Adele Malley’s enthusiasm for life is infectious. When the former Malley’s Chocolates CEO talks about the advice she offers in her new book, “Conversations with Adele: Business Owners’ Fundamentals for Success,” it’s clear that she knows what she’s talking about.

The book is a treasure trove of tips and advice on how to run a successful business. In many ways, it took Malley a lifetime to write—from growing up in her family business to marrying Bill Malley, to becoming the CEO of the Malley’s emporium.

She advises business owners to be excited about their brands, yet also know when to say something’s not working or the plan has to be changed.

“Keep going with it, keep things to be excited about, and be excited when they see a customer walk in the store,” she advises. “That's the whole thing—being excited, enthusiasm.”

Listening to Malley talk about chocolate is to understand on a cellular level the secret of her success.

Adele MalleyShe practically personifies the chocolates Malley’s makes when she describes the process of how Bordeauxs—chocolate-covered toffees—are made with an anthropomorphic attention to detail.

“They start out as rich, crunchy English toffee centers,” she says. “The fun part is when they're coming down the belt and they're all covered up with chocolate and they think they're so smart.

“Then we surprise them, and they get dunked into a big vat of freshly shaved almonds, and they get all turned around and covered up,” Malley continues. “Then they come down, and we put them in their boxes and wait for the customers to love them up.”

Family Business

The concept of “family business” is simply part of Malley’s DNA at this point.

Born Adele Ryan in 1937, Malley grew up in Fairview Park and learned about running a business while working in her family’s meat provision company located behind the West Side Market.

She joined another family business when she married Bill Malley in 1959. Malley took her ingrained knowledge and natural talent and helped Bill expand his family’s chocolate business into the Cleveland institution that Malley’s Chocolates is today.

You can see Malley’s influence on the company—from the friendly retail help and classic green, white, and pink color schemes seen throughout the company’s brand, to popular confections like BillyBobs, NutMallow, and chocolate covered pretzels and Adele’s descriptions, to the oval “CHOC” bumper stickers seen on just about every car in Northeast Ohio.

Adele and Bill Malley“Being a part of Malley's has warmed my heart ever since I met Bill Malley,” she says. “We used to be on dates, and we'd sit and talk about this or how we could write ‘thank you’ on the back of the bows that the waitresses would wear and what colors they should be. And it was just exciting to me—from the beginning to right now.”

Adele and Bill raised their six children in the retail stores and factory. She describes how she integrated her children into the business as she and Bill grew Malley’s. For instance, right after they opened their North Olmsted store it was so busy that Bill called her for help.

“So I popped all the kids in the car and got in and put them downstairs and had them bagging grass,” she recalls, laughing. “And they just loved that because they could use a pedal machine [where] you'd slide the cellophane bag in and stamp on the thing, and you'd have another bag made.”

She says she recalls checking on them at one point, and one of the kids was “leaning against a bag of grass with his head down, his hands full of grass and he was sound asleep.”

Malley was the president of the company from 1997 until she retired in 2003. She started drafting her book soon after she retired. Four of her children run the business today, and she is still a major shareholder.

Adele TeachingA Natural Teacher

Malley says she has always wanted to be helpful, especially when she sees an unmet need. She first started sharing her advice in 1983 when she started the Malley School of Merchandising.

She and Bill had been attending the Retail Confectioners International conventions for a few years when she noticed that some of her fellow conferencegoers weren’t able to translate their love and attention for their business into success the way she and Bill did.

“Chocolatiers love doing what they're doing so much,” she says, “but that feeling of love and creativity was in the kitchen. I didn't feel it in the stores.”

Malley says she saw the solution. “We need someone to teach everybody how to display their chocolates, how to invite somebody into the store, how to dazzle them with a center display so they have to come in to see it,” she explains.

Her enthusiasm for finding joy in what she does and translating that into success led her to ask Retail Confectioners International to help her start the Malley School of Merchandising. The school allowed her to find a new venue for teaching others how to do what they love successfully.

“I started school, and I started writing this book because I felt there was so much that I was nervous about when I first started,” Malley recalls. “I was afraid I wasn't going to do it right. But you did it anyhow and you got better at it, and then you realize, oh, my goodness, did I look like that in the beginning?”

The recollection led Malley to put her lessons in writing. “It was just a labor of love,” she says of the book. “I started writing and I just had to tell everybody what I learned, and I hope that it would save them some problems.”

Finding the Fun

The stories Malley tells about her life describe how fun and joy are at the crux of her success.

Malley School of MerchandisingWhen she was writing the syllabus for her merchandising school, her son Dan showed up at her bedroom door, dressed in a pair of his father’s brightly colored Lily Pulitzer pants, with an equally crazy shirt, a goofy hat and half a watermelon,

“He knocked on the bedroom door and he said, ‘Are you the lady that's accepting students?’” Malley recalls. “I looked up and there he was, dressed like silliness. We had a lot of good fun along the way as it grew.”

The success of Malley’s school has had a lasting effect. “I went to a convention recently and some fellas came up to me and they said, ‘If we hadn’t attended your school, we wouldn’t be anyplace now, your school made us aware of what we should be doing,’” Malley boasts.

The lessons that Malley has to offer go beyond the chocolate business.

“Anybody—small business and large business—can learn from this book,” she says. “It will help people get an idea that if [Adele Malley] did it, I can do it.”

She says she hopes her advice helps both entrepreneurs just starting out and the seasoned small business owner.

“For those who have gotten off track and just need a little spur to get them back on, this book can do it,” she explains. “[The book has] everything that they need to know to start a business, to drive growth in their businesses, and to learn things.”

She adds that an open mind is key to success. “If our minds are closed, oh, that won't work here in Timbuktu,” she laughs. “Well, then stay right where they were.”

Malley also gets into the specifics about the more difficult sides of business in her book. For instance, she asks, “How do you fire someone when you absolutely have to and then not sit up at night and worry that you didn't do it right and you're going to lose your business or something?”

The Next Chapter

It's clear that the love of product and customers is at the core of Malley’s secret to success—not to mention a positive attitude that has never wavered.

Lucky for the world, the minute she finished one book, she already started on her next book.  She says her next volume will focus more on public speaking, the skills Malley learned from years of giving presentations, and teaching in her school.

At 86 years old, Malley swears she’s not going to start a third book. “I'm going to have time to play with my grandchildren,” she says. “I have a few little ones. The rest are all out of college and things, and I just love them so much. I'm looking forward to really getting to know them, having conversations—sit-down conversations with the kids.”

She advises reading her book in the same way as an instruction manual. “I tried to help them with the things I learned as I went along,” she says, “I know that it'll bring people back on track and it'll give them the confidence that if ‘Adele Malley can do it, I can do it.’”

“Conversations with Adele” is available on the Malley’s Chocolates site for $29.95, or buy it at her book signing on Wednesday, Dec. 13 from 4;30 p.m. to 6 p.m. at Malley’s headquarters, 13400 Brookpark Road. Meet Adele Malley, enjoy free samples, and get some holiday shopping done.