Building Thriving Online Communities and Benefits of a Gluten Free Diet: Addison LaBonte: Founder Organically Addison, Sweet Addison's

Garrett (00:00:00) - Hello, everyone. Welcome to the pod with Garrett Conan. Today I have the pleasure of speaking with food influencer Addison Labonte, who's the founder and CEO of Sweet Addison's and Organically Addison, and she operates four additional websites which receive over a million views per month, has a social media audience, over 200,000 on Instagram and over 3 million likes on TikTok. After a successful Division one soccer career, she then began running marathons, but her life trajectory changed dramatically when she received a scary health diagnosis. And so now we'll,, we'll dive into this amazing story. So, Addison, welcome to the pod.

Addison (00:00:43) - Thank you for having me, Garrett. Excited to be here.

Garrett (00:00:46) - Great. I'm excited to get in the story and hear what you're up to. It's quite exciting.

Addison (00:00:50) - Yes, it is very exciting.

Garrett (00:00:52) - So,, let's start with how you became a food influencer.

Addison (00:00:56) - So I'll take it back to college. I was a Division one college soccer player at the University of Maine, and was in what I thought was the best shape of my life, eating the standard American diet fast food once a week.

Addison (00:01:10) - But I could, you know, I was working out all the time. And after I graduated, I really wanted to stay in good shape. So I started training for a half marathon. And I would notice that 3 to 4 miles into my run, my legs would start to get tingly. Almost like your foot is falling asleep, you know, nothing painful, but you're like, that's that's kind of strange. And then I would experience this very, very sharp shooting pain in my legs, almost like a Charley horse. And eventually the more I kept running, my legs would become completely numb. And that's a very weird sensation when you're running, because, you know, if you misstep, you could sprain an ankle or you just there's no depth perception when you can't feel your legs. So I went to see several different doctors, physical therapists, and they said, you have compartment syndrome. So I had actually heard about this because a few of my college teammates had this. And I said, well, I've been an athlete my whole life.

Addison (00:02:15) - I've been, you know, a college soccer player, and I've never had these symptoms, like, where is this coming from? And they said with compartment syndrome, sometimes it is the overly repetitive nature of what you're doing that causes it to come up. So because I was running these long distances, it was the constant pounding on the pavement and these symptoms came up. So basically compartment syndrome is in a normal person. You have muscle fibers that surround your muscles. When you work out a certain muscle group, your muscles literally get swollen. They they swell, you have increased blood flow to accommodate that. And the muscle fibers will expand. So there's swollen muscles, extra blood flow. Your muscle fibers have expanded for whatever reason in my legs, when I run, those muscle fibers don't expand. So my my muscles are trying to swell. The blood flow gets cut off, they go numb. So that's what happens. The crazy thing is, when I would finish running, my legs would be completely back to normal within 5 to 10 minutes.

Addison (00:03:19) - So I thought, okay, I can't be doing that much damage to myself. But the doctor said, you're actually doing like lasting nerve damage. And so he said, I'm giving you two options. You can get surgery on each of your legs, which would be a total of 12 month recovery time. Or you can quit running. And I said there has to be a better way. So my aunt is a seasoned marathon runner. She lives in my hometown in Maine. And she said, you know, whenever I used to train, I used to be gluten free. And it really, you know, it made me feel a lot better. And maybe you should give it a shot just to feel better overall. You know, I don't you know, it's really going to help with the numbness and the pain. And so I said, I'm so desperate and I just want to be able to run. I said, okay. I'll go gluten free. And this was, I don't know, on like a Tuesday or Wednesday.

Addison (00:04:16) - And I said I'm going to a Red Sox game this weekend. I'll start Monday morning. And so I did, and I started reading every ingredient label. So I went from eating fast food once a week to reading nutrition facts. And within 3 to 4 days, my life was changed. I remember the first time I went for a run after that and I could feel every step. And no. No pain, no numbness, not nothing. And I finally felt normal again. And I remember I went back to that same doctor about a month or so later for a checkup. And he said, you know, how's it going? Did you make your decision if you're going to get the surgery? And I said, I solved it. I said, I became gluten free and all of that. Pain, all those symptoms completely disappeared. And he said, well, that doesn't make any sense. You know that that has nothing to do with nutrition and you know, you're doing damage. You need to get this surgery.

Addison (00:05:13) - The surgery is called a fashion army. And what they do is they they go into those muscle fibers and they make incisions in the muscle fibers in the hopes that they'll expand. And he had even told me previously, there's no guarantee that this works., my college soccer coach actually had compartment syndrome, and he had the fasciae Tommy, and it worked for him. But I knew another person who got it done, and it didn't solve it. So.

Garrett (00:05:38) - And that's after a 12 month recovery to realize it didn't even work. Right, man.

Addison (00:05:43) - So I remember I was sitting in that doctor's office and I said, you wanted me to get surgery, and I solved this for free on my own. No recovery time. $0 out of pocket. I'm running. I feel better than ever. And I kind of told him, like, you should probably look into like more holistic approaches because. The the medical fields. A lot of doctors aren't necessarily trained in nutrition and holistic healing, and my life would be completely different if I had gone through with those surgeries.

Addison (00:06:19) - I mean, this has now become my whole life. It's my job, it's my passion. And who knows what would have happened if I had listened to him. So I've run two half and two full marathons and I felt every step. I mean, there was no numbness. That's amazing. The probably the best thing for me is I used to get 1 to 2 pretty bad headaches every single week. And being an athlete, I thought, oh, I'm just tired, I'm dehydrated. I didn't eat enough protein today. And and I genuinely thought that was normal. And I used to have a huge pill bottle of ibuprofen. I would just take those every, you know, every week. And. I don't even own ibuprofen anymore because I don't need it.

Garrett (00:07:00) - Wow.

Addison (00:07:01) - You know, so that's that's kind of the story of why I started,, getting into healthy eating and just healthy living and wellness overall. And so I've been a lifelong baker. I've loved to bake. I'm. I have a huge sweet tooth.

Addison (00:07:16) - I love chocolate, eat it every day. So when you become gluten free, it's like, how do you bake now? So I had to reteach myself how to bake, and I started documenting this process on Instagram. And that's how I got my very organic start to organically. Addison.

Garrett (00:07:30) - And so did you have any kind of, you know, misconceptions or perception of what a gluten free diet is that most people think of, and how has that? Have you overcome those? Or what would you say to people that say, oh, I could never be gluten free?

Addison (00:07:46) - You can,, it's all it all comes down to mentality and I'll say mental toughness, but I don't really think it's a tough thing in life to be gluten free., so this was 2016 when I became gluten free. So gluten free has changed a lot since then. We have so many more options now. But at the beginning I thought, okay, it's everything that has wheat flour in it. But I was shocked at how many products have gluten.

Addison (00:08:14) - , soy sauce has gluten. Why? Why does it need flour in there and wheat in there?, a lot of seasonings and seasoning blends. So sometimes even, like a taco seasoning will have it in it., something else that I struggled with., a lot of restaurants coat French fries in flour to make them crispier. So I learned that when the hard way a few times just there's so many things that unnecessarily contain gluten. And it took me having to literally read every ingredient label. So when I became gluten free, gluten was the the first and only thing that I cut out. But it really forced me to read all those ingredient labels and then I started seeing other things like, you know what? What is this food and what?

Garrett (00:09:03) - Or something that doesn't sound like a food. What is this that they're putting into my food?

Addison (00:09:07) - Exactly. What is corn fiber? What is rice syrup? You know, what are all these red 40 and yellow color and caramel color. And what is this? And different oils and and what is this? So the first couple of years it was strictly I'm just going to be gluten free.

Addison (00:09:24) - I'm going to teach myself how to bake and how to go out to how like dinner and, and restaurants and, and then I started to really dive into like, what am I eating? And I had realized that a lot of the gluten free foods are just gluten free, but there's more sugar to make them taste normal to get you a compensate to Diet Coke.

Garrett (00:09:48) - But what's actually supplementing that?

Addison (00:09:50) - Exactly. So I had noticed that my eye, my skin had broken out,, even worse than than when I was like in high school. And I said, you know, I'm in my mid 20s at this point, like, like, why is my skin breaking out? And I realized the amount of sugar I was eating every day was crazy high. And I consider myself a pretty healthy person. But all of these gluten free alternatives are just loaded with sugar. So my journey in what I've been eating has definitely evolved with time, but started with gluten and now it's like I really care about what I put into my body.

Garrett (00:10:24) - I was looking at your your recipes and got super hungry and your Instagram pages, and I just want you to kind of give the audience some of these recipes and foods that you do eat, because not only do they look amazing, they sound amazing, and I'm sure they taste amazing. So could you know a few of them that that stuck out to me? You know, gluten free chocolate cheesecake, a no bake Samoa,, cookies, orange chicken, and then my favorite cinnamon crunch banana bread, I mean, delicious.

Addison (00:10:53) - That just went viral on Instagram. That is 5 million views. Now there it is. So when I became gluten free, I vowed to myself that I would do everything I could to not feel like I'm missing out. So I tried to remake all of my favorite recipes, and my mom and I, I grew up baking with my mom, you know, pretty much every Sunday, we'd get out the bag of chocolate chips and make the Nestlé Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Addison (00:11:18) - She'd let me eat the cookie dough and we'd make cookies. And it's just such a fun memory that I have, and I thought, I'm going to make those gluten free. So I started, you know, doing all this experimenting. And that's that's why I started my Instagram to document that process. But now I try to remake favorite recipes or things that people love, but just gluten free. So those Samoa cookies, you know, I was a Girl Scout when I was younger and those were one of my favorite cookies. And I thought, oh, I'm going to make those gluten free because I want to eat those, but I can't just go buy them because I'll get very sick. So I, you know, played around in the kitchen and made them very healthy. So I did a whole no bake three ingredient. I mean, it's coconut flakes, dates, and 100% dark chocolate, so. And it tastes amazing., the orange chicken is one of my favorites because whenever I'm craving, you know, takeout.

Addison (00:12:07) - And I want a Chinese inspired dish., I usually can't have it because it has soy sauce. So I use coconut aminos, which is the soy free and gluten free version of soy sauce. So easy fix for that. I coat them in some gluten free flour instead of typical flour to fry them, and then I just cook them in a pan instead of frying them so I never feel like I'm missing out., if I go out to dinner and they come around with bread rolls, I don't even crave that anymore. I immediately think I'm going to have a migraine if I eat that. And people like you could be eating a full pizza in front of me right now. And I don't want it because it just I associate that with feeling sick. Now, if it was a gluten free pizza, that'd be different. But you know, I just I don't I try to do recipes that I'm craving and that I love and that I grew up eating just in a new way. So I don't really feel like I'm missing out.

Garrett (00:13:03) - From my reading. It doesn't sound like you're missing out. In fact, you're enhancing some recipes that we eat, not we eat. You know, those that,, contain gluten, but you're you're having a new twist on them, and they sound incredible. And so the overall brand, you know, easy, healthy.

Addison (00:13:18) - Delicious, gluten free recipes. There it is. I sometimes even hesitate to tell people that they're gluten free, because we're still working through that stigma as a country., a lot of people are probably burned from the past when everything gluten free tasted like cardboard, because when I started in 2016, it was like trying to find a gluten free pizza was disgusting. So I went without pizza for a while. I went without bagels and English muffins and,, but now it's amazing. So I whenever I'm back home in Maine, I'll cook and bake gluten free for my family. And none of them are gluten free. But like, wow, this is amazing. You know, it's so good.

Addison (00:13:55) - And so that's always my goal is to not feel like I'm sacrificing anything but that. I'm just living a normal life.

Garrett (00:14:02) - You're just excluding a couple ingredients, right? Yeah, but you're using others that,, enhance the flavor and create what it is. So what does food mean to you?

Addison (00:14:12) - Oh, that's a great question. I think for me, it comes down to a lot of memories. And I think food really brings people together. And if you think about holidays, celebrations, you're probably thinking about the food. So I grew up in a really small town in Maine, and my grandparents live in my hometown. I have two aunts, two uncles, five cousins, and a bunch of extended family all in my hometown. So every single holiday, birthday, milestone, life event, we all got together. And my grandmother is. A total foodie. I mean, she that's the way that she loves people is through her food and her recipes. So, you know, whenever you go over to her house, it's like, get ready to eat.

Addison (00:14:55) - You better come hungry because you're going to leave very satisfied and full. And so I grew up watching her create these amazing recipes, but more so memories for our whole family. And we always went to my grandparents house for a Sunday night dinner. And I just have such fond memories of going there. And my grandmother is the type of chef where she makes everything from scratch. So it really inspired me to test new recipes and just the whole from scratch. Like, I could go out and buy a gluten free pizza crust and stick some toppings on it and bake it. Or I could do everything from scratch. So a lot of my inspiration comes from her and comes from my mom. And just I have such a positive view of togetherness with family and all of those recipes that we love to eat. So I think more than anything, food is a lot of memories, family memories.

Garrett (00:15:54) - I love that and totally agree. And bringing people together and creating that great experience. And as the chef, I could imagine seeing the reaction of your guests when they indulge in the food and taste it and realize how great it is and and you realize how much work it went into, and you didn't cut corners and you create everything from scratch.

Garrett (00:16:13) - You you personally have that satisfaction. It's a great overall experience for everyone, right?

Addison (00:16:18) - Yeah. When someone tells me they, like, make one of my recipes and like it, it makes my whole day. I just get so excited because if I can extend that warmth and that those memories to other people, I mean, that's just such a blessing.

Garrett (00:16:32) - I totally agree, and people love food. So yes, that's for sure. I want to start in March 2021. Your website made about $300 and then in December of 2021, it made over $7,000 just from advertisements. Talk to me about what got you that growth.

Addison (00:16:54) - So in December 2020, I took a class all about SEO search engine optimization, and I realized that the website, my blog organically addison.com. It was not a fast website. It loaded very slow. The pictures were too large. I wasn't including the necessary information and all the recipes. There were some plugins that I needed to add to my website to make it more efficient. So I learned all about SEO and then I started implementing best practices.

Addison (00:17:25) - So from December 2020 to about probably June 2021, my website experienced a ton of growth. Like you said, in March 2021, I was able to sign on with an ad agency because I had hit their minimum thresholds of pageviews per month, and that completely changed the game for me. So at that point, I knew what.

Garrett (00:17:46) - Minimum was at.

Addison (00:17:46) - 50,000.

Garrett (00:17:47) - 50,000 a month.

Addison (00:17:48) - Okay. A lot of that in the early days was driven by Instagram, by by recipes. You know, something went viral. I'd get, you know, a few thousand clicks that day. But then as I learned SEO, I started to rank on Google. So it was a combination of, you know, going viral on Instagram and then traffic from Google coming in. So March 2021, yeah, I made about $300. I was like, well, this is great. You know, I want to hit $1,000 a month, like, wouldn't that be something? And I remember I hit that in June. Then I said, well, you know what? If I kept going and and soon I started making more for my website than my full time job in finance.

Addison (00:18:21) - And, you know, this was obviously a time when everybody was working from home. So I had more time to dedicate to my website and content creation and recipe development. And by the time the holidays hit in 2021, yeah, I made about 7000 a month. So it just it really grew and took off. And I remember at the time my parents were like, what? What is what is this? You know, we never have heard about anything like this. And they're both in finance and in corporate America and finance. And they're like, a blog makes this much money per month. Like, that's the coolest thing ever. So yeah, it was a very rapid growth.

Garrett (00:18:57) - And I think it's interesting you're we are talking about a blog and we are talking about a website and we're talking about 2021. So a lot of people are thinking nowadays that the way to make money is social media. You post on social media. But what I'm really excited to really deep dive in today is your experience with blogging and with websites acquiring websites, which I think is,, kind of making the old, old new again or still making that relevant and successful, right?

Addison (00:19:26) - Yeah.

Addison (00:19:27) - So most people think blogging is kind of outdated, or it's just a mommy blog and she posts about her kids. And but when I started my food Instagram, people started asking, where can we find these full recipes? And I said, well, I should probably start a blog. So I hired someone to create a website for me, and then I started posting on that. And I just remember in the early days I had no idea how to update a website or add photos. And I mean, I was so frustrated in the beginning just googling and YouTubing how to do everything, but it taught me a lot, and it taught me that I can figure things out and it's going to be tough, but there's nothing more rewarding than really figuring something out on your own, doing it and succeeding. So started posting on the blog and again, it just it really resonated with people. It started to take off in 2021, and that was a great time for it to take off, because everybody was at home cooking, baking and looking for slightly healthier options.

Addison (00:20:25) - So the timing couldn't have been better. But I really I give myself a lot of credit for for learning how to do everything.

Garrett (00:20:33) - And at 2021, so you're getting over 500,000 views at this time per month. Okay. And you had started when so it had been four years, five years or so.

Addison (00:20:44) - I had started in late 2018. So at that point it had been about three years. But again, those first two years, it was it was really just a hobby of just posting for fun and oh, I'll just randomly make this recipe and write whatever I want on the website. And I had no idea about SEO. So I think if I were learning or if I was starting a website today and I and I knew about SEO, I could probably get it to 5000 ish per month in one year, not three years.

Garrett (00:21:12) - And well, I, I believe that and I think you're undershooting yourself. I definitely that you could you could surpass that. And so then in,, 2022, you hired a team for brand partnerships.

Garrett (00:21:25) - Can you talk about that and why you decided to go that route?

Addison (00:21:29) - Yes. So I decided I decided to hire basically like a brand agency that would help with all of my partnerships. So it had gotten to the point in 2022 when so many brands wanted to work with me because the healthier, gluten free space was exploding. And at the time, I was still working in finance, and I thought, I really would like to have a manager take this on for me. And the manager works only on commission. So I thought, I don't really have anything to lose. You know, she makes money when I make money and she can bring in more partnerships, she can negotiate higher. She handles all the invoicing and emails back and forth. And again, I was still working in finance, so I thought this will kind of offload some of my work. And that was a really great experience. I have a I work with a different brand manager now, but highly recommend that for anybody in this industry who's an influencer and working with brands, because there's a lot of legal things that I didn't realize in the beginning, like usage and exclusivity and timelines and contracts.

Addison (00:22:33) - And so working with somebody who really understands that world was a game changer for me.

Garrett (00:22:39) - Got it. And then that definitely helped offload and as well as grow,, grow. The monetary side of it was that easy to get them,, to hire you or to get them onboarded.

Addison (00:22:51) - No, it wasn't. So this was an actual agency. This wasn't just a freelancer. And they said, we only work with influencers who do this full time. And I said, well, I still work in finance, so I can't tell you that I do this full time. I said, however, if you're asking if I do this for 40 hours a week, yes, I do this for at least 40 hours a week. I said, I'm working from home in finance. I get my job done by about 12 1:00 and this is all I do for literally the rest of the day. So I said, I'd like you to take a chance on me, because even though this isn't my full time job, I treat it like a full time job.

Addison (00:23:29) - So they talked internally and they came back and said, okay, we'll give you a shot. We're willing to work with you. And because we love your content and and what you put out there and what you stand for and sure, we'll give you a shot. So it wasn't easy, but it wasn't the most difficult thing. I had talked to a few other agencies. You got to.

Garrett (00:23:48) - Speak up for yourself and you had to prove your worth and tell them and explain why they should take that chance and tick off yourself, which is great. And as you should.

Addison (00:23:56) - I tell everyone, be your own advocate, because nobody else will do as good of a job as you will. And if you really believe in something and in yourself, you need to advocate for yourself. You need to. Command what you're worth. Truly.

Garrett (00:24:12) - So then in 2023, obviously you have a little bit of a team here working with you and getting in some revenue and making some money and and still working your finance job.

Garrett (00:24:23) - And so then you decided,, to invest in either real estate or start a second website from scratch. Talk to me about what was going on in Addison's head there and what next steps were.

Addison (00:24:36) - So in early 2023, I felt like I wanted a new challenge. I had kind of mastered organically. Addison was growing that and thought, I don't really feel like I'm learning all that much anymore and I'm ready to invest my money somewhere. And so originally thought I was going to go into real estate investment. And, you know, obviously it wasn't a great time in the market. And I know a little bit about real estate, but didn't feel entirely comfortable putting a significant amount of my savings into that. So I thought maybe I'll start a second website and it'll be a different, slightly different niche. Maybe it'll be like just vegan recipes or just like high protein recipes or something. Something else, not just gluten free, had.

Garrett (00:25:19) - Some synergies with your existing business.

Addison (00:25:21) - Yes, exactly. And I was listening to a podcast one day and it talked about buying other websites, and I thought, well, that's kind of like digital real estate.

Addison (00:25:32) - And that's something that I'm very comfortable in. I know how to grow that world. So I started looking at different website brokerages, which those do exist. It's kind of crazy to think about., and I found this blog that I now own and I thought, this is an amazing opportunity. So I bought it from a husband and wife team. She was a previous New York Times best selling cookbook author. She had a lot of recognition in the industry. And she said, you know, my daughters are in high school. I just want to spend more time with my family. I kind of lost my passion for this and even she said, blogging used to be just posting fun things, but now it's this SEO game and it's much more competitive and you need to do XYZ to rank on Google. And I thought, I love that aspect of it.

Garrett (00:26:23) - You're like, I know I have a website and I've mastered this and let's, let's scale, let's go.

Addison (00:26:27) - So she this woman had built up quite an audience.

Addison (00:26:33) - And at the time.

Garrett (00:26:34) - What are we talking about?

Addison (00:26:36) - So she has she I now own it. But over a million Facebook followers. And I thought, wow, this is being very underutilized. And at the time, organically, Addison and this other website had about the same number of page views. And I thought how with all of these people following her online, how is this not being utilized better? So I literally took a leap of faith, spent over six figures on this website and bought it. And I have now three times the monthly revenue in nine months and really, really grown that community. And it's been a challenge, which is what I was looking for. But it's been a lot of fun. So I completely doubled my business, doubled my workload. I more than doubled my workload because this website needed a lot of love, and this audience needed a lot of love. So I knew that I needed to hire out a team. I just I couldn't do this by myself. So the first person I hired was a virtual assistant and she lives in the Philippines.

Addison (00:27:38) - She's amazing., she works seven days a week for me, which Americans would not really be willing to do. So she works for me. She does a lot of, like, admin tasks. She'll update things on the websites, she'll schedule out social media posting. She'll run monthly reports for me about how the websites performed. She's amazing. I had her almost a year now, and I also had hired two food photographers. So I'll at home test the recipe, write the recipe. Okay, cool it works. Send it off to the photographers, they make it look all pretty. And I still love food photography, but it takes a long time. So had them..

Garrett (00:28:19) - It's not about what you love, it's about opportunity cost of your time. Exactly. You really got to look at that. And a virtual assistant, a food photographer, content creator. You really need to start valuing your time and then see what you can offload. If you have a higher value task that you need to be doing as the owner.

Addison (00:28:37) - Exactly. So I had to I had to go. I had to shift my mindset from blogger to CEO. Now suddenly I own a company and this isn't like a cutesy little food blog anymore. This is a digital media company with a huge audience online. And how do I cater to their needs and how do I how do I grow this business? So I knew that I needed to hire out. So the virtual assistant came first, then the food photographers, and then I hired a couple writers to help me write blog content. So. I have about half that team now because I realized, like once I had onboarded them and kind of caught myself back up, I said, okay, I can I can take some of this back myself. And I really do love the food photography aspect of it, so I do a lot of that myself still.

Garrett (00:29:25) - That's interesting because, you know, Jeff Bezos talks about there are one way doors and two way doors. And yeah, hiring people is a two way door you can walk right back through.

Garrett (00:29:35) - And if it doesn't work out okay, lesson learned. Or if it does work out, but you realize you have the time to put into the business, you can just, you know, reduce the team a little bit and, and do what you want to do and, and add yourself back into the team and create. Right. And I want to, you know, kind of double click into that decision point where it was either real estate investing or, you know, a website, whether it was buying or creating. And I think when you look at the wealthiest people in the world, they are all focused on one domain. And I think it's super critical when people want to feel a challenge and they want to add more to their plate, that it is way more efficient and way better in terms of a lifestyle and learning and, and building upon your existing business by kind of adding something that is tangentially related. And because you are either creating a website or buying a website, it still had similarities to the existing business.

Garrett (00:30:32) - So you could keep learning. But it added to that fundamental base, and then you can keep growing that and really become an expert. So I think that's a great move. And would you you know what comments you have about that.

Addison (00:30:45) - Yeah I mean it was. Kind of a no brainer. When I found this website on this this brokerage website, and I thought, I'm not just buying a business here, I'm buying a community, and how can I incorporate that community with my existing community and really lift them up together? So instead of going the real estate route, which I still would love to do someday, I went with something that I knew how to succeed in. And at that point I didn't have two completely separate fields I was working in. I had one, and then I was suddenly strengthening it with this other acquisition. So, so far it's been great. I mean, it's been a lot of fun and it has been a really big challenge. I remember I bought it on June 1st of 2023, and that whole month was kind of a blur for me.

Addison (00:31:36) - I added so much content to that site, I had to fix some things that were broken on the site and hire a tech guy to help me, you know, with those issues. And it was just 100 miles an hour from day one. And I think it was like that for several months. And then I kind of was like, okay, I can take a deep breath, I can relax a little bit and kind of see it from a more higher level view. And what can I take back in-house and where does my role fall in this? Because it wasn't like, okay, I need to fix all these things that are broken and then have all these independent contractors filling in for me. And then it was like, okay, I'm in.

Garrett (00:32:16) - Cruise control, you're sailing. So now what can you add add on. Right. And so how many views would you say was at that point where you said, okay, you're able to look back at the business of the two websites there.

Addison (00:32:28) - It was less about views and more about my gut instinct, which.

Addison (00:32:34) - It's huge. I always tell people, don't ignore your gut instinct. It's telling you something for a reason. And I finally felt comfortable enough where I can breathe. I've gotten into a good routine with how I work, and I can start to to give myself these tasks back. So I took that other website. It was getting about 400 ish thousand pageviews per month when I bought it. Now it's about 800,000., it was about 900,000 in December. You know, everybody's baking for the holidays and cooking and that sort of thing. So I doubled.

Garrett (00:33:08) - That in.

Addison (00:33:09) - Six months.

Garrett (00:33:11) - Wow. That's probably. Looking back on that you know six figure investment saying yep that's that's pretty nice. So because that became so successful you decided, you know this is a neat little business I got going on. So you decided to to buy a few more.

Addison (00:33:24) - Yes. So I bought two other small websites. Really small. I'm trying to build those up right now, and I still am not entirely sure where they fit into the portfolio and what the the future looks like for them, but they're pretty niche websites.

Addison (00:33:39) - So I now run for website,, organically. Addison. And then this other bigger one that I bought are definitely my main priorities. Got it.

Garrett (00:33:48) - And then a fifth one that will soon be talking about. So,, you have all these, you know,, audience and communities and they're, they're seeing your websites. Can you talk to, you know, what type of,, an audience it is? Community, I would imagine. I'm not in, in the game, but advertisers want engagement. So do they view this? You know, reader, as very engaged. What's kind of their take on this sort of,, reader and, and customer per se, I guess.

Addison (00:34:16) - So the good thing about being with an ad agency is that I don't even have to think about the advertisers. So the ad agency that I sign with, they basically come in on the backside of my website, and they code it so that the ads will be in very specific places, and then they establish those external relationships with the advertisers.

Addison (00:34:37) - So I literally don't have to think about that ever, which is amazing., I'm sure that they want to see engage readers, but that's off my plate. I don't even have to worry about that when it comes to working with brands on Instagram and TikTok, engagement is everything. So if I have a million followers but nobody clicks my link, doesn't matter. You know? They'd rather work with someone with 100 followers who has 50 people click their link. So yes, brands would love to see highly engaged audiences,, people that resonate with my content. So. A brand that makes normal pizza isn't going to work with me, you know?, so that's it's been a lot of learning. And again, there's really when I started this, there's really and there still is really no handbook for how to be an influencer. And you don't go to college for this. It's a very new career field. And when I tell people I do this for a living, they're like, oh, that's cute, that's fun.

Addison (00:35:35) - And I'm like, you have no idea. I own a business. I own several businesses at this point, and.

Garrett (00:35:40) - I do pretty.

Addison (00:35:41) - Well. Yes, it's my fault. I make more now than I did in finance, significantly more so if that tells you anything, you need to know., I make a great living off of this, and I'm having so much fun while doing it.

Garrett (00:35:54) - That's great. Well, definitely some more to dive into there., about the details and intricacies of,, the website and social media. But your audience, you know, love your recipes, love reading them, love making them. But what do they want from you?

Addison (00:36:10) - So they started asking me in 2020 and 2021, where can we buy your your baked goods? Can you ship these to me, that's the best. Can you ship these across the country to me, or can you ship these to my son or daughter in college? Or, you know, I even got the question. Can you ship these to soldiers overseas? I'm like, I wouldn't even know how to do that.

Addison (00:36:32) - I don't know how to ship overseas. I've shipped to Canada, but that doesn't really count. So it got my mind thinking, what would it look like if I came out with a personal brand, and what would it look like if I started shipping my baked goods? And in December 2022, I did a whole Christmas cookie series. So for the first 25 days of December leading up to Christmas, I did a different cookie recipe every day and I called it my 25 Days of Christmas cookies. And each day it was like, what's she going to post today? What's the cookie recipe going to be?

Garrett (00:37:05) - And all that anticipation, right?

Addison (00:37:07) - And people loved it. I grew my following a lot during that time, and my engagement was better than ever. And people started to really ask, like, what? You know, could we buy these? And during the holidays, everybody loves to get a gift box of cookies. And so I said, no, but stay tuned. So again, when 2023 rolled around and I said I need a new challenge and real estate or websites, and I kind of also thought like, maybe I should start working on a brand.

Addison (00:37:40) - So I always make not necessarily New Year's resolutions, but I make a list of things I want to accomplish that year. And in 2023, I wrote make significant progress towards coming up with a product. So I have family friends here in Dallas who own restaurants, and they approached me in spring of 2023 and they said, we get asked all the time if we have gluten free desserts and that's that's your bread and butter. So could we, you know, sell your cookies.

Garrett (00:38:09) - Bread and butter, but your gluten.

Addison (00:38:11) - Free bread and butter. There it is. Exactly. And I thought here it is. Here's my opportunity. So I said yes. But give me a few months to determine what I want this to look like. And I don't want to just sell gluten free cookies. I want these to be really special. I want these to be handcrafted with premium ingredients, and I want them to also be dairy free, because a lot of people that follow me are also dairy free., my best friend in the world is lactose intolerant.

Addison (00:38:42) - She's like, you better make these dairy free so I can eat them. And I thought, you know, a lot of people who are gluten free are also dairy free or who are dairy free. Also gluten free is it's a lot of similarities there. So I started this process in July or so of 2023. Now what does it look like?, start doing some research about how do you start a food company? What do I have to do from a legal point of view? Where do I get the ingredients? What do I have to put on my packaging? How do I price this out? I mean, there's just so much that goes into it. I had to become certified in the state of Texas to sell food, so I had to get a food handler's license and pass that class. And it was just a lot of learning how to do things for the first time. And it reminded me a lot of when I started blogging and influencing, like, how do I how do I do this? There's no degree out there that tells you XYZ and then you can do it.

Addison (00:39:34) - It's a lot of learning how to do things for the first time, and it's a very uncomfortable thing., but yeah, so I started the process of creating what is now Sweet Addison's, which is my brand of better for you desserts. So as it stands right now in early 2024, it's just cookies. But my hope is to expand into other desserts as well. And the feedback that I've received from people is just. It's so. Affirming and what I do and validating. And not that I'm seeking external validation, but when you can provide a good or a service to someone and they say, this made my day, I mean, that's the biggest reward there is.

Garrett (00:40:18) - So that's great, and especially because of what it means to you. I mean, this solved a real issue and a health issue, and this is really solving a need for other people. And you can just see in their smile that it's not just a cookie. This is so much more than just a cookie and what it means to eat like other people, to not be excluded, to be included in eating cookies that are delicious and and that they can enjoy that.

Addison (00:40:47) - That's the biggest reason that I started this brand, was not to get rich because food companies, it takes years and millions of dollars to to grow a food company. I wanted people to feel normal and I wanted to provide the experience of a bakery style dessert. For those of us who can't go to a bakery and just get a dessert. So going back to the whole gluten free tastes like dry cardboard, because a lot of times it does. I wanted to create cookies that are big, thick, chewy, gooey, reminds you of something your grandmother would make but is safe to eat. So I spent. About six months. Hundreds of cookies later to land on my first product, which is chocolate chip cookies. I went through over 25 recipe variations. I changed what gluten free flour I use, I change what baking fat I use, I changed what chocolate chips I used, and I have written out all of the 25 variations and what I didn't like about them, and what needed to be tweaked a little bit more.

Addison (00:41:52) - This a little bit more that they're a little bit too dry, a little bit too thick, a little bit too thin. And so I wanted to create the best tasting cookie that just so happens to be better for you. I don't want somebody to eat this and say, that's that's good for a gluten free cookie. No, that's not good enough. This needs to be the best cookie ever. And it's been interesting because over 50% of my customers aren't gluten free. They just love my cookies. And that is the biggest compliment. And I had my family taste test them., my mom is the biggest cookie connoisseur. Like, she eats a chocolate chip cookie every day after her lunch, and she has such a sweet tooth. And so I knew that if they passed her test, these would be legit. She's had probably thousands of chocolates. She's an expert, and she loved them. And then I said, well, maybe the real test is my dad because my dad calls himself gluten ful.

Addison (00:42:50) - He's like, give me all the carbs and the bread and, you know, everything. And and he loved them too. And then my brother, my brother is six six. He's a D1 pitcher and he's wow. These are you know, what did he say? Fantastic. Exceeded my expectations. And so I thought I'm really on to something here. And so I was very excited to launch this out into the world and especially to my community on Instagram, who has been asking for this and following my journey. And it is just been the biggest blessing to be able to spread joy to people in my first week of operating. These cookies were ordered for a chemo patient. And I mean, it brought me to tears because I thought. These cookies are already in hospital. I mean, it was literally the first seven days, and the person who ordered them said, I want to give these to my friend because he loves cookies and he can't eat white sugar because of the chemo. So my cookies are sweetened with coconut sugar.

Addison (00:43:52) - It's unrefined. It's,, 50% lower on the glycemic index than white sugar, so it won't spike your blood sugar like a normal cookie would. And she said, you know, I, I just want to make his day. And I said, if if I don't make a single dollar from this. I can say I made people's.

Garrett (00:44:10) - Day, and,, you brought a cookie for me, so I'm excited to try that. And and we met at a CPG,, DFW, CPG showcase. And so you were there and talk to many people and showcasing your product. And then I saw on LinkedIn that you posted a goal. Can you,, chat with our audience about what the goal is and how you came up with it?

Addison (00:44:38) - So I think you're referring to the goal of selling an order in all 50 states. So I've always been. Very analytical, and I've always tracked numbers and events and things like that, and I've always had a very good memory. And I thought, well, wouldn't it be interesting if I, you know, got an order from every state? And I think the thing that kind of sparked that interest was within the first three days, somebody from Hawaii ordered.

Addison (00:45:05) - And I was like, why? I don't know anybody who lives there and wow, these cookies are going to travel really long way to get there. And I thought, well, you know what if what if I what if I try to get an order from every 50 states? We're very close right now, so we're missing a few in the Midwest. So you Midwesterners please come through for me. We also still need Alaska, and I do have a friend there, so I'm going to make her order them., but I just thought, what a fun way to engage my audience and, and just bring people in and make them feel like they're part of this larger community, which they are, because I receive messages every day on Instagram and I don't view those as just followers. I don't like the word followers, like some of them have become my best friends. And there's people I hear from every day on Instagram like, hi Addison, how are you doing today? Love the cookies. You know, love this recipe.

Addison (00:45:53) - You know, what's your favorite restaurant here? What do you order here? And it's it's more of like friends, not followers. So I wanted them to feel included in this launch. So that's why I came up with the challenge.

Garrett (00:46:06) - That's that's so creative and so amazing. And it's has so many benefits because like you said, it's incorporating the community and and the customers and making sure that they feel welcomed. And oh, well, they're in this state and they're helping support me by checking that, you know, stayed off of of the challenge. But as well as knowing yourself and knowing how to motivate yourself and in entrepreneurship, it's it's a challenge. And and you're baking all these cookies. And I could imagine that just having that, you know, little short term goal is, is really inspirational to to keep you going at night and in the early mornings when you're cooking or I saw you, you slugged around some heavy flour packages. So yeah, it's there's a lot of behind the scenes work.

Garrett (00:46:50) - So I'd imagine setting these goals and, and having small wins along the way. And that's a I thought it was super creative. So I wanted to mention that.

Addison (00:46:58) - Thank you I appreciate that. It's been a journey. I've learned so much about myself and it. If I'm being fully transparent in every single day, I'm very uncomfortable. I mean, I the other day bought over $1,000 worth of almond flour and I thought, who does this in their right mind? I'm. When I. When I look at my friends, I mean, they're not doing anything like this. And I've since made friends in the food industry, but I'm talking about friends that I grew up with, went to college with, and I'm like, what am I doing with my life? And will this be worth it someday? And who spends $1,000 on almond flour at this stage? And so it's. I think success and very successful people have a high threshold for feeling uncomfortable, because nothing good ever comes from your comfort zone.

Addison (00:47:54) - If I was if I had listened to my comfort zone, I would have never started my Instagram and my blog because I would have thought, what if someone sees this and thinks it's weird and nobody else is really doing this that I'm friends with and that I know? And if I had let that fear hold me back, this wouldn't be my full time job. And I now have this audience on Instagram, and it's taking me all these places. And I can say without a doubt, I wouldn't have moved from Maine to Texas if it weren't for being bold in my life and having this experience of starting an Instagram, starting a blog, moving across the country and just being able to feel so uncomfortable and yet do it anyway. I used to think that the goal was to be fearless, but that's not my goal. Because if you're not feeling fear ever, your life is way too comfortable. The goal is to feel fear and do it anyway, and that's courage. So my new goal is not to be fearless.

Addison (00:48:51) - It's to be courageous. And that's my that's what I hope to inspire in other people, is there are things that are really scary every day. And I have a very comfortable life. I'm happy, I'm healthy, and there are people out there who are facing way worse than buying $1,000 worth of almond flour. But the message comes back to the same thing is, we need to be courageous, and we need to put ourselves out there and take risks and take chances and do things that other people aren't doing. I every single night watch Shark Tank, and I look at those five sharks and I say, they didn't get here by being comfortable. They were doing things that none of their family and friends are doing. People thought they were crazy. That's how they got to where they are and they took a chance. At one point they were all broke, unemployed, and they just had this dream and this vision. And that's what I want to inspire in other people. If there's something that you can't go a day without thinking about, it's time to pursue that.

Addison (00:49:51) - I say, don't quit your day dream.

Garrett (00:49:55) - That's powerful and I totally agree. And and so speaking to that, you know, I'm also of the belief that you have to change your environment, put yourself in uncomfortable situations to grow. And it's all about how can you even find those situations so you can grow. Right. And one quote, one of my one of my quotes from last year was success is something you attract because of the person you become. And so thinking about, you know, working and keep iterating on yourself and improving every day by 1% and eventually whatever big dream you might have, you will attract that and keep on going.

Addison (00:50:35) - Right? I completely agree. I listen to a ton of podcasts., same. Yeah. Yes. But one of my favorites is the Ed Mylett podcast. And he he's a motivational speaker,, businessman, extremely successful, but something that he talks about that I have reminded myself again and again. He says, touch your dream. So he said, if your dream is to live in that that amazing neighborhood, go drive around there once a week, you know, park your car, walk around that neighborhood, see who lives there.

Addison (00:51:10) - If you really want to drive that really nice car. Go to the dealership and test drive it. He said, think about how you feel when you're living that dream. And he said, just just touch it. Every once in a while. He's like, you want to go on that? You know that dream vacation, go there for a day or two, see what it feels like, and and touch that dream. So that's something that I keep reminding myself is I have this huge dream in my mind. How can I just touch a little bit of that on a on a daily basis? And for me, like, I love watching Shark Tank and seeing these people who are so successful and really changing the world. And I go to all these networking groups, and I try to find people that are way more successful than I am, because I get inspired by that. I don't get discouraged or think, oh, they cheated the system. No, that's inspiring to me. I, I want to be the least successful person in the room.

Addison (00:52:00) - And that's how I choose my friends. And the people that I surround myself with is how can they inspire me to be a better person, a better businesswoman, and how can I really touch that dream?

Garrett (00:52:12) - Man. I haven't heard that before, but I'm definitely going to start incorporating that into my life. I'm big into visualization and so I can see some synergies between those two, because one of,, a way to really powerfully visualize is to think of the details, and there's no other better way to think of the details. Then go in that car, smell that new car smell, touch the wheel or whatever it is,, or go on that vacation and get that image in your head and think about what it would be like to be going on that vacation every year, or whatever it is for you.

Addison (00:52:47) - Absolutely. I'm big into visualization. I don't love the word manifest. I think a lot of people say I'm manifesting this, and it almost seems like I'm just thinking it's going to happen, whereas with visualization it's more so I can see myself in this position, and these are the steps I need to to take to get there.

Addison (00:53:04) - And so visualization is a little bit of touching your dream, you know, at least in your imagination. And I think it's such a powerful exercise is go drive around that that neighborhood, go to that car dealership, go meet someone who's doing what you want to do. And I mean, I need to, like, meet Martha Stewart or in a garden or something, but,, I really encourage people to do that because then it doesn't. It doesn't seem like just some crazy, far off dream. It's like, this is this is what it feels like, and this is what the environment is like. And who are these people that are already doing this?

Garrett (00:53:38) - Yeah. Align the energies. Yes. And then,, because I love this topic of conversation. So another podcast I listen to and love is Alex Ramsey. And one thing many things stick out to me, but one thing in particular with what you had just mentioned about putting yourself in an uncomfortable situation, being an entrepreneur is he says that, and I'm paraphrasing, that in entrepreneurship it's not about the the outcome of of where you can be, but about who you become in the process.

Garrett (00:54:10) - And just thinking about that and the confidence you get from the cold calls and receiving those no's and being okay with rejection or the confidence to to send something across the world and figure it out on your own, or to build a website and realize that, wow, I just built this website and now I'm receiving income from it. And something in your creation and how that will just keep compounding your life, and eventually you'll become just this great person with all these skills, and you'll feel very fulfilled in what you've accomplished in that regard.

Addison (00:54:44) - Right, exactly., going back to the Ed Marlette podcast, he always says, you know, we always think the end goal is to be a crazy millionaire. And he's like, that's not the goal. The goal is to. Is going to be how you feel when you hit that. And he said he loved the journey more than the destination. And it's about who you become along the way and the lessons that you learn and the actual success. You probably won't feel as fulfilled as you think it will be.

Addison (00:55:13) - You know, once you hit that, that million, that 10 million, that 100 million, you know, whatever the goal is, financial goal.

Garrett (00:55:19) - If you rate success on a financial.

Addison (00:55:21) - Goal, exactly. Which is not is not success all encompassing. But oftentimes you'll get to that goal and you'll say, okay, what's next? And you're like, well, I thought it I thought my life would change and know, all right, what's next? And we're never satisfied.

Garrett (00:55:34) - Keep moving. Yes, yes. And that's why I just really like your, you know, your 25 day cookie challenge, where you can look back and think about how awesome that was and and your 50 state goal when you just launched your cookies. And I think super creative and making these little wins along the way. So you keep enjoying the journey, and especially because I know that you're going to have a great team eventually and keep building it out with whatever you you work on and getting the team inspired by goals. And so they'll definitely be excited to to hear more of your creativity and your goals in that realm.

Garrett (00:56:07) - Thank you. So where do you see Sweet Addison's going in kind of three years and maybe a little long term vision.

Addison (00:56:13) - So long term vision. I want to be a baking company. I want to be the next Betty Crocker., but in a more wholesome and and healthy way. I want it to be household name and a household brand. And I want, at the end of the day, to bring happiness and joy to as many people as possible and for as many people to experience sweet Addison's. And again, it just comes down to joy. Like I originally started this company thinking, this is going to going to be great for people with food allergies, and it's a great option, I thought. We'll see how that goes. And then the feedback that I've received is it made my day receiving these cookies and or someone bought these for me as a gift. And it just it lightened up my whole day and I thought I need to shift my perspective from this is for people with food allergies to I just want to bring joy to people.

Addison (00:57:09) - So that's the the ultimate goal is to just spread happiness and enjoy through these baked goods. But I want to have a whole product line. So focusing on cookies now would love to get into, you know, brownies and other classic desserts. But that's the goal is I want people to know about this, and I want more than anything people to realize you don't have to choose between your health and enjoyment. You really, really, truly can have both.

Garrett (00:57:38) - That's amazing and definitely on trend nowadays. And we need to to go more towards that path. And,, health is the new wealth.

Addison (00:57:48) - It's so true. There's a quote that I absolutely love and it's a healthy person, has a thousand wishes, but a sick person has one. And if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. So I really want to inspire people to look at the ingredients of the foods that you're eating. Because our food marketing world is very deceptive and. Just because something says healthy on the package. There's no law that says what constitutes healthy and doesn't.

Addison (00:58:23) - The FDA does not regulate that as of right now. That is another hope of mine is to bring transparency to the food marketing world. And if you're eating a giant cookie and it says 20g of sugar, but there's four servings in one cookie, you're not eating 80g of sugar, and you might not even realize that. It's 80g of sugar. Oh, it's only says 20, so I'm only eating 20. So that's just a small example, but. Please read the ingredients of the food that you're eating. I beg you, like if we had to actually say what we're eating on a daily basis, most of it would sound like for breakfast, I had corn fiber and tapioca syrup and,, inverted cane sugar and red 40. Why can't we say I had some eggs? And some grass fed bacon. And those are ingredients that my body can recognize and process. I'm not going to be. In a in a food coma in an hour. I'm going to have energy for my day. I'm going to feel healthy.

Addison (00:59:29) - I'm going to look healthy. I mean, healthy again has this stigma of being boring and and not tasty. And that's truly what I want to change.

Garrett (00:59:39) - And I believe you'll be doing it. Thank you. Yes. And on that, I mean, recently I was looking at acai bowls and oh, sounds so healthy, you know, and it's fruit and granola and but no, I looked at the ingredients and some chains. If they're kind of a fast food ish place, I don't want to name names, but it has serious sugar and it has a bunch of ingredients that aren't natural. And so even if the like you said, the the name of the food sounds healthy, you really need to look under the hood and see what is in there.

Addison (01:00:11) - It's it's so true. If you turn over a package of food and the ingredient list is a novel, put it down. If there is something on there that you can't pronounce or you don't know where it comes from, don't buy it. Why would you put things into your body that you don't know what they are? That is literally putting a foreign object into your body.

Addison (01:00:32) - Like guys, we only get one body. You can't, you can't redo this, right? But you can start new and you can start today and you can start treating yourself better now. And. I never knew how sick I was until I wasn't sick anymore. I thought having weekly headaches, feeling really tired after I ate, going through all this joint inflammation and pain. I thought that was normal. And I was 22 years. I was a Division one college athlete. You could look at me and say that I'm in the top 1% of athletes in the US, and I felt disgusting, but I thought that was normal because. The the the pharmaceutical companies will tell you that's normal. I'll just take some ibuprofen. Is that how our ancestors lived? Is that is that how we want to live? No. Right. I don't take medicine anymore because I don't need it. And again, I'm very blessed that I don't have any preexisting conditions. But at the same time, I've done my homework to get to this point where I'm the healthiest I've ever been, and I feel amazing.

Garrett (01:01:44) - And just like, first off, congrats. That's that's amazing. And just like the entrepreneurship journey with the advocating for your business, with the brand ambassador, you advocated for your health. Yes, yes, doctors, you know, get trained and they're experts in their field. But and I come from a medical family, they don't know everything. There's lots of things that,, you know, like holistic wellness or whatever may be. And so you need to be your advocate for your own health. And as people know, food is your energy. So and your physiology. And that can improve your your mindset, your energy, your productivity, your communication. It's just a domino effect. And one tool because I do understand it, it takes some time to read a label and research the ingredients. I downloaded an app called Think Dirty and you can scan a barcode and it will come up with a grade for that item. It will come up with alternatives kind of help educate you about the ingredients in the food.

Garrett (01:02:44) - So thank you technology and that company think Think Dirty is an app you can download to help with this.

Addison (01:02:52) - Awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:02:53) - So let's.

Garrett (01:02:55) - , dive a little deeper into social media. Obviously, right now, your followers. Well, in the hundreds of thousands., and you had mentioned and yes, I'd do my research. So thank you for doing some articles and podcasts. So that's why I got this information. But you had mentioned how it's critical to,, be consistent. And can you talk to us a little bit about what that meant to you previously when you first started, but now what that means to you?

Addison (01:03:27) - So when I started, I tried to post every single day, but it was a little bit all over the place. It was. Here's a random picture of my dinner. Here's where I went out to eat. Here's a snack I like. This is what I eat for breakfast. And it just it didn't have a consistent feel. So in 2020, I was working in finance in an office, started working from home, and for me, that flipped a switch internally.

Addison (01:03:56) - I'm not going to treat this like a hobby anymore. This is going to be treated like a business, meaning I will work on this at least 40 hours a week. I will work on it even when I'm tired. Don't feel like it. You know, whatever it is, this is a job now. Really fun job. But this is now a job. And so that looked like building out social calendars and starting to pitch myself to brands and really define what my niche is, which is the easy, healthy, delicious gluten free recipes.

Garrett (01:04:24) - So which is super critical in now I'm kind of learning more about content. Why is it so critical that you pick a niche.

Addison (01:04:31) - So people know what to expect? So you find your tribe, people who want to follow you. So think about the your favorite people that you follow on Instagram. It's because you know what to expect when you go to their page and you know that you're going to like it.

Garrett (01:04:44) - In addition to that, the algorithms know what to expect, which means they can help you grow your audience and push your content to those,, viewers that would appreciate it.

Addison (01:04:56) - Exactly. So it's all about consistency, not only days and times that you're posting, but what you're posting. Because if my audience. Likes gluten free recipes, which they do. And one day I get on and show white flour. Nobody's going to like that, and they're going to be confused and they'll probably unfollow me because now I'm not legitimate. I'm not trustworthy. So it's about building up the trust with your audience and consistency. Consistency in terms of days you're posting, times you're posting, what you're posting, how you show up, and how you interact with your audience.

Garrett (01:05:33) - You also mentioned you need to stand out and be unique.

Addison (01:05:36) - Yes. I mean, it's so saturated these days, how are you going to stand out? So one reason that I stand out and people tell me all the time is I'm making classic recipes in a healthier way. So, oh, you miss your mom's fudge brownies? Here's the recipe. Oh, you. You missed your favorite takeout orange chicken. Here you go.

Addison (01:05:55) - So I'm not reinventing the wheel. I mean, these aren't, like, crazy out there. Never heard of recipes. These are classic recipes that we grew up eating. One of my favorite recipes on my blog is gluten free Hamburger Helper, because I ate that all the time growing up. I also have gluten free chicken fingers., gluten free hamburger buns. I mean, again, things that people know and they recognize, but they have, for whatever reason, had not been able to make these gluten free or they can't go out to a restaurant and buy this. So consistency, definitely in terms of what you're posting.

Garrett (01:06:26) - Consistency, be unique, stand out. And I guess listen to your audience. Your audience was letting you know what they appreciated. And then you can keep doing that and definitely listen to feedback, which is obviously critical. Yes. And then you,, I guess the question is, how do you not let fear hold you back?

Addison (01:06:47) - So. This started probably in high school.

Addison (01:06:52) - But when I think about fear, I think about college., I knew that I wanted to play college soccer, and I thought I'm probably pretty good enough to play Division three. And so I started going to a bunch of different soccer clinics at D3 schools, and I had some interest from some coaches in, in New England, where I'm from. And I had this one coach. I thought I did really well at this ID clinic and was so set on going to this one school and sent him a follow up email, and he said, you're not good enough to play here. And I thought., my team just won the scrimmage 5 to 0. And as a defender, my team had a shutout. I thought I played really well, you know, whatever. And I thought, okay, so what am I going to do now? Because that that was my life path, right? I was going to go to this college. I knew what I was going to major in. What now? So on a whim, I decided to email the coach at the University of Maine.

Addison (01:07:55) - And it was a Division one school and I thought, I must be delusional. But you don't. You don't know if you don't ask. If you don't try, you'll never know. So I said, I'm just going to email him and who knows? Well, that email changed my life. The coach replied. And he said, I've heard about you and actually knew your dad because my dad played football at the University of Maine and he said, I went to school with your dad, and your dad is the most competitive person ever, and if you're anything like him, you will fit in well here. Come up for an official visit. I want to meet you. I know that you're a good student. I talked to your teachers and I thought, oh my goodness. I was recently told I couldn't even play Division three and now a Division one coach. Wants to talk to me. So I went up to the University of Maine,, for that first visit, and. Coach said. I've never seen you play soccer.

Addison (01:08:47) - It's the middle of your senior year of high school. It's way too late by normal standards. But I like you and I like how competitive you are. And he said, if you want to be a walk on, you can walk on, try out. I cannot guarantee that you will see a minute of playing in your four years, but I'm willing to give you a shot. And so I went home and I said, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. And that was truly the first time in my life where I felt the fear and I did it anyway. So that was a pivotal time for me. And I said. I'm I'm taking him up on this opportunity. So I called him on February 29th, on Leap Day in 2012. And I said, coach. I'm taking your chance. Thank you for taking a chance on me. And so I look back at. I was 17 years old at the time, and I look back on that, and I that was such a pivotal point in my life.

Addison (01:09:47) - And that changed. The course of my life. And whenever I feel fear now, I say, what if I didn't take that chance? And what if I let fear hold me back? And what if I let this Division three coach get into my head? And what if I believed him and thought, maybe I'm not good enough to play at all? And I felt the fear and I did it anyway. So. That's my lesson on fear is is life is way too short to let fear hold you back. I mean, we only get one shot at this. Life is way too short. And when you have opportunities. Are you going to let fear hold you back?

Garrett (01:10:26) - I think that's especially your your decision making framework of kind of what I regret this if I didn't go forward with this and Jeff Bezos has a regret minimization framework where he says, If I'm 80 years old and I look back in my life, would I regret not making this decision? That's how we started Amazon and left his high paying hedge fund job.

Garrett (01:10:48) - I think it's a great framework to make decisions. And you're 17, you have parents and a lot of people would go home. You know, they talk to their parents, they think about all their options. And some parents would have opinions on their child's future. Talk to you about whether or not. Their parents played a role in this decision, or how you are able to stick with your own mind or or how people can,, deal with others influencing their decision making.

Addison (01:11:19) - My parents are the two most supportive, loving parents. I. I truly feel like I hit the lottery with my parents when I came home from that trip, they said. You can't let this opportunity pass you by. We'll support whatever decision you want to make, wherever you want to go to school. But this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and it helped that they both went to the University of Maine themselves. So they're like secretly like, we love this place. And my dad, like I said, was a football player.

Addison (01:11:47) - So he had that whole D1 college athlete experience. And so I grew up in that environment. My dad's very intense. I'm very intense., so that that part didn't scare me. But they said, this is an amazing opportunity and it could change your life. And if you hate it and you're unhappy and you're you're not playing and you want to transfer or you want to quit, like, okay, we'll talk about that. Right? We'll talk about that later. But right now this is this is it. And so it didn't take me very long. And I called coach and I told him. And so I'm very blessed to have the support of my parents. And they've been extremely supportive through launching the blog and now the cookie business. And again, they both took a very traditional path working in finance, corporate America, a very, you know, well respected path, but also very comfortable. And they would tell you that we didn't really take any huge risks. And, you know, when I told them about the cookies, they said, that's so cool.

Addison (01:12:50) - We love that. And they tell all their friends about them. And I mean, it's just it it's such it's such a blessing. And I thank God every single day for the most amazing family. And I realize a lot of people don't have that., but they're a they are exactly why I am the way that I am today.

Garrett (01:13:11) - That's wonderful. And they're just support is kept you you driving forward. And I imagine once you got on that soccer field and knew that your everyone was supporting you, I want to keep going. And that definitely has an impact.

Addison (01:13:22) - Yeah, they showed up to games when I wasn't even playing a minute, and they would drive and they would, oh, we just wanted to see you after and support you. And,, I remember when I, when I first found out the very first game that I was starting and I hadn't, I had played a total of six minutes my freshman year and my sophomore year, the first three games, I didn't play a single minute.

Addison (01:13:44) - And then we had a scrimmage and I did really well. And the next game after that was at UConn. There are top 25 team and coach, said Addison. You're in. And right after that practice, the day before, I called my dad and I said, dad, I'm starting. And he said, what? I can't go to the game in Connecticut tomorrow. I didn't think you were playing and your mom's going, but I can. And, you know, he was all sad and flustered. He said, I'll be glued to the TV at home. And I mean, they're just they're. They're my two favorite people on planet Earth.

Garrett (01:14:17) - That's amazing. I'm sure they'll be enjoying a lot of the sweet ads and cookies and keep supporting. Yes. And then what would you say to someone who's thinking about starting either a blog or a food company?

Addison (01:14:31) - Do it. Start. Things don't have to be perfect. You don't have to know what you're doing. You will figure out things along the way.

Addison (01:14:39) - Find people that are ahead of you, smarter than you,, hire out when you need to. It's okay to ask for help. I've had to humble myself many times and ask for help. But just do it again. Life is too short. Like we really only get one shot at this, like you were saying. And I like to say that the only thing more terrifying than what I'm doing is not doing it. Because I don't want to look back on my deathbed and think. I let fear control me, and I didn't really actually do the things that I wanted to do in life. So go for it. Do it. Your dreams are your dreams for a reason, and you never know how. Your dreams can help other people and impact them as well.

Garrett (01:15:19) - And how fulfilling it will be. If it's an honorable mission and you believe in your heart, that's what you're meant to do.

Addison (01:15:24) - Absolutely.

Garrett (01:15:25) - Have some random questions here, so things should be pretty good. What's something you have eliminated from your life that's made the biggest impact?

Addison (01:15:33) - Alcohol.

Addison (01:15:34) - Never had an issue with it, but it doesn't help me.

Garrett (01:15:38) - Totally agree with that. For the audience looking to boost their wellbeing, what's your go to lifehack or daily ritual that keeps you on top of your game?

Addison (01:15:47) - Stop eating white sugar. Because white sugar is more addictive than cocaine. And. Yeah, just let that sink in for a second. And I would argue that over 90% of Americans are addicted to it. It's in everything. It's. Impacts your daily life more than you could ever imagine. I didn't stop eating white sugar until 2022, so it's been about a year and a half now and my skin cleared up. I feel better, I sleep, I sleep better, I realize that my mood and energy are a lot more balanced because when you're eating white sugar, your your blood sugar goes up and down and then your mood follows up and down and your energy levels are up and you're down. And so now it's like, I'm so steady and I have so much more control over the way I feel.

Addison (01:16:41) - So that would that would other than giving up gluten, that has been the biggest thing for me.

Garrett (01:16:47) - You seem very passionate about this, and I want to give the audience some real, tangible takeaway here. People are very busy, especially those who will probably watch this. How can they order food or get food besides making it themselves? That eliminates white sugar.

Addison (01:17:05) - When you go to the grocery store, or if you're if you're going out to eat. Look for recipes,, menu items that are made from Whole Foods. So look for a salad where, you know, it's vegetables. And, you know, if you're getting a pizza, you don't know what's in that crust. Or if you're, you know, getting fried chicken, what's in the breading. So get the the chicken and veggies. I know that sounds boring here, but.

Garrett (01:17:42) - Chicken breasts and veggies. Yeah, a.

Addison (01:17:43) - Chicken breast and veggies can't be fried.

Garrett (01:17:45) - Yes.

Addison (01:17:45) - Right. But once you start treating your body that way, you start to crave how you feel.

Addison (01:17:51) - And I truly believe that we crave what we give our body in terms of food. So a couple of years ago, before I, when I was still eating white sugar, I'd wake up and I'd make like chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. And when I stopped eating white sugar, I thought, what am I going to start my day with? So I started eating hard boiled eggs, bacon, and avocado. And, you know, at first I was like, oh, I'm still I'm still craving those chocolate chips. And I wanted that sugar high right in the morning. And. If it were up to me now, I would choose the eggs, bacon, and avocado over the pancakes because I feel so much better, I feel full, I feel satisfied. It's helped me with running. It's helped me in the gym. I feel stronger and I'm like addicted to that. That awesome feeling. I'm not addicted to white sugar. So that quick.

Garrett (01:18:35) - Hit of white sugar know you want that lasting feeling of the healthy meal, the energy and how that makes you feel throughout the day.

Addison (01:18:42) - Right?

Garrett (01:18:42) - So give it a try guys. One one week, two weeks and see how you feel. What's the worst thing that can happen? Right.

Addison (01:18:47) - So when you're eating a bag of chips or a thing of candy, a lot of times people feel like they can't stop. That's the sugar in there. And that's what these big, really rich food brands purposely do is we're going to put sugar in this so someone gets addicted. They keep buying it, they keep ordering it. I've never heard someone say, I couldn't stop eating that chicken and broccoli. I mean, I just couldn't, I binged it, that doesn't happen because it's real food. Your body recognize it, it digests it. You get full. You don't, you don't crave that. So instead of eating a thousand calories of empty, empty calories of a chip bag, you're like, I'm fueling myself so that I can be a higher performer. I can feel better, sleep better, and perform better. I mean, what's worth it? Performing at your highest level possible or some candy? I mean, you tell me what life you want to live.

Addison (01:19:36) - If you want the candy, be my guest. But I have a feeling that you want to live that. That version of yourself for your. You're performing at your best in your feeling, your best.

Garrett (01:19:48) - Nothing to add. That was. There it is. You heard it first. You mentioned how you want to enter room and feel, you know, maybe the least experienced or the least knowledgeable. Talk more about that and how you have found those types of events in communities to help, you know, grow.

Addison (01:20:07) - I like to surround myself with very high achievers. So when I moved to Dallas, I started researching different networking networking groups to align myself with and join and found some great ones. And then in 2023, I found something called Entrepreneurs Organization EO. And it's a global organization. There's, I think, over 10,000 people that are in it. You have to have a a certain threshold of income in order to even apply to it. So I thought, okay, these are all and you have to be a business owner.

Addison (01:20:38) - So I thought, these are the types of people that I want to surround myself with. And we have monthly accountability groups, monthly meetings and events and so that's been a really great way to just surround myself with with people that are way more successful than I am.

Garrett (01:20:54) - Is that all virtual or is there any local person? It's in person. There's a local chapter.

Addison (01:20:58) - Yeah, there's there's one in Dallas, there's one in Fort Worth. But every major city in the US has one that's amazing.

Garrett (01:21:03) - That's I think it's super important to meet face to face and have that in real life connection there. Yes. What would people close to you say is your X factor or your edge?

Addison (01:21:15) - Oh my competitiveness. I'm very competitive.

Garrett (01:21:18) - What moves the needle most in your business today?

Addison (01:21:21) - I would probably say. Making connections and fostering that community of people online. Because once you get people to not just follow you, but start to love you, which sounds weird, they'll buy anything that you sell. So that's been the biggest thing.

Garrett (01:21:38) - Which now incorporates much more behind the scenes and personal stuff about Addison. Can you briefly touch upon how when you first started, it was just the recipes and then now kind of what it's evolved to, right?

Addison (01:21:52) - So I try to make connections with people in my audience, and I answer every single DM myself, every single email myself. I don't have any of that outsourced. When someone now orders from Sweet Addison's, I'm the one signing the email in every single box of cookies that get shipped out. I write a handwritten note, a thank you note. So it's just at the end of the day, you want to make your customers and your audience feel special and like they know you. So that's been the biggest thing.

Garrett (01:22:21) - What's a talent you have that you are not using?

Addison (01:22:25) - I was going to say memory. I have a very strange, amazing memory., so I guess I'll say that.

Garrett (01:22:31) - And then is there an early childhood memory that you would say defines who you are today?

Addison (01:22:37) - This is this is going to be funny.

Addison (01:22:38) - So there are probably several that I could do. But I remember one of my first soccer games, you know, when you're a little kid, nobody wants to be goalie. So everybody has to take a chance being goalie. And there was one game I think it was like five years old and it was my turn to be goalie and my dad was sitting in the stands. So what he ended up doing was he ended up going and sitting behind the goal, and he was like kind of coaching me through it. And. Some big kit. It was co-ed. One of the biggest boys shot it and it hit me in the face. And I was horrified. And I started crying and I was like, I just remember my dad was behind the goal. And he said, it's okay, Audie. They call me Audie. It's okay Audie, keep going. It's right. You know, just just keep playing. We're so proud of you. And all of a sudden, and I'll never forget that day because I just remembered I was just humiliated.

Addison (01:23:28) - And I was literally hit square in the face. Life punched me in the face, and I kept going. And my dad was there, and I'm sure my mom was in the stands somewhere, and she probably didn't want to sit behind the goal. She was probably hiding like, oh my goodness, my daughter's in goal. And I was really small growing up, like very, very short and skinny and and I just remember my dad being back there. It's okay, Audie, it's okay. Just keep going. And then I remember after that game I said, I'm quitting. I'm never doing this again. And my parents said, you can't quit. Nope. You signed up for this season if you want to be done after the season, sure. But we're not letting you quit. And I kept going, and I kept going. And, I mean, obviously soccer was an amazing, amazing part of my life, the biggest part of my life growing up. So that probably sticks out the most, most definitely.

Garrett (01:24:12) - And keep that attitude and soccer and life and business and everything.. Absolutely. Yeah. There's some creative kind of hypothetical game questions okay. So we'll test your creativity here.

Addison (01:24:24) - Oh boy.

Garrett (01:24:25) - And put your the brand knowledge and culinary skills to the task. I'm sure you're up for it. Yes. So this one is a culinary brand mashup. So, provide me with a tech company, a fashion company and an entertainment. Just any well-known brand that comes to your mind.

Addison (01:24:48) - , technology. I will say Apple., fashion will go with Louis Vuitton and entertainment, I guess. Netflix.

Garrett (01:24:59) - All right, so we got Apple, Louis Vuitton and Netflix. Now combine kind of those brands and create a food product that combines, you know, specific elements of those well-known brands. So talk about the look, the name of an item, you know, the characteristics, maybe the flavor. And I can, you know, take some time on that.

Speaker 4 (01:25:23) - Right.

Addison (01:25:25) - I think it would be really cool if there was, and I know I is probably on the verge of this, but I think of the technology side of Apple being just a pioneer in the industry.

Addison (01:25:34) - Louis Vuitton being, you know, a higher end brand and then Netflix providing entertainment. I think it'd be really cool if we could somehow have an interactive dining experience like. Okay. I'm going to take a picture of, you know, what's in my fridge. And I will tell me this is the recipe you should make. And then, you know, somehow I just threw all the ingredients in a pan, and it just some sort of, like, entertainment interacting, I guess Louis Vuitton come in like, it's really nice cookware. And so I guess some sort of like an interactive dinner experience I think would be a lot of fun.

Garrett (01:26:11) - I like that throw on the the vision pros and see how you can make it right and then, you know, got Netflix in the background and you're watching some, some beautiful,, picturesque landscape or climate there, right? Yeah, that would be that'd be quite something. I'm in for.

Speaker 4 (01:26:26) - It.

Garrett (01:26:28) - All right. And then for this one,, we're going to combine a healthy food company within a well-known brand and do a collab for a product.

Garrett (01:26:40) - So I got some I got some examples for you. Okay. Whole Foods and Lululemon.

Addison (01:26:47) - Okay. Those are two of my favorite brands ever. I wear well, I dressed up today, but when I'm at home I only wear Lululemon. It's just it's so comfortable. So if we're doing Whole Foods in Lululemon, I think it'd be really cool if they came together and did some sort of protein bar, because the protein bar world is filled with a lot of additives and preservatives, and it could kind of be this is healthy enough for breakfast, but also great after workout and after your do your yoga Lululemon class, you know, you can run to Whole Foods and this is your like upscale bar. That's what I would like.

Garrett (01:27:23) - To call the bar., Namaste. Nourishment.

Addison (01:27:27) - There you go.

Garrett (01:27:27) - And then one of your companies is an oatmeal company or one of the brands. What's the what's the brand called?

Addison (01:27:34) - They're simply oatmeal.com. So that's one of those niche websites that I own.

Garrett (01:27:38) - Okay. What's a healthy oatmeal product or company that provides that?

Addison (01:27:44) - , Bob's Red mill? Does oatmeal.

Addison (01:27:46) - Okay.. Yeah. And I would like to see a healthy oat bar in the hotel bar.

Garrett (01:27:54) - All right, so let's,, let's combine Bob's. What was it?

Addison (01:27:58) - Bob's red mill.

Garrett (01:27:59) - Bob's red mill with Nike. Come up with. oh, I got it.

Addison (01:28:03) - Yes, let's hear it. A healthy oat bar that's meant for marathon runners there.

Garrett (01:28:06) - What's the name? What? Talk to me about the taste, the complexion of this.

Addison (01:28:10) - Okay, so it would be high in protein, but not necessarily taste like a protein bar. Because runners need a lot of carbs too. So it would be some. And the oats provide the carbs, which is nice. So it'd be like a mix between a carb and a protein bar. Definitely have chocolate chips in there. Unsweetened chocolate chips in there., what else would I put in there? Probably some dates because dates are really good for quick energy.

Garrett (01:28:35) - And then maybe this might be a little gross. Maybe you could also create that bar, but not make it a bar, but make it a one of those packages where you just slurp it through.

Addison (01:28:47) - , one of those gel packs.

Garrett (01:28:47) - Yeah, one of those gel packs, you can,, blend it up. You know, you could.

Addison (01:28:51) - Yeah, I when I was marathon training, I never liked those gel packs because it's straight sugar. So I would actually eat peanut butter and almond butter when I was running because I felt like that provided more protein and healthy fats and not just the the rush of sugar. So I'm sure there's a way to come up with that.

Speaker 4 (01:29:07) - Yeah.

Garrett (01:29:08) - Well that's great. I like the sound of that. Well, this has been wonderful. And,, we've covered quite a lot on this, but anything else that we haven't discussed that you would like to share with the audience?

Addison (01:29:18) - No, but I do want you to try this cookie while we're on air. Yes, because I would love to hear your opinion., just as a little background. So I really hand-selected every single ingredient. And if you look at most cookies, the first three ingredients are butter, sugar and flour.

Addison (01:29:34) - And so I wanted to create three healthier alternatives to those. So the the most occurring ingredient there is actually almond flour. So it's not sugar. It's not something that will spike your blood sugar. It is heart healthy almond flour. Next is olive oil. So I decided instead of butter I wanted to use olive oil. It's really heart healthy. It's also dairy free., and then the third ingredient is coconut sugar. So like I was saying, 50% lower than white sugar on the glycemic index. It's unrefined. It's literally made in one ingredient, less processed, more sustainable., so yeah.

Garrett (01:30:06) - And immediately when I brought it out, the texture feels good and it feels very moist. And,, I can't wait to dive in here.

Speaker 4 (01:30:13) - Okay.

Garrett (01:30:19) - Addison.

Speaker 4 (01:30:21) - Oh, my.

Garrett (01:30:22) - No way.

Speaker 4 (01:30:23) - It took me six months.

Addison (01:30:24) - That was a labor of love. And I love those cookies. I eat one every night in bed.

Speaker 4 (01:30:29) - This is delicious.

Addison (01:30:31) - Thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:30:33) - It's nice and soft, right? It's so.

Garrett (01:30:34) - Soft. Like, I feel like I was just holding in. It was going to crumble almost. It's so soft. And I mean, it melts in your mouth.

Addison (01:30:42) - Thank you.

Garrett (01:30:43) - You guys gotta try this. And many people will be getting these delivered to them on behalf of myself, because I'll be sending these definitely to many people to try. These are delicious. Congrats on such a successful product and excited to see where you go. And yes, tell people where can they find you.

Addison (01:31:00) - So as an influencer on Instagram, I am at organically Addison. And then these cookies are at sweet spot Addison's on TikTok, organically Addison and on TikTok eat sweet Addison's. So my website's organically. addison.com to order the cookies sweet addison.com. You can send me a message anywhere I will get back to you. I love hearing from people that it's the best part of this job. So thank you again. I'm so happy that you love it.

Garrett (01:31:29) - I mean love, I don't even know if there's a word. I mean, guys, I'm not just joking.

Garrett (01:31:33) - These are delicious. I highly, highly recommend you try these and take a look at her her Instagram pages for more delicious recipes, healthy recipes, and change your lifestyle. Change your life. Thanks everyone! Addison been wonderful.

Addison (01:31:46) - Thank you so much. I really appreciate this opportunity.