We recently connected with Alma Rojas Sanchez and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Alma with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
I have always liked to answer this question because I have always known I get my work ethic from my dad. I can’t stop but admiring how hard my dad works. Growing up I would only see my dad twice a year at some point I didn’t see him for three years. He would work in USA doing landscaping work while my mom, sister and me lived in Mexico. When I was 14 I moved to USA and saw my dad working everyday for long hours, I would admire and see for myself how disciplined and strong he was also how well done he performed at his job. He taught me that it didn’t matter where I work or what I do I always had to learn my job, do it well and learn to love what I do so it doesn’t get stressful or hard. And I just like to say I got it from my dad !
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
My name is Alma, I am 23 years old and ever since little my passion has been the kitchen. I loved to be in the kitchen baking and messing with my mom’s cooking. I remember I would watch MasterChef on TV and I couldn’t wait to grow up and participate! That never happened but I always kept it in my mind. Later when I turned 16 and I had already moved to USA I started working at restaurants and confirmed that indeed the cooking and baking were my passion ! I would spend extra hours working just because I really enjoyed being in the kitchen even though most places wanted me to be in the front I would always love sneaking in the back and helping out in the kitchen sometimes would ask if I could cook and they would let me! Fast forward to 2020 when I was 20 I started baking Mexican wedding cookies and selling them on farmer’s markets but it was just for fun on my days off. During that time I was going through some rough patches in my life so didn’t really focus on starting a business or anything like that.Later in 2022 when I was 22, I got engaged to my now husband, Angel, and shortly after I got pregnant with my baby, Valentina, then 3 months after I married my husband. During the time that I was pregnant I was thinking about starting to do something at home to entertain myself and don’t feel so down some days because pregnancy hormones really got me down some days. By the end of the year I had to take a trip to Mexico and there I took the time to explore new and yummy treats I hadn’t had before after I coloring some I realized a lot of vendors had these mini donuts at the flea market and after trying then I completely fell in love ! Coming back to the USA I started craving them but nobody sold them so I started trying to make my own, the idea was simple at first, mini butter donut batter baked with drippy chocolate and sprinkles and I would share them with my family. When I realized labor was coming up and I needed to get back to work I started worrying because I am a first time mom and I wanted to spend as much time with my baby whenever she was born. 2023 Easter was coming up and I posted some pictures of some mini donuts I had made with different color coating and sprinkles to see if maybe I could sell them for Easter and make some extra profit for my family. I did NOT think anything of it I almost didn’t even think I was going to get orders. Well, I got like 10 orders and I was so happy ! Then I got one more order requesting to make some mini donuts look like fruits. After saying Yes! I started going crazy about how the heck I was going to make mini donuts look like fruit but at the end it worked out !!! I took the donuts to this event and after everyone loved them I decided to start a business doing this ! I truly loved doing it and I figured I could just try and see where it landed. I made a Facebook page to start promoting more but then less than a week after I gave birth to my baby who came a little earlier than expected. I waited 2 weeks then started promoting again and taking orders again then I like to say God blessed me and my small business started flourishing then I started adding more toppings and flavors like our lemon and poppy seed donut, white chocolate and matcha topped, Bailey with mocha icing and much more! I am thankful I can stay home with my beautiful baby girl and help my husband with some extra income on the weekends! I’ve now been invited to different meetings and events to learn how to grow a business and also connect with different business owners which has been absolutely amazing ! I love meeting people and learning anything and everything. I’m still figuring how to balance my life and my hustle but I do everything very happily and thankful. My baby is almost 3 months now and I can’t wait to see how the future looks like for our business as I experiment how to creat new flavors and decorations for the mini donuts and I am planning on adding more stuff to my menu; my dream is to one day own a place that people can go to and enjoy their donuts and where I can talk to my costumers and get to know them better!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Set yourselves goals even if they are small and stick to it until you achieve them and believe me, sometimes small goals give you great gratification! 2.Learn how to have great costumer service. Enjoy talking to people and learn communication skills. This helps a lot !
3. Balance out your time. Separate work time from family time and take time for yourself as well. This will be very helpful and will prevent burnouts. I’ve had some burnouts trying to do everything at the same time. It doesn’t work !
I’m still learning but these have been the most important areas where I’ve found that make me feel are the foundation to a better organization for a business.
What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?
Being a home baker with a 2 month old baby and a husband who’s working most of the time. It gets hard to keep up and balance the work at home (such as laundry, cooking, cleaning) and the work from a business like taking pictures, posting, creating content, answering people, making orders, delivering and then my baby needs all the care and love in the world ! So things can feel overwhelming if I don’t stop and take a breath for a second. My husband has been my biggest supporter throughout the whole thing, when he gets home he takes care of the baby and makes me feel supported by letting me know with his words that he supports and loves me. Angel, shares all of my stuff on his social media as well , He has taught me to take a break for myself and to slow down when things get overwhelming, focus on one thing at the time and set small goals, even if I get one thing done today that’s okay ! If you work from home or not I want to encourage you to also take a minute from everything and just breathe and trust it will be okay, life is absolutely amazing and if you’re not feeling okay then nothing else will feel okay so take a few minutes for yourself to reset. Things will work out one way or the other
Contact Info:
- Instagram: Theedonutshop
- Facebook: The Donut Shop
