It started with a thousand cookies and a month off work.

Join Bora Celik as he chats with Luis Gramajo and Hans Schrei, the Founders of The Sunday Afternoon Project.

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Back in Guatemala, Hans Schrei found himself with some free time in December. Like many of us, he missed those childhood traditions - the warm kitchen, the holiday baking with family. "When you grow up, you kind of stop those traditions," Hans recalls. "My siblings and I had jobs, we were in college, we had better things to do than making cookies with our mom."

But that December, Hans decided to recreate those memories. He set himself an ambitious goal: 24 different types of cookies, one for each day of advent. When he finished, he had a thousand cookies and no plan for what to do with them. So he gave them away as Christmas presents.

That could have been the end of the story. But someone suggested he should sell them. In 2010, there wasn't much competition for nostalgic baked goods in Guatemala. A small bakery was born.

A few years later, Hans met Luis. The bakery was struggling - it was too much for one person to handle. They joined forces, fell in love, and eventually decided to get married. But there was one problem: gay marriage wasn't legal in Guatemala.

"At first, we were just going to do the living will and trust and all those things to patch it up together," Hans explains. But after some concerning experiences, they realized they needed proper legal recognition of their family. So they made a bold decision: pack up their lives and move to Austin, Texas on an entrepreneur visa.

They started fresh at farmers markets, focusing solely on cookies - their best-selling item from Guatemala. It was a humble beginning, but it worked. They were making a living, learning about their new market, and building their brand one customer at a time.

Then came March 2020. They had 25,000 cookies ready for South by Southwest when the festival was canceled. No website, no shipping account, not even a proper online presence - just a basic Squarespace page with contact information. They were in trouble.

"Someone said, 'Hey, I would love to send these to my parents. Why don't you put them online?'" Hans remembers. They created a simple campaign with the hashtag #BakeItBetter. They expected maybe 50 orders.

They woke up to 700.

An actress, Busy Philipps, with three million Twitter followers, had discovered them. Suddenly, they were everywhere - Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal, TV appearances. By the end of that year, they had transformed into a full e-commerce business doing $1.7 million in sales.

But success came with its own challenges. "We had to learn everything," Luis says. "We didn't know how to ship things, how to procure stuff, even how to make the product at that scale." They went from baking for farmers markets to shipping nationwide overnight.

Their brand, Wunderkeks, became known not just for its cookies but for its story. Their boxes carried a message: "The foods we share with the world tell the stories of who we are, and by openly and fearlessly sharing our stories, we create space for others to share theirs."

Celebrities came calling. Dan Reynolds from Imagine Dragons ordered cookies, leading to a Pride Month collaboration. Their treats made it into Oscar gift bags. They baked with Tori Spelling and visited Richard Branson.

But behind the scenes, trouble was brewing. An investment deal went bad. The investors didn't like the direction of the brand. Legal battles ensued. Eventually, faced with mounting legal fees and a year-long court battle, they made the difficult decision to close Wunderkeks.

It would have been easy to see this as the end. Instead, they saw it as an opportunity for transformation. They realized something profound: "It's not the foods that we share with the world," Hans explains. "It is the things that we share with the world, whatever those things are."

Today, Hans and Luis run the Sunday Afternoon Project, helping other entrepreneurs find and tell their authentic stories. They use AI-powered analysis to help founders see their narratives from new angles, breaking free from tunnel vision and finding clarity in their message.

"You can be whoever you want," Luis says, "but you need to be consistent and clear on who you are."

Their journey from Guatemala to Austin, from cookies to AI-powered storytelling, embodies the immigrant entrepreneur experience in America. It's a story of reinvention, resilience, and the power of authentic storytelling. As they like to say, they didn't live happily ever after - "for that is what got them into this mess in the first place." Instead, they learned to cherish every moment of the battle they fought together, wearing their story like a crown.

And they're still writing new chapters.

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