Cake Therapy
Cake Therapy is a heartwarming and uplifting podcast that celebrates the transformative power of baking therapy. Hosted by Dr. Altreisha Foster, the passionate baker, entrepreneur and advocate behind Cake Therapy, this podcast is a delightful blend of inspiring stories, expert insights and practical baking tips. Each episode takes listeners on a journey of self-discovery, emotional healing and connection through the therapeutic art of baking.
Cake Therapy
Tamara Harding Left A Thriving Agency, Rescued Trees, And Found Her Purpose In Wood
A thriving ad agency, a growing ache, and a leap into the unknown. That’s the backdrop for our conversation with Jamaican wood artisan Tamara Harding, whose purpose found her in the grain of fallen trees and the quiet of a bamboo-lined workshop. She didn’t tinker her way into a craft; she built a values-first brand, wrote a business plan, and let the material lead. The result is a body of work that rescues condemned trees, restores damaged slabs with resin, and turns flaws into features—sustainability you can touch.
We dig into the moments that changed everything: a failed holiday craft table, a backyard plum tree, and the first sellout that proved people crave pieces with story. Tamara breaks down why she uses electric hand tools, how dyslexia fuels inventive problem-solving, and what it means to let a piece “decide” what it wants to be. She shares her “no wood left behind” ethos and the logistics (and costs) of deconstructing trees at construction sites so their history lives on as tables, mirrors, and sculptural forms. If you’re curious about sustainable design, circular economy principles, and mindful making, this conversation shows how art and ecology can reinforce each other.
We also get real about the tough stuff: staying present on social media while working long shop hours, recovering from a recent grinder injury, and learning to delegate to protect both body and business. For aspiring makers, Tamara offers a clear, actionable playbook: craft your brand identity first, write a detailed business plan, plan your launch and PR with intention, and use a simple filter for new projects—will this feed my soul? Expect practical wisdom, candid stories, and a reminder that purpose sits on the other side of silence and courage.
If this story moved you, follow and share the show, leave us a review, and invite a friend who’s on the edge of a big leap. Your support helps us keep bringing purpose-driven conversations to your ears.
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Welcome to the Cake Therapy Podcast, a slice of joy and healing with your host, Dr. Altricia Foster. This is a heartwarming and uplifting space that celebrates the transformative power of baking therapy. The conversations will be a delightful blend of inspirational stories, expert insights, and practical baking tips. Each episode will take listeners on a journey of self-discovery, emotional healing, and connection through the therapeutic art of baking. There's something here for everyone. So lock in and let's get into it.
SPEAKER_03:Hi everyone, welcome back to the Cake Therapy Podcast with me and your host, Dr. Altricia Foster. Today's slice of joy and healing comes out of my home country in Jamaica. But before we get into conversation with Ms. Harding, I would like to big up everyone who subscribed already. And big up everyone who's listening. I want you to subscribe to these platforms. Wherever you get your podcast, please go ahead and subscribe. If you get it through YouTube, especially go ahead and subscribe there. Leave your comments and your thoughts. We're welcoming those. We appreciate the thoughts and feedback that you've given to us so far. Thank you all for continuing to support the Cleek Therapy Foundation and the work that we do for our girls. Special gratitude to People Incorporated for having us on their panel this week. Change Minnesota, Be the Change Minnesota for supporting us. And I want to say a special, special thank you to Youth Prize who support us financially over here at the Cake Therapy Foundation that helps to bring you um Cake Therapy podcast, which is to increase your knowledge on these alternatives and the work that we continue to do for girls. I would like to first introduce to you Miss Tamara Harding. She is the owner of Mara Made Designs. And I say Tamara is extraordinary. She's different. Really? She's a girl that loves trees and she's a widologist. I love her work. I I spotted her trying to get her small hands around a big tree into the back of her pickup. Um, because she's so connected to the earth and um the beauty that it personifies and the beauty that it brings. Her craftsmanship brings a unique touch to the world of woodworking. She has a deep connection to the natural world, like I mentioned, and she blends her traditional techniques with innovative designs to create breathtaking works of art from the wood. Her journey actually starts from, or it actually began when she was a project manager and she's the founder of her own successful woodworking business. So it's nothing short of inspiring to me, you know. So from project management to woodworking, just because of her connection with the earth and her connection with trees, I'm really looking forward to taking a deep dive into, you know, into this art form. And as I'm like scanning through her page, I will see clips of where she actually mentions that, you know, this woodworking is actually her therapy. And I want to learn from her how and why. And I'm hoping that this episode would actually explore her art, her personal artistic process. What is her relationship with trees and wood? What are her the therapeutic benefits that she actually finds when she crafts these woods? And you know, I'd like to find out like what are some of the challenges that she actually faced. A woodologist. I mean, one would say this is a man's world of casting, but it's really a man's world, and um Tamara has taken it over and she lives in it, she's running it. She's one of those girls who's actually running this world, and um, I want to talk to her. So, welcome Tamara to the show. I'm excited to have you. Thank you. Yes, I'm excited to have you today. So let me tell you why. Um, a couple weeks ago, I'm scanning through Instagram and I'm seeing this lady pushing a felled tree into the back of a colour, and it gave me pause. And I'm like, why is she struggling with this this felled tree or this fallen tree? And I'm I'm reading the the caption and I realized that you had a unique connection with wood, and your page shows a lot of that, and you're for me, it's like you're so connected with trees and nature, and I I I thought it's important to hear your story, how you got into you know budology, and um, what do you see the future of Marmaid designs, you know, is so welcome tomorrow again to the show. Thank you. This one, yeah. In time, I have a Jamaican on this one. I get really excited because I do and Jamaica. I'm a coach every now and again. So you know, here and there, but I I I get really excited because I know that from a cultural perspective, we're so proud and we're we get we're proud of the people or people who are doing big things. And to me, you exist in a man's world, you know. We think of wood and woodwork, it is a boy's world. You're living in it, and you're creating these amazing pieces um under your brand Mermaid. So I want girls, I want other girls to hear you and hear you clearly on why they too can do this and why you can do this. So I want for our listeners, share with our listeners a little bit about your background, how you first became interested in woodwork.
SPEAKER_05:Well, so I turned 50 next month, and when I was approaching my 40s, so almost 10 years ago, I had made a pact to myself that I was not gonna enter my 40s not having figured out what my purpose is on this earth. Why am I born Jamaican? Why am I born in the 70s? You know, why am I who I am? What is why am I here? And I had no answers. And now it's I am 39 and a half, approaching 40, and I'm having severe anxiety attacks because I made a pact with myself, and I'm not, I'm approaching is fast and furious, and I'm like, I don't have the answer. So something just said to me, slow down, get rid of the noise, and just listen. So at the time I was I owned and ran an advertising agency and it was doing exceptionally well. Appleton was our major client, and I was having fun and I was doing, you know, really good things, big things. Um, but I knew that that wasn't it. So, and I I also knew that the only way that I would be able to have that aha moment is if I cleared the space. So I decided with my husband that we would write all our clients, I would let them know that we were shutting the agency down. And then I literally went up into an area called Red Light, which is um just up past Irish Town. I had a friend that had a property there with a river, and I would go there once a week, and I would just journal, and I would just, you know, say all the things I wanted to do, all the things that excited me. You know, I again I didn't have any answers, but just, you know, wrote down the knowings. Like I knew I liked to create, I knew I liked to design and ideate, and but I didn't know what medium. And so eventually, when so, so this is now I would say September, and I'm turning forward to the November. So I decide to make Christmas decorations to kind of get my creative juices flowing. And so I go about buying all of the stuff between Michaels and Target and Walmart, and and then I, you know, bring them to Jamaica and I start making these things, and there's a a fair, uh health fair, some sort of well and wellness fair. So I take all my Christmas decorations there, and none of them sell. Zero, not one. So I'm just like, okay, this is not good. Like this, how do I, how is this now my new life of creating, and I'm not, I'm already flopping. So I'm like, I can't spend all this money buying all these supplies, and this is what happens. So I go on to Pinterest and I notice that there's a lot of decorations made out of wood. Yeah. So I at the time I had a plum tree in my backyard, and at that time of the year, the plum tree loses all of its leaves. So I had all these really cool branches. So I got a saw, I borrowed a saw, and I sawed off a bunch of branches, and I made all these wreaths and these cute little stick Christmas trees, and all of them sold. And I was like, oh my gosh, people are really into this wood, this wood stuff. And then I had like, that's when I had the aha moment that I was gonna create, and my medium was gonna be with wood.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:So I took all the money I made from those Christmas decorations, which only amounted to about 400 US. It wasn't anything major. I took all that money and I went to a local supply shop and I bought my first small chainsaw and a circular saw and a jigsaw. And didn't know much about any of them, but they sounded cool and it sounded like they could make some stuff. I called up a friend who does construction and I said, Hey, by any chance, have you cleared any trees lately? I really want to try my hand at woodworking. And he said, actually, I did. I just cleared this massive, what we call in Jamaica, a guonga tree. I think in the States they call it monkey pod or sewer. And so he said, Come and get it. So I went, I picked up a piece of it, and I taught myself how to carve with the chainsaw, did a lot of YouTubing, and because I knew absolutely not one single thing about woodworking, nothing. I had no family member in woodworking, I had no, you know, there was there was no agency that I could go to to nothing, zero. So so I taught myself, um, and then I said, you know, after I had the aha moment and I looked back, there were signs for like eight years leading up to it. So I didn't remember, but about six years prior, I was passing near to the university of the West Indies, and they had a huge, massive tree limb that JPS, that's our utility company, had cut off of the power line, and it was just sitting on the on the road side, the side of the road. And I passed it a few times and I just couldn't get it out of my head. And I called up some people and I begged them to go get it for me and cut it up for me, and I had it at the side of my house for six years. Didn't even remember I had it. Um, I had done some work with a tree, a puey tree that I had de-limbed out at the front of the house, and I had made this really cool wall feature with it. And all of so there was, and I can cite about seven more different examples, but there were all of these signs that were were kind of showing me that I could do this out of wood, and I just I was not open and ready to receive those signs at the time.
SPEAKER_03:Um my question is like, all right, you're in this marketing field, you're doing good, you have a big name client, right, on your roster. What is it that in those moments that made you still feel that you had not accomplished what you actually wanted to be, that you have not realized your full potential?
SPEAKER_05:I had a hole. There was a hole in my chest. I keep I carry a lot of my feelings in my chest. So anytime I'm stressed out or anything, that's where I feel the tension. And I just was feeling this hole, and I just was feeling unfulfilled and having bad anxiety. And you know, if we if we sit in silence long enough and actually listen to ourselves, all of the answers are there. Yeah, right? But the problem with our with with our with society and how we're conditioned is from a very young age, we're taught to conform. We're taught to listen to what other people tell us that we have to do. We have to sit, we have to put our hands up, we can't go to the bathroom until we're told or asked, you know. And so from a very early age, our physiological makeup is geared towards listening to other people and not ourselves.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:And so a lot of the fear that we feel, I believe, is breaking past that barrier into actually stopping the voices that are telling us, whether it's our parents or spouses or siblings or friends, oh, you can't do that, oh, that's not gonna work, or you know, no, you don't, you're not qualified for that, or that's a huge risk. Like, why are you gonna take up, you know, at your age and stage of life and and just clearing out all of that noise and going within and actually listening to what you know, right? And so, so back to your question is I felt that something was missing. I knew something wasn't right, and I knew that I was what I was doing, even though I was enjoying it and making very good money, that that was not it. Yeah, I knew it, I felt it. And and so as a result of that, I was able to break through and leave that. Let me see how I can put this. I I was able to break through the noise of needing to conform. Yeah. Because I believe that that is where the biggest fear is that people have. It's it's going to the edge of the cliff and jumping into an unknown situation that you don't know if you're gonna soar or if you're gonna fall. And it's hard to break through that barrier because again, we've just been taught to conform our whole lives. And so the biggest part is breaking through that barrier. But once you do that and you break through it, I mean, it's just endless um possibilities, endless happiness, fulfillment. I have never had to worry about clients, where they come from. Am I gonna make enough money? From I know that I'm feeding my soul and I'm doing what I know I'm here to be doing. Once I feed my soul, so every time I get a job, my first question is, is this gonna make my soul happy? And if it's the answer is no, I I politely tell the decline the job from the client. And you know, and so at the end of the day, it's we don't have much time here. I'm I'm 50 now, so I don't know how much longer I have, you know, and so for me, every day has to be filled with a purpose, it has to be filled with meaning, it has to be filled with happiness. I have to be able to be able to show that I have helped others, whether it's the guys that work with me in my workshop, somebody in my community, you know. So why waste time?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, why waste? Absolutely. And you know, like what connected to me, like what I heard was I say this all the time on my podcast or even in my own kitchen. I don't take orders unless they feed my soul. At the end of the day, I have to sleep peaceful at night with this night, this nice little hobby of mine, but my soul still needs to be filled. And I paused when you said that for years the signs were there. Do you think it was your socialization, your upbringing that made you not see that it would have been trees?
SPEAKER_05:No, I think it's just life in general, meaning that, and especially now, because there's so much more interference. You have social media, you have cell phones, you have you don't have the capacity to disconnect because your cell phone is always on you. Um, so I think it's just generally noise, not necessarily the way I was brought up or the way I lived or anything like that. I think that actually helped because I am from an island and I grew up in with family who were very adventurous and we were always outside, we were always hiking, finding some river somewhere. So I think that that helped. You know, if I had lived in Miami in a concrete jungle or somewhere like that, I don't think I would have been able to figure this out as easily, right? Or been or been as successful as quickly as I was, you know. Um so I just think it's I think it's how we're brought up again to conform. I remember as a young child questioning the purpose of adults and wondering why they exist in my life. Because all they do all day long is tell me what I can't do. Yeah. And I remember that from a very young age and and not understanding why they were dimming my light. Right. And so, you know, now when I was trying to break through that barrier of drowning out that noise and figuring out who I was supposed to be, I remembered thinking that as a child and questioning it. And then and then, you know, a lot of a lot of what helped me was going back to a very young age and feeling all the feels. And I remembered when I was about four or five years old, I was given a jumpsuit and it was like an overall and it zipped up at the front. And I just remembered every time I wore it, which was pretty much every day, it was very hard to get me out of it. I remember just feeling so alive in this out in this little outfit. And I had the blessing of still living in a house that I grew up in when I launched Marmaid Designs, and I remember being in that room and I put my blue overalls on and I zipped it up, and I was like, oh my goodness, that's what this was. Like my five-year-old self knew what was coming. And it was it was like a full 360 for me at that moment because it was the same spot I was standing in. I mean, I would this would have been now 35 years later, putting on blue overalls on my adult body, but getting back that rush feeling of what I would feel when I was five, putting it on. You know, so again, it's like you're born, you're born knowing. You know, there's a knowing that just gets gets pushed aside as you get older.
SPEAKER_03:Yep, absolutely enough to conform to what the adults are saying. But why would? Tell me about, you know, what is it about trees that resonate with you so much? And how do you connect to these enough this on a personal level?
SPEAKER_05:I can't put that into words. Yeah. I I tell people it's I must have done this in a past life because I know things I don't know how I know them. I genuinely don't know how I know them. And like, like, even like just saying that, like, I get very choked up about it because like I just made a dining table, I just finished it before my accident. And I my guys have been working with me for a long time. So they see a lot of the miracles that transpire in my workshop. And this one just blew them away because they were like, you know, Miss T, they call me Miss T. I don't know where this came from. We saw you, we saw, we saw what you were doing, and we were questioning your process and we couldn't see it. And if you ever see this table, it is just beyond beautiful. No, no one. Yeah, I'll show you a picture of it when I'm completely finished with it. But you know, it's I look at it and I and and I just don't know how. I don't know how I know to do it. I don't know how I know. I just don't know. Yeah, it it comes to me so easily and naturally, and you'll hear writers say things like, you'll see where they they'll tell you they've written a book in a weekend and they were just feverishly writing or typing and they were feverishly doing it, and it just came out, yeah, and then it became unavailable to them, right? It's like this portal that opens up that gives you this information and then it it's gone, it closes up. And I'll and I'll give you an example of it. Like there was a time, I don't know, maybe a couple of years ago, I walked into a house, and a lot of times I do work for designers, so I don't ever see where they end up, where the pieces end up. And I was in this house, and I remember walking in and I was blown away by this table, and I was just like, oh my god, it's amazing. And I'm running my hand on the table, and then I see my stamp, and I'm like, holy shit, I made this table. First of all, I'm in perimenopause, so my brain cells are all not there right now, right? So, but I was like, I was shocked, deeply shocked, that I'd made this table. I had no recollection of making it. That's the first thing. Second thing is if I had to make it again, I couldn't. I didn't know the process of what I used to make the table was not available to me at that time, right? And I was like, this is some, excuse me, some wild ass shit right now. Because I obviously channeled this and I produced this and it went just and then it went. And I mean, amen for my stamp, right? Because I mean, I I honestly, if I hadn't seen my stamp, I would have not even known it would have not connected to me because I just didn't even remember how I did it. Yeah, yeah. It's a little, it sounds a little hairy-fairy, but I truly honestly believe that I am a portal and that I am being blessed with a gift that I am able to open up and receive and impart that into the pieces that I work on and I create them. And you'll hear other artisans say that too, like other sculptors will tell you that they, you know, when they're sculpting a piece of stone or or something else, that they are really just the conduit. And and I feel that a lot of the times, that's how I am.
SPEAKER_03:Um yeah, it shows in your work, there is really a deep connection. And when when when I initially um stumbled upon your page and I read the caption, like it's there, the caption's there, but then when you start scrolling through and you're seeing it's like, yeah, she's like in every piece. And the thing that stood out to me, what you just mentioned, I really don't believe that you could actually duplicate a piece based on that. Yeah, I I yeah, no, it's true.
SPEAKER_05:I feel that yeah, and a lot of the times the wood itself dictates what it wants to be, you know? Um, and that's a big proponent of it too. So I always tell people the magic starts from from how I cut the tree. And for the listeners that are on, you know, I my purpose, I tell people I don't I don't rescue trees to make furniture and and pieces, I make pieces to rescue trees. And the difference is that so every piece that I sell and I make money from goes back into rescuing another tree, right? So I will go to a construction site, and if there's like a 200-year-old tree that has to be taken down, I will go and I will cut it and I will clear it at my expense. And but what that allows me to do is it allows me to honor the tree in the best possible way. And I tell people I don't cut the tree down, I deconstruct the tree to reconstruct it at a laser date.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah. And so, and then my motto is no wood left behind. So even if it's a soft wood tree, like a like an apple tree or a plum tree or a panciano, you know, everything can make something, whether it's mirrors or jewelry or utensils for the kitchen, it doesn't always have to be furniture. Um, there is a purpose. And and I I also have a resin studio, and what the resin studio allows me to do is breathe new life into pieces that are really in bad shape. So you have a lot of traditional woodworkers and carpenters that lick out against resin, but it's very short-sighted because I can take a piece that they would never look at twice, and I can rot that piece down, get that rotten piece out, and I can fill it with resin and I can breathe new life into it, and it looks incredible. Um, and so even with even with termite-ridden pieces, with rotten pieces, I can still breathe new life into all of them. Um termites, I I have a pest control company that comes to me every two weeks and they fumigate all of my pieces for me, which is a five-day process. Okay. So, so yeah, so every everybody stands a chance.
SPEAKER_02:So you literally leave no no tree behind. Like everything.
SPEAKER_03:So, like I I get it. I get the old concept of breathing new life, you know, or breathing life um back into the tree and not leaving any behind. How would you describe your style or approach to woodworking? What's your approach like?
SPEAKER_05:So I don't go, I don't go in with any expectations. I allow the tree to guide my process. I don't use any machinery. So every tool that I use is a handmade, is a hand tool, electric hand tool. Um two reasons for that is because I'm self-taught, the hand tools are much easier to learn. Um, it also, I found it gives me a lot more flexibility. And I'm dyslexic. And with people that are dyslexic, they always find a way to go around a problem because they don't know how to go in a straight line. But what that allows you to do is always figure out a solution to a problem.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_05:You don't see it straight in front of you. And so anytime I have a piece that I'm carving, or you know, a client wants me to produce something for them and it's not, it's not coming to me, or I can't figure it out, I use my dyslexic brain to help me to figure out a way around it. Um and the hand tools give me that, they they allow for that flexibility. And then because I'm not traditionally trained, I think that's an advantage because then I am not, I I don't, I don't see something and be like, okay, that can't happen because in my training I was told you can't cut cross grain and you can't do this and you can't do that. I don't know. I'm dumb, I'm stupid, I don't know anything. So I'm just like, yeah, man, we can do that. Yeah. And then I figure it out.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05:I figure it out. So so I think that has been a major advantage. Um, so yeah, I just approach I approach things in a very um intuitive way. And I I just allow the process to just guide itself naturally. I don't ever force anything. I don't ever force a piece. If it's not working and it's not coming to me, I will leave. Sometimes a piece will take me four weeks, six weeks to get that aha moment because it hasn't come to me yet. And I know I've learned over time to just trust that that is that it will come. Yeah. And the right and the right thing will come and it will be perfect.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. Is this a therapeutic outlet for you? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Talk to us a little bit about that, um, the impact it ha it has had on you personally.
SPEAKER_05:I would say that I mean, it's it's constant therapy, and it's a lot of it is meditative too. You know, you talk about living in a moment, what's the phrase that everybody uses again? Um, mindfulness. Yes. Um, you know, you have to be, yeah, you have to be in a mindful state all the time, right? And and so, and luckily for me, where my workshop is, I'm on three acres surrounded in bamboo, a hill. So I'm looking up at the bamboo. I have a river, and and so I'm already in a very um endorping producing environment, right? So it's very holistic and natural and it's just so beautiful. And so I draw on all of that when I'm producing and creating. And I mean, not I'm not I'm not gonna lie. I mean, there are times where where there's there are frustrations, especially with, you know, all of my team encompasses guys. They're all men and they're all older than me. And it can be frustrating, you know, being the female boss. And, you know, a lot of times they don't listen to me and I'm always right. And it becomes a she said, he said, and they gang up on me, right? Because I'm outnumbered. But it's, you know, we have fun. We we have fun, and I just I Because it's feeding my soul. Like how can it not be therapy? You know, it's I'm I'm doing what I was born to do. I'm I'm following my passion. So every day is a good day. You know, every day that I'm in my workshop producing is a good day. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Every day is a good day, she says. While both her hands are heavily wrapped because she had an injury in her shop, but every day continues to be a good day for YouTube um watchers. You'll see both her hands are heavily wrapped. She was injury a couple days ago, and we're still happy that she's here.
SPEAKER_04:No, no, no, no, no. You better no no no no no no I didn't prepare for that. All right, youtubers you won't hear.
SPEAKER_03:Let's talk about like the challenges then tomorrow. What are some of the the challenges that you face mostly at Maramade?
SPEAKER_05:I wear every cap, right? So the biggest challenge I would say for me right now is my social media presence. I have so much video content and pictures, and 99% of them have not seen the light of day. Yeah. Because I work, I'm in the workshop from in the morning. I don't leave till eight o'clock at night. I come home, I shower, I go to bed, I do it all over again. Um, and so my social media presence has suffered tremendously for it. People, people message me all the time and are like, are you still in business? Are you still like, yeah, because they don't see me posting, right? Because they think that that's that's everything. I'm like, well, yes, I'm not posting because I have so much work that I'm doing that I just don't have time. So I would love to be able to have that figured out where I can maybe hire a team where they can just come in, do the filming, do the editing, help me with that voice, you know, what's my messaging, what's the voice, what's my look, what's my feel? Yeah. Um, I would love to be able to solve that. The second thing is the second biggest challenge is rescuing the trees because it takes a lot of money and it takes up a lot of time. And so I have to leave the workshop. So if I get a call that there's a tree that has to be that has to come down and it's, you know, two hours away, I'm gone for like three, four days out of the workshop. And you know, so there are some logistical challenges. You know, I had a really bad injury at the workshop on Friday with the angle grinder, and I badly cut both of my hands and ended up having to do emergency surgery. And so now I'm out of commission. I can't use my hands. And you get you realize at that point that you know you're human and that there's you can't just do everything. And and so now I'm having to rely on my guys and my team to execute a lot of the things that I would normally have my hands on. And so it's gonna be a learning curve for me to be able to trust them. And I mean, the great thing is I can be there still, I can see, I can engage, I can, you know, guide them. It's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting, an interesting two months ahead of me, especially heading into Christmas, where it's like our busiest time, my busiest time. But you know, it it's it's life, and and you're gonna get you're gonna get these these curveballs that are gonna come to you every now and then, and it's how you you know go through it, it's how you process it and use it to your advantage. So I can't change what's happened. And I have, you know, one of the beauties of aging is you realize that that worry serves no purpose, it offers no solutions, and so yeah, and so you learn to let go, trust the process, and and as we say in Jamaica, bill.
SPEAKER_03:You just bill, bill and kill. So so much, um, a lot of your work seems very intuitive, and you mentioned that here. Are you inspired by any other woodwork or just out there?
SPEAKER_05:There's uh Barbara Hepburn, she is long gone. I like her style of work, I like how she was a pioneer in her time, but she didn't just carve with wood, she she used stone and metal and other materials. And you know, it's so interesting because I know what tools are available to me now, and I'm just looking at her and I'm just like, how did you make all of these things? Like, and I again I wasn't trained, I was didn't go to school. So maybe if I did, I would understand what's available. But she's a big inspiration. There's another lady too, I'd have to get her your get the name to you, another perimenopausal moment. But she just passed on last year, and she carved a little old, a little little lady, and she would carve these massive tree trunks, and she would do the most incredible sculpted work out of them. And so she was a big inspiration to me as well. And there are a couple, there are a couple others here and there, but you know, again, a lot of it for me is it's organic, um, it's intuitive. It's I may go to the beach and I may see the way the sun is reflecting on the ocean that's reflecting on a leaf. Yeah. And then I will get an idea of how of a chandelier.
SPEAKER_01:Right?
SPEAKER_05:So a lot of my inspiration comes from nature, and it comes from things that, and again, that's how does it the dyslexic brain works. Um, so I can see things that other people can't generally see, and I can I can draw, I draw a lot from nature.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. What advice would you give to like a hobby or someone who you know is dabbling in woodworking about starting a business? They want to, you know, start a business. Give them a little bit of advice.
SPEAKER_05:So the first thing I did, having having owned and ran an advertising agency, first thing I did before I even knew anything about wood, what I was gonna create, how my style was gonna be, was I created my brand, right? So I knew what my name was gonna be, I knew my look and feel, I knew that I was gonna create a stamp. And my stamp is just a big M and a little M, which I had them design on Fiverr um for$5. That stamp, I ordered that stamp before I even made one piece, right? Then the second thing I did was I did a comprehensive business plan. So luckily for me, I'm right brain and I'm left brain. So I love the business aspect as much as I love the creative aspect. So I am blessed with that. So the so I sat down, did a full business plan. I went through, you know, who I was gonna target, my target market, I knew what price range I was gonna sell my items at. I knew how I was gonna market, I knew how I was gonna PR, I knew how I was gonna launch, I knew everything. I set everything up. And then I followed a plan. So I knew I was gonna take one year, I was gonna make a hundred pieces, I knew what the categories of those pieces were gonna be, you know, household, jewelry, furniture, what style, what type of furniture. And then I went about doing a launch. I had a three-day launch event. I invited three different subsets of people on the island. And what I did was I had the local newspaper do an article, like a four-page article on me, and I had them time it to come out the Sunday, two days after everybody received their invitations. So people got their invitations to my launch, didn't know one thing about it, and they went into the Sunday newspaper, opened up the newspaper, saw everything, and almost everybody I invited came to the launch because now they were curious and they wanted to see more about this. And then I shot a bunch of videos with my Samsung phone. I called Samsung, I cold call them, Samsung Jamaica, and I said, I need you guys to sponsor my launch. This is what I'm doing. And I wouldn't take no for an answer. And they sponsored me some tablets. Uh so I had made this huge wooden entrance table that I was that I hung from trussing. And I put the Samsung tablets on there, and people had to sign in. And then they went into a tent and they watched a big Samsung TV with this, you know, the silent headphones, and they watched a five-minute video shot on my Samsung phone of me making what they were about to go into the launch to see. Oh, gave them a little bit of a sense of why why did Tomorrow just take up and do this at her age and stage of life? Nobody knew me in that capacity. You know, so they saw a little bit of a behind the scenes and a why. And then they walked in now, they passed through the tent and then they walked into the launch and then they saw all the pieces. So, you know, so that's just that's just kind of how where my brain went. And so my advice to anybody, any hobbyist, and this was never a hobby for me. I never people think that I started out as a hobby. It was never a hobby. I went straight into it as a business. What I would say to you is take some time, even if it means you have to use a family member or somebody that you know that can help you with your business plan, is that's where you have to start. You have to start with a business plan. You have to have direction of where you want to go. You have to know who you're targeting, you have to have a general idea of your price range, what items you're gonna create, how you're gonna market it, who you know, all of that. All of that has to be put into place. If not, you're just completely fudging, you're completely guessing and spelling, and you're, you know, your chances of access, suck of success may still be there, but it certainly won't be as high as if you plan properly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So planning properly is key to starting or initiating a successful business. So tomorrow, before you go, tell our listeners where they can find you.
SPEAKER_05:Okay, well, this is where I have the problem. So right now it's just Instagram. Um, for some reason, my Marmaid Designs Instagram page totally disappeared. I don't know what happened to it. I don't know what Instagram, I do not know if it was hacked, it's gone. So, so it's maro m-a-ra.harding on Instagram. That's it. Easy cheesy.
SPEAKER_03:Easy, easy, easy, easy to find. Um, Tamara, thank you so much for for joining us here at the Cake Therapy Podcast. You know, I say that the Cake Therapy Podcast is your slice of joy and healing, but I'm beginning to think that this is more than just cakes. You know, we do more than um just cakes here. So I I hope that our listeners will be filled from hearing your story. I'm proud of you as a girlfriend. I love your work. I want to clean up quickly because you guys see what she has going on here, but I really appreciate you showing up for me in this space. Um, I'll forever continue to support you, and maybe I'll have one of your pieces soon in my house. I want to thank you. Thank you all for listening to the Cake Therapy Podcast. And listen, don't forget to subscribe. We're counting on you. Buy us a coffee if you need. Every coffee that you buy goes to the empowerment of the girl. Nope, we don't park any of this. Use all that money to support the girls in our community. Thank you so much for joining us. This has been the Cake Therapy Podcast.
SPEAKER_05:Bye tomorrow. Thank you for joining us. You know, we you know what I could do is instead of showing me, I could just send pictures that you could just put up on the screen. Yeah, yeah, man, we figure it out.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, it's definitely pretty good. And um, following up, bye tomorrow. Today's mindful moment tells us a well-prepared dish is a gift of love, not just for others, but ultimately for yourself.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you for tuning in to the Cake Therapy Podcast. Your support means the world to us. Let us know what you thought about today's episode in the comment section. Remember to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. And if you found the conversation helpful, please share it with a friend. Also follow Sugarspoon Desserts on all social media platforms. We invite you to support Cake Therapy and the work we do with our foundation by clicking on the Buy Me a Coffee link in the description or by visiting the Cake Therapy website and making a donation. All your support will go towards the Cake Therapy Foundation and the work we are doing to help women and girls. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll catch you on the next episode.