Hi, I'm Carly Zagan.

And I'm Danielle Weisberg, and we're the co-founders of The Skim.

Welcome to our podcast, Skimmed From the Couch.

On every episode we invite smart, inspiring successful women to chat candidly about what it takes to get to the top and then what it's like when you actually get there.

So this is a podcast about the real stuff, the crappy days, the bad advice, the first big career win, and the people

who are there for the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.

We started the skim from a couch, and we have only one rule on this one no BS. So join us in welcoming Melissa Ben Shai. She's the

founder, president and chief product officer of Baked by Melissa.

That makes me hungry.

If you haven't had it before, you should.

There are several sitting on the table right now,

and we cannot wait to dive into them.

We are big fans of

big by Melissa here if you don't know it big by Melissa sells cupcakes muffins

macaroons on a very convenient bite size.

Melissa started her company when she was just 24 years old,

and in the 10 years since, she's grown it

from a business run out of her kitchen

to a phenomenon all over the US. The origin story is great so we will let her tell it.

Melissa, welcome to the couch. Thanks for having me girls. So we're super excited. I think we want to we want to jump into how you started per Danielle's intro which is you got fired from your job. So what happened where were you working? Walk us through it.

I was working at Toy Ch advertising, which is right over here on was on 15th and 8th in the Google

Building. I was at an assistant media planner. I was not passionate about the work I was doing and it showed because I got fired.

...