I recently interviewed celebrity chef Duff Goldman on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today is a celebrity chef and a mainstay on the Food Network. Duff Goldman was the star of the hit TV show Ace of Cakes and currently serves as a judge on Food Network's Holiday Baking Championship and Spring Baking Championship and is a co-host of Kids Baking Championship. Duff, thank you for joining us.

Duff: Yeah, good to be here, man. Thanks for having me.

Adam: You grew up all over Detroit and the DMV area in Kansas and Massachusetts. You broke into the culinary world when you were 14 when you started working at a bagel shop, but you were passionate about food long before that. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Duff: My whole family were obsessed with food. We're typical Jews. Everything revolves around food. Every holiday, we're all in the kitchen. It's all about food. I mean, you look at Passover, the entire ritual revolves around food. Food is a big deal. And my great-grandmother made this really incredible strudel. She was a great baker. her strudel. It was a thing. When she made it, it was like an event. And I remember being in her kitchen in her little apartment in Wichita, Kansas when she would be making this stuff. And I just remember the excitement that was around it. And so I think that every interaction I ever had with food, be it regular dinner every night, dinners on the table or a big festival, food mattered. I think that's one of the things. And my mom used to watch cooking shows. And so I used to watch cooking shows and I loved them. And I used to pretend I was a chef when I was a little kid. And so I think that's where not that I was like, oh, I'm going to be a chef, but I just was aware of good food early on. When I was 14, I was a graffiti artist, and I couldn't really ask my mom for money for spray paint, because she'd be like, why do you need 50 cans of spray paint? She would be rightly concerned, as any parent should. So I got the only job that you can really get when you're that age, and that's in food service. So I started working at Skolnick's Bagel Bakery. Didn't last long because it was in the mall and it was like a mall store. And if somebody orders a pastrami bagel, the pastrami is pre-portioned. And so I'd make these sandwiches. I'm like, you need more pastrami on that sandwich. And so I would put like three of those on there. And they're like, yeah, every time you work, our food cost goes down the drain. So I didn't last long at the bagel shop. I ended up working at McDonald's, which was a really great job for somebody that young. Because you just learn things like consistency and working within a system, doing things in the correct order, that I think is a really important lesson. Like, McDonald's was an absolutely fantastic first job. I think taking pleasure in good work, when you do something well, it feels good. It feels good to be good at something. So the McDonald's I worked at was actually in Hyannis in Massachusetts. And it was right across from where the ferry from Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard would dock. And there was no McDonald's on Martha's Vineyard. So what would happen is every time the ferry would dock, everybody would come in and they'd get 15 cheeseburgers and 10 Big Macs and all these McChicken’s. And then they'd bring them back and put them in their freezer so they could have McDonald's at home on an island where they lived. And so we would get slammed sometimes. And it got to the point, I can make 12 Big Macs in under a minute. when you can do that it feels good i mean it sounds silly right like yeah you can make 12 Big Macs in a minute but being able to sort of have that kinetic intelligence to be able to jam those out and you know that every one of them it's got the right amount of onions it's got the right amount of pickles the buns are nice and toasted you got the right amount of special sauce in there The special sauce comes out of a caulking gun. So you're like, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And knowing that you've got the sauce right in the right spot, it just felt good to like, you know, boom, here's 12 fresh Big Macs, and they're all wrapped well, and they look good. That feels nice. And that feels nice when you're making a $20,000 wedding cake, or if you're making a quarter pounder with cheese. When you do a good job, it feels good.

Adam: Duff, I love that, and it's a really important lesson for anyone listening. Being committed to excellence is something that every single one of us should be focused on every single day, regardless of what we're doing, regardless of where we are in an organization, regardless of what kind of job we have, what kind of career we have. To your point, you could be the CEO of a company or you could be an entry-level person working at McDonald's. It's the same mindset. It's the same effort. It's the same input to ultimately generate a product that you are going to be proud of.

Duff: Absolutely.

Adam: Was there a moment in your career when you realized, not only do I love doing this, not only is this fun for me, but I'm actually really good at this, I'm really gifted at this, I can become great at this?

Duff: I know the exact moment. I had already graduated high school and I was getting ready to go to college. My brother, who was going to James Madison in Virginia, drove up to Massachusetts to drive down with me to take me to college. And he came into the restaurant I was working at the time was called sandwich pizza, because it was a pizza restaurant in the town of sandwich, not sandwiches and pizza, although we did have sandwiches. And so my brother came in and he was hanging out in the kitchen while I was working. and he was like, hey, make me a steak and cheese. I know how my brother likes a steak and cheese. It's the same way I like a steak and cheese. And so we go over to the griddle. I get this chunk of frozen paper-thin sliced beef, like shredded beef, and I put it on the griddle. And then I have these two griddle spatulas and you start chopping it up. And so my brother and I were just sitting there talking and hanging out, some of my friends in the restaurant, and we were all just being teenagers, just goofing around. And the whole time I was talking, my hands were just doing this. A light bulb went off and I was like, I'm really good at this. I'm not even paying attention and I'm making a perfect steak and cheese grab the bun sliced it buttered it right on the griddle to toast the edges. I got my mayonnaise gun beef onions lettuce boom. It was a man, which it was a delicious sandwich and it was perfect and it was like muscle memory. It was just automatic. I was moving like a robot and that's when I realized you, I think I want to be a chef does I no idea what to major in when I went to college, I had no clue. I'm a crazy history buff. And I ended up with a degree in history and then a minor in philosophy because it was just stuff that I liked. But you have a degree in history and philosophy, the philosophy store isn't hiring. So I had to find something that I could do for a living. And I just knew I want to be a chef. I like this. I'm good at it. I can do this for a job.

Adam: How did you get from that place, having the confidence in yourself, recognizing that I can be great at this, this is what I want to do and I'm going to do it, to attaining greatness, getting there. And what can anyone do, regardless of what they're pursuing, to become great?

Duff: I mean, we were talking about just the pursuit of excellence, just being good at stuff. Part of that is being really honest with yourself. It's really important if you have a shortcoming to address it, to become aware of it. I think we're making a lot of strides in the field of mental health. And I think a lot of the things that, you know, people like you got to be kind to yourself. You got to watch how you talk to yourself. And all those things are very important. I've definitely had to learn that lesson. But at the same time, you got to remember not to coddle yourself and not to allow yourself to kind of slip into this like, oh, it's OK, you'll do better next time mindset. You got to sit yourself down like, look, I love you, but get it together. Be better than this. You can be better than this and see in your work the things that need improving and being able to be honest enough, but kind enough to be like, hey, you can do better here. I'm not beating myself up. I'm not calling myself an idiot, but just making sure that you look at something and be like, is that the best I can do? And your answer should be honest. And if your answer is honest, you can get much better. I think that really just losing the ego when you lose the ego is really when you allow yourself to grow and you allow yourself to listen.

Adam: A lot of really important themes there. The importance of self-awareness, the importance of intellectual honesty, commitment to improvement, understanding that every single one of us is imperfect. The most successful people. have plenty of shortcomings, but why are they so successful? Because they understand where they fall short and they're committed to getting better, not pretending that they're perfect, not pretending that they can do every single thing well, but aware of what they don't do well and focused on getting better every single day.

Duff: and not getting discouraged. I think a lot of people, they want to be good at everything the first time they do it. And it's funny that the older I get, the more I kind of recognize that the process of learning is beautiful. It's not just having knowledge, but learning stuff is really great. I heard a great quote somebody said to me the other day, every day is a school day. I thought about that and I was like, I really feel like I believe that in my heart. I just never really heard it articulated. But I love to learn. I love to learn new things. And I'm constantly studying. And I think that pursuit, that allowing yourself to become a slave to your curiosity, is great because it just takes you in so many directions and you're always looking around corners and looking indoors and checking stuff out. And the thing about something like I do, I'm a baker, is that baking, I can teach a kid how to bake a good chocolate chip cookie, but they can spend the rest of their life getting better at it. All the things that I'm good at, I make pretty good cakes by all standards. I make good cookies. I make good pies. Everything I make can always be better. And I'm always critical every time, even when I make cornbread for Thanksgiving at my brother's house. I'm very critical of it. All of my recipe books, they are not set-in-stone recipes. Every single one has scratches through it. Nope, that wasn't right. You got to do it this way or no, this wasn't enough sugar or too much salt, whatever it is, because you're constantly getting better. Recipes that I've published in books now are not the same anymore because they've changed over the years. Recipes are alive. My great grandmother strudel, she has her recipe. The way I make it, I mean, totally different, but I've changed some things. And I think it's fantastic. It's still my great-grandmother's strudel. And when my daughter makes it, it's going to be her great, great grandmother's strudel. But I've changed some things. My mom's chicken soup, same thing. I don't make it the exact same way that she did, but it's still my mom's chicken soup.

Adam: Something that many people ask themselves, especially when they hit a certain age, how do I stay relevant? And you just gave the answer to that question. Continually focus on reinventing yourself. Continually focus on getting better. I love the example of your grandmother's strudel recipe. That worked then, that might work today, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be that way today. Don't be afraid to tweak, to tinker. You shared a line that I love. Allow yourself to become a slave to your curiosity.

Duff: A hundred percent. I built a wood shop at my house because when my wife got pregnant, I was like, I need to build her some toys. I want to make her some things. And so I started building her toys and I have become a full-on woodworker. I did carpentry when I was in high school. I did some roofing and framing and stuff. I've always built stuff. When we make these big crazy cakes, you know, I build things, but I've never been a woodworker. And now I have a joiner and a planer and two different-sized Dremels. I got a big one and a small one. I have a bandsaw and a chop saw, and I got all this stuff. And I've become like a full-on Norm Abram woodworker. It's great. So I think staying relevant is just keeping yourself entertained. You got to use that thing just like those muscles. This one's a muscle and you got to use it. And if you don't use it, it gets soft.

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Adam: You mentioned that you could tell anyone exactly how to bake a cake. You could give anyone a recipe. You could give anyone instructions to follow. But the reason why you're a household name in your world is not because you followed instructions, although you did earlier on in your career, you were able to take instructions and execute on them to the best of your abilities, but ultimately it was because of your ability to create. How do you get to a place where you're at your most creative? And how can anyone most effectively unlock their creativity?

Duff: You just have to lose the ego. That's it. You got to not be afraid to look stupid. I've made cakes on television that have completely disintegrated and fallen apart because I was just trying something that was crazy. If I knew if it would work or not, that's not that fun for me. I don't know if this will work. Let's see what happens. And sometimes it doesn't. But that's good. It's good to quote-unquote fail. It's good to fail. You have to because that's how you learn not only the limits of cake and the limits of PVC pipe and wood and motors and all that stuff, but you also learn the limits of yourself and you learn just how far can I take this? How can I make this as crazy as possible? That being said, there are very specific rules to what you do. And so I think one of the things that you have to learn is that life has arts and crafts. We have arts and crafts in life and that they're not the same thing. The art of what I do is making a giant octopus that spews chocolate ink everywhere. But the craft of what I do is understanding How do hydraulics work and how much weight can I put on an actuating cylinder to make sure that the arms can move up and down? What kind of pump do I need to shoot chocolate? Because it's not going to be the air pump for a little fish tank. It has to be a reciprocating pump, something that can actually push gelatinous, glutinous liquids. There's a method to do things. It's really important to learn those things. You have to learn how to bake a cake before you make a life-size elephant. First, you got to know how to bake a cake. And there's rules to baking cakes. There are rules to building a giant elephant, but you don't know them yet. And that's why you have to kind of experiment and not be afraid to let it fall apart. You have to lose the ego. That's the biggest thing. And just allow yourself to be in this space where you're a beginner and you're like, okay, I know nothing about this. How should I do it?

Adam: Understand the rules of the road. Make sure that before you are trying to do anything crazy, you understand the basics. Because if you don't understand the fundamentals, it's going to be really, really hard to become a master. And when you are trying to innovate, when you are trying to do something that hasn't been done before, in order to get there, you can't be afraid of falling on your face. You can't be afraid of failing. Lose your ego.

Duff: Yeah, listen, Evel Knievel, he's going to jump his car over a bunch of buses. And that's cool. Nobody's ever done it before. But before he does that, you got to make sure the internal combustion engine in his car works. And he has to know that when you push on the right pedal, the car goes real fast. There's the nuts and bolts of it. And then there's the all right, here we go.

Adam: How did you get to a place where you've been able to develop this brand that has been so successful in the culinary world? And what are your best tips on the topic of branding?

Duff: Being true to yourself. If I came out with a mascara line you'd be like, I don't know, man. It'd be weird. But being true to yourself and doing things that you generally feel passionate about. I have a partnership with Sun Made Raisins, and that partnership came about because I was eating some raisins one day. And I took this beautiful picture of one with the sun coming through the raisin. It was like glowing green. And so I took a picture and I put it on Instagram. And I was like, you guys, look at this amazing raisin. It looks so good. And Sunmade contacted me. They're like, hey, that's one of our raisins. And I was like, yes, it is one of your raisins. And so they sent me a bunch of raisins. And I was like, I love raisins. And that was like a really organic way that that partnership came about. I didn't tag him in the post. I wasn't fishing for anything. I was just digging on my raises. I think also having a really strong commitment to quality. A lot of times when you're licensing and when you're giving control, to other people, it's really important to make sure that you have a lot of guardrails in place. So the market is going to want to sell this thing for as much as possible and they're going to make it for as cheap as possible. And sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't. And so it's really making sure that one of the criteria of anything that you put your name on is that it's got to be good. It just has to be good. We sell cakes on GoldBelly, making a cake and freezing it and then shipping it cross country. Like you could do that with low-quality cake. You can also do it with delicious cake. And it's just making sure that like, look, we're going to shave some percentage points off of our profits because they have to be good. And I'd rather sell more cakes and have higher margins than sell really not great cakes and have better margins. I'd rather somebody buys two or three than they just buy one and then they never really think about me anymore. He's like, oh yeah, I had that cake and it wasn't that great. We hear all the time, man, your gold belly cakes are absolutely delicious. And I'm not trying to do a commercial here. I'm just saying the way that we do that is our approval process is really strict. We have to taste and try everything constantly, not just once. We do it all the time. And then we get to eat a lot of cake too, which is nice.

Adam: The lessons that you shared are highly applicable very broadly. The importance of commitment to a high-quality product. How do you ensure that you are putting out a high-quality product? By doing what you just shared, making sure that you're not cutting corners, being personally involved, being personally invested. You also spoke about the importance of authenticity, which is fundamental to successful leadership. And that's a topic that I would love to explore with you. You've worked in an industry that is not necessarily associated with the best leadership. Oftentimes we think of restaurants as being led by toxic leaders. You've worked in a number of different Restaurants, you've run a number of different businesses. I'm sure you've been around really good leaders. I'm sure you've been around really bad leaders. You have your own leadership style. What do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader and what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Duff: Horror stories get a lot of attention. Everybody's got them. Everybody's worked at a kitchen that wasn't great. But by and large, if you're a maniac, you're not going to run a good kitchen. The people that work for you, they got to believe in you, because if they don't believe in you, you're not going to serve good food. I mean, you can taste fear. You can taste indifference. Those are the kinds of things that would kill a restaurant. So they're not all bad. You got to be a little thick-skinned because you're moving fast and there's heat and there's knives and there's dangerous stuff and there's a lot of moving parts. You got to learn how to be part of a team. But definitely people are getting a little softer than they used to be. And I think in a lot of ways it's good because people are being held accountable for terrible behavior. But also you got to realize sometimes you're going to get chewed out. You know? It's going to happen because sometimes you just got to get chewed out. But as far as being a good leader, the most important thing is you got to lead from the front. You got to lead from the front. You got to be in there and you have to do the work and you have to constantly let everybody know that you have their backs and that you know what you're talking about. I have a pretty unique set of skills. I'm insanely creative. I also have a very unrealistically positive sense of what people can accomplish. I've been told by a lot of my employees that I'm very optimistic about everything. I'm like, oh yeah, we can do that. No problem. I have no sense of time. But I'm not afraid of risk and I'm not afraid of committing to creating something amazing. But I have a lot of people around me that are really good at the numbers, really good at the books, really good at making sure that we are not spending more than we're taking in. It's really important to understand what you're good at, but it's also important to recognize in other people, you're good at this. I'm not good at that. So I think you should answer the phone. I shouldn't answer the phone because when I answer the phone, I'm like, what? What do you want? You're getting married tomorrow? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'll see you tomorrow. Bye. You know what I mean? That's not good for business, but you get somebody who's patient and understanding like, okay, and they can get that information. You build a good team. And I think that when you recognize in other people, their qualities and their strengths, and you let them know that like, hey, you're great at this and not being afraid to say, you're better at this than I am. I still own the company, but you should be doing this part of the job. That's how you do it. And you also just find the people that you vibrate with. My CEO has been working for me. He started in 2008. He was sweeping the floor and now he runs my entire company, the entire company, my GM in Baltimore and the artistic director of the brand. She started working for him when she was still in college. She eventually left and went and got her MBA and then got her MFA and then came back and now she's running things. And she's amazing. I have a lot of people that have been working for me for a really long time because we built a really good team. We all appreciate each other's strengths. They know that I'm not good at numbers. I can do geometry in my head, but when it comes to balancing the books, man, forget about it. My head's in the clouds. I can't do it.

Adam: Duff, you shared so much there that I love. You shared with listeners that you're not the best person on your team at making cakes. You're not the best person on your team at business. Leadership isn't about being the best at everything. Leadership is about empowering the people who are on your team so that they can become their best selves so that they can become as effective as possible at what they do. Something else that you shared, which I love, you said that you can taste fear and you're a culinary expert. I'm definitely not. If you saw what I ate, you'd probably have a heart attack, but I would put it out there and guess that the opposite of that is you could probably also taste love. And one of the most important things that you will find in every single one of the most successful leaders is love. Love of people. Love of what they do. love, passion, essential to successful leadership.

Duff: And empathy.

Adam: Yes. 100%. Yeah.

Duff: Empathy is big, especially when you're providing a service. Empathy is huge because somebody is going to eat that Big Mac I just made. And I know how I like my Big Mac. And I know that I like the meat-centered, you know, when it's not centered and sticking out the side, it's just not as good. I know that I like the bun correctly toasted. And when people don't do that step, you don't get that little crunch. It's just not as good. I know what a good Big Mac tastes like. And that's the one that I was giving people. I know what a beautiful cake looks like. And one of the other things that really makes an effective leader is having a vision. And a lot of people have vision and a lot of people have great ideas. But it's being able to articulate that to somebody else and be like, listen, this is what I see. I need to bring you there. So you see it, too. And then when we both see it, now we can build it. Now we can make it when you get a bunch of people together and you can show them what you're dreaming of and you can be on the same page and speak that same language and develop that lingo. That's when magic happens.

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

Duff: Cutting out the noise a little bit and allowing yourself to surrender to the process of getting better. And whether that's in business, whether that's in a fitness journey, or whether that's in a recipe, in anything, just allowing yourself to be where you are. and then move forward and allowing yourself to learn, allow yourself to grow. You ever learned something and you're like, oh, I'm such an idiot. I can't believe that I didn't know that. We see that to ourselves all the time. Oh my God, how did I not know the difference between asphalt and concrete was this? You've learned this thing, but it's like, wait a minute. You just learned something. That's reason to celebrate. Before you didn't. Five seconds ago, you didn't know this thing. Now, you know this thing. That's awesome. Now, you know one more thing. And that's cool. Allowing yourself be as good as you are at something like, OK, I know that when I make a pie, this is how I make it. I know I can get better. And the next time I do it, I'm going to get better. But right now, allowing yourself to be fulfilled and be excited that like this is the pie I made, not ignoring what could be better about it, but enjoying where it is right now. And knowing that the one you made right now, it's a lot better than the one you made last week. A lot of times we get a little breathless in the pursuit of wherever we want to go. And allowing yourself to relax a little bit, it's kind of lose some of that anxiety of, I'm not there. I'm not there. I'm not there yet. I'm not there yet. That's the thing that I think really kills people's motivation. I'm trying to get fit and I'm eating clean and working out. If I'm every morning looking at myself and be like, you're not 195 yet. That's defeatist. But I have written on my mirror, my starting weight. And then every time I lost weight, what my next one was and the date next to it. So I know that in November I was this, and in September I was this, and you can see that progress. And then you see, like, well, yeah, I'm not 195 yet, but I sure as hell am not 272 either. And that's great.

Adam: Duff, thank you for all the great advice, and thank you for being a part of 30-Minute Mentors.

Duff: Thanks for having me. This was really fun.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is 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. 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. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, 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. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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