Candice Nelson, SWEET SUCCESS
Zibby interviews (in person!) Sprinkles co-founder, “Cupcake Wars” judge, and New York Times bestselling author Candace Nelson to discuss her new book Sweet Success: A Simple Recipe to Turn Your Passion into Profit, a business book she refers to as a cupcake MBA! Candace shares what it was like to start her cupcake business from scratch (almost like raising children!), the stories behind the names Sprinkles and Pizzana, and how important it was for her to build a network of women–friends, mentors, and fellow entrepreneurs–to guide her along the way.
Transcript:
Zibby Owens: Welcome Candace. Thank you so much for coming on “Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books.”
Candace Nelson: I am so happy to be here. I am being treated to a marvelous view. It’s so fun to do these podcasts in person from time to time.
Zibby: I know. It’s so nice. Thank you for making the effort. Your book was so interesting. As a fellow entrepreneur, I can say now, I learned so much. I feel so validated because you had a passage in the beginning where you were like, if you’ve done a lot of jobs, you might be an entrepreneur. I was like, thank you.
Candace: Thank you. I’m glad that resonated with you. I hope it will resonate with others. My whole life, I just thought, ugh, when am I going to find my thing? I’m a jack of all trades. I’m a master of none. I felt less than because of it. You and I have said we’re the same generation. We’re generally the same age. I think when we were growing up, it really was about finding your thing. What are you going to do? What is the career you’re going to have for the rest of your life? It’s such an antiquated concept now.
Zibby: I know one person who has the same job. One.
Candace: A doctor?
Zibby: No. I guess doctors have the same job. You’re right.
Candace: Yes, but beyond doctors.
Zibby: I mean in a company type of situation where they kept doing the same thing forever. Nobody else does that.
Candace: Nobody else does that. This idea of loyalty and security, people have tended to look at entrepreneurship as the risky pursuit, but look at all the people who are being laid off from these tech companies, these big, badass tech companies have that more money than God. They’re revoking job offers. They’re laying people off. It reminds me of something someone said to me when I first started Sprinkles, which was that if you work at a company, it just takes one person to fire you, your boss. I say this in the book. If you start a business and you’ve amassed customers, all those customers have to fire you. I have to push back when people say entrepreneurship is so risky. Life is risky. Ultimately, entrepreneurship is about betting on yourself, which I think is really my mission in writing this book, is to say to women in particular out there, it’s time to bring your confidence online. It’s time to find the strength to bet on yourself. I think more women need to realize that — more women than men suffer from imposter syndrome. We are all walking around thinking that we can’t do things. We’re frauds. Women suffer statistically more than men. I think it’s just time to say BS to all of that. There are things you can do to help bring your confidence online if you’re not there yet. I think at the end of the day, if you got you, anything is possible. If you’re completely alone by yourself and you know that you’re still strong enough to get through the day with everything else crashing down around you, that’s my goal for women out there.
Zibby: I love it. You’re kind of like, women go through so much stuff anyway. This doesn’t even have to be the hardest thing you do.
Candace: Exactly. It might not be the hardest thing you do. Think about childbirth. Think about raising teenagers, which we were just talking about. It’s funny. I was actually thinking about the idea of scaling a company and how it is very much like raising children. I have a lot of friends who are just coming into empty nesting now. They’re seeing their kids off to college. It’s one of those things that I think women don’t talk about enough, is what a painful period of time that is. I’m getting emotional just thinking about it. I’m not too far away from it myself, but I still can’t possibly imagine it. The hardest thing is it’s the sign of a job well done as a mom. If your little baby bird flies the coop and is independent and responsible enough to go to college and not need to come home on the weekends for laundry — although, maybe they still do — then you did a great job raising that child, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t so much pain and loss that goes with it. Scaling a company is kind of the same way. I came to Sprinkles specifically through a passion for baking. Then as we grew and scaled and I built a team, I became more distant from that initial passion that brought me there. Then ultimately, we sold Sprinkles. I had a full-blown identity crisis.
Zibby: There was only a tiny bit of that in the book. I was like, I feel like there’s a lot more here. There was just a little paragraph or two. I’m like, no, no, no, I want to read that book now.
Candace:
Zibby: I feel like it’s also a little bit like an athlete. You have this single-minded pursuit of something. It’s like what happens when you retire from anything into which you throw your body, heart, soul, mind, everything. Then it stops. Life keeps going on, but what do you do next? What does it mean when you view the whole world in this lens and then all of a sudden, it’s gone? It’s like loss, like when you look around and you’re like, wait, everyone is having a normal day. My world just ended over here. How is this possible?
Candace: Right. It just exploded. I think I didn’t do a good job because I was so singularly focused. You have to be when you’re building a company. There also has to be another plan. There should be, what am I going to do after? At least a little bit of an inkling about, who is Candace Nelson post-Sprinkles? Ultimately, I was just ready for a break. I wanted a little time off. I wanted some time to dig in with my family. I had young, young boys at the time. I don’t think our school had ever seen me do a drop-off or a pick-up, which is mortifying. Then I just got right on in there and started doing the class parties and the big charity events and went in another direction with my type-A personality.
Zibby: I was interested a lot in how you could have named it Candace’s Cupcakes. I know this is just one tiny piece. Your book, by the way, is such a great primer on the whole start to finish from the time idea you get an idea and the passion and how to execute. It’s a business book, but it’s also for anybody who has an idea about doing anything, right?
Candace: Thank you. Yes.
Zibby: The regular person out there who’s like, let’s make a new kind of phone case, or whatever it is, could say, okay, I could follow this roadmap. I don’t have to be in a particular school or whatever. These are the steps. It’s very approachable and relatable.
Candace: It was my cupcake MBA.
Zibby: Your cupcake MBA, I love it. I have an actual MBA. I’m not sure it’s — I shouldn’t say anything. Never mind. Thank you. It was amazing. No. Obviously, things helped.
Candace: My husband has an MBA too. It was very helpful.
Zibby: There we go. I was interested in the way you decided to structure the brand not as Candace Cupcakes, but as Sprinkles and how when the brand was sold, you were even more thankful that you didn’t have your actual name attached. Tell me about that.
Candace: I was very tempted by the name Candace’s Cupcakes because I love alliteration. Ultimately, I wanted the name to stand for something bigger than my own personal brand, and to a fault, actually. I just stayed in the kitchen in those early days even though I realize now, ultimately, stepping into my personal brand later became such an important part of the brand. When people love a product, they really crave a deeper connection with it. Our story — Charles is my partner and husband. We stood behind that counter in the bakery talking to customers all day and just telling them, we left investment banking. We took a risk. Everyone said we were crazy, but here we are. People loved that. That gave them something to really hold onto once the cupcake was devoured and gone and to be able to pass along to somebody else. Candace’s Cupcakes, listen, it’s a cute name. If there are any other Candaces out there who want to start a cupcake company, it might be available. I believe in the power of a name. There’s something about Sprinkles that as soon as I landed on it, it just was magic. I love the way it sounds. I like it ways it feels when I say it in my mouth. That sounds a little crazy, but there’s so much in a name. Even a company like Clubhouse, everyone was so interested in Clubhouse because it just sounded fun. When we were going through our permitting process in building the business, all the people in the permitting department were obsessed with the name Sprinkles. They didn’t even know what the company was yet. They were like, “Tell us about Sprinkles.” It just helps a company spread like wildfire.
Zibby: Did you name Pizzana? Which is your act two, essentially.
Candace: Pizzana is act two.
Zibby: Which is delicious. I’ve eaten there. It’s delicious and amazing. I didn’t realize you were behind that.
Candace: Thank you. Pizzana, yes, I’m definitely more behind the scenes, founder, working on brand. I am partnered with a founder, a passionate chef, Daniele Uditi, who is really the star of the show from the personal brand perspective. Pizzana, here’s the thing with the name. It’s really hard to find a name that’s available. You can’t just choose a name and build a business on it. You have to make sure it’s available, you can register it, you can trademark it. I talk about all this in the book. This is the nuts-and-bolts stuff that I discuss in the book. Sprinkles, it was unbelievable that that name was not in use for a bakery. I look back on that, and I think, wow, that was incredibly lucky. With pizza, as you can imagine, there’s so much pizza out there. There are so many mom and pop and other pizza businesses. It’s really hard to land on a name. Something that Daniele told us, which really was the crux of coming up with Pizzana, was that in Italy on the license plates of cars, I guess the last two letters say what region you’re from. NA means “of Naples,” or Napoli. We thought, huh, pizza from Naples, Pizzana.
Zibby: I was thinking you were going to go to North America or something for Pizzana.
Candace: Oh, there you go. I hadn’t even thought about that. Pizzana really is this merging of Southern Italy meets Southern California, but Italy meets America. Daniele came to this country. He immigrated here with two hundred dollars in his pocket. He smuggled in his grandmother’s sourdough starter through customs. Thank god. Still the starter that we use to make all of our dough at Pizzana. There’s this incredible tradition there, this incredible artisanal quality to what he does. If you’ve been to Italy, a lot of times, true Neapolitan pizza is soupy in the middle. You need a fork and a knife. It’s fun when you’re there because it’s Naples. It’s Neapolitan pizza. In the States, Americans want to pick up the slice. They don’t really have a lot of patience for fork-and-knife situations.
Zibby: Is that so pathetic?
Candace: I know. Think about it.
Zibby: We’re that attention starved and in a rush that we can’t even use utensils.
Candace: Think about it. Hot dogs, hamburgers.
Zibby: It’s ridiculous.
Candace: I like to say I specialize in the hand-held food. Think about cupcakes. I met Daniele at a party. I had one bite of his pizza. I realized it was special. He loved Sprinkles. We were just two bakers, essentially, geeking out over each other’s product. What’s different about his dough is, he comes from a family of bread bakers, so there’s more heft to it. You have the chew, you have the char and all of that, but you can pick up a slice. It is that perfect blend of modern American taste meets Italian artisanal tradition and history. It’s also very delicious.
Zibby: It is amazing.
Candace: Specialize in hand-held delicious foods, let me add.
Zibby: Another thing you do in your book that I loved so much is all these little excerpts from, particularly, women founders. The whole book is not just a celebration of you and your journey and the act of creating, but also all the insights from other people who have done that. You’re celebrating their creations too and dragging everyone — lifting everybody up. Not dragging.
Candace: It’s so important. First of all, thank you. That’s really lovely for you to highlight that and say that. I hope so. I personally love my network of female founder friends. We definitely have an understanding of one another’s shared experience that is hard to find elsewhere. I certainly think between the time when I was coming up in the career world and now, there’s been such a shift in how women treat one another in the workplace and how we cheerlead for one another. Certainly when I was coming up in investment banking, I didn’t feel that there were other women looking out for me. Listen, it’s because it was really hard for them to get those positions. There was only one seat at the table. I didn’t begrudge them. I worked harder, probably, because of it because I realized, okay, no one’s going to help me. I’m going to have to make this opportunity for myself. It is amazing to see this complete shift, this groundswell of support of women championing other women.
As a result, I didn’t really do a good job of building my network when I first started Sprinkles. I just thought entrepreneurs are these solo founder people. They have to be strong. They have to do it all themselves. Granted, I wasn’t doing anything myself. I had my incredible cofounder, Charles. I had an incredible team from the beginning. Beyond that, I didn’t have a network. I realized how powerful a network was just in terms of being able to send an email and be like, what do you think of your digital advertising person? Can you go get a drink right now? I am dying. I don’t know what to do. I’m exhausted. I just need to stop thinking about work for one second. I’m part of this incredible professional women’s network called WIE Suite. It’s unbelievable. Anyone can send out an email into the ether, and these women, they raise their hand to help. It’s incredible to me. Anything from “I need a new nanny” to “I need a COO” to “I need a place for my company’s retreat.” It’s just incredible to know that those networks are out there. Beyond that, if you don’t have the money to spend on a professional network of that type, there’s LinkedIn. Everything is at our fingertips right now. I’m mentoring a female bakery founder, Auzerais Bellamy of Blondery in New York, who found me on Instagram. She just started interacting with my content. Then she reached out and DM’d, asked for a few questions. She didn’t come out of the gate and say, “Will you be my mentor?” which can be overwhelming.
I do as much mentoring as I can. Part of the idea behind the book was that I only have so much time, so this can help a larger number of people. All of these social networks are free and there for the taking if you apply them correctly. There’s a good way to send a request in an email, and there’s a not-so-good way to send a request in an email. Maybe my next book should be about that. I have a friend — actually, Christopher Tuff — who wrote the book Save Your Asks, which is an interesting one because it’s very true. There’s such a thing as a warm lead and a cold lead. There’s a way to do it. Absolutely, work your network on social media, on LinkedIn. My founder friend, Lisa Odenweller, who is the founder behind Kroma Wellness, which is this reset cleanse that I’m an investor in, she literally went dialing for dollars on LinkedIn. She looked around and found leaders in her industry and reached out to them and got not just information and knowledge and connection to find her copacker, but she got money to invest in her company. It’s unbelievable what is possible these days.
Zibby: Wow. Before I started this whole literary stuff, I was helping my family — my husband’s family had a great crumb cake. They wanted to turn it into a business. I helped them start Nene’s Treats. Although, tragically, his mom and grandmother died of COVID, so now his sister runs the business. It’s on Goldbelly and everything.
Candace: I’m so sorry.
Zibby: I know. It’s terrible. We can talk more about that later. I was helping. I was talking to my whole network of people I went to school with or whatever. I was like, frozen trucks, how do I get a product from here to there? The copackers were not producing a good enough thing. They tried out so many copackers. There’s all these little things that you have to realize along the way. When you were saying you reach out for a copacker, I was like, oh, my god, that would’ve saved us so much time. Anyway, it’s still around.
Candace: That’s part of what I’m trying to share in Sweet Success, is the fact that, sure, there are experienced founders out there, but most of them aren’t. Most of them are literally just trying it out. It’s rolling with the punches on a day-to-day basis and asking whoever’s in your network who might know better than you for their advice and using your gut and a little bit of analysis to figure it out. That’s what I mean by betting on yourself. It’s really eye-opening when you look around and you talk to these founders and you realize, they don’t have more experience than I do, but look at what they’ve built. What is that?
Zibby: I love that you admitted there was something you were ashamed, that you didn’t have some sort of classical training in the making of the cupcakes. You have some — this is in the imposter section, I think — embarrassment that you hadn’t had that particular pastry chef training or something.
Candace: Right. I was doing something for Netflix. One of the hosts of their show was this very highly esteemed food critic at one of the magazines. He literally looked at me and made me feel this big with one question. It was like, “Who did you stage with?” I was like, nobody. You’re right. I’m a fraud. I’m nobody. I’m nothing. It’s like, no, I have all of these other strengths. I don’t have to be that thing. I think that that’s also part of the messaging in the book. We’re leasing this idea that there are rules and there are expectations and making your own mark and embracing the “ands,” as I like to say, switching that thinking from, I’m less than because I’m a jack of all trades, to, look at how multifaceted I am. Look at all the things I can do.
Zibby: It’s so true. Oh, my gosh. What is your big hope with this book? I know it’s to help individuals, we’ve talked about. You obviously must have spent a lot of time working on it. You could maybe touch on that. How long did this take? Why do it? Why now? Why did you stop everything to write this book? What was that all about?
Candace: I do hear from a lot of aspiring founders. I hear from some who want mentorship. I hear from some who want investment. I am doing some angel investing. I also hear from women who have this business idea on the backburner, but they just would never pursue it because they’re definitely not founder material. It’s like, why? Even these women in my life who are now becoming empty nesters, they have time on their hands now. They have so much to give. A couple of them have started companies. It’s incredible to see, but there’s a lot more out there that think that they can’t. I believe in entrepreneurship. I believe entrepreneurs are — they’re optimists. In this world, don’t we need a little bit more optimism? It’s people looking around, seeing a problem, and getting off a couch and doing something about it. I love that. I just believe in entrepreneurship in general.
I also think that I want to see women create more wealth. Entrepreneurship can be the fastest way to do that. Women do, I think, better things with their wealth than men do, in general. They donate more. They invest more in other women. There’s a movement here. I want women to bet on themselves. I want them to start companies. They don’t even have to start a company. They can go after their dreams in whatever way that may be. Ultimately, that comes from grit and resilience and confidence, so there’s a mindset piece to it. Then for those who do want to start a business, I wanted to provide some tactical information, some actionable tools, a roadmap to how you might think about that. We see a lot about the Jeff Bezoses, the Elon Musks in the media and the press, but I literally built a business doing something that a child could do. Anyone can make a cupcake. Entrepreneurship really is for everyone. It’s not just for tech savants. It’s not just for people who are sending rocket ships to the moon. I think that ultimately would be my message.
Zibby: I love that. I think there is so much untapped potential for women of a certain age, fifties, sixties, seventies. There was an eighty-year-old woman who came to this book event yesterday and was like, “What about me? I’ve got all this time. I don’t want to just be told to walk up and down the hill to UCLA or whatever. I don’t want to be told to take my vitamins. I’m just as smart and as engaged as I was, but no one’s talking to me. What should I do?” Every so often, I get so excited. There are all these women out there with time now, and potential and brilliance. If everybody got together and did cool stuff, the world would really change.
Candace: A hundred percent.
Zibby: I get very excited about that too.
Candace: I’m a big believer in second chapters, obviously, because I had to create mine. You’re right. These women that have time are vibrant. They have energy. They have resources. They’re, a lot of them, very mission driven. There’s more heart, sometimes, in businesses that women found. Let’s harness them. Let’s go round them up and do some fun things.
Zibby: I would love it. Yes. It’s so exciting. The last thing I just want to touch on is, you made a conscious choice at some point to decide to put yourself forward as a brand. We discussed this a little bit before, really, starting the TV shows and even now, helping Daniele with his show and making yourself out there and a public figure. Do you have any regrets about that? How do you feel about that aspect of your life and taking your behind-the-counter and not only coming out, but being on TV and being really public? How do you feel about it now?
Candace: I think it was good practice, actually, to step out from behind the bakery counter and step into my brand because now in this day and age, everybody has to be a brand. It doesn’t matter if you’re starting a company. Everybody has to have a personal brand, persona. Whether it’s doing a podcast or just turning your iPhone on yourself and running an IG Live or whatever it is, we have this free marketing tool at our disposal. Frankly, if you’re starting a company, people expect you to use it. The investors, if you’re raising money, are asking you what your social media plan is. Again, I have a lot of friends who are more my age who are struggling with that. They don’t think that they look good enough to get in front of the camera. They need to be ready for that. That’s why I actually think that TikTok is a refreshing change of pace. Instagram was this very — that’s how I was brought up. That’s where Sprinkles really was brought up. It’s this glossy, idealized place where people go to see aspirational pictures of what they — it’s just perfection personified. TikTok is raw and gritty. Sometimes I feel like even though we think of TikTok as being a much younger platform, I say to my friends, start on TikTok. If you’re starting a brand, start on TikTok. Show up as your messy self because that’s what people like. It’s kind of an ego boost, actually, because there is something that feels bad about feeling like you need to feel filtered or the photo needs to be just so. Ugh, it’s just exhausting. TikTok, you don’t need to do that.
My point in saying that, I embraced my personal brand early, so I think it was good practice for what is expected now. There’s a whole spectrum of how you can embrace it. The original show, Cupcake Wars, that I was on for ten seasons on the Food Network, was a docuseries. The original ask was, we’re going to follow you around in your business. We’re going to come in your home. We’re going to video your kids. That was a hard no. There are things that are sacred that you just don’t put out there. That’s my family. I didn’t put a picture of my — everyone does it differently. This is not judgement. This is what was right for me. I didn’t put a picture of my kid on Instagram until they were old enough to be on Instagram. Then when the Food Network said, competition shows are doing really well for us, maybe Candace would consider being a judge, I was like, that is the type of persona I can get behind. That is the type of TV that feels comfortable to me. You’re right, now I’m having fun packaging other people’s brands. I just cocreated and I’m executive producing this show on Hulu for Daniele called Best in Dough. He’s essentially going to be — what I was for Cupcake Wars, he’ll be for this pizza competition show. It starts streaming September 19th. Shameless plug. It’s really fun for me because having that founder story, having that additional person behind the brand really just deepens the brand itself.
Zibby: You referenced
Candace: It’s scary. It’s a little bit scary. If you’re a highly sensitive person — I can’t even tell you how hard it was for me when I first started. It was before I personally came out as a brand. When I opened a public company — a retail company, not public company — all of a sudden, there were reviews online. I would pour over those reviews. It would cut me like a knife. As we know, the internet is largely for complaining. There were a lot of negative reviews even though there was a line out the door. I have to say, I give a lot of credit to my friends in the entertainment industry who advised me on this. Do not read the reviews.
Zibby: I’m going to say the same thing to you for your book. It’s the same thing. Not that you haven’t already had a cookbook. It’s the same thing for authors. Don’t read your reviews. It does no good.
Candace: Okay, that is a good reminder. That is a good reminder because it is, it’s all the same stuff when you put yourself out there. I quote Gwyneth Paltrow in the book about this. I don’t remember it verbatim. It’s basically like, what type of person do you want to be? Do you want to be the person creating things in the world, or do you want to be the one on the sidelines critiquing it? At the end of the day, you have to have both, but who would you prefer to be? I know I’d rather be the one putting myself out there, sometimes falling flat on my face, but sometimes succeeding as a result.
Zibby: I think that’s why all the people were online who wanted to hear your story. People just want a little piece of that. They want to be a part of a success story, a lot of people. That’s why they want to hear your story. Then they take a bite, and they’re like, I’m part of this journey now too. I’m helping so much.
Candace: It’s true. These people, it was like they took their marching orders. They had their box of cupcakes. They heard our story. They were like, uh-huh. They marched out into the world, shared the cupcakes with people and shared our story with people. In any company, that is what you want. That’s the holy grail of marketing, is that organic word of mouth. The easier you can make that for people — when I say easy, I mean digestible, a story that people can hook onto, it’s easy to share — the better it will be.
Zibby: It’s so true. Congratulations on the sweet success of your life and your book.
Candace: Thank you so much.
Zibby: It’s really inspiring and awesome. Hopefully, this conversation, your book, all of it inspires all these little things to start happening and roots to start growing. It’s just very exciting, the ripple effects. It’s awesome.
Candace: Thank you. It is amazing, the power of a book. I feel like there’s something different about the energy of a book that I wasn’t expecting. I thought of a book as being just sort of a brand extension, but it’s not. It’s really a launching-off pad to something else. People treat books — it’s sort of rarified. There’s something very special with the way that people consider books. I love it. I love being part of it. It’s very different. I have a — I’ll put it in quotes — “book” out prior to this one, but it’s a cookbook, so very different.
Zibby: Still, amazing. Thanks for coming on.
Candace: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Zibby: Congrats.
Candace: Thanks.
