Business Baby

I love the quiet that comes after major holidays. There’s a forced vacation from the fast pace of pie making, the only kind of break I can take during these early years of growing a small business. 

Presente.

During these periods, the flour clouds clear and I give myself permission to dream a little. New pie flavors, creative marketing plans, ideas for pop-ups and collaborations. I work on aspects of the business that feel like a luxury: a logo redesign, organizing the butter-stained recipes that are unbound in the green binder, reading the fine print the credit card processor has sent. This does not sound like a vacation, I realize, but when you spend much of the year juggling multiple roles (founder, baker, marketer, manager, etc.), getting through the to-do list in the wake of a busy holiday season can feel…relaxing. 

The truth is there are no vacations in the early stages of starting a business. Maybe you sleep in one morning or make it to an extra yoga class or two. Maybe you finally say yes to a friend’s invitation. Or maybe you strip the holiday down to its essence and find that it’s the best way to celebrate. But you are always thinking about your business baby.

I often say that running a small business is like parenting. The demands, the sleep deprivation, the worry and frustration. The fear that you’re getting it wrong. The punishing self-talk when you do get it wrong. And of course there’s also infinite and unfettered joy, laughter, and love. It’s all there. 

This Christmas Eve, my teenage sons and I ate fajitas on paper plates in front of our three-foot Christmas tree in the bay window. After dinner, we played Mario Bros. on the new Switch for hours. It was the best Christmas of my life.

What I’m learning is that there are ways to harness the chaos. To breathe through a busy season of catering and custom orders. To cultivate calm during the demanding logistics of pie production and pop-ups. I don’t need to plan a big holiday spread for my family after making hundreds of pies in the span of a few weeks. I just need to be here, present to the real gifts of the season.