{I am going to go straight through and answer the questions you all were so kind to ask in the comments from this post. I'm pretty long winded, so it may take a while. Thanks for reading! I hope these Q&A posts are informative, or interesting, or funny, or..something...}
I am assuming "Bake it Pretty" is a full-time job for you. I am most interested in hearing about how that came about. Did you have to save up and live off of that money for a period before the shop took off?
Yes, right now Bake It Pretty is a full-time job for both Mike (my husband) and I. Mike is the entire packing and shipping department, and has been since February of this year. He organizes the inventory, pulls orders, packs and ships, and handles the reordering of packing materials. I do everything else; sourcing new products, getting items photographed and on the site, answering emails, designing stuff, reordering inventory, blogging, etc. When it's really busy I will step in and help pull orders, but that's not often. Mike is pretty much a shipping maniac - much faster and, dare I say, more thorough than I ever was.
We were able to launch this business when we sold our house last August, 2008. We purchased our humble home in 2001 and, thanks to the crazy housing market, we had a lot of equity in it. I say *a lot* - but money is such a relative thing. It was a lot of money for us, but nothing you couldn't blow in a month with, say, a serious drug habit. Selling our house allowed us to pay off every penny of debt we owed, completely fund the (modest) business start-up costs, and we even had a cushion leftover to help us move to North Carolina and take our time with things. The plan was for me to start up the new biz, and for Mike to hang out with Max and take a much deserved break from working a demanding and generally shitty job for almost ten years. I was confident that I could at least keep us afloat for a while, long enough to get us all back on track as a family, and then we'd go from there. Happily, the shop grew faster than I originally thought, and Mike was excited to step in and help. Honestly, I'm not really that surprised that it's all working out. (I hope that does come across as cocky as it sounds.) I was really confident about this little project from the get-go. I can't say I had the hard data to back it up, or that I knew exactly how things were going to go down, but I had a strong hunch that everything was going to work out. I may be a dreamer, but I'm not crazy. I would never have embarked upon this journey with just a wish and a prayer. For whatever reason, I was confident, and I still am.
I hope that this part of the story doesn't bum people out. I don't want to make the impression that the only way to start a business is with a windfall of cash. It's really more about recognizing your options and, most importantly, being willing and ready to take a leap when a window opens up. We were very lucky to have this opportunity and I'll always be proud of us for taking advantage of it. Even if it all goes to hell - at least we had good intentions and we tried.
Did your husband support you until it got off the ground?
Money-wise, he absolutely did the lions share. Since our kiddo was born, I've worked various odd jobs from waiting tables at night to being a full-time nanny to two children from our home. Eventually, the etsy shop was bringing in more dough than my other gigs, and I was happy to focus on that for a while. Mike has always believed in me 100% and never wavered. It's pretty astonishing. I'm not going to say "I couldn't have done it without him," because that's not a very feminist notion, now is it? But I certainly wouldn't have wanted to do it without him, and it wouldn't have been nearly as fun.
This is a hard questions because individual situations are so different. The best answer I have is, don't waste time. As much as I have truly enjoyed all of the avenues I've explored since I began this blog in 2006, early on I stopped thinking about what I was doing as a hobby. I considered a hobby (or even a passion) to be something you did whether someone would pay you or not. I had lots of hobbies, I wanted a business. That may sound greedy, but it's really just practical. When I started out, I didn't have the luxury of being able to fail. I knew I had to go with what worked, and what I could make work. This was the driving force that personally swayed me away from the crafting and towards the baking supplies (more on that later.) I tried lots of things that were fun, that I truly enjoyed, but in the long run just weren't going to pay the bills. (Not for me, anyway.) I also stumbled on some ideas that had lucrative potential, but just didn't interest me enough. There has to be a spark. Luckily, the amazing thing about Internet businesses is the ability to start small and to build as you go. Invest time when you can find it and test the waters with new ideas, all with relatively little risk. Never would I have imagined two years ago that I would be where I am now. It's absolutely miraculous how one idea can lead you somewhere completely different. You gotta have your eyes open, and you've gotta do what works. And by all means, have hobbies and enjoy them - just don't expect anyone to pay you for them.
Also did you make your company "official," with an LLC, or do you just go for it?
Currently, Bake It Pretty is a sole proprietorship, but the LLC thing is inevitable. I'm dragging my heels about it, really, because big steps intimidate me and I want to keep the business small a little longer. I'm all about the baby steps.
I am the slow and steady tortoise.
..more soon!
