206. Baking it Down - Expound then Expand

Summary

Podcast Summary: Episode 206 - "Expound then Expand"

Podcast Information:

• Title: Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
• Hosts: Heather and Corrie Miracle
• Episode: 206. Baking it Down - Expound then Expand
• Release Date: April 8, 2025

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Introduction

In Episode 206 of the "Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing" podcast, hosts Heather and Corrie Miracle delve into the critical business principle of "Expound then Expand." This episode focuses on the pitfalls of scaling a bakery business without adequate planning and understanding of market demands. The hosts share personal anecdotes, provide insightful analysis, and offer practical strategies to help bakers make informed purchasing decisions that align with their business growth.

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Understanding "Expound then Expand"

"Expound then Expand" is a strategic approach emphasizing thorough planning and audience understanding before scaling business operations. Heather introduces the concept by highlighting the common mistake of introducing new products based on trends rather than actual market demand.

• Heather [02:08]: "What's trending? You know what themes are trending, what designs are trending... And then there's the other camp that's like, I shouldn't be offering a new product, but I feel compelled or pressured to."

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The Dangers of Over-Purchasing

Heather and Corrie discuss the allure of jumping on trending products without assessing their fit within the existing business model. They cite Hot Cocoa Bombs and Target Trays as prime examples of trends that led to financial strain due to over-purchasing.

• Corrie [02:27]: "Hot cocoa bombs. When they became hot on the market, dare attack. The HCBs weren't making HCBs. God rest your soul."

Target Trays: The hosts describe how Target’s affordable and attractive trays tempted bakers to bulk-buy, only to be left with excess inventory when sales projections fell short.

• Heather [12:44]: "And it was very large, so it handled a lot of cookies, which meant this was going to be a big seller at big margins... But the problem happened, though, is that baker saw that it was going to be a hot seller. Instead of planning out that they could."

Consequences: Over-purchasing leads to increased storage costs, unused inventory, and eventual financial losses, which can dent the bakery’s bottom line.

• Corrie [13:34]: "You're buying 40 and 50 trays. Not doing the math of what is 50 times 20 to fill up every single tray."

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Practical Examples of Over-Purchasing

1. Expensive Packaging:

   • Corrie [22:14]: "And then you have the phantom cost, like the storage cost or the cost of just the weight of like, oh, I bought those."
   • Custom boxes with high initial investment often result in excess stock that doesn’t align with actual sales needs.

2. Machinery Investments:

   • Corrie [50:06]: "They are not for you if you're just getting started right now."
   • Investing in high-end equipment like Eddie (a food printer) without a solid marketing plan can lead to machinery collecting dust and financial loss.

3. Specialty Sprinkles:

   • Heather [43:05]: "A lot of times, custom cookie bakers do not use sprinkles on the cookies."
   • Specialty sprinkles that aren’t regularly used become obsolete, causing storage issues and waste.

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Strategies to Avoid Over-Purchasing

Heather and Corrie advocate for a disciplined approach to business growth, emphasizing planning, budgeting, and audience cultivation before expanding product lines.

1. Plan Before You Buy:

   • Corrie [14:16]: "How many cookies can I physically pack into them? At the end of the day, you have two hands in 24 hours."
   • Conduct a thorough analysis of production capabilities and sales forecasts before making bulk purchases.

2. Cultivate Your Audience:

   • Heather [17:12]: "If you want to go to the market and make them a pre-sale audience."
   • Build a loyal customer base through consistent marketing efforts, ensuring there is demand before introducing new products.

3. Pre-Sales and Budgeting:

   • Corrie [16:37]: "Pre-sales are as good as they are bad. Pre-sales means you have to do the one. You have to make the one."
   • Utilize pre-sales to gauge interest and secure funds before committing to large orders.

4. Separate Business Finances:

   • Heather [35:31]: "Separate personal spending from business banking."
   • Maintain a distinct business bank account to manage finances effectively and prevent mixing personal and business funds.

5. Use Budgeting Tools:

   • Heather [35:31]: "Use apps like YNAB to categorize and allocate funds properly."
   • Implement budgeting software to track expenses, set financial goals, and ensure money is allocated toward necessary business functions.

6. Maximize Existing Resources:

   • Corrie [27:04]: "Plaques are a great starter. You can put anything on a plaque."
   • Repurpose existing tools and products to maximize their utility before acquiring new inventory.

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The Importance of Marketing Alignment

The hosts stress that marketing should drive sales, not the other way around. Investing in marketing strategies ensures that when new products are introduced, there is a prepared audience ready to purchase.

• Heather [55:07]: "Marketing produces the income that allows you to reinvest. If you buy before you market or if you buy before you plan to market, you've already operating in a negative."

Case Study: Cookie Classes Heather and Corrie share their experience with teaching cookie classes, illustrating how consistent marketing efforts led to sold-out classes and the ability to scale without overextending resources.

• Corrie [18:10]: "Our class has been sold out since January. And the class that we're teaching in August is halfway sold out."

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Listener Engagement and Q&A

The episode includes listener questions, where Heather and Corrie provide tailored advice on topics like profit margins at markets and handling over-purchased inventory. They emphasize the importance of context-specific strategies and encourage bakers to engage with the Sugar Cookie Marketing community for personalized support.

• Heather [57:00]: "What's the hardest thing to sell? I think bad products are really hard to sell."

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Conclusion

Episode 206 of "Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing" serves as a crucial reminder for bakers to prioritize strategic planning and audience understanding before scaling their businesses. Heather and Corrie offer a blend of personal experiences, practical advice, and actionable strategies to help bakers navigate the complexities of business growth without falling into the traps of over-purchasing and financial mismanagement.

Key Takeaways:

• Plan Before Purchasing: Assess your production capacity and market demand.
• Cultivate Your Audience: Build a loyal customer base to ensure demand for new products.
• Separate Finances: Maintain distinct business and personal accounts for clearer financial management.
• Utilize Budgeting Tools: Track and allocate funds effectively to support business growth.
• Align Marketing with Sales: Let marketing drive your sales to ensure sustainable growth.

By adhering to these principles, bakers can expand their businesses thoughtfully, ensuring long-term success and profitability.

Transcript

[Corey]

Welcome to the Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing podcast. We are your host, Corey, the younger twin, who looks vivaciously younger and then Heather the old fart over.

[Heather]

If you're tuning in for the first.

[Corey]

Time, if you're tuning in for the first time, welcome. We're actually a spin off from a group on Facebook. It's the number one marketing group, I will say, tooting my own horn.

[Heather]

We niche down so many times. It has to be the number one marketing group for sugar cookie cottage bakers. Yes.

[Corey]

And it is specifically for sugar suggies.

[Heather]

For sugar cookie bakers.

[Corey]

But it can apply to anything that goes into the oven. You can replace sugar cookies with cakes, with macarons, with cake pops.

[Heather]

Everything's pretty universal. You could also replace a lot of what we talk about with cars for sure. With home services for sure. But niching it down to sugar cookies specifically creates a very clear message.

[Corey]

And it's a clear message because that's what I bake for my clients most of the time.

[Heather]

And we're teaching a cookie class. Which you started prepping for.

[Corey]

I had started prepping.

[Heather]

Thought it out.

[Corey]

Yeah. One thing I did to kind of really. You got to realize everything you take on in your business and your bakery business takes a lot of time. So I said past me was looking out for current me and I went through the 2023, 2024 and 2025 class kits and put all the cutters in individual bags so that when it came time for this Easter class, I wasn't searching through endless cutters trying to find the bunny head or the pot with the bunny ears. It's already there. It's ready to roll, ready to grab and go.

[Heather]

Done. Moving into today's topic, a little a few play on words here. I'm gonna lob mat you.

[Corey]

There you go.

[Heather]

The the title of today's podcast is Expound then expand and explain me that kind of a plan before you play or a walk before you run. Okay. The concept is in the world specifically of the group we created. It's let's see what the best, fastest, newest, coolest product offering, class offering thing you can buy.

[Corey]

What's trending? You know what themes are trending, what designs are trending. The group is great for that.

[Heather]

It's great for that. And it's a double edged sword. It is because there are people who are like, yeah, I'm looking for a new product to offer. Let me see what's going on. And then there's the other camp that's like, I shouldn't be offering a new product, but I feel compelled or pressured to.

[Corey]

I'm just gonna say hot cocoa bombs. When they became hot on the market, dare attack. The hcbs weren't making hcbs. God rest your soul.

[Heather]

Hot take Hot cocoa bomb. Take that. Weird. Who owns the name? The trademark of it really did damage the entire industry. Neither here nor there. Yes, you can buy them anymore.

[Corey]

But people were hopping on the hot cocoa bomb train right and left. It was going to be no more cookies. I'm just a hot cocoa bomb.

[Heather]

The concept makes a ton of sense. You see these people coming in. They're like, I've made a million dollars doing hot cocoa bombs. It's the three simplest things to get into. And you're like, why wouldn't I offer it?

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

There's a million reasons why you wouldn't offer it. And that's what today's podcast. This is if you, if you're a big spender and you don't want to change, turn this off right now.

[Corey]

Turn it right, right, right.

[Heather]

This is the anti consumerism podcast and we're going to go through kind main purchase items that we find are culprits.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Over expenditure and lack of sales. Which leads to a dent in that bottom line.

[Corey]

It does.

[Heather]

It does. There is a strategy in saying you need. You need materials to produce. Right.

[Corey]

For sure.

[Heather]

But there's a. The counter strategy is too many materials actually a detractor and it actually will create analysis process in the baker.

[Corey]

In the baker and in your clients. But then to the other end, behind the scenes, what we don't get to see is these bakers are overrun with stuff stor costs.

[Heather]

We see the invisible. We never get to quantify.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

If we were like for every square foot taken up by an unused package, it equates to 32 cents. We would be able to really. But that's not how it works. Right. Because we put all of our cottage stuff in our cottage. Right.

[Corey]

In our cottage.

[Heather]

It'd be different if we were like, hey, just kind of the same thing. We're going to talk about business bank accounts and why they're important. If you had a storage facility.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And that was full of your cookie stuff, then we could put. Put a.

[Corey]

This is how much it tackle a number on. It's $128 a month to have this stuff.

[Heather]

And if you don't have the stuff here, you, your business makes $128 more. But we don't see that when we don't have those storage costs. Although they're there.

[Corey]

And I want to say I had a water loss. A little bit of a water leak.

[Heather]

And I said, cory, what'd you lose? And she said, some packaging. And I said, the Lord works in mysterious. I know, I know.

[Corey]

And I said, you know what? I didn't even like that packaging to begin with.

[Heather]

So it was crazy that Cory's never gonna use the packaging. And it got waterlogged. She had to dispose of it.

[Corey]

So I didn't even get a chance to use. I've taken a loss on that packaging. It's come out of my paycheck. My bottom line. I have lost the money associated with that packaging.

[Heather]

So the best way not to lose that money is to have. Not to spend it in the first place. And this is the. This is the intervention podcast.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

That we keep.

[Corey]

You're speaking to me, man.

[Heather]

We move this one really far from the vending bunny because I'm peer pressure buying. But it is important to have always in mind what the true cost of things are. You know, we have the initial investment, but then we have the second cost, which we talked about in another podcast where the cost of the time you need to invest to learn the thing. And then we have the phantom cost, like the storage cost or the cost of just the weight of like, oh, I bought those.

[Corey]

I know, I know.

[Heather]

And then if you say, well, then I'm going to resell and recoup some cost. We still are operating at a loss per those. Right. And then shipping and stuff like that. The stress of managing, you go to these cutter buy, sell trade groups and it's. I'm like, this is a full time job to manage what people.

[Corey]

Just the way they're laying out the cutters. And they have like 1, 2, 3, you have to name. I want four people are like, where's this cutter?

[Heather]

Where'd you buy it from this shop I have a picture of.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Okay, so let's just. We're gonna just. Just rip into each one of these.

[Corey]

Rip off the band aid.

[Heather]

Right. And then we're gonna give you discount codes for most of these. One. Backdrops, photography gear. Right. Lighting kits.

[Corey]

I feel attacked.

[Heather]

I feel attacked too. For you. I am proxy attacked in your behalf. Okay. This is not to say, you know. Cause you're like girls that every podcast you talk about photography is most important. Bible dries. You don't eat everything. Here's the thing. We got to understand that this podcast, we have to talk about a topic each week. That doesn't mean every topic applies to you same with sales. I'm a sales shopper. Yeah. I Love it.

[Corey]

Oh, T.J. maxx got me wrapped around.

[Heather]

I'm a max Anista.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Same with backdrop. Okay, let's say your favorite backdrop company code Sugar cookie check out to save 25%. Yeah. Is running a sale. Buy three, get one free. This is just a made up thing.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

The inclination is to buy three and get one free. You, you met, you got one for free, but you spent, let's say you were only gonna buy one. That was the one you needed. That was the one that made all the difference, the matte white finish. But then the sale got you to buy two more and then you got a fourth one free. We haven't maxed. We haven't maxed. Anisted out on the first one. To be considering the second, third, and fourth one, it's so funny.

[Corey]

And I'm. This is where I really fall. I fall in love with the idea of things. The if I had this, I could do xyz.

[Heather]

Who am I with this product? The person that I become when I have this is a different person than I am today. And I want to be that person. Here's my challenge. The Maxinista challenge is to get the white matte finish. Yes. Use code SugarCookie at checkout. 25% off. You bought one, you got the sale, you got 20%. And then you say with this one backdrop, the one most versatile one that they sell, I'm going to make my photography the best possible. And once I'm like, wow, this is capped out.

[Corey]

I got it. Yeah.

[Heather]

Then we can buy that second one or that third one. Right. So it is easy to look at the backdrops and say, with this, I could take this photo and with this one, but with that white matte finish, you can accomplish probably 85% of most of the photography.

[Corey]

And I can tell you the one I grab for the most.

[Heather]

Wait a minute. Before, you know, I'll see you for the cookie class, kids, she'll use these other ones, but you know that where she's in a different place. Right. And that's why people pay into the cookie college to get these class kits to get the photography is they don't have to pay for the backdrop. They don't have to pay for the expensive camera. Right. So backdrops and photography gear you can buy. And Cory and I fell prey to this once. We needed a camera that did slow motion. And this is back when slow motion was harder to come by. Right.

[Corey]

It was.

[Heather]

So it was. It was our first company. This was out of budget. This was a big investment.

[Corey]

It was a like sweat, sweating.

[Heather]

We found a refurbished cannon. Mark 3. Mark 3. No, no, we had the X1. It was a Mark something. I know it was Mark something. Yeah. But it had the slow motion capabilities. We bought. Bought it refurbished for $6,000.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

The camera has so much more capability than we've ever invested into it. Really? That camera is still so more advanced than our own skill set. But it's. It's the thought we need it for slow motion. So that's my excuse to myself.

[Corey]

But we have not utilized it to its utmost ability.

[Heather]

We haven't capped out on the Canon before we buy the next one. The next one. Your goal is to invest that initial investment. I'm always going to be behind. I think it's. I always said like don't fight your gear. When we. When I went to that skydiving.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Blip of my life. You did. They would put these. They call them boob goggles because they came to a point.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

They were universal goggles to protect your eyes from the fall. But they would touch girls eyelashes and it was. Made it really hard to see. But the instructors had these really cool helmets that fit around their face. It was really nice and everything. And I was like, wow, if you guys let the people trying this out use those helmets, more people would stick around for sure.

[Corey]

Because you were having a bad experience.

[Heather]

Their photos look better. And two, it was not fighting your gear. So. But here's the thing that don't fight your gear. So invest in the gear has a limit to it as well. You could buy an airplane to jump out of and you still know better at skydiving. Yeah. Same with backdrops. What camera? If you've maxed out on your iPhone, I'd say it's time to say maybe I want to invest in a dedicated camera.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

Which is the one that I'll spend the most time with that I will learn the manual mode. So understand I'm. So at the end of the day.

[Corey]

It comes down to you and you know who you are.

[Heather]

The second cost. Right. So it's easy. Like if I keep buying the nicer camera, my photography increases.

[Corey]

No.

[Heather]

Because unfortunately the skills with that camera is what it is. So that's a lot of what we're going to talk about today. So you're going to say with the backdrops. Well, I need to get better photography. Yes, absolutely. Sure. White matte finish that to me if.

[Corey]

That'S what I'm using 85% of the time. And I have an incredible amount of backdrops to grab from that I have collected over the years.

[Heather]

So Koi's already saying, I already bought.

[Corey]

Them, and you're still gonna go back.

[Heather]

To white matte finish. Then you don't have to worry about the distraction of all those other stunning colors and prints and textures. Yeah, you're gonna start here, and you're gonna work with this one until you max it out. Right. Maybe we could even get the brackets and get a backer. Oh, now we got a. We got an L frame, so you got two. And we can do some. A little bit more dimension.

[Corey]

Huh.

[Heather]

And then we can work on colors. Right?

[Corey]

Yeah. The. What a lot of times people fall in love with is, if I had this, X, Y, and Z would happen. But you. You fall in love with this idea, but the idea never comes to fruition because you get the backdrop, but then you don't. You never account for the time it takes to actually utilize it and put it into practice. So I'm a lover of packaging, and this is on the list. I'm a lover of it. I fallen in love with the ideas of if I made personalized cookies for Easter, then I could use this packaging. Here's the thing. I'm not making the personalized Easter eggs for Easter. I have the packaging, though, and I've had it for years.

[Heather]

And that was a problem with Cory's water loss, her water intervention. Moving on. A great example is the Target trays. Now, before you look down your nose and scoff at the people who bought the Target trays, don't. Because you have your own Target Trace in just rebranded.

[Corey]

Honestly, I really. I loved the era of the Target tray.

[Heather]

Target trace was like, what, three, four years ago? Yeah, it was. It's 2025, so it's probably 2021. So target.

[Corey]

It was very, very cute. They were. They were Christmas themed, and it was like, trays that were divided into six different sections.

[Heather]

I think I recall you made some of them.

[Corey]

Absolutely. So I just brought one. I actually gave one. They have a Valentine's Day one. I gave it to the orthodontist. I was like, finally I got rid.

[Heather]

Of the last one.

[Corey]

They gave it back to me yesterday.

[Heather]

They're like, we saved this. This is so. So the Target trays is a great example of this, because Target came out. They're in the dollar section. They're $5 a pop. I thought they were. They would knock any packaging offering out.

[Corey]

Well made so, well, colorful, branded, said cookies for Santa. Yeah.

[Heather]

And it was very large, so it handled a lot of cookies, which meant this was going to be a big seller at big margins. Right. Even though it was $5, it was still such a high profit margin because you'd be putting it with, like, how many cookies you could do it?

[Corey]

Like 20. 20 cookies in there.

[Heather]

20 cookies in there. So we were talking about holiday platters where we can already upcharge for Christmas. We can already upcharge for this amazing packaging, which made it a perfect gift. And we have a ton of cookies we can put.

[Corey]

Right, Right. The problem happened, though, is that baker saw that it was going to be a hot seller. Instead of planning out that they could. At the end of the day, making 24 cookies, two dozen cookies will take you an X amount of hours, close to eight hours, depending on the details. But bakers were going and buying out all of Target. They were buying 40 and 50 trays. Not doing the math of what is 50 times 20 to fill up every single tray. Yes.

[Heather]

Not only how much time, how many buyers can you source? Okay, let's say you could buy. You could source 20 buyers in the Christmas season. Well, we still have 30 of these things. If you bought 50 of which some people were buying, it's a great example of hype driving the need instead of market driving the need. Right. And I understand that there's that sweet spot between. Well, I know I could sell 20 of these, and there was only 15 available.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I went to two Target stores. But there's the other consumeristic. If I get these, I can. It wasn't a license to print money. And the big thing is like, expounding. Expounding before we expand is planning, writing out the business plan. How many of these can I physically store? How many of these can I physically sell?

[Corey]

How many cookies can I physically pack into them? At the end of the day, you have two hands in 24 hours.

[Heather]

Right.

[Corey]

So even if you're like, I think I could sell 50, that's great. Can you feel 50?

[Heather]

Yeah. So that was a great one where, well, let me buy it. And then, you know, it was funny at the time with all the cars. It was hilarious. I think Target was like, this is great. Yeah. But then we now it's been three, four years removed, and I see people, hey, I need to get rid of these trays.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So, wow. You have held on to these because life changed. Maybe you are not doing cookies anymore, but these trays were not foldable.

[Corey]

No, they were wooden.

[Heather]

They were heavy. They were wooden. They take Up a ton of space and it wasn't within your business plan. You expanded before you expounded.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

You bought and then you thought.

[Corey]

Thought like that. That's a good one. Thought before you thought. Write that one down, girl. Write it down.

[Heather]

Before you thought. So and then what happens when life is crazy. Life is unpredictable. I. You know the transience of cottage bakeries.

[Corey]

Is native to the industry we have watched. Me and Heather have been at this with the sugar cookie market for the last five years.

[Heather]

I'm always surprised when I see somebody that started with us five years ago.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And they still make posts. I'm like, wow, you're very. You're a rare breed of what the.

[Corey]

Typical baker is the amount of the industry turnover that me and Heather have experienced because we've never taken a break. So we've seen these people come and go. Someone requested to join the group and I'll let you in today. I'm working on it and said I was in this group a few years ago, quit and now I'm back to it.

[Heather]

We're seeing the whole like I see the returning.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

And that's absolutely expected with an industry like this. Especially one that had such a boom with COVID time. People were like okay, two years in. That's what I typically see is two years at the cottage bakery. And then it separates the kind of men from the boys. The person who was like I'm going to make this a big thing or I'm. That was my thing. I'm going to step back from it. So with the target trades like the big takeaway is first find your audience and then stock up. And I know that's why pre sales are the so great. They're as good as they are bad. Pre sales means you have to do the one. You have to make the one.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And then you have to pre shop it. You'd say to people who's interested in buying this and then you. But then you stock up.

[Corey]

Here's the thing. At the end of the day, if you know that you have not cultivated your audience to like pre sales. You getting 50 target trays and you haven't cultivated your audience to.

[Heather]

You're gonna be stuck. You're going to be stuck. Target trays.

[Corey]

Exactly. So you can work now to get to Christmas and and make them a pre sale audience. My audience. I'm a custom cookie. Give me a two dozen baker. So when I bring a presale to the table it is still a struggle for me because I'm so focused on Custom orders. I'm booked out. Pre sale's still a struggle for me. I have not cultivated the audience.

[Heather]

Yeah. Well, you think about it this. If I know of Corey's, like, hey, listen, I drop these DIY kits, I sell 10, I only make 10 at a time. Then I'm gonna be like, oh, I gotta be on top of this for the next drop.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

My little sister, our little sister's really into oala water bottles. And they do these specials where you stand in a digital queue and you try to get a water bottle that she's not drinking.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But she's very conditioned to look for their emails.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

Because they cultivate an audience. You want the special design. Yeah. They have we many now she's like.

[Corey]

Frothing at the bit. Yeah.

[Heather]

And that's a whole strategy that a wall has had to build up over time. Yeah.

[Corey]

But fantastic. It works for them now. But I'm sure the first day they came to market and said, all right, guys, you better wait for. It was going to be crickets.

[Heather]

Yeah. But they've continued it now. Summer is literally like, can everybody sign into your wallet account ready to give me a water bottle? So, yeah, find the audience first. If you don't have the audience now, it is only April. Yes. And you're like, well, you want me to find my target tray audience now? No, for whatever that product is that they're not conditioned to. Whether it be target trays, who knows? Or it's going to be these pre sales teachers. Gifts, gifts, cookie classes. All of this takes a lot of time to get your footing. I always say people are like, I haven't sold any of my classes.

[Corey]

What gives?

[Heather]

And I'd be like, how many classes have you taught?

[Corey]

One.

[Heather]

This is it. Like, what gives is. You haven't done this before. Right. And the market takes a while to get up there. Corey and I teach cookie classes. Right. In the beginning, we would never sell out. Right. With a ton of effort, we could do it. But it was like, usually we always have eight and we need to seat 10.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Sometimes 12. And then we'd see 10, whatever. Now the class that we're teaching in two weeks has been sold out since January. And the class that we're teaching in August is halfway sold out.

[Corey]

But that is all because the work.

[Heather]

We did years ago, consistent work over here. So now when we teach a cookie class or when I send an email or make a post, I said, hey, this will sell out.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And now people are like, oh, shoot, I gotta sign up now. People who are at our classes currently. They'll sign up while they're sitting there. But that has taken years of conditioning to get there. So with the target trace, you're gonna find your audience. If you don't have that audience yet, you're gonna cultivate it.

[Corey]

And before you buy the 50 target trays, you're going to sit down, you're going to math it out, you're going to say, I have six months before Christmas happens before I need to start selling them. So I'm going to do the math of. I'm going to. I'm going to see how long it takes me to decorate one cookie. I'm going to multiply that by the 24 that need to fit in the target tray. I'm going to do some mathy math here. It takes me eight hours physically as a human being who also needs sleep. How many can I physically actually make?

[Heather]

And then out of that, how many you physically. How many people will buy it?

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And then you can say, well, how am I supposed to do that now? Platters. Platters. Around the fourth of July, great way to kind of say, hey guys, I'm doing these kind of bigger orders, the pre sale platter. Get them, bring them to your parties and kind of cultivate that. It's easy around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Halloween too. Yeah. Last day of school. Anything of those big gifts where people are eating together. Okay, moving to this one. Corey. This is her own altar call. She told me to add it. She said she would sing along with Amazing grace. Cookie backers and boxes love this.

[Corey]

Love buying.

[Heather]

So she's added here. Start generic, then build your way to customs.

[Corey]

End of the day packaging, it's your cookies that are selling it. The packaging, adorable. There are white backers that can be used for St. Patrick's Day, Valentine's Day, Christmas, Thanksgiving, and they can be used throughout the year. When you pigeonhole yourself and get the one that says Happy 4th of July, you have one holiday to make it work. Otherwise it will be sitting with you for another 364 days.

[Heather]

Some people, some bakers may be like. But that differentiated that, that's that packaging differentiator that makes me a little bit of a better option for people. And they are correct.

[Corey]

Okay. But I want to say before we invest, I love the pre made ones. I hate using my printer. Okay. Yeah, the printer one though is a lot cheaper. And you can make two. If you sold two, you can make two. You can cut those up with your little slicer and it's cute.

[Heather]

Not as polished it's not as polished.

[Corey]

It's cute.

[Heather]

So somebody asks if you take a. If you've ever watched one of the. If you're in the cookie college and watch the class we taught or you see the pictures that we post from them when we teach classes. Somebody's like where'd you get those custom take home boxes? And we're like they're not custom. Corey put stickers on them. I know. To cut her costs. Yeah. So she gets these really generic white ones from Amazon as cheap as possible. We assemble them at the class and then she'll put stickers on them that match the theme. It's a hybrid. It's not as fancy. It's. Last year, a couple of years ago I printed you off. Absolutely. Custom boxes for your bakery.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Cost astronomical. Insane storage of cost.

[Corey]

Still storing them.

[Heather]

Right. They're even flat.

[Corey]

I'm moving them around because custom and it says break. Break for break seal. If you love cookies. Mixing bowl cookies. They're adorable.

[Heather]

You already can't be together love them because they have to have cookies and they're a custom box. They're only a custom doesn't box.

[Corey]

Yeah. Which most people don't even order one. Does it?

[Heather]

Let me tell you, they look fantastic.

[Corey]

Fantastic.

[Heather]

The price. But here's the thing. The incremental increase you can charge for that isn't as big as the cost. So here's what I'm trying to say. If the white Amazon cheapie box is $2.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Or let's say what do you think it's like a buck?

[Corey]

It's 68 cents.

[Heather]

68. Well I did the math on Corey's custom boxes. I think it came around 463. Yeah.

[Corey]

Everyone, every time I post those custom boxes people are asking how much does it cost? I'm like before you go dive in, let me explain what the cost is.

[Heather]

Okay. So you. Okay so okay, so 63 cents you said. And then 468 and 4 64.

[Corey]

68 roughly a four dollar difference.

[Heather]

We got a four dollar difference. So we can say well I'm gonna attach that to my price. Okay. That's. Yeah, that's something. But now But Corey had a minimum order of I think 250 of these custom boxes that are meant for customs that she can only put one dozen in. Okay. A $4 difference isn't going to hit the client so hard. Yeah but how many clients are going to find that fit with that box with the Amazon boxes? I know we use them for. Corey uses them for people picking up she uses them for the DIY kits. We use them for the take home plastic. That one is so cheap but so much more versatile. So again, it's that sweet spot between. I don't want to be the cheapest packaging out there. Yeah. But I don't want to lose all my profit.

[Corey]

I like that the mixing bowl custom boxes are for anything that I put in custom. If I got Easter DIY take home boxes for the classes that were just Easter themed.

[Heather]

Super cute.

[Corey]

They would be adorable.

[Heather]

Knock everybody else out.

[Corey]

But here's the thing. I'd be stuck with them for another year. These foam stickers I'm putting on them.

[Heather]

$2 two dwellers for the packet that fills up all 10, 12 to go box.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

All the boxes are covered. So Cory's got a 68 cent box or 63 cents and then $2. But divided by 12, we have 10 people taking the class and two DIY kits.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

So our packaging costs are super low and our packaging is super versatile.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So the other option if she brought those extremely custom boxes. I. I bet you don't use them sometimes because they're too nice. It's.

[Corey]

I. If most people aren't ordering one dozen. Yeah. If someone's getting like half a dozen, it. It's not priced right for me to use them.

[Heather]

Absolutely. So let's take them to class and give them as DIY kits. They're so customized it makes no sense to either class. So you can see that there's that like Corey said, everyone hates printing backers. I always see that. I'm going how to make them grease proof.

[Corey]

I don't think I know Whoever knows.

[Heather]

The secret is key. I think you gotta take them to a printing company and have them.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And that's when you get to go to the Ms. Cookie Packaging and buy these fancy.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But look for the more generic, the more wide open.

[Corey]

There's ones that maybe don't say Happy Easter with an Easter egg, but instead have a floral detail to them that still scream spring.

[Heather]

We just took from one day and we gave ourselves.

[Corey]

Yeah. Yeah. We gave us more Runway to use it. And that's fantastic. When we pigeonhole ourselves and buy all this packaging and instead of buying the one pack that has 24 in there, we buy three of them because we love the idea that we're gonna sell out.

[Heather]

But also there's a sale. Buy two, get one free. Oh. Free shipping.

[Corey]

If I buy this, there's a rewards program.

[Heather]

Everything is designed to get you to spend more because we're all businesses Same way you're trying to get your client to order that extra dozen. You got a dozen minimum. Order the same. We're all doing the same thing. But it is that dangerous thing where you purchase before you plan. And you're stuck with all this stuff that's so niche down that you can't even use it. Except for one time every day. I know.

[Corey]

And God forbid you run out of time and you don't get to make what you had planned.

[Heather]

God forbid you get out of cookies. So I see those cutter buy sell traders, because who doesn't like a little window shopping? And then like to somebody like, wow, that packaging came out four years ago.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And now you're getting out of cookies. And now you're selling this all at a loss because you can't sell it for what you bought it for.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Unless for some reason somebody really wanted it.

[Corey]

Here's where I want to kick myself every time. Let's say I buy two packets. That's 50ish. 50ish backers. I sell an odd 42.

[Heather]

So you're left with 8. 8. And it's not enough.

[Corey]

It's not enough to be like, let me go make these. But they don't make the backer anymore.

[Heather]

Let me tell you what Cory does with these. They end up with Archer headed towards his danger.

[Corey]

They're going in the danger.

[Heather]

And then Cory will just write it off as a loss. Y least the teacher's got something.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Heather]

Okay, so then that makes a ton of sense. What I see some bakers do, especially in the cookie college, is some of them will go in together on an order.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And split it between themselves. And that allows them to get the 25 that they need. This round they were able to save on, you know, like some cost or get a discount or something. And that's hard to do because now you got to trust somebody to come in for it. But it works that way. So everything is working together. The big takeaway here is not bad if you purchased as long as you planned it out first.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And I do like that kind of more generic packaging to really help allow you some flexibility. Yeah. Moving on. Cookie cutters. Advent of 3D printing. Advent of 3D printing. It's cut a lot of cost of sourcing cutters, but it hasn't cut consumerism. So now it's easy just to print something when in reality, if you're getting started, plaques are wide open.

[Corey]

Plaques are a great. Yeah, plaques are a great starter. You can put anything on A plaque.

[Heather]

Right. And you can decorate it. And then we get into the more customized stuff. But before there, there's the. A couple things. Plaques are wide open. Use what you have. Corey will take the cookie class kit cutters, which. There's always six.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And she will try to repurpose them into custom orders.

[Corey]

Try. Yes. My hardest.

[Heather]

Yes. One time, you did a whole set of the under the sea. And I was like, that was a good class.

[Corey]

Someone said, I would like that class as a custom set.

[Heather]

Right. I can do that. But you can do that. You can say, hey, guys, look at this great stuff. I've already purchased these to get more Runway, and I call it, like, cost per use.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

The more cost per use you can get out of a cutter, the cheaper it becomes.

[Corey]

So when someone places a custom order with me, and they're like, I really like this inspiration photo, I always tell them I have just about every cutter to match something similar. It won't be exact, but if you want it to be exact, I can work that into the pricing. Otherwise, it'll be very similar, and you.

[Heather]

Probably wouldn't even notice. I think that passing that additional cost onto the consumer, letting them choose because maybe they want the hypercussive thing, and.

[Corey]

And they can. And you're like, no. Why would you pass it on? I have every. Everything imaginable. I can get very close. If you need it to be exactly the same, hey, that's on you. But I can get so close that you wouldn't even know.

[Heather]

Love it. Okay. So the baker is like, well, I think the issue comes in with the, like, I think if I buy this, I could sell a lot of it. Right. Right now, not so much in that.

[Corey]

Silly goose is trending.

[Heather]

That is cute stuff. It's adorable. And it's tempting to be like, I want to sell a silly goose. I think I could sell the silly goose style. I could be that baker.

[Corey]

That's where I am every single night, hovering over Etsy, adding to cart.

[Heather]

But the reality check is, do you have a theme? Maybe not Silly goose. That would still sell really well for Easter. Yeah. Cory and I are teaching the Easter Easter cookie class kit from three years ago. You'll never guess how many times we taught it. Every year we have it just, well, what about the people? Don't they want something new? They don't care. These are new people.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Every class has new people.

[Corey]

You.

[Heather]

The.

[Corey]

The problem is that bakers hear one person be like, well, I think I decorated this last year. You can't up upend Everything for the one person when 24 of the other people didn't say one thing. You're listening to the one bad thing. And you were saying, we gotta. We gotta change everything. Everything's gonna. No, 24. We're fine with it if you do ra. 90% were great. I'm not even sure that was correct.

[Heather]

Say, not good at math.

[Corey]

99%. 95%. Okay.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

I don't know. But a lot were happy. What was your numbers?

[Heather]

I was kind of doing.

[Corey]

I said there was 25 people in class. 24 were happy. One was sad about the old class kits being reused.

[Heather]

4% were sad.

[Corey]

4%. Just 4%. We had a 96% success rate.

[Heather]

You pass a glass. Yeah, that's a great point. Is. And you know, okay, remember you're coming to the sugar cookie marketing group. What's our job? To see what's selling. Yeah. Talk about what's selling. Because Corey and I have to produce new content all the time.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So I post these threads and I say, what's your best sellers for Easter bonus? If you add the price. I love it. You guys are coming in. You're like, here's what I did. Here's what I charge. Here's how it is sold. But then I see. I see because I get pinged on every comment. People are like, oh, I really wanted to offer this this year. How many did you sell? And I'm like, that's their best seller.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You are getting distracted because you want what they have, but you don't know their market. You don't know their marketing. You don't know where they're located. You don't know if they've sold these every year leading up to this year. So it's something people expect.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Those eggs in a carton.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Tricky. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Do I find that gutter, buy, sell trade groups like those cartons.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Bright colors, super fun. Specifically made for Easter.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Niche product.

[Corey]

Niche.

[Heather]

Hand painted small eggs and mini eggs. That requires a paintbrush, the paint palette. Those eggs are little.

[Corey]

They're tiny.

[Heather]

They're tiny. And then a group of people. Who'd want that.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Over a DIY kit.

[Corey]

I know, I know. Super niche. I know.

[Heather]

Love it when people sell them out. But I think because they're so eye.

[Corey]

Catching, I want to say a lot of people fall in love with the end result of other bakers.

[Heather]

Who doesn't? You did.

[Corey]

You made it look fantastic. If I could make it look fantastic like you, I'd be so happy. I'd Sell a million of them. But here's the thing. You fell in love with the way they did it. You fell in love with their end result.

[Heather]

I always say this. Okay, what? Bikini shopping season, terrible time. And you see these gorgeous ladies who have a toothpick for a waist.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And then they have a butt, and then they're wearing these bikinis, and I'm like, Like, I. I need this.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I think I'd look like that. And I'm like, girl, is it her body or is it the outfit? Right, right. It's probably the body. So I'm buying for the imagination. That that's what I would look like. Yeah.

[Corey]

So when bakers are coming around and you're seeing this thread that Heather posts, the thread is great to give you ideas in the future to see what's selling for others. It's great. Like, oh, there I saw a lot of two. Two cookie packets selling very well. That's something I can store away in the back of my brain. But you've already locked and loaded what you're offering.

[Heather]

It's not the time to use that as an aisle in TJ Maxx and browse. Yeah. It's the time to be like, okay, that's an interesting concept there. Let me keep an eye on it.

[Corey]

Yeah, let me. Let me maybe work that into my next big holiday.

[Heather]

I try to put them up about six weeks out from the holiday because it's.

[Corey]

Which is a dangerous time because it's far enough.

[Heather]

I said, it's close enough that the people who are posting know what this sold.

[Corey]

They're. You've posted it and you made your.

[Heather]

Sales and you're producing them now. But it's dangerous enough that people who haven't buckled down are like, oh, I'm going to sell this. And then you have to buy a new product, introduce new product, and you got the shortest amount of run time.

[Corey]

I know you have to think at the end of the day. Cutter shops also have to produce new things each year because someone says, I'm tired of offering the same old thing. I want to offer new things. So a cutter shop will produce something every single Easter, and it's the cutest thing since sliced bread. But you do have the thing from Easter last year, and you didn't get a chance to make it last year. And you still have it sitting there. It's never been used. So the cutter shop is just doing their job producing new cutters, but you've skipped over what you even invested in.

[Heather]

We're all producing because that's how the market works. Right. We all have to keep producing. Corey and I are producing new class kits. We'll talk about that in a second. Cutter shops are producing new cutter sets. Packaging companies are offering new products because that's what we have to do to stay in business. That doesn't mean it's meant for you every time you see it, although it feels like it is, because why would you want to miss out on that?

[Corey]

I love it. We love it.

[Heather]

Love it. It should be the best seller ever, yet. Cory and I are still teaching the easter class from 2023. I know, 2023.

[Corey]

And. And don't get wrong. I think, like, oh, man, we're teaching that one again.

[Heather]

I even said, like, I'd love to cancel that one and do this Cinco de Mayo.

[Corey]

Yeah, right, right. It's so easy to do it because we're pummeled in our inbox, in our feeds reels, your tiktoks in the groups. Everyone's doing the new, newest, cutest little.

[Heather]

Silly goose set that I really want. Yeah. All this stuff, those blinders do come in handy because there's. There's that sweet spot again. I'm not going to say don't invest. I'm not going to say buy everything. Yeah, there's the buying, buying, implementing, maximizing, and then reinvesting. Yeah, I'm big into the don't take on debt thing. Is this recording? I don't know. I had a thought.

[Corey]

Still recording.

[Heather]

Red dot. Okay, I'm where he is.

[Corey]

Yeah, he's right here.

[Heather]

Yeah. And then. So then. So you want to buy, you want to learn, you want to maximize, and then you want to reinvest. Because in this process, you've gained money, you gained experience, skills, and money. And now here, this is paying for this, and this should pay for this. What we don't want is the massive investment here. And the. This is in my closet for three years here. Yeah, because that is the worst feeling.

[Corey]

Right. Take us to the next topic. Because Heather has a business bank account, and I think that one's a real.

[Heather]

The next one is sprinkles. But I'm going to interject that here. This isn't necessarily a topic, but this is why I think that starting a business. And again, it's going to be a little state specific, but you'll. You'll say, okay, I want to. I want to do this. Let me register with the state. When you register state, you're given an ein number. It's your business's Social Security number. With that you can turn to a credit union. We use Navy Federal and you say, I want to open a business bank account. It says, okay, absolutely, super simple to what's your ein? Right. So then you'll start that and then I'll issue a debit card. So now we have our business banking. What we're going to do is separate personal spending.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

From business banking. Your accountant will kiss you because that makes it a lot easier. What it's going to keep you though, is on the street. It is because you're not able to take Corey money and spend, mix, buy it from mixing bowl because you've just messed funds. Right. You can't mix funds. You can't do business and pleasure at the same time. Yeah. So what happens, Corey said, is having a separate business bank account means the only the business is funded by itself. We don't take money from ourselves and put it and mix it with the business. There's reinvesting, but that's a business reinvesting in itself.

[Corey]

A lot of times when I see bakers buying up all the things, I'm like, you're, you're taking your own hard earned cash, what the business has paid out to you and you're spending it back on the business. You can't borrow from Peter to pay Paul. Someone's going to go out of business here. It's either going to be you because you ran out of money or your business because it can't float. The business itself. Yeah.

[Heather]

You're going to be floating it through credit cards or a second income. And that's, that's still. You got to talk with your accountant. So you can't do that either. But what you want to do is have the business pay its bills, pay you, and then pay to reinvest in itself. So that means we were like, but I'm just getting started. That's exactly what that means. That means you're not buying all this stuff yet. Yeah.

[Corey]

Me and Heather, every time we started a business, we put in equal amounts. There's, there's things as startup costs. Like it's going to cost you some money to start a business.

[Heather]

I think with sugar cookie marketing, the startup cost was a podcast. I think that's in time. Which we didn't bill for, for sure.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But it was definitely, we said, okay, a thousand, a thousand. And then we bought all the stuff.

[Corey]

Yeah. But then if it went kerfuffle, I can't keep paying Corey money trying to make this work. I mean, I'm, I'm borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. And I'm. Peter's tired and penniless now.

[Heather]

She's another positive to go to bed.

[Corey]

The thing is, when you mixed your funds, it's so easy to buy all the packaging and to buy all the cutters you don't like.

[Heather]

You're a smart business person.

[Corey]

You don't know, but you don't know where the money's coming from. When you have that individual bank account and what you make is what you can pull from, from your profits to invest in more packaging, you're going to have like a come to Jesus moment. You're like, I don't think I can buy 82 of those boxes.

[Heather]

Right. I think I can buy two now. Another layer on top of this. So having a business bank account, Corey and I, because we're two, we have to do it that way. I think everyone should do it that way.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I think the business bank account and your money should. Shouldn't even canoodle.

[Corey]

They should have not.

[Heather]

On top of that, our older sister works for the app. You need a budget. Y NAB it's an acronym. W N A B dot com. I use that. And it's an overlay. It's like a overlay on top of that. Just random checking account number. Right. Because it's hard to be like, well, some of this I had allocated for my packaging and some of this I was going to pay myself. It's kind of hard to see it there. What you can do with wine with apps like Ynab is it syncs with your business bank account. And every transaction comes into this app and you categorize it. So it's saying, hey, last week, last month you spent this much on packaging. Is that the goal? Then you create a budget. You create like a target.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And it's like, hey, you overspent or you underspent, you actually have left over that you can reinvest this month. And that allows me to look through a lens of knowing exactly where the money's going. And I can also create goals.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So I could say I want it in Eddie, but I don't, I don't want to sell fund it. I want the business to fund it. So it's kind of like, hey, okay, that's $3,000 every month. You're going to allocate this towards that expenditure goal.

[Corey]

The great reason to have a budget, whether you go with something like Ynab or pen and paper, whatever is the best way for you to do it, is you have yearly expenses that we typically Forget about for 364 days till it comes out again.

[Heather]

Annual registration, $50 in Virginia website, monthly cost, domain, yearly cost.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

There's so many costs. QuickBooks has a yearly cost. Your insurance is a yearly cost. Then you have have the indirect costs.

[Corey]

Like you have monthly costs. Like Jotform is monthly. Your G suite is monthly.

[Heather]

Yeah. That's $6 here, that $10 there, that $30 there. It adds up. Tremendous. Then you're like, you're looking and you're saying, where's all my money? But you got a closet full of packaging. Right, right, right. So again, sweet spot. We need boxes. We want fancier packaging.

[Corey]

We want.

[Heather]

But what can we do? What can we take? I think Heather Campbell Berkshire had said, I bought a bunch of bows. She's like, they're generic bows. I use them everywhere.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

It's again, that universal, that utility that you can use bows everywhere, but they're not bows with eggs on them.

[Corey]

Yeah, right, exactly, exactly.

[Heather]

So again, sweet spot. Now when your business is doing really well, or you say, I really want to make this, I really want to invest in these Easter themed DIY kits.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Then we can do it. Absolutely. When there's money there, you're going to look up.

[Corey]

Oh, absolutely. You're never going to see me say, you know, skimp out on the cute packaging. If you can afford it. If it's in your bakery business budget, that's where I'm going to be like, yeah, do it. That's awesome. It's going to set you apart. We're all buying from the same cutter shops. We're all using the sugar, flour and butter, you know, so packaging is a great way to set yourself apart. It is fantastic if it's in the budgie.

[Heather]

Right. I think it's important that the business is always in a healthy black and not a dangerous yellow or alarm sounding red.

[Corey]

It comes down to just knowing your.

[Heather]

Numbers and it's because it comes down to even knowing how much this order costs.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Okay, let's say we're using the custom box. Well, we just said that was $4.63. So we can't charge $2 in packaging. We have to charge our packaging cost. Now, has Corey's cost ballooned farther than what her clients are willing to pay?

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

That's dangerous as well. There's a point at which you overextended your market. Your price is too high. You're driving away business. And you hear on this podcast, raise your prices, raise your prices. We're not charging a thousand dollars For a decimal, you can't do that either. There's that again. It's always a sweet spot. Like, it kind of exists in the gray area and so does business strategy. So you can say, okay, this cost. This, this doesn't. Let's say your cost of producing. Pulling us out of my butt. Kcost.net if you want to use it, let's say it's $36.

[Corey]

Sure.

[Heather]

Okay, well, you're charging $78.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So we have a huge margin. Is every cost accounted for? Let's make sure we're really good. Now let's implement it as an incoming. If you use a budgeting app, Ynab, you would say, here's the money, incoming. Then you go right to the budget tab and say, allocate this out.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And it said, okay, well, we're short on this and we're over budgeted on this. Now you can say, okay, let's say where I want to put my focus here.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

How many more dozens do I need to sell to make my budget reconcile?

[Corey]

I posted a Instagram reel today. You can look it up on trigger cookie marketing on Instagram. Here's the thing. She ordered three dozen cookies. If I would have used the custom packaging that I bought that there is one dozen that fits in there, that would have been three boxes.

[Heather]

Boxes.

[Corey]

That's $15 if we're rounding it up. $15, that would come out of my profits. There was not enough wiggle room there. So what I did instead was use the bakery boxes. Now we're back down to a dollar. I used two. One for two dozen and a smaller one for the last dozen. And I got these little flowers that I was able to glue on there. It saved me a total of 6ish dollars if you did the math. But 6ish dollars that I didn't have to give her three of these custom boxes to fit them. She needed to take them home. Yeah. So I have to give her something to take them in. But can do the math and math it out correctly so that my business isn't always taking a loss. Because a small loss, every single order is going to cost you in the long run.

[Heather]

It's going to cost you your business.

[Corey]

Absolutely.

[Heather]

You can't operate at a loss. At the end of the day, you cannot operate at a loss. I don't care if you're new here, if your skills are. You cannot operate at a loss and be profitable.

[Corey]

Yeah. Sprinkles is the next one. I. I realized I didn't realize this.

[Heather]

Was a whole Issue use sprinkles.

[Corey]

I don't use them except for DIY kits. Why am I collecting them?

[Heather]

Eyeballs.

[Corey]

Oh, I use those all the time. Those will be my right enough.

[Heather]

In every class kit. It's like, I'm always like, here's the thing.

[Corey]

Sprinkles are adorable. That's so stinking cute. And unless you're doing, like, cake pops and using them often on there, a lot of times, custom cookie bakers do not use sprinkles on the cookies. You know what?

[Heather]

Yeah. I don't see that. You think cookies and you think sprinkles, but it's not.

[Corey]

It's not.

[Heather]

But they're super cute sprinkles out there. And I see it kind of with the DIY kits. First of all, typically DIY kits are going to kids. Yes. Right. And they're hobble gobbling them.

[Corey]

They are.

[Heather]

And then you got these, like, super cute bunny carrots.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Carrot sprinkles. And you're like, this is so cute. And it is. It is. It's so much cuter than the generic ones. But those white little periels.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Not saying the word.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Nonpareils.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I know people who have sprinkle history. Why, here's the. That will get you 90% of the way.

[Corey]

Sprinkles expire. I don't care what you say. They do expire and they turn into chalk. They're either hard, they're chalk.

[Heather]

Those like big circles that are kind of iridescent. Really cute. They're, like, big, and they come in big.

[Corey]

Those will take out a tooth.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

So then you don't want to use that on an order because you don't want to get a bad review. So now you're stuck storing them them till they approach their expiration date. Then they finally approach it, and you're sitting there looking at them. I don't like them. They're expired. But why can't I get rid of them? It's because you invested in them. And that pain of throwing money into the trash can hurts.

[Heather]

Yeah. Like, you are weird with PMA sprinkles. You're like, they only get two extra one just in case it.

[Corey]

Yeah, I know.

[Heather]

Then I'll be like. Then Cory will be like, these are Rodriguez bar. Give everybody 50.

[Corey]

So what I've had to come tell myself is, Corey, you like the look of sprinkles. You like the idea of sprinkles. You don't use them. They are a waste of money for your business if you do not use them with reckless abandon. They will expire. But you have to store them until that point.

[Heather]

Cory and I have decided we're in our hit pan era.

[Corey]

Hit pan. And explain what hit pan.

[Heather]

Because I didn't know.

[Corey]

Not everyone knows that. But someone asked me in the group.

[Heather]

What does that mean, hit pan? I think it comes from makeup. It comes from the makeup influencer. And they like a product so much that they use the eyeshadow palette down till you hit the bottom of the.

[Corey]

Pan, which is technically metal. So you're like, pan.

[Heather]

If you can look at your eyeshadow palette and you start to see the metal reflecting. Yeah, you really like.

[Corey]

You really did.

[Heather]

So Corey and I said, let's channel our hit pan era. You have to hit pan on any product before you can replace it.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And before you replace it, you have to say, did this product fulfill the need at which it was. Was supposed to meet? If that's a need, like, it smelled good, great. That's the. But if it's like Corey had said, I. I went through. I hit pan on something. We're like, what is it? All this magnesium lotion. I said, what does it do? And she's like, I don't.

[Corey]

I don't really know.

[Heather]

She came back a couple days later and she said, while I did hit pan on the magnesium lotion, I don't know that if it filled the need. And I have another lotion, so I'm not going to repurchase.

[Corey]

Right. At the end of the day, you can find the cutest little sprinkle things. And you're like, I will only use this for a very special occasion. And that occasion never counts because it's so special that they were once in a lifetime buy. And I have many of those.

[Heather]

But here's.

[Corey]

At the end of the day, if you do not use them, they own you. Okay? They own the space. They own your brain space. They own your storage.

[Heather]

The. The Edism. Our grandfather Ed, late. When I was, like, 10, Corey and I. Lisa Frank Chokled loved Lisa Frank. Whatever. Lisa.

[Corey]

Her folders.

[Heather]

And I know the documentary.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Apparently she was a bully. Yeah, she was. But whatever Lisa Frank touched. So we got this packet of pencils, like, you know, the ones you sharpen. And it came in this perfect, like, case, and it came with a little sharpener, and it was these pencils. And I said, while we're sitting there in Kentucky, I said, I'm never going to use these. These are. These are so great. Yeah, I'm never going to use them. And he looked at me, and he was like that. Then. Then it's a waste if you never sharpen the pencil. It's a waste. So for the rest of my life, I'm like, you got to sharpen the pencil.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

If you don't sharpen the pencil, the whole thing is trash. But you. But it's so perfect. It's not. It's now the anchor. It's a weight. It's a golden handcuff.

[Corey]

That magnesium lotion has one job. To lotion my magnesiumless body. If I never use the lotion, I don't own the lotion.

[Heather]

I know it owns you, but it. And thank goodness it expires. At least.

[Corey]

We have to break me from the chains of magnesium lotion.

[Heather]

I don't know if anyone remembers in my get a speeding ticket era that I've since graduated from, and then I had to go to the thrift store and volunteer for community service, and they had me work the cash register, which had never worked a cash register before. I hope no one had to balance those books. I said, I don't know. The door didn't open, so. So in front of it, they had all this. And I'm just gonna call it what it is. Crap. They did remember thrift stores all donated stuff.

[Corey]

One man's junk. It's another man's junk.

[Heather]

There's a puzzle of missing pieces, and a lady bought it, and I was like, this is gonna be the most difficult puzzle. Puzzle you ever done in your life, or the easiest one. But there is these lotions from Bath and Body Works. From Bath and Body Works when it used to have the checkered. Yeah. What was that? What's that material called?

[Corey]

Gingham.

[Heather]

Gingham. It was. You have the gingham thing?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You. I'm like, oh, I know this. When I looked at it, I was like. I looked and I said, this is separated into the separate oils that make up. Yeah, I threw them away. Listen, if you want me to pay the $2 for that, I will.

[Corey]

But here's the thing. We love the idea of stuff we. When we pay for something, to throw that in the trash is debilitating.

[Heather]

Well, you just threw away money. You just throw away money.

[Corey]

You threw away cash. You literally took $2 out of your wallet, looked at it, and tossed it in the trash. Yeah. It's so hard to do. But we. We are putting ourselves in these positions because we're falling for the awesome marketing, the fomo, everything like that, without doing the numbers behind it. What set? I have no Silly goose set on my books and I'm booked out to August, so would it behoove me to buy the silly goose cutters?

[Heather]

Probably not, I say. And we're not done with our list yet, so if your toes haven't been stepped on, just wait, just wait. We're coming forward. A lot of this is solved by investing in marketing because marketing makes the world turn. It Marketing produces the income that allows you to reinvest. If you buy before you market or if you buy before you plan to market, you've already, you're already operating in a negative. Now you've got to chase that. You have to catch up. But what if it doesn't? Right? So marketing first. Planning how to market first, and then investing a whole vibe. Right. And they may not be a pre sale type person because I know there's certain bakers who like that and certain bakers who don't. But let's say if you're a customs person, if you are a cookie class kit person, or if you're a DIY kit person, there's strategies that fit that for you. Next one. Machinery. I mean, I love machine.

[Corey]

Heather loves technology.

[Heather]

I don't know some about one their packaging.

[Corey]

You've always been a techie person.

[Heather]

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Something about that little film that comes off.

[Corey]

Yeah, there's nothing like it. Nothing like it. Sally, I need to buy something.

[Heather]

Can we go to the spa? Okay, so I have some examples. Eddie 3D printer and indie hydrator. Cory and I obviously talk of Eddie. They're obviously a podcast sponsor. Corey makes money from them.

[Corey]

Yeah, okay.

[Heather]

Okay. They are not for you if you're just getting started right now.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

They are not for you if you have not planned on how to. So somebody always get this question once a month. Hey guys, I'm thinking about buying an Eddie. What should I know? And I said, Eddie is not an if you buy it, they will come. It's if you buy it or if you buy it, market it, market it, market it, market it, market it. And maybe they will come.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But it is not in any reverse order. It's not that Eddie brings in sales, it's that you brought in sales and Eddie helped. I know. So you, you see what I'm saying? You brought in sales. How'd you do that? Marketing, how did you do that? You worked, you planned on it and then you invested. Eddie. So I said to somebody last month, month, create an Eddie business plan, pretend you're taking out an SBA loan Yeah. How would you convince me as the loan officer to grant you this loan to purchase this? That is a strategy. Because what if I. What is the loan officer do I need. They need you to pay me back.

[Corey]

I need you to show me back and then some. Right.

[Heather]

I need to make sure that you know that how you're planning to pay me back.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

And that's what your business also needs. Yes. So you're not taking out the loan. Right. But you need to have the same strategy. I'm going to buy this. And here's what this is.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You're.

[Corey]

You're going to say to Heather, the SBA fake loan lady, I'm going to go to four businesses that first month and print cookies in their logos. But I'm going to go meet with the business owners and tell them what.

[Heather]

Eddie is, and then I'm going to say, great. Now what are you going to do the next month?

[Corey]

I'm going to create a Facebook ad.

[Heather]

You see how solid this sounds?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

This is the strategy that pays for Eddie. Now, what we don't want is for you to buy an Eddie on credit. He's. He's. He's a hefty $3,000. Yeah. Interest rates on credit cards could be upwards of 30% at this point. Like, I'm so sorry. We're talking about an additional $300 just right off the bat. Not compounding that you get the Eddie.

[Corey]

He sits in his box. Because you didn't allow for the learning curve that Eddie does have. There's a software there.

[Heather]

Right there is the alter call. If you have a machine in a box.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You have a problem. What am I going to tell you? I'm.

[Corey]

Go through my brain and see what I got.

[Heather]

You have to Cricket in a box. You have a 3D printer in a box. You have an Eddie in a box. Or if you have all these things collecting dust, you are a part of the. You expanded before you exp. Expounded.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

You do not have to suffer any longer. I want you to write up a business plan for that thing. If you're listening to this, post your business plan up in the group, you don't.

[Corey]

You don't have to get rid of it. But make a plan.

[Heather]

Make the plan. This month I will write on my plane. Honestly, I have to open the box yet. Yeah, you don't. He's sitting comfortable over there in the box. You can leave in the box. Write me up the plan. You're gonna have to open the box.

[Corey]

Plan number one. I'M gonna schedule my free call with Eddie. You get one hour. And I'm going to go over every single hour. What? How to turn them on, how to set up the program, how to attach my printer to my computer. That's my month one, right?

[Heather]

Let's say with a 3D printer. I bought it. I bought it during the Black Friday bamboo sale, right? I just put together scores. It took me 20 minutes. And I was recording it and talking.

[Corey]

And you know what? He's sitting on my desk, right?

[Heather]

You never called me about putting the filament.

[Corey]

Oh, I know.

[Heather]

I wasn't even like going out there. I know. That filament is drunk. I said every time I pass, it's.

[Corey]

Like you are gonna be my.

[Heather]

Know you're my machine in a box. But. Okay, let's say the 3D printer only takes 15 seconds or 15 seconds. 15 minutes to assemble, which is basically 15 seconds in the scheme of life. Yeah, assemble it.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

Same with Cricut. Corey and I found this. Local ladies teaching Cricut certification classes. Like how to get started with Cricut. If you have a Cricut in a box, take that class.

[Corey]

Yeah, Right.

[Heather]

So we're going to start taking these cost sinks and we're going to make them.

[Corey]

We're going to change. We're going to change it.

[Heather]

We still do that. You can change. Turn the ship around. Corey had dehydrated her. And I say, like I thought, dehydrates are important. Cory said, fan first, fan first, man fan first. There's always that cheaper option. What is that? Etch a Sketch or what do you guys call it?

[Corey]

Smart Sketch.

[Heather]

So, okay, we know that the product gets better with the projector, but there are. Even though that edge of sketching is.

[Corey]

Like, it's ballooned in pricing, it's still cheap.

[Heather]

So maybe go. I don't know. You have the phone. Okay, whatever. There's just. There's smaller costs we can take on before we invest in that, Matt. Massive cost. Or you can say, listen, Heather, I really think I need that projector, that higher end one. And that's going to need an archon mount as well.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I want to say, okay, what's the business plan? Pitch it to me. I'm going to let you buy it. I'm your SBA loan officer. How are we going to make money? How are you going to pay me back? And then some.

[Corey]

A dehydrator is a great buy if you're going to focus on one higher amount of orders that you need to push through real Fast or last minute orders.

[Heather]

You can be a last minute baker, which that's a whole strategy. You have a different set set up than the pre sale baker. But you're going to say, okay, then I'm going to get the dehydrator because that's my focus. Here's how I plan to bring in my last minute buyers. You see, Heather?

[Corey]

Yeah. If you're not focused on that and you're taking one to two orders a week and you're not rushed, they're like one dozen each dehydrator is not going to be the number one thing you need to buy. I don't turn my dehydrator on every week. And it's because I'm taking the right amount of orders. I'm not taking all the last minute orders. That is how I built my business.

[Heather]

But Corey's able to throttle orders because marketing has always been a constant.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I think marketing. And obviously we're marketing podcasts, so it's very, very, very biased towards that. I think marketing makes a world turn because you can have the best product in the world and if nobody knows it's for sale, it's the worst product.

[Corey]

For sure. You can be like, I'm going to.

[Heather]

Be the last minute baker.

[Corey]

But if no one knows you take last minute orders, what's the point?

[Heather]

Right. Right. Lucy Q. She's a local lady.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I see her recommended a lot. When people are like, I forgot to order a cake.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And she's like, I'm a last minute baker. And now they found each other. But not for lack of her having to push that narrative a lot.

[Corey]

Absolutely. And so many people recommend her because she will be one of the only last minute people who can take a cake order in two days.

[Heather]

You know how I know she's a last minute baker On Threads where people say, I've waited to the last minute. Instead of all the bakers chastising them that they waited too long, she'll be like there. And she's like, I can do this. And it's a whole strategy. And she works late hours.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But that's where she said, I'm really thriving. This where she gets a lot of. Please. I was thinking about this back to the SBA loan I had. Stupid. In my 20s. Right. I wanted to buy a motorcycle.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And then I bought a motorcycle was too big.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So I needed to buy another motorcycle.

[Corey]

That's insanity.

[Heather]

So I took out two loans on motorcycles.

[Corey]

Crazy.

[Heather]

I took them out. Of course. This was an industry. It was like I know, I went to the bank, and then a month later, I went back to the bank. The same guy sitting there, he's like. And I said, I said, I'm so worried. And he said, listen, and when. And I had this spreadsheet of like, you know what this all looked like, all the numbers written out, all the VIN and everything in the insurance. And he was like, when people are that planned, we know they're going to pass because they're so preemptively ahead of the loan. And I think that's what bakers can do, too. If I. If I can say, like, wow, look how planned out your marketing is, Eddie, I'm not going to be worried that you're not going to make your money back. But if I see you, I just bought it, and I'm like, and what? I don't know.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I like, oh, you just. You possibly just wasted $3,000.

[Corey]

Right. Because if it's gonna sit there and you don't have a plan around it, you're going to be Eddie's number one villain. You're gonna be like, that was a waste of money.

[Heather]

Your printer cartridge is expired.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Rolling right? Yeah. There. And does there's updates being pushed out your will behind y'all? Yes. You got to do that. Same with the 3D printer. Same with the dehydrator. Okay. Final one course courses. And I'm going to spin this one towards us. Right. Marketing courses, I think are exempt from this. And the reason being because marketing helps everything else.

[Corey]

But I want to say, if you sign up for the cookie college and don't take it, you're going to.

[Heather]

So open the cookie College. Yeah. And take that one class. There's a bunch of really, really, really simple classes. The.

[Corey]

The. Because we know it's overwhelming to learn something new. That's why we have the cookie college private Facebook group. It's the baby step to get you into the cookie college courses. Because from there, you can ask your baby step questions and somebody be like.

[Heather]

Oh, they talk about this in the course. Yeah.

[Corey]

Which is a fantastic way. That's why we were like, if you sign up for the college, get into the group, the group is there to help lessen the overwhelm.

[Heather]

So you open the box Every second Monday, I also open the box with people and we go through how the cookie college works and courses. I'd recommend starting with. With. Okay. But back to that floral course.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Buying courses. Delectable fun.

[Corey]

You do like a procreate course, don't you?

[Heather]

I'll be Taking one. I haven't bought another one until I take this one. The 15th through the 17th. Kawaii creatures.

[Corey]

Yeah. Cute.

[Heather]

Okay, but let's say skill set courses. Awesome. Because you say after I take this course, I'll be this kind of baby. I'll have this kind of skill.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

But if you don't take the course, that is a loss.

[Corey]

I want to tell you. I've been going through a course and just the stuff you have to buy to get through the course. I bought the stuff that was the.

[Heather]

Easiest part of the course.

[Corey]

Now I have the stuff and I'm like, wow, this is going to sit and stare at me until the course is taken.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

Which is a burden.

[Heather]

So you got to take the course. Yeah. The way you can do that. I've kind of implement. Ashley does our older sister got a Finstagram. If you guys don't know that it's an Instagram for your personal stuff and not your public brand. And she said. I. I said, oh, I love these photo dumps that she does. She makes one a week and it's. She's counting down the weeks of the year and she's like, the next one. I require a procreate drawing from you.

[Corey]

Oh.

[Heather]

So I was like, oh, okay. Great.

[Corey]

Feet to the fire.

[Heather]

Building that in, building these things, building yourself in a treat or telling people, hey, this is. This is. This would be a risky. Yeah. I'm going to offer this floral set, and you have to take the floral class to get there.

[Corey]

One time part of my life in my early 20s, I wanted to be a personal trainer. Trainer. I bought you and your dreams. Yeah. I bought a 1500. It was a course in a test. NASM being NASM certified. You know what? That NASM certification had an expiration date on it.

[Heather]

Smart Year one.

[Corey]

Smart came and gone. I never took it.

[Heather]

But the. At least it taunted you. It's.

[Corey]

It's haunted me. And it's been 20 years.

[Heather]

Yeah, that's that. So how can you be. One time I said, I want to do a fitness competition. And my exact ex was like, you just want to be. I said, I just want to say I could. Yeah, I want to get in that level of fitness. And he was like, right there. You just avoided having to do it because you didn't sign up.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And I was like, well, shoot, my feet. My toes hurt even signing up, though.

[Corey]

But here's the thing. You bought the course. Now you have. You have access to your calendar. Blackout a day. There's no orders on that Day. I'm not doing any extracurriculars on the day. This day is dedicated to learning florals from this class that I bought here.

[Heather]

I tell you to do. I was listening to podcasts and they were like, don't even let the phone be in the room with you. Yeah. The proximity of the phone affects your distraction. Take care, Apple. Watch y'all and knock yourself for two hours. Set a timer.

[Corey]

I know the great thing about a course. And to make it more bite sized, some of these courses out there are vast and large and 20 hours worth of content. If you're like, I want to learn florals just a little bit better, you can focus on the floral. I just want to learn lace. How to do edible lace. Focus on that. Get something out of the core, and.

[Heather]

Then it's still available.

[Corey]

Because it's overwhelming to say 20 hours is in front of me. And I just don't know if my attention span. But if you're kind of like, I learned edible lace from that course. And I think it did pay for itself because I've used it on this amount of set since.

[Heather]

That's a great point.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I typically buy an audiobook and I feel obligated to listen to the whole thing, but not all audiobooks are made for me. And I feel, like, guilty. Like I'm gonna.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But I think. Did you learn in the couple pages, did you learn anything? Did you learn that time is better spent not on this book.

[Corey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Heather]

And that, you know, not all target trades are for us. There's a point in which you're like, well, listen, girls, thanks for coming to the crime scene. I've already done all these things. Like we said, girl, I'm with you. With the girl. Open the box. Take part of the course. Sell the overspend.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

The cutter. Buy, sell, trade groups. There's a sure people that you're going to say, you got to eat the cost. You're like, okay, I made a mistake here, but I can recoup some of that.

[Corey]

That if I don't even.

[Heather]

In your.

[Corey]

What I actually have been doing for the past couple of cookie decorating classes is bringing cookie cutters. I know I will not use and giving them away.

[Heather]

Class people, the attendees light. They're like, are you serious? Yeah. Are you serious? And Cory's like, bringing, like, bags for them to take to use. Yeah. There's these bags.

[Corey]

Sprinkles that are going to expire before I use them. Let them go to the new home.

[Heather]

I think people are like, but they're Expecting those people could care less than some of those cutters had. No. They had no idea what these shapes were.

[Corey]

And I didn't have any idea either.

[Heather]

They were double fishing.

[Corey]

Yeah, but what a way. There's a local community group for your baker. Like, there's a lot of local baker groups. That'd be a great way to get a new home and a new chance at life for the stuff you're not using.

[Heather]

I know hoarding is like a mental disorder and progressively could destroy somebody's life, but a lot of it, it's like, it feels good to buy, but it feels so terrible. It's a put it horrendous. See it?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I think getting rid of stuff in a buy nothing, sell nothing group, while it's like, like. But this is cost. The freedom of not seeing it is also a value. It's a. A phantom one. We can't touch it.

[Corey]

Here's the thing. I am all this podcast was a. A lesson for me. This is something. What I've done is gone into TJ Maxx's and Ross's without my wallet. To walk into a place that is so centered around fomo and if you don't buy it now, you're not going to get it later and not have the option to buy has made me appreciate the fact that I can appreciate a nice box, but I can't buy it. I don't even have my credit card on me.

[Heather]

I'm like, I've got an issue. I don't go to the stores anymore, and I love them the same way. I have to uninstall TikTok. Yeah. Which, I'll be honest, this week I didn't understand because I'm not sure it's getting banned. I don't want to be locked out again. So I logged out of it.

[Corey]

The Sephora sale happens twice a year. Every single year, without fail. Twice a year.

[Heather]

Something in you has clicked this year.

[Corey]

Yeah. I am tired of. Of stuff. My house is clean, but if you open a drawer, used to, before I've started this, it was filled to the brim with stuff. Like, the house looks clean, but I'm surviving through cupboards and cupboards of things. And I don't like it. I don't like not knowing.

[Heather]

When'd you move in here? Three years ago. Remember when you said, wow, there's so much space, and I said, you should try to maintain that. Yeah. When we see space, we're like, I could put crap in here.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

So you would walk in my house and you're like, this isn't.

[Corey]

This looks nice. There's not. You don't have anything out. It's the. It's the mental thing that I know that there's packaging down there that I've had for three years that there's. I had to go through spatulas. I love them. They're easy for people to gift me. Because when you don't know what to buy a bakery, you buy a spatula. There's spatulas. I will reach over every single time to get a spatula I like. So guess what? The spatulas I'm not using that are taking up space have got to find a new home.

[Heather]

And Corey uses the community group she runs to donate a lot of that stuff.

[Corey]

I love it. And it has a new home.

[Heather]

A new home with somebody who may be fighting their own battles, but it's not your battle.

[Corey]

Here's the thing. All these companies that cater to bakers do run sales, and it's because they're businesses as well. You've got to do the math behind the product to make sure that the product is a viable option for your business. It comes down to a little math work, not the fear of fomo. If you need to unsubscribe to some of your favorite places, you have to do it. Sometimes they get back in there, and I'm like, oh, my gosh.

[Heather]

Right? Yeah.

[Corey]

And you're not alone in this. This is something that I suffer from, too. I love the idea of Corey selling pre sales, but I hate selling pre sales. So who am I, Corey?

[Heather]

What are you? Right? Finding and figuring out creating that business plan. This is the type of bakery I'm. Here's how I'm going to cover this cost, and here's how I'm going to produce profit from this. Can I buy debt? Yes, you can. I have no plan out this all. I just see it's on sale. I want it. No, you can't. Yeah, all right. I don't know. It's not even on sale, but everyone's buying it and saying it's changing their lives still. No, you can't. Yeah. Change their lives on yours.

[Corey]

How I've been able to kind of reconfigure my brain is if I go downstairs, is there any spot for more cookie boxes? No, there's no spot. Okay.

[Heather]

Water loss. That girl.

[Corey]

Hey, I got a few spots for you. If there's no room for a cookie box, I can't afford to get it. I don't have a space for it. But What I do have is the space that is being taken up by previous cookie boxes that I can use.

[Heather]

Right. So Corey had sent me a message. She's like, running out to this DIY kit stuff. I need to clear out my 10 boxes. Yeah.

[Corey]

And you know what I said to myself? It was so funny. It was. Sugarloaf Mountain was going out of business. They were pennies on the Dweller.

[Heather]

These DIY kits.

[Corey]

I had 10 of them that I've had for one year already. And I said to myself, I actually added to cart another 10 because I said, well, I would hate if I never got to have these. These again. And I said, what, girl, you have 10. You haven't moved, girl.

[Heather]

I said, get exit out of this.

[Corey]

So it's just having those. Those hard conversations with yourself and realizing who you are and who you want to be as a business.

[Heather]

So great for that baker. That baker. I'm so glad that thing sold out. Yes. I'm not going to partake, but you and your Target trays look phenomenal.

[Corey]

And guess what? More money is going to stay in your pocket. More money is going to stay in your business.

[Heather]

There's a way to. There's two ways to make money. You either earn it or you don't spend it. Both are strategy.

[Corey]

Right? Right.

[Heather]

So this is your little budgeting break. Check this podcast.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And there's a. Find that sweet spot. I'm not going to say cut all costs, spend nothing, and then expect your business for sure, that's going to be a no. No. But if you buy everything and do nothing, don't expect your business to grow either.

[Corey]

If you plan to market with the things you buy and you.

[Heather]

You.

[Corey]

You get rid of it, which is the goal. If you have the 10 DIY kits to sell the 10 DIY kits.

[Heather]

But you're like, what if I sell 12? Then two people. We oversold the. We sold out on that Easter class. People keep saying, can I sign up? Nope.

[Corey]

I know, but you. You can't sign up for the Easter class. But we do have another class coming up we'd love to see there.

[Heather]

You can't sign up for the class, but you can grab a deal.

[Corey]

What you're doing is creating fomo. You're doing marketing by not. Not always being the yes man.

[Heather]

Yes.

[Corey]

I could have kicked myself last October. Someone ordered a DIY kit, and I was like, I'm one box short. I did the math wrong. I was one box short. So I was like, let me buy 10 more boxes.

[Heather]

No.

[Corey]

Not only did she end up not buying the kit that she had said she wanted. I had 10 more boxes to sit with.

[Heather]

What you could have done is get in your white box and put some spideys on it.

[Corey]

Absolutely.

[Heather]

But we're like, we just get in that thing and it's the brain. It's. No one's really wrong. It's just the brain. How it tells ourselves. We surround ourselves. You would say you come to the cookie group, the sugar cookie marketing group. You want to learn marketing. And it is bedazzling.

[Corey]

Bedazzle.

[Heather]

I want to buy all the things.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But a little bit you gotta say that's bedazzling for you. It's not for me right now. Yeah. I'll see if it can work into my budget.

[Corey]

I know. So I'm getting ready to post these pencil cookies. I'm going to tell you right now, if you don't fall in love with skinny pencils in the boxes that come with them, I don't want you to buy them.

[Heather]

Don't buy that. You're going to post it.

[Corey]

They're going to be cute. Don't buy them. Yeah.

[Heather]

I always can tell when Corey posts some cute real because it's like, hey, where'd you get those boxes? Where'd you get that?

[Corey]

Kind of.

[Heather]

Where'd you get this?

[Corey]

And I'm always like, I don't want to tell you.

[Heather]

Did you plan.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Or are you just impulsively buying? Because Corey just showed.

[Corey]

I know. I know.

[Heather]

Corey has to produce content.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

So. And she's going to put out some.

[Corey]

Cute stuff on our.

[Heather]

Or not.

[Corey]

So, guys, that was a come to.

[Heather]

Jesus moment for both of us.

[Corey]

So I'm working. Work in progress. Proud of my. My.

[Heather]

I. Proud of Amanda Gray.

[Corey]

Proud of myself. All right, those are the stupid questions.

[Heather]

Okay, we have 10, 10 chances to win a stupid card. Try.

[Corey]

Did I go low last time? Because I think I'm gonna go high this time.

[Heather]

Little Christmas tree. Red truck was a Christmas tree. 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Where do I access the podcast? Hey, it counts. Listen. 8, 4, 7. I'll tell you in an email. Write me an email with the rest of your phone number to heather sugarcookiemarketing.com you won the stupid card tray. But to answer your question, where do you access the podcast? There's actually a couple ways to do it, and I've put them all on a webpage on our new website, sugercookiemarketing.com podcast.

[Corey]

Podcast.

[Heather]

But we are listed on all the major podcast Streamers. I'd have to ask where did you get our number? If you don't know, what if I love maybe.

[Corey]

Maybe the group though? Because you did post there.

[Heather]

Okay, well, eight, four, seven. I'm trying to tell you I'm speaking to you through the. I'm putting.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Manifesting you finding it in the next seven days we're listed on all the major podcast players, so Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcast. Apple Podcast, iHeartRadio.

[Corey]

Someone said they had a little issue on Pandora. I don't know.

[Heather]

Pandora is no longer living listed. Pandora. Something's going wrong with them.

[Corey]

Oh, interesting.

[Heather]

I think it's bigger than us.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

So I'm not sure you can find it. Usually I can see where things are listed. Some podcast players pull from Apple podcasts and you used to be listed on Pandora. Now it's not even an option in the directory. So I'm not sure if they're not accepting podcasts or not. Either way, if you do not have a podcast player you could go to. Go to there's a podcast.com and it'll pull up buzzsprout. That's our podcast host and you can listen for free directly from there.

[Corey]

That's great. Or you can watch it on YouTube.

[Heather]

It is called the playlist is called watch the baking it down podcast.

[Corey]

Nice. We thought some people like just to have it playing like you know, on YouTube.

[Heather]

I'm gonna be honest, Jor, I prefer to watch it than listen.

[Corey]

Really?

[Heather]

I'm now seeing the interactions. Yeah, maybe something about it.

[Corey]

I like watching YouTube videos for sure.

[Heather]

Let's see when you roll your eyes at me. Yeah, good. Okay, so Idrit from Minnesota. You didn't win but you could win next week by just texting in another question. Yeah, but I'm going to read this question. Hi. I just want to say besides the fact that I want to win a stupid card track that I can't thank you enough for introducing Royal batch. I love how it looks and tastes and it's easy to work with as well. As much as I hate mixing ri and preparing piping bags, I love flooding and decorating with royal batch. Also Corey, thanks for the tip. Take off one tablespoon as it gives me the best puffing I've ever had without with any other meringue powder. Thank you again.

[Corey]

Awesome.

[Heather]

Yeah, so explain this.

[Corey]

Royal batch, they are a podcast monster.

[Heather]

So I'll just get out of the way.

[Corey]

Royal batch is a meringue. Is a meringue powder. And there's so many different types of meringue powders. Your cookie journey is going to be determined a lot by the one that you choose. I had tried them all. Royal batch has been fantastic. It whips up bright white because there's already white food coloring in there. There's vanilla extract, so it tastes great. You don't have to add anything extra. And there's corn syrup in there as well, so that means it is a softer bite. The thing that the reason why I love it is it's silky smooth when you're using it. And my tip that I've learned that works for me is taking out a tablespoon of the cup that the back of the package recommends because it allows it to crust a little slower. So if you have issues with, you know, a little candy kiss or an air bubble, you can work it and fix it before it starts crusting over. So it gives me more time to work with it.

[Heather]

Don't you have a theory for icing bleed, too?

[Corey]

I have a. If you want me to post that. If you want to text in and I can post it in the baking group how I make the icing.

[Heather]

Exactly.

[Corey]

I don't mind sharing it. I've saved it to my notes that I use it so much.

[Heather]

This is me verbally texting it big. Okay, last text. Not. Not a winner. But you could be a winner next week. Just text into 5, 7, 1, 5, 5, 6, 5, 6, 4, 4. Hi, twins. Is there anything you don't think you could sell? You know, like ice to an Eskimo type of situation? You always say, just change out the noun and marketing and it's the same. What do you think is the hardest thing to sell? I think bad products are really hard to sell.

[Corey]

Oh, absolutely.

[Heather]

I, Cory and I bad customer service. Cory and I have told clients who have really bad review profiles that it's not something that we think think we're capable of working with. And I'll market a bad attitude.

[Corey]

You can bring so many leads to a person, but if the person you're bringing the leads to has a bad attitude, isn't willing to work with them.

[Heather]

To circumvent great marketing.

[Corey]

Yes. Yeah. Because you're not going to make the sales. You'll be like, but we're marketing. Where are the sales? I'm sorry, they're getting clogged at this bad person in your business.

[Heather]

Yeah. In the world of online reviews being pervasive, even if you have a shoddy product and you get listed on Amazon, you're gonna get those better views. Now, an example is My grandmother is super susceptible to infomercials. They got her in a headlock chokehold, whatever those are. They must have been good at one point. Now they're not, but she's still buying that crap.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But when you look now, the product to maximize their sales is gonna be listed on Amazon. You see, they get really bad reviews blocking out if you had a bad product. Product.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Only be listed on your website. Okay.

[Corey]

I want to erase what you just said.

[Heather]

Okay.

[Corey]

The hardest product.

[Heather]

Okay.

[Corey]

That we've ever had to market.

[Heather]

Okay. Was the Star Rescue. There is the nicest man, the nicest planet Earth.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And he had created this really unique product to help unlock public bathrooms for.

[Corey]

A very niche audience.

[Heather]

It was made for fire departments. Yes. And it needed to be purchased by the government.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

In. In a large capacity and distributed. It was a. You know, when you go to the bathrooms and they have the internal locks for it, like specifically overdose.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Quick responders turning that needed to get.

[Corey]

It versus trying to get the door down or saying, can you open the door? This rescue tool allowed them to unlock the door from the outside.

[Heather]

Now we're going to say. You guys are going to say, can't you use a quarter? Exactly the problem. It was such a hard product because so many public restrooms are configured so.

[Corey]

Differently and they have different locks, which we did discover.

[Heather]

And the biggest pushback was a fire fighter can only carry so much on their body. They're already extremely weighted down with fire prevention.

[Corey]

Yes. So they're like, why would I not just use the back of an ax and push the door in?

[Heather]

So they were like, what? When Rob got in that motorcycle accident, they were cutting things they didn't need to cut. Right, right, right. But yeah, I would say that that was a very. The nicest person.

[Corey]

Nicest person. I want to say if you say that we did our hardest, best 100. Because we loved the gentleman.

[Heather]

He was the nicest guy we ever worked. The nicest product was almost impossible to sell.

[Corey]

Yeah. And that just trumped it. Everything we just said that was a.

[Heather]

Hardest thing and we gave it. I think most things you can find a market for that. That one is government based. One. Government's already hard to sell to. I. Yeah.

[Corey]

Because the price is a big, big issue.

[Heather]

And that one was a physical product. So it was like you could see exactly how it performed. I want to tell you, me and.

[Corey]

Heather had to make a marketing video for it.

[Heather]

So we snuck into a public.

[Corey]

The cackle. Then I cackled.

[Heather]

You know, sometimes when you laugh so hard you almost think like this could be a medical emergency. Just. I don't know, maybe it's the two of us trying to film a bathroom and just to see her little finger trying to make it where I die. I die a death. Yeah. I think most things can be marketed really bad clients, really bad customer service businesses who are run poorly with me against the consumer, they're hard to. With the advent of reviews, they're hard to market around. So we just don't even take it on. There's just an easier client to work with than those clients. Right. But as far as like a process.

[Corey]

That was the product.

[Heather]

That was it. That was it. That was it.

[Corey]

That was our biggest challenge.

[Heather]

That was hard to do. Still I think about laughing.

[Corey]

You know when they were like up a guttural belly.

[Heather]

Had to like almost like grab a knee.

[Corey]

Like you couldn't even go to the ground cuz you're in a public restroom. Yeah.

[Heather]

You couldn't touch anything. You just wanted to. That was really hard. That was really hard. Nicest guy though. I can't believe that guy was so nice.

[Corey]

Read us one more.

[Heather]

Okay. And then we'll just. Back in the bubble. Yeah. Hi twins. I love your recent episode on markets. I'm considering a market. I'm really wondering what's the typical profit range for cookies at markets? I'm gonna say that's a great question. And I would actually ask it in the sugar cookie marketing group. It's gonna be one of those law of averages.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Cause it's going to be wildly different. Again, the healthy business model is 15%. I think maybe you could scooch that up to 20%. Markets are kind of preconditioned. But again, that's gonna be area specific. That's gonna be product specific.

[Corey]

It's gonna be event specific. Because if the big category is we.

[Heather]

Have a rainy day or we have a day. So I think you're going to have to say if you want to go to the sugar cookie marketing group, say I'm doing a vendor market throughout the summer.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Within that range, what is your average? And then maybe even mention where your location is. Because remember in Australia, crocky is cold.

[Corey]

Yeah, I know.

[Heather]

But here it would be a really hot, sweaty summer. I'm in it. Like something where. And then say how often you're going. Because it's going to affect. Because remember some vendor markets are one and done. They are go to those PTA ones. Or you do that like this big event we're doing, a circus comes to Town. And then you have those consistent Dale City farmers markets.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And I think you're looking at two different options there. Do you see what happened? Speaking of this.

[Corey]

What?

[Heather]

Okay, it's. If you guys don't know, at the Cherry Blossom Festival here, it takes this area by storm for three days. And you can't touch the Tidal Basin. You cannot. Okay. At the Tidal Basin they had some food vendors which I think you have to get licensed in dc. Is this the over ice cream cone?

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

So this. So there's. There are some laws. I don't think I want to explain.

[Corey]

The amount of people. Me and Heather live in the D.C. area. We went to the Tree of awesome festival once 30 years ago.

[Heather]

I snuck Ruth Ann and Summer to it. Year one of COVID Because nobody went.

[Corey]

Oh, see, that was an anomaly.

[Heather]

We're still in the March.

[Corey]

People in this area don't go there because the amount of bodies.

[Heather]

The traffic was three hours just to get over 14. Just maybe even get. You're not going.

[Corey]

You're not.

[Heather]

The.

[Corey]

The little elegant photos with the trailer blossoms with no one around it. That's not. Unless you're great at Photoshop. There will be a million people in your photo.

[Heather]

Do you see that? This lady's taking a picture of her kid at the Tidal Basin. But the kid. Okay. Weirdly, the title basin has no gates. Cuz it's ugly to have railings.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So you could flop. I could drop into this water.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

She's trying to take pictures of her kids and President Obama's in the background walking past. Hilarious. But back to the issue at hand. There's some food vendors. I think they're licensed, but they're some. I think there's a law where you had to publish your prices. They had to be printed, but they hid them.

[Corey]

I just want to say DC there's food vendors everywhere.

[Heather]

Massive, massive amounts of food vendors. And the capital lawn is just covered with people every weekend.

[Corey]

Roach coaches as far as the eye can see.

[Heather]

Just everywhere. So this ice cream stand.

[Corey]

Yes. Mobile.

[Heather]

This family bought four vanilla ice cream cones. Four.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

When they were like, hey, you know, you go up there and say, can I get it? Four cones? And then you kind of like, how much is it? Right, right. And they would not answer her question. So she. But they took her card and charged it and she was like, how much is it? And they just said next. Like just. She's like, I've never been wild.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

When she checked her credit card, it was $88 for four cups. Are you kidding. 88.

[Corey]

Did someone report them?

[Heather]

Well, she made the news. I read it. Even.

[Corey]

Oh, they were.

[Heather]

I don't even go into. So, yeah, I would say, like, definitely make sure, like, we got these, you know, the, the cherry blossoms is like, like three seconds you have a chance to see them and then the rain and wind. I know. So that you're going to be able to make more money. Not $88 or something that's consistent like the Dale City Farmers Market. You're going to have more of a consistent type of profit margin because you have a predictable amount of product to move.

[Corey]

Yeah, that's a great question for the group.

[Heather]

I would say that's a great question for the group. Get a lot of people in there to answer it, y'all. You can if you're reading this. Anonymous person.

[Corey]

Oh, lordy, lordy, lordy. Keep going, keep going.

[Heather]

Keep.

[Corey]

Dead air.

[Heather]

Dead air.

[Corey]

Dead air.

[Heather]

If you guys are listening, Cory has spilled her coke all over the white carpet. Wear quickly, Brady. It's stain resistant. Stain resistant. Well, since she's on her hands and knees, she could use this dollar tool. Okay, let me ask this question. Not. This says, hey, professors. That is funny. My stupid question is. Drumroll. One of the biggest reasons I get behind posting pictures is because I don't have time. One of the biggest reasons I get behind posting pictures is because I don't have time to thank each person. Person who comments on my pictures. Somehow I've convinced myself that it's rude not to respond to each person. And I've noticed that the more I respond, it drives my picture back up to the top of the feed. Is it rude or am I just creating something I cannot obviously keep up with? Thanks and have a great day. From Eunice, Louisiana. Great question.

[Corey]

That is a fantastic question. You're right. Why beg for more engagement and skip over the engagement?

[Heather]

I need more reach. I haven't replied anyone. Here's what I tell you. There is a point at which you have to go and live your life and you can't be always responding.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

What I try to do for Corey is I try for the first 24 hours to reply to any comments made then. Yeah. And then after that, if we can, we do. If we can't, I let it go from my mental.

[Corey]

My thing. What I've told myself because I sucked at that so bad is before I post another post.

[Heather]

Oh, this is a good one.

[Corey]

Let me go back and respond to the comments. A lot of times we're watching tv, you know, it's a great Time to respond to the comments. Comments. You know sitting in the car line at school is a great time.

[Heather]

You guys were asking last week about what a virtual assistant could do. That that's very, very true.

[Corey]

And a little comeback. I mean if you're swimming in a hundred and two hundred comments like I don't know, get a graduate.

[Heather]

Hey professor.

[Corey]

But a lot of times if I get like 20 comments is a lot for me responding to those, making sure I respond to them that that time that I posted coming back the next day but making sure they're all responded to before I make another post.

[Heather]

Let's say you get behind and you make the other post post and you want to go back because it still bumps in the feed. You can say hey, so sorry I'm just getting around to seeing this.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

When we onboard new clients a lot of times their five star reviews were never responded to. We think it's best practice to make sure everyone feels seen, heard and understood.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So I'll go back. So sorry we missed this and I just want to say thank you so much even though I know years have passed.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

It really has helped my business that you left this review.

[Corey]

So no congratulations.

[Heather]

That's great.

[Corey]

Great. Your mind's thinking marketing.

[Heather]

Yes.

[Corey]

We don't want more engagement and then we're not not engaging with our engagers.

[Heather]

Right. Like it is funny but you're all like, you know I gotta put produce content. It is truly a 17 hats.

[Corey]

It is.

[Heather]

Gotta produce content. Gotta make the stuff. Gotta go buy the packaging but not too much because the twins said it's bad. Yeah I know, I know. Gotta go unbox my Eddie because now I feel guilty about it.

[Corey]

I know. Let's hurry because I'm hungry.

[Heather]

Okay. And I want to flip it over table.

[Corey]

What can I do to get this in?

[Heather]

We're done. Okay. Corey covered Stupid card tray. Use code stupid. Sorry. Use code stupid at checkout.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Now sugar. Very close. Very very close. Code twins at checkout. Royal batch bake bake. Use code Twins at checkout. What's popping Con? I'm going to make a post about in the group. Twins at checkout. $25 off. Any core backers rebranded to the backers. Go. Use code sugar cookie at checkout.

[Corey]

25.

[Heather]

25% off.

[Corey]

Yes. Eddie does not have any discounts but he's a direct to food printer. We just talked about him. He prints directly on food.

[Heather]

Food.

[Corey]

Great. If you have the marketing plan in place.

[Heather]

Get the marketing plan in place. Use code full price to pay full price. Price. Yes. But if you have the plan, it'll pay for itself and then some. Ask Neiman Marcus.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Okay, that's our podcast sponsors. Do you have Twinterest? Oh, wait, the cookie college we've just dropped yesterday. I haven't even posted about it. The. And I'm going to say the Cinco de Mayo class, which is called Cookies de Mayo. Right. Nice avocado. Don't miss out on this.

[Corey]

We have a chip and sauce chip and queso is on there.

[Heather]

Yes. A chip and queso, a taco, a cactus, a sombrero, a peper, a pepe. Oh, come on.

[Corey]

An avocado. You said an avocado.

[Heather]

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, yeah. So that is all our cookie class kits are. Six cookies for icing. This one top three for me.

[Corey]

Really?

[Heather]

For three years. Really? What's your 20 classes? You know what? I don't even like to teach this one. I just like the class with a We go to Baker better together. Valentine's day set from 20.

[Corey]

Really?

[Heather]

What's your number?

[Corey]

Two. If you said that's your third, what's one?

[Heather]

I really liked the succulents or cats class. They're right. The same to me.

[Corey]

I do like those.

[Heather]

So last year, the succulents class was August and the cat's class was June. But if you're like, hey, well, that's last year and we're in the 2025 kits. If you signed up for the class kits today, $63, you get all five classes that have dropped because it's the eighth, you'll get a second. You'll get a. A sixth class on.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

April, May, May 7th, which is Father's Day.

[Corey]

Father's Day.

[Heather]

But if you sign up for the Cookie College, $76, you get all the classes. I'm talking about the 2023, the 2024, and these 2025 classes, you could sign up for a month, download everything in which you're gonna have a ton of stuff to download and cancel. And you got all that stuff now it's around $2.50 a class. I know.

[Corey]

That's so much easier to justify when.

[Heather]

You buy that, Don the cookie class kids, without coming out with a plan to teach a cookie class, if you're saying, well, I don't know how to plan for that. The cookie college has a course on how to plan for that. Yeah.

[Corey]

How to find and approach a venue.

[Heather]

We.

[Corey]

We take it baby steps. So what, to email a venue? How to email them.

[Heather]

Speaking in terms of what you can provide them not what they can provide you. Because we would like that cost of the venue to be $0. Yes.

[Corey]

We filmed an actual cookie class and then gave you a class script that we use in our class.

[Heather]

I would say use that build off it. Cory and I used to read it page by page. Now we just kind of manipulate it. And then you'll get those class kits as well so you can teach exactly nice these class kits. And then sweet pink off the cookie cutter maker provider, seller, she has some discounts if you are like going all in on this. So again, I don't. I don't want to tell you, like teach cookie class. Money printing season will be upon us.

[Corey]

It will.

[Heather]

This will be cookie class money planning season. Yes. And then starting maybe teaching one class. I know Corey's working on a free class for you guys. Guys. Might be the, the toe in the water you'd. You'd want.

[Corey]

They've never even heard about this.

[Heather]

I know. Guys, I'm giving you a little teaser here because you, you suffered through the altar call. But you could say, okay, I'm not ready to buy everything yet. I want to. I want to see. I'm going to teach this to four people.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Then you're like, okay, that, that was everything I wanted and more. It's going to be everything that we add in a cookie class kit just for free. And it's going to be our free download. So you can get a. A taste test. And then come money making cookie class printing season. You're gonna be like, I want the cookie cloth. Hand over fist. Hand over fist.

[Corey]

Feel the twin trust. Twinitarist twin.

[Heather]

I don't know. This is a weird one. I clean the shower constantly.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

I feel like it's an uphill battle. So I was talking to Raytheon about it. Also, I like to clean off the soles of my white shoes. I really, for some odd reason my fetish is looking at my old shoe and it looks brand new again. Okay. I love that. I love it when dad is like, did you getting shoes? I'm like, no, these are actually eight months old. Yeah, I worn them daily. So I was cleaning off shoe. I'm. I've got a drill with a drill bit that is attached to a scrubby pad. I am, I'm like, there's no. Ruth Ann's shoes are always white. The soles are. And I'm like, there's no way. Like I'm fully Max. This is a gym session. I'm fighting to get these stains off this. So what's she doing? She's like, well, I use something with bleach in it. And I was like, I was using. I don't know. Well, the shoes are not lasting long enough to get. So I went to Wall Street Poly World and I went to the cleaning solution, like, you know, you okay, get bleach spray. It's not. I need a paste. I need a paste. So I went to the paste section. Pasty white. You were right there next to it.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Then I moved to the past section and they had just. It was like one of the common brands. Common, I think.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

With bleach in it. A paste that looks like barkeeper's friend paste.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

With bleach in it. Oh, my goodness. Did you use it? Yeah, yeah. All the elbow grease out. Out the door. That's what she's been using to give you.

[Corey]

Oh, that's hilarious.

[Heather]

Maybe it's eating away, but I don't care. It looks random.

[Corey]

It's true.

[Heather]

So I clean the shower with it. Oh, my goodness.

[Corey]

Oh, really? Yeah. I cleaned my shower yesterday too.

[Heather]

Or on Sunday. Did you use a bleachy paste?

[Corey]

I used. What is that? Grout cleaner that we.

[Heather]

Yeah, but that's kind of, I think, just for grout. But you have cleaner t. You have easier to clean tile. It's very big tile. She has very small tiles where I'm like, this is a constant battle.

[Corey]

Yeah. No, mine was way easier. And I never get it. Let it get like, grimy enough to have to do a ton of elbow grease. My son's bathroom, on the other hand.

[Heather]

My God, I was influenced by that tick tock. That spinny rush.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

That's. How did you get it? Oh, I've had it. Yeah. Oh, you like it? I'd hate touching dirt. So. Yes, I love it. Me and the dirt are six feet away from you. Yeah, it really helps take the elbow, you know, like when you really need to. Now if I combine that. That with that bleachy paste, I think it would just be walking in a park.

[Corey]

My twin trust is what Corey signs up for during the week. And Corey of the weekend are very different people.

[Heather]

Cory texted me. She's like, what are you doing on Sunday night? I was like, news to me. Yeah. Chasing a cat. She was like, dinner Murder Mystery Theater. I said, where? When? She said, occoquan Madigan's. I said, I'm there. So we skedaddled. We did.

[Corey]

We skedadded. We only had a two day turnaround. Listen, I did not understand the assignment.

[Heather]

No, this was a date. Night dress up thing. And Cory and I look like vagabonds.

[Corey]

People were dressed up as the roaring twenties in these little flappers. I think it's what it's called.

[Heather]

This is so kitschy. It was so corny. It almost made it eclectic. I know the food is pretty good. The critique is I would have had the acting during the food, but we ate all our food and then they came out and acted, but it was fine.

[Corey]

I said, you know, these are theater kids who have grown up and they still love the theater. And I. If you give 100% to something, I can always give by.

[Heather]

And they gave 100%. While the acting may not win an academic Academy Awards, it was.

[Corey]

It was exactly what it is.

[Heather]

Cory and I were laughing the whole time. Yeah. Just at the sheer hilarity of what was going on. And I thought it was a pretty good way. It wasn't the cheapest thing.

[Corey]

No, it wasn't cheapest. But you got dinner, you got diet Coke, tea.

[Heather]

It was a three quarter. You got a salad, the main meal and a dessert and then the tea and coffee.

[Corey]

And I thought the meal was great.

[Heather]

And the venue was cute and fun. Yeah, they did a great job. It was hilarious. You can see like some people are on date nights, groups of women, but they all dressed up and then they had a coffee contest. Kitschy as always. House. But I thought it was pretty fun. I'm glad we went.

[Corey]

Anytime I sign up for something, I have the best of intentions to enjoy it. Then the lead up to it, I'm like, why would I sign up for something? I don't like to leave the house. Then we go and I'm like, I'm glad I experienced that Midweek.

[Heather]

Corey is just.

[Corey]

She's a wild.

[Heather]

She's a wild lady. She's an unpredictable little lady.

[Corey]

She is on.

[Heather]

I have listened to many podcasts and they were like, life is so short, it can't even fathom it. I know because it feels like when you're in the middle of. It's long. And then I was saying like Covid was five years ago. We can't even act like that was recent.

[Corey]

I know, but it feels like it was yesterday. It's so funny though. Speaking of this, my anti consumerism trying to turn into a minimalist. I said, I went through the candles that I have and a lot of us have these candles and we say, I'm only going to burn this on a special day. If you realize you live one life, life, today is the special day.

[Heather]

You might not get about this. I saw this dude. It was Tik Tok. But he was like an older kind of motivational speaker. Something. He was like, a lot of us see our time as a. What do you call an hourglass with the sand phone. Yes. He's like, but the problem is we don't know how much sand is on top. He's like, we think. He said my grandmother would always say, when she was 65, I'll be dead soon. I'll be gone to be gone soon. He said, she lived 30 more years. Yeah.

[Corey]

Till 90 some odd.

[Heather]

He said, My best friend when I was 16, died in a car accident on his way home. He's like. But both of them thought they knew how much sand was at the top, and neither of them did. So he said, your life is an hourglass, except for you don't know how much is at the top. So live today. He said, the pinch point of the hourglass is the only time.

[Corey]

Today is the only day you know you got.

[Heather]

So as much as like, I don't want to do things like. Cory knew I was going to say yes.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Yeah. I'm not going to say no, because I just don't. What if I never went in? My life ended, or my life was nothing, or I just. You can't be like, I'm so glad I sat all those Sundays at home and didn't.

[Corey]

I know. I know. Or I didn't burn that candle. Waiting for a special day. The day never comes.

[Heather]

Would you expire on the Burb app?

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

What's it called? Is it called Burb?

[Corey]

No.

[Heather]

Finch. Oh, Finch. You can have now Gold buddies.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

And I have a gold. But every day with summer to light a candle. Oh, that's so I'm like, every day. What's an hour of lighting? I know. Body Works 1295.

[Corey]

I love the white pumpkin candle. Here's the thing. They'll make it this coming year again. If I do not burn it, I will just have had it for one year.

[Heather]

Burning a bath and Body Works. Three wick.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

An hour. It takes two months. I know. To burn through.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

So. And I have three in the chamber waiting to come out.

[Corey]

You want to know how many I.

[Heather]

Have in the chain?

[Corey]

I'm burning through them. Like, with reckless abandon. 10 then.

[Heather]

You're not gonna. But you did good the other day. You wanted to buy one. You said, no, I have 10.

[Corey]

I said, I have 10.

[Heather]

You have to burn with reckless abandon to make it so the next. Don't they have the three big sale in November. I better get to burn, right?

[Corey]

Better burn night and day.

[Heather]

Got it?

[Corey]

Yeah. So I'm just retraining my brain.

[Heather]

Retrain your brain?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Your 40s will link you. My 40s are tomorrow. Thank me. Goodbye.