Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Mignon Francois, the founder and CEO of the Cupcake Collection , a destination bakery with locations in Nashville and New Orleans. Now get this, Mignon started her business with nothing but a $5 bill. She turned that $5 into 60 with her first order. Those $60 became $600. And now she sold over 5 billion cupcakes and was awarded the honor of Family Business of the Year by Black Enterprise Magazine. And as sweet as her success has been, no pun intended, it hasn't come easy. As you'll hear today, Mignon has persevered through some real adversity. But you'll also hear just how strong her mentality is, and for her, that strength comes from her faith. Now faith is an incredibly personal thing, and it looks different for each one of us. But when you know what you believe in, whether that's religious faith, a sense of spirituality, or simply core values you hold dear, you've got an anchor that will help you stay strong and grounded as you make your decisions and navigate all the challenges of leadership. I know this conversation is going to inspire you, so let's get into it. Here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Mignon Francois. I want to get into how you lead and grew this incredible business that you created from scratch. I want to take you back. What's the story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader that you are today? My mother was always in leadership roles, and we were always with her. So we would either get in her car and drive downtown to where she worked and catch our bus to school from there. And she always brought our work home. My mother was always finding herself with work at home. And so no matter what she was doing, it was always in a role of telling somebody else what to do or how it should be done. And she would stay up late into the midnight hour doing work. So I became the kind of leader that I am because of who my parents were. I understand you actually wanted to be a doctor. Now, when did you know that wasn't for you? I couldn't apply what they were talking about. All my other friends who were in college with me were getting it and they were getting out of the labs early, and I never got out of lab early. And I just didn't know, I think I was immature. I went to college really young. I just really didn't know what it took. Because school always came easy to me before college. College is where it didn't come easy. But had I known what it took to actually study? I probably would be a physician right now today who was making cakes for all of my patients. Well, you're probably one of the people who could probably do both. But I imagine you had to be this great culinary expert. No, I couldn't even bake not even out of a box. You got to be kidding me. It was in my kitchen that I discovered that this science that I had been learning in college also applied to flour, butter, sugar, and eggs. And when they collided together, I was able to make a recipe that I could use. And so I took what my grandmother had been teaching me over the phone and I applied what I knew from school or the lab to what she was writing because it dawned on me just one day in my kitchen that, wait a minute, these are elements on the periodic table . And all I need to do is manipulate them so that I get what I want them to do. And once I got that, there was nothing I couldn't make and all the recipes are mine. There's nothing that I have been unable to do. I'm working on sugar-free things right now. And I'm finding out that I could manipulate some more naturally occurring sweet eners so that everybody could have something to celebrate with. Tell us about the brand and what inspired you to create it. When I was in the process, I was drowning in debt and brokenness. I was losing everything that I had. Dave Ramsey said that people could get out of debt by having a bake sale. And I believed that. I had been following his show and I had been hearing all these people say, " Where? Debt-free!" And that's the kind of thing I wanted for my life. That's the freedom I wanted to experience. It was the way that my parents had raised us to be. So I had found myself in a situation that was not like what I was taught to be or taught to do. And so I wanted that for that reason. I wanted water that turned on because I turned the knob. I wanted lights that came on because we flicked the switch. How did you get in that type of situation? Because you're obviously a very smart person, well-educated. How did you get in that dire situation? I was a stay-at-home mom. My job was to manage the household and the money that my ex-husband, my then- husband, would bring home to me. Well, he wasn't raised in the same kind of environment that I was raised in. So delayed gratification was it something that I feel like he really understood . So it was, "I'll bring you whatever I have left." That's when I started stuffing money in envelopes and hiding money so that I could make sure that we had the ends to meet. It took me a long time to get to a place where I was able to buy myself a car. It took me a long time to where I was able to rebuild my credit. Eventually, I was able to own that house where the cupcake collection exists right now today. And we were losing it on the day that we opened the cupcake collection. So I think that this is a testament to really what you could do if only you believe. It's interesting you say Dave Ramsey inspired you to do this. Did you ever send him a bunch of cupcakes and say, "Hey, thank you, Dave." Actually in my new book made from scratch, there's a whole chapter dedicated to Dave Ramsey and his call phone a friend. I consider him a friend to the business. I even got a chance to kick off the year by being their keynote speaker to all of their employees one January. Oh, that's great. You know, and you've been enormously successful with the cupcake collection. And obviously it's not easy. What was the toughest time you had to really get this business over the top to where it is now where you're adding stores and growing? I think one of the toughest times I had was believing that once I got the store open that people would just come. I had placed a sign outside of the house saying, "Baker, we come in soon." We had this grand opening and all our friends came. And then after that, no one else came back, which is an indication that you can 't depend on your friends to help you make your business succeed. You got to get out there and work the process. You got to work the ground yourself. And so as I would stand in these two big eight foot windows there out the front of my house, I would see real estate agents come and I would go outside and I would say, " Hey, my name has been now a friend so I'm in here baking. I'm in a bakery coming soon. My family says it's good, but they love me and I just want to see what strangers might think." And those people began to offer me money right on the street for everything else I had in my hands. I understand that your first order was 600 cupcakes and you didn't even have enough money for all the ingredients. How did you find a way? How did you get it done? Yeah. I remember when my neighbor knocked on the door and offered me this opportunity to make cupcakes for her. And I didn't even have lights on in the house. The electricity was disconnected and she offered me this opportunity. I said, "Okay, I'll do it." Not knowing how it's going to get it done. I put all my shoes and I went to the store and I bought everything that I could buy with the $5 that I had. And I knew that she said she would pay me when I gave her some product. So I got enough to get a payday even if it was just $60, which is what it was. I turned that $5 into $60 that day and turned that $60 to $600 by the end of the week. And it's been that same money I've been flipping for the last 17 years. I've done this with no debt. I did it with no experience. I did it with no knowledge of the business and I did it losing everything that I had. It's clear that you have this incredible find-a-way mentality. What other traits do you think are absolutely essential for entrepreneurs if they want to be successful? I think that you have to be a quitter. A quitter? Come on, explain that one, Jimmy. I think you have to be a quitter. You have to quit quitting on yourself. So that's one of the things that entrepreneurs have to be. I think they have to be regimented. I think they have to understand that after a grind they have to rest and recover. I think that entrepreneurs have to know how to listen to their heart, listen to their gut, or like I call it, follow their spirit because you're going to do something that no one else has done before or you're going to improve on something that's never been improved on before. So you've got to be able to not listen to the naysayers. So it's like, what are you lending your ear to? So they have to be people who are very decisive and they have to be able to articulate what it is that they want from other people because you have to make other people buy into what it is that you're doing so that they follow along. You know, you use what you call your follow your spirit approach. Tell us about that. I believe that the Holy Spirit goes out before you, that he considers everything that you're going to run into into a day. I believe that if you wake up in the morning and ask out a question and give him a timeframe to answer by, he will answer you. And so every morning when I get up in the morning before I put my feet on the floor, before I do anything else, I usually try to say, good morning God, one of my best friends just told me this. She said, I'll start speaking to the Holy Spirit if I were you. He has never let you down. And so I've begun to say, good morning Holy Spirit. And you know, I just asked out a question. I recently found out while I was reading in the Bible that even King David did that. In the mornings when he would wake up, he would ask out a question. He fully expected that God would answer and all along, I thought I came up with that idea. But it was actually something that Kings would do in ancient times. I believe that if you would do that, that God would direct your path. It's actually a promise of God that says, if in all your ways you acknowledge me, I would show you which way to go. And so I believe that even goes down to being stuck in traffic. God knows that I hate traffic and he doesn't want me to be stuck in any of it. And so he'll whisper in tomorrow's and me, y'all don't go that way. And then sure enough, I'm disobedient. I always got to learn the hard way. I go that way and get stuck in traffic. But as I've become more successful, I'm learning to follow God into the teeny, tiny spaces that he's leading me into. I got to ask you, how do you know God's speaking to you? You say you have God talking to you. It sounds like he got this one-on-one conversation with the big guy. Where does it come from? You have to know what God's voice sounds like. There's a Bible verse that says, "My sheep know my voice," and they harken unto it. It's like a muscle that you begin to flex or that you begin to strengthen. And the more you use it and the more you answer to it and the more you test it, the more you will know that it is the voice of God. But you have to be able to pair it back to what the word of God says. You got to know what kinds of things God would say. You have to know what the character of God is. So when you feel this inkling on the inside of you, you say, "I think God is telling me to do this," you have to be able to run it back and make it make sense out of the word of God for things that he would say. The enemy will never tell you to do anything good or kind or giving. And these are all things that God would always do, something that's always going to be giving or kind or true. It's never going to ask you to tell a lie. It's always going to increase you with more. It's going to push you beyond your limits, but the Holy Spirit knows what you really desire on the inside of your heart. So when those things that you've never made audible before start coming to life , you kind of think, "Maybe that's God." Thank you so much for sharing that. When I interviewed Eray Levine, he's the co-founder of Waze, he talked about the importance of every business solving a problem for their customers. How have you thought through that for the cupcake collection? I knew that we needed a bakery. First of all, because I'm from New Orleans, we had good bakeries everywhere. That was fresh baked products that you could go and get for just a few nickels or pennies when I was growing up. And so I love cake in my love language. I say my love language is cake. And without that ability to get that good homemade flavor that my grandmother made, I knew we needed something like that in our little Germantown neighborhood. And so we needed a sandwich shop. We needed, I didn't know that we needed a little hotel, but I found out when they put one across the street from me, a little boutique hotel out of one of the little McMansions that we had in the neighborhood. So it was something that I understood that I could fulfill a need. And I had a major suite tooth. I felt like everybody else did. I didn't know that everybody didn't love sugar just as much as I do. By the way, I'm not sure I'm going to really like this sugar-free cupcake. That's not what I think of when I think of cupcakes. In what ways, Nionne, have you tapped into customer insights as you've built your business? How do you stay plugged into what the customer may be looking for? I have always been a good listener. It has been my customers that have been driving the needle for me the whole time. We were one of the first food trucks in the city of Nashville. We were the very first dessert truck in the city. It was because a customer of mine emailed me and said, "Hey, I just got back from LA." And she said, "This is the new wave of things that is coming and you should do it." And so I did it. I was not afraid to try something different. And so because I stayed connected to them, it was collaboration that was always key. Have you ever wondered what David is thinking as he interviews our guests each week? Or have you been interested in hearing David's take on some of the questions that he asks his guests? Well, I do, and I know a lot of you do too. My name is Koolah Callahan, and together with David, I host the Three More Questions podcast that airs every Monday. These episodes are just about 15 minutes, and in them, I asked David three questions that dive deeper into the themes of his episode with his guests. David shares incredible insights and stories from his career-leading young brands, and all of his answers are super practical and inspiring. Like this great insight, David shared in one of our most recent three more questions episodes. You know, I always wanted to be a president of a division, and now I had a chance to do that job. So I'm on this flight, and I asked myself, "What kind of president am I going to be?" And I thought about all the presidents of the PepsiCo divisions, and they were very formal, they were MBAs, they were very serious, you know, they kind of had a little bit of emotional detachment from the people that they led so that they could make the so-called tough calls. And I thought about myself, and I said, "You know, I'm not really that kind of person. I like getting emotionally engaged with people. You know, I like to have fun. I've got some blue suits, but I usually take the coat off, and when I'm walking around the office with my red tie, that's already got a couple spots on it. My shirt tail's hanging out. You know, that's just who I am." So I kind of said to myself, "Well, I'm going to be the same kind of president that I have been leader that's gotten me to this place, and I'm going to be true to who I am." Being open, being vulnerable, being transparent, being honest with people, not worrying about getting close to people because I may have to fire them someday. You know, continuing to lead like I've always led was the key to my success. Get the three more questions podcast in your feed each Monday and dive even deeper into the episodes you know and love. Just subscribe to How Leaders Lead wherever you get your podcasts. You know, one of the things I know the restaurant business is, and I'm sure your business is, it's driven by cash flow. There's no question about that. And you've been very mindful of cash flow. What advice do you have for leaders around operating the financial parts of their business with excellence? It's about living under your means. It's staying out of debt. One of the things that I did in order to find success in my business was I looked to the past to inform my future. I looked at what happened during the Great Depression because I opened this business during an economic downturn. So I opened this business in 2008 when the economy was down. So I believe this is a great time to start a business when people are talking recession and when people are trying to save their dollars. I think when people are being laid off, it gives you an opportunity to look and say, what do I have in my house that I can use to take me from where I am to where it is that I want to be. And so I looked at the past and I saw how the Hilton's came out. The Proctor and Gamble, who were the big names that emerged out of the ashes of the Great Depression and how did they do it? They did it because they were cash rich. It was their cash position that did it for them. And so I always wanted to be in a strong cash position. So we don't carry debt for that reason. You say businesses like a baby, explain what you mean by that. I think my business has been a lot like raising my children. When people are trying to decide when is the right time to step away from your business or hire people to help? Well, I think it's a lot like a baby. For me, I wouldn't leave my newborn if I had the choice because every mother doesn't have the choice. Every parent doesn't have the choice. But I wouldn't just leave my newborn with anybody. And if I had to leave them with somebody, it would be under very strict requirements. But in those first six weeks that a baby is born, that baby is attached to its mother. And so I sort of like married it to what it looked like when I was willing to let my children spend the night with someone. They had to be five years old before they could spend the night away from me. Or if they were going to go off to school and just even the way you matriculate through school, I think it's the same way with a business. At a certain point, I'm sure you realize this and you know it even more today. You can't do everything by yourself or you'll just burn out, you'll exhaust yourself. I'm interested in who was your first employee and what do you have them do? My first employee was my son. I had him serving people on the front end. And then he started going across the street with a table to the farmer's market and sitting at the farmer's market selling cupcakes for brand awareness. And then as I understand it, you have a real family business. That isn't easy for a lot of people. And how have you been able to maintain that family feel as you've grown? One of the things I'm most proud of is my relationship with my children. And people ask me, what is one of your greatest accomplishments? It's raising children that are kind that love their mother. And I believe that that has been one of the greatest testaments to why our family business works. We have mutual respect for one another, we fight, but we also forgive. And so I think that has been the thing that has helped me. My children have been my greatest cheerleaders. And so if you can give birth to your whole staff, go ahead and do it. Tell me about this tip jar you have at the cupcake collection and what makes it so special. The whole tip jar experience came from my children bringing me a glass pickle jar that they had washed out and decorated because they wanted people to show their appreciation for my work. I was just starting out. We really weren't making money. Everything that we have was going to go back to field trips for them and things they needed for school. And so they wanted people to put money in that tip jar for me. So I told them from that day, anything that comes in this tip jar will belong to you. And all I need you to do is after school, come and help my me clean up. And so that's what they did. They became my first dishwashers and cashiers and people cleaning up after me because they didn't know how to do any of the work at the time. But people in the neighborhood of Germantown began to know that my children only worked for tips. So even if they were allergic to everything in the building, they would come in sometimes and just put money in the tip jar and just say, we want Xavier to go to college and we want Dylan to make it. And so they would just put money in the tip jar. I remember a friend came by and bought a couple cupcakes. They just showing by like two cupcakes and she left a $90 tip in the tip jar. Now walk me through the decision making process you used to expand your business and now move into multiple occasions like you're doing. I remember going to New Orleans after my divorce. My friends were like, you need to get out and let's go home. And so we went home for a visit and I recognized after Katrina that things 13 years later still weren't back to normal. And so I had this business that was doing really well in Nashville, Tennessee. I always say New Orleans raised me but Nashville made me. And so I was in Nashville having success and I thought I want to bring my business and help to rebuild the city where I'm from because we are the flavor of this of our city. And now we've been there for six years. It has not been easy. It has not been easy to be so far away from it. But every time we struggle, I always remind God, you told me to do this. So you're responsible for the success of this. How have you built up the business acumen to make these decisions? I know you talked to God. I get that part. But you've got to come to the party and grow as a leader and pick up the skills . And I'm sure he's helping you do that. But how have you done it? I again have listened to those that are smarter than me or as I enter into rooms. I believe that you are the sum total of the five people that you hang around with. And so I've always been hanging around people who I admire. And those people would say, hey, you should think about joining this program or hey, would you come to this dinner? I want to introduce you to this person. I always made myself available to those things. But it was one major move that I believe really propelled me. And that was when my neighbor came from across the street. She had bought the house of the woman who propelled me into the business into the first place. But before that woman left the neighborhood, she made sure to introduce me to the new person taking over her house and said, she's going to take care of you just like I did . And one of the things she said was, we have this program at the Entrepreneur Center. She was part of the Entrepreneur Organization. And it was called Catalyst. You had to be making a certain amount of money in your business for them to take you on. But I applied. I didn't even realize how much money I had been making at that point because I was just, you know how they say you can't see the picture because you're the frame. And I didn't even realize that we were not only surviving, we were getting a thrive. And so I applied to be in the program. And it was there that I began to raise my hand in the room and say, hey, can you pause? I don't know what that means. I don't know why. Why should I care about a profit and loss statement? Or why do I need to know what the bottom line is? And what is this bottom line? And how deep does this bottom line go? And it was things like that that they would laugh and say, oh, man, y'all, let me teach you. And then it was just it became an endearing thing that they wanted me to learn. And so I began to understand what those things were. And as I understood, I began to teach others because my mother taught me that if you want to solidify what you really know, then teach someone else. That's a great point. And one of the things I know, Mignon, that you're known for is that you show up as a leader, you're very transparent. What you see is what you get. And you can tell that from this conversation here. You're not holding back and you're talking about what you believe with all your heart. Let me a story where having this courage to speak up and be who you are really paid off for you. Having the courage to stand up and be who I am, probably as I've taken stages and I've gone out there to tell my story, some people wouldn't tell what I've been through. Some people would never let anybody in to really let them know what they've experienced. But when I wrote this book, I really got vulnerable. I mean, I really am standing out there in the rain without an umbrella like I 've made some mistakes and some things have happened to me. But I'm understanding that the more transparent I am, the more it's drawing people to me. For them to say me too, you're not alone. You're not the only one. And for me to reach my hand back out and say, I'll hold your hand through this. I've got you. I understand where you are right now. And I think that has been a saving grace for me, but it's also helping other people to try something that they're a little bit afraid to do. I heard you say that collaboration is the new competition. When did that phrase become real to you? What do you mean by it? During the pandemic, we were hit by two storms. We were in the eye of a tornado that just flattened my whole entire neighborhood and the cupcake collection was one of the only things standing in this block. And all of the rest of the houses were either decimated or just gone. And I needed help to be able to run my store for the days that we were without electricity. Because like I said before, we don't operate on debt. So we operate on what we make. And so I put a call out that I needed a place to do five pop-up shops for two days a piece in order to recover those 10 days. And someone who was a friend of mine in business, she's the VP of marketing for Tazikis. And she called and she said, "Mignon, I heard you needed help. We'll come down and see my stores and let's see what we can do." And she said, "I have nine stores in the city. You can put your cupcakes in all nine of them. And guess what? We can do this until you get tired." And so together we started to figure out what we're going to do with a pop-up. And then the Monday that we were supposed to start, the pandemic hit. We had a ban on going outside and nobody could get out. And so not only did we need them, but they needed us. And so we both needed each other. And so we began to deliver product to them and they began to just buy more product. And that kept us going and it increased their bottom line by 166%. So we were the little engine that could at that point. And when I realized what we had the capability of doing, it was like, "Oh, we need more collaborators." We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Mignon Francois in just a moment. As you can hear, Mignon is a transparent leader who isn't afraid to be yourself . People are drawn to that kind of authenticity because they know it's a leader they can trust. It reminds me of a conversation I had with another great entrepreneur who has stayed true to who she is. And that's Corey Robertson, one of the stars of the hit reality TV show Duck Dynasty. You know, one of the things we talked about just so much with our kids is like, you are who you are, whether you're in the spotlight or whether you're about the sound of the scenes, whether you're in your work or your home or whatever. And just being really true to who you are wherever you are, I think is so important. And one of the things our daughter Sadie said one time someone asked, like, " How do you think you kind of say grounded?" And she was like, "You know, we're really the same people as home as we are in public. So that's just how it is. So I hope to think that's how we've lived our life." Go back and listen to my entire conversation with Corey, episode 145 here on How Leaders Lead. You know, you talk about the importance of joy. Explain. I have been through so many trials in my life. And one of the things that God said to me was counted all joy when you experience trials of many kinds, knowing that these trials come to increase your perseverance. And when your perseverance is mature and complete, then you will lack nothing. And so every time something would come that would like, "When I knock me down and make me feel bad," I would just say, "Count it all joy." I counted all joy. I declared joy. I declared joy. I declared joy until I felt it. And it began to move the needle for me that I didn't have to sit down and be sad or talk about my situations that I could count it all joy when I was experiencing anything because God had promised me that joy was going to rise out of the ashes. You love donuts as I understand it. Are we going to see a donut chain coming out of you? I'm going to leave the donuts to the people who do that best. You know, I always believe that I don't want to reinvent the wheel. I just want to do classic things well. I just want to do the one thing that I know how to do it and that is cake. Now I make a pretty mean set of cookies, but I'm not going to find myself getting into the cookie business anytime soon either. I just want to do this thing very well that I've been called to do and that I'm just going to go around the world eating the best donuts ever. Have you had any national brands contact you wanting to work on a licensing agreement and how do you think through that? I cannot reveal yet the one that I'm working on right now, but I've got a really major one that makes total sense right now and I'm so excited about what we're getting ready to collaborate and create in the atmosphere for other girls that look like me who may not have known what they could have done until they saw it. Oh, that's great. Well, I'm going to stay tuned and look forward to that. And, you know, this has been so much fun and I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are you ready for this? Okay. I'm nervous about lightning rounds. I never do really good at those. What three words best describe you? Oh, I would say dramatic. I would say generous and kind. If you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be? Oprah Winfrey hands down. Who would play you in a movie? Tisha Campbell, I get so much that we look a lot alike. What's your go-to cupcake flavor? Coconut cream. It's the one that my grandmother would make for me on the drop of a diamond. It's the one that I feel like people sleep on the most. Your most distinct cupcake flavor. Sweet potato. It's a cupcake collection original. And if you ever meet another one, it wants to be this one. And you know, you talked about joy. What's one of your joy blockers takes the joy out of you? I can't stand mean people. And what's something that really brings you tremendous joy? My children. Describe your last, "I can't believe this is happening to me" moment. Well, I'm in it right now. I can't believe this is happening to me right now as I get to unlock doors for the people who are coming behind me. And I get to take stages that I never believed that I would be able to take. And I'm getting to rub elbows and work with people I've been fans of for a really long time. But I guess if I would put my hand on one thing, it was when the book made number one in new releases on Amazon. What's one of your daily rituals, something that you never miss? Something I never miss would be prayer with God. If I turn on the radio in your car, what would I hear? Oh, probably a podcast. A sermon, probably, or a book that I'm reading. That's something about you a few people would know. That I never thought I was pretty until I was 33 years old, but my name has meant beautiful my whole life. And that's the end of the lightning round. You did very well. That was good. I just have a few more questions. I'll let you get back to making cupcakes here. You've had so many people champion your success. Now what are you doing right now to turn that around and do it for others? I believe in keeping my hand open. So I'm spending time at the Entrepreneur Center where I serve on the board as well as a mentor. And then every time they call me, I'm out there to be able to show others what they can do. So tomorrow I'm teaching at Lipscomb all day long, serving to show other students how their faith can show up in their leadership roles. And I'm curious, Mignon, what do you see as you're unfinished business? I want to travel and be able to do some of the things I've never been able to do before. And I have desires of my heart that I've not been able to handle that just for me as just as a woman or just as a girl who sees an opportunity that she can see. So I just want to travel the world and I want to be able to start businesses and other cities and places. Oh, serial entrepreneurship is important to me. Last question here. What's one piece of advice you've given to someone who wants to be a better leader? Take what you seek until you see what you said. I believe that the power of life and death lie in our tongue. And I believe that we have the power to call things into existence. I think if we look at the Bible for what it is, God showed us through the creation story, that we would be able to speak things that are not here as though they already were. And so that's what I would tell someone who wants to be a better leader. It starts with what you say. That is so poignant and just an outstanding piece of advice. And Mignon, I wish you so much as you seek to dominate the world and do it in the way that makes you, you, you are a very authentic leader for sure and someone that I admire just after meeting you during this conversation. So thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me. I want you to know, I think you're going to love reading Mignon's book made from scratch. And then I recommend that you swing by her shop the next time you're down in Nashville for one of those sweet potato cupcakes. You know, talking to Mignon, it's clear that she gets the importance of being who you are. And for her, that means a strong belief in God and a powerful connection to her faith. Now you may or may not consider yourself to be a spiritual person, but as a leader, it's so important to have a core set of beliefs to guide you. Because when you listen to Mignon's story, it's clear knowing what she believes in has been a key part of her success at the cupcake collection. It's guided her decisions and kept her going in tough times. Don't underestimate the importance of having that kind of anchoring presence in your life. So now let me ask you, do you have a belief system or a set of core values that can anchor you through thick and thin? Take time this week to consider how your beliefs and values impact the way you lead and live. Jot down your thoughts to really get clear on what those values are. Figure out why they matter and how they should show up in your leadership. So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is the great leaders know what they believe in. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Brett Baer, Chief Political Anchor of Fox News Channel and Executive Editor of Special Report with Brett Baer. One of the things I learned about interviewing over time, and a dude friend of mine was the late Tim Rossert who told me, "Listen, Brett, it's not about the questions. It's about listening to the answers." So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I may get a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you'll become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]