Nobody warns you business ownership will ask more of you than you ever planned to give. Knowing when to walk away requires just as much courage as starting in the first place. On a recent episode of Happy Hour Hustle, Kim sat down with Monica Gauthier, former owner of the award-winning Groovy Donuts and a member of the inaugural cohort of the Women’s Entrepreneurial Fellowship. They talked about what it actually looks like to build something from nothing, survive the hard years, and recognize the moment it’s time to hand the keys to someone else.
Sometimes You Stumble In
Monica didn’t set out to own a business. She was a fisheries biologist dating a man who wanted to open a donut shop. She got pulled in gradually, then completely.
What started as writing some SOPs to help her business partner and then-boyfriend Andrew get organized turned into crawling through ceilings to assist with fire suppression, laying gas pipe for a fryer, and sniffing out which contractors were wasting their time. As she told Kim, “I know how to talk to them [contractors], and I understand enough about building things that I can hang with the conversation and know if they’re full of shit or not.” Eventually, she stopped helping and started co-owning, insisting on a formal ownership stake when it became clear the business needed her fully.
Surviving Long Nights and a Global Pandemic
The first week Groovy Donuts opened, their baker, a family member, vanished without explanation. Monica and Andrew made the donuts themselves, in the middle of the night, with no real plan for how long that would last. It became a recurring theme.
“People look at a donut shop, and they’re like, ‘Oh, you wake up at 4 a.m. to make the donuts, right?’ In our last few years, 4 a.m. is when you start packing orders.” They were making thousands of donuts a day by hand. Kim put it: “The unseen. That’s just the stuff that needs to happen day to day, not actually working on your business or growing it.”
When COVID hit, the pressure didn’t break the Groovy Donuts team; it helped them focus. They were too small for most of the programs and loans available, so they did what had always worked: they showed up, made their case honestly, and asked anyway. “We see your parameters, but look at what we’re doing. We’re gonna take it seriously. We’re not gonna waste your time,” Monica said. That reputation opened doors, and 2020 became the year Monica and Andres finally built the five-year plan, identified their big goal, and started running Groovy Donuts like the business it had become.
Knowing the Right Time
The decision to sell didn’t come from a spreadsheet. Andrew was approached about a director role at an MSU program, something he had told Monica he wanted since their second date. Her father got seriously ill, and she spent weeks at the hospital while her team kept the business running without anyone on the outside noticing she was gone. “That,” Kim told her, “is when you know you’ve built a sellable business. It can run without you.”
The buyer appeared almost accidentally, over breakfast, through a mutual friend who knew Monica was looking. Monica’s terms were simple: keep the people, honor the culture, share the values. “People do business with people, not logos,” Kim said. “You, as a business owner, are the one who built the relationships.” The rest could change. Monica just needed to know her team was protected, and when that box was checked, she was ready.
What (Aspiring) Business Owners Should Know
Monica doesn’t sugarcoat it. “You can plan, you can research, you can read books, you can talk to so many business owners, and you just do not know until you do it.”
Every business is different, and so is every owner. The assumptions people make from the outside—that you must be wealthy, that it must be so fun, that you just make donuts and go home—don’t reflect the reality at all. “To this day, my parents still don’t understand,” she said.
Monica also learned, sometimes painfully, that being a warm and people-first leader doesn’t mean leaving yourself unprotected. She built a rigorous hiring process and put people she loved on PIPs when the business required it. She framed hard conversations around a truth everyone could understand: “We all need to pay our bills. If we don’t do this, that can start hurting the business, and then you’re not gonna be making as much money.” Being squishy, as Monica calls it, doesn’t mean being naive. It means building systems sturdy enough to let you stay that way.
When it comes to measuring success, Monica and Kim both called out how business owners are constantly under pressure to chase revenue. “You have to define your own measure of success,” Monica said. Hers shifted over the years, from helping Andrew launch, to taking ownership, to building a great team, to building something she could step away from. Each one was valid. Each one moved her forward.
Monica built a Michigan 50 Companies to Watch business from a standing start, built a team that ran without her, and sold to someone who wanted exactly what she had created. She’s sleeping 10 to 12 hours a night now, pulling shots on the espresso machine she bought herself as a gift, and drinking a lot of Bordeaux. She earned it.
Applications are now open for the 2026-27 cohort of the Women’s Entrepreneurial Fellowship.
