Episode 306: Zee Scott
In this episode, Fiona chats with Zee Scott, a multi-talented business owner who is a marriage celebrant, MC, and creator of delicious cakes, desserts, and catering. Fiona discusses with Zee how she manages to run a successful business with multiple different services and how she practically gets it done, offering tips and ideas for listeners who want to do the same. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
About Zee's brand
Zee's background in the arts and baking, and how she started her business
Starting a baking business in Australia after facing unemployment
Challenges faced in moving to London
Importance of taking opportunities and putting your goals out into the world
Juggling multiple physical businesses
The importance of taking a break
Adapting to changes in routine after having children.
Personal baking philosophy of keeping things traditional and basic.
The importance of understanding origins and having a starting point.
The idea of not adding too many things to a recipe and sticking to classic flavours.
The fear mentality around making mistakes and the importance of building good relationships with clients.
How to connect with Zee
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
“I'm going to advise anyone. Work out in the day when your most productive time is and then plan everything around that. As soon as I get up at 2:30, I chug a glass of water, I have a coffee, and then I look at what I've got on my baking sheets. I have all my baking schedules on the wall so I know what I need to bake and what I need to decorate. I get started, I have headphones in, I have movies on, and I live in my world.”
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Welcome to episode 306 of the My Daily Business Podcast. This interview is one of my favourites that I've done to date, probably because the person that I've interviewed is somebody I find wonderful, positive, upbeat, talented, and creative at what they do. It was my absolute pleasure to ask them on the podcast. Before we get stuck into that, I want to remind you that if you're looking for any course whether it's how to start a podcast, how to figure out your money, how to get published, or how to market your small business. You'll find a variety of courses, and at different prices as well, there are always affordable options for people, over at MyDailyBusiness.com/shop.
You'll also be able to find a whole bunch of other things that we sell. If you're looking for help, please go and check that out. You can always get in touch with us as well and the best option is email, Hello@MyDailyBusiness.com. The other thing I want to do is to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of where I am recording this and where I get to meet these amazing guests and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. Let's get into this interview episode.
It is my absolute pleasure to bring you an interview that I did with Zee Scott. For those who don't know, Zee is a marriage celebrant, an MC, and the queen of creating beautiful cakes, desserts, delectable things, and catering. I know because I've eaten it and I've had her catering for some of my client workshops. She's also one of those people that exudes positivity. She has this massive and contagious smile.
I first connected with her through Instagram. I had been asking people for catering ideas and her name came up so many times from people sending me saying, “You've got to have Zee Scott, she's the best.” She had also talked about coming from London or Britain and I was also born there, I lived there for many years, and I had my first child in London.
I felt this connection so I messaged her. To her credit, she got back to me so quickly and helped me pull together a workshop catering package in minimal time. The food was delicious, I wanted to eat so much of it. It looks delicious and it tastes even better than it looks, which I find is often the other way around. Often, you can have these things that look beautiful and the taste is hugely missing and that is not the case with Zee.
Zee does a lot of different things and part of the reason that I wanted to bring her onto the podcast was to ask, “How do you do those things? What is it like to run a business where you are doing multiple different things and not having to choose?” “I'm just going to do one.” I know that that's something that comes up in a lot of my client conversations and DMs from people, “I want to be able to have a business that does this but I also want to do this and this.” That's fantastic if that's what you want to do.
I wanted to talk to Zee about how you practically get it done. She has many tips, ideas, tools, and methodologies that I was taking notes throughout this podcast interview as well and I know that many of you will as well. If you haven't already discovered Zee, do yourself a favour, honestly, go and check out @ZeeScott_ on Instagram and ZeeScott.com. Here is my interview with the wonderful Zee Scott.
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Zee, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
I'm excited about this. I'm excited about everything that you do. I'm thrilled that you said yes to coming on the podcast. Tell us where you are right now and how you're feeling about life.
I'm feeling great about life right now. I'm like a caterpillar that I've gone into a little cocoon and I'm going to be a butterfly soon. I've planned my year. I've planned a lot of new things that are happening. I'm in a state of excitement. I’m looking forward to ’23. Even though we're already three months in, I still have that enjoyment.
I love that answer. I love the idea that you are in the cocoon still and you're still enjoying that journey because it's the journey that’s the most enjoyable and also 2023. One of my lovely clients said, “In 2023, everyone's going to have a good year because it's a Michael Jordan year.” I was like, “Yes.” He’s like, “It’s going to be a champion year.” I was like, “Yes.” I love this good energy. Tell us about your amazing journey into a small business and it sounds like you're still enjoying it. You do several things all related to the wedding event industry. How do you describe what you do?
I always stumble on this question because I'm like, “I'm running a business but I'm having so much fun. I forget that I'm running a business.” I like to break things down into sections. I'm a marriage celebrate and MC and they’re linked in a way. I'm meeting cool people who want fun ceremonies that may have a little bit of tradition but are also not that fine. I like to think that I take people on a bit of a rollercoaster for ceremonies. It's people that like to laugh but it's not a comedy and have a cry but be able to boost them back up and have a good time. Next, I'm an event host for weddings but not weddings but MC and things. I used to MC a burlesque show each week and that was fun.
In Australia?
Yeah. I tend to fall into jobs that I always have done, I'm fortunate. when I go through with people, the things that I've done, they're like, “How on earth do you do that?” I'm like, “I don’t know. Somebody asked me to do it and I said, ‘Yes, I'll go ahead.’” I do hosting as well. I have the baking side of doing cakes. I'm a cake artist. Also, I do these little wheels that are popular.
Also, delicious. I had to fight my children for the last one. They're delicious.
The number of times people taste them, they're like, “We didn't expect that. Can we have some more?” I'm like, “Okay.” Those are all the things I do and then it's all under the umbrella of Zee Scott. I've been through lives of having business names and it never felt comfortable. One day, I was like, “Zee Scott is for everything.”
I love that description. I also love that you stand by your name. A lot of people have that challenge of thinking, “Do I call the business something else?” You are Zee Scott and you present all these different things, it's amazing. Do you always know this is what you wanted to do? I did a bit of research on you and it said that you have been baking since you were 8. Outside of the event staff, hosting, and wedding celebrations, did you know, “I'm always going to be a baker? This is what I want to do with life.” Did you know that?
No, not at all. I'm a performance artist. I'm an actress by trade. When I was younger, growing up, I spent a lot of my time in the arts and I still do. My mom was a caterer, a cake maker, and a tutor of piping icing. I spent many times watching her and annoying her in the kitchen and trying to get her to give me recipes.
She's not the kind of person that used to get quite annoyed because I'd be with my little book and I'd be like, “Why are you doing that? How much have you done with that?” She's like, Chuck a bit of this in and do a bit of this.” I'm like, “I need numbers.” Growing up with her, watching her, and learning a lot from her, as we got older, between doing auditions or being on the stage, she would say to me, “Could you help out with this job that I've got at the weekend?” I'd be like, “I'll help out.”
I'd bake little cupcakes or do the tarts or something. I'd have a role. I never got paid for it because it's all family. One day, I thought, “This is great.” When she decided that she was going to slow down a bit and not do catering much anymore, she said, “Why don't you take over?” I was like, “I can't.” She was like, “You can still do it in between all of your art stuff.” That was it.
I decided, “Sure, I'll do it.” My first ever order was for the fashion icon, Isabella Blow, for the release of her book. I did a cake for the release of her book. I remember it was an open book and it had ‘Blow’ in 3D letters and stuff. I went along to the launch party of that and met lots of people and was like, “This is quite fun being on that side of things.” It then carried on from there, taking orders, and the rest is history.
I have so much to say about that. Firstly, did you always eat delicious food? Did your mom cook the most incredible food for you to eat as children?
Yes, she did. She cooked amazing food. She is of Jamaican heritage. We had a lot of what people now call fusion food of Jamaican and British food, which was always amazing. The one thing that I hated and I still do not eat is rice. I haven't eaten it since I was 4. Over the years, I’ve built this phobia. I once said to my partner, “It's like the rice is looking at me and mocking me.” Now, I'm like, “I don't want to see it. I don't cook it. I don't eat it.” Even if it's crackers but it says it has rice crackers, I'm like, “I’m not doing it.”
That's such a staple of many cuisines.
This is the problem.
Have you never had sushi?
I never had sushi. My mom loves rice. Even now, she will happily eat rice for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She's a vegan. She’ll have rice and rice pudding. I'm like, “I cannot. It's a no for me.”
You were saying, “My career was in the arts and I'm an actor and performer.” Is that what you studied?
That's what I studied in high school and then went to university and did performing arts as well. I was going on to auditions and then being in a couple of shows. I still love that. I still love the arts. I still love the idea of being on stage and everything. As you get older, a different mind comes in and you go, “Actually.” I always think, “Unless I'm in it already, I'm not.” I look at people like the amazing Viola Davis and go, “She didn't crack it until she was in her mid-40s.” It's then like, “Maybe there's still time for me.” Watch the space, you’ll never know.
This is a perfect segue into the next thing I wanted to ask you, which is about confidence. I'm wondering where that comes from. Were you always like that? Is it because you had this acting education and experience? You are the face of your brand very much. We've talked about your name as the brand’s name as well and people fall in love with it. I fell in love with you before I met you on Instagram. I was like, “I love this energy and all these good vibes that you're bringing.”
Have you always been like that? A lot of people struggle to be the face of their brand, even if, like you, they have their name. A lot of service-based providers know they need to get their face out there a bit more and they struggle with it. Have you always been good at this? Do you have any tips for people who are challenged by it with their own small business?
There’s me, my sister, and my older brother. My sister was always the quiet one. My brother was the one that focused on school. I was always the one that was like, “Mom, I've got a show. I'm going to put on a show. Saturday afternoon, I'm going to do a show.” I wouldn't necessarily call it confident because I'm not that confident. I'm good at putting on a smile and going, “It's showtime.”
It's become more important for businesses and if they are small businesses, especially service-based businesses or something, to be able to show your face. As a celebrant, there's no way of getting around that. I am the celebrant. I am Zee Scott. Funnily enough, my name is not Zee. Nobody calls me Zee. My full name is Zuleika but no one calls me that, not even my mom or dad. Zee is stuck as a teenager. I'm Zee and that's who I am.
For me, to have the name Zee Scott as a business, as soon as I changed it to that, I was like, “I need to put my face out there because it's me.” Also, I'm proud of everything I do and it also gives me a bit more accountability as well. I don't want people to go, “Zee, that wasn't a great experience.” I want them to go, “Yay, Zee is the who one comes on and says random things on stories and doesn't think about it and doesn't think about things.”
My advice to businesses as well is to be you. It's such an old bit of advice but it's true, you can only be you. Sometimes I'll post something on my stories and I genuinely go nuts. I've got friends who will do their stories and they'll record it four times and I stood there and I'm like, “What are you doing?” They're like, “I'm going to get this right.” I'm like, “It's right because it's just you talking. It's you saying what you're saying.” I'll go on and go, “I did this,” and then laugh and press share and it's gone.
I get many messages, people go, “I love your stories because it's just you.” I'm like, “That's all you can do. I can only be me.” That needs to be important as a celebrant as well, people of go, “I'm not going to be crazy as in hilarious. It's not a comedy show when I do your wedding.” You know that my humour is there and everyone will hopefully feel relaxed when I come out and smile and go, “Welcome, this is it.”
You know what you're getting with me and that's what a lot of businesses need to catch onto and go. People are buying sometimes or ordering from you. They see you and they like you and you're not a big brand that has multiple stores and you are a hidden person, the CEO in an office. You are you and that's all you can be.
I completely agree with it. The more you are, the more people are going to be attracted to that, not everyone. That's what we have to do with business, you repel and retract. I feel the same. I am me now but it's taken a little while to get there. I remember doing an Instagram story and my husband saw it and he was like, “Who are you trying to be? That is not you.” I was like, “I know.” It was this partnership with a brand so I had to say a certain thing and I didn't say it naturally and it didn't sound like me.
I was trying to harness this other person's energy who's in my similar space and I was like, “What am I doing?” I deleted it because I felt weird. For my husband to be like, “It's not you. Who are you trying to be?” The more you are yourself, the less you have to worry. How you are on camera is going to be how people meet you in real life. I had a client not that long ago and she was funny. In the first two sessions, I was like, “You're funny. I hope you don't take this offensive but I would never get that from your social stuff.” She said, “I know. I decided to pigeonhole myself six years ago in this certain space. Now, I feel like I'm stuck there and I have to be stiff and serious.”
We were talking about that because she was like, “Do I rebrand?” I was like, “No.” If people meet you in real life, they're going to think one thing based on your social media and then they're going to come and be a bit jarred or jolted because they're like, “You're this comedian but you don't show that online.” I could not agree more with it. You mentioned that you are a marriage celebrant. I understand the cake stuff and the mom's business and everything. How did you get into that?
I fell into it like most celebrants. There are two ways celebrants become celebrants and the first one is that a friend asked them to marry them and that wasn't me. The second one is that you go to a wedding and it was bad that you decide that you want to do it. This was over nine years ago now. We went to a friend's wedding and the celebrant who was marrying them did his job.
I'm not saying he didn't do his job but every time he said their name, he would double-check his paperwork to make sure he was getting the names right. I remember sitting there annoyed because it was friends of my partner. I was like sitting at the wedding and I said to my partner, “What's that job then?” He was like, “He's a celebrant.” I said, “What's a celebrant?” He was like, “They marry people.”
Back home, in the UK, you still have to get married in a registry office but you can have a celebrant do a wedding in terms of telling your story to your friends and kicking things off with a party. You still have to go and be married at a registry office by an official person. I was like, “He legally marries them and that's the job.” He was like, “Yeah.” I was like, “I'm going to do that.” He was like, “Okay. Shush now. We’re at a wedding.” By that night, by the time we got home, I had googled and researched and I was like, “This is what I need to do.”
By midnight that night, I had signed on to the course that you needed to do. I was like, “I'm going to get this done.” They said it's going to take a year online and I did it in six months because I was like, “Nope, I want to get this done.” You have to apply to become a celebrant to the attorney general and then once you are in, you are in, and then you get fussed out and start marrying people. I was registered in February and then had my first wedding in March, ready to go.
Can I ask, do you ever get nervous that one of them is going to say, “No, I don't.” Do you ever get nervous? Are going to stand there?
I don't think about that. A lot of people ask me, “What's the juiciest story you've got?” I don't have any juicy stories in terms of that. I've got other celebrants who will tell me stories and be like, “This person decided an hour before they didn't want to get married.” I'm like, “I’ve done pretty smooth sailing over here.”
I love the story and the context behind it. When you decided to do that, did you do that in the UK or Australia?
That was here in Australia.
When you moved to Australia, how long ago was that from the UK?
That was March 2011. March 2011 is when I arrived in Australia. I came over on a working holiday visa and I came with my best friend who is Australian. We had been working on a Cabaret show back in the UK. That tour was ending so she said, “I'm going to go back to Australia for a bit.” I was like, “This is my last chance to get a working holiday visa. Maybe I'll come.” She was like, “Do it.” Before I arrived, I was lucky enough to secure a job at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
I arrived, had a job, had somewhere to live, and did that for two months. Afterwards, I got a job with the Melbourne Theater Company. You can only work for six months if you want a working holiday visa. You can only work with one company for six months. By the end of that contract, I'd met my partner. We were trying to think, “What happens next?”
We were sure that this was the one. We were like, “Do you move here or do we go back to the UK?” I said, “I quite like it here. Maybe we'll apply for a visa to stay here.” As that application was going through, I was like, “I can't get another job because nobody wants to employ anyone for less than six months.” That's when I was like, “I've got to do some work.” That's when I started the baking business and that's how that came from that.
I've done the other thing. I was born in the UK and I've gone to the UK to work. Sometimes there's this perception, especially when you're going from two very similar cultures, Australia and the UK, in a way. I thought, “I'm going to go to London. It's going to be easy. I lived there before. I know lots of people.” I found it difficult. We moved in August 2009 so the global financial crisis, unemployment, and everything else.
Because you had the Melbourne Theater company job and you've had the other job and you had a partner who's Australian and your best friend is Australian, do you feel like when you started that baking business you had enough contacts to go out into the world? How did you do that? Moving to London, I'm from London, I speak the same language, and all of that, I still felt there were still massive differences that I had to get my head around. It wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. How did you find that, in case anyone is reading who maybe is new to Australia or new to another country?
I was fortunate. I don’t know what it is but my mom always says, “You always seem to land on your feet with things.” When my contract was ending at the Melbourne Theater Company, the restaurant that was attached to the theatre contacted me about two weeks before my contract ended and said, “We heard that you were thinking about going into baking. Would you be interested in making the cupcakes for the restaurant?” I was like, “Okay.”
At first, I was like, “That pigeonholes me into making cupcakes but this could be a start.” They were like, “We're going to want this amount of cupcakes each week.” It was enough to make me go, “I can live off that financially.” I immediately got a contract with them to do wholesale cupcakes. At first, I did some stuff from their kitchen because then I had to go and work out how to register my home kitchen and start a food business. That's a whole new area of things that you need to learn.
I went off and dealt with all of that all whilst I was able to create these cupcakes for them in their kitchen. That went on for about two months and it was specifically because they had a show, The Importance of Being Earnest, and they wanted to offer these high tea packages and stuff so the cupcakes were all part of that. It worked out and it was the perfect timing because it then gave me time to work out how to run a food business. It all fell into place. I feel like I'm saying to people, “It's ok. It will happen.”
Also, you took that opportunity. Also, you had told everyone what you were going to do. You put it out into the world. It wasn't this secretive thing. It’s taking opportunities. It’s not like, “It was all handed to me on a plate.” You still had to then make them and show up for them and figure it all out and figure it out again in a different country with all the food laws and whatever, it's different or not.
You do a lot of different things and a lot of physical things. You can't automate being a celebrant and you can't automate making cupcakes. It's not something you can find a tech tool for. On a practical level, how do you keep on top of everything? In my research, I found that you get up at 2:30 in the morning. Is that true? When do you go to sleep? Do you never have a night or never go out in the evening?
My sleeping pattern has been the same since I was about 18. I get up between 2:30 and 3:30 each morning. The average each night is 4 to 5 hours of sleep. Four hours is my minimum, which my partner finds hilarious because he is 8 to 10. I can get by on that for the whole day. I don't have an alarm, I just get up. Let's say I do that for about a month and a half and then I have what's called burnout and I have a whole weekend where I stay in bed.
My partner can see it and he's like, “I know.” He'll take the 6-year-old out and he’s like, “We'll leave you to it.” I'll watch movies, fall asleep, wake up, fall asleep, and wake up. That's my reset button. That's the sleeping thing. I do a lot of planning, a lot of scheduling, and a lot of things automated. I have a CRM that I work with and I spent a lot of time working with that to work on the back of the house. I also fell into a job as an HR manager many moons ago.
This also adds a whole other level to everything. You're like, “I have it supported.”
In that role, I learned a lot about workflows and the life cycle of certain products and processes and stuff. I became obsessed with Excel. I've always been about keeping things in order and I'm all about systems. I found this CRM that I started working with a few years ago and I spent a lot of time on back-of-house setting up all these workflows so that I knew that, for example, if a cake order comes in, straight away, it generates the invoice, and it generates the terms and conditions.
It then sends it out to the client and the client then pays and signs the Ts and Cs and then it automates and says, “We need to email the venue and say, ‘We're delivering the cakes. Do you have a call room? Can we deliver at this time?’” It takes through the steps. All I have to do each morning is go into the dashboard and double-check everything that it's happening.
It's the same for couples as well. When they sign up with me, I make sure their details are in, I'm up to date, and then it automates everything. You need to work on that back-of-house to get it to that. I've got some celebrants who work with the same system and they're like, “Ours doesn't do that.” I'm like, “It does but you've got to do a lot to get it to that point.”
You got to invest the time to get the most out of this program. At 2:30, what are you doing? Are you baking? Are you planning? Do you do meditation? What are you doing at that time in the morning?
I worked out many moons ago that my most productive time was between 2:30 and 6:00 AM. I'm going to advise anyone. Work out in the day when your most productive time is and then plan everything around that. As soon as I get up at 2:30, I chug a glass of water, I have a coffee, and I look at what I've got on my baking sheets. I have all my baking schedules on the wall so I know what I need to bake and what I need to decorate.
I get started, I have headphones in, I have movies on, and I just live in my world. I do anything physical that I need to do like that or in ceremonies or anything like that happens between 2:30 and 6:00. At 6:00 till 9:00, it's my son’s time because he's got to get ready for school, he’s got to have breakfast, and he's got to do his readers. We get ready and then we do school drop. Either I or my partner will do a school drop.
Between 9:00 and 12:00 is my admin-focus time. I'll sit down and I'll go through who's emailed me. Do I need to respond to anything or delete things? I delete all the emails I don't need, unsubscribed to anything I don't need, and do all the admin things. 12:00 to 2:30 is my plan for the week. If I've got a wedding that weekend, do I have the ceremony written? Do I need any more information? What am I wearing? Things like that. I do those types of things between 12:00 and 2:30.
I then leave for school pickup. From 2:30 till 3:15, which is when the school pickup is, I sit in the car and go on Instagram and that's my 45 minutes of dedicated Instagram time where I've got nothing else to do. I'll sit there and respond to things and schedule posts or things like that. School pickup and then I'm done for the day and then I switch off. That's everything in a nutshell.
There are many things in it that I feel like people reading will be scribbling notes and taking things. I love also that you've started this whole conversation by being, “I'm creative and artsy and everything.” I love that you came in with like, “I can be creative and artsy but I also love Excel. I love planning. I love having these systems and processes to support things.”
All the time, I hear people say, “I'm too creative.” Creatives can also do a lot of this and a lot of it is creative. A lot of it is problem-solving and everything else. I also love that you have a dedicated window for Instagram so that it's not constantly interrupting your day. With planning, how long did it take you to get into a system like that? Has it been years? Were you always organized?
I've always made sure that things fit into a day, that's the one thing that I've carried through from being young, being a teenager. Also, for me and my brain, I need to make sure that I know what's happening next. It also allows me to be ready for anything unexpected as well because then I'm like, “That's okay. I can move that to there,” or, “I can do that.” In my head, it's like Tetris. It’s the only way I can explain it because Tetris is one of my favourite games. For me, those little bits are a bit like my life and how I plan my days and everything. It's like going, “That's okay because if that disappears then that can make space for that.”
To get into the flow that I'm in now, that changed when my son started school. I then had to make way and go, “I need time to get ready for school. I need time to make sure I can go and pick him up when I can.” Sometimes my partner does the pick-up because he works from home. Mostly, I try to make sure that I'm there. It allows me to be the one that's more flexible with the day. Having it like that means I'm like, “I can always push that three hours of admin to 3:00 three till 6:00 if I need to.” It's taken time. I'd rather spend the time making that happen and then I can feel happy living.
It's like that quote one of the American presidents said, it’s something like, “If I have to chop down a tree, I'll spend eight hours thinking about how to chop it down, and one hour chopping it down.” That's the same in business. Sometimes if I show people the back end of our Asana and our systems processes board and they're like, “That must have taken forever.” I'm like, “It didn't. I sat here one night, I had a drink, and I bashed it all out.” It doesn't take as much time.
Another thing I wanted to ask is when do you do your research? You seem to be incredible. I know taste is subjective and all of that but you seem to be able to create these things. I was fighting over this stuff with the kids and sometimes kids can like things that are too sweet and I don't like that. You seem to be able to make things that are super cool and super delicious and they don't just look good but they taste amazing as well. How do you keep on top of trends in the baking industry because there are a lot of trends but also keep sustainable work coming in? People know that you're good at taste and everything else as well.
I'm going to rebuttal that and say I don't keep on top of trends. That's where I excel. I am all about keeping things traditional signature and basic when it comes to baking. People always get surprised when I say that vanilla is my favourite flavour for anything. I don't like ice cream but if I do eat ice cream, it has to be vanilla and it has to be a good vanilla.
My husband and I have this argument all the time. I don't eat ice cream. I haven't eaten it since I probably ate way too much when I was 14. I only have it if it's with a hot cake. My husband is obsessed with vanilla ice cream. I will go into Piccolina or fancy places and I'll be like, “I'll get the most interesting different taste.” He's always like, “Get me the vanilla.” I'm like, “Why would you get the vanilla when you could have everything?” He's like, “If it does a great vanilla, every other flavour is going to be good.” He's like, “It's not that easy to get a good vanilla ice cream.” Explain that a little bit more.
It's true. That's exactly what I say when people ask, “Why vanilla?” I'm like, “Vanilla cake, vanilla cookies, or vanilla anything.” It's a base for anything because if you can make vanilla, all the other flavours are always going to taste nice in my head. That's what my mom always taught me as well. The vanilla cake recipe I use now was the same vanilla cake recipe I used when I was 8 years old.
For me, it's how my brain works. I need a starting point. I need to know the origins of something. I'm that person watching a movie and then going, “Hold on a minute. Who's that guy and what has he done? How old was he?” That's me. You can't watch a movie with me without me doing that. Realistically, people sit back and look at what I introduce and what I do. The cake is a classic. My wheels are just biscuits. They are a version of the one that's out there but they’re better.
With brownies, I'll always do straight-up chocolate brownies. I don't add anything to it. Stop adding things to things. Stop hacking things. People seem to think that I'm moving with the tires but I'm just going, “Brown is popular at the moment.” They put them forefront a bit more and work with that. I was a floor manager for big fashion retail in the UK on Oxford Street.
You've got an 80-year-old's career list.
I did that for a while and I remember my manager always saying to me, “The lady’s floor will always be the easiest floor to run because as long as you've got a good white shirt, a great pair of pants, and a great skirt, you've got to look at your wardrobe.” Fashion-wise, that's how I look at my baking and what I put out there. I go, “We're looking at shirts this week. That might be the cake.” I'm going to be like, “Here are these cakes.” The style of cakes that I do now, I've been doing since 2019. This is before they became so Instagram popular.
I remember when I started doing them. There's a UK cake baker that I've followed for years and I've always gone, “She's doing that same trend and she's always done it and she's so popular.” My mom was like, “They're the cakes that I always made.” I was like, “Yeah, they were.” “I'm going to do something like that.” I introduced them in 2019. I'm not saying that I started the trend in Australia but I did kick in and then all of a sudden, they're the Instagram cakes. You've got to work out your classic marketing or your USP and work out what your unique selling point is. For me, I have a hundred different piping tips so I make sure that all my cakes are different I've got to offer something different.
There are lots in that. I love the parallel of the capsule wardrobe with what you do. I feel like that's something that anyone who's reading could take away and think about, “If my business was presenting capsule wardrobe.” If you don't know what a capsule wardrobe is, go to YouTube, fashion capsule wardrobe, and there are a billion of those videos. I feel like that's such a good way to look at the business. Can these things go together but also stand on their own like a crisp white shirt and all of that?
I want to ask one other question about being a celebrant and working with couples and everything else. Do you know when people say that there's a baseline of their mood? I feel like you've got a pretty good, happy, positive, and optimistic mood, the fact you're getting up that early and you've still got this energy all the time.
Life is life. We all have challenges sometimes or down days. You have a child as well that can bring in all sorts of fun and beautiful stuff but also frustrations and challenges. When you are having those days where things aren't necessarily going to plan or maybe other stuff is going on in your personal life, you have to show up and be like, “I'm excited about your wedding,” or, “Here I am marrying you,” or, “Here I am talking about the cake.” Do you have any tips to get yourself back on track? Do you have a good soundtrack that you listen to? What helps you get back in the zone?
I have two things that I do. All of the things that you said can make me have a down day but also now and again, I get homesick as well. Sometimes I wake up in the morning and I'll call my mom and then after I put down the phone, I'm like, “I want to be with her or with my family.” There are two things that I do when I have days like that. I'm not a Beyonce fan. It’s not that I'm not a fan. I love her and I love her as a business mentor. I look at her and I go, “Look at her go. Look at her doing all these things.”
Her and Kevin Hart, I'm like, “I want that level of business and I'm in all the things and I'm doing it.” I've got this album that I've created on Spotify called Best Bey and it's all the kick butt songs that you can hear. It's song after song of all her bangers and you come out feeling, like, “Here we go. I'm taking on the world.” When I'm driving to a wedding, I sit in the car, I straight away put my Best Bey album on, and I'm singing and going. As soon as I arrive, I'm like, “Let's do this. I'm ready.” I've had a whole hour of Beyonce. I do that.
The other thing I do is a bit more random. I advise anyone to do this. Take a moment if you're having a bad moment. Even if it's a bad day or a bad moment, go and stand in front of a mirror. I stand there and I look at myself and then I put on this smile. I take every ounce of energy that's in me and I push out this smile. I'm talking all teeth and everything.
You are willing to feel great. Do it for a minute. It's going to feel weird at first but you stand there and you do this massive smile, it's all your teeth, and in your head, you're thinking, “This is great.” Do that for a minute and I promise, as soon as you get to the end of the minute, you suddenly go, “I feel good.” It works. I don’t know how and I don’t know why but it just does.
I love both of those. I did not know where we were going to go if you relaxed. I don’t know what I would say. I have the same, an upbeat playlist on Spotify that gets me in better head space. I also love looking at myself in the mirror, forcing myself to do that because particularly, as women, we shy away from looking in the mirror a lot of the time. That's awesome. Also, a reminder. We're not talking about full-blown depression, anxiety, or other things, but normal day-to-day challenges. I do feel like we forget that we have the power to choose sometimes. I often say to my son, “You are in control of your own emotions.”
We say this to my son every day. The same thing.
I'm like, “Shake it off.” We have a very big shake-it-off in our house. He gets really embarrassed, my eldest when we’re at the shops because I'm like, “Come on, shake it off.” I'll shake it off on the escalator. He's like, “Mom.” I do think that we forget that we can change things. We don't have to sit in that feeling all the time. You have talked about so many different tips, ideas, and insights. What has helped you besides Beyonce because you said she's your power businesswoman? The same with Kevin Hart as a man. Who's helped you with your business? Have there been any mantras, books, or documentaries? Your mom sounds like a big influence. Who's helped you build all these businesses?
My mom is number one. I'm sure many people are the same. You've grown up, you've looked at your mom and you've seen everything that she's done, and you feel proud. Now and again, I say to her, “I'm proud of you.” She's like, “Go away.” Also, my sister. She's amazing. Back in the UK, she's my mentor. She's really into manifesting things and I was always like, “No. These things just fall into my lap. It just happens.” She was like, “No, you've manifested that.” I'm like, “No, I haven't.”
A couple of years ago, I remember being on the phone, I said to her, “I want to open this space. I want to open a studio space and I want a little kitchenette at the back. I can see it. There’s a table in there. I'll do like little weddings and I'll do this.” She was like, “Okay, keep thinking about that. Write it down.” I was like, “No, I'm not writing it down.” “I've written it down for you.” Six months later, I got my studio space and it's exactly how I wanted it to be with my kitchenette and my table. She's the one that if I ever think, “I don't think I can do this,” or, “I want to do this, but how do I?” She'll be like, “Sit down. Have a little think. Write it down. What do you need to do to get there? What does it look like?” She's that person. It's amazing. She's my number one business mentor.
Reading books and stuff, I've only come onto podcasts and books in 2022 because of my focus. I don't focus enough unless I have to plan my day and give myself an hour to read a book. I've started doing that. I know this is going to sound corny and sucking up, but your book, Passion Purpose Profit, my partner bought me that book for my Christmas present. He got it for me. I had it on my Kindle, but I bought the physical copy as well. I've got two copies because, for me, breaking it down, it's all laid out. It's like Tetris. You've broken it down into sections and with my brain that is always overworking, I've been able to look at it and go, “I'm going to focus on that bit today and I'm going to focus on that bit next week, and then this bit.”
The same with the podcast as well. The voices and how it's planned out. This is not planned and you haven't forced me to say anything, but that's one of the reasons why we started following each other on Instagram and chatting. I felt comfortable and confident that I was taking everything in and learning as opposed to just going, “I'm reading this book because everyone else is reading it.” It was like, “No, I want that book because everything else seems to work.
Thank you so much. After this call, I have to write the first chapter of my next book, and I have been delaying it and delaying it. What you've just said, you gave me a bit of a boost. Thank you so much. You put stuff out into the world like you put your cakes out, and you don’t know exactly what the impact is. How privileged are you to have two family members, and I’m sure, your other family members are great as well, that you could say, “These are my number one business mentor and mentor for life.” What a beautiful relationship you have with your sibling and your mom.
I must say as well, just in case my brother reads this. My brother as well is amazing. He runs his businesses. We all run our own business and it's nice to see and feel confident that I've got that kind of support behind me.
I'm sure you could pinpoint a million things, but if you had to pull it down to 1 or 2, what are you most proud of from your journey in business so far?
It’s hard to pick 1 or 2. I'm proud of myself. I'm proud of everything. I'm proud of my successes but also my failures because my failures have allowed me to look forward and succeed in other areas. I had a big fail some years ago. When I look back, I go, “I'm proud of it because of how I dealt with it, how I came out the other side, and how I went, ‘Nope, this is not the end.’” It could have been, but how I approached it and I spoke to clients that were affected and things like that made me even better in business.
That feedback that I got from my clients as well. “The way you came out and owned it and said, ‘I messed up, but we're moving forward.’” They were like, “It was great to have that as a business, acknowledging. You can't go back and change mistakes, but you can learn from them and that's what's most important.
I could not agree more with you. We are geared to be fearful of ever making a mistake. That goes through lots of things, people not wanting to speak up about certain things. We've got such a fear mentality. Everyone's exposed on social media, with your clients that you want to talk to, you don't know if they're going to jump on social media and rant. We have this fear, but I love that despite that, you were like, “I'm going to own it. I'm going to be transparent.”
Most of the time, if you've created a good relationship, people have a lot of leeway to give if things happen. We just worry all the time the instant we do something wrong, or the instant we've not seen as perfect. What's next for you? Also, we have not even touched on your workshops in your space. Where can people, if they want to order your beautiful wheels, their next wedding cake, work with you, or whatever it is, how do they do that? Where can they connect?
Everything is on my website, ZeeScott.com. On Instagram, it's the @zeescott__, which I had to have because I didn't realize there were so many Zee Scotts in the world. What's next? Developing the workshops, but also, as I touched on earlier, speaking about being an HR manager, I've had a lot of over the years, celebrants come to me and say, “Can you help with this?” I've finally started working on training courses for them. Things like how to set up all the CRM that I do and how to be confident out there in delivering your ceremonies and putting your ceremonies together, and just adding a touch of Zee zing to things.
Also, I have my studio space where I do my little mini weddings and the workshops with the cake decorating and everything. I like to do lots of things, but I like to do them small. My workshops are conveniently numbered, it's four people. I just want four people in the space and we just focus. We get a lot out of it. Moving forward with all that stuff, but also keeping things small and offering as much of me as possible, but not overwhelming myself. That's the plan.
I love that, and I love that you have that boundary. Sounds amazing. It's been such a pleasure chatting to you. Thank you so much for giving up your time in your busy work schedule.
Thanks for having me.
I can't wait to see all the things that come out of Zee Scott in the years to come.
Thank you so much.
Bye.
Bye.
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Couldn't you just chat with Zee all day? She has so many insights and ideas. It even makes me want to get up earlier than I already do. My two children are like human alarm clocks and they are always up at the crack of dawn, but her getting up so early having that peacefulness, that quiet time to get started. I love that she has created a life and a way of working that suits her, suits when she's at her best hours of working. There's so much to take away from that.
A massive thank you again, Zee, for putting up with all the stops and starts that we had on my end when we were recording. I'd love to know what you took away from that. Please let me know. You can find us on Instagram, @MyDailyBusiness_. You can also find the lovely Zee Scott. Go and check out all the amazing things that she creates over at @zeescott__. You can also check out ZeeScott.com. I'd love to know what you took away from this.
Two things stood out to me, and so many other things did, but I'm going to highlight two. The first and, I'm a huge fan of this myself. It has completely changed my business but I loved hearing about it from Zee. That is time-blocking. Having dedicated time in the day and knowing what you're going to be working on and having an idea of, “I'm going to get to emails,” at that point in the day. I'm not going to let them ping, ping, ping, annoy me all day.
I also love that when she talked about emails, she talked about delete, delete, delete. I am going through having a new inbox and it's so exciting. Everything's clean and neat and I am deleting. I'm using the delete button. The amount of emails I keep thinking I might need to go back to that, or, that was a nice thing somebody wrote. If it's nice, I put it in a sunshine folder, but there's a lot of stuff that I keep in the inbox that I don't need to keep. I'm taking that on board, delete, delete, delete.
Overall, I love the concept that she has about her time blocking. This time is for this, this time is for this. She has all of her important things in there as well, such as picking up the children, doing this, dropping them off, or having time with her partner, it's all in there. I love time-blocking. It has completely changed the way that I run my business and I love that Zee brought that up.
The other thing that I love that she brought up is the story when she was talking about the origins of coming up with her baking business. The whole business of all the things that she does, and she talked about that she'd been working at the Melbourne Theater Company and that they were having a restaurant opening and that she was able to put her cupcakes in there, but she was only able to do that because she had spoken about that dream. She had spoken about, “This is what I'm working on.” Putting that out into the universe as her sister is big on manifesting. Also, we don't tell people enough about what we are doing.
You don't need to tell them the exact ins and outs, all your fears, or anything else, but you might want to mention it when it's relevant. For example, a new restaurant opening and, “I do cupcakes,” or, “I'm thinking of starting this business.” That's a perfect example. Often, we keep ourselves quiet or we don't want to talk up about what we are doing, especially here in Australia, about a fear of being boastful or that you don't want to tell everyone until it's perfect, instead of just telling people what you do.
This could be people you're having a conversation with when you are picking up your kids from school. It could be people that you maybe play tennis or basketball with, or whatever it is, if there’s an opportunity, why not tell people about what you do? Who knows who they have in their lives that needs that? I remember talking to one of the moms at my son’s school. We were in the park, it was the end of term, and my book had come out a few months before that. This person I know, but I don’t know really, said to me, “I bought your big book for my sister. She has a business.” I was like, “Amazing.”
I had no idea that she knew that I had a book, but I had talked about or mentioned it to other people, and she bought that for her sister who has a business. Hopefully, it has helped her sister, but none of that would have come out if I hadn’t been telling people that I had a book or telling people what I do. Having that conversation and not being afraid of being judged for it or not being in the perfect state. I love that she brought up that example because you never know who needs what it is that you have if you’re not going to tell anyone about it.
Those two things stood out along with so many more. It was an absolute pleasure to talk to Zee Scott. If you haven’t already, go and follow her on Instagram. It’s a joy for the senses. If you haven’t tried the food, please go and try it in whatever capacity that you can. I have tried the wheels and some of the catering, it’s delicious. Of course, if you have a milestone event, getting married, a commitment ceremony, or anything else that you have going on, maybe you’re renewing your vows like Zee Scott, which is fabulous, then you can find all the information at ZeeScott.com. Thank you for reading, thank you, again, Zee, for coming on. I’ll see you next time. Bye.
