We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Olivia Braune a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Olivia , appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?
Being self taught YouTube and tik tok became our best friends. I knew the day I left Vail Colorado I wanted to make lollipops and we slowly branched out to doing other treats. Our first year was so overwhelming we didn’t realize how booked we would become so we had to scale back a bit because my mom is a full time medical transcriptionist so she can only help me with Livipops part time. My mom & I still watch videos, we plan out our social media content, collect ingredients and make magic! The first step to execution is to set your mind to bake something great! Currently we are moving Livipops to a bigger city so the possibilities are endless. We are planning to restock our current locations in Texas that we love so much. We plan on becoming aclimated with the local year round farmers market. We are excited for the next part of our journey that is getting us closer to a brick & mortar
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m Olivia Grace, I’m nine years old and my passion is horse back riding. I got the name Livipops because that’s the nickname my Nanny gave me and it was a perfect fit. She’s been calling me Livipops since i was 2 years old! I strived to become part of the candy industry because I knew custom lollipops would be my artistic endeavor that could also help take me farther in horse back riding. Originally we started making handcrafted custom lollipops, and we branched out to baked cake pops which have been our best seller. We also make candy bars, cakesickles, chocolate covered Oreos, cupcakes, homemade marshmallows and hot cocoa bombs during the holiday season. I’m most proud of our clients. I love making the orders, packaging them and also handing them to clients and giving them a big hug to show our appreciation. We want everyone to feel special with their order. We try to take custom photos of ever order for the client to post and we make sure they are part of the creative process. My mom and I may question a client numerous times but it’s because we want everything to be perfect
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Honesty and organization will always be your best policy. We pride ourselves in getting our orders out on time. We are transparent with our clientele. If we can’t do something we let them know in a timely manner. And if something isn’t right we go above and beyond to fix the problem. We also think it’s very important to be apart of our local community. It’s important to us to help any way we can. Whether it’s a small donation or attending local events.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
We are currently going through a very pivotal event in our small business. My Step dad received an amazing job offer so we had to relocate to a bigger city so now we are taking our time to come up with a solid business plan to move forward that suits our new surroundings and we are very excited. We have been looking at buildings we have been attending festivals and just immersing ourselves in the vibes and culture of a new city and we love it. We know we will flourish. And most importantly we will always take care of our clients back home.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: livipopstx
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LiviPopsTx?mibextid=LQQJ4d
Image Credits
Image credits: Livipopstx & LivipopsMom