The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
Business comes with many challenges, my biggest being burnout. The year I launched my business, I was unable to disconnect from “business mode” so I was often spending my evenings and weekends in the kitchen rather than with my family. It’s no surprise I burned out and needed to take a small break away from the kitchen. To overcome this challenge, I put into place processes to ensure I was working reasonable hours and still making time for my family – specifically, working while my little one was in childcare, working at night when he was asleep, and minimal to no work on the weekends.
For better or worse: What are the pros and cons of running your own business?
A benefit of running my own business is not taking on work during a week or weekend I know I have an event on. Knowing that there is a wedding, a concert or a family event coming up means I can block off orders for those dates well in advance. A definite downside to running my own business from home is that it took over at one point – there was equipment EVERYWHERE. I have since invested some of the profit I made in the business into organisational and storage solutions around the home; it’s not completely organised, but at least now, almost everything has a home.
Hopes and dreams: What next?
I recently started offering cupcake decorating classes for adults and it has been a real success. I would like to venture into offering cupcake workshops for children’s birthdays – combining my passions of teaching and baking/decorating seems like a logical step forward. I would also love to see some of my products offered by cafes and restaurants – I know from personal experience that very few places offer desserts that cater for allergies so people often miss out.
Visit the Baby Smash Cakes by Ange website to find out more, and join her communities on Facebook and Instagram.
