This is the full transcript for Episode #251 of the Wild Business Growth Podcast featuring Emily Harpel – Cotton Candy Clevelander, Founder of Art of Sucre. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
Emily Harpel 0:00
It is the scariest thing you will ever do, but it’s also the best thing you will ever do.
Max Branstetter 0:20
Hey, welcome back to the Wild Business Growth Podcast. This is your place to hear from a new entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning who’s turning Wild ideas into Wild growth. I’m your host, Max Branstetter, Founder and Podcast Producer at MaxPodcasting. And you can email me at to save time with your high-quality podcast. This is episode 250 13 minus 12. I’m making up new equations here, Episode 251. And today’s guest is Emily Harpel. Emily is the Founder and CEO of Art of Sucre, the gourmet cotton candy company that is just as fun and delicious as it sounds. They create, of course gourmet cotton candy with really really cool innovative flavors. And they even have some edible glitter bombs to add into the mix or add into your drinks as well. In this episode, we talk carving out and cotton candy eating out your niche in a really really cool space. How to unleash your brand on social media as Emily and Art of Sucre has absolutely blown up blown up blown up on TikTok and some tips from psychology to apply to your marketing. Plus lots and lots of love for Cleveland/Akron/Northeast Ohio, which as always could be the entire episode. It is Emily from CLE. Enjoyyyyyyyyyy the showwwwwwww! Aaaaaalrightyyyyy we are here with Emily Harpwl. The and I’m coining this cotton candy and cool champagne, glitter bomb queen from Cleveland. So they got all sorts of records there. But Emily, super excited to dive into your cotton candy Empire story and basically just talking about Cleveland/Akron the whole time as well. Thank you so much for joining How you doing today. I’m good. Thank you for having me. Of course, of course. I always get fired up talking to entrepreneurs. But when somebody has Cleveland ties, it gets me like, jumped out of my socks. And then you have a pretty boring business as well. There’s nothing really exciting about cotton candy or anything in the sweet space. So that’s kind of a bummer. But besides, now we’re really excited to dive into all the sweetness, which leads me to the biggest thing I’ve been wondering about is Have you always had an affection for confection See what I did there?
Emily Harpel 2:59
That was that was really good. And I’m glad that you’ve played it out that the most exciting thing about me is the fact that I am from Northeast Ohio because it’s true. And I would agree with that.
Max Branstetter 3:09
That’s usually where I lead with my backstory.
Emily Harpel 3:13
As you should. The really funny thing about your your question is, if I’m being honest, the answer’s no. My background and previous interests have really nothing to do with business, let alone cotton candy, or the sweet space in general. So it’s pretty ironic that this is where I have ended up.
Max Branstetter 3:33
So I am out of questions that no I actually have way more questions now. So like there was so there wasn’t anything in your childhood that pointed to you know, like, did you like sweets at all to it? Was there something about cotton candy that jumped out at you? No, and
Emily Harpel 3:47
I know that’s like a terrible answer. But I am just being brutally honest, because I just don’t want to lie to you about it.
Max Branstetter 3:55
That’s a that’s a good thing. That’s what we’re here for.
Emily Harpel 3:56
It’s a good place to start. I got the idea about planning my wedding. I was just graduating college got married crazy young and could not find an answer for wedding favors. This was 2016 and it was really all the rage of like the donut wall if you remember very much giving like an upgrade to sweets. And that’s where the idea came from. It was not this like long lost childhood dream by any
Max Branstetter 4:24
stretch. Real quick. For those who don’t remember, I mean I have a doughnut while myself now I actually have no idea what is the donor wall.
Emily Harpel 4:32
So I feel like this was a really big trend and even still is but really in the events and wedding space. You would literally have a wall at your event that donuts would hang on it was as simple as that. Or even like cake pops were really huge kind of coming up are those sugar cookies that look more like art. It was this time period where Instagram was really blowing up Pinterest was a really big thing. And these desserts were getting this like insane, artisanal up grade for lack
Max Branstetter 5:00
of a better description. Okay, so I, I’m tracking now with cake pops. Definitely always enjoy cakepops. And remember that when that started getting really, really, really sexy, but somehow it just totally missed the boat on the donut wall. So I’m glad you’ve kind of take that. And now taking it to another level with the cotton candy wall, if you will start starting a business, or even thinking of starting a business, you know, around the time of your honeymoon after your wedding. I think most people around that time are like just exhausted from the wedding and wedding planning and like really excited to just chill and not think about work or business at all. How did these dark and sweet thoughts start infiltrating your mind?
Emily Harpel 5:42
Yeah, and when I share even more, you’re gonna think I’m probably even crazier.
Max Branstetter 5:47
No, no, no, you’re from you’re from Cleveland. So you always have a past. Like you could literally say, that’s the biggest disclaimer ever. So
Emily Harpel 5:52
right that lets me get away with pretty much anything at this point. Yeah, so my background in psychology, that’s what my degree is in. And the plan was full on to go to graduate school. And long story short, they filled the cohort before they even rap, like reached my application. So they basically put me on ice a little bit. They’re like, hey, let’s get through this cohort, we’ll come back and review for the neck. So I had about six months to a year after I graduated with nothing to do. But wedding planning, which sounds you know, amazing, except for the fact when you’re not drawing a paycheck, and how do you go get a job that you don’t really have any experience for when you’re going to be leaving in a year. So it was a whole kind of sticky situation. And I no pun intended with that one
Max Branstetter 6:33
I was I was almost gonna let that one fly. But
Emily Harpel 6:35
you had just had to pause on that one. I got to the point where I really had to figure out so I had to figure out something right, I couldn’t just sit for a year, just that wasn’t an option. And I could not find something that just felt like it was the right fit. And so when I had this idea, I really kind of ran with it and presented it to my husband on our honeymoon drive home because we were literally too young to rent a rental car. And this is before like Uber was a big thing. So we drove 20 hours to get to our honeymoon. And on the way back, I had drew trapped and was like, This is my golden moment. And I asked him in the car like is this crazy? What do you think and fully expected him to be like, girl get a real job, like, what are you? What are you doing? And he didn’t, he said, This is an excellent idea. And it was an event based business to begin with. So the whole thought was to spin unique flavors of cotton candy in person at events. And he was onboard. Immediately we came up with the name on that car ride home, I got the LLC on my phone on the car ride home, the Instagram handles all of it. And then took the money from our wedding gifts and bought my first cotton candy machine like immediately following the wedding.
Max Branstetter 7:53
Which brings us perfectly to the Art of Sucre. So let’s get to your official business story there. I don’t know why I said official. Is it your very unofficial business story. I you actually read my mind because I was really curious about how your husband reacted to this idea you had. And you obviously great guy like super supportive, awesome reaction there. What about friends and family when they heard Oh, this is Wait, hold on. This is what Emily’s doing now.
Emily Harpel 8:25
Yeah, that was pretty much the reaction from everybody with exception of my parents, which I guess is really great news because they had just paid for me to get this fancy college degree. And I turned around and was like, actually mom and dad grad school is not really happening. I’m gonna start a cotton candy business. And they were immediately supportive. I think it’s because my parents are entrepreneurs. So it wasn’t as much of a stretch, they could kind of see my vision. And they were able to help along the way. I’ve just been like a paperwork process, which is a huge step up when you’re 23. And, you know, launching a business for the first time. And I also think it’s important to note that Drew’s two years younger than I am so he was 21 and we got married. And I don’t know if it was just because we were both young and stupid or what it was, but the fact that he was like fully on board for this he gets all the credit in the world because that’s just pure insanity.
Max Branstetter 9:18
Oh my god, I think it means the world when you’re significant when your significant other is supportive, even if you can’t pronounce it. Also, parents, that’s everything. I think back on the same way. My parents are entrepreneurs, we got a family business that they started literally the year I was born. So like, somewhere to you, you know, grew up with parents having, you know, business or being entrepreneurs. And I experienced that same sort of thing like when I left the corporate world and joined the family business for a bit and then got more and more and like, kind of differentiate myself into the podcasting space. They’ve been super supportive, the long wet, they’ve been super supportive, and as a long way, they’ve been super supportive the whole way and it’s kind of like a semi stark contrast. As from like, I think probably most people, like most of your friends are kind of in stable jobs in the corporate world. And as time goes on, you know, it’s like they get promotions, they get paid more things like that. And like, for a lot of people like going out on your own or starting a business is like so totally foreign to so many people. That it’s kind of like wait, like podcast like So how’d you get to do that? So it’s experience some of the same things that you’ve experienced, but candy is a hell of a place to have fun with but also to start a business with you know, out of all the different confections confectionery I’m not sure the right way to say that sweets out there. What is it about cotton candy that just kept jumping to the point that I can really differentiate in this space.
Emily Harpel 10:42
It was really the only thing that was being left behind. And that movement that we were kind of talking about right this was on the age of when social media was really starting to come in to a place you could make money off of this was really in the height of people realizing like oh, these aren’t just like silly little pictures that people are posting there’s there’s something here. And everything that had to do with cotton candy was something that was a really childish so it was about a fare or a baseball game, something like that. There was no adult element to it. Number one,
Max Branstetter 11:15
you just gave me the image of like the little kids at a baseball game when they have the cotton candy bundle that’s like as big as their entire body.
Emily Harpel 11:23
Know exactly, because that’s that’s what you think of right in line with that the branding of cotton candy is actually like Loki terrifying if you think about it, it’s this like scary red clown on this like sketchy clear bag that has just like a twist tie on it that wasn’t even like sealed properly, and it’s half melted in the packaging when you get it and it’s probably going to give you a cavity and there’s no flavor associated. It’s a color. Like that’s weird. If you think about it, like pink or blue. There’s no flavor associated with like traditional cotton candy. So I really felt like no one was touching this there was nothing to elevate it to give it this like much needed upgrade. And I had the vision for it. Why not? Me? Which is why I went with cotton candy.
Max Branstetter 12:08
So how much testing and taste testing has there been in your journey as you started to really diversify the flavors that you offer?
Emily Harpel 12:17
Too much too much? Too much taste testing. It’s even funny now. Like when we roll out new recipes, a recipe doesn’t really leave the facility until I taste it just to get the final approval of it. And sometimes when we do those, it’s kind of like a grown around the office. We’re like No, no more cotton candy. Please, we can’t we can’t do anymore.
Max Branstetter 12:39
That’s like the podcast office. Ladies, they were talking about how, when you’re watching a show and the actors are eating food. It might sound like oh, that might be pretty fun to like, eat as part of your job. But they’re like, no, no, no, this is you know, there’s like 30 takes of this scene and you have to eat or act like you’re eating a decent amount every time and imagine how sick of it so like this, this is your life like you’re living that how many flavors total like a running total have you in the team created overall, whether existing or discontinued.
Emily Harpel 13:13
Hundreds, I mean, hundreds upon hundreds when I did events, it was even in the hundreds because it’s so customizable, I did everything by hand back then. And we do everything by hand now so we own all of our own manufacturing. It’s not like we have a co Packer that we call up and say hey, you need to make us a sour caramel apple flavor for Halloween. It’s us coming up with the concept and then executing it so we can really do anything and because of that we do a ton of custom orders whether that’s with corporate clients, big brands, or you know just your next door neighbor because they’re getting married and they want a honey lavender or cotton candy glitter bomb for their French 75 champagne toast. So it’s really unlimited options. It’s hard to keep track.
Max Branstetter 14:01
Do you have a favorite all time a personal favorite flavor?
Emily Harpel 14:05
I actually just mentioned it and I think it’s because it’s on top of mind and we just dropped it for fall it’s our caramel apple flavor that has Sour Apple Pop Rocks in it as well. And it’s very reminiscent if you remember from like childhood those caramel apple suckers you know I’m talking about that come out like every fall.
Max Branstetter 14:23
They have like the apple flavor and the caramel over it. You mean this?
Emily Harpel 14:27
Yeah, like the caramel is like drizzled on top. It’s, I don’t know, makes me think of my childhood. But that flavor is the one that I will literally eat in my office alone. Like my team will come in and just catch me eating a bag of it. It’s so good.
Max Branstetter 14:38
Oh, that rocks, literally it Pop Rocks. That brings back a whole amount of nostalgia from childhood. So there’s the flavor exploration. And then you alluded to the fact that you really have to go from concept to execution. So you’re doing this over and over again. It’s kind of like going back to the office ladies in the office. It’s kind of like running a TV show. It’s like every episode is like a full From start to finish is like a full from concept to like putting it alive. And for you it’s with the flavors. How long does that process typically take from like somebody has the aha moment, ooh, this could be a flavor to a big launch of a new flavor,
Emily Harpel 15:15
it actually can happen pretty quickly, depending on how out of the box the flavor is. So if it’s something that like we’ve created something similar in the past, or something that we don’t have to do any shelflife testing on, it can be a pretty quick turnaround as much as a day if we really, really needed it to be. But I would say on average, we do take a couple of months because we just take our time with it, we have a big meeting at the beginning of the year, where we kind of map out general flavor ideas that we want to have for the rest of the year and concepts. And then we really space out the recipe testing. So we have a little bit of time to just make it perfect. But if it’s something that we have, like this idea that no we have to get to market immediately we can do it and a day or two or even if it has custom packaging, like two weeks max,
Max Branstetter 16:05
two weeks me as I say, but the caramel apple flavor or suckers or lollipops depending on what type of the country you’re from. I imagine you guys have consumed a lot of those for research over the in recent months. That’s pretty exciting. Another innovation you have and this is what’s you know, gone like crazy cotton candy bananas viral on Tiktok. Especially, are the glitter bombs. Where did the insight for this new, I guess, sweet product line if you will come from?
Emily Harpel 16:36
Yeah, so that actually happened while I was doing events, I was at a charity event. And this was years and years and years ago and a woman comes up to me while I was spinning champagne cotton candy with a glass of champagne in her hand. And she asked me what would happen if I was to drop this in my glass. And I said nothing, it’s going to dissolve pretty much immediately and just make you know your champagne maybe like a little bit sweeter, but it’s really not that much sugar. And she was like sign me up. I want it. So I made her the tiniest cone of cotton candy, dropped it in her champagne and she was obsessed and mind you this had no edible glitter in it at the time, it was just the cotton candy. And this woman had to be the ultimate salesperson because she literally walked around to everybody at this 500 person event and had them line up at the car at one point throughout the night to spin these little champagne toppers of cotton candy for the champagne. And I was just in awe she got everybody’s so excited about it. I literally went home that night and started researching like how can I make this better? How can I make this something that is really a wow factor. And sort of playing around with adding sprinkles and colors and edible glitter and all these things and then really finally settled on the edible glitter to make the glitter bomb and I used to do these for events all the time, I would do them in person. And so when I pivoted to CPG I already had the concept and how to execute it. I just needed the packaging portion.
Max Branstetter 18:01
You were so ahead of the curve. Do you watch The Bear by any chance? I don’t. I will I won’t give away much belt. There’s a part in the second season that involves a dish where they just like lovingly place cotton candy as a topper as part of the dish. And like it’s so cool. Like they use it like a cloud. So I think you first of all, you should see them now just guy but like they clearly think that maybe maybe they found inspiration from your TikTok could be
Emily Harpel 18:30
maybe yeah, maybe they’ve seen one of our videos for sure.
Max Branstetter 18:34
You alluded to packaging, what’s your packaging what’s been kind of the highs and lows of your packaging journey for Art of Sucre?
Emily Harpel 18:42
Oh boy, this could be a whole episode. And it ended up itself COVID happened so I had to find a way to pivot and that was a that a year long process. I found an incredible design team. Their names were Molly and Jackie they are still my designers today and they really held my hand through that entire process. But developing packaging is not easy for anybody but it’s really challenging when cotton candy. It’s a food product that’s incredibly delicate. Cotton candy is very temperamental. As we like to say around the studio here. If it’s raining, if it’s humid, if there’s any outside elements, even if we’re inside the building, the machines like to act up a little bit and it melts pretty quickly. So that was a whole process of finding a way to get packaging that made the product last and have a shelf life but then also do it at a low minimum a low run split across a lot of different skews and define providers that it doesn’t take six months to get your packaging in especially because we are like a limited edition a limited release brand. And it’s to this day so nightmare. I’m waiting on a 60,000 unit order for some packaging right now that’s been three weeks delayed. So Oh, it’s a lot of tears honestly and a lot of headaches but it is worth it in the end,
Max Branstetter 20:05
cotton candy tears and headaches that’s going to be the name of your autobiography one day, or your your classic rock album, one of the your email album what’s been the biggest thing you’ve noticed, besides the obvious differences in terms of, you know, product creation and shipping, things like that, what’s been the biggest difference? You’ve noticed since pivoting from more in person stuff to truly like ecommerce focus,
Emily Harpel 20:34
if I’m being honest, my quality of life has gone up, my stress levels are exponentially higher in a lot of ways it’s a lot more is at stake. It’s a lot. It’s a completely different operation, I went from myself, you’d been the only employee to having 20 employees that now rely on me for a paycheck and, and all those things, which is scary. However, I have my weekends and my nights back, which is just such a gift events were a beautiful thing. It’s what got me started. And I do think at some point, we will bring them back probably, but it won’t be me doing them anymore. Because it really takes a toll on you physically, emotionally, mentally, your family, all of that the packaging side of things has been a huge gift to me from that standpoint.
Max Branstetter 21:19
Yeah, I’ve always thought about that. Like, I’ve talked about it with my wife, Dana, because like, Wait, I got really into the especially her really into the wedding planning process during it. And we’re like, oh, like, like that. It’s like a pretty cool job to be a wedding planner. However, you’re always working weekends, and like you’re busy all the time, you have to be ready for people hit you up all the time. And, and your standpoint. So this is this has been a really nice thing for you to get weekends and nights back. Back when you weren’t doing events on the weekends and nights and didn’t have as much free time or or quality of life. What was your key way to kind of handle that and be like, alright, this is, you know, let’s just keep plugging along. And you know, we have to keep working on these times.
Emily Harpel 22:02
Yeah, I don’t know that I was handling it well to be. To be frank, it was really cool to get to interact with people on a regular basis, which was amazing. And to see people in person experience, something that you’ve created from nothing is pretty magical. But from a sustainability standpoint, there was nothing I was heading very quickly towards a really major burnout and I this is from a very privileged standpoint to be able to say this, and I recognize that but when lockdown originally happened, it was almost like a sigh of relief, which is really sad, because it was a forced two weeks to have to not feel like I was running myself into the ground. And again, I’m aware of how privileged that is to even begin to say that but it’s genuinely how i i felt and that’s kind of opened my eyes to being like, oh, okay, like, I can’t do this for the rest of my life. I have to figure something else out.
Max Branstetter 22:56
Yeah, no, I think that’s a very valid reaction. And it’s like a, an interesting take on it. And clearly you were you were craving for, I guess you knew in your mind that alright, this can continue like this forever. You mentioned that your team has built it out to 20 people now which congrats on that. That’s amazing. What tips do you have for anybody that wants to expand from you know, just like yourself on a couple of friends to like a whole candy punching out team like that.
Emily Harpel 23:27
It is the scariest thing you will ever do. But it’s also the best thing you will ever do. Emma is my right hand. She’s our brand director here. She was my first full time hire and people ask me all the time, like how did you know like you were ready. And you don’t ever really feel ready I can remember sitting on my couch like doing the math. If Emma spin this many bags of cotton candy a week, it’ll pay for her paycheck through this amount of time and, and you kind of just have to take the jump and ends up working out and the weight that it took off of me when she came on the team full time is something that I will genuinely never forget. And then once you do it once, it’s so much easier just to keep adding and adding and adding to the point where you have this massive team behind you turn around one day and you’re like, oh my gosh, how did that how did this happen?
Max Branstetter 24:15
Yeah, I think there’s so many things in the business world, especially entrepreneurship world where you never feel ready. And it’s just doing taking those baby steps or making that first action is like what starts to I guess get you a little bit more ready but like you’re never it’s like waiting before a big you know, presentation. Like the actual doing it isn’t as painful as like the waiting beforehand or like the big aspect you make it up to be in your mind. Like once you start doing it that’s when you start to get some momentum doing but it can be really hard to take that first step and many many steps ahead you are that’s that sentence sounded like Yoda many many steps ahead. You are on tick tock so tick tock has been an absolute explosion for you and you viral posts and just super like, if you check out your Tik Tok feed page, it’s you can tell I’m like, like foreign to Tik Tok pretty much. But like, there’s so many beautiful videos that you’ve put together like it’s really aesthetically appealing. And it’s just like an awesome engaging, like really cool behind the scenes, all that what’s been the difference for you and just kind of playing around on tick tock to now having literally like over a million people or millions of people paying attention to what you’re sharing out there?
Emily Harpel 25:30
Yeah, TikTok is a whole different ballgame. There is no doubt about that. I started posting in the middle of lockdown, and really kind of simultaneously, when I decided to transition into CPGs space. And I think what has really helped is that I’ve tried to keep it really natural. It’s not really a, I don’t like sell anything on there. It’s very much asking, you know, for honest feedback, we bring people that follow us along for the ride. And I know that part of that is easier to do, because of how I’ve structured the business from the standpoint of again, we own all of our own manufacturing, we own all of the process of how we get things to market. So it can happen in a really quick turnaround, which is really rare. But if we post a video and someone’s like, oh, like I like the rainbow glitter bombs that you have, but what if you did like me on Rainbow, I can walk into the studio, have my team whip up brighter versions of it posted video, people love it and have it to market in three weeks. And so that has really been a gift to our following and and I think that it’s cool to bring people along with your story. People are interested in entrepreneurs. And if you can just kind of pull the veil back a little bit, you’re gonna get people excited about what you’re doing. And that’s pretty much what I’ve done.
Max Branstetter 26:52
Well, that’s exactly the approach I take with the show like I like I’m one of those people like I love learning about the behind the scenes of entrepreneurs and how they went from idea to wait, like, really cool clients, millions of TikTok followers, things like that. But that neon one, I know you’re talking about the neon one because I’ve seen that when I was stalking your TikTok it’s super cool. And I think it’s it’s really cool, like next level of validation when you get suggestions, suggestions, cannot talk today from your audience about content ideas, and even can float a product ideas as well. So I’m glad that I think a lot of us are glad that you started and kind of dove into that Tiktok pool because it’s the pools happened as a kid say.
Emily Harpel 27:37
Exactly. Yeah, it’s I mean, it’s transformed the business 110% We would not be where we are today without tick tock. There’s no doubt about that.
Max Branstetter 27:46
And there’s no doubt I want to extend a huge thank you to Reginald Ferguson of The Fashion Geek Podcast, who is not only a subscriber to the Podcasting to the Max newsletter, he also attended my session at Podcast Movement. And he reached out through the newsletter to say that he really took some of the tips to heart and is working on his podcast studio, making some changes for the better. So check out The Fashion Geek Podcast. Shoutout, Reg! If you want to be like Reg and get awesome entrepreneurship tips, podcasting tips, and not so awesome puns and jokes to your inbox every Thursday, you can sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Now, let’s get soaked. So let’s switch gears a little bit. Let’s get to where you are on the personal side. So inspiration creativity kind of how you lead as a as an entrepreneur and business owner. And you mentioned something before I find really interesting is your you studied psychology and you know you’re almost ready to you know, get your Masters and psych or go to grad school for psychology. How today does you know any insight that you learned studying psychology apply to how you operate your business.
Emily Harpel 29:09
I think psychology and marketing go hand in hand. People buy from people is the reality of it. And especially speaking of tick tock, they can pick up on the BS, way more than any other social media platform and they’ll call you out for it. So I think that has just really helped from kind of a lens on how when I’m voicing over videos, or we’re writing copy for our marketing campaigns, things like that. I’m just trying to be as real with people as possible, not manipulate them in a way and understand kind of getting inside of the consumers head while they’re purchasing. And I also have believed that it’s really helped building a team. Being able to navigate a startup situation is not for the faint of heart. It is not easy and that is not a job for everybody. And I try to make that very clear to my I team and when I’m hiring people, but just being able to have conversations and use that background while I’m growing a team has also been super helpful. Do you
Max Branstetter 30:09
have any tools or like mental tricks to kind of reset yourself or reground your team by saying, hey, like there’s that keeps everybody going when when times are tough.
Emily Harpel 30:20
Definitely. And actually I just talked about earlier, but Emma has it tattooed on her hand, which is a pretty high praise, if I do say so myself. But one of the things that we talked about here is a we have to take turns being in a bad headspace. So especially for my leadership team, if I’m having a rough day, or in a bad space about packaging delays, or something that’s happening, I have to go to one of my team members and say, Hey, this is how I’m feeling about this, can you pick up the extra slack for today, tomorrow, whenever that looks like as far as kind of morale goes, because it’s super easy to just go downhill very quickly. If one person at the top starts, it doesn’t take long for the domino effect of everybody just to be in a really bad headspace, which we do not want. We want to avoid that so and they can come to me and vice versa, hey, I’m struggling today kind of helped me pull out of this. And then the next is kind of that saying that Emma has on her hand is that everything happens as it should. And that comes down to when a package arrives late when somebody’s mad at us because it was a wrong color or something. I mean, it happens. We’re humans, we make error. We make errors. Just having that in your mindset. As cliche as it is, everything happens as it should. And that has just been proven to us over and over and over again, even if we can’t see it in that exact minute.
Max Branstetter 31:39
I was so close to getting that tattooed on me before this interview. But I was like, You know what, Emma’s already got it. Like I don’t want to, you know, stomp on any feet there. So she’s kind of got the space there. But yeah, that’s that’s living proof that living proof. I just created a term proof. It’s like proof and truth that your team is, you know, buying into your mission, your mantra. And you mentioned headspace, which ties back to I know, it’s a popular app, but ties back to getting to the the mind of your consumer, how do you continually think especially with your content, but also with the products that you create? Think as if you’re, you know, the consumer and what’s going to pop what’s going to sell best,
Emily Harpel 32:24
I think it’s helpful that I am my target consumer. So it’s, it’s, you know, women that are my age that are mainly purchasing our products, that’s very helpful. But I also tried to really think with an eye while I’m scrolling, so when I’m scrolling on my personal Tiktok page, or Instagram, or I’m going to make a purchase, I’m really thinking through why what sold me on this and I try to take that back to our products and then the content that I am creating, and really look through it have a lens of would this sell me would I purchase this for whatever reason for whatever event in my life. And that’s like just slight shift, which is common sense. If you think about it has really made the ultimate difference in what we post and how we curate all of our marketing.
Max Branstetter 33:16
Yeah, that’s a really really good kind of like last step of validation is how would I like this and I think that’s a great message for anybody who’s creating a product or creating a content out there it’s like if you’re not your own if you’re not your own consumer you need to know exceptionally well the consumer that you’re marketing or selling to but it’s much easier when you can be a fan of everything yourself. slight shift to an even more weird and me unusual space called the unusual so let’s dive into pet peeves quirks weird talents, you know, aspects of your personality that don’t have to tie back to your business at all. So first question what what is your biggest pet peeve?
Emily Harpel 34:01
Oh, loud chewing I can’t handle it. I literally just like it makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. Any type of just loud eating Get away from me. I can’t handle it.
Max Branstetter 34:12
You’re kind of working in your own health and because you taste test so much stuff as a company that must be really tough. If somebody’s doing loudly What about weird talents besides chewing softly? What is something that’s like a party trick or just a talent you have that’s really really cool would be on you know, Late Show with David Letterman, but has no impact to your business. It’s just you can do it.
Emily Harpel 34:37
The only thing that’s coming to my mind is absolutely the opposite of a talent so I don’t even know why I’m gonna say this it gets its give me time to think but I can only tie my shoes in the bunny ears way which is like lowkey embarrassing not a talent at all. I don’t know I was in show choir as a kid. Does that count? I’m not sure.
Max Branstetter 34:54
I’ll give it to you. I’ll give you the bunny ears as well or I think our generation grew up with SpongeBob “Loop De Loop and Pull.” So a lot of famous ways there, I’m glad it’s still flow is still flowing through. And then what about quirks with something a little quirky about personnel, your personality? Well, a person, your personality that maybe your husband, Team somebody calls you out for, but it’s just who you are. It’s just a little quirky. Oh,
Emily Harpel 35:18
that’s a good one, too. I talk to myself a lot, but it tends to actually end up more as like singing or just like random noises and that is something that my team has very, very much had to get used to like, are you talking to me? I’m like, No, I’m actually just Don’t mind me. I’m talking to myself. That’s a hard to justify when you come on board and artists who craft for sure.
Max Branstetter 35:40
We just had a guest recently Leeanna Gant from tooktake who had a similar answer. She talks to herself around the house all the time. And she’ll be like, oh, I need to get, you know, cereal at Trader Joe’s and her husband will be like, Oh, do you want me to go to Trader Joe’s to get cereal? She’s like, No, I wasn’t talking to you.
Emily Harpel 36:00
Exactly.
Max Branstetter 36:02
So before we talk to ourselves anymore, let’s wrap up with some Rapid-Fire Q&A. You ready for it?
Emily Harpel 36:07
I’m ready. All right, let’s
Max Branstetter 36:09
get Wild. What is the most unique flavor of cotton candy that you’ve ever tasted? We did a set
Emily Harpel 36:19
a couple of years ago for April Fool’s that we called Bamboozle, and we did an onion flavor and it was disgusting. Oh, I’m
Max Branstetter 36:26
glad you actually create that because that’s something I feel like a lot of brands make a joke for like a disgusting, flavor flavored doesn’t fit but most of them don’t actually create it. So kudos to you for doing that. And I can smell and taste it and cried tears of that. Just from you mentioning it. Exactly. Back to the donut wall. Do you have a favorite flavor of donut of all time? Oh,
Emily Harpel 36:48
I if I had to pick my favorite very classic glaze with chocolate icing on top. Just standard no sprinkles, just chocolate and glaze.
Max Branstetter 36:57
Any sort of glaze is so good. I still love Krispy Kreme. Their Original. So good. Now that we’ve gone to our Cleveland tourism segment, what is the most underrated restaurant in Cleveland? Oh,
Emily Harpel 37:09
one of my favorites is the Marble Room which is downtown. I feel like it’s really good. But in Lakewood, it would be Luxe I feel like not enough people talk about it. It’s one of my absolute favorite spots to go. But in general Cleveland just underrated as a whole. I’m just gonna say it’s true. It’s underrated as a whole.
Max Branstetter 37:25
It’s true. Actually, that was an underrated answer. I’ll hype you up. But I love Cleveland everything Cleveland marble room I’ve never been to but I know it’s really really nice and supposed to have really, really good food. How about most underrated dessert place in Cleveland? Who
Emily Harpel 37:48
I feel like Mason’s Creamery. There’s a lot of ice cream based in Ohio in general. But Mason’s is a really good job of doing like vegan options, and they’re really off the wall flavors. totally underrated really delicious.
Max Branstetter 38:01
Delicious. I I liked that answer better than the onion. But I appreciate it nonetheless. And then last thing, this all started after your honeymoon. First part of it is where did you go on your honeymoon? And second is what’s your activity or like thing you saw or did on your honeymoon that you’re like, I just want to go back to there like that was the dream.
Emily Harpel 38:25
We went to Marco Island, Florida and we were really really sick. Everybody got sick after our wedding and so we were honestly pretty miserable the whole time. But we went to this like hole in the wall super kitschy restaurant called Marco Polo that we still talk about to this day. There was a neon sign with like a mermaid with a dancing tail. The waiters all wore tuxes, it was just this very amazing juxtaposition of like, high end kind of kitschy, just really weird space with amazing food would 10/10 recommend if it’s still there,
Max Branstetter 39:05
Marco Polo. I bet there were no jokes about the name of it. But Emily, thank you so much. This has been an absolute blast. Blessed blast. We’re blessed for the blast. But thank you so much for coming on the show, sharing the Art of Sucre story, all things cotton candy and Cleveland and beyond and everything that starts with C really appreciate it. Where’s the best place for people to learn more about Art of Sucre and to connect with you on social media or try it out themselves?
Emily Harpel 39:35
Yeah, we made this super easy on all of you. Everything is just @ArtOfSucre websites.com all the social handles it’s su c r e and you can just find me at Emily Harpel everywhere as well.
Max Branstetter 39:48
Excellent Emily last thing Final Thoughts, stage is yours it could be a quote, tagline I won’t let you use the one that is partnered on tattooed on your partner em, but Last thing stages, here’s just kind of words of wisdom to wrap us up on a sweet note here.
Emily Harpel 40:05
This is I’m gonna steal this from Nike, since I already said mine earlier. This is so tacky and so cliche but the hardest part about being an entrepreneur is getting started. So literally just do it. I don’t care what it is get the Instagram handle, get the business name, just start posting whatever it is, that is the hardest step. And it’s the easiest ones, you finally just do it.
Max Branstetter 40:27
I’m ready to run and run after that one. And eat cotton candy while doing it. A little bit of multitasking there. Emily, thank you so much for all you do, for coming on the podcast, for all the love you show to The Land, as it’s known, as well as all the cool things with Art of Sucre. And thank you, Wild Listeners for tuning in to another episode. If you want to hear more Wild stories like this one, make sure to follow the Wild Business Growth Podcast on your favorite app and tell a friend about the podcast. And then try out Art of Sucre with them and maybe even you know feed each other like you know when like people get married and feed each other cake. Do like that you could do it any day. You can also find us on Goodpods where there are good good podcasts podcasts. And for any help with podcast production, you can learn more at MaxPodcasting.com and sign up for the Podcasting to the Max newsletter. That’s at MaxPodcasting.com/Newsletter. Ending on a sweet note, Until next time, let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
