Welcome to Checking In with Michelle Williams, a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect. Hey, everybody, I want to speak to someone that's feeling like, you know, they don't have the resources they need to begin a company or to get out of a situation. This episode is going to be for you. I cannot wait for y'all to hear this young lady's story that's coming up on this next episode.
Of Checking In.
Hey, everybody, I am so excited about this week's episode because it is near and dear to my heart. Seeing that you know, our guest specialty is something that I love to indulge in. And I thought that I was an expert in another culinary suite, but it seems like I've got some competition.
So let me tell y'all who she is.
She is an award winning entrepreneur, speaker, community leader. She's appeared on the Today Show as well as featured in Southern Living, Entrepreneur and Business Insider, alumni of Xavier University.
Just we're going to get into all of that now.
She's got a book that is out now, y'all that is just absolutely incredible. It is called Made from Scratch, Finding Success Without a recipe. Okay, please welcome Mignon Francois to checking in.
Thank you for having me. You said so amazingly.
I imagine that you must speak a little bit of French.
I don't, but I got a feeling that I would do well in it.
Really, I feel like I would do well.
I think you would do amazing You just learned your first French word.
But you know, I try to honor the roots of a person's name, so I even want to try to pronounce it, even in the dialect, even in the accent of where it's from. So I hope I've majored you and your mom proud.
You have made me proud, and I'm sure my mom will be too.
Say when people mess up my name now, you know, because my name, you know, I'm gonna get everybody else's name. You know what people trying to do to me. They usually say, I'm gonna give you a nickname.
No, no, you're gonna say my name, and you're gonna say it right. We don't make it easy over here, although I'm guilty, I'm guilty of making it easy.
My first name is Tanitra.
Michelle is my middle name, and no one could ever pronounce to correctly. Really, we went to light on people because I love when I go to the airport and I give them my ID and they say t Niitra.
They get it right the first time, and I was like, don't let people.
Go easy on your name.
Yeah, I think, I think Tanietscha is an easy name to say.
Thank you, Thank you so so much, mignon.
Where are you from? I am from New Orleans, honey, and I truly believe there is no better place to be from.
But I live in Nashville, Tennessee.
You live in Nashville, Tennessee.
My niece took a trip to New Orleans for the very first time over spring break, and all she posted nothing but food and the swamps, and just I told her the food there is amazing. And you cannot go to New Orleans and just eat a ham and cheese sandwich.
You cannot.
You got to eat You got to eat the food that New Orleans is known for.
And you can eat it at somebody's mama's house. You
could eat it in a hole in the wall. You could eat I feel like a doctor Seusma and this so gayish, so so good it is, which is why I so desperately wanted to take the Cupcake Collection back to New Orleans because after Katrina, we had gone down there for a visit and I stumbled into this donut shop that I found on social media, and their donuts were so beautiful, and all the people that worked in there looked like they were casting the movie to work in the donut shop in New Orleans.
Listen, now, you kind of you're kind of getting down into my interview.
I was going to ask you about that.
But y'all, not only is she the author of Made from Scratch, Finding Success without a Recipe, You're like, well, why would she make.
A book called Made from Scratch?
Well, because she is the founder and CEO of the Cupcake Collection. It is in Nashville, Tennessee. And you have a place in New.
Orleans as well called the Collection.
I do, y'all.
Looked at the menu. It's amazing, honey.
She got sweep potato cupcakes, studie, she got zesty lemon or lemon lemon limon. Come on, somebody, how amazing? And we are going to get into that. But since you mentioned donuts, you noted, how are you a donut OFFICI and me?
Do you love doughnuts.
Oh my gosh, we are about to be friends.
I love donuts. Get it from I get it.
From the midderal search for the best donut in the world. Now, there are some good donuts in New Orleans. My son seems to think that the best donuts are right here in Nashville, Tennessee. But there are some really good donuts in New Orleans. And I have had some really good donuts in LA. And you know, I'm told I need to go to Voodoo Donuts in what Washington?
I think it's Seattle or really okay?
And I don't mean to be rude, but why do I feel like you need to try Hero Donuts. I believe they have opened up a Hero Donuts in Nashville. Finally what There's only like four locations, but I do believe Nashville is one of them.
Well, I'm gonna need to Charlotte Avenue.
What And I did not know that brand new because they just opened like a day ago.
Little because I was saying, I've been sleeping under a rock if I did not know that there were new donuts in Nashville.
They make them there like they don't get them from any They make them there.
I'm happy to get me one.
Okay. The burger is incredible, Oh, y'all.
I don't want to waste her time, y'all, because see you see how we got on a rabbit trail, because your story is so incredible. I love how you Yes, you have a degree, and I love how you know. On your bio it says, but you have a master's from Hard Knocks. Yes, but you are actually getting a master's. Did you ever to receive it or no?
I was so busy doing the things that I was working to get the masters for I had to kind of drop it. I now serve at the university on the board in the School of Business where I was seeking that degree. But I'd done so much in the city, you know. It was just something I wanted to have, okay myself.
So let's get into it for real.
At one point in time, you were drowning in debt, raising six children, living in a broken hand, abusive marriage. Yeah, where you ended up having to leverage the only five dollars you had to feed your family, y'all.
And she has turned it.
Into a ten million dollar cupcake empire. I'm sure by the time we get through talking, it's probably gonna be twenty million dollars.
God, we thank you.
God, Yes, God, we thank you, and we receive it.
Listen, yes we do. But it wasn't as quick as what I just said.
No. I think that people always think that overnight success happens overnight, and overnight success takes ten years. And while a lot of people are seeing me on lots of things right now, it took me seventeen years of working every day at this to end up at this table, or on this podcast, or with this book in my hand, trying to tell other people what they could do if they believe.
Wait a minute, if you want, if you believe, so just believe, not money.
Yeah, this is all about faith for me.
I believe that faith has a higher return on investment than money has, and that I coined a term called faith currency. I believe that faith will work for you just like money does, and that faith and money have similar properties. But if you invest in faith, you get more than with money. How many times you know, do you have a bill that needs to be paid. As long as there's something that needs to be paid, you looking for money to get to it, right, But a lot of times, what I learned is that we have
to faith through it. And God showed me something major in the process of doing this.
He didn't want me to do this in fear. He wanted me to do this in faith.
And so as I, you know, a people are talking about, oh, do it afraid, do it scared? I learned not to do anything scared. Even if I was scared, I was going to keep moving forward. But God didn't give me a spirit of fear.
I was just about to say, wait a minute, I'm guilty of saying that term. So you mean to tell me I need to do something with the spirit of fear, because fear is a spirit.
Yes, fear is a spirit that does not come from God. And that's not what he wants you to have, he says, trust me. And so I was just telling this story last night about my daughter and a bully she had when she was five. I was gonna get that five year old bully together, right, but she was so scared of that bully and she's like, Mommy, she's too big for you.
She's five. I'm mommy, and you.
Think this bully is too big for me. And that's the same thing we do with God. We tell him that the problems that we have are the bullies that we have. The situations that we have are too big for him. And God is like, but I'm God impossible. The whole nothing is impossible. That's a whole Another thing that we tackle in the book about the very word itself is I am possible, and the I am makes it.
Possible, makes it possible?
Come on, come on.
I love that my podcast gets an array of folks, and I love speaking specifically to people who may feel broken alone, who are like, wait a minute, I might be down to my last five dollars, and so I'm praying that they feel so so encouraged about how to build a successful business without an abundance of resources.
So we've got faith.
But then you got the works, right, So what was that journey like for you? If you can, y'all? And I know it's in her book, so and guess what you're gonna go get the book. But just to tickle someone's ears was one of the first steps that you did to build a business without the abundance.
The first thing that I was doing, I was sitting in the back of my house with no electricity. And I love that you spoke out to the people who might be sitting in the same position that I was sitting in. I didn't have any electricity. I was going to the grocery store and buying bottled water to fill up the bathtub because our water was often cut off, and having the baby go first because he was the cleanest. When my neighbor knocked on the door and asked me
to make cupcakes. But the problem is I'm in here without electricity, she asked me. While I was in the dark. I was like, cause I'm meditating dump and so she doesn't like question me. But I'm in the dark because I don't have electricity. I'm living in what is becoming an affluent neighborhood all the way around me, but nobody else is struggling like I'm struggling. So my cars are
being repossessed. When she comes and asked me to to make cupcakes for so simially, what she's asking me to do is take all that I have and go and spend it to make a deposit on an order that she wants to get for me. She sees the perplexity in my face and says, you know what, listen, you can't, you know, get them all made at once, and if you know, when you get finished, I'll pay you. And sometimes you know, people meet ish, you know, they don't
mean I'm gonna pay you right now. I need my money as soon as I.
Turn yeah, yeah, because the grocery store needs the money to get these ingredients nownight.
And if I take this five dollars, we're not eating tonight. But like she said, she paid me when I turned in some of the cupcakes and turned that five into sixty that day. And I took that fifty five because if I burn everything, I need the five that I started with. And I turned that fifty five into six hundred by the end of the week. And I've been
flipping that same money for the last seventeen years. I did it with no debt, no credit, no knowledge of the business, and a lot of people don't even know that. When I started the business, I didn't even know how to bake, not even out of a box. But I was believing God who said to me that day, because when I shut the door, I told the lady, Okay, Joni, I'm gonna.
Make cupcakes if you didn't bak well.
Because I was practicing, so I would go around the neighborhood. I was listening to this guy in the radio who's telling people they could get out of debt by having a.
Bake sale or a garage sale.
We couldn't have a garage sale because we sold everything that we had to get to Nashville in the first place. And we were not a family that complained about our situation, right, so people.
Didn't know what was going on.
I was just actively trying to dig us out, and so I thought, Okay, well, it's gonna be a bake sale because we don't have anything that we can sell. And so when I accepted her order, I had been practicing around the neighborhood. The whole neighborhood knew where to come and get cupcakes from. They I did this one let me cupcake at the time. It's about the size of a quarter and they were cooked, and so she thought,
I'm going to give these everybody for the holidays. And so when she came knocking, I didn't even have electricity, and I was just trying to reconcile.
What am I gonna do.
I don't have any money to pay any of these bills, but I am stuffing money into envelopes trying to.
Save to pay bills. Or to save up for bills.
When I realized, oh God, I haven't even fed the kids yet, and all I have is five dollars, I decided to take her.
Up on her offer. I closed the door, and I have come to Jesus moment with God.
I said, God, really, how do you give me this opportunity when I don't have any money.
To take it?
And God said, I feed birds, they don't toil, they don't store up in barns. How much more will I give you who looks like me? I was like, okay, cool. And one of the things I did learn to do was try God in see if he would not open up a window of heaven and pour out so much blessing that will be room enough to receive it.
Right.
And the thing about for me was he never said gonna open up the and give you a lot, you know.
He said, I'll.
Open up the window, will pour you out so much blessing you know you won't have room for it. And so I said, all right, God, let me see what you're gonna do with this. Right, I'm like like, okay, bet God. So I go around the corner and I put on my shoes and I gamble the five dollars at the grocery store, and just like she said she would, she paid me. And I remember when that Friday came and I was able to go to the SAMs and buy myself a kitchen a mixer.
I was so excited because.
Now I don't have to hold the handheld electric mixer in my hand anymore, and I can actually get the products done faster.
You said so much, So you started, like you said, with the handheld mixer with the five dollars, And you also said something you were listening to someone who said there are two ways you can get out of debt, have a garage.
Cell or a bake sale. Now, what do you have to say to people who know they in debt or need a way out.
But I don't want to do no bake sale. I don't want to do no garage cell, the get rich quicks things. What do you have to say to them?
People?
I love this, So if you can't do a bake sale, you can't do a garage sell.
No big deal.
It brings me back to a story in the Bible in Kings four and seventeen about a widow, and this widow goes to the profit.
It says to him.
Listen, my husband has died and now they're coming to take my children, as you know, to pay off the debt. What am I supposed to do? And the prophet doesn't give her an answer. The prophet asked her a question. He says, what do you have in your house? And so what she says is all I have? All I have is a little bit of oil. Two things that tells me all you have is all you need to get you from where you are to where you.
Want to be.
To stop calling what you have small, because in the master's hand it can become much. The other thing I learned from the story is stop telling people what you're about to do. Go in your house and close the door, because sometimes it's what's in your willhouse. It's not just necessarily what's inside of your four walls, but what's inside
of your ability to do. I couldn't bake when I started this, But there's so many people out here that are gifted and talented that can sew that you know, that understand business, who know how to sell, who understand tech. I mean, you can learn tech.
Right now. My friend Anthony O'Neill is talking about this all the.
Time, like all the time, shout out to Anthony by the way, yes, Like I was.
Like, go to Bethel Tech and you know, and then twelve months you're gonna be earning six figures.
I mean there, it's what is on the inside of you.
Yea, and that is amazing. But you said something, it's going to take twelve months. I think where I'm getting at is. I told a friend of mine, I said, who was great in organizing closets. This is before it became what it is now. I told this person, I said, hey, I'm gonna help you, and I said, within five years, I promise you, I believe you'll have a six digit earning.
Well, I wouldn't say income. Your business is gonna make it.
You have got.
Your business to earn one hundred thousand. You ain't earned a hundred thousand yet, Boy, you will. It'll come.
I would say within maybe seven years. I would think as far as what you're gonna put in your pocket, because y'all, what what I'm getting at is your business can earn a certain amount, but after you paid employees, equipment and all that stuff, that's not actually what you are doing this. Yeah, So but I'm not saying, you can't you know what I'm saying. So this person says.
Five years, they ain't got a five time. I was like Mignon.
Within five years, closet organization has become a thing.
They got television shows about.
Television shows on Netflix, they got their own line of product in Walmart and other places. They surpassed six digits. They're seven probably eight.
Yeah.
Yeah, So what I'm trying to say is because you said it takes time twelve months, like don't give up.
Consistency and persistence wins.
So say, at that time, when you were getting out of the abusive and rocky marriage, did you ever have.
Those thoughts like it's gonna take too long.
Yeah. I always say this.
If I'm gonna quit on anything, I'm gonna quit on myself before I quit anybody else. But for me, my children were involved, and I love these people with everything that I have on the inside of me. So I had to I didn't have to stop being a quitter. Essentially, I had to quit quitting. And so I had to quit quitting so that they could win.
And my children were.
Going to school, Michelle, they didn't know what we were gonna eat when we came home at the end of the day. We're from New Orleans, so red bes and rice is gonna be on the menu. And when you don't have any money, I mean that goes. You could five dollars a feed the family of eight. Real good, you know what I'm saying. And you know, I learned that I needed to be regimented for them.
And I think that people have to have a reason.
You have to have something that's gonna give you a reason to keep on going to get up in the middle of the night. But for me, the thing that changed it all was I was afraid of God who unpacked that I was being awakened every morning at three seventeen, like an alarm clock was going off. I would wake up and look over and it was three seventeen. And one day I decided just to get up because I couldn't go back to sleep, and sit on the sofa
and turn on the television. And there was a man on the TV saying, the morning Breeze has something to tell you, do not go back to sleep.
And I'm just like, Okay, I don't know what, mom, but you're getting off.
By on television right now. But by the third time, that he said it. He said, God is trying to talk to you, and this is the only time you'll be silent. And so you think you're getting up to check your stove and to check your doors and to see about the children, like this man is ftching me, and you know that's not what it's for. God wants to speak, and so it'll take you about a week. Put your feet on the floor and show back up
here and wait for God. I didn't know what that meant, know what it meant to wait for God or to hear God speak, But I learned it at three seventeen in those mornings, and God was waking. God began to wake me up for several weeks, like six or eight weeks. I was waking up at three seventeen to come and sit and talk with God and hear what he had
to say to me. And so when I first ended up, you know, at the table to talk to God, I was like, okay, God, look, I mean, I know you want to talk, but please don't talk because I don't want to really.
Run about of here right now by hear your boys. I'm not ready for that.
But I saw a Bible underneath my table and I picked the Bible up and I just dropped it open. It fell to chapter three in a particular book, and I went down the verse seventeen and I got my first set of instructures where God was telling me that he loved me so much and he was about to show me. And as I went back and forth through the Bible, reading the entire thing, starting at chapter three of five every book, and just going through until wouldn't
make sense anymore. And I would bring the sun up every day, and I was feverishly writing everything down in a journal. And when I got finished, I want the Last Days of God woke me up. I ended up in Deuteronomy and in Joshua think it was Deuteronomy thirty, and Joshua won, and God said, I set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your family will live. And do not change anything that I've told you to do, because if you do,
You're gonna die. I had been given so many ideas. I had so many business ideas, and I would always start, but I would never finish. And God was saying to me, I'm done. I've done giving you stuff, and you over here crying about you need money or you don't have to filter your money, and I've given you opportunities that you can build. And I was just like, Okay, God,
I understood that this was it. I was at the crossroad of life and death, and so choosing life meant to follow these instructions that God gave me over those six or eight weeks that we were getting up every morning, and it was all of the instructures to the Cupcake Collection.
Y'all. This is incredible.
When you hear testimonies like this, I hope that it convicts you.
When I mean convict you.
Prayerfully, you are reflecting like, okay, there was an idea, and you kept getting little teasers here and there, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, but you let fear or you're thinking you didn't have the resources needed. But what they say where God gives vision, he gives pro vision. And these aren't just cliche sayings. These are real, tested, tried and true. So CEO of the Cupcake Collection, Mion Francois, is here to tell you. Now, I love how you share in your.
Book, how you choose to find joy.
You choose joy in the hard times and how that choice can propel you towards an abundant life.
People like to get a call to action or a how how are you choosing joy or finding joy?
Yeah?
I think that actually just got to answer, but.
Okay, give me yours.
Well, it was in the question how do you choose joy?
It's a choice, I was gonna say. Sometimes it is a matter of standing in the mirror when you don't feel like it.
You know, sometimes I write.
It on shirts like this shirt that I have on today says smile more. What it causes people to do is smile more. And when when people when you're smiling at someone else, that smile comes right back at you. You know, they're just saying that says when you smile, the whole world smiles back at you.
It's because it's coming out of the inside of your spirit.
And sometimes it's I have smashed joy across T shirts and you know, write it on mirrors in my house or my business, because sometimes it's just about saying it until I believe it. Me and my brother we used to play a thumb war when we were kids, and it was like one, two, three four, I declare thumb war. And I started realizing you can declare whatever you want. You can declare war. You can also declare joy. And
so I decided to declare joy. And so every morning when I get up, even when I don't feel it, I declare joy. And if it matters, if it means that, I'm gonna stand in the mirror and keep saying it until I feel it, until I believe it, until it's settled. Then that's what I'm going to do. Because I want to choose to have joy.
Choose to have joy, because we will have whatever it is we say. So when you wake up like, oh my gosh, I know my boss at work gonna try to he oh he gonna try me today.
Get he gonna try you today, because you can have what you say. Or you know what, when I go.
To work, albeit maybe challenging, but I'm gonna have divine strategy on how to overcome this, right, because life is going to life. Let's not act like it's gonna all be peaches. If yeah, but when we when you wake up like, oh my gosh, when I get on this plan, I'm sure the flight attend is gonna have an attitude, is gonna have attitude, you know, things like that. So I am glad that we are just letting this conversation flow. You know, I believe the way it is supposed to.
But I also want to respect your business and your book because you share something in incredible about your book. You share some personal family history about the fact that your descendants of people who were enslaved on a sugar cane plantation. You're own a business whose main ingredient is sugar. How did you find out about your ancestors?
So, I love this question.
It's just because a lot of times we believe that we're so far removed from enslavement, right, And maybe individually we're far removed from enslavement, but generationally we are not far removed from it. And so my father was born on a sugar cane plantation, My father was born on a sugar cane plantation.
My father father likes far removed yesterday.
Yeah, my daddy was born wow, raised on the sugar cane plantation.
Wow.
And I think it's amazing that we get to now have free enterprise in the industry where they didn't get to use their own skill set the way that they chose to use it. Though their labor was used, they didn't really have any say so over it. And so it has been my goal and my journey now to bring a face and a name to our family so that while you may not know their names, you will
experience them because you will know my name. And that was one of the things that was important to me in going back to New Orleans and teaching it to my sisters, just because I didn't want to be over here in Nashville and growing wealth and helping people get out of debt and graduating people from college and helping them finish when my sisters needed it in New Orleans, and so I wanted to make sure that we were giving back to the people and into the soil that made us who.
We are, y'all. She's the og queen Sugar.
I love best.
Did you did it make you think of your family?
Yes? Oh my gosh.
And I listened to the whole podcast, and I think it was called like sixteen nineteen and where they visited some sugarcane farmer and just talked about the disparities in lending and all this kind of stuff. I was just like, I believe that I am a part of the first generation of African Americans with access to opportunity and ways my parents did not have it and take it.
We gotta graduate and run.
Yes, and my children will be the first generation as a collective of African Americans with access to wealth transfers outside of an insurance policy. So businesses and land will be passed on to my children. But it is their children, Okay, So I believe will have privilege.
Did you pass down that recipe?
Apparently you got some amazing cake recipe in the batter?
Yes? What matter?
An extract?
What is it?
My children are running the business, now, come on, so they you know I mostly answer to them, I said, God, I went from answer to my mam and to answer to my husband and answer to my children.
I need to answer to myself. Right. Wait, So the.
Young lady that was helping is she your daughter?
No, she's not. She's one of my biological children. Bro.
She has been with me since she was nineteen years old, and she's one of the longest standing employees at the Cupcake Collection. So I think, you know, just like you start looking like your husband, like people who when you start looking like you?
What's her name? I shut her out?
Her name?
Thank you so much for sticking That is like really really big someone to stick beside.
You, especially in this day, and it speaks to who.
You are as a leader.
I think, especially in this day name because you know, they don't they don't stick around for more than a year or two.
And she's been with me for almost eleven years.
They don't stick around.
It's like they it's like or they stick around you long enough to get your formula and then try to take everything. But I'm so excited for you that you've got some folks who were with you pretty much from the beginning beginning. I'm so inspired because you founded this business in faith. The book writing process. I love the book writing process. What were one of the most incredible things that happened for you while writing this book for us?
That is so good, Michelle, that is the list.
Thank you Lord.
Oh my gosh, that was so good.
I believe that everything that's happening to you is actually happening for you. But I learned in the process. First of all, I think everybody should write a book. Even if you do, I don't ever plan to publish it. You find so much out about yourself, and I thought writing this story was gonna be easy. It was not easy to write my own story, and I've been living in it. Took me two years to write actively write it down, but I learned that my father, who I
never thought he liked me very much. I definitely didn't think my daddy loved me. But I found out my father's love for me in writing this story. As I was writing the different parts, I had some aha, full circle moments, and I saw how I was doing some of the same things my parents were doing. And I got some healing for Mignon in here when I was writing this story. I believe everybody should have that kind of experience. I found out I was my Daddy's girl. I just didn't even just.
Didn't know it.
It's so interesting what's in us really is from our parents, some learned experience with.
That DNA there. It's their traits, yes.
And all these things I've been fighting against that I didn't want were the best.
Of both of them.
Yes.
And it wasn't until the day we buried my father that I really got to see that for sure. He was such a giving and generous man, and that was why we didn't get to see him because he was always giving himself away, always giving himself away.
Is that something that you've had to kind of.
Brain absolutely, and I think it has been people like Tanisha and my children, Dusilla and Dylan in xhavior, like just them being around me to protect me from you know, like they'll say, Mom, lay down somewhere, we.
Know what we're doing over here. We can really handle this.
And so I get a chance to actually do this. I promised God, Michelle that if you would make me successful, I would tell anybody who would listen about what they could do if they believe. And having the opportunity to write this book allows me to be with them wherever they are in their three seventeen. We got a message last night from a lady in the UK and I just almost just burst into tears listening to the things
that she was saying. I'm like, I am you, I am with you, I was you, and you don't have to be there. And I was just so proud and happy that I had something, a resource that I could send her and say, get this book, read it and do the things that will ever makes sense in it for you. Do the things when you will see yourself and you will find yourself, and you will know that you are not alone because isn't that what we all need to know that we are not alone?
Not alone?
Nobody, hold your hand and say me too.
Come on, y'all, listen, made from scratch, finding success without a recipe.
You've got everything you need.
On the inside of you, Mignon. I am so grateful for you. I'm pumped up, I'm inspired. I'm expecting to see more books from you.
Television, y'all.
Her personality is so infectious. All of that you taking YouTube, whatever it is by storm, as far as whatever it is that you want to do merch honey, come on, cupcake mix in these stores.
Come on, I'm so excited. And yet she has vegan and gluten free and they're.
Good options for those who can't have sugar or the gluten.
She's got something for you.
Yeah, before we wrap it up, now we got something where Listen, she says, she's like this donut expert.
I think I'm the donut expert.
Now, who are you?
Yes?
Country, country, Country I live in at who you think that the best donuts in the country?
Oo, the best donuts in the country. My son is gonna kill me for this right now.
But there is okay, just okay, hear me. Out.
It's one of two places to me. Okay, in New Orleans there is a bakery call doesen't you need to get up at five o'clock in the morning and get in the line to get your sick Yes, I even bought the T shirt and so I will work out for donuts. Don't doesn't in New Orleans that to me, they are one of the best. However, there's another place, also in New Orleans, and it's called Tasty. Now Tasty is I think a chain or used to be a chain, but in.
New Orleans it don't work like that.
So you can go in there and you can get you can get a meal to donuts. When I get off the plane, I gotta go to the Tasty Donuts that is in Kenner, oh Lousiana, right by the Louis Armstrong Airport, and Honey, you can get a cinema roll the size of your face. You could have, you could have hot glazed donuts. You could get I mean all day, twenty four hours. But the donut, the donut that lets me know I'm home is we have what's called a
buttermilk drop. It is like a fry cake donut. It's a ball and honey, when I go to New Orleans, I gotta bring them home to Nashville because they're like, I know you.
Didn't come home empty, honey.
I know you didn't.
Okay.
That's why we have talked about faith. We've talked about fear. We've talked about so much. Is there anything that anything else you throw down in the kitchen on besides sweets?
Ooh, I am very good at lasagna.
Come on.
I don't know what, why, or where. I guess I got it. I got that from my mama. My grandmother taught me how to cook over the phone when I was seventeen years old, and spending a lot of time in the kitchen with my grandmother made me a really good cook because I just didn't want to wash the dishes.
So my mom had this deal, like if you do the cooking.
I washed the dishes because she didn't want to cook and I didn't want to wash dishes. So I would say, I am the queen of lasagna. That will bring my children home. I don't have to tell them I'm making lasagna. It's like their noses know that Mammy is making lasagna.
It would be either that or oh, stuffing a pot roast with some garlic and Holy Trinity, and like, I'm this the thing that I miss about about being a meat eater because I recently became a vegetarian, I'm transitioning to being a vegan and it's just like, oh.
My godness, you go eat no dear.
You know, it was just it was a decision to choose life right. I had. I had gotten sick, and I had learned that if I gave up all of those things, I could be well. And I decided I wanted to live more than I wanted to.
Eat gumbo, y'all plant based vegan.
And honey. They got some people. They got some people in New Orleans that can do.
That because it's all in the spices. I'm assuming that, Yeah, yeah, it's I.
Think Nola Vegan is such an amazed I mean she's so good.
I mean you could take a mushroom and shred that thing up.
The brown Like, which have you met her yet?
I ran into Tap of the Brown in a store in l Me and my best friend, her name is Karima. We were in LA because she was going to be singing and we run it.
She said, girl, is that donna?
I love it? Come on, because y'all stories.
You know, she has built her empire just off an active obedience. She said God told her to get her phone out and start recording, you know, and how you had to obey the signs of getting up in the morning and putting that faith to work.
So I love hearing stories like this, y'all.
Her book Made from Scratch, Finding Success Without a Recipe is available now.
We want to say.
Congratulations to the best selling books ever.
Oh, I receive it, receip.
Yes, yes, and we're looking forward to more. I cannot wait till when I walk into a store and we're going to see your.
Name and faith oh so much. I'm excited.
I don't think God brought you this far to be like, yeah, it ends at a book, it ends at two cupcake stores, it.
Don't end there.
So I'm so excited for you. Thank you for being here, thank you for sharing. And we pray that someone listening has been encouraged. Because some people feel like I'm not valuable, I'm broken, I made bad decisions, or I don't have family. We're not going to say that anymore because you have everything on the inside of you. And Mignon Francois was here to show us and tell us on how to get it.
Amen, thank you for having me.
Of course, anytime you can. You are welcome to check in anytime.
We're so happy for you.
Thank you.
Listen, my youngest sister heard that I was coming on to talk to you.
She's like, oh my god, she's my favorite. Tell her. I said, hello, what's her name? Her name is Alisa Terrio, al Terryo.
We love you so much.
All right, we gotta bring up.
We gotta bring the whole family back on checking in Alsa. You come on on all right.
Yeah, honey go, that is gonna make her. She was like, because she has followed everything. She was like she was doing a choir show and I was watching that thing. Thank you, thank you so much for shouting her out.
She's gonna probably pass out. Now, it's all right.
She's gonna pass out. Honey, just eat a cupcakes. Child.
You come on back, Come on back to life, Come on back, it's life giving cupcakes.
Come.
I love it, yes, ma'am.
What about I gotta let you go. I'm thinking I just see your stuff on, like pancake mix and stuff.
Yes, I love it. I received all of it. We speaking when we seek till we see it.
Honey, we can have.
What we say. If you want pancake, you want to take over, you take over. Y'all gotta go?
All right, Wait a minute, are y'all as pumped up as I am?
Like?
I literally could talk to this woman all day. Mignon Francois brought it all, amg And it's nothing like hearing this from someone that's walked through pain, an abusive marriage, raising six children on her own, and has come out with a multimillion.
Dollar company from.
Using five dollars. Y'all, I don't have any excuse. I don't have any excuse to go after those things that I believe are in my heart that I am purposed and called to do. So I hope y'all leave this episode in curve. And even if you leave like man, I'm guilty because I haven't stewarded the resources that I already have. That's okay, Let's get up, Let's keep trying, let's keep going, let's keep building, be consistent and persistent, because no one can work as hard for you as you.
All Right, I'm so excited, I keep saying every few episodes, like the testimonies from the by the end of this year, I am excited to hear how you guys have begun to move and shake in your purpose and your calling. You're thriving in business, you're thriving in school, You're thriving in relationships. I'm telling y'all, this is the time to do it. This is the time to improve yourself. This is the time to go and get it.
Come on, y'all, Come on, y'all, you got this. I love you so much. Take care.
Checking In with Michelle Williams is a production of iHeartRadio and The Black Effect. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.