TRANSCRIPT:

[Music]

Hi everyone and welcome to this episode of the Digital Marketeers. Here today, I have Daphne Subar with us, the founder of Subarzsweets, which is a sweet gifting company. Thank you for joining us and thank you for being here, Daphne.

Thank you, Stephanie. I'm so excited to be here and talk with you.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into this industry?

Yes, so I launched Subarzsweets almost eight years ago in 2016. It was actually a second career for me. I was a lawyer, practicing law for about 25-26 years. I did enjoy practicing law, but I also liked to bake, and it was really my daughters who challenged me and said, "You've always liked to bake, and you've kind of toyed with the idea of opening a bakery. What are you waiting for?"

At this time, they were 16, 18, and 14, I think, and I came up with all these excuses. They're like, "So?" and I'm like, "Well, it's a little different when you're my age and you have responsibility." They said, "You tell us to follow our passion, so why aren't you following your passion?" They said that to me several times, and really, they kind of challenged me and made me think that, yeah, if I'm going to be telling them to follow their passion, why aren't I following my passion? So in 2016, I left the practice of law and just launched Subarzsweets.

That's so amazing, and a very inspirational story. Your daughters definitely were on to something. What kind of law did you practice?

I practiced different kinds of civil litigation, so I was arguing for a living, which actually was getting you know it’s hard to argue for a living, so I was getting a little bit tired of it, but I still really enjoyed a lot of aspects of it.

Yeah, well, it definitely is a different industry, and I'm assuming that you started baking and doing things like that to alleviate some of that stress and find it almost therapeutic. I know I enjoy cooking, and when I cook, it's almost like therapy for me as well. In another life, maybe one day I'll own a cooking show, but for the time being, this is what I'm doing. So what makes Subar special and different from other corporate gifting?

Well, Subarz is different from other corporate gifting in a couple of ways. First of all, we have a unique baked good that we created, which is a cross between a biscotti or a mandel bread and a cookie. So it's different than other products out on the market. We have one product but in about 21 different varieties. They are very unique in their taste and texture, and we have a lot of fun with the flavors. We have a traditional chocolate chip, but we also have a lavender, we have a matcha, so we've had a lot of fun with the flavors. We also have a gluten-free line.

We have a unique product that ships very easily and is beautifully packaged, and that's another way that we stand out. They come in a curated pink box, they're all individually wrapped, and they look very old-fashioned and home-baked. Each Subarz is wrapped in a doily, the boxes are beautifully tied up with a ribbon, and they're accompanied by a handwritten note. So the whole gifting process is very personal, and from the moment the recipient receives the box and they open up the shipping box, they can tell that this isn't just your standard box of chocolates or box of pears. Somebody really took time to send a unique gift. We also work very closely with our corporate clients to personalize the whole experience and figure out what makes sense for their clients. In a lot of instances, it's not sending holiday gifts because we get a lot of gifts around the holidays, and unfortunately, they often get lost in the shuffle. Instead, it's figuring out if it's someone like a real estate company, they may want to send it on the anniversary of when they retained the client or when they closed on a home. Other people are sending on birthdays, so there are many different ways to celebrate and gift throughout the year that aren't all between Thanksgiving and January 1st.

Yeah, definitely. Loving to bake and starting a bakery as opposed to starting a gifting company—and a corporate gifting company at that—are very different. How did you stumble upon the idea to make this a gifting company and then take it to the corporate level?

Well, what happened is when I launched in 2016, because I was baking, I thought of myself as a bakery. I had these products, I baked them, I packaged them, and I shipped them. Luckily, word spread pretty quickly, and we had a great increase in orders pretty quickly. Then, when I looked back at my business about a year or two later, I realized most people were sending these as gifts. People do order them for themselves, but because of the packaging and because we ship nationwide, and the ease with which we make the whole process, most of my clients were gifting. So I sat there and thought about it, and I realized it was really a corporate gifting company because people send them for personal gifts, but really, a lot of the larger clients are corporations who are looking for another way to reach out, connect, and personalize things.

As this was happening, the pandemic hit, so people were really looking for that connection. Corporations that are now remote or virtual, or hybrid, might want to, if they're having a board meeting or some kind of meeting, send something to each board member so they feel like they're kind of in the room. They might send a little box, and then while they're all on a four-hour board meeting, they can all be snacking on their Subar. So it kind of turned into a gifting company when I stopped and looked back at my business and realized it really wasn't a bakery. I thought of it as a bakery because I had a baked good.

Right, and sometimes that's the best way to stumble upon it, right? It's like that aha moment where you're like, "This is what I'm supposed to be doing," and it just all falls into place. How did you come up with the idea of having that specific Subarz? Personalizing it definitely takes time, and if you're working with some of these corporate companies, they have hundreds or sometimes even thousands of people working for them. Being able to keep that integrity for all of the bars and all of the boxes that you're putting out there must be pretty hard. How do you sustain that personability when sending this out. And I guess there are two questions here, and I apologize for that, but also, how did you come up with this bespoke idea of this cross between a biscotti and a cookie and how you described it earlier?

Right, so let me start there. I love to bake, and I love to eat baked goods—that's where a lot of it comes from. I have three daughters, and my oldest daughter has severe food allergies. My youngest daughter has some medical issues, so over the years, when they were growing up, I was used to experimenting in the kitchen so there'd always be something they could eat. I kind of came up with this Mandel bread-biscotti type recipe that didn't use any kind of almond flour or nuts at all because of my oldest daughter's severe food allergies. That's how it started, and I would always bring what we now call the traditional chocolate chip to family events, school events, or whatever, and people would always say, "You really should sell these," and I'd be like, "Yeah, yeah."

Then when I started thinking about the bakery, I realized I wanted to have a product that was different from anything else on the market. There is a traditional biscotti or mandel bread on the market, but I wanted something different, so I started tweaking the recipe. I took it and changed it a bit to be a little sweeter, not quite as hard. It's crunchy but not hard. With biscotti, you often have to dip it—sometimes in coffee or something else. With these, you don't have to dip.

I also wanted something that, when I first launched, there were a lot more in-person events—something that you could grab, have in your hand, take a bite of, and still have a conversation with someone at an event. They’re kind of like a three-bite item; they don’t require a utensil, it’s not a cupcake, you’re not going to get frosting on your face, so they’re a very easy thing to enjoy at an event. That’s how I came up with the product.

Expanding and keeping it personal—well, I remember from when I practiced law, the number of gifts we got towards the end of the year and how it did feel impersonal. It almost felt like the people sending them were doing it out of obligation, and I didn’t want that to continue. They meant well, but it was just what they did at the end of the year—somebody’s assistant would go on to, say, Harry and David or some other company and order 50 boxes to be sent to 50 people they worked with. It just wasn’t very personal.

When I started and was smaller, I was handwriting the notes myself in the beginning because I thought it was a nice personal touch. As I expanded, that’s something my clients really appreciated and wanted, so I’ve kept that in there. I kind of just did it in the beginning because I wasn’t thinking. In the first month, let’s say I sent out 50 packages—I just handwritten the notes because I hadn’t thought through what I was going to do about it. Another thing that I didn’t think through, but then it became something that we’re known for—we’re known for that personal touch, so we just kept it on and made it work.

Is it a message that you create, or is it a message that the sender creates and you just write it in?

They can create whatever they want, within a certain length, of course. They can create whatever they want, which is great. When the recipient receives the package, it really looks like the sender went to a store, picked out this box of baked goods, wrote the note because it’s a handwritten note, signed it, and sent it. Occasionally, we can include something else in the package or in the note—some people want their own business card, some want their own notecard, so they’ll send us the notecards. There are a couple of different ways we can personalize and make it even more unique.

That’s really nice. Expanding is amazing, but eventually, I’m sure you grew out of your home kitchen, right? How do you take something that is so close to you, so personal to you, and something that you’ve done manually and personally for so long, and then expand upon that with other bakers and helpers coming in without ruining the integrity of your baked good? That has to be hard.

It was really hard, and I actually fought it for a while. I would rather have stayed up all night and baked than have to have somebody else do it. But eventually, I realized I really couldn’t grow anymore at home. I could bake, let’s say, 200 in three or four hours; when I go to the commercial kitchen, we can produce about 1,800 in four hours. There’s a big difference there, but I do remember the first time going. I vividly remember driving over to the commercial kitchen, and all this imposter syndrome I was setting in. I'm like, I'm going to get there, and I'm going to be working with two people, and they're going to figure out that I'm really not a baker and that I should have never launched a business. All the things that you worry about were going through my head, and I was actually really hoping maybe the car would stall, but I got there, and it’s been great. It's still a very hands-on process. The bars are all twice-baked, so we really are making the dough, hand-placing them in pans, cutting them, and watching the baking process. It’s a very hands-on process.

I have been able to train others. I am probably still there about 75% of the time overseeing if I can be. If it’s the holidays and thousands of boxes are going out, they need to be doing that while I’m doing other parts of the process. But that was a very hard and scary thing for me, and I really had to talk myself into it. I’m so glad I did it. My business wouldn’t be where it is now if I hadn’t been able to do that, but it was hard. It’s also hard to take a recipe that you’re normally baking 40 bars at a time and scale it to where you’re baking 700 bars at a time, but it all went really well.

I’m really glad to hear that, and I’m glad that the deliciousness didn’t falter from scaling that up as well because that’s always a fear, right? When a big batch, even sometimes when you’re going to a catering hall or something, and you eat the restaurant’s food day in, day out, it’s amazing, and then they’re making it for 150 people, and you’re like, “Alright, it’s not as good as when they’re just cooking it for a table of four,” so that’s really great.

What flavors do you have, and how did you come up with those flavors? I know you mentioned some interesting combinations, so what’s the story behind that?

There are little stories behind every flavor. I started with one flavor, and I did that intentionally. Several people that I had talked to before I launched the business said, “Start simple. Keep it simple. Start small.” In my mind, when I thought of myself as opening a bakery, I thought I’d have mandel bread, cupcakes, and so on, but I heard that advice from other business owners, and I kept it small and simple. So I started with one flavor, which was the traditional chocolate chip based on the mandel bread I had made when my kids were growing up. I just changed it a little bit. I changed the shape so it would be uniform to ship, and I changed the texture just a little bit because you want every piece to be the same whether it’s a corner or middle.

So I started with traditional chocolate chip, and then I realized I needed more flavors. The first year, every month, I developed a new flavor, and it was really fun. The second one was a double chocolate almond flavor. Then I wanted to do something with caramel and salt. I was going to do a caramel apple, and then a friend of mine said, “Why aren’t you doing any fruits? Do a stone fruit.” So I decided to do a salted apricot caramel, which has been extremely popular.

I wanted to do a lemon one, and actually, my sister suggested baking with an herb, like thyme or something. I specifically remember arguing with my older sister, “No, I’m not doing that.” She said, “Just try it.” I thought it wouldn’t taste good, that it would taste like soup, but I did it, and lemon thyme was born. They all have a little story about somebody telling me something they liked or something they thought I should try, and I developed it. Once I developed the first couple of recipes, I really enjoyed it. It was very fun to experiment in the kitchen. My tasters were my neighbors, my kids, and my kids’ friends. When I came up with, let’s say, lemon thyme, I’d have three or four varieties. I’d bake them up, very scientific, put them in Ziploc bags, and hand them out to the neighbors with an A, B, C, and D on the bag with a Sharpie, and my kids and their friends would try them.

I told them they could have them, but they needed to tell me which ones they liked and why. They were all my initial tasters.

And that’s the best, right? No honesty like a kid.

Exactly. You get, “This is gross,” and all that, so if you really want brutal honesty, definitely give it to a kid.

So how many different varieties do you have today?

I think it’s 21, and I’m hesitating because we have 13 original flavors, and eight of those are now offered in gluten-free. We also have a few flavors that come and go. We have boo bars that are only out for Halloween, and then we have a Passover-friendly line of four flavors that we only make within two weeks of Passover, and they all have to be pre-ordered. There are a couple that come and go. Other than that, all the flavors are available year-round. In the beginning, we tried only having Chocolate peppermint for the holidays and lemon in the spring, but people really want all the flavors all year long, so you can order them all year long. You can order a box that has a couple of different flavors mixed; you can customize that.

That's really great. Do you have a cadence for when you try or test out new flavors or launch a new flavor?

Not really. I can tell you we will not launch between October 15th and January 15th because that's such a busy time. New flavors would be tried out probably in the spring and summer. We haven't introduced a new flavor in a couple of years because our other flavors have been so popular and we've been so busy, although we're thinking about a few new flavors.

Nice, nice. Have you noticed any specific trends in the corporate gifting landscape regarding sweets or food? I feel like so many different things come up, and with your sweet bars being so different—it's not your average sweet when you think of what you're getting in a gift box, or it’s not your average cookie—have you seen any other trends that were pretty interesting or maybe things that didn't last that long?

A couple of trends I've seen: people like things like sweet bars because they ship so easily. Rather than sending chocolate—I know a lot of chocolate companies won't ship during certain months of the year because it's too hot—ours don't need to be kept at a certain temperature. They can be kept at room temperature, and they ship easily.

A trend I've seen since before the pandemic is that offices would sometimes order several of our larger boxes, put them out in the kitchen or the mail room, wherever people congregated, and they would come in, grab one or two with their cup of coffee, and go back. Post-pandemic, corporations are more cognizant of that "sharing of food," so they'll buy smaller three-packs or eight-packs where people can do a grab-and-go. Some offices will order several three-packs so that if people are still in the office, they can just grab a three-pack, take it back to their office, or eat it there, but there's no fear of them touching food that somebody else may be touching, even as careful as people can be, you know, or eight-packs. So there's been a trend toward having more individual packages.

Also, before—so a lot of it did change in the pandemic—before the pandemic, all gifts were really sent to offices. A lot of corporate or client gifts were usually sent to those offices. Let’s say you had a large law firm or a large consulting company; a lot of times, they would send it to their clients’ offices. Post-pandemic, a lot of times, they're being sent to homes, or they're using gift cards so that the recipient can go online and decide where they would like to have it sent.

That's really cool and really nice. It seems like the personalization part of it is so big for you guys with those notes. Are you having the sender send you the note, or are you recreating what they want? Because I know you said that they're signing it and stuff as well, so that’s pretty...

We're signing their name. It can go both ways, actually. I do have a couple of my corporate clients that like to do their own notes, and they are monthly clients, so they'll send out, let's say, 20 or 30 or 40 gifts a month. They’ll send me all the note cards for that month in advance—there's that option. The other option is they just let us know what they want the note to say, and we do the handwritten note. Anyone who orders, even if a person goes online to order one box to send to their aunt, let’s say, can always let us know that they want the handwritten note. It's all included in the price, and we just do the handwritten notes. So it’s not just for corporate gifting; even the personal gifting gets the same attention and the same service.

Nice. Are there any sustainability practices that you integrate into your production or packaging? Are there any corporate givebacks or associations that you try to associate yourself with or work with for different things like community service?

Yes, to all of that. Sustainability—we're very cognizant of our packaging and not including anything unnecessary in the package and not over-packaging. Because it’s a food item, it all comes in a food-safe box, which is then put into another box, but the dimensions are intentional so that there’s not going to be a lot of space where you need to fill it with bubble wrap or anything like that. Everything is very sleek because I don’t want to—you know, we all get packages where you get something at home, let’s say it’s a pen, but somehow it’s in this big box with all this extra packaging because that’s just how they do it. We're very cognizant of that.

Giving back—we are always giving back to the community in many different ways. During the pandemic, we gave a lot to healthcare providers. We actually employed a lot of unemployed  angelinos in like the restaurant business hair salons like in the beginning when everything's shut down. We decided to do all of our local deliveries as actual deliveries instead of overnight shipping during the pandemic. Rather than paying for the overnight shipping, I gave that money to unemployed people in the community who would do it. They would come in the morning, pick them all up, and leave them on people's doorsteps. It was actually really fun because everyone loves getting something left on their door.

That's so nice and such an innovative and different way to give back and help others.

It was great. You know, people feel useful, right? They did, and it was great. I remember, in the beginning, when the pandemic started, nobody knew anything. I would have my mask on, the person I was going to meet would have a mask on, and I’d kind of leave the package in the front yard. When they pulled up, I'd go back to my doorway, they’d get out of the car and grab it. We were so nervous about it all, but I really wanted to help. I liked that because they were just sitting at home, feeling useless, and I think you're right.

Through the years, we've given back and partnered with several organizations. We're always kind of having one either happening or on the back burner. We've partnered with Everyday Action, which takes a lot of extra food from television and movie sets around L.A. and repurposes it to the unhoused rather than having it get trashed. We've worked with the Oscar Lwac Foundation, which works with hospitals and sick kids, by both making donations and donating products to healthcare workers. We've worked with GLSEN L.A., we've worked with SH, and we've worked with a lot of different organizations.

That's really amazing. I'm very happy to hear that, and it’s so nice to also share your success with others. Not only are you getting your product out there, but you're doing good with your product, which always makes you feel even better, you know, an additional purpose.

I agree, and you know what? I've been really lucky. I was able to transition from one successful career to another. It's not easy, and my community really helped me. I had friends, and friends of friends, and just people who are really kind and supportive. Then again, during the pandemic, I saw orders come through from individuals sending something to their grandparents’ neighbors, saying, “I can't visit my grandparents because they're out of state, but thank you for dropping groceries off,” or “Thank you for checking on them.” People were really being so appreciative and so grateful that it just reminded me how good people are. I wanted to continue giving back, and everyone loves sweets, so I want to share the success I've had with my business.

Well, I love that, and it’s definitely something to be proud of. I'm sure that people are grateful for that every day, so thank you for doing that. What have been some of the challenges that you faced entering this industry, and some of the lessons that maybe you've learned in figuring out how to overcome those trials and tribulations to get to success?

I mean, there have been a lot. I really honestly didn't know what I was doing. I kind of launched it thinking it would—I mean, I did a little bit of research, and I shadowed someone with a similar business, but I really didn't know what I was doing. So there have been challenges along the way. One challenge was the scaling, and part of that was an internal challenge because I was scared to go to a different kitchen. I was scared to step outside my comfort zone. The way to get through that was just reminding myself that I really wanted to grow, share the sweetness, and expand my business, and I couldn't do that out of my house. There were only so many Subarz you can bake in a 24-hour period.

Other challenges have been shipping. Shipping has been a challenge from the beginning. I don't think I thought it through. Shipping is costly, and we've tried different shipping models. Now we have flat-rate shipping and then free shipping after a certain amount. But in the beginning, I didn't have that, and it was very challenging because I think a lot of consumers are used to free shipping now, like Amazon Prime. When you have shipping with small businesses, there’s a little bit of hesitancy there, but I think I've reached a really good middle ground on shipping.

Other challenges: during the pandemic, there were a lot of challenges getting supplies. We actually pulled one of our flavors, which is very popular—the white chocolate raspberry uses freeze-dried raspberries, which were impossible to come by. There were a lot of issues during the pandemic with shortages, but you know what? We just took the products down and put them back up, and people really understood.

Yeah, I mean, that was such a crazy time for everybody. The fact that you were able to still be in business and sustain business and figure out a way to get our products to the people that needed them and wanted them most is amazing, so I think people definitely understood that there had to be some limitations and some things that just didn't work out.

But, you know, they stuck with you, and I'm sure they came back and ordered those flavors once they were back up and running. Good thing it was only for a short period of time. There were so many businesses that didn’t make it through the pandemic, so you also have to be grateful for that as well.

I'm very grateful for that, and I think honestly having an online presence before the pandemic really helped. I think if I had to scramble and get that done during the pandemic, it would have been hard. But yeah, I am very grateful. I know that I am lucky that I’ve been around for almost eight years. It continues to grow, and I’m really grateful to everyone who helps support Subarz.

Are the products available anywhere else aside from your website?

There are a couple of retail locations locally in California, but generally, it's through the website. Most people send them as gifts, and since we ship as much to New York as we do to areas in Los Angeles, probably 98% of our sales are online.

Nice, that's awesome. Can you also share maybe a success story that you've experienced with a corporate order or something very memorable that you feel will always stick with you?

I think a success story was probably the holiday 2022 season. I had probably my largest order—it was several thousand boxes to one client. It was crazy, and I actually wasn't sure how we were going to do it all because that was at a much bigger scale than what we were used to. My husband and our friends were like, "Just do it, you'll figure it out," and we did. But it was crazy, you know? That was the first time, about 14 months ago, that I wasn’t in the kitchen overseeing and working with them on the product. I had to trust them that they would get the products made the way I wanted them, and it worked out fine. Then I realized, with an order of that size, we needed to limit customization. We had to streamline that a little bit, but we figured it out, and it worked, and it was great.

That's great. It is during those times that you get some of your biggest lessons, right? You learn what you would do differently next time, what really worked, and you understand what you’re capable of when you push your own limits. Getting that negative talk out of your head is key because we can be our own worst enemy.

Absolutely, I would have talked myself out of even starting a business. But at some point, I was like, just try it. You're never going to know what you can do. Part of it has been great because I’ve learned so much, and that’s what keeps me going. There's constantly learning—how to market, handle the financial side, scale, ship, and more. If you're not willing to learn and ask questions, it wouldn’t really work. I've been very lucky.

And how do you maintain strong relationships with your clients and corporate gifters? Being online and having direct-to-consumer sales is great, but there's a loss of personal interaction. How have you learned to maintain and build those strong relationships?

A lot of it is just keeping connected with them. If a larger corporate order is going to come in, it's usually not going to come through the website. Usually, if it’s a larger order, they email us directly, and we work with whoever at that corporation is responsible for the order. We continue to give them feedback and updates, like if two addresses are wrong out of 200 packages. We’re constantly giving them feedback, and then we follow up after and ask how it went—what they liked or didn’t like. The good part is that the product speaks for itself, so a lot of times, a corporate gifter will get great feedback from the recipient. I just make sure I keep in touch with people. Most of my clients are lovely people who really want to gift and appreciate others. It’s a joy to keep in touch with them, and I think people appreciate that we’re all part of a community.

That is a big thing, especially with people being remote or hybrid. Having that sense of community and being part of a team is important. Bridging that gap is important too.

I agree. We’re part of their team—the gifting team. We’re trying to make it so that they can show their clients or employees gratitude and appreciation. It’s hard to keep employees sometimes, and I think a lot of corporations are realizing now that simple things like sending a gift on their birthday or a box that says "thanks for your hard work" can go a long way. You don't have the informal interaction you used to, so this is just another way to keep people connected.

And it is so important to make your employees feel that way, especially for smaller companies that maybe can’t do big retreats or offer huge bonuses. Even if a company is just starting out and doesn't have much revenue, they still want to show personability. A little attitude goes a long way, and who doesn’t want a cookie delivered to their door?

Exactly! We've worked with small companies and startups. I can recall a couple of companies where the person was just thinking through the idea but had a few initial meetings with others to pick their brains. They sent them a small box of Subarz as a thank you for spending half an hour on the phone with them. That's a small gesture that that person will remember for a long time.

Definitely, it makes all the difference. I remember when I was younger, interviewing and sending a thank you note or something like that, or winning a new piece of business and sending the client a little celebratory something. Those things might have fallen off a little bit, and people forget about that. It’s kind of taken for granted that you’re always going to do your job. So, it’s a really cute and different way to gift. I don’t want to knock Harry and David or any corporate gifting, but I’ve gotten a lot of those boxes over the years, and they are a bit impersonal. There are a lot of things in there that I’m like, "Am I really going to eat this?" or "I feel bad throwing it away, but what am I going to do with 600 pairs?" You’re really stepping it up, which I really love and enjoy.

What are some of the lessons you’ve learned or that you wish you knew before you started? Maybe somebody thinking about starting a baking business or someone in the industry might not be considering these things right now.

Lessons I’ve learned or advice I’d give—I think it's all tied in. A big one is just to ask questions when you don’t know. Don’t get in your own way. People generally want to help. I’ve learned from so many, and now I try to give back. If anyone is starting a new business and they want advice, I’m willing to share anything I’ve learned because I don’t feel like people should have to start over. I feel like I really benefited from asking questions and surrounding myself with people who really wanted me to succeed. Another lesson is to never give up on learning. There’s always something more to learn, another way to grow my business, and something out there I can do to be better.

In your view and what you're doing today, where do you see the corporate gifting industry going? Do you think it’s growing? Do you think you need to be unique and different to make things worthwhile?

I think corporate gifting is growing, and studies show that corporations are gifting more, both to employees and clients. I think the trend is toward more authentic gifting. It doesn’t need to be a large, life-changing gift. It needs to be a personal gift with a personal touch. There's more and more of a trend toward that, and I think people really appreciate it. People are also, in some ways, tired of getting stuff, swag, or two T-shirts, a mug, and a pen with a company name. They’d rather have something that looks very personal and doesn’t take up space. You're going to enjoy it, and if you want to remember it, you keep a little gift note. It makes an impact. I think there is definitely an increase in corporate gifting because corporations are now realizing the necessity to keep their employees and clients happy.

That’s great, and I agree with you on that one. I think it makes sense for sure. This was so much fun. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here. I always like to end our segments with two fun questions. The first one is, what was your first job ever?

My first job ever—so my dad owned a gas station, and I would work there. That was my first job. I think I was like 14 or 15 when I started, but yeah, I would help out at the gas station back in the days before self-serve.

So you'd be out there pumping gas?

Pumping gas, yep, exactly.

Did he have one of those little convenience stores inside too?

Eventually, but back when I was young, he didn’t. Eventually, he did have the little convenience store.

I’d rather be inside doing that work in the register, I think.

And the second question is, if you could do any career in the world, location and money didn’t matter, what would you do?

I do love what I'm doing now, so I would maybe do that. I would have maybe started it earlier in my life, so I’d have more knowledge. But if not, if it was another career, I think I would like to be a teacher. I think teachers are amazing. I witnessed amazing teachers with my daughters. I feel like my three daughters have grown up to be incredible people, and I feel like it was really a partnership with my husband and I as well as the teachers because they're in school as many waking hours as home and I really have a a lot of respect for teachers and I don't think they are not appreciated enough I a million percent agree with that for sure um and they're not feet enough either no not at all uh they such a big responsibility and they do so much and I mean that's a whole other topic I could go on and on and on about that right lots of teachers in my family as well but that's that's really great and really nice and I I really uh respect that and enjoy that um again this was really great can you tell us where our listeners can find you if they're interested in placing an order or learning more or speaking with course so most you can always reach me through the website which is www.subarzsweets.com we are Subarz on Instagram and Subarz  and Facebook you can always send me an email directly at Daphne@subarz.com awesome well thank you so much again um this was really great I hope our listeners enjoyed this and um I appreciate your time thank you so much this was so much fun so please subscribe like and share um and until next time thank you everybody [Music]