Phoebe's Cupcake Treasures
May 2021
Overview
Being a young professional who is focused on my entrepreneurial career, I love learning about business and developing skills that will help me succeed in business. I figured that the best way to grow those skills is to start and run a business.
Combined with my hobby of baking, that is what leads me to Phoebe’s Cupcake Treasures, my home cupcake business. I've spent about two months working on this side hustle, and for the next 28 days, I'm pumped to be growing it!
Contents
This is a long landing page, so feel free to skip to the section you're most interested in!
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Here is a summary of the tasks I strive to complete for this project:
During the month, I’ll make changes to the list if I find that I need to do things differently.
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I’ll use this list as a guide to keep me on track, rather than as a strict to-do list.
Why I'm doing this project
I’m using this project as an opportunity to learn as much as I can about business.
More specifically, here are the things I’d like to gain by the end of the project:
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Develop entrepreneurial skills, such as;
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Managing business finances
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Analytical thinking and problem-solving
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Project management
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Time efficiency
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Gain proficiency in Google Sheets or Excel to organize data
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Gain proficiency with Instagram and Facebook content creation
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Have a strong portfolio piece I can show off to potential employers
Weekly project updates
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Week 1: Planning the launch of my cupcake business
Week 2: Researching into the nitty-gritty of social media marketing
Week 3: Establishing a bookkeeping system
Week 4: Efficiently managing finances and social media
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Deliverables
Here are the pieces of work I’m proud to have completed over the month!
Social media work
Visual branding guidelines
Social media copywriting
Operations & management work
Business bookkeeping spreadsheet - Google Sheets
NOTE: To protect private information about my business, most of the spreadsheet data has been removed from the files below.
Product cost spreadsheet
Graphic design work
Business card - designed on Canva
Cupcake packaging - designed on Canva
What I learned
I demonstrate the hard skills I learned during this project in the blog posts below.
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Another huge reward I gained from launching my business over the month are various soft skills, such as:​
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Project management
A huge challenge I faced during this project was that certain tasks took me longer to complete than anticipated. For example, I thought that establishing a bookkeeping system would be a breeze, in which all I had to do was fiddle with an accounting software. But boy was I wrong! What I thought would be a task I finish by week 2 turned out to take me a week longer.
I also couldn’t finish designing my cupcake packaging by the original deadline because of delays in communication between me and the manufacturer.
This caused me to be behind with some tasks during the project. However, this made me better at managing my time during the project when things didn’t go to plan.
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Overcoming perfectionism
I experienced a lot of resistance with posting business content on social media, due to my tendency of making everything ‘perfect’. I realized that my perfectionist mindset was increasing the time I spent on tasks, so I made an effort to scrap perfectionism and just push out more social content. Overcoming this resistance is an achievement I'm proud of as I became more efficient with posting and was less stressed.
What I could've done differently
Better utilize Asana to organize my project
I didn’t refer to my Asana project management page often during the month, because I just worked on what I felt like doing at the time. For next time, I'd like to create mini deadlines in Asana each week to avoid having to stay up late and cram certain tasks.
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Reach out for help more often
I was struggling with the finance system yet I refused to reach out for help. Whilst I was able to set up a system I'm really happy about by myself, I would've gotten it done faster if I asked for help.
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Took more photos and videos whilst I was baking for social media use
I found that I ran out of new content to post because I didn’t take more photos, especially behind-the-scenes.
Did I achieve my project goals?
Yes!
A major goal of this project was to develop entrepreneurial skills. Reflecting upon my deliverable accomplishments, it's safe to say that I definitely learned a thing or two about business!
I didn't end up doing some tasks I originally planned for, such as writing the sales SOP and analyzing business performance. This isn't a big deal and I ended up scrapping those tasks anyway because at this early stage of my business, I found that they were unnecessary. Instead, I prioritized social media marketing and learning about finances.
That’s a wrap!
The past month has been a crazy challenge for me, but equally a valuable learning experience. I’m super passionate about business, so I’m thrilled to have taken on this challenge as I’ve developed many entrepreneurial skills. Although this project only lasts for a month, it is definitely not the end of my business venture. As this cupcake business is a passion of mine, I’m going to keep working on it as a side hustle to grow it and learn more as I go.
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Thank you for following my journey over the past month!
Please do not hesitate to reach out to me if you’d like to have a chat about my business!
