210. Baking it Down - How to Sell in Community Groups

Summary

Podcast Summary: Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
Episode: 210. Baking it Down - How to Sell in Community Groups
Release Date: May 8, 2025
Hosts: Heather and Corrie Miracle

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Introduction: Embracing Consistency and Community

In Episode 210 of the Baking it Down podcast, hosts Heather and Corrie Miracle delve into the intricate strategies of selling baked goods within community groups, particularly focusing on platforms like Facebook. They begin by addressing their temporary hiatus due to attending the "What's Popping Con" conference, emphasizing their commitment to delivering consistent and valuable content to their audience.

Heather (00:08): "We're actually going to two a Day podcast."

Corrie (02:07): "Today's topic is selling in community groups. And that was the topic that we spoke about on Tuesday."

The Challenge of Selling in Community Groups

Heather and Corrie highlight a common frustration among bakers: ineffective attempts to sell within community groups. Many members struggle with strategies that fail to yield results, often feeling ignored or receiving negative feedback. The hosts argue that the issue lies not in the act of selling itself but in the incorrect utilization of these groups.

Corrie (02:17): "But I think it's sucked on because it's like my grandma's in a community group. Anyone can sell in a community group. It's that easy. And in reality, I don't believe it's actually that easy."

Strategic Utilization of Community Groups

The core of the episode revolves around a structured approach to leveraging community groups for sales. Heather and Corrie introduce their curriculum developed within the Sugar Cookie Marketing (SCM) group, designed to help bakers navigate and optimize their presence in these communities effectively.

1. Identifying the Right Groups

Choosing the right community groups is crucial. The hosts advocate for "hyperlocal" groups over larger, less focused ones, arguing that smaller, well-managed groups offer more targeted and effective lead generation.

Heather (10:34): "I think smaller is better. Smaller and highly managed is better."

They recommend using spreadsheets to track and evaluate potential groups based on criteria such as group size, management style, and relevance to the baker’s local area.

Corrie (08:17): "We have a community group tracking spreadsheet I made."

2. Understanding Group Management Styles

Heather and Corrie categorize groups based on their management styles—strictly managed, moderately managed, and unmanaged—and discuss how each style impacts selling strategies. They emphasize the importance of adhering to group rules to maintain a good standing and avoid being banned.

Heather (11:49): "Nothing is worse than you coming in a group and manipulating it to just serve you and not add any value."

3. Crafting Effective Intro and Sales Posts

Creating engaging and value-driven posts is essential. The hosts provide templates and examples for compelling introduction posts that build trust and rapport within the group before making any sales pitches.

Corrie (55:00): "Your intro post should have a comment from you. Yes. Welcoming them, asking them more."

They stress the significance of non-sales content, advocating for a "give before you take" mentality to establish credibility and foster relationships.

Corrie (60:43): "If you cannot give before you take, community groups will always be a struggle for you."

4. Managing Engagement and Building Trust

Active participation and meaningful interactions within the group enhance visibility and trust. The hosts recommend responding to every comment on posts to boost engagement and signal to Facebook’s algorithm that the content is valuable.

Heather (Delayed recommendation): "If you don't respond to a comment, you're missing out on engagement."

Overcoming Common Obstacles

Heather and Corrie discuss several challenges bakers face when selling in community groups, including dealing with spam, managing negative comments, and handling group rules. They offer practical solutions, such as:

• Using Group Features Effectively: Utilizing pinned posts, featured posts, and understanding the mechanics of group administration to stay informed about rule changes and group dynamics.

  Heather (28:48): "If you want to stay on an admin's good side, which we do because we want to utilize these groups, we're going to check into those featured posts and just see where the admin's head is at."

• Avoiding Controversy: Encouraging members to steer clear of contentious topics that can lead to conflicts and potential bans.

  Corrie (38:51): "Ask yourself, is what I'm about to write if Facebook, if meta handled it, not even the admins, was it the appropriate action to take?"

• Protecting Against Scams and Trolls: Implementing strategies to identify and mitigate the impact of malicious users within the groups.

  Corrie (97:49): "Ghost profiles are not typically managed. What she's saying is a second. A complete second profile. Not a salt account, a second login. It's against Facebook's terms of service."

The Importance of Value-Added Content

A significant portion of the discussion underscores the necessity of providing value before attempting to sell. Heather and Corrie advocate for sharing helpful information, asking engaging questions, and contributing positively to the community to build trust and establish oneself as a reliable resource.

Corrie (60:57): "The key for intra post is giving enough information about your bakery without ever talking about it."

Success Stories and Listener Testimonials

Towards the end of the episode, Heather and Corrie share testimonials from group members who have benefited from the strategies discussed. These stories illustrate the effectiveness of their approach in real-world scenarios, reinforcing the value of their curriculum and community support.

Ann Elizabeth (90:59): "I had no business experience when I started my cookie business. That cookie college subscription was probably the most important thing I did that made my business a success."

Conclusion: Building a Sustainable Sales Strategy

Heather and Corrie wrap up the episode by reinforcing the importance of patience, consistency, and genuine engagement in community groups. They encourage listeners to invest time in building relationships and providing value, assuring that sales will follow as trust and recognition within the community grow.

Heather (63:11): "Posting non sales content five times as often as you post your sales content will change the results you're getting in community."

Final Thoughts

Episode 210 of Baking it Down offers a comprehensive guide for bakers looking to harness the power of community groups for effective sales. Through practical tips, strategic insights, and real-life examples, Heather and Corrie Miracle provide a roadmap for building a successful online presence within community-driven platforms. Their emphasis on value, trust, and genuine engagement serves as a valuable blueprint for anyone aiming to elevate their bakery business in the digital age.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Baking down podcast. You might be saying, but it's Thursday and you're not wrong.

[B]

We're actually going to two a Day podcast.

[A]

No, we are not. We actually were out of town for what's Popping Con, but we are back in town. And Heather, you know, wanting to stay true to our promise of consistency but not greatness, said, let's bring them the.

[B]

Podcast on a Thursday only way I know how.

[A]

So if you're new here, we're actually a spin off from a group that is on Facebook. It's called the Sugar Cookie Marketing group. It's about 48, 49, 9,000 bakers strong at this point. And what happens is that, you know, you're busy baking. I know Mother's Day is on Sunday. It's teacher appreciation week, Nurse appreciation Week. You're busy. You can't always be in groups checking the new things, seeing what's going on.

[B]

So we said, let's bring a podcast to your ear holes.

[A]

Because what you can do is while you're baking and decorating, cleaning, you can listen. So if you're not a part of the Facebook group, please join us. But thank you for being on here and listening to the podcast because without you, there wouldn't be a podcast to listen to.

[B]

I agree. And the sponsors, which we'll talk about in a second. But what we wanted to talk about today was what we talked about at this conference, the what's Popping conference on Tuesday.

[A]

Yeah. But you might be like, well, that deals with K Pops. The great thing is, no matter if it goes in the oven or out of the oven, it can be applicable to what we're talking about. So me and Heather, more on the sugar cookie baking side. But marketing is kind of universal, which is awesome.

[B]

I think it is. Everything has to be sold. Every time someone produces something, they need a buyer and it makes the world go around. I'm a huge proponent that I think marketing managers should be in high level meetings.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

They're the first to go when budgets get cuts, but the first needed when.

[B]

It'S kind of like, hey, listen, the big boys are going to go meet over here and you guys have fun playing with your little marketing toys. When in reality, I think marketing needs to call just as many shots as management does because they all work together to keep people employed.

[A]

Welcome to our day job.

[B]

Right. Obviously a bonus, but not today's topic. Today's topic is selling in community groups. And that was the topic that we spoke about on Tuesday. And I think it's such a Valuable topic. I know we're here.

[A]

You just heard what Heather said and.

[B]

You said he said, no, we didn't. I haven't heard her in years.

[A]

Yeah, you just heard what Heather said. And you're like, I always sell in community groups. They just don't work for me.

[B]

Which is why we created this curriculum. Because so often in the sugar cookie marketing group, I hate, you know, I try. It doesn't work. They're tagging other bakers. Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. I'm going to go eat some worms. Right. In reality, I believe that you are utilizing community groups incorrectly and the results.

[A]

Are that just like their strategy on your website, their strategy on your posting. When it comes to the caption and.

[B]

The creative and things like that.

[A]

There is also, you're never guessed, strategy when utilizing community groups.

[B]

But I think it's sucked on because it's like my grandma's in a community group. Anyone can sell in a community group. It's that easy. And in reality, I don't believe it's actually that easy.

[A]

I think because groups are now so pushed by the meta, by Facebook, now everybody's in a group.

[B]

Our number one group lead source generator is Facebook recommending groups. Yes. Right. So Facebook obviously favors the groups anyone can join, but who can? What makes the difference between that one baker that everybody tags when somebody asks for a baker and your posts that seem to fall flat on their face every week that you try to sell?

[A]

Yeah. So that's what we're going to dig into. Dive into the strategy of using community groups to help benefit your business. And you'll never guess you'll also need to benefit the community group.

[B]

Yeah. Which you're gonna see. The twins love refunds and love value added content. Yes. Yes. So we're actually gonna follow the script that we did in what's Popping Con. You guys can pull this up on sugarcookiemarketing.com forward slash, popping P O P, P I n G. Yeah. And it is a script. I decided not to go with a slide deck. I find that I thought this was neat.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Okay. If anyone wonders, why would you have put it on your website? Well, I have a Facebook pixel running. I have a Google retargeting pixel writing. It's collecting the data of anyone who clicks there. And if I choose to reserve an ad, if you ever go to Facebook and you see an ad from a website, that's what you can do with that. Two things. Two things. I didn't have to worry about managing slide deck on a Computer I wasn't familiar with.

[A]

And now we can retarget you.

[B]

Yeah, I'm not running any ads currently, so don't know why I'm doing. You're good. You're good. So, yeah, just jumping into there, you know, we did their intros. Corey's a baking twin. I'm the professional eating twin. Very good at my job, very good at it. And then we did a raise of hands. We went through, like, who. Surprisingly, a lot of people cross contaminate. They do more than just cake pops.

[A]

They do cookies.

[B]

They do other bakeries.

[A]

You know, I think, like, just like cookies are a gateway to a different thing. These ones are pretty close.

[B]

I mean, you're crying all the time about them.

[A]

Well, I thought they were easy and they weren't.

[B]

And you do macarons and.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You know, some people do cakes and cookies. Somebody use cupcakes and cakes and stuff like that. So we did that one. Raise your hand if you're selling a surprise. Probably half the room was selling.

[A]

Yeah. I felt like the whole room would have been selling, you know, but a lot of people were there just for fun. But it's good to know and it's good to have this information whether you're just starting off. You're even in the thinking phases. You know, I think I might want.

[B]

To sell because what happens is this is a fun hobby people start. Neighbors, friends, family say, hey, can I buy that from you? You end up investing in more production tools to streamline production. You're like, well, these tools cost. And I also have leads coming in. Let me start selling them.

[A]

Yeah. Usually it's your friends and families and neighbors that beg you beg to buy. And they really, like, soft launch you into a bakery business.

[B]

And everyone's like, I already started get. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm already baking a coworker of mine order. And I need to make this official, Right? Absolutely. Quite literally, having you and I got started, you know, we were like laying the foundation. Like, I got an order and I need an invoicing.

[A]

What do I do?

[B]

I think, yeah. To jump on the bike before you put the tires on is most of us.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I find that probably most people there, like, are thinking about selling. Yeah.

[A]

So even if you're listening to this podcast and you're like, you know, I'm not at this selling point. You could be. So this will still apply to you, whether if it's today or it's next week, next month, or next year, honestly.

[B]

And that's why I was like, oh. So I also asked him how many people are selling community groups? Even fewer hands. Cause, you know, it had to be less than selling. Absolutely. Um, and I was like, well, that's a little surprising because Corey finds that community groups could be her only lead source. Risky eggs in a basket. Yeah, but it could be. And she'd never have to create any other Legion source. So I said, surprising by the lack of raised hands here, but almost better because you haven't destroyed your reputation yet. You build that foundation from the ground.

[A]

Yeah. Laying the correct foundation is so much easier than fixing a broken one.

[B]

Right. So we asked if they sell in community groups. We ask if they struggle selling community groups. Same amount of hands went up. And raise your hand if people in community groups are tagging other bakers. Same amount of hands went up. So you can kind of see that thing. And then the last one. Had anyone been banned from a community group? I don't. I don't know if anyone. Everyone laughed.

[A]

I raised my hand. I got banned, and I don't even know why.

[B]

Did you write? Did I?

[A]

I probably did.

[B]

Okay. So around this time, people will be like, well, there's no community groups for me, so I'm going to turn off the podc. Here's. Here's my challenge to you. Make your own community group.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

There are tons of work. Corey even said we could do a whole nother two hour class on how to create one and get it off the ground. It is truly hard work. But when you're the admin, you call the shots.

[A]

It is, and I want to say it's.

[B]

I.

[A]

So many people start it. Facebook is always prompting you to start something. Start a page, start a group. It's so easy to start it. There's so much strategy behind making it valuable. And it's really kind of going out there and hitting the pavement and getting it out into your community, which is not something I love to do, but I force myself to do it.

[B]

It is tough. There's local mechanic in our area, Piedmont Tire and Auto, based out of western Prince William County. That guy started a group or took over a group, I think it was. The group has, I don't know, 100,000 people in it. Yesterday someone said, where can I get tires? And there was a ton of comments of people tagging a shop. Interestingly, it was a teacher and she said, I don't have a lot of money. And another woman put up a $600 for her tires. Right. And they installed them at Piedmont. But every comment in that thread was go to Piedmont. Go to Piedmont. And you can see how I'm not calling it sheeples, but I'm a sheeple myself. I like to follow the leader that people are going to say. The admin is going to be the one you're going to recommend. So if you're like, well, I don't have any community group, start your own. Guess who, what Baker they'll be tagging, going to be you, it'll be you, but it'll be work because you'll have earned that tech.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[B]

Okay. If you guys like freebies and templates and you're following along in the website, you're going to see a link to a community group tracking spreadsheet I made.

[A]

Yeah, Heather. Heather will live and die by a spreadsheet.

[B]

Listen, I have no memory at all. I am the memory of a goldfish. Corey is the memory of an elephant. There's nothing I've done wrong she hasn't brought up yet. But that's why I use spreadsheets, because I don't have to keep that in my brain. I can let a spreadsheet monitor that for me. So what we came up with a spreadsheet and we have different columns because this is what Corey and I determined are probably the most important aspects of tracking a group's value to you as a seller.

[A]

Yeah. Around me and Heather, we live in Northern Virginia and in northern Virginia is so many county cities, non counties, ideas and areas, incorporated towns that have turned into groups, whether it be moms, meetup.

[B]

Groups down to niche, like they'll turn them into group because like Corey said, every Facebook's like, would you like to make a group? Yeah, I want to buy a watch. Yeah.

[A]

So like book clubs are out there, you know, local area places, people that niche down to like, you know, you like theaters, you like free dinners, dinner nights with kids. There's so many local groups. You have to just open your mind and think, where can I find these local groups?

[B]

Worst case, go to a community group and ask for a list of people groups that are valuable. But not all groups are created equal, and that's important. So we're going to input them into the spreadsheet. I've left you about 15.

[A]

That's pretty good rows.

[B]

Right? We're going to get the group name and URL. Every group has a URL, can either be customized or they can just do the one that Facebook gives them, which will have a lot of numerical characters, the group type. Is it a locality? Is it a local State, Is it local? Hoa? Is it a local unincorporated town? Like how local is it? You can categorize it as a business. Here we have a lot of business networking groups, but they're still local. They still count towards us hobbyist groups. You know, if you join book clubs.

[A]

Or dinner, dinner idea clubs, charity groups.

[B]

Again, you're like, why would I be selling a charity group? We'll research that in a second to see if it's even a viable option. The goal is to find the most hyper local group. So we're in Virginia. We're also in a subset of Virginia called Northern Virginia. And within Northern Virginia, it's so populated that specifically I'm in Fairfax county and I'm very close to an unincorporated town called Fairfax City. Yeah. See how we can niche it down.

[A]

And there's about a group for each one of those and then within that.

[B]

You probably can find an hoa, but that one's probably going to be a little bit more monitored. Group size. I the concept, I know a lot of people kind of go is bigger is better. I can reach more people. Incorrect. I think smaller is better. Smaller and highly managed is better. We have a foodies group.

[A]

There's 150,000 people in it and it's just Northern Virginia foodies. Where does Northern Virginia end?

[B]

And so the problem is people come there and they'll recommend a restaurant, but when I Google it, it's an hour and a half away.

[A]

Yes. And that's why hyperlocal is almost better than the size of a group. So you might be thinking, I could sell 150,000, but I'd almost want to.

[B]

Sell it in the 500 person group that only goes to restaurants in Fairfax City. Absolutely.

[A]

Because it's more tailored to you. People aren't going to travel two hours for my cookies, but they will travel 10 minutes down the road.

[B]

You may think, well, I'm going to sell and then I'm going to sell to 150,000 people today. But in reality I'd rather sell to 25 people. If 25 people place an art.

[A]

Right. Next type is management style. If you're in any of our groups, which I hope you do, let me not scare you, but me and Heather and Amy, we're the mod team. We have a very strict management style because it keeps the group hyper focused.

[B]

I'm going to say our management style isn't the best in terms of companies out. Obviously we don't even allow sales at all. Right. So you're not going to want that hyper managed because those admins are really dialed in. They're not going to take any flirting with the rules. I would say a moderately managed is my bread and butter.

[A]

Yeah, moderately managed that have sales days, sales threads, don't mind recommendations. Those are great.

[B]

Now non manage it all. Don't touch it. Not even almost adding to the list.

[A]

You know the number. The number one thing we as small businesses. I love you guys, I love myself. We are the number one killer to groups.

[B]

We will always say nothing kills a group faster than sales. Uh, and when an unmanaged group typically has no sales rules, you'll just see if there it's the group feed is a bulletin board of of sales and.

[A]

It turns into a spam group because all these business owners are like, hey, I woke up. The podcast said I have to market so I'm going to share this.

[B]

I never listened to the rest of the podcast so I'm just going to go spam all these groups.

[A]

Yeah, I'm just going to spam the group. And there's no value. So people start visiting that group less it falls out of their feed.

[B]

Now it's just no valuable information. It's just buy from me, buy from me, buy from me. The interesting ones is these new hey, me and my husband moved to the area and we're about to be forced to move out. So we've bought our one last soap bucket and we're detailing cars. It's a complete scam. It's a complete scam that pulls on heartstrings. It's fascinating how it works. Those groups not worth it.

[A]

Right? Right. You want to make sure it has some level of moderation in there because that's going to make it valuable to both you and to the other members in the group.

[B]

And I'm going to say the one you're looking for is one with a sales day. And we'll talk about that in just a second. Sales type. Now this is a big one. Corey and I think that groups that have a single sales thread posted on like a Saturday or Sunday, they're probably better groups for value added content. It's worse groups for sales. Yeah.

[A]

So it'll be the admin will be like post your sales under this thread only. So your sales post now turns into a sales comment. It's harder to search. It's not going to pop up a lot.

[B]

End user would need to go to this thread and scroll past a photographer, a tree company, a pool cleaning company and find a baker. Harder to do. Maybe worth your time. But when we go to the star rating. That would be a lower rating for me versus a sales day. So again, we want a specific day we can sell. I know it feels better like well, I want it to have I can sell anytime. But again that's getting to that low maintenance group.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah, I prefer finding a group that has a sales day where I can make my own sales post.

[A]

Yeah, because when you can make your own sales posts, it's easily for. If someone is just a lurker and they search for sugar custom sugar cookie baker, you can. Your posts could turn up at the top.

[B]

In fact, that is the only type of sales group we're going to talk about for the rest of this. So the sales thread, you can try to optimize that. I know you had some tight content that you post in the group on how to make a thread work for you, but we're going to talk about making group sales posts. Yes, sales frequency. Don't mess this one up. Like I said, sometimes people we have a couple of groups that says you can sell every 30 days. That's going to be unique to the.

[A]

Last time you and that's going to be something that you're going to have to track yourself.

[B]

Interesting community group. A guy goes and makes his post and a guy's like, well you're spamming the group. Leaves him a one star guru for spamming a group. And he's like, but how would I know? When I last posted he didn't realize you can click on the you icon in a group and see your last post. And his last post had only been 16 days ago.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

So that's something. Don't mess this one up. This is how you get banned for groups. If it says once a week, if it says only on Saturdays, if it said only on Merchant Mondays, lady in the what's Poppin conference says she had a Sunday and a Tuesday sales day.

[A]

What me and Heather have found because now being on the user end of a community group, in the admin side of a community group, I understand so much more. Me and Heather realized people were joining the group that was a very well curated active group just to make sales. So we said do that no more. So now what we require, if you want to make a sales post on Saturday, you're required to make one non sales post during the week.

[B]

Again, you're looking at very highly moderated groups that we manage. So that one is a lot of extra. We have to do a lot of extra research because every time somebody makes a sales post on Saturday, I Click to their profile and see when their last post was. It has to be in the last six days.

[A]

Yeah, but to me, we're waiting out the users and abusers and we're hyper focusing on the givers and the takers.

[B]

So you're going to want to see what that sales frequency again, if it's weekly, it's going to be a higher rating for me than if it's monthly or quarterly or if it's a sales thread versus post. I agree. Sales day again. A lot of the groups that are well managed, you're going to have a specific day you can sell on. You're going to want to make sure and put that into the spreadsheet sheet. Go on.

[A]

They can have joined as most groups. You'll find if they're community groups will only allow you to join as a personal profile. But there are some groups that will allow you to join as a business page. If you can join as a business page and as your personal profile, do both, that is awesome. If someone is tagging you as a recommendation and you can comment back as your business page, you saved them one extra step. They can click directly to your Facebook page and they can order that way.

[B]

Another benefit of being able to join both is both as the profile and the page. I know people are going to say, well, which one should I comment as? You don't want to test that. But here's the thing. When the page can get in, you can tag it more easily.

[A]

It's, it's more, it's clickable. It used to have like an X mark next to it. Now that's only for people.

[B]

Oh really?

[A]

That aren't in the group. So you can say like I tagged Sherry, but Sherry's no longer.

[B]

She's not in the group. Yeah. Oh wait. When somebody's like got that little grace, that cross sign. Four pages. Now it doesn't.

[A]

Which makes it a little bit better.

[B]

You know, like in a group sometimes it's not always easy to tag a page. It's not.

[A]

Sometimes I have to actually like the page bendy, blendy.

[B]

It's always a hit or miss. So I find when the page is in the group, I can tag it more easily. May still post as Heather Miracle, but I can tag you Marketing.

[A]

I agree.

[B]

Is the your group profile optimized? And we're going to jump into that. It's two seconds long, but each group, every time you want to join a group, you create a secondary profile called that group's profile. Yeah. Meaning it's your person in that group's profile from an admin perspective it allows us to see admin log activity if you suspended or if you broke these rules, if you, if you know things like that, your last few posts. But for you it allows people to see a customized cover photo, customized bio.

[A]

And then all your posts directly. Right in a row.

[B]

Right. So that's also how you can check did I add value to this group before I sold last? Yeah. Okay.

[A]

The next step is group rating. It's going to be determined by what you find valuable in a group.

[B]

What Corey's likes and what I like are going to be different. So your group rating five star. This is a group and I've broken it down by quarters. Right. Because there's not a ton of groups kind of going. If it's a five star group that's where you're going to water. If you're like this is a great group. It's well managed, it's not massive. There's no scams. The admins are involved. Yeah. I'm going to want to make this my five star. I'm going to make this group my best friend.

[A]

And I will say as management style changes, as people admins come and go, your star ratings may change and that's okay. And it's good to keep note. Okay. This group has become less valuable to me over time.

[B]

When admins get absent, you're going to see that group deteriorate for sure.

[A]

Next up is admin plus.

[B]

Sorry, I just want to add one thing. If you find that you only end up with like two five star groups and maybe three, four star groups is probably where you're going to focus. The, the one star and two stars are probably never going to look at. I don't know that it's worth my time.

[A]

Yeah, I mean you'd just be adding to the spam at the next is the admin URL. It's good to stay on an admin's good side. You know it's teacher appreciation week and I told Archer literally everybody out there is bribo not saying I did. I appreciate the teachers but at the end of the day I want them to favor my kids. So I'm going to give them something. Your admins are giving a lot of their volunteer time to you. So knowing who the admins are, making sure that you see where they are when they change a group rule, just using their URL, you can go to their little personal profile in the group and see their updates.

[B]

Here's the thing. Cora and I are admins It's a pretty thankless job and it's not. And it's so funny. We have this local community group and I was like, they make a lot of money from this. I lose money constantly on this.

[A]

I don't think I need a dweller.

[B]

It's a very thankless and isolating job. And you're like, well, they seem fine. You know, people compliment them. I want to let you know if you guys could see what comes in the sugar cookie marketing inbox or this local community group's inbox. It is the worst. It is people just willing to say whatever to get.

[A]

Yelling, I'm gonna threaten. Yeah.

[B]

That's why I said we could do.

[A]

A whole nother podcast on starting a group because you gotta have some tough skin, girls.

[B]

So when somebody comes in and compliments a group, which you're gonna see a lot of that in a minute, in a second, or thanks the admins. It really does put a spotlight on you as a valuable member to admins who are fighting a battle you'll never see. I think a good admin is one that keeps that out of the group. That makes group almost seem like there's no drama at all.

[A]

That's what I said. I said you can't punish the good for the bad of the few.

[B]

Right. We can't punish the many for the few actions of the evil keyboard warriors who are very, very meanies. And then keep track of when you last posted. Again, you want to be a valuable member. Nothing is worse than you coming in a group and manipulating it to just serve you and not any add any value. So moving on to section 2B. How do they work? Like Corey said, it's. It's easier to understand how to sell in a group when you understand the mechanics that Meta gives admins to run a group because this is going to affect your posting ability. So an important aspect of selling group. I have an example group there. You guys are free to join it if you want. I am going to delete it. It just has these example posts. But all this stuff is still on the website. Yeah.

[A]

And that's truly all you need. You can kind of go to the SEM group and see just as much.

[B]

Right. So an important aspect in selling in a community group is following the rules. And you can find any group's rules by finding the group's URL and tacking on forward slash rules to the end. Otherwise, click on the group's name when you're in it and then when you take click on the name, scroll down, you can see those rules. Refresh yourself.

[A]

If the group is private, you've technically already agreed to the group rules. So you have seen them once. So a lot of times people end up in our DMs and be like, I didn't know that I could only post sales on Saturday. No, no, no, you did, you did, you did. No. So it's good to refresh yourself. Unfortunately, when admins change or modify a group rule, it doesn't alert everybody. So sometimes admins will try to say, hey, I've updated this rule again. We're all trained by the algorithms. Even though we're admins of a group, it doesn't mean we get more reach from that.

[B]

I think you get a moderate amount of increased reach, but not all the time.

[A]

You're not gonna reach the amount of people in the group.

[B]

For comparison, sugar cookie marketing groups, around 50,000. My average post reached around 800. Yeah. Do you see that is very, very, very low.

[A]

The ratios are low. So revisiting a group and just double checking if you haven't been in the group in a while or you're like, hey, I just listened to the podcast day one the of. I want to start utilizing community groups. Just go, just double check the rules. Just read through them once. That'll help you.

[B]

And if you violate a rule that has been changed, I guarantee the admin will not take your side.

[A]

Yeah, because I wouldn't.

[B]

Okay. Groups can only have 10 rules. This is a big one. Meta only allows groups to have 10 rules and the explanation of those rules is limited to 500 characters. A lot of times corn will be like, hey, that, that's not allowed content. And they'll be like, but it's not a rule, right? It's not one of the ten rules. Very limited. In which case, like, but inciting violence. I didn't think I had to make that a rule. So the group can only have 10 rules. When you join, you agree to typically those 10 rules. But that does not mean that this is not. This is the. This is it the. The Ten Commandments. Yeah. It means that those are the ones that they thought were most important. So you need to make sure you air on the side of caution when you engage in content that may be on the line.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Next up, groups can have both profiles and pages as admins.

[B]

And you're like, okay, whatever.

[A]

Here's the thing you gotta realize, like, okay, we run a ladies group. So you would assume everyone in the ladies group is a lady. If my husband was an admin on my Facebook page and my Facebook business page was an admin. He can now access the content in there by becoming my Facebook page.

[B]

But all the users would think it's a female only group because they only see mixing bowl cookie company. They know that's Cory. But Corey has more than one ad. Yeah.

[A]

So you don't know who's on someone's admin team. It could be someone local, it could be someone that is a different and gender. You have got to be careful what you say in a group. If you want to bash somebody, you don't know if they're the admin hiding behind a page.

[B]

Right. So again you're gonna see Cora and I, if you sell online, you're gonna operate by a different set of rules than somebody who is retired or who stay at home and they cannot get fired from the job. Right?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You can get fired from your bakery job by getting no sales. Yes. You have a lot of little bosses now instead of, well, I'm my own boss now. As an entrepreneur you have many, many bosses and they're each one of your kids.

[A]

I love when I see like b, like this is my page. I can do what I want. Can you though?

[B]

Not if you want sales. I don't believe you can do what you want. Although it feels like you should be. You know, I don't think that as a business owner you have the freedom of speech that others have on the Internet. I agree and we'll talk about that throughout this entire thing. Because it's a running thread here, admins can put specific members on post approval. So in sugar cookie marketing group it is not a non post approval, meaning if you make a post it goes right up. The only way to find out if a group is on post approval is if you go to make a post and it says thanks, we submit this to the admin team for review.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If what we do is if, if I find that you're in the sugar cookie marketing group and you're posting content that's either controversial or it's very client bashy. And I just don't have time to always stand over your shoulder and babysit you, I'm going to put your specific profile on post approval. Doesn't mean I'm going to reject everything you post. It just means I'm going to give it a once over. Okay, good. This one passes a vibe check. Yeah.

[A]

Here's the thing. A lot of we have two groups. We have the baking with sugar cookie marketing group and the sugar cookie marketing group. A long time ago you Guys voted. You wanted baking questions in the baking group, marketing questions in the marketing group so you could go and choose which one you want in your feed. If you're someone who is just post willy nilly and you're asking like where did I get this cutter from in the marketing group, it's behooves me as an admin who's running on borrowed time to put you on post approval for the fact that you're not checking and now I have to double check on you.

[B]

That's the big takeaway here is if you felt like a group wasn't on post approval and suddenly it is. Ask yourself, have you violated a rule and have the admins put you specifically on post approval? If so, you sold too close to the sun. This is your warning shot. They've given you a probationary period essentially saying we think we don't like your content. Tread with caution. You'll find that in the sugar cookie market group that's exactly what Corey and I do. If I find that now all your pending posts you're needing approval posts are also violating the rules. We're just not a good fit for each other.

[A]

The thing you have to remember is when admins put you on post approval it can be indefinite and odds are.

[B]

But it is.

[A]

Yeah, odds are. So you can do it like one day, three days, 28 days until I change it. When admins are working on borrowed time, odds are they're going to put until I change it because it just bought it just makes sure that their bases are covered.

[B]

Here's the thing. That's a good point. Go on, I don't want to interrupt you.

[A]

Oh, here's the thing. I forget who I put on eternal post approval. I don't go back and change it.

[B]

Because it served a purpose then so pass me new something future me forgotten that. What were you just saying? The bar time. Oh, the borrowed time. I think a lot of people are like this is their full time job. No, it's great. I would love it to be. That would be crazy. But like in Corey's community group I'll get DMs constantly. Why aren't you applying? Why aren't you replying? Because this isn't my job. Yeah, because this is a community group so admins are short on time and shorter on patience. You're going to work around that parameter. You're not going to be like well I deserve. No you don't because they can ban you and you deserve nothing. Yeah.

[A]

The thing is if you've been put on post approval. What we're not going to do in that little Google community group is DM the admins and be like, why isn't my post approved?

[B]

Because you're not twice as.

[A]

Yeah. You know you're making work twice as hard.

[B]

I always find it interesting. Corey's community group, it says please don't direct message the admin. So you can direct message as a page but don't message the admins. The person who breaks the rule will always message me personally. Right.

[A]

I put it on my almost every single role.

[B]

Like don't, don't DM the admin groups can be said to either private or public. These are privacy settings within a group. If you see a public group, you. That means like, have you seen it in your newsfeed where you're scrolling and you're like, here's a group post for a group I haven't joined. Yeah, that's a public group. All the content, all the content in there is viewable by anybody on Facebook. Yeah.

[A]

You gotta realize when bakers send me a friend request, I love it. I'll support you. That's my favorite thing to do. But I can also see when you comment in a public group, you don't know that I can see it, but because we've become friends, it's forced it in my feed.

[B]

Corey doesn't even need to join that group to see you politically mudslinging in the most offensive language she's ever read in her life. Because she's gonna screenshot and send it to me and I'm gonna read it. Uh, but that's a big thing, Right? So if a group is set to private, people can only read the content if they join the group. Yeah, but that private group can switch itself to public.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

After as long as it has fewer than 5,000 members. A privacy settings from a private to public group is allowable. Meaning? Well, this is a group, a snark group or a political group or like a like political leaning group. I can say whatever I want. I can curse however I want. Imagine that was read in the court of law in front of everybody who's ever bought from you before. Would you write it it? Well, okay. Do you want to make sales now? Let me ask, would you like to make sales to these people? Does that divisive political comment, is it conducive to you making more sales? Yes or no? If the answer is no, don't come to me and ask me why you're not making sales. Right. Absolutely.

[A]

Next up, it used to be called Pin posts for a long time and meta is always changing group features. So now instead of pin post, they've called it the features tab.

[B]

But the URL's still announcements. Yeah.

[A]

It's so crazy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

An announcement. You see how it's like not all changes change. So if you go to a group at the top, you'll see a little icon. It says featured. If there's a blue dot next to it, someone's added something new to that. That means the admins have taken a post in, pinned it and it can be found in the featured section. This is often where you'll find rule changes, rule updates, admin changes, admin updates.

[B]

And only people who can pin post are the admin team. Yeah.

[A]

So if you want to stay on an admin's good side, which we do because we want to utilize these groups, we're going to check into those featured post and just see where the admin's head is at.

[B]

Keep in mind on those featured posts. That's a good way to see if a group is actively admin is if that post is timestamp 2020, the last pin post. That probably means it's a group where the admins aren't very active. So a little indicator there. Some of them are active and they just forget about the pin post. Corey and I constantly clean them out. We're constantly updating them. Yeah, we do. It is literally my fetish to clean out the pin post.

[A]

Yeah. Heather does it almost.

[B]

Did you unpin that? I said it's been too long. It's been a week. I said a week too long. A week too long. Admins can ban all profiles connected to one account. So recently Facebook really, and it's in its group era, it wanted people to be able to join groups more anonymously without creating second accounts. Remember, Facebook's terms of service are one account per user. Yeah, but Heather Miracle joining I Love Snakes LLC group, maybe I don't want people to know I like snakes. Right, right, true. So Facebook's like, okay, your ex's history, tell us. I only date them. I don't like them. I have all these snakes. So I can create an alternate profile connected to Heather Miracle, but I can call it Heather Love Heather Snakes.

[A]

Whatever.

[B]

That profile can join a group. Heather Miracle is not in the group, but Heather Snakes is. Right. It's my own profile. If I. If Heather Snakes violates enough, the group rules that the admins go to ban Heather Snakes. They can say, ban this profile and all profiles connected to it. Which means Heather Miracle can't come back in and join the group. Yeah, you can get around that as long as Heather Snakes and Heather Miracle both join. But what's the point? I wanted to be anonymous that one way. The reason why this is important is people make these alt profiles to troll.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

But when that troll profile again, because you didn't heed the warning, the admonition that if you didn't, if you wouldn't say it to your mom, don't say it online. And if you say that to your mom, maybe talk to a therapist, you're going to lose access to that group.

[A]

Across all your programs. Yeah, one that you skipped. I'm just gonna go. Members can report content site rules.

[B]

This is a biggie.

[A]

This is a big one. Um, it used to be at the beginning of groups you would try to report the content to admins. Like if someone broke a spam and you're like, they're trying to sell Taylor swift tickets for $10 each. You know, we've seen those in all these community groups, members could report that. Instead of reporting it to Facebook, which can ding a group, you can now just report a post to the group admins and you can cite which rule, like, probably broke the spam rule or this is a scammer and report it straight to the. What it does is dings the group admin so they can see that post immediately and take action right away.

[B]

It's really helpful.

[A]

Super helpful for admins. Here's the thing, you. You get into a bickering fight over politics with someone in the group and you go to make your sales post and they spend their rest of their lives reporting every morning. Oh, what, what can you do? They'll become your worst nightmare.

[B]

So Corey and I, when you manage a group following, I don't know what the prerequisites. Facebook invites you to this thing called the power admins group on Facebook. So Corey and padmin members in the padmins. I get questions all the time like, hey, two members have gotten in an argument with each other and one member is reporting content that they've ever posted. It's bogging down the admin team. But you can see one angry user that's not even an admin can become your sales worst nightmare.

[A]

We in my local community group have two foster people. I didn't know. I thought it was always trying to get the cats.

[B]

She's literally talking about people who foster animals.

[A]

Yeah, foster animals. Like, I thought the goal was like, we love all the foster animal places.

[B]

But this one foster doesn't agree with how this other foster is fostering these.

[A]

Kittens and will report every one of her fostering kitten posts.

[B]

Right. Although as an administrative, I'll be like, cory is there. What's going on with the cats?

[A]

I said, I don't know. I don't know. What it's done is put a spotlight on both of those people.

[B]

Right. So you can say, well, I didn't do anything wrong. It doesn't matter if you did anything wrong. If a perceived slight by another member is seeing you as doing wrong, they can. Like I said, the guy leaving the other guy at Google Review, he has reported that guy's every content. I can guarantee it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you want to make sure that you remember to stay away from controversy. You are a nice, kind, upbeat, uplifting person. Another thing to remember, you make a member upset, they can comment on your group post and you can't do anything about it. They think your bakes are too expensive. They'll become.

[A]

These are good contact so and so. They're so much better.

[B]

You can't do anything about it. It's unfortunate. And then you're coming in the group and said, how should I respond to this? There's a strategy behind responding to those. But what we don't want to do is create that ourselves. We couldn't just keep our keyboard shut. Administrative. This is a newer thing. It's actually been pretty helpful. Admin assist is kind of a half AI now and half an if then statement. Corey and I have admin assist running. If someone uses this curse word, if they use this political word, just decline the comment. If someone uses. What do I have? I have. If this post is reported twice, just delete the post altogether. Yeah, it happens a lot. For those Taylor Swift tickets when that was a lot of spam, people could report it twice and would immediately delete it. So Cory and I and Amy didn't have have to.

[A]

Yeah, which was great. It was fantastic. Group spam filters is new. It's something that admins cannot disable. It is there and it'll be there for forever. Here's the thing, you're like, oh, I'm not spamming the group. Some of you guys, I don't know what you do things you're doing to your URL. So URL is basically your website. There's this lady, she posts every single Saturday on sale Saturday. She sells yoga with pasta possums.

[B]

I like the niche. I like the niche.

[A]

Possum on you while you do yoga. It's very niche about that. Whatever her URL has happened. She is she has done something dirty with it on the meta platforms and meta will always send her post to spam. Admins do not get alerted when something ends up in the spam filter. So she'll sometimes message after seven hours. It's like eight at night. She'll be like did I do something wrong in the group? I'm so sorry. Your post is now in spam. I will approve it now. But it sat for 7 hours not doing any work.

[B]

But if she posts again, it goes there and Corey's saying whatever you did dirty, I think you can just spam a URL enough. A lot of times in the spam filters and sugar cookie marketing group links to Walmart I typically find there links.

[A]

On Amazon anything care.com it don't like it care.com yeah, I know what happened there.

[B]

And that's more for Corey's community group. And then sometimes it'll be completely irrelevant stuff. Yeah, that'll go in there. And I don't make sense. Back to Admin Assist though. It can auto delete content members. If you don't have a profile picture and you're trying to join groups and you find that not getting in admin assist is automatically deleting you. Cause either your profile is less than a week old or your alt profile or you have no profile picture. It can also publish a recurring post that will look like it came from the admin. So you may say well I'm gonna go make the admin's day. But it was truly admin assist that posted it.

[A]

The admin get a notification though group.

[B]

Spam filters and then last meta aggregates multi group duplicate posts. So you're gonna see us say in this podcast, if you're gonna sell in a group, make it unique, tailored to that group. Don't do that copy pasting where you go through your spreadsheet and you're like bang, bang bang bang bang bang. That's what happened to yoga lady. I believe that she posts the exact same sales content in multiple groups and that's what sent her to the spam filter. If I'm in all the groups, you're in selling in it groups. Your sales post which limits your reach per group post.

[A]

Yeah, but you're like, well as long as they saw it once. Here's the thing. Something that makes me feel least cared about from your business is seeing that you posted the same thing six times.

[B]

So we ran Kori's community group in this area. There's so many of these duplicate community groups and Corey, like that lady spam this in six groups. She changed zero things about that post.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I was like, I've seen it as an admin. Quite like, well, this person could care less about our group.

[A]

Yeah. You're just literally running through and sharing the same content. And if it's your sales post that makes you look like a taker.

[B]

A taker. And it also hurts your post performance. So you're like, well, girls, I don't care. I don't mind to be called a taker. Well, you're also not even able to take as effectively. I know.

[A]

So if we're going to take, let's, let's try to take the best we can.

[B]

Can.

[A]

Moving on to the group profiles is actually something rather new.

[B]

Kind of. Yeah. And it's the customization. This isn't going to make you a billion dollars if it did have you. This is barely going to move the needle. But it's going to move the needle enough. That's probably worth doing. Yeah.

[A]

Let's say that you have said yes. I'm going to listen to the twins. I'm going to only be nice in the groups. I'm not going to do mudslinging. I'm going to optimize my little group profile. And you can find it by going to the group you're in. Going to the top, you'll see a little icon that says Y O, U.

[B]

You.

[A]

You're going to click on that and it's going to show you your little profile. You have a bio, 150 characters at all.

[B]

No hyperlinks.

[A]

No hyperlinks.

[B]

You're just going to say, I love.

[A]

Baking in Lake Ridge. I bake this. Okay. That's basically it. Your little cover photo. I suggest making it your business name.

[B]

Yeah. Here's what I found. It's a 1640 by 600 pixel sizing. Right. That was pretty, pretty close. I get without cropping. It's very thin. Think of a header on a piece of paper. But you can say like, I'm from McLean. Or Corey can say, hey, she joins a group called Lake Ridge Ladies. Hey, Lake Ridge Ladies, I'd love to bake for you. You. She can do that when she joins that McLean group. Hey, McLean ladies, I'd love to bake for you. And each one of those cover photos can be tailored to that group because what happens is somebody says, hey, I'd like to hire a baker. Corey tags herself. The next thing that person's likely going to do is going to click on Corey's name. It's going to take her to that group profile where she can then go to that personal profile. Right. So it all is kind of interchanged there. Back to the muddling comment. Sure. I want to. I want to challenge people to think this. Does writing this comment overall benefit me or not? Does pressing enter to this rage bait reply? Do I stand to risk to lose more if I get banned than I stand to gain by trying to convince somebody who doesn't want to be convinced of my opinion?

[A]

Yeah, sometimes I think it comes down to some personal growth that we need. If you feel so inclined to like, rage takes you over and you have to comment this, you press enter because you're so filled with emotion, there's something that you have to work on internally to gauge that emotional.

[B]

Why are you able to be so triggered Right. By a stranger?

[A]

Yeah, right. There's trolls out there. And in the world of the Internet, which has grown immensely, people are out there to push your buttons online.

[B]

Because I think it's like this anonymity. You can say whatever you want. You have no repercussions. The other day, someone said, what do you think? Think my total rebuilt car's worth? And then I said, I think about 35,000 in this market. And some stranger said, you're a drunk idiot. And I was like, wow, if you saw me in person, would you call me a drunk idiot for my opinion? Okay. The next thing is, should I reply to somebody that call me a drunk idiot, would that make me a drunk idiot? So you don't reply because what happens? And Corey faced this. She accidentally asked somebody how they met their husband, but typed ho did you meet your husband? It was a type of. But Facebook saw it as harassment.

[A]

Yeah, actually it put me on the short list and I was getting banned right and left. That's why my Heather has the last name Heather Miracle in the groups. My name is Corey Mira.

[B]

She had to make a second profile because that other profile was on such suspension. So ask yourself, is what I'm about to write if Facebook, if meta handled it, not even the admins, was it the appropriate action to take? I think oftentimes you'll find that it wasn't.

[A]

A lot of times what we see is someone will post a comment in haste, in anger, in emotion.

[B]

And it will.

[A]

They'll post it and they'll feel like, I probably shouldn't say go back to delete it, but it's already been screenshotted. You can't go back and undo these things.

[B]

It's on the Internet.

[A]

It's Forever. So I'm not sure what the topic was, but I feel very passionate about that.

[B]

Here's my last thing. Because this is where we see people get in trouble. Blocking is actually the biggest form of retribution. Right? Not even replying. Being so confident in yourself that you're.

[A]

Like, you know what?

[B]

You're not even worth my time. I'm just going to block your profile. I know what you're trying to do. You want me to engage. But the true elite said, truly.

[A]

The truly. I'm going to remove you.

[B]

Remove me.

[A]

Remove me from your life.

[B]

Very, very.

[A]

Which is the honest. It shuts down the conversation. Your buttons can't be pushed more. They can't find you.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You've removed all the emotion out of it. Because they can't.

[B]

You can't select them. They can't. And guess what? It's no longer sitting in your brain because you guys can never speak again. You'll never cross paths.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

So consider that when I do like blocking people. This is an example of a group profile. If you're following along on the website sugarcookiemarketing.com popping, you'll see my cutesy little. Your local treat yourself dealer made up a fake website. Heathers Yelms.com and I'm currently selling your favorites and I got just some emojis, a cookie, a cupcake, a donut and a cake.

[A]

I don't know how it's adorable, but I feel very confident and you know, my first impression of you. I feel comfortable maybe buying from you.

[B]

And I put in a little bit more effort than just having a cookie as my cover plate. I added some graphic elements there. So keeping it optimized. We've just talked about optimizing your group profile, but remember, you're two clicks away from someone's personal profile. Corey and I use. I think you can do. It's called View as on Facebook in your privacy settings, within your privacy settings, you can click View as and it'll show you what somebody who isn't your friend would see and somebody who's a friend of your friend. Remember because on your personal profile, each post now has the ability to have its own specific privacy settings. So what Corey will do is she's actually optimized her personal profile because it is connected to her group profiles to sell more online. Now her bio there you can use.

[A]

A hyperlink, which is nice.

[B]

So my said take a page, right?

[A]

Well, I. Because you're a creator profile, you can use the hyperlink. I tried and I could only actually at my page, which is good because you're already on Facebook anyways. So here's the thing we say to optimize your little group profile, if someone's clicking there, they're actually going to your personal profile because they want to see what you're about.

[B]

If you're arguing online, I'm on your group profile. I actually got to pull up Corey's profile and I'm going to tell you how she has this optimized because I'm impressed how you use it.

[A]

Well, I told me and heather our last 10 hour trip that we went to, I said, let's go through and optimize it together because I need another set of eyes on there.

[B]

So Corey actually saw her profile picture in that last 10 hour thing and she said, I want to schedule a photo shoot. I want my personal profile image to be orange to match my brand colors. Again, personal profile. She's still using it as a ultimate sales tool because they're so interconnected on Facebook, her cover photo is her mixing bowl cookie company banner. Then we have mixing bowl cookie company. Your page is tagged. I can click on it from here. It takes me right to the page. It's the first thing there. I'd add an emoji if I were you, but neither here nor there.

[A]

What?

[B]

I'd add an emoji next to mixing bowl cookie. Go.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Make it look like I'm going to.

[A]

Tell you the fight. I had it meta. Did not want to hyperlink it all.

[B]

Then I'd rather she said Woodbridge, Virginia cottage bakers specialized in custom cookies, Macs and cake pops. You know what she doesn't have there? School of hard knocks. I voted XYZ politics fight me in the comments. Which is what some of your guys's personal profiles look like.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. In her details, she has these set to public. You can set these to public or private. Nice. She has her website, she has her job. She has her second job. It's all pushing me to sales. Guess what? In her featured post, she has not her at a political rally because that is a public. Those featured collections, those are always public. You cannot change your privacy. She has has macarons, custom cookies, cake pops. My people, which is her and me holding cookie cutters. Yeah, but you're like. But my personal. My Facebook's meant to be about my family. Part of it can be. Part of it can be. But if you're still using it as a sales tool, not all of it can be anymore.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Because remember, if you want to sell, you can't have the freedom of speech that somebody who doesn't have anything to risk has. Right here. Five days ago. It's a sales post on her personal page. She set the privacy settings to public. I did. Meaning anybody on Facebook can see this because she's in community groups where people aren't her friends, and they're gonna click to this profile and see, this girl is bacon.

[A]

My top public post. I want it to be a sales post. I want you. If you have no time and you're like, I'm stalk this girl real quick. Bam, bam. Thank you, ma' am.

[B]

Because you don't have a creative profile set, and I am. I can pin post.

[A]

Oh, nice. Yes.

[B]

I'm gonna keep in mind she is posting more content than this to her page, but her privacy settings mean me that I'm doing a view as non friend. I can't see that. So she's still able to use Facebook. Facebook for her personal use. Yeah.

[A]

Like my son getting his hair cut. I can post that and post it to friends.

[B]

And you know what?

[A]

My friends will see it. And apparently, if I'm using Facebook for friends and family, that's all who I need to see it at the end of the day.

[B]

So you may say, well, then are you saying I can politically mudsling but set my privacy settings to only friends?

[A]

You.

[B]

You can. You're friending me. You guys. You bakers are friending me, and you guys are saying just some stuff on your stuff. Then I'm like, whoa, why? I'm not sure if you're friending me, and you don't really know me outside of the sugar cookie market, but I do enjoy seeing your content. But I'm like, what. What of your clients are they seeing? Because you don't know how they voted, but you're definitely telling them how you voted. And it's not that voting is a wrong thing. It's not that politics are necessarily wrong. It's that people turned it into a religion. I think Amy told me that. That politics are religion.

[A]

It's. It's divisive. You split your audience in half.

[B]

So do I want to sell on Facebook or do I want to argue on Facebook? I think I got to pick one or the other. You can't pick both. Right. So, Corey, her private photos are more like, here's my sister's cat doing something stupid. Right. She doesn't necessarily need non friends of friends. Friends to see that, but she's like, I want to remember this. That time hop thing.

[A]

Yeah. And I'm not One that uses Facebook a lot to post. I'm just not a poster kind of person. But it's good to refresh and look back and just. I want you to scroll back to the beginning of your profile. I don't want you to be like, well I went back two years. Listen, if someone has made it their.

[B]

The dirty dog is those things you did in 2012 when you were like 10.

[A]

Yeah. If someone, if you have wronged someone in a group, they will scroll all the way back.

[B]

I saw these two people arguing and somebody else obviously joined the argument and they were like, I scrolled back to this person's personal profile and look what they posted in 2019.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Like wow. You don't understand the. A person scorned on Facebook has no limits.

[A]

No limits. And they'll make the time.

[B]

And maybe you aren't that person who posted that in 2012. So go back, do that view ask, go back to the beginning of time and just set that to either trash you can now archive.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Or you can change the privacy settings to only me. And remember, remember, remember. If it's on the Internet, it's forever. You can screenshot that even like you change my mind. People are very unforgiving. So yeah. Can't stress it enough.

[A]

I think the hardest thing, Cory and.

[B]

I are obviously very, very stuck on this because what some people are willing to post I think is crazy.

[A]

The biggest downfall that people don't realize is a share. You're like, I didn't really say that. I just shared it. A share is a, a peek into your brain.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Like I will tie something to someone because of their share. Some people, I have a cousin, she shares years. A cousin in law, not even related to me. I've never seen someone post at the.

[B]

Rate that she posts.

[A]

Shares posts.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So some of this is going to take you guys a few minutes. It's worth a day.

[B]

It's worth it, it's worth it. Corey and I took 10 hour drive. Something to keep in mind as we're going through this thing. What was it gonna say? Sorry, I've lost it.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Whatever that valuable negative.

[A]

Now you're like, guys, get to the part where I can sell it.

[B]

Do you understand why we're spending so much time on this other stuff?

[A]

We're laying the foundation.

[B]

This is how you sell in community groups. And if community aren't working for you, it's because this other stuff wasn't addressed.

[A]

Right, right, right.

[B]

There was a baker, she, she went to foodies group. Yeah. Laugh, reacted and Made a mean comment. It was about unrelated to baking. I think it was someone's opinion on her. Someone went to her profile and said, I cannot believe you're a baker willing to say this. Oh yeah, she said she didn't like British food. She said British food is really bland and disgusting. And someone's like, I can't believe.

[A]

See, I want to say that comment added no value to anyone, but it.

[B]

Got her in the. They were so mad. And what happens is, do people take.

[A]

To their review and you cannot stop it. And as much as we want to be like, we can report it. We can report it. If they end up on Google, they end up on next door. They make it their life's mission to ruin your business. It is so discouraging to be on the wrong side. Does the comment you're about to make add value or take away from your business?

[B]

Moving on, the intro post. So again, we're still not even selling crazy. This whole post is about selling community groups, girls. Why aren't you talking about it? Because this is how you sell in community groups. This is, that's the foundational. It should be 90% this stuff and then 10% selling, which is exactly what this podcast layout is. So your intro post, typically when you join a group, admins can turn on intro post or not. They can.

[A]

Or not. You always see if you want to.

[B]

Know if they appear. An interesting photo I took, Corey said. Corey said, it's so weird. People keep joining this group and saying, here's an interesting photo. And I was like, oh, that's the prompt from an intro.

[A]

Yeah. So Facebook wants people to be involved in groups. So whether they do an intro post, it's always like a selfie. And I was like, and here I wanted to share a picture I took.

[B]

I was like, why are they all doing this? They're all using this. Are they bots? I said, no, it's like pre populated. So what we're going to do is we're going to start our community group sales long before we sell by doing our intro post. And I got two examples here. I've actually given people at what's Popping Con the template, and you guys are free to steal that as well. The link to it is in this website page, this web page. And these are going to be templates, meaning start points, jump off points. You're going to curate this to use. So what, what's. What I'm going to say about me is not going to be what you say about you. You guys can try if you like. Snakes go. Right? So interpose are a great way to let a community group members know more about you. This establishes that first layer of trust in the group. Here's who I am, here's what I look like. Uh, and then it also has this weird thing called group points. Uh, yeah, groups calculate points.

[A]

I know.

[B]

It allows. It actually establishes trust with the AI. Oh right. Yeah.

[A]

I'm not as an admin, I'm not looking at my points.

[B]

You got top contributor. If you ever wonder how people got those they've created. Interesting post. Top contributor badge. Right.

[A]

I want to say one time in.

[B]

The local community group someone was like.

[A]

They violated the sales rule. And I was like, oh, I'm so sorry. Actually the sales rules are first Saturday. And she's like, do you know who you're talking to? I'm a top contributor. And I said everybody has badge.

[B]

You can get the top contributor badge. Exceptionally easy parting. Just a couple.

[A]

You can get it.

[B]

I think it's within that dynamic of that group. If it's a highly active group, it's harder to get if it's a very low rung they've created like you know, if nobody's commenting, it's easier to get it. So the key for intra post is giving enough information about your bakery without ever talking about it.

[A]

Listen, we're not going to join a group and break the laws.

[B]

No. Because we're going to get banned and then we've lost that entire lead gen source. We're going to compliment the group admins. We're going to little suck up. A little suck up. Just a little like him. Excited to be here. I've heard great things about this group and remember, psychology is at play here. The admins are humans. Humans have brains. Brains can be be manipulated. Right. And not maliciously. We're going to be authentic, but we are going to use it to our advantage. So in my example post one, I've got a picture of me and Corey looking stupid goofy. But you'll never guess what's on her hand. Baking mitts. You'll never guess what's on the side of the picture. Cookies. Yeah, I think it's a macaron top.

[A]

It is.

[B]

Someone called it like Corey science project and we're all like supporting. This is so funny. So in my intro post, I prefer group formatting. You can. Some people ask me, Heather, how'd you get the bolded? How'd you get italics? How'd you get an unordered ordered list or an ordered list? How do you make the text Big and little within a group. If you post on a computer from a computer.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You cannot edit that post from a phone though. You have to edit it from a computer. But I prefer the look. Corey doesn't. No, it's what works for you. I just, I've never seen a user group. No, I'm.

[A]

I'm not my computer. For me to go down there again, how in. How involved do you want to be in your business?

[B]

Right. Here's the thing that evolved.

[A]

They have run actually launched two to phones posting groups, header tags, which does give you.

[B]

I feel like they're rolling out more. It must be some developers.

[A]

I think they're like 99 of people are on their phone. No one's on a stroll.

[B]

That's a great point. Most of the people selling in the group are doing it from their phone. If you choose to do it from a computer, you can stand out because your post will have more formatting options. Bold italics, underline true, bulleted list, ordered list, H1 tags, H2T text.

[A]

So you can do some of that from the phone. But if you do want to make a statement and have bolded text, that is a great way to do it. A lot of people don't have computers anymore, which is wild. That 2020, you do it from a.

[B]

Chromebook, you can do it from an iPad.

[A]

Yeah. Right.

[B]

True. A picture. So in this one I used a single picture, but in the next image I use a collage. And there's a reason for that. We're testing.

[A]

Yeah. What we don't want to do. I know I preached to you working that photography. It's a scroll stopper. If we're just getting into a new groove and we're just introducing ourselves, we're not gonna use a bake. Our well photographed bake.

[B]

Right. So what we'll have happen, Corey? Well, somebody will join a group. And again, we're too highly managed. We're too heavily. Corey and I are really big about being fair. Try being a twin. You'll find.

[A]

I know. Yeah. I don't know.

[B]

If somebody comes in, they're like happy to join this group. I really like selling my fitness routines. And here's what that fitness routine would look like if you bought it for the low, low price of $10 a day. I'm gonna be like, hey, thank you so much for being here. I love that. Just leave off the part where you're sales pitching. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why we don't want this intro post to already put us on the radar.

[A]

Yeah. We don't want to be on the radar, but you'll see that Cory and.

[B]

I are in a kitchen with baking mitts. It's a.

[A]

It's a nice. It's there.

[B]

It's not all there. Right. So it's like, hey, I wonder why she has baking mints on. I'm not saying. Listen. I'm just saying, huh. Maybe. I don't know.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

A hook. So this one. You can steal this if you are twin. I said, oh, help. Somebody stole my face. Cory and I are twins. Right. So it looks like right there. Unfortunately for Corey and I, we always have an icebreaker. We always are twins. Yeah. So I can say, somebody stole my face. Just kidding. We're twins. You aren't seeing double.

[A]

Where I live, there's a road. It has about 82 traffic lights on it to get out of the area. So I'd be a Holy traffic lights Batman.

[B]

Nobody told me if I live where Cory lives. Guys, I gotta play the lotto. It hit every green light on Old Bridge Road. Anyways, I've lived in Lake Ridge for about five years and this is the first time it's happened. You can see that I can resonate with that.

[A]

A hook can be something that resonates, something that stops the scrolls.

[B]

Humor.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. So hooks come in different forms and fashion. There's a whole. We could do a whole podcast on hooks. And maybe we will one day. But hooks are great, right? Heather loves to use. I just want to tell you, Heather loves to use hooks in the sugar cookie marketing group. When someone donates a cookie college membership, Heather be like, attention, attention, Corey Miracle to the principal's office.

[B]

The one. The hook that's great. Is controversy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Specifically argumentativeness. So I'll be like, hey, Corey, you know, this is the last warning. You've obviously blocked me, which you're not allowed to block the address admins. And it's ridiculous that we have to take this publicly when I prefer to handle it privately.

[A]

I'm pulling up my chair.

[B]

Then my next sentence is just getting somebody gave you a free membership. But you can see people are like, darn it, I knew you were. It was a hook. And I still felt we don't technically.

[A]

Want to start off our. Our little local community group off a few inch drama. Yeah.

[B]

We got to get a dynamic first. A short bio. So I have. Hey, my name is Heather Miracle. I'm not in self entitled Miracle. It's my actual last name again. It's kind of built. Built into that Sorry. With the last name Smiths. Yes. A little bit of about.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I said here's a bit about me. But let's play a game. Five of these things are true and one's like. And you figure out which one. People love having an opinion. Right. And so I. I realize how uninteresting I am. I said I have two pet snakes and one 7ft long. Okay. Most people don't like snakes. So they went through that. While I'm a baker. I don't like cupcake frosting. You see right there? I did it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I got close though. I don't think I got close enough to buy the risk. Right. Because this is my 5 inches thing. I jumped out of a plane once and forgot to pull the parachute cord. It was actually true. Live to tell. I've had three husbands, but I'm currently single. That's life. That was my lie. Corey has Just kidding. And I said I've never been on a cruise before. Ahoy. Right. So that what happens is I've just introduced people commenting back to me and.

[A]

She'S able to connect with people because she does have a pet snake. She has been on a cruise. She likes jumping out of an airplane.

[B]

I don't obviously not enough to pull.

[A]

The pricing is apparently too sweet for her. So she's able to connect with these little points in there. It's a dumb little game. Okay.

[B]

So I do this one. This may be too close. It depends on the dynamic of the group. It says a moderately moderate. I said any guesses? Okay. So I wasn't lying about the baker part. It is my full time job. So you may see me making some posts for taste testers. Pay attention. I'm not a baker, but this is my example post. I'm excited to be here and thanks to the admins for letting me join. It's really awesome having a local community group to pull from the hive mind. There's my compliment.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah.

[B]

And I said if you read this far, could you help a gal out? I'm looking for someone to do some light landscaping around my patio.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Right there. Now if they didn't engage with my five truths and a lie or whatever, they can engage with my ask for recommendations. Absolutely. So we've included a short bio. You see, it was barely there. We've included the blip about the cottage bakery without selling at all. There's no way for them to know I'm here to sell.

[A]

But your group profile is now optimized. Your Facebook personal pages optimized. We're Optimized just in case you do get the clicks.

[B]

It's there from the post one. The non sales post is technically doing some groundwork for us because we did some groundwork first and then I've complimented the admins because they're humans. And then I've asked for recommendations so people can come back and engage with. Because when somebody comments guess what Facebook does, it shows it to more people. Guess what? When they come and guess what it does, it shows it to more people. Give me the example too. I want to hear what you think.

[A]

About example number two.

[B]

Is this your.

[A]

Hey community group? Just a quick intro and thanks for letting me join. Excited to be here.

[B]

My compliment.

[A]

Yeah, put it up right at the top.

[B]

There's.

[A]

It's right there so you can see it. Quick question first. What is the best meal you've ever had at a local restaurant in town? Drop the restaurant plus the dish in the comments please. I'm on a mission to find a good local food.

[B]

Right there. Because the truncation. I put the engagement piece at the top.

[A]

Yeah. So even if someone is just scrolling fast, what they'll do is see that you asked a question.

[B]

Everyone likes a restaurant and everyone has a favorite dish. It's an easy lobbed up record.

[A]

Hey, my name is Heather and I'm a baker by trade. When I'm not in the kitchen, you can find me wrestling my seven foot boa constrictor named Felicia. Sweating on my motorcycle or car. Carving on. Carving? Is that what we call it? Yeah, carving on my snowboard.

[B]

Oh, and that's my kitten, Mr.

[A]

Munch. I lived in Northern Virginia my entire life, but I just found this group excited to be more part of the community and the conversation here. Already getting good vibes from the few posts I've read. Looking forward to all the restaurant wrecks. Bonus if they include a well made mocktail.

[B]

Right. Okay, so in this one I've used a collage of five photos. They include everything I mentioned there. It's a picture of me in the kitchen with Corey's stack. I'm not the baker, but you get the point. If I was, the picture of the motorcycle. Actually don't have it anymore. Picture of Felicia in some weird cat tote.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

A picture of me carving on a snowboard and then a picture of Munch and he's standing next to a cake pop. I wouldn't include an animal with a bake.

[A]

It's the only thing a kid with a bake. It's great.

[B]

Heather just doesn't have pictures that flirt Corey's. Like I said, I don't have a picture of like, not a bake centric thing. That's still Cory's. Like just using cat.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So we got the quick intro. I use the collage. It gives me five photos for people to connect with. The problem with collages and the reason why I use five, because if you use six, you get that plus one. Yeah, but the reason why I use five, the issue with that, if somebody comments on an individual post, it'll break it out of my post. Is that good? Is that bad? I don't know. I haven't ever tested it. Got my short bio. The very shortest mention of the bakery. Without saying anything else. I'm a baker by trade. That's all I said. There's. I don't think an admin would be like, she's trying to sell her to me.

[A]

I would be baker by trade. Like a lot of people do bake for fun.

[B]

You have a job, right? So we have a job. We didn't say bake by trade for a mixing bowl cookie company. And I'll be having a sales compliment to the group. I'm getting some good feelings here from the first post. And my question, looking for a restaurant recommendation. Okay, those are our intro posts. You can mix it up, match it. Every group who joins should have its own unique intro post, meaning we're not copying and pasting. We're going to make each group uniquely. Our hours takes an additional time. But like Corey said, how much do you effort do you want to put in your bakery? How much effort do you want back out of that? How much you know? Next section, 3.3 B value added content. We've did a podcast on this. Give, give, give, give, give, then take, yeah, five gifts. So give some, get some mentality. Corey and I are really big on this. In community groups, if you're a taker, you're on the short list.

[A]

When I see people that only visit. Here's the thing. To keep a community group going in and invaluable. It takes a lot. Specifically because I live in the area that this local community group is, I'm like, heather, you want to come do dinner with me at the new restaurant that opened? I really needed to add valuable content. So it's forcing me out of my house. Here's the thing. It's taking so much time to make a group valuable that when people come to the group and only selling it, you're taking, you're. You're riding the curtails of the Value.

[B]

That I did someone else's efforts.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And that person will start not liking you. If that person's the admin, we got a bigger problem. What I find is when people come to me and say, I have always struggled with selling in community groups. This is what they're violating, this is what they're not doing. And it's. And I, I even bolded this. If you cannot give before you take, community groups will always be a struggle for you.

[A]

If Heather talked to you once a week, just once a week, she said.

[B]

Hey, girl, how are you doing? Bye.

[A]

And I talk to you every single day. I laughed at your joke. I commented on your stuff.

[B]

By the nature of being human, which none of us know, you're going to.

[A]

Like me more than you're going to like Heather. That's the same for a community group.

[B]

A great example is the post I've been making in the sugar cookie marketing group. You know what would be really easy for me just to sell all the time. You know what's going to happen? You're not going to buy from me eventually. Instead, what I do and what Corey and I do is we add valuable content and then we sell to you. Because you're going to trust us to be reliable people. And when the product you buy from us, you're going to have that trust factor. Right. The same applies for community groups and big bakeries. Corey and I are selling a course. We're teaching how to market for free right now.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Then I'm going to say, hey, sign up for my course because you've heard me in the free stuff, you're going to trust me. Same with the bakery. I've become your friend in this online community group. When you need a cookie, call me. So moving on. When community groups are resources, they're always resource first. Granted, this podcast is about selling. You're going to see it's just about becoming a resource. I know. And then selling. We headwind. Yeah, we headwind. So in the next portion, we're going to cover how to become an engaged, engaging member who also happens to sell baked goods on the side. But first, we're the engaging member bakers who can't do that. Just can't read a room. This is less technical and more psychological. By adding value to a community group, the group admins will see you as a valuable resource. And when you're on the admin's good side, guess who will. They'll likely tag. Yeah. When somebody asks for a bakery, I.

[A]

Want to say Heather has never gotten her tile Refinished. She's never done tiling work in the house. I see her though, in the comments. Someone lady, she gives to the group all the time.

[B]

She posts. She truly likes the group.

[A]

She does.

[B]

And her husband does tiling.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So every once in a while she'll say, hey, Eric has some more availability for tile. I'm never going to hire Eric. I have no interest in whatever he does. Right. But I like the lady because she makes my job as an admin easier. So when me as the admin who's always in this group sees somebody asking for a tile guy, I'm going to say, hey, lady, check your husband Eric, because he is able to do this. And I know that because you've been such a great member.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

Corey, if you break the sales rule, she ain't going to take you. She'll find everyone who competes against you and tag it.

[A]

Oh, it's just my motive because Corey's.

[B]

So offended that Cory's like, we put so much effort in this. This one lady comes in, she sells, sell, sell, sell, sells. But these other people that are following the rules, I'm always going to attack them more.

[A]

They want, they, they want to be able to do that too. So when they're following the rules, I gotta water my grass where it grows.

[B]

We don't want those people late. Here is my hon. Take. This is your challenge. Your challenge. For every one sales post you plan to make in a group, there need to be 5 non sales posts leading up to it.

[A]

Twins, I'm just here with sales.

[B]

And you'll never make sales with that mentality. So pay attention to this. And if we could yell at you, which we basically have been doing this whole podcast, if you do not add value to a group before you sell, you are not a valuable member. If you're not a valuable member, you can expect suspension, banning, or disfavor with not only the admin team, but the community. A community group. This is community group Spooko. We gotta say it one more time just to drive the home. Posting non sales content five times as often as you post your sales content will change the results you're getting in community.

[A]

Yeah, you might not need a lawn care maintenance person right now, but you might need it eventually. Asking that question is going to create value for other people who might have needed a lawn care person, but it's.

[B]

Also going to make you make a non sales post. So don't overthink what a non sales post is. It's an anything. It's. Hey, guys, One my non sales post was this gel cleaner. I've talked about it. This gel cleaner I found on Amazon. I said guys I got to tell you about this. This is phenomenal.

[A]

Mine I'm always taking my son to and fro from school. I see all the car accidents, the shutdowns. A great one is hey just wanting to know lights on Telegraph Road are out causing a backup.

[B]

Right and she'll timestamp it because you'll be back here. Here's an example one if you're looking for an example and I think I've given you the template as well looking for a small project landscapers hey community group name I'm hoping you guys can help me find the landscaper for a small garden bed in my front yard. I went outside and took a photo. You did of the front yard. Here's my project requirements and I don't want to waste anybody's time. I'm just looking for the front yard. Here's the size. My budget's 350. Okay you get the point that there's nothing about baking here. Not one thing. I think I've added this thing. I said I think I said somewhere I have people coming and going in my front yard. I just want it to look nice.

[A]

No it's not even such a far grab.

[B]

You do not have to even think about selling in every post like Corey's Telegraph Road and I'm delivering cookies so I noticed that the lights were out too far. Too far, too far. We're just creating that value added content. My second example I've got that munch with the cake again. I wouldn't use an animal. It's my good but it's the one after the example because it connects me to a baked good. I said favorite local sushi restaurant. I'm willing to try places I've already tried. I've it's been a minute since I ventured out for fish so where should I try first bonus if they include sake appreciation. This group has been a huge help so I came I thought of the this place first when I thought about.

[A]

Finding a compliment a little nod to the group.

[B]

Then I did pick for attention right. So that's a pick for attention. You can see that like people are use random photos. I would not use my baked goods necessarily. It's too close. Maybe Corey's kid eating a cookie is far enough away but again just flirt with it.

[A]

Me having been now on the community admin side it's imperative like I'm willing to overlook a lot of things when you made so much value to the group. Group like the kid eating the cookie. I'm willing to overlook that when you are only selling. It's so hard for me to not. Me and Heather are twins and the reason why she says we have split everything. Everything has been fair in our lives.

[B]

If Corey had one more candy than me we would split the one more candy.

[A]

So I it is in built into my body to make sure that it's.

[B]

Fair for everybody because we'll say if we ban and this is what I do in this year who marketing group. How can I let this person not abide by the same rules that this person was suspended or banned for? I have to keep it fair. It's disrespectful to the other people I've banned by letting this person get away with it. Yeah. So but again more engagement equals more engagement. So we want these things that introduce engagement. I'm asking questions if you. These groups are resources. You need the resources as a community group member. So treat it as that that's Corey and I have this make one non sales post. Before you make a sales post. Somebody's like I only know how to make sales post.

[A]

I'm like, oh girl, you can, you.

[B]

Can take it out and don't sell something. And that's how you make the other post. Yeah.

[A]

If you love a restaurant. Nothing is more valuable to me as a group admin for a local community group now that I've been three years baptized by fire than someone saying guys, I went to the new restaurant. Here's what I ordered, here's what I like.

[B]

Here's the picture of the menu.

[A]

Here's what the parking situation. They take reservations because it's going to perform real well.

[B]

Because they were a resource to the group.

[A]

Resource.

[B]

You may be thinking like girls, wow. These are. These take a lot of effort. These groups we can do short and sweet posts as well. They can towards my five. So here's an example of short and sweet post I've given you in the template. Hey group, what's the best farmer's market in our area? We talked about that in the farmers market podcast. I'm not selling, I'm just asking. Yeah, a lot of people have opinions so they'll typically respond. Hey group, was wondering when trash collection. Is it still on today? I know it's a holiday. Forgive me if it's already been asked.

[A]

Great one. Especially when you. If you're in a snow covered area. We always wonder.

[B]

I wonder too. Yeah. Does anyone know the price of eggs At Giant. That's our local grocery store. I'm a baker, and I run through a dozen eggs in just a day. A little close. Yeah, close.

[A]

But you didn't break a rule.

[B]

I've mixed it in. Last example, and these are just examples. Don't sleep with a new fusion restaurant that just opened. My husband and I just ate there, and it was fantastic. Highly recommend the mango sticky rice, but call ahead for reservations. It looked like it was filling up fast. Yeah. Again, all these count towards my five. They're very easy.

[A]

What we're not going to do is say, highly recommend Nathan Jones landscaping. He's amazing. And then when I clicked your profile, I realized that you're married to Nathan Jones.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Covert sales. That is not fair to the people around you. It's not fair to the admin team to make them do that work to figure it out.

[B]

There is a strategy where covert sales could work, but I would only, only, only, only, only, only introduce it after you've been a valuable community group member for months and months. And those look like, hey, guys, which. Which set should I choose for my cookie class designs? Okay, that's very, very close. Actually, I wouldn't even risk it. I'd post it on my sale Saturday.

[A]

Oh, I'd be like, sale Saturday? I'm not selling to you, but I do have a question, right? Yes.

[B]

And I just. If a group is so valuable, why would you want to.

[A]

You don't want to risk it.

[B]

You don't want to risk it. This is an added tip. Every comment on every post you make in a community group should be replied to. Because consider how the algorithm works. When you reply to a comment, it gives somebody a notification. They go and check it. Facebook says, wow, that person, Heather Miracle, got that person, Corey Miracle, to check a notification and stay on the platform longer. Facebook's goal is to serve ads. If Corey's on the platform longer, she saw more ads. So Facebook's gonna show my post to more people to see if I can get them to say, every time someone reacts comments to a post, it bumps it up. We'll talk about that in a second. And also thanking people for their reply makes them feel better.

[A]

Does they give you a. They. They gave your post some time and attention.

[B]

I wrote this really informative post, and some guy said back to me. He was like, that's a great point. That's well worded.

[A]

And I said, that tickled your.

[B]

Well, I had to go back. And I said, hey, thank you so much for the support. Because you're like, how am I going to thank a guy that thanked me? You can thank him, absolutely.

[A]

If they took the time to give you a recommendation, if they took time to give you feedback, to question about something, we're going to take the time and build a relationship relationship with our community because the community is who we want to buy from us.

[B]

Now keep in mind, Corey and I talked about this in many podcasts ago. Posting hilarious memes and then lobbing up a sales post on your business page can help that increase. If you recently joined a group or if you recently accepted friend request, Facebook will test to see if you like their content. Same with the community group. If I can get people to engage with my non sales posts, when I go to make that sales post, it's likely gonna show it to those same people again. Moving on. Selling in a community group, you'll never guess where we finally made it to. Take us through it.

[A]

Let's make money, honey. Sales posts should be strategic.

[B]

I think people are like, I did so great up here, so let me just throw logic out the window and here, buy this.

[A]

Yeah, here's the thing. What we want to do is just the same tips and tricks that we just read.

[B]

Hooks, good photography, formatting, mixing of types of content.

[A]

We want to do that with our sales posts. We didn't just put in all this work into the community group just to flop on sales day because the strategy still must continue. The strategy must continue and we need if we can make it work for us now. This is our time to come and shine and make our post work for us.

[B]

Here's what I'm going to say. Hot take. Skip a sales day if you have not built up a strong enough foundation yet.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So you may be like, well, sales day is on Saturday. And I'm like, I just joined a day because I listen to podcast today. So I'm going to just, I'm just going to. I'll start that value add a post next week.

[A]

Listen, you weren't in the group making sales before. You can wait an extra week together.

[B]

And Cory had a great one.

[A]

If you're not open for booking, it's frustrating for clients. You post something super cute, teacher appreciation. And you didn't say like, I do not have these anymore. Someone's going to DM you. Can I order these? And for you to be like, sorry.

[B]

We'Re closed for the that from the mouth of babes. We had somebody in our community group and they were like, can you please ask the sellers not to post if they don't have Availability. It's very frustrating.

[A]

It is very frustrating because when you reach out to me for a custom order, which I appreciate, I'm like, I'm so sorry. You're going to. I'm booked till December 2025. Please let me know if you need an order. January 2026. That's a waste of their time.

[B]

I would put a bad taste in my mouth.

[A]

Yeah. So at the end of the day, if you want to, you're like, why am Buck booked out? That's okay. Then do giveaways on your sales days post.

[B]

And you could say, hey guys, I'm booked out for orders, but I still want to be involved.

[A]

Yes, it's okay. I actually run the group and skip most sales.

[B]

Corey skips most when she's booked. I never see about it. When our class is filled. We don't talk about good classes. Your sales post should test different concepts. Again. Marketing, test, test, test, test. Use professional product photos and then maybe try a candid photo of you and your kids.

[A]

You spilled flour all over your face and you got your cute little apron on. That's. That will make me stop and read.

[B]

Use collages or individual product images in some posts. Use a link preview as your sales image or test dropping a link in the comments only are no links at all. No links at. We talked about that. Run a giveaway instead of a sales pitch. Yeah.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

Use a sales post to just introduce yourself and tag your business. Love that brand awareness.

[A]

We say to introduce yourself on your page quarterly.

[B]

Do it in the groups quarterly. Yeah, but what am I not selling? We're still part of the ecosphere stuff.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Don't be afraid to skip some sales weeks where you didn't make any value added content.

[A]

Love it.

[B]

So make every sales post unique. Corey, take us through that.

[A]

So Heather has example sales posts here and it's just to get your creative juices going. You don't have to follow it exactly. You don't have to use as many emojis as Heather does. But we want to have strategy behind our sales post.

[B]

Mix it up.

[A]

A diversified sales posting strategy will yield better results long term. Okay. We have a class.

[B]

We have a market.

[A]

Market. We also want to take customs because we got opening. We're not going to make our post do that much heavy lifting. It's too much to people's attention. Classes, customs, market. One week where we have a class, we really need to get butts and seats. We're going to post about the class. That's going to be the whole entire post. What they can expect. We're not going to make this post do everything our business needs. We're going to focus on one.

[B]

But you know what can do? Your business page. You know you can spend this post doing tagging your business page.

[A]

Yeah but because people are on borrowed time and they're literally scrolling, we're not going to give them this insane wall of text with 5 different points of what you have coming up. We're going to focus on one each week.

[B]

We're going to make that one do the heavy lifting and then we're going to diversify. Is it long or short? Integration Picture image. So in this example post, my hook is school's almost out for the summer so it's time to think about those end of year teacher gifts. And I've got the gift that'll guarantee an A as a parent. So we got a little bit of humor or there. Here's a colorful details or these crayon themed teachers cookies. I may able to bold that because I did it from desktop but you're going to need to hurry faster than a kid leaving study hall because these will sell out. Yeah, little fomo. A little call to action there. I used an unordered list and use the Apple emoji order here. A link to your website that's going to stifle the reach of my post because I've input a link there and.

[A]

You'Re like but, but they need the linked order. Here's the thing. Facebook wants people to stay on Facebook. That's where they make their money. So so when you put a link in your caption, Facebook is like it's going to take them somewhere where someone else is going to get many, not me. So yeah, we're going to lower the reach. So that's why we test do we.

[B]

Put it link there? We say DM me for the ordering. Like do you put it in the comments? Yeah. Price per box. I prefer putting pricing up front because again you're going to get that frustrated. Well everyone says I'm too expensive. You could have vetted them by putting the price.

[A]

Yeah, putting the price in there while you make may get fewer DMS to order. Like you're like but when I don't put the price everyone asked me what the price and I get so many more messages. Here's the thing, they're just trying to.

[B]

See if it's affordable for them. Right. Something you can do if you're like well I'm really good at selling and it's in a subjective pricing, not an Objective pricing where it's like a customs. Then you can say, DM me to order and then you can talk about it there. But on these like setup things where there's a price.

[A]

Yeah, let's get them in, get them out.

[B]

A total. I'll be selling. I prefer that. You can always bake more, but I prefer like, hey, I'm doing 10 right now. All you need to know is there's 10.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So somebody like, oh, shoot, I'll take five boxes. Include pickup location. Again, these are just examples. Pickup date. Let me know in the comments if I can pencil you in and I'll get you on the list for teacher's pet. I mean, really good parent. I'll drop the remaining boxes. Countdown in the comments as people place orders. Because once I'm out, I'm out. And I hate freedom to sound that again. I'm bumping my own. So I use group formatting. I have a high quality stage photo of this specifically. I think, think it fits well with the content. I have a call to action. I have a focus. Product Description. Granted, we're teaching a class, but I'm not gonna talk about that. Yeah, that would be a lot for this little post to do. I have an order process. How do I order? Where do I order what? What can I expect to have a pickup date? My. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna react to my own post. Corey talks about this all the time. I do work. She's also gonna comment on her own post. I do it all the time. I haven't built it in there saying, I'm gonna comment with the countdown. In fact, I should do like, okay. Hey, Corey, thank you so much. I got your order. I'm down to seven. Yeah, I love it.

[A]

I'm like, okay, we got six left.

[B]

Five guys.

[A]

Wow. And then what it does, it builds up fomo. It also boosts the post.

[B]

Ideally, we get some comments from people. What's going to happen is you're going to want to reply to each one of those comments. It's going to bump your thread. Right. But Cory's going to leave one abandoned comment, one little lonely guy. They don't know that they're lonely. But in 24 hours, she's going to come back and comment on that. Why? By default, groups are set to newest activity. Meaning when you go to a group, the newest activity on a post is going to be the first post you see. She's saving that one comment. So tomorrow, when it's not a sales day, she's still able to boost her sales posts in that yeah just give.

[A]

A little bit more life. It might not make you a million dollars but it'll.

[B]

None of this feels if it did we wouldn't be selling cookies. I know but it'll move. It'll move the needle quite a bit.

[A]

Yeah. Her sales post number 2 she's used my son. I will say he's cute there. He has grown a little bit of a mustache as now and he's turned into a teenage boy. But what I'm doing in this post is connecting to other moms because this is my kid. So I'm doing this post is doing a lot. It's connecting me to my community while also making sales. So Heather has group formatting. She's always a picture of humans face. Human faces do better than product photography. It just is a written rule. We identify with people with eyes.

[B]

You may be thinking that I'm only going to have eyeballs in my photos again. It's not every time.

[A]

It's not every time. Yeah CTA we have have a whole podcast episode on call to action so if you want to like deep dive into there scroll back a few podcast episodes I think we just did a few weeks ago a quick product description Making a single bows carry too much too much for that post to do. We have order info in the DMs. We're going to just test we're going to test if the link needs to be there if we're going to do dms. I hate DMS because things get lost.

[B]

In the store doesn't choose to use it so if she doesn't it doesn't work that way naturally I'm not going to use this right.

[A]

So then we're going to test it with no links. Maybe we're trying to get a little bit more reach on this because we really want to have a really good.

[B]

Pre sale so no I can do drop a comment if you'd like to place an order and in there I'm going to say hey message mixing cookie company and I'll take your order and when you do it's an autoresponder.

[A]

There you go. We're always going to react to our own post. There should never be a baker's post where I don't see at least one.

[B]

Reaction because why it gets my attention. It's another little emoji that hooks to the post post. You can see that coin. I joke around do the angry reacts and people always go check I I.

[A]

Have Heather she'll say I she already knows I don't have to say it anymore. I said if you see that I liked my own post, you give it a heart react. If I heart reacted to it, you only give it a. Like it has to be something else.

[B]

Because it'll split them out and it's quite colorful. It's colorful. And then we're gonna do the. Bump the content. Bump the content in 24 hours. So I have a bunny emoji. Did some bunny say they needed Easter cookies? I've got the print. Perfect set for you to hop on. Here's my kiddo Archer playing cookie model with me for these cookie pops. Trust me, he was not a fan of his bunny ears. He's got bunny ears. Yeah. I said drop a comment below and I'll DM you the order details. But you're going to need to be faster than Peter Rabbit. I'm only selling 10 of these cuties. I mean cookies, not the child. LOL. All right, a little humor there. And we have a third example post now. I'm using a picture of Corey and Cory and I and we're in the kitchen. It's a fun photo of our. Our faces. I said happy hashtag sales day. Depending on what that group has. I'm Heather with mixing bowl cookie company. Okay, I hyperlinked.

[A]

Yes, single cookie company.

[B]

I've been baking for just over six years, but I've been eating desserts my whole life. So I'd like to think I know what tastes really delicious at this point. Laugh a little joke, a little humor. Humor does really well. I wanted to introduce myself today so you can remember my name if or when you have a holiday or event coming up that you'd love a custom dessert made for. I offer cake pops, custom sugar cookies and cups. Cupcakes use emojis. All those right there. Separated that out. This is not a wall of text. This is a lot of line breaks. Also, if you're new to this group, welcome. You're gonna love it here. Community group admin keeps this place running like a well oiled machine and there's basically nothing this group's members can't help you find, location, hire or read about when it comes to city and state. Thanks so much for your support and I love all the members here who've made me who have allowed me to make their events a little sweeter. You all are the best. This is a shock up.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

This is. Is more why you should be in this group than buy from me. Yeah. What's going to happen is like people are like wow. She didn't even sell to me. She was really nice. She complimented the group. And now I remember mixing. Well, I'll go like her page. I have no links in here at all. There's going to be no links in any capacity.

[A]

Well, what she did was nodded at the people who've ordered from her prior. If you want to create a referral machine, you've got to water the grass that you have already started to grow. I have a lady. Lady.

[B]

I love her.

[A]

I don't know how I got on her roster.

[B]

I know her so well. Because Corey loves her so much.

[A]

She waters me insanely much. Instead of just thanking her and being like, hey, person, buy from me. Like, I'm baking for her outside as a thank you gift.

[B]

That was a great question Somebody had at what's Popping Con. They said, when somebody does tag me, what do. And Corey, this lady Vivian will say, hey, here's a couple bakers. Corey, be like, vivian, who are you? How. How are you so great? And also, Opie. Yeah, you know what? Vivian's right. I do offer sugar cookies. And here's what that look like. If you want to order from me, here's how to do it. We're going to thank the people. We're going to water the ground that's already green. They're our biggest bastion in a community group. Because I can tell people to buy from me, but when somebody else tells.

[A]

You to buy me, it's so much more valuable for someone else to recommend you than you to recommend yourself. If you want Die Hards that if you want people, you're like, they're always tagging someone else. You gotta. You gotta get with that strategy.

[B]

Candy lady.

[A]

Oh, there was. I love all these people. There's this candy lady. And, you know, I'm not in the candy space, so I have no ties to candy. There's never my.

[B]

I'm eating it.

[A]

I'm just eating it. I'm just a consumer. This candy lady will always recommend this other local baker.

[B]

Love the local baker.

[A]

But I'm like, that candy lady is always online, and she's always quick to recommend somebody. I would love to be able to get on her roster some way somehow.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

But I've never met her in person. We don't cross paths.

[B]

She doesn't live super close to me.

[A]

But she's in that Northern Virginia foodies group. One day, someone asked for, literally, the candy that she makes, and because I've always seen her name, I knew exactly who to tag in her place. Page to tag because she is the lady that makes that candy. And I was like, you know what? She'll. She may never get the notification. We're not friends. Who knows? Whatever. I've never got a response to it. So I was like, yeah, I'll just go off. Someone asked for cookies a couple days later. Now, this lady recommended both the baker she normally recommends and then my name was on there.

[B]

So it works. Psychology. A couple things I want to say. You may say, well, I know twins. You didn't even talk about this. I'm going to cut the line. I'm going to get somebody else to make my sales post and recommend me. Corey and I hate it. In fact, we hate that astroturfing plant so much that we ban people over it. Cory and I said, hey, it's not fair to others to break the sales rule by getting somebody else to sneak around it because we do allow recommendations on any day. So, hey, I've used a street company. It was great.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Corey said, within the parameters of a tree company, it's typically recommended once a year. If one day I wake up in the pending. The pending post are all about recommending this tree company. Five and day. You are astroturfing in a way that's breaking the group rules and it's bringing.

[A]

That target to your profile as a small business baker. I can. I know the amount of clients that I get. I'm having three clients come pick up their orders per week. Out of those numbers of people, multiply that by 52. Probably someone who shouts me out is once a quarter. Okay? I feel like I'm rocking socks and I'm getting once a quarter. That's what a natural progression is. Oftentimes people are busy. They paid you to the money. That was their thing. Thank you. When you use your clients as bait.

[B]

Mules. Mules.

[A]

You're marketing mules.

[B]

Right.

[A]

You're putting them at risk of getting banned and you're putting yourself at risk.

[B]

Of getting that target on you.

[A]

Yes. We call them review rings. And it's. When I've seen it in other groups and it's kind of toxic and people notice it eventually it makes me feel.

[B]

Like, well, that's not fair. Even the admins, you know, it's even worse.

[A]

But here's the thing. Real estate agent would love to be able to sell 20 houses a night, but I can bake 20 cookies a night and give them to people and be like, go recommend me in this.

[B]

Community group and make sure you. I can always tell. It's always tagging the page tagging the website. So tagging the person and saying thank you so much for this amazing thing. And I'm like, you know one, it's against the rules. The you have to tell somebody when you're paid.

[A]

Yeah. Here's the thing. And in this local community group that I run, I did not know this was happening. Happening. I needed a cleaner. I was tired of cleaning and I needed a cleaner. Someone was rec. These people were recommending this cleaner all the time. I said I'd be dumb not to hire this cleaner. She's apparently the best cleaner that's ever happened upon this area. I hired her. Worst experience ever. One she never showed. She kept canceling. So I wasn't even able to to vet it. But I, I realized what she was doing was having any feedback. Yeah. You got a discount on your future cleaning when you came to this group and tagged her.

[B]

Right. Same happened with that car repair shop from yester year. Everyone was tagging that I thought was valuable. Compromise.

[A]

Non valuable.

[B]

Yes. Meaning I can't. Then you'll start to see it when people are like please only recommend somebody you've actually seen.

[A]

Like because it's a like a hostage situation. I get there's like you're a part of networking bis I was saying B the biggest offender networking groups and you're like I have to hock their wares otherwise I can't put something in the little. And it goes there. No, it's. We don't want to compromise our clients. We don't want to compromise our reputations.

[B]

But here's what I'm going to tell you. What if somebody's really active in the group and does all the right things and does a value added content and then somebody else comes in, said I had a great experience with them. I'm going to be like that was probably legitimate and I'm not going to be worried about it. To wrap this up, community groups are conversation. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. If you want people to comment in your sales post, guess whose name I should see commenting on every single sales post in that group? Yours. If people. If you want people to engage with your intro post, guess what? Every intro post should have a comment from you. Yes. Welcoming them, asking them more. Be involved because community groups are resources. Be a part of the conversation. Add value, respect other people. Tag other vendors. Tag other members.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Say hey person who recommended me, this landscaper I ended up calling them. Had a great experience.

[A]

Yeah, had a great experience. I love to throw it Back If I got a recommendation I saw and I got it from someone else in the group, I'll be like, thank you Chloe for recommending this person. Hired them, they were amazing. Now we've created a network.

[B]

Right. Also just scroll through the group. Somebody was asking Corey's community group which skincare product is best for wrinkles. I was like no one. Here's a website. I made no money from that, but I've created a connection with somebody. Somebody. Whether or not a year from the game is not the ultimate goal. Yes, being a part of the community is. When you're a part of the community, sales won't sell themselves. It will.

[A]

And I will be honest. While it has been hard to create a community group, the sales I have gotten from it makes it a no brainer. So if you can avoid the time and energy to make a community group and go on the curtails of someone who's done the hard work for you. But appreciate that, appreciate them and add the value for them. It can can be just. I mean you could, you could call it a. You could be like, I don't need to do any more marketing. I'm truly just doing it.

[B]

I agree. Okay, moving on. Moving on. Cookie college. Cookie college. Yesterday, last night, Corey, the cookie class kids added a new class. It is the cookie class kits is everything you need to plan, market and manage. Teach a in person cookie class. This year we're doing our tertiary holiday. It's been doing this for years. If you sign up for the cookie college, you get all three years of content. Next year we're going back to our primaries the mains. You'll see Valentine's Day, Easter, which is fun. But this year we did Mom's Day. Two months ago we did Cinco de Mayo. Last month, which you could still use. Nothing says Cinco de Mayo on it. You could still use it for any orders.

[A]

You have a lot of Fiesta.

[B]

My first Fiesta margaritas and the girls. But also this one. Yesterday we did a Father's day class. This is the first year we've done a Father's day class. And it has a golf ball. It was very cute. Wet on wet technique. It has a. It has handwriting cheers on a beer gooseneck beer bottle. And then it has a tie using wet on wet. And then we spell out the word dad in a kind of puzzle piece type set. Very cute. It actually wasn't my favorite but I was. As I was working on it yesterday, it really grew on me. Okay, good. It's masculine. It's kind of More towards dad jokes. And even if you don't teach the cookie class, you can turn those into DIY kits for mom to decorate with dad or for dad to be forced to come to a good class. Most of the classes we teach, every five classes a man will show up.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So this might be a fun way to kind of get dads involved in decorating with kids and stuff like that. So that class dropped in our cookie class kids membership. That's a $63 a month membership. Sign up, download everything from this year and cancel. Yeah, you got one over on us. Or to sign up for the Cookie College. I almost guarantee you'll like it so much you'll stick around. It's 76 and you get the 2023, the 2024 and the 2025 classes. Since it's the eight, that means next month on the seventh, you'll get another.

[A]

Class which will be an independence Day.

[B]

I have everyone begged 4th of July. 4th of July you should get. So you guys can check that out atthecookie college.com. see everything we offer there. The cookie class kits. We also have the baker's business basics, the digital downloads. Last month I did school textures.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

This month I think we're going to do a thank you Cookie cutters and prints.

[A]

Can I ask you, There was a post that went up yesterday in the sugar cookie marketing about someone who loved the cookie college. And how could you read that as that it was just so insanely kind. If you don't know the cookie college, it's a monthly membership. It's designed to get you more optimized for sales. The way that we laid down this podcast is the way that it's written, the way that it's on the website that you just followed along with. That's what you can expect when you join the cookie College. A step by step, hold your hand. Done with you marketing. It's fantastic. There's been so many people that have seen positive results from it that I can confidently say we can help you too. If you want to make more money in 2025, if you want to make this bakery thing work, let us help you do it.

[B]

Okay. I'm so close. I actually. Okay, here we go. So close. Ann said it. Ann Elizabeth. She said hi twins and sugar cookie marketing friends. I used to be in this group a lot when I started a few years ago, but haven't been on as much as time has progressed. Progressed. I think what I've learned often and I'm. I think of what I've learned Often. And I'm so grateful. I just want to stop by and share some things that I hope will help others. I had no business experience when I started my cookie business. That cookie college subscription was probably the most important thing I did that made my business a success. We did not pay this later, right?

[A]

No.

[B]

I was a little surprised.

[A]

I know.

[B]

And the things I learned allowed me to launch my business in a state I come from and then in a new state where we unexpectedly had to rel relocate. If you haven't signed up and you're starting a business or struggling to reach the level of success you'd like, like I can't recommend it enough. The states I lived in had very few. It had very different cultures, markets and needs. But following the basics that I learned from the subscription. And this group worked equally as well in both of those locations. Hold on. What? I've lost myself.

[A]

Where did I go?

[B]

Oh, both those places where I started, I knew tons of people. That really helped a lot too. But I knew nobody here when I moved. And following the same general formula and marketing strategies work just as well. It just took a little longer to build that local support. But making the connections with small business owners here and going out of my way to make community donations, which is always an important part to me, has really helped. I really love the approach from the twins where we see fellow bakers as allies rather than competitors. I feel like we're all offering something unique to which we are, to who we are. And we're not just selling a product. We're selling feelings and experiences which is unique to each of us. Plus, I really enjoy and admit admire seeing so many fabulous creations. I feel like not worrying about what anybody else is doing outside of admiring them has made having a business fun and taken a lot of the pressure. That was difficult in the beginning where I felt completely intimidated by how much better everyone else was. I couldn't figure out why my business took off so much. And I really do think that the marketing is the most important. It's more important than the product. In some ways. That's a hot take. And I agree. Yeah, she said there are a ton of talented bakers out there, but I do think we all have our own little niche, and finding that and promoting it can make us all successful. I would not be where I am today without the cookie college and this group. And I just wanted to stop by and say thank you so much. I never thought I could successfully start or even run a business, let alone do it twice. And I knew I couldn't have done it without the wisdom here shared here. If you are on the fence about the cookie college or following some of the strategies in this groups, I encourage you to embrace them both as both were important and I don't think I would have had as success successful a business had I just done one or the other. Thank you so much to the twins and this group. I'll still be around. I love seeing your post here and if I don't participate a lot I do just wanted to say thank you how I want to sign up for it.

[A]

That's nice but that's what you can expect in the college. You get a private Facebook group, a private podcast. You get that freebie photos to help you sell. I did these pencil cookies and it was so funny. The lady who commented on it, she's actually a local baker to me and I don't look at her as competition. I look at her as community. She said, Corey, because of that post I was able to sell 30 of them. Didn't have to make one 30 cookies to be sold. Because you used a freebie photo. I made the cookies. I made three of them and good enough for a photo and she was able to use that to make some sales.

[B]

It was so funny that Vivian lady that you liked tagged somebody and I was like and they responded to her tag. She tagged both of you and the other one was a baker and I was like wow, this copy is written really well. Like a picture.

[A]

It's Andrew. Andrew.

[B]

I was like, wow, that that girl. I think I scrolled through all the baker's post and I could tell who was in the cookie garage or had been and who hadn't been. Okay, moving on. If you guys want to check that out because that, that that's the best review it could possibly given you. If that doesn't if you like the content this podcast, go jump in there. We talk about it in depth. You can sign up or check it [e-mail], they're recurring memberships. Cancel anytime. I'm here to help you. If you have any questions heather sugarcookiemarketing.com and I can answer this for you. Help you find a membership that's best suited for you. Moving on to the stupid questions. We have a bunch of stupid questions. If I read if Corey chooses your text today, she can't see what I can see. I can't email heather sugarcookiemarketing. Stupid Car Tray. StupidTech.com will send you a car tray if you don't win. You can still buy one. 15% off stackable. I think they're running a mother's day sale as well. Meaning you can stack the 15% off. That code is sugar.

[A]

Yeah. Number two is my choice.

[B]

Okay. So you don't have to read them. You don't have to count them too. This is so funny. Somebody just sent and this isn't the winner, but they just sent a bunch of numbers. Listen, if you're playing this isn't the one winner, but if you're playing the lotto and have to pick numbers, I would pick 1-7-2430. It sounds like someone's phone number. Okay. Winter Haven, Florida.

[A]

Winter Haven, Florida. What a contradictory name there. Winter Haven, Florida.

[B]

Freezing warm. Hey, ladies. The last podcast you talked about a new sponsor, cookie design labs and mentioned that you had made a little of video of it in use. She said, I think I was driving. I may have misunderstood, but since I was it was made during the event that shall not be named. I figured it made may not exist still. That is correct.

[A]

You're right.

[B]

You're right. Will you be doing a video on it again sooner? Does it exist somewhere and I'm missing it? Thanks for all you do. And a big shout out to whichever one of you or if it's both, for uploading all the lives on YouTube so we don't lose these great resources. Okay, Winter Haven, you won. Email [e-mail] what she's asking is. Our newest podcast sponsor was also a vendor for the Vendee Blendy and It's Cookie Design Lab.com. it is a very simple platform to create cookie cutter STLs very, very quickly. Quickly, Very, very quickly.

[A]

Very quickly.

[B]

Right. So it's like in and out five minutes. Oh, I'm sorry. Probably like two minutes once you know what you're doing and 30 seconds once you're really dialed in. I did do a an example because Corey Cook doesn't print the cutters so she makes those promo videos for the vendors. So I made this one. I did it as a Facebook live. I did delete it because it was all about the vendor. Right. I'll have them. I'll offer her. Oh, that'd be nice. To go live.

[A]

That'd be nice.

[B]

And walk us through the platform. It's very simple, but it is worth somebody telling you where to click.

[A]

Yeah, I would. I would need just a little know how.

[B]

If you are in the cookie college, you do have that class. I added it to the setting up a bamboo A1 mini and printing a cookie cutter. We do design it in cookie design lab there. So I'll get more information from. Actually, she's just. She keeps saying, girl, you're not writing me back.

[A]

Okay. It's on your to do list.

[B]

To do list. So Winter Haven, you won. If you guys want to enter in next week, it's 571-556-5644. Or if you're on Spotify, you can just click text into the podcast. Let me check another one. Not a winner, but still a vibe. Hey twins, I have a stupid question about scammers. If I don't respond to them via Facebook messenger, will it hurt my account and make it look like I don't respond? People, that's a good question. I know that I could use an autoresponder, but to be honest, I don't know how to set that up lol. And I find them very annoying to be on the receiving end of. Agreed. Yes. Right now I've been playing games with the scammers and making up the town where I live and telling them that I only take payment through a carrier pigeon. But as entertaining that is, it is a waste of time and I prefer to ignore them at this point. Just worried about whether this will make me look bad to Facebook, if that makes sense. Thank you for all your help, especially with the ridiculous question like this one.

[A]

Facebook actually did away with the positive tattletailing. Yeah, it still does. It'll say tipfully response. It used to have if you responded in a certain amount of time, it was blue and it was like this person responds super fast. They've done away with it because they know the spam is going around.

[B]

Okay. A of lot. A lot of ticketing systems, like, you'll say thank you so much, but they have to reply to you because they have to be the last. And they'll be like, you're welcome. Be like, thanks. Yeah, you're welcome.

[A]

Please don't reply while it's still there. And it still does count. I don't think it's as valuable as it once was back in the day.

[B]

In our local foodies group. Someone I don't. I believe in a don't feed the trolls thing. Time is money. So where you're like, hey, you know, I'm joking around with those. We get a lot of people saying, here, I trolled a skill scammer. We actually delete those posts because I don't want to encourage that behavior. Yeah, because not all the time. This game and that's the dangerous part. The scammers are really good at looking like not scammers. Now interesting thing they're doing, they're screenshotting pictures on your page and say I want this, I want you to remake this.

[A]

What's so funny is my customers do that too. So it's really hard to spot them. So kind of messing with them is a dangerous territory we'd much rather not leave them respond to because your time is money at the end of the day.

[B]

A couple ways you can do that. You can change your page to only be visible in your country of origin. Right. So we're not shipping to Italy. I don't need Europe to see what I'm doing. I it stops some scammers. But if the scammers have taken over a profile, second best way is to see if they're six hours away. They're not ordering from you. Third best way, and I really like Corey's approach is like, hey, thank you so much for an order. I take all my order details through this link, fill that out and then I'll follow up with you. What's going to happen is the scammer is not going to leave that page and not going to fill out the order link. And if they do core actually you can add the page agreement there.

[A]

Yeah, it is. My autoresponder is.

[B]

I agree. And again with marketing, everything is a give and take.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

In a perfect world, everybody can respond to we want use autoresponders. And I agree. I think they're kind of annoying, but they also save time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So there's that give and take. What you can do is maybe not have it as an autoresponder but have a copy and pasted text. Yeah.

[A]

You can put it in your notes app. Just copy and paste it.

[B]

Autoresponder that where you'd go set that up. It has these merge tags meaning I can make it say Corey's name and I can make it say the name and that makes it a little bit more personable. I sometimes like to say this is an autoresponder and I would love to take your word.

[A]

This isn't manned. This is autoresponder.

[B]

Busy in the kitchen.

[A]

If you fill out this form, I'll get it and get you a response in two or three days.

[B]

So I would say, you know, always have your payment set. I like that. Hey, go to this form because they typically don't if they ask you to. If they say I only have Venmo, no, we've got a problem. If they say I only use Zelle. We've got another red flag. Someone said not all of these are red flags. No, but the more red flags that pop up, the more indicative that it is a problem. Unfortunately, there's no guaranteed way to say this is a scam profile. A lot of times if you see they're very far away. If they just joined the community group where they found you, that's often an indicator of it. And if they have very few friends, very few, that'd be me. I think you just summon me up for another thing. But like nobody's going to place an order from six hours away.

[A]

No. Yeah, absolutely. But it's good to not be like, you know, you're a loser, get off my bed. Because it could be someone placing an order because they're coming.

[B]

They don't have a lot of friends. They don't use Facebook. So it's. You got to. Hi, twins. I'm seeing a lot of people mention ghost profiles being their second admins. But I also heard you mention having second profiles being against Facebook terms of service. Do you recommend ghost profiles or trusted second person person. This is another great question. Ghost profiles are not typically managed. What she's saying is a second. A complete second profile. Not a SALT account, a second login. It's against Facebook's terms of service. A lot of times people don't manage from experience.

[A]

I have Corey Miracle who is getting banned often. And I have Corey Mira. When Corey Miracle faced a ban the last time it did affect my alt account. I lost access.

[B]

It affected my kit count.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

On the same IP address.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What I'm gonna. The problem is, and what I'd love to tell you do is find a trusted person. Now we have another liability. If that person clicks on those links, those trademark scam links. Also that person tends to get a lot of notifications. You can disable notifications, but that does it disable it. So again, it's one of those hybrid things. Which one is the least amount of risk? Corey and I are admins on each other's pages, but we're also invested. A VA would be a good option.

[A]

For you because maybe that just has a profile. I would just make sure that their password's locked and lighted and the ghost.

[B]

Profile is managed by you. As long as it's.

[A]

It just can affect. It can be affected probably.

[B]

And I hate to say that would be the one I go for if I was a one man band.

[A]

I know. But when I lost access, I had to go through your stuff.

[B]

It was crazy. It Was crazy. It's not my favorite. We have to pick one or the other. Last one. Hello, ladies. Texting in from New Jersey. One of the few states where it's illegal to pump your own guest. Every time I go to New Jersey, I'm like, what are they doing? Why is he coming to me? What's he doing? I know you have to tip them.

[A]

Because usually if someone walks up to you here, you got your.

[B]

Lock them doors.

[A]

You got your. Your punchers out. Come on, come on.

[B]

Call them your punchers.

[A]

Your little puncher.

[B]

I would be curious. New Jersey.

[A]

This is my little puncher.

[B]

Do you want to see my. You want.

[A]

You want to fight me?

[B]

I'd be curious. New Jersey. How much are you supposed to tip the pumper guys?

[A]

Do you think you have to tip?

[B]

Absolutely do. Yeah. They wait by there for it and they just. That's what you're supposed to do. I don't know. Whenever I go to New Jersey, I tip the.

[A]

Listen, I'm not one to leave my area of expertise, which is Northern Virginia. So I don't. Don't know.

[B]

I think it's the only state I've ever had to do it. I'm not sure if more than one state. I'm sure it's used to be so much more Gam was like, yeah, we never pumped around.

[A]

So funny.

[B]

I don't know. First off, she. I love your podcast Facebook groups. The college, which I've joined twice. Such a wealth of knowledge and know how shared across the board. In the past, I've loved participating in the sugar cookie college marketing collabs. I think it's the sugar cookie group. We haven't done them in. They were a fun way to connect with other bakers while boosting engagement at the same time. I saw a Facebook poll. You may be starting one and I'm.

[A]

Wondering we need to. Girl, girl. Thank you for that reminder.

[B]

I'm going to defend myself. I would love to showcase a cookie or bake that puts a spotlight on another unique, interesting hobby of a baker that we can then use as caption to write a blurb about the baker. I like that. So she's like, if you're a sewer, make a cookie. Yeah, that's sewing.

[A]

I like that.

[B]

That's a good one. Also, are there any hacks for IG trying to be more consistent in posting, but engagement is hit or miss and I get frustrated when I post a pre order. Not all my followers see my offerings. Thanks and have a great day. The reason why we. I love what she's saying is when we got all the bakers together and then we'd go to Instagram and on a single day for one hour we'd post the content and then we'd all go engage with each other. It was engagement. Manufacturing engagement did really well, but it was also really interesting.

[A]

Yes, we're gonna do it.

[B]

Okay. Can you manage it Feature the fire.

[A]

I'm gonna need you to make the event.

[B]

Okay. I can.

[A]

When I said please make an ad so I could sell these Easter kits and you did not.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And I still have the boxes.

[B]

Okay. How far on is the reason why is Instagram did away with hashtags? So we're gonna have to. And we talked about it'll just be a new one time use hashtag for this collab. Which totally fine. We can do that. Do you have any strategy for what's there on Instagram for Instagram?

[A]

You know, if you want to bypass, you can always run an ad on Instagram and show it to the people who follow you. It's a way to bypass that. That choke hold reach. Instagram is a little bit of a beast. It's a consistency game. You gotta post reels, you gotta post the content. You can't just show up one day and make a sale. You have to invest the time that is commenting on other people's things. Maybe making a little Instagram pod for yourself where you and your best baker friends can. When you post, you put that link into your little ch chat and then they come and they engage with you. That's how you're going to get your post in more. More feeds. A lot of times what Instagram is trying to do is compete with TikTok. TikTok is information based. Let me show you how to make a sourdough loaf. Instagram went from here's my pretty picture of my perfect set to now they're really trying to push content that creates that kind of engagement, which is a lot of real.

[B]

So. So what you're going to kind of do is introduce a real like hey guys, I want to tell you I'm actually baking for my pot pop up. It's in a week or so. But I want to show you this interesting like thing you can do to.

[A]

Get bubbles out of your icing, that is.

[B]

But then you have a bakery. Here's the thing.

[A]

If you go around town, if you're setting up for a market is a great one. If you visited a farmer's market just showcasing it, your reels don't have to ruin your page. They can live on the reels profile so you don't have to post it to your main.

[B]

Archive them when you're done.

[A]

Yeah, for sure. So it's really trying to create content that's useful for your end users.

[B]

Remember, you were like, but I signed on. It was just pictures. And then. But Facebook's like, we're losing people with the pictures, so we need you to do reels, guys. We'll reward you if you do that. Yeah.

[A]

So they're really trying to push that.

[B]

They are. We have a Facebook Live and it's a good end.

[A]

What is it?

[B]

It is on Saturday, June 7th. Okay. Jade said she emailed me the other day. She's like, I wanted to reach out because in less than a year I've gotten 20 Google reviews. Nine of those have been been posted since January this year.

[A]

It's fantastic.

[B]

And she says, I did this without verbally asking and without a follow.

[A]

I need whatever this is.

[B]

She is. Because I like. Because like you guys said in the podcast, once they pay me to obtain their cookies, the transaction feels like it's over. They don't owe me anything. Under said. I don't even have a business card, but what I do have is an Eddie.

[A]

Leave them on the hang.

[B]

She. Oh, you can tune in. Okay. Here's the title of it. She said. And I like, she got we going. So getting Google reviews using an Eddie, exclamation part question mark with Jade. So that will be on. That'll be at noon Eastern standard time on June 7th. I'll post that. I'll post that information.

[A]

That's fantastic. So let's move on to our sponsors. Without them, we also wouldn't have this podcast. So we need you as listeners. I'm sorry.

[B]

She took my event description template and wrote it for me. Oh, she loves yours. She loves you.

[A]

First up, we have the backers cook. If you want better photography and you're like, I really want to utilize community groups. I need better photos to stop the scroll. You need the backers code. The backers Co has 25% off for you, exclusive to the Sugar Cookie marketing group. You're going to use code Sugar cookie. It'll give you 25% off. That is an unheard of discount. They did not offer it last year. They are offering it this year. If you want to up your photos. If you see a photo that I've posted in the group and you're like, kind of like the feel of that. It's on the backers co back.

[B]

Love it. Uh, Daisy.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

What's Popping Con was put on by Daisy Makes slash Daisy Bakes.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

She said once. What's Poppin? Con's over. I want to advertise Daisy Makes Daisy Banks. Yeah, I haven't gotten that information.

[A]

It's Daisy Makes Innovations.

[B]

Okay. And that is her cake pops.

[A]

Molds.

[B]

Molds. Yes. Corey made one. It was very cute. Yeah, it was very, very cute. I actually made everyone in our family make one.

[A]

I did.

[B]

So everyone got the feel right. And then we all ate them. Our cake pops.

[A]

Yeah. The problem with cake pops, when you roll them, they're very heavy and they do tend to fall off the stick. And that's what people complain most about. Like, my ball's too heavy. It's falling off the stick. These cake pop molds are flat and they stay on the stick so much better.

[B]

Why are you looking at me? I've been taking the wrong way. I'm so sorry.

[A]

You have to be appropriate when talking about bakes. Thank you. But if you want to check this out, they have just about every. Every shape they were making. Such stinking cute. It was a heart one. So you're like, oh, I could. I got a heart one.

[B]

I can.

[A]

Only for Valentine's Day. No, they made heart apples for teacher appreciation. It was so stinking adorable.

[B]

So I'll get more information from her about how she wants us to talk about that. Yeah, but that's where we came. That's the what's Poppin Conference by Daisy Makes Innovations. So you can find her on Instagram. Next up, we have Eddie, the edible food printer. Now, I'm just gonna say this. Eddie had to raise the price of Freddie. I just saw a post.

[A]

She's saying, Freddie, Eddie are both owned by Primera.

[B]

Right. And I don't know. And people were like, are they going to raise the price of Eddie? I. No clue. They don't. They don't confide in me anything. Yeah. But I'm like, if you were thinking about it, I'd buy it now. For what? Eddie?

[A]

Yeah, Right. Now, yesterday they raised their price price of Freddy and he's not even out yet.

[B]

So you're not.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You're not missing a thing.

[A]

But yesterday it wasn't like, we can have like four days to like, book him or whatever.

[B]

I think you have. I think there was a cut off day, like if you wanted to see if you could put lace. Yeah.

[A]

It was like May 7th, though.

[B]

I know. So it's May 8th today is what it said. Okay. I. They said nothing about it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

But I'm just saying if the logic tracks. What if they raise the price? If it were me and I had the funds to do and I was on the fence.

[A]

So what is Eddie? Eddie is a direct to food printer. He prints right on the top of royal icing airbrush. No more stencils. Heard of her. Eddie is the coolest thing since lice. Still am obsessed with him.

[B]

Yeah. Yes.

[A]

It's. I look at him as such a tool in my toolbox.

[B]

The digital downloads last month.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Dropped a week. So if you have a membership, go log in. Are all these paper textures I actually had to make like line paper. You can print on an Eddie.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

This cute stuff. And then over top of that I did like grades. Like you can add these graphics on top of that or you can turn into a thank you teacher.

[A]

It's great. It's been great. And end of the year is coming up. That is such a fantastic way to say thank you to the teachers.

[B]

Thank you to the students. Now these printing that college rule line paper.

[A]

I know I did that. It was so great.

[B]

And Cory, was that your thank you cookies? Super cute stuff. Eddie's capable of that. Moving on. We have Royal batch by Bakey Bake. It's a meringue powder that Corey loves. In our cookie class we just taught. Corey gave everyone a packet. I did two ladies forget their little gift bag where these packets are in.

[A]

Like we have that.

[B]

And I was like oh darn. They immediately. Can you mail us that? We.

[A]

I thought I kept them for months.

[B]

Code is SUGAR10OFF. She has these.

[A]

No. Code is twins. But you're close.

[B]

You. You use code. Twins don't use code. Sugar be yelling at your computer. Code is if you go to sugarcookiemarketing.com, scroll the bottom. You'll get all these discount codes if you're not tracking because I don't.

[A]

Royal batch has come out with ugly. I've not seen it or heard of it yet. I will be trying. It wasn't on the website when we tried last time. So it might be on this time. Really truly. La la la. It already has white food coloring in it. The royal batch does. Which white food coloring, Corn syrup and vanilla extract. That's why I love it so much. And if you wanted to know, I finally posted my recipe a trade and true in the baking.

[B]

I saw that.

[A]

So if you wanted to snag it and grab it it you can use.

[B]

It, abuse it, love it, use it.

[A]

Make it your own so you can do it and then cover the last thing which Is the cutter shop technically what the cutter maker.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm so sorry. Sorry. Emilia, if you're listening, she's. She's probably like, girl, I have emailed you 50 times. I'll send it to her today. Okay. However, Cookie Design Lab. Is that what the mail. The text in question one was asking about Cookie Design lab dot com. It is a STL creator. The reason why I like it so much is like Corey could do it and I wouldn't. I could talk her through it on the phone. Yeah. Fusion360 is where I typically make cookie cutters for Corey. I actually use a Bella plugin, which is pretty neat, but it is my. My computer is trying to catch its breath just opening the application because it's.

[A]

A massive application and cutters is the tiniest side of it.

[B]

So it's a desktop, meaning I have to download the application, I have to open on my computer and I have to design the cutter and I have to export the cutter. Cookie Design Lab is a web based app, meaning I open it up, I upload my PNG shape, it auto generates the cutter file. I click save export stl. It's pretty neat. It's pretty neat. It's pretty. It's just the ease of use and the quickness is really.

[A]

And that's what we need as bakers. We need to shave down some of the learning curve. Curve and really just.

[B]

And while I'm the person who would be able to design a bridge in Fusion 360, I don't. I'm not that person. I want to be that person. I don't have time to be that person. So Cookie Design Lab steps in stage left and is like, hey, let me help you do that.

[A]

Nice. I feel like this podcast is extra long. Do you have a twin trist?

[B]

We'll just do.

[A]

You was twin to interest. My twin terse is my son has a project and you had to bring some food from around the nation.

[B]

Of course. I love it and it's my time to shine.

[A]

We're doing French macarons so we had to make 30 for the class due tomorrow. Tomorrow.

[B]

That is twin resting.

[A]

It is boring. But go on.

[B]

I. Cory and I drove down to. Oh, I'm going to say my twin Corey. I traded in her car for another car, a used car in the Carvana coin tower. I don't know if you guys have seen these. I've seen it. It's off of 95. We went. Cory's like, do you want to go? I was like, you? Yes. I thought you would say no.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Just to see a little. Go to get a car from a vintage car.

[A]

Popping now.

[B]

So they give her a giant fake coin. A giant fake coin. And she puts it. I said to the guy, I mean, I'll be honest. Maybe Carvana's on its last leg.

[A]

It feels a little less.

[B]

Like it felt a little forgotten. But it didn't matter. The stick was there, right. I was hook, line, and sinker. I say to the guy, listen, I want the entire experience. Can I run outside around the building?

[A]

Ran like kook. And.

[B]

And I said, I want to see the vending machine. If you guys haven't seen the Carvana vending machine, just Google it. It's what you. It's. It's weird. It's a wild glass building where cars come out of the vending machine. It sucks a car up, and it brings it to you. So we put the coin in. Cory just chucked it, and actually, I didn't get to touch it. We run outside. Run, run, run. The whole. The whole building mobilizes. It grabs a car and it brings it down. He's like, run back in. Because it does kind of this show for you. So the whole building. Nobody's the. In this building. No. The lights are kind of technically off, oddly. Whatever. So the whole building's like. And the car turns around, and then it spits it out. That's so funny. It was. I appreciate marketing that Carvana disrupted an industry in making used car sales. No hackle pricing. It took it from CarMax, but it made it, like, interesting. Although that is not a functional business model for how desolate the building. Right, right. How fun, though, for the. You can see this car tower from 95 the interstate. Yeah. That's a form of marketing it to get it that close to 95. It's in the desolate side of the city.

[A]

If we had to come to the marketing table, I'd be like, there's some pluses and there's some cons.

[B]

Right. But that's my two entries. Buying a used car from a car vending machine. It was wild. Wild.

[A]

And I said, heather, we'll never do this again. So would you like to participate? And she did. And she woke up early, and that's something she doesn't do.

[B]

I said, I am going to put a coin in a building and see a car bomb.

[A]

All right, guys, bless you for putting up with us. I appreciate you listening. Without you, this podcast would be just me and Heather talking, which is often of our lives.

[B]

Be doing that at lunch today. Yeah.

[A]

So thank you. You'll find this. Are you uploading today or tomorrow?

[B]

I upload the podcast today, the YouTube video I try to do tonight, and then Wednesday, Wednesday. Newsletter goes out tomorrow at 8am Eastern on Friday, so.

[A]

Great.

[B]

Yeah, sorry. We're going to try to get them out. My bad.

[A]

Thank you, guys. See you later.