Written October 2026 – Well they say failure is the best teacher right? Whoever “they” are lol. And if we’re not counting the businesses I started as a kid selling broken pencils and pb+js and hand-drawn cards to my family haha, then this would be my first “real” business attempt. And I definitely did learn from this first business failure.

Before I ever changed my major to Business in college (I was a math-ed major at the time), I was a part of the Entrepreneurship Club. Let’s be honest, there’s just parts of ourselves that are always there and entrepreneurship was always trying to burst out of me somehow.

The Club hosted a competition every spring called the $100 Start-Up. The concept is simple – they gave you a prepaid Visa with $100 on it and you had to use that to turn it into a business.

I remember shakily getting up to present my idea or “elevator pitch” to the group and being so relieved and happy when the feedback I got was so positive. People really loved this idea, and so did I! The concept was born from my own love for sweets and Pinterest. As a newlywed, I didn’t want to make an entire 9″x13″ pan of brownies or dozens of cookies every time I wanted to have a little sweet treat so I started making single-serve treats in a mug in the microwave. They were surprisingly yummy but also a pain to make because I had to measure out the most pathetic amount of each ingredient and dirty a bunch of measuring spoons.

I pitched to the club the same thing. Sometimes you want a little treat without having to make an entire batch of something, so enters “Mug Mix” – a cute company selling single serve brownies, cookies, and muffins (to start). My idea got funding and so I went for it.

I spent hours developing recipes and strolling WinCo’s bulk food section for mixes and ingredients, and even drew my own logo.

It was such a good idea – validated by the fact that a few months later Betty Crocker and Kodiak Cakes started selling the same thing. Maybe they had scouts at the market that snatched up the idea haha.

The moment of truth came for me to sell them at the market hosted at the end of the three weeks I think we had to launch our business. I don’t even want to know how late my husband, Bryce, and I stayed up bagging mixes the night before.

Needless to say it was a good thing it wasn’t our $100 (we were so poor at the time) that went to waste cause it definitely went to waste. I think we had 2 customers – the EClub president being nice and my mom and dad who ordered some online haha.

It’s completely obvious to me now some of the mistakes I made but that’s kind of how life goes right? Live and learn. So here’s what I learned from my first business failure:

1. Presentation Matters

For everything but especially with food. We packed our mixes in snack size Ziploc bags with a piece of paper taped on the front. Yep. No one wants to buy food that looks like that. I was teaching my girls about this the other day. We had been at a kids entrepreneurship market and saw these kiddos who had totes and totes and totes and totes full of … rolls. Rolls sitting in plastic totes you’d use to store toys, out in the sun getting steamy… not super appetizing (not to mention a lot of other issues with just selling rolls but I digress). As opposed to amazing cinnamon rolls sold at our local farmers market this summer. The cinnamon rolls were displayed in a glass case, they had a nice and clean booth, their branding was on-pointe, and the cinnamon rolls were in nice takeout boxes. Other vendors were selling cinnamon rolls at the farmers market too but they had the same steamy-in-the-container, melty-frosting-in-the-heat problem and it were not even on the same playing field as the ones who nailed their presentation.

Had we packaged our Mug Mixes even in cute little craft bags with a sticker over a fold that would’ve been worlds better and still just as budget friendly than… Ziplocs. Yikes. As well as making our table feel very simple, classy, and nice.

2. Quality Sells

Had the mixes been packaged properly in a way that spoke quality, we could have definitely charged more for them. Pricing is definitely a dance but as people we’re almost always willing to pay a bit more for something that’s better quality. And we often bypass the low-looking quality item altogether.

(trying to bring out some photography skills lol – they needed some work)

3. Start Small then Grow

I think we put together hundreds of mixes. Woof. It was not only a waste of time and money but it looks bad when you have tons of extras – like the rolls. In business you want to create the illusion of demand before it’s actually there yet. So start with a little bit, sell out, take down names and orders you deliver later. Not only does that save you the cost of a ton of wasted product but it also makes a product or service feel more premium when it’s selling out or running low.

We also started with wayyyy too many flavors. One of each would’ve been a great place to start. Honestly even just one really good mix would’ve been enough for a starting point. Nailing one to three flavors so that they’re so delicious would’ve been much better than starting with more, yet mediocre, variety.

4. You Gotta Sell It

Presentation is a huge part of this, but you’ve got to help people see the value you see. I was selling to the ideal market of single-serve customers – college students. I could’ve leaned into my marketing and the same things I did in my elevator pitch. Like “when you want a treat without dozens of leftovers” etc. Or helping them see it was so easy because I had developed my recipe to only need water added. “Just add water”, “mug + water + microwave = yum”, “homemade brownie in less than a minute”, etc.

Samples. I didn’t know how to get a microwave to a grassy space but I could’ve figured it out. Or cooked some prior and brought samples in little cups like they do at Costco.

Have a glass case to display your cinnamon rolls. Have flavored butters you sell with your rolls, or better yet soup mixes because who just buys rolls on their own unless it’s Thanksgiving? Think about what people want and maybe just sell bread instead.

Remember that you know why your product or service is awesome but no one else does. Help people see the value in your product, see what you see, and understand why it’s so great!

Sometimes helping people see the value in your product is hard when it’s your product or service. You’re invested in it, you don’t see what you might not be communicating, your wounds and insecurities are tied into it. Sometimes it’s hard to see what an outsider looking in sees because you’re in the thick of it. That makes it hard to see the ways you might need to adjust for it to succeed, or what you might not be saying that you need to say.

If you want another set of eyes on your business, want people to really see the value in it, and help working through what might be holding you back (or might once you start), I’d love to chat.

Learn more about my value-basedbusiness coaching at renpetersen.com/coaching

Hopefully you can learn from my failures so you experience less of your own.