Cupcake Wars

Because before she was moving millions of units in the publishing world, Abby Jimenez was operating in a completely different sector of pop culture.

Entirely different She was in the national spotlight as a Cupcake Wars champion.

Yes.

She founded Nadia Cakes, a bakery that won numerous Food Network competitions, and she amassed this staggering international following on social media.

Let's break down the psychology of what it takes to build a successful, internationally followed entity like Nadia Cakes.

Okay.

And then to go on and win a highly aggressive, time-compressed television competition like Cupcake Wars, it requires significantly more than just a foundational knowledge of how to cream butter and sugar.

Oh, yeah.

Anyway, but go on.

But yeah, a- and I used to, like in the back of the day, host Cupcake Wars and a bunch of random stuff that was not magic related.

Oh.

So sometimes people are like-

What? Cupcake Wars.

Cupcake Wars.

I love Cupcake Wars

Yeah, I watch that.

But yeah.

A- and I used to, like, in the back of the day, host Cupcake Wars and a bunch of random stuff that was not magic related.

Oh.

So sometimes people are like, "Cupcake Wars."

Oh, I love Cupcake Wars.

Yeah, I love Cupcake Wars.

And I'm like, "I know, yeah, I see you."

[laughs]

But it's it's Pentagon, CIA, NSA and military.

And it's movies as innocuous as, well, obviously the Marvel and DC entities, Transformers, James Bond, and then TV shows, Hawaii Five-0, America's Got Talent, Oprah, Jay Leno, Cupcake Wars.

I'm serious, they

have

paid.

Positive, right? Military

and Pentagon messages into something even as ridiculous as Cupcake Wars.

I

you ever watch the Food Network? Yeah, I love.

The Cupcake Wars? Oh, my God, yeah.

Also, just cooking videos in general.

Uh-huh.

We didn't win.

Cupcake Wars.

You have done more in reality TV than so many people.

And you realize that there is this whole space on the internet of people commenting on reality TV shows and the characters in them.

He's been on Prank Stars, which is a reality show.

He's been on Cupcake Wars.

He's been on Ridiculousness.

I think he's a reality person now, right? He's done The Masked Singer in Australia.

Um, and then there is a little bit of a timeframe that I don't know from that.

Cause that was like 2002 because by the time 2009 hit, I think was when you became the host of cupcake wars.

Yeah, correct.

And then you kind of like moved up throughout the whole scene of TV hosting and you hosted a bunch of different shows from there as well as made appearances on a ton of different late nights and everything.

I mean, I was that was a huge.

thing for me also a huge vote of confidence like when you first moved to la like to be like oh my god i got a break you know maybe this is going to be the beginning of a you know the floodgates open and i think i did 30 seconds to fame shortly after that which was like a precursor to agt which is you got these talent acts have 30 seconds sure the audience can buzz them before those 30 seconds are up and uh they vote for the best performer by the end i did not win but i i did that And then I didn't get another, you know, Hollywood gig for years after that.

How did you get the Cupcake Wars thing? Because usually when they give hosting gigs like that, it's like the person's already a celebrity in some manner or they are specialized in whatever the thing is.

So like you didn't have any experience as far as I'm aware in baking.