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

Suzzanne, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career

First let me begin by saying how important teachers and educators are. Truly marvelous and important people. However I do believe a lot of curriculum doesn’t necessarily benefit young generations for their careers or life. I have always felt there needs to be more education on preparing kids for everyday issues you face as an adult. I feel a lot of my knowledge came from experience in the field, and trial and error as a young adult, not from grade schools or my college degree.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

Hello! I’m Suzzanne Rubio owner and founder of Suzie Qs Bakery! Am at home bakery that specializes in all kinds of custom sweet treats. My most popular items are customized cakes and cookies for an array of events, from weddings, baptisms, baby showers and more! I pride my self in making all my creations delicious, beautiful and full of love.

I attended culinary school in Orange County CA. One week we had an assignment to create a fake business model, and I created my made up business, Suzie Qs Bakery. While I was in culinary school friends and neighbors started asking me to do odd end desserts for their events, and as I was getting more orders I decided to just call my side hustle Suzie Qs Bakery.

Once I graduated and started working in the field, I always kept my side hustle going. As word of mouth kept spreading, I was getting busier and busier and made Suzie Qs Bakery an official business in 2017. I ended up quitting my full time job and focusing on growing my side hustle. 6 years later I can proudly say Suzie Qs Bakery has been a thriving successful at-home business.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Customer service is key. Being extra friendly and flexible in the beginning really helped build my reputation. If you are just starting out I wouldn’t recommend setting concrete rules and policies yet. Be flexible, get to know your audience, your clients, and see what works. Then build the policies you want to benefit both you and your clients.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I will say the pandemic was a make or break situation for so many people. Once everything started shutting down all of my existing orders were cancelling, and no one was going to start planning a party anytime soon. What could I do? This is my only source of income so I needed to come up with something. Everyone was at home, and if you had kids you needed to keep them busy. So I came up with the idea to start selling DIY cookie decorating kits. Every week was a different theme, outer space, under the sea, etc. They were a huge hit! They kept me in business and really spread the word even further. Once everything started opening back up, schools and businesses were ordering cookie kits in mass. I was selling hundreds a month and it was a very proud moment for me. You are always going to get thrown curve balls on life, and you will have to be resilient. Adapt and find a way to make it work.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.suzieqsbakery.com
• Instagram: @suzieqsbakery
• Facebook: @suzieqsbakery
• Yelp: Suzie Qs Bakery
• Threads: Suzie Qs Bakery

Image Credits
I photographed every image myself, Suzzanne Rubio