Update from Addicakes: The big wins

During the months I was laid off, I received emails from both Idea Cafe and American Family Insurance that we had been selected as semi finalists in the contests we had entered, finally this may be our shot to reopen. We posted as much as we could, rallied our fans to help us and pushed like crazy to help people get our store back open. Both contests ended and we awaited the results in hopes we had won and could reopen the store.

It is now February of 2103, six months had past since our store was last open, rumors had been spreading through our small town like wildfire that we had gone out of business, that we were no longer doing anything, several of our orders canceled, brides requested their money back and took their business elsewhere for fear we would not show with a cake, and the orders and income diminished to almost nothing by January.

At last we were able to reopen the store, sales while ok were less then stellar, the people seemed to have forgot about our store for the most part, many said they heard we had closed for good, there were no lines out the doors like we once previously had, no selling out of 75 dz cupcakes in a matter of 2-3 hours and a fear quickly grew that we made the wrong choice to reopen the store. I found myself selling everything I could to try and stay above water and try to keep open and focus on getting the word out, I kept thinking to myself that the people would come back once we opened and they knew about it, we had all new recipes and a larger assortment of items, once word spread we would be back to the great sales and flourishing business. We quickly fell further and further behind, with little to no income coming in and nothing really left to sell we needed a miracle.

Then it happened, I arrived at the bakery, got everything ready to go, pulled out my computer to post the days flavors on FB and hope we made enough sales to cover being open for the day when I opened my e-mail. What I read blew me away, we had won, not only the Idea Cafe Small Business Grant, but the American Family Insurance Dream Camp as well. Our fans and our prayers came through, this was what we needed to get back above water and hire new help and move forward in business.

IN the coming weeks we had several correspondence e-mails and phone calls about receiving the money from Idea Cafe, as well as attending Dream Camp in Madison Wi. with Kathy Ireland and a host of mentors, that later on would prove my thoughts all wrong about what I would learn, how my business would grow, and what I had done and was doing in business.

My trip to Dream Camp took place before the check from Idea Cafe arrived and was able to be put towards my business to purchase some much needed equipment.

In the next installment I will talk about Dream Camp, each of the mentors, what they taught me and how you can use it for your business. I will also talk about some great books they gave us, life lessons and above all the the other two winners that were there that I have forged a lifelong friendship with.  OH and I suppose ill talk about the $10,000 prize as well and what I did with it.