Maci Reed with Bake-a-Reed

The Forrager Podcast for Cottage Food Businesses

Maci Reed lives in Dover, NH and sells cupcakes, cookies, custom cakes, and other baked goods with her cottage food business, Bake-a-Reed.

Maci never thought she would leave the corporate world and eventually start her own business, but life had other plans for her.

Shortly after becoming a new mom, she started offering baked goods to her local community, and her business has grown rapidly ever since.

She’s had custom orders booked almost every weekend since she started the bakery a year and a half ago, and most recently, she sold well over 1,000 baked goods in a single day!

In this episode, she shares how she’s built her business while being a full-time stay-at-home mom of a toddler, and how a near-death experience when she was younger helped make her the entrepreneur that she is today.

What You’ll Learn

• The importance of fostering personal connections and community in growing a home-based business
• How Maci used social media to jumpstart her business
• Why you should tackle large events, even when you don’t think you’re ready
• How a house fire in Maci’s childhood changed her outlook on life
• How to capitalize on word-of-mouth marketing by cultivating loyal customers
• Valuable time management skills when balancing motherhood and entrepreneurship
• How long it takes to start seeing a profit when running a cottage food business
• The importance of being flexible and listening to customers when starting your business
• The benefit of joining a mastermind group to level up your business
• How shifting your perspective to a positive mindset can make all the difference

Resources

Bake-a-Reed website (Facebook | Instagram | TikTok)

Maci’s Facebook Groups:

• Bake and Roll With Us
• TikTok Bakers Club

CakeCost

New Hampshire Cottage Food Law

Free Tutorial: Intro To Email Marketing

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Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/131