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We Started a Home Bakery

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I have a licensed commercial kitchen that we added to our home. I can’t tell you what an absolute blessing it has been. I am often asked just how we did that. For ten years I ran my home based catering company from home, and did it legally.

I wanted to stay at home with my kids, and investigated all sorts of ways to help generate income. One of the things I was pretty good at, was baking, and many friends suggested I start a business selling some of the great homemade baked goods I made regularly. After investigating the possibilities, I decided to give it a try.

I started my business working out of our churches kitchen. It was a true gift, however, proved to be a lot of work since I had to work in the middle of the night, clean the kitchen and be out by 7:00am in order to get the deliveries made for the corporate breakfast meetings that I baked for. I used that kitchen for about nine months, and then decided I needed my own space.

Okay, this is a long story!

Let’s face it, the story spans ten years, so it will take awhile to tell the whole story. I have decided to break it into bite size pieces, I will include a “To Do” list for you if this sounds like something that fits your dream. Rome was not built in a day, and neither are most successful businesses.

I am an impatient person, you may be too. I can’t stress enough that a fatal mistake too many small business owners make, is lack of complete planning.

I know you may need to start making money now, most of us do. You might not like what I am going to tell you, but realistically, if you are at the very beginning, you could be 2-3 years away from running a profitable business. Please don’t get discouraged right off the bat, if I can do it, chances are really good you can too!

Well, I don’t want to overwhelm you here, so I will end on this note. If you have not read a book in awhile, today is the first day of the rest of you life. The library, bookstores, Amazon, the internet, podcasts, online classes, audio books are about to become a BIG part of your life from now on.

The first thing on my suggested “TO DO” list is to go to the library and checkout “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. It is available on audio, you can listen while you work, drive, walk etc. If you would like to add this book to your personal library, below is a link to Amazon. I must tell you that using this link is a blessing to my family because it is an affiliate link, however there is no additional charge for you. If you prefer, you can simply go to Amazon and search for it by name.

I know that you probably are thinking, what does that have to do with baking.You are right, I don’t think he was known for his baking skills. He does however, provide a critical foundational piece to the success of any business, it is his recipe for success, in business and in life. Enjoy, I’ll talk to you soon.

Please leave a comment or question, I would love to get some great dialog going here as you embark on the path to your specialty baking , and hopefully starting your home bakery business. We can all help each other.

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Tip to Help WAHM’s & SAHM’s Find More Free Time

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How can I get more done?

As stay at home ,work at home moms, we all struggle with getting all the things we would like to do, done.We are all trying to find more time. I know I sure struggle with that, and it is often a topic I read about in the forums.

Of course, one of the suggestions is that you prioritize a list daily, and follow the list. That is great advice, and I should be more diligent about following that. Prioritizing is something that all of us NEED to do, otherwise we simply let so much time get wasted.

One of the things that I have on my priority list, is feeding my brain.I am pretty sure that most of us intend to do that, but where does a stay at home, work at home mom, find a block of time to actually read a book? I have struggled with that for a lot of years.Too bad we can’t simply buy more time.

As a matter of fact, I am embarrassed to admit that I pretty much let that goal slide for too many years. In the last couple of years however, I have learned from my kids the beauty of an ipod. I now listen to audio books and podcasts while I do other stuff.I listened to a great podcast this morning while I took my walk.

I have to tell you, that felt good to know that I was checking off two boxes at the same time. I felt energized from the walk, I learned a lot, and hopefully it burned off a few calories to boot! I guess you can teach and old dog new tricks after all.

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Be a Work at Home Mom And Help Others

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Don’t forget to fill out the survey after watching the video if this may be a good fit for you.

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I Am Admitting I Am Guilty

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Judges sentence: Change your attitude.

I don’t know about you, but as a stay at home mom I had felt like a second class citizen. I watched as others accomplish what seemed to be incredible things. I on the other hand spent my day caring for my children, keeping house, doing laundry, preparing meals, chauffeuring kids from place to place. I was so busy with what could be considered as mundane tasks that did not require brain power, that when I found myself in a group of professionals, I felt very inadequate indeed. In my mind, and in honesty maybe theirs as well, I was inept, delegated to the lowly duty of motherhood, while others were about the important work of running the world.

I now know that I was the biggest part of the problem. I grossly underestimated the value of my role in my family and in the world. I I really stunk at accepting compliments, because the things that others admired I didn’t see the tremendous value in.

You see, if you think about the person that had the most impact on your life, most of us would have to admit it was our mothers. Moms have the most influence over the future generations, and yet we don’t think that counts for a lot. Wow, when you think about it, that means that the world leaders of tomorrow are being shaped by us, just as all the world leaders since the beginning of time were hugely influenced by their mothers. Thinking of your job in that light, motherhood is a HUGE deal, and no mother should think that she doesn’t measure up to her professional counterparts.

I am here to tell you that we don’t need to redefine our roles as mothers with fancy terms like domestic engineers, because as we quietly do our work, we are in the process of determining the future of the world. [Read more…]

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Start My Own Business

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Delightful Aromas Awaken My Family

Homemade Goodness

I kept investigating everything I could find about making money from home, yet I could not find anything at the time that worked for me, and I ran into a lot of scams. I finally decided to start my own business doing breakfast catering for corporate business meetings. It grew and took on a life of it’s own, and the end result was very different from the original plan.

I learned a lot during those years. But as I began the journey toward how I could help others, one thing stood out to me. Many people have a need to generate immediate cash. Lots of business ideas are very valid, but they fall short of being able to generate immediate cash flow. If you can become profitable the first year, that is great, but that is not very immediate. I noticed that many people have that need for the immediate cash whether it is to help them pay off debt, make a necessary purchase, or build an emergency fund.

For so many years I had been helping youth groups raise money, and then one day a group that I was not familiar with asked me to help them, and wanted to know what I would charge them to make cinnamon rolls for them. We decided they would purchase them at a wholesale price and sell the at retail. A win win for both of us. That weekend I worked really hard, but the payoff was very nice indeed.

Much later I began to wonder if this could be the answer for other stay at home moms. My daughter offered to conduct the market research and approached a few churches offering to help them raise money they needed and she got a great response. She was able to generate a tidy profit for both parties. Requests for repeat sales started coming in, and we had the proof we were looking for and Dough Raising Mom was created.

We are putting the finishing touches on our new business that will teach stay at home moms or dads how to start and run their own business. In late May we will meet with our trusted advisers and make sure we have covered all the bases, and hopefully will start taking applications for our first class in June. Please check back for the latest news or join our mailing list so you can take advantage of this program in the near future.

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