We were lucky to catch up with Lydia Korte recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Lydia, thanks for joining us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

This whole thing started because I made one cake. I made a birthday cake for my son with a “cake kit” I got for Christmas on Amazon. My spouse posted a photo of the cake in a mom group on Facebook just to brag on me for fun. All of the sudden, I started getting messages, and messages and more messages. I absolutely couldn’t believe I had even one person interested in having little old me make a cake for them. Honestly, I wanted to turn every person away. But my spouse said “do it, take every single one. We will figure it out and I will help you” and she did. It took only two month before filling 6-10 custom cake orders each week became my full time job. It’s been a year and a half since that very first cake and I am still shocked everyday at what’s become of it. We have 93 reviews on Facebook and 2.7 followers and I’m just so extremely proud of us. We work really hard and it is an extremely stressful job with wonky hours. But we are building something that feels so important.

Lydia, 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?

My wife and I founded and run a custom designer cake business out of our home. We create elaborate birthday, celebration and wedding cakes for customers in the KC area. Our customers recognize our work for being clean, professional and trendy. We are really proud to be same sex couple business owners. We work together extremely well. Our inputs compliment each others’ in a perfect way and we would not be able to make even one cake with out the other. We divide the tasks of the business right down the middle depending on who is better at what and it just works.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We built our audience on social media in a strategic way. We do all of our advertising on Facebook in local mom/parenting groups, foodie groups, and local business groups. We share a lot about our family. I think customers seeing that we are relatable and recognizing our faces builds trust and rapport right away. Ordering a cake may not seem super important but it can be daunting because their are so many places to go for cakes. We want our customers to know we are real people who are down to earth and we’re going to do the best job we can to give them a great experience.

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

A lesson I think many of us have consciously or even unconsciously learned, is “be friendly and be likable”. This is something I really had to unlearn. It’s easy to apply this to your life because it seems like the right thing to do. Of course, be nice to people. Seems obvious. However, this quickly for me turns into – having limited boundaries, and letting yourself commit to things you really shouldn’t. It’s that feeling of abandoning your own needs because you were trying to be “friendly”. That’s a hard place to fall. So I had to unlearn “be friendly and be likable” to “be yourself and stop caring what everyone thinks”. If you are yourself they will like you, and if they don’t that’s okay because you like you. Without that belief, I think I would have crumbled under the pressure of my business.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @lydia_bakeskc
• Facebook: @lydiabakeskc

Image Credits
Couples photo by Shelby-Lynn Studios