We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lianna Fertig a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Lianna, looking forward to learning from your journey. You’ve got an amazing story and before we dive into that, let’s start with an important building block. Where do you get your work ethic from?
I’ve lived on my own since I was 17, so I learned at a young age the expense of living life on your own. This put a heightened emphasis on the value of a dollar and a fire under me to do whatever I could to earn a buck. I worked multiple jobs, odds and ends work, and had to strategically puzzle them together to fit into one schedule. I was fortunate to have employers that rewarded good ethic instead of seniority and I took full advantage of that opportunity. I think it’s human nature to do the bare minimum especially with “stepping stone” type jobs, but this conditioned me to show up for a job, not cut corners, and eventually doing the best I could do became my default work ethic.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am the owner of Enticing Cakes – A home based bakery + food truck and I have 5 “virtual locations” that sell cupcakes online through DoorDash, UberEats, and GrubHub. I started my business on accident with intensions of being an event planner in my early 20’s. I’d plan an event, but make the cake myself so I could spread the budget further. Eventually I started getting messages asking if I was the “cake lady” so I pivoted my focus to cake decorating.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
My top three impactful aspects are: 1. Time. Looking back, having patience and understanding the value of time was something I underestimated. When I was getting started, I had an idea in my head of how things would turn out. I visualized an entire business equipped with a website, a logo, success, etc. but everything takes a long time and every variable comes with a long list of obstacles. It took me about 4 years to get to a point of steady income to finally quit having a second job. I’m coming up on 10 years now of being and business and now I feel like my business is bigger than I ever planned it to be. My advice is make a small improvement every day, then those days turn to week, into months, and eventually the years sneak up on you and you’ll and realize you’ve built a monster as if it happened out of know where and you can’t keep up. Don’t get discouraged if it feels like a slow start to success, keep at it!
2. Get comfortable with investing in yourself. I feel like it’s a social norm to enroll in college, invest thousands of dollars + years of time without blinking because of the promised reward that your investment will return a steady paycheck. Yet, investing the same amount of money and spending the same amount of time to build a business gets a negative stereotype and is deemed risky. My advice is approach your business idea with the same mindset as college. Be willing to invest 4 years of time + money going all in, and I think you’s find yourself in just as secure of a position.
3. Your network is your net worth. One of the first questions most people ask when meeting someone new is “what do you do.” So get really good at what it is you do and meet as many new people as you can. I can’t exactly explain it, but there’s this magic that manifests from that. An unspoken club. Over time I’ve built this network of people where “I know someone…” for just about anything and we all refer each other to other people or I trade my services for their services and some of my best opportunities have come from that. My advice is mention what you have to offer as often as you can, listen to what they have to offer, and give more than you take.
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I am always looking for ways to grow. I have 5 virtual locations where I set up an online ordering tablet, make deliveries of cupcakes weekly, then the store fills the orders and makes a commission. I’d love to open a few more of those. I’m also open to ideas in general if there’s a symbiotic relationship my business and their business could do together.
Contact Info:
- Website: Enticingbakery.com
- Instagram: @enticing.cakes
Image Credits
Meghan Winkler Eric Mull
