37: Starting a retail business after corporate burnout

Helene Godin was a lawyer for 22 years before she burnt out on the long hours and commute. She quit in 2010 with no plan.

Over the next year, Helene used her skills as a lawyer to study the gluten-free market and develop recipes. In 2011, she opened By the Way Bakery.  Today, Helene has five retail locations and her gluten-free, dairy-free and kosher products are sold at Whole Foods and Stew Leonard’s grocery chains.

In this episode of Career Switch Podcast, Helene shares the ups and downs she went through to open her store and how she continues to grow her multi-million dollar business. She also reveals the everyday challenges she still faces as the founder and CEO of By the Way Bakery. 

Helene offers her best advice for making a career change, especially if you, too, are thinking about starting a retail business. 


Episode Highlights:

• Quitting due to burnout
• Studying the gluten-free market
• Using lawyer skills to start and run a business
• Designing a store
• Selecting a logo
• Challenges of running a retail business
• How to grow a business
• How to attract customers

Find By the Way Bakery at:
Website: www.btwbakery.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bythewaybakery
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ByTheWayBakeryHastings


Other episodes about starting a business:

Ep 29: A life-changing experience inspires a career change

Ep 25: A hobby turns into a career change

Ep 6: Starting a woman-and-minority-owned small business 

Music credit: TimMoor from Pixabay

Podcast info:
What's your career switch? What do you think about this episode and the show? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Transcript

Lixandra: Hi, everyone. I'm Lixandra Urresta, and this is Career Switch Podcast. This show is here to encourage you to take action with whatever career change you're considering or working on. Maybe you're trying to switch industries or professions or break out on your own and start a business. In some episodes, I talk to people who've made their own career switch, whether by choice or circumstance. They share the good, the bad, and the truth about their journey, including what worked for them and what didn't. In other episodes, I speak with experts who offer their best career advice on challenges that can come up during the process of making a career change. After all, it takes guts to switch things up, and it's not easy. However, it is possible. 

So, I hope you hear something in this episode, an idea, a suggestion, a piece of advice that'll spur you into action with your own career switch, whether it's taking that first bold step or trying something new. Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 

Today, I speak with Helene Godin, founder and CEO of By The Way Bakery. Helene was a lawyer for 22 years until she burnt out on the long work hours and long commute to and from New York City. She quit in 2010 with no plan. Over the next year, Helene used her skills as a lawyer to study the gluten-free market and develop recipes. In 2011, she opened By The Way Bakery. Her work ethic and persistence have paid off. Helene now has five retail locations and her gluten-free, dairy-free, and kosher products are sold at Whole Foods and Stu Leonard's supermarket chains. Helene shares the ups and downs she went through to open her store and how she continues to grow her multi-million dollar business. She also reveals the everyday challenges she still deals with as the face of her brand. Helene offers her best advice for making a career switch, especially if you, too, are thinking about starting a retail business. 

Hi, Helene, thanks for joining us today. Let's dive in. What were you doing before your career switch, and what led up to it?

Helene: I was a lawyer. My specialties were intellectual property and media. I practiced for 22 years. I was at NBC for a bit. Then I was at Reader's Digest. Then I opened my own firm before I decided to go back in-house and was general counsel at audible.com for three years. And then I went to Bloomberg for two years. I just then decided I was done, that I had worked with great people on great projects, but it was time to do something completely different.

Lixandra: You left your job in May, 2010. Why was it time to do something completely different? Were you burnt out?

Helene: I was not just a lawyer. I was a workaholic lawyer in that if you gave me a project, I would do everything I could to exceed your expectations 110%. And in particular, my last job was at Bloomberg, which is a fabulous company, but it's all about metrics, both in and out. And I needed to exceed those metrics 110% to the point where when I gave notice, My boss said to me, of course you're burnt out. We gave you the work of two people. We never thought you'd do it. So now let's dial it down and figure out which clients and what projects you'd like to work on because we'd like to have you stay at the company. And I very politely said, too late. I've done a lot of reflection and decided, no, I need to do something completely different. Looking back, I was totally exhausted. So exhausted that I truly didn't have a plan when I gave notice. You just wanted out.

Lixandra: I wanted out. I needed out.

Helene: Tell us more about that. One of the things that was really bothering me was that I was losing touch with my community. I had a rule that we always had dinner together as a family, but sometimes it would be, you know, I'd be coming home from Audible and I'd be stuck in two hours of traffic on the George Washington Bridge. And I'd call my husband and say, I don't care if you give them a Red Bull, I got to have dinner with them. The hours were long. There were times, you know, I would leave our charming little town in Westchester County before sunrise. I'd come back well after dark. So I was missing that sense of community. So that was one of the things in the back of my mind when I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next.

Lixandra: So what did you do after you quit?

Helene: I found myself doing some of the grocery shopping, not something I had really done in 22 years. I'm very fortunate that my husband took care of things like that. In fact, when I quit my job, he said, I only have one request. Can I continue making dinner every night? Absolutely. But, you know, with, with time on my hands, I found myself doing a bit of grocery shopping and I happened to notice this was 2010 that the gluten-free section was expanding. And when I say expanding, it was going from like two feet to three feet on one shelf. You know, and then it was like, Ooh, there's a second shelf. And this was in a very short period of time and a light bulb went off and I had toyed with, you know, if I want to be part of the community, maybe I'll open a restaurant. And then I thought, no, I'm not really a night person. And so I decided that I would open a gluten-free bakery. And I started by experimenting and ultimately came up with gluten-free, dairy-free, which then led to it being kosher.

Lixandra: Did you know how to run a business?

Helene: I had no business experience. I knew how to negotiate a business deal, but I had no concept of how to run a business. I also had no idea how to bake because as I said earlier, my husband did all the cooking and that included the baking. So I threw myself into this 110% and, you know, went deep into Google to learn everything I could. And it was again, 2010. So knowledge was thin then about gluten-free baking, but also how to run a business. In particular, how to run a bakery. So I started Googling like, what are the most popular items? And at the time, you know, there were a few flour mixes on the market, but they would have been cost prohibitive as I learned from the spreadsheet I set up to figure out ingredient costs. So putting all those pieces together, it took me a year because I would go deep into Google to learn everything I could about egg whites and research, well, what are the six items I must have for gluten-free baking? And as I said, there was limited options for flour mix and it would ultimately be cost prohibitive. So I spent four months developing the flour mix together with the recipes for these six core items. and had a very sophisticated testing method, which was bake, bite, throw out until I would get it right.

Lixandra: Tell us more about how you developed the recipes.

Helene: It was all trial and error. I mean, there were some blogs I would look at and a few cookbooks I bought. Cause my goal was for it to be as good as if not better than a conventional bake good. So I started with conventional recipes. So I would look on the food network and I would look at Martha Stewart and I would look at Thomas Keller and I would try and uncover as many secrets as I could. I really dug deep into Google and I did my homework and I used every possible resource. To this day, I should have a bumper sticker on my car that says, warning, I stopped for bakeries. Because always, and I continue to be exploring and researching and figuring out what I can do to make my product and my company better.

Lixandra: Yeah, it definitely sounds like you did a ton of research. Is that where the lawyer part comes in? Is that where being a lawyer helps?

Helene: Yes. You know, people say that they want to go to law school to think like a lawyer. And I'm not really sure that law school changed my way of thinking, but it helped change my process. And in arguing a case, because I was a litigator for the first four years, You learn how to research until you've uncovered every possible argument and pulled out every fact. You need to know the ones that are helpful to you and you also need to know the ones that could hurt you so you could better address them. So yes, I think that to this day, being a lawyer helped me. It also helped me because I wear many hats at the bakery, including if a six-inch sprinkle cake falls off the truck and there's no one to make it right, I'm the person who will deliver it. But I also do, for example, all our marketing, and that requires writing. And I, as a lawyer, loved to draft. And to this day, I look forward even to writing a Facebook post. So yes, I've pulled from my legal experience and my legal skills in many directions.

Lixandra: Great. I like the connection there. And I appreciate all the research you've done because I'm gluten-free and I find that a lot of gluten-free baked goods taste like cardboard. Or dust. Or dust, yeah. It just needs to taste like it's not gluten-free and I'll be happy.

Helene: Right. That's why it's called By The Way Bakery, as in, oh, by the way, that delicious cookie you just devoured happened to be gluten free.

Lixandra: Yeah, I love that. So, Helene, there are so many aspects to opening a retail store. I'm sure we have listeners who are thinking about doing the same. How did you design the store and select the logo?

Helene: So I worked with a very local architect, Mitch Koch. We worked really closely together and we made trips to the city to look at various storefronts, whether bakeries or not. Like our door handle is a French rolling pin at all five locations. And it was inspired by a butcher shop in Chelsea Market that has a, not a real one, but it's shaped like a meat cleaver. So just always looking for design elements as we were doing this, like thinking about colors. And ultimately, I selected a yellow that almost feels like a buttercream and a deep brown that should remind you of chocolate. For the logo, I worked with our dear friend, Red Maxwell, who I met when he was a freshman and I was a sophomore at Tufts University. And he went on to be a graphic designer. And when I needed a logo, I reached out to him and he sent me 15 different options. And it was a great moment because I put them all on a closet door and I was standing there and my dubious son, who was like, what are you doing? This bakery thing is ridiculous, actually took a moment and stood with me, and he too crossed his arms and thought, hmm. And we picked elements from some of the different 15 designs to combine them to come up with something, and then Red polished it, and that's how we came up with our hang tag.

Lixandra: Wait a minute. Your son thought your bakery idea was ridiculous?

Helene: Oh, for sure. I had two teenage sons and there were times I could actually hear their eyes rolling to the back of their heads. Because, you know, when you're a teenager, the last thing you want is for your mom to open a business downtown. And when I say downtown, Hastings on Hudson is where I live and it's got 7,500 Residents, it's really tiny. You know, one of them at one point said, oh, God, are you going to like stand on Main Street in an apron?

Lixandra: Oh, OK. So it was just the typical teenage mindset.

Helene: Typical teenage stuff.

Lixandra: Yeah. Because I was wondering, maybe they made you hesitate or think that you were making the wrong decision.

Helene: No, I knew I was making the right decision for our family. I mean, yes, I always take my family to this day. My sons are now 27 and 29. And I take their views very seriously and I think about anything I do and how it's going to impact them, how it's going to impact my husband. But that said, I'm fairly driven and independent. So I said, I see you, I hear you, but I'm doing this anyway. I will not embarrass you. I will actually ultimately make you quite proud.

Lixandra: And your husband, he was on board?

Helene: I had told him, you know, I'm dialing it down. I'm burnt out. We're very fortunate financially so that I can really leave this fast-tracked, high-paying career. And I'm just going to do this, you know, sort of as a hobby. And he just looked at me and said, you don't do hobbies. And five stores and a hundred Whole Foods later, I think he was right.

Lixandra: Okay. Thanks for sharing that with us, Helene. So what would you say our listeners who are thinking about opening a business should be aware of?

Helene: It's very hard, at least from my experience. It's all consuming. Customer service is not easy. And if you're like me, you take your brand very personally, and that means you are on the front lines. Even given, you know, that we're now a multimillion dollar business. I'm still, again, if a sprinkle cake falls off a truck and I can't find someone else to fix that problem, I'm the one who'll take care of it because I am the bakery. I could not have done this without the people who've been with me along the way. And I have a hundred employees now and they are all valuable, but I view it as like, it's very personal and I need to make sure that I am protecting the brand.

Lixandra: So you're like the face of the brand.

Helene: I'm the face of the brand, exactly. Or in the podcast, I'm the voice of the brand.

Lixandra: Okay, so you opened your first bakery in May 2011, one year after you quit working as a lawyer, and you now have five locations and your products are sold at Whole Foods from New Jersey to Maine in the U.S. What are some challenges that you faced at the beginning and over the years?

Helene: You know, HR is always very difficult. You know, finding good people is really hard. I do my best once I find them to retain them. I truly believe in treating all employees with respect because it doesn't matter what role you have in a business, you're important or you wouldn't be on the team. So I find that really hard. Customer service, as I said, is very hard and we're a luxury brand. Our cakes are very expensive. And so there's a higher expectation of quality, not just in terms of the baked goods, but also in terms of the customer service and in terms of the packaging and in terms of the turnaround time. And, you know, you have to take all those things into consideration when you're planning a retail business. The other thing is, I was quite fortunate and had the resources that I could launch in a storefront. But that doesn't mean that that's the singular answer for anyone who's thinking of going into retail. And I don't just mean for food. Let's say you're thinking about doing a little antique store. You don't have to rent a storefront. You could start at a flea market. A table is a lot cheaper than a whole 800 square foot retail footprint.

Lixandra: So if you had to do it again, would you start that way too, selling your baked goods at a flea market?

Helene: No, because I'm crazy. And given that there wouldn't have been a crystal ball showing me what had happened before, I still would have done it this way.

Lixandra: But that's a great way to start and dip your toe to see how it goes.

Helene: At the same time, while I have been fortunate in terms of resources, I've done it very much organically. I didn't open five stores at once. And I didn't start at 100 Whole Foods. I started at two, which is the way Whole Foods does it. I mean, that wasn't my choice. That's wisely how Whole Foods does it in that they say, we'll see if you can actually deliver the baked goods to Yonkers before we tell you you can deliver to Columbus Circle, our most lucrative store.

Lixandra: How did you get into Whole Foods in the first place?

Helene: I got lucky, but I was also persistent. I wanted to grow and I have grown organically, but I was looking for the next thing. And I thought Whole Foods would be kind of interesting. And so I started going to Whole Foods and befriending people in various departments. And I befriended Julie because that's where the chocolate was that I was using in my experimental baking. And we kept in touch and it turned out she became a customer because she also lived in the same town and she would come in for coffee and a muffin and say, Oh, I remember. One day, Julie said to me, Chrissy's here. I said, who's Chrissy? She said, she's the buyer. She's the bakery buyer. And I happened to have a chocolate cake. And not being shy, I said, Chrissy, it's so nice to meet you. Have a chocolate cake. I own By the Way Bakery. And it was just a fortuitous moment that had been planned in that I would show up at Whole Foods regularly with samples. to give to the bakery department and other store employees, like in case the word would trickle up. And I did this for about two years.

Lixandra: So what happened with Christy, the buyer for Whole Foods?

Helene: She said, you know, we're looking for some local gluten-free providers. And the next thing I knew, I got an email from Ellie Truesdale, who at the time was the local food forager. And I was invited to a bake-off. They said, you get 15 minutes and we've got a whole day's worth of presenters. So show us what you got. Show us what you could sell to us. And they picked me.

Lixandra: What a great story. And when was this? This was 2013.

Helene: It's a much harder, very different process now.

Lixandra: Based on the Whole Foods story you just told us, picking up that developing relationships and putting yourself out there seem to be important with growing a business.

Helene: It is important to develop relationships and don't burn bridges. Don't burn bridges because it's not a good way to live your life, but it also is quite helpful in business because you really don't know. The guy you sit next to on the airplane could be the buyer for Whole Foods or could be the head of marketing for somewhere with information that could be helpful, or you could help them and karma comes around.

Lixandra: Let's backtrack a little to when you opened By The Way Bakery in May 2011. When we first spoke, you told me that you actually didn't advertise that the bakery was gluten free. Why not?

Helene: If you look at the windows, the storefront windows at our five stores, four of them have our logo in the hang tag form, and it says By The Way Bakery. And bakery is bigger because I'm emphasizing bakery, but it'll say gluten free, dairy free. The Hastings window says, by the way, bakery, Hastings and Hudson. And the reason was I have this tiny little town and I wanted local traffic and I was afraid that people would be turned off by the fact that we were gluten and dairy free. I decided that I would be low key about it in town, but that if you had a need for my product, I would help you find me through other channels. Like, you know, if you walked past this store, it would be so charming, it wouldn't occur to you that it was a gluten-free bakery.

Lixandra: So if you were gluten-free, like myself, I will look for a gluten-free bakery. Then people like me would find you. And for those folks who weren't gluten-free, they would see a cute little bakery in town and go in to check it out. So you are getting both gluten-free and non-gluten-free customers.

Helene: That was the hope, and it seems to have worked.

Lixandra: So how did word spread about By The Way Bakery?

Helene: I befriended the editor at Westchester Magazine, so they would write an article or two about us. And also an editor at Low Hud, which is the Gannett local paper, who happened to be gluten free. And she was very kind, Jeannie Mutchnick, who wrote a couple of pieces about me. And we sponsored at the time a walk for celiac disease. I would go to celiac meetings and offer samples and we would cater events at synagogues at no charge to spread the word outside of my local community. And now I have customers who are gluten-free for years and will suddenly say, wait, are your products dairy-free too? Or vice versa. Or kosher customers who will say, Oh, it's power, but it's also gluten free. Like, so that's very nice.

Lixandra: And now let's touch upon the pandemic because of course that affected so many businesses. You had 60 employees at the time. How did you get through the pandemic?

Helene: I qualified for PPP and I used it exactly the way you were supposed to in that I didn't lay off a single employee. Um, we qualified, we were, we were exempt by New York state. We did not have to shut the businesses because we were a food provider in the retail side and a food manufacturer on the production side. I didn't lay anybody off. And what we did instead was we would, as I like to say, big for the camera. The biggers would bake and then the decorating team would make cakes that we could take pictures of to build our portfolio, whether they were wedding cakes or celebration cakes. It gave us something to do. We also took the opportunity to do some renovations in the factory. And we came up with the new products. We developed a snack food called Momix, named after my son, Mo. Actually, it had been a family treat when Mo was 11. So I really believe in not being shy, building relationships and making lemonade out of lemons. And I did my best to do that during the pandemic.

Lixandra: All right, Helene, as we wrap up, tell us about By The Way Bakery and how listeners in the New York tri-state area can find your products.

Helene: You can find us at btwbakery.com. It's pickup only at any of our five locations. We have one store in Westchester County. That was the first one. Then we have Greenwich, Connecticut, Upper East Side, Upper West Side, and Williamsburg. We do beautiful custom cakes. We do gorgeous wedding cakes. But we also have lovely treats you can pick up like a bag of chocolate chip cookies or fudge brownie cookies or almond cookies or to die for. So we have anything from a cookie for $2.50 to a wedding cake for $2,500. And I'm proud of each and every one of those items where they don't walk out the door.

Lixandra: And for people outside of the New York tri-state area, you are available at Whole Foods.

Helene: Yes. And so we are, as you said, we were in Whole Foods from Northern New Jersey to Maine. And we're also at Stu Leonard's, which is a grocery chain. And you're writing a cookbook. Exactly. And so if you can't find us, maybe you can make our products at home. I would say the book is 85% done. I'm hoping for 2024.

Lixandra: So Helene, what three tips can you offer our listeners who are working on their career switch, especially to those who are looking to start a retail business? Do your homework.

Helene: Really dig deep. really understand the marketplace and the cost of opening and dial that down as best you can. And as a marketer says, who's it for and what's it for? Are there enough of the who's who are looking for your product, who have a problem that you can solve for them? And to open a business, you have to think about all the pieces and you have to know how to run all of them. not just the glamorous front of the house kind of stuff. So that's the first thing. The second thing is ask for feedback. Ask for feedback from friends, from family, from neighbors, and listen to what they have to say. Because to ask and then not absorb it doesn't mean you have to follow their advice. But get their reaction, get their feedback, process what they're saying. Think about, well, they said that they're not looking for this, but they're looking for that. And how much of a spin is it? don't stay in your lane being so rigid. Like, no, I'm doing vegan gluten-free because even though that's what I started with, I thought, you know what, as my friend Jenny says, what a difference an egg makes. So I pivoted and I narrowed what I was doing, but then thought, well, but if I'm dairy free, I can still be kosher and maybe that will bring me the additional customers I'm looking for. And the third thing is don't be afraid to fail. Every day look and see, is this working? Is this working for me? Is this working for my customers? And sometimes it isn't. And hopefully you haven't put every penny you have into the business and you can take the opportunity to start something else instead. Because you may also find that even if it's working, you hate it. And you shouldn't change careers to do something you're miserable at.

Lixandra: Thanks to Helene Godent for being our guest today. Check out By The Way Bakery at btwbakery.com. 

You can find links to the resources mentioned in this episode and more helpful information in the show notes and on our website, careerswitchpod.com. 

So what's your career switch? Are you motivated to take action after listening to this episode? Tell us at careerswitchpod.com. We'd love to know, along with any feedback you have about the show. Let us know too, if you'd like to be a guest. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn at careerswitchpod. And please rate, review, and share with your friends and colleagues. It'll help get the show out there. Thanks for listening today. Till next time.