We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sierra Horsey a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sierra, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I’m currently asking myself this. I’m really struggling as a business owner and I can’t tell if I’m keeping this because I’m afraid of failing and what people will think of me for giving up or if I’m keeping this because I want it to work and think it’s the best course of action. When I created Song & Sugar Sweets, I had a full time job and no intention of turning it into a full scale home business, I just wanted to legitimize myself as I couldn’t afford to bake as a hobby. I thought that if I was going to charge what a cake was actually worth, I should do so in a legal manner. But there’s also an increased level of trust and professionalism that came with the cost. Now, 2 years later, I’ve moved to a part time job as I could not keep up with both careers, but I still struggle with balance. I also think I struggle working from home in that I have a very hard time separating work and leisure time. Whenever I want to have a lazy day, I feel guilty because 30 steps away in my kitchen, there’s always dishes to do or boxes to unpack. So instead of having a relaxing day to recharge and feel refreshed, I feel stress and anxiety. Then the next day I feel just as tired. It’s a vicious cycle that is hard to break, and it leads to burnout very quickly. I also feel like my kitchen is no longer my personal space and is just for business, so I no longer use it for personal things like cooking dinner. I survived mostly on takeout and leftovers from my job for the last year and a half. I’m not really eating well, which gives me even less energy, which just adds to the stress and anxiety cycle.
I’m slowly making steps for change. This summer I took a break, cutting my workload in half and prioritizing self care and rest. I started making small dinners again, and every once in a while making something from scratch. I am working to center my orders around the weekend so I don’t have to bake all week long. I’m participating in fewer markets. They take a huge amount of my time and I don’t see a return monetarily or with return customers. I’m focusing less on creating content and more on enjoying the baking and decorating process. I’m also looking into hiring help to take some of my projects off my plate. Even though I want to see immediate results, I realize that it’s a slow process. I know eventually I’ll find the right balance. Once I reach it, I hope I’ll be better able to determine if having a bakery is really the right step for me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My name is Sierra and I’m the owner and founder of Song & Sugar Sweets, a home based bakery that focuses on custom cakes, cupcakes and cookies using high quality, fairly traded ingredients. I have a degree in environmental science and spent the majority of my life learning about wildlife, the habitats they live in, and what we can do to be more environmentally friendly. However, as I did more and more research I learned more about the agriculture industry and how destructive and unfair it can be. On average, the global farmer is asked to live off of $2 a day. Women produce 60-80% of the world’s food but have less access to land, credit, training, equipment, on top of receiving lower wages. There are also certain industries that rely on child labor, often kidnapping them and forcing them to work on farms for no or extremely low wages. I know I can’t change everything about the agriculture industry, but I knew that when I made my business, I wanted to use my money to support farmers as best as I could. In order to support farmers and laborers of the agriculture industry, I decided to purchase from companies that are FairTrade certified or have similar (or stricter) guidelines for their products. FairTrade is an organization that works to increase fairness in the farming community. First, all fair trade crops are certified organic, meaning farmers can charge a premium for their crops. There is an additional FairTrade premium that is redistributed back into the farming communities to use for their needs (schools, medical facilities, and increased farming equipment, etc.). Also in accordance with FairTrade, workers must have fair contracts, safety equipment, and living wages. In short, FairTrade ensures that corporations are unable to exploit farmers for their own interests.
So when people purchase from me, they aren’t just purchasing a delicious dessert, they are also directly supporting farmers rights and small changes in the labor market to be more fair. I firmly believe that we can’t just wish for a better society, we have to fight for it, and there are multiple ways to do so. Not everyone has to attend marches and protests to make a difference. Choosing who you purchase from, and ensuring their labor practices and values align with your own is a great way to advocate for change. Educating people about what you believe in and providing actionable steps for people to take is another great way to make a difference. So with my bakery, I’m hoping I make a small difference with those around me.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I’m currently working on unlearning self doubt. I’ve always had an incredibly negative self view. If the things I did weren’t both useful and perfect, I felt worthless. From an early age I was a huge people pleaser who deemed my worth from what others thought of me. It’s an incredibly frustrating and difficult opinion to unlearn. Anytime people offer praise or positive feedback, I don’t believe them.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

There is also a lot of unseen labor that goes into creating, which influences the price more than the ingredients and materials needed to create your order. It feels like people expect food to be cheap because ingredients can be cheap, but they don’t account for all the additional labor that we do behind the scenes. As a baker I don’t just bake, I’m a marketing manager and content creator, I’m the bookkeeper, the secretary, the cleaner, the delivery driver, the baker and decorator, and I staff my own tables at markets and fairs. These jobs add so many unseen hours, that paying myself for all of these hours would price my desserts miles above what was reasonable for my skill level. As much as I want to preach about doing the math and including all my charges in the total price, I’m not quite sold that there’s a market for $15 cake slices and $10 cupcakes.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shop.castiron.me/song-and-sugar-sweets
• Instagram: instagram.com/songandsugarsweets
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/songandsugarsweets
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/song-and-sugar-sweets-tucson-2
• Other: TikTik: @songandsugarsweets