This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey there, my friends, and what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. I'm always excited for Thursdays. Every Thursday, we bring you this segment called Throwback Thursday, conveniently named for the day of the week. We also call it
Where Are They Now? Where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved considerably since we first featured them. And we have been making this show for well over 1,500 days now, a huge wealth of stories all locked in the Side Hustle School archive vault. There actually isn't really a vault, and they're not locked there. They're all okay. Everybody is okay,
don't worry. But it's always fun to go back and talk to them and say, "Okay, what's happened now?" Especially perhaps in the past year, as lots of different small business owners, side hustlers, entrepreneurs have dealt with the challenges of COVID. Now, recently we have featured a teacher who buys and resells sports gear, a designer for dog lovers. Last week, we heard from a Wisconsin native who sells coasters, classes, and other products related to beer. He's had to make a lot of adjustment from doing mostly retail sales to focusing more on online. And today, we're going to hear from a pastry chef who originally started
by baking on the side. She grew her hustle into a full-time business selling more than $100,000 worth of wedding cakes in a year. That is a lot of wedding cakes. And over the past year, speaking of COVID pivots, COVID adjustments, she has started a side business to her side business. I guess it's a side business to her full-time business. Confusing, but all good.
What's happened since? Let's hear directly from her. Her name is Ella. I'm going to come back at the end to wrap us up. My name is Ella Stone. I am from Charlotte, North Carolina. And I own
the Celestial Cake Re. I was featured on episode number 835. I got started kind of as an accident. I was working full-time as a pastry chef and was really only making cakes on the side as a side hustle, trying to make some extra cash. And it wasn't until my husband thought it would be fun to make me a website that things really started to take off and people started to find my website and contact me to make wedding cakes. And it all grew very quickly. So I quit my full-time job in
2014 to do the cakes. And by 2016, I was making over 180 wedding cakes a year. We were actually able to use some of the profits from the wedding cakes to open a second bakery. So now we also own a retail bakery called Swirl, which focuses more on cookies, cupcakes, ice cream, and caters more to a clientele of local neighborhood bakery type. We were kind of in a spot with Celestial Cake Re where we just couldn't expand any further. I couldn't make any more than, you know, 180 wedding
cakes a year. I didn't want to hire a bunch of employees in my home. And so we were kind of just at that point where we wanted to grow and we just couldn't grow any more within the ways of the business was structured. And so it really was a necessary move. So I'm really grateful that he had the courage to push us to do it because it's been a great move even though it's been a challenging one. It's been really rewarding as well. But our biggest
challenge right now is COVID. Weddings have practically ceased to exist due to restrictions on a large gatherings. I remember just day after day people were calling and canceling and I had several weddings scheduled for that St. Patrick's Day weekend and Monday somebody called and cancelled their wedding. And then Tuesday somebody called and cancelled their wedding. And then Friday I was
finishing up cupcakes for a wedding that called and ended up canceling. So we tried our best to do what we needed to do for the bride. Obviously they didn't like making those decisions either. I think it takes a lot of self-marketing to make it in today's world. So for me getting a website it was really what kind of pushed me into the direction of actually making this a real business and not just a side hustle. I think paying for good photos of what you do and in your work is
really important. But then taking the time to market yourself as much as you can on as many platforms as you can and really just try to get the word out there that you're here and show them your skills. So obviously I'm going to continue to grow Celestial as a brand and focus on gaining more weddings and more clients and growing the idea of Celestial as an upscale wedding bakery. But I also, me and my husband are both going to start focusing some more effort into expanding swirl. So right now we only have the one but we would love to be able to expand and have several locations in and around the Charlotte area and then maybe one day expand even further, franchise, take over the world, you know.
Thank you so much Ella. I really appreciate those updates. I know our listeners appreciate them too. She has been managing so much between the two businesses and that retail store, that retail operation, cupcakes and cookies and ice cream. I'm actually looking at their website right now. It's swirlclt.com. Of course we'll link that up in the notes page. But if you are ever in the
Charlotte, North Carolina area, go and check it out. Or if you ever happen to need a wedding cake somewhere over there. And I just want to say even though we are what one year into this pandemic, hopefully, you know, seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but of course it's going to continue to affect our lives, you know, for a long time. If you have been able to make an adjustment to your business, your side hustle, if you've been able to start a new side hustle, I've heard a lot of those stories over the past year. Or if you're, you know, still trying to find your way and struggling, whatever it is, you know, just know that there's a lot of people out there that are also doing that, right? And sometimes things work and sometimes they don't. And
all we can do is keep trying stuff. All we can do is ask ourselves like what is within our control? You know, what is not? There's so many things outside our control. So for me personally, I just try to say like, you know, what's the one thing I can influence? You know,
what's the one action I can take today to get closer to a goal that I believe in or to get closer to helping somebody? Or maybe if I can do both those things simultaneously, then that's a great day, you know, despite whatever else is happening in the world. So that's my encouragement for you today. Today's notes are at www.sidehustleschool.com/15171517. If you've got a question, www.sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Thank you so much for joining me. Be sure you're subscribed. Much more is coming up. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School.
From the Onward Project.
