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

Alright, Nicole thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was the most important lesson/experience you had in a job that has helped you as a business owner?

My background is real estate. Being in a new home sales and management for 12+ years taught me very valuable lessons. You have to have ownership mentality and understand that your customer is number one. Follow up and follow through are crucial in any industry, whether you are your selling a million dollar home or one dozen beautiful cake pops! Referrals are a business owner’s life line. Treat your customers with the upmost respect and deliver an incredible product & you will be successful!

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started making cake pops as a hobby for friends and family while working a full-time real estate career. I was so intrigued with cake pops my best friend made me, I just had to learn how to do them myself.

In the beginning learning the ins and outs of working with chocolate, perfecting the cake recipes, perfecting the consistency of the cake pop dough, learning how to create characters… that was quite a love-hate relationship, It took years and lots of practice to perfect.

Fast forward several years, when I launched my hobby into a business. I started with offering classic round cake pops, simple yet fun, elegant and delicious. My business quickly took off & more intricate and detailed designs were born!

I have a passion for taking an idea and executing it in an edible form of art. I truly love making cake pops for all of my customers, for every occasion.

My company name is well recognized in the DFW area & I’m also known as “The Cake Pop Lady”

Big Top Cake Pops has truly made a mark in the DFW confectionery/baking world!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

As we all know we recently were faced with a pandemic, Covid. As soon as Covid hit, everybody went into panic mode not knowing what the next days or weeks would bring. Almost all of my orders canceled, I had several weddings, birthday parties and baby showers booked but because of the threat of the virus, everybody canceled gatherings.

That was a scary time for my business, not knowing when things would get back to normal and when those customers that had to cancel would be able to reschedule.

I had to get creative, so I came up with a way to still create and deliver amazing cake pops while taking all precautions.

I launched a successful line of DIY cake pop kits delivered to your front door. This was wildly successful and would sell out every weekend.

Everyone wanted to get back to as normal as possible and were getting creative on how to have gatherings.

Drive through birthday parties, baby showers and engagement parties started becoming a trend & my business increased tremendously! The bounce back during Covid was the busiest in the last couple years!

So instead of sitting back and being down on my luck when everyone canceled, I was proactive and reaching the community where they were and coming up with creative ways to allow them to still have our amazing cake pops!

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

By far the most effective strategy for growing my clientele is referrals. When you have a happy customer and you delight them, they will talk about you and they will tell their friends. I have a social media presence but the majority of my business comes from word of mouth.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.bigtopcakepops.net
• Instagram: Big Top Cake Pops
• Facebook: Big Top Cake Pops

Image Credits
Nicole Pacheco & La La Photography DFW