Hind Al Mulla, founder and director at Home Bakery: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Hind Al Mulla (LinkedIn), the founder and director of Home Bakery. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

I’m Hind Al Mulla. First and foremost, I'm a daughter, then a wife, then a mother, and now, I can say co-founder and creative director of Home Bakery.

Home Bakery started with my passion for baking. I started experimenting at the age of 10 in the kitchen, but that doesn't mean that whatever came out of the kitchen was amazing. It was failure after failure until the age of 13, when I mastered a vanilla soufflé. After that, every day my dad would ask me, whenever we had guests over, “Hind, can you please make desserts?”

Later, I graduated from art and design from Zayed University. As soon as I graduated, I got married and became a mother. It's fulfilling as it is to be a mother, but at the same time I felt this emptiness inside me because I felt that I needed to create, and like my creative juices had dried up a little bit, so I started going back to the kitchen and baking again. Family members and people I know started asking me to make desserts for them for their guests, and that’s how it all started.

There was no business plan. I went and got another number and phone and asked my mom to use her driver, and set up a blog, and that was it. My first order was from Abu Dhabi, and then I started getting orders from across the UAE. This was in 2011, after Ramadan, and then the following Ramadan was nothing like I expected — the orders were coming in everyday and people wanted a quick turnaround. I got my cousins to help me out because I was working 23 hours a day. That’s when I realized that this was not sustainable, and I decided I needed a shop.

Ten years ago, the idea of a homegrown brand coming out and having its own standalone shop did not exist. It was predominantly franchises. The idea of an Emirati opening up something like this was unheard of. Whatever mall I knocked doors on, I was shut down, until one mall finally opened its doors for me.

I decided now that I have a location that I want to create an experience for customers. I want people to eat with their eyes first, so when they see the dessert or the dish that's coming in front of them, it's as appetizing as the dessert itself. I wanted there to be action so that when you look at the dessert, something is melting or bubbling — because that’s something that you can’t take away.

I knew how to run a kitchen, but I knew nothing about how to run a restaurant. I remember how hectic the first day was, and the staff was struggling, so I decided to put on an apron, and my siblings did the same, and we worked. People were coming in just to see the locals working at a restaurant [laughs] — it was unheard of.

Word got around to Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum that locals are working [at this cafe]. He wanted to come and see for himself, and he walked into the store and asked us what we’re doing. We explained that it’s our cafe and we’re still learning how to run things, and he patted my brother on the back and said: “Good job, this is how I want you guys to be.” Sheikh Mohammed later came back with President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and the whole cabinet and invited them over to see the cafe. This was like the pillar of all my achievements.

Right now, we have 11 shops in the UAE, with two more coming up. We have one in Saudi Arabia that’s two and a half years old, and we’re opening another one in Riyadh. We have the original Home Bakery, which serves breakfast and desserts, and Home Bakery Kitchen for lunch and dinner, and our roastery and specialty coffee store La Gente.

Every day is different. Mondays are for external meetings — so it’s open for any meetings outside of the office, whether we're meeting with people who want to collaborate with us, or events, or suppliers. Tuesdays are for internal meetings at the office; we have a big meeting and then I meet with the project manager for all our upcoming projects, and I sit with accounts and marketing. Wednesday is for tasting, and Thursdays are for workshops with designers working on our branches and site visits.

I keep Fridays for myself. I meet my friends, I spend the afternoon at my grandma's house, and then Saturday and Sunday are for my kids and family.

My mornings are very calm and quiet — I wake up around 5am, start the day with the Fajr prayer, have some tea, and read some prayers. I do some stretches as well. There are days where I train in the morning, but sometimes I train midday while the kids are getting picked up from school.

I struggled my whole life with ADHD, and to be organized and on time. When things become chaotic and I feel like I'm a little bit overwhelmed, I just need a day of doing nothing to go and look at my schedule. I reorganize things and I force myself to be disciplined, because it doesn't come easy to me. I’ve also invested in a grounding mattress — and had to make sure there was no EMF radiation near my bed — and it is life saving. I also do infrared saunas twice a week, and I castor oil pack to calm myself every night.

In the future, I see the brand expanding, not just in the restaurant field, but on the merchandise side, like venturing into things like spices and sauces. I also see us creating concepts for other people. We have a lot of people who come and approach us for help with kitchen design, so we do a lot of that and try to help those concepts come to life.

There’s also a lot of restaurants that don't want to invest in desserts because of the cost of staffing and equipment, so we want to branch out and provide a curated menu for restaurants where they can get all the menu items already prepared, so they could just finish it off in the restaurant. In terms of expansions, we have our eyes on the Middle East and branching out there more, as well as the UK and the US.

I love reading books, specifically fiction and mystery books. For self-help, I go for audiobooks. The one I’m listening to right now is Stolen Focus. It's about disconnecting from the Internet, and it’s a very interesting outlook on life and how people are so unfocused nowadays because of their phones, iPads, and laptops, and how just a break from that can really get your brain to quiet down. When it comes to podcasts, I like Oprah's Super Soul Sundays, and Radio Thmaneyah, and Finjan.

The best piece of advice I’ve received was from my dad. He always told me that there’s no such thing as impossible.

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