236. Baking it Down - The Most BORING Podcast Ever Recorded

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪

Episode 236: The Most BORING Podcast Ever Recorded
Hosts: Heather & Corrie Miracle
Release Date: November 11, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the realities of teaching a private, in-home cookie decorating class—a first for hosts Heather and Corrie, who are best known for strictly held, highly structured public classes. The sisters candidly detail the challenges, surprises, and pivotal lessons from working in a client’s home, exploring the theme of "great is the enemy of good": encouraging bakers to embrace imperfection, learn by doing, and not let perfectionism—or fear of chaos—stop them from new business ventures.

While humorous and self-deprecating in tone, the episode is packed with strategic advice and practical takeaways for cookie artists considering similar forays into private classes, group event marketing, and managing client communications.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Embracing Imperfection & Learning from Experience (00:17–03:10)

• Theme: Don’t let perfectionism stop you from trying new things. Doing the class—even imperfectly—yields actionable insights for improvement.
  • Heather: “Perfectionism and having everything perfect is the leading cause for things never to get accomplished.” (02:04)
  • Corrie: “If we never had tried, we wouldn’t have known what worked and what didn’t.” (01:32)
• Discussed the anxiety around private classes and their decision to take one on “for the podcast—and for you guys.”

2. Lead Acquisition & Marketing Channels (03:27–08:04)

• How the Lead Came: Referral from a past client, demonstrating the value of consistent cross-promotion and nurturing leads, even when you can't fulfill orders.
  • Heather: “Consistent marketing over time... hit both buckets. If you only post about customs, you lose class tickets. If you only post about classes, you lose customs.” (06:56)
• The benefit of Instagram and Eventbrite for staying visible and capturing attendee contact information for future marketing.

3. Event Setup: Venue Surprises & Technical Hiccups (14:41–20:52)

• Communication Challenges: Keeping client communication in a single channel (email). Clients may not read everything; be persistent and patient.
• Space Surprises: The host’s home was cluttered, the table cramped, and power/tech setups were unpredictable.
• Technical Failures: Their usually reliable IPEVO document camera wouldn’t cooperate; fallback plans (PowerPoint, TV) were hampered by the environment.
  • Corrie: “Turns out the TV was pointless. Turns out decorating was pointless. Turns out the IPEVO camera was pointless.” (20:52)
• Flexibility Required: Backup plans (printed playlists, “3D floating cookie cases”) helped improvise.

4. Challenges Unique to Private, In-Home Classes (16:33–43:53)

• Loss of Control: Unable to dictate timing, food/drink policy, or attendee behavior.
• Host Dictates the Tone: Mary, the client/host, introduced interruptions (e.g., serving dessert mid-class, ringing a bell, wine), which lengthened and disrupted class flow (30:34).
  • Heather: “We don’t serve food at our classes. Unpredictability, just again, it was for the pod.” (32:07)
• Noise & Distraction: Guests’ friendships increase side chatter; hosts struggle to command attention.
• Mobility & Space: Limited instructor movement due to cramped setup. Would recommend bringing an assistant/spouse for setup help.

5. Teaching Techniques & Audience Management (21:35–46:49)

• Piping Practice Sheet: A consistent win for engaging beginners—though physical constraints limited demos.
• Personalized Touches: Asking participants about their baking backgrounds to adjust teaching style.
• Handling Problems with Humor: Light-heartedly lowering expectations helps diffuse perfection-seeking frustration.
  • Heather: “The more relaxed you are, the more your icing’s going to work with you and not against.” (46:27)

6. Eventbrite & Ticketing Strategy (10:04–12:59)

• Individual Sign-ups via Eventbrite vs. Lump Sum: More admin work and absorbs fees, but you gain each participant's email for ongoing marketing/upselling.
• Risk vs. Reward: The up-front loss on processing fees is offset if you convert even one attendee to a custom order or repeat class member.

7. Pricing, Profit & Local Market Reality (11:36–13:12)

• Class Pricing: $85/ticket, higher than the group average ($50–$60), justified by local cost of living and instructor experience. Competitors charge up to $105.
• Venue Fees Save: In-home classes cut venue rental expenses but cost extra in time and unpredictability.

8. Post-Class Reflection: What Worked & What They’d Change (42:09–46:49)

• What They’d Do Differently:
  • Bring a TV for step demos, skip live decorating if the space is tight.
  • Bring a bell or amp for crowd control.
  • Pack their own trash bags for easier cleanup.
  • Build more buffer time into class pricing—setup and cleanup took much longer.
  • More succinct expectation-setting with the host about timing and audience management.
• Rebranding Take-Home Kits: Consider marketing as “Practice Kits” instead of “DIY Kits” for better clarity/sales (54:06).

9. Key Lessons for Listeners Considering Private Classes (48:01–55:14)

• Flexibility is Crucial: Every home/class will have unique quirks and challenges.
• Classes Are Profitable: Even with obstacles and an extra hour, nearly $900 profit for one night’s work.
• Private Classes Create New Opportunities: Expand income by offering weeknight classes and opening up to new client types.
• Lead Gen Opportunity: Collecting emails and cross-promoting memberships/book clubs is key.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Great is the enemy of good.” (02:12, Heather quoting)
• “Turns out the TV was pointless. Turns out decorating was pointless. Turns out the IPEVO camera was pointless.” (20:52, Corrie, reflecting on over-planning tech)
• “You have to price your class out for instances like this, because it’s out of your control.” (34:08, Corrie on time overruns at private events)
• “Even the people who didn’t like their cookies said... at worst case, you don’t like your cookies, go eat them outside.” (40:32, Heather, using humor for client reassurance)
• “Cookies looked pretty bad, but nobody cares. It wasn’t your work.” (55:11, Heather, on perception vs. baker’s standards)
• Listener text feedback (76:44): “Boring.” — The inspiration for the episode’s title; embraced by the hosts as a badge of honor, showing their openness to audience feedback.

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:17–03:10 — Main theme: Accepting imperfection, learning by trying
• 03:27–08:04 — How the client found them; Importance of consistent multi-offering marketing
• 10:04–12:99 — Eventbrite vs. Lump sum for ticket sales
• 14:41–20:52 — Communication issues and technological curveballs
• 21:35–26:27 — Piping practice sheet, student engagement, and adapting demos
• 30:34–34:41 — Host interruptions (food, wine, bell) and time management
• 42:09–46:49 — Post-mortem: What they’d do differently in future private classes
• 48:01–55:14 — Strategic summary: Profit, time, and why classes are still worthwhile
• 76:44 — Listener segment, “STL Me About It”: The “boring” review

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Special Segments & Additional Highlights

“STL Me About It” Listener Segment (76:00–78:00)

• Statesboro, GA listener wins for blunt, one-word feedback: “Boring.”
• Hosts encourage this honest audience input and use it as motivation to keep the podcast fresh.

Vendy Blendy Update (56:07–63:58)

• Vendy Blendy details: A 24-hour Black Friday event with 60+ vendors, massive door prizes ($12,000+), and unique offers for “pendies” (pending group members).
• Reinforces importance of pre-event signups and building vendor/attendee relationships.

Cookie College Testimonial (65:16)

• Listener “Jenny”: “I love the Cookie College. It’s honestly a bit overwhelming but I do love that I can do it on my own timeline. I’ve learned so much and I continue to implement pieces of it into my cookie journey.” (65:16)

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Closing Reflections & Twin Trists

• Heather and Corrie reflect on the experience, agreeing they’d do it again for the podcast—but still prefer their own venue for control and predictability.
• Both reiterate that “good enough” is often more than enough for clients and that flexibility and continuous learning are the secret ingredients to success.
• Heather: “We practice what we preach—we can’t give advice we’re not living ourselves.” (67:11)
• Corrie on boundaries: “If you’re going to hate yourself while baking that order, you have violated your own boundary.” (91:00)

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For Bakers & Entrepreneurial Listeners:
If you’re daunted by the idea of in-home or private classes, this episode will arm you with practical strategies, a realistic look at the chaos, and encouragement to just dive in. The sisters’ candor, humor, and absolute refusal to sugarcoat the difficulties are as helpful as their marketing advice.

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For more details on the Vendy Blendy, the Cookie College, or community resources, visit sugarcookiemarketing.com or the Sugar Cookie Marketing Facebook group.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Baking It Down Sugar Cookie Marketing Podcast. I'm your host today. Just kidding. I'm her son Archer with the intro.

[B]

You guys enjoy that? It cost me 10 bucks and I'll pay you when we're done with the podcast.

[A]

Pay me right now.

[B]

Thank you, son Archer. Thank you, son Archer. Well, as you heard here, yes, it was all the money I want to spend. That is Cory son Archer. And he thinks just like I do, which is, no, I don't want to do that. Oh, for money.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I mean. So you guys enjoy that ten dollar intro. I'll pay up when we get out of this. I spoke as fast as he. I'll say that he did it. He did. Just like you did. No, it sounds just like me. He did.

[A]

Well. Welcome to the Baking it down with Sugar Cookie Marketing podcast. I am the mom of the Archer you just heard and we are your host. But we're a spin off from a group that is on Facebook called the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group. We're nigh less than 100 off from 50,000.

[B]

It was Corey and I said, let the vendees bendy. So anyways, we've been letting people in. I know there's a massive glitch with Facebook Facebook in regards to answering the join request questions. Typically in the past we've said please.

[A]

Answer the joint just to negate spam. Unfortunately, when people request to join, it'll say it'll give a prompt. Do you want to answer the questions? They'll click on it, but they'll be taken out of the whole thing.

[B]

So I know it's not you guys. So we've been trying to get in. Sorry, that was my Coke opening.

[A]

We are nigh four days removed from our in person cookie class that we did.

[B]

I want you to know, did something go wrong? Yes, it did. And let this podcast be the eyes and the ears on the could have, should have, have would have.

[A]

But I want to say with what? If we never had tried, we wouldn't have known what worked and what did not work. So I'm proud of this though.

[B]

You said you wanted to do it.

[A]

I'm just saying we could have canceled. We could have not taken on. This is just for you guys who are like, I can't teach a cookie class. I could never teach a cookie class. You can.

[B]

You can teach a in person cookie class. So even though I can't find a venue that lets me either use a space for free, this is a very viable hybrid option. Using someone's home, a free space to Teach a cookie class that you don't have to pay for the venue.

[A]

We've done a podcast on perfectionism and perfectionism and having everything perfect is the leading cause for things never to get accomplished.

[B]

I was even thinking of this quote. It was from some sermon I heard when we were little kids, but it was great is the biggest enemy of good. Yeah, if I have to be great, then I can't be good because it's not great. And I think in business it sucks when things don't work out. However, doing the thing is the thing that makes you great.

[A]

If you did not have a good Thanksgiving pre sale or a good Halloween presale, now you have information to make your next one great. If you never did them at all, you wouldn't have that information. A lot of times we have something that doesn't go perfectly well, something goes wrong. Typically like Heather's thing that she did.

[B]

Wrong, how to be confessing to it.

[A]

And we say, that's it, I give up. Not for me, it didn't go well. But we never try to build on the fact of things that went semi good that didn't go totally bad or learn from the totally bad, and we just give up before we ever become great at something. So this podcast is all about that in home cookie decorating class.

[B]

So you might think, was it in.

[A]

One of your twos's home? No, it was not one of our twos home. I'll give you the backstory.

[B]

There's a really way. One of your twos is home.

[A]

Is that a word?

[B]

One of your homes plural. Make the homes plural.

[A]

Oh, I like that. One of your all's homes. I like to throw in a little word there Tuesdays.

[B]

So just to recap what we talked about in part one, this was. And it was funny because Corey actually asked where the lead came from. This was a lead from a referral of a client you had last year.

[A]

What was so funny is Mary, the lady who put on this class, had actually reached out to me mid summer when I was going through this, that cancer surgery and she wanted to have a custom order done. I was busy. So I actually gave her a list.

[B]

Of other things you're trying to.

[A]

I actually gave her a list of other bakers and I think she actually went with one of those other bakers. That would have been a loss of a lead for me because I had turned her away when she was looking. But unfortunately the person who had baked the cookies for her did not teach cookie classes. So Mary came back into my fold.

[B]

So you can kind of see that consistent marketing over time. So again, Corey had baked for these. The. It turns out the group was gathering. They were teachers. Yes. Corey had baked for one of the other teachers a while ago. Word of mouth. I actually think that teacher may have brought them to the school and given them to the other teachers. This teacher, Mary, reaches out for a custom set. Corey is busy, refers her out. She hires another baker, however, wants to do a private in home class, sees that Corey is cross promoting her private classes in between her custom sets. And then Mary says, can I schedule a private class? Now here's the thing. We don't teach private classes for the reasons we'll talk about in this podcast. However. Yeah, if this would be just a great business model. I'm just difficult. Yes, you are. I like. I'm sorry, I like extreme control.

[A]

That, and I want to say that is Heather does like extreme control. She likes to be able to go into the place to set up to have the knowledge that no one's going to dictate anything. We know what we're walking into when we do our cookie classes at the venue that we currently have. And I want to say it does play a factor having that control.

[B]

If we didn't have access to this, my type A personality, guaranteed spot that doesn't. That lets us, you know, use the whole space on setters, I would definitely learn how to be more easy, breezy and roll with the punches. However, my what I bring to the class would look a lot different. And we'll talk about that. Because we aren't outfitted for versatility in terms of space. That's what I think. If you got into this, you would have the tools needed. We didn't have them. Yeah.

[A]

I would say if you. Okay, say you didn't have a good venue and you had the choice to do classes in people's homes or a class in your own home, you could take back some of the control by hosting it in your own house.

[B]

But that requires a lot more changes in your end. You have kids. Do you have the large enough cabinet?

[A]

I know, yeah. I'm just saying if you were like in people's homes, I couldn't do venue. I can't do in your house. You could do.

[B]

Definitely an option. So when you say I have no options, consider this. A lot of bakers do teach out of their own houses. Yeah. And then a handful of bakers will do these private classes in people's houses. All of them are great money. Again, uh, class teaching classes is the highest margin Item a cookie or can offer. Absolutely.

[A]

I I tell you last week I had to decorate, I want to say a dozen cookies. The time that took versus the time of prep, prep included and teaching class reduced massively.

[B]

Massively. And the charging. I charge over your price per dozen per these classes per ticket. And then we had no venue fees, so. Okay, back to the lead acquisition. It was a referral from a past client. Corey was consistent on social media, was able to reacqu the lead in for this aspect.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As we're there, Mary also says I will be ordering customs from you. So Corey's able to reacquire even the customs and.

[A]

And that's fantastic. That go me. That was a great opportunity for me.

[B]

Okay. So the things we can take from there is consistency and consistent promotion across all offerings. When you only post about customs, you lose class tickets. If you only post about classes, you lose customs. So hit both of the buckets.

[A]

I think a lot of cookiers love their own aesthetic in their feeds and sometimes when up for the cookie class kits or other kit memberships out there, it takes away from your vibes. But unfortunately, if people don't know you teach classes, they won't come to your classes. So sacrifice. No one's checking your feed.

[B]

I'm a promise.

[A]

That's just you.

[B]

I very. If ever check, go to someone's feed and be like that aesthetic.

[A]

Right. We're doing that. It's more of our own ego tied into it. So don't say to yourself, well, if I post this, it takes it from me. You can always archive something after.

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah. So again, consistency of posting across all social media channels. This one happened to be Instagram. Yeah. And then. And then having the opportunity. So again, Corey posted about public classes and Mary inferred private class. Yes. It would typically be a no. I typically reject those and send them to other leads. That's why it's great to have other bakers in your back pocket. However, for you guys, we did it.

[A]

We did it.

[B]

Okay, now we have Mary here. She's interested. Corey lays out the parameters. Now we offer the cookie class kits membership. Somebody asked, do you guys teach those yourselves? Yes. Why Reinvent the wheel. That's our max. Best we can come out with. I don't think we could do that.

[A]

I don't think my brain can do much more that you're giving. You're getting a team Corey right there.

[B]

So since we have created the classes, Corey has the cutters for all those classes. I'm a big fan of reusing what you got. But because we've been teaching these classes for three years, I create a collage of the classes. Yeah. And. Oh, that is my fault. My water bottle.

[A]

Heather is saying those fast spank into me.

[B]

Deduct another $10 off my. I'll take the 10 dol. We had given her the this graphic.

[A]

And it's a huge collage because it's.

[B]

Every cookie class kit that we've talked and we said you can pick something from this. Now what I like is we didn't leave and whatever, you can design your own set. Nothing had to be recreated here. So there's no time cost of teaching a class. Since technically I bought the cookie class kit so I could just teach what we did. You guys don't know what the cookie class kits are. It's everything you need to teach a good class. So the PowerPoint, the promotional photos which you didn't need to use. Yeah, the end. The staged imagery and the copy.

[A]

I guess we did use them with the collage though. It was a fantastic collage.

[B]

The collage we use. And I did use the eventbrite copy and listing to create the private event. Okay. So she picked the one she want. She actually picked our first year Thanksgiving class. So it was a 2023 Thanksgiving class. And then we offered her two options. She could pay up front in one lump sum. Nobody's going to take that option because she's out anybody who doesn't show up. Yeah, we take a riskier option to secure the lead here because mostly I wanted to test it for you guys. We give her a private eventbrite class listing, which means yes, there's fees which I could have either passed on to them or absorbed myself. I absorbed them myself, but I put a limit. She had to have 10 tickets sold by a date that was two weeks out from the event. Okay. We talked about this in the last one and then we started emailing her. I think it started biweekly about a month and a half ago. Telling her who was on the list.

[A]

Now I'm gonna say one benefit to doing the Eventbrite thing.

[B]

So you're like, oh, you took a.

[A]

Hit with everyone who signed up through Eventbrite. Here's the thing. Every person there is a viable option. Either custom orders or repeat class attendees. If Mary would have paid the lump sum. We've only have Mary's email. It'd only been easy for us to remarket to just Mary them signing up individually.

[B]

I will say that's a good point. Yeah, we have everyone's Email, I could have actually upsold more of them. I could have done that. This wasn't our goal in this one.

[A]

But I but we can in the future and they love the class. So one our warmest lead is someone who's already taken the class.

[B]

We could Cory could get Customs which a lot of them said I'll be placing custom orders. You know I always take that number and divide it in half. Yeah. As more of a reality. But I do have all their email addresses. However, I lost money on processing fees because any processing is going to do that outside of bank transfer and I lost money on Eventbrite fees. So if Corey gets one order, if they come to one class, I've made that back but that's my risk. So I did take the front end loss in exchange for all of their email addresses.

[A]

With Eventbrite you can do what we call take home kits. So you can actually bring a kit home from class so all the knowledge you just learned, you can actually practice again. We wanted to see in this in home private class would people buy these DIY kits? Unfortunately only Mary the host bought the kit. But good to know. So if we wanted to not do eventbrite next time, we know the pluses and minuses. Not a lot of people wanted the take home kit. They were there more for this chilly night. Right. Chili night.

[B]

And I was devastated to report I didn't get a bowl of chili. And I'll explain why in a minute. Devastating though it smelled delish. It smelled delicious. People ask this. I'm just going to tell you we live in extremely high cost of living area. Probably in not what are the California prices but it is Washington D.C. prices. So you got a lot of big incomes. This was a sizable house here. So I knew that there was some money to be had. But we did not adjust the price per ticket. So we $85. It was $85 for this.

[A]

Like we talked on the last podcast, if we were new to classes, it might behoove us to discount these because one we don't have to market the class kits was already made. So we're not remaking. The venue is free. So if you're listening to this and you're like I've never taught classes. You don't necessari have to come into a high price because you're saving money in other aspects. Me and Heather knew because we've taught classes for years that if we hosted our own Thanksgiving class, we would have sold out.

[B]

And maybe and maybe just a little bit if I know you and me, we wanted to make it a little bit cancelable so that we could get out of it. Okay. Cory and I said if we. If we don't bend any rules here, the odds of her canceling. Canceling could be high. And that would be just a fine answer. But podcast reign supreme. So, of course, Mary had a lot of friends and she was able to sell out. I'm going to tell you our price per ticket. 85 doll. The average price per ticket in the sugar cookie marketing group last year is 50. So don't think if you're not at 85. We just live in a high cost of living area. And this is.

[A]

There's two of us teaching.

[B]

There's two of us teaching. Right. So 50 is the average there. If you came in at 40 to secure the lead, I wouldn't be mad. As long as your costs are covered. It's always a math problem.

[A]

Our competitor down the road with a brick and mortar, $105 a ticket.

[B]

So you see, they. They keep me on my toes. They show you where you can get up to that if you want to. Okay, so we secure the lead. I'm emailing Mary. She's selling out at just a predictable rate. We said about a month ago she was definitely gonna make.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So then I could tell by the way Mary emailed that she is a little all over the map. Like a fun vibe, but it's hard to secure it down.

[A]

One thing that Mary kept doing, Heather actually took over and said, mary, from this point forward, we will just be emailing because Mary did come in as a lead from Instagram, but we need to keep the conversation together and organized. Unfortunately, Mary kept.

[B]

But Corey would redirect. Remember, Mary's talking to mixing bowl, but she's emailing sugar cookie classes. There are two different people in two different avenues. I hate trying to chase down communication, especially I don't log in at mixing bowl. So.

[A]

And so there's two of us. So Heather's like, did Mary say this to you? It was my job.

[B]

Constantly redirected. Hey, Mary, thank you so much. I'm gonna follow up with you via email. So again, I prefer. And if you guys want a tip here is always keep people in your inbox. Within the inbox, you can see the chain. You can keep things in a chain. Love that. Nothing expires. Love that.

[A]

What we don't want Mary to say is, oh, I missed the message on Instagram because we were talking through two avenues. We want Mary to always be directed to one. And the easiest One that has a nice chain.

[B]

Nothing can be deleted.

[A]

Which Instagram.

[B]

You can delete messages now is your inbox. And the inbox, typically the way we're it ends up in primary versus the other ones on Instagram has multiple categories.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So that's what I would say is keep it on email. Yeah. And even if they reach out, which happened a lot. We get that now. The caveat here is Mary did not read my emails all the way through. She would only reply to certain information. I said, well, that'd be an interesting test here. It took me quite a bit of time to get her to send me a photo of the space. It did.

[A]

It was almost like a few days beforehand.

[B]

The photo of the space showed what the problems were going to be. Yeah, she had a lot of stuff in her house. There was no clean flat surfaces. So having a TV already out. Yeah. Which leads to the technical problems.

[A]

She had a dining room table that fit exactly 10 people. And if you're familiar with dining room tables, this wasn't a new age carpet. This is a vintagey. So you had chairs with big arms on them.

[B]

Heavy wood furniture. Heavy wood furniture.

[A]

And so there was exactly 10 students and there was exactly 10 chairs. And they look like to be no space around them.

[B]

Now we have two instructors and they need a place to set up. That was the issue. I told Corey I think we'll need to bring actually the little folding table that she's sitting at now. Great call. I couldn't have imagined what it would have been like otherwise.

[A]

At the end of the day, I didn't even need to be decorating. I needed a touch point.

[B]

I'm put something down.

[A]

Okay. Yeah, you're right. You're right.

[B]

We had our little presentation at the beginning. So we did bring. Bring a small folding table. Now I did bring the IPEVO camera, which worked miraculously perfectly at my house.

[A]

If you never heard of what Heather just said. An IPEVO camera. They use them at Cookie Con a lot. That's where the class instructors will actually decorate under this camera. And the camera will actually be projected either on a screen or on a projector. Something like that.

[B]

Old school projectors. You know those big things at the big bowl. Yes. This is a replacement. This is a digital documents camera. And it was perfect here. But the minute we get there, it suddenly doesn't want to play nice. And I'm not sure if it's a wifi thing typically. Typically I can fix technical problems. Except for I didn't realize they were going to eat Chili over my shoulder.

[A]

So. Because here's another thing. Heather in control, likes a control, a personality. We had no control of where these people were. You know, me and Heather, if we go fist fighting together because the ipevo camera isn't working, we can't do it now. People are literally standing next to us. We did not know that the dining room table was the only table she had.

[B]

We're actually watching a setup. So Cory and I prefer to not still have a sausage. It's like not cute to watch a cookie class get set up. It's very cute when you walk in. Yeah, I know it's ready to go. So that was the factor that I said. Oh, I wish that was different.

[A]

And here's the way that Mary set it up. Hey, you guys can get there however, and you can set up. We'll be eating chili. Me and Heather understood that as we'll be eating chili somewhere else. No, they were eating chili with us.

[B]

They were eating chili and watching us.

[A]

As the people were sitting on the floor watching us go around this table.

[B]

So I'll tell you this. The class was to be taught from 6:30 to 8, which is kind of late. So we said, can we get there 5:30? So remember, we built in an hour of setup time to fix these problems in our brains.

[A]

We thought we'd be there before other people know. Everyone arrived at 5:30, in which Mir.

[B]

Had mentioned that, oh, perfect. Because everyone will be getting there at the same time. Other aspects I. I wish I had more control over, obviously, but I kind of predicted. I pulled up the Google street view. It was down a pipestem. If you're not familiar with a pipestim, they're very common here in Virginia. You'll have the road, the neighborhood road. Then it'll look like a driveway, but that driveway spreads into five other houses that share a shared driveway. Yeah, it makes parking extremely limited because.

[A]

Mary had 10, nine other guests there plus me and Heather. That's nine other vehicles plus me and Heather's.

[B]

Remember, I'm carrying a lot of stuff.

[A]

We have so much stuff to carry that Heather blocking the pipe stem makes.

[B]

Mary look bad to her neighbors.

[A]

To her neighbors.

[B]

Yeah, it was a single direction.

[A]

But we also didn't want Heather blocked in by the members of the class.

[B]

I wanted a quick escape. More on that later. So what I wished is that I could have maybe told Mary she wasn't kind of factoring in what was going on in, nor should she have to, that we could have had access to a reserve parking spot or Something because we needed to carry.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Doesn't matter. What we ended up doing is putting the hazards on unloading car and then moving it after we.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Put it in there.

[A]

Yeah. Lots of.

[B]

Lots of movement. I couldn't imagine this being taught by a single individual. It would have extended so much more setup time. So while I'm moving the car, while I'm setting up the computer. Cory's setting up the car.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. I would do the. I would partner with somebody for a private class. Granted, you're going to half your profits, but bring a spouse, bring a child, something. Maybe some of you pay hourly. Would have been nice, at least just for the setup. Yeah, sure. Okay, so we go and set up the class. Corey's setting up the IPEVO document camera. Doesn't work. In hindsight, it didn't really matter anyways. There was such a tight radius. The average age was between somebody that was younger than me and someone that was older than my grandmother. So there was no predictability on mobility or access there. There was a lot of steps, and it was impossible for them to turn their chairs around.

[A]

It would be impossible because we said the chairs are these giant vintage Y hardwood chairs.

[B]

Right. So Corey printed off a playlist, which is a single sheet PDF of each step of the class.

[A]

So It's a condensed PowerPoint. The playlists are pulled from the PowerPoint. It's something that's available in the college.

[B]

And remember, we did not have a TV and we had no access to. Typically, I have the PowerPoint displayed on a TV that Corey brings. Okay.

[A]

I want to say there was four ideas of how these people could access the class. Typically we bring a TV and the PowerPoint's on that TV. We actually have me decorate in class. We have this cookie class playlist, and we have these 3D floating cases where I pre make the cookies.

[B]

So we already knew we were definitely not getting the PowerPoint. We thought we'd have Cory decorate, but remember, my document camera does not work. I couldn't imagine, though, how it would have worked Anyway, so it wasn't a.

[A]

Huge loss, but it's good that we didn't put all our eggs in that basket.

[B]

So we had the playlist again. I could always email them the PowerPoint, which I did have loaded onto the computer and on the computer itself. I told Corey I thought this might happen. I've loaded the PowerPoint onto the computer, which is great.

[A]

And we had the 3D floating cases where I pre made the cookies. So it's actually physically the cookies, but in these cookie stands.

[B]

So it turns out core decorating was pointless.

[A]

Pointless.

[B]

Turns out the tv pointless. So those things we end up relying on too. I like that we built in four.

[A]

The Ipevo camera. Pointless. The cookie class playlist. Why? Everyone had one. No one referenced it.

[B]

No. I don't know why. We've tried the playlist a couple times. I love the idea. It's perfect for DIY kids.

[A]

What's so funny is the last class that me and Heather hosted ourselves, a class before we had somebody there that actually came to the next class. She liked the little playlist thing because she sat in the back of the.

[B]

Of the class the last time when.

[A]

She came to the class.

[B]

This was just a couple weeks ago.

[A]

For the Halloween class. She's like, oh, where's the little playlist thing? And she didn't get it. So she actually sat next to me this time.

[B]

Interesting. It's interesting because I could tell the frustration on their faces is they couldn't see what Corey was doing, that there was no other option. If one person hadn't showed up, Corey could have set up at that table.

[A]

Everyone showed up during the piping practice part, which was a great part. I love the piping practice. It really gets them involved and allows me to showcase my teacher thing. What the piping practice is is just this segment of class where we actually have them be able to handle the piping bag before they're actually diving into their cookies. So if they need to mess up on anything, mess up on the piping practice sheet. At the end of the day, people come back to classes that they feel successful in. So setting them up for success is going through this piping practice sheet. It also allows me to showcase my abilities to teach. So when someone comes in, hey, do you see how you have more icing at the start and the end of the line? Let me just tell you what's happening there so I can go individually to each person.

[B]

And I've talked about this. This is just a PDF single sheet paper that actually had laminated in the cookie class kits. We designed one for each class. Me lazy already paid money. So we just take this one I've used for over five years.

[A]

The great part about it is we didn't want to leave that part out. But you have to understand, there was no space for me to showcase this lady Beth. Love her to death. She was actually had her chair slightly cockeyed enough where I said, beth, Beth, you mind if I squeeze in there so I can show people?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Beth was fine with It. Even though she had to keep moving her piping practice sheet, but she was in it to win it, and she wanted to see what it was supposed to look like. Granted, you might have people who are not receptive to moving, and you need a plan for that ahead of time. I.

[B]

It's.

[A]

Honestly, if I. If the.

[B]

I.

[A]

We couldn't. Because the table. The chairs wouldn't move.

[B]

There was no options.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So it was like in the best woulda, coulda, should have, this is what we would have done. In reality, it was exceptionally limited. So what I had Corey do is I had her decorate at one end of the table. I could see the frustration on the face of the other side. I said, don't worry, guys. I'm gonna have her come over to that. And then I'm a yapper. We don't want any dead air. So I just keep narrating what I just said to kind of make it.

[A]

Feel with people at these chairs. So with the chairs pushed in, I could walk around fully the whole extent of the table with people in the chairs. I actually had to leave the room, go around this divider and come to the other end of the class because it wasn't accessible with someone sitting in the chairs. So Heather would be like, can you go help? Running across their home.

[B]

I tried to think I was reading their facial expressions when the frustration was there.

[A]

But I want to say, if you're the only person teaching this class, you'll be taking yourself out of the element because you'll be running around.

[B]

It would be hard, and you guys would do it. Props to you. Yeah, I'd imagine it would be hard. We did the same intro we always do. So the class is an hour and a half, but 30 minutes or maybe 20 minutes of that is talking about the class and how sugar cookies and royal icing. And then we go to the piping practice sheet, which takes about 10 to 15 minutes, and then we do decorating. So it's. I'm able to fill up an hour and a half. It typically always goes over. And this one did as well in the script that we include with the cookie college. But it's also the same one I still use. I go around the room and ask for people to introduce themselves and give their back round with cookies. They already knew themselves, so they did not include their names. However, I was writing down their names, so I did go back and ask them for that. Interesting change.

[A]

When we do a cookie class in our own venue, people don't know each other. Sitting across the way so they're be like.

[B]

They're more apt to introduce themselves.

[A]

I'm from Woodbridge, and I don't really know how to decorate cookies, but I love eating them. This one, these ladies knew each other giggling right and left when they were like, oh, my goodness, Stacy loves to eat my cookies. We don't know who Stacy is. They know who Stacy is. So that section actually took a little bit longer.

[B]

Yeah. I wonder if we could have done that a little differently.

[A]

We'll have to reconvene on that one.

[B]

The consensus there, though, is a couple people were baking cakes and then one person had sugar cookie experience. So it helps me understand what the pain point is on the experience level. I really do like that question. I'll never get rid of it.

[A]

Yeah. It's what we do in our cookie classes.

[B]

It.

[A]

It actually helps us. I'm here to learn how to decorate better. Okay. I'm going to give them a little bit more feedback.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because they're here to learn it. Someone who is. I'm just having fun. Perfect.

[B]

Then I'm going to make sure that you have fun. Yes. Right. So I really do like that question a lot. Definitely changes how Corey engages with those types of people. Somebody I'll say, is anyone here want to learn how to sell these? Like, is anyone say, I want to make this my. My new money hustle?

[A]

I think in classes that question gets more feedback.

[B]

These are just friends for fun. Yeah. So it changed a little bit there. So we start in the class, we talk about kind of go through this PowerPoint. It's all scripted. I'm holding the laptop towards them. They cannot see a word that's on.

[A]

They can't. And unfortunately, sometimes I rely on seeing the.

[B]

I could tell Corey could not see the laptop either, so she didn't know what the next step was. And I think you can pick up when I was like, we're going to go back here real quick. Yeah.

[A]

And because we've taught classes so much, I knew what the natural next feel was, but it was hard to not see it.

[B]

I mean, because Corey and I have worked together so often, I can kind of tell where she was, where she wanted to be. Yeah. So we got that. We got through that. The piping practice sheet. Highly encourage that one. It is. I like to be able to have Corey and myself come around and be like, hey, you see this? This is why this is happening. I like them to be frustrated before they're trying to show off.

[A]

And I also think it adds value. So the people outside learning Something. Learning something. Yeah.

[B]

So we have them not actually do the whole sheet. We have them do various ones. And then it kind of helps them understand what outlin. And then the final step, we have them outline and flood a square that's on the sheet. And then Corey comes around, gathers it. You might say that's really messy. It is, actually. They glue themselves together and I put them in a tote to wash at home later.

[A]

But because they. Here's the thing. We have them so they're laminated, so.

[B]

They'Ve lasted us five years.

[A]

Some people just print out pieces of paper, trash them at the end.

[B]

Absolutely. Probably a better cleanup solution.

[A]

I don't know why we don't like buying printer cartridges.

[B]

Oh, I hate printers.

[A]

So that would be why.

[B]

Oh, that makes sense. So what we did is we jumped into the decorating portion. We'd already kind of done the eyebrow raise that the Ipevo document camera wasn't going to work. And I was going to kind of let the class dictate how they wanted. I could see they wanted to look at that laptop, but thank goodness Corey had these. One of the Vendys is actually selling them.

[A]

No, I don't think so.

[B]

Yeah, I put up their website.

[A]

No way.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So these little 3D floating cases, if you. They sold on Amazon.

[B]

And it was you.

[A]

I bought mine from the flowered box shop.

[B]

Yeah. And all you do is you decorate a cookie, let it dry, let it cross over, and then you put the finished cookie in this kind of plastic wrap and it's displayed vertically.

[A]

It has to be fully dry, not just crusted over. Otherwise it will squish.

[B]

Yeah. So the problem with these is they get kind of messy if you keep. Keep replacing them.

[A]

However.

[B]

Okay. It's. They're fine. Right.

[A]

It just made it a smudgier. It looked like a dirty look.

[B]

My favorite. But maybe if you could figure out replacement. Yeah, sure. They were cheap enough. I think you could do it anyways.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Lessons learned. It was meant more for vendors at a farmer's market.

[A]

What it's actually meant for was a way to showcase your cookie for eternity. So you really loved one cookie you made. You'll never take it out of this little sleeve. But me and Heather, like, I'm not tied to saving any of my cookies. I was like, yeah, this would be great for class. We'll take them out each time. Unfortunately, there's the remnants of the cookie before.

[B]

Right. Looks a little dirty. However, I haven't heard anyone say anything about it. I almost kind of referenced it so they know that we replaced cookies, whatever that disgusting little thing was. But what that did we I was able to pass the cookie around. Granted it's the finished cookie and we're very far from that stage. But they really did like it.

[A]

Since I'm not decorating in front of them, it didn't work. I decorated behind them. No one could see we didn't have the tv. The Ipevo camera, it's also not accessible. It was our number one way to show them the next steps.

[B]

In hindsight, Cory and I are looking at the venue and Cory's like, I bet I could have put the TV right there. It would have been have to worry about power, you know, because we need.

[A]

To play for sure. And when Mary took the photo, obviously she didn't take a power source.

[B]

She took it of the surface at the table, the table top. And she was very concerned about the safety of the table. But we had brought our trays, so she was.

[A]

And parchment paper.

[B]

So she didn't even need a word.

[A]

But she had covered it with this.

[B]

Little cloth or something. So we go through the class. I can tell the things that are different is they're actually drinking wine.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

That was a part of their chili cook off, not a part of us.

[A]

So I want to say because the wine glasses are so open, it took.

[B]

Up a lot of space.

[A]

It took up a lot of space. But also if someone's wine glass and this didn't happen were to fall over on the person next to them. So say if you're hosting in CL in person classes in your own home and these people don't know each other, but you allow opened drinks. You do run the risk where someone could knock over a drink and ruin the event for the next person next to them.

[B]

Let me ask you this, and I didn't ask you the day of having seen how constricted we were with space, would you have not used the trays and rather just the parchment shell sheets?

[A]

The one thing I like about the trays is it gave everyone a dedicated space.

[B]

We do like that. But you saw there was no space.

[A]

Yeah, but they had enough space in front of them. Some of the messier people to decorate. She needed like 52 yards of space.

[B]

Because she was falling over herself.

[A]

But I think most people did a pretty good job and they still had space in front of them. It's almost like when they put their cookie their step that they finished back on the tray. It's safe.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

But versus when it's just there, they're Nicking it, touching it, everything like that.

[B]

Okay. The wine did cause a little. I was constantly moving Anne's wine out of her elbow. Yeah. For fear. I didn't want to spell it.

[A]

Absolutely not my event.

[B]

But okay. Something to keep in mind.

[A]

Didn't have control of. And this is something you'd have to keep in mind if you're doing these classes at someone else's home. Mid. Mid step, mid cookie decorating step, Mary says, who's hungry? Okay. Our class is designed to be an hour and a half because any more time we start losing money. Mary gets up and serves dessert in the middle of class. It has now added an additional.

[B]

It really caused a lot of chaos minutes things. I have a very high pitched voice. However, it doesn't carry at all. So I got the worst of two sides. And I'm also the primary speaker in these.

[A]

When Heather's voice did not carry and I'm like, there ain't no way. Nobody in this.

[B]

I would just. And I say at one point, I said, use your deep voice. And we're getting back to class. We have. We have alcohol. So we've got people that are escalating the have a good time. Right. But they're talking louder and louder. We have the friendships which allow them to say things that I wouldn't have seen in a typical fashion. Absolutely. Because you're like, I gotta respect these other people's money. These people are like, we're friends. I'm going to talk loud. And then we got Mary who's like, I'm going to interrupt this at any point. Ed. I almost felt like she wasn't happy with the results of her cookies. She would create a distraction. Makes a ton of sense. So those are factors to keep in.

[A]

Mind because you don't control over that. I can't say, mary, take a seat. We're doing class. That wasn't appropriate at the time. It added 10 minutes onto class and created a ton of crumbs. Let me tell you, she had an oatmeal cookie there.

[B]

A lot of the space we needed. Yeah, it took a ton of space. So.

[A]

So one girl who really wanted her cookies to look good had these crumbs falling into her cookies that she's having to dig out. That's something. We don't serve food at our class.

[B]

Classes. Unpredictability just again, it was for the pod. So it was interesting to try to overcome that distraction. At one point, Mary's husband comes up from work and she wants to get up and serve him food. He actually Says no.

[A]

Yeah. He says no, but she would have left and that would end and then the class would have now had to cater to her because she'd been so behind.

[B]

So that was very interesting. I didn't predict that. I didn't predict the dessert and I didn't predict the wine. I don't know why I didn't predict the wine.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

You never know, Hannah. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So making it through class, when people were upset because they were friends, they were very vocal about it. Cause you can be. Those are your friends. This isn't a practice, but you can.

[A]

Say they're so relaxed.

[B]

We love that.

[A]

But now they're loud talking over. Heather can't be heard. So I'm having to use my bigger old mom voice.

[B]

I know some people get those little speakers that they put in the back pocket. Maybe not the worst idea. I thought it would be a little quieter. However, there was no. Usually we put through the TV Chord Spotify playlist. I did have it piped through the computer to kind of add some kind of level of ambiance.

[A]

Unfortunately, through a computer, it sounds like it's in a tub.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it would have been nice to have like the Google home there. Granted, obviously, Internet access was a big issue, so having at least something playing made added to the vibe of the whole experience. If it was silent, I'd been silent at some point.

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. So then we teach the class, but at constantly people are interrupting to just talk about their lives with each other.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Very interesting.

[A]

One thing I loved that Heather did to lock people back in.

[B]

She's like, you guys will never guess.

[A]

You only have 10 minutes left of class. So these people who are chit chattering, not focused on the next step now locked in. Because me and Heather will be leaving in 10 minutes.

[B]

Yeah. Which let me rest assured we did not. But I tried. But unfortunately, I can't turn off the lights. Yeah.

[A]

Giving that update allowed people to lock back into the class, focus in. Because now it's coming to a close.

[B]

I don't know if I had been more strict with Mary in the correspondence, if she would have gotten what that meant.

[A]

I don't believe so.

[B]

I think she was like, they'll leave when we're done.

[A]

Absolutely. But here's the thing. You have to think you have to price your class out for instances like this, because it's out of your control. When me and Heather are in our own classes in the venue, Heather will be like, I'm turning the lights off, ladies. Heather will physically Turn a light off.

[B]

My favorite thing to say is, you don't gotta go home, but you can't stay here.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I should probably start playing that song like. Like it's called Closing Time.

[A]

So I want to say that was out of our control. So Mary could wanted everyone to stay there for an additional two hours. She was having the grandest old time. At the end of the day, we have priced the class for an hour and a half.

[B]

The one thing I didn't have forethought for was cleanup. Because Corey and I just will take all the trash. The this soiled, I don't know, parchment paper. Just ball it up and throw it away. It makes for quick getaways.

[A]

Also, I just want to add in.

[B]

Our classes in our venues.

[A]

I bring a little bag where they can take their icing home. Nobody took their icing home because they weren't trying to do this later. They were just doing it for a bonding.

[B]

Which changed a little bit. Because in the class, that's a value added thing. And this one was an impedance.

[A]

Oh. Because now the icing heavy. There was extra icing. Everyone left it behind. So what's funny is no one wanted.

[B]

Our business card either.

[A]

No one wanted the business card. Good to know.

[B]

So funny. The business card, typically it has the royal icing recipe on it. They use it as a coaster for the wine glass. That's so funny sense.

[A]

Okay, so class comes to an end.

[B]

We actually.

[A]

We finished this step. People are chitchatting and talking. So Heather. So I ended up saying, guys, congratulations. You did a fantastic job. And that wraps up your cookie class as a way to end it. Because they wanted to chitchat to be like, oh, what does yours look like? Everything like that. We needed to pack up the trays. So there are cookies on trays. Our great thing that we do in every class is before class starts, we'll actually put the boxes together. So we'll uncorrugate them.

[B]

So they're now two boxes where they can put their creatures. Yeah.

[A]

So regardless, if you're having a grand time, I'm gonna hand you this box. And it's gonna be in front of you and the person you're talking to.

[B]

This concludes our room.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So Corey passes around the boxes. However, they don't seem to be as responsive as we wanted.

[A]

Usually that allows people to get up and leave. These people knew Mary. They knew Mary's house.

[B]

You know, I have all my things turning out the lights, saying my little phrases. And then I usually use this when the ven at Spaceback. But I can't do this in this location. So there is really, truly no way to get people to move. So I decided to come up with this grand idea. Can we take a group photo? Which I know they'd want.

[A]

So what it did fantastic idea. It brought everyone out from behind the table. They were no longer seated.

[B]

But, boy, did it just take so long.

[A]

Man, it did one thing Mary had, and it's a Mary thing. And I don't think anyone but Mary could do that. She had this bell.

[B]

Oh, that was Jean that she was bringing. Really. This distraction had been pervasive long before.

[A]

We entered the so when we wanted someone to get attention, Mary, when she was ready to serve her chili, rang this very obnoxious bell saying, dinner time. Dinner time. So I was like, oh, I see the bell. I said so? And so ring the bell and get their attention.

[B]

It was a genius. And everyone stopped.

[A]

And she's like, they're trying to take a group photo. Okay. Everyone leaves the table. Okay. That's all we really needed was them to leave the table because now we have to clean up. That's a part of the whole thing.

[B]

Once they left the table, we were set.

[A]

Oh, I. Heather took the photo, and.

[B]

I got to work set for and spank me for not doing that. I needed a trash bag.

[A]

I did not bring one. And Mary. So everyone's thanking Mary for a great time.

[B]

She's talking to living in la vida Loco.

[A]

Yeah. And Heather's pulling her out. Can we have a trash bag? And fortunately, we didn't bring our own trash bags.

[B]

Mary.

[A]

Nice as pie. It wasn't like, trying to hold her trash bag.

[B]

She was just finishing our conversation. She was just very busy. That were never ending.

[A]

So what we're doing is stacking now.

[B]

You know, I really hate, like, having to ask somebody repeatedly for something. It's frustrating for them. It's frustrating for me. However, we were a slave to cleaning us up. So I needed the trash bag. And by the third time I asked her, she's a little frustrated. I'm working on it. Yeah. And I know, and I hate to have people experience with me a negative emotion. And it only showed me that I probably needed to have handled it. So my bad. Yeah.

[A]

So Mary wanted to live on her grace. Hostess with the most is high. And we're pulling her out. But all we need is just one trash bag, and we will be out of Mary's here. As soon as we got the trash bag in hand, me and Heather are working. That was a Great part about having two people. Somebody wanted to talk to us.

[B]

They're like, are you in marketing and sales?

[A]

You guys are talking.

[B]

Call it throwing a life jacket. Okay. If you see somebody is getting their ear talked off, which is great, you know, you want that person have a great experience. But there's no natural way for the person like Corey to end the conversation. I would do. Hey, guys, I'm so sorry to interrupt. I've actually blocked the driveway and people can't get around me. Corey, could you. Would you mind? And I create that break.

[A]

Yeah. So if Heather's being talked to, I'll be like, heather, do you know where you can put my one box?

[B]

Shoot, Let me go get that for you. So it's just.

[A]

And me and Heather have build that rapport over time. The thing is, people want to talk and we want them to talk, but at the end of the day, we've got to get home.

[B]

Cory. And if you guys. This is just like a side. Corrie believes that no one at any point in their lives should be grabbing their phone to reveal an image. Because she says time passes differently for a person trying to find a photo than the people waiting to see.

[A]

I've been on the other end of people revealing photos to me for many years now. The time you finding a photo, you're. You're in the thick of it.

[B]

You can just see the brain. They're like, okay, when was that? Scroll, scroll, scroll. That was a fun day.

[A]

But I'm standing there staring at you, thinking, and that's a lot of time.

[B]

Passing on my side. And time goes bunny. So it's in. So you can kind of save somebody. Like, hey, hey. Why you find that picture? Corey, would you mind helping me? Okay. And that's just how you guys want to handle customer interactions. Then we packed up everything there was. I tried to put the room back to where it was because I had moved a lot of the trinkets around to give myself a little more space. This one I hated. I didn't have space. We decided to leave the trash bag for Mary. Probably should have taken it. But what I should have could have.

[A]

The problem is, Mary was talking. It would have been the fourth time pulling her out for the gosh darn.

[B]

Yes. So we said, let's. We cleaned up everything. We put the room back to the room. We could have taken it with us. I'll be honest.

[A]

It wouldn't have been an issue. The thing is, Mary was very nice, and it would not have put Mary out.

[B]

Right. I wish I could have had a conversation with her about it, but we weren't able to. And final. Corey goes up and says, mary, I just want to let you know we're headed out. We've got everything cleaned up. I'll send you an email with your information. Image, pictures, which I never promised. They really did want them, though. Yeah. So that helped a little bit. And she was like, we'll definitely be doing this again. Yes. Okay, great. I think she enjoyed the experience. I think she did. Everyone said they enjoyed the experience. Even the people who didn't like their cookies said, you know, and I always do this joke, guys, at the worst case, you don't like your cookies, go eat them outside. We'll never tell anybody what happened here.

[A]

How long over did we stay if.

[B]

We were there at home at 8:45.

[A]

So if we're there for typically an.

[B]

Hour and a half, a half. We were there for two and a half hours with setup. Wow.

[A]

Okay, so setup. I don't even ding Mary for. Because we gave an hour set up.

[B]

Cory and I did that on purpose because we don't typically teach in private venues. So I want to have a little.

[A]

And we used every single second of it.

[B]

You know, Cory, you know, I'm trying to smile like, hey, we're having a little bit of issue with the document camera. And Cory's like, but you think you can get it fixed? I said, not really sure. I'll let you know.

[A]

But I know Heather's like, like, corey.

[B]

This gosh darn document.

[A]

I can't get it.

[B]

And I'm like.

[A]

And I want to be like, oh, this piece of poofy. Why don't we even have it?

[B]

Wildest part is, usually if I'm frustrated, I want it to be on my face. But the camera. The problem is the document. I'm trying to tell my computer, don't look at my webcam, look at the document here. It was like, no, we're going to show your face.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Every time. It was Heather's face. And she was. I don't even want to see this. I don't even like selfie mode in my phone, let alone. Now it's selfie mode. But everybody can see my screen. Yeah.

[A]

The great thing, I will say that Heather parked her car. We would have been there a lot longer if Heather would have been blocked in.

[B]

In fact, I said, cory, I'm going to keep making loops and to ensure I'm not locked in here.

[A]

So I want to say it was good to not be the first person there and have Our car blocked in. Because now, if you think time is money, we've been there an additional 30 minutes than we were supposed to. It could have been an additional 45, or we would have made Mary look bad. Hey, can that go? Can the police sign behind me mil and pulled someone out of it. At the end of the day, Mary is client. Mary looking her best and feeling her best means we could have a repeat Mary client now.

[B]

Okay, let's say Mary calls again. Are you bringing a tv?

[A]

Now that I know I would bring a TV there.

[B]

And I, you know, I had thrown in the bag an extension cord. Although I did find a plug, obviously didn't. I ended up holding the laptop. It had. It has a good battery charge. It's a new laptop. So I was able to hold that around. A lot of people referenced that. So I would actually walk it around and then secondary. A lot of people wanted that little plasticky. We thought because the.

[A]

So one person, if we had the TV, would not have been able to see the PowerPoint at all. They would have been in front of.

[B]

It, honestly, which happens in a table that's circular. But for nine people to have a.

[A]

Better outcome would have been worse.

[B]

The sacrifice.

[A]

But we would have given the other person, like, maybe put the. The file right.

[B]

If Mary called us back again, I wouldn't have you decorate.

[A]

I would not.

[B]

I would not bring. There was not a good space for that. I would bring the tv and I would connect the computer to the tv. Yes. I do like having that reference point, and I like how much larger the screen would make it. Yeah.

[A]

We need less setup time now because we know.

[B]

Yes. And what would you do differently? What would you do differently?

[A]

I would have started. I would have had Mary. I need access to the bell because getting them into their seats took extra time.

[B]

If we did this at somebody else's house, would you bring.

[A]

I might bring a bell.

[B]

I. I don't hate it either.

[A]

Or you might need to bring something that makes your voice project more. Something like that.

[B]

Something for me, for sure.

[A]

Yeah. So I would say talk deeper. I want to say for people who make icing just enough for the class and nothing is left over. People were doing weird things with their icing. So if I'm like, there's only 3 ounces of the white icing, and you used. You did some random design. Most time in the classes that we teach, people want to follow directly what we've done. This class there were Wild, wild west. Like, I'm going to make my turkey have a mustache. Okay. That's not built into my icing amounts.

[B]

Right.

[A]

So you would have run out of.

[B]

That icing amount or be. And this is kind of what I do. I always find if you say problems before, they're problems, they're not problems.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I'll say, hey, guys, you can. This is your class. You can do whatever you want. I'm going to take you through this curriculum that you have enough icing for. If you choose to use your icing in your piping practice heat, your turkey may be pink. And that's okay.

[A]

I have a boned pick with you.

[B]

Okay. Why?

[A]

Because on our Halloween class, the candy corn is done incorrectly in the class. But you said, if you want your candy corn to look good, switch the colors. But the color was less. But I had already put an extra.

[B]

In the 2025 October Cookie Class kit, there's a candy corn which has the three colors. It's reversed than what it.

[A]

It's supposed to be white, orange, yellow.

[B]

And it was white, yellow, orange. And nobody would have noticed until I thought it was funny to mention it. And then everyone wanted to be biblically and they were like, we want to do a. I was like, oh, did.

[A]

I have enough icing in their bags? Did. So would you change anything?

[B]

What would you do? I would have brought a TV for sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I would have never messed with technology I hadn't had a lot of experience with. Yeah. I would not have had you decorate at all.

[A]

Knowing the space.

[B]

Absolutely. It was pointless. Yeah. It was great to eat them on the drive home. That was about it.

[A]

It was a waste. No. Not one person. At the end of the day, the reason why I do like to decorate in class is anyone who wants to say to me, I think you made my icing consistency wrong. I did. You didn't. You're not a good decorator.

[B]

So what.

[A]

What I like to do is decorate with the same icing they're using so you can be like, oh, look.

[B]

To give a little context of Corey, the bullies just said right there. Sometimes in the past, we've had classes where Corey hasn't decorated and somebody wants success too much on their first round. So instead of saying, I'm new to this hobby, they'll say, you've done this wrong. Which puts us in a bad light because it's inferring make this right.

[A]

And it's hard to be like, no, no, you're bad. The icing's great. So me decorating classes takes that whole, I think you did this wrong out because I'm decorating with the same icing you're decorating. So I like to say, listen, you're.

[B]

Going to see my cookies. I've been doing this time in the.

[A]

Saddle every single day for five years.

[B]

I will say it's just time in the saddle repeating, you know, taking it home, trying it, trying practice. And that kind of gets ahead of those problems. Yeah, yeah. And in fact, it's been. It was such a pervasive issue in classes a couple years ago that I said, hey guys, I added it to our PowerPoint. I said one thing. The royal icing knows if you want it too much and it actually acts funny if you want too good today. So be relaxed.

[A]

You're new here.

[B]

This is the first or second time you're doing this. The more relaxed you are, the more your icing is going to work with you and not against.

[A]

I like to liken it to the Ross effect. When you go into a Ross's and you're looking for a black shirt, you won't find it.

[B]

It knows you want it.

[A]

But if you go in there and you're not looking for a black shirt, you'll find 10. So if you want your icing to act a certain way, it knows that.

[B]

It'S so that kind of helps get in front of people's angst when you set the stage that they're not going to be great. And if they compare themselves to gory, that's what it would look like if you stayed in with this.

[A]

But I didn't need to honestly decorate for that. And I just do it so people don't say, well, the class would have been better if my icing consistency was better.

[B]

I'm very happy we carpooled.

[A]

Absolutely.

[B]

That was necessary.

[A]

So I stopped by. Heather loaded her car up with everything that was in my car.

[B]

I'm very happy we got there a little earlier. I initially said I thought that was too early if it was still too early.

[A]

Yeah. But it was. I honestly, I made the putting the cookies on the thing take longer to give you IPO pivot time.

[B]

Imagine now we tried our best. So I thought everything was pretty good. I think I have just a little bit more. It's not our first private class. However, the other private class, the most recent one was just five year olds. Yeah, it's a little different energy there.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I did not expect the host sets the tone for all things. I didn't expect Mary to be the the one who was distracting.

[A]

I thought she would been mostly involved into it because it was her idea but she was the one who broke the concentration often.

[B]

Right. Well, she's the hostess and I. And I kind of got that through the email. So I think the correspondence kind of set the stage. It's like she's not replying to everything. Yes. Would I do it again? Would I do it again for Mary? I'd probably do it again for the podcast.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I told Cory I always prefer that other venue where I have a lot more control. I think I could have still sold out that class. However. However, it's great to know this is a money generating rev option. Yes. That doesn't require a venue fee. It doesn't require marketing.

[A]

And also the venue, we only have access to it on Saturdays. That's the only time it's closed. This class was on a Thursday evening.

[B]

Thursday at six.

[A]

So do you see it? We've now opened our ability to make so much more money during a week where we wouldn't have been able to with a venue. A lot of times you'll find bakers be like, I have the venue from only for eight hours on a Saturday. That's a lot of work on you. The baker taker to teach straight, you know, an eight hour day because you don't want the venue one. The venue only allows you that day. But if you were going to spread it out and be like, I'm going to prep for this week and the next week. I have a class on Tuesday, I have a class on Thursday and then I have two classes on Saturday. It's a lot more doable. Instead of doing three classes on Saturday and be like, I'm beat. I couldn't possibly.

[B]

We did. We used to run it that way. Yes. It's exhausting. But yeah. This is a very good test of the emergency alert system. I was happy with it. I thought it was great. She was very excited. Yeah. I took photos of people decorating, as we always do. Chris Corey and I said contents king. So I'll include some of those in the newsletter.

[A]

And just like we do, we invited them to our private sugar cookie classes group where we could potentially remarket to these people.

[B]

Again, always interesting. We get one out of a group and we got one out of a group.

[A]

No, we got two.

[B]

Oh, we got two.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Great. And then I posted their pictures there and on our Facebook page.

[A]

So even more content, which is fantastic.

[B]

Remarket because you always gotta think the class. The photos I take here would be great to tell somebody. Here's what our private classes would look like.

[A]

Yeah. I do want to say though, if you teach your first private class and you hated it. I wouldn't necessarily put that on your Facebook page because you're telling people, I'm.

[B]

Open to private classes. Right.

[A]

So if you want to market it, that's a fantastic. Otherwise you could just keep it, send it to Mary and be like, okay.

[B]

That was one and done.

[A]

I'll never do that again.

[B]

So market what you want. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was pretty interesting. We did leave later than I wanted to. I felt like they felt like, oh, these twins are rushing out of here. I was, yeah, I want to get to bed.

[A]

But we had been there over the time promised. Yes.

[B]

So I would probably actually tell you and I internally to factor in another.

[A]

Hour of time, and then you would price your tickets accordingly, because that is a lot of extra time. And if time is money and you're not charging for the time, you are taking a loss. So where you're like, Well, I charged $85 a ticket, but it took you an hour extra to get out of there. You didn't. You actually only made $70 a ticket.

[B]

Because you got to think, well, there's no venue cost, but there's a time cost. Yes. So something to keep in mind. Glad we went with a cookie. Class kits. I'm glad we said this is what you can pick from. This set really did save a lot of the guesswork.

[A]

Well, the great thing about the class kits is there's only four icing colors at all times, and they are all beginner friendly. So they're all flood consistency.

[B]

Corey and I, big thing. If the customer doesn't feel successful at the end of the class, the likelihood of them coming back is lower. That's why you see the class kits use the loose flood icing and have simple designs. That was always the mantra because if they said, oh, I'm so close to figuring this out, we'd likely see them in again.

[A]

So that was great. Just for prep work. The six cookies, the six cookie cutters, the four icing colors, they were all beginner friendly.

[B]

And you sold only one DIY kit. I think I could have sold more if I tried, honestly.

[A]

Probably. But it's good to know that people who are there for Mary aren't necessarily there to be good at decorating.

[B]

It definitely changed the goal here. It was a. It was a bonding experience, not a hobby. Learning something.

[A]

You could tell somebody who felt really good, she was like, came to me after. She's like, so how long did she.

[B]

It take for these cookies to actually dry?

[A]

Like, you liked it and that was Beth. She had come and she wondered but.

[B]

You had other people who were like I'm eating these outside.

[A]

Mine are ugly. Yeah.

[B]

Someone said can I take Corys? And I said no, we gotta be eating those outside as well. So yeah, if that, if that helps you guys kind of get in front of this so you can kind of pre think your own private classes. I think private classes are a huge money generator. I think cookie classes are a huge money generator. I think it's a great way to do lead gen because halfway through every class someone says I get why you charge so much now.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And then yeah, you could be training. You had Christina say that she finds that some people come to class, become her competition. Something to keep in mind. Yeah. I find that very little in our experience. Very, very few and far between. We also live in a really popular. There's a ton of people here, there's a ton of work.

[A]

I also say set expectations. If we wanted to we could have set a better expectation about time with Mary. But we did say to Mary like listen, if you don't have this many people we will not be teaching the class class Mary at any given time. We don't want Mary to look bad because Mary will not be taking the onus on her. She will be putting it on us.

[B]

I wonder. And I'd have to go back through Eventbrite and didn't factor this in. When we said that to cancel a class and process a refund one of the ladies had accidentally in two different times bought two tickets so she needed to refund one. She could actually have requested that herself but I went in and did it for her. However, Eventbrite kept the fee so it.

[A]

Would have been good. Good.

[B]

Okay, what if we had to cancel the class? Do I. Who's losing out on this fees or does Eventbrite say if the class isn't going? Nobody's.

[A]

So I want to say if Mary paid her lump sum it would have.

[B]

Been easy to refund just Mary.

[A]

But I would as an end user be upset that Mary couldn't fill the class. So now I'm taking a five dollar hit.

[B]

So something to keep in mind. I had I known if Mary only had two tickets sold then it would have been less cost. Absolutely. We're going to refund everything.

[A]

And we did tell Mary as she went meant here's how many tickets that you've sold. So Mary knew what to expect.

[B]

Something I saw put a light in people's face. They said can we get the recipes which we actually send Corey's recipes at the end of every class. And I said, you'll get the recipes. You'll get a shopping list of a lot of the tools that we've used here. And I saw them do little happy dance.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What?

[B]

They will probably never use that stuff. But the fact that it got included with the class ticket seemed to excite them a lot. I think it did.

[A]

Also, if you want to do you can set up an Amazon storefront and have an associated link. That'd be a way not saying people are buying you out of scribe. Scribes are like $2. But that link could also give you a affiliate.

[B]

I'm wondering next year if we teach these classes to not call the DIY kit that. To call it a take home class.

[A]

Set or to say could you do it in a way like I want to be better. Better kit, practice kit, practice kit, something like that.

[B]

DIY kit is throwing people.

[A]

DIY is not a good term because you have to explain do it yourself. And we're like, oh, DIYers, unless you're on HGTV, the word DIY isn't necessarily huge.

[B]

Maybe duplicate second duplicates.

[A]

Weird. I would say practice, practice kit, take home practice kit. That and then that makes sense because now you get a practice kit.

[B]

I think that's better branding for what that is. Even though it is a DIY kit. It is a DIY kit.

[A]

But I think think trying to explain a DIY versus a practice in the realm of cookie classes.

[B]

A practice came in. So I'll probably try that differently.

[A]

So I think it was fantastic. You're welcome, guys. Me and Heather went kicking and screaming, screaming and kicking.

[B]

But okay, $85 a ticket, one DIY kit. We're clearing about almost 900 bucks. You got your, you know, time. I'm gonna tell you a net$900. Easy way to make it. Cookies looked pretty bad, but nobody cares because it's their cookies. It wasn't your work. They're writing a review and our goal is to people have a good experience.

[A]

Yeah, have a good experience. It was so funny. Someone clocked me and Heather and said.

[B]

Are you guys in marketing and sales?

[A]

We're like, you got it, girl.

[B]

Would you want to buy a watch? Yeah. It was a very interesting experience for sure.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And you guys are welcome. My pain and suffering is your podcast.

[A]

My little crumply hands that are so tired from the organizing bags are yours.

[B]

My losing this very squeaky voice for yapping a straight two hours. You're welcome. So that takes us through that. If you guys have any questions, you're free to ask in the sugar cookie marketing group on Facebook. I think it is a great thing to add to your repertoire. If you don't mind going to people's homes.

[A]

Yes. Yeah, it was great. It was good to know, good to learn.

[B]

Was it great? Was it good? It was good. Goodly great.

[A]

Now I could be great at my own home.

[B]

Grateful it's done.

[A]

So move the one ass on fun. The Vendi blend is coming up.

[B]

Vendee Blendy is coming up. We're only 16 days away. It feels like the year someone said, and I may have said this on last week's podcast, that October acted like it owed somebody money running through here. That's hilarious, right? So November is following suit. Can you believe it is already the 11th?

[A]

Don't tell me that I needed to go slow.

[B]

It says three weeks until the vending. It was actually the one week is the week of the venue. I don't understand countdowns. It clearly is lost on me. However, the Vendy blendy is just 16 days away.

[A]

How many vendors do we have currently?

[B]

61 vendors.

[A]

That's some. That's. Heather told me 62 vendors. Heather told me her make it or break it number was something lower. But her I feel good.

[B]

No, 50.

[A]

50 was your make it or break it. Your I feel good number with 60.

[B]

Yeah. You gotta have goals and they have to be somewhat realistic. So I like to come up with a few. 30 is we're cancel. If it's under 30, we're gonna cancel it. That's what the rules you guys have.

[A]

Said said you don't want Avenue, you're tired of it.

[B]

I said at 50 I'd be strong. Anything over 60 is my icing on the cake.

[A]

So I. When Heatherson 60 came in, I said, see you doubter.

[B]

This is a great metric. Always you gotta pick the right metric. We've done podcasts on finding the metric that that actually reveals what success saying.

[A]

I won a million vendors. Not gonna happen.

[B]

I would actually be unsuccessful. Last year we had 82 Vendys and the fee. And I said to Corey, while that could be an interesting metric, Patrick to grade this off of, if that was a successful one, I don't think it's the one by which success is measured because you can have too many of something and it's not a good thing. Absolutely. You have too few of something. I was trying to just like when.

[A]

Someone goes to a farmer's market, you can have too many of the tomato guy and then you're like, I don't.

[B]

Know which one to choose. The limitation. Yeah, the analysis process. So I said it, Corey, instead of last year's metric. I was like, how many vendees can we get? Yeah. Then I saw what that looked like in. In translation. So now I said, I would like.

[A]

A really strong, rounded group.

[B]

Well rounded group of shops that have staying power.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So that was. So we reached that. Now I need your pendage to get in the group.

[A]

Listen, Linda, if you're listening to this and your bun isn't pending, why aren't you pending? Why? Don't make me find you. Don't make me find you and sign you up to pend. Now the vendors have done their job. They have signed up. Now it's my pendy's job to come into the group. Click on the group join link. Thank. Enjoy. You don't even have to answer the questions.

[B]

The questions never hurt. Just a profile page thing. Hybrid.

[A]

If you. I want to tell you. And you're like, well, I'll join the day before I'm going to tell you.

[B]

Please.

[A]

The way that we market the vendor blender, the vending blender each year is by tracking these numbers. So when I go to the vendor next year and be like, this time last year we had 4,000 pendies. It is more of a attractive way to get them to sign up. You wait until last year. Second does not.

[B]

You're not doing us any favors. We charge you nothing in hopes that you pendy. So please, pendy.

[A]

And Heather's doing giveaways for pendies all the time for the next 16 days.

[B]

There is. I've got some money to be spent.

[A]

And she's gonna spend it, my friends. But it's gonna be on people pending.

[B]

Let me see. It's on people pending. And you know what? The less you pen, the more aggressive my content gets and the more Heather.

[A]

Will turn against you non pendies and turn into a big old pender.

[B]

I will be the bender.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So anyways, it's through. We're obviously doing great in the numbers. I just.

[A]

Yeah. Grady, Heather wants. Unfortunately, Heather's personality. She wants it to be the numbers the day before she needs. She's a tracker, let me tell you. She's tracking.

[B]

That's how you got kn.

[A]

But she wants it to know just like she wants in control of a cookie class.

[B]

Want it to all be done three weeks before it needs to be done. So anyways, we got a ton of lists of vendies. Again, you can find all this [e-mail] Vendy Blendy I've actually also included the Facebook lives I've been teaching. I've added them to our YouTube channel.

[A]

When is your next Facebook Live?

[B]

It'll be on Thursday at 6pm Eastern Standard Night in where the Sugar Cookie Marketing group and the next day it'll be uploaded to the YouTube channel and the Sugar Cookie marketing page and also the website sugarcookiemarketing.com Fendylendy if Heather's your.

[A]

Favorite twin, what a great way to show your favorite twin status by tuning into our Facebook Live and commenting some questions.

[B]

But maybe if you're like, I don't even really like her, which is fine. I understand where you're coming from. Maybe you could also win a marriage color gel food coloring set that I gave away on the last Facebook Live. I'll be giving away on the.

[A]

You would have only known that if you would have listened to this and tuned in there.

[B]

I'll tell you. Heather Kimmel Berkshire actually, yes, I like this. I came up with this right before the Facebook Live how to choose a winner. So I said, I said in the next slide we'll reveal a set of five emojis you've typically seen me use. Whoever in the chat that post one of those emojis wins.

[A]

Oh, that's the first person to do it.

[B]

Yeah. Because you have to know Hilarious Sparkle. Because I use the sparkle as italics.

[A]

You AI using sparkle.

[B]

I. I do like sparkles. Anyway, so the 2025 Vendy Blendy is all systems go. We've got 16 days. A lot of content. Cory and I. Lot of vendors.

[A]

A lot of great vendors.

[B]

Oh yeah, it's going to be a blast. A lot of great door prizes. It's funny because the door prizes were such a hit last night. Last year, the vendors, albeit we have fewer than last year, by design, the door prize total is higher. Yeah. Because everyone said that was a blast. I've shown up and shown out. I'm starting to get the venues to up their ante. I see that they're coming.

[A]

Heather's causing chaos. Heather will cause chaos every day till the vending Monday. I'm just, I'm taking it like a bag in the wind.

[B]

Behind you. I think my counterpoint to being type A is chaos. Like sometimes I'm like two working.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Let's see what happens. We light on fire.

[A]

Crazy.

[B]

See? Yeah. So all your questions are answered. But if you guys have more questions, I'm happy to answer them. Corey, someone Said maybe this will get post will get deleted. It won't.

[A]

It won't.

[B]

Once you guys bring your questions, comments.

[A]

And from now to November 28th, all.

[B]

Questions go November 29th. You'll never hear it mentioned if you're.

[A]

Curious and you're just hearing the word the Vendy Bundy for the first time. It is a one day sale on November 28 from midnight to midnight. And your favorite, let me tell you, your favorite vendors in the baking realm are coming to you with 25% off or more that entire day. And you're like, well, you know what? I just. I have everything I need. I don't need anything you want to get in there because the door prizes are over $12,000 and there's no purchase necessary to win those.

[B]

As someone asked. They said all. I mean they asked me this morning. Are you just to clarify, are you saying I don't have to do anything for this? Your body just needs to do one thing bendy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You have to request to join that group on Facebook. And I promise you what happens that day is a blast. Everyone really likes it.

[A]

If you're saying pendy, you will pen for that group till November 28th. So all you need to do is just make sure that your body is in the pending the request to join the Vendi blendy parentheses sugar cookie marketing Facebook group. And you can just search that up. You can also find it on the website sugarcookiemarketing.com vendiblendy you can also see who's a current vendor there. The deals will only last for 24 hours.

[B]

In fact, I tell the vendors I don't want to see a deal lasting any longer. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

But the giveaways you can only. You have to be there to get them. But they're so great. I think we did 10 boshes last year. Insanity throughout the whole day. So if you were sleeping, you might have forgotten that Bosch. You said someone else awake you take you could tune in throughout the day and win all day long. What Heather does in the midnight hours.

[B]

When my little baby head is asleep.

[A]

On a pillow, I don't know. And I also can't tell her no.

[B]

Because I have Cory's like no, don't do that. Okay, I will. How did you awake if you don't.

[A]

You just say things to get me to shut up. But you do the exact opposite.

[B]

I say if you really cared you'd be awake.

[A]

But I'm so tired.

[B]

Okay. I'm tired too. I love what happens after 11 Eastern Standard Time in the Vendy Blendy. It is. It is.

[A]

Do you have a Cookie College person that you would like to highlight? Let me fill that out. If you didn't know the Cookie College is a membership, it's actually if you wanted to become a more efficient, efficient, better baker and make more profit, you would join the Cookie College. You'll never guess the Cookie College will be at the Vendee Blendy as a vendor.

[B]

So you get it. College. People who want a discount, people who are thinking about signing up. I'm fighting this girl for your yeah.

[A]

Honor. And you know what?

[B]

I have to be wanting to nine. So take me to a good place for lunch.

[A]

The Cookie College is a monthly membership. It's always being added to. You can find the cookie class kits there, the Digital downloads, the $2 transfer club. Is there anything that we add the Cookie College gets? But we wanted to say I can say how I much I love the Cookie College and I'm biased because I made it. So we had people actually fill out a form and they do get a little. What do they get if they fill out the form?

[B]

$10Amazon gift card. $10Amazon gift card, which I've honored. So if you guys have heard this texted, check your yes. Yeah, check your little folder.

[A]

But we had them fill out and we didn't say you have to make good comments or else we'll ban you from the college. We said just fill it out with however you'd like and we'll feature you on the podcast. So this is our for this week.

[B]

Jenny, this is you in answering the question if you had to write a three sentence statement about the cookie college, what'd you write? She said, I love the Cookie College. It's honestly a bit overwhelming but I do love that I can do it on my own timeline. I've learned so much and I continue to implement pieces of it into my cookie journey. She's been in since the 2024 Vendy Blendy, which means she's been in for year. Her most used aspects of it are the Facebook group and the courses. And then she said what's the biggest aspect it's helped you with? And she said social media.

[A]

Social media. The reason why is there's a copy course in the college with so many people using AI. The the ability to sound different and unique in a world of AI sparkles and prompts is now the most useful it's ever been. What we want to do is teach you in the Cookie College how to be yourself, have your own brand voice so that when someone scrolls up on your post, they stop because of the way that you posted. So we don't just want this regurgitated AI and it's da da da da da da da da na. We want your brand voice because people are buying. They can buy sugar cookies from anyone. People buy from you because of you. And that's what we have to have you convey in your social media and your website, in your newsletters and your comments and things like that. That. That's very nice.

[B]

Thank you, Jenny. I'll send you your $10Amazon gift card. That said, she's been in since the 2024 Vendy Blendy and it's because she got a great deal. So if you're thinking about it, if you're on the fence about it, I would definitely swing by the Vendy Blendy group on Black Friday.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And I think you're going to love it.

[A]

Snaggle it.

[B]

If you say, if you look at how we market things like the Bendy Blendy and you say, I wish I knew how to do that. This is how we do that. Yeah. And it's. It covers a lot. It covers a lot of the city marketing copy. I have to work on a class this week. They wanted to know how to do picture in a picture. Yeah, picture.

[A]

The one thing that I love about me and Heather. Everything.

[B]

My hair, my.

[A]

My lips.

[B]

The one thing I love about me.

[A]

And Heather is we practice what we preach. So I'm not telling you. No.

[B]

I got to give you compliments. That one I will make. This is my hand. I will said we can't tell people what to do if we're not doing it ourselves. You get your butt to this part.

[A]

How can I tell you how to deal with an irate custom order client if I've not dealt with my own irate custom order client? So I will take custom orders every single week of the year because I can't tell you how to market it. I can't tell you if the economy's pushing back, if people aren't buying unless I'm experiencing myself. I can't tell you how to teach a cookie class if I'm not teaching them myself. It is important to me to practice what I preach. It's important to me to. To when you look at me that I have an answer that I've learned through trial and error myself, where I'm not saying, well, if this is me and if I taught classes. No, I've taught classes. Here's what I did in that Scenario.

[B]

And here's how I mess it up and here's how I do it differently. And here's what I do if I was you. And here's let's strategize together how your unique situation is actually solvable.

[A]

So that's, that's my goal is to always be able to practice what I preach. So when you come to me with a question, I can give you an exact answer.

[B]

Corey is very heck bent on making sure.

[A]

I think it's because if I've seen like people like sell courses and I'm like do they sell just courses or are they actually doing what they say and made a course from that? Are they selling what they're selling?

[B]

Make sure we're blood, sweat and tears before mad. Let's go on to this new segment. Your favorite post in the cookie group this week.

[A]

Do you have yours pulled up?

[B]

I'm working on. But you definitely told me you had one yesterday.

[A]

I have it and I actually did a fantastic thing on my phone.

[B]

How are you doing? You're impressing yourself a lot. In my phone we and people who.

[A]

Bake, we take our photos, we're taking our kids photos, we're screenshotting ideas. All that is misorganized in our phones and you end up having 10,000 photos. But where's that idea you had last year that you said if I could just remember it, I'd implement it. I'm making every photo on my phone go into a folder.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Oh very nice. It's going to folder.

[B]

That's so cool.

[A]

So what I did was able to take all my screenshots over the years and put them in a single folder.

[B]

Easy to snag.

[A]

Okay, here's mine. If you haven't upgraded or signed up for the cookie college, Tonight is the 9th. This was actually one year ago. Okay. I just upgraded from the Better Business Bureau.

[B]

What is that? Baker's Business Basics.

[A]

Baker's business basics to a full on college. And they couldn't have made it any easier. Don't miss out. Just think of how many cookies or treats you will have to make to cover the difference in price. And you won't have to push to get you going. Thank you ladies one and all. I really appreciate each of you. Happy Friday night. Now I have to go finish putting away my Christmas so I can work on my cookie business without distraction.

[B]

I love that.

[A]

Thank you.

[B]

This is the one I'm gonna pick this week. Had one of the highest engagement in the last week. Right. And the interesting thing is it's not necessarily the post itself, but it is per the concept of today's topic, where. Where great is the enemy of good.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And sometimes, because we know. Because we know what it should be, we get in our own way of what it's good enough. So, Allison, A L, Y S O, N. She said, I sent off this order with a customer's husband for their son's third birthday. When I was working on them last night, I realized I only had the number two cutter, not the number three. So there was no time to rebake. So I just did my best to flip it and make it work so it's the shape of.

[A]

I actually saw. I can't honestly see. If only because I'm a baker. Did I know that was a three cutter? If I would not have been a baker? Yeah. I would just know whatever the it was a two cutter with the word three on it. Yeah. I couldn't have told that.

[B]

If I. Suzu says, I'm sweating it out right now. I'm worried that it's painfully obvious this customer lives 40 minutes away. So I've got about 30 minutes before I might hear if they're upset. Do I get ahead of this with a refund? I asked my mom if she thought it was obvious I was covering a mistake, and she didn't hesitate to say yes. Okay.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So we have the baker, and they're in their own head. And I like that because we always want to get in front of problems. Like I said in the past, anticipating.

[A]

An issue was half the battle.

[B]

I want to let you guys know who's listening, what you're thinking. It looks like it looks a thousand times better. As a non baker, I cannot tell what her problem. I could not tell that that was supposed to be a two.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I thought it was an aesthetic backdrop. And all the comments say, agree that, hey, this is not worth the refund. I can't see the problem. There's a ton of effort, and in this, and there's no problem on our end. So because good enough, in a perfect world, we'd be perfect. We're not perfect because good enough is the enemy or great is the enemy of good enough. I'm gonna say, like, I love that she was there ready to handle it, but we were able to talk her off the ledge. It was actually a great set.

[A]

What she also did.

[B]

A lot of people come to the.

[A]

Sugar cookie marketing group, not looking for feedback, but looking for validation because the.

[B]

Thing has already happened. She.

[A]

So she actually sent the cookies out. Out. And she Wasn't saying she could have made a post that.

[B]

Like this.

[A]

I sent this. I ran out of time. I had the number two or three. It looked different when she got home. The customer was irate. But this is honestly what she looked like. What should I do?

[B]

Essentially, tell me I'm right. I've already told them I'm not offering. Yeah, tell me I'm right. Tell me the customer wrong. Make me feel better about the decision I've already made. It's hard to be wrong. It's hard to be wrong. It sucks.

[A]

She put herself in the line of fire for people to say, you know what? You missed the mark here. I would get in front of it. Thank goodness she did not miss a mark. It actually looked fantastic.

[B]

She did a great job.

[A]

But she cared enough about her business to get in front of the issues so that in case something bad happened, she was prepared versus being reactionary and then wanting people to just validate you. You already have the answer that you want, and it's not going to be one that is going against what you say.

[B]

Yeah, Cori and I were actually strategizing about that this morning. Is that not. Not everything needs an immediate response. Right. So she has time, and that's a good question. Do I get in front of that? You know, there's problems where you need to state that there's a problem. There's problems where it's not a problem unless the other person decides it's a problem. But we were talking about not everything necessarily needs the immediate response, immediate reply. So even if the customer has a problem, give your breathe. Breathe. What I see happens is the baker's really upset. They, you know, I put my time, sweat, tears, effort in this. The client's upset. So now I'm upset. So I've accidentally escalated this and now.

[A]

Already sent my reply. Unfortunately, it's sent out into the airwaves. Please validate my reply because it's already been sent.

[B]

We can't get the reply back out of the Internet. So what it does. If you're like, ooh, I don't feel like I can feel when I'm writing something from the wrong headspace, you can say to yourself, I'm writing this from the wrong headspace. And Corey said. Corey said to me, what's 30 minutes? What's one hour?

[A]

Unless we were brain surgeons, which we're not, 30 minutes would matter. But we're not.

[B]

We're not. So give yourself some time to say, is what I'm about to write going to enhance my business and the customer's experience. Is it going to impede a solution? Right. Anytime. Me and Heather had this client who mouth. Okay.

[A]

And Heather posted.

[B]

I love how you're mouthing. I can hear the word.

[A]

Heather posted a post. I want to say, was it either 20 minutes before or 2 minutes after that? It needed to go up and she called as if the sky was falling. She had escalated it, not realizing whether it was two minutes too soon or 20 minutes after the fact. Nothing in the world would change. She's freaking out. So Heather was able to say girlfriend.

[B]

I didn't say it that way, but.

[A]

It'S going to go up. We had to adjust a few things that you wanted in the post post to tag these people. Facebook is rendering the video. It'll go up.

[B]

I'm listening to a book and it's. And we'll talk about the podcast later. But it was. It's like. It's not about right or wrong. It's about emotions. Yes. And everyone's emotions are right to them. Doesn't mean they're right. Yeah. But they want their emotions to be validated in their experience.

[A]

Because if you dismiss somebody, oh, now not only do I feel invalidated, I'm gonna come at you. So you understand.

[B]

I now have to prove. And we always say, if you really want to prove that baker's wrong, just say that. There's a hair in the thing. That's the worst case.

[A]

That's what it always gets down to.

[B]

Yeah. So, yeah, that was very interesting. Anyways. Yeah. Being proactive to problems, but realizing that sometimes we're our own worst enemies. And you guys are actually doing a lot better than you think. Maybe to another baker, they could see that. Maybe to your mom. And I think it was interesting. Helpful that she asked her mom. I always call Corey, like, hey, here's what I want to say. I know it's wrong. Talk me off the ledge.

[A]

And I can't see purple. So I'm like, people who see purple is this close.

[B]

Yeah. So, yeah, I think these Facebook groups are great for that. To kind of get in front of. Getting in front of. So getting in front of. That's my favorite post of the week.

[A]

Now we are going to the STL me about it.

[B]

Let me tell you, I'm an STL girly right now. Okay. But this is very funny. This is favorite. This is my favorite part of podcast. Listen, listen, here. Here's another life lesson. Lesson. You can't please everybody.

[A]

You can't, my friends. You cannot.

[B]

I think pizza is delicious. And there's people don't like pizza.

[A]

I think Papa John's is great, but someone's gonna like Pizza Hut over it.

[B]

But instead of letting Corey pick the winner, I decided I want to pick the winner. And I think it's so funny. From Statesboro, Georgia, we got a text today and it is one word and you have. You are the winner of the baking it down STL me about it segment. So if you want to text into Heather or email into heather sugarcookiemarketing.com we know you're listening. Yeah. And you know, I appreciate the listen and I appreciate the honest feedback because all they texted is one word and it's the word boring.

[A]

Boring.

[B]

And I love that so much.

[A]

Not even a capital B A.

[B]

It's just, it was like this is boring.

[A]

But you are my friend, the winner.

[B]

And not even like in a like satirical way. Although it is, I think it's just hilarious. And I love that this isn't a great fit for you, but you took your time to text and if you're.

[A]

Still listening, you have won one month free of cookie design labs. What? Cookie design labs is now that I'm an STL girl.

[B]

Singular, not plural Design lab.

[A]

It's just a singular lab. There's one lab where cookies are designed.

[B]

I can tell you Corey will be opening her cookie design lab account. That's a. She's. Cory. Did I tell you guys on the last podcast I did the set up the printer. You did. And then. But Corey's little feverish hands. Yesterday I woke up printing success. Princess S Princess S girl. Cory is actually purchasing from. I think you're printing from the sprinkle library. Printing from Etsy as well. Etsy as well. Okay. So now she will want to make her own cutters.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

From like I don't know what her client's inspo is and she'll do that with cookie design, which is a STL software. It's very, very quick and easy. Did I demonstrate it for you?

[A]

You have not.

[B]

I will. And so you states for Georgia. I hope this is more interesting this week. Thank you so much for texting me. I'm going to tell you give me a giggle.

[A]

What you did was I. I came back. I came with a lot of energy today.

[B]

She did. Kept it concise. It was.

[A]

Thank you right off the bat for the feedback. And I started it with my son to add a little rush and it.

[B]

Cost me ten bucks.

[A]

Yeah, ten dollars. But thank you Statesboro, for keeping us on our toes.

[B]

Appreciate ya.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Last year, last Year's last week's winner had already is already registered for Cooking Islands. She wanted to give to somebody else. So we have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 folks who can also win. So it'll be two STL winners.

[A]

Number one.

[B]

Number one, you've got fan. She actually just texted or West Virginia just texted this in a minute ago. An hour ago. Hi to my favorite twins from your neighbor in those beautiful Blue Ridge mountains. I love West Virginia. She's from Heart Eyes Emoji. With all the excitement of the Vendy Blendy and this being my second year and actually getting to participate a little bit, I'm curious what vendor you're each loving to see come back year after year with new products and which vendor you secretly would jump back into wish would jump back into the game because their products were amazing and if you could only shop one shop, which would it be? Thanks for sharing all the secrets to success and being amazing.

[A]

Okay, what's the first question?

[B]

My first one is which shop are you excited to see coming back year after year with new products?

[A]

Year after year. Okay. With new products. So that's a double one.

[B]

It seems like they had to be a returning vendor, but they have also had to offer something new.

[A]

Okay. I like I told Heather this Sugar Dash company. Sugar Dash is a huge, huge Etsy.

[B]

Shop of cookie cutter cutters.

[A]

If you have a random idea, they probably made it into a cookie cutter.

[B]

I did say that they have lots of.

[A]

Yeah, they have a ton of selection. So any random like I actually had to do music notes this past week for a cake pop band.

[B]

You were struggling with that.

[A]

I was struggling with that. But they had the music notes which made it easy to incorporate that into this very hard set for my brain.

[B]

I like you have an answer to yours. Yeah. And I I hate to go back to this one since we just talked about about them. Cookie design lab added a bunch of new features. They've their first year was last year and I do like the new features that they've added this year. Nice. They're coming back again if. I mean there's so many great. It's hard to pick one. It's hard. Some of these shops are new cookie cutters by Nori. She. She's the vibe. You know I love all my vendors, right? Yeah. But there's some that just give me a little bit of elbow room.

[A]

She also has baking perforated baking bags.

[B]

I didn't realize she had so much more things.

[A]

Piping bags. Yeah. Tons of cutter options. And I want to say she has.

[B]

STL files as well. Yeah, I just. She's the vibe. She's. She said, girls, I want to give away 150 gift card to get people to join to Pendy. And then yesterday she's like, maybe she even said, hey, let's open up to.

[A]

Whatever you guys want.

[B]

You don't even have to have them. Just be Penny. Oh, that's hilarious. So I do like Cookie Putter. I love them all, though. I love all these people. I'm curious what in which vendor you'd secretly wish would jump back into the game because their products were amazing.

[A]

Amazing. I'm gonna be honest. All the ones that I loved are back, so I'm very happy with who has come back. So I can't say that someone's dropped us. Oh, here's one. She actually doesn't make them anymore. And there's no way she could be back because she actually took a nursing job.

[B]

But I know what you're gonna say. The scribe lady.

[A]

Yeah, the scribes.

[B]

There was these very fancy scribes that.

[A]

She, the sugar cookie dealer had made and she was in the vendability for a few years. A fan favorite fave. She can't come back for the fact that she doesn't make them anymore. But I really loved to collect those.

[B]

They were very, very pretty and she.

[A]

Had a lot of themes.

[B]

I'm going to say that I would have liked kibbers to come back and she in fact said she wanted to. I just can't get her. Check her emails. That's how. But I did like those 3D printed options. So it's not just STLs. And we actually have a new shop this year that's also offering Rebecca Bivins.

[A]

Rebecca Bivs.

[B]

And it's crafting fixation. So I still got my fix my fixations. But I did like kippers. That's whose boo boo sticks they print off for now.

[A]

You're right, you're right.

[B]

And if it could only be one shop, and if you could only shop one shop, which one would it be? Now this is interesting because Corey already shopped all these shops, so she has all this stuff. But if you could only buy one. I'm gonna tell you this because you hear it, I say it on the podcast. The backdrops by the backers company. Yeah. Because I know that photos would level up a business. So great daily. Yeah, I'd probably say if I could only shop one shop, I'd buy those cordiasm so I don't have to. I know.

[A]

Okay. I am Loving the ability to do STL files.

[B]

Clearly you are. So you like the.

[A]

If I shop now at a library, I want to tell you that Liz.

[B]

Viz, who also is a vendor this year, new vendor.

[A]

A new vendor created the viral barista.

[B]

Starbucks cup into a cookie cutter.

[A]

She was so fast on it. So fast so that I was fast on it. And I was able to make that into a cookie and actually gave me page followers, which is fantastic. From my local groups because I marketed it in those local foodie groups. And I couldn't have done that without her hard work. 1.

[B]

These are great answers and these are great questions. Questions. West Virginia, our little cousin. Yeah.

[A]

So STL files, whoever's got them, I'm going to be looking.

[B]

Okay, West Virginia, email me at heather sugarcookiemarketing. Unstate's Com Burrow both won the STL me about it segment. Thanks to Ashley Garza for passing that one. Thank you, Ash. She's.

[A]

She's a vibe too.

[B]

She actually gifted it to Carlos.

[A]

Carlos Sandoval.

[B]

Sandoval. Yeah. And Carlos had actually already bought it last year. Oh, that's. No way. That's crazy. That's crazy. So, yeah, that was fun. Thank you guys for being so gracious to each other. Thank you. I love that for everybody. And you guys are both winners. If you guys want to text into the STL Me About it segment and get 15% off, you can do at 571-55-65644. However, if you say I'm I don't like contest, you can get off more by at the vending clinic. Yes, 25% off more was crazy way to say that. Should get a bigger tripping over my hair. Need to hire Archer to come and speak for me again.

[A]

All right, moving on to. If you don't want to risk selling out, you can actually partake in our podcast sponsors right now. A lot of them have. And I want to tell you, a lot of people have sent me boxes to feature the bendy Bundy. They all came in yesterday. Oh, shoot.

[B]

I was telling them. Nobody. My bad, my bad.

[A]

They all did.

[B]

They all did. Okay, because I was wondering because Corey does. We offer this instead of having vendors have to pay for UGC content.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Organic content our user generated. That's right. That's our. You're falling apart here. Too many. I'm a type A. I'm a type A. I feel like I'm back in teaching the class and Mary's offering cookies. Give us a rundown and tell us.

[A]

What you could get now. Or if you want to risk it for the biscuit and wait.

[B]

Cookie design lab 15 off now. Code twins 25 off at the venue.

[A]

I want to say they probably will not run out since they are software.

[B]

Based but very cool software. Yeah. Baking me crazy. 10 off now. Code favorite twin 25 off during the vending.

[A]

Yeah but that is sprinkles for DIY.

[B]

Kids colors love like that. That royal batch Bake by bakey bake. 10 off now. Code twins 25 off at the vending bunny.

[A]

Is she sold out now? Because someone was like, hopefully she filled up before that. I don't.

[B]

Were they talking about glaze?

[A]

It could have been. I don't know.

[B]

Okay, let me see. Because I. I don't think that girl would have signed up.

[A]

Royal match doesn't necessarily offer 24 off. Hardly at all.

[B]

Oh, the £5 are out of stock. Yeah. £1er in stock. Which I'll have to. Well, it's up to her if she has them. I know what that.

[A]

That is Pinteresting. You might be risking it for the.

[B]

Biscuit if you ate it. I know. So you could get that off. 10% Renauco twins. Daisy make twins 10 get you 10% off. However, 25% off the vendy blendy.

[A]

Yeah. And those are molds that are just fantastic. And now they're very much themed.

[B]

Very cool. Yeah. They're niche themes too.

[A]

Niche themes. So like I saw wedding. They had definitely a Halloween one Thanksgiving. They've done a great job.

[B]

Eddie printer not on sale. Not a vendy, not discounted at all. But an edible direct to food printer. Corey Summer was asking about Eddie the printer to you and you said you use it about once a week.

[A]

I try to use it once a week. It's great for it has. I have. Do not recall the last time I've.

[B]

Turned my airbrush on because Eddie has filled now. Not cheap at all. $3,000. You can buy used Eddies. Not in their Facebook group, but I think it's called unofficial Eddie group. Find them there for sale and it's a great time when you can kind of get a baker to come off. You save about what I see. On average, you say about $1,000 to $1,200. Yeah.

[A]

But if you're like I don't know what they put their eddy through and you want a brand new one.

[B]

Absolutely. You can also get a refurbished one, I think if you call it.

[A]

Yes. And they have a payment planish kind of thing now.

[B]

It's not a. It's you. You pay in interest, so you definitely pay more, but you can pay over time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So dollar options there and then Bosch Nutri Mill is not a sponsor, but they are an affiliate. If use code sugar cookies, you get $20. They just actually told me what their Black Friday deal was. Not allowed to tell you the discounts, but I can tell you when it starts.

[A]

Oh, nice.

[B]

November 20th to December 5th.

[A]

Okay, so November 20th, we'll post that in the group. So you can just now.

[B]

Yes. I love my boyish.

[A]

Love my boyishes. I actually sold a kitchenaid for my boyish.

[B]

You did? Yeah, you did. We'll be giving away one of those. They donated towards the vendibunny. They did that last year. I like them. And then if you use code sugar cookies, even during Black Slot Friday, it will stack those discounts so you'll be able to get even more off that way.

[A]

Do you have a twin tryst as we wrap this bad boy up?

[B]

Oh, if you guys are wondering how my dinner went. Fantastic.

[A]

Delish.

[B]

So, like, the last time I did it last year, they put us around a smaller circle table. And I love that a lot better. It made for a better conversation.

[A]

It honestly faced everyone. So the conversations never let up. It never died. Because even though Heather's boyfriend who was there, Brian is not a talker.

[B]

He is a quiet guy.

[A]

He's a quiet guy. And I was actually face to Brian, so I was able to like shoot one zinger, one liner zingers right off.

[B]

I said, you need to fire back. She's getting too comfortable. You need to fire back quick.

[A]

So it was great to have everyone around the circle so you could like lob a question at everybody. And it just really kept it going.

[B]

I really liked it. Who's blowing up our Instagram?

[A]

I see it.

[B]

So sorry to bother you.

[A]

Yeah, it's the fake accounts that are getting at us.

[B]

I have noticed a ton of uptick in spam messages that is specifically about Meta Blue Check.

[A]

It's saying now instead of saying if you click this, you violated something, you have to click this to prove it. What it's actually doing now is saying, hey, you've been approved for meta verified. Click this. It's still a spam, but it's now a positive spam. I know, but it's still a scam.

[B]

But that's also being pushed a lot by meta as well. I'm also getting. Okay, so it wants my personal profile, which is set up to be a creator profile. Is that what they're Called to get the blue check. Yes. Meta sent me a message in my inbox on Facebook about it. See, so maybe they're. They're seeing that. That's type of this. It's kind of crazy.

[A]

All of them.

[B]

Yeah. But, um, yeah, I was really happy with how my dinner went. The food, fantastic. The service was pretty good. Yeah. It was definitely more in the ball last year, but I really still enjoyed the experience again this year. And you just can't tell if you're a steak girl. Capital Grill is owned by season 52 and Olive Garden. Delectable.

[A]

Whatever Darden, who owns them all, is doing over there with their food processing. Delicious.

[B]

Thanks, Darden.

[A]

How's me in a ton?

[B]

Olive Garden is a whole different experience in season 52, owned by the same company. Love both sets.

[A]

Love both. I guess one of the orders I made last week for my twin Teris was for my sister. Older sister moved into a new house and she wanted her welcome to the neighborhood and being my neighbor to be these little boxes of cookies. And it turned out great.

[B]

And Cory got a lot of praise and honor from the neighbors. And my sister, our mom is a carder.

[A]

A carder. So she makes cards. Cards.

[B]

Right.

[A]

She doesn't deal them.

[B]

She's not at the slots and cut scenes. She also doesn't even tell them. But she and Corey partnered to make a cookie of a red card truck.

[A]

I made a cookie of a red truck. And what she did was made a basket of apple card that very much went with a vintage red truck.

[B]

Yeah. So with their powers combined, Ashley's the best neighbor. Yes, she is the best neighbor. She would be a great neighbor.

[A]

Let me tell you, making your clients look good makes you look good.

[B]

So people are like, did you put your business card on there? No.

[A]

At the end of the day, Ashley needs to look good. I don't need to make more sales through Ashley. If they now have Ashley's phone number when they actually ask her who made those amazing cookies, I can't get the.

[B]

Taste into my mouth. And then some people. Your cottage dolls allow you and require you to, which is a great fall guy for like putting your own logos. But it turned out really cute. Did.

[A]

Did.

[B]

That was my twin trist. I made too many cookies last week.

[A]

Ties.

[B]

This is Corey. She. I was like, this is a busy week.

[A]

I didn't know.

[B]

And Cory said, oh, my.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The reason why is cuz I thought there was an extra week in November and I was shoving everything into two weeks when in reality it was like on it's the same you cookie do look.

[A]

Oh, look at a rule. I only have measurements.

[B]

Look at a calendar for days to.

[A]

My calendar 247 at the tip of my fingers, which I am always.

[B]

I can't see the calendar.

[A]

That's the first. What I am realizing now for bakers who are trying to stay strict on their boundaries, the customers are going around the boundaries to see if they can't.

[B]

This is Corey's issue. We create the walls to protect our time and our. Our boundaries. And Corey will let them see. So what happens when you say, hey, I'm fully booked? You're gonna have someone say, I know you're fully booked, but whether or not you take that order, it's completely up to you. It's your business. However, if you're going to hate yourself while baking that order, you have violated your own boundary.

[A]

I was telling Heather earlier, boundaries are crystal clear when we make them. If you do this, then this. Unfortunately, the people who try to break themselves boundaries know that a crystal clear one. So what they're saying is, you made my cookies for my mom last year. I already see what you're doing. You're connecting with me. You're a past client genius. Yeah.

[B]

So I could be like, we have rapport.

[A]

We have rapport. So instead of being like, I'm booked, they're emailing around the form because the form is booked.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And they're saying, you did this for my mom last time.

[B]

Can we do this again? Yes. She really, really loved it. So it's never disappointing client at this point anymore. Up.

[A]

It's never quite as clear. So you're gonna have people that go around your boundaries. Hey, do you mind to just make two cookies for the pta? And two cookies, in essence isn't going to put you out.

[B]

You have the boundaries are there to protect your options.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you want to take it, take it.

[A]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[B]

But no, you will be also baking it if you take it. You gotta bake it.

[A]

Take it and bake it.

[B]

Take it.

[A]

Thank you guys for listening to this boring podcast.

[B]

Boring podcast. And she's actually. I'm not offended at all. I think that was so funny. It actually made me giggle at lunch. And then I had called Corey and we gave. I said that was hilarious. And we even said, are they even wrong?

[A]

And listen, we know it can be boring. Me and Heather are boring people. So we are trying to incorporate new things in. Stay tuned, Ms. Georgia. We are trying to bring new things.

[B]

To your ear holes, make it maybe just a little less boring.

[A]

Each week. Just a little bit.

[B]

Just a little. Okay. Let me go pay up my debt. Go pay the 10.

[A]

Download.