Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Sprinkles Co-Founder Candace Nelson

I recently interviewed Candice Nelson on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a New York Times bestselling author, TV personality, and entrepreneur. Candice Nelson is the co-founder of Sprinkles, the world's first cupcake bakery and ATM. Candace is also a judge on the TV shows Cupcake Wars and Sugar Rush, the co-creator of the TV show Best in Dough, and the author of the new book, Sweet Success: A Simple Recipe to Turn Your Passion Into Profit. Candace, thank you for joining us.

Candice: Thank you for having me.

Adam: You grew up in Indonesia but went to high school in the U.S. and went to college at Wesleyan in Connecticut. And you worked as an investment banker before entering the baking business. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What experiences and lessons were most instrumental to shaping your worldview and shaping the trajectory of your success?

Candice: Wow, you really do your homework, don't you? Yes, I did grow up as an ex-pat most of my childhood and we moved around quite a bit as a family and spent a lot of years in Southeast Asia, most notably Indonesia. And when I was a little girl growing up on the island of Sumatra, I missed home, I missed my friends, I missed the TV shows I used to love, I missed being able to go to the mall and get stickers for my sticker collection, all of these things that as a preteen American girl, I missed. And this, of course, was pre-internet, pre-Netflix and all of that long-distance phone calls were expensive and typically dropped. So for me to find that connection to home, I had to make it myself. And so when I was craving the treats I missed from home, classic American desserts like rice krispie treats and brownies and cupcakes, of course, I had to get in the kitchen and make them myself. I couldn't pop down to the corner bakery and get those. So I spent hours and hours in the kitchen with my mom. We were baking from her Joy of Cooking cookbook, which ended up becoming tattered and worn and stained, and which is the best kind of cookbook to have. And I made these delicious treats and found a great way to connect not only with my mom and bond with her, but to connect with a home that I really missed. And as I grew up and went to boarding school, and then went to college and went into investment banking, there wasn't a ton of time to bake. I always loved it. I always loved treating myself to beautiful desserts and baked goods and always had such an appreciation for it. But I never in a million years thought I could do it for a living. I didn't have a model for that in my life. My dad was a corporate lawyer for a couple of different multinational corporations. That's why we moved around a lot. He was a very risk-averse person. And I didn't have a model for entrepreneurship. In my world, I was taught to go to a great school and get a job and focus on climbing the corporate ladder. So that's what I did. And that's what I thought I would be doing for the rest of my life. And then life threw me a one-two punch. The first was the ‘.com boom’, which I had been working through first as an investment banker and then an internet company turned into a bust and I was without a job. And it was the first time in my life that I looked around, and I'd been doing everything quote-unquote, right? And it hadn't turned out. And so I thought, hmm, I guess this whole security thing is a bit of a myth. And then a few months later 9/11 happened. And that was when I really did some self-reflection because up until then I thought well, I'll just go to business school and find another job. But in the wake of 9/11, I really was able to do some deep reflection. And what came out of that was that I really didn't like crunching numbers. I really wanted to do the one thing that I enjoyed that brought me joy and that added a little bit back into the world. And so I decided to take a really big left turn and go to pastry school instead of business school, that was the beginning of my Sprinkles journey.

Adam: Candace, I love it. And you're hitting on themes that are so familiar and personal to me, so familiar and personal to listeners of this podcast, the importance of pursuing something that brings you joy, the importance of pursuing something that allows you to add something back into the world. Something that I tell audiences that I speak to is, when you're trying to figure out what to do with your life with your career, you want to try to check three boxes. You want to try to find something that you love, you want to try to find something that you're great at, and you want to try to find something that allows you to make a positive impact in the lives of others. And if you can check all three of those boxes, that's it. It doesn't feel like work. You can get up first thing in the morning and you can go until you have no energy left. And the next morning, you're fired up to go back and do it again. That's it, you found it. And clearly with this, you found it.

Candice: I did. I can't believe it was baking. I never thought that was a possible career path. But I made it work. Out of pastry school, I decided I had six months of being creative and getting my hands into dough and making incredibly beautiful, delicious things. And I found it so rewarding because it was just so simple, right? It was just grounding the way you could create magic out of a few ingredients, something tangible that you could give to someone to watch them enjoy. It was so different from what I had been doing, which was just creating spreadsheets, Excel spreadsheets, and I loved it. But the business side of my brain didn't magically disappear. So out of pastry school, I decided I was going to start a cake business. And so I thought I'd be really creative with these special occasion cakes and spend hours on these beautiful fondant decorations and tint buttercream and make these fabulous creations and sell them. But what I realized very quickly is that people don't buy that many cakes like that. They are, by their nature, reserved for special occasions. So it wasn't the best business idea.

Adam: Well, if your first business idea doesn't work, you pivot. Here we're going to talk about the importance of pivoting in business, the importance of pivoting in life, as you did so successfully. But I want to go back to how you were able to discover this right path for you. You mentioned right after 9/11 you spent a significant period in your life engaging in deep introspection. What advice do you have for anyone listening on how to discover what it is that they're great at and what it is that brings them joy? What is it that they should be pursuing?

Candice: Such an interesting question because I feel like my whole life I have been in pursuit of that. I know when I was growing up, people were taught that they were supposed to do one thing, to find that one thing that they loved and pursue it. And I was always this well-rounded kid. And there were things I loved. But I wasn't like one of those friends of mine who always knew they wanted to be a lawyer or a doctor or teacher. And I felt somehow badly about that I wasn't going to have success because I didn't have that one burning passion. And what's so funny is that I always did have that one burning passion, but because it never revealed itself as being a viable career choice I didn't consider it. And when I was trying to sort of figure out what I was going to do with my life. In the wake of losing my job in the ‘.com bust’, I did a lot of active investigation. I read that book, What Color is Your Parachute? so many times I think that it was about as worn thin as the Joy of Cooking cookbook that I grew up with. I went and I did career aptitude testing. I did it all. One of the things that kept coming up was, what did you like to do as a kid? Which seems so simple. I mean, there aren't that many things that you did as a kid that you can actually turn into a career, but that is what I ended up doing. Which is so funny to me. And I think what you do as a child is really your most authentic and genuine passion before it gets colored by expectations and what the world is driving you to do. And so after all of this sort of searching and reading and testing, I did end up embracing what I had done as a child.

Adam: It's really interesting. And you shared so many really important pieces of advice there. Firstly, it's never too early or too late to get on this journey. This journey of self-discovery, this journey of understanding what it is about you that makes you great, what it is about you that fuels you, what it is that you should be pursuing. Another great lesson. When times were tough, you went to work, you did the hard work that ultimately led to this great discovery that ultimately led to your entrepreneurial success.

Candice: I think one of the things that really helped, and I did, you're right, I got to work, I was searching, I was trying. But I also did, I'm not gonna lie, I spent some time sulking on the couch. I am not gonna just gloss right over that. Because I didn't know exactly what to do. I had plenty of energy to spare, but I didn't know how to channel it. And the funniest thing happened as I was sitting on the couch, watching hours and hours of The Oprah Winfrey Show, and the Martha Stewart show, which by the way, there is so much at our disposal these days in terms of inspiration, podcasts like yours, and masterminds and everything you could possibly imagine. But at the time, as a woman looking for inspiration for her next move, there wasn't that much. But there was Oprah. And there was Martha Stewart. And one of the things, I've gone to Wesleyan, as you said, is a very progressive University. And I was raised to think here I am, I've been offered this opportunity as a woman to go into the career world, go into a sector that doesn't even, not to say allow, but it doesn't offer opportunity to many women, at least it didn't at the time, investment banking. So to think about embracing the domestic arts as my next career move to me, felt a little regressive. It felt a little anti-feminist. It almost felt like turning my back on the opportunities that had been created for me. But the woman who made me realize that it was okay was Martha Stewart because here was this woman who was, by the way, in her second chapter of life. And she had created this incredible business based on embracing the domestic arts. And she was unapologetic about it. She was whip-smart. And she created this incredible community. And I think, here was this woman who showed up, who was showing up every day, as strong and as a leader, but also as her feminine self, being able to garden, making her own pie for Thanksgiving dinner. Like all of these things that I had been taught, we were moving away from as women. She allowed me to accept again.

Adam: I think that's a really powerful point for listeners. It brings me back to an interview that I did about a year ago with an Emmy Award-winning broadcaster, Adrienne Bankert. And one of the things that Adrienne mentioned to me is that she considers one of her greatest mentors to be Oprah Winfrey, and Oprah has made an indelible impact on Adrienne's career. Adrienne never met Oprah Winfrey. But through osmosis, by watching Oprah on video, by reading Oprah's books, by studying Oprah, she's learned how to become a great broadcaster. And you can have great mentors, you should have great mentors, mentors who are a part of your life. You see them once a month, you see them however often you want to, however often you need to. But the power of many mentors, people who you might only see once, you might only speak to once, or who you might never interact with at all. You might interact with them by reading their books, watching them, or listening to them. I've heard this over and over and over again from people I've interviewed. I've heard this from Alan Mariska, the founder of EA, I heard this from Gary Friedman, the CEO of RH, it's a key theme. You can learn from anyone and everyone around you. They don't need to be someone who you know, personally.

Candice: They're leading by example. And look at the ripple effect that follows and by the way, I can speak to the transcendent power of Oprah Winfrey, and can I fast forward for a second?

Adam: You're the guest. You can do anything you want here. It’s your 30 minutes.
Candice: Okay, this podcast is about to take a whole nother turn. My husband and I were asked to bring our cupcakes to The Oprah Winfrey Show. We hadn't even been open a year at Sprinkles. We just got through our first holiday season, where we were the gift to give on every agency, every studio’s list, and we were exhausted. It had been the most maniacal time, my husband and I had slept on the bakery floor. I mean, these were grueling days. And it was January and so many people in L.A., as you know, being a local, they go on their January cleanses. And that's not just in L.A., but people were staying away from the desserts a little bit. And we were thrilled because we were so tired. And so it was one of those days, we were shutting off the ovens early and cleaning up the bakery and the phone rang and it was Harpo Studios. And I figured it was over his production company in Santa Monica calling for cupcakes. Well, it was a producer on the other end of the line. And she said Oprah loves your cupcakes. And I've already established how important Oprah was to me just in terms of the trajectory of my career and just love her anyway. She's such an incredible, incredible being. But I said, “She does?”. And when I picked myself up off the floor, she said, “Yeah, and we need 350 of your cupcakes in Chicago tomorrow morning at 5 am”. And this is, we're winding down the day, the night before. And I said, “Yes”. Because when an opportunity like that knocks, you say yes and you figure it out later I shouted to the back, fire up those ovens again, we're going to Oprah. And sure enough, my husband and I stacked boxes, as many as we could fit into huge shopping bags. We booked a red eye, his brother happened to be visiting. So we had another person, another cupcake Sherpa to help us. And we had nothing else on us, just the clothes on our back and those cupcakes. And we showed up backstage at Oprah at four in the morning. I mean, Oprah wasn't even there yet. So I was there to watch her come in before hair and makeup. And she just came in very silently sleepy. And then about an hour and a half later, she comes out and she's transformed. And she's got her show presence on. And the room just went silent. And this is backstage where all her producers are. These aren't guests. These are people who are used to seeing her and it is just the power of Oprah Winfrey that is literally palpable. And she actually looked in my direction and complimented me on my sweater. And I was like, well, it's official. This sweater is never being washed again. But then proceeded to film her show. And we watched backstage as she delivered a love letter to our cupcakes, which was like an out-of-body experience. But I get that this is a very long-winded way of saying I can understand how someone like Oprah Winfrey can and does have such a positive power over people that she's never even met.

Adam: Well, in addition to saying that, you shared some really important lessons, the importance of manifesting. You wanted to connect with Oprah and understood the power of connecting with Oprah. And by manifesting it, it made it all that much more likely that it was going to happen. The importance of resourcefulness. The best entrepreneurs are those who are the most resourceful, being willing to do whatever it takes. You and your husband, the founders of the business, the two most important people, the two most powerful people in the business, you're the ones pulling the all-nighter, you're the ones going in and getting your hands dirty, doing whatever it takes flying in making it happen.

Candice: It's so true. You got to do the work. You've got to do the work and you build a team that wants to do the work too. But you're doing everything that your team does for a long time before you're able to move on to the next strategic vision. You have to be a servant leader, particularly in the food world, you have to be a servant leader.

Adam: Exactly. Even when you have the team you're leading by example. 

Candice: Exactly.

Adam: So you fast-forwarded, but I want to rewind a little bit. You brought up this game-changing moment in your business, connecting with Oprah, having Oprah not only plug your cupcakes and plug your business but praise your business and make it a central theme of one of our episodes. How did you get to that place? How did you cut through the clutter? Break through all the noise you shared about how your first idea didn't quite make it. You pivoted to this idea for a cupcake-focused business. Your first shop was his high-end bakery in Beverly Hills. What did you do that allowed you to get to this place where your business was ultimately able to take off?

Candice: So after I realized that cakes were not going to be the business idea that took off, I realized I wanted to make something that people could conceivably eat every day. And I remember once walking through a supermarket, and going by the bakery section, and seeing all of these cupcakes that were stacked up in these plastic clam shells. They were hideously decorated, tacky cupcake picks, and bad sprinkles. And I just thought, here's this beloved treat that is uniquely American. A treat that we all love, we grew up with celebrating birthday parties. And look where it's been relegated to the supermarket bakery, and I just thought a cupcake deserves more. The cupcake deserves our respect. And I set out to elevate the cupcake. I just thought it needed a makeover. It needed to be brought into the modern age. And I also felt like if I could do that, if I could infuse the same care that I reserved for the special occasion cakes into the cupcake, then it would actually be a legitimate dessert that adults would love too. Not that adults weren't eating cupcakes, but they were eating them more out of nostalgia, not because they truly enjoyed them. And so I set about to reinvent the cupcake.

Adam: How did you cut through the clutter? How did you build this level of awareness that has ultimately been so essential to the success of your business?

Candice: Well, coming from the technology world, I knew that if I was going to bet it all on cupcakes, there was an inherent issue, which was that my business was not that defensible. There was no real intellectual property, there was nothing to really defend this product because anyone can make a cupcake. So what I decided to do was really lean into the brand. I was elevating the cupcake, I was making it a modern dessert, making it aspirational, making it giftable using the world's best vanilla and chocolate. And so everything about that cupcake had to be reflective of the fact that this was something new and elevated. So I really focused on the look of the cupcake and not just the ingredients and the technique. I wanted to obviously have an exceptional product or product that people would crave and come back for and splurge for. But then I also really dug into the look of the cupcake and the experience of the store itself. The moment you walked into a Sprinkles bakery, you had to understand whether or not you could really pick out all the details or why you felt the way you did. But you had to understand that you were in a very different type of bakery and that you're about to experience a very different type of cupcake. And so just absolutely dissected the cupcake from beginning to end. And that included typical traditional bakeries that use those pastel cupcake wrappers. I use these chocolate brown cupcake wrappers. They were opaque, they were more sophisticated and they rounded the cupcake. Instead of using a piping bag which felt more production line, I used offset spatulas to create this more artisanal look of frosting. And then I also wanted to reinvent the traditional sprinkles. So I did that by creating this new decoration, which we call the modern dot two concentric, brightly colored circles, that ultimately ended up becoming a really important differentiator for our brand. People really thought about that modern dot, when people saw that modern dot, they knew it was a Sprinkles cupcake. And they became so synonymous with our cupcakes that I actually did apply for trademark protection, and was granted it. So given that I came into this business with intellectual property in mind and it ended up being so important because, as I said, starting a cupcake bakery, there is so little that you can defend, there's so little that you can own. But I did find that one thing I could. And it ended up being a really important differentiator for our business.

Adam: Yeah, it really came down to your ability to build this incredible brand. So much of your success beyond Sprinkles has been a byproduct of your ability to build and cultivate your personal brand. Hmm, what are your best tips for listeners on the topics of branding and personal branding?

Candice: Well, building a brand for your business really starts with your why and what you stand for. And Sprinkles was all about, for me personally, it had been that search for joy in the wake of 9/11. And finding a place where people could come together and agree on things in what is typically a very fractured and divisive world. So it was about elevating those everyday moments and injecting joy into them. So that was our brand. And that's how we showed up every day to deliver on that brand promise. But my personal brand, actually I stumbled into as much less intentional. It just came about because the media was showing up in the bakery because there was just this phenomenon going on. We became known for these lines down the block, and everybody was scratching their heads that people were lining up for a $3 cupcake, particularly the height of the low-carb craze. So TV cameras would show up and they needed somebody on camera, and I was in the back with my baseball hat on and covered in powdered sugar. And I thought, well, that's me. So I sort of dust myself off and talk to the news crew, and then head on back into the bakery. But the cupcake phenomenon continued. And to the point where there was a producer who was driving down little Santa Monica, which is the street of our first Sprinkles, opened on, and drove by Sprinkles, saw the line, noticed it, and then a couple of blocks later, she noticed another cupcake bakery that had recently opened from New York. And it opened two blocks away, which was a little weird, to be honest. But she looked at both of these cupcake bakeries, and she said, “It's a goddamn cupcake war out there”. Ding, ding, ding aha moment. She has the name for her new show, she takes it to Food Network, they say we love it. They didn't even know what the show was going to be yet. But they bought it based on that name alone. And then they came to me and said they needed the queen of cupcakes to be the judge for what turned out to be a cupcake competition show. And at that point, there was so much noise going on in the cupcake world. What had initially been considered a crazy idea, all of a sudden, once we were successful, became a very natural idea. And there were cupcake bakeries popping up everywhere around the country. We needed something to differentiate us again. And when stepping into your personal brand, that is one of the most important ways you can differentiate your product, you can humanize your product, you can show up in a way that really represents your company's brand promise. And that's exactly what I did. I showed up as the premier cupcake expert on a very joyful family show week after week after week. And it was incredibly important to the success of our business for awareness, really on a national level, but also just to differentiate ourselves as the first to enter the cupcake world, and also the leaders. So TV was how I really stepped into my personal brand. And that's not available to everyone. But certainly these days everyone has a phone for the most part. And there are a plethora of social platforms available to us apps that you can download for free and you can literally turn the phone on yourself and start to talk and build an audience. And I think If you can do that, and you can humanize your brand, and customers love to buy into people. So it's a real missed opportunity if you're not doing it.

Adam: And your journey really started with you walking outside with a baseball cap. Hopefully it was an Angels cap and not a Dodgers cap because that might change the trajectory of this interview. But you're wearing a baseball cap and a dirty apron, you are being authentically you. You weren't going out there dressed for the cameras, you are going out there dressed as you are dressed being you being your authentic self. And that's how you do it. Be yourself, be you.

Candice: That's right. People are hungry for that, they're hungry for authentic connection.

Adam: Absolutely. Candice, you've spent your career since leaving the world of investment banking, not only in the business of food, but in the business of carbs, sugar, sweets, and not exactly the healthiest food. How have you been able to maintain a healthy lifestyle being in this business, being around this food all day and all night? As you shared with that great story. And what advice do you have for even the most avid customers of your products on how to maintain a healthy lifestyle?

Candice: So I've always believed that food is part of life's great joys. And it really is about embracing foods that you love in a joyful way and not making them shameful, and enjoying them with people that you love. I think so much of health is mental and being happy and feeling connected. And I really see celebratory foods, delicious foods as a great way to do that. Sprinkles is definitely not a health food. But certainly at the time, what we were doing was using real and natural ingredients, which a lot of cupcakes that were being made at the time we're not doing, right? Using butter instead of shortening and our frosting using great chocolate and real vanilla extract. So it is meant to be an indulgence, but one that you enjoy wholeheartedly. And the same goes for pizza. I now have a pizza concept called Pizza Anna, which is a NEO Neapolitan pizza concept. And it's all about the ingredients and the technique. And the fact that this is real food, and to be celebrated and enjoyed. And yeah, I think given that I work in the food industry and sometimes I have to do menu tastings, or I'm writing a cookbook or I'm at a food competition showing and tasting cupcakes all day. I don't recommend eating like that. That's just the nature of what I have to do sometimes for my job. But then on the other side, I'll make sure I'm active. Sometimes I'll do some intermittent fasting to just normalize again. But in general, I think you should be able to indulge in the foods that you love that have been thoughtfully created for you and enjoy and not beat yourself up about it because that kind of defeats the purpose.

Adam: Candace, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Candice: Hmm. I think we all have to dream dreams that light us up, not goals that we think we can achieve or dreams that seem reasonable. It's like no, you need to dream the dreams that seem unreasonable. That just gets you excited. I remember before Sprinkles I dreamed of having a cookbook. I don't know if I even dreamed that it would be a New York Times bestselling cookbook. I couldn't even conceive of that. I dreamed of being on the Food Network. This was back in the day when I was out of a job. I don't think I've even gone to pastry school yet. I mean, these were ridiculous dreams. Truly, if I'd spoken them out loud, which I didn't dare do. But that feeling of possibility. That feeling of being excited about something really is what gets you going and what gets you working on a path and gets you motivated to work hard. And so I think dream those big dreams. But if you're thinking about starting a business, start small. Start with those first few steps and test. Test your idea, test your thesis before you go all in.

Adam: Candace, thank you for all the great advice and thank you for being part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Candice: Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure.


Adam Mendler is the CEO of The Veloz Group, where he co-founded and oversees ventures across a wide variety of industries. Adam is also the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. Adam has written extensively on leadership, management, entrepreneurship, marketing and sales, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities and non-profit organizations.

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