Hey, entrepreneurs. It's your podcast mogul, Feel Better Here. I am excited for this episode as as I know you are. Before we jump into this episode, I'm gonna ask you if you are also a podcaster and you're looking to grow your podcast or monetize your podcast, make sure you stay till the end of the episode. I have a special deal for you or a special offer, if you will. But ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let's jump into the episode.

Welcome to invest in yourself the digital entrepreneur podcast. Join the podcast mogul Phil Better as he interviews successful entrepreneurs that make their living in the digital world. Now, let's join your host Phil Better as your special guest today on invest in yourself the digital entrepreneur podcast.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Invest in Yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. I am, of course, your host with the most feel better, the podcast mogul, and I'm very, very happy to introduce our guest today. They are the powerhouse behind the art of Sirk, which was started in 2016 because a hole in the market for a chic twist on a nostalgic true treat, if I can speak properly. Cotton candy was discovered by our guests. They decided to take the money from their wedding gifts from all their guests and, purchased their first cotton candy machine and began spinning the, threads of golden goodness at events around the Northeast Ohio. And then tragedy stuck struck in 2020. As we know, the pandemic showed up and forced art of to transition into the CPG, which for those who don't know and I didn't know before recording this, means consumer packaged goods brand that you see today. And during this pivot, our guest took the TikTok to grow her following to a whopping 1,300,000 followers, and that allowed her to partner with brands like American Girl, eight one eight tequila, because who doesn't like tequila, and Gandhi.

And, of course, the fabulous Barbie. Well, also, she grew her team from a solo one woman shop to now bustling 20 employees. Please welcome our guest, Emily Hartby. Emily, thank you so much for being here.

Thanks, Phil. I'm excited to chat with you today.

So, yeah, I gave, well, yes, thank you. I'm excited. All that one. I just wanna jump into it, because, like, after a glowing review like that, I wanna hear from your own words, who you are and how did you get started?

Yeah. It's funny to look back on it because so much has changed in the past three years, but to take you, like, way back to the beginning in 02/2016, I was planning my wedding while just graduating from university. So got married crazy young. My husband and I have been together since high school, and my whole plan was actually to go on and get my master's degree in clinical mental health counseling. And through a really weird series of events, essentially, they kind of lost my application, and then they filled the cohort, and then they were gonna hold my application, and then they rejected it. A weird series of events happened that I found myself out of college with a degree in psychology, which you can do a lot with, and planning a wedding. And it was kind of like, oh, now what? I need I need to figure something out. And I spent a lot of time on Pinterest as I feel like most people who were getting married do and happened upon cotton candy as an option for a wedding favor.

But it was kind of like scary cotton candy. Does that

make sense? Like, it had a clown on it with this, like, really ugly packaging and there was no flavor associated with it. It was just like pink or blue. It's kind of a mystery. You don't really know what you're eating. And it was really at the height of kind of Instagram and this upgrade of all of these desserts. Like, cake pops were becoming really popular in the donut wall. I'm sure

Oh, god.

You know you know what I'm talking about? Right? You remember?