Hello to all of my lovely supporters! I have decided to start this blog, to be completely honest, in order to boost my SEOs 😅 however, I hope to entertain readers while informing my loyal customers a little more about who I am as a person and business professional, and maybe get to know myself a little more in the process too!
So where did it all begin? I touch lightly on this in the "About Us" page on my website, but here I will go a little bit more into detail:
I started baking as a small child - simple things like rice crispies and box mixes with my mom and grandma. Even today, baking more complex recipes still brings me back to my childhood kitchens, baking with these amazing women. Some of my favorite childhood memories are of us baking all kinds of Christmas goodies, packaging them up, and bringing them to friends, family, neighbors, and teachers. This is a tradition I have since continued as an adult!
I wish I had pictures of us baking together. Maybe one day when I go through the ridiculous amount of boxes in my garage I'll come across some and share!
With a passion for baking already ingrained into my DNA, I went to college for business administration right out of high school; although, my original plan was to go to beauty school next and partner with my dad in his salon. In 2016, I got my first job as a baker at the Cedar St. Bistro in Sandpoint, ID. I am very grateful to Tim and Manuela for believing in me and allowing me creative freedom over some things I baked for the Bistro. This cake was one of my first ones ("Okay, Taysia, make some kind of layered chocolate cake today!") I decided on a brownie bottom, chocolate cheesecake with raspberries in the middle, and a chocolate hazelnut mousse on top!
It wasn't until about a year later, after working in the salon for a year, that I realized the salon life just wasn't for me. I knew I wanted to open a bakery eventually, but I had no idea how. Here's the funny part: when you go to college for business, they teach you all about bookeeping, basic economics, and how to write a full business plan "to bring to investors," but what they don't tell you is that most modern-day investors don't care much about pretty business plans with a bunch of fake numbers and care more about your ability to start your business and gain traction on your own, showing real numbers and realistic projections based on those numbers. Anyways, my need to just survive as a young person trying to figure out what to do with my life took over and I forgot about my baking dreams for a bit.
In February of 2020 I became a mother to my wonderful son, Braven. His father and I decided I would be a stay at home mom. I quickly started filling my spare time with baking and experimenting with flavors, breastfeeding the baby with one arm while baking with the other. I started baking for friends and family in exchange for the cost of ingredients used. For a while, it allowed me to build my skill set and experiment with other people's taste preferences.
Very suddenly, a shocking event changed the way I baked.
One of my favorite hobbies at the time was competitive pool. I played in leagues and tournaments, and I consistently did well. Brad Hollibaugh was another pool player on many leagues and tournaments, and in April of 2021 he unexpectedly passed away. The pool community is very supportive of each other and tries their best to support families when a player is lost, so I decided to organize a bake sale for Brad's family. Not only did I raise over $500 for the family that day, but I also started getting messages from other pool players asking for specific baked goods.
I would like to take a moment to honor Brad before continuing. You were always a pleasure to shoot with and talk to. May you rest in peace.
As more requests came in, I started to research what it would take to open a real bakery. I wanted to start baking for vendor events and get my name out there, but of course I wanted to do it legally. It was during this research that I discovered cottage food laws. Cottage food laws allow bakers to sell certain baked goods made in their home kitchen - no commercial kitchen or storefront bakery required! Up until this point, I had no clue this was legal. After sitting on this information for a couple of months, I created my website in July of 2021. By January of 2022, I was getting enough orders to get over that "impostor syndrome" feeling a bit and register my business.
2022 went smoothly as far as the business goes, but towards the end of the year my personal life had been totally torn apart and I had to uproot everything I had worked for over the previous 3 or so years. With my business doing well, I had just decided to apply to appear on The Blox, a reality competition show for entrepreneurs, just a couple weeks before things started going sideways. I had to return to a regular job - actually, multiple jobs - in order to keep food on the table. At that point, I wasn't expecting in the slightest to get accepted onto The Blox; but at the same time, I kept moving onto the next phases in the application and interview process. I was exceptionally surprised when I got the official invitation, and also terrified because I had hardly done any work on my business for about 3 months.
So there I was, about to make a decision that many told me was an absolutely ridiculous one - figure out a way to make it to Kansas City with a few short weeks' notice and spend a whole week there competing for my business that I had barely even thought of in weeks... Seems legit!
Well, well, well. I made it happen!
I will save the full story of The Blox for a future post. The important thing is that this experience rekindled a fire that I feared was almost gone. Spending an entire week learning about business, things I never learned in college, surrounded by roughly 70 other entrepreneurs, all of us competing in front of cameras and microphones to prove why our businesses were the most amazing thing on earth, was the most profound experience of my life. Not only did I learn so many new skills to implement in my own business, but I left with friends to last a lifetime.
The week at The Blox still feels like a dream. Coming home, I knew I couldn't let myself slip back into a "normal" life. There is so much more to be said about the whole experience, but I will say that I found a new direction and a new purpose, both in business and in life. Since February, I have been expanding my horizons, branching out into content creation, and continuing to do my best to serve my amazing clients.
Please feel free to follow me on social media and check back in for updates as I continue to grow my business. My story is far from over!
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