We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Heidi Shabarek a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Heidi, 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?
Every since I was in my early teens, my work ethic has been very strong. As soon as I turned 16, I applied to my first job and worked full time/12 hour shifts in the summer, and part time 5 days a week during school months. To state I’m very much work driven is really an understatement! I thrive under pressure and I believe that this trait has strongly encouraged my work ethic to be the best that it could be!
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
After graduating from NJ with a degree in interior design/interior architecture, I found it very difficult to find an opportunity to work in NC because of the need for jobs relating to my field. Being very much work driven, I turned to a second passion that I had since I was very little, baking! Born and raised in the US, yet still very aware of my culture and its palette, I found a gap in the bake shops in NC and wanted to hold the role of offering the community a taste of authentic middle eastern flavors and overall treats. Holding onto an even bigger role as a mother, I was able to own my home-based small business and continue single-moming it in life- where I can work while my babies are still by my side. I remember hosting bake sales from elementary school to university, making all the birthday cakes for my family members, and attempting to incorporate little details from my design background into my little treats. For 6 years, baking became me, and Blossombyheidi was introduced to Raleigh. Middle easterners were excited to taste foods like home, and non-middle easterners were eager to try them. Baking became a way for me to share my passion with others, and the reward of seeing people enjoying my sweets is more heartwarming than I could have ever expected. I’m Heidi, mama and interior designer/architect with a major sweet tooth; I’m currently on a mission to share the treats I couldn’t find locally, so I decided to make and sell myself!
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 strong work ethic has to be the number one on my list of traits that positively impacted my journey. I worked from such a young age, with so much determination, that it only set the tone for how I would be in the future with my work. I believe that anyone that had the opportunity to work early in their teens have somewhat of an advantage when really getting into the real world. If you can work, work!! More experiences early on, more opportunities in the future! A second skill I had to learn how to excel at is communication. I’m a pretty shy introvert, so when starting my business and realizing how much talking I had to do to complete orders, hosts events, I knew I had a lot of work to do beforehand! Recording yourself having conversations and then later viewing them, can help greatly when trying to see where your strengths and weaknesses are.
Lastly, when you start a business that once started as a hobby, you have such an advantage in pursuing your work to the highest level it could possibly be. My father always said, you have to love what you do in order to succeed in it! What better than to work with something you were born loving!
How can folks who want to work with you connect?
I’ve had tons of fortunate opportunities to collaborate with local cafes as well as be able to ship out some of my treats to be introduced in other areas! I am forever grateful for every cafe that has and still is featuring my treats, aiding me in expanding BlossombyHeidi. It takes a village to grow something beautiful!
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @BLOSSOMBYHEIDI
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blossombyheidi
