John Corcoran: 05:18
Right?
Odette D’Aniello: 05:18
In that way, it was not good. But on the positive note, it was the way I learned my skill. And it’s you know, when they say that you find your passion and your love at age ten and, you know, cake decorating was certainly that for me because it was a it was also an artistic outlet.
John Corcoran: 05:35
You I love to ask people about what they were like as a kid. And, and you mentioned that in high school, you sold newspapers, you got involved in Junior Achievement, you wrote stories for magazines. Talk a little bit about that.
Odette D’Aniello: 05:50
Yeah I, I was, I didn’t well that whole newspaper project, it was because my high school, I went to a Catholic girls high school and part of our project was our after school project when I was able to stay after school, when my work was done at the bakery, we had a junior achievement program. And, you know, you could start a business. And I started a newspaper business and I sold ads and made money out of it.
John Corcoran: 06:18
Actually, it was.
Odette D’Aniello: 06:19
It was I sold ads and candy grams. It might have been me and a couple of other girls, but it went really well. And this was like, wow, this is great. That’s awesome. And then I went to college.
You know, I started I kept working, right. But then at the same time, I also had these side hustles where I work as a writer. I wrote for a magazine. This is before the internet, right? So I worked for a local magazine.
I was writing for them. I made cards, I painted on cards.
John Corcoran: 06:52
And wow.
Odette D’Aniello: 06:53
Yeah, I sold sarongs at one time.
John Corcoran: 06:56
You were you. You had seen sarongs, I think, in the Philippines. Right. Or Guam?
Odette D’Aniello: 07:01
No, it was in Bali.
John Corcoran: 07:03
In Bali. Okay, okay.
Odette D’Aniello: 07:04
90s. You know.
John Corcoran: 07:05
Okay.
Odette D’Aniello: 07:06
Pieces of cloth that you wear on, you know, wrapped around you at the beach. And, you know, I was living on Guam. Yeah. So everybody wore a sarong. But then in the US, there was no sarong.
So I would bring them and I would just sell them to my friends. Times the amount of money.
John Corcoran: 07:22
You ended up, you’d never been off of Guam. You’d never been in the mainland US when you decided to go to college at University of Arizona, is that right?
Odette D’Aniello: 07:31
No, because we were waiting for our. It took a while to get our ducks in a row with getting a green card and all. So after we got our green card, I went to the to the University of Arizona.
John Corcoran: 07:45
But what was that like for you moving to Arizona and living on the mainland after growing up in Guam?
Odette D’Aniello: 07:52
Well, I’ve only lived on an island, so I lived in Cebu, which is surrounded by water. And then Guam is surrounded by water. And these are little islands. I’ve only lived in two islands when I was, when I was young. So when I moved to Tucson, I was sure, first of all, because, you know, it was landlocked and it was all full of cacti, and there were so many white people like I was.
It was culture shock for me because Guam is very diverse. There’s a lot of people from all over the world who live there. It’s a it’s a melting pot, sort of. And I was just shocked because the only time that I ever really saw a lot of Caucasians were Mormons in the Philippines who taught me English or my some of my teachers in Catholic school. But then, you know, it turned out to be such a beautiful experience because I met so many different people with different types of, you know, I learned so much about the world, and it was a culture shock initially, but it was really quite I felt quite at home afterwards because, you know, the people when I when I realised that people in, in the mainland us at that time, you know, I didn’t realise that they, they were the type of people that would just tell you exactly what they meant.
Yes or no, they don’t. There wasn’t like this passive like passive way of saying no, which is a, a very Asian. My culture is like, if you’re saying yes, you don’t say, oh, if you’re saying no, you don’t say no. You just say, you know, kind of like, you know, yes.
John Corcoran: 09:39
Yes Shake your head.
Odette D’Aniello: 09:41
Yes or no? It’s like a lot of mixed messages, so I like the fact that people were very direct. I kind of I very much liked that because I was I like personally, I’m a pretty direct person. I mean, I’ve always been a direct person, and it was very hard for me growing up in a Filipino family, being a direct person.
John Corcoran: 10:01
You decided to eventually start your own bakery and you ended up moving to Washington State to do that. Talk about that.
Odette D’Aniello: 10:11
So my husband was a teacher too, actually. After I graduated, I became a teacher and.
John Corcoran: 10:17
Runs in the family.
Odette D’Aniello: 10:18
Yeah, yeah, yeah, my husband was from Connecticut. He moved to Guam because there was a teacher shortage. And I met him on Guam, and he wanted to live there forever. And I was like, no, gosh, no, there’s no libraries. Like, you know, I was such a good reader.
John Corcoran: 10:38
Like The.
Odette D’Aniello: 10:39
Doors were. So there’s one bookstore in the entire island. I really wanted to continue on with my education, because I was getting a master’s degree at that time, because I was a teacher, and I just wanted access to more learning and more books and more people, different types of ways of living. And, you know, I had already traveled extensively at that time because I in college, I was an exchange student, but he wanted to stay on Guam and wear slippers and, you know, live on an island for the rest of his life. But we had this bet that if he if we both go to teach internationally, if we both got jobs at then I would teach internationally for two years.
If we didn’t, then we’d move to Washington and start a life. And I got a job and he didn’t. So we moved to Washington.
John Corcoran: 11:31
Okay.
Odette D’Aniello: 11:31
And then we started a bakery.
John Corcoran: 11:33
And they started bakery. Yeah. And what was it like making that shift from, you know, here you had worked in a bakery growing up and, you know, in your words, it was kind of oppressive. You didn’t get to experience that childhood. And yet here you are starting a bakery.
Some people would run from that experience and never want to go back to it. And yet, I guess you discovered enough love for like, cake creating cakes that you decided to start your own or have your own bakery.
Odette D’Aniello: 12:02
Opened a we opened a cafe.
John Corcoran: 12:04
Okay, so it wasn’t a bakery first.
Odette D’Aniello: 12:06
It wasn’t going to be a bakery. It was like. This cafe I was, I my favorite restaurant was a seventh day Adventist restaurant in, in Guam. And they it was a vegetarian. I was a vegetarian. I was as a pretty staunch vegetarian and a vegan at some point when in my when it wasn’t hip. Yeah, this was not hip.
This is in the 90s and nobody really was that. Yeah. And I thought I was just going to open this, like seventh day Adventist type of kind of situation where you can choose your own sandwich fillings and all that. That was my big dream and it was a really bad business model. I learned about bad business models.
John Corcoran: 12:45
The cafe was a bad business model. Why?
Odette D’Aniello: 12:47
Bad?
John Corcoran: 12:48
Why?
Odette D’Aniello: 12:48
Because I it was too cheap. I had line. The line was out the door, but the food was too cheap. I didn’t we didn’t really know because I opened it with my brother and my husband. We didn’t really know how to run it very well.
We, you know, there’s a lot of perishables, a lot of it, you know, just kind of went. When your menu is so big.
John Corcoran: 13:09
So you did something right. If the line was out the door, why do you think the line was out the door?
Odette D’Aniello: 13:13
Because it was cheap.
John Corcoran: 13:14
Okay.
Odette D’Aniello: 13:15
I mean, it was with the breads are baked fresh. The breads were soup were baked super fresh, like every day by from scratch. And you could choose your own fillings and you can get unlimited drink for $5.
John Corcoran: 13:30
Oh, wow. That’s cheap.
Odette D’Aniello: 13:31
Yeah, I’d go there every.
Odette D’Aniello: 13:33
Single meal of the day, too. If I was that person.
Odette D’Aniello: 13:35
Yeah. And so we weren’t doing well. And the next, next door to us was this flower shop. And this woman would sell her flowers for, like, three roses for $25. I was like, and by the time I was like, what’s the cost of goods of that? You know, it’s. Like, yeah. And so I realized I’m like, I think I’m going to do cakes because I ended up going to a wedding show and I, I met these, this couple and they only did cakes for a living and they were charging hundreds of dollars for it. You know, when I grew up, cakes was just a side job. Like, I wasn’t the main thing. The main thing. And I was like, wait, you guys only do cakes like, like those wedding cakes?
Because I can make those with my eyes closed. And they’re like, yeah, this is all we do. We do it out of our garage. I’m like, you don’t have overhead, you don’t have rent, you don’t have insurance. I was just I was only I was, what, 28 years old?
I didn’t know anything about this business. And so I talked to the to the wedding show owner and he said, well, do my show on in January and you’ll never have to worry about your business again. And I charge it to my credit card and I did it.
John Corcoran: 14:51
You charge like what? Like a booth.
Odette D’Aniello: 14:53
Show getting $800.
John Corcoran: 14:55
Like, did you get a booth or something where.
Odette D’Aniello: 14:57
You did you got.
John Corcoran: 14:59
Like behind you right now like that. You had like.
Odette D’Aniello: 15:01
Yeah, you.
John Corcoran: 15:02
Had like big beautiful cakes. Yeah.
Odette D’Aniello: 15:04
Yes.
John Corcoran: 15:04
And did that book you up?
Odette D’Aniello: 15:06
Yes. Wow. So within maybe like a week we decided to shut down our cafe, changed our sign and Said. Our cake studio.
John Corcoran: 15:17
Wow. Just like that.
Odette D’Aniello: 15:19
Once we have no breakfast. So people who were lined up, they’d be like, wait, what happened? I’m like, we’re cake studio now.
John Corcoran: 15:25
And really.
Odette D’Aniello: 15:27
It ays cafe. Out the door Or is your son? I said, well, caffe means coffee. Basically just pretended like it was always that way.
John Corcoran: 15:37
Wow. That’s funny.
Odette D’Aniello: 15:38
It was really funny. And then, you know, that’s how we started growing. It’s 26 years ago.
John Corcoran: 15:46
Wow. And was it all good, or were there any downsides to shifting to that model? Like, one thing I would think of is like, well, there’s some seasonality to it. People tend to get married in the summer. Was it difficult to like, get used to that kind of rhythm of it? And also you’re selling a very extensive, extensive product.
Most of the time once, like I assume they don’t. Or maybe, maybe they would come back and buy a cake on their anniversary, but it’s like mostly a one time purchase as far as the customer goes.
Odette D’Aniello: 16:12
Yeah, well, we started getting customers from like a local hotel bought from us, bought products from us. The military did.
John Corcoran: 16:22
So more repeat customers then.
Odette D’Aniello: 16:25
Yes. And there was like A casino. So this kind of, you know, the whole it kind of evened out.
John Corcoran: 16:33
Okay. Yeah.
Odette D’Aniello: 16:35
Still, you know, when you’re charging $5 with, you know, with every transaction, it doesn’t matter. So what we did was just, like, tightened our bootstraps. Like, actually, speaking of bootstraps, I actually read a book by Tim Ferriss. Wait, was it Tim Ferriss? No. Who wrote the book? Oh, no. No, it wasn’t Tim Ferriss who wrote the Bootstrap Bible.
John Corcoran: 16:58
Bootstrap Bible, I don’t know, I don’t Know God.
Odette D’Aniello: 17:00
Not my. Oh, Seth. Gordon.
John Corcoran: 17:03
Seth. God. Okay. Got it. Okay.
Odette D’Aniello: 17:05
So I found his book at the library, and I read that like 20 times. And that’s got through it all. I highly recommend that book.
John Corcoran: 17:14
What was that like, shifting from this, you know, losing, losing a money on each $5 sale to selling, you know, multi hundred dollar cake.
Odette D’Aniello: 17:23
It was great.
John Corcoran: 17:24
Yeah.
Odette D’Aniello: 17:25
It was great. And it also was in alignment with who we were, because that’s you could tell that we really loved that. You know.
John Corcoran: 17:33
Say more about that.
Odette D’Aniello: 17:34
So I think a lot of times when you do something that’s in alignment with who you are, there’s a lot of ease around it and there’s a lot of joy, and people can sense it versus people like when you’re not in alignment, the level of like, resentment shows.
John Corcoran: 17:50
Did your sister join the business from the get go?
Odette D’Aniello: 17:54
Yeah, she moved with me. She was 18 and so she moved with me and she started going to school. And then when my brother, my brother and I. This is a downside of going into business with a family member. My brother left the business ten months later.
We were always like kind of love, hate. And he left the business. And so my sister stopped going to college and she became my business partner and my cousin, my first cousin Wallace, who was baking on Guam for our bakery there, our family bakery there. He moved and became our baker.
John Corcoran: 18:29
It’s quite a family affair.
Odette D’Aniello: 18:30
Yeah. So it’s been the three of us. And then my husband still.
John Corcoran: 18:34
Is he in the business?
Odette D’Aniello: 18:36
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but he’s a teacher. He teaches, you know, he was. He taught for all of it. All of this entire time.
But he was just during the weekends, you Know, he.
Odette D’Aniello: 18:46
Would help. And, you know, if things get needed to be fixed, it’s just really good to have partners, you know? A good team. And we have been a good team. You know, we’ve we have been together for 25 years.
John Corcoran: 19:01
Wow. 911 you were in Las Vegas at a bakery show, a 911.
Odette D’Aniello: 19:08
Yeah.
John Corcoran: 19:08
And your daughter was there. She was 11 months old. You were going to the show for the first time when you saw the terror attack on the television. What did you do next?
Odette D’Aniello: 19:19
So we went to Las Vegas. It was our first trip, you know, we started making money. So we went to the International Baking Expo up in Las Vegas, which happens every four years. And we were super excited. We were, you know, we were staying at.
What is the one that that’s the tallest, cheapest hotel at the very end of the strip? Stratosphere. We went to the first day of the show. The second day of the show in the morning, I went to the my I saw on TV that there had, there was a plane. A plane had just crashed into the Twin Towers, one of the first planes. So I, the first instinct was pack everyone up, let’s go. And we didn’t have any news at all what was happening.
My baby was only 11 months old. My daughter, who’s, you know, who’s now the director of marketing. She was our 11 month old baby. There were, you know, my me, my sister, her husband and my cousin. I said, let us pack up and let’s bring that gigantic car that we rented us back to Washington.
We’re not flying and they’re just like, wait, we’re going to the show today. I was like, no, we’re not. We’re going home today. We don’t even know how many planes are in the sky. Like, I had this instinctive thought that there was it was going to be disastrous.
John Corcoran: 20:46
What was it that that caused you to have that feeling?
Odette D’Aniello: 20:52
I have a really good sense. Like I have really good intuition. So. And I also have, I think, a real sense of like survival instinct. Plus I was I’m, you know, I had a baby.
So that was a lot of, you know, I was very on high alert because. Just thinking, I need to take care of this, this baby, this baby needs to be safe. Safest place is to be home. So we went down, checked out of our hotel. We didn’t ask for permission. We just took the car and everyone else was still gambling.
It was 9 a.m., you know, Pacific time. We got to, you know, we loaded up the car with a lot of water and food and, you know, anything that we can do to survive getting stuck in Death Valley because we had to drive through that. And, you know, there were no cell phones.
John Corcoran: 21:42
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Odette D’Aniello: 21:44
So we just drove out of the desert. I’m like, the best thing for us to drive into the middle of the desert, because if there’s massive attacks and tallest buildings, being in the stratosphere is a bad idea. So just go in. The middle of the desert. It’ll be hard to hit us. And then, you know, then by the time we got to the middle of the desert, that plane in Philadelphia had was in Philadelphia. Yeah, there was a plane that had had just crashed. And people Were frantically looking for ways out of cities. And so we got home and, you know, three days later we had a wedding show and we went to the wedding show. Like, it was it was really pretty incredible. And every single, you know, iby every four years, you know, we go there and all the people who’ve been in the industry for the longest time, we talk about that. We’re like, remember, remember. When that happened. 9 11 happened.
John Corcoran: 22:46
Right, right. The show just had that instinct to go home. I’m wondering if that instinct has served you well in the business and in other ways where you have this kind of intuition for if something is not working out to, to make, to act quickly?
Odette D’Aniello: 23:03
I think so. I think so. I think so.
John Corcoran: 23:07
Yeah. It’s a good one to have in business, right?
Odette D’Aniello: 23:11
Yeah. It also helps because I meditate every day.
John Corcoran: 23:14
Yeah, let’s talk about that. I know meditation, mindfulness is kind of a really important part of who you are. It relates to baking also. So talk a little bit about how you discovered that.
Odette D’Aniello: 23:29
So when I was when I was younger, I, I was, I was raised Catholic. So a lot of, you know, a lot of reverence for and being prayerful came from that. Right. Because being raised Catholic, I went to Catholic school all my life. And then when I was a teenager, I had a really tragic loss of a friend.
And after that, you know, it was a it was a I maybe it was a trauma response where I was wanting to know why that happened. And I just kept praying a lot. And, you know, basically that whole intention of understanding why tragedies happen led me to different modalities of prayer, and one of that became meditation. And that has been my go to. So for the past, you know, 35 years I’ve been meditating has really helped.
Just helps me a lot. It calms my nervous system. It clarifies my mind. I understand things greater, you know, doesn’t mean I’m, you know, I’m still super flawed in so many different ways, but it allows me to just kind of give myself some grace and maybe other people grace. And it’s still a journey, you know, it’s a practice, right? It’s a practice.
John Corcoran: 24:50
Yeah. You came from poverty. You didn’t have any privilege. You didn’t have any opportunities. Immigrant.
And you’ve said that meditation helped you to manifest the life that you have now, because now you obviously you’re a member of EO. You, you know, run multi-million dollar businesses. Talk a little bit about how meditation plays into that.
Odette D’Aniello: 25:11
Yeah, a lot of it is putting myself and, you know, maybe, maybe because I grew up in not the most, you know, ideal way for a child to grow up, that I always had this penchant for imagining things, imagining a better place. Like, you know, I always imagined being in, like, the sound of in the middle of the Sound of Music, for example. So if you know, if things are not going well, I would just close my eyes and I’m in the middle of The Sound of Music. You know, I’m in the middle of flowers, and I’ve always been a very imaginative child. Maybe as a trauma response, maybe not.
I’m not sure, but I think it is. I think it was more of a trauma response. And a lot of kids do that when, you know, when there’s just so much, you know, there’s so much like input that that the brain, a young brain, can’t really process. So I would imagine things. Well, what happened was the things that I imagined actually came true.
Like, I ended up, you know, in Switzerland in the middle of that field. And, you know, a lot of people can attest that they really when you imagine something like as if it’s real, it happens. And I, I have always just used that. In a lot of different ways. So when things are not going well, instead of like, you know, diving into this like, you know, deep hole of, of, you know, sadness and, and helplessness, I end up creating like, what would it be like if this was my ideal? If, if it was, everything was possible, what would it be like then. And then it happens.
John Corcoran: 26:52
And you know, the food business, bakery business is really hard. You know, just looking at the last few years, there have been so many restaurants, food businesses that have gone out of business. It’s such a hard business to be in. Does the meditation help you to kind of keep everything level as you’re, you know, navigating this industry?
Odette D’Aniello: 27:16
Yeah. It is a very hard business. And a lot of people, you know, it comes and goes like the whole business is in a flux, you know. You work with really tight margins. It’s very commercialized. A lot of a lot of it is, you know, you’re competing with mass producers.
So small businesses like ours, you know, it’s very rare to be in business for this long. And, you know, a lot of it, though, is that we really enjoy what we do. And joy emanates. Right. I, I just recently made a new friend in Tucson who is a who’s a she’s a biologist, an RNA biologist, and she works for the Astro Bio lab, and she has a PhD from MIT and Harvard.
John Corcoran: 27:58
Smart Cookie.
Odette D’Aniello: 27:59
And she’s super smart. And you know what I found fascinating in her research. She told me that when you love something, your cells actually emanate light. They emanate light when you when you’re around people that you love, when you do something that you love, when you are uplifted by good music, you know your cells just emanate light. And that light is energy, right?
So a lot of it is that, well, you can tell when food is made with love. You can tell when a chef loves what they do. It just tastes better. It tastes good, even if the servings are so tiny. And when food is not made with love or with resentment, you can tell.
And it’s actually not good for your gut either. So I think one of the main reasons why we have lasted this long is because we absolutely love what we do. We go through so much. There’s like so many different things that happen throughout the day or the week that could just be so like. Demoralizing.
But we really like what we do. And there’s so many happy things. There’s so many fun things. There’s a lot of laughter. There’s a lot of creativity.
There’s a lot of, you know, who is sad making a cake. Like it is. So it’s freaking fun. Like I. Say that, and my kids can attest to it too. Like my daughter, she left, you know, she is now working for her. She just totally enjoys what she does. Absolutely enjoys it. And you know, and people are happy. People are just happy to meet you. You know, it’s not.
John Corcoran: 29:38
Yeah, I love that.
Odette D’Aniello: 29:39
Like I mean they’re. Like, oh my god.
John Corcoran: 29:41
Yeah. We, we were talking earlier about your reaction to 9 11. Well, in 2020, January 2020, you had a friend who was visiting from Hong Kong who said that, you know, this is going to come to the US at a time when a lot of people didn’t think that was going to happen Happened falsely. Talk a little bit about what your reaction was like after that.
Odette D’Aniello: 30:04
Yeah. So I had a I have a, you know, I have a childhood friend who lives in Hong Kong and she, she, you know, she’s a really smart cookie as well. She’s, you know, she owns a hedge fund. She’s super smart. She came to visit Seattle to speak to our chapter about her hedge fund.
And she was frantically looking for masks. And she said, you know, this is going to happen and this is going to come to the US. And I was like, oh my gosh, I can see that. Like. And I saw the concern in her eyes, like, you know, I was like, I can see that.
Well, I ended up going to Hawaii to the Regional Leadership Academy for EO and I. And that was that was always present in my mind that like, I hope they don’t shut down borders. And this is before, like, I hope they don’t shut down the airports because, you know, you don’t know if what happens during a pandemic and by the end of it, you know, the first case happened in Seattle. So I flew home and that was March. By March 12th or 16th or something, I started seeing like it’s spreading.
And then my employees were like, you know, I live with my grandma or like my mom was sick. So then I just woke up one morning and I told my, you know, my sister that I think we need to shut down. So I shut down the business. I told everyone, like, you know what? We’re going to figure out how to pay you.
And, you know, we didn’t know what furlough was before because we’ve never furloughed anyone. We’ve never hired anybody. So we’re like, okay, we’re just going to have to figure this out. But as of right now, your health is the most important thing in your family members. So we gave all of our inventory away. We shut everything down.
And within a couple of days, the whole county shut down. So, you know, and we stayed home.
John Corcoran: 31:58
And you went home and you started meditating.
Odette D’Aniello: 32:02
I did. I started meditating three hours a day. Wow. I did. I did I would sit down meditation and then I would do walking meditations. And, you know, I’d walk five miles and I was meditating the entire time. I just basically just let it go. And I was also grieving. My brother had passed away a few months before, so I was dealing with that too.
So that has that allowed me to just really like, you know, really heal. And it was a it was a bit of a gift. And it was also quite incredible in that, you know, it took us like a month to recover and by, you know, within a month or two we were up and running again. And the demand just grew because grocery stores were very busy and our business just took off.
John Corcoran: 32:45
Did you have to shift the business because you were you from like, you know, making wedding cakes that were for a while there people weren’t doing weddings?
Odette D’Aniello: 32:53
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So we did a lot of wholesale. So we have a brand called Dragonfly Cakes is their little pet Offers. And you know, we distribute them nationally.
And you know, we had a small distribution at that time. And then our distribution just grew. And that took over for all of the parts that were not, you know, were not running yet like events. So that really helped us. And we’ve got to bring back our employees.
And, you know, it was it turned out it turned out great. And I, I could really attribute that to like a calm mind, you know, not too reactive, not too afraid. And, you know, I’m just going to say I’m naturally an anxious person. So, I mean, I have to meditate. I mean, people who don’t have maybe people who haven’t gone through like trauma or. They’re in their disposition, you know, it just works for me just because I’m naturally an anxious person.
John Corcoran: 33:50
And your father also got cancer, and you had to care for him for nine years in the midst of running your business.
Odette D’Aniello: 33:57
Yeah. My father and my mother had a stroke, and we kept our business running. We, you know, we took care of him at home like we, you know, we were we only shut down, you know, luckily, our team was amazing. My sister and I work really well together. And kudos to my sister. She has such a good head on her shoulders too.
She’s amazing and strong and she runs our business with like such a tight, tight ship as a tight ship. And we had a great team who helped. But yeah, we had to go through my, my the death, the illness and death of my father. The, you know, my mother, my mother, my mother stroke my sisters. You know, very my, my, you know, getting giving birth to our children, raising our children all throughout this business.
It’s not hasn’t been easy, I must just say. But it’s been an adventure.
John Corcoran: 34:53
Yeah.
Odette D’Aniello: 34:54
It’s just I could say that.
John Corcoran: 34:55
Yeah. And you’ve also, in the midst of this, you’ve acquired other businesses. Dragonfly cakes, I believe, was an acquisition. And then now you’ve acquired bringing you back to Tucson, acquired a tea house and event space in Tucson. So talk a little bit about that kind of coming back to your roots.
Odette D’Aniello: 35:14
Yeah. So yeah, we purchased we acquired a company called Wax Orchards and it was a chocolate fudge company. And we still have it, but we, you know, when you sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed. Well, this was a I’m not going to say failure. It just didn’t work out.
So, you know, selling chocolate fudge in jars to companies like target at, you know, 5% margin. It’s not a business model. It’s a really good one. So we shut it down. And then, you know, six months later we purchased Dragonfly Cakes, which is a Say a petite forest. Companies are tiny little cakes that are covered with chocolate and they’re delicious. And so that is the company that we distribute nationally. And that was an acquisition as well.
John Corcoran: 36:00
Why did why that of all the different types of companies you could acquire.
Odette D’Aniello: 36:05
Well, we knew it. It was within our vertical. So I also knew all of the equipment. I’m a big bakery equipment nerd.
John Corcoran: 36:12
Okay.
Odette D’Aniello: 36:13
I knew how to make these things. But the fudge, we were outsourcing that. So a lot of the things that are in cans in the middle aisle of a grocery store, a lot of that is made by co manufacturers. And that’s what we did. We our chocolate fudge was co manufactured.
So I would order, you know, $50,000 worth of fudge. So and you know it’s just sitting in the warehouse. It’s either sitting. In a warehouse or you’re waiting to get paid. So yeah like a lot of money sitting around. So Dragonfly Cakes is something that we manufacture. And. We know how to do it. We had really great help with an organization called Impact Washington in Washington State that helped us. So, you know, if you’re a manufacturer and you have local resources that can help you with your production, I would highly suggest using that because that really helped us, you know, just get things going and kind of figure out all the kinks and, and start producing and start shipping fairly quickly, you know, from, from acquisition to full production. It took us maybe eight weeks. It was quick and we moved it from California.
So we moved all of the, the whole facility to California from California to Washington.
John Corcoran: 37:24
Was that hard?
Odette D’Aniello: 37:25
It was An adventure.
John Corcoran: 37:26
That was been hard to do.
Odette D’Aniello: 37:28
Oh, it was. It was quite an adventure. Because we needed to get it up and running before the 1st of January, which we did.
John Corcoran: 37:37
You like, load up trucks and drive them up?
Odette D’Aniello: 37:40
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we packaged everything the seller created. You know, we didn’t even she didn’t really tell her customers that the whole facility was moving. So she was bulking up there, their inventory and then shipped, like, you know, packing everything up, shipping the whole thing to us. We frantically put it all together and started testing. And then we had six weeks to be up and running. And we did. We started shipping in six weeks. It was a mess.
John Corcoran: 38:07
When was that acquisition?
Odette D’Aniello: 38:09
That was in 2016.
John Corcoran: 38:11
So it was a couple of years before Covid. So in retrospect, it helped to diversify your business going into Covid.
Odette D’Aniello: 38:17
Yeah, yeah, it really did. Everything is just, you know, works out.
John Corcoran: 38:21
Fascinating. Sometimes when businesses do that, they don’t even realize that that that diversification may have saved their business going into some big, you know, pandemic.
Odette D’Aniello: 38:30
Yeah. I mean you know there’s also there’s, you know, things are never the same. Right. So I don’t I think there’s always the only constant is change. So that’s something. That we are very aware of. It’s like you know what, this is not going to stay the same. It might be really awesome right now. And that’s one of the things that has always been in my mind. Like I don’t you know, we don’t live extravagant lives just because you don’t know, like small Business Owners. Yeah. Go buy A Ferrari. Right? Right. You just can’t like that. I’m in a food business. Maybe if I was someone in another business, I would. But I just live a very simple kind of. Low key life.
John Corcoran: 39:08
You mentioned with the chocolate fudge that it was too outside of your wheelhouse. And you acquired a tea house, an event space. What have been some of the learnings or challenges around that? And also one that is in, you know, quite a distance from where you live in Washington state?
Odette D’Aniello: 39:25
Yeah. So the we my, my daughter went to the University of Arizona and I absolutely loved this town. And we just happened to have this venue. That’s all. It was already ready to go.
It just needed to be loved. So I’m a big gardener, so a lot of it is because I love to garden and I wanted to revive the garden and that was my thing, like I wanted I want this garden to go.
John Corcoran: 39:51
She bought the business so that you could revive the garden.
Odette D’Aniello: 39:54
I was buying a garden and I was going to have a bakery.
John Corcoran: 39:59
That was a good fixer for you.
Odette D’Aniello: 40:01
Kind of a fixer. But it turned out that it is quite a task.
John Corcoran: 40:09
The garden or the bakery or the business.
Odette D’Aniello: 40:11
Or the garden was Really hard because, you know, a desert garden is very different from. A, you know, very different. Garden where it rains all the time. So I, I’m an expert in ground drought tolerant ground covers now. I know how to you know, I know a lot of things about a lot of things a little bit. A lot of things right now. And we started doing high tea, which is the reason why is because a lot of our customers are tea shops. Because we sell these offers and, you know, tea shops have they buy our pet offers. So we started going around going to high tea and I was like, you know what? If I were to have my own tea, I’m going to give everybody food, like lots of food, you know?
And so my kids and I did a brainstorm and we decided on the name, and then we decided on the business model and we said, let’s do high tea, but let’s make it Filipino high tea. So I was. And my mother, you know, my mother still, I still have family who live in the Philippines. My mother lives my, my, my mother and my brother were living in Cebu. So I was visiting them. And, you know.
John Corcoran: 41:24
Is high tea a big thing over there?
Odette D’Aniello: 41:26
It’s not. It’s called merienda.
John Corcoran: 41:28
Okay.
Odette D’Aniello: 41:29
So it’s really out of our own brains. It’s like a, it’s an exercise in creativity.
John Corcoran: 41:35
Okay. And so and you had mentioned when you went to University of Arizona, it was very white. Did you find that bringing this Filipino high tea tradition to Tucson, or maybe Tucson’s more diverse now than it was when you went there? But did you did you find that it was difficult finding customers for it, or did you find that because it was something different, people were excited about it?
Odette D’Aniello: 41:58
I think people in Tucson very warm and welcoming. There’s a there’s actually a big Filipino community, and Filipino culture is very similar to Hispanic culture. And the and the palate is very similar. So it’s been really fun and great. And I have an amazing I found an amazing team that we work with.
And it’s been really quite fun.
John Corcoran: 42:21
It’s kind of a bit of a dying tradition, I have to say, because my wife loves nothing more than going to tea. She loves going with friends to a tea shop experience like multiple hours, little tea cakes, all that kind of stuff. But. And we’ve been together for like 25 years, but I feel like she, you know, we have kids and everything, but she’s had trouble, like finding a lot of tea shops have gone out of business, you know. You know, it just seems like the tradition is not around as much.
Odette D’Aniello: 42:48
Well, it’s not a very easy business model. It’s really a lot of work. I mean. I think the regular high teas like they offer at the Empress in, in Victoria’s probably like, I think. The cost of That is super cheap. It really is about what they, you know. The experience. Maintaining the experience. All the stuff around you. That’s what costs a lot. But I made it harder in that we actually make hot food. So we have four we have four courses of Filipino warm Filipino food. Right. Oh cool. Normal high teas would never have. They have warm food. It’s always. Just sandwiches. So that has helped. In differentiating us. But it’s also. Made it hard to really scale. It’s not like I want to be cooking, you know, every single day. I don’t want to be a chef like I don’t. Although I love to cook. It’s a whole different story when you’re cooking for a mass number of people consistently. I do have a chef who, who cooks for us now that, you know, I’ve taught him how to cook a Filipino like Filipino dishes that I created. But he cooks it consistently in commercial kitchens like. I cook At home.
John Corcoran: 44:08
Yeah, I small stove.
Odette D’Aniello: 44:10
I didn’t even know how to turn on the freaking grill, you.
John Corcoran: 44:14
Like, yeah.
Odette D’Aniello: 44:15
Even know what a flattop was. So I’m learning a lot and that’s what makes it quite fun for me. It’s, you know, it’s the when I think it’s every entrepreneur maybe, you know, the, you know, when you’re learning is, you know, like steep, you know, it’s so exciting. And then when it starts to even out, then you’re like, okay, what’s my next project? You know, I’m sure you understand for sure.
John Corcoran: 44:41
So this has been great, Odette. And circling back to the mindfulness and meditation we were talking about earlier. Before we wrap up, are there any resources that you would point anyone listening to this who is curious about meditation, where they could, you know, learn about it or how they could get started?
Odette D’Aniello: 45:00
Yeah. So I, I would if for any entrepreneur, I think the most important thing that I did was go on a silent retreat. You know, there’s one right outside of you, John in San Francisco. Spirit rock. Spirit rock.
John Corcoran: 45:19
Yeah. It’s like 20 minutes to the west of me. Yeah.
Odette D’Aniello: 45:22
Yeah, it’s the best. And then I also go to a lot of different other retreats I’ve gone to Joe Dispenza retreats because he’s from the Pacific Northwest, and that has been it’s very different and that’s very active. It’s super fun. It’s more of like, you know, putting yourself in a trance and basically creating where spirit rock is more of, I would say heart surgery, you know, quiet. You don’t talk to anyone for a week.
You don’t look people in the eye, you don’t write, you don’t, you know, you don’t do anything except really look inward. And, you know, between the two, I would say that it’s been transformative for me. And I also, now that I’m older, I, I seek to meditate with community. So if there’s a group that, you know, I can meditate with, I participate in that and whatever modality. Right.
And, and, you know, when we travel, my kids and I, my family, we’re very much into going to churches like especially church Catholic church was is familiar my Both my kids, you know, we raised them Catholic. We love that. I mean, any type of activity that, you know, gives you a sense of reverence of what is beyond the body is really helpful. I mean, I think to stay connected to the whole reality that, you know, basically our life is an adventure and it’s all an illusion. By the time we pass away.
That is what’s permanent. You know You’re in Bhutan with EO Asia Pacific, which is I’m a part of. And what I love about that culture, it’s a Buddhist culture, which, you know, I’m a practicing Buddhist, although I was raised Catholic. It’s Buddhism is a practice. It they live for the other world for the next life, you know. And so that’s why they’re kind to other people.
They’re kind to each other, and they really take into account how their actions impact other people. And in that way They’re mindful with every action that they do that they’re not necessarily, you know, oh, I’m meditating. It is that every act is a meditative act. And that is what I’m, you know, working on and practicing.
John Corcoran: 47:36
Yeah. Well, this has been great. Where can people go to learn more about you and Celebrity Gourmet and Dragonfly Cakes and Himaya Garden?
Odette D’Aniello: 47:45
Well, you can connect with me on LinkedIn or you can send me an email at Celebrity Gourmet. I’m hoping to, you know, do more things that are in alignment with my mindfulness journey and along with business. So stay tuned for that.
John Corcoran: 48:00
Great, Odette, thanks so much.
Odette D’Aniello: 48:02
Thanks. Thanks, John. Take care.
Outro: 48:08
Thanks for listening to the Celebrity Gourmet Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.