We sit down with Ashley Rogers in this episode of Money Mondays, the founder and powerhouse behind Spudsy, Buff Bake, and Sprinkles CPG. Ashley shares her journey from working as a cocktail server to launching successful brands in the CPG and retail spaces. She talks about her experiences growing Buff Bake, raising $9M for Spudsy, and innovating with Sprinkles’ new cupcake cups. Ashley also dives deep into the challenges of working with business partners, building brands, and breaking into retail stores. Don't miss her insights on the realities of entrepreneurship, retail, and scaling businesses from the ground up! --- Like this episode? Watch more like it 👇 The Secret to Turning Your Passion Into a Million Dollar Empire w/ Danielle White 👑: https://youtu.be/0dlLoC2TUGw Why Your HOBBY Could Be the Secret to Making a Fortune w/ Josh Luber & Noah Neiman 💵 : https://youtu.be/WF2k8olReBU Ted Dhanik Shares His MOST Valuable Money Lessons 📈 : https://youtu.be/4CtAPoG5GdE Clinton Sparks & Eddie Wilson's BILLION Dollar Exit & The Business of Gaming: https://youtu.be/9bT3nGvs6Q8 Watch ALL Full Episodes Here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k --- The Money Mondays is a business podcast here to teach you how to make money, invest money, and donate money by showcasing some of the world's most successful people and how they do the same. Hosted by serial entrepreneur Dan Fleyshman, the youngest founder of a publicly traded company in history, this money podcast gives you an exclusive behind the scenes look at how the wealthiest celebrities, entrepreneurs, athletes and influencers make, invest and donate money. If you want to learn more business and investing while you work to improve your financial life, you're in the right place! Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@themoneymondays?sub_confirmation=1 Dan Fleyshman, The Money Mondays Learn more here: https://themoneymondays.com Watch all the podcast episodes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLs0D-M5aH-0IOUKtQPKts-VZfO55mfH6k Let’s Connect... Website: https://themoneymondays.com Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-money-mondays/id1663564091 Twitter: https://twitter.com/themoneymondays LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-money-mondays/about/ TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@themoneymondays FB: https://www.facebook.com/The-Money-Mondays-110233585203220/
Chapter 1: How did Ashley Rogers start her entrepreneurial journey?
Mm hmm.
You need my brand, one, because hopefully it's not another Me Too product. It's something innovative and different. And two, it's performing really well in these smaller retailers that I'm in. That's why you should take it in in your larger retailer.
So someone gets into those first few stores, how can they nurture that store? How can they make them feel like a lot of times people don't realize you're either paying for merchandising displays, you're paying for the discounts that happen, you're paying for chargebacks if someone wants to return the goods to you. There's a lot of money that goes into once you get into the retailer.
Where can they learn about that stuff? Do you have coaching or masterminds? How do people understand this stuff? Because I grew up selling my energy drinks. We were in 55,000 stores. Mm-hmm. But I lived and breathed it for half a decade of just like schlepping around the country, carrying cases of drinks in the stores and like, will you buy my product?
Yeah, it's funny that you say that, Tim. So I feel like not a lot of people teach you how to do those things. And I've spent thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and advisors to basically in real life experience. That's basically how I learned how to do all those things. But I also created this little program.
It's like a mastermind teaching people A to Z how to launch these products into retail. So from working with manufacturers to getting into retail to working with distributors and brokers and the whole gamut, because I feel like not a lot of people teach you the A to Z of launching a product. So I'm in the process of building out that as well.
Very good.
Yeah.
People need it.
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Chapter 3: How did Ashley raise $9 million for Spudsy?
I get it going and then I figure out what gaps I need to fill first and the most important role I need to hire first, which is normally I'm the best at sales. It's normally like the ops and finance side. So if I get somebody else to run that smoothly, I can go out here and sell and market the product. and get the revenue coming in.
Yes. So here's a big thing. Operations and finance is very time consuming and you want someone that knows how to live and breathe it. It's super important. I don't run any accounting in any of my companies because I'm better versed to go do like what Ashley said is go do the sales or go do the marketing or go do the social content, go to the conventions.
me dealing with the accounting and finance is not helpful to the company no and sometimes like oh i can't spend the three grand a month or ten grand a month or two grand a month or five grand a month whatever the price is to have someone do that thing but how much are you worth totally like would aren't you worth more than five grand a month yeah if you know that you can go create ten thousand twenty thousand fifty thousand hundred thousand dollars in sales then five grand a month is free
Well, that person will basically pay for themselves.
For sure.
Yeah.
Just allowing you to unshackle yourself from the office and deal with accounting and spreadsheets. And so I go in knowing like, okay, what does my day look like? If I'm spending two hours a day dealing with accounting and finances, what could I do with two hours a day in sales?
Yep.
All right. So why don't I pay that person five grand a month to go do that thing for me? Unshackle me. Let me go.
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Chapter 4: What innovative product did Ashley create with Sprinkles?
And what does it do for retailers to already have an established brand?
Yeah. So we didn't want to be in baking because the velocity is pretty low and baking. We wanted to be in a high velocity category and we're an indulgent, decadent brand. So we just love the chocolate category. Um, when it was presented to me, it was bars, but I realized quickly that bars, like I, like I said, I'm big about innovation.
So creating something that brought chocolate and the cupcake together and creating the cupcake cup, like
was the perfect product for the chocolate category which is like a higher velocity category because that's another thing when I create things like I don't want to create something and know that it's going to be a slow mover I want to go into a category where I know it's a high velocity item and the product's going to move salty snack like
Most people buy a bag of salty snacks when they're in store, right? Chocolate, another big category. Ice cream, another big category. But ice cream's difficult because I actually looked at the ice cream piece of it too. The frozen component, that's another thing you want to look at. The logistics of it. Does it need to be refrigerated? Is it frozen?
This would be a great frozen brand, obviously, too. But sprinkles could be anything.
Yeah, it could.
Frozen is a there's a lot of ice cream brands. Yeah, there are a lot of there's like six shelves, like six cooler shelves of ice cream, maybe more now at most chain stores. But they also are owned by the same half a dozen companies like that are just cannibalizing each other and buying all of each other. Okay.
So as you're getting into retail stores with the brand and you're already in obviously to the biggest brands, which is Walmart and Target, how did the small stores buy you? Do they buy you through distributors? They buy through wholesale? Like how do small retailers go buy a brand like this?
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