In this episode of The Bread Winner Podcast, Caroline kicks off a three-part series on navigating Q4, the busiest time of the year for sourdough microbakery owners. In part one, she dives into the importance of proactive schedule planning, offering strategies like time blocking, preparing for peak baking weeks, and ensuring that you make room for family and rest amidst the holiday rush. Caroline shares lessons from her own experience, emphasizing how thoughtful planning can help prevent burnout and allow bakers to enjoy the season without feeling overwhelmed.

Tune in to hear how you can optimize your calendar, balance your commitments, and build a schedule that works for your business and your lifestyle. If you're gearing up for Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other seasonal events, this episode will help you stay ahead and savor the season without sacrificing your sanity or success. Plus, Caroline is offering one-on-one coaching opportunities to help you refine your holiday strategy—details are in the show notes!

Download the free printable planning pages: https://www.carolinebower.com/planner

Book a 1:1 Call with Caroline: https://calendar.app.google/DMTtsD62F56K247s7

Download the FREE Guide and Checklist, Your First Steps to a Successful In-Home Bakery at https://www.carolinebower.com/checklist to begin building YOUR thriving microbakery! 

Caroline Bower Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinebower_sourdough

Mentioned in this episode:

Try Sunrise Flour Mill Organic Heritage Flour

My kids have been DEVOURING the banana bread that I've been making with the Heritage White Flour, and my customers are so excited about the 50/50 Whole Wheat Heritage that I've added to my menu using the Heritage Whole Wheat Flour!

20% off Sunrise Flour Mill

Episode 25

Welcome to the Breadwinner Podcast. This is the show for sourdough micro bakery owners who are building a sustainable, successful, profitable business from their home. If you are already in business or if you're dreaming of starting one, this is the place for you. I'm your host, Caroline Bower. I own a successful in home sourdough bakery, and I am here to share everything I've learned that works and that doesn't, plus everything that I'm researching along the way so we can build thriving businesses together.

This is going to be a three part episode series focusing on. Quarter four, the fourth quarter of the year. And this first episode, we're specifically talking about planning our schedule. The next two episodes, we're going to talk about planning our menu and planning events to participate [00:02:00] in.

But we're going to go ahead and kick off this series by talking about how to best set up our schedule during the season.

So we'll talk time blocking, anticipating the busiest bake weeks. And we're definitely going to talk about how to save time for family for rest and savoring the season. As always we are. Burnout here at The Bread Winner Podcast. So let's make sure that we are planning. Not just for productivity, but also. Four. Quality beautiful. Traditions and experiences in this season of the year.

All right. We are going to jump into the episode here and start by. Talking about why it is so essential to plan ahead [00:04:00] for the fourth quarter of the year. I'm going to be calling it Q4. It's kind of industry lingo a little bit, but when I say Q4, I'm talking about the last three months of the year, the fourth quarter.

So October, November, December. So for most of us, this is one of the busiest seasons of the year.

So we'll have bake weeks that are packed with holiday orders, thanksgiving type orders, uh, seasonal events like Christmas teacher gifts. Hostess gifts. So many opportunities are present in this fourth quarter of the year, and they can be really easy to get caught up in what to say yes to everything, because it's really exciting and you get to bake delicious flavors and make people happy.

So it's easy to get overwhelmed and to lose track of what's important and take on more than you maybe should say yes to. And ultimately end up burnt out exhausted and not having enough time for what's most important in life.

I got it all done, but it was kind of chaotic. And I definitely came off of Thanksgiving feeling more than a little bit burnt out. And that meant that when I rolled into December, I didn't have any energy left to say yes to any of their opportunities in December. I had a very, very limited holiday menu. And I didn't maximize the opportunities. Now I had a lot going on and I feel good about what I said yes to. But I know that if I had made a better plan to, um, balance out both Thanksgiving and Christmas. I probably would have come out of the season, feeling less exhausted and burnt [00:06:00] out.

So that experience certainly taught me a lot. And I'll be approaching this holiday season. Much more intentionally. I am already planning my November, my December menus and. Considering what I can prepare ahead of time. What else say yes to. I have raised prices on certain things already. And so I am just going to make sure that I am saying yes to the right things and also saying no to the right things.

And I want to help, equip you to do the same thing, whether this is your first holiday season in business, or whether you've done it more than once.

So to set yourself up for success now is the time to look at your calendar. And start blocking space off already.

So consider what you want to prioritize, reflect on how you felt at the end of the season last year. if you were exhausted, if you managed your time, well, if you haven't gone through a holiday season baking yet before, definitely listened to my previous episode, episode 24. Where I give you a bunch of questions to reflect on how you want to approach the holiday season, but definitely think about how you want to feel at the end of the season.

This is, has not been a strength of mine, historically. Scheduling. I tend to thrive under pressure and a deadline motivates me more than anything else. And so that's okay. We can work with that, but also that's an exhausting way to live if you're doing that all the time. And so I've been growing the muscle of blocking my time out and utilizing my time more strategically, more thoughtfully intentionally.

So that. I'm not always just running on adrenaline at the last minute, because that is not sustainable.

So I suggest going into your calendar, whether it's Google calendar, whatever calendar you use, maybe it's pen and paper. And start by marking off your bake days. So look at your non-negotiables. I look at your events that you have scheduled. And again, we'll be talking about that. In an upcoming episode in this Q4 series. But block off your days ahead of time.

So this might look like for my big markets, I bake all day, Friday for a Saturday event. Which means that my dough days are Wednesday and Thursday.

I can get all the dough done in just one day if I need to, but that's a very exhausting day. So I find that if I spread it out between two days,

If you need a daily or a weekly planner, I do have free printable planning pages.

I will put them in the show notes. I designed these myself with a baker schedule in mind. So a lot of times when you have an hourly time block schedule, it doesn't start. Until 6:00 AM. And most of us has Baker's start. Our days are big days, especially earlier than that. So the free printable pages that are down in the show notes start at 4:00 AM.

To give you. Space to block off your baking, your dough prep, your. Packaging, even your admin tasks, you were going to get all of those kind of planned out ahead of time.

That actually have a hard and fast deadline and things like posting on social media. Responding to an email or a text those fall by the wayside. And so scheduling in an intentional block of 30 minutes where you just know that's your time to sit down, maybe with your cup of coffee and check in on social media, check in on your. Customer contacts, whatever you need to do, whether that's check in on your bookkeeping. Have that scheduled into your calendar proactively so that you just know that is part of your day.

If you know that this is intentional time, that you are required to rest during this time, rather than like trying to sneak in some rest, when you have. Baking tasks piling up and you maybe feel a little bit of guilt sitting down when you have other things that you at the back of your mind know you could be doing.

One thing to keep in mind when you're making your plan is to be realistic about how much you can handle in a day. My business coach told me always schedule in 50% more time than you think a task will take.

Sometimes I have a habit of just sort of rolling from one thing to the next and sort of.

Flying by the seat of my pants. Which leads to this constant feeling of. Being just one step. Behind which is not again, not sustainable, not a good way to live, not healthy. And that is a recipe for burnout. So all of these strategies are burnout, proofing your business so that you love it and it serves you well.

And doesn't deplete you or your household.

So when those weeks come.

It's all about efficiency and prepping ahead of time. So to get ahead, think about things that you can prepare in advance, whether that's getting all of your labels printed the week before, or making sure a couple of weeks ahead of time that you have the ingredients that you need or, a grocery order scheduled.

That you have marketing materials printed.

If needed. Have you ordered enough business cards? Do you have bags for customer orders? Think ahead about all those things that you might need so that you're not scrambling at the last minute to place an overnight Amazon order.

So if you can prep ahead, some of those items. That don't need to be mixed up during your bake week. And then you just bake them for the orders. That's going to help take a lot of your plate and help streamline your processes. And maybe allow you to increase your capacity.

Another way to get ahead or to streamline these really busy weeks is to batch your tasks.

Again, we're going to explore a whole bunch of those really cool options for freezing ahead of time in an upcoming episode. But that's an idea to get your wheels turning.

Lately I have been. Multiplying my scones recipe by six, every time I mix it up. So I may offer.

I have that ready in the freezer. And don't have to scramble to mix it up.

So anything that you can think about batching. , I love to batch labeling my bags. So I will just put a logo sticker on a ton of my brown paper bags for the markets all at once. So that it's done for a couple of weeks. And I don't have to think about it every single week.

Another thing you can do to help ease the pressure during these busy weeks is to help. Is to streamline your communications.

If you want them to email you, if you want them to send you a Facebook message, let them know how to contact you and how quickly to expect a response from you.

If you have not already set up an ordering platform, something like the simply bread app. Or hot plate. Definitely do that before the holiday season. So you're not trying to manage your orders through just taking messages or DMS or texts or a Google spreadsheet.

Make life easier on yourself by using a platform that is designed to take the orders, to process the payment. And then it's just easier to fulfill the orders to when you have it all on one page.

The next thing you can do is delegate.

If at all possible, get some help. I did not do this last year and it would have made such a difference. This could be a family members helping with packaging or hiring seasonal help. Maybe just hire someone to come in a few hours a week during this busy season to help with dishes and labels.

I very recently hired an assistant myself and I can already tell that this is one of the best decisions that I've made for my business. I am so excited to have a second set of hands for this busy holiday season and just moving forward. So she helps me with things with like dishes, with packaging, with pre-measured ingredients. She helps scoop cookies. Uh, pretty much anything that I asked her to do. I still do the mixing of the dough and the hand, the bread process itself.

All right. The next thing to talk about is certainly just as important as the baking task. And we've already touched on [00:21:00] this. And that is rest. I feel a little bit like a broken record, but this is one of the core themes of The Bread Winner Podcasts here.

I am huge on rest. We cannot grow a thriving business. If we are not taking care of ourself.

So Q4 is about making beautiful, delicious baked goods. That will be a part of the memories for your customers, but it is also about savoring memories, traditions moments with your family in this holiday season, too. So schedule time to be present with them, whether it's a family, a weekly family night or game night, attending your kids' holiday events or carving out time for a movie night, we always do a lot of holiday movie nights and that's always a really core special part of our holiday season.

If you're feeling stretched thin. It's okay to say no to some opportunities. Or to cut off your ordering a little bit sooner, limit your inventory, availability, your business should serve your life. Not the other way around. So this is your reminder to give yourself grace. And give yourself permission to prioritize.

What's really, really important. At the end of the day. I hope that I look back on this season of my life and remember the family traditions that we embraced, the moments that we had together, the. The food that we savored together. And the memories that my kids created. And not the money that I made selling bread.

So on the topic of rest, the final suggestion is to take a rest week at some point in this season.

Even if it's just a few days, give yourself that intentional break to help prevent burnout. I have already scheduled in a rest week for the last week of October, I added it to my October calendar for my customers. So they know they can plan accordingly and they can order extra the week before if they need to and stick it in the freezer. But I'm not blindsiding them with a week where I'm just suddenly not available. I'm giving them four weeks notice. But I'm going to take that time before November hits. [00:24:00] And before everything gets really crazy to sort of center myself. Take a rest, maybe take myself to a coffee shop and just read a book for a day or something. , But that pre-holiday rest week is going to be really important to set myself up feeling rested and recharged.

And then you can consider taking a week off between Christmas and new year's as well. That's generally a really slow week anyway.

And it could be a good time to just unplug recharge and savor family time.

All right. As we head into Q4. I hope these tips help you to not only plan for a busy and successful season. But also for a season where you can feel present, rested and connected.

So if you haven't yet grab a pen and a calendar, download the planning pages down in the show notes and start mapping out your weeks.

Trust me, planning now will save you so much stress later.

If this episode was helpful, if it got your wheels turning, if it inspired you, if you're feeling really encouraged and optimistic about Q4, I would love to hear about it.

Screenshot this show, tag me on Instagram. I'm carolinebower_sourdough. I want to support you. I would love when we can all connect when I can reshare those and we can see where we're all listening from. If you haven't already followed the show, make sure you're doing that. So you don't miss an episode.