We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Whitney Lounsbury a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Whitney, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

Five years ago our family was on a difficult path with our young son’s medical complexities. It felt like we were coming a part at the seams trying to find a way forward for his physical and mental health. After many so many frustrating doctors visits without positive change for him we decided as a family to make a shift in the way we eat, hoping it would impact our son’s life. We cut out sugar, gluten, grains and switched to a low carb/keto lifestyle. It quickly became apparent how difficult it was to find desserts at stores that were made with clean ingredients that he would enjoy. So many families want to reduce sugar but don’t have the time or experience to make these desserts themselves.

I began making treats for our family and soon launched Butter Baked Cake Co. Our mission is to create the most delicious clean ingredient, zero sugar treats so no one is left out when it’s time for cake!

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

In my “pre founder” life I was a sales executive in the fashion industry managing, scaling and developing sales for national brands. I believe every person, success, and failure is an opportunity to learn from and grow. I had the immense opportunity and gift of learning from many mentors and colleagues within my teams and I use all of those touch points to help build an integrative and collaborative network at Butter Baked Cake Co as we grow. I utilize a community building sales approach which has enabled Butter Baked Cake Co to grow more rapidly with a very small internal team.

At Butter Baked Cake Co we produce a line of better for you products, all made without sugar, gluten, grains, or soy that are all keto friendly…and delicious! We ship direct to consumers nationwide and sell to grocery stores in California. We are unique in our space because not only are we sugar free but we are also made with clean ingredients like butter and monk fruit.

So many people want to reduce sugar but don’t know where to start. Many families feel overwhelmed with the amount of sugar they are consuming but don’t feel they can make a change. We are solving this problem but giving them a choice in the baked goods aisle. Ready to use zero sugar frosting made with real butter, and delicious healthy cupcakes that their kids will actually like…problem solved!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

All of our growth including in social media comes back to the strategy of community networking. This involves my connecting in person at events or online via linked in or on instagram to other aligned brands and influencers. One of the best things about the CPG (consumer packaged goods) industry is that brands are very receptive to collaborating with each other. Big brands and small brands will happily do a giveaway with you. It’s the most organic way to piggyback off each others followers.

Because we have had some generous support from larger brands in the space it has helped introduce us to some of our most influential affiliates as well. Our affiliate program is another incredible growth platform for both sales and social media.

My best advice is to connect in a natural way, not spammy and build trust as much as possible. Be a source of information if possible for people without asking for something in return right away. The universe has a way of bringing that back around to you. Building a community based sales approach is always about being a resource first, not asking for a favor first.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Several years ago we were about to produce a run of our 1st round of frosting pouches at a co-packer. There were approximately 5,000 lbs of frosting waiting at the factory for them to start putting into the machines and they emailed me to tell me that they changed their minds. They didn’t want to use butter in the machines!! What in the world was I supposed to do with 5k of frosting in buckets, I was completely out of sorts…cried for a minute then started figuring it out. We ended up renting a frozen storage unit to keep the frosting safe and used our own tiny machine to manually fill all of the thousands of pouches over the next few months to fill our orders.

It was a big curveball and one I won’t ever forget but when you are an entrepreneur you have to be willing to work 10x harder to make things happen. Things will go wrong and you have to adapt and learn from them.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.butterbakedcakeco.com
• Instagram: @butterbakedcakeco
• Facebook: @butterbakedcakeco
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitney-lounsbury-ba39716
• Twitter: butterbakedcakeco
• Youtube: `Butter Baked Cake Co
• Yelp: Butter Baked Cake Co