Warren Brown On paper, Warren Brown's life was every mother's dream. A George Washington School of Law graduate and a Master's in Public Health, he snagged a coveted federal job as a lawyer with the Department of Health and Human Services. But just three months into the job, he knew it wasn't what he wanted to do with his life. "A lot of people just thought I was crazy for leaving that behind," Mr. Brown said. "I had no choice; you have to realize that. I was looking at the face of continuing in a career for 20 years; that's how I did it. I said in 20 years do you want to be an expert in law and legal principles in healthcare or any other field, or do you want to be an expert in food and know how to work with different ingredients and be familiar with things that come from different continents?" The answer was obvious. He said he would much rather look back on a life of food. "I looked at my future retrospectively and said I have to start right now on the path and direction that I want to end up in," he said. So he began researching different areas of business. Mr. Brown considered becoming a chef and starting a restaurant but decided he didn't want to go back to school. He began baking and decided on cakes after a walk with a cake through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. In September 1999, Mr. Brown was on his way for a family outing in New York and brought along a chocolate cake he had baked. The cake was on a dinner plate barely visible under the blue plastic wrap. "And I got all this attention in the airport going to JFK and when I landed and was waiting for my aunt. As I walked through the airport and I've got this cake, everybody was saying, 'Oh, this cake's for me. It's my birthday. Oh, can I have some?' Everyone had something to say. It was funny, and I was just kind of remarking to myself when I was waiting to get picked up, why did I get so much attention, what is the deal?" He said cake reminds people of childhood and parties and solicits smiles and comments from strangers. "It was a total people magnet, men and women, old and young. Everybody wanted something to do with it. And I was just sitting there, and it kind of hit me as I was staring off into space with the cake right in front of my eyes, and it said, 'Make cakes.'" So Mr. Brown, 34, started baking in earnest and inviting friends and family over to his apartment in Washington, DC, for cake parties. The parties, he said, were a huge success. Later than dinner parties and not as formal, dessert parties are where people get wild, Mr. Brown said. "It was later, so we could have desert, then go out and party," he said. "And before I knew it, people had turned the lights down and turned the stereo up and were jumping over the bed and the furniture. And I was like, 'Oh, my God, this is very different from a dinner party.' That's because it was dessert." He was hooked on the appeal of cakes and started planning to open a bakery. In March 2002, he opened CakeLove, the bakery, on D.C.'s hip U Street. A year later he opened LoveCafe, where people can come in for a very high-end slice of cake. Mr. Brown thinks he receives so much attention because people assume he has "a screw loose" for giving up the law for cake. "It's the fact that it's a cake," he said. "It means simplicity for a lot of things: cakewalk, and it's a piece of cake, and nothing to it. It makes people think that there's no thought involved." But cake can be very complex, and Mr. Brown says being a baker and a business owner requires a sharp intellect. "I'm not saying it's rocket science, but it is something that a lot of people get wrong, because there's a lot of bad cake out there," he said. So why did he go to law school in the first place? Mr. Brown said he wanted the credentials to change the way sex education is taught in high schools. He had worked as a sex educator in Los Angeles and was disgusted with the materials provided for sex education and what students were learning. Many of the kids, he said, didn't understand why condoms were needed, and there were limits on what he was allowed to discuss. The word "orgasm" was taboo and never mentioned in the literature, and the clitoris was left out of anatomical drawings given to children. He still feels strongly about the need to reform sex education but was dispirited in law school that his peers weren't as interested in making changes and were more interested in joining corporate firms. Although he earned the legal credentials, he hasn't used them to reform the education system…yet. He said he might return to that fight one day. Mr. Brown has cooked since he was a boy, but he had no formal training as a baker. His recipes come from trial and error and the best, most natural ingredients. He never uses dyes. If a customer wants pink frosting, it is made with fresh raspberry puree, for example. He started the business with a loan from a local community bank for about $85,000. The first year he focused on the bakery, the second year the café, and now he rarely bakes but is focused on administration, expansion, and writing a CakeLove cookbook, which he has been shopping around to publishers in New York. Although he says he didn't particularly enjoy law school, he said the training has helped him run a business. Even his experience as a sex educator, he said, has helped him, especially with relating to customers and talking in front of a crowd. Attorneys, he said, received excellent business training skills in law school, whether they know it or not. "I have never before in my life had more appreciation for what's involved with law, the procedure that's used, the decision-making process that judges use," he said. "I feel like I use that all the time, in some modified way, as a business owner. I think as an attorney, you really pay attention to the issues of procedure and substantive issues of looking at what the product is or service is that the business will be involved with. I think I really got excellent training for going into business."

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