This week’s guest is French pastry chef and entrepreneur Sophie Dubost. Sophie had advanced degrees and a successful career in the traditional business world, yet she walked away from it to train as a pastry chef at Ferrandi Paris, one of the world's premier culinary schools.
Along the way she saw a gap. Bakers and pastry chefs wanted to learn from the best in France, but they were short on staff and couldn't leave their shops. The great chefs felt out of reach. So she built Voilà Chef, an online platform where Meilleurs Ouvriers de France and world champions teach through more than 140 courses and 900 technique videos.
A foundational step was how she got those chefs on board. She didn't use a big pitch. She simply filmed one master class with one great chef and made sure he was thrilled with the result. That led him to recommend her to another chef, and that chef to another in what she calls a "chain of trust." Today chefs come to her given her great reputation and platform.
We also talked about:
Keeping quality high while scaling from a one-person operation to a thriving company.
Earning trust from customers who don't like buying online to become great customers.
The qualities that she looks for in a trustworthy hire to maintain the premium service that she is known for.
The importance of self-trust to take risks and succeed.
These insights and practical advice are not reserved for the kitchen but apply to many common situations that leaders face regardless of industry.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Trust rarely comes from a great email or sales pitch. It comes from delivering what someone needed, again and again, until other people start vouching for you. Sophie's chain of trust began with one chef and one excellent day of filming and has grown to over 140 courses and 900 videos. Yet, when I asked her what our audience most needed to hear, she didn't talk about her accomplishments or plans. She talked about getting things wrong and learning fast as keys to her success.
"It's not an issue to make mistakes. The point is really being able to move from one decision to another quickly." – Sophie Dubost
WINNING MOVES
Make your first impression count. Your initial project with a new partner or client is your referral engine, so set the tone by ensuring that you meet the need of your partner.
Put your ego aside to learn quickly. When a decision misses its mark, seek out what happened, ensure changes are made to reduce the risk of happening again, and move on. The only way to grow is by learning from your mistakes. Your team is watching how fast you recover, not whether you're perfect.
Grant trust wisely. When bringing on new people or assigning new roles, use the Trustworthy Decision Matrix to weigh their track record against the difficulty of the project before you hand off something difficult or of high-stakes.
Please view her Win Via Trust leadership podcast for great insights and advice.
If you want to dig deeper into the trust side of leadership, please read Win Via Trust or subscribe below for future Trust Lens newsletters.