Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kalie Trahan . We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Kalie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?
I started my business from home while I was in business school about 8-9 years ago. At this time I was alone building my customer base. Juggling school, my job and trying to start my own business from home was not a easy task. My family was the biggest support/help, and still are ! When I finally opened my storefront in 2017 (just celebrated 5 years open! Yippee !) It was just me and my husband (when he wasn’t working at his job) pulling all nighters to try and complete orders as well as manage a storefront that we also sell out of daily. I quickly realized I needed more help to manage this better. I hired 1 girl to help me, the bakery quickly grew fast and with time we needed more and more help. Flash forward to today, I now have 6 employees ! They are all amazing and we have all grown to be so close. I love each of them so much ! I believe having a good relationship with your employees so they are happy is SO important. We are a great team together. Without them I couldn’t do it alone, so a happy team is priority! Team work makes the dream work ! When I’m hiring I first focus on personality, I have realized this is the most important. We look for someone happy and cheerful. From there if they are familiar with baking or decorating it is a bonus ! If not I teach them my ways. If I were to start today there is nothing differently I would do. Each step was a learning process for me and with each step I was able to be a better business owner and boss.
Kalie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Hi! My name is Kalie Trahan. I decided to open my own bakery storefront in 2017, I was a fresh 25 years old and right out of business school. I started my business from home while I was in collage and knew instantly that owning a bakery was what I wanted to do. Craved Creations Bakery has now been open for 5 amazing years ! I love my job so much, and with the amount of work involved to run a bakery I have realized more then ever how important it is to love your job. The bakery sells cupcakes and cookies daily for walk in customers and we specialize in custom cakes and decorated cookies by order. Our main custom order events are birthdays, weddings, showers, and gender reveals. All of these are such important days for our customers and I absolutely love being able to be a part of that with them. Each day I wake up with such a grateful heart and can’t wait for so many more years to come with this dream I brought to life !
Any advice for managing a team?
The best advice I could give for managing a team is a good relationship. A happy team is a good team. My team and I absolutely love spending time with each other. So those long days in the kitchen filling orders makes it fun for us ! I couldn’t imagine any other way !
What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?
Absolutely. Going through collage, I also had a job, at one point I had 2 jobs. With all that on my plate I started decorating cakes for fun. When I realized I was kind of good at it more people started to ask me to make them their cakes for events. This quickly grew to a side hustle. When I noticed how quickly this grew and how much I loved it I realized this is what I wanted to do after graduating from Business School.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cravedcreations.com
- Instagram: cravedcreationsbakery
- Facebook: Craved Creations