Episode 43: 10 episodes 10 lessons : My season 5 wrap up

Speaker A: Welcome to the Adventures in Cakeland podcast. I'm, um, your host, Yvonne, and this is the podcast where we talk about the ups and downs of cake life, running a business, exploring the latest cake trends and hearing authentic stories from other cake business owners. I really hope you enjoy today's episode. Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Adventures in Cakeland podcast. This is episode 43 and it's also the last episode of season five. So how are you and how is business and how are you holding up with this madness of the heat wave? Honestly, I think this past week or so is, um, giving cake makers they're thinking about their life choices, honestly, because the amount of posts that I've seen in groups where people are like, they've got cakes coming up, they don't want to do them, cakes are melting, the venue's got no air con. Honestly, they're stressed. And I think it's one of these things where we're just going to have to adapt to this new normal because I think the summers are just going to get hotter. And it's the one time that I'm glad I don't do wedding cakes, but I do do cupcake towers, etc, so it's something that we have to think about and I'll touch on it as we move through this episode. But, um, the topic of today's episode, I think I just want to reflect on the whole season, basically. And if there's one word that I think I would use to describe this season or state of the K chords in general, is endurance, we have to have endurance. But anyway, before we get onto any of that, let's do as we always do and rewind the clocks back to the beginning of June. What I've been up to in the business and also what I've seen trending so in the business this month, I would. I think I'm going to rename it Cupcake June because I haven't done so many cupcakes. It has been quite enlightening, to be fair, the amount of cupcake orders that I have coming through. And if there's one thing that I know from business and when we're thinking, thinking about, you know, the products that we do, you have to go with what they call the hero products, don't you? The things that consistently sell. And I think for me, cupcakes are. It's always the one thing that has been very consistent in the business cup, you know, celebration cakes. I do anyway, and I've changed the style of them and what I do. But the Way that I do the cupcakes is prep is stayed pretty consistent, focusing on the flavor and what they look like. So, um, my sit back kickback box went out this month, and the theme for that was berries. And it was another popular box. And the flavor, the berries that I was using were strawberry, raspberry, and blueberry. And the flavor cakes that I had in the box were strawberry shortcake, raspberry, um, chocolate meringue, and also a blueberry tiramisu. And out of the three, I've got to say, the blueberry tiramisu was absolutely delicious. Now I sometimes I think it's the chef in me. Sometimes, you know, you can taste flavors before you've made them or even taste them. You can imagine the flavors together. And I've made a tiramisu cupcake before, which was really delicious. But obviously being sit back kickback, we need to, we need to step, um, it up a gear. So I thought about adding fruit because you can do orange and coffee, which is a flavor that I want to explore in the future. But I thought about adding some fruit. So because I'm already doing strawberry, I was already doing raspberry, and blueberries are always available, kind of summery. I thought, well, it'd be nice to maybe try and add blueberry. So what I did, I made a blueberry compote, a coffee cake, and a mascarpone buttercream. But when, when I did my tester, I needed a more of a coffee hit. So I ended up making a coffee syrup as well. And oh my God, this cake was absolutely delicious. Now, for me, blueberry and coffee is quite an unusual combination. But lo and behold, a few days later when I was on Instagram, I saw a barista making a blueberry latte. So watch this space for this flavor to become really popular. But honestly, I might have to add this to my flavor menu because it was such a delicious cake. But that went really well. So my next sit back kickback now won't be till August, and I'm playing around with a theme for that. I always set the theme. I've already set the themes, but I have free will, so I can change them round. But yeah, I'm just going to sort of try to think of what I'm going to do, what flavors I'm going to do for the next one. So by the time I air again in September, um, you'll hear all about it. One of the things that I will be looking at also in the business and I, it made me, because of the Orders that I had, it sort of like made me think about, oh, I need to look at that is reducing down the cupcake flavors that I do have on my website. So I have some pre selected boxes and I also have a flavor menu. On that flavor menu I had 27 different flavor cupcakes. Now all these cupcakes at some point or another have been sit back kickback flavors and they made it to the menu. But what I realized was, number one, as consumers we do have what I call decision fatigue. Sometimes we have too much choice and sometimes people just want you to take that choice and do it for them. And sometimes when people have gone onto the website, um, they get, or they always go, oh, you know, they'll message me and they'll say, oh, there's so much choice, I don't know which ones to have. So I made some pre selected boxes. But I have had some orders for those pre selected boxes which leads me to think that people have got decision fatigue. So with that in mind, I'm going to reduce down the flavor menu from 27 to whatever number I've already started to take some away and maybe introduce a couple more, um, themed flavor boxes because it makes sense and you, you don't have to have too many ingredients hanging around. For example, ube, which is like a Filipino ingredient, a purple yam, I made a cupcake with that, with coconut, put it on the flavor menu and I haven't sold anything. The ingredients that I've got for that are going out of date. So what I've just, I'm going to take that off the menu because I don't want to repurchase something that's not going to sell because we're wasting ingredients or wasting money and I don't want to do that. So yeah, so that's one of the things that I will be looking at over the summer. Reduces that down. And the other thing that I will be looking at as well is because of this warm weather that we have, I have, like all of us, I have T's and C's and one of the, the clauses or paragraphs in these T's and C's is about inclement weather. And it's usually based around cold weather, snowy weather, uh, force majeure, things that are out of our control. But what I'm thinking of doing is tweaking it and adding in about hot weather because obviously that's as much as a problem. And I did post on my Instagram stories on, um, the Instagram page for this podcast about asking Claude AI and ChatGPT what I could put in there. And I think what I've decided to do, I'm going to put to reiterate the importance of following the storage instructions. So I deliver all my cakes. Um, it's very rare that a customer will come and pick them up. But if, when I deliver the cakes and it's a warm day, I either tell them to put it in the fridge or if it doesn't have to go in the fridge and it's not that hot, it's keep, keep it a cool temperature and the rest of the instructions are on the card that's on the box. It's very important that customers follow this advice because the amount of times that I've seen on social media where cake makers have handed over cakes to customers and then a few hours later they're getting a picture of a cake that slid or it's been damaged in some way and they're blaming the cake maker. And I think there is an element where once you hand over a cake to a customer, they have to take some responsibility on how they control it and manage it. So I think I'm going to really reiterate the importance of following that instruction and also put things in like, you know, adapting delivery time so, you know, going for really early deliveries or later in the day deliveries when it's cooling down or not so hot in the morning, things like that. And for wedding cake makers, I saw somebody, um, suggest actually that if you're doing a cake, use dummy tears as opposed to real life cake. Because if the bottom, if you've got like a tall cake and you've got four layers of sponge and the bottom two start to get, the filling starts to get soft and it becomes unstable, it'll start to collapse. Maybe use a cake, uh, dummy and have a cutting cake. So I think as cake makers moving forward, it's something that we're going to have to think about because I saw a climate expert who's suggested that this will be one of the last cool summers, that they're just going to continue to get warmer. And if that's the case, we're in trouble because we deal with a lot of um, heat sensitive ingredients, butter, ah, and chocolate. So we really have to think about adapting. But over the summer I think I will be adding in a clause just so customers aware that as m much as it can be difficult when things are cold delivering to you, it can be just as bad when we're delivering to you. And it's a really, really Warm day. So something to think about. I've also finally added on some more ready to order cakes based on the style that of cakes that I've been doing and having them ready to go and having two different sizes, a small size and then a regular or large size. So I finally managed to do that. But I need to practice some more flavors to put on there. But very much in style of the cakes that I've been doing. And also a lot, a lot, a lot of focus on flavor. So, yeah, so that's what I'm planning on doing on my summer break. And, um, also before we get on to what's trending, I just need to give a shout out to, um, Trish from Sweet Ella Bakes. Sweet Ella Bakes, who gave me a lovely shout out on one of her posts. At the beginning of June, she was celebrating her fifth birthday in business, I believe it is, and was. You know, as much as I do this podcast and obviously it's audio and people listen. I'm always surprised that people listen. So when somebody gives me a shout out and I mention and they listen to it while they're doing their cakes, um, it really means a lot. It's really special. So thank you, Trish, um, from Sweetella Bakes. I'm hoping I'm getting those names right and everything. I, um, really do appreciate it and I hope, you know, congratulations on your celebrating five years in business. Um, that is no mean feat in this day. And, and yeah, um, I'm hopefully to have you on in future episodes. Anyway, let's move on to what's trending. So the first thing that I would say that I've seen trending or seen a lot of, and I've recently been asked for these as well, is cake pops. But not in the way that you imagine. So cake pops to me is always like a little sphere of cake on a stick. But cake pops, the new version is more like a cakesicle. So it's more like a, a lolly rather than, um, the round ball of cake. And I have been seeing so much content on Tick Tock about these and also, um, dipped treats. So these are things like, um, pretzels and Rice Krispie cakes, uh, Oreos dipped in chocolate or what they call. It's not chocolate, it's vanilla. What do they call it? Almond bark. It's something called almond bark, which I think is like a substitute chocolate. It's not exactly chocolate. I'm thinking candy mat kind of thing. But whether it is or not, so I'm seeing loads of this content. And recently I was asked if I make cake pop. So I don't know whether this is something that consumers are seeing because obviously whatever's happening in America, sooner or later will hit the uk. And that happened with the rectangle cakes that we spoke about earlier in the, ah, year. So that's really interesting thing to keep an eye on. So, like I said, they're dipped treats, pretzels, pretzel sticks, Oreos and Rice Krispie cakes. And then they decorate them for a theme. So things like baby shower, birthdays, and then with the cake pops, people are doing flavors with them. And I've just seen, actually, I think there's a little bit of beef going on on one of the people that make cake pops and accusing somebody else of copying a recipe. And we've been down this road before, I thought we about copyrighted recipes, but that was. That's been quite an interesting trend that I've seen coming through. The other thing that I've seen trending is Christmas. Now you're probably thinking, Yvonne, um, what are you on about? It's the end of June, July, so hear me out. So from last year, um, early last year, I saw a creator, ah, who was talking about Christmas. And this was in January. So what she was doing, she was buying up, um, wrapping paper, buying up things that were on offer for the Christmas to come the following Christmas. And what she basically does is spread the cost of Christmas across 12 months. So every week she'll buy something for her Christmas cupboard. Sure. Um, things like hot chocolate, things like foil baking trays. Anything to do with Christmas, she will buy and put them down in her Christmas cupboard. She will tell you when the Hallmark Channel goes live, which is in July, by the way. Um, anything to do with Christmas. But then since that time, I've seen more Christmas content creators. So there's a couple of women and they've got their little Christmas decorations on their head and they've got Christmas songs playing in the background. And I thought, this is really interesting how Christmas is getting earlier and earlier and people really look forward to it and buy into it. And we know this has always been the case, but it's just been interesting to see it play out in real time. And so what I would say that if people are already thinking about Christmas, because there is a group of people that love the bear months. They love September, October, November, December and hate, hate summer. They hate the heat. They're looking forward to cozy season, um, pumpkin season, all of that. They're looking forward to it. If that is the case. And this is becoming more popular because I'm seeing more creators have Christmas cupboards, uh, Christmas boxes where every week they go out and buy something into that. And I have been one of these people. I went into Tesco's the other day and they had celebrations on offer and Quality street and I bought two tins. Actually I bought more than that because I gave some to my sisters. But, uh, I bought two tins. I thought I'm putting this down for Christmas and Christmas cupboard is something that I've actually done and do. But I usually don't start until September. So things that are on offer towards Christmas, I buy them when I put them down. But obviously there's a group of people that are pushing this out much further, much earlier into the ah, year. So based on this, if you are a person that does things for Christmas, by the end of August, September, you should already be planning what you're going to do. You could even be launching in October what you want to do. Now I have done Christmas cake again, which has been a really popular promotion for me. Christmas is such a popular time, so popular that I've had to calm it down because it's ridiculous it, how busy it gets. Now this year I'll uh, be doing my treat box because there will be one due in December which is perfect. But if you are a person that's thinking about doing a Christmas promotion now, um, is the time to slowly start putting the cogs in motion and maybe getting ready to launch September, October. Because if people are thinking that far ahead about Christmas boxes, you, you put some treats up, you put some cakes up, they might think, ah, I might order that, that and put some money aside to pay for it and then it's ready to deliver in Christmas. So that has been a really interesting trend that I've seen coming through. And like I said, there's a subset of people that absolutely hate the summer months but they love the, what we call the burmance. So yeah, watch this space with that one. And um, if you are deciding to do something then you know, by September, start advertising, promoting it and give people time to just start paying down on it and just get it in the order book. So the other thing that I've seen, not necessarily trending but all of a sudden appeared is, um, Instagram instance. And it's the most irritating thing that I've had to switch it off. It's absolutely doing my heading. Um, I keep getting the little, you know, the little arrow with the notification and when I click on it, I'VE got notifications, but I don't get it. I don't understand what it is because isn't that the same as, like a story? I. I don't understand it. So I've had to switch it off. I don't want to see it. I don't want to see anybody's content with it because I don't get it now, uh, in a year's time, I could think differently about it and decide I want to do it, but for the meantime, no, nothing to do with me. I don't want to do it. If anybody can understand it, please DM me or send a message or whatever. Ah, to explain. But yeah, um, Instagram instance. No, not for me. I don't need anything else. I'm struggling to cope with all the things that we have to do. Rules and stories, you know, throwing another thing in the loop. I'd ra you just send out my content to people that actually follow me instead of just more bells and whistles. Unnecessary as far as I'm concerned. So there was an article that was written in the Entrepreneur magazine by a lady called Amanda Breen in, uh, Just Like June, basically talking about cashing in on hobbies. And what she was giving is the top 10 list of hobbies that people, uh, cashing in on. And let me just take you down the list, shall I? We're going from the top to the bottom. Photography, software, app development, AI prompting, AI consulting, author, writer, web design and development, personal training, fitness coaching, baking and cake decorating, dog walking, pet sitting, podcasting and crafts and handmade goods. Now, firstly, let me just say I don't make no m money from podcasting. This is my little hobby. It's not monetized, but I use it. I can use it a little bit as a lead magnet. M but apart from that, it's not monetized. But look where bacon and cake decorated, number seven. Now that's really interesting because as we are in the era of things shifting in the cake world, you we would be deciding to think sometimes that it's on a downward decline, isn't it, that nobody really wants what we do. Nobody's really baking anymore. But it seems to be the opposite is true. But I think the opposite is true because there's so many different things that we can do in the caking world now. And I'm going to touch on that a little bit regarding the state of the industry and where we are shortly. But I thought that was just really interesting that something like the Entreprene magazine has picked up on, um, that cake decorating and baking is a hobby that we can monetize. It's a hobby that we can monetize. And it's absolutely true because we can make money from it. Maybe, um, don't run it as a hobby, but, um, you see where I'm going. But I thought that was just a really interesting thing to share. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know that I'm m a fan of using AI. I first spoke about this, I think in 2022 and I've been trying to use it in my business since that time. So what I've done over the past few months, I've created a number of custom GPTs. So if you're thinking Yvonne, what is a custom GPT? It's basically an AI tool that's designed for a specific job. So it just needs you down, it just drills down a bit further so it's trained on your instructions, it will build around your niche and it's just designed to do one task really well. So based around that, I've created three custom GPTs. There's one called the Flavor Lab, there's one social media assistant, and one is a cake design studio. So if you're interested in using, you can find the link in the bio of the page for the Adventures in Cakeland podcast on Instagram and just follow the prompts and then just see if it'll help you. Totally free to use. And if you do like using them, feel free to give me some feedback. But anyway, let's get back to today's episode. So a little admission here. So my last episode, the Day in the Life, should have been the last episode of this season because I always do a 10 episode season running from what is it, September straight through till June and then I have a two month break over the summer. And when I recorded the last episode and it went live, I went, oh, that should have actually been the last episode. So this one is just to summarize and tie up this season and just um, talk about things that we've spoke about, the guests that we've had, um, things that I've learned, some of the trends that I've seen coming through, etc. Etc. So let's get on with the main portion of the show. So one of the first themes I think that I, I've seen, but I haven't really spoke about that much on this podcast. I spoke on it with Christina, but I haven't really spoken much about it on my podcast because it's constantly evolving and happening around me. But it's the, the cake industry, how it's changing. And I think, you know, I've said before that I really love the fact that people will pivot their businesses and we only have to sin. Like I've mentioned the entrepreneur, um, the top 10 think ways to monetize your hobby and number seven was cake and cake decorating proves that the industry is still growing. Um, there's a low market to entry. We know that, but it's still growing. But I think the fact that people can pivot and run it their way, you can have a business making brownies, cookies, just doing treat boxes. You don't necessarily have to do the wedding cakes and the celebration cakes. But the other way that I've seen things growing is the rise of the content, the cake content creator. So you don't necessarily have to. If you like making cakes, you can make them, but you don't necessarily have to sell them because you can show your processes and then you can make money that way by being a content creator. Um, and other things that are affecting the industry and affecting our businesses. Is social media reaching engagement. It wasn't what it was. So sometimes you might feel like you can't get to your ideal customer or you're losing your followers or people aren't seeing your content. And that is something I think it's in our control, but it's out of our control because we don't control the algorithm, we don't control these social media platforms. But the way that we can control it is by posting more. And I must say over the past, I know m that I've spoken at the beginning of this season about trying to be more intentional with my social media posting. And I do feel like I have peaks and troughs. But the past couple of weeks I've been a bit intentional with changing some things and it seems seems to be working because I've gained a few more followers. Not a. Not m a huge thing, but yeah. So that's been really interesting to see that constantly play out. And obviously, like I said, we have this insta instance and I don't need more gadgets, I don't need more stuff to show the things that I create, the content I create to the people that follow me. Thank you very much. Um, the other thing that we've seen is a consumer shifts in consumer behavior. I had an episode about this where I shared all the things that were shifting. Um, the rise of GLPs, people wanting smaller of plates, restaurants realizing that this is the fact. And um, us as cake makers trying to adapt to the new normal. People are still willing to pay money but I think it has to be something that they love and they, they people are like looking for experiences and that's one of the reasons why I do my treat box the way that I do because I recognize that people want to get back to meeting in real life like I did when I went to Natalie's workshop and um, and just make that kind of work in real life. We also spoke about and looked at new income streams beyond custom cakes. So things like digital products, um, recipe books, recipes, um, pricing calculators, forming memberships. Cake makers are getting very innovative about how they can generate additional income rather than just making cakes because you recognise that we might not be as busy as we once were, but we can also think about, think outside the box to make things happen. And um, that's been really interesting to see that play out as well to be fair. So those are the first few things that I've seen trending and some of the episodes where these are mentioned are observations from my cake break, the consumer shift episode and the 25 pound cookie episode and the Michelin star one. So, so yeah it's been, that's been really um, quite enlightening. The first part of the uh, episode. Some of the other things that I've spoken about is trying not to have burnout, um, the importance of taking breaks, looking after your physical well being your mindset and trying to work smart a little harder. Because I've, I've um, spoken about these and obviously if you were listening to last year, you know that I hurt my knees, I'm in a much better place now, I'm moving around. And you cannot underestimate when your body doesn't work, how it want, how it used to, how your mindset just shifts a little bit and it takes a lot to bring you back into the space where it's like right, I need to work on this and I need to work on that to get me back to where I was. So it's really important to look after your well being and to avoid burnout and taking breaks as well. Because obviously I'm taking a break for a couple of months and that's really important one for creativity. Sometimes I find my best ideas come to me when I really slow it down, when I'm not even sometimes in the cake space, I'm just not thinking about it. But obviously you need a break from listening to me and I need a break from recording episodes just to get my equilibrium back and try to get to creativity and probably record a few episodes here and there. But we'll make sure we get a, a, a good break in. But it's really important to schedule in that downtime. I'm a big advocate for doing scheduling downtime and having something to, to look forward to. I haven't booked a holiday yet, which is not like me to be fair. But we at my day job there's um, a lot of transition going on as regarding some team members and recruiting and things like that. So until I we know that everything is settled and okay, then I can have a proper rest. But there's nothing worse than going on holiday and you're not sure that things are going to be okay for the team, etc, so it's really important for me to do that. But September is usually my time. So when this podcast does come back, it'd probably be mid September because I will be having definitely, definitely trying to get a break and sk. It's in paper but I just need to make it happen. So we spoke to other creators and um, we spoke to Christina from the Arcade coach, Jenny from Sweet at Success and Charlotte Giddings. Now we usually try to have about four to five episodes in a season but obviously with scheduling time m etc it's not always doable. But if you go back and listen to each of these episodes, I can guarantee that you're going to take some aha moments from each one. And Christina and Jenny in particular, I like what they're doing. We're trying to keep the cake industry, I wouldn't say relevant, but trying to have a standard, trying to help us as much as we can with visibility, pricing, time management, all those things that we need as cake makers. So go back and listen to their episodes. I guarantee that you're going to find some nuggets of great advice there. And then I also spoke to Charlotte Giddings who's from Brown in the Bean. It's a brownie business. She's not a coach. Um, but I really loved hearing her story of how she started her business just before the pandemic, things that she had to do and how fantastically well they've gone on to win awards and, and you know, branding their business. And it's a really lovely, it's a really lovely business. I ordered some of the brownies and they're delicious, but it just shows you. Again, like I've said, you don't necessarily have to be making celebration cakes and wedding cakes to make a baking business work. Or have that creativity, you can do it in any other ways. So over the summer, if you want to tap into some other episodes, I do recommend you listen to the interview ones because they are exceptional. So one of the episodes that I did was also stepping out of your comfort zone, I. E. Shoot your shot. And not just keeping everything in the bubble of the cakewood, stepping outside of the cake world and either, um, networking with other people, not, not within our industry, entering competitions that are outside of our industry just to get yourself out there. You never know where the opportunities can come from. And obviously I've spoke about the Small Business Sunday, which is a lovely network to be part of, but I think it's just really interesting to step outside of your comfort zone. And I went to Natalie's in person eventually, Natalie Freeman, who we've had on the podcast before, and that was really lovely to mix with other small business owners that was not related to the cake world. But you can learn so much from them. I find that really, really fascinating. And I also like to listen to other podcasts that aren't related to CAKE and read articles that aren't related to CAKE because you can learn a lot. And some of that information gets passed through on this, on this podcast. So that is a fun thing to do and I really recommend um, that people try to do that. And so lastly, before I go, you know, some of the biggest trends that I have seen happening, um, and we've, we've briefly spoke about the duck cake. But some of the biggest trends that I've seen more generic are ah, is nostalgia, simplicity, um, and premium treats and the rise of additional revenue alongside your cake business. Um, and we're, we're creative kind, we're creative group of people and so it's fascinating to see this play out, especially the nostalgia. I really felt that this year, uh, that people are ah, anchoring back to a time that you know, things just seemed much easier and especially if you're Gen X, which I am. So you're born in the 70s, you was a teenager in, you know, in the 90s and 80s and 90s kind of thing. And people are just really kind to um, trying to go back to that time. So it's been really interesting to see that play out and the amount of content and you know, I spoke about um, Michael Jackson in the last episode and how popular that film is and what we could learn from Michael Jackson. But some I saw a content creator talk about why they felt that that film was connecting with people so much and because it took us back to a time where you might remember the friends you had, the places you went, the music that you listened to, you know, the summers that you had. This fashion, the music, it was just very nostalgic and it just took us. Well, it took me right back, you know, remembering songs and singing along and you know, people are just, I don't know, they're just reminiscing, aren't they? The world is so topsy turvy right now and I think that was just one way to just forget about everything and just embrace it. So with the cakewell that we do, nostalgia things like you know, um, sprinkle cake and old fashioned bakes and even the way that we decorate cakes, it's a nod back to nostalgia. So that's been really interesting. I think I spoke about that, those but definitely early part of this season that we spoke about it. So that's my summary for this season. Not totally like super duper in depth, but if you want to hear more, just go back and listen to some of the episodes over the summer and, and see what you can connect with and hopefully they'll have more guests in the new season etc. But all that's left for me to say now is firstly, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this podcast. Podcast. I really, really, really do appreciate it. I still enjoy making them. I still enjoy the conversations and the research into the trends and talking about my business as well because I'm in it together. Um, and in the summer I'll be tackling some of the things that I spoke about at the beginning and then I'll be back in September. Not usually episodes go out the first Tuesday of the month but uh, but I'll be slowing it down. Regarding the podcast, still working in the business but when it gets to September I will be having some proper down time so I'll be taking my Ann and hopefully manage to get away. So like I said, the podcast will be back mid to late September and then normal service will resume. But thank you so much for taking the time to listen to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it and all that's left for me to say, have a wonderful, wonderful summer. I hope your order books are full and bursting. I'm hoping we don't get too many, uh, heat waves and uh, just have a lovely time and enjoy your summer and thanks for listening and catch you all again in September. Thanks a lot. By Sam.