The sweet side of business
Photo credit: Vinesh George
A creative and energetic Business Development Manager with engineering and X-ray background as well as a Private Pilot License. Extensive experience working with people all over the world including working in world’ s top-5 pharmaceutical company. Passionate about entrepreneurship, travelling, adventurous activities and networking. Furthermore, making the dreams of Eddie’ s wife come true is a source to fulfil his self-actualisation( Maslow’ s hierarchy of needs).
It is interesting to take into account how fortuitous meeting a random stranger can prove to be. In MBA land we are pushed to go out of the building, constantly network, mingle over coffee and drinks. Most times it ends with empty promises, sometimes it’ s just a bad fit, but on rare occasions you may find the Cinderella shoe for your career. For Eddie Yu meeting Cinder was the perfect fit professionally and personally- this Eddie’ s serendipitous story with his wife and business partner.
Sweetserland Patisserie originated from a love story between a flight attendant and a pilot. It is this passion which drove me to setup a flyingrelated business and find the need to study MBA( Executive) in AGSM and eventually helps growing Sweetserland.
Ten years before I met Cinder, she already had the aspiration to study at Le Cordon Bleu( LCB), a prestigious patisserie school and the dream of all those who are passionate about dessert making.
Cinder used to make cakes when she was in 6 AGSM
By Eddie Yu MBA( Executive) Hong Kong. Once she migrated to Sydney in 2015, I established the business Sweetserland and put her in LCB to get formal trainings. It was her husband’ s chance to make her dream come true! She put her heart and soul into every lesson attended, and every piece of dessert she made. There is a real difference between passion and interest.
I named our business“ Sweetserland” because we make“ sweet” products and hope our customers can have“ sweet” memories when consuming our products. Coincidentally, Switzerland is also the place we first travelled, so we decided to play on words a little and came up with a“ sweet” name.
Apart from making cakes, Cinder also plans to arrange cake decorating classes in Sydney, Australia but Cinder is a shy person especially as she is not native in English. The MPO course taught me how to build Cinder’ s selfefficacy and empower her to step out of her comfort zone. One of the first steps is to let her achieve enactive self-mastery by presenting her products and business plan to LCB chefs.
In fact, her talent in baking and cake decoration did not go by unnoticed by the chefs at LCB, including the Head Chef, Andre Sandison. They gave her a lot of constructive advices and Chef Andre even referred her to teach in Australian Patisserie Academy( APA), one of the biggest cake decorating schools in Australia. APA is run by TAFE NSW and there are many great chefs providing a broad variety of baking, cake decorating and chocolate classes. Being new to Sydney, it is an honour for Cinder to teach in APA.
This is a great achievement and reminder of what life can give you when you follow your heart.
Being a physics graduate, I’ m strong at numbers but running an entire business is really new to me. The MBA( Executive) program has so far