It’s very hard to admit defeat. As a self-proclaimed perfectionista even the thought of failing throws me into fits and you’ll find me in the closet clutching my  knees to my chest and pretending my bubble didn’t just burst. And that’s exactly where I thought I’d be right now, but somehow it has eluded me – the closet, not the failure.

Many of you are aware of how last year I started my own cupcake catering company, Le Petit Cupcakery. It’s cute and adorable and I had found passion! I had found something I loved doing and could make money off of it! The company started as a small at-home web-based company, my only advertising was my website and networking with wedding planners and their clients. Business started getting good.

I was in Toronto, it was summer and I was doing large cupcake orders almost weekly, smaller ones every week. My friends even started paying for my services, which was a huge deal to me since I was always bringing samples to their parties for free. I started looking at cupcake blogs and baking blogs and found that other people started off selling their goods at home too! I was inspired!

And this cupcake baking was fun! I experimented with flavours, fillings, frostings – I tested, tested, tested! I ate, I fed, I donated – and everyone around me loved it. For once I felt like I could actually do something right, MYSELF. No one else was the boss of me, I was my own boss and I had the loving support of my boyfriend and my family.

Upon our impending move to Vancouver, I almost begged a friend to take over the cupcakery in Toronto, so I could have two locations – but people have their own lives, and really, it was an at-home business. It wasn’t a shop that someone can come in and run perfectly, it was tried and tested and re-tested to perfection, but it was all in my head. I didn’t have the time to train anyone else, even the eager ones, so I just settled with closing up shop in Toronto.

I know in the back of my head that I could’ve made it happen somehow, remaining open in Toronto, having two locations country-wide – but I just didn’t want to. Too much work and effort – and I was going to use all of that up in Vancouver attempting to re-open and find a new clientele in a place I’ve never been before.

A little history on the cupcake scene in Toronto – it is pretty huge and awesome. There are about 10 or so big bakeries, all independently owned. Every shop is different, every cupcake is different and every person you know might prefer a different cupcake shop than you. Competition-wise it was pretty great because everyone offered something different.

In Vancouver, it’s not like this at all. There are two main cupcake offerings you’ll find in Vancouver – one simply called Cupcakes, the other Big City Cupcakes. Cupcakes has 5 locations citywide, BCC has 9, scattered throughout the Greater Vancouver Area. This was big time. Now that’s a little daunting.

I had always dreamed of opening up my own shop, but realised that without proper money backing up and proper contracts to back me up, I wasn’t going to make a lot of money.

Little cupcake & cake shops make the majority of their money on corporate contracts and weddings. Walk-in clientele obviously accounts for some of the money, but when you add up how many $3 cupcakes you have to sell to pay the lease, it gets scary. I always knew I’d have to network myself to huge companies and try to get all the weddings to go through my little company, but sometimes I’d look at it and not know where to begin.

So I settled with being an at-home cupcake baker, at least for the time being.

After arriving in Vancouver, I received an email to join a bakers market – a place where all different kinds of independent & at-home bakers and food creators came to sell their goods. Amazing! I was so excited and I baked up over 200 cupcakes for my first market! I had planned on selling my cupcakes for $2.75 & $3.25, but when I got there I realised there was another person who sold cupcakes. For the cheap price of $2.00. I dropped my price to $2.25 but it still felt so sucky.

It sucks when you know you’re not making money. You’re barely breaking even. But you tell yourself it’s to get your name out there, it’s to talk to people, let them have a taste and all that. Week after week I went to the market, but because of poor advertising and bad location, less and less people showed up every week, meaning less profit and more feelings of wasting my Saturdays doing almost nothing.

I met a lot of great people there though, and it was definitely fun, if not very productive. I saw all the amazing things people were baking and making – truffles and specialty chocolates, bundt cakes, marshmallows – everything homemade and special with cute packaging and branding. And then I started looking at my cupcakes, and, you guessed it, I stopped believing in my product.

You see, to sell something you really need to believe in it, if there’s even a flicker of doubt in your eyes or your voice people will know that you don’t believe in  your cupcake wholeheartedly. When you drop your price by over a dollar, that’s your first sign. I was selling a product that didn’t wrap up well, wasn’t in cute packaging, didn’t last for more than a few days, and I started to feel defeated.

I ended up not going back to the market after a few more weekends. I started feeling like it was the wrong place for me, I mean, how many sweets can people buy on a Saturday morning? I started looking for other markets to go to, other places to sell my cupcakes, but my search didn’t go very far, my heart wasn’t in it. And then I discovered another cupcake baker, an amazing one, who works from home and has a huge following and does like really outstanding designs – and then I start to feel more defeated.

I still had hope for my business though, but no real plan, no written down goals – just that I wanted to make it. I started getting orders again, and it was great – more weddings and birthdays and cakes to make – but it started to feel like a chore.

I think the general consensus when choosing to do something you love as a carrer is that it won’t feel like a real job. And that’s really why you choose to ‘do something you love’ – you think it will be easy and fun and profitable. When it started to feel like a job, I felt backed up into a corner, I felt like I had lied to myself – I didn’t want a real job, I wanted to have fun and make money and make people happy – not this!

I started reading about jobs and self-fulfillment and bad career choices. And then I thought a lot. A whole lot.

When I think I internalize everything. I kind of shut down and stop listening to people’s advice and just am silent for a while – and this is mainly because my head won’t stop talking, it just talks, talks, talks, pointing out what could happen if I do this, and where this will go, and what I’d have to do for this… and I don’t really feel too crazy but I can’t get my words out properly.

So I made the decision to shut down Le Petit Cupcakery.

I called my remaining clients.

I cancelled contracts.

I wrote emails and made phone calls.

And a huge wave of relief washed over me.

I finally figured it out, after twenty-six years of living, of trying to run from responsibilities and maturity and just trying to have fun all the time without really knowing what I was doing.

Instead of doing something I love, I should find something I love doing.

Find something you’re good at and love that.

I’m starting to feel grown-up, and I always feared being old, being an adult, actually feeling like a grown-up. But I don’t, not at all. Instead, I feel more balanced and happy and just realising that there actually is more to life than just wanting to go out and party and waste money and accomplish nothing.

I want to accomplish something.

Through failure I’ve discovered a lot about myself. Things you fear are actually good for you – all of it. Afraid of having kids, afraid of quitting jobs, afraid of shutting down something you built up – it’s all for something.

I even feared writing this post.

But I’m definitely glad I did it.

xoxo

Fab Brunette