Charlynda Scales is a veteran, serial entrepreneur, author, and in-demand speaker. As the founder and CEO of Mutt’s Sauce, she turned her grandfather’s secret recipe into a popular regional food brand. She’s also the Executive Director of the OH Taste Foundation and the 6888 Kitchen Incubator inside the Dayton Arcade, where she provides small food business owners the tools they need to succeed inside and outside of the kitchen.
Tune in to hear how Charlynda’s personal journey fuels her passion for uplifting the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Listen Now!
Episode Transcript:
Evelyn Ritzi:
Welcome to Creating the Future. I’m Evelyn Ritzi
David Bowman:
and I’m David Bowman
Evelyn:
and today we’re joined by veteran entrepreneur, author, speaker, and friend, Charlynda Scales, hello, welcome.
Charlynda Scales:
Thanks for having me.
Evelyn:
Thanks for being here. Well, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast today to share what you’re doing in the world, but you’ve had such an inspiring journey to get here, so let’s start at the beginning and share more about your background and how you came to call Dayton home.
Charlynda:
Sure. Well, I am a country girl from the hills of Tennessee. I grew up in Cookeville, Tennessee, close to Nashville. I come from a military family, so I’m a fourth-generation veteran. My grandfather was in the Korean Vietnam War, and I wanted to fulfill that military heritage, so I went into the Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. That’s how I found myself in Ohio. I have to say they kind of dragged me here because I didn’t know what to think about Ohio. I thought it was kind of like Little House on the Prairie. I mean, I didn’t know. So when I finally got here, though I loved the assignment, I loved the people, and when it came time to go into entrepreneurship, which we’ll talk about, I said, Let’s just stay here. And so that’s I’ve been here since 2010.
Evelyn:
I’m glad you’re here.
David:
Yeah, so let’s talk a little bit about your company, Mutt’s Sauce, because it has such an interesting backstory, and family legacy. Tell us a little bit about the sauce and what makes it so unique in the story of it.
Charlynda:
Mutt’s Sauce, so you can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. It’s sweet, tangy with a little bit of heat, but the sauce was actually made by my grandfather. So my grandfather had a call sign in the military, and it was Mutt, and that was because his personality was very adaptive. He had friends all over the world. And you know, back then, it wasn’t a time where people, you know, we still had segregation and we still had civil rights issues. So he kind of lived in this Nirvana where everyone was his friend. And looking at pictures back then they had backyard barbecues in Okinawa, Japan, and the sauce is what he would make to bring people together. So 1956 is when he came up with his last version of the recipe, and everybody in the family ate it. And if you wanted a condiment, it was gonna be the sauce. So I just grew up eating it on my eggs, and I loved it. My grandfather was a huge influence for me. He was like my father figure. So when I grew up, I wanted to, I wanted to be a jock, so I wanted to play soccer or run track, and I had sports scholarships lined up. As it turned out, I tore my ACL first game senior year. So we all have a fork in the road, something that happens. You gotta have a plan B, and I filled out a Reserve Officer Training Corps Scholarship application in the back of a math class in high school, and that meant if you went into the Reserve Officer Training Corps, you would become an officer, a commission officer, when you graduated college. And I didn’t think that that was a big deal. I was just like, how do I pay for college? Because I was in the household where you get kicked out at 18, so you need to have a plan, right? I was like, I mean a plan. And when I told my grandfather, he broke down in tears because he was so proud. He didn’t think that anybody else was going to go into the military. My cousin went into the Marine Corps. He got hurt. But my grandfather had this mentality that you had to retire. That was just the way he was, and that was great news for him, so now I’m doing it for him. He got diagnosed with stage four lung cancer my senior year, but he was still the first person to salute me. He fought cancer for four years to be the first person to salute me on active duty. So. So Mutt’s Sauce is more than sauce. I say all that to say Mutt’s Sauce is more than sauce. It is truly a family legacy. It is it is something that I can share my family and the love that we have for each other with everyone, and we hope that you get that experience. So we don’t sell a product, we sell an experience. It is great. I love the taste of mutt sauce. I love that I don’t have to think about it. My mom told me, eight years after he had passed, that he had left me something, and it was the original recipe in an envelope. So that is why I was like, whatever I gotta do to make this thing tangible, I will do it because I knew that was a big gesture. All of his children were still alive. I’m like, eighth in the hierarchy. So the birth of Mutt’s Sauce came from that.
David:
Was the plan at that point, when you get the envelope, were you immediately like, I’m gonna make a product and take it to market, or was it all right, I got this, I’m kind of the keeper of the sauce and like, I’ll make it for the family barbecue. And, you know, was it more low-key? How did that sort of evolve into, well, something you could buy?
Charlynda:
Thank you for that question. David, I had a lot of imposter syndrome. It was a lot of, I’m the worst cook in the family, and everybody knows it. So like, what am I doing with this recipe? Like, I don’t know. I would burn, I would burn toast like I would. I couldn’t even water, sauce, right, right? Because it makes it taste good, right? So I was wondering, like, why am I the person? So I did seek mentorship. So I Googled free help. I found a Score here in Dayton. They had a chapter in Dayton, and my mentor was John Suter. And John Suter was about my grandfather’s age, and he said, You need to think bigger, because I walked in saying, I want to make a couple bottles for friends and family. They all miss him. Just tasting the sauce, I think will be healing for them. So just teach me how to make a couple bottles. And he said, I don’t think, I don’t think you’re I don’t think you realize what you have here. And there are people who come into your life and they see something bigger than what you see. And he said, This is going to be in Kroger, this is going to be in grocery stores. And I’m like, hold up. I’m still active duty. I don’t think you understand how Uncle Sam works. I got to give him all my time. And he said, your grandfather loved your family, and he ran out of time. That is what I’m hearing it just ran out of time. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to make this in a way that you can sell it on the weekends, respect your military career, and grow the company outside of that. And so we fully manufacture. We’ve always been fully manufactured in Dayton, and I paid a manufacturer to make Mutt’s Sauce, and we’re in Kroger now, and the rest is history.
Evelyn:
And you just get chills hearing that story, and that’s so amazing. And you talk about imposter syndrome and breaking into a very competitive space like food and food and beverage, is in general, very competitive. And then you go into condiments and the niche areas, like, tell us about that, and like how this podcast is all about creativity, right? So how have you used creative and out of the box thinking when bringing a new product to the market?
Charlynda:
I feel like it had already been beta tested, in a way, like there were people that I knew loved it. I had to get over the fear of, what if the local people of Ohio don’t like it, because it’s like a Tennessee, sweeter sauce. So we just had, we had an event at the Chamber of Commerce in Beavercreek at the time. So join the Chamber of Commerce, and they had all their members, the Chamber members, come to an event, and I just fed everything I could think of. I had hired a caterer. I was like, match everything with Mutt’s Sauce and let everybody taste it. And then we just had feedback cards. You tell us what you think. And now, you know, in a mentorship role, I have to tell my mentees, don’t worry about who else is on the shelf, because if you look at how many sauces there are on that aisle, you will never get the confidence to go after it, because you like so much competition. But the people who love Mutt’s Sauce, love Mutt’s Sauce, and you just have to think about those people and serve those people. And I’m surprised at how many there are. I just You just enjoy the journey of discovering who loves mutt sauce.
David:
Two things; What’s your favorite thing to put Mutt’s Sauce on? And what’s like the weirdest combo, like out of the box. Like, you know what I really like is put on this.
Charlynda:
Yeah. So we have three flavors, original, sweet and spicy, and ghost pepper. And original has no pepper in it, and that’s because I’m allergic to pepper. Oh, my God, really? Yeah, I try them all, though. So when I go into the manufacturer to try all the flavors, I’m high as a kite. I loaded up on Benadryl. Yeah, so much Benadryl in me. I’m like Lieutenant Dan, so but I, I go in there and I tried the sweet and spicy and ghost pepper. Ghost Pepper actually came from people in Ohio. They said We want something with some heat to it. I tried to take it down to Tennessee, and they didn’t like it. They didn’t like it. It just sat on the shelf. So we brought it back. And I like it on my eggs. I love it on my eggs in the morning instead of and there’s ketchup eaters, people with Tabasco, right, right, so I’ll put it on my eggs. Weird combination. The bloody mutt was one that we were not expecting. Okay, yeah, we’ve been in the Bloody Mary contest so that, I guess every year, Dayton has a Bloody Mary contest, and we’ll submit the bloody Mutt and that has Mutt’s Sauce in it, you know, add all your fixings and stuff and Mutt’s Sauce.
David Bowman 11:25
Pair that with your eggs for a good breakfast.
Charlynda:
Yeah, interesting breakfast that would be a good Sunday, Saturday, Tuesday.
David:
So you’re also one of the founders and executive director of the Six Triple Eight kitchen incubator, which is inside the Dayton Arcade. You’ve described it as a love letter to Dayton. So tell us about the six triple eight kitchen incubator. For those who don’t know what, what is a kitchen incubator?
Charlynda:
A commercial kitchen is think of it as a co-working office, and in the office. There’s so many desks, everybody’s working together. It’s the same thing, but a kitchen. So our members, our food business owners, who needed a space that they could scale out of their home, out of their home, that they call cottage food level, into a certified clean kitchen that they don’t have to worry about. The certifications, the public health certifications, the utilities, lights, none of that. They just come in there and they cook the best food on Earth. Our members are also getting mentorship. So that’s the incubation. Part of it is you have three co-founders, myself, Dabriah Rice, and Jamaica White, and we’re all food entrepreneurs wanting to help you scale your business side. What we notice as food founders is what usually makes you go out of business is the business side. Your food tastes great, your cupcake is awesome, but you’re basically a charity. Every time you sell this cupcake, you’re losing money, and you don’t realize it’s it’s buried into the what we call the cost of goods sold, your flour, your sugar. If you’re running into the store and buying it retail, you’re losing dollars of profit margin. So we’re here to hold your hand and help you through the process of scaling, because we want to see you downtown Dayton. We want to see you as the next restaurant. We want to see you as the next big chef in this area, or the consumer packaged good product. But that that needs some help. People need to pay attention to the fact that we’ve lost so many restaurants since COVID, even now, I think three of our beloved restaurants went out of business just in the Miami Valley region, and we want to prevent that. We also have a food desert, food insecurity issue. There’s not access to healthy food at an adequate level, or a grocery store that people can get healthy food. There’s more like places like gas stops and things that level of food. Yeah, grab your chips, candy kind of stuff. Hey, you see that everywhere. And we want to be a place that is centrally located, that you know, you can have access to healthy food. So we spent four years behind the scenes in the ideation and planning, and then finally, construction and during COVID, not a lot of people understood, like, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? It’s a big city concept. If you go to Austin, Texas or DC, they’re everywhere, and they will tell you that the local economy grew because of the commercial kitchens. Why do people come to a city when they visit as a tourist, they want to know, where do you eat? What food is good? Well, if there’s no restaurants because everyone’s going out of business, then your city is not cool, right? Like, yeah. It’s all connected. How are the how’s the education system? How are the children’s grades? If you’re hungry, you can’t pay attention, your grades will slip. So food, food has such a intricate and a widespread impact, and we wanted to do that. We just like we see it, and sometimes you have to be the person to make it happen, and just wait for the rest of the world to catch up.
Evelyn:
That’s amazing. To visit it, because I got to see, you know, the ribbon cutting, and tour it. And it’s just, I mean, amazing state-of-the-art kitchen. You can, if you work downtown, or are downtown, you can order lunch from some of the resident businesses in there right now. And I just think it’s really fascinating, really cool thing to support. I do want to talk about the name, though, because six, triple eight, you know, it has a deeper meaning, and it does tie back to Dayton. So can you tell? Can you talk a little bit about the name, the idea for the name and what it means.
Charlynda:
So in World War Two, our country sent 855 black women, I would say women of color, because there we found out there were some Hispanic women as well, to Europe. And it was an impossible job that they gave them the 6888 central postal battalion, and they were augmented to fulfill a backlog of 17 million parcels of mail that they had stuffed in a warehouse. So what that meant was These soldiers are fighting a war, and what helps your morale is knowing that there are people back home that love you, care for you, and can’t wait for you to get home, and they have not heard from their families. Vice versa, their families haven’t heard from them. So all this mail sitting there, these women were given six months to clear the backlog of mail, and now that there’s a movie on Netflix that kind of helps tell the story of what they went through. They weren’t given proper accommodations, they weren’t given proper resources. They weren’t set up for success, and at every corner, they faced a challenge that they had to overcome as a team led by Lieutenant Colonel Charity Adams. Early at the time, she was major Charity Adams, and she was a resident of Dayton, Ohio. Now we, Jamaica, Dabriah, and I had called the kitchen North Arcade kitchen. And we’re like, we gotta come up with something better. The North Arcade kitchen just didn’t have, you know, the ring to it. And this radio show host from Pennsylvania, he said, you three remind me of the Six Triple Eight. And all my years in the military, I was embarrassed. I was like, I’m afraid to ask this man, who’s that? Because he knows he’s talking to a military veteran. So I guess he’d just assume she knows I’m talking about, yeah, I had no idea. Imagine that like almost 15 years of service, and never heard of the Six Triple Eight. So when I went back and looked at it, I was in awe of the story. Brought it back to the girls. We read about them, saw the the part about lieutenant colonel and Charity Adams. I’m like, That’s it. Like, how do we tie in military history, local history, this impossible job we’re trying to do of telling people about commercial kitchens and how they help with economic development of a city. How do we do that with a name? And so we said we’re going to name it Six Triple Eight. So if you walk into our facility, naturally, you’re gonna say, why is it Six Triple Eight? And you will learn American history, and you will learn local history, and I think it really brings in just our mission. It brings it all together.
David:
That’s fantastic. So you are also the author of the book. Rock Bottom has a Trampoline, and there’s a lot to unpack in the title alone. But tell us about the book and what you hope readers would take away from the book.
Charlynda:
I think the book, the book started. I guess the essence of the book. Started in 2016 I was invited to Washington, DC to give a keynote speech, and the keynote speech was at military influencer conference. So these are the most influential military and military-affiliated entrepreneurs and military spouses in the country, and having an opportunity to talk with them, I’d seen them in different facets many times, and it was always great news. There’s always some great news with mutt sauce or whatever I was doing in community, and I don’t think they realize how. How much I had been through that was not good. And even at that time, I was living two different lives. I was going through my first pregnancy, so I was pregnant, they had no idea, and I had just gone through a really hard time in my personal life, and both those things can happen. You can be at rock bottom and at a really great time in your life, at the same time. So I’m on this stage, and I decided I’m going to tell them about rock bottom, just straight rock bottom, the whole entire keynote. And I said some faces as I was giving the keynote, I’m looking at the shocked faces of when I talked about being $1,500 in the hole and owing people a lot of money of being on the cover of military spouse magazine while I was going through a divorce from my military spouse. Yeah. And of going through sickness, where the military couldn’t figure out what was going on with me, and I was basically really sick for a year, undiagnosed, just suffering and having to show up to work and act like nothing was going on. So that keynote. After I gave that keynote and announced my pregnancy, at the end of like, holy cow, this young woman, Brunella, walked up to me, and she said, You need to write your story. This is one thing to tell your story to this room. This other thing to write it down. And so that was 2016 and she was a very persistent person. So years she pursued just checking in, have you written your story? No, and in 2022 she said, I took an outline of what I thought your keynote was, and I sent it in to a publisher, and you might hear from them. Next thing you know, the publisher tends a note back. I want this book. Okay? And what do I do now? She’s like, I’m a writer, and the reason why I’ve been pursuing you is because I write books. When are you going to sit down and write a book? You’re not, you’re not. Be honest. Let’s just find a time where I can talk to you. And it ended up being five o’clock in the morning every day for two weeks of her pulling out the rock bottom moments of all those years, and she turned it into a manuscript. She said, now we’re going to submit this to publisher. I begged her so many times to hit delete on a lot of this stuff. It’s hard. It’s hard to talk about rock bottom, but I think I owed it to people like my mentees, who would come up to me and say, Wow, everything went your way. Everything worked out. I owe it to you to say, no, it didn’t, because I don’t want to paint a false picture of entrepreneurship. You got to have the real deal. So that’s what it is. It is I have not. I’m not the billionaire who has made it, who is sitting on their yacht or in their mansion saying, here’s the 10 steps to being like me. It’s not that book. It is I’m the strong thousandaire right now, because I’m claiming, well, I am. I am the strong thousandaire right now, who is meeting you where you are, and saying, I understand. I can relate. And this is what happens. Rock bottom is not one time. Rock Bottom will happen several times. It’s a matter of when, not if. And here are the instructions to what to do when you get to this type of rock bottom. So whether it’s your business partner, being broke, being sick, going through divorce, pick a rock bottom. There’s 200 pages of it. Have your fill. That’s what it is.
David:
I love that and that, you know, we live in a world, it’s so curated, right? Like, so you go on Insta, or you go on, you know what? You pick your social platform. And if it’s not people yelling at each other, it’s people with, like, Hey, look at my perfect life, or follow my four-step plan to bliss and happiness. And it’s like, that’s not real, like, that’s not helpful in any way nice, it’s fine.
Charlynda:
But and I’m sure you’ve, you’ve had your experiences, yeah, it never stops. Really, you just have to learn how to adapt, yeah. And then each rock bottom moment helps you get closer to self-actualization, like I’m okay with who I am. I don’t need these people on Instagram to tell me who I need to be, and I’m not afraid to show up on social media and be that flawed person. It just it takes a lot of rock bottom moments to get there.
Evelyn:
I think that’s, you know, part of the reason why I was drawn to you is, like, even seeing what you put out on social and how it’s like, radical honesty. It’s this is real. This is me. And something people may not know about you, that you know they see you as, like, keynote speaker and up on stage and doing different things, is that you’re introverted, too. So talk about that a little bit, and how, because I relate to that, how does that influence how you connect with people, you know, on one on one level, and then going on stage and speaking big conferences and things like that.
Charlynda:
Yeah, you just, you turn it on, you know, I, I realize that on a stage, the purpose is to give the message someone needs to walk away with something. They need to hear that they’re not alone. They need to hear something that helps them, that’s tangible for them. But at home, yeah, I respect those boundaries. Now. I used to just be out there. If you wanted me there, the answer was yes for everything, and it led to me feeling really burnt out. I was so burnt out and all I could look back and like, am I? Am I getting anything out of all this? If I know that a message needs to be given, and I feel like I need to be there. I’ll be there. But there have been times people like, can you be out in Vegas? No, no big because anytime when people talk about life balance, I don’t subscribe to balance. Because if I’m in Vegas at an event, and then I’m in a hotel for three days. Guess where I’m not at I’m not with my son, I’m not with my family, and I can never get that time back. So that was like the realization that if I had, if you take me away from that, it better be worth it. And I’m so introverted and I’m awkward. It’s so awkward, you know, I’ve leaned into just, just the life I have now is I’m home a lot. I’m home a lot more than I am out there. I just try to find a way that when I’m out there, I’m curating so much content that I can just stretch it out so it looks like I’m always out there.
David:
Do you find, see I’ll do speaking from time to time, or play music, right? And be on a stage. I’d way rather be on stage than in the audience, right? Like, I’m on stage, you’re with couple people, or you’re by yourself, right? So as an introvert, yeah, you’re there’s people there, but you control the dynamic a little bit, and then you can be done, right? As opposed to, like, if you’re still in, it’s different, yeah, if, if you’re in it, like going to the conference and walking around and like, like, a little bit, okay, but like that just flares me out, quick draining.
Evelyn:
Right? But like, a conversation like this kind of fills me up, where it’s like, smaller group.
Charlynda:
You know, those conferences, I already have anxiety. So I’m 70% disabled veteran as well, and one of those is just the social anxiety. So I will literally my I’ll have like tachycardia in my heart is racing, and for me it is the lot of people, the chaos of people coming up and they’re trying to get just a conversation, or try to plan something on the fly, and my brain is trying to remember it, and it’s already just like, Girl, stop. You know you’re gonna forget. This is not a battle you should even try to take on. And so I’ll say, hey, hit me up on LinkedIn. Hit me up on LinkedIn. Let’s, let’s, let’s try to organize this. But after a while, you’re just like, I can’t breathe. I literally can’t breathe, and I’m known to just disappear at conferences. They’re like, Where’d you let it go? And I’m probably just sitting in a bathroom stall staring at the ceiling.
David:
Are people surprised when you say you’re an introvert, like, I’ll get I’ll tell people like, I’m probably more ambivert, but like, when I’m done I’m done, like, and the older I get, the more I gravitate towards introverted. And if I have free time, I’m probably by myself, like reading a book, or with my family. Like, small group, not big crowd. I feel you, but people like, are surprised. Like, no way you’re an extrovert. I see you at events or speaking, and it’s sort of like, no, like, that’s my job.
Charlynda:
I just have grace with it, you know, because there are people who they only see you on social media. Like, we see each other. We see each other at Chamber. There are people who only see you online, and so that is the you that they have curated in their mind. And it is shocking to them when it’s like, okay, we’re done here. What? She’s so rude, but it’s just I’m at my limit, and I try to just have grace with it, or I’ll just say I have to go somewhere.
Evelyn:
Yeah, I mean, honesty. Like, just say, like, Hey, I’m getting I’m burnt out. I’m burnt out. I’m overwhelmed.
David:
I saw a title book yesterday that was something like, I’m sorry I was late, but I didn’t want to come.
Charlynda:
That’s a great title. Yeah, yeah. I like, now is the time to try to be even more honest about those sides of me, of knowing, like I’m juggling a lot, or even one time I was introduced as a millionaire, and I bust out laughing and there, and I was like, sorry, I had to turn to the audience be like, not there yet. Not there yet. Want to be, manifest it, yeah, not there yet, but I don’t want to paint a false picture. And I was like, I don’t know what it was, from my social they gave that away. There’s no millionaire energy. I was like, there’s no Bugatti. What? Anyway, I drive a Honda.
David:
So, let’s tap into the millionaire energy a little bit. Mentorship has been a big part of your journey. You’ve had incredible mentors, Daymond John and others, and you’ve served as a mentor to other entrepreneurs and community leaders. So what’s one piece of advice you live by or that you find yourself giving out like all the time?
Charlynda:
Oh, wow, so many.
David:
Or maybe give us the greatest hits package.
Charlynda:
Surround yourself with like-hearted people. Yeah, the like-minded people got me into so many situations. Was like, glad everyone around me agreed. Didn’t get me anywhere I am suffering. I would rather have the like-hearted person who would tell me something that stung a little bit, but got me to where I needed to be, just the Military Spouse magazine the editor, she told me, basically, get over yourself. I told her, I don’t want to be on the cover because I’m going through a divorce. She said, This is not about that. She said, I’m trying to change the narrative for military spouses. They don’t hold posters at airports. They’re running companies. Military Spouses are men because we have women in combat. We need to show the whole identity of the military spouse, and I’m trying to use your story to do that, and I need you to get up off the floor, put down that drink, and get it together. And that was the hardest gathering I have ever received from a person. When I was very sensitive. I was in an apartment with no furniture. I was just in a hole, and she would not let me wallow. She’s like you, this is not happening. Yeah, wow. Like-hearted people share the same morals and values, but they’re okay with telling you something that goes against the grain, because they care. They care.
Evelyn:
I feel like, if you live your life like a light hearted person, those people come to you, right, like, that’s a throughline from the from the author from this magazine, right?
Charlynda:
Absolutely. And the more you step into that authenticity, the more you like you said, we’ll get those.
Evelyn:
That’s amazing. I did want to briefly we dropped name-dropped Daymond John. But if you could talk a little bit about that relationship and what that mentorship means to you.
Charlynda:
He is an amazing human being, and I say that from having met him back in 2016 I got rejected at Shark Tank. So went to Shark Tank six months into owning Mutt’s Sauce. So that’s around 2014. Imagine getting rejected from Shark Tank. You wanted to meet him. They told you. The ones that were there said, keep going. You didn’t fail. You’re only six months old. As a company like you, you need to live a little so I kept going, and then four years after that, you get to sit down with Daymond John in a room by yourself. Wow. Two chairs. Thank you. Bob Evans, Bob Evans arranged the mentorship, and they looked for three veteran-owned businesses that they could help get to the next level. And mentorship was part of that. And his advice to me was more centered around family. We talked more about family than you know, most of the company stuff. We talked about succession planning. Are you going to leave FUBU to your daughter? Are you going to leave everything to Minka? Should I leave everything? How should I interact with my family? How do I make them feel a part of this journey? Those are the things that we talked about. He did tell me, you know, manufacturing is important, and you need to take the money that you get. Do not buy a brand new car, because I know he’s like, how’s he said, How’s your level of financial literacy? It’s like, it’s not, you know, I grew up with my grandparents on the farm, then my mom and I moved. Did not know that we moved to Section Eight housing the project, so not till I got to school, the kids tell me, you’re poor. I’m like, Oh, well, I don’t I don’t want to be poor. I don’t want to look poor, I don’t want anybody pick on me for being poor. And what that manifests as is you become an adult who buys stuff, you buy cars, you buy expensive clothes, you buy those things because you don’t want it to look like where you came from, and he’s like, You have to. You have to harness this financial literacy now, because if you use that $25,000 that Bob Evans gave you, and you do not buy sauce, you will not be able to scale up into Kroger, because you have to buy a ton of inventory. So that was very helpful, that he gave me that advice that did help us eventually get into Kroger. Since then, I’ve been his brand ambassador for his book. I’ve been in one of his books, Power Shift, wow, and what else. And we just every now and then. It’s not one of those things where we talk every day, but when we talk, it’s meaningful and it fills you up. It’s almost like that best friend you have from high school or elementary school that every three years it seems like, Hey, how you doing? Great, great, you know. And that one hour conversation fills you up for the next three years. So yeah,
Evelyn:
He seems like a light-hearted, oh, very, very down to earth.
Charlynda:
Very much. And then just seeing his interactions with his his family, you could tell he shares those same values and morals. So just one of those people, I’m like, I’ve met a lot of celebrities, but he’s one that I really like he’s really cool.
Evelyn:
Real quick. I do want to mention that Mutt’s Sauce is available in a lot of local stores around Dayton and online. So I don’t know if you want to shout out some of the places you can find Mutt’s Sauce.
Charlynda:
Shout out to Dot’s Market. Dot’s market was one of the first grocery stores that accepted us. So we stayed in dots. They now have the Centerville locations as well as Kettering.
Evelyn:
That’s where I got this bottle.
Charlynda:
Yeah, all right, so Centerville the base. So the military deli that’s in the commissary on base has it. Kroger has six locations in Miami Valley, so all the Kroger marketplaces in Miami Valley carry Mutt’s sauce in the Buy Local section. So after COVID, we went from 100 stores to six. That was part of a strategy with Goldman Sachs. So I went into Goldman Sachs small business program, and I told him, like it is hard to maintain distribution of 100 stores. The contract that they had given me at a corporate level was direct store delivery. And anytime a small business, if you’re in food and they’re like direct store delivery, I’m telling you now, that means you have to drive to 100 stores and deliver to the back door of that store. Wow, that is not a good deal. So I don’t advocate for that. For small businesses, I said I can make as much money in six grocery stores locally that I could trying to drive around and losing profit margin in 100 so we did that math. That’s why we scaled down hyper local, hyper-local, hyper-local,
Evelyn Ritzi 39:02
And online. So people nationwide can buy Mutt’s Sauce.
Charlynda:
MuttsSauce.com, you can get it anywhere in the continental US. And trying to think of what else we flirted, we floated with TikTok Shop, and then TikTok went away for 24 hours, and I think I just like, I’m over it. Sorry, guys, if you’re looking for the TikTok shop, and then where else, I know there’s one — Jungle Jim’s.
Evelyn:
Amazing, of course, amazing Jungle Jim’s. Go spend two hours there. Look, that
Charlynda:
Look, that is, you know, I thought that I’ve seen a lot of sauce until I went to Jungle Jim’s. The cheese, like this place. That’s next level. How did they find all this stuff?
Evelyn:
You’re there. You’re there.
Charlynda:
The casino, sorry, Oh, go on. There’s a Hollywood Gaming casino carries Mutt’s Sauce in Barstool Sports.
Evelyn:
You just have it with you, meal right there. Yeah, I love it. So we’ll end with the last question that we ask all of our guests, which is, what’s the future that you want to create in Dayton or beyond?
Charlynda:
I just want to see a future where small business owners have resources and know they have resources, whether it’s food, no matter what it is, I want to see people who choose empathy. I think that no matter where you go, a place where the people are empathetic is a healthy community. You don’t have to understand to be helpful to your neighbor. You don’t have to have the same lived experience to reach out and make a friend. Because when I look at my grandfather, I’m like, how did they get along? You know, past everything, all the differences that they had, because at some point they chose to be empathetic to each other in a time of war.
Evelyn:
It’s like that idea of I don’t have to understand what you’re going through, but I can be curious about it and care about it and care about you as a person. I love that. Well, thanks so much for being with us today. Lots of words of wisdom from Charlyda.
Charlynda:
This was fun, thank you so much.
