Cheryl Bottomley Cake Academy

Id love to know which one of these do you wished you'd have known sooner in your cake business?

You have ghosted them!!

Do you have a proper system in place to ensure you are following up with potential cake customers?

This one is good to map out if you haven't already done so, and set yourself some templates up

If you want a proper fix for this, the 6 week 1:1 Cake Business Breakthrough covers all of this and more.

Comment the word FLOUR

Your first cake builds the foundations.

Then you grow.

Every order teaches you something new about your pricing, your process, and your customers.

Progress beats perfection every time.

Save and follow for more inspo 🤩

I've only got a few 1:1 spots free right now

Six weeks, one to one, sorting your cake pricing, your systems and your confidence, so your cake business finally feels properly paid, not just properly booked.

Because it's one to one, I can only take on a few cake makers at a time, and right now there's space.

Comment FLOUR now and I'll send you everything before the spaces are filled, or you can visit the link in my bio for further info 🤩

Every cake business has different costs, different skill levels, different overheads and a different ideal client.

Copying someone else's price list tells you nothing about what your cakes need to cost.

It just keeps you stuck in a race to the bottom with people whose business looks nothing like yours.

My Free Cake Pricing Calculator works out your numbers, not someone else's, so you can price with confidence.

Comment CALCULATOR and I'll send you the link, or you can visit the link here: https://tierandcocakemanagement.co.uk/free-signup

Wedding cake delivery day.

My son in the passenger seat, tiered cake in the boot, me driving like I am transporting something extremely fragile. Which I am. 😂

On the way home he asked me how much I charged for it.

I told him. And then I thought about it properly myself. Days of work. The skill it took years to build. The planning, the sugar flowers.

Actually, when you say it out loud to a nine year old, it makes you think.

Your time has value. Your skill has value. Price accordingly.

What they charge has nothing to do with what you should charge.

Stop asking other cake makers what they charge.

I know why you do it. It feels like useful information. A sense check. A way of making sure you are not wildly off.

But their price is built on their costs, their overheads, their experience, and what they need to earn. None of which is yours.

Using their price as your benchmark is like using someone else's shoe size to buy your own shoes. It might fit. It probably will not.

Work out your own costs. Charge accordingly. That is the only number that matters.

Every cake business has quiet periods. The ones that survive them are the ones that planned for them.

The slow month is not a sign your business is failing.

Every cake business has quiet periods. The odd random month where enquiries just dry up.

The cake makers who panic are the ones who had no visibility of it coming. The ones who stay calm are the ones who track their numbers, know their pipeline, and planned for the quiet spell before it arrived.

Know your numbers. Know your slow months. Plan accordingly.

A quiet month is only a crisis if it surprises you.

which are your quieter months?

Getting back to feeling properly healthy is one of my non negotiables this year.

Not a nice to have. Not something I will get round to when things calm down. An actual priority.

I have been navigating perimenopause and for a while I was not fully connecting the dots between how I was feeling and what was actually going on. The exhaustion that hits out of nowhere. Needing an afternoon nap on days when I have not even done that much. The sense that my body needed more attention than I was giving it.

So I am being more intentional. The weekend walks. Protecting my sleep...... and this is another issue in itself. Paying attention to what I eat and how it affects my energy levels through the day.

And here is the thing I keep coming back to. You cannot build a business properly from a place of complete depletion. The creativity, the decision making, the showing up consistently all of it is harder when you are running on empty.

Looking after yourself is not separate from building a good business. For me right now it is part of the same conversation.

I am a work in progress. But I am working on it. 🥰

Take your last cake order.

Add up every hour. Not just the baking. The consultation call. The admin. The shopping trip. The emails back and forth about the colour. The packaging. The delivery or collection. The washing up...... what ever it may be. All of it.

Now divide what you charged by that number.

For most cake makers, that is a deeply uncomfortable calculation. Because the number is often below minimum wage once you account for all of it honestly.

This is not to make you feel bad. It is to show you where the work is.

Your time has a value. Your skill has a value. And your pricing needs to reflect both of those things before it reflects anything else.

If you have never done this calculation, do it today. It is the most clarifying thing you can do for your business.

And then if you need a hand working out your goals comment INCOME and I will send you my tool