Friday, May 29, 2009

My First Big Gig!

I had my first BIG gig!!!

Well.. it turns out all my bake sale contributions have finally paid off. A woman at my church happened to come across a batch of my Cordially Cherry Happy Janes, and she was smitten. SO smitten, in fact, that she commissioned me to provide her with 25 DOZEN of them for a volunteer appreciation party she was charged with hosting.

(insert big huge smiling Carrie here!)

This project was a true exercise in time management, as well as a chance to create invoices and receipts for my budding business. I'm PROUD to say that the creation of and delivery of this job was done seamlessly. like.. I was done before 9pm the night before seamlessly. (I KNOW!! awesome, right??)


signed, sealed, and delivered!

In hindsight-- I COMPLETELY undercharged this order. I have no shame in saying that because it WAS an event for church, and it WAS my first big order. But yeah... The church got a GREAT deal on these... I probably averaged about $4/hour BEFORE my costs were taken out... MAYBE 25 cents/hour profit.

but that's GOOD. all part of the lessons learned!

In addition to those things, I feel I have a better understanding of ground rules and expectations when it will come to ordering and payment. I was a little bummed that it took about a week AFTER the event to be paid for the work, and when I was, the check was made out to A Taste of Stepford. (which meant I was unable to CASH the check because at the time I did not have an account set up under the fictitious name of Stepford)

But everything is a step forward in this journey. I do find it slightly meaningful that it was an order from church that forced me in the direction of above-board business practices such as proper account naming and licencing... but that's just me.

The bottom line is that I accomplished my biggest order to date with timeliness, style, and a great product.

and I got PAID.

Whe-hoo!

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