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Maria Haversham didn’t foresee ditching spreadsheets and endless meetings to design cakes, but she has become an accomplished cake designer and founder of Cake Designer Pro, a leading platform for aspiring bakers to transform their baking business dreams into realities.
For Maria, the joy of baking was fading away, buried under the overwhelming amount of work, the stress of managing a family and a small cake business, and too little pay.
When you put all your love into baking your cakes, making a sustainable business out of it can feel daunting.
The good news? Mariaʼs story is one of how she overcame these challenges.
What They Didnʼt Tell You About Starting a Cake Business
Like many home bakers, Maria started by making cakes for colleagues, friends, and family, charging barely enough to cover ingredients.
“I felt guilty charging friends for my time,” she states.
Her turning point came when her manager asked her to create a cake for a company event. “Despite my self-doubt, I couldn’t say no,” Maria says
The corporate cake’s success opened doors but also brought new challenges.
“Suddenly, I was getting requests from executives and managers—people who had different expectations and budgets. I found myself straddling two worlds: making $50 birthday cakes for friends while fulfilling $300 corporate orders.”
Instead of following the typical advice to “take every order you can get,” Maria noticed that her corporate clients approached buying cakes differently—they valued experience, emotion, status, and reliability over price, which led her to rethink her approach.
Over the next six months, Maria transformed her business by studying not just baking techniques but also luxury brands and high-end service providers.
Through careful testing, she created workflows that let her balance family time with cake orders, pricing strategies that reflected her true value, and customer experiences that turned one-time orders into loyal clients.
“The hardest part,” she says. “was believing I was worth premium prices.”
Mariaʼs Secret Success Recipe
As Maria’s business grew, she identified that there are actually three principles that transformed her home-based hobby into a premium cake brand:
“First, I learned that success isn’t about making more cakes but the right cakes for the right customers. I stopped trying to compete with grocery store prices and positioned myself as a luxury service.”
Her second insight revolutionized her workflow.
“Most bakers think they need to say yes to every order,” she says.
“I developed what I call the ‘Three-Tier Growth Method’—focusing on high-end private clients, corporate partnerships, and strategic wholesale accounts to create stable income without working around the clock.”
The third principle? Premium pricing psychology.
“When I started charging $500+ per cake, something fascinating happened—I actually got more orders, not fewer. Premium clients weren’t comparing me to grocery stores anymore but to other luxury services for their events.”
As word of her success spread, Maria found herself fielding countless messages from other bakers struggling with the same challenges she’d overcome.
“I realized they didn’t need more baking tutorials—they needed a complete business transformation system.
This revelation led to the creation of Cake Designer Pro, a comprehensive platform that goes beyond basic cake decorating advice. It teaches bakers how to:
- Position themselves as luxury cake artists
- Attract premium clients
- Create profitable pricing structures
- Develop efficient workflows
- Build a recognizable brand
- Transform average orders into high-end celebrations
“What makes Cake Designer Pro different is that it’s not just about making beautiful cakes—it’s about building a sustainable business. In fact, we donʼt teach our students anything about baking; there are plenty of resources for that.”
Many cake enthusiasts have reported success in turning their hobby into a business, and stories of their transformation are starting to spread on social media and on the Cake Designer Pro website.
Finding Success Doing Something You Love
Mariaʼs system has helped bakers across Australia and beyond build profitable businesses.
One of the most rewarding aspects of Mariaʼs journey is the community she’s grown.
Bakers who once struggled to balance their time, manage their finances, or stand out are now sharing their successes, offering support, and learning from one another.
What started as a personal struggle for Maria has become a movement of empowering bakers worldwide.
Want to Make a Living Doing Something You Love?
“You are already baking for fun or simply for the love of it,” Maria says. “Now, I want to show you that it can be a career.“
Mariaʼs journey proves that success isnʼt about being born with business skills—itʼs about learning from those whoʼve been where you are. Are you ready to take that next step? Explore the same system that Maria and so many others have used to transform their businesses at Cake Designer Pro.
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