The Rise (and Fall) of My Boutique Catering Company - PART THREE
It wasn’t one monumental blow-up where I clutched my pearls and thought, Oh my gato! Maven Oak has got her claws in me — deep. It was little things. Tiny sacrifices. Plans that got pushed. Trips that got postponed. Weekends that never quite belonged to me. Death by a thousand cuts.
It took years before I realized what was actually happening. Maven Oak’s claws weren’t malicious. They were just the price of admission — and I was reluctant to pony up.
There’s an old saying: If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans. In the small business world, it goes like this: If you want to be busy...book a vacation.
You can spend weeks sitting around picking your butt, waiting for someone to order one of your big, beautiful charcuterie platters.
Nothing.
Silence.
Crickets.
Then you finally say, “Well...I guess I’ll take a little trip,” and POW. The orders start rolling in.
I cannot explain why this happens, but it happened every. damn. time. (We all remember the fall of the European Summer Dream, right?)
Now you might be thinking, What a greedy SOB. Complaining about not having work and then complaining about having too much work.
Fair.
But that wasn’t actually what bothered me.
I genuinely love working. I just like to know when I’m going to be working. I’m a planner. I like making a plan, looking forward to the plan, executing the plan, and then enjoying the aftermath of the plan.
Clients who booked 8 months to a year in advance were GOLD! We can thank the wedding industry for creating this standard. I could check my calendar and know exactly what life looked like. How many staff would I need? Could I take another event that weekend? Should I maybe not book myself a spontaneous trip to the Faroe Islands???
But a huge percentage of my business wasn’t like that. People booked days before their event. Sometimes hours. Eventually I had to make a rule that no orders would be accepted within 72 hours because otherwise I would’ve spent my entire life running around like a chicken with my head cut off.
Looking back, there were probably better ways to solve this. Hiring sooner. Building better systems. We’ll get into all of that another day. Because that isn’t really what this newsletter is about.
This newsletter is about time. More specifically... who gets to own yours?
I didn’t realize it then, but every last-minute order was asking me the exact same question. Who gets to decide what I do this weekend? Me? Or whoever happened to email me in a desperate panic?
The first time I remember palpably feeling this was during year one of Maven Oak.
Thanksgiving was over, and my mom and I had our annual Southern Utah road trip planned. Wednesday night I got an email requesting a four-foot platter—the biggest platter I offered at the time. For the coming Saturday, meaning the Saturday in less than 3 days, meaning the same Saturday I was supposed to leave town.
GAH!
I asked my mom if we could push the trip back a day. She happily said yes. The platter was absolutely stunning. The trip still happened, and everything worked out just fine.
But it left a bad taste in my mouth. Bitter, tannic, and rancid.
It wasn’t about the platter. It wasn’t even about moving the trip. It was realizing how quickly I’d sold a weekend of my life for a dollar amount.
That thought lodged itself in the back of my brain: Am I ever going to be able to make plans again? (Hey there rat friend, you have been here all along.)
It sounds dramatic. It was dramatic. But it also turned out to be surprisingly accurate.
Because this became the pattern. I’d hesitate before making plans. I’d avoid booking trips during the fall because of weddings. Holidays became automatic work weekends. Christmas Eve was basically spoken for. There were many weekends where I wanted to go somewhere but thought, I should probably stay home...just in case.
Friends would ask if I wanted to do something, and my answer was almost always, “Maybe...” I waited for that 72-hour deadline to pass before committing, because saying yes to my own life always felt a little risky.
Sometimes the work came. Sometimes it didn’t.
That’s a dangerous way to live. Not because I don’t want to work. But because somewhere along the way, I wasn’t just waiting on orders — I was waiting on permission to prioritize my own life.
What is a girl with a wanderlust soul supposed to do when she accidentally builds a business that requires her to stay put?
I kept thinking this was just the price of entrepreneurship. It wasn’t. It was simply the price of this business. That distinction took me years to understand.
Then came Taylor Swift.
I was lucky enough to land tickets to the Eras Tour in Atlanta. The tickets had been purchased months before, and I had absolutely nothing booked that weekend. I was in the clear…right??
Then the inquiries started coming in. (But, of course, they did.)
Three large events. About $15,000 worth of cold, hard, cheese revenue. They trickled in over the weeks leading up to the trip, each one a little test. A teeny tiny voice in my head asked if I should cancel. The old me would have seriously considered it. The new me squashed that voice like an annoying gnat between my fingers and flicked it off my shoulder.
I had already made the decision. If I booked a trip, I was going. No exceptions.
Bye-bye, $15,000.
Did it sting? Absolutely. Would I make the same decision again? Without hesitation.
By then I finally understood what I was really protecting. It wasn’t the trip. It wasn’t even Taylor Swift (GASP). It was my ability to decide how my own life was spent, and that was worth more than any dollar amount.
Here’s the strange part. I could’ve hired a team. I could’ve built systems. I could’ve eventually stepped away from the day-to-day kitchen work of it all. Looking back, that probably sounds obvious. At the time it felt monumental and a step I was not willing to take.
Because I’d already learned something much bigger.
My ideal life and the reality of running a catering company were always going to be pulling in opposite directions. I wanted freedom over my calendar, and the business demanded that I surrender it.
Neither one is wrong. They’re just incompatible.
And that realization changed the way I think about work forever.
We’ve all been taught to ask the wrong question. What career should I have? What business should I start? What makes the most money?
I think the better question is: How do I want an ordinary Tuesday to feel?
Build your work around the life you want. Not the other way around.
Because if you don’t, one day you’ll wake up and realize someone else owns your time. And once someone else owns your time, they’re awfully close to owning your life.
Cheers,
Nicole | Butter Cult🧈
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