After graduating from one of the largest high schools in Texas, I attended the University of Illinois Urbana- Champaign on a soccer scholarship. My initial interest in finance quickly waned and I found a new passion in marketing and even advertising. I graduated from the UIUC business school with a Bachelors of Science in Marketing and Business Administration. 

It was at the University of Illinois where I met my husband and right before graduation we got engaged. I then moved to Kansas City, Missouri where he was drafted by the KC Chiefs while I unsuccessfully searched for a job in my chosen field. 

I taught myself photography and nurtured my passion for cooking in the meantime. I started a small photography business and a food blog. Content creation was a different game back then and I started to earn money on commissions, affiliate marketing, and blog advertising. 

These short stints greatly contributed to the scrappiness of Cookie Society as I had the confidence to teach myself just about anything. The initial brand photos, social media graphics, and more were done by me. 

Our first website cost us $5000. I wanted to prove the concept before over leveraging ourselves. The site wasn’t perfect and the payment processor was constantly glitching, but it allowed us to track our customers, start collecting data, and prove the value of the brand.

We ordered boxes in quantities of 100, and leased commercial kitchen space by the hour, but slowly started to gain traction. We were starting to outgrow the kitchen and were unable to meet all the inquiries we had for the product. That’s when we wrote our first business plan and started searching for a retail space. We still wanted to focus on e-commerce but needed to increase our visibility and further legitimize the brand. 

My husband was still playing in the NFL at the time so I would go to architect meetings and hop on re-branding calls by myself. 

We looked all over the DFW metroplex but settled on a flagship store close to home. 

It was 2020 and our project was days away from completion when the world started shutting down. The first Cookie Society was opened without much fanfare and we did car hop service 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, for the first few months. We were heavily supported by our community and relied on pre-order services and third-party accounts to keep the business going.

This was the same year I had a spread in Rachel Ray magazine and was featured as one of Oprah’s Favorite Things 2020. 

We managed thousands of holiday orders in our freshman year of business and gained invaluable knowledge on running a successful enterprise during this time. We navigated product shortages, extended shipping delays, manufacturing errors, and constant communication with our customers that really propelled our growth over the next couple of years. 

We went on to open a production facility for corporate catering, wholesale, and our e-commerce business, while also cutting the ribbon on 2 more retail locations.