Melena Costello runs a smoke shop doing $300,000 a year, a food truck booked across Michigan, and a handcrafted product line built on her late grandmother’s recipes.
She’s a single mum of three. She’s never paid for advertising. And she nearly quit this morning.
That last part is in the episode. So is everything else — including a $250 per month marketing system that returned $1,400 in a single week, a product filter no business school would teach you, and a clear-eyed view of where growth actually comes from when you don’t have a budget for ads.
If you’ve been told you need more money to grow, this one will frustrate you in the best way.
The $250/month text system that returns $1,400 a week
This is the most immediately actionable part of the conversation.
Melena runs an SMS marketing system for $250 a month. In a good week it returns $1,400. That’s not a complicated funnel or a sophisticated ad stack — it’s a direct line to people who have already bought from her, reminding them to come back.
Most small businesses underuse their existing customer base while spending money trying to find new ones. SMS flips that priority. The list is already warm. The cost is low. The returns compound as the list grows.
Networking vs paid ads: where growth actually comes from
Melena has built three businesses on referrals and relationships rather than paid reach. Her view is direct: for the kind of businesses she runs, genuine community presence outperforms ad spend at her stage.
That’s not universally true — paid ads work and scale in ways that networking can’t. But the principle underneath it is sound: if you’re not working what you already have, adding more spend to the top of the funnel is often the wrong move.
Why she hires friends and family — and how she makes it work
Melena deliberately employs people she’s close to, which runs counter to the standard small business advice. Her reasoning: she trusts them, they’re invested, and the relationships were already real before the work began.
The caveat she’s honest about: you still have to have hard conversations. Proximity doesn’t exempt anyone from accountability. She talks through how she handles that without destroying the relationship — which is the part most people are actually afraid of.
Routine as infrastructure
Three businesses. Three kids. The thing holding it together isn’t willpower — it’s routine.
Melena talks about structure as the foundation that makes everything else possible. When the day has a shape, decisions get simpler, energy is protected, and the chaos has somewhere to go. For anyone running multiple things simultaneously, this is less a lifestyle preference and more an operational necessity.
The product filter: would grandma have loved it?
Melena’s grandmother’s recipes are the origin of her handcrafted product line. The filter she applies to every new product decision is simple: would grandma have loved it?
It sounds sentimental. It functions as a sharp quality control mechanism — one that keeps the range coherent, the standards high, and the brand story intact. Plenty of businesses would benefit from an equally simple filter, whatever form it takes for them.
The day she almost quit
This is in the episode and worth watching for. Not because the story is dramatic, but because it’s honest — and because her answer to it is practical rather than motivational.
About Melena Costello
Melena Costello runs Bakeshop Betty’s, Batter Up Buttercup and House of Smoke across Michigan. Find her on Instagram at @batterupbuttercup_ and @houseofsmoke.fl.
