We caught up with the brilliant and insightful AJ DeDiego a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi AJ, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
As a small business owner, a good work ethic is absolutely essential. Starting a brand new business is very challenging in numerous ways, and it can easily be overwhelming. Over time, I’ve realized and witnessed firsthand that success isn’t just going to happen on its own. It isn’t handed to you on a platter. It takes a lot of work. When I finally realized exactly where I was going and what I wanted to get out of starting my dessert business, I knew that it would take time, money, energy, and lots of hard work. My strong work ethic came from that realization. I knew that what I wanted to achieve wasn’t easy, and wasn’t going to come quick. I also knew that my business is what I love most. Providing unique, delicious and beautiful baked goods to the community is what I’ve wanted and dreamt of doing. Why let go of a dream just because it takes a lot of work to achieve? I’ve always been the type of person who stops at nothing until I’m happy and reach my goals, and seeing how much work it would require for me to grow my business was no exception. I used it as a reason to have an even stronger work ethic, to prove to myself, my friends, and my family that I have what it takes to be successful on my own.
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 own AJ’s Baking Company, a small baked goods business in Atlanta. I sell custom cakes/desserts, wholesale baked goods to other businesses, and have an online store where I ship handmade dessert mixes and a variety of fresh baked goods nationwide. I’m very focused on continuously improving my craft so I can offer a unique, high quality and delicious product to my customers. I want people to order a dessert from me and say it was the best they’ve ever had.
There are so many exciting parts of my business, but I have to say the two most exciting things are first off when I receive an order, especially from a new client. To have someone place their trust in you and spend their hard earned money on a product from you for their special occasion is the biggest compliment to me. I always make sure to let my customers know how much I appreciate their business, because without customers, I would have no business. The other exciting part is when a customer reaches out after they’ve received their order and they tell me they loved it. Baking is an art form. You not only have to make sure they product tastes great, but looks great, and that is very challenging and takes a lot of practice. When someone lets me know that they loved their order, nothing else matters in that moment. That right there is the feeling of success. I created a brand, marketed my products, someone trusted me to provide for them, and they loved it. It’s a full circle moment of success that never gets old.
Over time, I plan to expand my business, pick up more wholesale clients so you can get a variety of my products all over the city, and eventually the country!
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?
The very first quality that comes to mind, which is perhaps the most important one, is patience. Years ago when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with baking, and what I wanted to achieve, I was impatient. There was a lot that went into the foundation of my business that took time. When you want to achieve big things, you can’t expect them to happen in a week, or even a year. The biggest success stories happened over years, not weeks. I’ve been working on my business, figuring out what I needed to do, acquire, and so forth, for 3 years. Only in the last year did things start taking off, because I had all the pieces of the puzzle together.
An essential area of knowledge that may be obvious to some in my industry is knowing your strengths and weaknesses. There are very few people out there who are amazing at everything. When you want to go into business, you have to know what you’re good at and what needs improvement. Early on, it’s easy to say that you want to be able to offer everything to your customers, but honestly, you just can’t. You can’t expect to offer everything and it all be amazing. No matter how good you are in your field, there are areas to improve on, and that can be a hard pill to swallow, but knowing what you’re best at so you can offer something unique and special to your customers is very important. Over time, it’s very important to practice at the things you need work on, so that later on you can offer them and be confident in what you’re selling. If you’re selling something you aren’t 100% confident in, the customer will know.
An extremely important skill and quality for any business owner is organization. I consider organization a skill, because it does take a little work to become a super organized person. When you run a business, you don’t just have to be organized in your workspace to be able to put out the best quality product, but you have to be organized with your scheduling, finances, and marketing. Each aspect of a business takes specific knowledge and understanding, and if you’re organized from the beginning, then as things grow, you’ll avoid being overwhelmed and confused. I have excel spreadsheets of all my income, where it came from, the dates, my expenses, my planned marketing, my social media posts, and everything else. Everything needs to be within reach and easily attainable so you don’t have to waste any of your precious time looking for something.
What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
My biggest area of growth has definitely been cakes. I’ve always loved making cakes, but I wasn’t always great at decorating them. It took a lot of practice, learning, watching tutorials, and so forth. There are a thousand ways to decorate cakes and a thousand different materials you can use, and they all take a specific skillset to be able to do well. I have to say that when I was on Food Network’s Halloween Baking Championship, my takeaway from the show was to improve my craft with cakes. I got sent home because of a cake on the show, and that really lit a fire in me to improve. Now, cakes are what I’m known for and sell the most of.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.bakeitwithaj.com
- Instagram: ajdediego
- Facebook: A.J. DeDiego
- Youtube: Bake it with AJ
- TikTok: bakeitwithaj
