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

Taryn, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Back in 2011 my best friend and I were looking for a place to order my Goddaughters birthday cake (my best friends daughter). While looking at different places and prices for her cake, we were like “wow these cakes are so expensive”. I’m not spending that money on this cake. In that same moment though my best friend said (jokingly at first) we should just make it ourselves for all that. Then we stopped laughing and seriously said “no we should make her cake forreal”. Long story short, the cake was not the prettiest to say the least. On the consumer side I said “wow that’s a lot of money to spend on a cake”, however people actually don’t mind spending this money on a cake. On the business side I said to myself once I’m able to perfect this craft, this is actually a very good business to start. Everyone has celebrations, why should they only have to order from the usual bakery’s or stores with the same basic designs on them? I would love it if I could get a custom cake made locally. Not to mention my family’s birthdays, and other major celebrations. Essentially just knowing that my family & friends would not HAVE to order another cake from a bakery or pick one up from the supermarket was pretty exciting. My best friend pretty much put the final idea in my head, she was like “you should really just start making cakes”. I also love to draw, so with my love for art and creativity it really made this something that I truly enjoy doing.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

As a kid I loved to draw. I always had books around the house with sketches of different cartoon characters and then I even attempted to draw my nieces and nephew faces. I pretty much perfected the ninja turtles (haha). I loved arts and crafts or pretty much anything that involved creativity. When my friend and I decided to make my god daughters birthday cake it just tapped right into my creative side so it worked out perfectly. We also learned to make homemade fondant with marshmallows although I’ve definitely stopped using homemade fondant and started buying pre packaged fondant, learning this skill is very useful if ever I have to improvise. I’m very proud of how fast I’ve come with out giving up, I’ve pushed myself at different points in my entrepreneurship, my husbands also pushed and motivated me to at least get to the next step you know because sometimes the next step can seem so far or so impossible. My entire life I’ve procrastinated and felt this way so I’ve talked myself out of doing things because it doesn’t seem like it could happen, but with my business I’ve literally talked myself out of giving up. That’s something I’m very very proud of.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Well those who know me know that I have two daughters and my bonus child (I don’t like saying “step” child). I had my oldest daughter while I was only 18. As grown as I felt I was at that age using the word ONLY, is very intentional because I had so much more to learn about myself and about life. I hadn’t finished high and had attempted to go for my G.E.D but couldn’t find the drive in me to see it through. At this point I was barely going to school and then shortly after got pregnant all while being in a pretty toxic relationship. During my pregnancy I also found out my grandmother had cancer. Unfortunately she passed away about 5 months after hearing this news, A few weeks after this my daughter was born. As a new young mom I was so excited, nervous, scared, and unfortunately ended up going through pretty bad postpartum, this ultimately landed me in the hospital. I was for sure at my lowest point in my life, however this happening caused me to reflect on my choices and where things can end up if I don’t get my sh** together. So I went home I prayed a LOT. and I registered for school for that fall semester., i was definitely ready and a little excited or I would even say happy to be back in school. In 2005 I graduated with my degree in business administration despite all of the hits I received prior to that moment.

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

As a new business owner, one of my favorite marketing strategies are pop up shops, or some people may know them as a “farmers market”, because it’s a great networking opportunity. I’ve been a part of a few of them. There was one pop up shop that I was part of where my family and friends were unable to make it to. I had a goal of the minimum profits I was hoping to come home with. I exceeded that amount and I exceeded that amount with complete strangers. People were coming to purchase things from me just because they were interested in my goods. One person would come and then would bring their friends back to purchase some desserts. That truly made me proud because although it’s nice to have support from friends and family, in real life your friends and family aren’t going to be the people that purchase from you the most. It’s going to be strangers people who hear about you or find you online etc. I just felt so awesome that day.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.tees-cakes.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/tees__cakes?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=