Most people use their mornings to get ready for work. Allison Sheehan spent hers decorating cakes.
Every weekday, she’d wake up at around 5 a.m. to frost cakes she’d baked the night before, squeeze in a workout, get ready for the office, and leave custom cake orders with her doorman for customers to pick up — all before heading to her desk in Goldman Sachs’ private wealth management division. During lunch breaks, she’d answer customer emails, sketch cake designs, and edit videos for her social media accounts. And after work? She’d bake all over again.
Then, one meeting changed everything. What Sheehan thought would be a routine meeting with her manager turned into an ultimatum from Goldman Sachs’ compliance team: delete her social media presence or leave the firm.
By then, Sheehan had spent years documenting the balancing act between Wall Street and cake decorating online, amassing thousands of followers as the @investment__baker.
“It was a really tough decision, because I loved my job,” Sheehan tells Spoon University. “But I just couldn’t imagine a life without making cakes and following my dream of being the next Betty Crocker.”
After months of deliberation, she walked away from Goldman Sachs, throwing herself completely into baking. But long before she was the entrepreneurial Investment Baker or finance career woman at Goldman, Sheehan’s love of baking had begun in her childhood kitchen.
“My earliest memory of being intrigued by baking is me standing on a red stool next to my mom. I was too short to see what was going on on the counter as she was making biscuits,” Sheehan says. “I remember peering into the silver bowl, and just seeing it go from the flour and the butter, to the batter, to the finished product. I found it so outstanding that I wanted to be a part of it.”
Growing up surrounded by talented bakers — including her mother, grandmother, aunt and older sister — Sheehan developed both a love for baking and a creative eye.
While attending college at Southern Methodist University in Texas, she noticed there was only one baker in Dallas making elaborate custom cakes, and demand far exceeded supply.
So she decided to start making them herself, and that endeavor quickly grew into a thriving business serving students across campus and customers throughout the Dallas area. But after graduation, a move to Utah for her first finance job forced her to put baking on hold.
“I went from being the go-to cake maker, making cakes for all my friends and the entire school, loving what I did and waking up every day excited to create something, to not having that creative outlet,” Sheehan says.
Determined to rebuild the sense of community she’d experienced in Dallas, Sheehan eventually moved to New York City. As soon as she arrived, she announced on Instagram that she was taking cake orders again.
“Immediately, I got a huge influx of orders, and the rest is history,” Sheehan says.
After a few years of growing her business, a coworker suggested she start sharing her unusually busy mornings online. Another friend called her the “Investment Baker,” and the name stuck — and that’s when her following skyrocketed.
“The tension between my two worlds really began to get traction and got the attention of people that were confused and curious and never thought that they would see the intersection between a baker and a financier,” Sheehan says.
As both her following and cake business grew, so did the opportunities. Sheehan began creating cakes for celebrity clients and fashion houses she had admired for years, all while working full-time at Goldman Sachs.
But leaving Goldman wasn’t as simple as walking away from a paycheck. She had been relying on her finance salary to fund ingredients, part-time employees and a commercial kitchen.
“When I lost that stable income, my bank account just started draining because I had all those expenses with no income from my job,” Sheehan says. “In that moment, I realized I know nothing about business. If I really want to scale this thing, I need to learn how to run a business.”
That realization led her to Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, where she is now pursuing an MBA while building Alleycat, a cake mix and frosting startup.
She hopes Alleycat will do for cake mix what brands like Goodles have done for boxed mac and cheese: reimagine a familiar grocery aisle for a new generation of consumers. But more than anything, Sheehan said she wants baking to feel approachable.
“I want dads to see my box on the shelf and want to buy it. I want young boys to see my product on the shelf and want to buy it. I want young girls, families, kids, moms, everybody,” Sheehan says. “I want them to be excited about creating something and seeing it come to life.”
Looking back, leaving Goldman Sachs and walking away from the stability of a prestigious finance career was a big risk. But it also meant betting on the business she had already been building in every spare moment.
Sheehan’s advice to aspiring entrepreneurs?
“Be confident. Trust yourself, and tell your story.”