Act Like the Booked Solid Cake Designer
Act Like the Successful Cake Designer You Want to Become
I want to share a concept that completely transformed my cake business in just a matter of weeks. It's something so powerful yet so simple that you might be surprised at how quickly it can shift your reality. So, what's this game-changing approach?
The Secret: Act Like the Cake Designer You Want to Become
I know exactly what it feels like to be in that frustrating place where you desperately want to grow your cake business, but:
The cake orders aren't coming in
Customers don't want to pay your prices
Clients aren't booking the wedding or celebration cakes you dream of designing
It's incredibly disheartening, and you find yourself caught in this endless cycle of wondering: "When is this going to change? Is my cake business always going to be like this? How can I make more money? How can I grow?"
Here's what I learned early in my cake business journey (thankfully!): You need to act like the person you want to become in your cake business.
Let me explain what I mean. Right now, there exists a version of you who has that dream cake business—booked solid for the wedding season, charging premium rates, creating the designs you love. That version of you is available right now, but there's a gap between where you are and where that version of you stands.
The only way to bridge that gap? Start acting like that successful cake designer today.
How to Embody Your Future Successful Self
When I realized this principle, I started asking myself some tough questions:
"How can I act like a cake business owner with a booked calendar when I'm barely booking any orders?"
This led me to examine several key areas:
1. Evaluate Your Marketing Strategy
I put my thinking cap on and asked: How can I increase my marketing so I'm actually getting out there and booking more wedding cakes? What can I do to expand my presence?
This meant looking at:
Networking opportunities
Word-of-mouth strategies
Paid advertising options
Overall marketing presence
When I started acting like a booked-solid cake designer, I approached my marketing with intentional consistency instead of sporadic efforts. I realized successful cake designers don't just wait for clients to find them—they strategically position themselves where their ideal clients are already looking and create a cohesive brand presence that speaks directly to their target market.
2. Honestly Assess Your Design Skills
I took a hard look at my cake designs and thought:
Are my designs truly special?
Am I as skilled as I think I am, or do I have room for improvement?
What can I do to become a better cake designer?
This honest self-assessment was uncomfortable but necessary. It pushed me to identify my strengths while acknowledging the specific areas where I needed to grow, allowing me to make targeted improvements that dramatically elevated the quality of my work.
3. Examine Your Business Practices
I scrutinized how I approached my cake business operations:
Was I leaving things to the last minute?
Was I being cheap with ingredients?
Were my purchases strategic, or was I wasting money on cute but unnecessary items like random sprinkles and cookie cutters?
Was I making empowered business decisions that actually benefited my growth?
This honest self-evaluation completely changed how I operate my business. I realized that successful cake designers aren't running around frantically at the last minute—they're organized and methodical. They invest in quality ingredients that elevate their products. They make intentional purchases that directly contribute to business growth.
Every decision they make comes from a place of empowerment and strategy, not impulse or scarcity. When I started operating my business this way, clients noticed the difference in quality, professionalism, and my own confidence level.
Need a Goal Setting Guide to help you reach your cake business goals this year? I got you! Click here to download my Free Cake Business Goal Setting Workbook Guide for you to smash and accomplish your goals this year. It’s free, and it’s located inside my Cake Business Library.
4. Invest in Your Education
I asked myself:
Am I taking classes to become a better business owner and cake designer?
Or am I fooling myself, thinking I can figure it all out alone and magically start making more money?
Let me tell you - this was a game-changer for me. When I started investing in my education and stopped trying to DIY everything, my skills improved dramatically and my business mindset shifted.
The successful cake designer you want to become is constantly learning, growing, and investing in themselves. They understand that every class, every workshop, every business book is not an expense - it's an investment in their dream business and their future success.
Create Your Personalized Success Blueprint
Here's what I want you to do: Make a list of the habits and actions that your ideal, successful cake designer self would be doing right now. Then commit to actually doing what's on that list.
Think about:
How they plan their week
How they interact with clients
How they price their work
How they present themselves online
How they manage their time
How they continue learning and improving
This blueprint is your roadmap to becoming the successful cake designer you envision. I've found that when you commit these habits to paper and review them daily, they gradually become second nature.
Your thoughts create your actions, your actions form your habits, and your habits ultimately shape your cake business reality. Remember, you're not pretending—you're practicing being the cake designer you're destined to become!
Still attracting budget cake customers in your cake business? Let’s change that around! Click here to download my FREE eBook: 10 Strategies to Become a High-End Wedding Cake Business. It’s located inside my Cake Business Library.
The Power of Portfolio Building
One of the most powerful strategies I discovered was this: If you don't have the cake orders right now, start pretending that you do! Work on portfolio (dummy) cakes as if they were actual orders.
This accomplishes several important things:
It gets you into the rhythm of working on multiple cakes weekly
It helps you practice managing a busy schedule
It builds your portfolio to showcase more work
It boosts your confidence
It demonstrates to the universe that you're serious about your business
Think about it—when you eventually have that booked-solid cake business, you're going to be busy! You'll have a lot to manage. That reality isn't going to appear overnight; you need to gradually work up to it. By creating portfolio pieces regularly, you're essentially training yourself for the success that's coming.
Plus, this practice shows potential clients that you're actively designing and creating, which can attract more orders. It's a wonderful upward spiral!
Success Doesn't Happen Overnight
Remember, you won't go from one cake to five cakes in a weekend without preparation. You have to practice getting there. If you don't have the orders yet, produce the work anyway so you can:
Showcase more designs for clients to choose from
Grow your confidence
Show the universe you're taking your business seriously
Act like the successful cake designer you're becoming
The beautiful thing about this approach is that it creates a positive feedback loop that accelerates your business growth. As you create more portfolio pieces, your skills improve naturally, making your work even more appealing to potential clients. And most importantly, you'll start to truly believe in yourself as that booked-solid cake designer, which radiates confidence that customers can feel from a mile away!
What's Your Next Step?
What's one thing you're going to do in your cake business today to act like the business owner you want to become? Is it creating a portfolio piece? Upgrading your photography? Networking with wedding planners? Taking a new class to improve your skills?
Whatever it is, commit to it now. This small step could be the beginning of a complete transformation in your cake business.
I hope this post has inspired you to start embodying the successful cake designer you want to become.
Remember, your dream cake business is possible—you just need to start acting like you already have it.
Make Vision Boards for your Cake Business
How to Keep Your Goals in Front of You: The Power of Vision Boards
Have you ever set goals but somehow... they just don't materialize? You're not alone. As human beings, we're naturally driven to accomplish things and better ourselves. But here's the catch - we're often not as focused on our goals as we think we are.
Why We Lose Focus
The truth is, we get comfortable with our current routines. We're so used to the way we're living and running our businesses that we forget to keep what we want in front of us daily. It's like wanting to go in a new direction but not actually moving that way!
If your goals aren't in front of you, you will forget about them. You'll inadvertently revert back to your current patterns, and months later, you'll wonder why nothing has changed even though you said you wanted something different.
Are you going to hit your Cake Business Goals this year? I’m here to help! Click here to download my Free Cake Business Goal Setting Workbook Guide for you to smash and accomplish your goals this year. It’s free and it’s located inside my Cake Business Library.
Enter Vision Boards
This is where vision boards come in, and they're what we're diving into today. If you haven't used a vision board for your business yet, I highly recommend taking the time to create one now.
The concept is simple but powerful: keep your visions and goals in front of you at all times so you can focus on and visualize what you want to create. The images you consistently see help align your reality with what you're trying to create.
My Personal Approach to Vision Boards
I create new vision boards whenever the mood strikes me or when I feel my current ones aren't working. I'll even move images around to give my eye something fresh to look at.
Personally, I prefer putting my vision boards on paper card stock rather than a traditional board. This makes them portable - I can move them to my refrigerator, bathroom mirror, or anywhere else I'll see them regularly.
When the same spot becomes too familiar and I stop noticing the board, I just relocate it!
For creating the boards, I don't waste time with the magazine-cutting method. I prefer to directly find images of exactly what I want, print them out, and arrange them on my cards.
Some things I've included on my boards:
The car I want to drive
What I want my income statement to look like
An engagement ring
The Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas
Flexibility goals for my body
Designer bags I want to purchase
Images representing romance and family
New York City (which is almost always on my boards!)
Strategic Placement is Key
I place these vision boards in various locations where I'll see them throughout my day:
By my desk
On my bathroom mirror (because we're always looking there!)
Where I wash dishes
On my refrigerator
In my dreams and desires book that I look at daily
They Really Work!
I've used vision boards to manifest incredible things in my business:
My first cake studio - once I put an image of the exact type of storefront I wanted and the blueprint of the place on my board, it manifested within about two months
Being on Food Network! I put their logo on my very first vision board back in 2010 before I was even a cake designer. While it took about 4-5 years to manifest, it happened exactly when I was aligned and ready for it
Trips to Las Vegas
Meeting Maggie Austin when her classes were sold out (I somehow got in!)
Another Powerful Technique: Daily Goal Writing
Besides vision boards, I have another habit that keeps my goals in focus: writing them down every single day in my goals and dreams book.
Each day, I open to a blank sheet of paper and write my current goals - whatever is top of mind for me. The interesting thing is that sometimes I don't write the same goals as the day before, which shows me what's truly important versus what just sounds nice.
I learned this strategy from Brian Tracy (the time management and personal development guru). It takes less than five minutes but makes a huge difference in keeping my priorities straight.
The key is not to cheat and look at what you wrote before. Write fresh each day to discover what's genuinely important to you. The more you focus on specific goals, the more likely you are to reach them, rather than having a hodgepodge of goals without real focus.
Have you access my FREE Cake Business Library? If not, why not?! You will receive access to several eBooks, Guides, Checklists, and Templates to help you grow your cake business, charge premium prices, and double your cake orders. Click here to access.
Make It a Conscious Decision
To transform your business and life, make it a conscious decision to keep your visions and goals in front of you daily. You're headed in the direction of the pictures and words you focus on every day.
When you align with new images and visions, your behaviors and actions naturally change. Your brain needs new things to focus on beyond what you've already created. If you want something new, you must be more obsessed with those new images than with your current results.
Keep It Fresh and Fun
Make this practice enjoyable! I like to:
Mix up my vision boards regularly
Find better, more stimulating images
Browse Instagram, Pinterest, or Google for exactly what I want
Keep a special book of visions
Celebrate the visions that have manifested
Update goals that have gotten stale with fresh images
The Science Behind Why This Works
You might be wondering, "Why does just looking at pictures make such a difference?" Well, there's actually some science behind this!
What we repeatedly see and focus on literally rewires our brain. It's called neuroplasticity. Our brains are constantly forming new neural pathways based on what we pay attention to. When you keep seeing that dream cake studio or that revenue goal every single day, your brain starts to accept it as normal, as something that belongs in your life.
I used to think things just happened coincidentally in my business. Now I understand that what I repeatedly tell myself and put in front of my face becomes what I actually replicate in my reality. It's not magic - it's focused intention combined with daily visual reinforcement.
How to Make Vision Boards Work for Your Cake Business
For those of you running cake businesses like me, let me share some specific ways I've used vision boards to grow:
Product Development: I've put images of cake styles I wanted to master on my vision board. Within months, I was creating those exact styles with confidence.
Client Attraction: Want to work with a certain type of client? Put images representing them on your board. I wanted more luxury wedding clients, so I included images of upscale venues and elegant wedding setups. Soon enough, those bookings started coming in.
Team Building: If you're looking to grow your team, include images that represent the work culture you want to create. This helped me attract the right people when I was ready to expand.
Physical Space: As I mentioned earlier, I manifested my cake studio this way. Be specific - include colors, layout, and the feeling you want your space to have.
When Vision Boards Don't Seem to Work
Let's be real for a minute. Sometimes you put something on your vision board and... crickets. Nothing happens. I've been there too!
If something's not manifesting, ask yourself:
Is this truly important to me, or do I just think it should be?
Am I taking aligned action toward this goal, or just hoping it appears?
Is the timing right, or do I need to develop other areas first?
Remember my Food Network example? It took years to manifest because I needed to develop the skills and business first. Some visions need foundation-building before they can become reality.
Make It a Daily Practice
The power really comes from consistency. Just creating a vision board and then sticking it in a closet won't do anything! Here's my daily routine:
First thing in the morning, I look at my vision board by my bed and take 30 seconds to imagine these things as if they're already mine.
Throughout the day, I catch glimpses of my strategically placed boards during natural transitions - making coffee, washing hands, checking the fridge.
Before bed, I write my goals in my dreams book, allowing myself to feel excited about them.
This whole process takes maybe 10-15 minutes of my day total, but the impact has been immeasurable in my cake business and personal life.
Commit to this practice throughout the entire year, and you'll be amazed at what changes. Some goals will manifest, others will reveal themselves as less important than you thought, and you'll continually refine your vision as you grow.
What goals are you keeping in front of you this year? Have you tried vision boards before?
I'd love to hear about your experiences in the comments below!