When Melissa Mueller-Douglas was around 8, her grandma Jeanne Mueller got her started with investing.
Mueller, now almost 99 years old and still trading her own stocks, encouraged her granddaughter to look at the places she visits, what she spends her allowance on and consider owning a piece of those entities. Her grandma is a professor emeritus of Cornell University.
“Over the years, my interest (in investing) and understanding increased,” Mueller-Douglas said. “That’s when it got started.”
Her vision came full circle after she founded in 2017 her own company and raised over $40,000 through IFundWomen, a startup crowdfunding platform for women entrepreneurs.
Her Rochester-based business, MyRetreat, has created a wellness app that pairs chocolate with mindfulness to improve habit stacking. She also holds wellness workshops and retreats.
Q2 of this year is on track to increase revenue 400% compared to Q2 2023.
As a licensed social worker, Mueller-Douglas said she began her startup because she and her colleagues needed a way to prioritize wellbeing. When asked about self-care, many said they didn’t have time or that they would have time to prioritize it later on, after, for example, their kids went off to college.
MyRetreat, which now employs three plus contractors as needed, started with a physical office space before the pandemic, but as people requested access any time, she pivoted to creating an app with daily three-minute meditations that users pair with a piece of chocolate as a tangible reward.
The app is free, and users can BYOC (bring your own chocolates) or start a chocolate subscription with MyRetreat, which paired with Conexión Chocolate, a woman-owned business based on Ecuador, for the offering.
Mueller-Douglas continues to be an investor through Wefunder, a crowdfunding platform.
“I see the benefit of rewards-based crowdfunding,” she said. “I know the feeling of elation when I met my initial goal for that crowdfunding raise.”
The entrepreneur also joined the Rochester Open Coffee Club, based on the Buffalo Open Coffee Club, during the pandemic. She recently attended one of the Buffalo group’s gatherings and participated in the Women of Color Summit as a panelist in the Buffalo area.
As a Black, female founder, Mueller-Douglas’ advice for entrepreneurs, especially women and people of color, is best summarized by this quote: "Be the woman who fixes another woman's crown, without telling the world that it was crooked.” That’s from Amy Morin, a psychotherapist and author.
In other words, be the person who is offering help, support and solutions behind closed doors, rather than calling someone out in front of everyone.
“That’s very real for me,” Mueller-Douglas said. “There are dozens of women out there that right now if I picked up the phone and asked them to show up for me, they’d do it. And they know I’d do the same.”
