Episode 31: With special guest Kate Tynan.

Kate Tynan is an award winning Cake Business Coach and has worked with over 10,000 cake designers in the last three years.  She is the founder of 'The Cake Business Club' - a monthly business membership for cake businesses around the globe. 

Kate is also a certified positive psychology coach and weaves that into her 1:1 coaching so her guidance builds upon her clients' strengths, values and personality type.  

She has over a decade of experience running her own multi award winning wedding cake business 'Little Button Bakery', but closed that business in October 2023 to focus solely on 'The Cake Business Club'.

Kate has built a name for herself in the cake industry with her no-nonsense, straight-talking style - always with an injection of fun.  Her clients say she is their biggest cheerleader and will always tell them what they need to know to grow - even if a bit of tough love is needed. 

Kate values inclusivity, honesty, fun and respect and always goes above and beyond for the cake designers who work with her.

Find more about Kate and The Cake Business Club here: https://www.thecakebusinessclub.co.uk

Follow Kate on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/thecakebusinessclub/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

I'm welcome to the process of the data podcast. I think I'm not a high data business. I don't think I don't think I'll be sharing that mindset and inspiring stories and basic or building businesses they are. Because success in this industry isn't about to bakes the fancy space. It's about to build the strongest business foundations. Let's get started. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Profitable Baker podcast with me, Annie Bennett. Oh, I've got a fabulous episode today. I have got a wonderful guest with me. This lady is a cake business coach. She runs the Cake Business Club and she is also Delicious Magazine's Business Coach of the Year, not the time at all Jeff. I am just pleased, delighted to welcome the fabulous Kate Tynon to the podcast today. Hello, Kate.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Hi Annie. Thank you so much for having me. It's a delight. And it was lovely to be a finalist with you, Annie. And everybody who was in that final deserved that award. So it was a great honour to get it.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

Bless you. Yes, so what I'd like to do for my listeners, I'm sure most of my listeners know who you are anyway. But for those that don't, could you just tell us about how you got to where you are? Tell us about your background and how you got to be doing what you do.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yeah, sure. So I had my own cake business for 11 years, little button bakery. I ended up being a wedding cake designer in the end. That's all I did. And for probably the last maybe six, seven years in my business, if not a little bit longer. Obviously, COVID hit and like destroyed that in 2020. And during that time, I ended up here with lots of conversations with other cake designers, a lot of people who I felt were like right at the top of the game, who were kind of coming to me for advice because I was quite visible during COVID. I got a lot of press for the wedding industry and the cake industry specifically. So I was on TV, I was in the radio, on in print, and it kind of raised awareness of me and my business. So people were coming to me asking me for advice. And I was like, Oh, actually, you know, maybe there's a thing like perhaps giving advice to other cake business owners is something I could explore more of. So after COVID, you know, things settled down a bit, and I dabble with the idea of potentially coaching other people, so set up a free community. Um, grew that for a year before deciding to launch my membership, which was the Cape Business Club, and sold out all 50 founding member spaces for that in less than 24 hours, which was super exciting and amazing. Um, I think because I built such a really strong community beforehand, it naturally transitioned into the club. Um, I've been running that for four years this year. A year into running the Cake Business Club, I had to make the hard decision of do I carry on running both businesses by giving 50% to both, or do I take the plunge and maybe see what lies ahead for the Cake Business Club? And it was really sad to close the doors on Little Button Bakery, and you know, it it gave me a lot of joy over the years and worked with some amazing people, and I'd had my own cake studio, which was a massive dream. I literally got the keys to that just before COVID, and I had you know, I walked away from all of that, but I could just see that A, there was just a lot of people that I hadn't even reached yet that I would be able to help, and also I'd found a new joy in helping other people with their cake businesses, so that's what I decided to do. So I shut the doors on Little Button Bakery and well went full-time then into running the membership of the Cape Business Club, and I now work with around 100 cake makers at the moment, mostly in the UK, but also around the world, and I also coach one-to-one as well. Um, so I've got I usually have about 10 one-to-one clients at once. So my days are filled now with helping up the cake businesses and and not being covered in flour anymore.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

It's funny, isn't it? Because yeah, I you know, similar kind of journey, different background to you, but similar kind of journey. Um, wedding cake business, 2020 comes along. OEC, what are we gonna do? Yeah, um, and of course, my journey was similar. Let's start up, you know, training and things. Um, and then yeah, I decided to close the wedding cake business, slightly different reasons, but we won't come into that now. Um, but it's it's funny, isn't it? Because people say, Well, do you miss wedding cake? Do you miss it? Do you miss it, Kate, making the wedding cake?

SPEAKER_01 4:57

I miss the creative, like that creativity because I don't feel like I've found anything to fill that void. And I've always been a very creative person. I did like art, GCSE, I did art at university to start with, and um, I don't do that creative part anymore, really, than anything else. I need to find a new a new outlet for that. But I don't I I don't miss like giving up my weekends and things like that. Like I missed a lot of time with my children when they were younger because I was out delivering wedding cakes, and it was I don't miss the fact that I can't commit to family events and things because I don't know like that far ahead, or or maybe you know, people haven't told me about an event, I've already got work booked in. Like I don't miss that side of things. But you know, I love I did love my cake business. I didn't close it because I didn't love it, it was just a new time for a new direction for me. But yeah, I miss I miss some of it, but not all of it.

SPEAKER_00 5:51

Yeah, because it is that time restraint is is uh key, isn't it? Because you know, I'm sure you have a lot of bakers who've set up because they want the freedom of being self-employed, um, you know, they might have come away from a career that didn't suit them or, you know, in my case, my you know, my 30-year teaching career made me ill, so that's why I stepped away from that. But then they're finding that actually, no, I don't have my weekends because markets or weddings or whatever, but it's you know, a case of looking at your business and working out how your business can suit your life. I was saying this to me the other day, how your business can suit your life, not the other way around. Do you do you think that too?

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Yeah, and even as a wedding cake designer, like this is probably a terrible business decision, but I used to take all summer holidays off bar two weeks, even though it was the busiest time of year for weddings, because I knew it was just sacrificing my children and I would end up having to put them in holiday clubs or try to find other people to look after them. And when they were little, you know, I I settled my business to be able to have a flexible business around my family, and I didn't want to necessarily miss all of that time, so I took pretty much every school holiday off. I wouldn't book any cakes in my diary until I knew when the school holidays were. So people are asked for cakes in advance. I'd pencil them in, but I'd say I can't confirm 100% until I know when if that's going to be half-term or not. So yeah, I think it's hard to do that, and I think a lot of people worry that you know they're not gonna have enough orders if they don't do that. And but I think you've got to find what works for you and also remember your why. Why did you set up the business in the first place? Is it because you wanted to have a more flexible life and and be there for your children and be around your children and be able to do things with them? If it was, and then you spend all your time working, you've got you need to go back to that why and reassess and like try to come back to that and maybe tweak things and change it so it fits better.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Yeah, absolutely. I know you've worked with with Lisa Johnson as well, haven't you? Yeah. Um, and and her way of planning is you know, long-term planning is doing it backwards. What do you want? And and then sort of going backwards and then planning out perhaps your year to say, well, I don't want to work then, so how am I going to make up that income elsewhere? And it's really a long-term strategy thing, isn't it? Do you think too many bakers and you know, and cake makers might think short-term knee-jerk a little bit too much?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

100%. A lot of them don't have any kind of plan or vision, or even when it like you're just saying then about working backwards, that's how I would teach like pricing a lot of the time. Like, what do you want from your business? How busy, how many cakes do you want to make, how how many weeks do you want to have off? What can we fit in? Okay, now we can work backwards and see does your pricing align with that vision you have for your financial future? And often the answer to that is no. So you know, and I'm and I think a lot of cake designers are maybe sometimes wary of bringing in other things to their business to help like um fill those gaps because sometimes, particularly if you're a wedding cake designer, it can be quite seasonal where you know, yes, you do get people getting married across the whole year, but there are definitely busier times of the year. So it's about stepping outside of that sometimes and thinking, okay, well, what else can I do to you know bring in some extra income? Like, for example, in my cake business, and had COVID not actually happened, I wouldn't be I wouldn't be doing what I do now, I'm sure, would still be making my cakes, but I was building my business up to a point where almost half the year would be on weddings and half the year would be on teaching or facilitating classes with other people. So I used to have guest guest tutors come and teach. So I had like Dominique from Poppy Pickering and Isabel from Designer Cake Company and Emily Hankins all lined up to come and teach classes. Um so that was the way my business was going. And you know, I think people sometimes put themselves in a box and they're worried about stepping outside of that box. But actually, particularly if you're just a celebration cake maker, if that's all you're making in your business, it's quite hard to reach financial goals that you might have for yourself with the celebration cakes because you there's a limit to how many cakes one person can make. Absolutely, and there's a limit to what you can charge really for a celebration cake. Um, there's always going to be a ceiling there, depending on what you do. But it's all you know, you have to do more volume to make the same amount of cakes as you would do as a wedding, as for a wedding cake. I don't know. I could I was only making one or two cakes a week, really.

SPEAKER_02 10:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Whereas maybe somebody who's just making celebration cakes might have been having to make five, six, seven, eight cakes to make that same amount of revenue. So it's it's it's uh wedding cakes aren't for everybody, I get it, but you've got to kind of think of the business as a whole and what else you can bring into it.

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah, yeah. Because it's important to niche, say I was talking to Jenny Gilson, um, and we were agreeing that yes, you've got to to niche, you can't be doing, you know, all cakes, everything, I can do anything you ask me. Because that doesn't a it doesn't help your sanity, does it? And B, it doesn't help you get established. You need to be known as the something person, don't you?

SPEAKER_01 11:12

You can you can do that, you can do everything, but then you are being everything to everyone, and actually, then often it ends up you're being nothing to no one. Exactly. And and if you're like you've got to think about like fish in a pond, if there's loads of competition around you other cake makers, and they're all doing everything for everyone, it just then comes down to who's the cheapest, yeah, and that's who the customers book with. Whereas if you can find something that stands you out from the competition, maybe that's the style of cakes you make. I'm just gonna pull like Charlotte from Perfect Cake Coaster as an example. Like, she's a specialist painted cake designer, and there's very few people in you know the UK who can make a painted cake to the standard of Charlotte. So if you wanted that style of cake, you know, that's your go-to person for the most part to get that cake from. So she's not gonna get someone coming to her asking for you know a sculpted teddy bear cake because that's not what she does, exactly. Um and I think it's about really defining what you want to do or understanding if you don't want to have a niche, then it's probably gonna be more difficult for you to build your business um and to command prices that you know fully represent the work that goes into a cake because you are competing with so many other people who don't have an understanding of what they should be pricing things.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Yeah, if you can get to a point where people look at your work and go, that is exactly what I want, and I don't want anyone else to do it, then you can charge. I mean, I'm not saying hike the price just because, but you can charge a premium because you are the only one that does that.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Absolutely, and it's also about establishing your place in the market. So whether that's you know, winning awards that put you as the go-to cake maker in your area, whether it's featuring in you know, magazines or blogs, and you've got a lot of like you know, attention on you from lots of different places, it starts it's is getting people to to notice you. That's the thing. Like, what can you do to get people to notice you as a cake business? And maybe that is the style of cakes that you make. It could also be the whole way your business is represented, like it might just be something really fun. Like, I don't know if you've ever heard of rude cookies, they're a cookie business, I think. Yes, yeah, right, they make rude cookies, obviously. But you know, they're making royalized cookies and they've developed this specific niche for themselves. Are they for everybody? No, they're absolutely not. Like, there's no way my mum had everything, yeah, yeah. Yeah, but they're for a lot of people, and they've developed this you know, this business now, which they're the go-to people for for that for that style of cookie, you know, similar to Charlotte with her case. So it's about finding, I guess, what sets you apart from other people, and it could be the level of service you offer, it could be your whole business as a whole, it could be how visible you are, yeah, you know, what how well regarded you are. Um, and it it could be, you know, that you are making a specific style of of cake and that's what you become known for. But I think a lot of people just try and be a fish in the big pond, yeah, and they don't want to be, you know, the the swan on top of the pond floating along who's like it, everybody can see them basically floating by, everyone notices the swan, nobody sees the fish in the pond. Yeah, and be the be the swan, not the fish, tree the swan.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Well, it's it's true, isn't it? I mean, I'm you know, I often said to, you know, particularly my big Facebook group that I've now closed. I know you've closed your Facebook group too, but you know, I'd often say, be the be the leader, don't be the follower, be the leader, don't jump on the bandwagon and do brown-ups just because everyone else seems to be doing them and seems to be making some money.

SPEAKER_02 14:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Get your own thing that everyone else wants to copy because you're the original like that.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

And don't be afraid to say no as well. You know, if you don't want to do something, like I was very much known for say no to ruffles. In fact, I even had a hashtag at one point, which was say no, hashtag say no to ruffles. And it was a running joke, like in my business. And I ruffled some feathers, I'm not gonna lie. Some cake businesses got annoyed with me because I was saying I don't like ruffles. But couples came to me and often on their consultation form when I asked what they don't want on their cake, they said ruffle, like I don't we definitely don't want ruffles because it's like we know you don't like ruffles. Yes, I made ruffle cakes in my time before I decided that's not the route I wanted to go down. You're all gonna dabble with different things. But you know, I said no to ruffles, I didn't make sugar flowers in the end, you know. I was more about textural cakes and colours and the height of my cakes and things like that, but it's uh it does take time to find what you actually want to be going for. You can't unless you really do a lot of groundwork at the beginning. And like I've got a client, I don't know if you've heard of Katerina from Flock Bakes. She's now kind of gone a little bit more into cookies rather than cakes. But she came to me when she first started, wanted to start her business, but she had a very set idea. She came from an architecture background, she had a very set idea of how she wanted her cakes to look, taste, and very different from what else was out there. So it's not to say you can't decide before you begin, you can, you just have to put more legwork in to actually get those building blocks in place before you launch. And I think a lot of people don't do that, they just launch and then try to find the feet. Yeah. Whereas if you maybe took a little bit more time beforehand thinking about where can you fit in the market in your area, what's missing, what could make you stand out, what's different to what else is out there, then you're probably gonna have a better success rate when you launch than just trying to find your feet and taking years to decide what you actually want to be known for.

SPEAKER_00 16:53

Yeah, that's so true. But also, I'd add into that finding something that you love to do. Yeah. Because there's no point in having a niche if you think, oh, I've got to make some of these today. And I'm making them because there's a gap in the market, but I'm really not that, you know, it it it you got to have something that you get up on a Monday morning and think, well, if you do want to do that, and you're like, you know, maybe you need money, that's okay, but just don't share it.

unknown 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

If we feel like we've got to share everything and actually only share the things you want to make and you want to do more of if you made something and you hate it and you think, oh my god, I never want to do that cake again. Don't share it. Yeah, you know, you've got no obligation to a customer to share your work. Yeah, if you didn't want to do it again, just don't because people will ask what they see.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I did quite a few cakes that never got to my website or anything like that, mainly because I wanted to be niching as the wedding cake, you know, the three-tiered white sugar flowers. So, you know, all the little birthday cake, you know, the frozen birthday cakes and that I occasionally did. I thought, I'm not gonna put them up because I don't want people to know that I do them. I only did those for previous customers, kind of.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I mean, I did, I was a wedding cake maker, that's all I marketed myself at. But I did do the odd celebration cake, often for past customers. Yes. There's clients who had made wedding cakes for maybe wanted a christening cake or a birthday cake. And yes, I would do those. And I might, you know, they were still very much in keeping with my style. So I may have shared them on the stories, but I probably wouldn't have put them on my like main grid in the motor part because I didn't want people to start coming to me asking me for celebration cakes. I wanted to just be a wedding cake.

SPEAKER_00 18:29

And that that's a that's a bit of messaging, isn't it? You what you put out, yeah. How you market yourself and how you make, you know, what you allow people to see is is you know, is important to what it is you want to actually do, isn't it? But there's all also the thing about um, you know, niching in terms of you know, I'm sure we both know loads of wedding cake people who only do buttercream, yeah. And other people that only do the sugar paste. Um, but isn't wouldn't you say it's a question of you've got to have those other skills. So you've got to be able to do the buttercream, but then choose actually, I prefer to do sugar paste.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

So that's Annie. I think if you know, if you knew like going into it, that's all you wanted to create. So, for example, again, I've got another client, Amelia from the cake hunt. She just uses Swiss meringue buttercream on her cake. She does have quite Lambeth style cakes. I can't see her ever making a fondant cake. Right. I don't know if she's I don't know if she's ever made a fondant cake, to be honest.

SPEAKER_00 19:32

She may have she probably doesn't need to, does she?

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Because she's got enough of what she does. It's almost like saying, well, as a cake designer, you need to learn to pipe with royal icing, you need to learn to make sugar flowers, you need to work with buttercream, you need to work with Genash, you need to work with Fondant. Do do you? I don't I don't I don't know if you do. I don't know if I would agree that you do that.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

I think the reason I said that is that I've come across so many over the last few years who said, Oh, I can never, I can, I I don't do buttercream because I can never make it work. I can never make it smooth, so I just don't do it. Yeah, and there's a difference, isn't there, between trying something a couple of times and failing at it and thinking, oh, I'm no good at that, yeah, to doing something or or not at all saying, no, I don't want to go anywhere near buttercream, I only want to do sugar paste, and I'm so I'm gonna be absolutely A1, get my skills up on that. There is a difference, isn't there? So it's a it's a case of have I got the resilience, and this is a business skill, isn't it? Have I got the resilience and the perseverance to actually carry something through that I want to do and make something from one thing to the next or yeah, yeah, and then yeah, bro nuts. Do you remember brownuts? Yeah, yeah. Of course, now it's dot cakes, isn't it? That's what people are talking about at this point. I don't even really know what they are, they just look like a cupcake stuck in a pot with little but it's funny, isn't it, how trends how trends go. And again, it's it's to do with perhaps jumping on the bandwagon a little bit. Oh, everyone else seems to be doing these, so I must do them.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Yeah, social media though, as well. Like the thing at the moment is the yap challenge, like that's all over social media. There's a lady in America who's launched this challenge and everyone's on the bandwagon with it, so there's all this yapping going on on Instagram, like unpolished, like just talk to camera kind of stuff. Right. And I think for that's not necessarily right for everybody, you know, but just because you see it doesn't mean you have to do it.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Um, so it's about deciding does it fit into your business? Yeah, and how do you want your business to come across, you know, online?

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 21:39

Yeah, I think just not just doing everything for the sake of it, yeah. Um what actually you want to do. And and like I said before, saying don't be afraid to say no. Like no can be the most powerful word when you're running a cake business. Because often that little no word opens doors to much bigger yeses is. Said yes when you should have said no, I guarantee that a better opportunity will come along that then you can't say yes to because you've said no to the thing you didn't really want to do in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 22:10

Absolutely. Top tip there from Kate. Listen, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

I'm full of those, honey. Full of top tips.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

What would you say is the most so someone starting up a cake business. So let's you know, talk about me 12 years ago when I left teaching, thought, right, what do I want to do? I want to set up a cake business. What do you think is the most important thing for someone to do or learn or have in place before they start trading, for example?

SPEAKER_01 22:37

It's a bit like how long's a piece of string and so many things. I'm not sure there is one, just one thing. I think probably if I had to pick two things, like I'm gonna pick two, but like one thing more from a business point of view, one thing more from a cake point of view. So the cake point of view is get your skills to a point where you think they are good enough to sell and that they are polished, you know, that you can do a cake with straight sides, that the the finish is clean, it's not lumpy and bumpy, you can cut out lettering neatly, and it's you know, all of that, because I see a lot of cake makers now, and I'm not you know, everyone's got to start somewhere. My first cakes, oh my god, yeah, terrific, you know, like I thought they were amazing, they were terrible. But I think you've got to look at it and think, okay, is that well, if I'm gonna rate that out of 10, how many, how much am I gonna give it? And if you're only giving it like a three or a four, it's probably not time to sell your cakes yet. You want to be at a seven or an eight, really, before you start selling, and you'll get to a ten with practice. Yeah, but you shouldn't be selling when you're only a three out of ten. Yeah, you should be selling maybe when you get to seven or eight out of ten. And I think a lot of people jump in too soon before they've got the skills to actually sell the cakes, and then they're stuck in that cycle of low pricing because the cakes aren't good enough to charge those higher prices, yeah. And this suit the skills soon develop, but then the pricing's stuck. So I think that's from a cake point of view, I would say the skills get the skills right. I'm not saying you're gonna be perfect when you start selling, you're not, you know, but you need to be at a point where I feel like straight sides, neat finish is a non-negotiable when you're selling a cake. Yeah, um, and then the the thing from a business point of view is pricing, yeah. Understand what actually goes into pricing a cake. You know, it's a lot more than you actually think. I've recently built a cake pricing calculator which is free, which literally walks people through the steps of pricing a cake and turn gives them a price at the bottom of what they should be charging for that cake to hit the profit, to make sure they're charging what they should be charging for the time, and also cover the business costs and everything like that. But I think a lot of people almost they follow weird strategies like oh, it's cost of ingredients times four, yes, or it's you know, just literally ingredients plus time. That's that's that's the price. And I'm only going to charge minimum wage for my time because that's all it's worth now. I'm just starting out, and you're not really making anything there, you're not making any profit for your business, you've got no room for your business to grow, you've got no like little pot of money sat there that you can use to develop your skills, grow your business. And you know, I think that that is the probably the biggest mistake I see in the cake industry, and it's still very apparent, like there's even Facebook groups set up just for cake pricing. I actually made a reel about this yesterday about taking advice from strangers on the internet. Yeah, so many people are asking these Facebook groups how much should I charge for this cake? And people are giving all the prices, yeah, you know, are so different, and you and then they're taking that advice and running with it, but they know nothing about that person that's given them the advice. They don't know where that person's based, what the standard of their cakes are, what their business is like, what their business costs are, what kind of market they're trying to position themselves in. It's just almost like I wish that those Facebook groups for pricing would just close. I actually got thrown out of one once. I like shared something about it and like you know, I remember that.

SPEAKER_00 26:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

I literally shared a picture of a cake that appeared in the group. I didn't share any screenshots from the day. No, no, you were very diplomatic, but they weren't very they didn't like me, they threw me out. But I think that's the problem, and actually the worst offenders of pricing are the ones that don't want to listen, they think they know best, and actually they don't like the pricing I see from some people is absolutely horrific, and it just makes me sad inside that people value themselves so little, yeah, and almost it's they feel like they can't charge for their time, worthy of charging that, and no one will pay that. We often put ourselves in the shoes of our customers and think, well, nobody would pay that because I wouldn't pay it, but most of the time we're not our ideal client. No, no, so I think pricing almost I wish there was like a benchmark for pricing or like a minimum fee that everyone in the industry should be charging for cakes. But yeah, yeah, you know, I still and today I found some I pulled some old invoices off my business from 2013. I haven't got ones from the very, very like my starting days, and I've shared it as a reel today, but I was charging ridiculous prices at the beginning like 20 quid for eight cup cakes, seven sixty five quid for a carved sofa cake with a model of a person on the top. It's like, and again, I I was doing everything, I was trying to be everything to everyone, knowing what was doing. I made all the mistakes I'm talking about today myself, me too. And I wish I'd had a coach, someone to guide me in the beginning, because I would have not made all of those rubbish mistakes, and I probably would have actually been a better business earlier on than spending years trying to figure it all out on my own, and then you know, probably costing myself a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of stress that I didn't need to charge. So it's it's a constant battle, Annie, the pricing that I continually to beat my drum on and run in master classes and me too. I mean, yeah, it's one of those, but it's as new cake makers come to the market, I guess it's just about educating them and also ensuring that people aren't giving really bad advice on Facebook groups. And I think if you are one of those people who's checking your prices on a Facebook group, you need to not do that anymore. Like you're not helping yourself.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Absolutely. I mean, I in in my Facebook group, I I let it go for a year or so before I'd really, you know, got my own self-established, but uh you know, I stopped it. I said, nope, you can't ask for pricing. And after a while, the other members, if one did slip through before I'd seen it and removed it, the other member to say, you've got to work out your own costs, you know. So my message was getting through to some of them.

SPEAKER_01 28:49

You've got to work. To be honest, when I worked out my price in the beginning, it took me such a long time to work out all my costs. It took me hours and hours and hours and hours to work it out. Um, but it's probably the most important thing before you set up a business because if you don't know what things cost you or how much each recipe that you're gonna offer for sale actually costs you in all the different sizes you offer it, you're literally just plugging a figure, plugging a figure out of thin air.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

How can you as we as we all say, how can you run a business and know you're making a profit if you don't know what it's costing you? It's yeah, it's 100%. It's madness, Kate, isn't it? Madness, it's madness, I mean, yeah. Because I know that you know, uh all most of us business coaches, at least the ones that I know and speak to, we all have this sort of pricing, pricing, pricing. It's you've got to know your pricing, you've got to know your numbers, you can't just oh we'll add a fiver for overheads. You can't do that, you've got to calculate them, haven't you?

SPEAKER_01 29:51

You've got to and I know that's harder in the beginning because you don't necessarily know what your overheads are gonna be until you start out, but you can at least take a best guess at that. Yeah, then you know average it out over what you think you're gonna be making or what your capacity is for the year, because in the early days you're maybe not going to be as busy as you are gonna be as you get established, so you can't then think, Oh, I'm gonna make five cakes, so I'm charging my whole business overheads to five customers, like that's not gonna work. You've got to think about what your capacity will should be, and work it out like that. And yes, you're probably not gonna make as much money in the early days, and you know, you're gonna be covering a lot of your business costs yourself, but then as you get established, your business costs should be covered by the prices of your cakes. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 30:35

Pricing for um, because I'm always saying this that I think a a mistake that a lot of new bakers make is that they think that everyone wants the cheapest cake, and not all customers want the cheapest, do they? No, no, absolutely not. They don't, they want, as we said, you know, earlier, it just takes someone to look at your website and go, that is exactly what I want, and I'm willing to pay whatever it takes to get that.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Yeah, and to get yourself to a point where people are happy to book in with you and pay the deposit without really any kind of back and forth about it. They're just like, right, I wanted to secure you for this date, like you're the one for me. Like, bam, here's the deposit paid, right? Finalize the design nearer the time. Once you get to that point, I'd say you know your business is doing pretty well, establish yourself as an expert in your area and a go-to cake person for people to work with.

SPEAKER_00 31:30

And that and partly that is a visibility strategy that's not just Facebook community groups, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 31:39

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of where if you are you want to find the bargain hunters, that's where to go and hang out. Yeah, it's not and also just running your business off social media as a whole. I again I work with so many cake makers who that's what their strategy is. Yeah, you know, you you're just draw you're just reducing that fish in the pond thing, you're making your pond even smaller because people don't see him on Google, you know, particularly for a wedding cake designer. If you're gonna look for a wedding cake, where are you gonna look? Facebook or or Google, like you're gonna look on Google. And if you're not on Google, it's hard. And actually, with the AI coming along now, AI is now throwing people to do use AI like a search engine. So if you don't have Google, if you're not on Google, you haven't got a website, you're not gonna show up in AI searches either. So it's gonna hinder your business doing that. So I think it's about having very different marketing channels to make sure you're visible across lots of different touch points, not just putting all of your eggs in one basket and not putting all of your eggs in a basket that isn't even owned by you, it's somebody else's basket. Yeah, walk off with that basket of eggs at any point, you know, yeah across their accounts on Instagram and Facebook, and and then if they haven't got a backup, they've not got a website, they've not got a mailing list, literally, they literally don't exist then. Once the accounts have been hacked or whatever, it's it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Always saying that. I mean, my one of my bugbears is seeing a a Kate person, and this is just me personally. If I see DM me to order, it makes me gives me the ick. Yeah, or what's like one are you? Yeah, you should be straight onto the email. You should be, you know, absolutely email. It should be the way uh because you know, the number of times I've seen messages, oh uh my Facebook's gone down. If you've ordered a cake from me next week, can you let me know? What?

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Yeah, yeah, it's not a business, it's not like looking as professional as you possibly can, like at every single touch point, be professional. Okay, don't have a you know, sweet cakes at hotmail.com email address. Have a proper business email address, it costs like six pounds a month with Google Business Suite. Don't run your business off WhatsApp because people talk to you on WhatsApp very differently to how they talk to you on an email. They get they just very it's more seen as a way of communicating with your friends and family, and you'll get like single like words written in tech speak, like not an actual conversation.

SPEAKER_00 34:06

Yes, yeah, and it's it's it's the fine line, isn't it, between a customer and a friend. If you start the whole DMing and WhatsApping, people think that you're a chum. And yeah, oh, can you just do it at you know this, or just can you just give me a discount for that?

SPEAKER_01 34:21

And it's much harder to enforce boundaries when you do that as well, because people can see when you were last online, they can see when you've read the message, and then they'll start hounding you at times when you're not actually in work. So it's it's very much about boundaries. Like even with email, I tell my clients e if you even if you are doing admin in an evening, schedule that email to go out in the next morning at like 9 a.m. Because you don't want a client to think you're messaging them at 10 o'clock at night, yeah. And then they think, oh, that's okay for me to message them at 10 o'clock at night, and we can, you know, they're doing the business then, and then they'll be like, Well, why aren't you reply to me on a Sunday? You know, I've been chasing you. So I think it's just about establishing your own boundaries and working out how that fits into that. And for me, DM's WhatsApp, you know, Facebook Messenger doesn't fit nicely into boundaries.

SPEAKER_00 35:11

You're right, you're absolutely right. Excellent. Oh, this has been such a lovely chat. We need to oh look at the time already. What just one last thing? What would you say is the thing that cake makers need to now be aware of for the future? Let's look ahead for a bit. What do you think might be coming up or happening that cape makers, bakers, whatever we want to call them, just need to be aware of?

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Um gosh. I think kind of pretty much all some of the things we've talked about, really, like AI, just in making sure that you are a business that will be found by AI searches, because soon I think AI searches will probably take over from Google because it gives you a lot more information. And even Google's got AI Search now.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Yes, it has.

SPEAKER_01 35:59

Yes, it has to try asking Google which cake businesses you'd recommend in your area and see if you come up. If you don't, then you need to work on that.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

I need to work on it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:08

So I think that's probably something to just be aware of. Apparently, there's a change coming in regarding uh uh commercial waste disposal next March, which might affect cake businesses. It was something the government brought in last year for bigger businesses and they're rolling it out to micro businesses from March 27, businesses with 10 employees or under, where you have to have a commercial waste agreement. So where you have to, you know, separate all of your different waste and have it collected by a professional, uh a commercial company, not just put it in your own bin. So I would say it's a bit woolly at the moment, the guidance on that. I'd say it's something you potentially need to discuss with your environmental health officer. So if you've got an inspection coming up this year, talk to them about it then or reach out to them and open the conversation yourself. Similar to all of this uproar around cake sheds and trading licenses, the onus is on you to make sure that you are actually doing what you should be doing in your business. So you need to check with your council what where the land lies with that. Um so that's something to be aware of, I'm sure. Um I kind of only found out about myself recently. But we were talking about it in my membership and kind of what how it might affect people. Hopefully, it won't affect small home businesses because of the amount of waste a Cape Business produces is so tiny, but it may do. So just be just being aware with that information, really, because it apparently it's coming in at the end of March next year.

SPEAKER_00 37:39

Yeah. But it's important, isn't it? Um I'm sure you found this too. The the second, third, fourth hand information that can go around Cape, particularly Facebook groups, when someone asks a question and someone says, Oh, yes, I know the answer to that. And actually, it's not true. And no, absolutely important, isn't it, to find the source of, you know, if you're talking about waste to spoke, go to the you know, the your council.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

Yeah, absolutely. Because it might be different for every council to say that the street trading license is not every council is singing from the same hymn book. So yeah, check with your own book. You need to do your own due diligence in your business to make sure you're ticking all of the boxes. One more thing that is coming in, I've just remembered, which is in three days' time, actually, there's a change to the to GDPR in terms of privacy policies, right? Where you have to have a way of people to complain about the use of their data in your privacy policy. So if you've got a privacy policy on your website, you also need to check that as well and just make sure it is in accordance with this. In accordance, yeah. So use Chat GPT if you're not sure.

SPEAKER_00 38:46

Yeah. You should have a privacy policy on your website if you haven't. Make sure you've got one.

SPEAKER_01 38:51

Yeah, well, this is a new addition to that about how customers can complain about the use of their data. So it's another specific what joy, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 39:00

Joyful.

SPEAKER_01 39:01

Yeah, the joy. There's all these things that come out. A lot a lot of the things you hear about don't don't really make a huge amount of sense. Like the streets are aging licenses. Like, I just think that's a way of councils trying to just get more money out of people. Like, how can you say someone's got to have a street trading license from their own driveway? I know, I know. Crazy. And the prices of them like vary so so much.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

It's it's just absolutely. And and I sort of briefly looked up the regs, and if you're in London, it's one set of regs, and if you're elsewhere and it's something to do with how many meters you are from the pavement, and everyone's different.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

The same with environmental health, so not which also grinds grinds my uh my cogs of my brain. Like, not all environmental health officers sing from the same hymn book, they all have different things they want you to do. So you need to check yourself, like you're running a business, you need to check in your local area what the rules are for you to trade and just make sure that you are doing everything that you're supposed to be doing to that you don't get slapped on the wrist or you find yourself with a fine or that yeah, because that's yeah, that's tough, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 40:08

If that happens, yeah. Excellent. Thank you, Kate, so much. Now, if people want to get in touch with you, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01 40:15

So you can find all the information about everything I do on my website, which is thekatebusinessclub.co.uk, and the platform I'm most active on is Instagram. So please do follow me there. It's just at the Cake Business Club. Um I share lots of helpful tips and advice on there with a bit of humour sprinkled in. You talked earlier about not being creative, but your Insta is so creative. Maybe that's where I'm I've got the creative energy now. The little Lego figures, Wendy, is it? And yeah, Wendy and Carol, yeah. And I've got a little like cupcake microphone now that I was talking about the other day. So yeah, there you go. I am being creative still in different different ways. I've got a great prop box for real.

SPEAKER_00 40:58

Fantastic. Well, what I'll do is I'll ask you for for sort of links and details and a bit of a bio for the show notes. So we can I can put all that in there. So um, if you want to know about Kate, have a look in the show notes and the links will all be there. Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining me today. It's been such a lovely time to talk about it.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

I've loved it. Thank you, honey.

SPEAKER_00 41:19

And uh yeah, I'm sure we'll we'll see each other at some point in the future with various projects that are going on and possibly Cake International or anywhere like that, we'll we'll be seeing each other. So thank you, Kate Hein, and thank you so much for joining me.