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

Amanda, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Parents play a huge role in our development as youngsters and sometimes that impact follows us into adulthood and into our lives and careers. Looking back, what’s something you think you parents did right?

I am very fortunate to have an undying support system from my own parents in my small business. They have both been my number one fans, and my biggest investors. They have not just told me but shown me that I have a support system that I can rely on as I reach for my dreams, and having that support is so impactful when starting a small business and dealing with imposter syndrome. And it never hurts to have an extra set of hands around too!

Not only are they my biggest support, but they have shown me throughout my childhood and adulthood that it is okay to make mistakes and it is okay to change your mind or goals. Never once have they talked down to my dreams, never once have they said my career goals would be a bad idea or tried to change my mind. They just show up continually for me, and know that we are all constantly growing and evolving, and that means your goals and dreams can grow and evolve too – even if it takes a whole additional year of schooling.

And most importantly, in my opinion, is the way that my parents raised me to help uplift those around me in any way that I can, just like they do and have shown with me. I do not need to tear other people down in order to grow my career to the point of success or my goals to fruition. In reality, by raising me with such empathy, they taught me that instead of competing for top spot by gatekeeping and tearing others down, we should start with helping to bring up the lowest in our community up, sharing our knowledge with each other, and in doing so that lifts everyone else up higher as a whole – and that applies to jobs as well as our society and communities around us.

Amanda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Amanda Jade, and my home bakery business, Jade Cakes & Bakes, is a culmination of a lifetime of baking with my mother and family, along with multiple different work environment experiences. I have always been a creative, and I learned to bake and decorate cakes from my mother who created homemade birthday cakes for my sister and me. As I got a bit older, I started making themed cupcakes for my friends’ birthdays in school, and later got a job cake decorating for Coldstone Creamery, where my speed and efficiency for cakes really accelerated.

I continued to improve my skills in themed cakes as a hobby, but I had started schooling for photography, and soon was working at a local portrait photography studio, where I gained a plethora of knowledge on marketing, still imagery, and storytelling in art. This also gave me a fascination and detailed skill for food and product photography. For a good deal of time I worked in portraits, photographing many families, and then moving into weddings and pet photography and animal rescue work, where I still volunteer and foster to this day. It was in these various job environments that I learned the ins and outs of many business models, from corporately owned entity, to individually owned startup, nonprofits, and service gigs; and those connections and lessons have impacted how I run my business today. These experiences also mean that I have confidence in working with different scales of events and locations, planning and coordinating schedules, and even photographing small and large events and weddings. As a baker with wedding experience, I make sure neither is compromised.

But it wasn’t until the hardships and lost job opportunities of 2020 that I even began to think about opening my own business for baked goods. I actually fell back on food service and Coldstone Creamery for a while, which finally made me realize the talents that I was not taking full advantage of in myself. I had been baking with my own mother for years, it felt like I should finally just lean into what we had been doing for the entirety of my life. I just had to finally believe in myself for once, instead of getting caught up in the plans that had fallen through. So in September of 2022 I officially registered a business license and all the necessary food safety licenses for a home bakery, and I made this longshot a reality. Because at this point, after learning that not everything goes to plan, what did I have to lose by betting on myself? Not to mention I was already getting orders through word of mouth. I could hardly believe it, people wanted my cakes!

Now, the continuing challenge is to be grow and believe in my own skill. The freedom that has come with owning my own business has allowed for time to focus on my creativity and to create uniquely delicious cake creations. Going into the rest of 2024, I hope for even more cake orders to fill my days with full time work and to share my baked goods to people of all walks of life, backgrounds, and lifestyles. I want to spread joy and acceptance for all through delicious bakes.

All of my cakes and baked goods are made custom to order, with any desired flavors, themes, or dietary restrictions. I take plenty of time to create just the right dessert for your birthday, wedding, or special occasion. Having time to make sure the flavor and texture are perfect along the way is an important step, so the cakes are as delicious as they are beautifully decorated. It has helped me create some amazing cakes that I am so proud of, to the point that customers are coming back time and again and spreading my business through word of mouth. It makes my heart so very full when that happens, because it means that I have been able to make a positive experience and impact for my customers, as well as light my inner passion.

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

When it comes to my baking skills, it was for a majority of my life a side hustle to my goals for a photography career. Both artistic ventures, sure, and both important enough to me that I didn’t want to have to give up one for the other entirely. But baking and cake decorating was always a side hobby done with my mom, not something I ever took that seriously until after the year of 2020. I worked at high end portrait studios in the valley, and always had planned to “make it big” in photography and marketing campaigns. In reality though, maybe losing multiple jobs and prospects into 2020 was the push that I needed to finally bet on and believe in myself fully – once I didn’t have any other option. I essentially had to hit a rock bottom to finally push for myself on my own. But once I finally broke through, with the help of my support system and my therapist, I was able to take actionable steps for once, to get my business license, renew my food handler’s license, and follow cottage food laws locally. That was when Jade Cakes & Bakes was officially born and licensed in September of 2022, and now I have a full service website for ordering inquiries and social media videos being shared around regularly.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

The best source of new clients for me has to be word of mouth, as per the classic phrase. And I couldn’t be more excited about it! It means the people who have bet on me first have been met with a result that they believe is worth sharing, and that is so meaningful to me. Sure it is great when a random online inquiry trusts and reaches out to me, but to know that someone is going out of their way to mention me and my cake when they can, just makes me feel so fulfilled and worthwhile. To my local peers sharing my name around, you are my true heroes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jadecakes.com
• Instagram: @jadecakes_bakes
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amanda-rief-429030151

Image Credits

All images copyrighted to Amanda Jade Rief