216. Baking it Down - Take a Stab at a Cookie Collab

Summary

Podcast Summary: Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪

Episode 216: "Take a Stab at a Cookie Collab" Release Date: June 17, 2025

In Episode 216 of Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing, hosts Heather and Corey Miracle delve into the art of cookie collaborations, exploring their significance, historical context within the Sugar Cookie Marketing (SCM) community, and providing actionable insights for bakers looking to enhance their marketing strategies through collaborative efforts.

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1. Introduction to Cookie Collabs

The episode kicks off with Heather and Corey sharing personal anecdotes about their recent beach trip, setting a relaxed and personable tone. Quickly transitioning from their vacation tales, they introduce the main topic: cookie collaborations within the SCM group.

Corey (00:35): “If you are a baker looking to grow your business, cookie collabs are a fantastic way to increase your reach and engagement.”

2. Understanding What a Cookie Collab Is

Heather and Corey define a cookie collab as a focused, day-long event where multiple bakers design cookies around a specific theme and share their creations on social media using a designated hashtag.

Heather (08:26): “A collab is a single hour in which a bunch of bakers get together to design a cookie based on a specific theme and post it to a specific social media profile using a certain hashtag.”

3. Historical Context: Collabs in SCM Community

Reflecting on their journey, the hosts recount past collabs initiated in 2020 and 2021, highlighting various successful themes such as the Susan Reed scam awareness and creative designs like cookie logos and Christmas in July.

Corey (05:03): “We created a Susan Reed collab to educate bakers about the scam, turning it into a community-wide awareness effort.”

Heather (07:28): “Themes like 'Last Cookie, First Cookie' and 'Pumpkin Patch' not only engaged our members but also showcased their evolving skills.”

4. Details of the Upcoming Collab Event

The primary focus of the episode is the announcement of an upcoming "Meet the Baker" collab scheduled for Friday, June 27, 2025, at 10:00 AM EST. This event encourages participants to post personal photos alongside their cookies to humanize their brands and foster deeper connections with their audiences.

Corey (12:08): “We're inviting 75 bakers to participate, aiming for 75 genuine comments to boost engagement significantly.”

5. Reasons to Participate in a Collab

Heather presents a compelling list of 10 reasons why bakers should engage in cookie collabs, emphasizing benefits such as:

• Increased Engagement: Personal photos tend to receive higher interaction rates.

  Corey (14:30): “Posting a photo of yourself can perform far better than showcasing just your cookies.”

• Algorithm Boost: Enhanced visibility on platforms like Instagram through strategic hashtag use.

  Heather (16:36): “Engaging during the collab period can reset your Instagram algorithm, improving your content’s reach.”

• Content Generation: Provides fresh and varied content ideas for social media.

  Heather (25:32): “This is a great way to see photo shoot ideas and save them for future use.”

• Community Building: Strengthens relationships with fellow bakers and potential long-term collaborators.

  Heather (18:47): “Beyond marketing, it’s a fun way to discover like-minded bakers and build friendships.”

6. Tips for Successful Collab Participation

To maximize the benefits of the "Meet the Baker" collab, Heather and Corey offer practical tips:

• Timely Posting: Ensure your participation post goes live precisely at the designated time to maximize visibility.

  Corey (28:13): “Try to have your post up by 10 AM Eastern for maximum exposure.”

• Use the Correct Hashtag: Adhere strictly to the specified hashtag format to ensure your posts are tracked and engaged with appropriately.

  Heather (12:46): “Use the hashtag #SCMCollabBaker and avoid any typos to ensure visibility.”

• Engage Actively: Beyond liking, comment thoughtfully on other participants’ posts to foster genuine engagement.

  Corey (30:23): “Like and comment on posts with meaningful questions to drive trust and interaction.”

• Maintain Account Privacy Settings: Ensure your Instagram account is public during the collab to allow maximum reach and interaction.

  Heather (32:22): “If your account is private, the hashtag won’t be visible to others, negating the collab benefits.”

7. Future Collabs and Ongoing Initiatives

Looking ahead, Heather and Corey tease upcoming collabs such as the "Main Street Cookie Collab", which focuses on creating cookies featuring local business logos to strengthen community ties and potentially open revenue streams through corporate orders.

Corey (34:01): “The 'Main Street Collab' will allow you to highlight local businesses, which can lead to bulk orders and increased brand visibility.”

Additionally, the hosts discuss their midsummer membership sale, offering discounted rates on various SCM memberships and resources to support bakers in their business growth endeavors.

Heather (36:10): “The Cookie College is now available for $68 for a limited time, bundling multiple memberships for comprehensive support.”

8. Addressing Community Questions and Concerns

Throughout the episode, Heather and Corey address listener questions, providing actionable advice on topics such as pricing strategies and managing feelings of guilt associated with raising prices. They emphasize the importance of valuing one’s work appropriately to sustain and grow a baking business.

Heather (46:56): “You're doing the ethically wrong thing by undercharging. It’s time to raise your prices to keep your business afloat.”

Corey (49:32): “You need to remove feelings from pricing. Charge what you need to cover your costs and make a profit.”

9. Conclusion and Next Steps

Wrapping up, the hosts encourage bakers to participate in the upcoming collab and take advantage of the ongoing membership sale. They highlight the importance of community support and continuous learning through collaborative efforts.

Corey (54:50): “Collabs are a lot of fun and a great way to engage with your community. Don’t miss out on the upcoming events.”

Heather (61:05): “Join us next week for a pre-recorded episode as we continue to support and grow our baking community together.”

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Key Takeaways:

• Cookie collabs are powerful tools for increasing social media engagement, building community, and enhancing brand visibility.
• Proper planning and execution, including timely posts and correct hashtag usage, are crucial for maximizing collab benefits.
• Participating in collabs not only boosts your online presence but also fosters meaningful connections with fellow bakers.
• Valuing your work appropriately through strategic pricing ensures the sustainability and growth of your baking business.

By embracing these strategies, bakers within the Sugar Cookie Marketing community can effectively elevate their businesses, reach new audiences, and maintain robust engagement in an ever-evolving digital landscape.

Transcript

[Corey Miracle]

Welcome to the Baking it down with Sugar Cookie marketing podcast. We are your host, Corey Miracle and her twin sister, better half. An identical twin to most fraternal to.

[Heather]

The doctors who birthed us a better half. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

Most of the time. Heather. We just came back from the beach.

[Heather]

And this is actually recorded live. But next week's is pre recorded yet again.

[Corey Miracle]

We just came back from the beach. I couldn't have asked for better weather. The one thing for me to enjoy any trip is to. To not drive at all. I don't want to know the calendar, I don't want to book the reservations, I don't want to draw.

[Heather]

I've done that. Tick tock. Like I'm Heather and I made the reservations. I'm Cory, I'm Heather and I.

[Corey Miracle]

So Heather drove us in her very nice quiet. I sat in the back, Somerset in the front to help Heather drive, keep her alert, focused. But we had an absolute.

[Heather]

A little tip for people. If you're going on a trip.

[Corey Miracle]

Sure.

[Heather]

And there's more than you and you have a Spotify, you can create a shared Spotify place and everyone can add. So we create. Every year we create a beach playlist and it's required that all participants add to the.

[Corey Miracle]

There was a lot of Katy Perry on there for some odd reason. A lot of Justin Bieber.

[Heather]

Summer.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, yeah. And one oddly November Thankful song by Jeff Gordy.

[Heather]

But I say it's a blast.

[Corey Miracle]

You couldn't. It was supposed to be rainy. And I said at the end of the day, the beach weather is like walking to TJ Maxx. You can't want it.

[Heather]

Are you a Maxinista?

[Corey Miracle]

I'm a Maxinista. So if you go into TJ Maxx looking for anything, you won't find it. If you go to the beach wanting good weather, it won't happen.

[Heather]

Right. So we finally agreed to stop checking the weather as it was deteriorating rapidly.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. But we couldn't have asked for a better beach.

[Heather]

You know, it's kind of the beach weather where it just gets better and better. Or terrible. You just don't know.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. And the day we left Terrible. Woke up terrible. And we said the best day ever.

[Heather]

It was. If it was beautiful, you would been remorsefully. But this sounds like ew, gross. Good. Like everybody else, I would need to.

[Corey Miracle]

Be back at home. But it was great. We enjoyed it. It was recharging. Definitely what we needed.

[Heather]

If you ever want to go to Virginia Beach, I'm not going to say it's the best beach. It is a very close Beach. My mom thought it was. Oh. And then funny enough, I'm sitting there at the downstairs restaurant that's outside on the beach, and I look over and there's my parents who had surprised us.

[Corey Miracle]

I know. So then we got to build everything to their room.

[Heather]

It was a delight to. 416.

[Corey Miracle]

Thank you so much.

[Heather]

I had said, okay, I'm gonna go get a drink and I'm gonna. I'm gonna pay for it to my room. So I was like, hey, can I grab this? Can you just bill it to that? We didn't stay in the same hotel. It's like this campus. And we were in the cheaper hotel. And he was like, we don't build at that hotel.

[Corey Miracle]

And I was like, well, you build.

[Heather]

It to my mommy and my daddy.

[Corey Miracle]

If you're tuning in for the first time, welcome. We're actually a spin off from a group that's on Facebook. There's about 49,000 bakers in there. People are coming and going. People are starting their journey. People have been in their journey for 15 years.

[Heather]

So it's the M that make it such a.

[Corey Miracle]

It's great because if you're starting out, you can ask all the questions and get the answers from the pros. It's probably the nicest group on Facebook. As far as other bakers trying to help you without sabotaging you. You won't find a nicer group. So if you haven't already, go and search Sugar cookie marketing group. We'll get you in, I promise.

[Heather]

Yeah, we've been much better about it.

[Corey Miracle]

Munch better.

[Heather]

Munch. Speaking of, Munch has a. His best friend is here. Another cat named Uno. Who. Uno is a normal sized cat. Munch is a munchkin cat. And to watch them hang out is hilarious.

[Corey Miracle]

They've been good for each other. Better for us. Less annoying to us.

[Heather]

He's very annoying in general. Honestly, looking at him, it's like a dork. No offense to my own cat, but he's like a dork trying to impress a cool kid. The normal sized cat. And then they're just like. He's like, you know, like, where do you want to go? Like, he's breaking all the rules. Munch never goes upstairs. But then I suddenly look and there's both.

[Corey Miracle]

You gotta be cool, man. You gotta be peer pressure for sure. So the topic of today's podcast is a. What is a cookie collab. We've done collabs over the years. Me and Heather actually just went down memory lane. We've been doing group collabs since 2020.

[Heather]

2021. We started the group in 2020 and 2021. Everyone requested these collabs. If you don't know what we're talking about, you've come to the right place.

[Corey Miracle]

Yes. Yes.

[Heather]

So we want to take a stab at a collab. If you wanted to. We're having a collab. It's next week on Friday the 27th. I'll talk about that more. But we wanted to get into the meat and potatoes of collab marketing. How it works, why it works, why you should do it.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. Because if you just hear the word collab and you have to make a cookie post on random day, you're gonna be like, that's a waste of time.

[Heather]

It is kind of a weird vibe if you don't know what it means. But there's a. I wrote a list yesterday of 10 reasons why you should consider. And we'll talk about that. Yeah, but let's walk down memory lane together.

[Corey Miracle]

Let's walk down memory lane.

[Heather]

So Corey and I try to think of all the collabs we've done in the sugar cookie marketing group, and then we'll talk about what they are. Right. It's free to join. So Susan Reed, my favorite Susan Reed was the.

[Corey Miracle]

The first and foremost spammer that ever happened. Now she's been spoofed. There's only one original. The rest are copycats.

[Heather]

Susan Reed would be the original baker scam.

[Corey Miracle]

So what we did was we created a Susan Reed collab to get the information out to bakers about who Susan Reed was. So no bakers would get scammed. We gave her a dose of her own medicine. We all made blue hearts with a white border.

[Heather]

That's how the scam works. Susan obviously isn't a real person, but it was. This is a spam script that say, I'm Susan. I'm an event planner. I have this amazing party. It's two inches from your house. I need just seven dozen blue hearts with white outlines. Because it was such a simple order and it had such a high pay rate. So many bakers be like, absolutely, yeah. Did Susan Reed pay? Absolutely. She actually overpaid. And that's where in the scam lies. Which is a genius thing. The fact that the thousand dollars wasn't the scam. It was a $200. So what would happen is Susan Reid, this proverbial scammer, would pay you 1200. You thought you only allocated 1000. They said, could you just return the 200 as an overpayment? You return the 200. But the whole check ends up bouncing. It was an E check. It bounces for all 1200 and your bank forces you to pay the 200. Genius. But also a lot of bakers had baked already the hearts they had.

[Corey Miracle]

So what we said was, let's make her famous. Let's make Susan Reed as famous as she wants to be. So we all baked.

[Heather]

It was a couple hundred bakers all posting the same minute blue hearts with white outlines. And it got other bakers like, what's going on? Why is my whole page I have.

[Corey Miracle]

To give myself a pat on the back. What I did was I did do the blue hearts with White island, but I also baked a fake check, which.

[Heather]

Was great because it was a message to other bakers and it was interesting. It wasn't so much one design for the audience. Like this one is. This one was designed for the bakers. Oh, we did a Meet the baker, which is actually the theme of this collab. We're doing it again. Main street cookie collab. That's one we'll be hitting next month. Yeah, that was a great one. Really like that one. That was the idea of someone in the group and it just was a genius idea. Cookie, your logo.

[Corey Miracle]

We did turn everyone. People had complicated logos. I'm sorry, that's what Eddie's for. But we all cookified our logos and shared them at the same time.

[Heather]

I thought it was a good demonstration of skill set. Yeah. Okay. And Corby girl era first cookie, last cookie. This is an interesting one to demonstrate your where you started and where you came. So you found your first cookie and then you remade it with a skill set that you've since learned. And it was a good demonstration to your eyes that was more focused on the audience. It was fun as bakers to see where people started Christmas in July. That was kind of a work ahead collab. We did it in July with the Christmas bakes you'd be using in Christmas when we're too busy.

[Corey Miracle]

So you had to choose which one you would want to sell in December. But we were honestly giving yourself more time. So if you baked whatever you wanted to sell in December in July, you were just going to rake in the money come December because you had already done the work.

[Heather]

Then we did pumpkin batch. A ton of work on my end. Everyone had to make pumpkin on a white background. A lot of you guys use Canva. I know. But we took all those pumpkins of which there was hundreds of pumpkins. There was way more than made a cookie pumpkin patch.

[Corey Miracle]

There was so Many pumpkins in that photo.

[Heather]

It was hilarious because it was fun. Saying a lot of bakers took it and said, can you guess which pumpkin is mine? Sugar My state. That was where you created cookies that had semblance with your statement. Did you do that one?

[Corey Miracle]

I did. Virginia and I put sunflowers on it.

[Heather]

Sunflowers.

[Corey Miracle]

I don't even think Virginia is tied.

[Heather]

To sunflowers, but I know we did. We were the Dogwood Tree Farm. And then we did the Meaning of Christmas where you baked and donated cookies to someone that. That made a difference in your life and told us about that person.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. And we, we took pictures of the gentleman. That was the guy who ran seasons 52 at the time.

[Heather]

Made a huge difference in my life. Okay, so starting with number one, what is a collab? So it is a single day, a single hour, in which a bunch of bakers get together to design a cookie based off of a specific theme and post it to a specific social media profile. And the keyword here is using a specific hashtag. Do you want to add anything?

[Corey Miracle]

A lot of specifics there.

[Heather]

It's got to be very specific. It cannot be like an androgynous post whenever. It has to be very aligned.

[Corey Miracle]

You may be wondering what platform the platform is. Instagram. It's just made for hashtags and hashtag searching.

[Heather]

It's.

[Corey Miracle]

The whole thing has changed over the years from how easy it used to be to a little bit more difficult now. But we've been able to navigate it, but it mainly takes place on Instagram because you can search hashtags on Instagram. What's your point number two?

[Heather]

My point number two says, okay, why we stopped doing that. Specifically this. Instagram is in an ever changing platform. It is. It's actually trying to replicate TikTok, which has been stealing Instagram users for years now. It's funny, Corey and I keep tabs on all our social media numbers every Monday. And Corey. Well, I'm like, oh, it looks like TikTok's growing just nicely. And Instagram gained two users in the last seven days. It is crazy how much better performance and long term content reach TikTok has in Instagram. Yeah, I want to be like Instagram. If you could just let us have.

[Corey Miracle]

A little bit of a hit on TikTok. There's people who have liked a post, specifically this one, where I'm using this $10 projector. It's the cheapest projector. That's why people are searching it. It gets liked every single day. I posted it Years ago at this point.

[Heather]

Yeah, because I don't know. I'm sure there's a reason why Instagram doesn't want to let you reach anybody after hour two of your post. But TikTok, I'll see a TikTok and I'll explain the comments and it will have been posted months ago. Insane. And I enjoyed it just as much as then. Okay. So we stopped doing them because Instagram really, really depreciated how the hashtags were working, how collabs work off of these hashtags. So we'd always use SEM cookie cloud hashtag. SEM cookie collab. The reason why we did, everyone would put that hashtag on there. And for the one hour that you're supposed to post, people click on that hashtag and then they can go engage.

[Corey Miracle]

They could actually search the most recent so it was easier to find anything that was posted recently under that hashtag, which would be the newest one.

[Heather]

You could even follow the hashtag. Yeah. And you could engage with it, as you saw on your feed. So they've gotten rid of following hashtags and they've gotten rid of recents. And. And now, because there's no way to filter by recents, a collab participant from years ago would. Would show up now. And that's not what you need. We need. So the solution and time. We need a little bit more time is to use a specific hashtag per collab. And once that collab is over, the hashtag is no longer used.

[Corey Miracle]

Yes.

[Heather]

Which. What you're going to think. What hashtag do I have to use for this one? I'm going to tell you because you're in the right headspace for this. Okay. So that's why we stopped doing them.

[Corey Miracle]

And they're back.

[Heather]

This is our trial run our trial.

[Corey Miracle]

Just to see if it crashes and burns. At least we know.

[Heather]

But if it doesn't, we're going to try to do two more this year.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Maybe even the summer before the busy season comes back up. Okay, details on this club. Friday. It's Friday next Friday, June 27, 2025, at 10:00am this will get you Eastern Standard Time, which means for you it may not be 10am if you are on Pacific time. Right. 10. That would be 12. Don't even. I forgot to go back before. I think they go backwards. It would be eight. Sometimes I forget if there's two in the middle.

[Corey Miracle]

I'm sure.

[Heather]

Anyways, your time zone, your problem, your math problem. But it is Friday at 10am now, the reason why it's so specific on the time is because for only one hour we're asking people to engage with the content. And I'm gonna talk about why. That engagement is truly what we're going for here. There's the benefit of content generation, but that engagement, when I'm going to read through this 10 list, is the bang for the buck. And that engagement is from 10 to 11. Yeah, after 11, you're. It's just, just a massive fall off.

[Corey Miracle]

But we still ask people to engage throughout the day. But if you really want to get the most juice out of the club, you're going to follow this to a T. It's going to be next Friday, 10:00am Eastern Standard Time.

[Heather]

And the hashtag, drumroll please.

[Corey Miracle]

You have to have the hashtag on this for this to work.

[Heather]

Okay. It is SCM Collaboration Baker. Now, the way we're going to move forward is SEM collab. And then that noun at the end is going to change. So for each collab moving forward, this one is only for this collab on Friday, then it's a dead hashtag for us.

[Corey Miracle]

The reason why we're doing this is because you can still search a hashtag. Now, everything under this specific hashtag has to do with this specific collab. So it'll be easier to find out who's posting, who's not posted, what you've engaged with, what you haven't engaged with. How I go about it is I'll search the hashtag. If I've liked it already, I know that I did the engagement already.

[Heather]

So Corey and I actually share the same account and she'll double tap when she's engaged with it. And then I'll do this, our twin.

[Corey Miracle]

Signal to each other.

[Heather]

Ben here. Done that.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So again, just to recap, June 27, it's a meet the Baker club. Now let's talk about what that means specifically.

[Corey Miracle]

So Meet the Baker. Like, oh, what does it mean if you get your little apron on, stand in front of your favorite mixer that you know love and has done you good all these years and snap a photo of yourself? It does not have to be a professional photo. What performs best on social media is faces. It's been studied. It's been. If you post a picture of a cookie set that you took 52 hours to make or a picture of yourself in an apron with crazy hair, the picture with you and your crazy hair is going to perform far better than any set you've ever done. So if we are looking at trying to grow our social medias get more reach, end up in the feeds of those that already follow us that maybe we've fallen out of the feeds of.

[Heather]

Which is ideally people who would buy from us.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, you'll not find a better stack as far as, you know, manufactured engagement through the collab. A face photo.

[Heather]

Now, the big asterisk here is nobody's following you. This isn't a way to grow your Instagram account. It's a way to increase your reach. I'm going to talk about that right now while we go through my list of 10 reasons to sign up for the Cookie Club on June 27th at 10:00am Eastern Standard Time. And Corey and I this week will help you with some copy ideas. So, okay, one, people like faces. Exactly what Corey said. Marketing 101. When in doubt, selfie it out. Yes, your audience will always respond well to photos of you.

[Corey Miracle]

Oftentimes you find us and every baker is posting set after set because at the end of the day, we do sell cookies. So you're gonna post the thing that you wanna sell the most. Your audience buys from those they know like and trust. So your face just being where they can relate to you if they see you out and about. Oh, I know Jessica, she's so sweet. I see her at the farmer's market all the time. Is going to be a great way for you to grow that trust with your audience.

[Heather]

Question. What if you have a punchable face? Cory and I have this thing where we're like, does my face look punchable today? Like, not that. Anyway, you know, you' oh, I just don't like that person. I wouldn't trust them at all. So again, when you post a pic of yourself, your audience just shows up in the comments. Now you're going to get the bakers to show up as well, but so will your audience. I had somebody say and they said, I hate it that you guys said to do this.

[Corey Miracle]

I hated it.

[Heather]

And I did it and I hated that it performed so well. And I've done it three more times since and I've hated that it's also done well.

[Corey Miracle]

You know, we're doing this collab. This will be the only Meet the Baker collab we do this year. But me and Heather actually suggest that you do a Meet the Baker once a quarter. Give a face to the name, put your face out there. That's what your audience wants to see. That's who they're supporting. Their dollars don't necessarily go to a cupcake liner. They go to you, to your family, to your family's Extracurriculars, putting food on the table. So you showing either you, your family, you know, the people behind the business is going to be the best bang for the buck.

[Heather]

You don't believe us? Open any magazine. I want you to start counting the faces. Yeah. When you go to Wegmans, I want you to count the faces. I want you to see the faces in the ads, because people like faces. Even if they're not buying the thing, we'll look at the thing because there's a face in it. Next one. Content buckets. Exactly what Corey said. So an about you content bucket is a solid way to become relatable to your audience. Outside of I bake this.

[Corey Miracle]

If you found that your content has grown stagnant, that the likes have, this is consistently decreased because it's one cookie after the next cookie after the next cookie. Maybe you throw in a meme here and there, but you find that your engagement on your page and on your profiles is going down well.

[Heather]

I actually took a poll and 86% of bakers who vote said my content reach has decreased it.

[Corey Miracle]

And I agree.

[Heather]

So we're all fighting the battle.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. So if you want to kind of reset your algorithm, end up in a little bit more feed so you can maybe get that audience back into your feeds and really cultivate with a content bucket. That is what Meet the Baker is. And then from there, you really need to grow your content buckets. It can't just be all right, this.

[Heather]

Would be my only time I'm hitting this bucket. This would be a part of that bucket and you're going to see it does well. And so you're going to want to build out that bucket.

[Corey Miracle]

You're right.

[Heather]

Engagement. So at the time of writing, we had 59 bakers registered. How many Think you have how many? I mean, I did add a registration for this one and the reason why is because I want to remind people about it. Yeah, I want to send out.

[Corey Miracle]

That's the biggest things we were like, oh, I forgot. So now if you went to Heather's, included a link to register, and you'll just get an email to remind you the night before, I believe.

[Heather]

Yeah, I'll schedule it out. It's going to have a link to this podcast. You can listen to it. It's going to have some copy Corey's going to write for us. So you could use that as a template if you wanted to, and then it's going to remind you to do it. Yeah, but free engagement. So I just checked. 75 bakers have signed up. That means we have potential to get 75 comments. 75 genuine comments that otherwise from 0.

[Corey Miracle]

To even 3 would be mind blowing.

[Heather]

A lot of people, especially new bakers who are like, this is my first year in this. This will be the most popular post you make for the fact that you have now free engagement. You didn't have to pay for it. It's going to be quality engagement. That's why I have this email list. We can coach people through the comments that they leave. And to get that organically, your content strategy would have to be.

[Corey Miracle]

If you're wondering, I've been doing this for years and years now. My comments are dwindly at best. Granted, I get most of my comments on Facebook because I've invested my time there. It'll be nice to kind of reset my Instagram algorithm and kind of get back in the feeds there.

[Heather]

Connecting with bakers. My fourth point, I think beyond the marketing aspect of it, this is just a fun way to discover like minded bakers. You know, okay, I'll say this. Corey and I go to the occasional cookie event in person and people be like, hey, it's me. And I'm like who? And I realize like, wow, we've had these long term years worth of relationship together and you've been a circle I can hardly see because I don't wear glasses on the Internet. And now you're a person.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. The great thing about Meet the Baker is their caption is going to reveal a little bit more about them. You can find their interest, you know, if they're a growing family, if it's a dog mom, you know, if this is their full time job or at the side business and what they do for a full time job, it's a. You can create long life friends through it.

[Heather]

Now you may have. Here's my asterisk. You may have the inclination. Wow, I really like the speaker. I want to follow them. I'm going to ask you to actually request if ask them if they want to let you follow. What we don't want is this to be a follow train. The reason why is I don't want to bog down the participants following count, but I want more followers, right? We want followers from people who actually buy from us. Bakers are not going to buy from you. Uh, Corey has this issue. I always ask Corey like hey, I'm referencing your Facebook page. Do you want me to link to it? And Corey be like, no, because I'm still a baker that sells locally and a lot of bakers following me doesn't help my algorithmic reach.

[Corey Miracle]

You might think it's easy to get a baker to follow you. They know the struggles of social media so they'll follow you because they know and they know it. They will. But here's the thing. The long term thing is they're gonna not always engage with you because they're busy trying to grow their social media with their local followers. So if you have your account and you've grown it with local followers, we want to keep that.

[Heather]

That's. I'd rather 400 locals than 4,000 and 0 locals. Right. So it is quality over quantity. So the rule for this collab is do not follow anybody. If you're like, but I want to then send them a message. Hey, I'm from the collab. I really resonated with your post. I was wondering it'd be okay. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

And they can say yes.

[Heather]

No.

[Corey Miracle]

You probably get many yeses.

[Heather]

Could you imagine the no. I'm gonna go cry over there. But yeah, what we don't want is to Cory and I, you know, guys, you jump in your file trains. You do you boo bear. You won' us running follow trains. You actually see us deleting it out of the but if you want to be a follow train girly, there's many groups that let you do that. Just not the strategy I would follow. If I need to reach locals. Yeah, a lot of times we get the texting questions and it's like, hey, I have a lot of bakers find me. Should I ban them? Not a well, okay. Point five. It's easy. This is an easy. This will be the easiest collab we do.

[Corey Miracle]

It'll be the easy one. You don't have to put anything in the oven. You ain't gotta mix any icing.

[Heather]

You don't. You just gotta put some makeup on a pig. Was it paint on a pig? How's that one?

[Corey Miracle]

How do you tell your to yourself every morning when you get on.

[Heather]

Look at this pig.

[Corey Miracle]

Gotta put some paint on her.

[Heather]

It's like, girl, I said, here's what I think about when I put on makeup. All we're doing, all makeup does is make a flat canvas again. And then you put the colors where you want them.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, mine.

[Heather]

That red on my forehead is now red all over.

[Corey Miracle]

And then I just put the red now on my cheek.

[Heather]

And then. Yeah, on my lips. And then I think it's funny. Like my eyes. I'm like coloring a crayon in the crevices. But it does make your eyes pop. What can we say you don't have.

[Corey Miracle]

To put on makeup. But we will say that because of the amount of engagement you will get on this post, your posts will now fall into the more feeds of people who actually currently follow you. So if you want to end up back in the feeds of those local audiences, hey, take a photo, edit it in Lightroom. Get yourself a little color going.

[Heather]

Yeah, but it's just posting a selfie or getting someone. Corey's taking a photo that we took a couple months ago. Yeah, I'll send those to you. I forgot about DZ as pie. So this is not a complex cookie design this round. However, those will come. If you're like, I don't know if I have a lot of time for all the collabs, this would be the one I would ditch my toe into. I think you'll find that like, shoot, that was good. And I'll do the other ones. Yeah, and they're not going to be super complicated, the other ones, but they do require busting out a piping bag. So I know this is the one. You bust out an eyeliner, you tell me your battles. Okay, number six. It's organized because I'm doing a registration process. You don't absolutely have to register. It just helps me get a good count. And I'll send you tips. I'm not doing anything else with your email addresses. I will sign you up for every newsletter. No, I'm not even signing you up for our own newsletter. I'm just using this to keep it organized. But because it's organized, it will do well. Yeah, right. Because the organization of a collab dictates. And since they're a little bit larger, most collabs are private. That's a good point.

[Corey Miracle]

A lot of times, if you've been collabs have been around for years upon.

[Heather]

Years upon years, please understand this is not some unique twin idea.

[Corey Miracle]

No, it isn't. If you've been a part of them, sometimes you'll see them and it'll be like these elite bakers. And it was invite only. This one, you're invited.

[Heather]

It's invite only to everybody. To everybody. So we're using the registration process. Would be emailing reminders, helping with copy, kind of coaching people. I think it does a little bit better when there's a little bit more TLC there, a little structure, little something something number seven, that's free. I'm saying this because I've seen some collabs where you have to purchase the product from a seller to be involved in the collab. Yeah, this one is free. There's no you must buy from Heather and Corey to participate. Although that would be great. Cool.

[Corey Miracle]

If you did. There's no specific cookie cutter. There's no specific shirt you have to wear. There's no apron you gotta have.

[Heather]

So there's. There's very few marketing tactics in life that you'll find cost you $0. This happens to be one of them. A little bit of time. And I know time is money, but just, you know, people are actually getting their haircut for this. No way. Yeah, I saw a couple, I think, oh, he's like, I'll actually shower name. He's like, she got a haircut. And I think Daphne was like, oh, that's so funny. I'm getting a haircut too. Yeah, but you're not gonna post your.

[Corey Miracle]

Little selfie at bar.

[Heather]

I don't post myself. E. It's fun.

[Corey Miracle]

Ish.

[Heather]

Not. I mean. Okay. It's not an amusing part.

[Corey Miracle]

Here's the thing. It is fun to learn about people. I love to read an about section of someone I don't know but I followed like when they do like hey guys, it's been a minute since I've introduced myself. I will stop and read those all the time.

[Heather]

I do like reading. I like to know somebody's backstory.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So I said who knew you could bill scrolling on your phone to the company time. But in this way you have the. What we're asking is to engage for an hour if you can.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

At minimum you have to engage to some capacity. But if you could do for an hour, use that hashtag, click on it. You're going to just be able to go through like comment, like comment, like comment. It's a. It's a fun way to learn about your essentially co workers. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

You'll find that you can give a loan to the person who's engaged with you if they're commenting on that post and you're like I truly haven't seen that name before. The odds are they're coming from the collab. So if they leave a comment on yours, you can go straight to their account by clicking. By clicking on their comment.

[Heather]

That's a great point. Is that you won't. I'm not going to publish list of these emails of people who registered. You'll just know if they're commenting. They've also done it. You can. And like Corey said, you can go to their comment and engage back. Great way to do it. Or go to the hashtag and just go through the list which is how Corey and I are doing it. Here's another one. I thought this was a good idea. A lot of times people say I'm looking for photoshoot ideas. This is a great way to see photo shoot ideas.

[Corey Miracle]

Sure.

[Heather]

So basically you would schedule, you would hire a photographer and you do an in house photo shoot to generate content. That's a lot of what these meet the Baker post will be featuring. They've scheduled a professional photo shoot.

[Corey Miracle]

Yes.

[Heather]

You can still use a selfie.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

But if you're like, wow, I would like some branding photos or some brandable photos. This is how you're going to be able to see. Oh, shoot. I really like that one. Save it. You're allowed to save them. Save them in my photo shoot ideas.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So Baker's always asking for inspo pics. This is how you're going to be able to.

[Corey Miracle]

Nice.

[Heather]

Yes. Love it. And my 10th. It's just good marketing. This group is focused on two things, business and marketing. And this calab taps on both. You'll be getting in front of your audience by working in tandem with other bakers to increase your profile reach. Getting in front of your audience means more engagement. Have you guys ever engaged with something that's fallen out of your feed and then you, you did something with it and then it's back in your feet? Yeah, that is what this is.

[Corey Miracle]

Here's can I do 11th tip that I'm going to do on Instagram? You can actually pin three posts to the top of your profile. What I'll do is you'll see me have the cop copy that says and thank you sugar cookie marketing for putting on this collab. I'm using the hashtag SEM Collab Baker. Is that correct?

[Heather]

Hashtag SEM Collab Baker. Yeah, Collab Baker.

[Corey Miracle]

If you want to check out other bakers participating, you can click that hashtag and you can find them after a few days. After this collab ends, I'm going to edit the copy, remove that section, pin it to the top of my profile. So what it does is it looks someone who's doing the research about me before they book with me, they're going to be able to one learn about me. That that post is going to have a lot of interactions. The comments are going to be all responded to because that's what we do here.

[Heather]

Right there. Money move right there.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. And then the, the copy is going to be edited to talk to my ideal audience. So I'm going to take out that, oh, look at my other bakers here and it's now going to just be focused on the audience that I'm trying to warrant.

[Heather]

I love that because in the copy template Corey is going to offer you, you see I've assigned this to you. It's going to say hey, I'm a part of this collab. Yes. And it's going to give your audience just a little hint of what it is. We don't need to tell the audience an hour long podcast about it. We're just going to say hey, we're in this collab and we're engaging other bakers. If you want to check out whatever you want to do, she's going to help you with that. But going back and taking that out would make a lot of sense, especially if you're going to have it evergreen on your profile because it'd be weirded out to be like this collab from two years ago.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. So what we're going to do is just pin that to the top of the profile and then those your, your photo, the one that performs best. Your face the low, no like and trust is going to be up there at the top. You're going to look great. It's going to have a lot of comments, a lot of like a lot of engagement on there. So it'll be something that you want to show to your ideal audience.

[Heather]

Love it. It. Okay, last tip. Last, last point in the podcast is how to get the most out of this collab and all collabs. This is the same copy script I just post everywhere. So tips to succeed.

[Corey Miracle]

1.

[Heather]

Try to have your post up by 10am Eastern for maximum exposure. What I see happen is sometimes people are like I gotta go to bed so I'll post it the night before. Not the most ideal. Especially when you can use Facebook planner to schedule to Instagram and I'll talk about why it's Instagram in a minute. But I see people also get the times wrong and post two hours late. You're not getting the bang for your buck.

[Corey Miracle]

Ye because we are just asking people that they are there at 10am Eastern Standard and engage for about an hour at the end of the day. We do have lives, we have businesses to run. Things don't bake themselves. So we're not asking someone to sit behind their screen all day waiting for you to post. So it's on you to make sure that you set your alarm for 10:00am Eastern Standard Time so that you're alive and well and there so you're responding to comments, you're engaging and getting the most out of it.

[Heather]

Now, what I'll probably do is in the face page, this is an Instagram collab, but in the sugar cookie marketing Facebook group, I'll say cross post or post here so we can see what it looks like. And that way people can kind of find you as well. Here's the bit again, and I'm saying it so much because it's that important. If you do not use this hashtag, nobody can find you.

[Corey Miracle]

Nobody will be able to find you.

[Heather]

Your audience will, but we won't. You'll be discouraged.

[Corey Miracle]

You will never want to do a collab again.

[Heather]

I'm going to tell you this. Your audience will love seeing your face. You'll still win. But why not win all the way with semcollab Baker? That's all one word. There's no spaces. That's the way hashtags work. So I don't what other hashtags you add. SEM Colab Baker. Ideally the first one.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, a lot of people will do not remember that and they'll do hashtag.

[Heather]

Sugar cookie collab or sugar cookie marketing.

[Corey Miracle]

That is not going to be searched. It's not going to be seen.

[Heather]

It may have worked in a past collab years ago. The reason why we put them off is because it no longer works that way. So it has to be this hashtag. S, C, M. Collab.

[Corey Miracle]

Baker, Does Collab have two Ls?

[Heather]

Yes.

[Corey Miracle]

Yes.

[Heather]

One B. Hey, here's the unfortunate mark. You got a typo in there. You can't even. It becomes a total different hashtag. Let me ask you this, does it need to be in the copy? Is that comment top comment thing work anymore?

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, it still works.

[Heather]

Let's put it in the copy. Let's just put in the copy.

[Corey Miracle]

The. The. I'm going to give you the caption to use. You're going to edit it. It's going to be in there. That just makes it safe and sound.

[Heather]

So you can leave him there. That way we can find you. It's not not. We don't make a dollar for every time somebody use a hashtag. Otherwise I'd be using it everywhere. It's just for us to be able to find you to engage with it. Okay, tips again, definitely like the post, but also comment on the post. So it's one thing to like and if that's the bare minimum and that's all you had time to do, I'll accept it. But what I want you to do is like and comment. Now, the comment should look at the person we want to Give the baker something to reply to, something to bite into. So the baker's like, I have 21 kids. You'd be like, oh, my goodness. What's your tallest one? Right? What's the tallest kid that you have? How did you. How have you done that for 21 years? Yeah. Whatever it is, you can ask a question. Corey's gonna help guide people to give us some information that we can bite into.

[Corey Miracle]

At the end of the day, we want to think the baker in mind. So saying, like, what's your favorite kind of gold that you use isn't necessarily going to be helpful for the baker. We want to think in terms of the baker. If a client is coming to their profile, what comment can I make that drives trust for this end user when they're reading it? So, like, oh, I. You said you grew up in D.C. have you ever been over to Alexandria? There was this great little restaurant there.

[Heather]

Do you.

[Corey Miracle]

Have you ever been. That would be.

[Heather]

Now, keep in mind, if you're ever like, what should I write? What would you say to someone if you met them in person? There you go. If this is meet the Baker, if you met them in person, what would be the next question? Yeah, I think you could default to the neat. Hi. Love this. Not as. It's harder to bite into Now, Bakers, if somebody writes that on yours, you can also push them a little farther. They say, love this. Oh, I love it. Hey, I went to your page and you could make them engage on your profile. So there's a. There's a little strategy there. The more effort you put into this, the more you're gonna get out. Yeah, this is not a way to get followers. I have in all caps. It's only for engagement. If your Instagram profile is set to private, you need to set it to public. Here's the thing.

[Corey Miracle]

You can use as many hashtags as you want. If it's a private account, no one can see it. The hashtag doesn't show anywhere.

[Heather]

Give me the best photo, best caption, all the right hashtags. Exactly at 10am on Friday, June 27th, Eastern Standard Time. But your account is set to private. It is. You're echoing to the abyss.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. So you'll have people like being like, hey, your. Your account's private. It happens every single time. Your account's private. You need to make it public. But the. The baker won't have checked in. The collab will have come and gone and got nothing.

[Heather]

Right. So something. Keep mine. If you have some stalker exes, when you set an account to public. It accepts all the follower requests. So if you want to clear those out first by declining them and then set it to public.

[Corey Miracle]

Interesting.

[Heather]

And go back underground. Never want to give the exes any form of gratitude. Last one. This is Instagram only. It's not on Facebook. I have so many bakers complain at me. Get me Facebook. I just don't feel like Facebook's it right now. I know. We waited for them. They kind of moved to the Page feed thing.

[Corey Miracle]

I can't even search in groups right now.

[Heather]

It's just not it. Yeah. Only. Well, I don't have Instagram. Then you don't have this collab on your docket. Yeah, that's okay. I always. But, but, but, but, but, but, but I can't help you there. You can run an ad to your Facebook profile. You could still post. I would encourage. If you're doing this on Instagram, definitely post it to Facebook. You won't get that engagement on Facebook. But why not? It's a content. Yeah. It's going to do well either way.

[Corey Miracle]

I know, I know. But collabs are a lot of fun. If you utilize them. You're going to have a great time. You're going to be begging us for more.

[Heather]

And I think the next ones are going to. To go back to Main street cookie collab.

[Corey Miracle]

And I think we're gonna do the cookie, the logo again.

[Heather]

So those will be our three. So only three this year. If you want to taste test. This is the one to taste test. We started with the easiest first.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

The Main street collab will actually probably make you money.

[Corey Miracle]

Sure. Because it's corporate you're highlighting. What is it? It's Main Street. So there was a lady that she said. I think it was Lydia.

[Heather]

Lydia. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

L. Lydia said that she went down her main street in her small town town and she cookified the logos of the businesses on the main street.

[Heather]

So she's actually holding the logo on a cookie and behind it we actually see the business and she features the business.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So she.

[Corey Miracle]

It's all about the business. And she's literally not saying and then buy my cookies.

[Heather]

What a great content bucket for local audience that talks to corporate.

[Corey Miracle]

What.

[Heather]

What happens is the business turned around, said, this is great. How many can we order?

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Genius.

[Corey Miracle]

If it was for me. And this is just preemptively for that collab. There's next to my house is a cuppa coffee that opened.

[Heather]

Cuppy coffee.

[Corey Miracle]

Cuppy coffee. And it is taking the world by storm.

[Heather]

If you're In Whitbury, the sandwiches, did you go?

[Corey Miracle]

No, I've never been.

[Heather]

The sandwiches did you eat?

[Corey Miracle]

Have you gone?

[Heather]

No, I've been just drooling on the pictures. The sandwiches, they have like, you know, my arugula vibe.

[Corey Miracle]

So what I would do was cookie their logo and I would ask people, what sandwiches should I order from here? This actually just opened up Dillingham Square.

[Heather]

And then Cory and I would go there, we would take a picture of her cookie fied logo up, cuppy coffee in front of the sandwich for about to eat. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

And what it would do is everyone in my audience who has been to the place is going to be so excited because they've been there, they know what they ordered, they love what they love.

[Heather]

People love what they love.

[Corey Miracle]

You're going to get so many comments about it because we're featuring a local spot.

[Heather]

I like it. And then the other one, the Cookier logo is a great flex on your capabilities.

[Corey Miracle]

Yes. And to help you with corporate logo orders to bring awareness to. If you've rebranded, you won't find a better time to unveil that.

[Heather]

It's a Meet the baker, but more probably meet the bakery.

[Corey Miracle]

Yes.

[Heather]

So I like that one. So that is a collab. Again, it's Friday, June 27, 2025. If you're listening to this and that date has passed, you can go back in time and if people haven't taken that hashtag out, you can go check her out. But. Yeah, check her out. What's wrong with your eyeball? I don't know.

[Corey Miracle]

It got a hair in there.

[Heather]

It's called allergies. And his name is Munch.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. It's also 50 million degrees in this room.

[Heather]

You know, it's Ruth Ann, buddy. She doesn't. It is if we lived in the nation swamp. It is swamping. Has not stopped raining since we got back.

[Corey Miracle]

I know, know, I know.

[Heather]

It is miserable. Moving on, we have the midsummer membership sale next month. Now, how we're pricing this out and I'll post about it. Don't worry, I'm going to spam you. We're going to do the cookie college at its grandfathered pricing for seven days only. At the seventh day, it disappears. The next sale you're looking at is the vendor buying.

[Corey Miracle]

So the cookie College currently is $76. It will be $68. So that will only happen for one week. That's the last week of July into the first.

[Heather]

First three days. Two days. Two days.

[Corey Miracle]

Days of August.

[Heather]

Right.

[Corey Miracle]

Also, someone asked me this and I. I was able to nail it down people, someone asked me where can we still get the class kits from 2023 and 2024.

[Heather]

Great. Hold on for the mid summer membership sale because here's the pricing of everything else that membership. The cookie college. The cookie college gets everything goes down to 68. The other memberships of which there are four. The cookie class kits which gets the 2025 class kits. The baker's business basics which Corey hates to pronounce, which is 13 fundamental foundational classes to get started. Digital downloads, which is a digital print type download, whether it be 3D print or Eddie print or Canva print, that is monthly. And then the $2 transfer club which I'm pummeling you guys with. Transfers. You guys never seen so many transfers. All those become half price.

[Corey Miracle]

I know.

[Heather]

Now they're all memberships cancel whenever. If you sign up for a yearly get two months free. But again it's half price. Yes, it's half price. So the cookie college is the only one that doesn't go exactly half, but it goes to a price that you haven't seen in a very long time, which is fantastic. Now the 2023 and 2024 class kits are inaccessible in any place other than the cookie college. That's what makes a cookie college so valuable. You get everything. You get all those memberships and you get the past class kits. If you're like girls, I love you, I don't want a membership. All those past class kits will be $10.

[Corey Miracle]

That'd be $10 per class. So you could get the February we go together like class for $10.

[Heather]

Now here's the beauty of those ones is they're not members. It's a one time pay. I'll just pick and choose a la carte. So if you say I only, I only want to the two classes, do they come with cookie cutters? No, we have a partnership with sweet pink coffee. Yes, you can still buy the cutters for the 2023 and 2024 classes. The most financially beneficial move here is to not buy them all a car. But I understand if that's what your budget allows. It is the cookie college at 68 for seven days on the cookie college will be 68.

[Corey Miracle]

But it also gets gets the basic business bakers.

[Heather]

You're close belugies.

[Corey Miracle]

It gets the basic business bakers, the cookie class kids, the cookie class kits, the digital downloads and the two dollar transfer club all for the $68.

[Heather]

Right. And it gets its own content that those other memberships don't. So you're Going to see the digital downloads goes from 10 to 5. The Baker's business basics goes from 36 to whatever half of that is. I can't do it in my head. 23, 23, 13, 17, 50. The cookie class kids club, half price. And then the. You're going to say the $2 transfer clothes, half price. Half price.

[Corey Miracle]

Dwala a dweller.

[Heather]

Dweller. And those are memberships, so. Meaning they keep getting added to. But you cancel whenever the. The. The benefit though the. The asterisk is it can never get you out of that grandfather pricing unless you choose to cancel.

[Corey Miracle]

So as long as you're. If you're in the cookie College now at $76, you can partake, take drop down to $68 and you'll be getting one over on the twins.

[Heather]

So I got a message and someone's like, hey, I want to teach the fourth of July class. We just dropped it. Super cute. And I was like, you can sign up today. You can get it. Obviously 4th of July is before the midsummer membership sale on July 27th, I think it said.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I said, but if you like what you got and you want to stick around. Yeah. That starts on Sunday, July 27th and runs to Saturday, August 2nd.

[Corey Miracle]

Nice.

[Heather]

I can say. But you can drop down. You can still. Even if you signed up today, you can switch over. What if I signed up yearly today? You can still switch over.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And within those grandfather pricing, you can always switch to yearly or monthly.

[Corey Miracle]

Nice.

[Heather]

So it's a great thing. And it'll be the only sale we run until November. I had someone messaged me about the venue blending and I was like, what. What are you saying? Ptsd? We don't talk about the venue, Blenny. At least till the beginning of our. So that is if you want to check that out. It's a cookiecollege.com but I'll be teaching some Facebook lives on what to expect and why you should sign up and what it looks like and how it works.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Leading up to July, I'll be out of town next week. That's why this next podcast will be pre recorded. But then my butt will be here.

[Corey Miracle]

Yes.

[Heather]

It will render my life.

[Corey Miracle]

It will.

[Heather]

Cory's not letting me going down.

[Corey Miracle]

Not letting her going to town unless.

[Heather]

She takes me moving on on. Somebody texted in. I have to find it. Actually read it from my phone.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. Two weeks ago, texting question.

[Heather]

I texted in how to name the podcast and I will find out who you are and I will give you the credit that is due because these Are called the stupid stupid questions. But it's not stupid anymore because we.

[Corey Miracle]

Have a new sponsor.

[Heather]

New sponsor. So let me just see if I can pull it up. The st Ellis about it segment.

[Corey Miracle]

That's hilarious.

[Heather]

Hilarious.

[Corey Miracle]

Because st LS about a section. I love that. So what this section is is if you have any questions whether it be about the podcast, whether about me and me and Heather, whether. Whether it be about business, something that you're going through in your business, you can always text in. The phone number is 571-556-5644. If you text in, we try to give you a little something. Do we still have that promotion going on with Cookie Design Labs?

[Heather]

That's why we're calling it the STL me about it. So Cookie Design lab is an online cookie cutter design software. It's online, which means it's web based app, which means it's not going to bog down your computer like Fusion360. The person who came up this idea was from Phoenix, Arizona. So Phoenix, Great. So yeah, she had a bunch of ideas. Control, text, print. So from text to tray, she was saying from text, oh, I like it. And then the ask and stlu later, slice me a text. STL you what the template. She did great. She's fantastic. Month in the Cookie Design lab, which it has, you have to have a Gmail account to use it. And that's what happens when you text in and say, hey, I'm the winner. I'll send you a form that you got to fill out. It is pretty neat. I really think it's a cute thing. I'll be teaching a Facebook Live on that coming up as well. Which check what number, what numbers do we got? One, two. Remember this is over the past two weeks.

[Corey Miracle]

Okay.

[Heather]

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16.

[Corey Miracle]

Shoot. 11.

[Heather]

One, two, three, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. Okay. She said, she said. No offense, but I'm still getting the. The stupid auto response. Thank you. I would not remember that. Okay, so you win. 4, 4, 3 with Erica. Do you think that is? I wonder if she actually had texted a question. Indiana, Maryland, Baltimore.

[Corey Miracle]

Oh my goodness, girl, you're right above.

[Heather]

Us in Virginia's hat. That's what I call Maryland. It offends Marylanders. But she actually did have a question. Thank you so much for telling me that. I would not have remembered to change that. If you text in with the 571-556-5644, there's an auto response text that tells you we Got it.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Which has the stupid Cartra information and now it needs to be the other one. So you guys, my eyes are near, my boots on the ground. Morning, ladies. Thank you for reading my question. That's the second time ever my business gets mentioned on your podcast and I feel like I could start offering autographs now. Ah, yes. Also texting about about the Cookie Design Lab offer. Congratulations on the new sponsor and have a wonderful time at the beach.

[Corey Miracle]

Oh, thank you so much.

[Heather]

So you have won my 443friend. Email me heather sugarcookiemarketing.com with the rest of your phone number and I'll cook you up with Cookie Design Lab and you'll get that for a month. It's a really quick and easy way to make STL cookie products. If you guys are wondering which printer I'd Recommend the bamboo A1 mini.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. Fur cutters for sure. So if the rest of the questions. Heather's gonna read just a few more. If you are hearing your question being read, I'm so sorry you did not win this one. But that's okay because we always encourage you to continue texting in any questions.

[Heather]

If you're anything like Deb. If you have the luck of Deb.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, Deb, who like chosen 52 times last time. But you can text in by 571-556-5644. Heather, two. Two more questions for us to go through.

[Heather]

Hori.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Did you pick a winner in the dye free food coloring test? Please let us know what your thoughts are.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, that threw me for a bamboozle. I didn't know that True Prism and True Color were the same brand.

[Heather]

Would you pick them up? I was like, oh, yeah, Let me see who wins there. The same thing. It was just a different name.

[Corey Miracle]

It was like one is like their wholesale one and one is like their brand. I can.

[Heather]

Well, it worked on you when you're trying to.

[Corey Miracle]

But I was like, wow, these look very similar. Did I choose one because of this new dye band that's rolling out in 2027. So down the road there's a lot more businesses coming out with dye free options. So I can't say I pick a winner because I'm still collecting the bottles. They're all coming out with something.

[Heather]

A lot of people in the formulation.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, they're in the formulation stage. So I don't want to say like.

[Heather]

Did you try when you're like, that's pretty good.

[Corey Miracle]

I thought True color was pretty good. I like the gels more than the powders.

[Heather]

Is that they sell both.

[Corey Miracle]

They do sell both. Both.

[Heather]

You like the gels? I know. Because it's fun here.

[Corey Miracle]

Well, it's just easier to mix in. I feel like I'm going through powders so fast and it's because I'm doing this little thing and it's just knocking whatever into the bowl.

[Heather]

As an experienced paprika sprinkler on the deviled eggs, you either get all paprika or no paprika. So yeah, I haven't decided yet, but.

[Corey Miracle]

There'S so many more coming out. There's brands that people have actually mentioned to me that I didn't even know sold that. So I will be partaking because like.

[Heather]

Dye free has been like this on the fringes for years. And there's some bakers that do totally die free because they're like healthy. I don't know. Okay, down, down. But now they're kind of coming to like, hey, we've been, we've been blazing this trail for everybody.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, for sure. So I'm excited to see how those roll out.

[Heather]

I like it. Heather and Corey, first off, you're both so amazing and have brought so much to all of us. That's so nice to see you. Thank you. Nine two zero. Secondly, I've been a part of the cookie college going on a year and it's truly changed my business in so many ways. The college is worth every penny. So if you're not a part of it, go check it out. Especially because it'll be on sale. Yeah. Thank you person who I did not pay to send this text. Lastly, my question. I did a very detailed lots of color farmers market babysit and only charge 35 per dozen. Cringe. I know because I wanted the theme so badly. But now I'm kicking myself for it because it was so much work. But then I char. But when I charge or suggest a price that I really want or need like $50 plus, I feel guilty. Especially cuz I live in such a small town and I'm the only baker in this town, which I guess is good for me in some way. I look at what others charge around me and it's in the 50 to 70 per dozen range. Ladies, I'm not making a profit. I'm not making. I'm not even breaking even here.

[Corey Miracle]

How do I get.

[Heather]

How do I get rid of that guilty feeling and charge my worth before I have to close? I've been doing this for four years now. I'm an LLC and I am dying. Help. Tell me straight up. I'm going to tell you straight up, you are more valuable to your small town being in business than you are out of business, you are doing them a disservice. If by every set you sell, you're.

[Corey Miracle]

Closer to closing from a baker to a baker. If you are saying, I feel bad, you're charging on a feeling. That is not a math problem. What you need to do is take feelings out of it. You need to sit down. You haven't costed out your ingredients in your time.

[Heather]

She even says she knows she's undercharging.

[Corey Miracle]

But it's your feeling.

[Heather]

Yeah. And what Cory's saying is, right. When you know, I can't charge less than this, or I'm literally paying you to buy from me, huh? That removes a lot of the guilt. Like, at the minimum, I have to charge this to cover at least my ingredients cost. And then I gotta charge for my time, and then I gotta get a little profit, because if I don't charge profit, I can't expand, right?

[Corey Miracle]

You can't expand. You can't pay for the things that keep a business going. If you're always borrowing from yourself, an employee of your business, you're going to go under slowly but surely.

[Heather]

You're Robin from you.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, you're robbing from me. You are both Peter and Paul. It's so easy as a business owner to be like, well, I'll just pay for the website, you know, yearly fee out of my pocket. At the end of the day, I am the business. No, your business is something, and you are an employee of that business. When you can start thinking like that, if your boss came to you and was like, hey, Heather, I'm gonna need you to spot me too, Hundy. I kind of overspent at the beach, but I need to make payroll. Heather's gonna be like, absolutely not. So why would you do it to yourself?

[Heather]

Right? It is. I. I would tell you this. You feel like you're doing the right thing by undercharging, and I tell you, you're doing the ethically wrong thing. You may think you're doing right by your customers, but you're doing wrong by your customers. Because you will close if you could reframe what you feel is ethical as unethical, I think it'll help you make that jump. But here's. Here's the nuts and bolts. It can't work at a loss. So, yeah, you will close. Giving it to you straight, just raise your prices. Okay, what's going to happen? Your past clients are going to be like, oh, My goodness. You doubled. It was $35, and now it's 50 to $70. And you're gonna be like, yes. You know, I cross it out. My recipe. I have to raise the prices to meet the cost of ingredients. Those people aren't gonna be happy because they had you at cheap and now they know that they had a gold mine. Yeah, gold mine. And then now you're gonna raise your prices. Those past clients may fall off. You may feel guilted. I would feel. I would. I'll be like, you were changing my life for $0. Now I gotta pay for it, and I'm gonna take my oil change elsewhere. Where am I gonna go? There's nowhere else to go.

[Corey Miracle]

Right.

[Heather]

They'll adjust. Just, you have to raise your price.

[Corey Miracle]

What I see bakers that do have this feeling of guilt do is they. They do a slowly raise a price over a fast period of time. So instead of being like, raising your prices once per year over the next six months, you're going to have a price structure raising that's going to get you there faster. So you're not going to be like, I'm going from 35 to 55.

[Heather]

And people are like, oh, my goodness, 35, 45, 55. Exactly.

[Corey Miracle]

We're going to structure it up so we're going to go up every single month. And it's going to allow you to feel less guilty as you raise your price prices. It's not going to be so jarring when you quote your clients the new pricing, but it's also going to keep you in business longer. You can't work for free.

[Heather]

I'm going to tell you, I want you to go to your small town. I want you to go sit in the parking lot of your Target or your Walmart, your grocery store, and I want you to look at every Ford 1F150. The number one selling car sold every three seconds in America, free. It's the number one selling vehicle in America is a Ford F150. And if you add any sort of package to it, you're looking at an $80,000 truck. $10 is nothing. $10 doesn't even get the tank full. They're money on so much stuff if they can't afford it. The audience will determine that for themselves. I always see people like, you know, don't charge a rush fee because that's, that's disrespectful. If I. If I'm the guy who forgot and you, I want you to take that money because I need this.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

If they Want to, they will. If they don't, they won't. Yes. You also have no competition, so great. You can work off a scale. Let's say you don't want to go all the way to 70 like you said. Maybe that's a little bit higher. But let's say we shoot for 55. Maybe we're not making as widest profit, have to make a profit, but maybe we're doing an economy of scale thing. Since you're the only one, you'll always be booked out.

[Corey Miracle]

You're right.

[Heather]

Right.

[Corey Miracle]

All right, we're going to save the.

[Heather]

Next questions because these have to carry.

[Corey Miracle]

Us over for the podcast we're filming right after. So we're going to our sponsors. Without the sponsors and without you supporting the sponsors, this podcast would not be.

[Heather]

So I want to tell you guys this, I want to say this to you. I listen to a lot of podcasts, specifically on YouTube. And you know what? This sponsor segment isn't some pre recorded long thing. You get us genuinely talking about them each week. It could be a lot more intuitive. Yeah, I listen to Dateline Murder in the middle sentence. They'll just. Another ad will pop up for Saatva mattresses.

[Corey Miracle]

So our first one is the backers code. The backers co is like a done for you in your home photography studio, but at scale. So we can't have these big white backdrops because we don't have the room, we don't have the space. But what I do have space for is a backdrop that's 23 inches by 23 inches. And that is what the backers coast does. You're like. But there's so many backers out there.

[Heather]

There.

[Corey Miracle]

There are not so many backers out there that are actually food safe. And we are working with food. When we take pictures of clients orders, we need to make sure that we are making sure that we're safe on our end and we keep our clients safe.

[Heather]

Because unlike cookie cutters, where, where's that line? While you put in the oven, it bakes it out. When you take the photograph the cookies have.

[Corey Miracle]

That's it.

[Heather]

They're no going through another heat.

[Corey Miracle]

Right. So if you're taking pictures of like your fish last night and your cookies this morning and you're doing it on a piece of poster board, there's going to be some cross contamination.

[Heather]

Are we taking the fish out of the bowl?

[Corey Miracle]

I have no idea what you fishy people are doing.

[Heather]

Are you talking about cooked fish? Yeah, I'm just saying I was thinking a goldfish. Oh, Goldfish? Not sure. Little cheese allergy there. Next up Eddie printer. No discount but pays for himself and then some. However not cheap. $3,000. How does he pay for himself? Corporate early orders. You're going to see a lot of people when we do the main street cookie collab. They're going to incorporate Eddie and that inspiring if you want but there's a refurb program of which I'm a huge fan of refurbished things. It's you can go to their website. You may have to call them to get on that list. It puts you at the top of the list and as soon as they get a refurbished one in you get it. Nice.

[Corey Miracle]

Next up is royal batch. Royal batch. Apparently there is a a run on meringue powder. So if you are in search for a new meringue powder the one that I used is royal batch and I posted my ingredients in my recipe recipe to the baking with sugar cookie marketing group. So you can check it out there. It has vanilla extract already in it, white food coloring and corn syrup to give it a soft bite. You can get a sample pack on her website but you can use code twins and save 10 off. So if you're searching for a new marine powder that might be one you want to check out to give them the backers code.

[Heather]

Discount code.

[Corey Miracle]

No you cut me off there.

[Heather]

Sugar Cookie 25 Cookie Design Lab sponsor of the STL Me About it segment. Hilarious. Code Twins 15 off. They have a monthly membership. You have to have a gmail accounts web based account app. STL designs very simple to use.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah nice.

[Heather]

Next up and I I owe you an email. I know. B the begging me crazy. Biggy me crazy. There you go. What is it?

[Corey Miracle]

Big me crazy is an awesome.

[Heather]

She did give me a discount code to retailer for if you're looking for.

[Corey Miracle]

Sprinkles for molds she had the cake pop molds which are super like people are super into. I think she had like food coloring like color mill things like that. If you were looking for an online supplier and with the discount code code is even better.

[Heather]

The discount code is hilarious. What is it? Favorite twin? Favorite twin 10 off website is shop baking me crazy dot com. She was a vendee in the vending bunny. She said she's back again. She's one who gave me vendy bunny ptsd.

[Corey Miracle]

Nice.

[Heather]

So if you want Karen, I have an email. I'll get it to you.

[Corey Miracle]

Heather will get it to you this week.

[Heather]

Feed to the fire.

[Corey Miracle]

Feed to the fire. That wraps up our sponsors. Thank you sponsors for Making this possible without you. Me and Heather would be at lunch a little bit earlier today.

[Heather]

Today. Yeah. Just keep in mind there was two Facebook lives taught last week. One on flip insurance, a little bit dry, but necessary. And then a more fun one taught by. Taught on using Eddie. Eddie the edible printer to get Google Re.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So you can still watch those. I gotta record them all the past Facebook lives. I gotta hurry and finish up this. Oh, is. When does. When does Google deliver? The 28th. The 28th. Got a week. Yeah. Me and the VA have been working on this. There's 170 of these things. Things. I've uploaded them to YouTube. If you're watching YouTube and you're watching the recording of this.

[Corey Miracle]

Hello.

[Heather]

Hi. Yeah, you may be saying you guys aren't very tan from the beach trip.

[Corey Miracle]

No, we hid from the beach. But if you wanted to listen to those Facebook lives, they're no longer going to be accessible in the Facebook group.

[Heather]

Because Zach is doing away with it.

[Corey Miracle]

So what Heather did with the VA is recorded them and uploaded them to YouTube. So the ones that were still available, Grant, these have been going on since 2020. So there was many of people who have, like, deactivated their Facebook accounts. Probably 15. You didn't get.

[Heather]

We're going through something like that.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, something like that. So the majority have been uploaded to YouTube. So if you want to snag any of those, you can find those there. They will no longer be pinned at the top of the events like they have been in the past because Facebook's deleted.

[Heather]

End of an era. Okay. Twin trust, we have one.

[Corey Miracle]

I've worn this back posture correctly.

[Heather]

I love it when a twinturist survives the test of time. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

So I tested it. It to take. To see if I could bake while wearing this posture corrector. No go. It was insanely annoying.

[Heather]

So that we bought these. We were. I don't even think it was influenced. I've been thinking about it for a while.

[Corey Miracle]

Sure.

[Heather]

My grandmother is 86. She'll turn 86 on in two days. And she talks about posture all the time. Because at that age, you can see the exacerbation of poor posture in your 20s multiplied by time. So we have a neighbor, he's basically bent over, and we talk about like, that's an additional pain point, which is preventable with good posture. Posture. Good posture is frustrating, but good posture.

[Corey Miracle]

Is something me and Heather don't practice.

[Heather]

I do not. So I found this little device which now has these little necklaces. If you're on the. If you're on YouTube. You can see these little necklaces it dangles from your back. And the little device needs to be at a 90 degree. It needs to be vertical. If at any point it feels that it's not, it actually vibrates and tells you on its app. It's called the Upright.

[Corey Miracle]

The Upright. So what it does is you wear it. You can set the sensor to be super sensitive or a little, little bit graceful. But you calibrated at the beginning of the day. So I calibrated it for me sitting in this chair.

[Heather]

This takes a million data points. It doesn't say. It says, actually, perfect posture is not healthy. It wants you to shoot between 75 to 95% perfect posture for the day.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. So when you wear it, the longer you wear it, the more data points it has for you. But if you lean forward for five.

[Heather]

Seconds, it will time it slouch. But if you truly lean forward, it knows that you're actually doing like.

[Corey Miracle]

So if you bend over, it's fine. And if you lean forward, it's going to vibrate. It's very annoying. But if you want better posture, it's going to be annoying until you figure out what it feels like to have better posture.

[Heather]

Passwind twist Was that water bottle?

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

My mom bought one with us and she doesn't even use the app. And I said, well, why would you just get another water bottle if you're not going to use the app? And she's like, the fact that it vibrates is so annoying. It reminds me to drink my twin trist. Okay. I drive a lot, right. And you can't text and drive. You can't take notes and drive. It's hard to. Oh, I'll think about it when I stop. I'll never remember what I was thinking about it. So I found this little thing couple. I found it last year. I never bought it. Is the size of credit card. It's called applaud P L A U D P L A U D A I And this is called the note and it's listening to the podcast right now. I got it yesterday and I had it listen in on the phone call. I had the Monday morning marketing meeting and it records the whole thing and then you tell it generate meeting notes from the conversation.

[Corey Miracle]

It actually did a fantastic job.

[Heather]

It found it's okay AI taking over the world. I don't know. You can listen in last week's podcast, but I was pretty impressed with this. It's listening to how we talk and it even found. It even got some of the altercations we had. Cause I was like, well, you're not letting people into the group. And Cora's like, what? And it was like, hey, at the end of the meeting notes, it came up with a task list. It came up with a recap of the different segments. That's how we organized the Monday morning marketing meeting with miracles. It says, hey, I actually want to recommend a few things to you guys based on how you spoke to. It wasn't altercations, but it got like.

[Corey Miracle]

You'Re not letting people in. I said, well, it was vacation last week. I'll let them in.

[Heather]

And then I said, like, you know, what's the. What are we. How are we promoting the midsummer membership sale and course? Like, I don't know, we'll talk about it. I was like, hey, I actually don't think you guys actually had a determination of how you're planning to.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah, it actually got most all of the meeting topics and put them in a. It heard the words correctly.

[Heather]

And I think because it's not a perfect. You can try to transcribe, but because a summary is not a perfect transcription. My mumbling. It didn't need it. I think.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. It just cut it out.

[Heather]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

Cuz Heather is a mumbler. A master of mumbling.

[Heather]

It did say sourdough sailors. Sailors sailing. That one's a hard one. We knew sourdough sailors. Yeah. So I wonder if it'll. I have it recording. I told it. This is a podcast. I want to see how you do the podcast summary.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And I'll see. I don't know. It's pretty neat. It's 100 bucks.

[Corey Miracle]

$100? 100.

[Heather]

That doesn't include. If you want to upgrade the plan for some more additional.

[Corey Miracle]

Is there like a subscription fee to it?

[Heather]

Yeah, when I turned it on, I was like, would you like to subscribe? But otherwise, the base. The base plan is a hundred dollars, no fee.

[Corey Miracle]

Oh, interesting.

[Heather]

So what I did was free outside of the hundred dollars for this guy, but he can also record conversations and transcribe them on your phone. It has that magnetic.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah. In the cookie college, we actually have. What is it? What do you call it? The buddies.

[Heather]

The accountability Buddies.

[Corey Miracle]

The accountability buddy. So if you were to make a phone call.

[Heather]

Huh?

[Corey Miracle]

Study buddies. If you were to have a phone call with your study buddy in the college and you're like. Instead of. Instead of just spitballing, you could have this. Record your guys's goals for the month.

[Heather]

And then come up with meeting notes. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

And come up with meeting notes and then you could share it with your study buddy. Yeah.

[Heather]

The real big thing, the account that we have was like if you guys bill a lunch to your company, you need to have meeting notes. So I was like, okay. Yeah.

[Corey Miracle]

We had never made a meeting note before in our lives. Granted, we always talk about marketing.

[Heather]

I will say that's all we talk about.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And before you guys say consenting third party recording, say yes. I don't. If you're going to record somebody, tell them you're recording Virginia. You have to tell them. Otherwise, can't use it in the court of law.

[Corey Miracle]

Yeah.

[Heather]

That is this podcast. We will see you next week on a pre recorded podcast that happened today.

[Corey Miracle]

And then we will be locked and loaded for the rest of the year. Lock in, locked in, locked in, loaded.

[Heather]

Boy.