Ellen Bennett:
Sometimes the road is windy. What you think is the thing you want to do is not actually the thing you end up doing, and that's okay.
Kerry Diamond:
Hey, Bombesquad. Welcome to Radio Cherry Bombe, the show that's all about women and food. I'm your host, Kerry Diamond, coming to you from Brooklyn, New York. Today's guest is a good friend of mine. It's Ellen Bennett, the CEO and Founder of Hedley & Bennett in Los Angeles. Many of you know Hedley & Bennett as the maker of colorful and highly functional aprons, maybe you even know on the collab apron that Cherry Bombe did with Hedley & Bennett a few years ago.
Kerry Diamond:
Anyway, Ellen is also the author of a brand new business book. It's called Dream First, Details Later: How to Quit Overthinking & Make It Happen! As a major overthinker, I feel like Ellen wrote this book just for me, but she actually wrote it for all the indie and would be entrepreneurs out there. She is here to tell us all about it. If you're an official member of the Bombesquad, check your inbox. Our next members' meeting is with Ellen this Thursday, May 27th at 5:00 PM PST on Zoom. Membership Director, Donna Yen will interview Ellen. The team and I will be there for some Zoom networking at the end. If you'd like to become a member and join us this Thursday, visit cherrybombe.com for more. Now, here's my chat with Ellen Bennett.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's jump right into this. You run a company. We'll talk about the company in a little bit. You are a busy person. Why did you write this book?
Ellen Bennett:
I wanted to capture the honest and real journey that it takes to build something out of nothing. I feel like there's a lot of awesome business books out there, but nothing really talks about it from going from 0 to 1, 1 to 5, 5 to 10, right? The early days, the hardest part where you are your only cheerleader, no one is around. You literally have zero resources. You don't know where to begin. It's so overwhelming and crippling at times that people just don't even start. They don't even try. So, this is the book I wish I would have had when I started Hedley & Bennett, when I was 24 or 25. I wrote it in a way that's extraordinarily honest, every blow, every failure, just ruthlessly honest.
Ellen Bennett:
I did that because I think if people know that failure is part of the journey and part of the process, it's less scary, but because you don't hear about that all that much, you think when you fail that you are a failure. That's just not true. So, this makes it all a lot more normal when you fail. It's colorful, which is very unusual. No business books are really colorful. I told Penguin Random House, "This was a very important part of the book and that it needed to be alive because business is not black and white. Why the hell are all the business books black and white?"
Kerry Diamond:
You are 100% correct. Business books are very boring. This book is the opposite of that. Ellen, who is this book for?
Ellen Bennett:
This is for the overthinkers in my life and outside of my life, too, but it's also for the dreamers, the doers, the hustlers, the people that have big, audacious, hairy dreams that they want to go after. Those can be little dreams or big dreams. It really doesn't matter. It's the pep talk/a guidebook, if you will, to help you get out of your own head and just get on the road to trying. You learn so much more when you're actually just doing the thing than thinking about the thing. All the learnings come from the journey. One of my favorite quotes in there by Suzy Kassem, "They're not bumps in the road. They are the road."
Ellen Bennett:
It's just so true and it's so part of the journey. You just got to embrace them. So, it's for all of those people out there. I think that in a way, it's very timely, because we just all are coming out of COVID. The world's been reset and shaken up in more ways than one. What a great time to take those ideas that you've been thinking about and brewing on. Maybe your entire life got flipped upside down because of COVID. Now is the moment to go after that thing you've been really wanting to do. This is the book. You pick it up. It's like Ellen Bennett yelling and cheering you on from the sidelines saying, "Go, go, go! You've got this."
Kerry Diamond:
What are some ways entrepreneurs sabotage themselves?
Ellen Bennett:
There's a little infographic in the book where I list out all the things that I had and all the things that I didn't have when I started. Ironically, I had very little, and yet that list is actually longer than the list of what I didn't have. But on my list of what I didn't have, it was MBA, trust fund, investors, a college degree. It went on and on and on. But the things that I did have was where I focused. I think that sometimes entrepreneurs get hung up on what they don't have and all the things that they're going to need to be able to make that big leap or that next big move. It's just not true. It's a state of mind in a way, right? You got to figure out what it is that you want to do, decide, and then start taking the tiniest steps.
Ellen Bennett:
If that's what you can do and that's all you have, then just begin with the little things. The things I had, the other side of the infographic was I had grit and tenacity. I had been raised by a single Mexican mama who really showed me how to be resourceful and figure things out, even if it felt like you had no options. Just what is the option? Because there's got to be something.
Ellen Bennett:
All of these perspectives from my youth of having had very, very, humble upbringing, that really contributed to me not just being like, "Oh, well, I don't have money. I guess I can't do this." That's just not the truth. When you're telling yourself that, you're just lying to yourself, because there's so many things that are out there in the world that are available to you and that are free. A lot of that includes creativity, right? So, what can you create that will come to life, that will help you make this thing that you want to come to life to?
Kerry Diamond:
Now, this book isn't just for entrepreneurs starting out. You wrote that there's people at different phases of their journey.
Ellen Bennett:
Yup. What's been really cool about it is as I've gone on my digital book tour, I have met so many people, right? I've heard 15-year-olds pick up the book and be like, "I love this. This is really approachable." And then I've gotten 50-year-old men on a radio station in the middle of Minnesota, interviewing me for the radio junket tour. They're like, "This is real cool. I really like the perspective." So, it's hit a chord in all of us of the dreamer within us, right? Everybody has ideas and things that they want to do and get out there. One of my favorite parts about being creative is seeing it in my head and then seeing it come to life.
Ellen Bennett:
That joy of the existence of it in the real world when you first saw it in your noggin is so special. I think everyone can relate to that feeling and making something come alive. So, so many people have just connected to this and they're like, "Oh, man, I can do this. Wait, she was 24 years old and had no money and started those with $300 out of her house and literally had nothing to her name. She figured it out. Well, shoot, maybe I can try this too. All right, maybe I'll just begin." So, by the time you get through the book, you're like, "All right, let's go. Let's go." That's the best part about it. I've just been so happy to be pep talking people into action.
Kerry Diamond:
Let's say you have a business. How do you take it to the next level?
Ellen Bennett:
I break it down in here. One of the things that really was a big tool for me on my journey was what I call humble enthusiasm. There's a chapter about how I talk to people. You never want to make anyone feel like a transaction, right? Because you hate feeling like that. If you call AT&T, they're going to make you feel like a transaction. You go to a cute coffee shop, and the owner is behind the coffee bar. She's just like, "Oh, where are you from? That's so cool," right? You feel heard. You feel listened to. So, I pulled up the little square for you. Humble enthusiasm equals excited to share and excited to learn.
Ellen Bennett:
So, when you're talking to somebody about something, you want to be excited to tell them whatever it is that you're working on, but you also want to be willing to hear their feedback and willing to listen, really listen. Because you listen, then that person is collaborating with you. They're willing to get involved in whatever it is that you're talking about. It just leads to a relationship, right? There's a mutual friendship that is born. That is step one to getting people that are maybe cynical or skeptical of whatever it is that you're working on to pay attention to your idea. And then once you do that, you're not treating them like a transaction.
Ellen Bennett:
So, then you go into the next phase of it. It's like, "Cool. Now, you're having a friendship with them." And then if they happen to want your product, awesome, but you got to play the long game in it, right? It's not just every single person you've ever talked to is going to want to buy everything right on the spot. It's a very human interaction thing, right? Sometimes people want it now. They're just like, "Can you get this for me?" It's like, "No, I don't need that right now." But maybe they'll need it in two years. So, thinking about your business in that way, I think, is extremely helpful, because I've made some lifelong friends that I met at the very beginning who never needed an apron from me.
Ellen Bennett:
But then when they would do commercial or something, oh, I'm going to call Ellen. Her company makes aprons. Hey, I'm doing this commercial for Fage. Can you help me get something? Yeah, totally, let's make it happen, right? But then it's a mutual friendship and a relationship. You're also building community. So, those are some of the core things that were very helpful for me at the beginning. I reinvested every penny I had back into the company at the beginning. I didn't take a salary for a long time. I've listened and collaborated with anyone that gave me the time of day. That made me learn a lot from being boots on the ground, instead of hiding behind a computer screen somewhere, unwilling to hear what the world actually had to say.
Kerry Diamond:
You just have this boundless energy and enthusiasm. Where does that come from?
Ellen Bennett:
A lot of it has to do with how my mom raised me. A lot of it was just allowing me to learn and try and fail with very little to no resentment if I did something wrong. She was a nurse. She worked 12-hour shifts. She would leave at 6:00 AM, come home at 7:30 at night, close to 8:00. So, there was a lot of just free time for me to explore and try things at home. By the time I was 13 or so, I was writing the checks to pay the bills for the house. One time I painted her bedroom yellow, and she didn't even care. She just gave me so much liberty to be creative, because that was my world, our little, tiny apartment. It was just like us at home.
Ellen Bennett:
She never made it wrong when I did fail, right? The yellow painting of her bedroom was by far, not a landed job. It did not look good. It was dripping everywhere. It was a little bit of a disaster. I don't know that I would have reacted the way she did as a parent, but she made it so okay. She just came home and she was like, "Okay, that's fine. Okay, that's cool. Thank you. Good night." That gave me permission. It allowed me to just show up and try again and again and again. If I already had it in my core, it just accentuated it.
Kerry Diamond:
Ellen, let's talk about Hedley & Bennett, because the company is a little different today than when you started out. What year did the company launch?
Ellen Bennett:
2012.
Kerry Diamond:
Right. So, we started at about the same time. What was your aha moment when you realize the world needs a cooler apron?
Ellen Bennett:
It was almost like the world needs something that makes people look and feel good in the kitchen was the aha moment. Aprons just happened to be the vessel it. It could have been a chef coat, it could have been something else, but I just happened to decide on aprons. It was when I was standing in the kitchen. It's actually the prologue in the book, is when I was working at one of the two restaurants and my chef said, "There's a girl. She's going to get us aprons. Do you want to buy one?" I was like, "Chef, I have an apron company. I will make you those aprons."
Ellen Bennett:
It was out of nowhere, out of the blue. I had no company. I had no business plan. There was no strategy for how I was going to accomplish this. I wasn't thinking about if it was going to be wholesale or retail or direct-to-consumer. I simply wanted to help others in the kitchen and making people look and feel amazing.
Kerry Diamond:
But you have the idea to do aprons before your chef...
Ellen Bennett:
I had the idea. And then the rest of it, I had literally zero. So, I took a few 100 bucks out of my savings account. I convinced him to give me that order and Hedley & Bennett was born.
Kerry Diamond:
What were you thinking your journey would be at that point? Did you want to be a chef?
Ellen Bennett:
Yeah, yeah. Well, I was working at Providence. I was working in Bäco Mercat. One was a two Michelin star restaurant. One was speed, 200, 300 tickets a night, in the weeds, buried until you leave type of a place, fast-paced. The other one's perfection. So, perfect for me. I was learning quality and speed at the same time. I wanted to be a chef. I wanted to have my own restaurant situation. I thought, "Well, if I'm going to learn to be a restaurateur, I better work in a restaurant," which by the way, very important part of the journey, because it turned out I didn't actually end up wanting to do that.
Ellen Bennett:
If I had gone the route of just theoretically, I wanted to have a restaurant and then just doing it, I wouldn't have learned everything I learned by working at these restaurants to come to the conclusion that that wasn't the path for me in the future. So, sometimes the road is windy. What you think is the thing you want to do is not actually the thing you end up doing, and that's okay.
Kerry Diamond:
Those early Hedley & Bennett aprons, what did they look like compared to what a Hedley & Bennett apron looks like today?
Ellen Bennett:
Oh, it was so bad. That first order was so bad. It was so bad. They were definitely not right. I thought they were phenomenal, honestly. The chef actually called me into his office 24 hours later. He's like, "Bennett, these aprons suck." I was like, "What? Oh, my God, the world is ending." I thought, "He's my one and only client. He's also my chef. My job is also on the line, and I'm not going to mess this up. I need to get it right." So, I told him, "Keypath, I will get the other half fixed. We will make this right because it's the right thing to do." He said, "Fine." So, I fixed them.
Ellen Bennett:
The straps that are very Hedley & Bennett iconic, just the fixed strap, colorful contrast from the main body of the brand was born. The function of it and just that marriage of fashion and function being so important started there, but they weren't perfect. We kept evolving them. That became one of the really strong foundations of our company. Now, to your point earlier, it's changed so much. But back then, that was the first fork in the road where I could have taken the non-quality path or the quality path. I chose the quality long-term path.
Kerry Diamond:
How did you build it in the early days? Because like you said, you didn't have money. How long did you keep your day job?
Ellen Bennett:
I kept them for about a year and a half roughly, year in change. I actually had a little tiny office and one or two employees before I even quit Providence, because it felt like my safety net. It felt like the thing that kept me connected to that world and the thing that to me made me feel real and legit and not like an imposter, if you will. Yet I was doing everything by working with chefs and by talking to them and collaborating with them and hearing them and really, really listening to them. There's a part in the book where I talk about when you're working with someone, you want to listen and almost diagnose them like a doctor. Okay, what's working? What's not working? What do you like? What do you hate about this? What doesn't feel good? What does feel good?
Ellen Bennett:
By really, really listening, you learn so much from people on the frontlines. All of these chefs were just laying out the guidebook of what was needed in the product. And then I love design. So, I brought the design and the color and the life to that function. So, Hedley & Bennett just kept morphing along the way, right? I wasn't hiring Bain or McKinsey to be my focused group. I had these real life chefs that were my consulting groups. Every order, I would take a deposit on it. Therefore, I was able to fund every order with the money I was getting from chefs and just putting that money back into the business. I'm still at it right now. It's been nine years.
Ellen Bennett:
We're so used to instantaneous success and all this stuff because of Instagram, because of Forbes, because of technology companies. The truth is heritage brands take hundreds of years to build, and that's okay. I'm going for the long game here. I don't want to be a flash in the pan. I don't want to be fast fashion. I'm really proud of our community and our team for having gotten us here through all the triumphs and the failures, which I talked about in the book, too.
Kerry Diamond:
So, tell us what Hedley & Bennett is today.
Ellen Bennett:
So, it started obviously, as basically chef uniforms, custom chef uniforms. We're doing aprons, but we were also doing chef coats.
Kerry Diamond:
In the early days, you were?
Ellen Bennett:
A year and a half in, two years, something like that. But custom was such a big part of our business. We almost didn't even have our own inventory. We would just take an order. You want a unicorn on your apron? We're going to figure out how to do it. We just wanted to make things that were beautiful for people and on-brand for their restaurant. But as that business evolves, I came to a realization somewhere along the line, you got to get off the bike to fix the bike. I've just been running for so long, just willing it all into existence by sheer just show up and hustle. I hadn't really backfield the infrastructure. I hadn't really put in all the things that were needed to actually have a sustainable business that was continuing to grow on its own without me taping everything together.
Ellen Bennett:
At that point, we realized that we couldn't do custom for everyone all the time. We had started to make some new designs for ourselves as a core business. And then we had the epiphany that our fastest-growing channel was actually online. So, we were accidentally becoming a direct-to-consumer brand without even realizing it. Yet all of our effort was going to running around, trying to find the perfect blue strap for that one restaurant that needed it in said way.
Ellen Bennett:
Once I realized that, it was like, "Oh, shit, all hands on deck to do this thing that's actually going to be able to grow the company in a way that is sustainable, that isn't reinventing the wheel every single time." So, now, Hedley & Bennett is 80% direct-to-consumer and 20% restaurants. So, we focus on still totally amazing quality. Everything is pro-grade, like on steroids, right? Our gear last freaking forever, but we're outfitting home cooks and bringing that dignity and pride of a professional kitchen to the home. It's legit gear to make you feel good and cook good.
Kerry Diamond:
What other categories have you expanded into?
Ellen Bennett:
In collabs land, we've done everything from jumpsuits with Madewell, which I feel like you have one; shoes with Vans, which are amazing because they're water-resistant, slip-resistant. They have a rainbow sole that's super cool. We've done stuff with Parachute Home and just a bunch of different companies that have nothing to do with food frankly. That's what I think that makes a good collaboration. And then on the core business side of Hedley & Bennett, the expansion is really going into kitchen gear, but it's just expanding the collection into everything you need and nothing you don't in the kitchen, so essentials. Sometimes companies stretch out wide or stretching deep.
Kerry Diamond:
Got it. Is the company still completely owned and funded by you, or have you had to take loans or investors?
Ellen Bennett:
We actually got strategic partners, because I wanted to do this direct-to-consumer expansion. I was really excited about how to do that. But also, after having done it for eight years on my own, I realized that there's so much knowledge that I wanted to have for this next journey. I didn't actually have all that information. So, the book is called Dream First, Details Later, not Details Never. So, I'm at this stage of my life where I'm like, "Okay, I got off the bike to fix the bugs. I slammed my head into the ground literally a million times since I started this business. I've learned what I'm good at. I've learned a whole list of things that I'm not good at." It's actually totally okay to get help on that. You don't have to do it all on your own forever.
Ellen Bennett:
That was a big learning curve for me, because having grown up so hyper-independent, I just thought I could literally do it all on my own. It's just not true. You need a great team and you need great partners that can help you navigate some of these new adventures. So, that's the phase of Hedley & Bennett, where we're at now. Thank God, our business is doing really well and it's growing and it's expanding, but it hasn't been without a lot of really scary times where I had to stop doing things that just didn't work for the business and evolve.
Ellen Bennett:
So, you can go out and raise money that's just cash by itself, just alone or cash. There's no involvement from anybody. A strategic partner is someone who gives you resources, but also is involved with how you execute those resources. They are really amazing at that. We have biweekly calls with them. They've helped me on recruiting. They've helped build out our entire team of people, out Head of Finance, our Head of Product, our Head of People. All those layers that I struggled for so long without, they've been able to help me backfill all of that in a way that I didn't know how to do all of it on my own. So, that's been a really big shift for me as a business owner.
Kerry Diamond:
It is hard to get money. It's hard to get the right money. It must be even harder to find what you're describing, this advisor, mentor, partner with a checkbook. How do you find someone like that?
Ellen Bennett:
I mean, I think that because of so many years of doing collaborations with brands, collaborations with chefs, just talking to people, you really start to find the good eggs out there. There's also a whole chapter about that in here, where I call it ‘Commandeering Your Co-Pilots.’ It's about finding the good people and holding those people close and having them be helpful to you, but you also being helpful to them. I feel like those years of doing it on my own led me to meet a lot of different people.
Ellen Bennett:
So, when I decided to do this, I talked to 75, 100 different companies until I found people that really were aligned with our values as a company and where we were headed and that they didn't just want to hand us a check and be like, "Good luck. Hope you make it. Peace out." Because that's just not the business that we are. I knew they were my partners like I knew that Casey Caplowe was my husband. It was just a very deeply rooted feeling, but that took time to find those people, a long time.
Kerry Diamond:
I can absolutely imagine. You are in a very saturated market that wasn't as saturated back in 2012 when you started. Now, everybody's doing aprons, but that's not unique to your field. The restaurant space is hugely crowded. The bakery space is hugely crowded. What's your advice to folks working in a crowded field right now?
Ellen Bennett:
It's so important to be and find your own special sauce, whatever that thing is that you are most uniquely qualified to do and that really is you. It's so difficult to copy people and to stay on top of it. You're just going to be wasting all this time just looking left and looking right to see what everyone else is doing. You have to find the thing that really lights you up and ignites you. When you bring something to the table that is different, that is where the special magic happens. You want to be something that actually helps people, that contributes to their life in some capacity and do it in a way that is unique to you.
Kerry Diamond:
I did an event with Erin French, who has the restaurant up in Maine and Ina Garten. The audience asked questions at the end of the event. There was a woman who was in her 50s. I think she had lost her job. She said, "I just don't know how to reinvent myself and start over." What's your advice for folks who have to dramatically pivot?
Ellen Bennett:
I think that it's one of those things where you have to be willing to let go of the accomplishments you already had and be willing to start over. When COVID hit for example, our entire life was on the line for everybody, for so many people. If I had stayed in that place of, "Well, we make aprons and nothing else and there's nothing I can do," I wouldn't have made that leap to doing this other product. I was willing to let go of what had worked to try something different and willing to fail, but that failure meant forward progress. There's a fear. There's a fear in that leap, but that is really at the crux of what I'm trying to say with Dream First, Details Later is yes, it's scary, but what's scarier is not doing something and letting the world make that decision for you, right?
Ellen Bennett:
Standing still and not doing something is still doing something. You're still deciding to not do something, right? And then life is happening around you. Are you going to make the decision for yourself, or you're going to let life make that decision for you? Recognize that if you've done something once, you can probably do it again and you are much stronger than you think you are. So, don't push yourself down because you had a failure. If anything, it's like, "All right, the phoenix rising from the ashes here. What am I going to go do now with all that new resilience that I just built, because I just survived a horrible shitstorm?"
Ellen Bennett:
So, if you think about back to my original comment of, "Focus on what you have and not what you don't have," think about, "What are your gifts? What are those tools that you have as a human, as a person?" Maybe you're a graphic designer, but you don't want to do graphic design anymore. Is there somebody that you want to go work for that you can offer graphic design to in return for learning something? I talked a lot about bartering when I first started.
Ellen Bennett:
I would barter cooking for people for their advice on how to make a pattern or to check my numbers or to check my financials or to help explain how does a P&L work. I had no ego about it. I just wanted to learn. People were willing to give it to me, and I was returning something else to them. So, using the things you have to push your idea forward is a very empowering thing to do for yourself, because you're not just waiting for something. You're just going out and beginning action on it.
Kerry Diamond:
I'm the overthinker you're targeting with your book. I mean, I'm overthinker. I get very overwhelmed easily. My mantra and the thing that always gets me through is from that... I think it was a Christmas TV show. I can't remember which one but that song, "Just put one foot in front of the other."
Ellen Bennett:
Yeah, yes, I don't remember what it was from, but I very much recall that.
Kerry Diamond:
When you're really just feeling like, "I can't handle this, I can't do this or that," I always sing that song in my head. Just put one foot in front of the other. Another way to look at that just takes five minutes or one minute or 30 seconds or whatever it is and just do something to get yourself out of your rut. Sometimes you might find that there's a momentum there that will just carry you through to the next step. In the course of writing this book, Ellen Bennett, what did you learn about yourself?
Ellen Bennett:
I learned a lot because it took me three-plus years, and I'm still on the journey of Hedley & Bennett. In one of those years, we had a global pandemic. So, you can imagine everything I learned from that. But I definitely have come a long way in realizing that you cannot do it on your own and you need a team. Team one, maybe your core team is so vital to whatever it is that you're trying to accomplish. Again, it took me eight years to come to that realization, because I just thought, "Well, just show up and you'll figure it out and whatever." So, no, you need certain pieces.
Ellen Bennett:
The Details Later part of my journey is very present in my life now. I'm like, "Okay, cool. I've made it come to life with the big dreams, but then there was a moment where I realized I need the team, I need infrastructure, I need processes. And then I need to not lose the ability to keep dreaming," right? You don't want to just get somewhere and plant yourself there. You need to get somewhere and then get to the next somewhere. So, it's this happy balance of building infrastructure while not losing that spirit and that drive that brought you here in the first place. That's a balance that I'm learning to now do, now that I actually have a full team who's helping me execute stuff that I used to do everything on.
Kerry Diamond:
For a long time in the restaurant industry, you were the face of the hustle. Did you burn out and how have you dealt with that part of the entrepreneur's journey?
Ellen Bennett:
No, I totally have had many moments in this journey where I talk about it too, that I had several come to Jesus moments, if you will, where's what I was doing was not sustainable and I couldn't keep doing it the way that I was doing it no matter how much energy I had. I think COVID also really shook everyone to their core and made me recognize that I do need to sleep enough, I need to take care of myself, I need to make sure that I spend time with my family, my core family. You don't have to dance at everyone's wedding. You don't need to be at every event under the sun, moon and stars or else you're not good enough or whatever, right? Whatever wild idea you might shove in your head is just not true.
Ellen Bennett:
So, recognizing that and this idea that I said earlier with our company of doing less better was something that I then adopted for myself too. It's very different. It's a very different Ellen than, "Okay, I got to fly there tomorrow and I need to be here this next day. I'm going to do 972 things in a day or I'm not good enough." That's not true anymore. There's other things that are much more valuable for me, but it's taken a long time and some stubbornness to get over those ideas.
Ellen Bennett:
But I'm really glad that I went through the things that I went through because they're notches, I call it, to my confidence belt in the book. But every time you do something hard and you show up and it's difficult, you put a notch on your life confidence belt. You get this big belt and it's full of experience and learnings. And then you get to approach things smarter, because you already did it and you stretched your mental muscles. I love that about failure just makes you realize, "Hey, there's a better way."
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, let's do a little speed round. Do you drink coffee or tea? I don't know the answer to that.
Ellen Bennett:
I drink tea. No coffee. I love mint, fresh mint tea. I have a giant bush growing in my backyard. So, fresh mint tea with honey is the jam or chamomile tea with lemon and honey.
Kerry Diamond:
No caffeine.
Ellen Bennett:
No caffeine.
Kerry Diamond:
Because you can't handle it?
Ellen Bennett:
Exactly, I might blow a gasket or something.
Kerry Diamond:
Oh, my gosh. Most used kitchen implement? Don't say apron.
Ellen Bennett:
I would say cutting board. The thick one-inch rubber cutting board that professional kitchens use, 18 by 20, proper cutting board that doesn't thrash around your counter, that's the jam in the kitchen. Because if you've got that, you can pretty much do anything.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, where'd you get yours, a kitchen supply shop?
Ellen Bennett:
Yeah, Charlie's Kitchen Supply in L.A. I'm really particular to this eight-inch chef's knife I got from Global Knives. I love it. They're so easy to sharpen, so easy. So, yeah, my chef's knife and my cutting board. There, I didn't even say apron. Boom, Kerry Diamond.
Kerry Diamond:
A treasured cookbook?
Ellen Bennett:
I love Prune. It's such a great cookbook. I love that she's yelling at you on the pages. Don't even think about going to the street corner for that bread. It's just really Gabrielle Hamilton in a nutshell. I love it so much.
Kerry Diamond:
Last pantry purchase?
Ellen Bennett:
I went to Cookbook, which is a local mini market. It's almost like a bodega but of L.A. I caught a bunch of fresh fruit and they happen to have some really juicy tomatoes. So, I got some big, fat, juicy tomatoes and some Bub and Grandma's Bread, which is an amazing local bakery here in L.A. If you put the Bub and Grandma's Bread with butter and those tomatoes on it, it's like magic.
Kerry Diamond:
Nice, that sounds good. A song that makes you smile?
Ellen Bennett:
In Rainbows, Radiohead album. The whole album makes me smile, because it reminds me of when I was 16. That was the music that I was really, really into. I just jam out to it. It's very soothing and calm, which is the opposite of me. So, I tend to like music that's like that. I'm always smiling when I listen to Radiohead.
Kerry Diamond:
Do you listen to music when you cook?
Ellen Bennett:
I do, and when I drive. Usually, if I'm not on the call, I have Spotify on and I'm just blasting music on my way to the office. It's my mental quiet time. I really love it.
Kerry Diamond:
What is the oldest thing in your fridge?
Ellen Bennett:
Oh, weird. Love this weird question. I'm like, "Do I have any dying leeks in there?" I feel like I do. I think it's a condiment. Three years ago, I don't even know if it's good anymore, but three years ago, I went to Prune. And then I sent a whole care package to Gabrielle because she had had us for dinner. She sent back three bottles of, I think, they're vinegars and a wine that she had wax sealed on the top. It was so elegant and so her. I was just like, "Oh, my God."
Ellen Bennett:
But then it was also Ashley, her wife, because it was perfectly labeled with a date and everything, like a label maker label. So, it was like Gabrielle and Ashley in a nutshell. They sent it to me and they were so perfect. I was like, "I don't even want to touch it or use it." So, they've been sitting in our fridge now for, no joke, three years. I think they're maybe rancid but I don't care. They look really cool.
Kerry Diamond:
Okay, last question. When everybody can safely travel again, where's the first place you'd like to go?
Ellen Bennett:
I'd really love to go back to India. Especially with everything that's happening right now, it crushes my soul and heart. I have friends that are from India. It's such a beautiful place that is so alive and colorful and vibrant in every way, shape, and form. I cannot wait to go back to India. We went a little bit for our honeymoon.
Kerry Diamond:
All right. Ellen Bennett, congratulations on this fabulous book.
Ellen Bennett:
Kerry Diamond, I love you. Thank you for always being my older sister from another mister.
Kerry Diamond:
That's it for today's show. Thank you so much to Ellen Bennett. Her book, Dream First, Details Later, great title, is out now. Pick up a copy for your favorite entrepreneur at your local bookstore. Don't forget, we've got a double dose of Ellen, the show and then Ellen will be joining us for the members' meeting on Thursday, May 27th. If you're a member, check your inbox for the Zoom link. If you have a question for Ellen, email it to Donna, our Membership Director. Radio Cherry Bombe is produced by Cherry Bombe Media. This episode was engineered and edited by Jenna Sadhu. Thanks for listening, everybody. You're the bombe.
Harry from When Harry Met Sally:
I'll have what she's having.