We caught up with the brilliant and insightful AJ DeDiego a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, AJ thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?

I think success comes from determination and knowing yourself. When you know what direction you’re trying to move in, even if it involves a long process of difficult steps, the determination to make it is what guides you. The road to success teaches you a lot about yourself, and you learn to prioritize everything in your life as well as your field of work. When you crave success like I do, you do anything it takes to achieve your goals so you can move on to the next, bigger step.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I own AJ’s Baking Company, a small home-based dessert business in Atlanta. My journey started with social media recipe videos back in 2017. I created YouTube baking videos for years before figuring out how to go into business and create my own career. After growing a steady following on Instagram and keeping up with all my social media for several years, I launched my gourmet dessert mixes and then started selling custom cakes/desserts. I always strive to provide my clients with something that looks and tastes amazing. My dessert mixes definitely set me apart from the rest.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

My social media and physical business used to be a side hustle. I always had a goal to someday work for myself and be able to pay my bills solely from my business, and that took years of experimenting and figuring out how to grow in several areas. While I was a flight attendant, I used that money to fund my life and my business, using all my spare time to create content to keep growing on social media. I knew that a bigger social media following would be a bigger customer base for me to market my business to, so I dedicated a long time to figuring out how to really do well on all the social media apps so I could have something established. That honestly led to everything else. Having a notable following got me media exposure on the news and in online articles, and I made it on a Food Network competition, plus I’ve published two cookbooks, purely because I’ve been able to grow a following and start a business from it.

Have you ever had to pivot?

I think the ability to pivot is really important in business and in life. Sometimes, over the course of your journey, you’ll realize that some things you try aren’t as great as you imagined. When you embark on a big journey, like growing a business, there are lots of goals and lots of things to learn. While growing my baking brand, there were certain things, like selling wholesale, that became goals and then left the picture. Sometimes, something doesn’t quite work out, or doesn’t feel the way you expected, so you have to have a backup or a different direction to go in just in case.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bakeitwithaj.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/ajdediego
• Youtube: Bake it with AJ
• TikTok: Bake it with AJ