so out of control. And I felt like a different person. I felt uplifted. I felt energetic. I felt clearheaded. I felt not depressed, not anxious. And she ended up finding out she was celiac at that time too. So, that was the process of that. But it became this huge aha for me that I always knew that I didn't do super well when I ate a lot of the sugar and stuff, but I've always been more drawn to the un-sweet things, I think because I do get really zapped.
I don't even know what it is in my system, but it just doesn't sit super well with me. And so I really started thinking, "Okay, oh my gosh." I was like, "This is my next businesses. I want to do a cultured vegetable company where I sell these cultured vegetables and people just have this opportunity to eat this really simple food and it helps their overall wellbeing." And so that was this huge aha. I thought I knew I understood the grocery store basic concept as where the margins needed to be. And I love people and I'm always up for something new and interesting. What happened at that point is I thought, "Okay, I want to do this and I'll start it at the Farmer's Markets again." I understood that playbook.
Kerry Diamond:
You were ready to start from the beginning.
Christy Goldsby:
I was ready to start. And so that was the beginning. And I kept running into all sorts of problems with this idea of the cultured vegetables. I couldn't get the licensing. My back kept going out. It was a really arduous process really just to make it and sauerkraut and it's super stinky. Love the stuff, but it wasn't... My daughters were both like, "Mom, all these things that you're making and trying to make and stuff, they're so stinky in the fridge. Every time we open the fridge." I'm like, "That's really important to think about."
Kerry Diamond:
Ah, kids. Yes, they are stinky, but they're good.
Christy Goldsby:
So, anyway, I continued to think about, "Okay, how can I actually blend these two worlds?" Because I've always been more a very fitness-oriented person, really wellness-minded, and thought, "How can I blend these two worlds?" Which I just loved so much about the bakery world and cooking and baking in general, like we just got done celebrating with the Cherry Bombe and the Jubilee, is this nostalgia, this love, this experience that we have of eating something that somebody has made for you. It's just such a pleasure to both make it and to be given it. So, that element is what I realized when I was running into all those different walls with the cultured vegetables was, it's because I think in my core being, I want this feeling of pleasure and comfort food and all that and not have to be so functional. I want it somehow to be enrobed in this highly pleasurable experience where you feel like you're eating chocolate cake.
Kerry Diamond:
So, how did you get from cultured vegetable to chocolate treats?
Christy Goldsby:
So, another friend of mine and I, this is about a year later or so, we're doing just, I don't know, 10 days of super healthy, clean eating kind of thing. And we would call each other and we'd be like, "Could we just eat popcorn? Popcorn, is that on our little healthy eating cleanse?" So, we always had this little back and forth thing going on about how could we cheat while we're on our little cleanse thing. And it was really funny. And she says, "Oh my gosh, I've got this thing. I'm totally going to bring it over to your house tomorrow morning. I'm going to drop it off on your doorstep." And she was like, "It's our last day of our cleanse that we're doing. And it's all the things I think that we can pretty much eat right now," but she's like, "but it literally tastes a candy bar."
And I was like, "Okay, bring it on." So, I was so excited. I opened my door the next morning and sitting on my door she had brought this tray full of these... They looked bird suet. It's just chock full of coconut oil and I think it was flax seeds and almond butter and cocoa and maple syrup or honey, I can't remember which of the sweeteners was in it. But I put it in my mouth. I was like, "This is the thing. This is actually the thing that I really want to do, is I want to bring this to the tables." And I realized right away it was melted all over your hands. I thought, "Okay, well, this is not going to work. It definitely has to stay refrigerated." And so I just started playing around with that concept though, because it was very much comfort food forward.
It was very protein forward. And so I ended up making the bar recipe from that inspiration. And during that time, that was 2009, 2010, actually probably about 2010, the paleo movement was coming up. I started just looking around for different recipes that were more dessert-oriented that were in that raw food world. And that was how I ended up making the recipe. Pretty much just tweaked this one that she had given me and played around with honey, sprouted almonds, cocoa powder, unrefined coconut oil, Himalayan pink salt, and called it a day. And I put it in the fridge. I took it out. I cut it up into little squares and I literally did take one bite that thing and I was freaking out.
Kerry Diamond:
This is it. Who was your first customer?
Christy Goldsby:
My very first customer was a coffee shop in Portland called the Driftwood Coffee Shop. I still have the dollar from that first sale. It was two days before Thanksgiving. I also had just gotten into... When I tasted the bar for the first time, I fell in love with it because I had been playing around too during this time with a lot of alternative sugars and even sugar-free ideas and things. How can I create this thing that is very wellness-focused, but also has love in it, like you can really taste that love? Because that's why I like eating cakes and cookies. And you can taste that as the butter and the sugar and all that good stuff. And they were just lacking that, like a lot of the things. And so I loved when I ate the honey, there was something real special about the way I think that it made me feel too. Just the way that the bar made me feel was so good. And it gave me no dips of energy and it made me feel completely vital, I would say.
Kerry Diamond:
I told you how I first discovered you. It was in the Portland, Oregon airport, which is my favorite little airport in the world. And it does such a nice job of recognizing the local food specialties from there and you can buy them in the airport. I bought some there and I fell in love with it, but I knew it was a Portland-based treat. Then fast forward I was walking through my neighborhood and I see this huge poster that you're in Whole Foods. How did you go from this fabulous little brand that was a very local brand to a brand that's now... Are you nationally distributed with Whole Foods?
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah. We're nationally distributed with Whole Foods. And I love that story. That's so great. And it really is, I'd started at the Portland's Farmer's Market downtown at PSU. It's such a great Farmer's Market. It's really hard to get into. And the other products that I had made that I was thinking about starting a business with, I had actually submitted to the Farmer's Market and been turned down. So, I got in there and I had done the Farmer's Markets. I did several Farmer's Markets a week and was hustling, hustling, hustling. And I love to hustle. And within the first year I was dropping off the product to local grocery store buyers and stuff and getting lots of really positive feedback. People were putting it on their shelves really pretty much right away. And I think it's really important to note that it's refrigerated.
When I first made it, I recognized it was refrigerated. I loved everything about it and I didn't really see it as an obstacle at all. I went and checked out what was in the fridge of the grocery stores and I thought, "This feels to me like a really important part of a conversation that I want to be a part of and activate in people, that you can eat something that is absolutely delicious, but if you can't eat something, if you are gluten intolerant, or if you have some specific diet that you have to be on, what a lovely thing to not have to make it yourself and to be able to find it in the grocery store where everybody else buys their candy bars."
Kerry Diamond:
Did Whole Foods come to you or did you go to them?
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah. Whole Foods actually came to me at the Farmer's Market. That's where I met my buyer. Had just an immediate, really positive interaction with them locally. And they were super, super supportive. And I think it's funny because the fact that it is in the refrigerator's always a conversation. And especially back then. "But where's this going to go in our store?" And I would just walk around with the buyers and we'd look at spaces. And some it was more obvious than others, but we ended up just always finding a great spot in really more a grab and go deli or bakery vibe of spot on the store. And-
Kerry Diamond:
In my Whole Foods you're in a great spot.
Christy Goldsby:
Are we?
Kerry Diamond:
In the Gowanus one. Yeah.
Christy Goldsby:
Great. I always love hearing that.
Kerry Diamond:
You can't miss it.
Christy Goldsby:
So, yeah, the Farmer's Market was this testing ground. And at that point I decided to take out a little loan and then build a kitchen space. And I had done that when-
Kerry Diamond:
How did you get the loan? Because I'd spent last year trying to get a loan and that was a pain in the neck.
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah. It's not easy. Well, it's a great segue. So, I went to my local bank. I had nothing. I didn't own a house. I had nothing. I didn't even own a car. I had nothing to show for collateral. And I just applied for it. And I was like, "I don't care. I'm just going to go ahead and apply for this loan." And at that time, my friend Amy, who I danced with, she said, "My husband owned a tech business, sold it, and now he works with small entrepreneurs who are actually trying to create businesses. And if you ever want to talk to him about what it's like to raise money." And I was like, "That just scared the living shit out of me." And I thought, "I don't know what that world is about, but I'm going to stay as far away from it as I can." But I did meet with him.
And at that moment I said, "Okay, this is super interesting." Because he's like, "What's great about if you raise money, for one thing, it's really hard to often get the money you need from a bank. And there's a lot of angel investors who are interested in and will invest in a tiny company like yours, who are just silent and they're not going to put pressure on you. And it's just all about how you approach it." And I thought, "Okay, that actually sounds kind of interesting." And I really liked the feeling of having a network of people who were supportive financially and also just family, I think. There was that sense of that. So, I ended up getting the loan. I got-
Kerry Diamond:
Oh you did, from the bank.
Christy Goldsby:
I did. I got the loan. And what they did is they gave me the loan and I think it was like, "Okay, great. We're going to give you," I think it was a $60,000 loan. So, it wasn't huge, but it was enough for some equipment. And they said, "We're going to give you this loan, but you have to come up with," I think it was 20% upfront, "in order for us to give you the rest of it."
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, interesting.
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah, it was real... But the interest rate was low and-
Kerry Diamond:
Did you do your commercial kitchen?
Christy Goldsby:
And then I did. I built out a kitchen space and I actually did do a fairly small friends and family round at that same time. So, I'd been in the business about a year, year and a half. And then that was 2014 when I did that. And closed that round, opened up a little space, about 1200 square foot space. And I think I had five employees at that point. And we were in grocery stores locally. We were still doing several farmers markets a week. I had to actually write a business plan for the first time when I did the friends and family round. And I think that's actually a really important part of this story is because it, I think, was very important because it allowed me to be accountable to other people than just myself.
Because I might have given up many times along the road here. To grow a company like this, it's intense. And it, I think, was really, really helpful to have a group of people who were cheering me on and also just feeling that accountability and writing that plan and really being able to look at, "Okay, what's the roadmap here?" Had the plan. And at that point when I created that plan, it was definitely distilling for me the value of what I was trying to do.
It's like, "What am I doing here? And how big do I want to grow a company?" And I thought, "I want to impact the food conversation somehow in this way that feels really important to me, that I'm seeing both on a personal level, but that feels obviously I recognize that as a broader conversation that was happening to lots of people." And I felt comfortable growing something regionally because I like to touch things. I like to feel connected to the thing and the people around me. And that was my plan, was to grow my company to be a regional company within about five years, and then I had no idea after that. I just thought, "That's my plan."
Kerry Diamond:
After that, question mark.
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah. And then we did. And so we have. So, now I'm 10 years into the business. We did a Series A round of investment in the end of 2019. And so at that point we brought on Amberstone Partners, which is this really, really well-aligned, wonderful group of investors that are based in San Francisco. What I recognized at that point was we were pretty much at the point where I was wanting to grow the business. I had lots of energy left in me to continue to grow it. And it was doing well enough where I thought, "If this still feels healthy to me and that I'm taking care of myself and taking care of the company, taking care of the people in the company..."
Because that's where it starts, right? And it's like what Rachael Ray was talking about, that extension of how do we take care of each other and then give back and then let that circulate. And that, to me, that's always my question as the company continues to grow. And so when we did that, we closed that round of investment. I knew that that was going to allow us to have the momentum and the funds that we needed for marketing and PR and sales really to-
Kerry Diamond:
And you repackaged. That's always a big deal.
Christy Goldsby:
And that's when we did the repackaging. Yeah. That's when we did the repackaging. So, we had the same packaging for seven years, eight years. And it was hand wrapped and butcher paper with a bright label around it. And we did all of that by hand forever and ever and ever. We still hand-do quite a bit of the process.
Kerry Diamond:
So, do you still have a question mark at the end of the next five years or do you know what you want to do with the company?
Christy Goldsby:
Right now where my mind is at and what the strategy for the company is is to become a mainstream opportunity for a confection for people.
Kerry Diamond:
And there has not been a lot of innovation in, you called it novelty, I would just say the candy category. I mean, I see the organic Reese's Peanut Butter Cup on the counter at my local deli and I get very excited. But there hasn't been much advancement.
Christy Goldsby:
It's an interesting process because what we've done is we grew the company through the natural grocery channel intentionally, because that's always where I recognized that was the core demographic. And then we're just at this point now where we are crossing over into the more conventional market, and the consumer isn't necessarily as curious to be like, "What's in this," and blah, blah, blah. So, letting the brand develop and mature to where it's gotten has been really intentional. I didn't want to try to go faster because number one, we're in the refrigerator and that refrigerated space has filled out quite a bit, which is good for us. But in New York, in all these bodegas, and I walk around all the time and I'm like, "Where is Honey Mama's going to go? Where's Honey Mama's going to go?" And from five years ago when I came here, there actually are a lot more spots now with the juices and all the little juice shots and all these things where we've got great little spots for us to plop into.
So, that is my goal over the next five years is to be able to continue to dive into, bridge over into the conventional shopper more and meet people where they're at. So, we're doing innovation all the time. We have a line of, well, 11 products now that are the three serving size. And we're looking at innovations of form factors that are going to be maybe really fun and approachable for people, keeping those as, whatever, you can buy that or you give it as a gift and then something that is maybe smaller that you can just munch on and things like that. And so-
Kerry Diamond:
Exciting.
Christy Goldsby:
...that's kind of... Yeah. I think that's what keeps me pretty excited and busy.
Kerry Diamond:
This hasn't just been an evolution for your brand. It's been a real evolution for you and a real journey for you. What do you wish you knew at the start of Honey Mama's that you know today?
Christy Goldsby:
That the challenges are going to show up in such different ways than you anticipate and to just trust and slow down and not try to rush to figure it out. There have been several stages with the company where I just slow down, take a minute and then regroup and then look at problem solving. I have learned how to problem solve in so many new and amazing ways that I had no idea I had it in me. Also, come back from the depths of just self-doubt and just being able to find that resilience in the moments of where you're dealing with overcoming huge challenges. And I think I knew some of that from Blue Gardenia back at the bakery, but the scale of this has been much, much bigger. So, it's trust the process, do lots and lots of self-love. Walk your talk. What we're doing with Honey Mama's is it's all about, really, about self-care. So, I probably would have told myself in the beginning, "You better learn how to walk your talk a lot better, babe."
Kerry Diamond:
I kind of relate to that, sadly. It's just so impressive. I mean, I don't know if you pat yourself on the back very much, but you didn't go to business school. You didn't come up in these different corporations, and you really are a self-taught CEO.
Christy Goldsby:
Yeah. I love it. I think I love that challenge. I really, really do. What I'm learning at 53 now, and I feel like the last few years especially, and taking on the money from Amberstone and doing the Series A, honestly I recognize that as both really important to the health of the company of where I wanted it to be, but also for the health of me. And I think that because we were able to put the right people in places and there was just less of that scarcity mindset or whatever that is where you're literally just in survival mode all the time. And so that gets very, very important as we age. Certainly for me, at least, in what you are able to put out there. Yeah. It's clearly a culmination of a lot of really cool different things that you've done and being able to bring that together and have that voice for that thing. It's like this magic. And with Honey Mama's, yeah, for me, it was listening to the woman who was Julia's executive assistant.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, yes. Stephanie Hersh.
Christy Goldsby:
I was loving just how she talked about how, when she was in college and what she studied and how all the little dots end up connecting. And I was listening to that thinking, "Yep, yep, yep, yep." I love that. If anything else, I think I continue to learn every day. This seems like, "What the heck am I doing right now?" But I'm also just trying to trust that it really does matter and make sense in the larger scheme of things and-
Kerry Diamond:
Sometimes the dots do all connect.
Christy Goldsby:
Sometimes they do.
Kerry Diamond:
Yes. Tell us some tools that you rely on as an entrepreneur. For example, I don't know what we would do without MailChimp. Gusto is our payroll system. Some folks love Asana. Some folks love Slack. What do you rely on?
Christy Goldsby:
I personally, honestly, don't do a ton of that in my business. But I think that I rely on the right people in the right positions to know what they're doing with all that stuff.
Kerry Diamond:
Got it. Hey, that's an answer. You're the boss.
Christy Goldsby:
We are a manufacturer. So, that's a great question because we still... For example, there's really expensive software that you can buy that ties all of your ordering and your manufacturing per lot and all these things all together that the concept is it would make it seamless. And the truth is is it's super, super expensive and we still can't really afford to do it. And it really still makes sense to us to be still using QuickBooks and Excel. And those are our two tools that we use in order to track all that for right now. And we'll continue to do that.
Gosh, because I have over 60 employees, I think a lot of the tools for me come down to management and management support for the staff. And that doesn't all boil down to technology, but being able to have a really strong human resources person, which we just hired a couple years ago, to help us manage people. Because that is such a huge part of what we do now is manage people and run departments. And about two and a half years ago, we found... Literally I think she dropped out of... She's like Glinda the Good Witch that came from the sky and she runs our...
Kerry Diamond:
I just got goosebumps. I have a lot of folks in my life like that. It's like, "Oh, thank God."
Christy Goldsby:
She is the VP of Operations now. And she came in and she had had 20 years of experience in co-packing and manufacturing. And it was the first person who came in and really knew what she was doing. And she has been able to not only create an incredibly efficient food-safe environment, highly impeccable, but also the ability to know how to treat and manage people. The quality and the grace that she has brought to that is... There is no software, no anything that could replace human beings being treated in a way that they actually want to come to work. And it's unbelievable. We have really low turnover because of that. And that was one of my hugest challenges for so many years was to try to manage that.
Kerry Diamond:
There's no replacement for a good human.
Christy Goldsby:
Oh my gosh. I would say humans, I have to say. I think those are my tools.
Kerry Diamond:
Any advice for CEOs or aspiring CEOs out there?
Christy Goldsby:
Go for it. Do your homework. Do your homework. Do your homework.
Kerry Diamond:
I love it.
Christy Goldsby:
Investigate as much as you can in the field that you are looking at and don't be afraid. Just do your homework and don't expect for anything to happen overnight. It takes a lot of time to develop and to grow and to do it right.
Kerry Diamond:
Christy, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for making a beautiful product that I've loved all these years. Thank you for supporting Jubilee. Jubilee wouldn't have happened without you. So, thank you for that. And thanks for coming by Radio Cherry Bombe.
Christy Goldsby:
Thanks, Kerry. Appreciate it.
Kerry Diamond:
Thank you so much to Christy Goldsby for joining us. If you'd like to try Honey Mama's, you can order from their website, honeymamas.com, or you can find them in places like Whole Foods. If you're new to the brand and need some help deciding what to try, my favorite flavors are the Oregon Mint, the Coconut, and the Spicy Dark. Also, their new carrot cake flavor is next on my list to try. Thank you to Brightland for supporting today's show. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out past shows with other savvy entrepreneurs like Dee Charlemagne from AVEC Beverages and Sana Javeri Kadri of Diaspora Co., who happens to be on the cover of the latest issue of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Stay up to date on all things Cherry Bombe by signing up for our newsletter at cherrybombe.com. Radio Cherry Bombe is a production of Cherry Bombe Magazine. Our theme song is by the band Tralala. Thank you, Joseph Hazan, studio engineer for Newsstand Studios, and thank you to our assistant producer, Jenna Sadhu. And thanks to you for listening. You are the bombe.