We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Stephanie Dobos a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Stephanie, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
Starting your own business is always such a huge risk. You wonder if its the right idea and if youre making the right choices but the biggest risk you take is just saying YES! and getting things started. You never know unless you try and no time is better than taking the leap as soon as you can! I had an internship right out of culinary school where I was working for another bakery owner. Every day that I went into work I thought, why am I doing this for someone else when I could do this myself? Not long after that I decided to go ahead and get started. I sat down and brainstormed a name, make a facebook page, and started advertising! The orders started rolling in and 15 years later we are still going strong, getting bigger and better with each year that passes by. You only waste time of what could be by wondering “what if?” Just take the risk and get started!
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 got into this industry in 2008 when I graduated from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts. I started my business in 2008 as well, in Austin. We were featured in Texas Montly magazine for winning Best Tasting Cake in a competition as well as featured in the Austin American Statesman for our work with the organization, Bake A Wish. When I started out it was mostly doing custom cakes. We still do many custom cakes however our niche has started to lean more towards the custom decorated cookies side. While I love doing both, the cookies just add a little more level of creativity with the multiple designs and more detailed piping. I come from a family that is very creative, from drawing, painting, tattoo design etc, something design related was sort of in my destiny. I think we are set apart from others because of the fact that I am very creative and try to come up with different gift sets or box sets for big movies coming out and things of that nature that add a little extra touch to just ordering a set of decorated cookies. We love doing custom orders and things out of the oridnary that isnt the normal theme that most people think of and being able to put our own little twist on it to make it unique!
How did you build your audience on social media?
We started building a following as soon as we set up shop. We knew that social media is what was going to get us on the map and that is where we started. We set up a facebook page and started posting! Its important to not only post on your business page but your personal as well, thats where your sphere of influence is and who you’re going to market to. Once you start getting business from your friends and family and have photos to back up what you can do, you start posting in neighborhood groups, mom groups, community groups… wherever you think would be a good following to the product that youre providing. Once you start getting the orders and completing them… be sure to ask for reviews! Repeat customers will start to come and word of mouth will get around and before you know it, you will have business come in that you dont even have to spend a lot of time marketing to!
What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?
Social Media is absolutely the best source of new clients, without a doubt. Mainly Facebook, specifically, however there is also a big following on Instagram. Facebook has been our go to because you can market to multiple areas, multiple groups and have people tag you and share your photos of your work etc. If we ever need to do a big push for a certain product or deal we have going on we always go to Facebook first.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @thebutterstickbakerytx
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/thebutterstickbakerytx