This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. How are you doing? There we go. I'm good. I'm good. How are you doing? Good. Thank you for being here. Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Jessica Spalding. This is an interesting and it's an important story to tell. So, shout out to Adrian Walton, our mutual friend, A. Butter.

Legend.

Put us together last year and then, you know, had to reintroduced the situation recently.

But long story short, Jessica is an entrepreneur who owns the Harlem Chocolate Factory, staple in Harlem,

and have come across some unfortunate situations.

But I'm going to let you tell a story because you could tell it obviously better than I

can.

But it's an important conversation that I think we need to have as far as entrepreneurship, small businesses in our

community, access to capital, brick and mortar, different things of that nature. So can you tell

it, can you tell a story to kind of open it up? Yeah, I mean, the quick overview is we started the

business in 2015 after I joined a business plan competition.

And I was unemployed and I found out about the competition while I was at the library with my kids.

And I wound up winning the competition to start my business for $15,000.

And but I started to learn right after that how media coverage can also tank you.

Because immediately that winner, we went into 250 media kits given out by Sam Adams

and we were flooded with orders and I was working out of a little six foot table in a commercial

kitchen and so it was just like really a really rapid growth.

We went from a two-foot table in the back of a brownstone selling our products to now being

in major tourist attractions and selling out every week. And then from there, we went to the fancy food show and got selected as like the best bites at the show.

And so I'm like, okay, we need to find a larger production space.

At the time, Amazon reached out and wanted this huge six-figure order.

And so I'm like, let me find a production space.

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