3 ways to avoid holiday burn out
Holiday burn out as a small business owner is real… And for home bakers holiday burn out is super real with sprinkles on top.
My first year as an official cottage baker I got a HUGE order ( 30 dozen) for a dentist office. They wanted festive little tooth decorated cookies. So I ordered custom cookie cutters that were tooth shaped complete with reindeer antlers and Santa hats. I was so excited about the order that I had totally spaced the pre-sales that I had already started to promote as well as a basketball birthday order 😬.
Needless to say I was over my head… I literally took a week of “vacation” from my day job just to squeak by. I was able to finish all the orders but the quality was sub-par and I even ran out of time to get a photo of all my hard work!
I tell you this story in hopes that you will learn from my mistake. So if you are just starting out here are 3 tips to be smarter than me !
Block off a space in your calendar to only do holiday “pre-sales” where you don’t have any custom orders on your calendar. This allows you to be creative and make sets you truly love … AND it also helps limit the number of flavors/ colors of icing your making which will save you a lot of time.
Set yourself a Maximum number of orders you can comfortably take on and stick to it. Its the holidays and you …. yes you… deserve to enjoy time off with your friends and family.
Say No. If you’re a fellow people pleaser you’ll understand how hard this can be, but its ok to say no. Have a template response set up ready to go where you inform your customer that your schedule is full and re-direct them to your holiday pre-sales if you have any availability left. And if not just let them know that unfortunately your schedule is full and that you hope you can bake for them in the future!
Let me know if this post helped you by dropping into our dms @cookieladyacademy on Instagram ! And as always if you have any questions send me a message I love talking all things baking !
Happy Baking!
-Kaitlyn