We are delighted to welcome the incredible Dr. Magie Cook as today’s guest. Magie’s remarkable journey has taken her from growing up in an orphanage in the mountains of Mexico to building one of the fastest-growing fresh salsa companies in the United States.
Join us as Magie shares how mindset, perseverance, and taking inspired action helped her overcome adversity, build a nationally distributed business, and create opportunities far beyond what once seemed possible.
Magie’s Journey
Magie Cook was born in Mexico and raised in an orphanage where her parents cared for dozens of children with very limited resources. From a young age, she decided she would not allow her circumstances to define her future. She used a cave she built in the mountains as a place to future cast the life she wanted. Later, she earned a basketball scholarship to study in the United States, overcame homelessness after college, and started her fresh salsa business with just $800. Her company grew from selling homemade salsa locally to supplying major retailers across 38 states before merging with Garden Fresh and ultimately becoming part of a $231 million acquisition by Campbell’s.
Choosing Hope
Choose to focus on possibility rather than remaining trapped by adversity. Magie understands that fear and joy cannot coexist, so what you choose to feed your mind becomes the direction your life will follow.
Future Casting
Future casting became Magie’s daily practice at age six. She believes that repeatedly visualizing yourself achieving your goals helps you recognize opportunities and gives you the confidence to act when they appear.
Doing Something Different
Magie believes that choosing a different path can reveal opportunities that others might overlook. Rather than following what everyone else was doing, she chose basketball because very few Mexican girls were playing it. She developed unusual practice methods and always sought ways to improve.
Believe in Yourself
After breaking her collarbone, Magie was told her dreams were over. Instead of accepting that, she constantly reminded herself that something better would come from the setback. Missing the opportunity to play for the Mexican national team, which she considers the best thing that never happened to her, ultimately led to a basketball scholarship that brought her to the United States.
Learning English
Arriving in the United States without speaking English was one of Magie’s greatest challenges. As nobody around her spoke Spanish, she immersed herself in learning English, practiced constantly, and, through determination and repetition, became fluent.
Difficult Circumstances
After graduating from college, Magie could not find work and became homeless. She lived in her station wagon and later in the woods, yet she never saw herself as defeated. During that period, she continued to seek opportunities and focused on building a better future.
Finding Opportunity
Magie began making fresh salsa for her friends, just as she used to do in the orphanage. Winning a statewide salsa contest showed her there was genuine demand for her product, and an anonymous businessman gave her $800 to start her company, asking only that she pay it forward someday. That small act of generosity became the foundation of her business.
Think Bigger
After receiving rejection after rejection from supermarkets, Magie changed her strategy. Instead of calling the smallest stores first, she contacted Whole Foods, even though it felt intimidating. She had a meeting with them that transformed her business, escalating her annual sales from approximately $12,000 to $1.9 million.
Staying True
Creating something unique and staying committed to your vision can become your greatest competitive advantage. When experts suggested cooking her salsa to prolong its shelf life, Magie chose to stick with her unique, fresh salsa concept.
Learning
Without mentors or industry experience, Magie relied on research, experimentation, and Google to learn how to build her business. Although she values learning from others, she believes that figuring things out herself allowed her to approach challenges with fresh thinking rather than accepting the limitations others expected.
Think Like a CEO
As her business expanded, Magie challenged her team members to think like CEOs. Before bringing her a problem, they were asked to think of a solution. If an idea improved the business and made money, the employee received an incentive.
Be Ready for Opportunities
Landing Whole Foods created an enormous challenge because Magie suddenly needed to increase production from about 250 pounds of salsa to 10,000 pounds. She explains that success can overwhelm you if you are not prepared, so you need to be ready to deliver when opportunities arrive.
Purpose-Driven Culture
As production expanded, Magie focused on creating a workplace where people knew they were building something meaningful. She inspired employees with a shared vision, encouraged continuous improvement, and built a culture where people felt valued and could contribute ideas regardless of their role.
Looking Beyond the Past
Many of Magie’s first production employees were on work release from prison. They became some of her most dedicated employees. Many people simply need someone to believe in them and offer them an opportunity to prove themselves.
Use Contracts and Relationships to Build Trust
When banks refused to lend Magie the money she needed to fulfill Whole Foods’ first order, she obtained a contract from Whole Foods and used it to borrow the funds from friends.
Visualize
When business growth slowed, Magie returned to the same future casting techniques she had used throughout her life. She visualized meeting with the world’s largest supermarket, and soon afterward, Walmart contacted her.
Leading Alongside Her Team
As her company expanded, Magie continued working alongside her employees on the production floor. She believes leadership is about supporting your team, understanding the work yourself, and creating an environment where people feel respected and appreciated.
New Projects
Selling her company allowed Magie to focus on speaking, inspiring others, expanding her foundation, and reaching even more people through new projects, including a feature film based on her life.
Finding Purpose
Looking back at the activities that made her feel most alive helped Magie recognize that inspiring people through speaking had always been part of who she was. Today, she finds making a lasting impact through inspiration more meaningful than financial success.
Bio: Dr. Magie Cook
Dr. Magie Cook is a self-made entrepreneur, author, and internationally recognized keynote speaker named one of the Top 80 Speakers in the World (Inspiring Change) by Real Leaders Magazine in 2026.
Born in Mexico and raised among 68 children in an orphanage, she came to the United States on a basketball scholarship, survived homelessness, and launched Maggie’s All-Natural Fresh Salsas & Dips with just $800 — later selling it alongside Garden Fresh to Campbell’s Soup for $231 million. Today, she shares her research-backed 3R Framework with Fortune 100 and 500 audiences, equipping leaders to turn adversity into purpose, build unshakable resilience, and unlock their full potential.
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Connect with Dr. Magie Cook
On her website
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“Sometimes it’s the closest people to you that will impede you from fulfilling your dreams because they don’t believe enough in you. But you have to believe in yourself more than anyone else believes in you.”
Dr. Magie Cook
Full transcript of episode 329 of The Business of Meetings podcast, Eric Rozenberg with Dr. Magie Cook. Lightly edited for readability.
Eric Rozenberg: Hello and welcome to a new episode of The Business of Meetings podcast. Today I have an absolutely incredible guest. I heard her speaking at the MPI World Education Congress, and her story is absolutely amazing. Totally amazing. She’s a self-made entrepreneur. She’s an author. She’s obviously recognized internationally. She was born in Mexico and was raised among 68 children in an orphanage. She came to the US on a basketball scholarship. She survived homelessness, and she launched Maggie’s All Natural Fresh Salsas and Dips with just $800. Fast forward to about 2015, I believe, she sold the business for $231 million. But she is also extremely humble. Her story is one of the most fascinating stories that I’ve ever heard, and I’m so pleased that Dr. Magie Cook is my guest today. Magie, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me.
Dr. Magie Cook: Thank you so much for having me.
Eric Rozenberg: I was listening to you and was like, “Wow, wow, wow.” Every part of your story is just fascinating, and the entire room was like, you could hear a fly fly, as they say in English. And then you went from making us cry, making us laugh, inspiring, absolutely phenomenal. So if you don’t mind, let’s start with the beginning, and tell us a little bit about the beginning of your journey.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. It started in an orphanage in the mountains of Michoacán, Mexico. My parents took in over 68 kids through the years, most of them adopted, and there was only them two as caregivers. So it was always a challenge. There were always adversities. There was always some form of suffering or another, from being hungry for weeks to suffering emotional, physical abuse, psychological abuse, because we only had two people caring for us. But I had an epiphany at six years old when I saw so much suffering. I remember turning up to the sky and just saying to myself: I’m going to do something big, so that I can perhaps be an inspiration and inspire change from the suffering. And that was my aha moment. That was the inception of an ambitious goal, and that was to focus my mind to the future, to seeing myself as a successful person instead of being stuck in the patterns of hurt or suffering.
And it all really started when I built my cave in a canyon, and I would live out of this cave. It was about two meters deep by five meters long. And I would literally go in there and future-cast myself into success. And I did that until I was 14, when the cave was discovered. And then I ventured into trying to figure out something else. It almost felt like being in a prison for 18 years of my life, because I couldn’t go anywhere. But I wouldn’t say it was a prison 100% of the time, because I used my mind to escape that. I used my mind to think and believe that I was something else, or I would jump into an attractive character, like a superhero or a basketball player or something, to distract me from what I was suffering. And I think that’s really where my teachings on mindset come to play, but also on overcoming adversity, and reframing, and looking at “the opposite is true.” When we are so stuck in the adversity, we forget to really even think about the other side.
And I didn’t want to be stuck. I wanted hope for something better. And that gave me the hunger and the passion and the fire to continue to do what I was doing, even though I hadn’t lived outside of that barbed-wire fence in that orphanage. We were in the mountains of Michoacán, very, very secluded from civilization, really. The very first time that I came out of there to live in a place that was different was coming to the US, which was another whole culture shock in itself. But it’s been such an amazing experience. And I will tell you this: I would not change a thing about it, because I really believe that no matter how you suffer, it begins to create the person that you’re meant to become, if you choose that path, because there’s always the other way. One of the biggest things for me is that I’ve come to understand now that fear and joy cannot coexist at the same time in the body, because they occupy different parts of the brain. So what do you feed? That’s really what you bring more of.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s amazing. And listening to you, I can clearly see those words coming out of the mouth of an adult. And as a dad of three daughters, I’ve always tried to raise them to become independent. We say, give them roots and wings. And I remember sticking on the fridge this quote from Sheryl Sandberg and her book Lean In: if anybody tells you that you are bossy, tell them that you have executive leadership skills. So, I love that. But in the environment in which you were living, how does a six-year-old have those thoughts? Did somebody talk to you, or is it like a divine intervention? Because it’s amazing what you’re just describing.
Dr. Magie Cook: Well, I know I just made a decision. And I made a decision, it was almost like I was in a power pose, like: yes, I’m going to not be stuck in these ways. I want a way out. I want a better life. And that was the attitude that I had. I had this Mowgli in the Jungle Book attitude, you know, that everything was possible for me no matter what I was seeing. It was sort of like this different character that I built, and I believe maybe perhaps I was born with some of it. But the worst thing that I experienced wasn’t the fact that I was physically harmed or abused. It was when I experienced that done to others, and I tried to do everything to prevent that for them, because that’s what made me suffer the most. So I was determined that when I grow up, this is not going to happen anymore.
It’s crazy, because 30 years later I was able to go back to the orphanage that I was born into, and I was able to rescue all of them, all 31 kids, from a cartel actually that had taken over. When I was really young, I would have these nightmares that I tried to save all of them, but I could only save five. I actually had nightmares where I would wake up screaming, up until college, and my basketball teammates, because I lived in the dorms, would be so frantic and scared for me. But it’s something that I eventually dealt with. It’s like life always brings you back full circle, right? And you never take anything for granted. I do things now that keep me grounded, you know, no matter how successful you are, because it’s so easy to get derailed by shiny things.
Eric Rozenberg: Are you still having those nightmares?
Dr. Magie Cook: No, I dealt with it. So, you want to know what it is? I actually never talked about this. When I was in college, I made a decision to stop that cycle of the nightmares. And I actually tattooed symbols on each one of my wings, my arms, in the back. And one says to dream, and to fly, because my dreams were about flying and trying to get away from the orphanage, and then teaching them how to fly so they could fly away with me. So my reframe was to dream and to fly high in life, so that I could go back and do something about it.
Eric Rozenberg: And as soon as you had those tattoos, what was it?
Dr. Magie Cook: Done.
Eric Rozenberg: Wow. Wow. So from 6 to 14 you were getting refuge in this cave, which, you know, Plato’s cave is literally what you did. What are you thinking about when you are in this cave alone, and how many hours a week do you spend there?
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. So during the weekday we had school. Starting from when I was born, I always lived in the orphanage. So the weekends were the most free time that we had. It was also the most free time for punishment, the most free time for anything else that could go bad or wrong. When I was really young, my only option was the cave, which I built in this canyon. And when I grew a little bit older, actually around 11 years old or so, I had another option, which was to teach myself how to break or tame horses and become a horse rider. And this is when I would flee to the mountains. I actually remember seeing that photo of me at the event that looks like Mowgli, really. Remember that photo on the horse? That’s exactly what I looked like.
And my cave was a place where I would just be in silence on the weekends, and nobody would ever find me. And there were so many kids, too, so you weren’t asked to be present anywhere unless it was for school during the week. But I remember that I would future-cast myself to success, and I would imagine that I was this super successful woman with long hair, even though I have short hair. And I would visualize that I was dressed in a suit with heels, behind a mahogany desk, and it had my name on it. And I believe that came from one movie that we watched for so many years. That’s all we had in the orphanage, and we would watch it over and over again. And it had a scene of a successful woman. And I just thought that that was the definition of hope: being able to make my own decisions without being compromised by anybody else, to own my power. That’s what I internalized, and I would see myself as that, ultimately becoming that person —
Eric Rozenberg: Right.
Dr. Magie Cook: — that I am today.
Eric Rozenberg: So when you’re 14, they discover your cave.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes.
Eric Rozenberg: You must have been devastated.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. I think you saw that photo also, when I was 14, on that cave. And I was devastated, because what happened next is, there were so many kids that also went to the mountains on the weekends, and now it was occupied by them. So I no longer had a secret hiding place. So what I did next, it was scary, because my idea was to go outside of the property line. It’s a big, big compound in the mountains, and I had never done that. Other kids had done that, but I never had. And I was scared, but I thought, what if the scariest thing, the next best thing, is what it becomes? You know, what if that scary thing becomes the next best thing?
And so I had the courage, and I was so scared, to start walking outside of that barbed-wire fence. And I came across this village, and these peasant people just looked at me strange, because I’m just this little girl, probably looking like a little boy, the way that I was dressed, in rags, and my hair. But they took me in, and they fed me the most delicious taquitos, the [inaudible] salsa. Oh my gosh, you have no idea how good they were, because the way that we ate, when we had food, was no flavor at all. Not even salt. It would be like whole vegetables and water, and we cooked it because, you know, we didn’t know how to cook. That’s what we had. And I said, “Can you teach me how to do this, so that I can go back and share it with my brothers and sisters, just so that I could see them smile?” And that’s where salsa began, without even knowing there would be something that would happen in the future, where I would share it again, be entered in a salsa contest, and it would become the very beginning of my fresh salsa entrepreneurship career.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s amazing. So you’re 14, and you came to discover, you take some risk. What is happening in your mind? You have all this image, this mindset, of what you want to be, successful, and then you see the environment that seems to limit your opportunities. And maybe tell us a little bit how you get to the US on a scholarship.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. When I was in junior high, I started thinking, I think I have this entrepreneurial mind, just because of what I wanted to become, and to come out of the circumstances there. But I started to ask myself: what is one thing that I could start doing that I could capitalize on to get me out of here? And back then in Mexico, there were sports, and I love playing sports. I was looking at soccer, and I was looking at basketball. Soccer, everybody played. Basketball was a new thing, especially for girls. So I decided to do the thing that nobody else was hardly doing. Actually, the same thing I did with my salsa.
Eric Rozenberg: Of course.
Dr. Magie Cook: And I remember going by my principal’s office, which was a teeny tiny brick building, and I saw he had a black and white TV, really long, at the top of one of the cabinets. And I said, “Hey, can I come and watch Michael Jordan play when I’m on break?” Because I saw Michael Jordan play. I didn’t even know his name, but I saw his moves and I was so intrigued by it. And I said, “Can I come?” Because the physical education teacher gave us the basketball and actually kicked it and said, “Play.” So he’s not even teaching us how to play. He didn’t know. And so he said yes, and I started watching him play.
I started going back to the orphanage, and I would play with a bandana or something around my eyes. And I had an adopted brother that I was caring for that week, because when I was growing up, they paired me up with an adult, and when I was a young adult, they paired me up with a young kid, and that’s how we took care of each other. So that week I was with Poncho, who had spina bifida. My caregivers found him in a dumpster, and that’s how he came to be in the orphanage, because he was disposed of. But I had this idea to tell Poncho: hey, this is the basketball court, why don’t you tell me “stop, turn” whenever I get to the edge, because I don’t want to hurt myself. So that’s how I started practicing basketball. And I would future-cast. I would imagine a lot of people coming towards me trying to steal the ball from me, and I would dribble between my legs, behind my back, and I would do all these moves blindfolded.
Eric Rozenberg: Wow.
Dr. Magie Cook: At one point Poncho stopped telling me “stop, turn,” and I hit the pole, and I had stitches on my forehead. And I asked him why, and he says, “I thought you were looking.” So I knew that I was getting better. In high school we played basketball, won all the championships, and I got recruited to play basketball for the Mexican national team in Mexico City. My caregiver and I went to Mexico City, and they saw me play. You remember seeing the invitation letter in my presentation? And they wanted me to play, but they were still looking at other women, because they were recruiting. So they said, “We’ll get back with you.”
My father and I went back to the orphanage and waited for about three months. Didn’t hear anything. One day, he pulls out an American football and starts throwing it with me and my brothers, and we started to play. And on one of those big, big throws by one of my brothers, his name was Julio, he threw this long pass, and I caught it in the air, but I landed on my left shoulder and I broke my collarbone. You can see the little rupture there. And it scared me. So I went to my father, who’s a doctor, and he was so rough. He actually took my shoulders and went like this, because the break was like this, so he kind of extended it. And he said, “Your dreams are over.” That’s what came out of his mouth. As soon as he did that, I went into this fighter mode, saying: no, wait a minute. If this happened, there’s got to be a reason for it. And I started to repeat that mantra in my mind to try to distract me, because it was so overwhelming. I kept saying it, kept saying it, kept saying it, and soon enough I began believing it, believing it, believing it.
But when that happened, three days later, the Mexican national team called, and I couldn’t go. What happened next was that my parents took a bus with all of my 68 siblings, and actually removed half of the seats so we could fit in the bus, and they toured the United States to raise funds for the orphanage. And we stopped at a picnic in Charleston, West Virginia, here in the United States. When we arrived, there was a picnic, there were a lot of people, there were balloons. But the only thing that I could see, with my brothers, was that basketball court behind the picnic. It was one of those exterior basketball courts, beside a Catholic church. And we just started to run, and grabbed the ball, and started to play. This was months later, so I had healed. And that day, there happened to be the coach of the University of Charleston, and she saw me play.
Eric Rozenberg: I remember you saying that.
Dr. Magie Cook: She told my father, “I want her to come play for me on a scholarship.” And the thing that I tell people is that if I would have listened to my father, who’s a doctor, and not played that day, I wouldn’t be speaking to you today. Sometimes it’s the closest people to you that will impede you from fulfilling your dreams, because they don’t believe enough in you. But you have to believe in yourself more than anyone else believes in you. And I always say that not playing for the Mexican national team is the best thing that never happened to me.
Eric Rozenberg: You never know. That’s why I’m here with you.
Dr. Magie Cook: Speaking these words with you.
Eric Rozenberg: Do you believe in angels?
Dr. Magie Cook: Absolutely. I have chills, you just said that. My whole body.
Eric Rozenberg: Because this is another part of your life. What are the odds that the coach of the university will be there and will see you?
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. I think that when you decide to have a mindset that only sees the possibility of what’s good, instead of the opposite, you begin to attract, but not only attract: you see, you recognize people, places, circumstances, and then you take action, because you recognize they’re there. Because you’re laser focused on that thing that you’re hoping for, when it shows up, you recognize it, and you take the action. If you didn’t have that ability to see, you would still be in the same place, because you didn’t give yourself permission, and have that option, to see far beyond what actually could be possible for you.
Eric Rozenberg: Wow. I have to ask you a more trivial question. When you came to the US for the first time — I mean, I moved from Belgium, okay, so we have supermarkets, everything, but when I come to the US, just going to Costco, for instance, it’s like, wow, this is crazy, the amount of choice. You go to a restaurant in Belgium, you have one option, and here you have 15 options for the meat, for the sauce, for this, for that. What was your reaction when you came, with the 68 kids, for the first time, to the US, and you see the environment, how people live, which, by the way, they take for granted?
Dr. Magie Cook: I didn’t get much of a chance to experience that, other than seeing people where they were meeting us. But what I will tell you that blew my mind was when we would stop at a McDonald’s, and my dad would send me and my brothers to get 150 Egg McMuffins, and they would say, “What? No.” And then my dad had to come by and confirm that it was true. So they would have to shut down for anybody else, to just feed us. When we would stay in hotel rooms, it would be like a whole block of 15 hotel rooms, to fit several kids in one. So I didn’t get to go into a Costco or a Sam’s to see that. But I did recognize and understand that people were living very differently here. It was a different kind of energy, way of life, the way people interacted with each other.
And that’s the first time that I realized I didn’t grow up in a normal family, because here’s a family that has two or three kids; here’s my family. That’s all I knew. At some points we had over 200 kids living there. And I saw the affection, the love, the care within that family, that I never had. Like, for example, a hug, or an “I love you.” I saw those differences. But as far as resources, I could see from different perspectives that it was definitely very, very different than living in a village in the mountains of Michoacán, Mexico, with very limited resources.
Eric Rozenberg: So you arrive at Charleston —
Dr. Magie Cook: Charleston, West Virginia.
Eric Rozenberg: Charleston, yeah. You arrived there for the basketball team. And how about English? Because obviously I have an accent, and I learned English, but still. Where did you learn English? I mean, it’s amazing how fluent you are today.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. So when I came to the United States, I didn’t know any English. And that was probably the hardest thing. I actually had to go take a class and take lessons, learning English to pass the TOEFL test, which was something they required, at least the minimum, to get into college. And I honestly don’t remember how I passed, but I got into college. The thing that I was so blessed by at the university is that it was a private, small university. So even after my teachers gave the class, I was able to meet with them one-on-one after the class. But not knowing any English, coming here was the most difficult thing, aside from being culture shocked by being in a totally different environment. I mean, picture yourself being in an orphanage in the mountains of a third world country, and then coming to this fruitful environment in America, in college. The only thing that I would say was very similar to the orphanage was that there were dorms, right? College had dorms, except we had these large rooms with big bunk beds. But it was quite a different experience.
And the reason why I learned English so well is because there was no one that spoke Spanish. No one. And I’m such a perfectionist, you know, ADHD. And I really taught myself how to speak English in the best way possible. I’m so grateful for being in West Virginia at that college, because I will tell you, I speak with my sisters who moved to Florida, and their English is so broken, much worse than mine. And that’s how I know the difference.
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely. I’m just thinking about my three daughters. When we came here, none of them spoke English, and a few years later they were taking advanced classes in English and everything. Just fascinating. But we kept French at home, and at school it was only English, and nobody else spoke any other language, so the immersion obviously is helping. Now, you’re going through college, you’re graduating college, and then what? You’re going to play for the WNBA, or what’s going to happen?
Dr. Magie Cook: No. It’s funny you say that, because you remind me of something from when I was in college. So, I paid for my schooling. It was a private, very expensive college. I had a scholarship in basketball, I got a scholarship to play soccer, got a scholarship to row crew, and I was running, and I was cutting trees on the weekends. So I paid my own way, and I still don’t know how I did it. I was just so determined to be successful, and I still graduated with a 3.8 GPA.
But when I graduated college, the only option that I had for a degree was interior design, because that was the only degree that was closest to architecture. And architecture, because when I was in junior high in Mexico, they start teaching you, they give you options to choose from, and one of them was architecture. So I went into that. And when I graduated with a degree in interior design in West Virginia, there was a statistic that came out that said that ninety-some percent of the people with that degree either couldn’t find a job or had to move out of the state. And I was one of those statistics. There were two interior design firms in the state, and I kept reaching out, couldn’t get hired. So I became homeless.
I started living out of my white station wagon. I called it the Maggie Waggy. And it was during the wintertime, so I would turn the heat on so high to be able to sleep, and then when it was so hot, I would turn it off, and then it would get so cold I would wake up again. A station wagon, that car, has a thing in the back that folds out. It’s almost like a huge bed, so it was really nice for me. And then one of those days, I was driving through the West Virginia hills and my engine exploded. And I had no idea what to do about anything with vehicles, so I just picked up my bags and left the car in flames on the side of the road, and I started living in the woods.
And it was so interesting, because when I started becoming successful with my salsa company, and I was delivering products to the back door of the supermarket called Kroger in West Virginia, there was a lady checking out at the counter. I would deliver the products to the back and come to the front, and they would give me a check. And there was a lady there, checking out from her purchase, and she said, “Oh my gosh, I remember you, you used to be homeless, and look at where you are now.” And I was like, wait a minute. I was homeless, but I never thought that I was, because I had lived in the woods in Mexico. So for me to live in the woods in West Virginia… And I didn’t have much money, so I remember I bought ramen noodles for a few cents, and I would go to the gas station and pretend that I was a customer, and I would fill it with water, put it in the microwave, and that’s how I fed myself through that time. It was about three months.
I was found on the street by one of the cooks at the University of Charleston. She found me and she says, “What are you doing? You’re crazy.” So she reached out to the president of the university, and they gave me a place to stay at the dorms while school was out. And not kidding you, it was maybe four or five weeks later, I got entered into a salsa contest for the entire state of West Virginia. And the contest was for fresh salsa. The reason why I was entered into that contest is because when I was in college, I would make fresh salsa for my friends, just so that I could make them happy, just like what I did with the orphanage kids. And when I made the salsa, it was so good that they would tell my teachers, and my teachers would call me and ask me to bring it to class. So now I was known as the salsa lady. And that’s how I was entered. I don’t even remember who entered me.
So I go into this contest, and I was the only Latin American person. Everybody else was white people, like, older. And I noticed that what they brought was cooked salsas, like Tostitos salsa. And I was like, I think I’m going to win. But I kept humble. And I went through that, won everything. What do you call it, People’s Choice, when everybody votes, aside from the judges. And I was like, oh my gosh. I had an aha moment: maybe this could be something.
And I remember there was a gentleman. He was dressed in business clothes. And have you ever been in a situation where you’re interacting with people, but somebody’s looking at you so strongly that you can feel them? I felt that from him. But I kept talking to people, because they were asking me, “Where do you sell this? Where can we buy it?” And I was like, I don’t sell it anywhere, just trying to get my life together. So he comes to me after everybody leaves, and he reaches for his wallet. And he says, “You don’t know me, but I see that you have this passion, this fire. This is what I have in my wallet. I want you to have it, and I want you to start your business.” He pulled out $800, and he said, “I don’t want anything in return, as long as someday you pay it forward.”
Eric Rozenberg: Whoa.
Dr. Magie Cook: I have chills. I haven’t told that story in a long time, and my whole body has chills. The first thing that I bought was a small food processor. It was the best well-spent $800 of my life. I bought containers, stickers, and I started selling the product for $5 a pint. I would make it in one-gallon batches and sell it to friends. And then I discovered that you can buy wholesale, so I started making a little bit more profit. And I would visualize that I was a millionaire. I would grab a bunch of $1 bills and be like, woohoo! You know, I was future casting into the person that I could become because of this.
And I remember starting my business because, you know, I made all the pros and cons. I told myself, if I have more pros than cons, I’m going to go for it. And I was very, very, how do you say, neutral about both ways, because I didn’t want to favor one side or the other. And when I realized that I had more pros, I went and started and got my business license, everything. And I remember I started making a list of stores to call, from the smallest to the largest. And the reason why is because I had never made cold calls, and I was very scared. So I thought, maybe if the little people reject me, it’s not going to be as bad.
The list was a couple hundred stores, and I remember I started making these calls, and the first thing that they would say: “Fresh salsa?” It was West Virginia. Nobody knew fresh salsa. As a matter of fact, the health department, the Department of Agriculture, the FDA discouraged me from making a fresh product, because they said it’s not going to sell. “By the time you have 15 days” — because we did the test, you have 15 days — “by the time it gets to the stores, it’s going to be 5 days. Nobody’s going to buy it.” And I said, no, I’m going to stick to it. They wanted me to be like the 99% of everybody else on the shelf, whose products lasted for eight years.
One day I was doing a fair, and the lady that certified me for production came over and she says, “Remember when I told you that you should cook your salsa?” And I said, “Yeah.” She says, “I’m so glad you didn’t listen to me.” She was the vice president of the Department of Agriculture with the FDA in the state of West Virginia.
Eric Rozenberg: Wow.
Dr. Magie Cook: So she knew what she was working with, with other people, but I was so different. And what people don’t get is, this was a niche, and I capitalized on that. Right now everybody’s making salsa. But back then, this is why it grew so fast and so big.
But when I’m sitting there making these calls, I get rejected 90 times, by 90 supermarkets. And I felt terrible. I remember putting the list down. A friend came through the little office that I had, and she was like, “What are you doing? You’re not making any money. You should quit. Just get a job.” But I knew that I had something, because I had seen people’s reactions, and I had seen how much it was loved. So another approach I remember was to go to ready-to-eat product manufacturers, like mine — salsas, salads, things like that — and I asked them, “How did you get your products into the stores?” And they were like, “Oh, it took us six years. They’re not going to listen to you. You’re basically nobody.” And I was like, thanks.
So I went back to my office, and I remember taking a day off, because I was just so overwhelmed. And I decided that I was going to try to figure out what my next approach was going to be. And I decided to think as wild and as big as I had ever thought about the process I was doing. And the idea that came to mind was to take that list and turn it upside down. And that meant that the largest supermarkets, which were at the bottom of the list, were now at the top of the list. So my very, very top supermarket to call was the Whole Foods Market, which is the largest organic retailer in the United States.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah.
Dr. Magie Cook: And I remember, I was sweating, I was so nervous. And I picked up the phone, and I said to myself: I hope they don’t answer, I hope they don’t answer. And it rang, it went to voicemail, and I was like, “Hi, my name is [inaudible], I have an awesome [salsa] I think you guys would love.” And I just hung up.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s the best pitch I ever heard.
Dr. Magie Cook: I just hung up. But thankfully, I had a website, and they searched me.
Eric Rozenberg: Really amazing.
Dr. Magie Cook: The next day, I was parked in the city center in my little beater car, a really old beat-up car, and I get a call, and the guy says, “Hi, my name is Eric. Is this Maggie?” And I said, “Yeah.” He says, “This is Eric with Whole Foods.” And I about lost it. And he says, “We heard about you. We want to know more. When can you come?” And I said, “Well, when do you guys meet?” And he says, “Tomorrow at 9:00 a.m.” So, if you think about it, I’m in West Virginia; Maryland took me eight hours to get there in my little beater car. So I said, “I’ll be there.” Literally, this was 6 p.m. I go back to the kitchen, make salsa, drive all night long, barely made it to the distribution center doors with traffic, barely made it at 9:00 a.m.
And I was sort of freaking out a little bit, because I had never seen a Mid-Atlantic distribution center, with all of the huge facilities, the dock doors, the tractor trailers. And I was kind of swallowing saliva a little bit, you know, like, oh my gosh. I drive in, I park my car, and I go into the building. They open these doors, and I’m carrying my salsa boxes with my chips on top, and I’m wearing my heels and my little skirt, and I’m just clocking across the floor. You could hear my heels; the halls were such that you could just hear the echo. They open these double doors, and there are all these buyers, mostly men, and this really long U-shaped table. And I’m like, oh my gosh, freaking out a little bit. So I put the products on the table. Eric comes over and he welcomes me, and they start opening the boxes and start eating the salsa. It took a little minute, a good minute, until Eric gets up. He didn’t even consult anybody. He gets up and he says, “We love your products. When can we have them?” And I about lost it again. My heart almost dropped out of my chest. And my first question was, “Well, how much do you need?” Because I saw the distribution center, and at that time I was making about 250 pounds of salsa, selling it for $5 a pint. He says, “Your first order is going to be for 10,000 pounds of salsa.” 10,000. And I lost —
Eric Rozenberg: Forty times.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. And long story short, that year we went from making $12,000 a year to $1.9 million, with just Whole Foods. And what happened was that all of those stores that had said no, because I was in Whole Foods —
Eric Rozenberg: Now they wanted it.
Dr. Magie Cook: And we grew with zero dollars of marketing. As a matter of fact, that year, the [inaudible] year, we grew over 500%. And we were in the news, we were with the Small Business Administration awards. It was pretty big.
Eric Rozenberg: Oh, wow. So, let me just come back. The person who gave you the $800, do you know who it is? Did you see that person afterwards?
Dr. Magie Cook: No, I’ve never seen him again.
Eric Rozenberg: Oh, wow.
Dr. Magie Cook: Never. But I’ve paid it forward many, many times, and I continue to do that.
Eric Rozenberg: I’m sure you do. Now, you made it sound so easy. And first of all, I appreciate the fact that the guy is named Eric, because every Eric is a nice person, right? But in all seriousness: you started this business, you grew it to 250 pounds of production. I’m coaching people that are starting their business as well. Nobody knows what they should be doing, nobody knows how to grow, nobody knows how to delegate. How did you do that? Who helped you? What’s happening in your mind? Because you make it sound so simple, and of course it’s not. I’m sure you had a lot of ups and downs in the process.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. Funny thing that you say that, and I hardly ever talk about this: I started reaching out to people to help me, including other salsa manufacturers that made cooked salsas, just to help me. And nobody would return my calls. Some of them were a little rude. The Small Business Administration couldn’t help me, because they didn’t know anything about my business. So what I did was, Google was my research source. I actually spoke at Google not too long ago, and I told them, thank God for you, because this is why I’m here today. And that’s how I learned.
And part of me is so grateful and thankful that I didn’t have someone who had already been through the process, because I would have perhaps been told it was too hard, or would have been discouraged. And I’m thankful for that, because it allowed me to do things with a fresh new perspective. I’ve talked to other food manufacturers and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, you did it that way?” But I’m glad that I had to go through the struggle. But the one thing, if I was going to do it over, is this: at some point, I stopped asking for help. I know that if I would have continued to do that, even when I grew, when people knew more about me, I would have actually grown a lot more. Because I’m not perfect. There are always limitations to things. There are things I’m still educating myself about, business and marketing. And if I would have continuously tried to connect, and hopefully someday get somebody to be my mentor, I know that I would have done bigger things.
Eric Rozenberg: Well, everything is relative. But one question I have, especially in terms of mindset for business owners — I’m the first to be guilty of it, at the beginning, the first two years of starting my first business: those are my clients, nobody’s going to do it better, I’m going to do everything myself, and hardly delegate. What mindset shift, and what caused it, for you to say, I know how to prepare my salsa, up to putting the process in place and trusting other people? Because you cannot grow otherwise. Trusting other people to be able to do it the same way that you would have done it.
Dr. Magie Cook: Well, the thing is that when I started my salsa company, I had to do everything myself, because there were no funds, no money. Banks wouldn’t loan me money. Actually, there’s a really interesting story of how I got the money for the first order that we can talk about. But what I quickly learned is that when I had the resources, the cash, I was able to identify and recognize that there were people out there that were great at the things that I wasn’t great at, and that I could trust enough, once I looked into them and created those relationships, to hand things over.
But the biggest thing that really made my business go to the next level is when I presented the idea to my entire team to think like a CEO. One day we had a meeting and I said, “If you were in my shoes, how would you do every aspect of the job that you’re doing? What would I do?” And you could just see the light bulb moment going off in their heads. And then what I proposed next was this: I want you guys to help me, because you’re going to be thinking like CEOs with me. Whenever you have an issue or problem with whatever you’re working on, try to think what the solution is before acting. We’ll meet again collectively, we’ll decide if it’s a great idea or not. And if your idea turns out to be a great idea, and we make money on it, you’re going to get incentivized. And what that did — it lit the fire, because everybody was looking for ideas and solutions all the time. They were fighting for ideas. At first it was overwhelming, but then it calmed down, and I realized I had created a moment where I was able to let go of everything and let them take it on. Even if I wasn’t present, everything would be taken care of.
Eric Rozenberg: Interesting. On that note, and before asking you to tell the story of the first loan with the bank: how did you manage to fulfill the first order from Whole Foods, going from producing 250 pounds to suddenly 10,000?
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. You know, this is one interesting question, because when you are an entrepreneur and you’re dreaming of making it, and you’re dreaming of creating success, and then you get what you wished for granted, but you’re not ready, and then you’re not ready to fulfill, therefore you fail, because it’s too much. So, you know, be careful what you wish for, but be ready for what you wish for. I had one employee, and we cut 60,000 tomatoes. It took us a whole week to make the Whole Foods order. 60,000 tomatoes. And we were so in pain, our arms were stuck like this. But we got it done. Oh my gosh, I’ve got to tell you my truck story, how I got the product there.
Eric Rozenberg: Yes.
Dr. Magie Cook: But the following week, I realized quickly that I needed people. So I made the calculations — I used Excel for everything, for my calculations, the salsa, the people — and I reached out to the Small Business Administration and I said, “Hey, I need 20 people for production. Can you help?” And they said, “No, we don’t do that. Go to the state, they’ll be able to help you.” So they gave me the number. I called the state, asked them the same question, and they said, “Yeah, we’ll have 20 people for you tomorrow.” And I was like, really? Because I had never hired people before.
So they gave me the people. I remember I rented a room, and I had all these mostly men in this room. And the first thing that I did when I walked into the room, I said, “Hey guys, my name is Magie Cook. I have an awesome pico de gallo salsa. Look, it’s the only fresh salsa right now in the United States, and Whole Foods wants it. And I believe that I can become the largest fresh salsa company in the US, maybe the world, and you guys are going to help me take it there.” And they were like, “Yeah!” They were so excited. And this is where it started, the inspiration part, the culture part, right?
So, we go back into this production area. I was renting an FDA kitchen, and I was driving an hour every day to get there. It was a kitchen owned by somebody else, but it was FDA approved. So we were making products, and every day during lunch we would meet in the conference room right outside — which was the rocks and the dirt — to figure out how to improve, because we were growing so fast. And on one of those times, we finish our meeting, everybody goes back, and there’s a gentleman sitting outside, kind of looking down. He was an African-American guy. And I thought there was something wrong. So I go out there and I talk to him, and I said, “Hey, are you okay?” And he looks at me and he’s tearing up, and he says, “Magie, thank you so much for hiring me. Nobody else would hire me.” He says, “I just came out of prison, and I did this, this, and that.” And I was like, “No, I don’t want to know. Listen, let’s just go back to work. You’re awesome.” Because he was an awesome worker.
He goes back to work, I cross the kitchen, and I go into a little office, and I start shaking. And I call the state and I said, “Hey, you gave me somebody from prison.” And they said, “They’re all from prison.” And I was thinking: I gave them knives. They’re all from prison. But they were the best people I ever had. Because I was able to bring them to my greater why. And I also realized that because they were prisoners, or on work release, nobody gave them a chance. And that’s the not-knowing part that made me so successful with the culture, and really opened my eyes to the opportunity: people are really good people. We just make mistakes.
Eric Rozenberg: Amazing. And to your point, if you would have asked, a traditional somebody would have said, no, never do that.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes.
Eric Rozenberg: So what about the truck story?
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. So, I am second to the last day to deliver the products to Whole Foods, and I have no truck. This is a fresh product, requires refrigeration. I’m looking everywhere, can’t find a truck. I realize quickly I have to get my truck driver’s license, my CDL. So I get my license and I’m ready to go, but I just don’t have a truck. I go to this junkyard, because they referred me to this place, and they have a refrigerated truck. And I rent this truck for $350. And Eric, this truck was so bad. It was worse than any Mexican truck I’ve ever seen in my life. The wires were sticking out of the dashboard. The seat wouldn’t adjust, because it was rusted. And when you drove it, it was making a bouncy noise. And the stick shift — I call it the stiff chick, I was the stiff chick, because I couldn’t drive that thing. The standard didn’t have the numbers, so I had to figure it out. So I got to flat pavement, testing it.
I go back to the production area. The product is ready to go for Whole Foods for the first time. I back this truck in, I load it up, top, bottom, to the back, completely loaded. I get in the truck and I’m so excited, and I start to drive. But what’s in West Virginia? Lots of hills.
Eric Rozenberg: Oh.
Dr. Magie Cook: I come to a stoplight, and now my butt is at the back of the seat and I can’t reach the pedals, and I’m parked, I’m the first truck at the light. Have you ever sat in agony so bad, so quickly? So I’m trying, with one hand, to pull myself up, and I’m trying to work the standard with the other, and I’m doing two things at once. In my mind, I’m thinking people are going to laugh, because I’m yanking this truck so much. But then I realized, I was too short, nobody could even see me. And then I was thinking: I have a truck, there’s a car behind me. What if I roll back and hit it?
So I barely get this truck up the hill, through the light, and I park it at the side of the road, because I had to compose myself. And I asked myself the question: how am I going to make it to Whole Foods? Because there are a lot more hills. It’s an eight-hour drive, probably more in this truck. And I remember that I was smiling and saying, “I’ve made it this far.” Even though it had been only a mile. And I got off the truck and I was looking around, and I saw a little piece of wood block on the side of the road, to the right. And I remembered that I had duct-taped the right mirror, because it was falling off. So I grabbed a piece of duct tape, and I duct-taped the piece of wood block to my shoe, and I drove to Whole Foods.
But now, here’s the thing. Something strange was happening when I was driving this thing: there was a leak in the gas tank. So I had to stop and fuel a lot. That was another adversity, just to get there. And when you fuel diesel, you don’t park where the cars are; you park where the truckers are. So Eric, every time I got off to fuel and pay for gas with my piece of wood block on my shoe, you should have seen these truckers’ faces. At some point, I just owned it. But I made it. I made it. I remember I took a video and I was just going, “Woohoo!” I was just so excited, because I was hearing them unload the product from the back of the truck. And that’s the week I decided: I need more people, I need help. And that’s when I went to the state and got those people, the new crew, to help me with production.
Eric Rozenberg: So how did you deliver afterwards, after the first order? In terms of production, in terms of transportation. I mean, you cannot be everywhere, so you need to structure your team.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. I could hardly sleep, because I was so excited. I was on fire. I was coming up with solutions very, very quickly, and I was able to delegate, and I was able to direct, and I was able to create things that were very exciting for me. The challenge was, for the first order, it required cost of goods of $20,000. I didn’t have $20,000. I went to the banks, and they rejected me, and I felt so bad. And then I went to friends — because Whole Foods had signed me, right? And they said, “You need to deliver 10,000 pounds of salsa, but I have no money.” So I went to friends, after the banks, and I basically told them, “Can you help me with this?” And they said, “Well, how are you going to pay me back?” Exactly what the bank said.
So I called Whole Foods and I said, “Hey, can you put something in writing that I can share with the people I want to borrow money from, to show them that we’re good for it?” And they said, “Oh yeah. It’s called a contract.” So I signed a contract with Whole Foods. $20,000 was what I needed; they paid $40,000 every week. So when I borrowed, I paid it back in a week, and then every week was 40,000, 40,000, and we just grew. And a funny thing happened: when the banks started seeing the money coming in, they started to offer loans. And that’s when I said, no thanks.
Eric Rozenberg: My first question here, with what you say, you signing a contract with Whole Foods: where did you learn to look at a contract? Was anybody advising you and helping you?
Dr. Magie Cook: No, no. I didn’t know that you could do a contract until they told me. And I remember they were very good to work with. I remember looking at everything, but I needed to move fast in order to get this out. And as soon as I was able to show my friends, this is the contract, and this is how much they pay a week, it was easy for them to release that money. And I didn’t receive any legal advice, any advice for anything. I was just going with pure instinct. Gut feeling. Instinct.
Eric Rozenberg: Amazing. Amazing. So now the banks want to lend you money. But there’s a story that you said you wanted to share, how you got the first loan.
Dr. Magie Cook: No, that’s the story that I told.
Eric Rozenberg: Ah.
Dr. Magie Cook: So I never got a loan.
Eric Rozenberg: Of course not.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yeah. They come to you when everything is showing off.
Eric Rozenberg: Wow. When you start developing and growing the company, which year is this?
Dr. Magie Cook: So, I started the company in 2004, and 2007 was Whole Foods. Between those years, I started selling to the Capitol Market, where the contest took place. They were the first ones to take me in, because they could see that people loved it. And then I was supplying, I think it was a fish market, and a place called Black Angus. Little mom-and-pops. Just a little product here and there. And then it went from very, very little to Whole Foods. Big, big, big. And because of that, we started distributing to 38 states, and then Walmart came along — there’s a whole story behind that one — Costco, Whole Foods of course, the Kroger Company, Harris Teeter, supermarkets across 38 states. Then in 2015, my company sold, with Garden Fresh, to Campbell’s, for a quarter of a billion dollars.
Eric Rozenberg: Yeah, we’re going to get to that. But as you told me you still have a little bit of time, I want you to tell the Walmart story. But imagine that Whole Foods would have told you, well, we’re signing a contract with you, but you cannot sell to any other. They don’t do that?
Dr. Magie Cook: No, they don’t do that. Not at all. You know, exclusivity was mentioned a couple of times, but I didn’t want to be put in a box.
Eric Rozenberg: Amazing.
Dr. Magie Cook: Because I wanted to have — and one of the ways that we got into other supermarkets was when people who loved the products tasted them, and they would actually go tell them. That’s how we got into Harris Teeter, Kroger. They would tell them, “You need to get this lady’s product.” And that’s how we just grew tremendously.
Eric Rozenberg: And what is the Walmart story?
Dr. Magie Cook: Yeah. So, I can’t remember the year, but it was a couple of years after 2007, and my business had hit a plateau, and I wanted to go way beyond a couple million dollars a year. And I decided to go back to my power declarations, and I started writing things, and visualizing, and future casting, the same things I was doing in the orphanage. And I was writing — it’s in my book — “the largest supermarket, perhaps in the world.” I didn’t mention anything about what it was, because I wanted to be open to whatever grander possibilities. I said, they’re going to call me, and we’re going to have a conversation. I’m going to be at their main headquarters, and they’re going to open the products — and I could smell it, when I was visualizing, I could smell the product in the air — and the buyer is going to extend their hand and shake my hand, and we’re going to have distribution even wider. And I was visualizing this every single day, to the point that I would get in tears, because I was hoping so much for it. And there’s a whole process that I teach on this, on manifestation, on power declarations, on future casting, on taking inspired action. You have to do these things if you want to achieve anything in your life. And it’s really what it comes down to, including my movie, that I manifested recently.
But I was in my office, and I get a call, and the lady — her name is Dee — she calls me and she says, “Is this Maggie, with Maggie’s Salsa?” And I said, “Yeah.” She says, “We heard about you. We went online and looked at ten different fresh salsa companies, and we thought yours was the best. Do you want to sell to Walmart?” This was after 30 days. Science says it takes 15 to 21 days to bring anything, to manifest anything, if you believe something to be true, it becomes. And remember what we talked about, focus and taking inspired action, the things that show up, right?
So, I’m immediately jumping out of my seat, and I said, “Can I put you on hold?” And I put her on hold, and I went to my friend, who was an adviser for business, who was just in the living room. And I said, “Hey, it’s Walmart. They want our products.” And she said to me, “It’s a prank. Hang up.”
Eric Rozenberg: Oh my god.
Dr. Magie Cook: And I said, “Wait a minute. I’ve been visualizing. I’ve been bringing this. It’s got to be real. It’s got to be real.” So I get on the phone and I asked her, “Is this a prank?” And she says, “No, we’re the real deal.” Within a month, Eric, we were in Bentonville, Arkansas, signing a deal. And I have chills again telling it, because I don’t tell these stories on stage. Signing a deal, exactly how I had visualized it. And the first question that they asked — because people told me, Walmart’s going to take advantage of you, all these things, and I said, I’m not going to make assumptions until I have the experience myself — the first question they asked was: “We want to make sure that we don’t give you too much, that you don’t spread yourself too thin, that you’re not able to distribute and deliver.” And I loved that. Because we started small, and then production went from something that was a regular business-hours day to 24 hours. So I had to go out and get more team, more people, and I literally slept in the warehouse. We had already moved to a 20,000-square-foot facility, and I had shifts of people working 24 hours, and if anything went wrong, they would knock on my door and I would wake up and try to fix it, if a machine went down and things like that. And that’s really when it took it to a whole new level, with Walmart.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s how you inspired Elon Musk to sleep on the floor of the factory. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. Who were the key hires — I mean, everybody in the team obviously has their role and is very important, but who were the key hires that you made to allow you to go from the beginning to several millions, and then from several millions to a quarter billion?
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. The key people were, one, a personal assistant, who was with me most of the time when I was in the office. I was basically duplicating another Magie. That was a huge asset, because then they could go and really implement. And we had a system: new things that we were implementing went into a booklet that kept growing and growing with new implementations, and everybody that came in was trained on that. We made videos so that everybody would get familiarized. And then I hired a food scientist, to help me with the food science of it, because when you start manufacturing products at that scale, you have to be able to track the foods, all that stuff.
And then, what I loved most, and it actually shocked my team, especially the new hires, was that I loved putting on the gear and cutting tomatoes and doing things next to them. Often I would hear a reaction like, “What are you doing here?” And I’m like, “I’m helping you.” “Well, I never had a boss help me.” “Well, now you do, right?” And the culture became so awesome. A culture of caring, because we did care. There are some things that happened that they even spoke about, that got into the news, because of how awesome it was. But it was less about “how much money am I making” and more about “I feel like I have a sense of family here. I feel like I can grow. I feel like I can contribute.”
Eric Rozenberg: Absolutely. That’s beautiful. And you’re growing. And when are the first signs that big companies want to buy you? Or is it you, at some stage, thinking, you know what, now I’m going to sell the business?
Dr. Magie Cook: That happened when — one of the reasons I wanted to be successful, and really what pushed me to the edge, was that my father told me that I would never be anyone, that I would die in prison and with AIDS. That was exactly his words. So part of my why was to prove him wrong. During that time, he had passed, when I was just becoming very, very successful. But before he passed, he wrote me a letter. And I believe I shared that at the — you want me to read it?
Eric Rozenberg: Yes, please. If you have it, that would be wonderful.
Dr. Magie Cook: It’s right here. And think about this: he never gave me a hug, or an “I love you.” He never recognized my success. And he wrote me this letter just one week before he passed. And it says: “Maggie, I’m so proud of you. You will know what I mean. You’re from the old school, from the old generation, maybe 50 years back. The generation that had an ethic and a discipline, and most of all, a dream, and willingness to labor and make that dream a reality. You are so caught up in what you’re doing at this moment that you can’t fathom where you’ll be in five, in 15, in 25, because of your willingness. It is going to be big. America needs people like you, and your values passed on, if it is to survive. You are one big asset to everyone in your life. Sweetheart, I’m really proud of you.”
Eric Rozenberg: Wow. Wow.
Dr. Magie Cook: He was prophesying over my life, and I didn’t even know it. So when that happened, I quickly realized that my fresh salsa company was just a stepping stone to something bigger. But I didn’t know what that bigger was. I was just open to the what, even if I didn’t know the how. I remember going to a trade show, it was called the IDDBA, the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association, in Texas. And I had my booth and I was selling — you know, buyers come and you present your products, they try it, and if they like it, they put you in more supermarkets. The booth right next to me was the company that bought me, that we merged with, that then sold within a year to Campbell’s. The booth right next to me.
Eric Rozenberg: So you’re merging. They’re buying you, you’re buying them — I know it’s merging, but usually in a merger there’s one who’s buying the other.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes. Well, we merged, sort of like a purchase thing, and then we were in talks with Campbell’s, to sell to Campbell’s within that same year.
Eric Rozenberg: And then they bought you for $231 million.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yes.
Eric Rozenberg: Not too bad for an investment of $800, right?
Dr. Magie Cook: No.
Eric Rozenberg: What’s happening in your mind at that moment? Are you thinking, I’m releasing my baby to somebody else?
Dr. Magie Cook: Great question.
Eric Rozenberg: Or is it like a stepping stone for something else? Because one common thread with entrepreneurs that have sold their business is there’s some sort of down, and depression, afterwards.
Dr. Magie Cook: I would tell them never to sell unless they have something they’re preparing for that takes them to the next level. For me, it was the realization that I was speaking, Eric, back then, but I was speaking for free, to businesses, schools. And I realized that I could turn it into a business at that point. I realized that I needed to start my speaking business so that I could actually make a greater impact through inspiration. But also during that time, something really tremendous happened, when the kids at the orphanage that I was born into were endangered by being taken over by a drug cartel. I went down there, did the rescue. You saw all those photos in the presentation that I gave. That inspired me to start my foundation, Magdalena Cook, and now we serve over 28 orphanages. And because of that, things just keep expanding. I was giving a talk in San Antonio, and some movie producers came up to me, and we did an agreement, and we started filming, about a month and a week ago, a movie about my life.
Eric Rozenberg: That’s amazing. Well, yeah, I have no doubt about that. That’s just amazing. What is the dream now? What are you looking at in the future?
Dr. Magie Cook: The future, for me — it’s almost like I’ve lived so many lives, but I feel like I’m at the place where it feels right. Everything that I’m doing, including speaking, and growing my speaking, because I love what I do, and I love to be able to inspire change. What moves me the most is hearing from people after they heard me speak, how now they’re able to look at their life differently, to make the changes, to become a better human, become a better business owner. The best way for me to help people is that way. It’s not giving money. It’s not giving anything else but time. And that’s my purpose.
One of the things that I had to do is a rediscovery. Because when my father died, the first question that I asked was: who am I going to prove wrong now? And I had to take inventory of my life. One of the ways to discover your why is to do that, and look at the things that I did that elated me, that mesmerized me, that made me come alive. And I realized that when I was in the orphanage, I was a little performer. I loved to do poetry. I liked speaking on little stages, and I would practice in the dirt. There’s a photo that I shared in my presentation where you can see little Magie. And this is exactly what I’m doing today, but I think with bigger impact, bigger inspiration, with the work that we’re doing with my nonprofit, but also with the movie, because I think that it’s going to be a great source of inspiration for many people. And I’m very, very excited about that.
Eric Rozenberg: You obviously have tremendous business success, you’re an author, you have your book, you’re going to have a movie about you. How can we help you? Anybody listening who wants to help you, what should they do? What are you looking for? Who can they connect you with?
Dr. Magie Cook: I think, spread the story. Spread the love. Because what I’m most interested in, more than anything right now, is to be able to be in more places, to share a beautiful message.
Eric Rozenberg: Wonderful. How do people get in touch with you?
Dr. Magie Cook: Magie at magiecook.com, and that’s also my website. Magie is with one G: M-A-G-I-E. My last name is Cook: C-O-O-K. And everything’s there.
Eric Rozenberg: Amazing. Magie, thank you so much. And in full transparency, people listening: we got cut in the middle, because the electricity just shut down in my house, which I’ve never, ever had in 330-plus episodes. And you were so gracious, and you were even calming me. That must be a reason. I love that. Thank you so much. My last question I got from a friend who is absolutely amazing. His name is Jayson Gaignard, and he’s actually coming out with a fabulous book as well, called Community Made. He always likes to ask the question that I’m asking you now.
Dr. Magie Cook: Okay.
Eric Rozenberg: In one year, when we meet again in person, with a bottle of champagne, what are we going to celebrate?
Dr. Magie Cook: I don’t drink, but I will drink to a nice limonada or something. Just because I choose not to, you know, health-wise. In one year, I would love to be celebrating the new movie, and expansion. I have the pitch right here. And it looks like Al Pacino wants to push it.
Eric Rozenberg: Oh, wow.
Dr. Magie Cook: Yep. So maybe celebrating with Al Pacino.
Eric Rozenberg: Amazing. Amazing.
Dr. Magie Cook: You see that?
Eric Rozenberg: Wow. That’s great. Well, you definitely deserve that. This was one of the, if not the most, fascinating conversations I’ve ever had on my podcast, and you’re so gracious with your time. You’re a genuinely amazing and good person. I’m really honored that you took the time, and I look forward to really meeting you, not only through the stage, but meeting you in person in the future. Thank you so much.
Dr. Magie Cook: You’re very welcome. It’s my pleasure.
Eric Rozenberg: Thank you for tuning in to The Business of Meetings podcast. I hope you found today’s episode valuable. If you enjoy the show, the most important thing you can do is leave a review and share it with your colleagues. It really helps spread the word. I truly appreciate your support. And if you’re ready to take your business to the next level, don’t forget to visit eventbusinessformula.com to learn more about how we are helping event business owners like you. Thanks again for listening, and I’ll see you next week.
