We were lucky to catch up with Tiffaney Strayhorne recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tiffaney, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with education – we’d love to hear your thoughts about how we can better prepare students for a more fulfilling life and career.

Many of the changes I would like to see in the educational system are being instituted as we speak. I’ve spent a lot of time this year building the philanthropic portion of my profile through teaching, donating and taking the opportunities to display leadership in our local schools and community. The key points I always drive home is for children and young adults to remain consistent in their goals and disciplined, to think outside of the box when choosing a career path, and to take the time to nurture gifts that may come naturally to them by practicing with intent. I am also adamant about teaching the basics of creating a business structure. As an Entrepeneur myself, I feel I was taught to be an employee but never groomed to create systems to offer services and products to the population on my own terms. This in itself gives any person more control over earning potential, time, freedom, creativity and a multitude of other things so long as they remain disciplined and consistent as mentioned earlier.

I also advocate for paying special attention to mental health no matter the path you choose. I consistently advocate healthy habits such as a regular exercise regimen, healthy eating and spending habits, and paying special attention to not being overly invested in comparisons made during time spent on social media. Run your own race.

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 background and context?

My first love and business is Pauline’s. It’s five years in the making. I provide custom cake services to feed anywhere from 5 to 200 people! I also offer cupcakes and dessert shooters. Here at Pauline’s we service the Jefferson County area at large about 80 percent of the time, however we regularly travel out of state, city and county to service clients on a regular basis as well.

Not only do we provide a food service with desserts we have instituted small party catering this year and we have successfully launched our Cake It! program, which is a small class of anywhere between 15-30 little bakers twice a day 2-3 weekends per year. We partner with local businesses who sponsor our event by either sponsoring several students, providing a venue, customized merchandise or food products to each child as a takeaway. We spend 2-3 hours per class teaching basic icing and stacking skills to little kids and allow them to explore their creativity, work on fine motor skills, build confidence and practice critical thinking skills while socializing and creating a cake that instills confidence they may not have had when they met my group of instructors.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to make several investments that are now coming to fruition, I am now the proud owner of Champion Tax and Consulting which will be open to the public 2023 tax season officially. We offer tax preparation for both individuals and small businesses, business registration services, business consulting and notary services as well.

What prompted this venture was first, me recognizing my need to take an in-depth view of how things worked behind the scenes with my own business, spending time with business mentors and consultants that counseled me on how to create a structure that would eventually allow my business to have optimum functionality and order and knowing the ins and out as required by the Internal Revenue Service. I have been very fortunate as of late to partner with the Birmingham Urban League’s department of entrepreneurship and workforce at speaking engagements to provide insight based on my journey and experience, I spent half of this year continuing my education and now I am ready to pass that on to others in my community that may not have the opportunity or access that I have had to those resources. Each one teach one.

As a whole, I also use a percentage of sales each quarter to donate snacks to local schools during standardized testing, setup and educate on entrepreneurship at high school career fares and speak in classrooms to educate rising Juniors and Seniors on the risks and benefits of creating your own company.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

Initially I worked in healthcare. I had a consistent career of more than 11 years. I wasn’t an individual that wasn’t gainfully employed however, I do believe I was always an individual that was stuck in a box. Alot of times when you work for companies you really can never reach your full potential if you are a creative unless your role is with a company that requires creativity and not rigidity. Serving others was always my strong suit, and my coworkers and I spent so many long hours together assisting with and performing surgery that’s what got me through. However, the pandemic and company changes slowly reminded me I needed more, and more had to be more aligned with who I am as an individual. With respect to those facts my job was such a help to me during that process.

My coworkers gave me feedback on recipes I was trying out, they were my first customers during my building phase. I only made and designed cakes on the weekends because my then, career took up most of my time. However, when the country experienced a shutdown, I had nothing but time on my hands… I just made myself more available (I don’t think I would have otherwise). Business started booming overnight! I had to eventually make a choice when the OR opened up as I was trying to do both, but I was being pulled in both directions extremely hard. I remember the day I finally decided. I parked outside of my home. I called my best friend in tears because I was scared to death to miss out on knowing exactly how much I would get paid every other week. I was complacent with that … I was stifling my own potential. But when I let go and trusted God the business took care of itself. All I had to do was keep creating and improving the product. In the south great food will definitely always sell itself.

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

While I do have a subscription service available via website, text and email marketing… The MOST effective strategy of growing my clientele has always been word of mouth. I’ve managed to retain over 70 percent of my client base and counting over the past 5 years, and those clients consistently bring in more clients, friends, and associates through referrals. The thing I focus on most is customer experience. From the moment an order is placed all the way to consumption. Sure the cake is delicious, but I want the product to be the “icing on the cake”. This method alone has proven to be tried and true to our growth and development over time. Especially since most new businesses tend to not make it through the first 2-3 years.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.paulineshomemade.net
• Instagram: @paulineshomemade
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Paulineshomemade
• Other: tiktok @paulineshomemade