077. Brittany Whitenack: From Craft Fairs to $8 Million in Annual Revenue

Brittany’s original plan after college was to climb the corporate ladder. When she bought her first candle-making kit online, she never planned to turn it into a business. But when her corporate job led to burnout, she started looking at alternative careers. Brittany decided to make a bold move – she quit her job and went all in on candle-making.

In her first year, Brittany made $16,000 in revenue. By year four, Antique Candle Co brought in over $300,000. Almost a decade later, Antique Candle Co has grown to over 50 employees and $8 million in annual revenue.

From craft fairs to millions in revenue, how Brittany Whitenack turned her love of candle-making into a multi-million dollar business in less than 10 years.

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Transcript

Brittany (00:00):

We were growing really fast. Once we started getting traction, we started growing really fast just to kind of put that into perspective. So year three, oh, we had about 2300 customers. We were serving year four. We had about 15,000 customers, year five, 40,000 customers ordering candles. Year six, 60,000 customers. So every year we're growing by millions over the previous year in revenue, and we're having to make thousands of more candles per week. It was not a candle making kind of feel anymore, it was a production.

Shanna (00:42):

You're listening to Consider the Wildflowers the podcast episode 77. Brittany's original plan after college was to climb the corporate ladder. When she bought her first candle making kit online, she never planned to turn it into a business, but when her corporate job led to burnout, she started looking at alternative careers. Brittany decided to make a bold move. She quit her job and went all in on candle making. In her first year, Brittany made 16,000 in revenue. By year four, antique candle coat brought in over $300,000. Almost a decade later, antique candle coat has grown to over 50 employees and 8 million in annual revenue from craft fairs to millions in revenue. Brittany shares so much wisdom on running a creative business, scaling and staying in love with your craft along the way. If you dig professional bios, here goes. Brittany started antique candle co with an idea business plan and $200 worth of candle making supplies.

(01:34):

In 2014, almost a decade later, antique Candle co employs 50 plus Candlemakers a shipping team and marketing gurus while bringing in about $8 million annually. In 10 years, her business has employed 167 individuals, made 1.5 million candles and served almost 200,000 e-commerce customers in the United States and Canada. In addition, you can shop these farmhouse soy wax candles in about 700 shops. Bootstrapping a business isn't easy, and Brittany has learned some good old fashioned business lessons along the way. All right, formal introductions over, let's dive in. Hey, it's Shanna, and this is Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast. For the past 15 plus years, I've had the honor to hear thousands of stories from entrepreneurs around the world. As a former Fortune 100 financial advisor turned business consultant, I have a unique opportunity to see the real behind the highlight reel. I'm talking profit and loss statements, unpaid taxes, moments of burnout, and those of utter victory. Or as my husband says, the content everyone is wondering but not many are talking about. And now I'm bringing these private conversations to you. Hear the untold stories of how industry leaders, founders, and up and coming entrepreneurs got their start, the experiences that shaped them and the journey to building the brands they have today. Stories that will inspire and reignite encourage to redefine success and build a life and business on your own terms. Welcome Wildflower. I'm so glad you're here. Hey, Brittany, welcome to the show.

Brittany (03:00):

Thank you. So excited to be here.

Shanna (03:02):

This is going to be so much fun. I love when we got to chitchat a little bit before we hit record. We don't know a ton about each other, which is always so fun because I'm just such a naturally curious person. You have built a big company, antique Candle, co Big. How long have you had your business?

Brittany (03:23):

I have had my business for 10 years. We just had a decade party. That's

Shanna (03:29):

So fun.

Brittany (03:30):

Yes. Oh my

Shanna (03:30):

Gosh, my gosh. We officially launched in 2013 as well, so we did not have a decade party. And now I'm filling a little bit of fomo. Oh, you got

Brittany (03:37):

To have a decade party, girl. That would be so fun. I feel we

Shanna (03:40):

Need a decade party. So we are currently in the middle of moving, and one of the girls on my team is also in the process of just moving. She's moving as well. Her house is on the market, so it's so funny. We're just like, we have a lot of irons in the fire, which I'm excited because we're going to talk about balance today and that's going to be fun. But before we hit record, why I asked you that, Brittany, is because before we hit record as we were just like, Hey, who are you and what do you do? And I was sharing about why I didn't go the traditional business consultant, finance route, power suits, and a lot of intimidating numbers that seem to kind of resonate with you and maybe your business. And I would be interested to hear, if you don't mind sharing totally off script, maybe your experience with that or you've grown a large company and have you felt some of that?

Brittany (04:35):

Yeah, for sure. Well, I am in Lafayette, Indiana, so it's near the home of Pur University. And I went to school for business. I switched my major two or three times before selecting that. And through that program I decided I wanted to kind of join the big corporate world and kind of climb the traditional corporate ladder. It's what a lot of our classes, like in our case studies were around. And it really interested me. And so after graduation, I took a job as an assistant store manager for Super Target. I mean Target, that's the best place on the planet. They are a great employer, but the actual job, and I was on the retail side on the stores, the actual job was really challenging and not nearly as rewarding as I thought.

(05:28):

And I remember asking myself, do I want to do this for five years, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? And maybe I'm not at Target forever, but this feeling of, there's so many folks, there's all these very rigid procedures and regulations where the creativity and target's pretty good in terms of companies for being creative and innovative and fun and fast and friendly. And I just was so disappointed with that. I really, really was. And that was about 10 years. And I don't know if you remember this when you're shopping at malls and things, but you remember where you would go anywhere and they would ask you to open a card like, Hey, do you want a Target card? Hey, do you want a buckle card? Hey, do you have your Macy's card? Do you have your Kohl's card? That was the era. And oh my gosh, it drove me nuts. It drove me nuts at my job.

Shanna (06:17):

Why did that drive you nuts? I don't know. I got asked yesterday at the Fresh Market if I was a loyalty member, and I was like, oh, wait, no, I don't have a card for Fresh

Brittany (06:27):

Market. I think it was one high pressure to hit the metrics, but it felt like that was the only important emphasis of the job, and it was really focused on executing and be a good manager, be a good executor, hit the numbers and don't bring creative ideas to the table. And again, there were a lot of fun parts about the job, but that's what I found dissatisfying and why I eventually left the job too.

Shanna (06:52):

Yeah, it is an interesting big corporations. That's what we probably knew. I'm an entrepreneur. We move fast, we make quick decisions, we mess up, we do cool things, but it's fast. And that's the difference. That's one of the biggest differences I have seen between the corporate world and the entrepreneur. Small business world. Things move at such a more rapid pace, and I think I know that I need that

Brittany (07:19):

Totally, and I completely agree, and I know that now, but I didn't know I wanted to be a business owner, and I didn't know that even existed. It's just due to my lack of exposure and just formal education. It was a new world to me, but I've been doing it for 10 years and I love it. Holy

Shanna (07:39):

Cows. Fun. Okay. Tell me, Brittany, from Target to candle making, so talk me through the transit. How did it happen? Was it just a hobby that you were doing? Was it Yeah. How did the company today come to be?

Brittany (07:53):

Yeah, so it truly was just a hobby. I remember I'm like, I need something creative to do, and I bought a $200 candle making kit online. I just always have candles. Whatever I go, I'd buy a candle, but I mean, most people are, so it's not like I had this weird obsession with it, but the process of making that candle was so fun. I'm like, oh, what fragrance should I order? Vanilla? Oh, vanilla Bourbon or Ooh, lavender, if you mix that with this. That was really fun. And then once I kind of learned how to make candles, which by the way, the first couple batches were horrible. I don't know if you should say that if you own a candle company, but my first candles weren't very good. They're pretty bad. But the process was so fun. And then I had this idea, I would go to these antique malls and vintage markets and I would see these old blue ball jars, coffee cans, old teac cups, and I would think to myself, oh, I could make that into a candle. That'd be kind of cool. That'd be really unique. And I could pick the fragrance and it'd be its own unique candle. And that's where the idea of antique candles was born, and that's how the whole business was started 10 years ago. It's kind of that creative thought. So

Shanna (09:17):

You're working at Target full time, just having fun, making candles, nights and weekends. At what point were you like, this could be my future. I'm going to figure out how to price this and sell it? Just kind walk me from hobby to business.

Brittany (09:38):

So I was making candles for about six months, and actually I'd left my job before I even had another job lined up. I was so burn out and I quit. And that's something I don't really talk about a lot. It's not something I'm really proud of that I did, but I just felt like I had no other way out. And as a newly married couple, we had moved to the new Chicago area. I took a summer and a fall off, and that's when I was making candles. I was baking bread, doing other stuff. I was unemployed and it's kind of not a fun part of the story to share. And I remember I was looking for another job and also making candles, and I sat at the dining room table and I kind of wrote up a business plan because really I was trying to answer the question, could this be my job?

(10:26):

Could I sell these candles and work up to the salary I was making at Target? Is this possible? What does that look like? What's my income level need to to make the salary that I want? How many customers do I need? What's the average price of my product? Do I sell online? Do I have a store? That's when I started asking all those questions before committing to something. And through that process, I developed I think a five-year plan. And that's when I basically, the answer to that question was, yes, I think I can. So that's why I decided to do that, and I decided to do it in the format of an online shop.

Shanna (11:04):

So into all this. So Brittany, I have this course that I teach. It's called the Blueprint Model, and it's essentially, it's exactly what you just went through. Okay, what's my offer? How much do I need to price it to actually make the income I need to make and pay my employees? And it's just this way of creating a plan for your business. A lot of people, I don't think a lot of people know to do that or know how, or they feel like they need a process or the work with a ton of people, of course, who would classify themselves as like, I'm not a money person. So how did you know Brittany to do that? Do you feel like your business background really helped with that? And did that give you the empowerment? That's what I love about this course. It's empowering you to be like, you know what? This can work, and then I just have to work plan. Yeah. Yes. That's so interesting you did that.

Brittany (11:56):

Absolutely. You're so right. Yes, my formal education helped a lot. I mean, that's four years of business classes. I took a lot of accounting classes. I took finance, I took HR operations. I didn't know enough to be an expert, but I knew enough to lay a foundation, and I love that you offer that type of course, and I love that you have the services that you have because even with that information, I would still not consider myself a money person. And when I meet with other creatives or I'm giving a guest lecture or speaking at some event, one of the questions that I get asked a lot is, if you could share one piece of advice with creative entrepreneurs, what would it be?

Shanna (12:46):

So into this,

Brittany (12:49):

My answer, I can tell when I give it, people aren't excited about it, you'll be excited about it, but the crowd just looks at me because I feel like, what do they want the answer to be? I don't know, love what you do, or You'll never work a day in your life, blah, blah, blah. My answer is, take an account in class. If you have never taken an accounting class, it is so important for you. It will keep you in business. I resonate so much with your mission. Take an accounting class.

Shanna (13:17):

My heart just grew through sizes.

(13:22):

What's funny, I have on my website and what I teach and preach now all the times it's kind of language I use. It's like money is likely not the reason you got into business and it truly isn't. But understanding numbers is what keeps us in business. But I think where that reframe is is when people start to recognize, and I think we all get there. I think we all get there. We get either burnt out enough or need more time, but it's like money is a tool that provides time, freedom and flexibility and the ability to try new creative ideas. It's the money piece that holds us back, and that's truly why I teach what I do. So I love your answer. Of course. So smart new business besties. Okay. Tell me about those early days. And also side note, I don't talk about this a lot either, but I quit my job in finance, in corporate finance before I knew what I was going to do, either I drove home and I always tell people, I don't recommend it, but really build your wings on the way down.

(14:22):

I drove home. We were living in Atlanta at the time. I drove through an hour of traffic. I was so stressed. I'm from the country, you can hear it in my voice. I'm from the country and I like it that way. And we were living in Atlanta, so traffic was just so stressful for me. I got home, I was sobbing, I was tense, and Kyle was just Shannon and my job wasn't bad. I mean, I loved the people I worked with. It was a startup and it was amazing, and it's how I got to do what I do today, but as I just quit your job, I was like, I pay our bills. I was in school at the time. I'm like, this is bad plan, but I did and we figured it out. And so I love that. Okay, so tell me about those early days when you're like, okay, this can replace my target salary. I see the vision. Tell me why you chose to make it an online shop, especially 10 years ago that wasn't what it is today, and how did you figure out pricing for your candles and sourcing all of the products and goods, and were you making everything yourself? So just walk me through those early days for

Brittany (15:30):

Sure. Yeah, the first couple years, it really was just me. It was like a solopreneur time. I remember my first year in business I made about $16,000 in revenue, which is a lot. And so the early days was me packing up my candles and taking it to craft fairs, vintage markets, and the reason being, I had an online shop. I wanted my own shop. I was using Squarespace at the time, but no one knew about me. I didn't have an online presence. I had just started a social media account. I was trying to grow that. But the first couple years was me going to customers and I would bring with me a clipboard and I'm like, Hey, if you like how they smell or want to hear more from us, sign up for our email list. I did that for three and a half years, and I started building a client list. And I think this is really important because where we are today, we have over 50 employees and we make thousands of candles a day, and we generate over $8 million in annual revenue. That's today,

Shanna (16:37):

No big deal,

Brittany (16:38):

But people think it's overnight thing. I mean, years of grinding, begging my husband to help me set up for candles on Saturdays and cover my bathroom, break shifts and learning about my customers. Who are they? They would open up a candle and I used to make this carrot cake candle, and I'm like, carrot cake smells amazing. People would open up and be like, oh, this is horrible. I'm like, okay, this is good. This is customer discovery. It would hurt a little bit. I'm like, this is good. So a lot of those early years was focused on customer discovery, understanding who my customer was, what they wanted, what they didn't, and really honing in also on pricing. I was kind of surprised how many customers were willing to pay at the time, $20 for a mason jar candle, and they were paying anywhere from 40 to $50 for the antique candles. I was kind of worried about the price, but then people would, they'd be in the booth shopping and they would just load up a bunch of candles in their arms. That was really formative for me.

Shanna (17:36):

So it's like they were resonating enough, I would say price is about perceived value, so they were resonating enough with the sense the uniqueness of the antique candle holder to be able to pay that more premium price. I love that so much because going to those boot antique crafts fairs, doing that is hard. My sister-in-law owns a bakery, and she did that for years going to, and she's like, it's just so much work. It is so much work. But putting in that grind, and I think what I see now 10 years later, I don't know if Brittany, if you've seen this, some people want to skip that part. I mean, who doesn't want to skip it, but it's so super important. When did you start seeing traction and then seeing the online sales start to happen?

Brittany (18:25):

Yeah, I started seeing traction around year four, so I don't know how many creative business owners give up before year four. You probably know the statistics better than I do, but it did take that long. At that point, I had a couple of part-time that went to school at Purdue or went to a local high school, and I had just begun hiring some full-time help. So at this point in, I think in year four, we did about $300,000 in revenue. So we had about, I think 2300 customers that were shopping with us regularly that year, so a couple thousand, and their average order was anywhere from 70 to a hundred bucks. And some of the full-time hires that I hired were really good decisions, and I was looking for skill sets that I did not have to help invest and grow my business. One of the first full-time marketing folks I hired, her name was Hannah, and she was actually full-time in marketing, but she had a side business as photography, and she and I both agreed and started building a vision and a plan for what the online shopping experience should look like.

(19:37):

We had switched to Shopify and we started taking very professional photography of our products and when we would launch new products, and she focused heavily on the customer journey and the flow of that website, and that's when we started noticing a lot of traction. And around the same time is when I started personally still working a lot on the marketing e-commerce side of the business. It was 20 17, 20 16 is when I started investing a lot of capital around influencer marketing, which is like everybody knows that is now, but at the time, only very big brands were doing it, and the return on influencer marketing was really, really high. I remember sending free product or an influencer saying, I'll do it for 50 bucks, and we would get a return of four or $5,000. It was seriously a great return because it was so new and people weren't as familiar with it as almost like an ad, I would say.

Shanna (20:33):

Yes. So instead of going the ads route, you really went, so it wasn't mostly Instagram influencers, bloggers. What type of influencers were you specifically feeling like were the best fit for your?

Brittany (20:48):

For us specifically, it was Instagram, but that also was several years ago. Yeah, different. And I had built credibility for our brand on Instagram. One of the things that I did in the early stages was read a book on how to grow a business on Instagram because someone told me I should do it. And one of the things I did before handing off or hiring someone to manage our social media was that I grew our Instagram audience from zero followers to 50,000 over the course of a few years, but we looked credible. So when influence, we reached out to influencers, they were more receptive to working with us.

Shanna (21:20):

Yeah. Okay. Well, this is good. Okay. Tell me, as the company grew, what went well, what did not go so well, and just some lessons learned along the way, and you can go with hiring or pricing or just kind of what stands out to you over those few years. Influencer marketing went really well. Looking back, what went well, what didn't go so well, and some lessons learned,

Brittany (21:47):

What went really well for our business generally is being super creative and innovative with our product offerings. So we've tried a lot of different business models. The antique candles was like our jam for the first four or five years, but it's not scalable. It's really hard to grow. And so we really innovated, we did hypno votives, we launched a bundle offering where instead of just buying one or two candles at full price, you buy two and you save five bucks. It added a lot of value for the customer while also increasing the average order value for us and increasing the margin per product because we were able to ship it in one package instead of shipping two orders that have one candle to ship, one order with two candles in it, so the price per unit margin is higher. We just launched subscription boxes, we've done collaboration candles, we've worked with influencers, we've done candle tester rounds where we invite our customers to pick what the next fragrance is. We're like, here's four candles. We'd love to launch a coffee candle. Should it be latte? Should it be a fresh roasted coffee? Should it be chai? That's really fun and very innovative, and that's something that we've always invested a lot of capital into and some of it's flops, but some of it does really well, and you can really lean into that, and I think it's okay to change your model every couple of years too, if it makes sense with your demo. Yeah.

Shanna (23:07):

What did not go well?

Brittany (23:08):

Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's like it's hard to pick one. I can think of a few really big blunders, but there's one that was just really difficult, not only on me, but the team. So at the time, I think we had about 20 to 30 employees. This is year five or six maybe. We were growing really fast. Once we started getting traction, we started growing really fast. And just to kind of put that into perspective, so year three, oh, we had about 2300 customers. We were serving year four, we had about 15,000 customers coming out, year five, 40,000 customers ordering candles, year six, 60,000 customers. So every year we're growing by millions over the previous year in revenue and we're having to make thousands of more candles per week. It was not a candle making kind of feel anymore. It was

Shanna (24:10):

A production.

Brittany (24:11):

A production. How do we make 3000 sweet lemons because last year we're making 500, do we do the same process? And we were bootstrapped, we don't have any investors, any backers, and one year in a 12 month period, we moved three times, three times packing up all the stuff and moving to a new location. We need more space. And then packing up again and moving into another space, trying to meet that demand and that production and those business demands because you want to be able to send yummy smelling candles to customers who want it, and you want to be able to do it quickly. Doing that and then also internally trying to build that infrastructure and meet the needs of the business were just so incredibly difficult. And I did not handle it well personally. I was very demanding on my team team, and it was just really, really, really, really tough year.

(25:03):

It was horrible. I remember at one period, I think it was a few months, I was working seven days a week, and I had several other employees that were doing the same thing, and I didn't have to ask. They just did it because they're like, how else are we going to do it? And this is the job. And sometimes I look back at that and I'm like, was that God honoring? Why did we do that? No, it wasn't. Why did we do that? Well, at the time, you're in survival mode, right? It's just 95% of my energy is to the business and there is no personal life and it's so hard. And I think that's on the p and l balance sheet. Shannon, super profitable. What a great year, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, actual life, horrible. It was horrible. It was really, really difficult and very turbulent.

Shanna (25:54):

Brittany, thank you for sharing that. I have so many questions. I'm writing them down as we go so I don't forget them. But I think doing what I do, I love getting to talk about money and finance and business growth, but if you spend any time on my website, my favorite quotes from Dolly Parton, it says, never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. And I just truly feel like when I worked in finance, that's the piece that was missing for me. And I never want to give finance a bad rap. I loved my work, I learned so much. I had a great team of people I got to work with, but this idea that sometimes business on paper doesn't resonate with us, you know what I mean? It might look really good on paper, but we want to feel good in life as well. And I did write down one question, did you ever fear that growth? Because if you expand and you take on team members, you're committing to them. Did you ever fear the growth is going to stop, people going to the sales are going to slow down, like I'm taking on all these commitments, and did you ever fear that growth?

Brittany (27:04):

I don't remember fearing the growth, but to your point, I didn't consider. I think I was naively optimistic. I didn't consider that it will not be growing like that forever. So the past couple years we've seen a little bit of growth, and this year in particular was high growth year for us, but year eight, year nine, it was plateaued. And I'm like, well, I invested in an infrastructure and team and equipment for additional growth, so that way we were supported. I never considered that we would miss a sales goal by X amount. Oh no, I've committed to these financial commitments. How do I handle that? And what followed was two years of cash lien times like spending freezes and really trying to be scrappy. And unfortunately what happened is we stopped being as innovative, especially when it came to products and what we introduced to customers.

(28:00):

The story I told myself was, because this is just where we're at, we kind of just have to maintain. But I really feel like that wasn't the right call, but I was naively optimistic that I would continue growing and yeah, I feel that burden now the way I approach my work is different and you have a responsibility as an employer to be able to provide consistent, fair and healthy work to your workforce. So it's very different than those early years. So that's what's been interesting, but luckily it was over a long period of time, so it's given me a lot of time to process, get counsel advice. We have a full-time, CFO of course, to help ensure that he has the cashflow for every single day listed out for the next two years, so he could tell you how much cash we're pulling have in the bank in 2026. And that's helpful. That's helpful, and that's responsible, I think.

Shanna (28:57):

Yeah. Brittany, this is so good. What would you say, I'm off scripting again, then I'm going to go back to the script, but when you feel like growth slowed, or I guess my question is over the last few years, what have you seen shift or change and how have you continued to grow your business or after that season where you didn't see it growing where you say Instagram is different than it was five or 10 years ago, totally different. It's not the cash cow for small businesses that it once was, or influencer marketing, totally different than it was a few years ago. The strategies that worked five years ago are not going to work now. How do you feel like you all reacted to that, got innovative, continued grow in a marketing environment that's so different?

Brittany (29:45):

Yeah, that's great and I'm happy to share some granular stuff. In terms of marketing channels, I would say for us, we started really focusing on our customer and what they were delighted in. So that earlier example where they smelled the carrot cake at the craft fair and they hated it. It's easy when you are an e-commerce business, especially if you're making your product, your product base to start to disconnect from what people really want and what they love. And especially it can evolve over time too, the look and feel of the product or even fragrance profiles. Shanna, the first five years of my business, I could not launch enough fruit candles. I launched every single fruit I could think of, pineapple, coconut, mango, citrus, peach, apricot. I could keep naming them, but the past couple of years it's all about, I call them mandals, but more moody, more woodsy. So like cozy cabin, winter woods, autumn leaves, right? Anything with something

Shanna (30:44):

With bourbon.

Brittany (30:45):

Yes, exactly. So there's a shift. So I had to change my approach. What we are seeing specifically on marketing channels, for what it's worth, I don't know if this would apply to every business, but social media used to be our number one traffic channel and one of our top revenue generating channels. That has completely changed. However, we still post for very specific reasons on social media, which I don't know if you want to get into that, but the top channels that are producing for us are our email list, our own list that we can reach, and our texting audience. So these are folks who are just very engaged with the antique candle co business story and our product and have just had a good experience with us. So we're really honing in on kind of the returning customer groups. Influencer marketing is still in the top three though.

(31:34):

It's just more expensive. So we've just had to adjust our marketing budget appropriately. We used to have great return on marketing budget. I think we used to spend anywhere from seven to 8% of our net income on marketing, and we could grow crazy on that. Now we're starting to have conversations internally about, okay, can we maybe shave some operating costs so we can increase our marketing budget to more like 10% or 11% or even let's maybe plan two years from now for 12%. So that's where we're starting to see it's still very effective. It's just costing more than we're expecting, so we need to budget appropriately.

Shanna (32:10):

Brittany, you're so smart. Your brain, you're talking about things that I'm just like your brain works business. So I typically ask, I love to ask about money and your relationship with money and what has come naturally, but I kind of want to shift that just a little bit and broaden it just to business in general, your relationship with business and money when you first got started versus now, do you feel like it's come easily for you to talk about things like I wrote down average order sized, that's something I think about all the time, but I don't think that's always something a business owner knows to look at or think about. Do you feel like these things have actually come pretty natural to you or what would you say has not come natural on the money or business side?

Brittany (33:06):

Yeah, I think a lot of it has grown over time for me, 10 years. We're talking at year Ted, so I have a lot of experience at exposure for our certain business, but what has come naturally for me is anything metric driven or financially driven, that's around relationships. So I'm very people oriented. So when it comes to team culture or how to interact with our customers, what to say, what are they interested in? Are they interested in buying two candles a time or would they rather buy four or is four too many? And they're like, girl, my candle cabinet's full stop trying to tell me about the bundle four. I just need two at a time. So it's very relationally driven so that a lot of those metrics around average order value, the average time it takes a customer to reorder again based on how you group them, which for us is anywhere around 22 to 28 days way more often than I thought. Oh, that's interesting. That's come naturally what has not come naturally to me where I've had to hire a fractional CFO and eventually a full-time finance advisor is actually managing all the money for the business, for operating it. So cashflow, I'm not naturally gifted in on my personal life or my business life. It's just not my forte. So even profit margin and pricing a little bit as well. So anything very like what you would think of pure financials or pure accounting I've struggled with even with the formal education that I have

(34:42):

And even with the 10 years of business experience, I still hire others to fill that gap, my responsibility as a business owner and it's how I will get paid and all my employees too.

Shanna (34:54):

Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because I know people get frustrated. I tell people I'm really good at numbers I think. I don't think I know it is the gift that God gave me. My brain works numbers as a child. I played bank instead of house. That's love, who I am to my core, but if you talk to me about SEO or anything, technology, my brain literally is

(35:23):

Shift off. It is. There is a circuit missing and I'm so grateful for that because I think a lot of people feel that way about numbers and I love that you said even though in some that is your strength, there's strength there that you still have questions. I'm like, I have done this for 15 years plus not including my four years of business degrees before that. I've done it a long time and there's still stuff that I get stuck on or have to remind myself, and I just think that's so freeing. Okay, one final question about money and then I want to move shift a little bit about work life balance. And I wrote down a question I'm interested to hear you answer. Yeah. What would you say is the best thing that you have learned about money or business? I kind of am liking that little broader question, money or business in the past 10 years.

Brittany (36:17):

Yeah, that's great. And knowing how much of a finance person you are, maybe you can settle a debate that I'm having right now internally with my team. So if we have time, we get to that now, no big deal. Lets do, I'm pumped. The one thing that I have learned about business slash money has to do with top revenue generation indirectly. Hannah, who's our chief product and marketing officer today came on board five or six years ago, and there is an obvious pre Hanna to antique candle co and a post Hanna. And one of the things that she's always really emphasized with me and drill down, and we were both completely aligned, but she really pushes my thoughts on this, is the emphasis on the visual and functional customer shopping journey. Think about when you're at the mall, what's the best, what's your favorite store to shop at in the mall?

Shanna (37:10):

What is it? Cinon

Brittany (37:12):

Cinnabon. Why do you love Cinnabon? What is it about Cinnabon?

Shanna (37:16):

The smell.

Brittany (37:18):

The smell. And that's an emotion. There is that emotion evoking in your response. You feel delighted, you feel good. The endorphins from the smelling that icing are hitting your brain. You are excited to be in Cinon. And so that's something that she's really honed in, has been great advice because that's something that we really lean into at anti Candle Cove. So hopefully if you go to anti candle co.com today, you feel delighted and you feel that sense of emotion and fun when you're shopping. That has been a game changer for us, and I think that has a lot to do with our growth because it made shopping fun online. It's not clunky. It's beautiful, it's fun, it's inspiring, and you see that pumpkin spice candle and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I can smell it right now. This is amazing. I need it right now.

Shanna (38:08):

This is so good. In talking about the stories we tell in our business, this is something I've thought about a lot. So I teach finance and I for a long time struggled with how to visually show finance in a way that resonates with my community. Let's be honest, profit, the loss sheets aren't pretty, just neither, just everyone I know. But I love that you said that because it isn't always about the candle, it isn't always about having a clean profit and law sheet. It's about what that does and what it means later. And I've always, I don't know who said that quote about, people won't remember what you say, but how you made them feel. Yes, exactly. And I think about that so much, especially when I'm speaking. I get asked to speak a lot on finance and I'm like, if I just were to talk about finance, people would glaze over. But if I talk about, Hey, do you want to be able to afford for your kids to go to school three days a week so you can have dedicated work time? Like, okay, that costs this amount. Here's how we can do it. You know what I'm saying? Oh,

Brittany (39:12):

Yes. No, and since you're a finance expert, I got to bring a debate to you. Okay,

Shanna (39:16):

Ask me the

Brittany (39:16):

Question having let's do it. Okay. If you have a limited time product run, whether it's seasonal or whether it's a drop or whatever, is it good to sell out of it? Like, oh, we sold out blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and you see different models like hype marketing or whatever, it's like it's here and it's gone. We used to do this thing called antique restock, and we still do them, but where we would take all those antique candles and we can only make maybe 300 at a time. We'd load 'em to the website and they'd be priced at the price that they're at, and then they would sell within 30 minutes, and we would consider that a win. Like, oh my gosh, they sold out in 30 minutes. This is amazing. Then I was thinking back to some finance classes and thinking about the relationship between demand and supply and price, and then I started thinking to myself, maybe they were priced too low. Being all sold out isn't a good thing yet for whatever reason in the maker community we brag about when we sold out of all our stuff.

Shanna (40:15):

Is

Brittany (40:15):

That good really or is it not? And what are your thoughts? We don't know the right or wrong answers.

Shanna (40:20):

This is so interesting. I don't know the right or wrong answer either, but I'll give you some thoughts. I think I tell my clients that a good booking ratio if you're service-based is 50%. You want just as many yeses as nos, and I think so often people just want to hear yes, but I'm like, if you're booking over 70% or maybe for you selling out more than 70%, that is a sign that your price is too low. So in the service-based community, if it's like it's 70% or higher, when people are like, I'm like, Hey, how many people did you ask to buy? And they said yes. And they're like, well, everybody. And I'm like, yeah, that's a problem. That's not a good thing. And I actually say 30% is kind of where you want to land, and 30% of yeses feels hard. That's a lot of nos.

(41:08):

So I think though, with limited runs and hype events, I do, I think it's really cool to sell out. There is something though in the psychology of sales called scarcity, and I think that's what it does. A limited run is a scarcity. It's here and then it's gone, and I think you want it to be, and like you said, I love how you use the word hype. Hype is another part of psychological selling, so this hype event where it's here for a limited amount of time or there's a limited quantity, and I think in that case you do want it to sell out or take it off the website. I have people take things off the website and if they don't sell out and then reintroduce it later, I just think the worst thing is if you then discount it,

Brittany (41:53):

Oh, yeah, okay. This

Shanna (41:54):

Is so helpful. So I actually love the idea of selling out, but you don't want to do that of course every time because then people are frustrated they can't get it.

Brittany (42:02):

Yeah. There was a time where everybody would complain, so this is really helpful. I'm going to share this with my team and this will maybe,

Shanna (42:08):

I don't think it's a answer, but those are my thoughts for sure. I love that. I love limited time runs. I think they're so cool for hype and for scarcity. I also think if it sells out that fast, knowing how to expand and getting a little bit longer increasing pricing event, but I do think, yeah, when people say, oh, it sold out so fast or everybody booked, it's like, okay, well, that's a good sign that you're probably ready to raise your price. Yeah, you have the demand there to do it, so is that helpful

Brittany (42:37):

At all? No, very helpful. Thanks for sharing. No, this is so wonderful. Thank you. Oh, is good.

Shanna (42:42):

Okay. I'm going to shift a little bit. I love asking this question, have you seen your business shift in different seasons of life? And I kind of want to ask, wrote this down. I don't know if this would be a hard question for you to answer, but the difference between a small business and a very large business, you're playing very different roles. Has there ever been a time where you're like, I miss the days of making candles versus being a production facility? Can you talk about that?

Brittany (43:15):

Yeah, no, that's great. There's definitely probably two or three. Hes of the business. The first four or five years was I was still very much in the weeds of everything, and I liked that, and then the last four or five years really it shifted from founder candle maker to CEO traditional CEO role, and I didn't know this at the time, but I know it now. I didn't like that last part of the era. If someone wanted to be a CEO of a company of our size, why would you start a candle company in your kitchen in the first place? It's kind of like a, you know what I mean? Both really can't be true. I feel, and I miss those days a lot, but at the same time, we make a great product and I want to be able to send it to customers' homes because I know it's amazing because it has soy wax.

(44:09):

It's going to last longer, it's going to smell amazing. It's going to burn cleaner. They are amazing. And so what I did, Shannon, I'm actually talking to you and it's been two weeks since I have not been CEO. I hired a new person to run my business, which is really exciting. She was in training for the past couple months. I've made the announcement to my team and team. Not a lot is changing for our customers. I still own the business and I have a new role, so I'm still working at my business. I still have a salary doing the things that I love, and so I'm so excited. Just because I own the business doesn't mean I have to run it. Someone has to run it. Someone has to make sure that, okay, we got this project on task and blah, blah, blah. We got a good operating procedure here, and okay, this machine is working really good or it's not, or we need to hire this type of person.

(45:02):

This is a need at our company and we need to support our team and our customers really want more pumpkin candles and to do that, we need some extra help around here. We need to post some jobs, all these running the business side of things. I enjoy being a part of it, but I don't actually enjoy the actual role of it. It's not creative. I consider myself very creative. I love being hands-on and in the weeds, and I don't even necessarily want to make the decision. I just want to be a part of it, and I would just really like our product. I really like our customers, and so I'm really excited to contribute in a new way.

Shanna (45:37):

Chief Visionary Officer,

Brittany (45:40):

Yes. It was hard to find a title, what do you call this

Shanna (45:44):

Her, that gave so many people, I think so many people just found a lot of freedom in what you said. What a gift to grow a company to the $8 million mark and to where you are and however many, I don't even know at this point how many employees you have, but that doesn't mean that has to be the role you play forever. That is a very different role than smelling candles and deciding if lavender and bourbon go together or not, which I don't think they do.

Brittany (46:12):

They don't.

Shanna (46:13):

That would be bad.

Brittany (46:15):

It would be bad, but it'd be fun to smell it.

Shanna (46:18):

That is so cool. Congratulations to you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, last question then we'll go to quickfire. In a world that asks us to do everything really well, all the things, how have you found harmony in your work and your life and your creativity, or how are you striving to find that harmony between all these different things?

Brittany (46:43):

Great question. If I'm being completely transparent, I don't know if I found it, it might just be my personality. It might be the growth rate of the company. I had to commit so much of my time and efforts and energy to my company to be able to do what it did, and I put a lot of things on the back burner. Whether they were right or not, I'm not sure, but I do wonder if it could be achieved at that growth rate. However, there are some things that I did that helped provide that feeling. At times when I was, my faith, walk with the Lord was really strong, that helped a lot. When I took seasons of rest, like taking a three week sabbatical helped a lot. What I eventually had to do is I knew what I was doing wasn't sustainable with my personality with the company and the demands of the business. I could not have a life outside of work and I wanted one. So that's one of the motivations for building a company that can run without me running it full time. There's some incredible folks there that have probably the personalities that could sustain a demanding job better than I can, and I just am excited to build. I have a lot more time to create harmony in these other areas that I'm interested in. So outside of work,

Shanna (48:16):

I think it is so cool that you said, we start our business with the question of how can I make this thing that I love doing into something that pays my bills and fulfills my time? And your company grew over the last 10 years to a large scale, $8 million, lots of employee. It's a totally different vibe and filling, and I love that you gave yourself the room to ask those questions again and to say, how can this be good for me too? I think we all start with those questions that are honestly counterintuitive in business, I think, and I again, never want to be negative about that, but I think if you go into the business world is about profit margins and growth and building brand awareness, and it is about the bottom line and the feelings get lost in there, so I'm excited for you. Thank you, man. I could go on. Okay, let's quick fire. Okay, let's quick fire. One thing you would be embarrassed if people knew.

Brittany (49:21):

Okay. I think that thing would probably be that I love video games, particularly the first person shooter game Halo. Don't know if you've heard of it. I

Shanna (49:29):

Have heard of it.

Brittany (49:30):

Okay. I grew up with four younger brothers, but one year outside of work, my goal was to get to this diamond ranking, which is like you'd be in the top 10% of players and it's super sweaty and it's super competitive. I'm not super embarrassed by it, but I could tell when people find out they're kind of embarrassed for me,

Shanna (49:50):

So

Brittany (49:51):

I think that's what I have to go with. I love that game.

Shanna (49:54):

That is hilarious. It's

Brittany (49:55):

Been around for 20 years. They keep coming out with new games every,

Shanna (49:58):

I am shocked it's still around, honestly, because yeah, I remember it from a good minute ago.

Brittany (50:04):

Yep.

Shanna (50:04):

Brittany, that is just another layer to who you are.

Brittany (50:08):

Thank you. Oh yeah, I love it.

Shanna (50:11):

My mom got into really into Zelda. Do you remember Zelda?

Brittany (50:16):

Yes. Oh, of course. I coworkers

Shanna (50:18):

Still play. She bought the secret books and all the things of life, so I totally get it. That was my mom.

Brittany (50:24):

I love

Shanna (50:25):

That. Buying books on, I'm like, people would be like, is this your game? I'm like, actually, no. It's my mom's game. My mom.

Brittany (50:30):

She really into all that. Is she embarrassed or you just, I dunno.

Shanna (50:34):

I'd have to ask her. I doubt it. She is her own unique human. She don't care.

Brittany (50:39):

I

Shanna (50:39):

Love it. Any regrets or wish you could do over moments?

Brittany (50:43):

Yeah. One of the things I wish I would change maybe is hiring so many folks from my faith community, my church for personal reasons. They're amazing employees, but what happened is I noticed my Sunday worship times and I kind of do it to myself, but turned into every Sunday after church, after worship, people come up to me asking for a job or asking for a donation. I could not go to a Sunday. I think there was one year, it really was hard. I'm like, every single time I show up, people don't want to talk about my faith or anything. All they want is something from me and it's kind of money, and that kind of really was uneasy with me. I hired other people, so like, oh, I could get a job at Britt's company. Why not? She's nice. I see her on Sundays. That was really difficult for me, and that really hurt my walk with the Lord for a little bit. I got pretty bitter about it, so I'd probably change that.

Shanna (51:35):

Yeah, one of those things. Yeah. Sometimes we have to walk through it to learn it, don't we? Oh,

Brittany (51:41):

Totally. Oh yeah, for sure. It's my own. Yep, my own choice. I did that, so now I know.

Shanna (51:47):

All right. Big win or pinch me moment.

Brittany (51:50):

Oh my gosh, girl. There was this moment last year we got recognized, our employees voted. We got a great place to work top 20 in the nation for I think 2022. That's awesome. For advanced manufacturing and logistics companies that are smaller, medium size in the nation. I couldn't believe that. We weren't expecting it. It's just a survey they completed and that was a pretty big deal for us. That was so cool, and because we care a lot about our team and the workspace. Yeah, that was really, really cool. That felt really good.

Shanna (52:24):

That's awesome, Brittany. That's awesome.

Brittany (52:26):

Thank you.

Shanna (52:27):

Alright, best advice or just really good advice that you have received?

Brittany (52:32):

Oh yeah. I feel like I already touched on this, but really focusing on that shopping experience journey from my coworker, Hannah. I mean, it's so smart. Conversion increased, and then when traffic increased, we had a stronger bottom funnel. It was just, it's the best advice to focus on that. Holy

Shanna (52:48):

Cow. Brittany, I'm going to pick your brain on that for a second. Would you say a big piece of that was simplifying the process

Brittany (52:54):

Part of it? Yeah, I think so. I think simplifying and in parts, adding more context visually, so products shouldn't just be a white background with the picture of the product. I dunno, I feel like people know that now, but lifestyle photos, social proofing, reviews, what is on that product listing, not just the price and the picture. Every single question is intrinsically answered. Maybe it's not spelled out in writing, but you could get the answer by looking

Shanna (53:23):

Visuals. Yeah.

Brittany (53:24):

Yeah, visuals powerful, but the checkout part, simplifying that man and Shopify and shop pays where it's at and the shop pay installments where you see that when you check out on websites, they get the four installment options for us. It increases average order value by 40%.

Shanna (53:40):

What?

Brittany (53:41):

Yeah, it's in crazy. I got to show you the finances. Sometime we need to have an email conversation. It's insane.

Shanna (53:47):

I'm going to tell Kyle that. My husband, he does all of our tech, but we use Shopify for our, we have a spreadsheet template shop, so business spreadsheets we call the Creative Money Shop, and so just these spreadsheets I usually use sell and give it for my clients or students, but we decided just to sell the spreadsheet templates and we use Shopify, so yeah, I don't even know if we use that. That's so interesting. That'd

Brittany (54:08):

Be cool. That'd be fun to benchmark with you since we both use Shopify.

Shanna (54:11):

Here we go. Okay, last quick fire question and then we'll send it off. What are you working on now or one resource that you would like to share?

Brittany (54:21):

Right now I am trying to figure out what's next, but one of the things that I've been working on is with my friend Holly. She's also a fellow creative entrepreneur, and I've been dabbling with online courses, so I created a course with her. We might create more, and so one of the things that I don't think we talked about on the call, but our candles are sold in over 700 stores across the US and Canada. That's just an area of our business, and so that was done over time and I just share six fundamentals of how to do that if you make your product with the course through her. Outside of that, I started an entrepreneurship email list just to kind of share my thoughts and my reflections. A lot of what we do here just for fun. It's fun for me to talk about. It's fun when people email me back and we have a conversation, so those are kind of things I'm doing right now.

Shanna (55:07):

I love it, and we will link those resources in the show notes, so if anybody is interested in the course or the email list. Sounds amazing. Yeah, you're so smart. Brittany, thank you so much for your time today. Let's send it off with looking back to the days of your red shirt and khakis and then quitting your job with no other job. What would you tell yourself on day one of being like, I think this candle making could be a business

Brittany (55:43):

Man. The only thing I can think about is what question I would make sure that I asking myself then so I could start thinking about what my answer is, is if this candle business is successful, you get to that five-year plan, you're planning blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Do you want to do that for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? What's the plan for if it's successful? Is that just your full-time gig, you made it, you're happy, it's giving you some satisfaction. Is that what you want or what's the plan after that? I waited too long to figure that out, and I felt just stuck in the job that like you and me, I couldn't put in my two weeks or my month notice and leave the situation. I own the business. I can't do that or I can't do it as fast. So I think that's a good question I would ask myself so I could solve it sooner.

Shanna (56:38):

Pretty. That was so good, and I know we didn't get to talk about this during the interview, but that's something I've thought about a lot. I wonder how many of us go in expecting it to always be hard or expecting it to succeed, but to succeed at the hundred thousand dollars level or probably not many of us think in 10 years I'm going to be doing $8 million.

Brittany (56:59):

Yeah, right, and are you even going to like it then if that's your goal? Are you going to like that? Why

Shanna (57:04):

Or why not? I'm going to sit back and ask myself that.

Brittany (57:07):

Yeah, that's a good question.

Shanna (57:08):

Thank you for being on the show. It has been a joy to get to know you. I feel like our friendship has just begun and I'm so pumped about it. If we can do anything to help or serve you, please always reach out and just thank you for sharing your story with our listeners. Yeah,

Brittany (57:21):

Thanks for listening. It's so fun to hang out with you guys today. Chat soon.

Shanna (57:25):

Hey, wildflower, you just finished another episode of Consider the Wildflowers, the podcast. Head over to consider the wildflowers podcast.com for show notes, resource links, and to learn how you can connect with Brittany. One final thought for today from Max Dupree, we cannot become what we want by remaining what we are. As always, thank you for listening. I'll see you next time.