Episode 27: The Baking Business CEO

Are you running your baking business, or just reacting to it?

In this episode, Annie breaks down what it actually means to be the CEO of your own business — and why that shift changes everything, from your pricing to your boundaries to the way you make decisions.

In this episode:

• Why "I just make cakes" is keeping you stuck — and how a CEO thinks differently
• The three things a Baking Business CEO does that a "just a baker" doesn't
• The "Nice Baker" trap: why talented, hardworking bakers end up exhausted and undervalued
• The identity shift that turns self-respect into a business strategy
• Three practical things you can do this week to start leading your business

The Profitable Baker Live — 31st March, 7pm A practical live session covering 5 shifts to make your business more profitable, with mini tasks, checklists, and a workbook. Just £7. book your place : https://anniebennett.co.uk/register/the-profitable-baker-live/

Join the Home Baking Business Academy The March programme covers high performance habits, boundaries that protect your profit, and the full identity shift from skilled baker to confident business owner. 

Find out more and join: https://anniebennett.co.uk/the-home-baking-business-academy/

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For free tips, insight and real-world business talk:
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For her website with all this and more:

anniebennett.co.uk

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Profitable Baker Podcast, the show for bakers who mean business. I'm Annie Bennett, founder of the Home Baking Business Academy, and every week I'll be sharing practical lessons, mindset shifts, and inspiring stories from bakers who are building businesses they love. Because success in this industry isn't about who bakes the fanciest cakes, it's about who builds the strongest business foundations. Let's get started. Welcome to the Profitable Baker podcast with me, Annie Bennett. Now, just before we start this episode, I want to tell you about a live event that's happening at the end of the month. The Profitable Baker Live event is on the 31st of March at 7 pm. It's a practical session where I'll be taking you through five shifts to ensure your business is profitable, and there will be mini tasks, checklists, and a workbook. It's only£7, and to secure your place, just find the link in the show notes and I'll see you there. So, welcome back to The Profitable Baker. I'm Annie, and today we're talking about something that I think is going to shift the way you see yourself and the way you run your business. We're talking about what it actually means to be the CEO of your baking business, the chief executive officer. Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Annie, you're thinking, I'm just one person working out of my kitchen. I'm not a CEO. But let's have a look at the dictionary definition of a CEO. It says they're the highest ranking person in a company or other institution ultimately responsible for taking managerial decisions. So it seems that you are an SEO, whether you like it or not. Because you are already running a business, you have a product or products, you have customers, you have revenue, and you have costs. The only question is whether you're leading that business or just reacting to it. So let's talk about what it actually looks like to step into the CEO role in your own baking business. So I want to start with a question. When someone asks you what you do, what do you say? Most of the time, bakers say something like, I make custom cakes or I do wedding orders. Well, that's true, but it's also incomplete. Because a CEO doesn't just describe what they make, they describe what their business does for people and why it matters. And there's a gap, a really big one actually, between thinking of yourself as a skilled baker and thinking of yourself as the leader of a business that happens to involve baking. And that gap shows up everywhere. I talk about it all the time, listen to the last few episodes of this podcast, and it's a theme that keeps repeating. It shows up in your pricing, when you charge less than your work is worth because you don't want to seem greedy. It shows up in your boundaries, when you take on a last-minute order because you're afraid of losing the customer. It shows up in your decisions when you say yes to things that drain you because you don't have a filter for what's actually worth your time. Now the good news is that none of this has to be permanent. It's a mindset shift, a conscious decision to lead. So, what does a CEO role actually look like in a home baking business? Because I don't want to just be abstract, I want it to be practical. So here are three things a CEO does that just a baker doesn't. Number one, a CEO sets the terms. The CEO decides what they offer, when they offer it, and at what price. They don't let inquiries dictate their calendar. They don't drop their prices because someone asked nicely. They have a structure and they lead from it. So this might look like having set order windows, having a clear price list you stick to, saying I don't do orders with less than two weeks' notice, for example, and meaning it. Number two, a CEO protects their time like it's a resource because it is. Every hour you spend undercharging, doing admin you haven't systemized, or managing a difficult customer who isn't a good fit, that's an hour you're spending not on growth or on rest or on the parts of the business you actually love. CEOs don't fill their diary, they curate it. They're very purposeful about what they do and how they do it. And number three, a CEO makes decisions based on data, not emotion. Now, I'm not talking about spreadsheets, although I do love a good spreadsheet, and quarterly reports. Those are very useful and you need to be looking at those, but we're not talking about those really here. We're talking about knowing your numbers well enough to make good decisions. Could you tell me what your most profitable product is? Do you know what your busiest month costs you in materials? Do you know which customer type takes the most of your time for the least return? Now, if you can answer all those questions, you're thinking like a CEO. And it's available to every baker who decides to do it. Now, here's where I want to go a little deeper because the practical stuff is only half of it. The bigger shift is identity. I've talked about this before, I talk about this all the time. There's something I call the nice baker trap. I talked about a few traps in last uh week's episode, but this is this is another one. The nice baker trap. And I've seen it catch out some incredibly skilled and hard-working bakers. The nice baker is brilliant at what she does, or that he does. Their cakes are beautiful, their flavours are incredible, their customers love them, but they are exhausted. Because the nice baker has quietly built their business around keeping everyone else happy. And somewhere along the way, they forgot to include themselves into that equation. They take the last-minute order because they don't want to let someone down. They absorb the cost of a difficult customer because they don't want conflict. They don't want an argument. They underprice because they're scared the right price will scare the customer off. They say yes when they mean no and then resent the order that they take. So does any of that sound familiar? Certainly resounds with me, particularly at the beginning of my baking business. I've had to learn my way out of all those habits. The shift from nice baker to baking business CEO isn't about becoming cold and corporate or less caring. You can still be all of those things, but it's about adding self-respect to the way you operate. It's about deciding that your time, your skills, and your energy have value and that it's not only okay to protect them, it's essential. So I'm going to talk about some things you can actually do, practical things that you can actually do to help you with this. And I'll encourage you to have a go at these this week. Um, I was doing some of these in the Academy membership this week. First thing is to write your professional identity statement. This is a single sentence, two at the absolute most, but try and keep it to one, that describes who you are as a business owner, not just what you bake. Something like I run a premium custom cake business that serves clients who value quality and invest accordingly. Something like that. I am a baker who finish that sentence. Now you need to write it down. No good at it being in your head. You need to write it down. Put it somewhere you'll see it. When a difficult decision comes up, you ask yourself, what would the person in that statement do? That statement is going to guide you through any difficult decisions that you have. So that's number one. Write your professional identity statement. Number two, we're talking about boundaries now here. Identify one boundary you've been avoiding. Just start with the one, the just one of them. Maybe it's a minimum order value you've never enforced. Maybe it's a turnaround time you keep letting slide. Maybe it's a customer you've been bending over backwards for who consistently undervalues your work. Pick one. Write it down. And decide what you're going to do differently going forward. And stick to it. And number three, you ask yourself the CEO question. This week, before you say yes to anything, you pause and you ask, does this serve my business or am I just doing it to be liked? And that's it. That question alone can shift an awful lot. Now, if this episode has resonated with you, I want you to know that this is exactly the kind of work we go deep on inside the Home Baking Business Academy. During March, we've been running a full programme around high performance habits, boundaries that protect your profit, and this identity shift, the whole journey from skilled baker to confident business owner. If you're not in the academy yet and this sounds like what you need, the link is in the show notes, and I would love to see you in there. And if you found this episode useful, please do share it with another baker. And please do leave me a review if you haven't already. Those will really help getting the word out there. So keep going because your business is really worth building properly. So thank you so much for joining me today, and I will see you next time.