Episode 29: With special Guest Jenny Gilson

Jenny is a multi award winning business woman with over 25 years experience in the cake industry. 

Originally trained as a pastry chef, Jenny worked in some of the UKs top establishments, honing her skills before establishing her cake business which went from kitchen table to 6 figures within 3 years. 

Jenny created cakes for Royalty (making HRH Charles and Camilla’s first wedding anniversary cake) appeared on TV (Britain’s Best Bakery, The Alan Titchmarsh show, amongst others) and featured across the national press. 

Jenny sold the cake business after selling over £2 million worth of cakes and trained as a coach and hypnotherapist. 

Jenny is an expert in not only creating beautiful cakes but growing a cake business, gaining press and the mindset needed to create a successful cake business. 

Jenny coaches with passion, making it fun, whilst being results driven. Jenny prides herself in being cake business owners biggest cheerleader in business, working with them on their mindset to help them achieve their goals and dreams.

When not working, Jenny can be found in the forest or at the beach, swimming in the sea (when it’s warm enough!) 

Get in touch with Jenny on Insta:

https://www.instagram.com/sweet_as_success/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Hello and welcome to the Profitable Baker Podcast, the show for bakers who mean business. I'm Eddie Bennett, founder of the Home Baking Business Academy, and every week I'll be sharing practical lessons, mindset skills, and inspiring stories from bakers who are building businesses they love. Because success in this industry isn't about who bakes the fanciest cakes, it's about who builds the strongest business foundations. Let's get started. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Profitable Baker podcast with me, Annie Bennett. Oh, I'm so delighted today because today is slightly different to our previous episodes. It is a guest episode. Hooray! And I've got a splendid guest for me to chat with. I have the lovely Jenny Gilson here. Now, Jenny runs Sweeter Success and is a cake business mentor like myself. So what we're going to do is have a good old chat about how the industry is going. So welcome, Jenny. It's so lovely to have you here.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Oh, thank you so, so much for inviting me. I've we've already had a bit of a chat, haven't we? Off big secret, we've had a bit of a chat. Um, we're already um tears in our eyes with giggling. So I know this is going to be a great chat.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Oh, absolutely. There's a lot to giggle about in our industry and beyond. So, what I'd like, Jenny, is for you to tell me and any listeners who may not know who you are a little bit about you, your background, and how you come to do what you're doing now.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Oh, thank you very much. Well, yeah, I'd love to. So I started um way back now. I'm going to go a little bit further back than probably normal because there's a reason for that. So I um failed being dyslexic, failed most of my GCSEs and thought, oh, what now? And um I decided the only thing that I really liked doing was catering. So I went to catering college, trained to be a chef, and was really lucky that my first job in a kitchen was at Claridge's in Mayfair in London. Um, and um, you know, making afternoon teas and desserts, and we'd be cooking for people like Madonna and George Clooney and the royal family, and um, and while it was amazing, and I I worked in a few different places around London as a pastry chef, um, when I had my so I'm skipping forward quite a bit now, um, at 23 I had my first son. I got married young and had my first son at 23, and I thought a professional kitchen is not the place to raise a family. So I um gathered all of the experience that I could. I worked in various different restaurants and bakeries and fine dining and lots and lots of different places, travelled to Australia and worked around there as well, and what I wanted to create, and it was all it had always been my dream to have a cake shop, um, was I wanted to create something really new and really different for the the UK cake market at this point in the early 2000s, um, and bring together my classical training with some of the more modern stuff that I'd um seen and learnt in Australia and create something really new. So I um created this uh cake company all around chocolate, actually. So my speciality was chocolate, and having trained with one of the country's top chocolatiers, I was very lucky that I had um some fantastic training. And I talk a lot about, and I don't know if you would do as well, Annie, about niching down and being, you know, let's not try and be master of everything, let's really be, you know, let's be great at one thing. So my thing was chocolate. Um, and um, so I um started from home just baking, you know, talking to anybody that would listen about my cakes. Yeah, um, I'd go to all of the school fairs and the Christmas fairs and you know, get out there as much as possible, network, um, because social media back in the early 2000s wasn't as big as it was now. So you actually had to get out there and meet people. Um, so um I yeah, I worked from home for three years, um, and then I found the most perfect shop. It was an old um, it'd been a post office, it was um completely back to bare brick, it'd been closed for a few years, it was on the corner just leading into town, and it was just the most beautiful little shop with a park opposite, and I thought that's that's my cake shop. Um, so created a kitchen in this cake shop um so that people could come and watch, and the smell would kind of float up the road. Um, and I remember um I was outside painting the shop just before we opened, and these two lads, 20-something lads, um walked past and went, Well, I'll give it six weeks. And then uh six weeks later, I was actually turning over um you know, six figures, and I was like, ha ha, I'll find you boys. Um, so I yeah, opened another shop after that, and then um I became known in the media to do so. I went on TV a few times to as a uh chocolate cake expert or a cake expert. Um I made a cake live on air for Philip Schofield, which was um quite an experience, had Elaine Page on one side and David Essex on the other side, having my makeup done. Like, what is this? What is happening?

SPEAKER_01 5:40

This is a blast from the past, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Yes, those eyes, those eyes. Um, so opened my second shop, um, had a great time. So I had my my cake business for um 14, 15 years, and then I had a just a messy divorce, and I thought, what do I want from my life? Um, so my next biggest dream after having a uh cake shop was to live by the coast. And at this point, I lived in the Midlands, which is about as far away from the coast as you can get. So I sold everything, I sold my business, I sold my house, I sold everything, and I moved me and my boys to um Dorset, which is where I now live. So it's a really long way around saying how to how I got to you know my classical training. And then um, when I moved, I thought, what now? What do I do now? You know, and I um decided I'd had so many people approaching me about how did you start? Like, how did you get to sell two million pounds worth of cakes? Like, where did you even, how did that happen? And I thought there are people out there that need help. Like it it feels I've I have worked with mentors and coaches throughout my career, but very general ones, you know, business mentors and coaches. And I thought there's a market here for people that need a bit more help, specifically in the business of cake, um, cake mentoring, you know, cake, um what's the word I'm looking for? Cake businesses, sorry, penimen perimenopausal brain when words just fall out of your head. Yeah. Um so yeah, and now I work with bakers all over the world. I've got clients in Canada and Philippines and America, and it really helping them because what and you probably see this as well, Annie, is that a lot of bakers are over trained in the um technical side of things, but they the business side, they just don't put as much time and effort into it. And that's when we see that their businesses don't grow because they're they make the most amazing cakes, but they don't know how to grow a business, which is very different.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, absolutely. And I was just I was training my members this morning and saying, you know, that when I first started, I mean, my my cake journey is a lot shorter than yours, but I was I started my business about uh 10, 12 years ago, something like that, and I had not a clue, not a flipping clue about business at all. And it is funny, isn't it? Because we've all, you know, we've come from very different backgrounds. You know, I was 30 years a teacher and didn't really bake much, and then I sort of thought, what do I want to do? And I know we have some colleagues who are also business, cake business coaches, and we all seem to have come from very different uh ways of getting to where we are now, haven't we?

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Um, but I I think a lot of my bakers, possibly yours as well, have come into running a business because they might have had a career or they might have had a job and they perhaps had children and thought, I want to do something for myself. I you know, I want to have the freedom of running a business. Um have you found that? That that that's where a lot of cake businesses, how they you know originate.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I as I said at the beginning, I very much wanted um the business to work around my family as well. I was I wanted to be, I wanted to be at Sports Day, I wanted to be at assemblies, I didn't want to miss out on that. And um I think I've shown with um you know being early 20s, being dyslexic, if I can do it, then anybody else can do it. And I think you know, our kids grow up so fast that we want to be able to dedicate that time and have that freedom to go, I'm gonna go on a school trip today, or I'm gonna go and watch sports day or whatever it is, and that freedom to be able to also show um your children what can be done, like you know, school is so um my husband's a teacher as well, so I kind of get a little bit of that world is that school is so funnelled to academic learning and you know, math, science, English, you have to have these things. But actually, as moms that are entrepreneurs, we're teaching them there's also another way as well. You know, you can be on paper, you can not be particularly book smart, which I say I'm not particularly book smart, but I could probably build a house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And um, you're teaching your kids not only are you building something for you, but you're also building something for your family as well, which is just priceless.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Yeah, I I you've absolutely hit the nail on the head. I keep banging on about this. You know, having been in education, um, one of the reasons, one of the many reasons I came out of it was it wasn't what it was when I first went in, and it's now very straight jacketed, um, you know, with a whole offstead, and you know, so many children have got to get, you know, past the pass mark and all that kind of stuff. And there doesn't seem to be any real freedom for creativity and going off and doing what your passion is. And I think we've got beyond this. You go to school, you get your exams, you have a career for 40 years, you then retire, and then you know, because so many people are cracking that trend, aren't they? Particularly, we, you know, the people that we work with, you know, I've I've got people that I work with who have done all sorts of things, a whole range of things, and they decide they don't want to do that anymore. You know, you know, don't want to do it.

unknown 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

And yeah, you're right, it's it's freedom to actually be with your children. But don't you find that there's there's a danger, isn't there, if you haven't got the business basics to find yourself falling into the trap of taking on the other order, taking on another order, taking on another order, and then you find that you know the the bakers find that they're working 24-7, yeah, they're so busy that they haven't got time to do the chill, the school run and all the things that they started their business for because they perhaps haven't got the business foundations that we teach, because that's what we teach, isn't it? Do you do you find that?

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Absolutely. So if you're not pricing properly, um, you're you're saying, as you say, I'll just do this cake. I don't want to do that cake, but I'll do it because it's a bit of money. But actually, when um so I work with um clients one-to-one that really want to um have a transformation of their business. And when we sit down and really look, I know you're big on figures as well, but when we really sit down to look at the figures and the margins and the profit, um, when people I've there's someone that I'm working with at the moment, and when we really looked at her profit margins, she was able to reduce the amount of cakes that she made up her prices, and she was saying people won't pay that. And I said, They will. And a month later, she's proven that it is working. So she said, I've got another order, and they pay the new price, and they didn't even question it. And it's all generally, we talked a little bit about mindset, didn't we, before we started um recording the podcast? But it's so mindset led if you think that somebody isn't going to pay it, if you don't believe in your value, then that comes out in your marketing, in your uh messaging, in your content, in in and then they don't trust you. So it's mindset led in trusting yourself first enough to charge properly, um, and not being the cheap cake maker, because nobody wants to be the cheap cake maker, do they?

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah. I I was saying, in fact, I was saying to my my bakers this morning, and I say to them all the time, that the mistake that a lot of home bakers make, particularly when they start, is they think that everyone's after the cheapest. That's really not the case. You know, if you think about, you know, when you and I I always um give the example of laying a patio. I've no idea why. So the first thing that comes to my head, if I wanted to lay a new patio in my garden, I would have no idea what that would cost, you know. Um, but I'd go and get quotes, and I would in amongst that I would see what their service levels are like, i.e., you know, whether how quickly they answer my emails, how nice they are talking to me, all that kind of stuff. But the chances that I would actually choose the cheapest, probably I probably wouldn't. I probably wouldn't. I probably, you know, choose out of three, I'd probably do either the middle or the top one because that they're probably service levels and yeah, reputation, and you know you're gonna get a good job and all that kind of stuff. Um, and that's that's quite a hard lesson to learn for a new baker, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 14:49

It really is because I think they think, you know, well, if I'm cheaper, then I'll get more customers, but actually, then you really struggle to get out of that cheap baker, and actually a lot of them will be just charging ingredients plus 10%, whatever. And actually, what that means is that they're losing money and they're paying people to take their cakes away, yeah. Um, which is such a painful lesson, but also one that's really hard to get out of. So charging properly from the beginning is really, really important.

SPEAKER_01 15:20

It really is, isn't it? I've come across bakers who said, Oh, things like, Oh, if I charged for my time, I'd never have any customers. And you think, oh no, let me help you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and and the whole, you know, you can't charge that in my area. I uh you know, I hear I used to have a big Facebook group and I've closed it now, but used to have that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

I thought you were gonna say it was called that. You can't charge that in my area. No, you could have though, couldn't you?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

But it it's true, people would people would really, really assume that they couldn't charge that in and I s and I used to say to them, what do you mean by in your area? Do you mean by your local community Facebook group? Because yes, you're probably right in that respect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I bet you, you know, I bet you 10p that within five miles of you there's someone who doesn't think of paying 300 quid for a handbag. Yeah. So it's it's all to do with the visibility. And you talked, you know, when you were telling us your background about having to be visible in the early 2000s, and and I think it's really important for for us to remember that that is important. I think too many people, don't you think, rely on social media, yes, and they don't see what's beyond that.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Yeah, absolutely. It there has to be a mixture of online and offline marketing, but like you, um, or probably like you, I see a lot of um uh BIOS accounts, one with a generic AI-made logo, which all look the same, same, same colour. They don't have a name even on their account. Um, so I don't know that you're called Annie. It's a faceless account. There's no picture of them, yeah. Very generic. It says cakes for all occasions. Now, yes, there is a lot of bakers out there, but you the way that you stand out is to be different than all of those. So invest in your branding, get really great branding, and you don't have to invest a lot of money. Show your face, like talk about why you love baking. Um, and I know that people are nervous about um showing up online, but you have to do it in in in this day. You have to people buy from people that they can see. Um, and I think that I I was doing a live last night about um visibility, and and lots of people know the word visibility, but what the nuts and bolts of that is is that you have to be out there and it's not just I'm gonna post three times a week and that's my visibility tick, not that bit, you know. Yeah, no, and we have to be like we have to be content creators, we have to be marketing managers, we have to be PR people, but that is just the business now, so you have to learn how to do all of those things. I'm a big believer in bringing in people around you to do the things that you're not good at, but you have to know how to do them and what's needed in your business.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Oh, absolutely. It's really important that the whole visibility thing, you know. I say if you're only online, you're a 2D business. Yeah. And if o people only ever see you in Facebook or on a Facebook group, you're 2D. You've got no substance to you really. But the minute they see you in the local paper or they see you talking at an event, they go, Oh, that's so-and-so who I saw. They're you know, they're really nice, they were really chatty, all that kind of stuff, and it joins up the dots for people, doesn't it? It it it makes your business 3D, 4D, whatever it is, how many D's it is. All the D. All of them, all of them, all the D's. But it does, it's it's true, isn't it? And of course, you are in fact. Did I not see today before we came on? Did I see you post something about a magazine that you were in? I think I did, didn't I?

SPEAKER_02 19:16

Tell us about this.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

So I um, you know, what you've got to think about in terms of PR. So I've been really lucky with my career that I've had a lot of PR. Um, a lot because I made the first anniversary cake for Charles and Camilla, darling, um, back in 2007, I think it was. But um, so what you have to get quite savvy is is knowing your story and being able to tell your story. Now, this um um magazine article is it's in Best Magazine and it's actually about manifestation. So I don't talk about manifestation that much because I think people think manifestation, woo-woo, hippie, all of those things are true. I'm a great hippie, I love woo-woo, but I am also a serious business person as well. So those two things exist. Um, but the uh the article is about how I manifested my husband, um, and um, but it also talks about business as well. So um you have to learn how to kind of be a bit more of a personality behind the brand as well. And especially for cake makers, I put a lot of my success in the two million pounds worth of cakes down to the fact that people um knew who I was in the local town. They were like, oh, it's the cake lady, it's chocolate Jenny. You know, I was I was called all these kind of names of you know, chocolate lady or cake lady or whatever, because I was known because I've got myself out there, I networked everywhere, I um got in the papers, I had a sharp eye, was on the radio, I was on the tele, you know, and and PR is really important. So learning what you want to open up about and what what your kind of hook is into your business, you know, you might have started your business because you um were made redundant from your old job, or you might have started because you're you've got a child that's got additional needs and they need you at home more, you know. What is it? And then talk about that, and that's what that came from.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Absolutely. You know, I talk about that all the time. You know, I've had a bit of PR and you know, been in pay papers similar to you, and and it is it's all about having a story. And I say to my bakers, you've all got a story because you've all started a business, and that is a story, and people want to read about that, don't they? People love to open up a magazine or look on you know their online paper, local paper, and see you know, business success, this, that, and the other. They they love that, and magazines love that too, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Yeah, it's inspirational, isn't it? Because if you're sitting there thinking you're in a job that you hate and you love making cakes, but you can't see how to transition and to be able to escape this job to get into doing something that you love doing and you see that somebody else has done it, you go, I'd love to do that. And then they they see it's possible for for them as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Absolutely. And that's the key, isn't it? It's it's seeing someone else do it and you think, well I could do that. Yeah. Why can't I do that? I can do that. Yeah, yeah. It really is, isn't it? It's really inspirational. Yeah. Um now the other thing I wanted to to chat, we sort of alluded to this before we started um, you know, the recording. What kind of things do you think are coming up for the industry that perhaps bakers need to watch out for or things that might be happening that might be causing headaches. Is there anything that's going on, Jenny?

SPEAKER_00 22:47

I know the answer but tell me we're talking about dot cakes and cake sheds. Well there's a few things and actually we we've got a meeting haven't we in the next few days we're putting together a um a top secret project that I can talk a little bit about um that is um trying to help the cake industry to shape for the best for the better and it'll be cake industry um suppliers to try and help cake um makers to be more successful. But you know cake sheds are a massive thing at the moment they've blown up massively they've been around actually for quite some time but they've only yeah they've only actually hit headlines a bit more recently because of the greedy councils um wanting to um and you know that there does have to be um there does have to be regulation we don't want people that haven't got you know hygiene in place that haven't got the the correct training they haven't got insurance absolutely but this is a reason why you can't just rely on one stream of income because you can make really good money from cake shares you absolutely can I've got clients making really good money but if the council are going to charge you a thousand pounds a year you have to decide is that worth it or is there another route so we should never just rely on only one thing because I think that leaves you too open to um outside changes outside of our business. And they will reach a point of saturation where it's a bit of a fad and you know you've got to look at other things. I always used to say in my cake business I have to it you have to innovate or die. That's that's innovate or close innovate or stop innovate or die. You have to keep innovating whilst also maintaining your key thread what is your key thread through your business I'm not saying make cupcakes one day dot cakes another day um you know Lambeth cakes another day fondant cakes another day like have your thread but within that what can you create that's a little bit different what can you how can you keep people's interest and I think cake sheds in a couple of years may have died out a little bit because the council are it's not just going to be one councils I think they'll probably all come into line there might be a couple that don't yeah yeah well they they've all apparently all councils have the the ability to charge some decide to and some decide not to so it's in the you know it's in the gift of the specific council whether they do decide to charge and in fact some of my bakers have got coaches and said oh I've contacted the council and they've said no we don't charge so phew but it's it's all to do with strategy isn't it you know I'm saying all the time you're you're quite right you've got to be a leader yeah you've got to be a leader and if you knee jerk react to what someone else is doing particularly Doris down the road you know Doris down the road is doing bro nuts.

SPEAKER_01 25:46

Do you remember bro nuts?

SPEAKER_00 25:48

They were they were short lived weren't they?

SPEAKER_01 25:51

It was going to be the cupcake and then oh so and so is doing that and making a few quid so I'm gonna buy all the moulds and I'm gonna do this that and the other and I'm gonna you know jump on that bandwagon.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

Well of course after a couple of months everyone's tired with bronuts yeah um so what's your next thing so it's got to be long term strategic what do I want for the year ahead yeah um it's got to be much more that hasn't it yeah rather than bandwagoning yeah yeah and I'd be really surprised I think if we chat in a year we'd go dot cakes what were they yeah yeah yeah well I mean everything's got trends I mean that's the way of the world isn't it that's how culture works you have your your trends your Lambeth cakes and your you know but that you know for weddings luckily there'll always be room for the classic white with the roses on you know there'll always be those the timeless ones um you know it it it is you're right it is worth looking at the strategy and thinking what can I do that's a bit different that Doris down the road isn't doing because I don't want to copy Doris yeah yeah it's right and I I want to be doing it first and doing it best yeah yeah exactly and being innovative and I think as creatives as well because I think most bakers get into this because they're creative and they love being creative and that's how our brain our brain kind of works on dopamine from being creative and creating new things. So if you're doing the same thing day in day out you know it gets a little bit boring doesn't it but actually what can and that's why most cake makers um will create new designs or like working with different people because one day they're doing a white fondant wedding cake and the next day they might be doing just looking at the cakes behind you they might be doing a sufflower or you know there's so many you can be open up yeah yeah yeah yeah be really creative which is great but it's it's also so important as we were talking about before about having you know your pricing structure because even thinking about this cake shed thing um you know bakers panic oh it's going to cost me a thousand pounds a year well actually if you break that down into what that's gonna be a week and you add that as an overhead to what you're charging actually it's doable it really is doable if you if you're selling the volume of cakes yeah um you might only have to add on like 50p a cake or something to cover the cost of that.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

So it's all to do isn't it with strategy and knowing your numbers and knowing how it all works.

SPEAKER_00 28:26

It's key isn't it Jenny it's it's absolutely key and we can't I don't think we can emphasize this enough you can make the most amazing cakes in the world but if you haven't got the business side of it you're on a wonky house I always talk about the foundations let's get the foundations right first let's get them stable and build from there rather than building a sand castle that will fall over anytime.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Absolutely but it's it's also a case isn't it of when you start up something like this I mean you've obviously been doing it for years and years and years and you you've had a a you know a really good foundation but you know perhaps someone like me who came in later starting with not a scooby-doo of how it all works and not realizing that actually if you start your wedding cake business by discounting things you're on a hiding to nothing aren't you you're you're going down a dead end doing that um oh I'm only charging this because I'm new well you know the customer doesn't care whether you're new or not they just want their finished item it beautiful so yeah you know yeah yeah so there's so it's it's it and it's not knowing what you don't know yeah um you know ideal client I had not a clue what that was first time I heard that I thought what's all that about I don't want to I don't want to I want to sell to everybody and it's not until you start knowing what these things are about yeah um when I joined lots of business groups and had lots of training from non-cakey people you know about all this you know the sales and the pricing and the ideal clients and everything because it really made a difference.

SPEAKER_00 30:01

I thought oh that's what that's about oh I get it now yeah yeah yeah the cake business can be a bit insular can't it it can be a little bit you know in a little bubble yes and everyone agrees with each other oh yes you can't charge that in our area either yeah and it's it's like they present it like it's the news like it's the 10 o'clock news and here is the information that I'm telling you but actually that's just your thought about it. So when you really delve into the money mindset part of it and you really look at your um self-limiting beliefs. And that's why so when I do the mentorship when I work one-on-one with clients I build an audit based around where they are in their business and no two bakers that I um mentor are the same. So the I tailor the program to them because some of them need more mindset help some of them need more financial planning help some of them need no more marketing help or branding so it really you know although we're all selling the same sort of thing at the end of the day your um what will make or break your business is you so you have to make sure that you learn what you need to know to make it successful. And don't give up before you get there because a lot of people are like I love doing this but it's exhausting and it shouldn't be exhausting. There'll be some days where you think it's exhausting but overall it shouldn't be it should be something that you love doing and that supports your life rather than takes over your life.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

Yeah yeah I mean I'm I'm often saying you know once it gets to be a chore and you start hating it that's when you step back and you go right what's going on here? Yeah what what um because something's not right if that's the case isn't it yeah something's something's come around the wheels have come off your cart somehow yeah go find the wheels yeah because it should be you know we should be running our business for our life not running our life because of our business yeah yeah that's the way round it should be and if we want to have you know eight o'clock or eight thirty and three o'clock for picking the kids up then we should be able to do that you know mine are grown up now so I you know I don't need to do that anymore but I do don't you miss those days though you know like when you're in them you think this is really hard work and then mine are now 19 and 22 and I'm like oh just light them back at five and uh eight just for a few hours mine are still cuddly though so that's great you've got girls haven't you I have yeah mine are boys so then oh I see oh yeah well that yeah yeah nothing don't want to say anything about that so so what do you we're gonna be coming to our end of our time now it's a shame because we could talk for hours couldn't we but what do you think you know for for people listening to this podcast what do you think are the main things that people need to be thinking about you know in the next year or so what what do you think the focuses should be for pink businesses I think that um let's let let's leave the learning okay so we've learned how to buttercream we've learned how to um decorate to a really high standard we've learned all of the wafer paper the trends the Lambeth this the that everything let's focus on actually learning the business side of it now because there's always going to be another skill that you could learn but let this skill be about how to sell how to manage your mindset how to market your business how to network how to um get on top of your branding how to post how to be visible all of the things that will actually grow your business rather than oh I just need to learn about how to make wafer paper flowers you don't you need to learn how to make money yeah absolutely because it's all about the profit the profitable baker that's I've even changed my name to make it really important you know because that's what it's about you know if you if you're not making money you've got a really expensive hobby haven't you? Yeah exactly what a segue Annie it's like you've done this before it's slick this operation is slick excellent oh it's been so lovely talking to you now if people want to get hold of you um and find you online and all that where can they find you Jenny?

SPEAKER_00 34:32

I mostly hang out on Instagram um love a bit of Instagram um so sweet underscore as underscore success and I um all about the pink hot pink so if you find a hot pink account is mine.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

What we'll do is I'll ask you to send me all the links and things and I'll put them in the show notes so everyone can can can um go in there. Jenny thank you so much for joining me today we did we talked about cake sheds and dot cakes and all sorts of things um it's just been so fabulous and um I know that we are going to be perhaps working on your top secret project as well. So I'm sure listeners you will find out what that's all about in due course whenever that happens. But um but yes thank you so much for joining me today Jenny Gilson thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:21

Oh thank you so much for having me Annie