We had the good fortune of connecting with Samantha Lilly and we’ve shared our conversation below.
Hi Samantha, what is the most important factor behind your success?
The most important factor behind any success is customer service.
If you have lousy customer service then people won’t support you! I have a product and skill that many are wanting right now and I am offering individual customer service when people message me directly through Instagram to troubleshoot what they are doing.
You can’t go on Amazon and ask the company to help you with their product but with my business you can buy my sourdough kit and directly message me your questions and depending on what the issue is that you need help with I can FaceTime you or just text you to help you along in learning this new skill!
Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
First I’m a mom and wife. Secondly I am a sourdough baker. I have written my own sourdough book and opened my own sourdough shop that has an emphasis on selling sourdough kits and tools needed to make your own sourdough at home.
I recently got my license to sell my own bread and have partnered with a couple local farmers markets to sell as well.
I am super proud of the book I created with my own recipes I made from scratch for each bread! Each bread in my book has a story! For example the cheese & onion sourdough- I was born in England and my family immigrated to the USA when I was young but my mom always cooked traditional English food! My favorite thing she cooked growing up was a cheese and onion pie! I took that concept and made it into a bread specifically sourdough and it was so yummy and captivated all the same flavors so I started to experiment and came up with my book- “From the kitchen of Happlilly Homesteading”
It was fairly easy to start my book it was just time consuming. I had to make sure I could replicate my recipe enough that every time I would get the same results so needless to say I was making a lot of bread! But I was having fun and I think that’s what counts! Work shouldn’t feel like work, it should be fun!
I started really small with an idea and I chased that idea until I could bring it to fruition. I think it’s really important to take your dreams and goals and go for them, because you will never know where they will lead! My business started as a little book that I thought no one would buy and now it has built itself into teaching sourdough classes, selling bread, selling kits, and connecting with my community!
I never would have dreamed that I would have sold over 1,000 copies of my sourdough book! That’s HUGE!, but here we are and I truly believe that your drive for success means a lot! If you leave your idea as just that it won’t go anywhere, so don’t be afraid to try, don’t be afraid to chase the idea it can really turn into something amazing!
Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I would take my best friend to the River walk- that’s a must! It’s beautiful there and just has a ton of little restaurants to visit!
I Love this little place there that has ice cream and coffee inside of their ale house! It’s such amazing coffee and the ice cream is on point!
Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Shoutout to a dear friend Kacy for being the one to push me to publish my sourdough book in the first place!
To my family and husband who has supported me throughout this whole journey to get where we are now!
Instagram: @ourenglishfarmhouse
Other: Etsy- https://etsy.me/2Ztgx8B Happlilly homestead