'Tis the season to h-h-hate your bakery business. I can't even judge, I'm a slave to the "cookie SuperBowl" where we sell the MOST volume all year x10 (see the diagram from Google search queries for "Sugar Cookies" below). 🔥 It's our time to shine - shine - shine, baby, and then go out in a glorious flame of burnout bust! But that's bad for business.
So - here's Corrie's list of burnout boundaries to save ya from your sleighin' self this holiday season.
💚 1. Raise Them Prices.
A lot of you are leaving money on the table you're bent over to make that last batch you undercharged on. Does raising your prices lower your sales? You betcha! But does raising your prices also mean that those fewer sales go a longer way? Yes.
📉 Let's say I have a classroom for 10 students and I charge $20/ticket. If I sell all the tickets, I make $200.
📈 But if I raise the price to $50/ticket. Let's say 60% of people no longer attend the class (fair, it's out of their budget), and I only sell 4 tickets. But guess what - I still make $200, but now I only have to render services for 4 people - saving me time, ingredients, and headaches.
💚 2. Focus on Your Favorites.
Let's face it - some of us hate customs - they're time eaters, they're complex, they require a ton of work. So why are the last 23 posts you made to your page featuring customs? Market what you want to move! If you want to sell class tickets, I should see a heavier presence of class-related posts. If you want DIY kits to do the heavy lifting on that bottom line, I better so some DIY kit photos - packed, unpacked, finished, kiddo with icing bag in hand - you get the point.
💚 3. Don't Disappear.
It's easy to take off especially when cookies aren't bringing in your primary household income and you have some flexibility (️🏆 Heyo to my trophy sisters and brothers! Take me with you!). But imagine going to a mechanic's shop for an oil change for years only to roll up and find they've closed temporarily.
🚗 You check back next month. Nope.
🚕 You check back month 2. Nothin'.
🚙 Your car needs oil - so you find another shop.
BUT WAIT! They reopened! 😫 They want ya back! But you've moved on. Same with your clients. Take fewer orders - heck, reject 90% of them. But the big disappearing act is killin' your holiday sales.
💚 4. Make Those Money Menu Makers.
Some products just have bigger margins - and they're a great way to buy back more time and less burnout. For us - it's classes. I can sell 10 class tickets at $75 a ticket to make $750 bucks. At the same time, it'll take me thirty DIY kits at $25/kit to generate the same amount of money.
If you're willin' to stand in front of folks for 1.5 hours, then the classes will generate far more income for a lot less work.
💪 (have I mentioned we do even more of that work for you in the class kits memberships?)
💚 5. Website Bouncers.
😈 Make your website be the bad guy. Corrie loves to let Jotform break the bad news that the date the client wanted is sold out (or maybe she's meeting me at the mall) so the client can't get to it and bog down your boundaries. This is a great option for those of us (hey - you are my people) who have weak "nos" and strong people-pleasing tendencies - 🔗 remove the weakest link: YOURSELF.
💚 6. Get Tunnel Vision.
Listen to this week's pod to learn why all the best options is actually the worst option when it comes to boundaries and bottom lines.