One was not a good shot. He said what was it . I said it was perfect. [laughter] ok. At 80 i decided i could not hit two shots in a row. All of this has always been easy for me to do. I quit shooting at 80 years old. I was one of the best wing shots in the country but i have Macular Degeneration and i see double. Can i still kill birds . Yes. But i cannot kill them with consistency, and it was not much fun. It was like golf. I would just as soon watch somebody else shoot now. Mentally what are you doing . You are adjusting to your age as you go. I have had the same trainer for 26 years. Homecoming deal, stillwater, oklahoma, oklahoma state. The rest of the day was, and i was the marshal of the parade. Why not . I have given them 500 million. [laughter] and now my wife and i ride in this convertible. Behind me are the rtc guys with the board. And they are getting up and doing pushups. She said you can do that. I said ok, i cant. So i got on a board, they hosted me up. And i did 20 pushups, and [applause] im not through, ok . [laughter] i got back in the convertible and she said you were in the shade and i could not get a good picture. [laughter] she said i want to get that picture. It is important. Ok. Men want to do things for their wives. So i get off get back up and do 20 more. Having said that, you said how do i get from here to there . I love life. I love every day. I go to the office, my trainer shows up at 6 30 in the morning same guy for 26 years. I am programmed, and it could not be better. I have a great marriage. Now, you say, how i given anybody any advice . Are we through . That big red o there. You are not old enough to know this, but the hook. The hook. Boone pickens. [applause] our next segment from the washington ideas for a features lauren brown. He discusses business and gives advice for budding entrepreneurs. This is almost 15 minutes. So lots of people dream. I am going to go into the glutenfree business. Im so sick of investment banking. This is the whole trend, that people want to be food entrepreneurs. They are throwing it away and they are going to make. It is so curious that you left law to be a baker because that is so much people as usual. They want to be a tv chef or a baker. How is it that you managed to make the transition . With a lot of help, a lot of support, and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, frankly. It took a lot of time and i thought it would take three months to leave law and open up a business. It took 18 to 20 months or so. Why be a baker . Being a tall, strapping, heterosexual man i hate to stereotype. I had people say you look like a rock star, a rapper, or Something Like that. I had dreadlocks back there. I love food and i love putting things together. When i was busy developing a hobby, which this was at first the new years resolution in 1999 i just kind of found myself wanting to understand how to bake and how to bake all kinds of different things. I realized it reminds me of a lot of models i make when i was a little boy. I used to make military miniatures of tanks and soldiers , lots of continuous work, ours by yourself. I love that, but you can shut you cannot share that with people. Nobody understood how much i got into them. With a cake, you can slice it serve it, and people can understand a lot easier. I i cannot resist interrupting. The origins of french pastry are from a man who was an architect. So the first book widely followed by pastry chefs was designed and written by an architect. So you are right within tradition. I get into the ingredients. I am all about butter, sugar eggs flour, cocoa powder how much of each thing . How much protein is in each one . How much fat, whether it is milk or halfandhalf or cream, or if it is soy milk if we are one with something light . I love thinking at that level. The world of cakes is decorators and it is bakers. The baking world for cakes is really mostly decorators. People who are mostly into what it looks like on the outside. It is not one drove in the cupcake frenzy, which we hope will die it never dies. It has internal life it has eternal life, which is what gave you the beginning. These adorable Little Things that you pretend have no calories . I am not in it to win a beauty contest. When i first opened cake love, we were doing a hand top with a spatula. Wont that work . Years later, people started typing out a standard, which we do now, which is faster and it looks prettier. But i never started with the intention of being, i want to have cupcakes that just look like number 10. I want it to be topped with toffee coconut, something that just resonates what does it look like . Does it taste like that . It is that takes that is that taste a nice clean finish . I wrote up ease in the atlantic about the cupcake craze which i thought it was going to die in five years. People did not give a darn about they were delivery vehicles. That mattered a lot. But the cake is indifferent to it. I care a lot about the cake. But what i have learned in the last 12 or 13 years i can like something as much as possible, but it does not matter if it does not resonate with the customers. That is fine because i am a cake merger a cake merchant and i have to so what people like. We have listened closely to what they want. It is cream cheese icing. That seems to be the thing that people are all about. Cupcake being the delivery mechanism or whatever it is going to be. I have learned a lot, grown a lot, changed a lot. It is not just being in the kitchen in my apartment tinkering with recipes. That is all very important. I never leave behind what the ingredients are, but i have to keep in mind that it is not all about what i want. I have to blend in a lot of what people want. You were saying beforehand you went from very successfully having seven Retail Stores to having two and deciding you were going to concentrate on wholesale, and then this vast innovation and change to the jar concept. Can you tell us about what precipitated this change . And i think it had to do with customer comments. It did. A lot of people over time gave feedback and commentary. For it i was paying attention to it, and then i said we do what we do, we want to stick with what we know. Some people really liked our product and we will stick with that. But the rise of feedback got to the point where we have to pay attention. My staff, i said what are we doing wrong, what are we doing right . Lets focus and start all over with recipes, with feedback, and our whole approach. We did a series of focus groups that lasted a month in the beginning of 2013. We asked our customers, just tell us. And critics, too. I hate, i dont like i wanted to know what they were looking for. So many people said to me, it must be a real blow to your ego. I guess. I am in it to understand and make something better. In fact, what is like . There is always the artistry component of making and serving food . If you thought you were making something that was as good tasting as you could turn out and you really liked it and liked the flavor, what was it like to hear people beat up on it . What was it like to say fine, i will make something i do not particularly like. Of course, i am putting words in your mouth and i bet you did not say that to please other people . I am after the truth as much as anybody else is. One thing that is difficult to get is honest feedback. When you get that feedback, any kind of feedback, it is a gift. It really is. Even if it is on yelp . It doesnt matter. Even better if it is. There is probably some truth in it someplace. That is what i needed to look at. For me, one of the things is like, how do we make a better cake . I want to know that. Part of that means, what is the texture going for . What is the flavor . All the dimensions and all the different characteristics of the cake and this bunch. What is it supposed to be . I have come to terms with the fact that just because i like something this mean everybody else will. I am a huge radiohead fan. Not everybody likes radiohead. I do not want to start making us hungry because we are about to be hungry and restless to start tasting some of your cakes. What were some of the things that you liked beforehand, you love, and you just said a reluctant but fond farewell . Potato starch. Potato starch, beloved by jews at passover. In deed. It is expensive, it has great texture. It makes a very delicate crumb, like cake flour. Duckett but i think it adds theres it dries it out. Really, it is all about vegetable fat. You have to look at what kind of fat youre using in a cake i thought you were a huge defender of butter. I am all for it, and i still am. But we use a blend of different fats rather than going with one solitary shortening agent. Is that a change . It is. I used to do butter, eggs sugar, flour. Now we do butter, palm oil which is a natural fat. Blending that in plus a little bit of canola