A Recipe for Success! Kym’s Cakes and Bakes.

How to set up as a small business and succeed.

Kym of Kym’s Cakes and Bakes and I had a chat recently about how she started her own successful baking business and made it such a success.  The recipe is a simple one, choose the thing you love doing, get qualified (if you have not already) and register as self employed with HMRC.  Then work HARD!  Really hard!  Work evenings, weekends, all the holidays and then some!  You must be driven to succeed and working hard is the only path to get your business up and running.

Once you have your business model, your pricing structure, and any equipment you need, you need to find your audience and your clients.  Kym started off like many, through a hobby that she loved, and after asking around for quotes for a birthday cake for her daughter, knew she could do better herself.  She did, and she has not looked back since.  Baking in batches, three to four days a week, then selling out everywhere she went, markets, fairs and regular spots, Kym has not lost the love of her craft.  She enjoys the days she spends investing in her future: creating, experimenting with innovative ideas and recipes, always looking for new opportunities.  She found her audience selling directly to the public at events and online sales for bespoke cakes via her website, her feature page with thebestof Taunton and Bridgwater and over social media outlets.  She has created a good following, piggybacked onto our following and used us to promote her offers and events.  Attacking her marketing in easy to manage steps, resulting in a steady flow of sales.  Never underestimate Kym, she is a busy mum, managing not one but two businesses, she is well organised and works exceptionally hard and it shows.

If you are the main focus of your business, your talents or skills are what you are selling then you must be ready to promote your business to get it off the ground.  Just setting up your business and expecting everyone to know about it is not going to get you sales.  Promoting your business in the right target areas, and to the right people is key and getting help with your marketing is a sensible investment.  You may not see it pay off short term, but medium term and long term, it will reap rewards, as your business gets known, gets found more often, you move up the Google rankings with good SEO work in the background of your website and you are much more visible to your clients.  Good social media is vital as we no longer reach for The Yellow Pages, we tap into our phones and remember that amazing picture of someone else’s gorgeous celebration cake and we search for good or bad reviews.  Kym has all her reviews available in one place and it is easy to see that she is regularly given good reviews.  By inviting your clients on a regular basis to send you a review keeps your business fresh and keeps you climbing those all important Search Engine Rankings.

For Kym as a mum and a business owner, it is not always easy to juggle everything, having good organisational skills is always going to help and being your own boss is useful when you need to reschedule your day unexpectedly.  Kym used the enforced down time of the pandemic to create her business and to plan, research and launch onto the market.  Marketing and Selling directly from her social media platforms and her website.  Designing and producing a good website is essential to any new business and we recommend Dexterous Designs for any websites, graphic design and business card/logo work.  They even have set prices for our members that are pay monthly to get you started. 

Finding the right advice and using the right products are invaluable too.  Finding someone who can give you financial advice, whether you wish to do Self-Assessment Tax Returns yourself or want to let someone else more experienced to help you.  There is a myriad of ways to do things, and you must find the way that suits you and your business best.  At thebestof Taunton and Bridgwater, we always recommend speaking to a professional, we recommend Maxwells Chartered Accountants or Solo Business Solutions as both arbiters of great advice and trusted local businesses.  You can find both on our business directory on our website.  If you want help with your marketing, then contact Grahame Rowlands at thebestof Taunton and Bridgwater via our website or give him a call on 07592602647 to see how we can help your business get found and get noticed like Kym’s Cakes and Bakes.   Then you can enjoy seeing your own business rise!  Take a look at Kym’s feature here and choose her for your next celebration cake or treat, you will be so pleased with the cake and you get to eat it too.