
Inventor/entrepreneur Molly Wilson, who could have been on that plane, lives with added gratitude and purpose
BY REID CREAGER
Molly Wilson decided to change her life. Little did she realize that choice may have prevented her death.
Though proud to be a member of Sen. Paul Wellstone’s staff for five years, at 28 she grew curious about other challenges. On Oct. 25, 2002—one week after Wilson left to open her first retail business—the Democratic senator from Minnesota called her from Saint Paul Downtown Airport to congratulate her as she prepared for a grand re-opening at her Hallmark store.
Sen. Wellstone, his wife, Sheila, and his daughter, Marcia, were about to fly with campaign staff members Will McLaughlin, Tom Lapic and Mary McEvoy. Their destination was Eveleth, Minnesota, to attend a funeral for the father of longtime Wellstone friend Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia.
Sen. Wellstone “passed the phone around the plane as they were sitting on a tarmac with a flight delay due to fog,” Wilson recalls. “He cared so much about others that he took a moment when he likely had 20 calls to make, just to wish me luck that day.”
Not long after, as Wilson prepared for her store event, a customer walked in the door crying and then ran up to her for a big hug. “I’m so sorry,” she told Wilson.
Her mentor and hero, a passionate champion for the underrepresented known for “The Magic Green School Bus” that symbolized his campaign, was dead. The six-person Wellstone “family” and both co-pilots died in a plane crash just 45 minutes after Wilson’s conversation with the senator.
She said she was the last person not on the plane to have spoken with him.
The National Transportation Safety Board report on the crash said the chief pilot initially decided not to fly after receiving a weather briefing that morning—but reversed his decision. The NTSB cited pilot error in the crash.
Twenty-one years later, “The truth of my reaction is really hard to think about, to be honest,” Wilson says. “I collapsed, got sick and prayed.”
Her emotions ran the gamut from shock to devastation to survivor’s guilt. Had she not recently left Sen. Wellstone’s camp, could it have been her on that plane as well?
“Well, I left two weeks before his third re-election campaign. A great woman, Mary McEvoy—a professor at the University of Minnesota—stood in for me those last two weeks and was on that plane. She was so honored to take a brief sabbatical to step in.
“It’s hard for me to think about Mary’s loss of life because I was not on the plane that day.”
If you don’t ask…
Although she was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and grew up in rural Iowa, it may have been inevitable that Wilson would meet the personable and empathetic senator from Minnesota.
“I am all about real connections with people, working hard for what you want and always being thankful,” she says.
“In college, I studied what I was passionate about—women’s issues. I was in graduate school while driving in Minnesota when I saw a sign for Senator Wellstone’s office. He was an author of the Violence Against Women Act.
“I’ve always been confident and outspoken, so I pulled in and walked inside! I asked the receptionist if I could give them some feedback—a confident kid sharing her opinions. I suggested there was a lot more the senator could be doing with the Violence Against Women Act.
“It just so happened that the senator’s wife was walking by and heard me and said: ‘What is it that you think we could be doing better?’ She and I walked to grab a coffee, and she listened to my ideas! She said, ‘My husband has to meet you.’”
Two weeks later, Wilson was hired to direct community outreach across the state of Minnesota on women’s issues.
Business hallmarks
In many ways, being around the senator for five years helped Wilson improve her already formidable people skills—which have boosted her tremendously as an innovator and entrepreneur through highly successful pursuits that have included but are not limited to:
- Leading a Hallmark Gold Crown store that eventually became the largest of its kind in America;
- molly&you, a popular gourmet breadmaker;
- BEST of Show, industry disrupting high-energy showrooms where American wholesale manufacturers and leading brands sell products to a robust group of American and international wholesale buyers;
- Big L. Brands, a small business investment company; and
- November 2022 startup Lacsnac, which makes GMO-free, gluten-free and dairy-free lactation-enhancing food.
With Sen. Wellstone, “Our focus was always on listening first and then problem solving through federal legislation. … In the van, he’d make us stop if he saw any children having a lemonade stand or car wash. I cannot tell you how many times we were late because we stopped to support a roadside endeavor.”
They shared the kind of bold, can-do personality that had prompted her to walk into a senator’s office as a college student and make suggestions to accomplished strangers. Wilson thinks big, and her successes reflect it.
She wanted to own a Hallmark Gold Crown store—privately owned and carrying premier Hallmark items such as its Christmas ornaments. Wilson’s status as a Gold Crown dealer meant she has support by way of financing, point-of-sale systems and customer data management.
That doesn’t mean raising capital for a business is ever easy. Wilson was undaunted.
“I’m a friendship maker. I love making friendships and give and take to receive funding! I have raised money from friends and family, leveraged my own bank accounts for collateral—always scary—and during my time as a retailer, I worked with my banker to learn from him to grow.
“The more I showed I was willing to learn and keep my pay low while I had debt, the more my community bank was open to increasing my lending.”
Success the hardest way
Wilson has an unconventional, one-word explanation for how her Hallmark Gold Crown store became America’s biggest.
Grief.
“I think that my growth into a megastore honestly came out of grief. When tragedy and complex grief strikes—the kind of grief I experienced with the death of Senator Wellstone and my coworkers whom I loved dearly—we all react differently.
“People often lose themselves in something. It’s a mechanism that protects a person from the darkness of the struggle.
“I now know that I deep-dove into building something during my grief. To go from a 1,500-square-foot store to a three-story, 6,000-foot-per-level operation is a really dangerous and ridiculous thing to do, to be honest.
“Day and night for two years, it became my focus and where I channeled my energy, probably largely to not feel the pain. Ultimately it was part luck, part grit and determination and part relationships that made this mega-store happen.”
Admittedly, her prodigious sales and creative talents also came into play: “Hallmark used to hold top volume sales contests for store owners. The joke was that ‘Why bother? Molly will win.’ … But I never feel that I’m in competition with anyone but myself.”
She says she became the top store by becoming a great product buyer—20 percent of her store was Hallmark product; the rest, she curated—and focusing on two things: the customer experience and creating a fun and desirable work environment for employees.
Sounds like her time working for Sen. Wellstone.
Time to pivot
About 10 years ago, Wilson had a realization that is common for megacreators. She had to create something new again.
She sold the Hallmark Gold Crown store to two women who worked for her and started her own bread company.
“There comes a time when I look at a creation and the community I have created, and it feels perfect,” she says. “That’s the moment when I know that I succeeded, and instinctively I know I’m ready for the next creation. That is when I know that it is time to take a business and find the next great owner.”
She has always loved homemade breads. Because Sen. Wellstone was passionate about farmers and farm workers, “I always got great produce and homemade breads and jams, because over the years we stopped at more roadside vegetable stands than I can count.”
But the most direct impetus for molly&me came from one of her Hallmark employees, a high school teacher.
“Mrs. Nichols kept saying to me, ‘Molly, you have got to try this beer bread from the Clay County Fair. There are always lines, and the young mom making it is so sweet.’ Finally one summer, I tried it and I loved it!”
So did her customers, who were willing to pay for it. “I approached the young mom from the fair, Amanda, and told her that I thought her mix had great potential. I mentored her for two years and helped her get the bread mix into other small shops. … But her interests weren’t in growth, so she asked if I’d buy it from her and I could create a company and she’d make the bread mix. That’s how we started.”
Before long, Amanda was teaching her her secret recipe. Soon they were creating other flavors of beer bread mixes.
“When I knew it was time to sell my store, I decided that I’d really give this bread thing a go. I’d figure out how to mass-produce mixes of bread and developed a growth strategy to sell the product to retailers.”
That first year, 2013, the beer bread mix was sold in 40 stores. With more than 60 products, molly&you gourmet food mixes are now in over 4,000 retailers and online, including Amazon.
“I never thought I’d ever be a food manufacturer,” Wilson says. “But when the door opens, I just have to rush in.”
Bathroom brainstorm
By now, you understand that Molly Wilson’s relationships and experiences often lean toward the incredible. So it may not surprise you that her recent startup originated in a restroom in Las Vegas at 5:30 a.m.
“I was traveling and had an early flight. I went into a restroom and saw a mom sitting on the floor with her breast pump plugged into the wall. We started to chat.
“She told me she had just returned to work and she was tired and not keeping up her milk production and she might have to stop. We talked about supplements. I gave her some advice on other foods to add into her diet that help boost production.
“Upon leaving, I gave her a molly&you Microwave Mug Cake and told her I owned this company, and she could have a treat when she went home. She said, ‘This chocolate brownie looks amazing. Do you think my breastmilk supplements will work if I crack them open and mix them in here?’ I said yes.”
Then she turned the package around and noticed they aren’t gluten free, and they have a lot of calories. When Wilson asked her if she had tried any of the lactation cookies currently available, she said no—“they are all just unhealthy cookies.”
Wilson left that restroom and felt “1,000 light bulbs above my head.”
She spent the entire trip home researching, and found the woman was right. Wilson spent the next six months creating gluten-free items, with only purposeful ingredients known to increase breastmilk production in nursing moms. She surveyed mothers, sent out samples and got incredible feedback.
The brand launched in November 2022, with Lactation Coffee and Lactation Overnight Oats. In early April, Lacsnac (lacsnac.com) launched ready-to-microwave, soft-baked gooey lactation cookies and brownies (in six flavors) in a disposable cup. In the first month, Lacsnac cookie cups became a top 10 cookie mix on Amazon.
Wilson says all her businesses relate to continuing the mission she was on while working for Sen. Wellstone.
“Our work was focused on women’s issues. I love being a job creator for women, supporting women-owned retailers and now with Lacnsac—bringing help to every mom who is sitting on her couch in tears because breastfeeding can be just so hard in every way.
“I truly want to always keep making a difference in the smallest ways I can, everywhere I can.”
*****
Molly Wilson
Birthplace: Harrisonburg, Virginia
Current home: Boca Raton, Florida
Family: Husband Dean; children Wilson, Sami, Brittany, Brooke; dog Koa
Education: Bachelor of Science, Women’s Studies and Social Work, Masters of Science in Social Justice, St. Cloud State University
Hobbies: Golf (went to college on a golf scholarship), travel, great wine and pilates
Favorite food: Sushi by day, ice cream by night
Favorite inspirational quote: “Never separate the life you live from the words you speak.”—Paul D. Wellstone