We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stefani Pollack. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Stefani below.

Alright, Stefani thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. How has Covid changed your business model?

The Bake Fest was created because of COVID. Because live events were being cancelled, bakers needed a virtual space to connect, learn, and grow. Even though live events are back, we’ve found that our attendees love the ability to continue to come together from the comfort of their homes.

Stefani, 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?

Stefani Pollack is a blogger, social influencer, and serial entrepreneur with nearly one million Instagram followers on her @cupcakeproject account.

Her baking blog, Cupcake Project (https://www.cupcakeproject.com), began in 2007 as a way of documenting her quest to master the cupcake in time to bake hundreds of them for a friend’s wedding. Since then, her approachable sweet and savory recipes have been featured in Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, she’s been a contributor for Parade Magazine, Paula Deen, and Chowhound, and she has freelanced for magazines like Fine Cooking and AllRecipes.

She founded The Bake Fest (https://www.thebakefest.com) with a deep love for the baking community. It’s a virtual space for all bakers – home bakers, pastry chefs and bakery owners, recipe developers, and baking influencers to come together. Bake Fest events have live virtual classes and well as networking opportunities with other bakers and shopping discounts and giveaways from baking brands.

Stefani has also co-founded Build Digital Marketing, a company focused on Instagram account management for small to mid-sized businesses.

When she’s not hard at work or playing with her family, you can find her upside-down on aerial silks.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

At dinner one night in early 2006, some good friends mentioned that they were trying to decide where to buy cupcakes for their wedding. I surprised myself and others at the table by offering to bake for them (I had never baked a cupcake before – ever!). My friends surprised me by accepting. Their wedding was Dec 31, 2007, and I had exactly nine months to learn to bake wedding-worthy cupcakes. I baked a new cupcake for them every week and let them choose their three favorites for the big day. My friends were the reason that I started Cupcake Project. It was meant to be a place to track the different flavors I was making for them. But, when other people started reading it, I took a deep dive into a how to grow a blog. When one of my cupcakes was featured on CNN my traffic skyrocketed and eventually, my advertising income was high enough that I was able to leave my day job. Because blog traffic ebbs and flows, I’ve created other businesses using my skillset of growing on social media and connecting bakers. One thing led to the next, I’m always on the lookout for the next way to pivot and continue to grow.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Growing on social media was no easy task. I posted on Instagram 6 times a day every single day for a full year. I also constantly read about the latest algorithm updates and what was working best. Social media changes so fast that my main advice is to keep up – what worked six months ago, might not work now. If I was just starting today, I would focus exclusively on short form video and post similar content to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube shorts, and Pinterest stories. I’d see which audience my content was resonating with the most and then focus my efforts on growing on that platform – tracking trends and spending a lot of time engaging with related content there.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.thebakefest.com https://www.cupcakeproject.com
• Instagram: @cupcakeproject @the.bake.fest
• Facebook: @cupcakeproject @thebakefest
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefani-pollack-54235/