00:00My name is Aaliyah Baylor and my company is Make My Cake Bakery.
00:14We are a 22-year-old retail bakery in Harlem.
00:18Our lineage goes double that.
00:21We specialize in custom-decorated cakes for all occasions.
00:24We are known for our red velvet, our sweet potato cheesecake,
00:29butter cupcakes, our buttercream frosting.
00:44Make My Cake started in my home over 40-something years ago.
00:48I didn't want to go out to work.
00:49I wanted to stay home with the children, so I started this cake business.
00:53The business started in our apartment and the little girls watching my mom make cakes.
00:58And it became a hobby that turned into a full-grown business.
01:03Between the baking at home and working got to be a little bit too much and I stopped.
01:08And when I stopped, my daughter picked it up.
01:11I did not know that she was paying that much attention.
01:13These people were still calling my house even after I stopped.
01:16Taking cake orders, I was like, oh God, this is going to be a disaster.
01:20What is she going to do?
01:21But little did I know that she was really, really paying attention.
01:24When I stopped, I stopped at this level.
01:27When she started and after about three or four years,
01:30she took it to a whole another level.
01:39Having my daughter do the things that I did,
01:42having my sons here, you know, because it is a family-operated business.
01:48But having this third generation is rewarding to me.
01:53It gives her a sense of, you know, support that I don't think that she would feel otherwise.
02:02For my daughter, you know, if she chooses to step into the business,
02:07I'm here to support her, you know, as my mom was.
02:14Advice that I would give, you know, a female entrepreneur is to start very early in building
02:21your resource network.
02:23It's, you know, you have your friends and you have your family,
02:27but you never know who that individual that you meet at a conference, you meet
02:33in a coffee shop, who will be that support system and who can lend advice.
02:39What I had learned in corporate America was, to me, very valuable in terms of taking this,
02:45the infrastructure of the business and how we operate it.
02:48There's so many people that tell you, you know how to bake, you know how to cook,
02:52open up a restaurant, but if you don't have that infrastructure,
02:55if you don't understand what the industry demands, how to do marketing,
03:00understanding what the customers want and how to present it to them,
03:04I think being in corporate America was a plus.
03:06Don't always look at your competition as competition.
03:09You want to look at yourself and say, this is who I am.
03:13This is what I want to be.
03:15And these are the steps that I'm about to take.
