We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Natalie Tsui (pronounced Choi) a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Natalie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I have baked for as long as I can remember. I actually come from a family of bakers. My Aunt Jass – one of my father’s sisters – made the best bread I had and HAVE ever had.

I think I started off baking cakes. And then I moved on to bread – makes sense right?
Oh I just loved it. Baking was so therapeutic for me! Especially bread. You cannot rush bread, You have to knead the dough, wait for the dough to rise, knead it again, wait for it to rise again, and then bake it. This is not a quick and easy process, but boy is it worth it! I baked through my twenties. When I was off at college I would bake bread whenever I went home and continued to bake whenever I had the space and opportunity.

In 2013, I was in NYC pursuing an acting career. I had gone to school for acting and had recently moved back to NYC from LA, where I realized it wasn’t the scene for me. I felt like I was on the precipice of something happening in my acting career when I got a call from my father that my step mom had suddenly passed away. He was devastated. I dropped everything. Within two weeks I was on a plane to Houston. I never went back to acting. I wanted to, but life has a way of altering your direction, whether you like it or not.

I did not know anyone in Houston. I got a job, and my coworkers were the only people I knew, apart from my dad. I had alot of time on my hands so I baked. My dad doesn’t eat cookies, or cake. So anything I baked I brought to work. One day someone asked me if I sold my treats… and thus Cookie Nookie was born.

At that time Cookie Nookie just existed within the confines of the hotel I worked at. I sold to my coworkers and that was about it. Over the next few years, I met this guy at a ‘meetup’, moved to Indianapolis for a career opportunity; started a long distance relationship with that guy; moved back to Houston and then married that guy. That guy’s name was Wilson.

I continued baking but Cookie Nookie fell to the wayside.

Wilson and I settled into our life together and decided to start a family. It turned out to be and extremely difficult and painful experience for us. We miscarried our first pregnancy. My doctor recommended speaking with a fertility doctor because of my age and the miscarriage. We met with the fertility doctor who recommended IVF (In Vitro Fertilization) but we decided we would try IUIs (Intrauterine insemination) first. We had sticker shock from the estimates they gave us. Neither procedure was covered by our insurance, and IUIs were much less expensive than IVF.

Well 4 failed IUIs – and a few thousand dollars later – we switched clinics and were advised that IVF was the best route for us. By then we had come to terms with the fact that it made more sense to go the IVF route than throwing MORE money at something that clearly wasn’t working for us.

At the start of IVF prep, we got pregnant “naturally”. We were so excited and thought maybe we wouldn’t have to pay for the super expensive IVF treatment after all! But shortly after finding out we were pregnant, I miscarried for the second time. It was devastating.

So we maxed out 5 credit cards and drained my 401K. We wanted a family so badly.

Throughout all the heartache I baked.

And one day we found and dusted off my old menu and without any discussion as to whether we should or shouldn’t, we resurrected Cookie Nookie, and it became what it is today.

Cookie Nookie is so much more than just a bakery. It is a way to use my passion for baking as an outlet for all the pain, heartbreak and anxiety of infertility, a means to bring in additional income to help paydown the debt incurred from years of infertility treatments, and a way to show support to others in the infertility community. We share my passion for baking, the pain of infertility, and the joy of your dreams finally coming true – and the silly moments of day to day life. We also share our miracle rainbow baby we fought so hard for. Cam is our EVERYTHING.

And my biggest, scariest, all consuming dream, is to get Cookie Nookie to a place where we can offer grants to other families struggling with infertility. Infertility treatments take such an emotional and physical toll on a family. They shouldn’t have to stress about how to pay for it as well.

We are not close to that big scary big girl goal YET. But in the meantime, we have a monthly Infertility Warrior Giveaway, where someone in the community wins our treats. We want to show we see them, we are routing for them, and we are there for them. Because we ARE them.

Natalie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

We are a sassy bakery that strives to use something we love – baking and being super silly – to bring joy and levity to our followers. Especially those in the infertility community.

We sell cookies and brownies and have a monthly COOKIE SUBSCRIPTION, where subscribers get a unique and delicious treat delivered to their door every month!

I want people to know that we are so much more than a bakery. That every purchase helps us grow our family, and gets us closer to our dream of helping others grow THEIR family.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

Not sure if this is what you mean but here we go:

They say the ‘J’ months are typically the slowest months in sales, so June and July are notorious for being hard to make a sale. I had the idea to do a Christmas in July sale. My name, Natalie Noelle, means Christmas Christmas, so I LOOOOVE Christmas. Any excuse to celebrate Christmas, I’ll take it. After Christmas is over I am immediately counting down til NEXT Christmas. It’s just such a great time of the year.

Every year in July the Hallmark channel celebrates Christmas in July by showing Christmas movies all day, and I always watch them! I love anything Christmas related! I even plan on putting up a tree and having presents when my son is a bit older! A scaled down version of Christmas – in July!

So I brainstormed with this awesome community of Mom-preneurs that I am a part of, the “Girls Grow Together Gang,” lead by this pretty fierce mama – Lindsey Bonnice – and they inspired me to tap into my authentic, CREATIVE self, and I came up with a whole Grinch-Trying-To-Steal-Our-Cookies series. It was super fun!

I shot (and starred in) most of it myself and it was so. much. fun. I truly believe that is why we got as many orders as we did! In a slow ‘J’ month! It was amazing!

That Christmas in July campaign inspired me to tap into my creative side and use a lot more humor going forward!

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

My cofounder/business partner is my husband, Wilson.

Cookie Nookie wouldn’t be what it is without him. Truly.

When I moved to Houston to be with my dad, I knew no one apart from my dad. After several months at my job I decided to join a “meetup” to try to meet new people, make some friends. I joined a bowling meetup. The first day, met Wilson and Kate. Both would become my besties, but one would end up my husband. Spoiler alert: it was Wilson.

I don’t think Wilson ever considered starting a business, but he is so business minded! He created our website, he figured out shipping, the packaging, and almost everything not baking related. And even that he helps out with! And does more and more as time goes by. I’m gonna have him baking soon mark my words!

Seriously if I have an idea for Cookie Nookie, he finds a way to make it a reality. For example, our packaging. He found the pretty pink boxes I wanted, the pink food grade tissue I wanted. I wanted each box wrapped with a pretty pink bow and not only did he find the ribbon, HE TIES THE BOWS! I discovered early on that he ties a waaay better bow that I do!

HE’S A CATCH!

Cookie Nookie definitely wouldn’t be what it is today without Wilson.

Contact Info:

• Website: GetCookieNookie.com
• Instagram: @GetCookieNookie
• Facebook: Cookie Nookie
• Twitter: @GetCookieNookie

Image Credits
Jan Angeline Parayno