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

Chelsea, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

While being a business owner is the most important thing in my life that I have achieved, it’s also the most stressful! When I started this business it was out of necessity and honestly, boredom during the pandemic! Being sidelined at home from my full-time pastry position I was itching for something to do! So I launched my first menu online and sold to friends and neighbors. While owning a business was always in the plans for me eventually, I never expected it so soon! I had to grow my idea of the business along the way with me, to make it work for me and what I want to do in my life. While I sometimes wish I could have those late nights back when all my friends are at a concert and I have to work on wedding cakes for the next day, every time I finish an order and see the reaction from customer’s faces it makes it worth it. This business is mine, and its success rests only on my shoulders. It’s a big responsibility and sometimes it feels like a lot to handle, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

Chelsea, 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?

I got into the food industry back when I was 16 and haven’t done anything else since! I loved the idea of being able to express my artistic creativity with a practical item such as food. Edible artwork is an incredible thing to me, so I always strive to strike the balance between incredible, gourmet taste and beautiful edible art! I love when customers tell me my products look too good to eat, but always let them know that it tastes even better than it may look! I put love, time, effort and customize every one of my orders for the customer. In the end, I love bringing joy to people through food most of all.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I was a year or so out of culinary school, I was fired from a kitchen manager position I had been at for 4 years. I had grown a lot with the company and had been there a long time, and it had become a part of my identity. I couldn’t imagine leaving the position, although I felt that I wasn’t fulfilling my potential and had wanted more for quite a while. When I thought I was going in for my typical annual review, I was blind-sided by being fired. It shook my world and my career up, and I wasn’t sure at the time if I could recover what I had lost. I had a position most people don’t get so early on in their career, and my confidence was shattered by losing that. But I found a job (that paid a lot less and just barely got by for a while) where I was under some incredible pastry chefs. I learned an incredible amount and built my confidence back up far beyond what I had possessed before. When you bounce back from a blow like that, it makes you much stronger than before. I gained the skills I felt I was lacking/not honing in my career before, and in a year was back to making more than I had at the kitchen manager position I thought I could never replace. A couple years later, I was a much more well-rounded chef and business person, and was ready to take the next leap into owning my own business!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Being a business owner has forced me confront the fact that I am a perfectionist, and to start to let that go. I always felt that in order to start something, you had to know every facet. You had to be an expert before starting something new. But that’s not the way life works! When I jumped into my business head-first knowing nothing about most things I needed to from licensing to building a website, I was still in analysis paralysis. I thought my website had to be perfect, menu had to be set in stone, and run like a business that had been running successfully for years before opening myself up to the public. And if not, it would be failure. But something I learned day-one from starting my business is that every single person is learning as they go. “Fake it till you make it” is a real thing, and everyone is doing it! You’re allowed to change your business, your policies, your procedures to what works for you. You’re allow to try new things and see if they work, or don’t. That’s the beauty of owning your own business; you call all the shots! “Failure” isn’t something to be scared of, it’s just another opportunity for growth.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.phreshbakedgoods.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/phreshbakedgoods/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/phreshbakedgoods
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/phresh-baked-goods-denver-3
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@phreshbakedgoods

Image Credits
Spencer Chambers Photography Soulshine Photography