This story appears in the November issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.
Once a month, Utah Business hosts Founder Friday, a free event sponsored by BONCO, Kajae, Kiln and Comma Copywriters that showcases the wisdom of Utah-based founders. In October, Kiln hosted the conversation between Utah Business Editor Mekenna Malan and Sherrita “Rita” Magalde, founder and CEO of Sheer Ambrosia Bakery.
1. Craft a professional brand.
At her first job in a KFC, a Greek man asked Magalde to work for him. She began babysitting the family’s children, writing out their checks to pay bills, chauffeuring around older family members and learning to make baklava. Many years later, she combined her Southern roots with that baklava expertise to start Sheer Ambrosia Bakery.
“I started this business from home, but I wanted to make sure that it didn’t look homemade,” Magalde says. “I invested $10,000 in my branding, boxes and colors.”
2. Prepare for opportunity.
In 2019, Magalde decided to update her website. She wanted customers to be able to order more easily online. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in May 2020, she was glad she didn’t have a brick-and-mortar operation to upkeep. Business was slow, so she got a second full-time position.
Then, after the murder of George Floyd, orders flooded in through the newly refreshed site. “So many people were interested in supporting Black-owned businesses,” Magalde says. “Some people wanted to protest in their own way. Those people decided [they] wanted to support Black-owned businesses by buying from them.”
She started baking. Soon, her story was on National Public Radio.
“I’ll never forget the day the story aired. It was three minutes that changed my life,” Magalde says. “I started getting phone calls, emails and orders from across the country. I knew where [the story] was airing because that’s where I was getting the orders from. … How does the saying go? ‘Luck is where preparation meets opportunity.’”
3. Take responsibility for your life.
The bakery isn’t Magalde’s first enterprise. She used to co-own a $10 million travel agency with her former husband.
“I was pregnant with my second child that we planned, and my husband came home and said, ‘Hey, I want a divorce. I’m not happy. I don’t love you, but I want to stay business partners,’” she recounts. “I went through the worst possible depression. I was inconsolable.”
Eventually, Magalde realized she had to make a choice: be miserable and angry or be a positive role model for her children. A call to a lawyer and $40,000 later, she was free to start “reinventing Rita.”
A large part of that plan was starting Sheer Ambrosia, which lifted a dark cloud from Magalde. “I just really got out of my own miserable victimhood head and started thinking like the businesswoman I was,” she says. “Sheer Ambrosia saved my life.”
4. Don’t let money be a factor.
“Everything I’ve ever wanted in this life, I have gone after it, regardless of whether I had the money,” Magalde says. At times, she had to work three jobs to make things work, but she never gave up on herself or her dreams. If you want something, work toward it, she says, and “Don’t let anybody stop you.”