Greeting Cards with Instant Cakes – Sarah Neal of InstaCake Cards

Founder

Sarah Neal

Canada

hidden

Full-time

Open to opportunities: Yes

Business

InstaCake Cards

Physical Location - Country: United States

Location - Countries Operating: Canada

6-10 (Small Business)

https://instacakecards.com/

Business Type: Product

Category: Retail and Consumer Goods

Subcategory: Toys, Games, and Gifts

Niche: Gift Items

Segments: B2C and B2B

Structure: Private

Number of founders: 1

Business Socials

Financials verified via: Founder Supplied Data. Last Updated: January 2, 2025

$5K

Startup Costs (USD)

$50K

Total Investment (USD)

$100K - $500K

Annual Revenue (USD)

20%

Gross Margin

External Funding: No

External Investment Amount (USD): $10K

Investment Type: Donation

Profitable: Yes

Sales
Marketing

Platform

Shopify

Business Book

  1. Rich Dad Poor Dad

Productivity Tool or Tip

  1. Focus on companies that are making a positive impact on the planet

Inspirational Peers or Entrepreneurs

  1. Sarah Breedlove

Innovative Product or Idea

  1. 3D printers

Best business advice

“Building a business is a journey, not a race.”

INTERVIEW VIDEO (Length – 45:48)

PODCAST AUDIO

Intro

Sarah Neal, founder of Instacake Cards, transformed her expertise in food technology and cake decorating into a thriving business that creates greeting cards with ingredients for 60-second celebration cakes. Despite launching just before the pandemic, her innovative idea gained traction as lockdowns drove demand for unique, shippable celebrations. Sarah shares insights on sourcing, manufacturing, trade show experiences, and her appearance on Dragon’s Den, offering advice for entrepreneurs and plans for future growth.


Coming up with the business idea

I’m so excited to share how my journey led me to creating a fun, unique product. My background is in food technology, and I’ve always loved baking. I’ve been decorating cakes since I was young, and I’ve made tons of birthday cakes over the years. When I moved to Canada, I tried sending cakes back to England, but it was either too expensive or the cakes got crushed during shipping.

That’s when the lightbulb moment happened: What if I could send a cake in a card? The idea seemed crazy at first, but I kept thinking about it. I knew it couldn’t be just any cake, especially since I was in Canada and distances were long. The cake could get ruined in transit or even moldy. But then, the idea evolved. I thought, what if I used a baking case that could be crushed into a card? I even thought about mug cakes, but I didn’t want to deal with the cleanup. Why not make it easy and fun with frosting and sprinkles too?

Before I knew it, the idea grew to include everything needed to make a cake on the go—just add water, and you’re good to go! So I created a foldable tablespoon so that no matter where you are, as long as you have four tablespoons of water and a microwave, you can make a cake. It’s a gift anyone of any age can enjoy anywhere.

Of course, it wasn’t an overnight success. It took a lot of time and persistence. In 2019, I was ready to launch, but I had to scramble to get everything together for a show in New York. It turned out to be the best decision because right after, the pandemic hit and shut down trade shows. If I had waited, I wouldn’t have met so many amazing customers.

So, that’s how this all came about—step by step, I worked backwards from the simple idea of sending a cake in the mail and built it into what it is today. It’s been an incredible journey!

Idea Validation

Honestly, when I first started, I didn’t have everything figured out. I was just throwing ideas out there to see what would stick. Originally, my idea was B2C, focused on sending cakes with personalized messages in a card. You can still do that today, and we offer shipping across North America. However, the shipping costs and lack of tracking in Canada became a challenge, so we’re likely removing that option, but shipping within the U.S. is going strong with great tracking.

Looking back, I’m glad I decided to test things out in New York. I figured, if people there liked it, I had something good. I wanted to challenge myself by presenting my product to the toughest crowd out there, and that ended up being the perfect way to gauge if I was on the right track.

Right timing for COVID

Looking back, I realize I wasn’t fully prepared when I first launched. The cards were functional, but they weren’t as fun as they could have been. I took a leap of faith, driven by a bit of naivety. If I knew then what I know now, I might have done things differently, but if I hadn’t taken that leap, I probably wouldn’t have gotten my business off the ground—especially with the way things played out during COVID.

When the pandemic hit, we saw a huge surge in online orders. People were stuck at home, so sending fun, interactive cakes became a hit, and we got a lot of custom orders from companies wanting to send gifts to their employees. We even worked with big-name brands for virtual events like Zoom parties, which was an unexpected but perfect fit for our product. It turns out my business plan was made for the pandemic—something I definitely didn’t plan for, but it worked out. It was just one of those moments where being in the right place at the right time made all the difference.

Manufacturing

We handle everything in-house, from packing to making the cake mixes and frosting, which is all done right here in North America, in Parksville. We don’t outsource any of it, giving us full control. Our frosting, in particular, sets us apart—it’s something no one else is doing, except for some larger companies. Finding the right partners was a huge challenge at first, as many manufacturers were unwilling to work with small businesses like mine. They wanted huge orders, but I couldn’t commit to that without knowing if the product would work. So, we bought our own machines and set up our own kitchens, and that’s how we continue to make everything ourselves today.

As for the non-food components, like the paper products, we work with a trusted company in China that specializes in these materials. They’ve been great partners, and I’ve done extensive research to ensure we get the best quality. Everything food-related, though, is made right here in North America.

One of our biggest challenges has been managing all the tiny components—ensuring we have enough stock and the right cards. We’re working on streamlining production to make things flow more smoothly. And of course, like many businesses, we’ve been facing the rising costs of doing business in Canada, particularly with wages, which have gone up significantly. I believe in paying my team a fair living wage, especially in a place with a high cost of living, but it’s not always easy. Shipping was also a nightmare during COVID, with delays and disruptions. While things are better now, the costs continue to climb.

Freshness

I wouldn’t risk outsourcing our food products, especially when it comes to freshness and food safety. Legislation also plays a big role in making sure everything is up to standard. While China excels in many areas, I’m just not comfortable with the idea of having frosting or cake mixes sitting on a boat for who knows how long. I’ve seen products made in China, like frosting, that ended up congealing and falling apart, and I knew right then that I wouldn’t compromise on quality like that.

That’s why we make everything fresh for every production. Every week, we create fresh frosting and cake mixes to ensure top-notch quality. We don’t cut corners when it comes to what goes into our products.

Going B2B (Tradeshows)

I’ll admit, when I first started, I didn’t have a clear strategy. The idea just came to me, and I thought, “I wonder if others would like this too?” So, I posted it on Facebook and hoped for the best. It turned out to be helpful, and we got some attention. But we quickly realized that just relying on online sales wasn’t enough. We’re not like Amazon, and we can’t ship things next day.

Once the borders opened, we jumped at the chance to go to trade shows in America. That’s where we really started to make connections with bigger companies and gift stores. It wasn’t so much a strategy as it was figuring out where to go and what was available to us at the time. We had all this product, and we needed to sell it in larger volumes, so we shifted towards B2B (business-to-business) sales. Selling just a few cards on a website wasn’t going to cut it, so that’s when we started focusing on trade shows and wholesale to scale up our business.

In-Store

During the pandemic, we had the opportunity to work with some amazing big companies like Netflix, Pepsi, and even a major insurance company that ordered 600 for a Zoom call. We’ve also partnered with Kohl’s in the U.S. and American Eagle, and our products have been in various stores across America.

That said, while we’ve had some great big-name partnerships, I really enjoy working with midsize, niche stores. They have the time to truly appreciate our product, and since we’re positioned as a high-end gift, these stores are the perfect fit for us.

Target Market

We sell our products in a variety of stores across Canada, including a surprising number of hospital stores, toy stores, boutique shops, and even furniture stores. We’ve also expanded into the U.S., partnering with stores like Learning Express and American Eagle, as well as World Market and museums. It’s been amazing to see our product reach so many different types of retailers.

One of the challenges we face is figuring out exactly who our market is. Our product appeals to a wide range of people across different ages and occasions, which is great in many ways, but it also makes it harder to pinpoint a specific target audience. Despite this, we’re proud to see our product in such diverse stores, from big-name retailers to unique boutiques.

Special Occasions

We’ve done a variety of special occasion products, including Christmas and Mother’s Day, and we’re actually launching a cute new Christmas range this year. Ironically, I was just finishing up a new card design before coming here! But here’s what I’ve learned: while special occasion products are fun, they come with their own challenges. If you don’t sell them as expected, you’re left with unsold stock, and then you’re stuck storing it for a year, which costs money.

So, moving forward, we’re focusing less on seasonal items and sticking to our core product range. It’s tempting to expand for holidays, but the reality is that it comes with its own set of challenges and costs.

Motivation to Start a Business

Ironically, I started my first business because I was feeling a bit bored and had too many ideas. If you ask my friends, they’d probably say I never stop coming up with new ones! In fact, I already have another business in the works that I hope to launch in a few months. As an entrepreneur, it’s not about being special—it’s about turning ideas into action. Once you’ve set up one business, starting another becomes much easier because you learn from the first one.

From an early age, I always dreamed of starting a muffin business. But my family, especially my dad, believed in the traditional 9-to-5 job. Then, I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, and it completely shifted my thinking. After moving to Canada, I realized that the work-life balance I wanted wasn’t going to happen with just two weeks of vacation. That’s when I decided to take the leap into my first business.

If I had any advice for others, it would be to start your business while you still have the security of your current job. That way, when the time comes to make the jump, you’re more prepared. For me, I had nothing to lose—I had already left my career behind after emigrating and had two kids to care for, so I figured, why not give it a try?

Team

During COVID, I was fortunate to have Brianna join me, and she’s still with us today. She started helping me pack the first cards in our bonus room, working alongside our snooker table! Now, she’s the head of our sales team and will be heading to Atlanta tomorrow for a trade show. We’ve also brought on another team member to support her in growing the sales side of the business.

I don’t really go out to hire people. Instead, I tend to find people I like and then invite them to join the team. For example, I met someone working at a liquor store, and after chatting with her, I asked if she’d be interested in a job. She’s turned out to be a great addition to the team!

Currently, we have a team of seven: Brianna, the new recruit, two part-time staff, and we’ve also hired a wonderful girl with autism to help us out. We’re proud to offer opportunities to everyone who’s a good fit for our team.

Shipping

We’ve partnered with a fantastic shipping company that provides us with amazing rates, especially for shipping to the U.S. In fact, if you didn’t know I was in Canada, you wouldn’t be able to tell based on how fast and affordable our shipping is. Initially, we tried sending products to a U.S. warehouse, but it became too costly, and things would often go missing, so we decided to bring the process back in-house.

Now, we have full control over everything, ensuring that our products are fresh and made to order. Each order is carefully packed and shipped out that same week. Interestingly, it’s actually cheaper for us to ship to the U.S. than to send something within Canada, like to Toronto!

Selling on Amazon

We’ve tried selling on Amazon in Canada, but it didn’t work out. On Amazon, people are often looking for specific products, and our unique offering didn’t fit that model. With our limited marketing budget, most of our funds go toward trade shows, which are costly. If I had more money for marketing, I’d definitely invest in that.

We focus on high-end gift stores because they appreciate products that aren’t available on Amazon, which is why we don’t sell on Amazon in Canada.

Dragon’s Den

A few years ago, people often asked if I had been on Dragon’s Den or Shark Tank. I never had, but after my dad passed away, I thought, “Life’s too short,” and decided to do it for my mom and to say I had been on the show. I went on not for marketing or to push my brand, but just to experience it. To my surprise, I got chosen quickly, and everything went really well. I received a fantastic offer, but after some discussions with the investors, things didn’t work out because they wanted to change the structure. I totally understand their perspective, and I’m happy with how it went. While I didn’t end up taking on investors at the time, I’m fine staying independent for now. It was a great experience, and I’d recommend it to others—just make sure you know your numbers!

Mistakes Made, Lessons Learned

I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way, but I’ve learned that mistakes can often lead to the best outcomes. If something goes wrong, it’s not the end of the world—you’ll get through it. One of my biggest lessons has been understanding cash flow. You can have the best product or service, but if you don’t grasp cash flow, your business won’t survive. It’s crucial to manage the money going out and coming in.

Another big mistake I made was ordering too much. I thought I’d sell huge amounts, but I learned to take it slow and order smaller quantities. Even if you end up selling more than you expected, it’s okay. It’s better to start small and adjust as you go, even if it costs a little more.

Rapid Fire Segment

Book recommendation: Rich Dad Poor Dad was a game-changer for me. It really helped me understand the difference between working for a salary and investing in business. It’s a great starting point for anyone looking to shift their mindset.

Innovative product: I’m really excited about 3D printers. They have so much untapped potential, especially in construction. I think we’re just scratching the surface of what they can do, particularly in creating affordable, sustainable housing.

Productivity tip: Focus on companies that are making a positive impact on the planet, like those cleaning the oceans. There’s a lot of inspiration in businesses that prioritize the greater good.

Living on Mars: I don’t think humans will live on Mars in my lifetime. We have such a beautiful planet to care for—let’s look after it before considering moving elsewhere.

Inspirational entrepreneur: Sarah Breedlove, also known as Madam C.J. Walker, inspired me. She was the first self-made female millionaire in the U.S. and overcame incredible odds. Her story is truly empowering.

Best business advice: “It’s a journey, not a race.” Appreciate the wins along the way, no matter how small. It’s easy to overlook your progress, but it’s important to recognize the victories, even the small ones.

Best Business Advice

Building a business is a journey, not a race. It’s easy to get caught up in the challenges, but I’ve learned to appreciate the small wins along the way. Sometimes, after a tough day, I remind myself that someone bought my product, someone liked it, and that matters. Even if it’s not millions of sales, those small victories are worth celebrating. Take the wins when you can—every bit counts.


Episode Summary

Sarah Neal, the founder of Instacake Cards, a unique product that combines greeting cards with everything needed to bake a celebration cake in 60 seconds. Sarah shares her background in food technology, her struggles with shipping cakes to family abroad, and how these experiences led to the creation of Instacake. Launched in 2019, Sarah explains how the pandemic affected her business, increasing online orders and bringing significant corporate clients. The interview delves into manufacturing and shipping challenges, particularly the expensive logistics in Canada compared to the U.S. Additionally, Sarah discusses her unplanned go-to-market strategy, her pivot to B2B sales, and major customers like Netflix and American Eagle. She provides insights into running a small business in Canada, the complexities of inventory management, cash flow, and the potential of future business expansions. She also shares her appearance on Dragon’s Den, her thoughts on government support for 

small businesses, and future plans, including potentially moving her business to the U.S.

Interview Transcript

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks. This is the show where I interview successful e commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders and ask them questions about their business story and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Sarah Neal to the show. Sarah is the founder of Instacake, cake in a box. Instacake creates greeting cards that come with everything needed to bake a celebration cake in only 60 seconds. And today I’m going to ask Sarah a few questions about her entrepreneur journey and some of the strategies and tactics that she has used to start and grow her business.

Now, before we dive into this interview, if you enjoy this kind of content, please make sure to hit the like and subscribe button. And for more content like this, please visit our website, treptalks. com. And with that, Sarah, thank you so much again for joining me today at Treptalks. Really, really [00:01:00] appreciate your time.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: You’re welcome. And hello.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, yeah, as I was saying, you know, you, when I looked at this idea, it’s such a unique creative kind of an idea. I mean. You would want someone to, uh, to receive a cake, uh, you know, when they have a birthday or something like this, but you, you know, you kind of, uh, uh, made it into a reality.

So maybe share a little bit about your story, how kind of you came up with this idea, when did you start the business and yeah, what really motivated you to create this unique business?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Okay, well, thank you. Um, well, basically, um, I came up with this idea. Um, well, my background, just a quick thing. I came up with my food, my degree is in food technology.

I’ve worked with the food companies. I’ve been cake decorating. I’ve been baking cakes since the ages like. My first, you know, so I love baking. I’ve done everybody’s birthday cake, you know, lots of birthday cakes, all different types. [00:02:00] Um, so that’s an, and what happened was that I came to emigrate to Canada and I tried to send cakes back to England.

And it just, it was getting too expensive or they got crushed, you know, that side. And I just had this crazy idea came into my head was, well, what if I could send a cake in a card? That was just, it was an idea. How? And I went, no. And then, cause I went, Oh, you can send a little cupcake. No, but, but especially being in Canada or in America.

The distances, the cake are going to get destroyed. They’re going to get, you know, like it could take 10 days to go across Canada or get moldy. And I went, no, that’s not going to work. But this little idea started ticking. And then, um, I had this idea and then I had some, I bought some baking cases, these paper baking and went, Oh, if I could crush one of those and put that into a cart, that would be cool.

And then I saw, you know, mug cakes where you make mug cakes in a mug. I went, Oh, what if I could do that? Do that that went in there, but if I’m going to have a mug, [00:03:00] like I didn’t want that cleaning up of a mug. That’s so much of a gift. So when, well, if I have this case that went with the mug, but if I’m going to have this, then I might as well have frosting.

How am I going to do it? I’m going to have frosting. I’ve got to have sprinkles. And then by the time, and then I’m going to have sprinkles, I might as well have the candle. Let’s go full. And a lot of it was. And then one of them was, I said to myself, Oh, you got to put four tablespoons of water in there.

And then he said to me, well, which one’s a tablespoon? So I made a, uh, a foldable tablespoon too. So you can make our cakes anywhere in the world, as long as you have four tablespoons of water and a microwave. And that was the fun, any age, anybody could make it anywhere. So that was, so that’s how the idea, then that took over quite a few years.

Then, um, yeah, I just started, uh, uh, chipping away at it. It’s, it wasn’t open as you probably any business person, it doesn’t happen overnight. You just chip away your ideas come. And in 2019, I had a ready to go [00:04:00] prote, you know, and I had to launch it early ’cause I wanted to go to this show in New York. So we literally scrambled everything.

We hadn’t really done all our marketing research, I said, I said, let’s just, just go for it. And little did I know that was the best decision I ever made because then the. Pandemic obviously was just around the corner where they shut down all trade shows. I would not have met all my customers. So, and that’s how I sort of came up with the idea.

It was little baby steps. It was just like, I want to send a cake in the mail. How do I do it? And work backwards.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So you launched, um, during the pandemic?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Just, just, we launched in 2019, August of 2019, in New York, and I, um, at the New York Now show. And then I came back, and I have another business, so I was literally sort of doing that, and I really wasn’t focusing on instant cake.

And I went, but I did really well at the show, and I went, I’ve really got to do something with this. So, uh, in February I went, okay. Let’s [00:05:00] 2020. I got it. Like, so let’s get this going. Let’s take this really seriously. And my first employee I took is March the 16th when we went, I think, yeah, 16th when we went into full shutdown in Canada.

So that was, uh, now that, so now suddenly I’ve got somebody I’ve just employed. Now I can’t go to any trade shows that, you know, so it was a lot of pivoting.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So when you were coming up with this idea and you were going to the trade show, where you’re, um, was your, um, I guess business model or the way you had envisioned your business was really to sell this to businesses?

Or were you thinking about, uh, you know, doing a I mean, your website is definitely direct to consumer, but, uh, when you were like coming up with the idea, like, how do you envision really to have it distributed to, through other businesses?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Yeah. I, to be honest, I didn’t have, I don’t know. I was just like throwing it out there and I was going to see what was sticking the most.

Cause [00:06:00] my actual regional idea, you’re a hundred percent right. It was, it was, um, a B2C. I wanted to send. So right now you can still do that. Uh, send a, you put your message in, um, And we’ll put it in the card. You can send it anywhere in North America. However, in Canada, the shipping is so bad and so expensive.

There’s no tracking. So we’re taking that probably off, but we’re still, America’s good. We got a really good tracking system. We got that. Um, so I’m glad I kind of went to, if by a pure, I don’t know, it was just, I wanted to test it out on the market. And I thought, well, what better way to go to New York? And test it on the hardest people out there.

Cause if they liked it, I kind of figured that that was my whole marketing strategy. If they liked it, I’m going to guess I got a good product to sell.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, that’s no, that’s, that’s so interesting. And I definitely want to, I’ll ask you more about your shipping strategy later on, because I mean, this, this makes an interesting product where somebody would want.[00:07:00]

To have or purchase it beforehand, but some people would be it’s it’s kind of like a last minute shipping, right? so i’ll definitely want to ask you about that, but I guess before that, um, so you had this idea of validation, you, you put this product in front of people and you had, you got good response. Um, what was next?

Uh, what, uh, I mean, had you already, I mean, at that time you only had the prototype, right? So how are you? I

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: had, I had the real, I had the real type. I mean, I just, the cards weren’t fully fun. Uh, well, it was all pretty good. It was all pretty, you know, like functional product. Um, But as now, now I look back on it, we really weren’t ready.

You know, like I took that leap of, it was naivety, but I now know what I know now. I probably wouldn’t. But then if I hadn’t done that, then I would have probably never got the prisoners off the ground because of COVID. So there’s a lot of, uh, so sometimes one fight is sometimes you just [00:08:00] have to jump. And then you’re just going to hope that the parachute comes out and you land safely.

Um, so, so what happened was I launched it. COVID happened. And then obviously because of that, we had phenomenal, a lot of online orders that did really well during COVID because nobody, but we had a lot of custom, uh, companies that approached us because we had massive orders online because, um, to send to all the staff.

I had zoom parties, we’ve had, you know, big company parties, we, uh, you know, we’ve had some big names that, uh, bought our product because suddenly nobody could go anywhere. You couldn’t go to a birthday and what, I mean, my card was made for pandemic. Little did I know my business plan, but I didn’t write in ready for pandemic because it really was made for that.

Um, So yeah, that was just like one of those of other few people out there, just lucky at the right place at the right time. [00:09:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: How are you? So, so your, um, business, it seems like it has, you know, the product itself, it’s multiple components, right? So you need to have the greeting card, you need to have all these different pouches made for the cake itself, then it has to be packaged together.

Uh, can you talk a little bit about your, you know, how you’re getting your product assembled or manufactured? done in North America? Are you getting assembled somewhere else?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Uh, so a lot of, a lot of paper stuff. Okay. So we had to, um, so basically everything that is packed, uh, and the cake mixture and frosting is all done in North America, in Parksville, where we actually do it ourselves.

We don’t outsource it. We have full control over it. I bring in all the cake mixture and the frosting. So that makes us unique is our frosting because no one else is doing that except some big companies. So that was a nightmare trying to figure it because I tried to find people, but nobody, and because we’re too small, no one would take on our business.

They said, no, we need you to make a hundred [00:10:00] thousand cake mixes, a hundred thousand. And I’m like, well, no, because I don’t know whether it’s going to work. So in the end, we bought our own machines. We set up our own kitchens. Um, so we literally, we still do that. We make everything ourselves today. So that, but the, the, you’re right.

All those tiny little bits, um, they came from, uh, China. And really good company. I’ve worked for them for the, they specialize in this paper product. They’re one of the best. So I did my, obviously I did my research, um, to make sure we get, but everything food related is all made in North America. Um, but yeah, but that’s our big.

Biggest bit been our biggest nightmare is all the tiny bits, making sure we have enough in stock, making sure we have the right card, but we’re changing things now to make production much flow. The only downside for us, and I think I’m no different from a lot of other business, is the cost of doing business in Canada because it’s the wages have gone up [00:11:00] tremendously that, you know, a lot.

And I like to pay a good living, a fair living, especially where we live. It’s very expensive. People say, well, you know, you should go elsewhere. You know, maybe I should, but right now we like doing it here. Um, so that’s our biggest challenge is getting the people to backpack. And, and, and also talking about shipping, you know, during the, you know, that was a nightmare and stuff not coming in on time.

We couldn’t get it. It was an utter nightmare during the, obviously COVID. And now it’s still, it took quite a while to settle down. It’s okay now. But the costs are still going up.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. So to me, it seems like the challenge is that because you’re the cake part is a, is a food item, and I’m sure there’s some sort of regulations there.

So you cannot just send that or outsource that to a country like, let’s say China or somewhere in Southeast Asia, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, um,

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: I [00:12:00] wouldn’t because, because obviously freshness, because when also legislation, it would, and also you don’t know how long it’s been on a, uh, I would, you know, China, you know, China is very good at many things and their food in their own country, but I wouldn’t have it.

I mean, that would be sitting on a boat. I saw somebody, I’m not mentioning anybody, but a product, I know it was made, the frosting was made in China and it was just. For either like congealing it was falling apart and I’m like, no. So we can use, we make every patch fresh for every production. So you couldn’t get, it’s literally, um, every week we make fresh frosting, fresh cake mixture.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, that, that definitely makes, makes a lot of sense. Um, now, um, so, so you have your product you’ve launched. Uh, can you talk a little bit about what, what happened next? So your, how did you go to market? Like, I know you have a website, but yeah, what was your strategy? And it was this pandemic time. So I [00:13:00] guess probably your website probably makes the most sense, but, uh, can you talk a little bit about your go to market?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: I’m a bit embarrassed to say I didn’t have a strategy. I literally, um, I, I came up with this idea and I went, Oh, I wonder if everybody else wants it. So I just literally, we, we put posted on Facebook. So that was helpful when we posted it on Facebook. Um, so we had it sort of like did that, but we weren’t expert.

It was just that lucky enough. Um. We got caught and seen, but then as soon as the borders open for us to go to America, we ended up going to a lot of trade shows. So because doing online, you have to sell a lot. And we’re not an Amazon. And this is what I keep saying to people. We’re not in there. Like we can’t ship things next day.

You know, we’re not, you know, not an Amazon. So we then went to America. America opened before Canada. And that’s hence why most of our business is in America. Uh, so we went to the biggest trade shows that showed our [00:14:00] product to all these companies, you know, all these gift stores got caught up by some bigger companies.

Um, so it’s a strategy I didn’t really have. I’m just sort of say what at the time was, well, where could we go? What was open? How do we get this company? I’ve got all this product. We’ve got to sell it and bigger volume and, and, and be to, um, B2B is obviously a bigger production. And I, you know, why is you have to be selling on a website?

You have to be selling lots of, lots of things. We had one cup, six cards. Well, it was very hard to make any money just selling six cards on a website. So that was my strategy.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So who was your kind of like big first customer that you got on a big business side of things?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Oh, that’s a good question. Well, we had some really big companies during the pandemic.

Like we’ve had Netflix, Pepsi. Um, who did we, and we had some, we had a MA, another [00:15:00] big insurance company. They ordered 600 for a Zoom call. Um, we’ve done Kohl’s in the US. Um, we’ve been, we’ve been in, um, America. We’re in, uh, oh, was it Mark? What’s it called? Um, Oh my goodness. Uh, Eagle was American Eagle.

Okay.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: We’ve been in, uh, so we’ve been in, we weren’t surprisingly in a lot of stores, um, in different places. So, but then equally, we like, to be honest, I like the midsize, this, this, the more niche because they got time to look at our product. Because it isn’t the cheapest and that’s more our product is more the high end gift store at the moment.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, I mean, here’s the thing. So, uh, you know, this is such a unique idea and product and I did not know about it, right? So, so I, of course, as you said, you know, if for a B2C, it requires a lot of marketing and you need to have a lot of marketing budget to get the visibility and so forth. [00:16:00] But if I, in Canada, if I want to Um, come across this product.

Like, is it available? Like what kind of stores would I go to find this?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: I give store. There’s quite a few in Toronto. Um, so, cause I don’t, I don’t really deal with sales so much anymore, but yeah, there’s a load of stores across Canada that sell it. So we do sell in, um, we sell in a lot of hospital stores. I don’t know why, but we’re really popular in hospital stores.

We sell in toy stores. We sell. boutique stores. So, um, and then on our website it shows you where our product sells. But the weird thing about our product is that literally we can sell it. We sell into a lot of range of, uh, like a, uh, toy store called learning express in America.

And

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: as I said, we did American Eagle.

We’ve done some other, other companies on world market. That was the other one I was thinking of. Um, but then we go into museums and then we go into very big tea. So the. We, it’s a [00:17:00] very unusual product in that not only do we do all different occasions that it can fit, it fits into all different. I mean, one of our, we’ve got a great customer and they sell them in a furniture store and they do phenomenally well against the pods and we have yet to figure out, so we haven’t figured, and I know this is a bit embarrassing.

We haven’t figured out our market yet because we, Because we seem to appeal to a lot of different people at different ages from, you know, it’s a, I think that’s, that’s our biggest problem is narrowing down who our market is because our market is so wide. I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, are you, uh, I mean, it seems like I’m on your website and I see there’s a lot of the cards that are targeted towards birthday itself.

I’m assuming like somebody who’s buying at a, at a hospital gift store. I mean, maybe they’re looking for like get well card or something.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: No, it’s no, it’s, I run it, it’s birthdays because [00:18:00] there’s a lot of doctors and nurses that are there and they’re buying them. It’s a lot of stuff by for each other or they buy it for.

Cause, uh, they’re by, you know, sort of sick people in the hospital for a long time. So no, it’s, it’s, uh, it’s normally our birthday ones are the biggest seller. Tea or vanilla is our biggest, like by far.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And have you tested like all the other occasions and like Christmas and all those kind of occasions as well?

And, but you recognize that birthday is your biggest seller?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Well, we do Christmas. We do. We’re launching a really cute new range coming out this Christmas. Super duper range. That’s ironically just before I came here, I was finishing off one of our, a bit, a new card. Um, I should have put that in. So that should be launched.

Um, I So we’ve done Mother’s Day. Uh, we’ve done, but the trouble is when you do these special occasions, and this is one, be very, be very careful because if you don’t get that sales, you’ve put all this product in and you don’t get it. [00:19:00] You are stuck with that product for the next year. And you can store that product.

So for us, we’re going to do less special occasions and stick to the core. Because, you know, like, you know, you’re just stuck. And what do I do with this stuff? I’ve got to store it and it costs money to store it. Um, it sounds great to do special occasions, but it comes at a price.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I think, yeah. I mean, now that you’ve learned what’s working, I think, you know, the 80 20 rule applies, right?

You know, what’s, what is the 10 20 percent that’s bringing in the 80 percent of the revenue? So I think that definitely makes a lot of business sense for sure.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: And, but we did launch out, what we did launch out, what we did find was, and we’ve done some kits now. So people didn’t want to say, you know, some people just don’t give cards these days, but they do know gift bags.

So we do this little cute kit, Sacrosanct cards, which just comes all in a bag. Yeah. Yeah. So you can, you know, give it for birthday parties. We have a lot of people that mothers give it as gift, uh, goodie bags. [00:20:00] We have it put in gift, uh, bags, you know, baskets. Uh, florists give it a lot with a bouquet of flowers.

So that’s, uh, we branched out onto that and that’s a range we’re really focusing on because we can see it’s much easier to store bags than it is lots of cards. Um, and we can flip, now those we can do a special occasion because I can literally flip, Get those printed much quicker, much easier, um, and then, so I think, you know, we’re gonna keep Carter’s like a real speciality premium product and then bring in the kit that can fit a different price point.

Because it’s less packaging and people say, why is that? Well, it’s less packaging. And packaging means money.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. I’m curious, um, so when you started this business, of course, you know, you had a, you had the background in food industry and you had this idea, but did you always want to, uh, try your hands at entrepreneurship or was it more like a you know, uh, [00:21:00] a passion project that you felt that, you know, this is an interesting idea that other people may be interested in, or were you kind of motivated, like, you know, uh, I need to quit my nine to five.

I need to, you know, I want to be my own boss. What was your motivation to create this? Well,

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: ironically, I had a business. So that business, so I was just a little bit bored with that. And I might, if you ask my friends, they say, uh, you know, like I just never stopped having ideas. I’ve already got another business that I’m a lot, uh, maybe in, in six months time, we can talk about, but I got another business, which I can’t say mentioned now, uh, that I’m hoping to launch.

Um, I see ideas and I’m always, and that’s what an entrepreneur is all about. I don’t think I’m any special. I think all of us have ideas. It’s just that I It’s putting it into action and, and how, so once you’ve done one business, setting up another business is not that, once you’ve learned from the first business, cause you, it’s much easier to do the second [00:22:00] business.

However, I would say I was, uh, from my early age, like when I was, you know, like in my twenties, I always wanted, when I was in, I’m living in London, I wanted to start a muffin business. But more my family, my dad was a chemical engineer, you know, you get a job, you work nine to five, you do this, and then, and there’s one, one bit, I read a book called, um, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I don’t know if you know that, so that fundamentally changed the way I thought, I mean, it really, it was a, um, Quite like shift in my thoughts.

And I went, Oh my goodness. And I went, well, why don’t I know? So I had, uh, I know. So I was working and we moved to Canada and they only gave me two weeks holiday. I think even for the first year weeks holiday. And I was like a management in England. I had four and a half weeks to five. I went one, one, one week.

I can’t live off one week, you know, one, one week holiday. [00:23:00] So that pushed me into a corner. Literally. And I went, I want time with my children. So what does that, and that’s what started my first business. And then, and then that’s how it all started. So I, yeah, it’s, it was, I think it’s easy if you’ve got a very comfortable lifestyle, I think it must be very difficult to jump outside that because it’s so, I think if I was to give any advice, it would be try and um, do them parallel and then get ready to jump over.

Whereas I had nothing to lose. I hadn’t, my career had gone because I’ve emigrated. I had two children and I went, Oh, well, let’s try and see what happens.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think, yeah, I think that’s, that’s a great advice, right? Like, you know, if somebody already has a job and they have an idea, you know, try it as a side hustle kind of a thing.

Um, I think that minimizes risk a lot, for sure.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: You’re still going to have, it’s going to be tiring, exhausting, and you’re going to hustle. But yeah, in some ways I think I was like, uh, [00:24:00] as I said, I, maybe I wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t had so much to, I had nothing to lose to basically. So I went, okay, well, let’s just do it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, I think that’s, that’s great advice. Um, You, you mentioned that now you’re not looking at the sales side of things. So can you talk a little bit about your team, you know, who, who’s working with you? Uh, what, what is kind of your focus on this business and what, what, you know, who’s doing what and so forth?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Well, I’ve got the, this, the girl that, uh, the old young lady, I should say, that joined me on, um, COVID, she’s still with me.

Okay. And,

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: um, Brianna and she’s been through, she literally has, we worked upstairs on the bonus room, packing on side of our snooker table, people put big cardboard out and from, we’ve been packing from, you know, she helped me literally pack the first card.

So now she’s the head of all the sales. She’s now off, uh, to Atlanta tomorrow. I’ve handed all that [00:25:00] kind of sales to trade shows. And so she’s overseeing that and we just brought on another younger person for her to work with her so they can build up that side. And then, uh, I, I kind of pick people up along the way.

I don’t ever really go out to employ people. I find people that we like, and then we go, Oh, do you want to come and join us? I got a new recruit that I found in a liquor store. We got talking,

I said,

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: are you looking for a job? Because I liked her so much, um, and she’s turning out to be great. So we’ve got now, uh, I got, and then I got, uh, two part time, well, part time, they’re, they’re like three days, four days a week.

We just also hire a girl with, um, autism. So she’s part, so she can help us. So we, cause we try to give everybody an opportunity. So, and then, um, so how many got, so, so five, five girls and two, so there’s seven of us now, seven of us. No, of course.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: [00:26:00] Okay. Now, of course you’re a small business in Canada. Um, do you find, how do you find it to be running a business in Canada, especially with employees, you know, all, a lot of the changes that are going on, do you find it, it’s to be, um, easy place to, to run a business?

Yes. Okay.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: I think it’s easy. It’s just expensive. I’m sure if I was down in the States, it would cost me a lot less in labor, but there’ll be probably different things that I haven’t, you know, so I think for me, it’s just the wages is the killer. Everything else is pretty straightforward and obviously taxes, but it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, you pay taxes.

I think what I’m disappointed in, and I don’t want to get too political, but they, I don’t think this can, I don’t think, The best way, especially BC do not help small businesses. They seem to go out of their way to help the big businesses, but not the small businesses. And yet we employ more people than anybody else.

And I think it’s, [00:27:00] for me, they should be giving cuts to say, if I employ this many people, you get a tax cuts. proving that I’m putting the money back in.

But

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: what’s the incentive for me to more employ more people that there’s no incentive. I mean, I mean, that the girl learning with the autism, yes, I get a slight wage, but in the end, she will get a full wage when she gets a full wage.

Anyway, they just cover it. But It’s one of those things that, um, they could do so much, they could do so much more and I think they should be nurtured, especially the young people, they should be nurturing as much little, uh, helping them out as much as possible. Because they’re the next generation, they’re the ones that are going to build the next businesses and why would you when you get taxed so heavily and there’s no incentive, is there?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think, uh, the studies are showing now in Canada, the number of small businesses going down. And, uh, I mean, it’s, it’s not, it’s [00:28:00] not great because yeah, you know, you want to have people starting businesses so that they can employ other people and so forth. But what is it, uh, how do you do business in the U S like, do you have, when, when you get, uh, uh, customers or when you have customers in the U S do you ship a ship ship to them directly from.

Canada, or do you have warehouses in the U S and does it have any duty? Like what are the duty tax implications?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: We’ve got this great company that does the shipping for us. And it gave us phenomenal rates. Um, I always say to America and I said, if you didn’t know I was in Canada, you wouldn’t know you just because our shipping rates are so good, so fast.

Um, and for me, so if I pay for it to go to where we were doing it in America, we pay for it to go to warehouse. We never had the right product in the right place. Um, it would cost a fortune for them to pick it. And we went, okay, enough is enough, you know, and then things went missing. So we went nothing. [00:29:00] So we brought it back in house.

We’ve gotten way more control. The product is completely fresh. When that goes out, that product was made that week. We do everything to order. So we look through our orders. Cards get packed. They go out of the kit. Unless it’s a massive order. Um, but. Yeah. So we find that the shipping, I don’t know, it’s actually better.

It’s cheaper for me to ship to the US and it is, can we need to send something to you in Toronto?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Whoa. That’s very interesting.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Yeah. Um, and we keep it because it was like under 800. The, the, um, we don’t get charged. And then we take it if a customer gets charged, we take it on because, uh, to avoid that confusion.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Yes. So, especially in America, you don’t want to put, because when they see you in Canada, they’re sort of like, oh, And we said, look, trust us if, if you find the shipping gets tell us, but trust us. And then what we also do, do a lot of free [00:30:00] shipping. So what we, when they first open an order, they buy normally a retail ready pack and that includes the free shipping.

So we try and do that as much as possible because that alleviates any concerns.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What percent of your business is B2C? I’m, I’m assuming it’s a very small, uh, it’s much

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: smaller. Oh, three percent, four percent. Wow.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. So, um, from a marketplace perspective, I know you’re on FAIR, which is a, uh, a wholesale, I guess, B2B marketplace.

Amazon. It’s like

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: an Amazon, I guess, for B2B, isn’t it?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: But, but you’re not on Amazon and, or any of these.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Uh, in America, well, on Amazon, um, that’s through one person that we, uh, deal with. Um, we, we, we haven’t gone Amazon Cancer because, well, we were briefly, but it didn’t work out, because no one, Amazon is like, People are looking for something.

So no one’s really looking for us. Um, which is, I know we, our budget, unfortunately we only have such a big, you know, our marketing budget and a lot of that, the trade [00:31:00] shows are so expensive. Um, so there’s only so much money we have. Um, I’d love, I mean, if I could have more money to do, uh, marketing, of course I would love that.

Um, Also, we deal with a lot of, um, as I say, high end gift stores, and they want something different that isn’t on Amazon, um, so that’s why we don’t do Amazon in Canada.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Interesting. So I noticed that, uh, you had an appearance on Dragon’s Den. Um, were you, can you talk a little bit about, you know, your financing?

Have you always, have you funded everything on your own? Did you get funding from Dragon Den? Uh, what was that experience like for you?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Um, well, from beginning to end, it was great. So my, I, so what has happened over the last few years, or everybody says, have you been on Dragon Den or have you been on Shark Tank?

And I go, no. And then, and then you’re like, okay, and then I went, then one day, um, and [00:32:00] then, uh, unfortunately, yes, last year, my dad died. And, and I went to the, to see my mom and everything. And one of the comments she threw out, she says, Oh, I love dragons then. And I went, Oh, okay. So when I came back to Canada, I went, Oh, look, life’s too short.

I’ll do it. I’ll do it for my mom and do all for these people. So I can say, yes, I have been on dragons then and then it shuts everybody up. So I did it. It’s just as a kind of like, Oh, I’ll just do it. I wasn’t doing it for any, uh, marketing. I wasn’t going out to market the cat. I just thought I just do it for a bit of.

It’s fun, I guess. And see what, what, uh, if there was any investment. And then I got one of the first chosen and it happened pretty fast. And yeah, so I went on it and then everything went really well. I got an amazing offer. I did. It did really well. The only thing afterwards, and that was great, nothing came about, because they wanted to change the structure a bit, Arlene and Robert, and I totally understand, I have, and I think, um, [00:33:00] nothing came through, but I, and I totally understand where they were coming from.

And I hope they can understand where I was coming from. Um, so, you know, and I’m kind of glad I’m, I’m okay. I like being independent. I mean, um, so, you know, once we get it to some point, if I have to bring investors up, you know, if I need to, then I will. But for the moment, I’m okay with that. But it was fantastic.

It was fun. I would highly recommend it. But know your numbers. I really didn’t know. I mean, I know, I knew my numbers.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. I mean, yeah, that, it isn’t that, I think that happens a lot where, you know, it’s a show, so, you know, you, you have your presentation and the, the offer, but afterwards, you know, then some business part and legal part and things, things change.

Yes. Do you, do you.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Some people do it for marketing, you know, I literally, I don’t know. I literally did it for, Hey, I’ve done it. His mom, [00:34:00] I don’t, cause I really don’t. I don’t want it like something my mom went and never saw it. So I went, Oh, let’s just do it. And it’d be a fun thing to do.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Did you see any lift after the airing of the, Oh

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: my God, we website kept crashing and things like that.

Um, it’s a shame because I know that this online service is wanted in Canada where you can, cause like in, in, in America, especially in England, it’s big where you go online and you order a card. It’s delivered the next day.

Hmm.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Um, whereas because it’s, it’s, you know, I don’t want to get into about Canada post.

Um, I just, I have a little bit of issue with them, but they have this slot and if it doesn’t just slide right through

15

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: and, uh, or 20, they charge one person. Whereas, you know, like ours just fits and you’ve got to push it through, but they argue, well, that’s not how it is. And, um, And then they don’t have any tracking.

I can’t even, you know, you [00:35:00] pay 3. 25, but you can’t get any tracking. The cheapest tracking you can get is, some is between 12, well, it’s only 19. 99 to send. So I would make no money. Whereas in the US, I can get tracking and it’s 4. 25 or something like that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. Very interesting. I mean, I wonder if you go with like one of these, uh, UPS or FedEx or Purolator for, I mean, but maybe you don’t have

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: that company.

I do. I do. The cheapest they can do. They can get it down. I mean, they’ve got like 10 within BC and then I think it was 12 or 13 too, but I still wouldn’t make it unless I charged 29 or 30 for it. I don’t think anybody would. I don’t know. Maybe they will. Maybe I should do some research. Will they pay for it?

Because there can be literally you’d be on your phone and you can order the card and get it delivered.

Uh, Canada

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: post is like it’s one customer. I’m only an hour and an hour and a half away from Victoria. It took 12 days to get there.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Oh, wow.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: [00:36:00] Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, do you ever think of going into Shark Tank? I mean, Shark Tank has a much bigger, I guess, appeal and audience, especially in the U.

S. And given that U. S. is your primary market, do you ever think about, given that your, your business is so unique, I’m sure, you know, and you probably have the financials.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Ironically, Robert’s on Dragons and he loves our product and he’s under, we can’t, uh, we’ve even been approached by Shark Tank, but we can’t because we’re Canadian.

You have to be American.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Oh, wow. Okay.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Yeah. They’ve got two Canadian, I think, investors that go on it. I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, to me, it seems, do you, do you ever think about, and maybe people have suggested to you already moving to Canada, I mean, through your business, I’m sure if your, if your market is already big in the U S I’m sure that there’s like visas that can help you, uh, you can create a business in the U S and, you know, uh, move to the

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: U S.

Do you mean move to America?

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Uh, yeah. I mean it’s something on our, it’s that’s a big [00:37:00] move. Uh, and, um, I don’t know. Some person they recommended not to ’cause they said the taxes could be out. Well, you know, crazy. Uh, I said, well, if I’m making millions, who cares? But, um, you know, I don’t mind paying taxes, you know, if I’m paying, if I’m making money.

Um, it’s something that’s on our, yeah, we are, we need to go in and have a look at where we would go. But yes, it’s in the future could possibly be. It make, it kinda makes sense.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I mean, if that’s your big, bigger, big market and, uh, you don’t mind being in the U. S., then I guess, yeah, it makes sense. Um, what is your, so, so right now you have, you said, you know, you already had a business, now this is your, another business, and you’re thinking about, uh, starting another one.

Um, What is the future vision for you? Like, do you, do you just want to be the CEO, manage different businesses and have let your, like, you know, employees run these businesses? What, what does the future look like for you [00:38:00] in the next five years? And especially for this one?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Yeah. Um, well, I think for me, cause I, okay.

So I was, well, I’m 58 now. And I have to say, start when you’re young. Cause like, I, um, I forgot that the different energy when I was in my forties to now it’s totally different. Uh, maybe I have more. You

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: don’t look 58 by the way.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: But it’s like, I just, I mean, it’s, it’s, I think starting young is really where you want to be.

But anyway, um, yes, I would love to be the overall and I’d like to have everybody running it or I’d like to sell out. And I mean, and that’s, I think that’s my ultimate goal. If somebody bought us, that would be, that’d be fine by me because then I do have to sort of. retire at some point, I guess, but

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I guess, you know, the, it, it would make more sense.

The, the girl who started with you at the beginning, if she just buys your business, she’s already running it,

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: but she’s doing a great job. So yeah, she could easily do [00:39:00] it and things like it’s unfortunately, you know, it’s the amount of money I might need to be bought out. You know, I’ve got a house in Hawaii.

I need to buy a house in Hawaii. I’d be probably myself, but

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Oh, wow. Okay. Hey, if you, listen, if you, if you want to live in Hawaii, then, then it It makes sense to already thinking about moving to the U. S.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Well, that’s, well, that is true. That’s not a bad thing to think about. I mean, I wouldn’t live there full time, but it’s things like that.

But there’s, there’s also, there’s like, I want to travel. There’s a lot, you know, obviously I want to go back to UK a bit more often. Um, I just want to try, you know, do things. And so far, you know, go to, go to, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been supporting this, uh, elephant safari, you know, supporting elephants. I’d love to go to there and do more work and something like that.

That would be great.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: You know, it’s interesting that people get into entrepreneurship because entrepreneurship, um, I think most entrepreneurs are motivated by this idea of freedom, right? Like if you’re an entrepreneur, you control your time. But a lot of the times when you’re in the [00:40:00] field, you know, working on your business, it’s like you’re You know, you’re working more than you would be working in a, in a job situation.

Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of, um, I guess, uh, what is the word? Um, catch 22, right? Yeah.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: And also I think it chooses you. I think sometimes it’s just one of those things. You probably, you know, you’re probably the one person you’d get bored. You couldn’t, it’s just there. And you sometimes you act like this other idea.

And I’m like, no, no, I don’t ever get no more ideas. I don’t want to, but then it just nags at you and you go, Oh, I’ve got to do it. Cause I just got it. So I think, yes, you’re, you’re right. And then you work longer hours. Yeah. I work way longer hours than I, if I worked in an office, I’d have holidays.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure.

Um, in every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always mistakes made, lessons learned, failures. Um, I mean, you’ve been doing this for a long time. So I’m, I mean, maybe you can share, [00:41:00] do you, when you look back at this business, have there been any, You know, big lessons learned, or, you know, mistakes that you think you could have avoided that, you

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: know, Top, top, top

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: one or two.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Okay. Um, I think making my mistake. I mean, I made so many, I mean, like, um, because, but unfortunately you have to make mistakes. Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made have actually turned out to be the best things that have happened. So. You know, accidentally something not happening has actually turned out to be the best thing.

So if something really bad does happen, what, what It’s not the end of the world. Nothing is at the end of the world. You will survive. Um, I think for me, it’s cash. Learning about that cash flow is the most important thing. You can have the best product, you can have the best service, but if you don’t fundamentally [00:42:00] understand what cash flow is, You’re never going to make it because that’s what I made.

I think in my first one of my first business, businesses, um, I didn’t understand that. You’ve got to make sure that the amount that’s going out, the amounts that’s coming in, because if they all got to go out at the same time and you, you can’t get a loan or credit, your business is over.

So cashflow, cashflow, cashflow, look after cashflow. And I think the next for me and what’s the other business is, um, Gosh, how many mistakes have I made? Um, it’s ordering too much. Go slow. Go, don’t, you think you’re going to sell. 100, 000 of these products. No, bring it right back. Even if it means you could have sold 10 times over that amount because you bought a small amount, that’s okay.

You learn from that. You’re going to tweak it to make the ghost go small. I got a mistake back in the warehouse. They all laugh at [00:43:00] me. I ordered. So many of these stands and I’m going to have to live through it until we get through them. And then I want to change them and I just, I went, yeah, this is great.

And I realized it was a mistake. So go slow, go smaller and pay a bit more. Do you have to pay a bit more? Pay a bit more.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, exactly. I mean, sometimes you, you have to buy more because you’re getting better pricing terms, right?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Yeah. Yeah. But don’t

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Um, well, now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment in this segment.

I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer them maybe in a word or a sentence or so. The first one is a book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Uh, well for me, it was reached out only because it makes you think differently and yeah, that’s, that’s,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: yeah, that’s, that’s definitely a great book.

Yeah, for sure. To, to understand. The difference between, you know, just working for a salary versus, you know, your investment and business and things like this. So, yeah, definitely.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: That was what fundamentally changed me to become a, there are a lot, I [00:44:00] mean, like you got the email, I mean, you got the, there are so many great books out there.

I think it depends on who you are at the time, but that’s the one I would go for at the moment just as the starting point.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. Um, an innovative product or idea in the current e commerce, retail, or tech landscape that you feel excited about?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Um, I, I think, uh, 3D printers are underrated.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: 3D printers.

Okay. I’m wondering if your next business is something related to 3D printers.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: No, it actually isn’t. But I, I just love them. I see them. I’m fascinated, like, especially with the building. I think if you can build a house and if we can take them to different places and keep the cost down for the next generation, I think, I don’t think they’ve been fully utilized yet.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think some countries are using, uh, more of the, the, the smaller houses. I don’t know if they’re making it three, they’re 3D printing it or, but they are like, uh, they’re, they’re more affordable way, uh, more sustainable way of

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: living. I know, I don’t [00:45:00] know if that’s new, but I think it’s, it fascinates me.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, a bit, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, you’re managing multiple businesses. So you must be, you must be productive.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: And things. I do. I love any company and I, there’s a, that’s cleaning the ocean. So a company that goes out is not necessarily going to make a lot of money. It’s doing it for the, the, the, the good of mankind. And I wish Jeff and, and Matt, you know, all those big guys sort of trying to get to Mars, let’s get down to looking after this planet because it needs a lot of cleaning and then they produce a lot of waste, especially, you know, Amazon.

So I think he should have, anyway, so anything like that, those startup companies that do great jobs cleaning up the beaches, because we need our sea.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure, for sure. Um, do you, by the way, do you, do you think that we will ever live on [00:46:00] Mars or one of the other planets? Not in my

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: lifetime. Uh, nothing. I mean, would you, would you want to

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: live there?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: No. Look after your own planet. It has, like, you go diving in the Great Barrier Reef, you go climbing into some beautiful mountain, you go to the, You know, savannah or some places in Africa, you know, let’s look after this most beautiful place. We don’t even know there’s another planet out there in the whole of the universe.

And yet we’re not, no other animal doesn’t treat its planet or its area like the way the, you know, the man is a great, the humans are amazing. So we can do it. And I just, they make that sense to me, as you can see, why we aren’t looking after our planet.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I think, I think that’s a, uh, there’s a great opportunity there for entrepreneurship as well.

I think, um, a peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to, or someone who inspires you.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Um, well, this sounds great. It might sound okay, but there was a woman called Sarah bread, bread, love, [00:47:00] and she was the first, uh, colored woman to make a million in America. And I just watched not, I mean, about a couple of years ago, and I never knew about her.

And I was She blew me, I think, I was so inspired, I went, if she can do it, I, like, there’s no reason why I can’t or many other people. She was against all odds, all odds, and she did it, so she totally inspired me.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So if

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: anybody’s saying, I can’t do it, go and watch that on Netflix. And she started hair doing like special oils for colored hair in like, this is 1902, like, like 90, just at the century.

And she did it.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Is that a documentary on Netflix or is that like a movie?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Well, it’s a movie kind of thing. Okay, I’ll check it out. It’s based on truth and it’s a phenomenal realization. Awesome. Anybody could do it. [00:48:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um, final question. What is the best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Um, it’s, oh, it’s a journey. It’s not a race. So enjoy the wins along the way. I think sometimes I don’t necessarily appreciate where we’ve come from and where we’re at today. And I’m trying to do that more, appreciate the wins. Because there’s enough, you know, people try to knock you down, you know, like, but I think you’ve got to sometimes And you’ve had a really hard day and everything and you go, but look what I’ve done.

I’ve actually, you know, someone bought my product You know, someone looked at it and someone liked it. It might, yes, it might not sold millions, but there’s a few people So if a few people like it, so take the wins when you can.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Sorry, go ahead.

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Appreciate yeah, appreciate the way you’ve got to.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, that is, that is such a, such a great, uh, advice.

I mean, not just in business, you know, everything is [00:49:00] a process and you have to enjoy it while you are doing it and, you know, um, there’s, hopefully there’s a destination somewhere, but, uh,

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: well, yeah, but it’s like you just don’t know how long the journey is, do you? I mean, I like this could take me another five years to get it to where I want it to be, so that’s a long time.

So you might as well. Okay, well, let’s. Let’s enjoy it and have fun. And I tried to try and do that with the, you know, the team that I’ve got. Um, we try to have a little bit of fun.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. Uh, well, Sarah, those were all the questions that I had. Thank you so much for sharing your story, for sharing your, uh, your entrepreneurial journey, some successes and, you know, lessons learned.

So I really, really appreciate your time again. If anybody wants to get in touch with your business or wants to buy your product, what’s the best way to do that?

Sarah Neal of Instacake Cards: Um, instacakecards. com. Um, and, uh, there’s lots of emails on there, phones. If you want to contact us, feel free to do that. Or order a card and we’ll ship it anywhere in North America for 19.

[00:50:00] 99.

Awesome. Well, uh, Sarah, thank you so much again and wish you and your business, uh, lots of success.

Yes. Well, thank you so much. And hopefully maybe I’ll be on here again with my other business.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. For sure. Uh, you know, I’ll, I’ll reach out again for sure.

Also, get inspired to Create a Profitable Online Business with Building a Building a Leather Accessories Brand as a Full-Time Homemaker – Julia Hankinson of Crown Leatherworks


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