237. Baking it Down - Once a Year Cookie College Stealios

Summary

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Baking it Down Episode 237: Once a Year Cookie College Stealios

Podcast: Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing
Hosts: Heather & Corrie Miracle
Date: November 18, 2025

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode is all about the once-a-year Black Friday deals on Sugar Cookie Marketing’s (SCM) Cookie College membership and other related resources. Heather and Corrie take you through the ins and outs of their programs, highlight the enormous value up for grabs during the annual “Vendi Blendy” event, and provide deep dives into the most useful, underrated, and actionable courses inside Cookie College. The episode oozes their trademark blend of sisterly banter, practical marketing lessons, and realistic, upbeat motivation for cottage bakers who want to run a more efficient and profitable business.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Vendi Blendy and Black Friday Deals Overview

[02:22–11:49]

• Vendi Blendy is a 24-hour, once-a-year sale in the SCM Facebook group, featuring deals of 25% off or more.
• The Cookie College is on sale for $64/month (normally $76), or $576/year (normally $912). The yearly plan is touted as the best deal ever (12 months for the price of 9).
• By joining during the Black Friday window, bakers guarantee access to all current and future content at the lowest price.

Notable Quote

“If you don’t sign up during Black Friday, you have just overspent a ton.”
—Heather [03:02]

• The goal isn’t just sign-ups; it’s to help bakers make their money back PLUS a dollar through profitable skills like teaching cookie classes.

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2. What’s Inside the Cookie College: Unlocking Value

[11:49–15:59]

• The Cookie College offers hundreds of classes, kits, and digital downloads designed for small bakery business owners.
• Courses are broken into four types: most popular, most slept-on, efficiency-focused, and easy-win/bite-sized courses.
• The content is incredibly organized (“organization is the key to a successful business and marketing campaign”).

Notable Quote

“Organization is the key to a successful business... If you can’t organize it, it can’t scale.”
—Corrie [04:12]

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3. Most Popular and Most Impactful Courses

[12:30–16:59]

The Top-Recommended Courses:

• Photography Course: “People buy with their eyes.” The signature course guides bakers on staging, lighting, and editing photos—using both their phones and DSLR cameras. It is credited with directly boosting sales for members.
• How To Teach a Cookie Class: Real-world demonstrations, scripts, supply lists, and step-by-step instructions. “You will regret not starting sooner.”

Notable Quotes

“If you take better photos, you make more sales. It is as simple as that.”
—Corrie [12:33]

“That script and PowerPoint is fantastic. Me and Heather don’t do well off-script!”
—Corrie [17:29]

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4. The “Slept-On” Courses – Hidden Gems

[19:13–30:00]

• Eat That Frog: Focus and productivity. Helps overwhelmed bakers identify their most important next steps.
• Asana Course: Project/life management. “Changed my life,” says Corrie.
• Google Calendar Course: For client reminders, birthdays, and business dates—great for “top of mind awareness.”
• Digital Download Kits: Monthly themed resource bundles—cookie tags, backers, graphics, and more, all in one branded package (exclusive to Cookie College).

Notable Quotes

“If you tried Asana you’ll say, ‘How did I do without this before?’”
—Heather [22:09]

“Could you imagine a heartfelt note for their anniversary? You’ll be their lifelong baker.”
—Corrie [26:23]

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5. Community & Support – The Private College Facebook Group

[31:00–34:46]

• Exclusive group for students—no “random opinions,” just real, in-the-trenches bakers sharing wins, troubleshooting, and support.
• “The number one utilized source of the college is this Facebook group. It's the ability to have coworkers… when you enter the college, competition melts off.”
• Real, actionable feedback and emotional support for cottage bakers who might otherwise feel isolated.

Notable Quotes

“The number one utilized source of the college is this Facebook group. It’s the ability to have coworkers.”
—Corrie [32:17]

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6. Actionable, Bite-Sized “Best Bang for the Buck” Courses

[35:46–39:00]

• Photo Organization 101: Easy, fast access to your best work for marketing.
• Inbox Zero: Achieving a clean, actionable inbox for better customer service.
• How to Set Up a 3D Printer (Bambu A1 Mini): No-nonsense, step-by-step. Empowers last-minute custom cutter creation.
• Emphasis: incremental 1% optimizations across many processes add up to massive productivity gains.

Notable Quotes

“If you are organized, your customer service gets better…and your life gets easier.”
—Corrie [39:52]

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7. Becoming “Better Than the Competition”

[58:43–63:36]

• Photography, copywriting, efficient forms (Google Forms/Jotform), batch post scheduling—these “small” improvements set you apart in a crowded market.
• Even posting twice/month keeps your “open” sign on for new clients.
• Baker’s Business Basics: 13 foundational video lessons included or sold separately—perfect for serious hobbyists ready to go pro.

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8. Detailed Black Friday Deal Recap

[64:34–69:12]

• Cookie College $64/month or $576/year (best value), includes everything—courses, class kits, digital downloads, group support, etc.
• Cookie Class Kits: $44/month (active year only).
• Baker’s Business Basics: $14.40 (never before discounted 60% off).
• Digital Downloads: $4/month (normally $10, now 60% off).
• $1/month Transfer Club (240+ transfer designs for royal icing, etc.)

Notable Quotes

“You might be saying, girls, are you popcorning me? ... It’s just a better bet to do the Cookie College.”
—Heather [69:12]

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9. Vendi Blendy Sale Details & Door Prizes

[69:32–76:18]

• 24-hour Facebook event: 63 vendor partners, most offer 25%+ off and door prizes.
• Over $18,000 in prizes this year: 10 Bambu A1 3D Printers, 5 Bosch Mixers, gift cards, and more.
• No purchase required to enter prize drawings.

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10. STL Me About It: Listener Q&A

[76:18–84:45]

• Q1: Instagram blue check verification—worth it?
  • $14.99/account/month; gives support and perceived legitimacy, but may not be worth the investment for small bakers just starting.
• Q2: Using attendee photos for marketing—cover your bases in event terms, but always read the room and get consent for photos.
• Q3: Animal Crossing tangent, but a heartfelt “thank you” read from a listener who joined last year and transformed her business.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On dealing with new tech like 3D printers:

  “I hate learning new things. But after seeing what the little A1 Mini can do, I said that’s a great door prize.”
  —Corrie [48:29]

• On incremental improvements:

  “What if you took 30 things and made them 1% better? If I can make emails a little more organized, sell one extra ticket, print my own cutters… all those 1% changes add up.”
  —Heather [49:18]

• On the importance of community:

  “The problem with being a single bakery business that starts from your home is… it’s very lonely. You feel picked out, very alone.”
  —Heather [32:17]

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Time-Stamped Highlights

• 00:55–02:22 | Vendi Blendy countdown debates
• 02:22–11:49 | Black Friday Cookie College deal explained
• 12:30–16:59 | Most popular classes: Photography & Teaching Cookie Classes
• 19:13–30:00 | Slept-on courses
• 31:00–34:46 | The private college Facebook group culture
• 35:46–39:00 | Photo organization, Inbox Zero, Bambu printer setup
• 49:06–50:34 | Optimization mindset — do 30 things 1% better
• 58:43–63:36 | Competitive edge: looking more professional
• 64:34–69:12 | Black Friday deal breakdown
• 69:32–76:18 | Vendi Blendy logistics & prize hype
• 76:18–84:45 | Listener Q&A: Blue check, event photo rights
• 90:02–90:26 | Listener thanks and success story

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Extra: Group Collab Segment

[90:43–98:06]

• Instagram Collabs—huge for reach, engagement, and sales inquiries. Example: Donna’s post, eight new IG inquiries in a month from collab participation.
• “Thank You Cookie Collab” announced for Friday, encouraging bakers to post photos of someone holding a thank-you cookie with a meaningful story for max engagement.

Notable Quote

“Your biggest fans are your biggest fans because they know, like, and trust you — and posting about your gratitude and personal stories builds that.”
—Corrie [96:31]

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Tone & Style

• Fun, fast-paced, candid, packed with twin-level inside jokes and real-world examples.
• Clean language, genuine encouragement, and lots of “just do it, you’ll thank yourself” moments.
• Deeply practical—a resource for those “hands-full-of-flour” bakers who need actionable, honest, and non-intimidating business advice.

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Who Should Listen to This Episode?

• Hobby bakers eyeing business status.
• Cottage bakery owners overwhelmed by “all the things.”
• Existing Cookie College members wanting to maximize or refresh their learning.
• Anyone curious about optimizing time, systems, or marketing for selling baked goods online.

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End note:
If you’re tuning in the week it aired, don’t miss the Vendi Blendy Facebook group for Black Friday. And sign up for the Cookie College—if you can only do one thing for your business this year, Heather and Corrie (and dozens of testimonials) urge you to take advantage of the annual steal.

Transcript

[A]

Never life. I started Frasier again. She watched again. We're alive. Anyways, we're doing it live. We're doing it live.

[B]

Welcome my friends, my baker friends to the Baking it down with Sugar Cookie.

[A]

I want to let everybody in the Internet know Cory's in a feist bucket. No, none of you.

[B]

Know what? I had a headache all night and I took cuz I ran out.

[A]

You took it out on me.

[B]

I ran out of Advil so I googled who runs out of Advil. I googled how to get rid of a headache fast when you don't have any over the counter stuff. Water did drink some. And a caffeine pill which I did have.

[A]

Caffeine bill for bed.

[B]

No, I just took it like an hour ago. Right.

[A]

Oh, that's why you're insane. You've been ridiculous. If you're on any sort of substance, I would like to be privy to.

[B]

The consumption I was co caffeine build man. Welcome to the Baking down with Sugar Cookie marketing podcast. Or should I say the Vendy Blendy.

[A]

Because that's all we've been talking about. November doesn't exist. November is the only thing.

[B]

If you are like what are you talking about? The Vendi Blendy goes down in T minus 10 days.

[A]

10 days. Full days. I do believe so. Correct. Oh, I got the countdown running. Here's what I don't understand. I don't understand countdowns.

[B]

Is it countdowns include the day of I don't know, I don't know end of the day.

[A]

I also don't understand weekly countdowns. Get this.

[B]

Doing them every how many days till 14?

[A]

Okay, it's not. It's actually 10. But when I need to make the countdown is 14, which is seven and seven, that's two. So you write two weeks until the Vendi Bundy. And then on Monday, on next Monday I would do. Or Friday, whatever.

[B]

One week. I guess it's. When does your week start? On Monday. Are you a Sunday starter?

[A]

But here's the thing. If I say one week until the vendibundy but it's during the week that is one week left. It is correct in the count of days. So that's why I'm switching. I'm going to switch to days countdown.

[B]

Because it's that that's one week makes.

[A]

It sounds like it's definitely seven days to me. It's next week.

[B]

It's in seven full days. When someone says it's a week away.

[A]

I think it's in seven days.

[B]

When I hear those words I register.

[A]

One week left until the venue blendy.

[B]

I say you have seven days left.

[A]

To me, it's just one week away. Makes me say it's definitely not in the next seven days. It's in the eighth day.

[B]

I would say more than a week away for the Vendi Blendy but less.

[A]

Alligator open mask.

[B]

The vending Blendy is a one day sales day. Goes down 24 hours, 25% off or more in the Vendy blendy group on Facebook.

[A]

And I'm happy to report the subject of today's podcast is the or more of the cookie college.

[B]

Okay, I know you're like, guys, we're so tired of hearing the cookie college. You're tired of hearing the overview. But we're getting into the nitty gritty, right?

[A]

Corey wanted to go through first. We wanted to say last year, we. I'll be honest, last year we didn't promote our own business enough. We just did. So we're saying, okay, we gotta do a little bit of internal promotion as well, which is today's podcast topic.

[B]

We're like, and off.

[A]

And maybe, maybe we'll give something away. I don't know. But Cory wanted to go through the cookie college. Cookie college deals and steals. Here's the thing. If you don't sign up during Black Friday, you have just overspent a ton. If you're on the fence, Black Friday is the answer. If you're on the fence and it's February, great. Join us. But why join us then when you could join us now for cheaper? Yeah, and you might be like, you guys always talk about the vending blendy.

[B]

Every single.

[A]

Are you just.

[B]

Every podcast you talk about the vending blendy, but then we just do an overview of the cookie college. Sign up for the college. If you want to become more efficient, sign up for the college. Blah. Okay. What I wanted to actually tell you is open the doors. Open the doors of the college and tell you actually what's in there. And we're going to divide it into most taken courses, most slept on courses. The courses for someone trying to become more efficient.

[A]

I like those ones. Yeah.

[B]

Heather likes this one. She made this one. The easiest courses to take, like, less time involved.

[A]

One of the. One of the best compliments I'm paid for.

[B]

Paid to, paid for. Okay.

[A]

No, I'm not paid. Verbally given a gift of words from the Vendis is, wow, that was really organized.

[B]

Yes. And I want to say organization is the key to a successful business. A successful marketing campaign.

[A]

If you can't Organize it one. Really? I just look at the world and I'm like, this could be optimized. And just because it doesn't mean throw everything away, it means how can I create this room in a space that is most advantageous for the user?

[B]

I'll tell you, Heather has taken me kicking and screaming over the last 10 years that we've worked together because I just hated folder structures. You did.

[A]

But look at you go. Oh, once you tasted the sweet nectar of easily accessible, not leaving it on your desktop world.

[B]

If my folder doesn't have two folders inside that folder, did I even folder delete it?

[A]

It's ridiculous. It shouldn't even be there. Here's the thing.

[B]

Having a structure to your business is going to save you time and money.

[A]

Can I tell you the funniest thing? Sure. The way I organize my external hard drive, it's constantly a thought that if I was in any event incapacitated, could you find the cookie class kids promo photo? Could you navigate my shoulder structure in a logical path?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so let's go through each membership discount first and then we'll talk about the classes. Sure. So I'm going to just. Do you want to go through all the discounts or you want to do discount class? Discount class.

[B]

What do you mean, discount class?

[A]

I do want to say here, I'm only talking about the cookie college right now.

[B]

We're only talking about the cookie college right now.

[A]

But then we're going to go to the other membership deals. Yeah, Later.

[B]

Way down.

[A]

Okay, so the cookie college is on sale on Black Friday for 24 hours only for $64. The best discount we've ever run.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That we said we'd never run again was last year during the vending bunny and it was $63. So are we liars?

[B]

No. But for $1 more, you can get access to everything in the cookie college. So what your savings are, it's normally $76 a month.

[A]

The vending budgeting is $64 and you're.

[B]

Saving $12 a month.

[A]

But I got an even better deal, which actually makes this the best deal that we're offering. And it's the yearly upfront.

[B]

Okay. That's access to everything in the cookie college. Everything dropped everything in the future for 12 full months.

[A]

Right. So when you sign up for the Cookie college on Black Friday, you pay $64.64 a month. It's typically $76 a month, but when you sign up for the yearly price, it will take the monthly price down. So if you paid Monthly. What are you looking at?

[B]

Myself.

[A]

Oh, it would take it down to $48. That would be the cheapest monthly price you can get.

[B]

Okay, so what would I have to come out of pocket to get the $48 a month?

[A]

576.

[B]

576.

[A]

Right. Not time change.

[B]

Not. It is an investment in your business. And that's why our goal is today to tell you how you can invest use.

[A]

I'm going to put that in perspective here. 576 is a lot of money.

[B]

It is.

[A]

But on Thursday in one private class, we cleared 895.

[B]

895. So we taught a private class. I did have to do zero marketing for it.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And we cleared 895.

[A]

So if I. If you sign up for the college and you want to get that deal because you say I do want to make a large impact in my business in 2026 and I can get you to teach one private class of which I provide everything you need to teach a class. And I teach you how to teach the class with the script included and you clear $800. It is a solid one class.

[B]

One class, granted.

[A]

High cost of living to it. Okay. $50 and $50. Okay, let's say you can teach 10 people. So $500 in one class. In a rural area, $50 is the average ticket price and you get sell two DIY kids. I paid for myself. Paid for in one rural class of 10 people.

[B]

Yeah. Listen, me and Heather's goal is not to just get you to sign up for the college and then we forget about you. Our goal is to get you to sign up for the college and then us help you step by step to make that money back. And then plus a dollar.

[A]

That's a. That's our going thing. If we could get people to sign up and they make their money back plus a dollar, they'll never leave. That's our goal. But ideally you make back tons of money. Yeah.

[B]

Signing up for the Vendy Blendy. It is going to be chaos in December for you. If you're a baker, you got a lot of things to bake. Our goal is to set you up for 2026 so that you run into 2026 more efficient.

[A]

Great. And that's what I. That's my bone to pick is. Yes. I can tell you here. You sell this many tickets, you make this much money. But what I can't put a monetary value on is efficiency because of the time cost savings.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

My life is so much easier. I got zapier a little bit of AI. I got a lot of organization, I.

[B]

Got a lot of things working for.

[A]

Me that I don't have to pay for. You know, small stipends. Right. But my website's doing this, this is sending to that my emails, this cut. And so the time cost savings which you see a lot of people who have actually dug into these classes are like, wow, I'm a lot more efficient.

[B]

It's more efficient. You have a clearer brain because you're more efficient. You have better customer service because you are more efficient. Your email box is to inbox zero. Everything in your inbox is a to.

[A]

Do list and you label it and then you have it mapped out to go to various folders.

[B]

I'm going to tell you something as someone who was not organized. Me, I was not organized. I have become organized. It has changed my life.

[A]

Corey's got Corey, dare I say 20, 25. She has processes in place.

[B]

Processes, SOS, PS shops, standard operating procedures.

[A]

Because when you can document it, you can replicate it and you can scale it, right?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And if we're not in the position to hire out people, Corey hates hiring out people. We can at least optimize it with website software.

[B]

Here's the thing, the way that business goes is you get so efficient that the only right next step is to hire someone else. A lot of people get stuck in, they're not efficient and they're like, if I just hired someone, I'd have more time.

[A]

Gotta think of this. If I had to hire somebody and I had to explain to them how to work this, if it's already overwhelming, it's not gonna be a good position to hire out. But if I can optimize it and just explain that to somebody. I have my virtual assistant and I try to say, if I had to explain this to him, could he do it? Yeah, I mean, of course he can do it. But if I'm like, well, you got to go here and then you got to light your shoe on fire to go my inbox and try to find it.

[B]

Here's the thing, People are like, I'm not hiring someone. Listen, you are your employee. You are your number one employee. And if past you does not set up current you for success, whether it be how you take your photos, how you store your photos, your website, your updates on your website, those things like that, current you is suffering because past employee you didn't think about current you, future you has already costed the time and money.

[A]

I do like to think of myself in three different versions Past, present and future. Present suffers from what past did, but future can help. Present, future.

[B]

Oh yeah, the present.

[A]

Okay, so the cookie college again, it's typically $76. It'll be $76 on the 27th and it'll be $76 on the 29th. Yeah, but on the 28th it'll be 64amonth. If that's where you're at, it's great. Stay in a few months.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

But if you want to switch, you can get 576, which takes it down to an equivalent of $48 a month.

[B]

Granted.

[A]

5, 576 paid up front. Yeah, not chump change. But if you said, okay, I'll sign up for the year, you get all of the class kits, which I'll talk about in a second. I'm gonna teach one class if you can make me that promise. Sign up for the year, teach one class. It would be dumb not to sign up for that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay, so there's my call to action. Right? Call to action. Now Corey wanted to go through the classes which we have these published in a spreadsheet. Cause I'm optimized.

[B]

We do have them in. It is overwhelming. There's a lot of classes. That's what, that's how much value you get when you sign up for the college. So I want to break it down even into a tinier, more palpable way by telling you the most taken classes, the slept on classes, the easiest classes to take. So like if you signed up on Black Friday and you're like, I, I, I really want to take four classes that can help me in December. These are the four classes you take.

[A]

I'm going to tell you the slept on class that you should start with.

[B]

Well, let's go to most popular first.

[A]

It's going to be the photography course.

[B]

It is.

[A]

It's Corrie's course. It is.

[B]

Okay. The most popular course in the cookie college. If you sign up for one thing, take one course, it is the beefiest course. There's a lot of info in there. If you took that course, I'm going to promise you you'll start making more money. And that is the photography course. People buy with their eyes. Food is visual. If you take better photos, you make more sales. It is as simple as that. The course that I will always suggest people start with is the photography course. If you sign up on Black Friday and you said, I have 30 days in here, what can I do? If you take that course, you will that that information you have gained and we go through how to. How to stage something. How to stage a photo. Then we show how to edit that photo in Lightroom. My go to edits.

[A]

If props are kind of lost in you and you know you want them, but you're like, I just don't understand the concept of making it look cohesive and presentable. Like when I put it there, it looks like I just went through my closet and threw stuff on a board. This is kind of how to create. And would you use that phrase the other day? The triangle, the pyramid.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That kind of brings it focus while making props a supporting role.

[B]

Yeah. So we go through how to set up your stage. So how to. How to find the right lighting. That's how nitty gritty we get in there. How to find the right lighting. So it's going to be for different for everyone's house. I show you where to go. I show you how to take a little field trip around your house and what to look for. Then we go how to set up your prompts, how to make sure that they compliment your cookies versus take it away. Then we take the photo and listen if you ever wonder. No. I have a fancy camera. I don't use the fancy camera. I do all my editing in Lightroom, so I do it after the fact. So you don't have to have a fancy camera and you have to learn all the special knobs and doodads on it.

[A]

You're looking at some out of the boxers. Aperture priorities right here.

[B]

Out of the boxers. And this all works for. If you have enough phone that you're using or if you're using a DSLR or mirrorless. Yeah, yeah, both. We go to how to edit it in Lightroom. Lightroom Mobile free Freeze a burden. I'm sorry.

[A]

If you're not running it through Lightroom.

[B]

I'm gonna tell you every photo you've ever seen from me, even the one I did at Olive Garden last week.

[A]

Why wouldn't you run through.

[B]

Here's.

[A]

Here's what I'm gonna say. Editing. What our eyes perceive and what the lens of a camera perceives are two different things. So. And this is what I have to tell myself when I take a selfie.

[B]

And I hated it.

[A]

I'm like, that's not really me. Right. I'm just hoping selfie math makes sense. But there's lens distortion, there's discoloration. You got a camera trying to make the darks light and the lights dark. It's doing a lot of things. So in post processing and even in creating mask Which I'm not sure that everybody use, but I like to use them. I can have the background calm down while bringing light into the subject.

[B]

Absolutely. In a better photo. A better photo. Not only will you be able to use it for marketing for years to come. Years and years. When someone in a community group says, I'm looking for a winter wonderland baby girl thing.

[A]

Oh, Corey has them organized now because you're responding, here's a winter wonderland baby thing I did.

[B]

Bam, bam, bam. And those photos that I took years ago I can still use to this day for my marketing. And that is, I'm going to tell you, that's how I get more leads. By someone saying, I want a Winterland pink baby thing. And I show them a fantastic photo of a Winterland baby theme. That's how I get more orders.

[A]

Winterland or winter Wonderland?

[B]

Winterland and Winter Wonderland.

[A]

Are those two different topics? Oh, I said, oh, what's a winterland?

[B]

A land of winter and wonderland.

[A]

I really like that class. I'm going to say one of the most taking classes in the cookie college, granted. So we have the five membership options. The cookie college gets everything in all the memberships. This class is actually only available to the cookie college. It's how to teach a cookie class. Right. So the cookie class, kids, is what to teach. This is how to teach it. And this is the one I typically direct people to. Corey and I taught a live class.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

We charge people for it. And then I told them, I'm recording it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What I did is I recorded an hour and a half and then I sped it up through the parts where it was silent. But I wanted you to kind of hear, watch and see how we lay this out. Exactly Goes.

[B]

It's very interesting to see how the flow of class goes. And you can see with 10 different people and I. Everyone goes at a different pace. And how you, as the leader of the class, the instructor needs to push everyone along.

[A]

It was good to see, you know, it's a script. When core and I first started teaching classes, we knew we needed to run through a script. It's just kind of how we work.

[B]

Right. It took us roughly two and a half hours to make the script.

[A]

And then we went through it many, many times and took notes and edited and edited.

[B]

Cut it out. This doesn't make sense. Cut that out. Add to it.

[A]

Right. So we gave you that script. We used to print it out and take it to classes. Now I've got it pretty memorized. And then you can watch that class. And then you get all the list of the supplies we used to teach that class. Granted, yours will look a little different, but if you're like, ooh, wow, I would love to sign up for the college, but teaching a class is so far from my skill set now. It's actually not that far. And you'll see a lot of people say I didn't believe them. I taught my first one and I regret having done it sooner.

[B]

I want to say that script and the PowerPoint and everything like that is fantastic. Me and Heather, last year at Thanksgiving to our family, taught a mini cookie class and we went off script. Me and Heather don't do well off script.

[A]

I want to be honest. You taught the whole thing by yourself?

[B]

Yeah. But I want to tell you, I felt like I had no direction.

[A]

I know.

[B]

Like a script gives me a script, tells me the next steps. Add value here, add value here. Dive into the cookies. Step, step, step. End of class.

[A]

Cory and I go off script. It's not a good time.

[B]

It's not pretty at all. But having that script, knowing that you can look at a class that's being taught, an actual class, you're going to be set up for success. So much better than just signing up for the class kits. Because that's the curriculum. But it's not the flow.

[A]

No, it's not. When we taught that private class last week, did you feel me bringing you back to the script? It's because it couldn't see. I know. Did you feel me pulling you back in? That's a great point. Let's get to that in a minute. So that one I think is great as far as probably the two most taking classes that I see people take. Right. Then we have like supporting role classes, Nailing Instagram for business. A lot. A lot of classes I teach on optimization. You did airbrush systems, product reviews. Yeah. You know, things like that.

[B]

Now I want to move on to the most slept on classes. So there's some slept on classes. Photography not being one of those because I teach it and I'm just like, you know, my voice is so eloquent. Slept on classes are classes that Heather has made that not all the people take just because they're. People are at different stages of their business, but they've been slept on. And if you take these, they'll help you in business. And Heather doesn't want to be so slept on in these classes.

[A]

Yeah. Then fine. Great. Yeah, I have a lot of bones to be.

[B]

So what's your number one slept on class?

[A]

I'm going to Say. I'm going to say. And I hate to say this because I always started this one. The eat that frog class is where I tell everybody to start. Because you see the title and you're like, what the heck is that? Yeah, agreed. But it is helping you determine what your next steps are. So biggest complaint of the cookie college is. It's so overwhelming. There's so much going on here.

[B]

And I want to say the biggest complaint in people's bakery businesses. I'm so overwhelmed.

[A]

So much going on here. Yeah.

[B]

Don't know what's going on here.

[A]

So a lot of that I find is because. And I feel myself doing it. Some days I'll come down to the computer, be like, oh, I gotta start this. Oh, shoot, I forgot that. Yeah, I forgot. I'm like, whoa. And I was saying, baby girl, sweetheart, slow down. What's the goal today? What's the one thing today? If I did this, my day has been successful. And that's actually the eat that frog concept. It's not something I came up with, but it's something we worked through in the college. We did Facebook Live. So these are replays of those with worksheets that help you kind of nail down your membership here. So if you're here for a long time and a good time a year, awesome. If you're here for a month, we gotta make it work for you. Right. I want both of you to be successful. So what happens is, you come here, you're like, what I gotta do Instagram. Oh, I should make it TikTok. Oh, I should take photography. They said I should do that. I want to be optimized. And you're like doing everything and you're almost getting frozen.

[B]

And you didn't go in any one direction. You started too many directions and you never finished anything.

[A]

And it creates an unfortunate. Like when that. When I do that, I'm like, wow, I did nothing today. I did everything and nothing got done.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the eat that frog concept is a slept on one because it helps you focus. What's one thing? If this one thing was done? If this is a one direction, I took this. If I want to start a newsletter, if these are the classes, I take these five classes, four classes. If these are the questions I asked and I got the newsletter out, was I successful on my membership here? Yes. Okay. That was great. And that's why I think that's a slept on class.

[B]

So if you're like, wow, a newsletter class. I want to send a newsletter. You're going to take the Copy class.

[A]

You're going to take the photography class.

[B]

You're going to take up how to set up a newsletter class. Those three things right there are going to set you up for success. And you'll send out a newsletter.

[A]

If you're thinking, well, what is it that frog? Just tell me to pick newsletters. Like, no, it actually has you lay out what your goals are and then you categorize them as A, B, C, D. And I think you might, might.

[B]

Be great at copy. You might be great at typing captions, you might be great at formulating a very good email. So the copy course wouldn't necessarily be the one that fits you because you already know how to do that. So me saying take the copy course, that doesn't benefit you. That's time wasted. You already know how to, to write.

[A]

Stuff, but now you have a bunch of other things buying for your attention. You're like, which one should I focus on? Well, it helps you determine which one to focus on because what my answer is and what your answers are going to be. Different. Different. Think that's left on. I'm gonna say another one slept on the Asana course. Asana is a project management software. And you're like, what? It's a life management software. I actually use it to organize most things in my entire life. It's one of the few softwares I paid for for years and I don't see myself unpaying for it. People who try the Asana course and try it, they always come to me and they, they got that if, you know, you know, look.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And they're like, how did I do without this before? Yeah, you had an issue where you double booked some stuff.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Corey does not use Asana. No. When I go to Asana, there's different views that I can see my entire week. I can see my entire month. I can drag and drop the tiles around to make sure it all fits. I can see if something is about to get double booked and I can let it all move. I can actually trigger like a task, a project, and it will backdate all my supportive tasks. So when we have a cookie class on a Saturday, I've created a project with triggered task. So I'll say on Saturday I have this class and then suddenly my whole week tells me what I got to do each day to make sure this class is successful.

[B]

As you go through the college, you take the photography course, you implement it, you start making more sales, your life, your baking life becomes busier. Now everything needs to have a task a to Do a to done. Need to think about this later because as you get busier because of the courses you've taken time in, efficiency is so much more important. I know it's easy to take one sale a week and knock it out. And you're like, I don't really need to be efficient. I knocked that out of the park. You have five different orders to bake in one week and a market on Saturday. Everything needs to be categorized in a ready to go.

[A]

So people saw took the asana course and they liked it and they were like, but can you tell us how you do your pre planning each week? So on Sundays, typically I sit down and I make a sauna map out. You want to make it map out? They always say five weeks. So you can see your next month and a week. Yes. Ahead of. So they asked me to do a pre planned together class. So I walk them through what my Sunday in asana looks like. So you might be like, I download software, but what do I do now? Then you're going to go take that course. These are two separate courses. I think those are slept on because I think once you have a project management software and if you're a pen and paper girly, I'll fight you back. But I really feel like what I can do in my g. Of course I can label something and it naturally.

[B]

Ports over to asana pen and paper girls. I still am that, but I want to say having it digitally in front of you.

[A]

Oh yeah, I'm a pen and paper girl.

[B]

You can be both, but pen and paper spit baller. Yeah. And then an asana locked and loaded.

[A]

Locked and loaded.

[B]

Yeah. The thing is, in a digital world, which we are now, if you're on the go, um, what was so funny was I threw Heather a mini party at Olive Garden last week. And so many of the waiters and waitresses came and wanted my business information. If someone wanted to order right then and there. And I said to them, well, let me check my calendar when I get home. I've lost a sale because I've extended my sales funnel. If I have access to my what I have going on and they want to order in that moment and I could take their order in that moment. I've secured a sale because I've become more efficient because my asana's planned out. I know what my week looks out. I know if I can take that order. I know how much dozens I could take if I wanted to take that order. But if I'm like my pen and paper at home, I'll get back to you.

[A]

I couldn't imagine it. It would lend me to massive panic and pen and maybe the reason why I'm not a pen and paper girly is I hate my handwriting. Maybe that's the it set me free.

[B]

My older sister has beautiful handwriting.

[A]

I would be a pen and paper girl. Yeah, they look like that. Another one I like is the that I think is slept on is a Google calendar course similar to Asana. Not project management but using Google Calendar. When people look at my Google calendar they're like, what the heck? Yeah, they're like, why is it so color coded? Why is it organized? I have calendars that remind me of anniversaries of family. I never miss a birthday. It's frustrating to my sisters. It's so insanely because I'll have I created a calendar for family birthdays and I set up reminders that give me ahead of time. So if I want to send a card and then I always send the text and they're like happy birthday, dad.

[B]

Here's the thing. You're like, well, I don't really care about my family. If you have a client, what if you have a client who orders every January for their kid's birthday and you beat them to it? Or if you find out you did a wedding shower set and every year you wish them a happy anniversary.

[A]

Could you imagine?

[B]

Could you imagine? Could you imagine a heartfelt note, a letter in the mail? You will be their lifelong baker. So many times what happens with bakers is we take an order, we give them their order, they pay, set it and forget it. But that next event is one year away and they have so many clients, have so many things to remember in that year, the odds that they will remember mixing little cookie co slim to none. So if I'm not hitting them with a newsletter at least if I hit them with a Hey, I just wanted to know, wanted you to know I thought about you. I hope that your one year anniversary is as special as the day you got married.

[A]

And that's called top of mind awareness marketing. It's kind of a little pie in the sky, fluffy. But it really does work.

[B]

It does work. And you have dentist office that do a generic AI call. Imagine if you, you took the AI out of it and you put your hand in it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

[B]

Oh my soul.

[A]

You send me a card, it's handwritten.

[B]

Do you understand how insane that would be?

[A]

It's so that's that new type of marketing where you're like, what's the Opposite of what everyone else is doing. And that's what stands out.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So you can send the automated, you know, the dentist wishing me happy birthday. Always a wild experience. But the dentist, the front desk lady's writing me a card that says Happy Birthday. Wow, that's. That's gonna set you apart.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

You can obviously spend a ton of time and what a coulda should is.

[B]

I'm.

[A]

I'm right there with you. What do we say? Oh, these are slept ons. Do you have any slept on ones?

[B]

I have my easiest ones to take the easy ones. Easiest ones.

[A]

I wanna say one more slept on.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

I think the new digital download kits.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So here's the thing. The digital downloads is included in the college. It has its own separate membership called the digital downloads. The college gets everything. So when you sign up for the college, you get anything me and Heather have ever, will ever offer. That's the great thing about the college. It's the best bang for the buck. The digital downloads is just what you think it is. A digital download. Just like as if you would get a transfer sheet that was a digital download. An STL file. A download. You download this. The great part about it is Heather rebranded it this year to be quite cute.

[A]

The digital download kits. Yeah. So each one I really wanted, I really work well with a standard, operating standard offering. Right. Like not all the way, all chaotic.

[B]

Made up new something.

[A]

And Corey said, why can't you just market the digital downloads? And I was like, because I, I wanted. I like more a standardization so that you know what to expect. And then. So we sat down back in late summer maybe at the beach. Yeah. And we said, what would this look like if I liked it? Yes.

[B]

And how can I make you like this?

[A]

Right. So we came out with these kits. So each month you get a kit. It has seven downloadable files that all match the same a certain theme. And you could pick and choose what parts you want. A cookie card backer, a cookie backer, cookie tag front and back.

[B]

A cookie cutter that matches the cookie card and cookie tag.

[A]

A pattern to use in your marketing. But also a social media graphic where you can Dr. Your sales behind the screen using Canva.

[B]

A transfer sheet that matches PNG and Eddy print.

[A]

So you could take the graphic and use it in your own if you want to make it in Canva. But if you wanted to print this out onto that, you get the outline in the book, the colored one. If it lends it, the design lends itself to that. So we did. Thanks, Boo. Corey has this really funny pun, I gotta get it done this week. And it was hats to yourself and Merry Christmas. We'll be using Santa hats. Yes, Little Santa hat. So you're gonna get the hat cutter, the hat transfer sheet, and there's just pick and choose which pieces you want. But it makes a cohesive set each time.

[B]

Yeah, it's themed out. But the issue is if you have a cutter and then you go to Etsy to find something that kind of mimics the cutter shape or the cutter style, it's harder to do. And it kind of looked disjointed. Heather, I said, heather, since you're talented behind a computer screen, make it so the cutter matches those other files. So it goes into a very cute set that I liked.

[A]

The thanks Boo Ghost. You get the thanks Boo cutter.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then if you wanted to print the thanks Boo Ghost with an Eddy, you got that file too. Yeah, I really like it. That's a good point, though. The cookie college gets everything. These memberships, if you signed up for them individually.

[B]

Individually? Individually. Tell me if I signed up for them individually on thanks on Black Friday.

[A]

Okay, outside of Black Friday, individual cost is 187amonth.

[B]

That's all of those, you said, I.

[A]

Want the digital downloads, the class kids, the baker's business basics, and the cookie college and the transfers. If you sign up for those individually, which nobody ever would because you actually can't, the system doesn't allow you to do that. You would have to pay $187 a month.

[B]

$187 a month. That's a lot.

[A]

Just for signing up the cookie college, you get all of that. And on Black Friday, it's $64 a.

[B]

Month, that's a no brainer.

[A]

If you signed up for those individually on Black Friday, which again, you can't, but you'd be 1:27. So for just 64. But then to sweeten the deal, if you sign up for the yearly membership, you get three months free, which takes that down to 48. So you get all of this for $48, when in reality, if you signed up individually, it'd be 187 insane.

[B]

It's a no brainer.

[A]

I try to make it a no brainer. If you guys are wondering if we use our own marketing tactics. Yes, absolutely. Popcorn price you guys up? Why do I want people in the cooking college? Because you also get the private Facebook group. Yes. And that's where a lot of people find success.

[B]

The private Facebook group. So let's say you join on Black Friday, you already have a very big December, but you signed up for yearly. So, you know, you might not be able to take a course in December, but you know, January is going to be a slower down month. So you're going to be able to take some in January. Totally fine. In that time in your December, if you have a client interaction that was less than savory, you can come to that Private Facebook group and the sugar cookie marketing group. We do have to admin. There's 50,000 people in there, and we do have to really admin and govern it very closely in the college. It's a lot of business owners that are business focused. We can let the posts that we would normally close down in the sugar cookie marketing group really go. So you get a lot of different perspectives. You have brick and mortars, you have. Have Hobbiers turning into bakers. You have people with a, hey, this happened to me one time. Let me tell you what it made me feel like. Those posts, people just flock and they're always geared towards making you a better business. It's not like I hate customers. They're the worst. There's no comments like that and we don't even feel them. There's just no comments that exist.

[A]

I think everyone's like, I gotta get my money's worth out of this.

[B]

Absolutely. And it's the hive mind. The problem with being a. A single baker, a bakery business that starts from your home, it's very lonely and isolating. And you feel in that moment where a customer's unhappy with something you do, you feel very picked out, very alone, very.

[A]

A customer comment can target. And there's no one to get any validation from or any reprieve from these. Oh, I made this huge mistake. You know, am I a bad person?

[B]

Yeah. And what the cookie college Facebook group. The number one utilized source of the college is this Facebook group. It's the ability to have co workers. And you're like coworkers that are my competitors. No. For some odd reason, when you enter the college, that competition just melts off.

[A]

Because, okay, people be like, oh, I want to teach a ski class. I forgot to order the cutters. And someone's like, is there anybody? And they're like, I live down the street from you.

[B]

Yeah, just borrow it from. Yeah.

[A]

Pretty interesting. One thing that I've noticed, having admin, not a public group, a large private group, and then a small private group. In large private groups, there's a lot of opinions and there's a lot of people who are no longer Baking, but really like to have an opinion. Absolutely nobody who isn't baking is signing up for the good college. Yes.

[B]

Why?

[A]

Because you're not generating what. You just want to hear my sweet voice talk to you. So everyone in the college is actively in business.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So when you ask a question, you're not getting somebody who's like, I never do that. They'll. They would. You'd get in a.

[B]

In a poke right now.

[A]

As they say, look at this person's attitude. And you click to their profile. I haven't baked in a year.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

I haven't baked in five years. Like, why are you here making somebody feel bad about themselves when you yourself do not put it in practice. In this group where people have to put their money where their mouth is, they're like, let's strategize this, because this will happen to me. This has happened to me. Or this is going to happen absolutely one day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So it's a lot of that different energy because nobody's just. Nobody's just taking a giant poop on a thread and walking away.

[B]

There's not, you know, and I see.

[A]

You guys doing the main group, you know, it's. And that's what people are like. I don't feel embarrassed for making a mistake.

[B]

I'm gonna be honest. I love sugar cookie marketing. I love baking with sugar cookie marketing. But I will ask all my questions in the cookie.

[A]

When Corey truly has a struggle, she could be like, hey, cookie college members, I can't get this.

[B]

Hey, cookie college members, my pops are falling off the sticks. What do versus Sometimes in those larger groups, and there's a lot of larger groups out there, people can say a comment that's not helpful. Like, my icing never does that. Well, good for you. My icing is so in the cookie college group, you can ask those whether you feel dumb, whether you're like, I just. Am I. Is this a weird question to ask?

[A]

Because it's such a petite group, you can ask baking questions and you can ask. You can ask marketing questions, sales questions. We even have a sales thread. So if you're like, well, I'm a shop. I don't want to violate the no sales rules. Once a month in the Cleekage, you can pitch your orders.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So the kits are slept on. Thank you. Yeah.

[B]

The digital download kits are slept on. Now the next one I want to go to is if you signed up for 30 days. So let's say you signed up for $64 on Black Friday, what are the easiest courses to so little bite sized courses. I already have mine.

[A]

Okay, let's hear it.

[B]

Okay, mine is. The easiest course to take is how to get a custom domain. Okay. You're not ready for a website and I don't want you to take.

[A]

Did you say this was an easy course?

[B]

No. Custom domain to get a custom email signature.

[A]

It's not an easy course.

[B]

It's not not easy.

[A]

It's not not easy. But it's not the one. Let me just do this in a two. In an hour.

[B]

Listen, best bang for the buck.

[A]

Bang for the buck course. Yes. I'll let you reassign. Okay, I'll give you one thing to reassign.

[B]

Bang for the buck.

[A]

Okay, I'm gonna say bang for the buck course.

[B]

Are we now bang for the buck and not.

[A]

Yeah, we'll go back to the foul on the play for saying that.

[B]

Best bang for the buck courses.

[A]

Getting a customer domain name is not hard. It's just not the easiest thing I've ever done in my life. Okay, gosh, we can move on. I'm gonna say photo organization 101. Bang for the buck.

[B]

Bang for the buck. I'm going through my cell phone.

[A]

Cory's doing it, guys.

[B]

And I said at the end of this and I'm going to tell you that's not. It's not the easiest course to take because there's time into it. It's not a hard idea.

[A]

I'm sorry. It's mentally taxing.

[B]

It's mentally taxing. In my phone is just about every. A set. A photo for every set I've ever done because I send them to clients right at the end of this. Every photo I have on my phone will be in a folder. A well, easy access folder. Baby shower will be in a baby. If you have a baby shower set. So when I go to a common.

[A]

I know exactly you were going to say that because we have so many people in this. A lot of complaints. Everyone's always tagged. That doesn't tag me every other baker in the world. So you got to tag yourself.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

That's part of the hustle. How fast can you.

[B]

How fast can you access something that is hyper niche?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So I had an order for K Pop specifically.

[A]

Not K Pop.

[B]

K Pop, which is very trendy right now. And hyphen, that's the.

[A]

The where you learned a bunch of new words.

[B]

Yeah, I did. So if I can access. If someone is looking for a K pop set, how fast can I access that photo and throw my hat in the ring?

[A]

Because here's what she's competing against. And you see, you can see it. And bakers, I appreciate the hustle. Like, oh, somebody said, here's a set I just did. But they were asking for a wonderland.

[B]

Winter wonderland, baby.

[A]

And you did Bear in the summer. Yeah, okay, fine, you, you demonstrated something, but which one's going to perform better? Somebody that gets as close to that set as possible. And what you're going to be able to do with that is a photo. Organization 101. Here's my big thing. And I find myself. This is the type of course buyer I am. I know what I need to do. I would rather purchase somebody else's system and implement a system that's been proven to work by them and then implement it myself rather than reinventing the wheel.

[B]

Trying to invent a system hard.

[A]

My systems are tried and true, tested. And the fact that I can get.

[B]

Cory to adapt, some of them listen kicking and screaming. I was the one person who didn't want to do anything that Heather said.

[A]

Mostly because she's my twin.

[B]

But then step by little baby step, Heather said, you know, you are, you are.

[A]

I started telling Corey, if it's not a calendar invite, I'm not going. So if you schedule a client meeting and you're the only one on the calendar invite, that you default it to 8am when it's at 2pm, you'll be going by yourself.

[B]

Yeah. Yes.

[A]

So now she's kind of adapted to it, which I'm impressed with because it is hard to put a system in place. The biggest hard part is to go back in time and rework.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

But when you do it, okay, best.

[B]

Best bang fit course that I like myself, okay? And I've taken it on this year is Inbox Zero.

[A]

You have taken on the inbox zero course. It's a chunk. It's a big boy.

[B]

Okay. I haven't done it in my personal email, but I have done it in my mixing bowl. Cookie company email in my mixing bowl. I go through it every day, so it's always@inbox0. Here's the thing. The emails that are starred, I have to do this. They either need an email to them or they need the order actually completed. If I have finished an order with a person, archived, gone gone Love archive.

[A]

Because it's not a delete.

[B]

Promotion folders and social go through them. Cleared asterisk.

[A]

I open up a Gmail account on my phone, go to promotions and it says, and this is horrifying. Why don't we not do them chronologically? What if we did? Most relevant, I said disable, disable. But that's what's coming.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The email. The last frontier of chronological is getting eaten up by relevancy.

[B]

Crazy. Okay? But I'm gonna say if you are. If you are being like, where was that client's communication? Where was that email? What was the last thing they sent? They changed something. I can't remember what it was.

[A]

That Freddy feeling, which I'm there too.

[B]

Oh, absolutely.

[A]

And I'm pretty good at organization. But that feeling when I'm like, I've forgotten something.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

It's going to keep me up tonight. I hate that feeling.

[B]

What's so funny? Because I'm so aggressive with my Inbox Zero, if a customer sends me an email outside the original chain, I'll be like, hey, I'm actually going to resave this in the chain we started over there. Because I'm getting ready to abandon this email because he's off by himself. And my inbox zero doesn't support emails off by themselves. And what it's done is made me more efficient. My customer service is better because everything is together. I don't lose anything. The last thing you want to do in this. Before my inbox Zero, this was me.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

I would say yes to an order.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

And then it would be like two days before the order was due. And I'm like, I realize I never asked for their child's name and they wanted on a cookie.

[A]

So I look now to be like, hey, I clearly am not putting you at the forefront of my priority. I'm about to pipe.

[B]

What was that color you wanted again? So what we want is to have everything organized. So in my initial email, because Heather, standard operating procedures, in my initial email, they fill out the form. My form has a lot of information collected in my initial form.

[A]

Also class in the Creek College.

[B]

Also, I want to. We'll get to that one. That was the best one. In my first email is always the same kind of setup. Hey, so and so I see you're looking for two dozen custom cookies due on Blah.

[A]

What that's doing Reiterate the. So we're on the same page. Yeah.

[B]

But it's also starting my email chain. So if when they send 52 emails back on designs, that first email tells me what's due. So I'm not being like, I only baked you a dozen. You asked for two dozen. I'm so sorry. Because customer service starts with organization. It really just does.

[A]

Business starts with organization. Okay, I'm going to tell you one for the bang. For the buck you were sleeping on.

[B]

Sure.

[A]

How to set up a bamboo a 183D printer. I was printing my lap yesterday. I got. I got the notification. I like having that little ping that you finished that you're knowing what I'm doing.

[B]

Here she has again.

[A]

Oh, she got another one. I can see what she's printing. So the back in June, I have had a couple 3D printers. I was talking to somebody yesterday in the cookie group and she was like, I had an Ender 3 and I bought a bamboo A1 Mini. And she's like people. No. I never got prusa. You never got more expensive. Ender was $150. It was a nightmare. Not self leveling. So I had to level it every time. Spaghetti prints constantly. And then now they've come out with these bamboos, which is just ridiculous. And I told that lady. I was like, everyone should be forced to get the ender so they understand how the bamboo.

[B]

How much is the bamboo A1 mini.

[A]

Right now it's on sale for $200. It should be 250.

[B]

Oh, so $50 savings.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Okay. So Heather actually bought one. A whole course in the college is how to set up a specific bamboo A1 mini printer.

[A]

I actually have a carbon. I bought that a couple years ago. It's the big boy. I'm not even barely.

[B]

Honestly, my cookie room's so small. That would be overwhelming for me. So then they.

[A]

But they didn't. That was their only printer. That and the. Yeah, it was only printer.

[B]

It's a big dude. It's tall.

[A]

It's a big guy. But wow. I said wow. The technology is great. And then over the past five years, I think I got it four, three years ago. I'm sure in the past three years they've come out with these smaller models until they've gotten this really petite model that we got for Corey.

[B]

Here's my thing as a baker who. Who has very limited time during the day and I'm baking in the evenings. I don't want a big printer. I'm not trying to print dragons. I'm not trying to print giant things. I am just trying to print a cookie cutter I need for an order. And that is what that bamboo A1 mini does. I want to tell you my life has been changed.

[A]

Guys, listen. I bought this gosh darn thing back in June, maybe even May. Yeah. Yeah. And I. I assembled it. It took 15 minutes. It's so simple.

[B]

If you are unlike most people I need. I'm A visual learner. So Heather taking it out of the box and showing you step one, step two, and you're literally just listening. You could listen to the course while you decorate cookies.

[A]

And you're gonna be like, that was super simple. And then we take you through designing one. Actually designed it in cookie design lab. And then we purchased an SEO, which I provided during the course. So you didn't know how to purchase it? Yeah. And then I think we designed one in Fusion, which was really good. Ridiculous. But I wanted to give you the three options, so that.

[B]

But.

[A]

Okay. Okay. It was May, June, July, August, September, October. Finally in November. Oh, I'm sorry. October 31st. Halloween. Corey. I was saying, like, you're. You're ridiculous for having this printer. She's had the printer all the summer. She's never turned it on. I know. So we go there, set it up. You know, just connect it to WI fi, which I walk you through in the course.

[B]

I want to say, even Heather, setting it up was very fast. The whole thing was fast.

[A]

People were like, well, I don't have a twin. That's my slave. Right? No, but. But I'm the slave twin telling you how to do this.

[B]

I know. So you have access to my slave.

[A]

Twin now, Corey, she hasn't faced any of the. She hasn't had frustration yet.

[B]

Oh, I've not helped.

[A]

It'll creep up.

[B]

Yeah, sure.

[A]

Don't do words. But she's running, I don't know, three times a day.

[B]

Listen, if I can. I want to just tell. I just want to tell you if you are a baker.

[A]

I had an argument with you in my head last night.

[B]

It.

[A]

Because I was like, you had made me make so many custom ones because you wanted it. But you're not making custom ones. I know you're not. So you're buying close enoughs, but you could have done close enough. So I was like, making me make custom ones.

[B]

Got it. I didn't know STLs. I had never looked at STL files because I didn't have the ability to print them. There's so many shops now that sell.

[A]

STL files because you had. Everyone got these little printers.

[B]

Yeah, these. Okay. So I want to tell you, if you are a baker and you're like, well, Corey, I don't have a ton of orders coming in, but I do want to sign up for the college. And the way that I was able to move my. I went from Fairfax to Prince William County. It's a county over. They want the reason why I was able to get clients Was because I was able to take last minute orders. So last minute orders. You don't have two weeks to get shipping from your favorite Etsy cookie cutter shop. What you can do, though, is use plaques. I got it.

[A]

Look at you. Just listen. Just a poster child for three days.

[B]

Your custom shapes get you better orders. They look better in photos. They get you better orders because people want custom.

[A]

I want to say, though, you did pretty good with my birthday plot, Corey. Okay, I'm sorry, guys, a little addendum. So we meet on Fridays with her kid to go to Olive Garden. It's a tradition now for some reason. I got an invite and I've not stopped going. So Corey texted me. She's like, let's meet at 12:30. Because her kid hadn't have school. Yeah. So I said, okay. I was running a little behind, and then there was traffic. And then Cory's like, where are you? And I was like, I'm coming. I'm. I'm trying to get a great parking spot. Then I come in, and it's a surprise pasta pie.

[B]

Pasta pasta party. Okay. Our birthday is this Saturday. So I said, archer didn't have school, so I could actually go early to the Olive Garden and set up. And I didn't want to go at their busy time because I'd be sitting at a table and, like, taking up, like, precious, like, tip money. So I said, if I go early when it just opens, I can go there, set up my pasta party.

[A]

What's so wild? I didn't realize this, but we've been doing this cookie thing for almost six years. I've never gotten a setup. I've never gotten my own.

[B]

Heather has gotten hand me downs or. Or she has purchased them for loves of her life.

[A]

My mistake.

[B]

But I've never actually made Heather her own dozen.

[A]

So it was all these plans, which, I gotta say, the creativity was there. Obviously, I didn't place the orders. She had full creative.

[B]

And you're like, why didn't you custom print? Heather has access to my printer. She can see what I print.

[A]

So I said, that's another thing about the bamboo. It has an app, so I can control it remotely and I can see what Court's doing. Yeah.

[B]

So I didn't want to, like, give her any idea, not that she would have an idea, that the pasta was meant for her. So I said, let me just use these plaques, and then I can make them custom in that way. But I want to tell you, if you're trying to get clients, Custom shapes get you better clients. It's just, that's what they want. I love plaques, but if you have a Pooh Bear scent and it's got Pooh Bear shaped ears on there, you.

[A]

Will get more sales because.

[B]

And that is what on a one minute.

[A]

And this girl has dug in her heels about learning this technology. I tell you exactly how I learned this technology. Walk you through it. People say, wow. And I think if you wanted to buy a bamboo, which if you paid attention to the Facebook group. On Sunday, we announced the big door prizes for the Vendy Bunny. It happens to be 10 bamboo A1 mini printers and 5 Bosch mixers. But if you were like, if I won one of those, this is right there for you.

[B]

This would be right there. And I want to say, guys, I hate learning new things. But I thought after seeing what the little A one can do and be able to utilize it myself, I said that's a great door prize. I know we did Bosches like all Bosches last year, which is a great.

[A]

Door prize, great door price.

[B]

But this is different, man.

[A]

People said they preferred more chances to win.

[B]

I think more chances to win. But these little printers in. Guys, I want to tell you, I hate learning new things.

[A]

She hates it.

[B]

But this has been. I have printed three cutters.

[A]

Look at your face.

[B]

Glowing peaches and dreams or peaches and creams, whatever that STL shop is that I'm trying to talk about.

[A]

Anybody? Okay, we got one mess.

[B]

It's 50 off right now. I know. So I was able to print three under $5. Those cutters would have been $15 for me to buy.

[A]

So we're talking about again, the cookie college isn't about like just teaching classes. It's about increasing margins. And you can do it through printing cutters, saving time cost, using the freebie photos.

[B]

Having a turnaround for a client that's custom will get you more leads. And that's how I was able to build my business was I took a lot of last minute orders.

[A]

I like to listen to. I like to listen to podcasts about optimization and then do it myself.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So a guy had said instead of looking at one thing to increase production or output by 30%. What if you took 30 things and increased them by 1%? It's a marginal change and it's not upheaval, a massive structure change, but rather, if I can make my emails be a little bit more organized and if I can make my cookie class sell one extra ticket and if I can make my printer print at home, these cutters you bought back, back Up. If I told you I can make you make 30% more. Oh, yeah. Would you not absolutely sign up, but I can make you make 30% more by small 1% changes 30 times.

[B]

If you are like, I really want my bakery to be a thing. You've got to optimize when it's just you. Because when you are fully optimized and it's just you and you bring on the next client, I mean, that next employee, you're so optimized that that employee is paying for themselves by the output.

[A]

Here's what I'm saying. You might have been like, well, I'm not hiring anybody. Virtual assistant. I'm big into the va. Um, especially those tasks. I really just find myself, like, mentally eye watering. I'll hire a VA to do it. And now, because it's super optimized, I can be like, hey, I'm going to onboard you here. This is what you're going to find. I use Google Drive extensively. You're going to find this in the Google Drive document. Here's what we're going to have you do with this. Things like that. It's all there. So, okay, what did you want to do? Easy courses.

[B]

Yeah, you'll have to go through the easy courses because apparently I don't know what that stands for.

[A]

I'm going to say an easy course. I actually got to record one this week, and Corey's been on my butt about it. Picture in a picture. It'll be super easy. And then I was gonna. I was gonna record too. Hold me to this. If it's not posted by next Monday, I owe you a hundred bucks. Done. Shoot. Ah, I'll do it. Cause it's short. Picture in a picture. When I do the Facebook Lives for the Vendee blendy. You can see that my little face is in there, but I'm still sharing my screen. Facebook doesn't allow you to share a camera and then switch to a screen. So how am I able to do both? And I'll tell you how to do that. That'll be super easy. It actually is free slide. A hand trick there. Nice. And the other one is QR codes in Canva. It's actually super easy to do, but sometimes it's lost on people. Like the complexity of it when it's not complex at all. You just got to have a little bit of foundational knowledge and then it makes it super easy. QR codes.

[B]

Since COVID had made a comeback, now people aren't so scared of them anymore. They're not this ambiguous Thing because we all had to scan our menus as QR codes because you couldn't.

[A]

We can single handedly thank Covid for walking QR codes off the brink. I was looking for exit now. I was excited about it but yeah, well you can do with QR codes is your, you know this black and white squares though that is a visual representation of a URL.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So your camera can take that and trans, whatever translate it back into the URL. And that's why you can quickly go to websites.

[B]

Yeah. QR code is great for. Hey customer. I've put the sticker. It's a QR code. It'll take you to my review profile on Google. If you wouldn't mind having a saying to a customer that comes in to pick up an order and say hey, do you mind leaving me a review on Google in that you'll, you'll get.

[A]

You've increased the clicks.

[B]

Now they have to search for you, find you. If I say, hey, here's your box, you'll see on this corner is this little QR code. If you are happy with the service you got today, I would love to get a review from you. And all they have to do is scan in and go your review profile, turn a conversion rate how many people you turn from non reviewers into reviewers just went up by 50%.

[A]

Yeah, it's, it's really good to shorten the funnel and everything increases the likelihood.

[B]

Of it happening with mine. I, I have Heather put because she's my Internet slave, my business.

[A]

Yes partner, which they're getting from the podcast.

[B]

A lot of times when customers order cookies for schools, I want them to be able to know the ingredients list and some. It used to be printing it out but I'm like, is this getting it to school? A QR code to my ingredients list on my website makes it easy for the teacher, easy for. For parents and makes my customer look good. And that's my end goal. Can I make them look good? Because they'll come back to me when they look good.

[A]

So on core Shopify website, which there's also a course on, you could set up a QR code to send people through a quick scan directly to the information you want them to use.

[B]

Do you? That's my next one. How to look better than your competition courses. But do you have another easy bang for the buck one and not bang for the buck. Easy to take.

[A]

Easy to take. That's okay. This sounds complex but if you already have a custom domain through Gmail, setting up an alias is three Clicks.

[B]

So, so tell me what would behoove me to set up an alias?

[A]

I'll tell you. My email right now is heather sugarcookiemarketing.com well, I'm using that for absolutely everything. Right. But what if I want to on my website, not have that one published because that's my heavy hitter. I can't have that one so bogged down. But I also don't want to spend money on buying another. So each Google workspace account is 6 to $7, depending on what plan it could go on.

[B]

And that's a month, just so you know. Yeah.

[A]

So, okay, I'm telling you how to save six bucks here. Like, that's my thing is to save you a little bit of money everywhere. Let's say I want to do hello at Sugar Cookie Marketing, but I don't want to have a second inbox.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I'd create an alias, which means Heather now accepts two different two emails. So you can email Heather and I get it. And then you could also email hello and I still get it to the same inbox. So I saved $6, but I've increased my email accounts.

[B]

So if you were wondering how you could translate into your bakery, a lot of people come and ask for donations. So you could be like, donations ixingboldcookiecompany.com what it does in my inbox is also segregated as well. So I can be like, okay, I need to get back to the customer. The person who's asking for free cookies, I don't need to get back to right now. But instead of having everyone who ever wanted free cookies, go to hello at mixing bowl. And I'm like, who are you? Oh, you're not a real client. You're asking for free stuff. We segregate it. It makes you look more professional too.

[A]

Right. I can do within the inbox where I've created the alias, I can save the from email. I can now alternate between the two aliases. Yeah. Interesting thing, like a great example, actually using an alias is Heather at sugarcookie Marketing. But I want the vendors to email Vendee at Sugar Cookie Marketing. And then I have, using a different class, the Gmail labels. Funnel those into a different place.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

That way at a quick click. Quick click. That was gonna get me like it a quick click of a button. I can easily access everything there.

[B]

If you're teaching cookie classes. And under the same umbrella, I would.

[A]

Do classes at Mixing Bowl Cookies. Yeah.

[B]

So because your customers are different, your custom order clients aren't always your cookie class. Clients, but we don't necessarily want to have to. Man 2 Email inbox.

[A]

So you get the front end, the brand, the professionalism, and then the back end. I can actually use those two different aliases to have the emails do different things. Yeah. But what I can do is if an email comes to this alias, have it autorespond with this. Yeah. Right. So.

[B]

So they could have an autoresponder. I have autoresponders in my inbox because I need people to fill out the forms. And I want to tell you the form course in the cookie college. Fantastic. My form is how I stay organized. I love, love, love Jotform. I love that it's so customizable. It can get all the information I need from an order and I. It really cuts down the customer conversation. You have to think the. If my order form isn't collecting the information, I have a ton of back and forth with client and time is money. So having the back and forth, like, do you want a name on it? What name? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Colors. Having that is. I'm getting lost in the song. If my form can do the heavy lifting, I gotta do less back and forth. So my client interaction, less time, less customer retention higher. Because they're not gonna be like, wow, this was a process to order these customers.

[A]

When you're emailing company, you're like, I can feel this is not gonna go the way I want. That would be the company I sent my card to that. That one year.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That I complained about. I was like, wow. How they were replying to these emails is not a good sign.

[B]

Wanes the credibility of.

[A]

Oh. By the end, I was like, this is a. Just a cluster and. And this isn't good. And it. And always. I've only unrecommended them for years.

[B]

Yeah. So I'm just saying, like, just being able to appear better to your clients.

[A]

And you can do that and save a little money. And yes, when you grow, you can actually set up. This year I actually did set up a second account, Vendy Blendy.

[B]

But I want to say we've. How long has the vending Blendy been going? This is its fifth year. For four years.

[A]

No, I'm so sorry. The first year I did it wrong. The second year I came with the alias. Third year, fourth year, I'm saying.

[B]

So what you're learning from Heather is her mistakes and how she's rectified them. And you learn the rectifying so you don't have to make the same mistakes.

[A]

If you guys. And that's what I kind of like about the college is, okay, you say, okay, I want a form. I want a job form. You set up a job form. Well, another course tells you how to take Jotform and shove it into a Google spreadsheet using a Zapier, a webhook. So then I could say, when a form is submitted, which is how I run the vending plan, when somebody signs up to be a vendor, have it port over to this Google sheet. Using this Google sheet, have it port over to these other sheets that I need to share with different parties and have it. And I have a course on Google Drive and how I organize it.

[B]

It's streamlining your business will make you more successful. If it's just you working in your business, you can't be everywhere at all times. So utilizing these things that are out there that someone smarter than us all has put together, geniuses is going to make you look so much more professional. And I'm going to move over.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The courses you take to look better than your competitors in the cookie college. No one's a competitor. We're all friends. But you got some competitors out there.

[A]

Well, I'm going to go back and have to say the photography course.

[B]

Oh, for sure. A thousand percent. But I also want to say a lot of home bakers still take their orders via DM on Facebook.

[A]

That's a risky click. Cloud fair. Cloudflare went down today. It took out half the Internet.

[B]

And people are like, nothing's getting to my imagine.

[A]

Cloudflare went down today. Yes. I don't know why I'm tripping over my words. Okay? But I'm getting them out.

[B]

You just gotta take a caffeine pill.

[A]

Yeah. Cloudflare went down today. If you had a pickup, let's say you had a presale. A class.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Let's say you had done that. You know, sometimes Facebook goes down with these. It must not be using whatever. So let's say you can't access those people anymore. What are your backup options? And did you build those backup options?

[B]

I know in the college, Heather has a. There's two courses on forms. There's a Google form that is free.

[A]

Free.

[B]

It's free if you have a Google account. Heather walks you through that. And then there's a JOP form, a JOT form. Let's say you sign up for the college. You're like, I don't have that much money coming in, so I can't afford a website right now. The Google form, free the jot form a little bit more customizable can take Payment options can also be free if you're under 10 submissions free under 10 which fantastic. Okay. I want to tell you those make you look more professional than taking orders via DM on Facebook.

[A]

I can't handle placing orders to DM myself. I'm not that type of girly. I hate the scrolling.

[B]

I'm going to tell you also it feels more fly by night. I'm not dogging on anybody taking DMs. That's a great way to start. We all started there. It's just that seems just a tinge bit less professional than the person next to you using a form.

[A]

When your industry is crowded, the way to compete is by standing out out.

[B]

I'm going to tell you I live in one of the most cookier populated areas in the nation. There is a ton of us. But I feel confident when I offer my services to my clients because I look professional.

[A]

Another one kind of. This is kind of an abstract one. You scheduling posts. I think I walked through a couple different ones but Facebook Planner is kind of the big one there. It's free and again I'm trying to save money being able to post while your competition's too bogged down to get around. Yeah, you always see people like sorry.

[B]

I haven't been around before. Oh, especially in December.

[A]

Man, December makes sense. Makes sense. You're busy, you don't need the leads. However, if we want to stand out just a shade above having activity on social profiles, I'm the person who says if I'm about to order from this company, let me make sure they're active on social profile.

[B]

Thousand percent. I tell people, Facebook is I'm interviewing you. Google is I'm searching for someone I don't know about.

[A]

So Facebook.

[B]

If I'm like someone recommended the mixing bowl cookie company in a comment on Facebook and I'm going to click to there. I need mixing bowl. I need Corey. I need Corey's hands to turn me into a buyer. If mixing bowl hasn't been posted to since mid April and we're in December, it feels like I'm not. She's not taking orders.

[A]

Well I'm gonna tell you the the vendors we invited back this year, we didn't invite back people that weren't active because I'm like I'm putting my name next to your shop. You're not active now I'm telling people to buy from you. What if you shut down and take their money? That makes me look bad. So I'm not going to risk it because you clearly didn't have time to. Yeah, so I can't do that. So it's not a good fit.

[B]

Even like a few years ago wasn't as utilized as it is now. If I'm going to say maybe the younger generation isn't using it. Our generation and up uses it as a way to actually vet a business. So if you are not on there, if you're not utilizing, I don't care if it's not your number one lead source. I don't care. Care. That is where people go to vet you. It's Facebook does not have a good search. So I can't type in sugar cookies near me.

[A]

It'll just pull up any sugar cookie.

[B]

Baker in the world. What people do is they're recommended by either a friend, a family, a coworker, a past client. They go to Facebook. That's where they see your photography.

[A]

Because one they'll they'll at you. Somebody will recommend you as an and then they'll click to your page and that's where that first impression is. When it's Christmas and you still have bunnies from Easter as your cover photo.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

It's the impression is like they're not active here.

[B]

The courses that your Facebook page needs is a photography course, the copy course scheduling course, how to take an order course, whether that be Jotform or whatever. The Facebook page is a fantastic way even if you don't invest a ton of time, even if you post twice a month.

[A]

Well, the cookie college gets another membership called the Baker's Business Basics. Cory always makes fun of it. The Better Business Bureau. The Better Business Bureau, Baker's Business Basics. In that course it's just 12 foundational 13 foundational things that you need to have in order order for all this other stuff to work.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So if you're like, well I don't even have a Facebook page. Well, I'll tell you how to set it up and then I'll tell you how to set up a business Instagram and then we'll connect the two and then now we can use planner to post to both. And that's what I do in those basics courses. That would make the cookie college make more sense. Now you. The baker's Business basic courses will be discounted, but you also get them in that steeper discount when you sign up for the cookie college.

[B]

Listen, if you are a hobbyer turning into a business baker, which you would.

[A]

Be if you're listening to this, you.

[B]

Would be that Hobby. The Better Business Bureau courses can get you the right foundation. I almost can't even leave them alone. Can get you the right foundation that when you are now in the college. So you took those easy. They're very easy. 13 foundational courses. And now you're like, okay, I'm in the college. I got the Facebook page. Let me take the photography course now. And I think there is a little.

[A]

Bit of a photography course you actually did. Fun.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

A little easier fun. Photography, easy.

[B]

Stepping stone to get you more sales, to get you to the college to pay for it.

[A]

Right. To break down the sales one more time. This is on Black Friday. You'll have 24 hours to sign up for these and these are the discounts. The cookie college will be the only one with the yearly option to make it real clean and that way it's not so confusing. And It'll be either $64 a month, which saves you $12 over what it'll be the next day.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or it is 576 a year, which the next day would go up to 760. Yeah. That 576 a year saves you. It brings that monthly cost down to 48. So it's a great option right there. The cookie class kits will be on sale. This is different. We typically don't run the sale on the cookie class kits in the vendibundies. So we decided to add it this time to sweeten the deal. It will be 30% off to $44 a month. Again, those class kits are included in the cookie college along with the 2023 and 2024 class kits. The cookie class kits only gets the active year.

[B]

They only get 2024. 5.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If you're in the college, you get three full year of class kits. That's three Christmases, three Thanksgivings, three Halloweens.

[A]

And then in 2024 we did secondary holidays. You get those. And then in 2023 did primary holidays. Then we went back to primary holidays.

[B]

Yeah. So you get two primes, one secondary. So what are you like primary secondary in February is both the super bowl and Valentine and Valentine's Day day. So sometimes people were like, well, I think I could do the kits. I could sell kits for the Super Bowl. And I also want to say in the college, heather made me mid 2024 start taking DIY kit photos.

[A]

Oh yeah. So those are included there. Just take a picture.

[B]

And in the college also to accompany the class kits is these cookie class playlist. So you're like, I'm going to a venue Or I'm not tech savvy. These playlist playlist are each step of the PowerPoint PDFs that you can just print out. And that's what me and Heather did.

[A]

In compliments to Julia. She actually does this for us. She's an angel. She keeps trying to quit cookies and it keeps bringing back in.

[B]

She. She's making handover.

[A]

She said, you know, she's getting. I think she's getting her PhD. Yeah, she is. And she was like, man, I'm trying to cut this out, but I can't. Money's too good. So the Cookie College again, it'll be 64amonth, or you get the option for those three months additional. If you sign up for the year, the cookie class kits will be $44 a month. That's down from what it typically is, $63. So you actually save $19 a month by just signing up for on Black Friday.

[B]

And the class kits right now, everything for 2025 has been released, so you get the whole thing.

[A]

The interesting thing about the class kits, if you sign up in January, you get one class. If you sign up in February, you two classes, two classes.

[B]

The benefit being your first to market with a class that nobody has.

[A]

You'd be like, why would everyone not.

[B]

Just wait to December?

[A]

Because they want to teach a Valentine's Day class in February? The Baker's Business Basics. It's actually a discount we never run before. It'll be 60% off. We wanted to beat last year's offering, so it'll be $14.40. But the unique thing about that one, because it's the basics that set you up for the cookie college, the discount code in that one, because it always has a coupon to get the cookie college at its grandfathered rate, but you'll be able for one day to get it at its Black Friday rate of 64. Meaning if you're like, well, I'm not ready for 64 yet, but I don't want to miss out on. On this snag. The Baker's Business Basics. Get that last module. It'll have that discount code. And then whenever throughout the year you want to upgrade, you can get that. The digital downloads. Corey let me discount it to 60%. We've never run this sale before, so it'll be $4 a month. That's down from 10. So you save $6 a month and you get these neat little kits.

[B]

And we started the kits in the.

[A]

Last half of the year, she said.

[B]

After we went to the beach in June. But there's still stuff from the beginning of the year.

[A]

We actually launched these in 2020. So the digital downloads, it's been around.

[B]

For a long time.

[A]

It's gone through a couple iterations. The other stuff is still solid, especially the stuff we've done for the last two years. But I really am happy with the class. The digital kits and then the $2 transfer club is 50% off. For a dollar we have over. I think we're at 240 transfers. So for a buck it takes it down to 0.004 cents. So if you're like I really like some. Some diverse and many any digital downloads it is our loss leader. I just like doing them.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then uniquely what we're adding here. Remember if you get the cookie college you get all the class kits right for that 64 or that 48amonth.

[B]

So that's 2023. 2024 and 2025 is available on the college.

[A]

Now the cookie class kit only has 2025. So if you wanted to purchase one time not recurring again those are all memberships cancel anytime. But if you just wanted a one time payment for the 2023 class kits and or the 2024 class kit baskets, we'll do that bundled for $44.

[B]

So you get the $44 for 2023 and 44 for 2024.

[A]

Two separate 44s.

[B]

So that's 88 for 2023 and 2024 or the college for 64.

[A]

And you might be saying girls, are you popcorning me? Yeah, it's just a better bet to do the cookie college. And then you also get that private group which actually keeps you sticking around. That's why the point is there. So Those are our 2025 Vendee Blendy the cookiecont offerings. Now just to recap, the Vendibly actually had two vendors trying to sign up right now.

[B]

No way shall discuss after.

[A]

Okay, there's a couple people I need to hit up. I need to lock it down and then just finalize it. The Vendee Blendy is 10 or nine days away. Corey and I will have to argue when it is counting down. It is next Friday. So you're listening to this On Tuesday a Friday passes. Next Friday is the Vendi Bunny. It's the day after Thanksgiving. It's a 2024 hour long baker sale.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

If the Vendee Blendy teaches us one thing every year as a reminder it's that doesn't matter how many times you say it. Your your posts are not reaching Your audience. That's why we reiterate it so many times. And on that day, people will be like, what is the vending blendy? I'm glad you asked. Yeah, I'm happy to tell you. So this year we have locked and loaded 63 Vendys. Most of them are offering really great deals. Almost all of them are offering door prizes. I made a post about it.

[B]

Our door prizes, every single one of them is 25% off or more, minus Eugene Doge heaters.

[A]

But he's giving away one, so we allow him and he's 10% off. So we also have some door price hype prizes. I've called them this year. So our total drawer prizes. Now that everything's kind of. I'm actually waiting on five vendors to give me the valuation. So that's not even calculated here because I gotta always be honest. The valuation of the door prizes on Black Friday only is $17,659.66. And I'm missing five.

[B]

That's literally insane.

[A]

Right? So the thing is, and why I'm so stoked for the door prizes, they're doing this out of the kindness of their hearts, but they cannot require you to make a purchase. So if you say, I'm not spending any money on Black Friday because I don't want to sign up for the cookie college and I want to be a dummy, you can still have a chance to really enter in all these door prizes and take home 17,659.

[B]

If you really get door prizes from vendors, the vendor's door prizes, no purchase necessary. The thing is, they don't always ship to everywhere. So that sinks to note. The big door prizes, though, it's either going to ship to you or cash equivalent. So that's open to every pate.

[A]

Yeah. So the big door prizes, like I. If you guys listened, it is 10, 10 bamboo A1 mini printers. You heard Corey's love letter to them. Listen, it's such a great price, okay? Because they were cheaper, we were able to do more. And then it's five Bosch Universal plus mixers in white.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Crap. Great. Which I love.

[B]

My Bosch, my Bosch Grape.

[A]

Now we actually have Vendies. And Corey and I have purchased these ourselves. For everyone knowing the only reason the Vendy Bunny exists is because the cookie college is paying us to be able to fund it.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

So thank the people in the cookie college. Their money goes to put this thing on without them. No vending bunny.

[B]

Because you're like, wow, no, this is a loss. Some money loss.

[A]

Oh, yeah. It cost us a lot to put on, but we make it back because we're a vendee ourselves. But. But this. So fun.

[B]

So fun.

[A]

Cory and I love this thing. So we have a thousand dollars in Kaleidochuts gift cards each live. I've been teaching, and I have one on Thursday. It's my final Q and A with you guys. We've been giving away a 40AmeriColor student set. Bosch has donated a mixer, which I gotta give away tomorrow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then we have Lollibee, sweet pink olive one Smart cookies and crafts. They've shown up to cookie cutter. They've shown up to add additional price. Insanity. So that is totaling. And actually got to add another hundred here. So it's $2,170 just to get you in. Yeah, that doesn't count. Some other stuff that we've been doing. So this is massive money movement here. It's a fun thing. It pays out because you guys shop the vendors. So everybody wins. But what a blast. So that will be in nine or 10 days. I cannot believe.

[B]

Cannot Zendi Blendy season. Believe in.

[A]

And it'll open at midnight again. All the times and I hate time zones are in Eastern standard. That's we live. So that's what everyone operates off of each vendor in the Black Friday Vendee Blendy Facebook group. It all exists in this Facebook group. If you're not pending, if you're in the sugar cookie marketing group and you're not pending for a group called the Vendi Blendy, you're not in the right spot.

[B]

Yeah, you're going to search. I just want to say it's the Vendee Blendy parentheses, Sugar cookie marketing. So when you search it, it's going to have those words in there. So you. If it's not populating, make sure you type in the Vendi Blendy parentheses. Sugar cookie marking parentheses.

[A]

That's a group.

[B]

There's right now currently only four people in it. So you're like, there's no one in there.

[A]

Paige. Paige.

[B]

Yeah. So the reason why is because we're setting up that group for the vendors first. So next week or this week, you're going to see people entering. You're like, I didn't get in. Why are they getting all the. No, those are just the vendors. We're getting them primed, prepped, ready vendors, assistants, their pages.

[A]

Yeah, Amy. The virtual assistants. That's who I'm getting there.

[B]

Yeah. So that you're. You're still going to be pending. You're going to be pending till midnight on the 27th. Everyone will will be. Then me and Heather press this button probably 52 times to get everybody in.

[A]

Yeah. When everyone enters it's a blast. I'll actually spend the next week prepping the vendees themselves. Cory saw my. I create some. I did some how one on one post. Corey sees me always moving across the Internet there. So it is a blast again. 23 shops, 25% or more door prize is valued at almost $18,000 and it will pass 18,000 when I get those ones to confirm.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Two vendors want to sign up. Working on that. And then. And then you got. All you do is you can get this spreadsheet.

[B]

Of course.

[A]

Is it me without a spreadsheet? A spreadsheet. If you just go right click download, save as you can shop the vendors on your own or come back throughout the day. Which I'll talk about in that Q A on Friday.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Or Thursday. Come back throughout the day and when these entertaining these door prizes. I've actually been working on my schedule and since you guys are listening to the podcast, shouldn't I tell them what my schedule is for the big door prizes?

[B]

You can can do it.

[A]

Why are you bossing me around?

[B]

Cuz if I have to drive you to lunch, I've got to get your bun back.

[A]

For my birthday. For my birthday. Corey got me a detail from my cousin. He's out there detailing. I can't wi. I can't wait. I'm going to start the big door prizes at 7 and post them every 45 minutes. Since we have an odd number of door prizes. 15.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And a Glen Pal tow.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Glenn Pal tower. I'll be posting at 7 and they'll run all the way to 6:15pm on the 45 minutes which puts them at very odd times.

[B]

Yeah but that's even more chances to win.

[A]

That's even more chances to win. The vendors can post their door prizes whenever Cora and I are giving away as our door prize the year in the cookie college. That's valued at 760 full price a year in the class kids which is valued at 6:30 full price. So you'll get the 12 upcoming classes. And then last year we did the cookie class cutters for 2020 which was $300 valuation. We buy them from Sweet Pink Olive and 2024 another $300. So that put us at almost $2,000 in door prizes ourselves. Again all this information you can [e-mail] Vendy Blendy. Including that link to the group. And if you want to preview those cookie College sales, it's TheCookieCollege.com Vendiblendy yeah. Nice.

[B]

Now moving in to the STL me about it section.

[A]

If you are now sold on a.

[B]

Bamboo because I had you, you just discover that it could be good news.

[A]

From Cookie Design Lab.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Who sponsors this? They said people don't need. She's like it's so nice that they're gifting their months to other people because they're already active. But she's like but we can add a month at the end of your when your month expires. So tell them to redeem it. We'll add a month to their membership.

[B]

So when you get your 3D printer that you either win or you buy, you want to make custom cutters. You can make the custom shapes yourself with if a client sends you an invite. And on that invite is a dinosaur. This house happened to me.

[A]

I tell mom Corey's next move and I can feel it in her bones is to figure out Cookie Design Lab which she's gifted you a membership for. You're going to love it. I'm going to love it.

[B]

So what it does is as a way to make custom cutter files to.

[A]

Herself really fast from a web based.

[B]

Absolutely. So someone sends you a photo of the child head the child. You can put the child's head and design it in Cookie Design Lab to make a cutter so you can print Eddie on.

[A]

On there. That's Cookie Design Lab didn't exist when I had to learn fusion. A lot of people use Tinkercad and I tried it and it's not bad. But. But because Cookie Design Lab is a paid and it's got a seven day. A seven day membership. You can do it just it's so quick.

[B]

I'm going to say at my level in my bakery. I don't want to learn everything else. I don't want something that has a ton of other things.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I want.

[A]

Oh, you're not going to want to touch fusion at all.

[B]

Yeah. So I don't want that.

[A]

So this is by cooking year. Buy a cookie and her husband four cookies and their husbands are the slave twins, I guess. Okay. We have three texts in. I don't know if one of these says really boring or not.

[B]

Number two, I'm feeling good. You come back for another week.

[A]

Number two, this is a very good question. It is a text from 631631 Pennsylvania. Oh 631 Suffolk County New York, New York. Okay. Suffolk stuff. Email me at heather sugarcookiemarketing.com I should actually make that one.

[B]

You should. Winner.

[A]

Podcast. Yeah, podcast. Email [e-mail] with the rest of your phone number. You are the winner of the STL me about it segment, which gets you cookie design lab for a month. The question is, is it important to get the blue check verification thing on Instagram for my business? And I know why you're asking that because it's being pushed so heavily. It is. There's a couple reasons why you could consider it. I actually pay for. For it for sugar cookie marketing.

[B]

The.

[A]

The one that people seem to really like is you get a support agent. You cannot. If you have a problem with Facebook, you can't talk to somebody directly, but if you have the blue check, you can. Yeah. With that blue check, they now always favor you to protect you against fraud or hackers.

[B]

They do. So hacking and fraud and spam and stuff is around so much now. So a lot of times if you. And this is in the past, if you ran a giveaway on your Facebook page and used the word giveaway, boys robot would come and spam the account.

[A]

Hello, it's me. I'm the problem.

[B]

Would come and spam the account and comment back. They would create a Facebook page with your name and logo.

[A]

Genius scam.

[B]

Yeah, genius.

[A]

And they would tell everybody they won to message them, to message them.

[B]

And they would just not knowing, click to that scam account and message them. And they'll be like, okay, we just.

[A]

Need your credit card information.

[B]

So having the person, you can say, hey, my account has been cloned. Can you help me take care of that? That's a great part the of about it.

[A]

Another visual. They. They say this. We just lambasted Facebook search. They said, if someone searches on Facebook and you have the blue check, we'll move you to the top of search.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Take that or leave it.

[B]

Okay. I want to say this is no small investment.

[A]

I didn't think it was cheap at all. They have a couple different plans. And that's what's confusing. You can get it for Facebook, Instagram, or you can get it for your personal profile as well. So there's a bunch of different versions. When you get it for your business, you have to supply business information. Yeah, yeah. I think when you get it for your personal profile, you have to verify yourself through your government id.

[B]

A nice thing to have. I'm just saying visually, if you are in a group that allows you to comment as your business page and you could comment as a visual it draws your eye.

[A]

Remember we said if you had to compete for real estate digital real estate that check mark would make people go to yours their eyes would be drawn.

[B]

To it more and it also to your end user Granted this check mark thing is as of late it's not.

[A]

That wronger means you're Justin Bieber it.

[B]

What it does show your clients is that you're not a fly by night you didn't just verify yesterday you had to get verified you're investing in your business. So it shows me as the end user this person really cares about their business and they don't want their business to be a scam so they probably will not scam I now here's actually.

[A]

Actually how an interesting limitation of having the blue check I cannot change a profile picture very often. I can change it twice every every 30 days and it has to be manually verified by somebody on Facebook's end So I'll go like if you guys go look now the profile picture of the sugar cookie marketing page is orange and you know celebrating the vendee blendy I had to wait three days for that to get approved on both Facebook and Instagram where I pay for the blue check and it said don't do this again in 30 days it'd be you cannot make it change back that.

[B]

You wouldn't if you're looking for brand recognition wouldn't necessarily need to change your.

[A]

No if you want to be fun.

[B]

Some some businesses and we can talk about in the but that's why it.

[A]

Adds a layer of protection it does if you buy from me you know that I had to be this for.

[B]

A while now I'm seeing on Instagram you can filter comments by meta verified accounts. Oh no way.

[A]

They're doing a massive push for it.

[B]

They'Re doing a massive push for it right now. It's just a visual representation plus you get access to someone to help you and they did say that if you invest in the check mark they'll show push your post out to more feeds. Is that true? I don't know.

[A]

Okay well here's what I want to tell you guys though it ain't cheap. It's not and for that reason I'm actually going to say no. Okay you but you could try it out for a month. I know here is the business standard per account per month. So you just heard me say that we're doing it on Facebook and Instagram there was a bundle discount but it's 14.99 per account per month.

[B]

So you would have to think that's $30.

[A]

30 bets. We're halfway through cookie college members are order.

[B]

Yeah, I know.

[A]

Just for the blue check because we've paid for it for a while. The only reason I'm keeping it around because I want you guys to know that we're legitimate. Yeah. I would not recommend a baker to us.

[B]

I'm gonna say though, you're. You have orders coming in, right?

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You're established.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You live in an area that has a lot of other cook years there. It can be the thing that makes you come to the top.

[A]

Okay. Okay. Here's what it's saying. The plan includes the business standard 14.9amonth. If you sign up today, you get 20% off. You heard it here first. You get verified badge impersonation protection. What they call it enhanced support. Enhanced support might. Might be worth it. On Facebook and Instagram you get an enhanced profile.

[B]

What does that mean? It could be so not to.

[A]

We've done a whole.

[B]

We've talked about this at length before or whatever.

[A]

Add images to your link links, share your physical business addresses and showcase other brands associated Facebook pages with your Instagram accounts and profile.

[B]

So it's. It's a. It's a up for grabs thing. It's not cheap. But if you have consistent orders coming in, maybe extra revenue stream, maybe you signed up for the creative rewards program and you get paid for your views. That can be something you reinvest back in your business in a sort of way. It's a gamble so you gotta choose which one. All right, take us to our next question. I can see you're getting lost in software.

[A]

Business Max is 350amonth.

[B]

But if you are a giant business.

[A]

I know, I know. But yeah. Gosh, Lauren. Yeah, that's gonna be opinion. Corey. I can see is lean into yes and I'm leaning but I say I don't have it. So I. I like the idea of it. Okay. Another one. Howdy. From Texas. You mentioned you take photos at your classes. For content and newsletter purposes. Do you need to include something in your terms and services? Terms and conditions, assuming you have one. To get attendees to consent to being in these photos. Just in case someone's secretly on witness protection. Lol. Great question. And this is included in the cookie class kits Eventbrite copy. We use Eventbrite. I say in that copy before they ever sign up, there's cameras present and we'll be taking photos now that is just to Check my box. Yeah. When I go around the room, I try to read people's faces. And if I get the. Some. Some people are like, I don't want my photos taken.

[B]

I know sweat at all.

[A]

Uh, then I try to get people, hey, stand together and take a photo. Hey, guys, I'm coming around and taking a photo. They can kind of tell me when.

[B]

You say take a photo of us while we're teaching. We tried to bring up it a lot often, but Heather always is reading the people. If someone doesn't want to be in a photo, we are not going to take their photo.

[A]

So granted, they did sign up and they knew that they I would be taking photos. If they say, oh, I don't really want to or I don't really like it, it's fine. A lot of times I just try to read their mood. This last class we taught in person, not the private class. I kind of got a vibe somebody didn't. So I just took. I said, hey, write a half of the room, take a picture. Left half of the room, take a picture. So I did that to kind of, I don't know, whatever I feel like at the time.

[B]

At the end of the day, we're we, me and Heather, big proponents of taking photos for marketing. But at the end, end of the day, your customers interaction with you and how they enjoy the class is way more important than getting every marketing photo out there. Once you have a class and you've taken a bunch of photos, you can reuse those. If you have a customer who really doesn't want to be in a photo, I would not stress being like, no, well, you signed up. Blah, blah, blah.

[A]

We have taught so many classes that have so many photos that if I didn't take it, I don't cry. It would be cool. But it's not required. It's just there if it's there.

[B]

Yeah. So it is on our listing. And I always behoove everyone get in front of an issue before it's an issue. And if you just have that in your eventbrite listing, no one's going to read it. Promise you, no one's reading anything but to have it there. So as someone say if there's a.

[A]

Problem, if you sign up for the class kits, you get my eventbrite listing. It's so long. But it's for this reason because there's some people like me who like to read. There's some people who like read nothing. But I talk about my allergens there. What they'll be exposed to I talk about parking, I talk about refunds. During COVID we had all of our.

[B]

Covid precautions that we were doing.

[A]

And then we also talk about this. Yeah, Photography. So, yeah, I like to cover my bases. It's actually an SEO feature to have a lot of text. That's what the bots can read.

[B]

And I want to say having more text converts more people. If I go to an Eventbrite listing or a Facebook event and there's just like, have fun and more. More, I'm not going to necessarily feel comfortable giving you my 75, $85.

[A]

You may be thinking, how do I set up an Eventbrite class? I actually teach you that. About the Cookie college. It's in the Cookie college as a class. Eventbrite has rolled out a lot of new features and last year they got real bad from COVID so they try to come out with new features. And you can have a schedule, which I have in an hour. So if you have a fear of spaces and new people, you will feel comforted because they tell you about parking, they tell you about this, they tell you what it's. And that's kind of how that works.

[B]

Nice.

[A]

Last one. And I like this one. Um, I'm a week behind on the podcast and I was not expecting to hear about Animal Crossing, albeit very briefly. Uh, the two upcoming things I'm most excited about, the 3.0 update and the Vendee Blending. Okay, just a little backstory and I'll read the rest of her text. Animal Crossing is the most pure hearted game. If. If paying bills in real life is too hard, go pay bills as an animal to an animal. Right. Uh, we've had Animal Crossing since I was. Since it first came out on Game Cube, way back when we were in. It had the Miracle sisters in a chokehold. That original island has never been tread upon. We would wake up in the morning. So Animal Crossing is just. You're a little person. You move into a town full of animals and then you try to pay your bills.

[B]

But 24 hours in real life is actually 24 hours in the game.

[A]

Yeah. Which is great because it's just the sun comes up. When your sun comes up, you tell it the time that you're in and it just mirrors that. And then you can do these tasks to try to make money and pay off your debt and get a bigger house.

[B]

You just live a little life on a little island that you name real.

[A]

Life stress, but with animals.

[B]

I'll tell you, my island right now is called Denial. The island of Denial.

[A]

Mine's called Virginia Beach. So on the island you just kind of pay your debt. But they're having. So they've come out with it. It was GameCube was when we were what, 14, 15. We would wake up early in the morning and we. Because we have four sisters and you could have four players, you couldn't play at the same time. You'd have to hand the controller, save your account and log in.

[B]

But we're all neighbors.

[A]

We would all call dibs on the trash can because you could go to the trash and take the trash and sell it.

[B]

And there's seashells on the seashore. You would call dibs on those.

[A]

So it would be so refreshing because the sister would be like, I called dibs.

[B]

And the other person I just woke up. Then we got all our own memory cards, so we all had our own islands.

[A]

And now it's on the little Nintendo Switch and it's got this new version and they came out with it in 2020, something like that. Some Covid y time we've played it, it was a blast. And they were like, okay, we're not adding any more updates. This is the end. But then also sudden Animal Crossing. Nintendo turns around and says we're actually doing a massive update on January 15th.

[B]

Huge update. So not only. Yeah, I want to tell you, if you just need a break from life and I usually watch TV while I play. Yeah, like 10, 15 minutes. You can dedicate a lot of time. My little sister is always on when I log in.

[A]

She's always on.

[B]

She's always on.

[A]

I'll be like, it's two in the morning. Let me just log into my town, pick some weeds. Yeah, she'll be on.

[B]

But you can. It's design. It's just honestly just mind numbingly cute. Comforting, comforting. It is my comfort game. I have only one game right now in my life and it's just Daniel Cross.

[A]

I find myself grabbing that switch and be like, ah, just pick some money. It's a great little game. If you have, you know, if people really love it, it's a lot of fun. Been around for now decades. Okay. And then this other half of the text. It was my first Vendee Blendy last year and it was so much fun. I joined the cookie college at the same time and I haven't looked back. The Facebook group alone, the community in there and the freebie photos make it work. Worth it. I've started teaching cookie classes, which I wouldn't have done without the college. And it has been so Much fun and transformed my business. Thank you so much for all you both do.

[B]

Thank you so much.

[A]

That was extremely nice compared to the last text last week, which was boring. Yeah, that was very kind of you. Okay, look at me in the eye. Fight me. Boring. Fight me. Statesboro, Georgia. Did they ever claim. Did they claim their wedding? No. They could have though. I stopped. She said it was too boring to listen to again. You should have listened to it. It was less boring. This last episode when you won. You can't call the venny bunny boring boring.

[B]

You can call it chaos. Me and Heather overwhelming the vendibunny not boring.

[A]

And that's why I'm boring all year, because the vendibuny takes it out of me. Yeah, that is the STL me about it segment. If you want to enter to win next month, my water bottle is shaking. It's 571-556-5644. Or if you're listening to a podcast player and you see that, text me. But yeah, it'll come in that way too.

[B]

Okay, let me read. We have a new section. As we are redoing this podcast, there were literally bringing in new aspects to the podcast to make it interesting. We have a section where we bring highlight a group post. It can be a win, a loss, a good brain question.

[A]

I love it.

[B]

I have this question by Donna. Now Donna gets what a collab is about. Okay, Donna said so. Here's the thing. If you aren't doing the group collabs, think again. Let me share what effect it's had on my IG page. In the last last month, the Main street Collab got me 848 views. To date, 56.1% were non followers.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

People not following. The recent circle collab had 317 views. So the Circle Club was a video that was real. 78.6 of whom were non followers. The day before the Main street Collab, I had 579 followers and very few inquiries via IG. As of this morning, I have 807 followers. That's 228 new followers. Followers that I am certain are not all fellow bakers. I've also had eight listen eight inquiries through my IG than I had all of 2024. Wow, that's insane. Okay, most of my orders inquiries come from Facebook. Totally normal. So what I'm trying to say here is capital. Do the collabs.

[A]

Can I use this as a segue to the collab we have on Friday?

[B]

Thank you.

[A]

Okay, so we have a cookie collab On Friday. I know. Because we get so vendy blendy on the brain, it kind of gets lost in the sauce.

[B]

Is it this Friday or next Friday?

[A]

This Friday.

[B]

Wow, nice.

[A]

So the it is the thank you cookie clap. Now, typically make a thank you cookie, a car cookie. A cookie that you give the buyer, right? Yeah. So we thought it would be fun in the spirit of thankfulness for Thanksgiving to have you take a thank you cookie and take a picture of somebody holding it and then you'll take tell us the story of why you're so thankful. Pretty easy. But what it's so interesting to people like us is I get to read about why this person wanted to face. We know that performs well. Two, you're hyper thankful for them. And three, I get to learn a little bit about your relationship to this person.

[B]

All these collabs take pace, take pace, take place on Instagram.

[A]

It's a hard day for words.

[B]

I know. And Instagram is just the easiest way to search hashtags. So every collab we do has its own individual hashtag. In this one, ones is SEM collab T Y T Y stands for thank you.

[A]

The collabs hashtag always starts with SEM collab. And then that last thing changes each collab. So the collab hashtag from last time. No, this one's SEM collab. Ty. You will make the post on Friday at 11:00am Eastern Standard Time. So if you're listening to this in post, it was November 21, 11:00am Eastern Standard Time. You will post post a photo of a person holding a thank you cookie that you're thankful for. If you signed up, if you register, which 70 of you did, you got my coaching. If you're like, oh, I'm just hearing about this, Can I not do it? Yes, you can. There's an event in the SEM group called the thank you cookie collab. In it, I pinned the comment with this coaching help. This copy coaching.

[B]

Yeah. So the copy coaching is I don't know what to say, but I want to say something. So Heather just gives you a little bit of part of her brain. You can always make your own. But if you just want something in Heather's copy is a way to insert that hashtag that makes a little bit more sense and kind of explain what a collab.

[A]

Yeah, right. So. And then on the SEM account, I'll have better explanation of what a collab is if. If your audience finds themselves there. Um, what happens is when you post at 11, from 11am to 12pm so one hour the other bakers and you will go around and read each other's stories and engage with that. Now, that's called engagement baiting or manufactured engagement, but it still works. And Facebook can't figure out how to get us to stop it.

[B]

It.

[A]

But it's a great way to meet.

[B]

Each other's, Support each other, and it.

[A]

Provides somebody a little bit more reach. Now what happens is that content will be shown to more of their followers, which are hopefully people that could buy from them.

[B]

Yeah. So what Donna's saying is she has followers, but she wasn't getting any inquiries through Instagram, not saying she did the collab. So eight inquiries came through. She did the collab, got the engagement. Her post was shown more in feeds, and from there, there she got eight inquirers via Instagram.

[A]

What I love about the clap is it gives you excuse to break the typical posting pattern. Like, okay, I did a Pooh bear said I did this. Now I can say, here's a random excuse. I have to post a picture of somebody you don't know.

[B]

And I want to say faces. This is why it's not just a thank you cookie. Faces do better on Instagram, and that is why a face needs to be with the thank you cookie. We are doing this for the benefit of you.

[A]

Right. There's a multiple benefits. You'll get more reach, you'll get more engagement for the fact that the bakers are doing it, but you'll get more engagement for the fact of what the content is. Yeah.

[B]

So Heather is actually going to be my thank you collab photo. So when I made her her custom set last week, even though she did not order it, I made her a thank you cookie with it, which I typically do for orders, but I needed. I said, don't eat that one, eat all the other ones, but bring that one and let me take a photo of you with it.

[A]

Did you post my pasta potty set in the. In the group? Can you do it? No, I have not post that so that they listen to the podcast. Just do hashtag podcast reference.

[B]

Okay. And so Heather from the pasta party got a themed cookie that looks like a pasta party, but she's going to be. My customers don't necessarily know I'm a twin. Okay. So what I'm doing is letting them into my life in a very natural way. And I'm going to also say, if you've ever liked my website, if you've ever liked my emails, this is who's behind it. So what it's doing is Allowing people to be like, oh my goodness, she's a twin. Oh my goodness, she has a sister. Oh my goodness, I've seen her before. Oh my goodness. I know a little bit more about Corey than I did yesterday. I feel a little bit more comfortable ordering it. Your biggest fans are your biggest fans and that's why they want to support you. We all are baking cookies.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

We all are buying from the same cut. Elf on the shelf looks the same every year.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

What they do in what these collabs do is allow people to get to know you just a little bit better. So when they go to find a cookier, they say, I know Corey, she has a twin. I want to buy from her. I like her I to want supporter.

[A]

So you can see from Donna's review right there, it is very effective. And the. That's one of the hardest collabs is the Main street cookie collab. This is a really easy one. It'll get the similar reactions from the meet the baker one, but it'll be a little bit more heartfelt and warm because you're not talking about yourself. You're talking about somebody that maybe I'm.

[B]

Going to say put your marketing cap on. You can thank your best referral customer. That's a fantastic way to highlight, highlight them. Put your marketing cap on. I don't want you to see a thank you cookie you throw on every box. This is a person that has worked for you in some form or fashion. Can be a spouse, can be.

[A]

Just say you're thankful for.

[B]

No, I'm just saying worked in your business some form or fashion. A really good customer. Your husband who holds down the fort.

[A]

Gives your sister who watch your kids when you're doing classes.

[B]

The person who puts on the markets that you go to every single. That's a strategic one. Yeah, I'm just, just saying the coffee shop you have your little meetings at, that's a fantastic way. This is not just a thank you cookie on a white background. That's not what this.

[A]

Oh, I said it has to have somebody holding it.

[B]

It's. I'm telling you why. It's not because me and Heather are meanies. It's because this is how you're going to get it to work for you.

[A]

No AI. No AI allowed. Please don't use AI because that would be the most least caring about something.

[B]

We don't want to go it's opposite way.

[A]

It's not going to get you the reaction you want. If you have AI forcing somebody with a thank you cookie against A reaction.

[B]

So if you're hearing this for the first time, you're like, I really want to be a part of it. You don't have to register. You just join us on Friday at 11am Eastern.

[A]

All the information you need. But if you want a little additional help, I pinned it in the event.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You can always ask in the group.

[B]

And I'll help you.

[A]

I'm just giving you ideas.

[B]

Thanking your dog walker and tagging their business. Fantastic way and odds are they might reshare. They might reshare it. Thanking the orthodontist office, thanking the dentist.

[A]

There's a lot of opportunity here when you kind of think outside of the box. Can I say my one is bendy blendy related?

[B]

Sure. Okay.

[A]

Our little sister does pick out the winners for the big door prizes. It's the only component of this entire business she has a say in. It's the only thing she wants to do. You guys. She made this post the other day. She had said I want to make a post in the group. Tell them. She did? Yeah. You guys are so welcoming to her. She has such a giggle. She got 200 likes on her post. She's so stoked with her reach and engagement. She writes this. This me rising from my yearly slumber to awaken for the bendy blendy. Just some things I want to keep in mind as the best part of the day of the year approaches. Some will say I'm biased towards the following cats makeup, Glen Power shirtless and top guns volleyball beach scene bakers who put a little extra effort into their entry comments. For those of you gracing the annual baker sale for the first time, I'm the resident big door price picker and I am openly bribable. Happy vendee blendy season. So she posted a picture of the three of us. Yeah. It was so funny. You guys just were so, so hilarious funny.

[B]

Literally. There was a comment that someone. Genius use of AI. Someone edited out me and Heather in the photo and put Glenn Powell hugging and kissing Summer's floor.

[A]

I don't know how she got AI.

[B]

I don't take a celebrity. It looks so real.

[A]

You remember it won't touch the liberties but she got it looks like he's in my parents house.

[B]

It looks like he's kissing Summer's head.

[A]

Dan, if you hear this. She thought it was so funny. She sent this it as a Snapchat to my whole family. It was an extended cousin's got.

[B]

I'm sure she's sending it to her work friends.

[A]

Oh she posted it to her Instagram. She said, let's never forget that this could be a potential hilarious.

[B]

And I. Heather is now one of the door prizes is a Glen Powell towel.

[A]

Glen Powell towel. I'll be entering. Yeah, you guys wanted him. He's here. So I'm sure someone will be entering it as well. Anyways, those big door prizes. She is the winner picker. If you guys want to know the strategy behind how to do that, go listen to my Facebook Live number three, secrets to sharing shopping. I'll tell you how she said. I know her weaknesses.

[B]

The reason why me and Heather couldn't be the pickers. Because we love you all. And I. I don't want you to be like bipartisan.

[A]

This girl knows nothing of you. She's gonna base. She's not. If you just say I want to win.

[B]

No, no, no, no. You go listen to that live. You go listen to that live. If you are in it to win it, you'll go listen to live number one.

[A]

It was the third one. It's on YouTube and it's still in the group, but it's also on the sugarcookiemarketing.com forward slash, bendy blendy. Yeah.

[B]

So if you want to know the secrets to get to Summit's hot and your name is pal.

[A]

You don't want to listen to them. You don't want to listen Glenn Powell. You'll win them all if you are listening. Blossom. Hi. Yeah.

[B]

Moving on to our sponsors. Without them, this boring podcast wouldn't be here. First and foremost, take us through them. We won.

[A]

I tell you the fun thing about them. I'm going to actually tell you what discounts they're running at the vending Bundy. All of them but one are vendors. Somebody I love. When I use Google sheets and I can see you looking with me, I'm.

[B]

Going to tell you I'm always in in the Google vending blendy sheet. So if you ever see Whispering Otter, it is on. I know.

[A]

Okay, so we have. Let me go to this to pull up. So we have cookie design lab.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, you could always get them off. 15 off. But for the Vendy Blendy, they'll be running 25 off.

[B]

I'm going to tell you that. Discount day.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You don't buy your bamboo, but you wait to see if you won the door prize. You win the door prize, you get cookie design Lamb daddle over skate lamb. You don't win the door prize. You can get it $50 on. Off. Since bamboo's running a sale, sk over.

[A]

There, get cookie design level. It'll be 25% off. Baking me crazy typically you get 10% off. You can get 25% off.

[B]

I want to tell you, Baking me crazy actually sent me and I'm going to make her Vendy Blendy video.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

She has everything under the sun. If you.

[A]

I'm going to say I like this biceps.

[B]

She has the nicest, the nicest rolling pin and it's the ones that have the sides on there. So you can determine the size of yours. It was so nice. And it is. It's her branded rolling pin.

[A]

You said she sent you her whole store.

[B]

Oh, she, I, I said there's nothing she doesn't have. I like her shop because it's a one stop shop. So you get to save on all these different shipping charges because you can buy just from her shop. She sells chew mats. So even though Chua is a vendor, if you're like, but I need Chua mats and the rolling pin and sprinkles, you could all buy it from her shop.

[A]

I like that.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

A baggity bake typically takes.

[B]

Wait, what's her discount? You didn't say. I'm sorry.

[A]

25%. 25% royal batch. Typically 10% off this time. 25% off.

[B]

25.

[A]

She never runs it.

[B]

She does not.

[A]

She does not. Daisy makes typically 10% off. And let's just so you guys know, they're paying to give you discounts. They're paying even more to give you more discounts. I know Daisy make is doing 25% off at the Vendi Blendy.

[B]

Okay. Daisy makes and I made her Vendee blendy video.

[A]

I haven't posted it yet. Okay.

[B]

It is a kit. But here's the crazy thing about a kit. It came to my door and it says open and refrigerate. And I was like, what is in here?

[A]

Okay.

[B]

The kit is everything you need to make, but the dough is in there. Sixteen ounces of dough on a chilled thing came to my house. Oh, that's so crazy. I didn't have to buy one extra thing. I, I literally just made it come to room temperature and used it.

[A]

She, she is just a saying. She posted about the Venny blending groups and I was reading it and she was like, this is the best deal we'll offer. I love when the vendors do that. So the best deal you're going to get from Daisy Makes is on Black Friday. Yeah, she is. Okay. Not discounted. Still a sponsor. Definitely. If you have been nice this year, ask for one. Eddie the edible printer.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Eddie the don't run discounts. We tried every year.

[B]

They do, though, have a payment plan.

[A]

And they do have a refurbished option. Yeah.

[B]

So I want to say a lot of these cutter shops now sell STL files in Eddy prints, which you can.

[A]

See in the digital downloads kit. Corey and I use Eddie a lot. Of course. She's the one. She took him from me. She left the carousel, though. Odd.

[B]

It was too big.

[A]

Take him with you, Heather. Here's the thing.

[B]

On Heather's order, I did. Last week, I did tomatoes. This is.

[A]

Okay. I'm so sorry. You guys don't understand how cute this is. She used Eddie to print like a. What do you call that? It's just a background. Yeah, but what do you put. When you put over a table of tablecloth? It's like a tablecloth print. And then she piped on top of it. And that is.

[B]

Eddie, that. That set. Okay.

[A]

I gave it to Heather.

[B]

It was for her birthday.

[A]

Welcome.

[B]

But I also used it in my own marketing.

[A]

Do it, man. All week long, Cor's been pimping me.

[B]

Out because I was able to do that set, and I really enjoyed it. That Eddie print behind those tomatoes brought the set together. It would have been white.

[A]

They all voted it as a favorite.

[B]

I know.

[A]

Yeah, they liked it. It just.

[B]

It was a simple cookie, and it just elevated it just a little bit.

[A]

I know Eddie Khan's coming up in January, and they told us to promote it. And I saw that they opened up more room blocks, so they're definitely filling up. If you want to hang over there and get that discounted room, definitely go to Eddie Printers users group on Facebook and find that link.

[B]

Eddie is more than just backgrounds. People. People are printing icing transfers. They're actually printing on those.

[A]

We'll do them at a class. Corey will go to a class and print the outline that I. I make. I give those to you in the class kits as well. But you'll print it on the cookie so people can kind of see where the design is going. Definitely for it. When the cookies are kind of too.

[B]

When there's a lot of steps in there and they need to know, like, if you. I think the last class we did.

[A]

I was like, whether you have a. Yeah, we did it for the cast.

[B]

Class, but we didn't do it on this private class. But like people's turkey bodies.

[A]

The turkey platter did a turkey turkey roast. And people had massive plates and little turke tiny turkeys. I wish we had printed on There. And then last but not least, Bosch Nutra Mill is running their Black Friday sale. I'm not allowed to say what it is until the 20th, but it beats their sales all year.

[B]

So you'll post that in the group in like two days.

[A]

The key is you on top of their sale. You have to use the affiliate code to get this deal. Otherwise it's not the best deal. So definitely use affiliate code. It'll be code sugar cookies. You get 20 bucks off, and they pay us 20 bucks, which I use to run the Vinnie Blank.

[B]

Nice. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, kids, that takes us to arrest.

[A]

You can talk about your pasta party. I had a pasta party. I had a pasta party at the Olive Garden. It's funny. You go to Olive Garden, which I go to. We go every Friday. And I walk in and I texted, corey, where are you? She said, back right. You know, because they're a set with the right and left side of the restaurant. So I'm heading towards the back, right? I look at the lady at the front. I said, my sister. She's like, back right? I was like, oh, back right. How would you even know that this is my sister? But it's because when I came around the corner, there was a. This little Wegmans has these little cakes.

[B]

Tiny cake. They're so good.

[A]

Yeah, it was a little vanilla cake. I'm so sorry. It was delectable. In it was pasta noodle candles.

[B]

Candles. I'd found them. I think I found them on Etsy.

[A]

They were so cute. They were little. They literally look like a noodle with a flame coming out of it. Then she had two balloons, three and seven. Yeah.

[B]

So funny.

[A]

The bartender comes by, he's like, you guys look great for 73.

[B]

Because it was. It was floating around. Those were a Zillow million dollars for.

[A]

They've been Munch's favorite thing.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Then there was these cake pops. True cake pop bottles with chocolate formed noodle pasta.

[B]

The bow tie noodles. I found a mold on Etsy and I just formed chocolate there. I did like probably eight of them wrong. And then I got six of them right.

[A]

So she got exactly 16. Hilarious. Hilarious. Then a dozen cookies with six different. Now, this is Corey. She's not a plaque girly, but she used. Each of these used a plaque except for one was that she had a noodle balloon. Was this supposed to be real balloons?

[B]

They're real balloons. But Liz Viz has.

[A]

She's weird into the noodles.

[B]

She has a whole noodle groove. She'll be at the Bendy Blendy at 25% off, just so you know.

[A]

30.

[B]

Oh, 30% off. Okay. I love her shop. She has these transfer sheets you can buy that were all noodle.

[A]

Oh, that's so fun.

[B]

And she had noodle cutters and everything. I didn't do the cutters, but I did the transfer sheets. She does these.

[A]

I'm so sorry. She's doing teeth Christmas.

[B]

Yes. She's more receptive to weird things than anybody else.

[A]

It's super funny. Anyways, that, and then there was confetti in the shape of pasta.

[B]

Yeah, it was pasta confetti that I.

[A]

Found on Etsy as well. It was a giant happy birthday in the cake cutout, like a topper.

[B]

And that had, like, spaghetti on it. One thing that didn't come in and it did.

[A]

So I'll be giving to you is.

[B]

I did order these handmade poured ravioli candles.

[A]

No way. Yeah, I'll bring them over. Yeah. So you'll be able to burn. Super funny. It was super fun. It was a blast. And then Olive Garden was like, it's your birthday. Here's a free cake with a candle.

[B]

But I'm going to say, even for the marketing standpoint, how many people came and asked. For my information, it was just saying, Cory.

[A]

Cory staged the whole table, I want to tell you.

[B]

Staged it.

[A]

There was beads.

[B]

I had a silk thing. I had a checker, red checker. I set it up and that's what.

[A]

Got people to stop. And then she lit a fire. And then her sim is like, how are you going to get the shallot? And I said, said, asking the important questions.

[B]

Oh, and then I got you the cute. What is this? Pop up cards.

[A]

Oh, yeah. I love pop.

[B]

Love pop Pop.

[A]

Oh, I don't know. Either way, those cards, when you open them and there's like a pasta theme, it was so funny. And then because it's so cute, they let you have a little insert, so you can. That was super cute. What is your twinrest?

[B]

That's my Twinrest. I Pasta point.

[A]

I pulled it out of my butt. Can you post it in a group? Just hashtag podcast reference pasta party.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So fun.

[B]

Yeah. I thought that was so fun.

[A]

Kids, we got our birthday. Got the. The collab on Friday, twin birthday Saturday, Vendy blendy next Friday, Thanksgiving, that Thursday. But who cares? Who cares about that day? That's just.

[B]

That's just literally fueling me for the vend.

[A]

It's just food to get you through the vend.

[B]

Yeah. Honestly. Really? Honestly. So I want to see everyone at the thank you Collab. You have exactly four days to turn your oven on and make a thank you. You don't have to be insane.

[A]

I even said you could print it. There's no AI, but you could print it.

[B]

We just need a of bunch body. Holding it, boy.

[A]

Holding it. And guess what?

[B]

I'm going to post it everywhere because.

[A]

That'S what we do as marketers. Also, content work for you, baby girl.

[B]

Next door for 2025.

[A]

Yeah, this would be fun.

[B]

So I'm going to show you how I unveil the market behind that.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

We don't just post just when we get something. Make it work for you.

[A]

The content.

[B]

All right, guys. Vendy Blendy Hype. We're running off of Vendy Blendy Hype fumes. I mean, caffeine pills at this point, apparently.

[A]

I want to say you want a caffeine pill is like a drill sergeant vibe. Yeah.

[B]

All right, guys, thanks for tuning in.

[A]

To the most boring podcast in the world.

[B]

Appreciate you.

[A]

Next week we'll be in bendy blendy vines.

[B]

Oh, you want I won't know a.

[A]

Word that doesn't start with a V and a B. I will also be doing an extra podcast next week on the vending Bundy. Yeah, we'll have one on. We'll do again on Friday.

[B]

Damn.

[A]

Okay, kiddos, look, the camera's last.

[B]

It's cuz it's so freezingly cold.