I got into cupcakes about six years ago when I went to New York and I visited the Magnolia Bakery. When I had that first cupcake I was amazed – I hadn’t had anything close to it in Melbourne. I’ve been obsessed since then.

After uni, I was living my corporate dream in IT but it wasn’t what I really loved. I used to bake cupcakes for my workmates and I started blogging about how my dream was to open up a cupcake shop.

Fate gave me a helping hand – I lost my job. I was working for an American consulting firm and they went under in the US and a lot of people were laid off. I lost my job in 2009. I remember so clearly. More than half of the people were laid off and no one knew it was going to happen. It was gut-wrenching. My whole world was turned upside down. I felt like I had given so much to that company and to hear I no longer had my job was hard to accept.

I decided it was a great opportunity to start Cupcake Central, but I didn’t have the capital for it. With the money I had, I started a website. I told everyone and people started ordering cupcakes and telling their friends about it and it grew from there.

I went through a stage where I had to bake hundreds of cupcakes in my little kitchen at home. The hardest thing was working alone. I had to start my own business on my own. All my friends worked nine to five so I felt really isolated and had to deal with that for about nine months.

Eventually my partner came onboard and said ‘let’s go find a shop’. We opened our first outlet in Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn in August 2010 and we opened our second store in Melbourne Central a month ago.

Sometimes passion doesn’t make money. One of our pastry chef’s has a passion to sing. I tell people to go for it, it’s following what you love to do. I wouldn’t ever go back to corporate life. I wake up every day wanting to go to work. I used to dread Monday. I’d only look forwards to weekends – just two out of seven days. Now I look forward to every day.