199. Baking it Down - Are Your Sale Slow Right Now?

Summary

Episode 199: Baking it Down - Are Your Sales Slow Right Now?

Release Date: February 18, 2025

In Episode 199 of the Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪 podcast, hosts Heather and Corey Miracle delve deep into a pressing concern among their community of bakers: slow sales. This comprehensive discussion not only identifies the root causes of declining sales but also offers actionable strategies to overcome these challenges. Below is a detailed summary capturing all the key points, insights, and conclusions from the episode.

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1. Introduction: Setting the Stage (00:00 - 03:14)

The episode kicks off with Heather and Corey engaging in their characteristic light-hearted banter, reflecting on past marketing attempts and their effectiveness. Corey humorously admits their journey into podcasting three years after deciding to launch it, highlighting their evolution from Facebook group admins to podcast hosts.

Notable Quote:

Corey (01:12): "What we are is the admins of a sugar cookie market group. It's on Facebook. There's about 46,7ish, 48ish thousand bakers in there."

2. The Pervasive Issue: Slow Sales (03:09 - 05:36)

Heather introduces the main topic by referencing recent Valentine's Day sales. While some bakers experienced high sales with pre-orders, others felt disheartened by low sales figures. This dichotomy leads to a recurring question in their Facebook group: “Are your sales slow right now?”

Notable Quote:

Heather (03:09): "And a lot of people loved their sales. They did. There were a lot of pre sales... and just as many hated their sales."

3. The Psychology Behind Comparisons (05:36 - 07:54)

Heather and Corey discuss the negative connotation that often accompanies discussions about slow sales. They compare it to broad predictions made by psychics, highlighting how generalized statements can foster a breeding ground for negativity rather than solutions.

Notable Quote:

Heather (05:36): "You are shrinking by 16. Yeah, but if you looked last year... you would actually see that you've increased by, you know, 33."

4. Reframing Success: Personal Growth vs. Market Comparison (07:54 - 12:01)

The hosts emphasize the importance of self-comparison rather than comparing one's sales to others. By assessing growth relative to previous performance, bakers can better appreciate their progress and maintain a positive outlook.

Notable Quote:

Heather (10:07): "I have had low sales. So what happens is it's a breeding ground for negativity. It's not a breeding ground for solutions, though, unfortunately."

5. Debating Market Saturation vs. Market Segmentation (12:01 - 17:04)

Heather challenges the notion of market saturation, arguing that instead of a saturated market, there is a need for better market segmentation. She illustrates this with examples from various industries, asserting that multiple businesses can coexist successfully within the same market by differentiating their offerings.

Notable Quote:

Heather (17:04): "So market saturation isn't a thing. It's market segmentation that allows you to set yourself apart."

6. The Crucial Role of Consistent Marketing (17:04 - 25:08)

Consistency emerges as a central theme. Heather and Corey stress that consistent marketing efforts yield steady growth, even if it's not as rapid as initial surge periods. They caution against diversifying efforts too broadly, which can lead to lack of focus and perceived stagnation.

Notable Quote:

Corey (24:20): "What you water will grow in that if you can stay consistent through it."

7. Utilizing CRM Tools for Effective Marketing (55:09 - 59:21)

The discussion transitions to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, with Heather and Corey sharing their experiences and recommendations. They highlight the importance of maintaining and segmenting customer data to facilitate targeted marketing efforts and enhance customer relationships.

Notable Quote:

Heather (55:34): "The biggest misstep with CRMs is not keeping up with them."

8. Engaging with the Community: Real-Life Examples (59:21 - 64:46)

Through anecdotes and listener interactions, Heather and Corey illustrate practical applications of their strategies. They share stories of successful marketing campaigns, the importance of personalized communication, and the benefits of active engagement within their community.

Notable Quote:

Corey (59:11): "They need that reassurance. They need that guidance. They want to make sure that just because they send the inquiry, that feels good."

9. Personal Reflections and Resilience (64:46 - 73:31)

The hosts open up about their personal challenges and resilience in the face of business struggles. They discuss the emotional aspects of running a business, such as dealing with loss, maintaining enthusiasm, and supporting each other through tough times.

Notable Quote:

Heather (71:30): "So Cor and I are driving down Dead Tennessee. First time. I think I've been to Tennessee, to be honest. First time."

10. Conclusion: Embracing Consistency and Positivity (73:31 - End)

Heather and Corey wrap up the episode by reiterating the importance of consistency, self-accountability, and maintaining a positive mindset. They encourage bakers to focus on what they can control, leverage community support, and continuously adapt their strategies to foster business growth.

Notable Quote:

Corey (84:04): "But if I don't dissect it, then I'm just letting the pessimism win."

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Key Takeaways:

1. Self-Comparison Over Market Comparison: Assess your growth relative to your past performance rather than comparing with others to maintain a positive outlook.

2. Consistency is King: Regular and focused marketing efforts lead to steady growth, even if it’s not immediately apparent.

3. Effective Use of CRM Tools: Properly managing customer relationships and data is crucial for targeted marketing and building lasting customer connections.

4. Segment Your Market: Instead of viewing the market as saturated, focus on differentiating your offerings to appeal to specific customer segments.

5. Community Engagement: Active participation and support within your community can provide invaluable insights and foster business resilience.

6. Positive Mindset and Resilience: Maintaining enthusiasm and a positive attitude, even during slow periods, is essential for long-term success.

Final Thoughts:

Heather and Corey Miracle offer a blend of strategic advice and personal insights, making this episode a valuable resource for bakers grappling with slow sales. By emphasizing self-growth, consistent marketing, and effective community engagement, they provide actionable strategies to turn slow periods into opportunities for sustainable business growth.

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For more detailed strategies and to join a community of like-minded bakers, tune into the Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪 podcast every Tuesday.

Transcript

[Heather]

Okay, are we recording on yours?

[Corey]

We are recording on mine.

[Heather]

Did you press up camera?

[Corey]

Yes, yes and yes.

[Heather]

It is what it is.

[Corey]

He is.

[Heather]

We should do like. Like, you know how they do the previews, the bloopers. Stop saying that, okay? You don't understand marketing.

[Corey]

Stop yelling at me.

[Heather]

See what Corey said that was so bad?

[Corey]

I think we've tried that too many.

[Heather]

Times using the podcast.

[Corey]

Like, never.

[Heather]

Twitch said it did work. Tammy Gunnels posted about it. Even she. Tammy had gone to the group and she had said, I can't believe the twin would have said that on the YouTube channel. And I was like, what did we say? But she had wrote me an email. She's like, I just want to let you know. Just kidding. Marketing works on us too. Okay, Corey, tell us what this is.

[Corey]

Welcome to the Baking it down with Sugar Cookie Marketing podcast. What we are are just your hosts in this world we call baking. I'm Corey, and the other face over there is Heather. What we are is the admins of a sugar cookie market group. It's on Facebook. There's about 46,7ish, 48ish thousand bakers in there. And each week. Well, I said, you know what, Heather? I like to listen to podcasts. And Heather said, no, I don't think so. And I said, okay, good. We'll be doing a podcast.

[Heather]

And here we are three years later, doing a podcast. It's funny, in the intro, you talk. You talk kind of like this, but when you get to the intro, you. You, like, drop an octave and you're like. And in the sugar cooking marketing group, you'll find everything you need to survive in this life.

[Corey]

You know what? One thing I'm good at is sales.

[Heather]

And you need a sales voice. I wish I knew you when you were selling cars.

[Corey]

I was a shell.

[Heather]

Hey, would you like a sporty car? Because I used to be an economy.

[Corey]

And, like, people were buying for me. And I was like, hey, do you want a car?

[Heather]

Listen, you need to sell something. You're suddenly going to find. You guys, you're gonna sell yourself a little. Sell your soul. Which takes us to today's topic, something I posted about in the group. And Corey thought it was a great topic to lean in on. And I must agree. What are you getting? Diet Coke.

[Corey]

Do you want me to run and get it while you discuss?

[Heather]

Yes, while you run and get it.

[Corey]

Oh, run with the might of God behind me.

[Heather]

Okay, there she goes, boys. Give me an extra cold one from the back. It was a huge Diet Coke addiction in this Family. My dad was really worried about consuming our consumption of sugary drinks. So he was like, we're not. I don't know if you guys. Dating myself. Twister. The red drink. The red juice drink. We always had a bottle of Twister in our family. It was my favorite thing to Dr. And then dad read some article somewhere, and then he was like, guys, no more Twister. It's full of sugar. He's one of those guys. Still is. And then he was like, you know, and we said, we have to have a compromise because water's not cutting it. And then he's like, you guys can drink Diet Coke. Which created the hell we live in now. Nice. Oh, listen to that. Hold on. It's gonna be the first one. Oh, that was a good one.

[Corey]

A Diet Coke actually exploded in my hand the other day.

[Heather]

It was in the back of the.

[Corey]

Fridge and had frozen. So I looked up and said, man, look, it's so oblong.

[Heather]

And then it did. Oh, that. You knew I was gonna expl I doing what you love. All right, let me pop my lip. That was a good one. So back to the topic. Valentine's Day was last week, right?

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And a lot of people loved their sales. They did.

[Corey]

There were a lot of pre sales.

[Heather]

Going on, and just as many hated their sales. So what happens is they come to the group and we have that ever pervasive daily question. Are your sales low like mine? Does anyone else feel like their sales are low this year? Yes. Or that their leads are slow or that something is a negative? It always has a negative connotation. What the problem is. It's kind of like. And if you believe in what, psychics or people who can read your palms, they'll create a really broad. Yeah. You are going to go to the bank today. Unfortunately, mine. You are very hungry.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You like bank. You need to use more moisturizer. They do these broad stroke things like, I feel like you had a bad day.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Have you had a bad day? I feel like you got stuck in traffic on the way here. Okay. Kind of the same thing with those negative. Hey, does anybody else feel like their sales are slow? The only people are going to comment are people with slow or low sales.

[Corey]

Yeah. Or people who are on the fence and they're like, oh, yep. She said, you know what?

[Heather]

Now that you bring that up, I have had low sales. So what happens is it's a breeding ground for negativity. It's not a breeding ground for solutions, though, unfortunately.

[Corey]

There's no, like, groundbreaking theories going in Going on in the comments. Me and Heather have been in business for a long time and one thing that we know, what goes up must come down. You can't have perpetual better, better and better growth.

[Heather]

It doesn't work that way. Just talking about it this morning. I was at a restaurant the other day, sitting next to me, kind of an annoying guy. Catch his name. It was a client we used to have and I looked at him and I said we'd never met before, but we have dealt with each other in email and you were kind of terrible. Whatever, you apologize. But what Cory and I said is the problem when we deal with clients is we say, listen, you're going to feel like exponential growth because we're getting started from nothing. Yes. You're going to feel like this is going to be light years. We're moving at the speed of everything is coming together. Likes comments, subscribers and then it's going to feel slow because comparatively speaking, it's leveled out. We've brought you to where you needed to be and now that growth will be very, just so gradual.

[Corey]

You're like, but I didn't change anything. You didn't, you didn't change anything. You went from nothing to something. Now from something to something feels a little bit different. So you're saying, but I didn't change anything.

[Heather]

It must be everybody else.

[Corey]

Everybody else. There's, there's too many babies, the market's.

[Heather]

Saturated egg price and then, then you can create your self fulfilling prophecy of you'll go out of business. So I said, I wrote this in the group. If you compare yourself, let's say someone sold what I say, 50 units and you sold 30 units, you would look at that. I'm shrinking by 16. Yeah, but if you looked last year and you sold, you know, what was like 20 units and now you sold 50 units, something like that, you would actually see that you've increased by, you know, 33. Exactly. And it's the perspective of comparing yourself to the baker next door versus comparing yourself to where you were last year. Now somebody entered the comments and they had a great question. They said, I'm actually, I sold fewer units this year than last year. So where am I at on this? Well, fortunately they were in the cookie college. So I've seen where they put their time and energy, energy. And I said you sold classes? And they were like, oh yeah, I actually started selling classes this year. So I didn't sell any customs because I sold out three classes.

[Corey]

Yeah, your, your focus. Heather loves to say this. And we say it to the clients when we're onboarding is we say, what do you want out of this? And they'll be like, we had one lady who said, I want to show my ex husband I'm successful.

[Heather]

That's still my most favorite answer to that question today.

[Corey]

Because I was like, we can do that.

[Heather]

She said, I want my. I never changed my name after the divorce. And I want him to be annoyed because it shows up so often. Yeah.

[Corey]

So some of our clients been like, you know, I want to grow my social media numbers or I want more SEO. And we say, where it. Where you water, it will grow. You're not going to grow everywhere because you're not watering everywhere. If you focused on classes in this Valentine's Day, you watered there. You posted a lot of content. You made a lot of ask, hey, sign up a lot of FOMO around that. So where you watered grew.

[Heather]

You had.

[Corey]

You had signups and you taught classes where you did not water did not grow. But you can't be like, okay, I'm done watering my classes.

[Heather]

Where. Where did all my customs go? I know.

[Corey]

So you. There has to be. You have to give yourself grace in business. It can't always be this negative downturn.

[Heather]

Right. And even more interesting to this question, somebody else entered the comments and said, I actually sold fewer this year than I did last year. And it was only the same thing. I watered asterisk. And this was Mike Skyring. He was like, but per unit, I made more. So I was able to work less and make more this year. And that right there is success.

[Corey]

That is success. If you charge more and you get fewer orders, but you make the same.

[Heather]

You, that's still moving forward.

[Corey]

It just looks different, it feels different. But at the end of the day, if you put crunch the numbers, you were just as successful.

[Heather]

Okay, so we got a couple different options here. Odds are you increased your sales from last year to this year. That's a win. Odds are you watered different ground and that increased this year from last year. And that's when odds are you charged more but sold less and still made more this year. That's when. And then you have the person who's like, I did everything you guys said and I sold less.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

What happened? And that's where you get to do a root cause analysis. Because what happened is something in your marketing shifted. Yeah. Or. And if you guys want to do well, the market got saturated. I'm going to tell you right now, the market saturation from COVID year one to today, so many people have gotten out of the business. I love that it's the go to excuse because it's one we can't touch unless we murder people. Market saturations is easy because you can blame everyone but yourself.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

In fact, that's what it is. Saying it's the market is saturated means it's everyone else's fault.

[Corey]

Yeah. I think a big proposal proponent of why maybe people saw fewer sales is because social media had more of a harder reach. Because a lot of people, when TikTok stopped, they, Facebook started a lot of these payment programs like you had the reels bonus program and all those things. So a lot of people are like, well, let me invest my time in something that isn't going away. TikTok's still on the chopping block, so people are still investing.

[Heather]

You can download it again. I download it.

[Corey]

So a lot of people are using Facebook, meaning your reach is now even less than it was before. That is a factor there.

[Heather]

There's many factors. Right. So we had an election year, which meant that October and November reach was down. After November, we are in Black Friday sales territory. All those companies who couldn't spend competing with the campaign money are now just throwing money at the problem. And now, okay, we're back into a kind of a more level playing field. The elections are over, Black Friday's over, and now we're in kind of a more homeostasis. Right. But then it's a day month, it's January. It's these slower months. And now bakers are like, well, this looks terrible. And remember, we always say the months following the super bowl that is December in the cookie world look drastically slower.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

If you. If it didn't feel slower, something's wrong. It should feel so much slower because it's almost like December. If you guys go to trends.google.com and search sugar cookie, December is 10 times the search results than it is the rest of the year.

[Corey]

Yeah. Yeah. And then you have a lot of bakers take off in January and come back for. You'll never guess it, Valentine's Day.

[Heather]

I asked an interesting question in the group this past week, and I said, if you had to make one more sale this week, you had to do it. What would you do? And the brainstorming, the geniusness in these comments, because if you could sell one more, what would you do? And everyone's like, here's what I do. I do that. I would offer a discount. I do. I knock on a door. I'd go to a networking event. That's such a different Perspective than is anyone else's. Feel like they're slow. Their sales are slow.

[Corey]

I was talking to Heather and I. My analogy was bakers are easy. They finished all of their either classes. If they focus on classes, their pre orders that they did pre orders and looked at and been like, where are my customs? We're on a boat. Your business is running.

[Heather]

I'm sorry, we're on an aircraft carrier. Yeah.

[Corey]

Of a boat. Oh, yeah.

[Heather]

Yeah. That takes forever. Yes.

[Corey]

When you are, it's easy to look around right and left that and say, oh, where's my sail? Where's my sail?

[Heather]

It.

[Corey]

Since we're on a boat, if you want to turn left and you are shipping, manning a boat, it is a process. It's not this one right ever. It's like, turn the sail.

[Heather]

I think there's a back you can keep. How long does it take to turn an aircraft carrier around? I'm not the first person to Google this. Thank goodness. It takes five minutes to turn the boat around. Right. That's forever in terms of turning right.

[Corey]

But as when we pop off our heads from our customs in our classes, it's so easy to turn around and be like, but where'd it go? Where's that?

[Heather]

And then you get whiplash because you're like, why isn't that working? Why is that? And then it creates that angst, that anxiety of nothing's working but you're turning around. When you're turning around, you're going nowhere. Right? Yeah, you're. You're going in now. You're making no forward progress. But you're like, no, it's not working. It's not working. It's not working. It's not working. That's not working. With the twin set isn't working. None of it's working. It's everybody else's fault.

[Corey]

Yeah, but if you focused on classes and your customers saw that you were doing classes, you posted about your classes. You posted a recap of the classes. Your audience is now in tuned with you selling classes. But where's my custom orders? They're still in the class. They're taking five minutes to turn around from classes, and they need you to guide them back to your custom orders. But I see so many people pop up and they're like, but my sales are bad because I have no customs coming out of Valentine's Day. That was super successful. And it's because it takes a hot minute anytime we've had a client. And they're like, yeah, I want more followers. I can't Be like, and bam, you have a hundred.

[Heather]

We can buy them. But you don't buy anything from you.

[Corey]

It takes a lot of time to have a new initiative. You have to train your audience. And it's not like I started selling cake pops last year. Just now am I getting reoccurring orders. But it's taken so much time to associate my name with cake pops. It wasn't overnight, unfortunately. But if I would have started off as a cake pop baker, I would have had cake pop sales right off the bat. It's because my audience that we've cultivated is used to what I'm showing them. So to introduce something new or to bring something back, it's very hard to just turn that switch and be like, okay, buy from me.

[Heather]

I think it's only fair that we tell them the truth.

[Corey]

Okay, tell em.

[Heather]

I know that we preach filling up classes and stuff and I unfortunately Cora and I have sold zero tickets as of yesterday. We had sold zero tickets to classes. And it's because of market saturation. I'm just kidding. It's because we hadn't posted them yet. Right. And I hadn't marketed them at all. In fact, we had filled up our December class back in August of 2024 and I proceeded to not market at all because my heart wasn't in it. We had sold that class. I tell Corey, we'll figure out a way. So yesterday I sat down and we posted four classes. One December, one October, one August and one April. We've sold six tickets out of 10 tickets to the April class. If we sold zero today, I would have been like, that matches the effort I put in at the end of last year.

[Corey]

But it's so easy to post them, not make a sale and be like, does anyone feel like it's really slow?

[Heather]

No.

[Corey]

I want to imagine if I had posted yesterday. Did you not market it?

[Heather]

Imagine I had posted this for a yesterday, which I did around 7pm yeah. And then I go to the group and I say, anybody else feel like ticket sales are slow for cookie classes? I think it's a curriculum. I think it's market saturation. I think when I went to post the cookie class, which is a cookie class kick or. And I teach the same things we sell. I saw somebody else teaching, we're at double their price. And I still sold six tickets.

[Corey]

Yeah, I still did. It's. Heather knows sometimes I wake up and I'm a pessimist. You know, everything's wrong where it keeps me grounded.

[Heather]

I'm the sun, gorgeous cloud.

[Corey]

But If I wake up and I look at my business through a pessimistic lens, it will be bad. The market is saturated. No one's buying classes, my customs aren't working, people aren't reaching, no one's commenting. And then I will be stuck in a pessimistic outlook on everything. But if I take a step back, I had my tried it and truest customer order 52 conversation hearts. I can't say that it was a bad day. No, she bypassed everything, got to me, I got her in. We got it done. It was fantastic. It was a great sales day for that. But I can look at something and be like, well, my classes didn't sell out in a day. Well, you didn't post them but yesterday.

[Heather]

So it's a lot of that introspection. And that's what I want to challenge folks here. So like one, use the correct metrics. Compare yourself to yourself last year. Don't compare yourself to the baker over there. You are cost of living here is tremendously different than your cost of living there. Our price per ticket is so much higher because it costs so much to do anything in this area. So don't compare. Well, the twins sell each ticket for $85 and I can pull 40. We're not playing the same game. Your property taxes are not my property taxes. Right. Don't you know, do the wrong metric, don't compare the wrong data set. Then make an honest thing. What did you water? Did that grow? So let's compare the right thing and then say did you. Were you able to charge more and work less? That's the right one. And then this one. Okay. I did all those other. That wasn't. Then let's actually look at what your efforts were. Let's take some accountability here. And I think accountability is important because if you don't take accountability, you don't have to change. If you don't change, guess what doesn't change? Your sales.

[Corey]

I know that people love to say the twins never think it's market saturation. Yeah. At the end of the day, there's one thing you can control. It's you and your business. You cannot control the market. You cannot control how saturated it is.

[Heather]

We get a great perspective living in Washington D.C. that there is no such thing as market saturation. Because there's so many. If a corny wanted to get sushi right now, there are within probably 30 minute drive, I would say well over a hundred.

[Corey]

Absolutely.

[Heather]

And they're all still in business.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Some are fantastic, some will be closing tomorrow. And some have been here for 30 years.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So we are able to be like, there's so many Toyota dealerships, there's so many sushi restaurants. We live in this kind of. They call it the mixing bowl. That's why Corey's company is called the Mixing Bowl. We live in this mixing bowl of opportunity because there's a lot of people. So market saturation isn't a thing. It's market segmentation that allows you to set yourself apart.

[Corey]

But I think when you don't think and say, you know, there are 22 fast food, different change around me, you can say, well, I think people are just tired of eating food. They're done eating. They know that they don't want to eat anymore.

[Heather]

They're not ordering, not interested in eating.

[Corey]

But you got to think at the end of the day, you can control one thing and it's you and your business. You can't control the people around you. But everyone eats multiple times a day. People have birthdays literally every day of the year. They're always trying to celebrate. It could be coming down to the way that you price right. You know, you could be priced too low and then you're the most expensive of the cheapest. It could be that maybe your photography isn't on point with a higher end pricing.

[Heather]

I agree.

[Corey]

That's something we can ask a ton.

[Heather]

And have a really big picture. Right.

[Corey]

Maybe it's your copy. Sometimes the copy is not compelling. Compelling. Making me feel like fomo. I'm gonna miss out if I don't get this.

[Heather]

I'm gonna say, ease of ordering is a big one.

[Corey]

It's a big one.

[Heather]

Corey, when she doesn't want to take orders, makes it hard to order. Yeah, because she knows it stops orders.

[Corey]

It stops orders. If I wanted to make it easy, you're gonna best believe that link is going to be in my copy. It's gonna be in my caption. I'm gonna be talking to myself in the comments.

[Heather]

I. I contacted two doctor's offices, right. And I contacted them the same day. And I use the exact same copy in their online submission. Right. They both had online. One was more complicated, the other one was like just click send. Yeah, the more complicated one took me forever. But it was said, hey, after you submit this, you'll definitely hear from us in 24 hours. 72 hours later, they did reach out to tell me that that availability, that appointment I sent, it's no longer available. Okay. Then they've contacted me again today. I immediately hung up because you know, who Contacted me first, that other office. They were super friendly, super accommodating. I was talking to a real person, and I told her, tracy, I said, I just want to. I don't know who considers your bonuses, but you have been so much more responsive than the other office I've reached out to. And I think that's also a differentiator. But we're like, nah, we hate our clients, but why won't our clients order from us? Yeah, we're mean to our clients and we wonder why they don't come back. Yeah.

[Corey]

But then you're so quick to be like, well, the market's saturated. Look, there's too many doctors around here, not enough sick people.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

So it's just easy to cast blame on things we can't control. Because when we can't control it, that means we're not at fault for it. At the end of the day, it's really hard to look internally and be like, well, you know what? I did kind of rush that photo. That post I just did willy nilly. I was super proud of the cookie. So I just posted it up, not thinking if my audience was online. I didn't check my stats and my insights to know that, you know, Wednesday isn't the busiest day. Or I posted on Independence Day. No one was online. They were all trying to be outside at their barbecues or things.

[Heather]

It.

[Corey]

It's really hard to look internally, but.

[Heather]

At the end of the day, it's egg on your face. And the only person to put the egg there.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah.

[Heather]

Cory and I have a marketing with miracles. So we had the yesterday and it's like, okay, hey, what have we been doing? Well, okay, what are our weak spots? They call it a swot s w o t analysis in business. Right. So where are weak spots? Well, we didn't say is like, well, everybody else is trying to sell the same cookie college we are. So I guess just back it up, kids.

[Corey]

Yeah, there's too many cookie class kids out there.

[Heather]

No, we said, okay, this is something that we haven't been doing very well is we've not been super engaging in the sugar cookie marketing group. We haven't been, you know, boots on the ground. We've been more of this admin like air traffic control instead of like value added. Let's strategize here. Let's work here. So we're like, okay, well, that's our own shortcoming.

[Corey]

At the end of the day, that's all you can control. So you better hope it's your own shortcoming.

[Heather]

Because if it's not. Yeah, if you can control it, you can control. I know that means you can make it go up and down. If it's out of your control, that's the death sentence.

[Corey]

I think a lot of times we are like, but I'm posting it to my social media. At the end of the day, if you aren't growing your social media, it's the same 400 people that you're talking to. At the end of the day, they maybe buy from you once a year, you know, for a kid's birthday or something like that. You are like, well, I'm posting and no one's buying. But are you working on the growth part of your business? There's two separate ones. There's cultivating your audience and growing your audience. They're not the same thing. Are you only posting the same copy every Saturday on a sales post in the group and never coming back to grow the relationship with the group? Well, then I can tell you that you're a poster and a ghoster, you know, and that's so easy to do. And it feels like, no, I am marketing. I'm posting that.

[Heather]

That.

[Corey]

Are you going to the meetups? I hate going to in person meetups.

[Heather]

But do they work?

[Corey]

They work.

[Heather]

They do work. Corey could have been the poster child.

[Corey]

I could have been the poster child. I went to absolutely everyone for years, and people associated me. They knew my name, and that was great. And then I got busy. And you know what I stopped doing?

[Heather]

Stop going.

[Corey]

Got stopped going.

[Heather]

And that's an absolutely fine trade. There's only so many hours a day. But Corey and I will be like, you know, she'll be like, what happened? That initiative that you had. And I was like, oh, I got busy. She's like, well, you're not going to meet your goals. And I said, absolutely, I'm not. And that's my own choice.

[Corey]

But to take that and to say that is my choice. I know that I am doing that. That takes a lot.

[Heather]

Yeah, it's an L taking a loss.

[Corey]

We love to kick cans down the road over here. You know, we don't want to abandon.

[Heather]

Initiative, but we'll scooch it down just a little way.

[Corey]

It's farther away, and that's okay to do.

[Heather]

But as long as you make a conscious effort that this was done by me and I made this choice, and the results of this choice are ones I'm willing to live with.

[Corey]

Yeah. If you are out there and you're like, you know, my custom order form says I'll respond in 48 hours. Totally fine. But at the end of the day, your competition is responding in two minutes. So when you're like, but I keep getting ghosted. They're asking, and I'm getting back in the 48 hours. Like, if you want to be booked and busy and blessed, you got to put the effort. Booked in busy and blessed because your competition is doing it.

[Heather]

Consider the two appointments. Had Tracy never messaged me, the 72 hour response would have been the one I went, yeah, yeah. But I liked how Tracy's customer service. The thing is, and the reality of it is, there's only 24 hours in the day. Yes. There's not enough time to do everything. In a perfect world, we'd water this, water that, water that, and then we go bake, and then we'd listen to this and we'd learn that, and we try this. There's only so much focus. And that's why I do like the eat that frog book. Because sometimes when there's too many options, too many places to water, we get analysis process and you and I can kind of see and Cory now will be like this baker right here. They're getting really overwhelmed because they're focusing on everything and as such are focused on nothing.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So they'll be like classes. Okay.

[Corey]

Oh, do you do it custom?

[Heather]

Okay. Oh, what is this, a pyo? I'll do the pyo.

[Corey]

Bronuts.

[Heather]

Or the. What is those? Those cocoa balls. What else are we doing?

[Corey]

Sourdough.

[Heather]

I'm getting into sourdough. And we're like, you'll make no traction at all because you're not. What we say is like, okay, I want in the eat that frog book. It's not by us. It's by Tracy something. Another Tracy. I like me some Tracy. You do like Tracy's. So he says, listen, if you had to eat a frog, if you. You knew you had to eat the frog today, when was the best time to eat it?

[Corey]

Tomorrow.

[Heather]

No, you have to eat the frog today.

[Corey]

Oh, now.

[Heather]

Right. Because if you eat it now, your rest of your days and spend thinking about it.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Wild of you to say tomorrow.

[Corey]

I thought you were doing you had.

[Heather]

To eat it today.

[Corey]

I was trying to.

[Heather]

She says a lot about where is it two weeks from now. If you had to eat a frog today, the best time to eat the frog is right now. Because then the rest of your day is free up. So you can say, okay, I want to teach classes. I'm horrified at the thought. Okay, then, then take that. We Have a course in the cookie college. Take that course right now. Oh, shoot. Okay, now I have to make one. There's a course in the cookie college setting up eventbrite. Take that one. Now I gotta post it. There's a course in the cookie college on how to post it. Take that one and post it. Guess what? You are now a bakery teaches cookie puff.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You know what? You're not a bakery that's making no traction and blaming market saturation.

[Corey]

Sometimes I see people, I'll be like, yeah, you know, sometimes I see people ask for a BAKER and there's 46 bakers tagged in the comments. I would say those 46 bakers tagged in the comments that are tagging themselves, they want that business. They want it. They want it. But if you're like, there's 46 tag, there's no youth. At the end of the day, someone might like your style more than someone else's style.

[Heather]

They might like your customer service. They might like your order process. They may like your photography better. Yeah, there's a lot that goes into my cousin Jesse. He wanted this car this weekend, right. So he goes to five exactly the same dealerships. They ended up. They ended up picking the dealership with the salesman that also owned the car. Oh, it wasn't based on price. All the cars were 2025s. They were beautifully done. They were this Subaru. I didn't realize Subaru does not pay on commission.

[Corey]

Oh, really?

[Heather]

You pay. It makes salary. So they went, they went to five different dealerships and picked the one because they liked the guy.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Not because they liked specifically the car. They were fine with the car. It was sold at all the dealerships. They liked the guy.

[Corey]

They liked the guy. And at the end of the day, someone's going to like you over someone else just because of your pure style. There's so many different styles. That's why my grandma was like, I don't really like the way your cookies taste. And I was like, you know what? That's totally fine to.

[Heather]

No, I'll never.

[Corey]

It'll be something I cook on my.

[Heather]

Tombstone did not like my cook.

[Corey]

And I said, you know what? I make the cookies for the taste that I like. I had someone come up and she was like. She was cus. She like, I just like that. The way I could really taste the vanilla in your cookies. I don't make them with almonds. There's a lot of people make them with almond extract. And people love almond extract. My mom, I really love almond extract. I don't love it. That's why I don't bake with it. But there's so many different factors out there. It's not that I saw this Baker tag 52 times. They only like her, the marketing. She's got the market. And I can't edge in on her. No, you totally can. You just have to put yourself out there. And what you. Water will grow. If you want to focus on customs, that will grow. If you want to focus on something new, like you're getting into sourdough, you got to give it a minute. But it will eventually grow.

[Heather]

Right? Imagine that you, like, put a seat in the ground. You put water on. You're like, nothing's there. No longer. Got it. I don't got a green thumb. Guys. Like, no, you would nurture it. You would fertilize it. You'd put it in the sun.

[Corey]

When me and Heather first started our marketing company, one I started it on.

[Heather]

Do you know your anniversary is, like, tomorrow?

[Corey]

Oh, no.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

For the first three months, we had zero clients. But you can. I can tell you 100. We hit that ground every day, Corey and I.

[Heather]

She'd show up to my apartment. We'd be, like, ready to do nothing. And we'd be like, we're gonna write content. Yeah. We're going to go to these networking events. We're gonna cold call cold.

[Corey]

But if month one went by and we're like, this isn't working.

[Heather]

It was a little bit in the back of my head of I said.

[Corey]

It has to work, so I'm going to continue working. But if month one, we gave up, we wouldn't have had the success that we've had long term. It took three months to get client number one.

[Heather]

It took three months to get client number one, and we lost client number two. Client number two called me and literally said, you've ruined my life. And I said, listen, I've done a lot of things. We haven't ruined it. I'll. I'll. I'll. I'll get.

[Corey]

But if you took client. This isn't for me. We're out of here. No, it takes consistency. And I know. And it's probably because we've been in the saddle for so long that it's easy for me to keep watering it. It will grow versus being like twins. Gosh, shut up with your positivity. It's annoying. It is annoying.

[Heather]

I would say that it's positivity as much as just guaranteed. Yeah, guaranteed. Corey is the pessimist poster child. It's not Positivity. She just knows it works. The crazy thing is, you may think it's market saturation. Corey and I have now since Sugar Dot, if you guys know her, she was og, og Teacher.

[Corey]

Teacher on the East Coast.

[Heather]

When you Googled cookie teacher near me, it was Sugar Dot's website. And when we got started, we're like, oh, whoever Sugar Dot is, we ended up meeting her. Nice lady. But she moved to Tennessee. She moved. She gave us opportunity to. And guess what? Cory and I are bored. Yes. Now we have. There's more opportunity to take more market share because Cory and I are leaving it on the table.

[Corey]

And you know what? You're like, oh, finally. What we did was we marketed and said how fun classes are. So we've opened up the market to. People are like, I think I really like classes. And now that we've kind of won our Saturdays back because we work so much, we've scheduled fewer classes than we used to, but it's opened up for other people.

[Heather]

So market saturation is, I think, and I'm going to call it a cop out.

[Corey]

Heather said to a client, we'd much rather have you think there's market saturation than you be the only one in your market. Because if you are the only one in your market, there's something wrong with your market.

[Heather]

Right. And I heard that from somebody smarter than me. He was like, if you go to a town, there's no gas station. I'll start a gas station. There's probably not enough people to support a gas station. Right. More business, more competition means sustainability. If there's nobody there, I mean, there's just. There's billions of people in the world. If it was opportunity, somebody would be there. Right? That's the signal that more people should come because there's more opportunity.

[Corey]

Yeah. I would be worried if I went into our food is group and 46 bakers weren't tagged.

[Heather]

I'd be like, oh, we've got the hot cocoa bomb. Someone had said, this year, hot cocoa bomb's not a thing anymore. Yeah. And I'll be like, there must not be enough support.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

For the market saturation. There's not. Not yet. We want more people. And then, okay, can there be too many of one thing? But the market, the invisible hand of the market handles that too. People get tired drinking water.

[Corey]

My drink is telling me to drink water. I'm back on my water train.

[Heather]

Felicia is very. I think this snake, and I'm sorry if you hate snake snakes. Can you see him in the camera? No. Oh, really just a rock. I think the snake likes the sounds of my voice. Like, you know what?

[Corey]

I agree with what the My friends. You're one of the few ones. He's just out of camera. Just out of there. My over at the end of the day we know that feeling a sense of unease. When you don't have emails waiting to be responded to. There is an unease and you are not alone in feeling that.

[Heather]

I would go to that thread. What's one if you had to make one more sales week, would you? And I'd start trying out those ideas because that's what people have said. If I had to make another sale, here's what I do. Likely that's what they think will get an extra sale. If you are saying I got no sales right now, I got no leads, go to that thread and start practice. Just take one and see what happens if you try it out. Yeah. Because there are some pretty good strategies.

[Corey]

There and I think that's fantastic. And it's better than coming to a group of bakers who don't share your same audience, who don't share your same time in, who don't share your same artistry.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

And say does anyone else feel like their sales are low? You're going to feel a resounding yes. Because people are oh yeah, you know what? She said it. Now I'm thinking it. My sales are low. If you take a step back and you say what can I do to change the fact that I'm feeling this way?

[Heather]

Have I.

[Corey]

When was the last time I checked my insights? When was the last time I tried to grow my page number and following.

[Heather]

That thing a feeling going off. I I love metrics and they're so free and readily accessible. So Cora and I were talking about some groups group metrics of which Facebook provides you. If you're on desktop, you can go back for a year.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And Corey's like, I feel like our engagement. So I was like, well, let's not feel. Let's look.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

And I was like, it's actually higher than it's been in a while.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So Corey's like, oh, that's great. What if we had just gone off the feeling?

[Corey]

I then the feelings can be so pervasive because it's whatever you're feeling a little bit. You can really make it shout from the mountaintops by just looking at something simple like, well, no one commented on my last post. So the market's oversaturated. They're busy commenting over and on other things on TikTok this past week went a little viral. I would have quit cookies because of the viral and how people ate it, what I did. But at the end of the day I had growth through that viral TikTok where people really shunned the fact that I made gift bags for a 15 year old boy. That was my kid. I got growth from it. So at the end of the day, haters gonna hate. But I made $16 off of that video.

[Heather]

$16. $16.

[Corey]

I didn't have like, wow, look, people don't like that baker.

[Heather]

Let's. No, no, let's say we, we start you posted TikTok, you got nothing. What have you quit then? Oh, where would that $16 be? Right?

[Corey]

Not in my pocket, right? Not in my pocket.

[Heather]

It's that consistency over time. Cory and I again and I say it every podcast. The number one competitor of bakers is another baker's. It's their lack of consistency and you can out consistency the nearest competitor.

[Corey]

I actually was in the local foodies group and I just looked up sugar cookies in the there and I said I'm just going to scroll through every person I clicked on that had shouted out their business in 2020. 2021. No longer in business.

[Heather]

No, no. It's market saturation. No, no, no, no. It's not that they quit. It's that they did not quit. Yeah, quit, but they did not.

[Corey]

Yeah. So I know it's easy to get in the pessimistic attitude. I am that embodied. I do that all the time. But what I know even more than my pessimism is that what you water will grow in that if you can stay consistent through it. The people who are inconsistent, who let the pessimism rise to the top, believe it.

[Heather]

Or who are just tired of teaching.

[Corey]

Class or who just tired.

[Heather]

You will rise above them. You will.

[Corey]

I just remember if we all go back to when we first opened our bakery, we got likes it was the dopamine.

[Heather]

It's like you five, four.

[Corey]

I said, I got 10 followers today. I cannot believe that.

[Heather]

You know what's so funny? I was cleaning up our event break. I use eventbrite because I'm lazy. And it was like, do you want to see your drafts not published? And I was like, okay, because I don't keep draft events. So it was from 2021, 2020. And I was like, oh, so hopeful back then. So I deleted all the drafts and then I'm going to bed and I messaged Snapchat Corey because she only lets me snapchat her. And I was like, oh, we made a sale. Like, it still hit that same part of my brain from that first sale. But when we need that first sale coming out of COVID trying this new thing for the first time, we make that first sound. I was like, oh, my goodness, I.

[Corey]

Can'T believe someone bought. But we still lose track of that because this uphill feels so good. From nothing to something. Oh, my goodness.

[Heather]

But from something to something to something. So something. We call that slow in reality, it's just progression. Yeah. It is progression as a reflection of where we've watered. Yeah. For Cory and I to be devastated we haven't sold out of our December cooking class when we posted it yesterday is ridiculous.

[Corey]

It is.

[Heather]

But for me, I can say, hey, my sales this year compared to last year, seemed rather slow. Now, I watered different places.

[Corey]

I know. And it's in your life. But I always offered customs. But if you focused on posting the pre sales and that's what the only thing you've focused on for the past month because you wanted to sell out of your pre sales, that's fine to. To have sold out of your pre sales. But give yourself some grace as you turn this ship around to focus on customs because you're not a failure. The market isn't oversaturated. You focused on something. It paid off.

[Heather]

They say, well, I would like more. I would like to focus on two things. I only have time for the one. Then that's when you start hiring help. That's when you start hiring a virtual assistant or a social media manager. But they're going to cost you money, and that's how you grow. I was telling Corey, I make more money working with her, but I lose 50% of every dollar. But we have potential to make more dollars.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So in a way, you're making less, but you're making more.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And that's hard to do and. But you're like, no, I want to keep it all to myself. But you're going to make less overall and maybe possibly be very stressed for it. So you got to do that. That business thing. And that's why business owners are so different than employees. Business owners, like, if I hire you, I can make 10x. Yeah, the sell. The sell. If I hire you, I lose 50% or I lose 20 cents for every dollar I make. You know, that kind of like hoarding. And then. And then you start resenting everybody because there's too much work. It's a lot opportunity, and that translates to work. Like Cory's like, I'll Teach a class, but you post them like Corey's never was. Never gonna post this class. I don't think she has a lot of anyone posted DM me.

[Corey]

And if it works out.

[Heather]

But here's the thing. I'm not gonna bake for this. Those pictures are all taken by Corey. The copy I wrote, the management of it I do. But the teaching Corey does. And we meet in the middle, so I can tell that Corey's on her soapbox. This entire one. This is pressing on her this week that I just.

[Corey]

Just. It's not that you can't feel pessimism, because I feel it all the time. It's that you have to have it with a drink of water of what did I focus on? And if I focus on it and that didn't work, maybe I can be a little disappointed about it. But if I don't dissect it, then I'm just letting the pessimism win. There's no correction there. But if you focus on it, you do the stats, you're consistent. I swear, it's. It's proven over and over again. Me and Heather, the idiots we are. One thing we are is consistent. And it works. It works.

[Heather]

You're a bit more consistent than I am. I said, like, corey, I'll start something. Cora make us have to keep. That's a problem.

[Corey]

I hate when someone assigns me something because I'm like, this will be on my brain for the rest of my life.

[Heather]

And I'm like, I don't know if you wonder how we started the marketing company. I used to say, we go to the annual twin beach trip, which we still go on, but we didn't work together at the time. And I would say, corey, there's just. We're leaving money on the table, this marketing thing. She's in car sales and in marketing, and I was in marketing and SEO. And I was like, if we could just do this together, and then the beach trip would end. We'd be like, see you when I see you. And then one day, I think it might have been in a March. February.

[Corey]

I think it was a march.

[Heather]

I felt like it was cold outside.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And then Corey called, and she's like, hey, you know that dream of starting the marketing company? I was like, yeah, weird. I usually talk about it in the summer, but, yeah, sure, you want to talk about it? She's like, it's tomorrow, because they just quit me down. And then I was like, well, I guess do or do not. There's no try. We're gonna have to do. So then you focus on what you want to water. And that's why if you do listen to that eat that frog book, I do like it because you're saying, here's the frog. I'm gonna eat this one frog. I'm gonna focus on this frog. Once that frog's eaten, then the next frog and I'm gonna eat that frog. And what you're gonna see is each.

[Corey]

Frog is that watering we're talking about frog is. I really want to teach classes this year.

[Heather]

Year. You're going to water that first.

[Corey]

And what you're going to start to see grow is interesting classes. But you can't be like, but what about my customs? You focused on watering your frog for the classes. You can water two frogs, but there's.

[Heather]

Going to be a bigger frog. One of them is going to beat.

[Corey]

The other a bigger frog. And that. That it's okay.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

And that is fine. And that is dandy. But you can't look over and be like, well, look at my customs. Frog is so small and tawny.

[Heather]

Because you're going to eat the biggest frog first. That's when you're going to focus on. So Corey and I. And that's why I like small campaigns. Right. So like Corey said, let's spend February really getting engagement in the main sugar cookie marketing group up.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

How we're gonna do that? Okay, here's what that would look like. And there's a bunch of supporting frogs to this big frog. Right. She's like, we need to teach a live on how to teach cookie classes. Do an ama, you know, do this, that the other. Record the podcast, make more content. That's why I did the February freebies and so that. But that's not sustainable long term. It's the campaign right now. It's our February strategy march that's gonna shift to something else.

[Corey]

Y. But imagine being like, we have to just get it up. But there is no. It's so you can be like, I'm trying. It's not work. Nothing's working. But if we gave it an expiration date.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

It makes it so much more palatable because you'll be like, we did great in February. A plus did great. And then you can move on to your next frog that you want to do. But if you're just like this ambiguous. I don't know anything ever.

[Heather]

Shifting wind. Yeah. You know, like, sorry. The thought of a plastic bath bag being on the grill of my car while I'm driving 50 miles an hour.

[Corey]

You know, I don't get embarrassed as an adult.

[Heather]

That is like having something in your car is like having something in your teeth. Like, so when I see a plastic bag and you know he's got that big volume.

[Corey]

He does.

[Heather]

And he's like unpredictably following the truth. Every car that's passed by, he's swooping.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So I'm like, okay.

[Corey]

And then I look at my rear.

[Heather]

View mirror to make sure he's still floating. Because if he's not there, he's on my car. I will literally have to pull on side of the road to make sure. Absolutely.

[Corey]

Absolutely.

[Heather]

But that bag in the wind, which our little sister always says, I feel like a bag in the wind. She has no direction. Right. So she'll say that when she feels like she's lost that bag in the wind. That plastic bag floating around. He's never going forward. He's never going back. His only lucky shots get hit by a car. But that is what that baker with no focus is doing. And they're going to feel like it's slow and they're going to feel like they make no traction because there's no focus. Yeah.

[Corey]

And you're going to feel like the market's saturated. But the market saturation has always been there. It was there before.

[Heather]

Yeah. You saturated somewhere else market.

[Corey]

But you have to realize as many people are coming that as many if people are leaving it. Yeah. And it just is the consistent baker that wins out over. You don't have to be the best, most talented, just consistent. Show up for your business every single time.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

If the. If there's a sales day in a group, I want to see you there. If there is a thread, I want.

[Heather]

To see, I want to see new. I want you to test theories of types of content. Yeah. I want you to say, okay, let me do a selfie. Let me do a. Let them in. Meet the baker. This one. Let me do a funny story. This one. Let me do like, here's why here.

[Corey]

But listen, that is showing up for your business, doing the same copy each and every week. And reach out to me.

[Heather]

I can make run her local group.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And I'm like, this person has posted the exact same sales pitch every Saturday.

[Corey]

I said, this must be in their notes app because it's a copy paste. Same photo, same copy.

[Heather]

Without saying it.

[Corey]

I already know first letter S, same word.

[Heather]

And I'm like, wow, they get no traction. And every week they.

[Corey]

But you know what they could do? They could go to their local group, like their SCM group for whatever they're in and be like, I. No one's signing up. Zero appointments made. But I'm showing. I'm posting every week. Your passion isn't showing. Heather was talking about charisma and being charismatic.

[Heather]

What a. What a del. If. If you have charisma, the world. The world.

[Corey]

But here's the thing. There's so much social media now. How do you show charisma in a post?

[Heather]

Excitement. How do you embody excitement for something you don't find exciting? I don't think you can. You have to be excited about it.

[Corey]

If you were like, oh, my business. It's going to come off to people. When people show up, I really have to be like, someone's coming to the door. I want you to vacuum real quick.

[Heather]

And I want you to be fun for them the most.

[Corey]

And when I sold cars, we were told, treat the person coming through the door like they are your first and only customer of the day. And it's why. It's because they want to buy from someone who's more passionate about the sale of this car. It's funny.

[Heather]

It's. You feel it and you're like, yeah, I'm excited.

[Corey]

I'm excited.

[Heather]

Yeah. I was wearing these pair of jeans I should have never bought. They're not very flattering on me, but at the principle of the cost that they wear, I have to wear them. Yeah, right. So actually, our older sister's like, where'd you get those jeans? Because that's kind of more her style. And I was like, oh, a ritzy at the Moment mall. They had opened one in Tysons. It was funny as I was peculiar. I go there, it's a massive store. Say, hey, can I try this on? The girl's like, oh, absolutely. Let me get a dressing room set up for you. But in the dressing rooms, there's no mirrors.

[Corey]

Wild.

[Heather]

There's one massive, beautiful, stunning city sitting area. That's the mirrors. And I was like, that is peculiar. But when I walk out, you would have thought I came from a New York City Runway. This girl looks at me and she like, that's it. That's the look. And I was like, how can I not buy? But see, if you were in your.

[Corey]

Own echo chamber, in your own dressing room with your own mirror, I feel horrendous.

[Heather]

But the girl, when I walk out, she's like, so how did you put that together? As if I'm some, like, designer. How did you even come up with that style? It looks so great on you. And I was like, I'll be taking this home. Thank you so much. I will be wearing this to the grave. This will be my uniform. So she was so excited, and it got me excited for something I wasn't going to buy. And they actually say that Aritzia is designed that way on purpose, which obviously works.

[Corey]

Yeah. When people bought cars, do you think we wanted to put a bow on every single car that you bought?

[Heather]

Yeah. No.

[Corey]

But the bow is a bow to you because this is the first car you bought all day. We've stole 20. But this is your first car. And you're like, oh, my goodness, a bow. Can I take a picture?

[Heather]

Yeah. Jess comes in with the new car. Right. And I open the door and I was like, little bow in your company. Yeah, we put a bow. When I bought the Acura, I wanted to buy it used because I didn't want to the depreciation to be so bad. But I bought it from a Ford dealership, right? So this dealership is a bunch of men who like Fords. So. And I bought it out of state. So I'm calling these guys versus the salesman. He's like, oh, man, you're calling about that Acura. We cannot get people away from it. We finally had a locket because we didn't want them touching it. You know, it's just everyone, they walk past everything, they walk straight up to that car and they're like, what is this? And I'm like, you're blowing smoke up my butt. And I like it.

[Corey]

But if you are pessimistic about your business, it's going to show in your copy. You're not going to run to comment back to people. You're not going to be the first person to comment on a thread looking for a baker.

[Heather]

And then your sales will be slow.

[Corey]

I know. And it's so be like, does anyone else feel like their sales are slow? There's always extenuating circumstances, but you have to be. You're going to be your business's number one fan, sometimes the only fan.

[Heather]

Uhhuh. And that's not only fans. The only fan. Listen, my feet. I slow enough.

[Corey]

I only feed. But you got to realize that no one's going to be as passionate about your business. So if you are not showing up and passionate about it, just imagine that other people are not going to.

[Heather]

I wouldn't want to buy. I wouldn't want to buy from this ad.

[Corey]

Baker. Yeah, but I just remember the baker I was when I got my first sale. I was Cloud 5000.

[Heather]

I think your face could go. We got.

[Corey]

I be. I was like, oh, my goodness, I got a sale. Thank you so much. That passion, we lose it over time because we're like, oh, this person kept going back and forth. The sales aren't easy to make. Well, one, the sales could not be easy to make because we've gotten better. So our pricing has increased. And so now each sale is a cultivated sale because we're charging a lot of money for it now.

[Heather]

Make that experience, match it. And you're. You won't be asking the question next year. Why am I saying sales? I know.

[Corey]

And you're. You could look at Corey and be like, it's her sales must be off the charts. And sometimes I have low weeks. But you know what? You'll never see that from me.

[Heather]

Cory's gonna say, oh, my. I can see Cory. She's like. Like, this is. We're sitting there before cookie class. And, yeah, the cookie classes are. Are fun. But again, it's our 50 millionth one. So Cory's like, okay, look at me. Look at me. This is their first time. Make this the best experience from them. So we do this, like, 1, 2, 3. Hey, are you guys here for cookies? It is going to be. And it really does affect how that class goes.

[Corey]

Yeah. And it's. I mean, in high school, my family always said, corey's got a clown.

[Heather]

Yeah. I would get in these moods, but it wasn't enough for her to be in the mood. The mood would have to be. Everybody was included. So there would be a cloud, because it'd be cloud forming.

[Corey]

And then if you were under my cloud, you were gonna deal with my bad.

[Heather]

My mom would be like, cory's got a cloud. And mom was unfazed by if she had to be.

[Corey]

So this been what I've learned. Even though I am sometime pessimistic, I had to pull myself out of it. And I've gotten really good at pulling myself out of it, because sometimes Cory.

[Heather]

Will come over here, and I'm like, yeah, you gotta call him. Trying to pull myself out. Let's go for a walk. Okay.

[Corey]

So you're not alone.

[Heather]

It's.

[Corey]

It's not that the twins are on this journey. Positivity.

[Heather]

You're not gonna have a better lunch gossip than these two.

[Corey]

I know, but it's pulling yourself out of it. Showing up for your business in the most positive way can be being excited about every single comment you get, because one point, you didn't get any.

[Heather]

And that's what we're comparing ourselves to. The person Who. The version of us who got no comments. Not the version of us who got a ton of comments in December. Yeah, that was guaranteed. Yeah.

[Corey]

I'm thinking about Corey, who didn't have any clients for three months back when we started our business. And even though right now, where the clients aren't, it's more cultivated to get them to sign up. I would have. I would killed for someone to knock at my door. I'd been like, oh, my goodness, an opportunity.

[Heather]

You can't lose that enthusiasm. Every signup's gotta be like, hey, great. Wow. I'm so excited.

[Corey]

Yeah. Yeah. And I find myself, like, typing like, okay, we can definitely do that thing. Blah, blah, blah, backspace.

[Heather]

I've never done unicorns. And that is the takeaways a little bit more cognitive episode. But it is these slower months. We'll get it up so here in Easter. And then we'll get the teacher prejudice situation. Then you guys get distracted in the J months because you're out of town. But Corey and I listen, if you're consistent. Yeah.

[Corey]

You are going to work through the J ones and you're gonna come out on time.

[Heather]

You're going, your. Your Q3, Q4 is going to be a hold on tight.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Well done.

[Corey]

Hold on tight. But it is a mindset shift. You're not alone in your mindset. If it's a little pessimistic, if it.

[Heather]

Feels away, keep it monitored. You can be a little. You can be a little messy. Yeah. Be a little pessy if you want to. But just be like, okay, that was fun. I'm gonna go.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Rise from my and move forward and make sales. Otherwise you quit. And then I could tell somebody else that some markets. Okay. Loving the text. Loving them.

[Corey]

Nice.

[Heather]

This is so fun. We have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Today, nine chances to win a stupid car tray. Coda sugar for 15% off. If you want to send Phil a video of you saying you love your stupid car tray and using in your car with your cookies, you can get a free silicone mat and.

[Corey]

And couple for your stupid car tray.

[Heather]

So you have nine of these. What's your number this week?

[Corey]

Four.

[Heather]

1, 2, 3, 4. Here's a stupid story. In hopes of winning a stupid card tray. I shared it in the cookie college page, but I thought others might get a kick out of it. I got a voice. Oh, I read this was pretty. I gave her a heart. And then I was like, sad face. See, I got a voicemail. Inquired for 3000 cookie order from my City. They said it was for a big event in honor of their employees. Naturally, I went full cookie commander mode, calculating ingredients quantities, scheduling bake times, and mentally preparing for how to store all that dough. Now, I love my little town of 18,000 people, but 3,000 cookies seemed like a lot. Like, were they feeding the entire population? Twice over half of me thought it was a scam because, you know, the Internet. But they called me, so it had to be legit. Right. Then I took a closer look at the phone number. City of Ottawa. Ah, yes, great. Except for it was wasn't Ottawa, Illinois, it was Ottawa, Ontario. As in Canada. As in 13 hours drive and a passport situation. Cue this ad from Pac Man. And this is from Ken Kake. Illinois. Illinois.

[Corey]

Illinois.

[Heather]

They don't say the S Illinois, but that's hilarious. That is so Ken Khaki and I know. Email me heather sugarcookiemarketing.com and I'll put you in touch with Phil. You win the stupid car trade. Congratulations for your stupid, stupid question. That's a stupidly funny story.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Could you imagine?

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Ah. And then I know. She actually passed that lead on to people from Ottawa, Canada.

[Corey]

I want to tell you what I know for a fact because I googled it when I moved to Woodbridge. There's a lot of Wood Bridges.

[Heather]

There's a Woodbridge, Ontario. Yeah, it's a cat rescue that I'm constantly.

[Corey]

So sometimes people will. Especially because our local ladies group is located in Woodbridge. We have a lot of people from Kanahu to try to join because they're like, oh, Woodbridge. That's where I am. So that's where I always have to think. That's why I type. Woodbridge, Virginia.

[Heather]

What's the yellow? The Simpsons. They use Springfield. Cause I think every state has a Springfield.

[Corey]

Absolutely.

[Heather]

Could you imagine being.

[Corey]

Oh, I could not.

[Heather]

Here's another text from Becca. Hi, Corey and Heather. Your podcast and Facebook groups are beyond helpful and I have no clue what I'd do without them. Becca, what is a good CRM software you'd recommend? I remember on a recent podcast of one you mentioned a brilliant sales tactic to reach out to customers who for example, ordered a first birthday set last year so this year could say, hey, remember X's birthday was last year. It's probably coming up. You want to make a set? Yeah. Are you interested in any set of cookies for the second birthday? So ideally a CRM would remind me of things like that. But also I could potentially use and start building an email list too. CRM Customer relationship management. That's exactly what it does. I've had use cases with a couple CRM programs, and you got to kind of find the one that you like now. Now, a lot of them are big into funnels. You can actually create a funnel and be like, here's where this person is along the sales funnel now for what we do, for what we sell. The cookie college, that funnel thing didn't work well for me, but it's still.

[Corey]

A great tool for cookie people. Absolutely.

[Heather]

Your funnel may be shorter because we're not selling like a $150,000 kitchen remodel or $100,000 car. Now, I used copper CRM. Don't do it. Did not like it. It integrated really well with Google Gmail, and that's what I wanted. I've used Nutshell Serum. Not the cheapest, but I did really like it. And then I used Insightly CRM, which is probably the one I'd use again if I had to.

[Corey]

How much was Insightly?

[Heather]

I think at the. At the time I used it was $9 a month.

[Corey]

Oh, okay.

[Heather]

Okay. Now what the CRM does, it does. It should link to your Gmail. If you use Gmail, whatever, you could use Outlook.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And every time you email a contact, it takes that message and it puts it on that program. Under their name.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Within their name. You can set reminders, you can tag them. And now that's going to be uniquely yours. Like how you. Okay, these are my cookie class ticket pieces people. These are my cookie class ticket people that I know signed up because it was a birthday celebration or this is my customs and it was one year old. Or this is my customs Valentine's Day. So that way I can say, okay, a year from now, who ordered Valentine's Day for me last year? Yeah, here's the people I'm going. Who, who came to this cookie class I taught with a Valentine's Day theme. Those are the people I'm going to reach out to.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

This year. And then that it can start rating your contacts. This is a really solid contact for me. This is somebody that's worth reaching out to. Or you can say, this is a dead lead. I'm going to put them over here. I'm going to remarket to them. I'm going to do. Do cold outreach for them again.

[Corey]

We find a lot of people, specifically when my son is getting braces next month. But we've been in the orthodontist's CRM for two years, but they've been monitoring. Imagine if I Went two years ago. And then I never heard back from you.

[Heather]

Never gonna call me. Yeah.

[Corey]

But today we get a text message. Happy birthday, Arch. Because it's his birthday today. They've done a great job about keeping that. So Donna is my. Whatever the orthodontist hope her name is. She calls me. Hey, Corey, just want to check up. It's been six months. You want to bring him back in and we can double check. I'm a lead for them. It took two years for them.

[Heather]

Donna calls you and you're like, I'm going to find somebody else. No. You're like, I'm already in it. I love this experience. I'm not big on orthodontist hunting. Yeah, yeah, probably just. And that's what Becca's asking here. And they're great. The key the biggest misstep with CRMs is not keeping up with them. Yes. And then you feel like you're paying for nothing. So you gotta almost set it. If you have an admin task state be like admin task, go through my CRM, make sure everything's where it should be, make sure everything's tagged correctly and stay on top.

[Corey]

Yeah. If you have a customer that's typically, you know, they order custom once a year but then they partook in a pre sale.

[Heather]

Partooken.

[Corey]

Partooken. That's a great way to your segmented audience. Like oh, now I can remarket to them because they do like pre sales.

[Heather]

Get pretty creative when you have a dialed in list.

[Corey]

Yeah, I need, I need to work on this.

[Heather]

That.

[Corey]

Let me work on that. Okay, put on my list.

[Heather]

Is it gonna end up on my list?

[Corey]

It'll end up on both lists.

[Heather]

Okay. This one says sincerely brain melted cookie or so I don't know what the text is. After we cried the tears and chewed our nails down to the stub. Setting up our own website, building a forum, consistently posting on posting things, growing our email list. How. Please tell me how to respond. How do we respond to order inquiries? Thanks. I'll take your money and make the sugar dough. Now. Now do we need to get more info? Do we need to get their Social Security number, Their blood type? Like what else do I need to say to them? And how do I make it sound like it's a good idea to give me their money after they spend the time filling out the order inquiry help. Sincerely the Brain Melted Cookie so what.

[Corey]

I've realized over my time of order intakes is this is oftentimes their first time booking a custom cookie set. They're not well versed in it. A lot of times my clients are once a year type people. They're ordering for one birthday every year but because it's quite the investment. So what they are looking for is direction. Instead of being like thanks or like my husband likes to text Heather thx.

[Heather]

I hate that. Thanks do not like an abbreviated thx.

[Corey]

What they, what I've learned is they really like communication. So let's say they book for three months away, totally fine. We love that. Hey Heather, thank you so much for your order inquiry. I am so excited to bake this.

[Heather]

There's that enthusiasm.

[Corey]

We talk. Yeah. This theme has been on my to do theme. I'm so, so excited. If you wouldn't mind, send me some if they didn't already, some inspiration photos so I can see what you're thinking and make sure that it's something that I can accomplish. I'd be so appreciative once they send that. Thank you so much for sending that. The next part of this is going to feel crazy. I'm not going to talk to you for a bit but what I'm going to do is one week out from your pickup date. I'm going to reconfirm everything with you. Be sure to look out for that email because I will need you to respond to make sure we are good to go and make sure nothing's changed. And I say nothing's changed because someone did have a baby in that time. So like, like the, the gender reveal was like, no, we know the gender, it's a girl. So it just helps me and it keeps them in the know because they don't know what's next. Sometimes you contact a small business and I'll be like, what do I do now?

[Heather]

Yeah, nothing makes me feel more precarious than when I submit in a form and nothing comes back.

[Corey]

Nothing comes auto respond.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

So it's just keeping them in the know. If you find that they're emailing you, be like, what, what about this? That means there's something on your end that you haven't addressed that you might want to put in your email sequence to them to help out. I'm not much of a conversationalist. Whatever you want, I'm going to make. And because I don't have to put my particular creativity on it to make it. So I'll be like, whatever you need is something that I will make. I will be in touch with you in two and a half months. If you have any questions between now and then, send them my way. I have an Answer. But if we have no questions between now and then, I'll reconfirm a week out. We can set up a date. I'm going to send you a picture of what your order looks like the day before pickup, just to make sure you're happy and we can nail D.

[Heather]

That would make me feel so relieved.

[Corey]

And that's because that's. They need that reassurance. They need that guidance. They want to make sure that just because they send the inquiry, that feels good. But it's the inquiry. Accepted. Yes.

[Heather]

I need. I need a guide.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I don't need you to hold my hand and wipe my butt. I just need you to hold my hand.

[Corey]

So excitement.

[Heather]

Yes.

[Corey]

Shorten to the point. They don't need to know your backstory. Telling them the next step. Setting expectations. Those are the four things I would include in your email.

[Heather]

I like that. I like that a lot.

[Corey]

That's how I do it.

[Heather]

Rain melted. Cook you out. Also, get their social and just go spend it.

[Corey]

Sometimes people will ask me like, okay, when can I expect the drawings? Because they have ordered from somebody else. And I'd be like, I'm so sorry. If I were to draw it for you, you would definitely not order from me.

[Heather]

I would. I would say if you could be the sales pitch here. I wouldn't say, I'm so sorry. I'd be like, hey, I actually don't draw. I follow the creative guides that you send me in that. And trust me, you would like how I pipe better than how I pencil.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Kind of make it that positive aspect. Right now, you folks who are actually good at drawing, you can say, listen, I don't do stuff. We could add that to your order form. It would be a small increase in price, but I'm happy to do that for you and then make it a sales book.

[Corey]

Yeah, I. I can sense when someone has booked with someone else before and I'm. I'm another person and they're like, yeah, when do I get these drawings? Or, hey, what font are you choosing? I'm like, okay, this is a more involved customer, and that's totally fine.

[Heather]

Fine.

[Corey]

I just need to set the expectations of who I am as a decorator and help them understand the way that I work versus they understand the way that the other person work. Because if they're judging me by the person that they went to before, they're going to be, sadly, a little disappointed because I'm not so chatty about it.

[Heather]

Right. What's the technology? Yeah, the printer's calibrating the Water bottles, water bottling. But that is a great one. So. Okay, guys, you want to. We gave away a stupid card drive this week. You have seven days to claim. Name it. Nice ille. But rest of you guys, just a simple text.

[Corey]

Nice little text. And you know, you can tell I haven't chosen the same number. I'm across the board mid start.

[Heather]

And if you're on Spotify, there should be something that's like text, a podcast or write the pod. You can click that. That counts. Or you can do 571-556-5644. If you didn't win this week and you want a stupid card trade code, sugar at checkout is 15% off and then is stackable. Nice.

[Corey]

Tell them. Didn't you just. Lord, did someone post something they like.

[Heather]

Something or unlike something?

[Corey]

I think you added something to the cookie college this week.

[Heather]

I did. So the cookie college is the program, the platform that we use to sell very charismatic courses on how to grow your bakery business. And that's mostly marketing and business, but Corey does some other, like how to get in a sourdough and stuff like that. Again, major focus, making more money, increasing by bottom line. One way to really increase the bottom line is by taking cookie cutters in House with 3D printers. Now, when Bamboo first started, Bamboo printers, right. They only had the carbon X1C, which.

[Corey]

Was a big boy.

[Heather]

It's 1200. And I think I did the AMS add on it made it around 15.

[Corey]

Is that the thing on top?

[Heather]

The thing on top that allows you to have multiple.

[Corey]

He's a big guy.

[Heather]

So yeah, I bought him and I was like, wow, this is great. But that's super expensive. However, bang, for the buck. Everything it said. It does, it does.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Since then, Bamboo has offered a bunch of smaller printers, fewer capabilities, but I mean, we just want cookie cutters. This thing I bought like an aircraft carrier when I needed a sea doo. Right. So this thing is. So Corey, on Black Friday, I bought her the A1 Mini.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

With the promise to the cookie college. I would unbox it with them, we'd assemble it together, and I'd show them.

[Corey]

How much is an A1 mini?

[Heather]

Black Friday was 200. Now it's 220. Oh, not, not, not.

[Corey]

Not bad. Yeah.

[Heather]

12, 1500 downstairs.

[Corey]

Yeah, 220, right. I'm a 220 kind of girl.

[Heather]

So within 20 minutes it was assembled. Within 20 minutes, we got our first benchy printed perfectly.

[Corey]

When didn't you have an ender at one point? How long did that take to assemble.

[Heather]

How long did it take me to find the multiple YouTube videos to assemble?

[Corey]

True.

[Heather]

Yeah. This thing is just a breeze. And I'm sure Ender may have caught up. I don't care anymore. They lost me as a client. Yeah, I had to use a third party YouTube video to figure out assemble the ender. This thing comes mostly assembled. All you're doing is removing some support so that it didn't get messed up in shipping. You are putting on the spool holder and you're booting the thing up and running it up. Yeah. And then we loaded the test filament, which is white. And then we loaded an actual spool of. I purchased bamboo PLA basic and pink and printed off a cookie cutter that I gave you because we designed it together in that class. So you guys can sign up for the cookie college. It's $76 a month and you get that class, but you also get 82 other classes. You also get get 13 Baker's Business Basics classes. You also get 190 transfer sheets. You also get 27 cookie class kits. You also get four years worth of digital downloads. Yeah, for the $76, cancel any time within your 38 days. And you only paid once. But I can almost guarantee you'll stick because there's more than just that. It is the private Facebook group. It's an extra podcast. It's direct access to Heather and Corey, which is great. But you also get a thousand other bankers who are in the same money mindset you are. I know.

[Corey]

And sometimes other bakers have brilliant ideas. Some of them think of it.

[Heather]

Cory will go there and be like, guys, I'm having some problems with my cake.

[Corey]

Pop's falling off the stick. What do.

[Heather]

Didn't you ask a sourdough question the other day?

[Corey]

I did. I asked.

[Heather]

I was trying to get a color.

[Corey]

Oh, I was asking one. I'm getting into dye free food coloring and there's some dye free bakers in there that are just brilliant minds at it.

[Heather]

And there's some brick and mortars which we can't even up with. And they're able to sit down there. This printer once. He's like, baby girl, you. You said you're gonna replace that card six months ago. So that is the cookie college. You can check it [e-mail] can they hear that? Can you guys hear that? That's ridiculous.

[Corey]

I can hear that.

[Heather]

How can you not hear that? No, that's. I have. What did he do? He's like.

[Corey]

He's running his updates, reading all the paper.

[Heather]

There's no paper. There's no ink in there. I have got to. Do you have an hp? No. I got rid of hp. This was the most recommended in terms of. Terms of desktop, partners, people, brothers.

[Corey]

Oh, brother.

[Heather]

Yeah, sweet. I gave that HP away. That was ridiculous.

[Corey]

My HP has been just the best thing ever.

[Heather]

Touch HP again. Really? Yeah.

[Corey]

I love my little dude.

[Heather]

Ruthanne has a Canon. I like that one. But I ended up going with brothers. Like my hp. He doesn't do that. Do you want to speak? He said, I heard enough of them. I heard you talk about a 3D printer, don't you, dad? So that 3D printer, though, if you were like, hey, I'm not gonna sign up for the college. I do want a 3D printer. That a one mini from Bamboo. It sings to you.

[Corey]

I'm gonna tell you something, guys. Cory's getting that A1 printer today.

[Heather]

He's boxed up, ready to go. I'll tell you legit if it's easy.

[Corey]

Or legit if it's not. I'm the most.

[Heather]

You need to come from under and you'll be like, that was amazing. Look at him. Look at his perfect layer. We got one layer defect right there, but it was pretty good. He was also on a shaky table and I should have had had them on the floorboard.

[Corey]

Guide still came out nice.

[Heather]

See this boat turning around.

[Corey]

I'm excited to learn.

[Heather]

It's already set up.

[Corey]

I. I'm excited to learn the process.

[Heather]

Yeah, it's pretty fantastic. So again, if you want to join us, if you are tired of feeling directionless, actually teach a course on. Eat that frog. Yeah. Actually teach a course on teaching cookie classes. I teach a course on how to market cookie classes. How to print three. A lot of people take my. My February freebies 3D printed cookie cutters and they gave them away. That was genius.

[Corey]

That was genius, genius, genius.

[Heather]

It's, you know, every once in a while, stroke of genius. They use that one brain cell that we divided in half.

[Corey]

In our April cookie class, I'm giving them a royal batch pack 2 ounce bag.

[Heather]

Oh, yes.

[Corey]

I like to give away something.

[Heather]

Cory and I in our April 2025 class. In person. Our in person class, we're teaching the cookie class kit from April 2023.

[Corey]

Nice. Which is Easter, which we love. So that one is definitely super.

[Heather]

What's our next cookie class kit drop? We have a mother's Day. I got a preview of it, guys, and I think you're going to like it. Okay. Before we say too much, move on to the sponsors. The sponsor.

[Corey]

Speaking of Royal batch, it's one of our sponsors. If you wanted to test out Royal batch, it's the meringue powder that I use and I've come to love. It has white food coloring on it in it, it has vanilla extract in it. It has corn syrup for a softer bite in it. They have 2oz tester pack. So if you're like, I don't want to dive into the 1 pound bag or 5 pound bag. Get this tester pack and you can see if it works for you. Love it. The tester packs to give away in class because everyone always wants to learn.

[Heather]

We raised our prices this year. We did. So now they can really, now that we have. That won't impact our bottom line. Yeah, yeah.

[Corey]

So I always love to give something away in class. So when I found that she had these tester bags, I said, everyone in class always wants to know what meringue powder I use. And now I can give them their own, which is great.

[Heather]

You know what some folks will do in the cookie college, Another great mental space, they sell it. They say, hey, if you guys. If you guys loved what you did and you want to go home and do this, I actually have some ring powder everywhere.

[Corey]

Honestly. We should test that.

[Heather]

We should. A few.

[Corey]

A few cutters.

[Heather]

Absolutely. It's so simple.

[Corey]

Ring powder, some scribes and see, just.

[Heather]

Remember, you can't sell sweet pink olives.

[Corey]

No. But you, my friend, can make my own.

[Heather]

I can make anything.

[Corey]

Eggs.

[Heather]

Oh, I made some eggs for the fence Feb. If you guys missed out on the February freebies, I made them a digital download and you can get it through the digital Download membership for $10 at the Cookie College for 76. But you get all those February freebies and they don't expire.

[Corey]

Should we test that out and see if we could sell something?

[Heather]

I'm sure we could sell something. I'm sure we could just bring an extra DIY kit and sell it.

[Corey]

I know, but if you were in class and you're hyped up and you just made a set and it's cute, yeah, I would.

[Heather]

That's the time to strike for the iron top. Strike where the oven's warm.

[Corey]

So royal batch is the meringue powder. If you want a discount code, code use code twins. And it saves you 10% off.

[Heather]

Not ever. Least and sometimes last, just because of the order of things. Eddie, the edible food printer. Direct to food printer. You can print. Literally. Cory and I always wanted to Take it to class. It's just kind of. It's kind of like you don't want to take a machine. He's $2,000. You don't necessarily want to carry him around. He's just a little hefty. He's a big boy. But I just know it would mind boggle a cookie class to see.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes I bring Eddie printed cookies as.

[Heather]

The giveaway and people are like, how did you get the detail? He didn't. Watch yourself. Yeah. To be replaced. Yeah. But that is what Eddie the edible food printer from Primera does. You can check them out at Eddie Printers users group. It's a Facebook group. Great place to get inspo. Or is it Eddie on Instagram or is it primary?

[Corey]

I think it's Eddie the food printer.

[Heather]

Go to their Instagram and get Inspired. Now it's $3,000 but I'm going to say Corey has paid for it and then some with Eddie printed corporate orders. Yeah, like, but it's taking the artistry out of it. No, it's putting the money back into it. It replaces a stencil which is also taking the artistry out.

[Corey]

There's oftentimes a customer, corporate customer will have a very complicated logo and I wouldn't have been able to pipe it without it looking uggo.

[Heather]

Anyways, also last minute corporate orders.

[Corey]

Yeah, they've been great. I have people who ask for printed cookies now.

[Heather]

It's a new thing.

[Corey]

It's more common since Eddie's been around.

[Heather]

For a few years. Well, it's another option. It's not taking away from the industry, it's adding another.

[Corey]

It's adding another layer.

[Heather]

Financial.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Heather]

No code, no discount. They don't run them. We tried. But definitely worth putting it on your wish list this year and kind of earning towards that.

[Corey]

Yeah. Last but not least, the backers company. It's the backdrops that I use. If you wanted to look up mixing bowl, cookie co company. Sorry. On Instagram, the lady who has company. You have my heart, girl.

[Heather]

I have messaged you many times.

[Corey]

You can see how I use the backdrops. But you can also go to the backers company on their Instagram and see how others are using it. People are actually doing reels on top which I thought was genius.

[Heather]

It really does level up the photography game.

[Corey]

For sure. For sure. And you can save 20 and get your own using the code sugar cookie. At checkout. It's matte so there's no glare from your camera.

[Heather]

You're gonna hate glare.

[Corey]

You're gonna hate glares and they're hard to edit out. And a lot of people are like, how do I edit out the glare? Let me know when you find out. Food safe. Safe. It's scratch resistant. So when you put the props on there, you're not going to have scratches. Which I have a bunch of backdrops and that is the most sturdiest of them. And it's waterproof. So if you want to dump some.

[Heather]

Waterproof or water resistant?

[Corey]

Waterproof.

[Heather]

Yes.

[Corey]

Put that under the hose outside.

[Heather]

Let's go. Water your. Water your what you want to grow and then water your back your backer.

[Corey]

So you can save 20 using code sugar cookie at checkout.

[Heather]

Wrapping up here. Any twin dress.

[Corey]

Do you have a twin trust as.

[Heather]

I think I do. Corey and I. You guys know my cat passed away.

[Corey]

Frank n. How long ago?

[Heather]

Christmas Eve Eve this past year in the most traumatic way possible. He had a heart stroke. He had a stroke? Oh, he had a heart murmur that led to a stroke. That led to a blood clot that led to paralysis. Paralysis. Wow. Just a wild. A wild month.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Ridiculous. Would probably not do that a second time, but I'm glad for punishment, I'm doing it a second time. So Cor and I are driving down Dead Tennessee. First time. I think I've been to Tennessee, to be honest. First time.

[Corey]

I think I probably drove through it a few times but never stopped in there.

[Heather]

Unfortunately, Cory is my yes man sometimes and she has volunteered to go with me. Listen, we'll be driving down 10 hours one day and 10 hours back. I know. A little twin trip. A little twin trip. And then we will have a new fur friend, which hopefully he's. I am trying. I am putting all my chips on. Read it yet again.

[Corey]

A little baby.

[Heather]

Are you excited? I'm excited.

[Corey]

I'm sad I'm not getting another pet. But at the end of the day.

[Heather]

I have a cat and I have a dog.

[Corey]

And that is a lot in and of itself.

[Heather]

And this is a proxy pet because you're here.

[Corey]

It is a proxy pet. My dog and cat getting older in age. We've got some sadness that we're going to go through when they depart.

[Heather]

Can you guys go to a therapist before then?

[Corey]

I can't tell you. I don't know what it's going to.

[Heather]

Look like, but I love.

[Corey]

I'd rather die. I love looking at my dog. My dog snuggles me so. I can only imagine Heather's going to love this cat. Him.

[Heather]

Yeah. This is a younger one. Frank. They said he was 6. Everyone guessed he was like 12.

[Corey]

We have names for you to guess. We're choosing between two names. Cash and Niles. If you would like to cast a vote, we have not.

[Heather]

Is my sister's initials spelled to together? Niles is from Frasier and it's quirky and we like Nile.

[Corey]

We do like Niles. I feel like Niles is losing out in the family.

[Heather]

Yeah. But I my cat. It's my cat. I gotta pick what I want.

[Corey]

Can't wait to have a little baby in my hand.

[Heather]

10 hours bud. But I have a cat toten carrier. So if you don't want me. Yeah, we'll have to see how it works out.

[Corey]

It's been almost two years. My cat.

[Heather]

This, this, this could go off the rails.

[Corey]

Off the rails.

[Heather]

So we'll have to report back on Tuesday. Do you have twin twist? Do I have a twin?

[Corey]

What would be my twin twist?

[Heather]

Cat shopping.

[Corey]

Well, I'm divin dovin dived.

[Heather]

Dive ditted.

[Corey]

Divedited. In the world of dye free food coloring. Yes, I quite like it.

[Heather]

Oh really? Why?

[Corey]

It's very muted.

[Heather]

But do we because you like like pastels.

[Corey]

I do like pastels and usually I grab for the brightest colors. You know that's what I do. But if you want to differentiate yourself from the oversaturated market that we have.

[Heather]

The oversaturated color. Yeah.

[Corey]

You could go with this dye free thing. So in the world of sourdough food coloring is a figment of the imagination. You don't talk about dye food coloring. You only use it because it has.

[Heather]

The word die and then I people.

[Corey]

Spell it but sourdough cuz it's easier on your gut health. They, they want to approach it but there's dye free sprinkles. Dye free food coloring.

[Heather]

I think bakers should be I I do think by the 2027 ban assuming it even stays up my thing. Stop. Okay. We got to end the thing by whatever. That was a great point you guys.