CO:Member Spotlight: Tim Hayes and His Sweet Life

Passionate.

That’s the one word that comes to my mind after meeting Tim Hayes, founder of How Sweet It Is By Tim and this week’s CO:Member Spotlight. 

Passionate about his company. Passionate about his customers (or his sweet family, as he calls them). Passionate about the gift of baking.

Hayes, whose work has been featured on the Food Network, the Cooking Channel, and Netflix, first dreamed about his career in an unexpected place: his anatomy class. Once the idea of baking popped into his head, he couldn’t shake the desire to start making cakes, so he eventually began an internship with Dumplins, a local bakery in Jackson, and realized his love of baking for the very first time. 

“Now, I will say, some of my cakes started looking like me with a top hat or something like that,” Hayes says with a laugh. “But I still quickly started to realize it was as if I had [been making cakes] forever, and I always tell people that this is a passion and a gift from God because I couldn't have done that if He hadn't have given it to me.”

After receiving a degree from Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Orlando, Florida, he returned to Jackson to run Dumplins for five and a half years as the general manager, pastry chef, and catering supervisor.

He says after those five and a half years, the time came for him to step out on his own, and while taking a leap of faith to begin his own baking business came with some challenges and hardships, he found his love and passion for baking helped him continue his calling.

“If it's a bride on her wedding day, to see that little tear run down her face when she sees the cake is what I love about doing this,” Hayes says with a smile on his face, the same smile that has been on his face the entire course of our conversation. “Sometimes, as a one-man show, it can get really stressful, but that's what has kept me going.”

After being introduced to theCO from a former member, Hayes realized how the space was an amazing opportunity for him to grow his business. He has utilized theCO’s rooms for meetings with his clients, and he says it has become the perfect space and atmosphere for him and his customers.  

Sharing the gift of baking with others is a great love of Hayes, and after returning from Orlando, he was determined to give back to his community. This determination has led to the opportunity of teaching culinary arts to students at Haywood High School and to the creation of The Chef’s Club, a program through the Boys and Girls Club to teach children how to be independent in the kitchen.

“I was fortunate enough to have people in my life to push me and believe in me, and many of the children I teach don't have that in their lives,” Hayes says. “That's why I tell them how important it is to believe in themselves.”

He wants to leave all new entrepreneurs with four main tips to building a great business: never give up, make sure it’s your passion, always have superior customer service, and never devalue yourself.

“You have the potential and power to start your own business, and you should know how much you are worth in anything that you do,” he says.