Latest / The Curve / Starting, Scaling & Selling a Global Brand with The Caker, Jordan Rondel.

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Starting, Scaling & Selling a Global Brand with The Caker, Jordan Rondel. · The Curve

• 0:00
  Welcome to Raisin the Curve. A podcast designed to teach you everything that you need to know
• 0:04
  to be better with your money. Come and learn alongside me so if you're all right,
• 0:08
  a total beginner from the finance expert Victoria Harris. So I've asked all of the questions
• 0:13
  you wish you could so that finance and besting and growing you are actually makes sense.
• 0:17
  Yes, it's expert education but with promise will not be boring and in the wise words of share.
• 0:22
  My mom said to me, you know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.
• 0:27
  I said, Mom, I am a rich man. Come and talk and learn and laugh with us because together we really
• 0:32
  can raise the curve. This conversation is with Jordan Rondal who is a New Zealander who's moved to
• 0:41
  LA and created the most amazing business called The Caker. So she started it in New Zealander when
• 0:46
  she was like 21 and it grew into this global brand where she was then making cakes for
• 0:54
  Miley Cyrus's birthday and other celebrities and she just created something which just had the
• 1:00
  most incredible brand loyalty that you just don't often see and particularly with a brand that's
• 1:05
  not like a person, you know, like yes, she's a person but the brand is cakes but people just live
• 1:12
  and die by these cakes by the cake boxes and yeah, she's just, she's really amazing and she's
• 1:18
  now living in LA and we spoke all about her journey in business. She started when she was 21
• 1:23
  and it was going for 14 years at the end of last year she decided to sell it and is now kind of
• 1:29
  rethinking what life looks like beyond the cake but I don't know if you remember this but a couple
• 1:35
  of years ago maybe not even that long ago there was this big moment where Chrissy Teigen launched a
• 1:43
  new product which was essentially copying the cake and what Jordan had created and it was the
• 1:48
  big thing on social media. Anyway, we spoke about that but we spoke about resilience, how to deal
• 1:54
  with competition when you're in business. There was just so many moments in this conversation where
• 2:00
  I felt really inspired and super proud of a New Zealand woman who has just created the most amazing
• 2:07
  business. So have a listen, it's a really cool chat and if you would like to find out more about
• 2:13
  Jordan and what she's doing, we'll link her Instagram and the show notes because yeah, she's just
• 2:18
  really cool. So here is the cake. Jordan, I'm so excited to speak to you. I actually have
• 2:28
  followed the cake and been a giant fan of your work from afar for a long time. I think that
• 2:33
  the creativity and like I don't even know how to explain it and this maybe is just going to sound
• 2:38
  like I'm shooting all over New Zealand but I feel like there's not a lot of brands that come out
• 2:43
  of New Zealand where I look at them aesthetically like when you sort of engage with it, it feels like a
• 2:50
  real international brand and I think that what you did with the cake was exactly that and obviously
• 2:55
  you moved overseas and there was like a lot of influence. I guess and also planning around that,
• 3:02
  you know, it seemed like from afar you started the cake and you always knew it was going to be
• 3:08
  so much bigger than baking in your kitchen. But yeah, I just wanted to say it's really cool to
• 3:15
  speak to you and I've heard through, I can't even remember who, but a while ago, I feel like I came
• 3:22
  up with some random idea of doing like cake and crypto night or something and I was like, oh my god,
• 3:27
  the cake would be great for this. And then I was speaking to someone in your team and they were like,
• 3:30
  oh, Jordan's actually like quite into investing. Like she's, she's aware of it, she's interested
• 3:36
  in it and I was like, oh, cool. So anyway, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Yeah,
• 3:41
  it's a real pleasure to have you on. Thanks for having me. I would love to start by just kind of
• 3:46
  speaking about the cake and where it started, which I'm sure you're probably sick of talking about
• 3:52
  and I promise we're not going to stick on this for long, but for those who don't know much about
• 3:57
  the cake or where it started to where it transitioned into being a global recognizable brand,
• 4:04
  was this something that you started and thought this is going to be a huge business or was it a
• 4:11
  passion project that took off? Like what was the like grassroots story of the beginning of the
• 4:17
  cake? Oh, it's a great place to start. So okay, we're going back to 2010. So quite some time ago.
• 4:24
  Oh my gosh. Yeah, good, good 15 years ago now. That's a long time. This is like, you know,
• 4:30
  pre-instagram pre a lot of the the stuff that we know builds amazing brands today or helps
• 4:36
  helps do, but my business was really sprung from a very true authentic kind of undying love for
• 4:46
  baking and a lot of bakers who have successful businesses will say the same thing. It's an easy
• 4:53
  thing to fall in love with. For me, cakes represented so much more than just something really
• 5:00
  delicious or something beautiful to look at. They represented, you know, something super important
• 5:07
  to people's lives and we're often the center point of these most important occasions in people's
• 5:13
  lives. And I think I was really kind of enamored by that. Like it's such a what a cool vehicle
• 5:20
  for celebration, you know, it's also so true that we don't often celebrate success milestones
• 5:27
  outside of the traditional like wedding birthday. So the fact that we have a wedding in a birthday
• 5:33
  to celebrate is like thank goodness we celebrate something because it's just a moment to stop and
• 5:38
  pause and be grateful and be around people you love. So I totally get that. And throughout the
• 5:44
  course of my career as the cake, I I learned there are a ton of occasions that we can celebrate
• 5:49
  with cake. So I really I really fell in love with that whole concept. Yeah, about how they would
• 5:55
  just get so much more than something to eat. They were like actual experiences. So I started the
• 6:01
  brand out of, you know, I've real pure passion for baking, but it quite quickly evolved into something
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  more because I realized that there was this emotional connection that I could form with people.
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  And that made something to me. And I also kind of quite quickly realized that I really love
• 6:17
  entrepreneurship and I love brand building. And I was like, okay, you know, there's no stopping me from
• 6:24
  turning this into some kind of empire to think that at that age, you had those thoughts. But also,
• 6:30
  I think traditionally service industries or skills that require a lot of your time,
• 6:37
  a lot of people really struggle to productize or grow a business outside of that because
• 6:42
  for obvious reasons, it's you can only make so many cakes. So the fact that you realized that
• 6:48
  early was so cool. I wish that I'd had that way of thinking as a young woman, like I just never
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  I never thought about the idea of productizing or commoditizing on my skill sets as an asset
• 7:01
  to be able to build equity in a business. I just never I don't know if it was that I wasn't
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  surrounded by that as a kid or just didn't have the self belief and my own ability to do that.
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  But was there a moment in which that kind of became very obvious to you where you were like, oh,
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  wow, like this, this really could be something so much bigger than what I realize right now?
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  Are there any moments that stick out to you? Yeah. And just, you know, just to go back to what you
• 7:29
  just said, like my dad is a businessman, but like built off a very creative business. He was
• 7:35
  a furniture designer who kind of like had his heyday in the 90s and is still quite well-known in New
• 7:39
  Zealand. So I kind of grew up around a business mindset, but also like very much in the creative
• 7:47
  space. So maybe that's why that kind of came by that naturally to me. I don't know if he's a
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  fool. But yeah, I mean, look, probably the biggest pivotal moment that I recall being like,
• 7:58
  okay, this is the real thing is when my sister joined me in the business. So she came on as a
• 8:05
  co-founder, well, not really co-founder, I'd already sounded it, but she came on as a co-owner
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  about five years in. And together in that first sort of six months together, we tripled revenue,
• 8:18
  we tripled the number of employees we had and we tripled the size of the space that we were
• 8:22
  operating out of. So output also tripled. And I was like, oh, shit, like we can we can really
• 8:28
  build something here. And also, it was just like so much more fun instantly as well,
• 8:33
  having my sister with me. Yeah, it can be a pretty lonely journey starting a business. And I
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  don't know why everyone says that. Like, I don't even know how to put it into words because you can
• 8:44
  talk to people about what's happening. But it's just a completely different stress and all
• 8:50
  encompassing feeling being in a business than having a job. I don't know what it is. I don't
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  know, I'm not trying to preach Steven Bartlett or any of those like entrepreneurial podcasts, but
• 9:01
  there's something that comes with having a partner in crime within your business where it's like,
• 9:06
  a cool, we're in this together. Absolutely. So I totally understand that. Looking back, was there
• 9:13
  early decisions that set the tone for the brand's aesthetic and identity? Because you speak,
• 9:20
  and I guess what you're doing now after the kaker is very much helping with that brand building.
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  Peace, which is so important in such a world that's saturated with brands and social accounts,
• 9:32
  and thus and that, when you look at 21-year-old Jordan, you like that was pretty clever. I like
• 9:39
  that I did that. Well, I think I just kind of did what I liked doing, you know, and one of those
• 9:47
  things was at the time was quite unique. Was creating cakes that tasted even better than they
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  looked like I cared more about taste and aesthetics, but I learned quite quickly that
• 10:01
  when something tastes really good, it also just happens to look really good. In my opinion,
• 10:06
  I took a very authentic, just focus and was like, if I put out what I love, hopefully other people
• 10:15
  love it too, and they really did. I think I could respect what I was doing because of that. It was
• 10:21
  really, you know, I was following my own taste and intuition to guide the brand, and it's what led
• 10:27
  to our commercial success in the end. It almost sounds like such a cliche, but it's so true.
• 10:33
  You just have to do something that you like, and the right people will find your brand.
• 10:39
  It's like, this is a maybe a weird example, but if you think about how many yoga teachers
• 10:44
  there are in the world, and you go to a yoga class and you're like, sometimes you actually just
• 10:47
  take them. There's not where they speak the way they say the word breathe. You're like, no, not for
• 10:52
  me. But then there's people who absolutely love that yoga teacher, and you just have to remember
• 10:56
  you're not ever going to be something that everyone likes, but leaning into that can actually be
• 11:03
  a really amazing way to find what your niche is as a business or as a brand, and for the people that
• 11:09
  are actually going to like it to find you. Totally. I'd love to know as like a, you were a young
• 11:15
  female founder and also in the creative space, did you ever feel underestimated or like misunderstood
• 11:21
  and particularly when it came to money or the financial side of the business? I was thinking about
• 11:26
  this. I mean, I get asked this a lot, and I wish I had a more sort of like gender related
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  answer, but I think maybe where more of the like sort of biases came from,
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  well less about gender and more about like sort of creativity versus business
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  dabbiness. I think there's kind of this assumption that exists like if you're a really creative
• 11:49
  person, you aren't necessarily commercially driven and like aren't able to make amazing brand
• 11:57
  deals and like financially conscious. Like I feel like a lot of people don't think the two things
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  go hand in hand. It is so true. Right. And I think people think that about me, like I've never
• 12:07
  really heard it put like that, but it's true. There's this inherent way that we almost discredit
• 12:13
  creativity as not being financially lucrative. And I guess it's because you look at how people
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  are afflicted in their renumerations, whether they're a doctor or a lawyer or in their finance
• 12:23
  where they're paid a lot. But if you're an amazing graphic designer, often the pay is less like
• 12:29
  it's almost like people subconsciously think of creativity as not as valuable or financially viable.
• 12:36
  Yeah, totally. And I don't know if that has really anything to do with me being a woman,
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  but it's something I certainly experienced. And I think that I like to think that I disproved
• 12:46
  that theory along the way, you know, you can be creative, very creative and also be able to
• 12:51
  pull out a sick brand deal and like make it really commercially viable, 100%. And I guess for
• 12:58
  anyone who has been or worked in or owed a small company knows there is I can't even say the
• 13:07
  question without laughing because it's actually just so stressful sometimes financially. But for
• 13:12
  anyone who has never worked in a small business where there's really limited resources,
• 13:17
  there's always such a push and pull between like what you can spend to grow, what's actually
• 13:23
  feasible, the runway of how long a business can survive based on what you spend.
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  What were some of the biggest financial challenges that you faced when scaling the caker,
• 13:34
  like were any of them surprising or different, what, what were some of those financial
• 13:38
  challenges that you came up against? For a long time, like for the first maybe decades,
• 13:43
  there were no challenges that really like blew me super off course. It wasn't until we decided
• 13:50
  to expand the states that the challenge was really like it hard. First of all, because we had
• 13:56
  decided to bootstrap rather than raise straight up the gate, we were investing a lot in the US
• 14:02
  company in US dollars, but like, you know, using the New Zealand company's profits. So all of a sudden
• 14:09
  the investment was kind of like worth half. We also really wanted to like launch here with a huge bang.
• 14:16
  So we invested more than we were used to ever investing in marketing and just exposure. So it was
• 14:23
  really like, yeah, just a bit of a shock how much money went out the door very quickly, very early.
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  And then also during that exact time, COVID hit. So in the state, we were hit much sooner than in
• 14:37
  New Zealand. So like kind of battling like two different timelines of, you know, the results of
• 14:42
  COVID on the brand and it was, it was both were really, really difficult, but to manage them at
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  different times was also really a challenge. Oh my God, you almost had like a double, double
• 14:53
  Emmy. Yeah, like so unpredictable as well, because what happened in New Zealand was so different
• 14:59
  what happened in the states, you couldn't even look at it and be like, this is probably going to
• 15:02
  happen here. It's like, no, it was all so different the way it played out. It was crazy. Do you,
• 15:08
  when you think about the stuff that you invested in from a marketing or brand exposure perspective,
• 15:13
  like what did you find was actually helpful to break into a new market? Because the states is huge
• 15:20
  and so audacious as a tiny little New Zealand spec of the world to go and be like, nah, we're going
• 15:26
  to make it in LA and in America, like that's wild. What were some of the things that you did spend
• 15:32
  on where you were like, that was a great return on investment. We were totally right. We we went
• 15:36
  from being a pretty big fish and a small pond to being the tiniest little minnow and a huge huge pond.
• 15:43
  So we kind of knew that we had to, you know, speak the language, which is money, that is like the
• 15:50
  only language that people understand here and invest in PR for the first time a bit, like I did
• 15:56
  everything and house myself before this. So we scoped out an agency that we knew a few other
• 16:03
  brands had used and it was really successful and they were very expensive, but we were like,
• 16:08
  it's going to be worth it. And for a launch of a new brand, with a good story and cool founders,
• 16:16
  like it kind of, it did, it did work. Like there was some pretty epic press that came out when we
• 16:21
  launched. We had an amazing Forbes writer and an amazing Buon Appetit, which were both very kind of,
• 16:27
  you know, a story driven and like all about us as founders. It wasn't just like a sell, you know,
• 16:32
  wasn't just about the product and trying to sell anything. And it really paid off in the beginning.
• 16:37
  I quite quickly learned that like, unless you have something to constantly talk about to your
• 16:41
  audience, there's not much point in paying for PR. Yeah, it's quite interesting because we're in
• 16:47
  the same position now. I mean, I wouldn't say we're a big fish and a small pond, but you know,
• 16:51
  some people know what the purpose of New Zealand and then going over to the UK, there's such an
• 16:57
  enormous population there. And whilst there's not actually heaps of competition, it's not like
• 17:03
  saturated with people trying to talk about investing in money. It's very humbling to God,
• 17:10
  and you play some people are like, sorry, what? Sorry, who are you? You're like, oh, this is,
• 17:16
  this is like five years ago, humbling is the word. Oh, it's so humbling. One of the things I'd
• 17:22
  love to ask you about is like, how your relationship with money changed because you went through so
• 17:28
  many different business phases. You know, you had the early days in New Zealand, we're probably
• 17:32
  I imagine most of the revenue coming in, like you could see it, you knew it was going on. It was like
• 17:37
  a lot more controlled to then expanding to a new market. We all like, oh, my God, this is going
• 17:43
  to be huge to then selling an eventual exit for people who might not know what that means. It's
• 17:49
  essentially selling a business and hopefully having some kind of like exit payout. How have you
• 17:56
  noticed? Yeah, I guess your personal and or business relationship with finances changed throughout
• 18:01
  those different stages. Yeah, there were a ton of different stages, you know, during kind of
• 18:07
  our most exponential growth period, we really focused a lot on top line revenue more than profit.
• 18:15
  We were just like, hey, let's just keep growing. And that was so much fun, like to not worry
• 18:18
  about how much things cost and to just kind of only worry about that top line was like the funnest
• 18:24
  time ever. But that could only go on for one look. Eventually, you do need to get back to focusing
• 18:27
  on making a profit. Did you have investment at that point? Like, was that why you were able to spend
• 18:34
  or were you just like, do you know what? We're going to put aside X amount of money for this growth
• 18:38
  to spend. So we're not going to think too much about it. We never took any outside capital ever.
• 18:44
  We did have a low interest loan at one point. But it was kind of just like, what if we made,
• 18:52
  we could put back into the company, you know, eventually we did have to get back to focusing on
• 18:57
  profit. And it wasn't until we released our shelf product, which was the cake kit that we really
• 19:04
  had to like start looking at margins quite closely because now all of a sudden we have a product
• 19:08
  that is going to be wholesale. So everyone along the way is going to take a little cut. And so
• 19:14
  margins became a really big focus later on. The fact that you didn't take capital, you didn't have
• 19:20
  any investors, you grew and scaled actually quite quickly. I know for you, it probably felt like
• 19:27
  an entire lifetime. But that's amazing. And then to actually sell like, who did you sell to? And
• 19:33
  are you open about what the exit was or are you able to have any details around how that played out?
• 19:39
  I owned the business with my sister, as I said before, and she, before she joined me, was it a lawyer?
• 19:46
  And she started having these thoughts about wanting to go back to law. This was kind of
• 19:51
  beginning of last year, I would say, it's the beginning of 2024. And I don't know, you know when
• 19:58
  your most like the person you trust the most and love the most starts to have thoughts, you're
• 20:03
  kind of like, oh, I wonder how I feel about that for myself. And kind of got to thinking like, maybe
• 20:10
  this has been 15 years of my life. And it's time to kind of, or 14 years at that point. Maybe it's
• 20:17
  time to think about what else is out there. And so it really was both a very personal and strategic
• 20:23
  decision at the same time. And it took about nine months to find someone, but we eventually did. And
• 20:30
  it was a New Zealander that we sold to, which is really cool, because that, you know, that's where
• 20:36
  the cake was born. And it's where a lot of the brand equity and loyalty still exists. So
• 20:41
  at that totally made sense. And it did a really good hand. So I'm really happy with how it all worked
• 20:46
  out. Gosh, that's honestly so wild that you grew a brand for 14 years and then stepped away,
• 20:52
  because there's so many stats and data that speak to founders who sell and then plummet into
• 21:00
  like a, you know, what the hell is my life purpose? What am I going to do with my time? Because it
• 21:05
  is quite addictive when you work on your own business. Like last night and after dinner, I cooked
• 21:10
  dinner for my parents. I'm loving it. So chic. And I, and I was like, do you know, I don't have any
• 21:18
  meetings tonight. This is the first night all week. And the only night all week that I don't have
• 21:22
  meetings. I probably should just like relax and unwind. And then I just found myself back at my
• 21:28
  computer, like editing a little video and like doing a little bit of this. And I was like, gosh,
• 21:31
  this is, I know it's not great. And I know that I need to have a better work life balance. But
• 21:37
  for you, like having, or your heart and soul and all your time and money into a business to
• 21:43
  then sell it, what was the period post sale where you just like, yeah, celebrating on the beach in
• 21:49
  Mexico or was it like a weird transition for you? It was super weird. I did, it was very conscious
• 21:56
  about like giving myself a couple of months to just feel good about it and chill and relax.
• 22:03
  If I could have honestly done like an e-pray love moment and gone to Bali for how many months I
• 22:09
  would have done that. But like, I have a boyfriend and I have, you know, my sister went straight to
• 22:13
  study for the bar at California and bar. So like, who would I have even gone with? And so I kind of
• 22:18
  just like, it gave myself two months just to relax. And then I started to freak out in sort of
• 22:26
  like the very beginning of January and like, not really freak out, but just like really start to
• 22:30
  put pressure on myself to figure it out. I really, in earnest, started to like look at what it is
• 22:36
  that I want to do next. And you know, it has been really fun. Like, it's a very different
• 22:43
  experience for me in this exploratory phase without much structure or, you know, a routine, but
• 22:50
  I'm trying to try my best to enjoy it. And I don't want to just jump into the first thing that
• 22:54
  comes along. And there have been things that came along very soon in the process that I'm glad I
• 22:58
  didn't just like jump into because they were wrong. I've really been conscious about like,
• 23:04
  what it is I want to do next is like the next big thing for me.
• 23:07
  Well, it's also if you think about like how loyal you were to the kaker and to that business.
• 23:12
  It was a 14 year journey. It's not as though you're going to just quickly jump into something
• 23:15
  as a man. It could be 20 years down the track. Totally. That's how I am. I'm just like an all-in
• 23:21
  person. Oh, I'm so excited to be telling you about VPur. This is a brand that I've been using
• 23:27
  since I've been home in New Zealand, but actually have loved forever. The reason that I'm talking
• 23:31
  about VPur today is because a head of New Zealand winter is a really good time to be investing
• 23:36
  in your health. There's three particular VPur products that are part of an immune essentials pack.
• 23:43
  The first one, which I've been taking for a couple of months now, is the zinc restore.
• 23:48
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• 23:54
  your gut, immunity, hormone balance, mood, energy. It's been very much needed for me. So this has
• 24:00
  been part of my daily routine. The super boost to sea. This is high potency, vast acting
• 24:07
  immune support. It's got over three grams of vitamin C per serve. It's kind of like inhaling
• 24:13
  39 oranges. And then the third one for your winter toolkit is the vitamin D restore. It's also
• 24:21
  very good, apparently, for PCOS, side note. But this is a really important one for any one that
• 24:26
  experiences seasonal depression. So I will be taking this back to London with me. It's kind
• 24:32
  of like sunshine in a bottle. If you would like to get 20 percent off these three products
• 24:36
  for the immune essentials pack, you can do that. There's a link in the podcast show notes.
• 24:40
  One thing that I would say is just so brilliant about this is that you can pay month by month
• 24:45
  and they come in a delivered, you know, so you don't have to go and invest in three months worth
• 24:51
  of products up front. You can pay month by month. You can fact that into your budget,
• 24:56
  but also it's low admin. You're not having to go and order them every month, which for someone
• 25:00
  like me who forgets everything, that is ideal. So thank you so much to be pure for making my
• 25:08
  body and mind feel so much healthier. Yeah. And for any details about these products, you can find
• 25:13
  them in the podcast show notes. Do you think there's any parts of the cake? I know that you do a
• 25:18
  lot of interviews and you speak really openly about the brand and the business, but are there any
• 25:25
  parts or pieces of the story that you think people still misunderstand or have misunderstood
• 25:31
  from afar? Well, it's hard to know what people didn't understand, but if I can make an assumption,
• 25:36
  it would be that, you know, building a brand that from the outside in pairs very like cult and cool
• 25:44
  kind of means that the founder, the founder or founders like have it all figured out and have it all
• 25:50
  planned and they're super, you know, onto it all times, but like I often found myself
• 25:57
  building the plane while I was flying it. Do you know what I mean? And I think that there's
• 26:02
  nothing wrong with that. Like I kind of learnt on the job a lot of the time that made me quite
• 26:07
  good at taking risks, which lead to growth. And I'm proud of that, you know, what do you think is
• 26:13
  a good place for? Because I think there's this perception that women aren't good at taking risk,
• 26:17
  or that, you know, we don't like risk as much as men. What is like exposure therapy in a business
• 26:22
  sense that you could do to test that out? Because I don't know if I'm good at taking risk or not,
• 26:29
  but I would love to be able to at one point, if I step away from the curve, be able to look back
• 26:34
  and say I was really good at taking risks and I got better at that. What does that look like?
• 26:39
  What did it look like for you? Would it be having an idea on something thinking like this could
• 26:43
  totally flop a trying anyway? Like are there some small examples you could give to that where
• 26:49
  maybe initially that felt quite scary and risky, but then over time those things just were
• 26:54
  constantly happening? Well, I can speak to a very big risk that we took, but it's one that was
• 26:59
  very calculated and like it did take a lot of time to execute. So, you know, it felt safe in the end,
• 27:06
  but like I looked back and I was like, wow, we were brave. Like that was a huge thing to do, and that's
• 27:11
  expanding the company to America, like just without even skipping to Australia first or anything,
• 27:17
  we just like, you know, went straight for the big guns and it's super just the hardest thing we've
• 27:24
  ever done, but the best because of how much we'd learned along the way. And yeah, that was a
• 27:30
  huge, huge, huge risk and I don't take any of it back. Yeah, oh my god, I feel like I remember seeing
• 27:36
  like you made Miley Cyrus's cake once and I just thought, shit, yeah, that's a New Zealand woman
• 27:42
  killing it internationally, you know, like it's just hard to understand because I think New Zealand's
• 27:46
  so segmented from the rest of the world that small stuff like celebrities taking an interest in a
• 27:52
  brand is just like, wow, wow, because the magnitude and the way that that can influence the future
• 27:58
  of a brand is pretty enormous. Totally. Were there any like big other pinch me moments like that,
• 28:03
  where you were like, we need to take a second here and be like, wow, this is pretty cool.
• 28:08
  Yeah, and I totally agree, just on your point, like the, I feel like what I love so much about
• 28:14
  being a New Zealand founder, founded business and having expanded overseas and having six
• 28:19
  this overseas, it's so celebration New Zealand, like the, the trickle down effect is real, you know,
• 28:26
  and I love that. Like we're so proud of our brands that make it overseas. But I remember really
• 28:31
  early on, like in the first sort of maybe two months of moving here, this was back before COVID
• 28:37
  really hit. So it was like still the focus was on creating a bakery. So we had to kind of like
• 28:43
  build the brand that way and then introduce the cake kits a little later on when there was already
• 28:48
  like brand loyalty and an understanding of what the hell the cake was about. We had rented this
• 28:55
  like a commentary kitchen and we were taking orders and slowly been building up like a clientele.
• 29:02
  And one of our very first orders we got was through a friend and it was for
• 29:08
  flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers wedding, which was cool and I sat down with, you know,
• 29:12
  his wife to be and we didn't taste it and it was like so sweet. And then the wedding day came,
• 29:18
  Kate's were great. We decided to like deliver them ourselves rather than use a service.
• 29:24
  I'd be doing that too, definitely. Yeah, you're like, I want to go see, you know, I think we
• 29:29
  did like rented like a Mustang to go do the delivery. It's so fun. Went to go set them up and
• 29:37
  they were like, oh, why don't you just stay for the wedding? We were like, sure. And so I just
• 29:42
  have this very clear memory of like, you know, setting up the cake alongside this florist who I was
• 29:47
  obsessed with and had been for years. He was just happened to be there. And then behind me was
• 29:53
  Lauren Hill performing. Oh my gosh. A live set and flea's like coming up and like eating the cake
• 29:59
  and it was just like, whoa, this is so surreal. Like we've made it, you know, that's how it felt.
• 30:04
  Right. Oh, that's so amazing. And also, I do think when you're doing something big and bold,
• 30:10
  like moving overseas, you do need those small wins, not that that's a small one that's enormous.
• 30:14
  But you kind of need those wins along the way to be like, oh, tick, okay, cool. And I think, you
• 30:21
  know, that happened to Vic and I with the curve in London when we've tried a little stint, not last
• 30:26
  year but year before and we were invited to speak. I always say the wrong one. It was either Oxford
• 30:31
  or Cambridge. I can't remember. And I just remember thinking, this is wild, you know, but it's just
• 30:36
  sometimes you just, because it's hard, it's such a slog and the whole time you're doubting,
• 30:42
  if this is a good idea or not, will you make it? What percentage of businesses do actually do well
• 30:47
  overseas? It's not a lot. So to have those wins is like, okay, okay, cool. You can like rest
• 30:54
  it yourself and then kind of like keep climbing, you know? Yeah, you don't, you don't take
• 30:57
  much time to celebrate those wins. You're like straight onto the next thing. But can we talk about
• 31:03
  this? And you can also totally shut this down because I don't know if there's like
• 31:06
  NDAs around it or you're not allowed to speak about it because we're talking about celebrities.
• 31:11
  I remember the whole like Chrissy Teagan saga from afar and just being like infuriated on
• 31:17
  your behalf. And I felt like the whole of New Zealand was just like, what's going on here? And
• 31:22
  and I, you can 100% be like, can we not talk about this? But I guess the reason that I brought it
• 31:27
  up is there's, you know, you, you've poured all this time and energy into building up a business
• 31:32
  and putting all of all of this IP into something. When or if as a small business, you come up against
• 31:40
  something that feels wrong, but maybe you're sharing so much of your skills and your expertise
• 31:46
  publicly. Yeah, like what were some of the learnings from that? Did you look back on it and think,
• 31:52
  oh, yeah, we dealt with that really well or was that a really difficult time? What made that even
• 31:57
  more crazy was that Chrissy and her team are cravings, like approached me to work on a collab with
• 32:04
  them. Oh, she was like, you know, I love what you're doing. It's so cool that we should do something
• 32:09
  together. And I was like, absolutely, let's work on something. So we spent the next six months
• 32:15
  like working on a collaboration cake kit with holy shit. I didn't realize that. Yeah. And so
• 32:21
  it wasn't like copying from a fire. It was like integrated and like hands-on. Hopping.
• 32:28
  And right before it was about to launch and go to market, they essentially tried to call it off.
• 32:36
  After we'd already invested a ton of time and money and IP and everything into it. And the reason
• 32:41
  being was that they were about to release their online luxury cake kit. Surely it's not illegal.
• 32:47
  Like, I mean, I don't know anything about law, but your sister being a lawyer was they're not like
• 32:52
  some kind of, I don't know, IP. It's pretty hard to protect. Well, first of all, recipes are
• 32:58
  impossible to protect. And then I think with food packaging or any kind of visuals with food,
• 33:04
  it's like, it's as vulnerable as any other category. Well, yeah, I guess also because on your
• 33:10
  cake, since you have like what ingredients are in there. So it's like, it's not as though it's
• 33:14
  like the secret hidden thing that no one can get access to. You're kind of the way that
• 33:19
  you actually have to approach your product is by being transparent. So it leaves you quite,
• 33:24
  I guess, like vulnerable to copying. It can be, yeah. But what I also learned in that process,
• 33:30
  is while it's done and I did end up speaking out about it after a lot of thought, I was like,
• 33:36
  should I address this publicly or not? The amount of support that we got was so just beautiful
• 33:43
  and like really helped me through that time. And honestly, if we goosebumps just hearing you say
• 33:49
  that because I, oh God, I just, I, yeah, I can't even imagine it. And to think that there's like
• 33:53
  this army of cake lovers who are just so passionate and like supportive of you to come up and say,
• 33:59
  like, no, this is shit. Would have just felt like you've got your little army behind you, you know?
• 34:04
  It really was, it was one of the, ended up being like one of the better experiences in my whole
• 34:09
  career with the cake. But through that, I also learned like having competition in a category
• 34:17
  that didn't sort of traditionally have a lot of brands like yours. So I really think that we
• 34:23
  kind of like reinvented a category like cake mixes have always existed, right? But for a lot,
• 34:30
  for forever that I know of, there weren't luxury ones that made like actually very good cakes with
• 34:35
  clean ingredients like, um, cost what hours cost? And um, so we were kind of the first to do that.
• 34:45
  And that's a really heavy lift for brands like the cost of educating our customer around why they
• 34:52
  should spend as much as $25 on a cake mix. And you know, that it's, it's not the sort of like
• 34:59
  pantry staple. It's like an experience, the lifestyle item, the gift is a really, yeah, heavy lift
• 35:06
  was really heavy lift for us to do. So for someone else to come along and kind of be like, oh,
• 35:12
  we, we're going to do this too. It actually can like help relieve some of that burden of your
• 35:17
  shoulders to kind of carve the path out for your customers. And so I can look at competition is
• 35:24
  like not a bad thing. It all worked out just fine, but it was a great story in the end. I mean,
• 35:30
  I feel like it was one of those iconic things that everyone will like, oh, that time that
• 35:33
  Chrissy Teague and try to take down the cake, like, still to this day, yeah. And just in terms of
• 35:40
  your like personal approach with investing in like where you put your money and particularly now
• 35:44
  that you're in a position where you're not earning a regular income, how has your investments
• 35:50
  evolved over the last kind of 15 years? Where do you like investing what kind of assets do you
• 35:56
  yeah, like like to put your money in? Is it properties? Is it stocks? Is it crypto? Is it small
• 36:02
  businesses? I've actually dabbled in all three of the ones you just said, property, stocks,
• 36:10
  and crypto. And I'm still in the crypto and the stocks to a degree. A small, very, very like
• 36:18
  lean with my investments and the markets are just too volatile, but I have bought properties
• 36:25
  before and since sold those and kind of got out scratch like I didn't make anything of properties.
• 36:32
  I actually kind of don't think property is a very good investment. It's so much more depending
• 36:37
  on a lot of different factors, but that's just been my experience. I think your money is very
• 36:42
  tied up in property and I think you can be put to better use. That's kind of what I
• 36:47
  where I am with that thinking. I don't know, I'm quite fond of having it in the bank account at the
• 36:51
  moment to be honest with you. For now, for now, when you say that you think there are better ways
• 36:57
  to make money than property, have you had any success in other things? Like whether it be particular
• 37:03
  funds or stocks or art or anything like that, where that's given you the confidence to move away
• 37:10
  from property and into something else? I experienced some quite good returns on a fund that I was
• 37:16
  invested in, an Australian fund that was quite a small one. They only have like 20 companies
• 37:23
  in their portfolio and I experienced some quite good returns from that. Was it like a private
• 37:29
  equity or was it? Yeah, cool. I've only just started learning about private equity and I'm like,
• 37:34
  oh my gosh, this sounds really cool because you get access to businesses like even just
• 37:39
  cool New Zealand ones, like AS Color, that's not a public company, but that you can invest in them
• 37:44
  through private equity. I was like, it was totally blew my mind. I was at a concert and this random
• 37:49
  guy was telling me about private equity and I was like, hold on a second. Yeah, no, it was quite
• 37:55
  cool, but every month they were sent through their round up newsletter thing and they would say,
• 38:02
  returns were great this month, but you can't expect this to keep going on and I guess eventually
• 38:07
  they became true and it all plateaued out. I was like, I was going to get out and have my money
• 38:13
  safe and put it somewhere when I know it's right. Yeah, also you might want to invest in another
• 38:19
  business, you even know what it is. That's right. It's a little while we'll lead to and I guess
• 38:23
  for you if you need liquidity and the idea of the markets are all over the show right now,
• 38:28
  I totally understand the idea of like, I just feel safer, have a get in the bank for a period of
• 38:33
  time. Too much volatility. Yeah, it's quite interesting to hear someone that's like obviously
• 38:38
  schooled up and knows about investing and money and finances, but you're opting to have in the
• 38:44
  bank because that just is what feels right. If this was three years ago and we were talking to someone
• 38:51
  who didn't know anything about investing, I'd be like, no, you need inflation blah, blah, blah,
• 38:58
  then you look at people like Warren Buffett who have so much in cash right now and it's like,
• 39:03
  maybe it's clever. I'll pick a time when everything is at the lowest and then put it back in,
• 39:08
  maybe we'll see how things go. Cool. And I just love to finish with one final question,
• 39:14
  which is totally irrelevant from anything money related. If you could do all of this again,
• 39:20
  if you could do the cake again with the same ingredients. Would you have baked the same business?
• 39:28
  Look, going forward, I won't replicate the same business, but I'll put it that way. I will take
• 39:33
  everything I learned from it and apply it, but it was a great business. We built a ton of
• 39:39
  customer loyalty through building this intense like emotional connection with our brand,
• 39:44
  which is hard to do, you know, but it became quite clunky having a fresh cakes and then the cake kit
• 39:52
  there's two quite separate lanes and so they're quite hard to market separately and I think whatever
• 39:58
  I do next will be like a very lean, clean, killing machine, like very simple, lean, clean,
• 40:04
  killing machines. I just love it. But I think simplicity is underestimated when it comes to business.
• 40:13
  Like just take something simple and run with it. It's such a good point. I've heard so many people
• 40:19
  who have extended their first business successfully say the exact same thing. Simplicity and also
• 40:25
  like not necessarily try to be cool. Like you don't have to be cool. Actually, what's that saying?
• 40:30
  It's like sell to the masses eat with the classes. I think I fucked that up. It's the idea of
• 40:38
  like you don't have to be this cool niche business to have a successful business. Actually,
• 40:44
  if you go sometimes for scale and ease, it can be more profitable and successful long term.
• 40:53
  Probably pick a market that seems a little bit underserved and like find a gap and that's probably
• 40:58
  what I'll do next. Cool. And if anyone's interested in working with you, are you doing like
• 41:04
  creative consulting or any kind of freelance work? Okay, let's give that a plug because I think
• 41:09
  there'll probably be a lot of people listening to us that have ideas or small businesses. So
• 41:15
  what does that look like? So that's a little unstructured. It kind of depends on anyone's need.
• 41:19
  But if you slick me an email at Jordan at JordanRondale.com, we can figure out what works for you.
• 41:25
  And I'd love to give back in some way. That's like that's what brings in most joy right now.
• 41:32
  Oh, that's so awesome. Thank you so much for speaking to say us. I keep saying,
• 41:37
  oh, we didn't into it. It's like, no, I. Thank you for speaking to me. And yeah, I can't wait
• 41:43
  to watch from a fire and see what you do next. I feel the like same pride. I feel for someone like
• 41:48
  Lord for the Kaker. Love you. Like any international brand, whether it's like an artist or a
• 41:55
  business or anything. And I think what you said earlier is so true. There's such like a passionate
• 42:01
  like in New Zealand, there's this weird tour pop-up syndrome. But as soon as someone kind of like
• 42:05
  flees off shore, everyone's like, go get it. I'd love to know what everyone thought of this podcast.
• 42:13
  Same actually. It's really cool when people leave comments underneath the podcast episode
• 42:19
  because I must say when people send us DMs on Instagram, I sometimes forget what it's about or
• 42:24
  what they're talking about. And like imagine if we were doing shit, I'd have to shit the
• 42:29
  episodes for over 200 episodes, then we had no idea. I mean, I don't know if it would have got
• 42:35
  to 200 episodes. No, then shit. It's like someone not telling you up food in your teeth.
• 42:39
  Like, please, can you help us out here? Tell us what you like, what you don't like.
• 42:43
  What you don't like. You don't want to know. You don't want to know.
• 42:46
  So if you're listening, wherever you're listening and you have a thought on something we've spoken
• 42:51
  about or a question or comment, please do leave it on what it platform you're listening on.
• 42:56
  It also really helps us from an algorithm perspective like for more people to find the podcast.
• 43:00
  Yes, which we want to educate more and more women about the fun and beauty that is
• 43:08
  financed and investing. I don't know if anyone's either said fun and beauty talking about
• 43:11
  financing, but I'm here for it. Yeah. Quickly, the curve was created to empower and educate
• 43:17
  you about investing, but we are not financial advisors. Our platform exists for educational purposes
• 43:22
  only and it doesn't provide personalized investing advice for your individual needs and should not
• 43:26
  be relied upon to make an investment or financial decision and always remember to do your own
• 43:31
  research before making any investment or financial decision. We're here for any knowledge and support
• 43:35
  you need, but the final call is always yours. And thanks for being here. You got this. Yeah,
• 43:40
  we know you got this.