Music Credit:

Adding The Sun by Kevin MacLeod

Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5708-adding-the-sun

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Maddy Fisher: Hi, I’m Maddy Fisher, and this is Outside the Box, the Rubicon podcast about what students are involved in outside of SPA. Today, we’ll talk about turning your passions into a business.

Becca Richman: I started baking when I was really young. It was a lot of like hanging out in the kitchen with my dad, making pancakes or just like doing random things that he would make. Like, my parents are not cooks. They do not like cooking, it’s not something that they do for fun. It was kind of more of a necessity, and somehow I fell in love with it.

MF: That’s ninth-grader Becca Richman. Baking has always been a significant part of her life, but in the past couple of years, Becca has begun to create a business out of her favorite hobby.

BR: I started selling cakes just because people asked me to. It was never like, Oh, I want to make money, I’m good at this, I will sell some cakes. It was always like, I’ll bring a cake somewhere and someone would be like, oh my gosh, can I buy one from you. I’m like, Oh, I don’t know. Sure.
The first time I sold a cake was when I was 11 or 10. It was for my mom’s friend’s son’s 15th birthday. And it was bad, like it was a bad cake. It tasted fine but it was absolutely ugly.

MF: Despite this initial setback, Becca’s business has become more successful.

BR: It started becoming more formal this summer. Like, I would be at home and I’m like I have nothing to do. And my dad was like, oh my friend needs a birthday cake and I was like, great, that’s a great way to spend like five hours of my day. So it started off being like I will sell you a cake for $10 I just need something to do, because it was one of my hobbies and it was really fun. And then, like it grew into a more professional situation. But, I guess, the first time I considered it a business was when I started getting regular orders. So, I would be making like two or three things a week. And when I started getting orders from people I didn’t really know; like when I started getting a bigger market was kind of the first moment I noticed it. And also, just when I like got an Instagram account and started like actually trying to get orders rather than just like letting them come in, so like made a website and all of that. Like I guess just trying to get more publicity and marketing.

MF: Pursuing a business and expanding her network has allowed Becca to get to know more people.

BR: I feel like I get closer to a lot of people because my market right now is more people I know and like family, friends, and like, I’ll mail stuff to people and do all that. But it’s mostly people I know. So it’s nice to just make a deeper connection with them.

MF: However, in spite of her success, Becca’s primary focus is not the business aspect of her baking. What Becca gets out of this hobby is far more meaningful.

BR: I love how I can be creative with it like it’s definitely an outlet for me. And I also love how making things for other people can make them really happy, because like, I feel like there’s no more pure joy than having like a really good like cookie, like that just sparks such awesome joy, it makes people really happy.

MF: Baking also connects Becca to her family and identity.

BR: I think there’s that part about like cultural identity and connection with like my roots and my history. We have this family secret recipe chocolate cake. And it means a lot to me to have that like to have that connection with my grandma who passed away a couple of years ago and to have that connection with like the community that she came from, and the community that my family’s from is really important to me.

BR: I also think baking is a way for me to express my love for people, I think, like when I bring baked goods to people, a lot of it is because like I care about them and I want them to be happy. And I think, like I will bring baked goods to people who are like sick or something or like, try to cheer people up. And I think that helps a lot. And I like to think that it does. But I guess baking is just a way for me to show people who I care about that I care about them.

BR: The stories that I have are never really around like food, it’s around like the people that I share those experiences with. So it’s like the friends that I bake with, the people that I get to bring the food to and get to make really happy, and like the experiences that I get to have through baking.

MF: Thank you to Becca Richman for sharing her story, and to Mimi Huelster and Evie Sampsell-Jones for helping to conceptualize and edit this episode. Once again, I’m Maddy Fisher, and this has been Outside the Box.

Go back and listen to Episode 1, Style with Tyler Christenson and Episode 2, Theater touring with Soren Miller and Valerie Wick.