In 2011, the private farmers’ market where I’d been selling my raw desserts was shut down. I needed to get my business fully legal so that I could sell my food in shops, but that required about ten thousand dollars, which I didn’t have. I decided to launch a Kickstarter project to try to crowdsource the money. Keep in mind, I had never done any sort of self-promotion before, so this was incredibly frightening for me. Not only did I have to put myself out there, but I had to ask people for money! I forced myself to say yes to every opportunity to fund-raise, so when a friend of a friend invited me to his “singles dance class” at a Latin dance club in San Francisco, I said yes. The idea was that I would bring samples, explain my Kickstarter, and people would donate. I got there while awkward middle-aged singles were filtering in, and discovered that they didn’t have a place for me, so they’d decided that they would put me and my samples on stage under a spotlight. My friend Kendra, seeing how this was all about to play out, leaned in and warned me that this was going to be a “character-building experience.” Sweaty folks would come up between dance songs to feast on the chile truffles and lavender macaroons (they loved them!), but people didn’t let me get two seconds into my spiel before stuffing a couple of cookies into their mouth and running the other way. At the end of the night, I had given away a ton of desserts, gotten zero donations, and felt like a giant pathetic failure. I cried the whole drive home.
In the end, I did make my Kickstarter goal, but I spent a big chunk of it on sending the rewards out to all my supporters, and by the time I was done I was basically right back where I’d started.
So, look, I’m not a good businesswoman. Definitely don’t hire me to help you with your spreadsheets or whatever. But raw desserts? That’s my wheelhouse. I can say with confidence that if you make any of the following desserts, you’re going to be stoked.