We were lucky to catch up with Nicole Bendig-Lamb recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nicole, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?

My journey to making a full-time living with my cake designs has been a long one, but so worth it! My whole life, I’ve been drawn to baking and cooking, and I always felt that the kitchen was my happy place. I remember being a little girl visiting my Aunt Florence, who owned her own restaurant. She would let me “help out” in her restaurant by bussing tables and doing easy jobs like filling the condiment containers. I’ll never forget standing in her kitchen and staring at the giant commercial mixer with pure joy in my heart! I knew then that I wanted to be a baker. But as it happens for many people with a passion for the creative arts, it seemed like a traditional educational path was better suited to make a living. So after graduating from high school, I went right to a 4-year University and earned a Bachelor’s Degree. I spent most of my adult life working office jobs, from administrative support, bookkeeping and eventually landed as an Accountant in Tax Firms. While it paid the bills, it didn’t make my heart sing like baking and creating beautiful cakes did. Everyone kept telling me that I should be baking cakes full-time, and that I’m wasting my talent, etc. I would always brush this off, thinking “Oh, I could never do that!” or “I’d never make enough money.” But I never lost my passion for it and one day I finally realized that the only person telling me I couldn’t do it was ME. So I started working with a Cake Business Coach, I set a goal, broke it down into manageable steps, did the work and was able to quit my day job as an Accounting in June of 2019! I know now that I could have done this years sooner if I had just believed in myself more.

Nicole, 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 have spent years perfecting my craft of specialty custom cake design, from studying and following industry leaders to just playing around in my cake studio to try new techniques and medium. Now as the Owner of Snarky Sweet Cake Chick, I help my clients create EPIC memories for their celebrations as a Master Cake Designer. I believe that a spectacular and delicious cake is more than “just a dessert.” It’s an artistic show piece, an experience and a conversation starter.

When creating a cake for a client, I research every detail of the theme they desire and also try to “get into their head” to pull in elements that often surprise and delight them. The most important thing to me as a baker and cake designer is that every client’s cake is better than they could have even imagined!

Most of my designs are best suited for large celebrations, like weddings, retirements, milestone birthdays, showers and corporate events.

I think the most frequent question I get about my business is, “Why are custom cakes so expensive?” I actually love this question, and I think many people watch all the baking competition shows and see amazing things on Pinterest and they really just don’t know the process and the time and skill level that goes into creating these types of desserts.

Before I even turn the oven on, I go through a long design process which involves research of the topic, sketching, and designing the structure. THEN there’s the baking, leveling, carving, crumb coating, stacking and finally the outer decorating. Some of my cakes can take up to 20 hours of decorating time!

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Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

My favorite business books are “Profit First” and “The Pumpkin Plan” both by author, Mike Michalowicz. His mission is to “eradicate entrepreneurial poverty.” Both of these books have been instrumental in my business.

“Profit First” is a cash flow management system designed to help small businesses run a fiscally healthy business while making sure that the owner takes their pay and profit FIRST before paying expenses. This comprehensive system helps business owners identify where their money is really going, and then helps leverage their behavior (instead of trying to change it). I believe in the system so much that in 2020, I became a Profit First Certified Professional and even got to interview Mike for my cake podcast (The Cake Biz Broadcast)!

In “The Pumpkin Plan,” he sheds light on the concept of finding the RIGHT customers for your business. More is not better. BETTER is better! By putting this concept into play in my business, I was able to see that I shouldn’t say “yes” to every single type of order, but instead only take the orders that are best suited for my skills, talent and passion. It was so liberating!

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

When I decided that I wanted to quit my day job in Accounting, I knew that I needed to build up some capital before taking that leap. I set a specific money goal that I wanted to have saved before I quit. I ended up working my full-time day job and slowly building up my cake business as a side-hustle. I would take half of every day job paycheck and put it into a special bank account that I wouldn’t touch. I also took all of my profits from by baking side-hustle (thanks to Profit First!) and put that into the same bank account. Within a year and a half, I met my goal and quit my day job!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.snarkysweetcakechick.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/snarkysweetcakechick/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/snarkysweetcakechick
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicole-bendig-lamb-3a1a2033/?msgControlName=reply_to_sender&msgConversationId=2-MjdlMDQ0MjUtYWI3Mi00N2YwLWE0ZDItZjJlODUyYTU1N2Q2XzAxMA%3D%3D&msgOverlay=true
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqAUCprXWI70–ecqpeIVzg
• Other: https://thecakebizbroadcast.libsyn.com/

Image Credits
Marilyn Garrison Photography