A (1:53)

The fluidity of being able to start and stop it. And I know people are vexed by this at Christmas because you got the Christmas bakers coming back, but it allows you to kind of a low cost entry. You don't need a college degree. You just need to get some time in on the royal practice. But then on the flip side, you can stop when you want to or when life changes. You're a stay at home mom or this job, you got a raise.

B (2:12)

So there is a lot of stopping and starting. And the group has been around for over five years at this point. And a lot of people who joined at the beginning are no longer even baking at all. Like they've sold off the KitchenAid. There's no coming back. Curious.

A (2:28)

So I think a lot of times I'll join a ton of Facebook groups if any interest I have remotely and then I'll be like, it'll never show me those groups again. You can tell my theory is that when you join a group, Facebook's like here's everything. And then the group posted and it's waiting to see which you actions you take. And then it's like, okay, guess you don't like them, we'll never show em to you again.

B (2:45)

As a marketing point to this, everyone has what's called an engagement ratio. And ratios are based off of your growth. So the sugar cookie marketing group has 50,000 members in there. So the ratio of how many people engage from month to month to how many people are in the group. And just like that, your Facebook page has an engagement ratio. When you post something and only a few people react to it, you'll notice that your post isn't pushed out anymore.

A (3:13)

Well, I think it's, I think like I said, they're saying, okay, well let them have a little bit this time. Let's see how many people react to this. And if the reactions are low, then the, then the algo is like, no, they don't like that. Yeah.

B (3:24)

Something that me and Heather love to track is active users. Monthly active users in the Facebook group.

A (3:30)

How many do you think?

B (3:31)

I just pulled it up. I think it's around 30 something.

A (3:33)

35,089. And in the group we have, let me put 50,200.

B (3:39)

My goodness girl, I told you I'm tracking this year. That would be.

A (3:43)

It's 51 87. Yeah. So that is the engagement rate or ratio, whatever you want to call it, is how you determine what. So we have a 70%, a 69% engagement rate within the group. So active members. Yeah. And active members by definition of Facebook is the time active members, total active members are people who viewed, posted, commented or reacted to content within the dates you selected. Active members per day are the number of people who engage with your content on a given day within the dates you Selected. So not a bad.

B (4:17)

End of the day, out of 50,000 people, that 35,000 are active. Amazing. I can tell you the little extra couple grand that are in there that aren't doing anything. Those are people that no longer bake.

A (4:29)

Or we've fallen out of the algorithm. Who knows?

B (4:31)

Yeah.

A (4:31)

Either way, a little bit of dead weight. So we were hiring the VA to remove inactive members. And the way you can see that if you guys don't know how a Facebook group works, each within each group you join, you have like almost a membership profile, which you guys can see it in it. Anytime you make a post, you get some points. The points are useless. However, to an admin team, it tells us the activity. Post comments or reactions in the last 30 days and post eternity. Yeah. Time present, time past. So activity would be making any engagement within the last three days or any post at all, ever?

B (5:01)

Yes.

A (5:01)

And then a lot of profiles that click on them and you can tell that the profile's been abandoned and things like that. So we were going to assign to the VA to clean that up, but brings us to the point of this podcast. Stay on track, track, track.

B (5:12)

Corey and I have spreadsheets on the brain 20, 26. Everyone, like Heather's old boyfriend, and she brought up last week, he always had to start on a Monday. A lot of people start on the new year. That's why there's New Year's resolutions. So if there was a time to start tracking, it would be now.

A (5:28)

And the reason why I do like starting, you know, I track all year long, but I like to have. And I told Corey, because I said, if you call this not working, that's on you, man. Because I had to have my spreadsheets dialed in. Ready, go, Jan.1. Because I like to look at our fiscal year as a whole from January 1st to December 31st. So all my spreadsheets, I roll them over to new copies. Why don't you just use the old ones? What I did last year, I can see the gaps. And I say to Corey that sometimes when I'm like, oh, I wish this was a little different, I build it into the next year's spreadsheet. And every year it gets progressively more intuitive for how my brain works. And that is what we're going to talk about today.

B (6:02)

Because tracking, I want to say, though, tracking is like dough days. Let me explain that to you, non baker over there. When you make dough, just to have dough on hand, dough in the freezer, dough ready to go, dough, Remy, do, re, mi, FA latte, Dough. It's the most underwhelming. You don't get a pretty picture. It's not cute. You don't say, wow, I made five loaves of dough. It's. It has to be done. Loaves of dough.

A (6:32)

Is that how we're counting?

B (6:33)

It has to be done because it makes a better business. But it's not. It's not. No one's congratulating you. No one's saying how cute your dough is.

A (6:42)

And ugly. Right? So the whole. You're like, that was a ton of work and nobody's clapping for me.

B (6:46)

And that is my thing with dragging.

A (6:48)

That is the thing with tracking. So to kind of. Cory and I are going to go through kind of the basics of what I would recommend considering tracking, and then we'll go through different avenues that you want to focus on and what you would track if you did that little off the cuff here, because we gotta listen. We gotta text messages. I gotta text us this more.

B (7:07)

It says, Seasons 52, 11:00am Me and Mom. No question.

A (7:12)

No questions. So a little bit of a time constraint, because that fishing. That said, I would love. I prefer to have every. And I know this is built into my own limitations. I want my spreadsheets to start on the first of the year, and I want them to log every once a week.

B (7:32)

Okay.

A (7:33)

I know that's going to challenge intuitive. Intuitive. But a lot of people may get overzealous and say, I'll just log in every day.

B (7:39)

That's hard.

A (7:40)

When data. When they say when data's missing points, it becomes dirty data. Right. It's hard to use dirty data because it doesn't make a lot. And now it now has no trajectory. It's almost becomes useless. And I tell Corey, once my spreadsheets get dirty, it causes me a lot of anxiety. So I say, okay, I know that on Mondays I can set aside one hour to update this spreadsheet.

B (8:02)

And whenever, as you're saying, talk to the baker out there, the. The solopreneur in their small home bakery.

A (8:11)

How they're took a bunch of orders this week. Yeah, okay, how many orders did I take last week? How. And we're going to talk about which ones. Which one of these metrics you want to track. But if you could say every Monday, you can look at the past week and the future week. Now we can log leads that came in bakes that I'm baking, leads that converted things like that to tell us what happened that week. Then I have in my spreadsheet a little line item for notes what happened this week that made this week a lot different than others.

B (8:36)

Okay. It's not every you could have run out of dough and you had to re remake.

A (8:40)

I took a week off.

B (8:41)

Yeah.

A (8:41)

For vacation.

B (8:42)

Right.

A (8:42)

I would want to know that because my number's going to look weak either before or after. During that. But I want to say, oh yeah, that was the week we were out of town.

B (8:48)

I do want to say, if you think you're going to remember what happened in the last year, you won't. So to see like, wow, June was horrendous. And not remembering that you had a vacation mid June, it's hard to remember things. And I think I'm going to remember everything. I don't.

A (9:01)

You know, I have a terrible memory.

B (9:03)

You really do.

A (9:04)

And it's my secret power is to know that I'll never remember it. So I never tried to. Instead, I have to log it. And if I don't log it, I say, well, I'll never remember it. So I take a log of it. Now that's what I would challenge most people listening. I know you can make this unique to yourself, but Mondays at 10am and I tell I have it so dialed in because I don't want to suddenly start halfway through the year taking logs on Wednesdays because half my year would be on a Monday and half whatever that day is. Your admin day, you say hell or high water. Heck or high water. I'm going to sit down in the spreadsheet and just get the basics in there. Right. We don't want the spreadsheet to track everything because you'll be overwhelmed again. Absolutely. You got to build the humanity into.

B (9:41)

The spreadsheet and you know who you are at the end of the day. And with that power comes great responsibility.

A (9:47)

And not all metrics are created equally. There are metrics that can guide your entire existence and then there are metrics where you are just wasting your own time. Yes. So that's what we're going to talk about today. Now let's talk about customer acquisition tracking.

B (10:03)

Well, I want to even go higher than that.

A (10:05)

Okay.

B (10:06)

Your goals in your business in 2026 are going to dictate what you track.

A (10:11)

Love that. I agree. If you say, I want to be an influencer, your tracking is going to look much different than someone says, I want to beat my sales from last year. Yeah.

B (10:19)

If you're like, I'm a brand spanking new business and I want to get out there so people just know me, you're going to track differently than someone who's been in business for a while.

A (10:28)

Maybe you can say instead of focusing. And you can, and I love that Corey and I will say, what's this year's overarching goal?

B (10:35)

Yeah.

A (10:35)

Last year was client retention. And then you know what suffers when you focus on retention? Acquisition. Yeah. That's why I feel like, hey, this year or this month or this week's goals, metrics will look different than my next month. And you'll make a note. This month, I wanted to focus on this.

B (10:52)

I do want to say for me and Heather schools in our marketing company. Heather pounded this into my brain. As soon as you get a client, you're losing them. And you have to remember, and that goes for a bakery, too. As soon as you get your client and you set that high expectation where you just nailed the design, the day.

A (11:10)

Is the day you begin to lose them.

B (11:11)

Because atrophy, Atrophy. People, new people coming into the market maybe priced lower than you.

A (11:19)

Location differences, people who are just good.

B (11:21)

At decorating, coming in there.

A (11:22)

Right. So to retain. To focus on retention of your customers, you're going to do different things than acquisition. Retention is going to. I'm going to take the people who order from me and enter into them a CRM. Yes. And then I'm going to send them an email, and then I'm going to send them a Popeye or something like that.

B (11:37)

And then on their birthday, they're going to get a little note for me. And then their next order, I'm going.

A (11:41)

To include something extra that, you know, if you did all those things all year, that your retention numbers, you're returning clients. Yeah, that's a retention. We're retaining something that we have that is going to be a metric that is going to grow. You're going to look and be like, what did I do for acquisition? Why is it so low? Well, we focused on retention.

B (11:55)

Right. At the end of the day, you're one person, 24 hours, two hands. So you can't have the goal of everything. And I wish that could be us. And I wish we had enough time and enough brains and enough hands. We're not octopi. We have two hands. So you're going to focus on something, and your. Your year of tracking is going to be built on that.

A (12:12)

Right. So let's say we focus as a baker on retention.

B (12:15)

Yeah.

A (12:15)

I want to. They. I listen to the podcast. The cheapest lead is one I already have. So I'm going to focus on that. When you focus on retention, your marketing costs are going to Be lower.

B (12:24)

Yeah. Right.

A (12:24)

Because you do. You're using some.

B (12:26)

You're internal, you're not external anymore. We're not trying to get new leads every single time.

A (12:30)

So you're going to take. You're going to borrow from the Facebook ads, but.

B (12:33)

Yeah.

A (12:33)

Which is an acquisition, and you're going to put it into a retargeting pixel if you wanted, or something like a CRM program. Yeah.

B (12:38)

Or you're going to, come Christmas, make a vanilla extract for your best clients ever.

A (12:46)

And that's going to be your overarching umbrella. Focus.

B (12:49)

Right.

A (12:49)

And we could obviously do acquisition while we're doing retention, but we're going to focus on that and make a mental note in our spreadsheet. So it's not mental that this was their goal of maybe it's this month, maybe one month. I'm going to focus on cultivating past clients.

B (13:03)

Yeah.

A (13:03)

So, okay, then you would say, okay, how do I track that? Heather and Corey? Well, now you're going to have to approach this on how every baker is going to be unique because of how you're acquiring the orders and how you're tracking orders. So if you say, well, I take everything through Facebook messenger, you're going to have a much harder time than somebody who's using a Jotform or somebody who's using Shopify. They can easily export or use Zapier to automatically populate, Auto populate a spreadsheet.

B (13:28)

Right.

A (13:28)

And then you can.

B (13:29)

A CRM program would solve a lot.

A (13:31)

Of this for you, and that would be a big task to take. But you can input the person. And now every correspondence with these CRM programs will actually pull into their profile. So.

B (13:40)

Okay, question for you. I get my leads through Jotform and it does kind of keep things nice.

A (13:45)

And cozy up in there.

B (13:46)

It's not a CRM because I can't add a node, but could anything. Could Zapier work with Jotform and input.

A (13:52)

Them in a CRM and tell you and Zapier is something that makes two applications talk to each other that shouldn't be talked. Yes.

B (13:59)

So Jotform is owned by Jotform Incorporated, but we want them to talk to our CRM, which may be.

A (14:04)

What is the CRM that you like?

B (14:05)

Nutshell.

A (14:06)

I like the year.

B (14:07)

Okay, so Jotform is an independent company from nutshell, but we don't have enough time in our day to always go in and put the information from Jotform into Nutshell. What Zapier does another company in between makes those two speak to each other. So it'll take the information from Jotform, a new client lead, and it will go and put it in Nutshell, our client CRM customer retention manager, and it will let it speak so that we have to do less physical labor.

A (14:34)

And that is what Zapier is.

B (14:36)

And they call that action a zap.

A (14:39)

Yeah, you have a lot of Zaps turned on. Okay, so you have Jotform so you can go to Zapier even without buying it, and then you can see what it's it's able to pair with on Zapier. So let's say we have Jotform and it says, okay, we have a bunch of apps, it can talk to Nutshell. Let's see if it even has Nutshell. It does. So we said, Corey doesn't use a CRM, but we have these. It's saying, I can connect your Jotform to Nutshell. What do you want it to do? It says it's got two options for you. And the most popular people are using is create Nutshell leads from a new job form submission for seamless lead management. And then it says another one, add new Jotform submissions to Nutshells as person.

B (15:16)

So I want to say you can do this individually, you can get a lead from Jotform and you can go into your nutshell and put it in there. The problem is we know who we are. There ain't enough time in the day. What Zapier does, it is a paid thing. What it can do is create those leads for you. So while you are busy in the kitchen, it's doing the work behind the scenes.

A (15:34)

I love automation. Yeah. And AI has brought automation to the forefront. There is such a thing, I believe, is too much automation to where it's working and you're not even checking it.

B (15:43)

Well, I want to say when my dentist, who I haven't gone to in 14 years, gives me a phone call, Merry Christmas. Hello, Gary.

A (15:51)

That's almost too much automation. We've gotten so efficient that we've lost touch with reality. So something I would say, okay, Jotform, when somebody sends a Jotform, put them in a nutshell. But on Mondays, Heather, I'm going to go into Nutshell and I'm going to fill out some personal, identifiable information about this person and stuff that I know about. Here's the thing.

B (16:07)

When they, when they stop by to pick up their orders, I always invite them into the just the little part of my house at the front so we can have a conversation. And that's where I learn a lot about them. Like, one time this lady's like, oh, I see you have a picture of a bulldog. My daughter has a bulldog. And now I know they like bulldogs in their family.

A (16:23)

Corey needs to implement input that into a software so she doesn't have to be like, is that the bulldog lady? Yeah. What kind of dog do you have?

B (16:29)

Oh, he died last week. And then when she brings it up again, and I'll be like, yeah, I love my bulldog. I don't know. And she's like, oh, I thought I told you I had a.

A (16:35)

And then, yes. Do you see? So, which is great. If Corey inputs that this person is this lady, she's ordered from me before. She likes dogs. What could I also say? I know there's a lady who likes dogs. Let me search my nutshell. Invite her to my Pets Focus cookie class. Right.

B (16:49)

Or when I go to Marshalls and I find a good deal on a little dog ball, I buy two. One for my dog, one for hers.

A (16:55)

So what I would do is I would say, okay, I'm going to start by acquiring leads through a form. Yeah. Right. And this is why we're constantly pushing, shoving you guys into forms for leads. Because you can use this data.

B (17:08)

Yes.

A (17:09)

Versus manually doing it, which you absolutely could. And then having to fish around for that data. Yeah. Things that software like CRMs do that I really like is every time you use Gmail or Workspace, every correspondence is now pulled into this nutshell, CRM, under this person's profile. So you can actually reference those emails as well. Yeah, yeah. Very neat. So, okay, that's if we're going to focus on tracking our customer retention. Right.

B (17:32)

To me, that overarches everything. Customer retention. At the end of the day, keeping your customers happy, having a relationship with your clients is going to behoove you no matter what your goal is.

A (17:42)

You can do a fancy CRM, but you can be as simple. And don't ever. Don't ever pull my spreadsheets from me. Yeah, you can be as simple as inputting in a spreadsheet. I got five leads this week, and three were from past customers. And then you could say, okay, wow, that's pretty good. How many of those past customers, how many of those leads converted? And what ratio was past customers? Yeah.

B (18:00)

A lot of bakers listening to this who have been in business for a while be like, well, I didn't do this before. And now my old start. Now it doesn't matter. You weren't doing it before. So start now.

A (18:10)

To plan a spreadsheet was 30 years ago. Second best time to plan a spreadsheet is today. If you're listening to this and you're.

B (18:15)

Getting ready to start your business or your business is in its infancy, the you are at the prime time to really set yourself up for success by doing this now versus later.

A (18:25)

But I want to say you can do it at any time. Don't.

B (18:27)

You can do it at any time.

A (18:29)

I have had to let go of my. This, this spreadsheet doesn't cover everything. You don't like him anymore? No, he's covering enough. He started late, he's growing and that's all I need. Even if you did it in a.

B (18:40)

Google Doc, like the baby of an.

A (18:42)

Excel Google sheet, Google sheets and you.

B (18:45)

Just put name, first name, last name, email in a factoid, you're better than.

A (18:50)

90% of baby out there.

B (18:51)

You are. Because when you press control F in a Google sheet, you can find their.

A (18:58)

Name and then you can be like.

B (18:59)

Oh yeah, she said her daughter was.

A (19:00)

Getting married last time.

B (19:01)

So when they come to the door, did your daughter get married?

A (19:04)

Oh my goodness.

B (19:05)

Congratulations. Show me a photo and you're already better.

A (19:08)

Don't be afraid to delete dirty data. Don't be afraid to be like, well, I mean, they ordered from me, but it was six years ago. Is that a valuable retention? No. Six years ago, they've never ordered from you again. Don't be afraid to be like, I don't remember anything about them. They wouldn't remember anything about me. The email would just bog me down. I think sometimes when we had, you see, Mailchimp lowered its free plan again.

B (19:29)

No way.

A (19:29)

250. So sometimes when we get like, okay, excited. How much data can I get?

B (19:34)

The more data the better. Yeah.

A (19:35)

Remember, it's always quality data. Absolutely. If I load up a thousand emails, yes, but a thou. But 900 hasn't ever heard from me. It's not the most valuable spreadsheet unless I email uploaded a hundred of those. Yeah.

B (19:49)

A lot of times if you start going to networking groups, and I used to live in networking groups, let me tell you, you'll get a lot of people's business cards, you'll get a lot of sheets of papers with people's informations on it. You're gonna want to take that information.

A (20:02)

Be like, I can use this.

B (20:03)

No, that's not a valuable lead just because it's on a piece of paper that was handed to you. A valuable lead is you going up to someone. Hey, I'm Corey. I'm with Mixing Bowl Cookie Company. Oh, you're a roofer. Oh my goodness. Yeah. We could do something that is a.

A (20:16)

Valuable lead if I went to a networking group of 30 people and three people expressed interest. I'd rather input just the three people than. I worked at a company and we did a lot of sales events. Expos. Yes. And it was always. You had to have a gimmick to get people to give you a business card because everyone wanted to interrupt. It was funny. They came up with this thing called a Moneyball and they came do it once. It's kind of funny. You take. You'd get a foam core from Michael's or whatever and then you tape money around it. Every time you create one layer, you Saran Wrap it again and again. Until now. The thing is like the size of a basketball, but it's just money.

B (20:49)

And you can kind of see the money through the Saran Wrap.

A (20:51)

And it's a ball.

B (20:52)

You could throw it. Me and Heather literally tossed it too.

A (20:54)

If you throw a ball of money into it. And these are, you know, marketing. That's such a given. It's a given. However, how else are you going to in the most eye, seemingly boring expo. How are you going to get people to stop by your booth when you toss a ball of money into the air? It does get a little dangerous. Anyways, they would drop their business cards into this bowl and they would write their guesses on their business. Right. Rudimentary marketing got. Now we have what, 100, 200, 300 business cards. The boss would be like, input all of these into a spreadsheet and input all those into a CRM program and then input that into our newsletter. And I was like, huh? I said, I would like to challenge the status quo here. One, that's insane amount of data entry. Yeah. But two, are all these worth it?

B (21:34)

Because I want to say at the end of the day, they wanted to win a ball of money.

A (21:37)

Also, it was a lot of our other vendors. Yes. They.

B (21:42)

It wasn't valuable data. And you're going to run into non valuable data in your bakery business all the time. Whether someone's just inquiring. A lot of times you'll get someone from asking to donate. While that's valuable in its own sense, it's not necessarily where you want to send your weekly newsletter. You know, someone who wanted you to donate something, things like that.

A (22:02)

So you'd have to make a note of that. You can see a lot of this. You spend Time looking at a bunch of empty cells and asking yourself what is valuable or not. So Corey had talked about in the cookie college this week tracking social media metrics. I think we get lost in the sauce there because everybody, if you're brand new or if you're. If you're a billion dollar conglomerate, has metrics provided by social media platforms. Awesome. It's a nice way to get a little temperature check on what your marketing is doing. But not all metrics are created equal and not all metrics are valuable considering what your guiding goal is.

B (22:34)

Yes.

A (22:35)

Let's say Heather and Corey, this year I would like to be a social media influencer in the baking space, specifically with sugar cookies. Because I know you guys said niche thrice, name a price. So we niche it down. I want to make baking related content on social media. Great. I would say what platform you're going to focus on? All of them. No.

B (22:52)

Yeah.

A (22:53)

Which one? Yes. Okay. Well, I'm going to focus on Instagram. I think I have more ability to grow on Instagram. I'll cross post a TikTok, but I want my signal metrics to come from Instagram. Okay, great. TikTok has a better acquisition, but Instagram will make you work for it and I find that its data will be better. Yeah. Okay. Now it's not so important that we have returning customers as much as we have views. Yes. Because we're getting paid out of the creator fund and the creator fund pays based on views.

B (23:20)

It's so we're our what we create. Because that's your goal. Now what we create is going to look so much different than we're trying to get mom and pop down the street to open their wallet and buy their kid a birthday set.

A (23:31)

We're no longer tracking sales per lead. Yeah. That's not our focus anymore. We're now tracking impressions per video. Yeah. And you can see. But what about my sales per lead? You just told me that they're not your focus. So that metric will start to hurt.

B (23:47)

And I see bakers want to do it all who? And I listen sources. Meta. Facebook is like I posted a reel and it was like you could get $6 if you post this in 6 different groups. If an admin deletes one, it doesn't count anymore. And I said, wow.

A (24:01)

Like it. Yeah.

B (24:02)

It really is trying the world. Yeah. But so what it's trying to do is it's pushing you in every direction because who doesn't Want to know? $6. $6. $6. But at the end of the day, Is it. Is it supporting your goal? Is it taking away from your goal?

A (24:14)

If you tell me, girls, I would like to focus on income per cookie class. Let's do net or gross, right? Because if we're focusing on gross, we got a big number. If we're focusing on net, we have a small number.

B (24:27)

Whatever.

A (24:28)

One of those you want to pick. Maybe you want to focus on both. Maybe say, I want to see what my big number is, and I want to see what it. It costs me to get it down to my small number. Maybe you would say, okay, a little less on the gift bags, right? Yeah. Eating up my income then we're not going to focus on impression views on Instagram.

B (24:42)

We're not.

A (24:43)

Because that metric doesn't support buns in seats at class. Yes, they kiss. They're kissing cousins. Right? If you get more views about a cookie class, you may sell more tickets. However, this is not the metric we're going to focus on. At least this month, or at least whatever that goal is, we need to find the metrics that support telling us what is working and what is not.

B (25:01)

Yeah, I see a lot of bakers being like, I posting in every group and not making any sales. That posting in every group isn't a sales metric. It's an awareness metric. You're making people aware that you exist, but you're spamming all the groups in order to do so. Instead, what you're doing is getting your name out there, but you're not necessarily. They're not opening their wallets. They're just learning about you. What you want to do is collect those people somewhere and. And have a retargeting Facebook ad going up. So when they click to your. When the people from the group click to your Facebook page, they've shown interest. Then you hit them with a one, two punch. Buy this right?

A (25:37)

Now click to my website, you're more.

B (25:39)

Likely to get more sales.

A (25:40)

So you see, now we're picking out the metrics, those statistics that are telling us which direction we want to go.

B (25:47)

My goal for social media, I have the numbers. Okay. Got the numbers. My goal is to create the relationship.

A (25:54)

Corey's going into relationship marketing. It's a little bit more of a figmented, imaginary.

B (25:58)

It's hard to be like. And this was the one that did it, right?

A (26:01)

But what she's going to do, what she did last week, is she turned a local foodie guru, popular guy into a cookie, Right? She posted it in a group and then she tracked. And this is what she wanted to do. She wanted to track new page likes. New local page likes. Right. So she did two campaigns. Two campaigns as simple as posting cookies in two different groups. She talked about the first watch. The F was falling off. And then she tried this foodies guy. And she said between the two of these, a higher performer, oddly, was the first watch one.

B (26:27)

Yeah, but in the vehicle, we. We hang out with our family on Saturdays. In the car on Saturday, my sister says, you'll never guess. I was at a company Christmas party and someone said, I saw your sister. And she's like, what are you talking about? She said she posted about that local foodie celeb. And I took a screenshot and sent it to my sister and says, look, I know this person.

A (26:50)

Right? So my question for you, you're tracking. You're tracking something hard to track. Relationship marketing. What is a metric that's going to signal to you that this work? Is it page likes? Is it sales?

B (27:00)

Is it going to be higher view count and higher engagement rate in the.

A (27:05)

Groups on your page?

B (27:07)

On my page, what I'm trying to do is bring them to the page at the end of the day and from there that's where my real relationship. So while I did make the foodie guy into a cookie or whatever, technically I don't own those groups. And at the end of the day, they're so vast, they're so big that it's not necessarily local people that are in those groups. Right.

A (27:24)

So the foodie group, what, 50, 70,000, 150,000. Oh, my goodness.

B (27:28)

Yeah.

A (27:28)

So. And maybe they all live here. Who knows? But the thing is, Corey is like, if I try to. And you could, you could be very well known. That foodie guy, he absolutely popular. He's able to command presence in a group, which is impressive because it's hard.

B (27:39)

To do me what I'm trying to do instead of reaching so broad. He doesn't sell anything. So at the end of the day, his could be the view that he's.

A (27:45)

Just having a relationship.

B (27:46)

I want to be in the local Prince William county groups.

A (27:48)

Okay.

B (27:49)

Hyper local, hyper local. And I want to be local on my page. Okay? So we're going to do those kind of things in relationship. My face is going to be in front of the camera more often. It's not going to just be a cookie.

A (28:00)

Cute cookie set.

B (28:02)

Thank you, Felicia, for ordering.

A (28:04)

Tori's going to. She said her goal this year is to put herself in front of the camera, do hyperlocal content testing what hits, and just, you know, we even said maybe not so much Just a voiceover, maybe talking on the side. Yeah. And saying it. Which we try it at the Tufting class we'll talk about in a second. Are you making a ting class for you? So that is what she's going to focus on now. Now I personally believe that every spreadsheet needs to have some kind of monetary tracking to it because at the end of the day this still a business. If you're not making money, you're not in business. Right. So Corey can say I'm going to track my leads, my income coming in. Income coming in, my income coming in this week and then I'm going to see what it relates to the content that I posted. So I believe that your post may help in a six month.

B (28:50)

Absolutely.

A (28:51)

Because Corey is getting her name known to strangers, people who've never heard from her and they're not ready to order immediately.

B (28:56)

Absolutely. My goal, I think at the end of the year if my relationship marketing does as I plan to, I'm going to get more mentions in groups when people are looking for something. Right now my client retention is really good. That's where my books are really like padded because it's people who've ordered from me before coming back.

A (29:13)

And so you're not focusing on them.

B (29:14)

So I'm not focusing on them. But in my goal I don't want to forget them this year. Right. So I'm not necessarily going for new business because I have old business.

A (29:21)

Excitingly, Cora said she's going to get into CRM. I'll help her with that.

B (29:25)

I know.

A (29:26)

And she's going to do manual inputs.

B (29:27)

Manual inputs and then a newsletter that's segmented.

A (29:31)

Segmented. So what she means there is yes, I'll put in all my leads into a CRM and within that I will tag them as returning past clients who have ordered past leads. I have lost cook class people. Cook class people. Now she can say export my cookie class list. Import it into a. We're going to use Flodesk and put it into Flodesk and have it send out my cookie class stuff. Somebody in the cookie college had asked. They said all my emails are now ending up in spam. My worst fear, right. Emails end up in spam likely because there's. It's a signal from the recipient.

B (30:02)

Yeah.

A (30:03)

So you'll open up your inbox and you'll realize somebody scraped your email which means they took your email and now it's being used to send you marketing spam. Yeah, I'm getting a lot of it. Hey, first name, nice to Hear from you. Like it always has. That never populated my name. When I get those, I mark them as spam.

B (30:19)

Yes.

A (30:19)

Intentionally. Because I don't like when people treat my email that way. They're just scraping you. They're not. You're nothing to them. They're sending stuff to a million people.

B (30:25)

Like, I've tried to unsubscribe from Poshmark a million times. Now it just ends up in spam. Because I said report spam. I tried to get out.

A (30:32)

When you report spam, you signal to Google that this email is not making you like their product. So they're like, we'll never show it to you ever again. Right. When enough people do that with your emails, Gmail, to protect its user base, will be like anything coming from this domain. Do not give, do not show it to my people.

B (30:48)

And it will go directly to spam.

A (30:49)

Even if they didn't directly to spam, enough people have done it. So I had worked with the person who was asking questions. She was like, you know, I send cookie, I send out my classes and now they're going to spam. So I told her she was actually sending her class reminders through mailchimp, which would make a ton of sense. If you sign up for a ticket, you want it. But if she was sending a lot of emails to a lot of people that weren't segmented, meaning I'm sending buy my customs to somebody come a cook class. And they're like, well, I never was going to buy customs. Yeah, I just came to this cookie class to do something fun this weekend. They'll say, market a spam or send a trash Gmail. Gmail now says, here's where you're subscribed. Do you want to auto unsubscribe or it says, you've gotten a lot of emails from these people and you haven't opened it. Do you want.

B (31:27)

It's always suggesting it.

A (31:29)

So it's important to list segments. So now you can see, now we're cleaning up our data. Now our data is more powerful. It is trimming the fat a lot. But this data, even though this big list is now a very small list, it's a very strong list.

B (31:42)

Strong list is so much more valuable.

A (31:45)

Than a big list. Now if Corey's posting a lot of about town content and saying, where's my sales? That's not the right metric for about town content. About town content could get page likes. And that's when I'd be like, where are my page likes? I track it every week on Monday. What did I post this week? Okay, this week I actually went to a rug tufting class and I got five page likes locally. But the rug tufting class wasn't in Corey's demographic. So she maybe say well that, that those aren't valuable people to me. Yeah.

B (32:12)

So my goal because going off that my classes, my cookie classes are actually near the rug tufting place. So because I have a sugar cookie classes page and my mixing bowl cookie page, it would behoove me with the knowledge to post the rug tufting class along the cookie classes page because geometrically that is where it is.

A (32:33)

Do we understand? Are we seeing this how tracking different metrics and even if you said I'm not even going to focus on this metric, I'm just going to log it is valuable in reference to what we're doing. So sometimes I'll say to Corey, the Vendi Blendy is a great example of where you need to focus. Right. If we only focused. If we said that Vendi Blendy's potential success is based off of Corey's product reviews. Is that a good metric? Like you make an Instagram video unboxing a vendor's stuff? Yeah. It gets 300 likes. Well, Vendee Blendy. Cancel it. Cancel it. It's not going to work. Right. That's not correct. The way the metric we base tracking Vendee Blendy success off is pending members. Yeah. Not even Vendees pending members are indicative of the success of the event. That's the one we said. If this number is strong, the numbers within that day, the sales numbers will be strong.

B (33:20)

And I want to say to us, talking about segmented audiences, it would, it would be so much easier for me and Heather to host the Vendee Blendy within the sugar cookie marketing group. There's 50,000 people in there. You're like 50,000 beats the 10,000 that were in the Vendee Blendy group. Here's the problem. 50,000 people weren't going to spend money at the Vendibly. Right.

A (33:41)

So you can see the big number is actually a lie and the small number was actually the metric that that had the most impact with sales.

B (33:47)

What I see bakers do, we're all guilty of it. We'll lie to ourselves. We'll say yeah, we got so many and we'll look good to ourselves in one aspect and be like, wow, I'm really getting no leads. But look, I, I'm getting page liked all the time. But you posted an ASMR video of you decorating and that Wasn't going to translate to sales. So at the end of the day, while it's cool for me to say the group has 50,000 people in it, that is a vanity metric. That is not a metric by which you could run your business by.

A (34:16)

Because it's a metric. I might say, hey, do you guys want to sponsor the group? It has 50,000 members. That would make more sense than that. But that's not our focus. It was to. So you can see, I cannot say the vendor. The vending plan is successful based off of the number of sellers. No, that's not indicative of a successful event for the metrics that we're tracking. Um, so, yeah, when you look at what you're going to track this year, you're going to say, last year, what did. I wish I knew and I didn't know. Okay, now make a list. I wish I knew. Just write it down on a piece of paper. I wish I knew how many leads I got. I wish I knew how many sales I got per month. I wish I knew how many Valentine's Day orders I got. Yeah, right. Then you say, maybe I wish I knew how many networking events I went to. Okay, so we're going to start making that list, and it's going to be unique to you. Then you're going to say, what's my goal in 2026? What do I. What do I want to base my success on? I want to increase my sales. Great. That's going to be the guiding metric. That's going to help you figure out which metrics.

B (35:10)

When you say, increase my sales, my brain already says we're going to create a newsletter. We don't already have one.

A (35:17)

We're going to also do a hybrid approach of retention and acquisition. How can I bring back the old people? How can I get new people? And if that divides your month into 50% old people, 50% new people, so be it.

B (35:28)

We're going to create a blog on our website so we have some content that can be ranked that's going up there so we can get more leads on Google. We're going to make sure that we have our profile set up on next door. If that is what we're. Our goal is more local sales.

A (35:42)

Okay, if we say, I want more corporate leads, guess what? We're not going to focus on.

B (35:47)

We're not going to put on the cutesy stuff.

A (35:48)

We're going to go to. We're going to find a list. We're going to make a list of networking events in our area, and we're going to sort them by rating 1 to 5, which is a quality event, which is an adequate quality event. And then price.

B (35:59)

We're going to create our LinkedIn profile. We are going to still take our custom orders for cute birthday sets. We're not going to post them as.

A (36:06)

Much as much because, you know, you can have, you can have a mix of metrics, but if there's got to.

B (36:10)

Be a focal point. But if we're like, we want more corporate leads, we've got to show more corporate sales.

A (36:17)

And then we're going to go to more corporate events and we're going to get more corporate business cards. And then we're going to see which one of those is quality. And then we're going to go to LinkedIn and connect with those people so we can get them into our funnel where we're gonna post things from our page and share it to our personal profile. Even those people didn't like our LinkedIn profile page, which somebody had asked about on the podcast last week. We're gonna get them to connect with us and see it and we're gonna also start engaging with them. And you're gonna say, how many networking events did I go to? How many corporate orders did I secure this year from?

B (36:44)

And if you wanna really niche it down, I went to a BNI in Fairfax. I got one lead from there that bought. I went to, I think Powerhouse Pink. Powerhouse is this woman's group. And I got two leads from there.

A (36:57)

Join the chamber.

B (36:58)

Join the chamber.

A (36:59)

Three leads.

B (36:59)

Now we're going to know where we need to focus on 20, 27.

A (37:03)

You can see I prefer to look at my tracking system as a year because when you narrow down your tracking, way too narrow. You're like, I went to a BNI one time and I got no leads. So corporate isn't for me. It's too narrow. Your scope was too narrow, your tracking was too limited. You would need consistency over time. Remember that little theory that they have the 2221 touch points, meaning somebody has to hear from you almost 21 times in 21 different ways to finally make that order. Maybe that looks like 21 networking events. That's half the year. Yeah.

B (37:30)

If you never set up a LinkedIn profile, they're gonna have to see a 21 times.

A (37:34)

And then maybe it's, you know, you got people calling. Everyone calls my birthday from the gym and says, happy Birthday. It's because they want to be like, you know, and this time they try to sell me on a personal trainer. I said, no, but I really do like the birthday calls. So you're going to say, okay, that's going to be my focus. I want to take more Eddie orders. What's your marketing going to look like?

B (37:51)

It's going to.

A (37:52)

And not have as many customs in it.

B (37:53)

What was so funny is I put the little local foodie dude on.

A (37:57)

Can we call him a foodie duty?

B (37:58)

The foodie duty on a cookie. And I. Eddie printed it. I took two photos first. He was back behind it, the Eddie printed one. And I said, you know what? I like the. I like the fact that I printed it on there and added a piping detail to it. I'm actually going to use the photo of him in the front with the Eddie print in the front to showcase.

A (38:18)

You're going to move the cookie to the front? Yes. Sorry. Oh, yeah.

B (38:20)

Put him in the front of the.

A (38:22)

Cookie that was Eddie printed.

B (38:24)

Yes.

A (38:24)

Because she wants to draw attention to the fact that we can print on cookies. Right. So if you say, I want more corporate Eddie orders, you're going to have more printed cookies in your marketing. You're also going to collect more leads from corporate people and send them emails about any printed cookies.

B (38:38)

If you say, I want to. I want to focus on not attrition, but acquisition. No, not retention. That's going to look different. You're going to have incentive. You're going to segment your audience. You're going to have your. And you're going to send your best clients. Like, you guys are my best people. So you get first dibs on my next sale. Your VIP group, maybe, where your best clients can mingle amongst each other.

A (39:01)

Yeah. You're going to focus on that VIP group number is going to be a very strong metric if you're working on retention. Right. Because a way to retain customers is to get them in these groups where they can see you with your marketing with that. And that group is going to look a lot better this year because you're like, I keep this thing.

B (39:15)

What I see is a lot of people had the best of ideas. I'm going to create a VIP group to go with my Facebook.

A (39:20)

But then two clicks of a button, I see it.

B (39:22)

It's the same content in both.

A (39:23)

Not valuable, not as valuable.

B (39:25)

So what we want to do is if we are focused on creating powerhouse people that love our business, they're going to get exclusive content in there.

A (39:33)

Yes.

B (39:34)

They're gonna get dibs on stuff in there.

A (39:36)

To keep in mind, okay. The cookie College, our sales product. Right. It's a membership we can sign up for I would say only in the four years, five years we've been doing that. Only three times has someone signed up for the cookie college that hadn't come from the sugar cookie marketing group. That is a huge metric showing that groups are really strong. But my eggs are one basket. Yeah, right. So Corey and I like to cultivate within the group. You sign up for the sugar cookie marketing group, you like the collabs, you like how it's run, and then you're interested in the cookie college. If I'm saying I want new acquisition, I got a lot of eggs in a single basket. I might want to move to Facebook ads and I might want to do Google pay it ads.

B (40:12)

You'll also see, though, me and Heather know it's our strongest lead source. So on the podcast we'll say, if you haven't joined the group, go join it, because we want you to. If you go to our website, it'll be like, click here to join the free group where you get free information. So we are funneling them in there. But it's good to know that me and Heather do have a YouTube channel. We do have a podcast platform. So if meta were to go down for whatever reason, we have different aspects that we've been growing over the years.

A (40:39)

I can't. That's fine. Uh, he said, I agree. Amen. Amen. Amen. He's like, are you tracking my treatle metric? I can tell from the sides of.

B (40:48)

Him you are not.

A (40:49)

Are you happy when I'm tracking? Are you picking me in the room over other people we're dragging? In the cookie college, I do a.

B (40:55)

Monday morning roll call where I just go live and then we pick a topic that we discuss and how we focus on it each week. If we're like, grow your social media in 2026. Difficult. If we say, here's a topic on Monday that you can listen to and we can focus on together. So we've been building off of each other. So we created one where we went over what content. We're going to have a content game plan. We're going to have a content avatar. Who are we making our content for, how we're tracking the content. And then this one was definitely how to a spreadsheet to track your growth throughout the year. So in April where you're like, wow, I actually got 42 followers in the month of April. What did I do there? Let me go dive into April and see how I can implement that in 2027 and create more content that people like, resonate with. I Will say, like, I made the.

A (41:44)

What was that?

B (41:45)

That barista bear from whatchamacallit.

A (41:48)

From Starbie's.

B (41:49)

Darby's. I made him into a cookie. That one. While those numbers performed well, it was because it was trendy in the moment. So I said, oh, I.

A (41:59)

My.

B (42:00)

My November sales went up or my November numbers went up.

A (42:03)

Why?

B (42:04)

Well, I did something trendy. So next November, I can't be like, look, Corey, you stuck. Your November sales are down. No, maybe this next November, nothing trendy happens. But I can know that, that, hey, sometimes you could jump on a trend train and not necessarily be down on yourself that your sales or your numbers are down kind of thing.

A (42:22)

It's very interesting. And I know that maybe you signed. You listen to this podcast and be like, tell me what to attract girls. It's going to be unique to you. Some of you guys are like, I'm a second income earner. This is my hobby. And I don't need necessarily the sales, but I'd like to grow this. You're going to focus on page likes. You're going to focus on content creation. And then whatever metric you choose, you're going to see that your marketing is going to adjust to support it. If I want to grow cookie classes, I'm not going to make reels about customs, okay? If I want to grow cookie classes, I'm going to make reels about cookie classes. Then I'm going to make it on. And post it on Instagram, but I'm definitely going to post it to Facebook and I'm going to see what I can extract from this and. And post it in groups. Right? So you're going to see that it kind of creates the metric you choose, creates the marketing campaign you focus on. Within this, you can have durations of focus. Right? Durations of metric. January, I really want to do this. February, I really want to focus on this. You could break it down by that, or you can say, my whole year. This is what I want to focus on. You can have multiple metrics, but keep in mind probably three or four solid ones. Yes. Or ones that interchange. When you say, I want bigger, faster, stronger, better of everything, you're going to overwhelm yourself. You're going to overwhelm yourself.

B (43:28)

Spreadsheets, it's going to be dirty data.

A (43:29)

You're going to give up. You're going to see. This is. I always ask myself, did this metric assist me this year?

B (43:35)

Yeah.

A (43:36)

No. Did I need to track it? Then, okay, it goes away.

B (43:39)

But about.

A (43:39)

How about all the things it. It's no longer serving me. It served a purpose at one time. It's no longer serving me today. Could that effort be spent in a better metric, a better logging of data here? Yeah. So that's what I'd focus on in the next one week. I hate the lull after a spicy holiday like Christmas into the doldrums of January, New Year's. I'm a little too old for that. At one point, it was a vibe. Yeah. This time I'm like, okay, gotta get my sweatshirts ready. So in the next week, you're gonna say, what do I want out of my business? Once you control your business, don't. It doesn't control you. What do I want out of my business in 2026? Do I want it to grow? Do I want it to maintain? Is it not where I. Is it not focused on what I want? You're going to turn the train in the direction that you want to go, and you're going to find the metrics that support that direction. Yeah, we don't want to. Not all metrics are created equally. Sometimes I log something and I'm like, I'll never make a marketing decision from this, but I want to know. Yeah, okay. Two years ago, the Vendee blendy, remember, we came up with the strongest metric. We sat down. The strongest metric is Pendi's. But what I hadn't tracked the year before was how many people requested to join the group at certain data points this year. I said, I will track it leading up to it. I'll track it weekly. The week of, I will track it daily.

B (44:54)

It kind of sucks, though, is because we delete all that content. We can't be like, what was the gimmick Heather pulled on that day?

A (45:00)

If we had gotten ahead, we could have. I know I'm lazy and I'm busy, so. And then the. The hour, the day, I've actually tracked it hourly, every other hour. Right. Because then I said, last year, I wish I had this. This year I can. I can log it, and then next year I can reference it. And then every year I say to myself, what can I do just a little bit better with this spreadsheet? What can I make this spreadsheet do a little bit better?

B (45:17)

Yeah.

A (45:18)

That it work really well for my goals this year. Yeah.

B (45:22)

Yeah. I see a lot of times people will say, put your face in front of the camera, get down there, do a video. You'll do one video at flops. Okay. You did one video at flops.

A (45:31)

You immediately say, the metric says, My face is ugly and nobody wants to watch it. So I'm no longer putting my face in a video.

B (45:36)

But listen, if you've never been in front of the camera, your first video is going to fly. You have to fall in love with the flop to. But it's never just. You can't rest the laurels of a whole year on one tiny little aspect of your business. It has to be tracked. You need to do the get in front of it for five times. Okay, well, I talked about this one. In the first one, that one flopped. The second one, I actually showed a cookie class and I had everyone wave, that one performed way better. Now we have comparison. Give yourself a few more videos. Oh, we got some trackable data, friends.

A (46:05)

I was telling Corey, when you're surrounded by data on all sides and you don't know which one's a valuable one, you can see now a massive corporations pick the wrong metric and head in that direction. Hindsight being 20 20, you're like, and that's where Cross went wrong. JCPenney should have never run those sales.

B (46:20)

There's this guy, and I can't remember his name, but he. If you just look him up on TikTok, it's. He always says the rise and fall of. And Quiznos, rise and fall of Radio Shack.

A (46:28)

When he's talking, I'm like, yeah, you dummies. Why would you have even done that? An interesting one where the wrong metric was tracked was red lobsters, endless shrimps.

B (46:38)

They did an endless lobster.

A (46:40)

Yeah, it was shrimps. It was shrimps. Yeah. And they said the problem with it, while it got people into the store, it actually cost them. They lost money per person that walked into store. Store. If your metric was bodies and seats. Bodies and seats, then you got a hundred percent. You got A plus.

B (46:54)

Yeah.

A (46:54)

If your metric garden sales did it.

B (46:57)

Isn'T waiting till they shut down before they realized that their. Their rewards program was giving way too much food.

A (47:04)

They yanked it.

B (47:05)

So they. They pulled it, but they didn't wait till the end to say when we pulled it. You're going to pull things because the metrics in the data tells you to.

A (47:12)

And you're gonna be like, did I fail or did I pivot at the right time? Yeah, yeah, you're gonna say I pivoted at the right time. You failed. If you continue P metric. That is telling you this isn't it.

B (47:22)

It was so funny.

A (47:23)

Blockbuster.

B (47:23)

I listened to the rise and fall.

A (47:26)

This is the biggest attribution of their fail.

B (47:28)

The biggest attribution was they Took so much money for late returns and they weren't willing to give it up until it was too late. But Netflix in that, you know, red.

A (47:38)

Box, Netflix started as you return it whenever you feel like.

B (47:41)

And they said Blockbuster was like, no, a big portion of our money comes from people late returns and them having to pay for the late return fee.

A (47:49)

You can see that Blockbuster's days were numbered as streaming became the flavor of choice. Netflix went from. I don't know if you're old enough to remember this. It went from mailing CDs to now it's a streaming service. There's no way to get. I think someone said that there's still some Netflix where it supports places with no wi fi. Oh, that's good. Like no high speed Internet. But they said Blockbuster is like, you're going to physically drive to a Blockbuster. You're going to touch a bunch of dirty cases and see.

B (48:16)

But at the turn of the century, when Blockbuster first came out, it was fan. They said the numbers were booming. People loved that they could get because.

A (48:25)

They were competing against a theater where the movie is no longer played. Like, wow, now I can rewatch this movie at home. Then you have Netflix. When Blockbuster could have said, let's turn it into a streaming service, they let Netflix take that market share. When Blockbuster finally got its head out of its bun hole and said, what metric do we need to focus on? It was already too late and you're going to.

B (48:43)

If we bring it drink, drink, drink, drink down to the baker. Your local competitors might be doing a.

A (48:50)

You know what, great point on that, to look over your shoulder. And that's why we say, put the blinders on. Your competitor is running a completely different business. You guys happen to sell a similar product, but that's about only times you guys cross paths. What happens when you say, oh, they're doing that? I should do that? Because if they're doing it, that makes sense. You have no idea what metric, if any. Yeah, they're focused on. Yes.

B (49:10)

We don't know. Are they getting ready to take a big break? Are they going to do a baby announcement and not work for the next three months? Are they. Is this just a side job for them to. When you always pivot to what your competitor is doing, they are directing your.

A (49:23)

Business and you're not.

B (49:24)

And you don't even know what they're directing it by?

A (49:26)

I saw somebody ask, I think it was in the sugar cookie market room. She was like, I need to get on TikTok. My competitors are on it. And I Was like, question, are your competitors on it because their competitors are on it, or are they on it because it's creating leads?

B (49:37)

Yeah.

A (49:37)

I said, from what I've seen in the six years of running this group, the lead source that is most powerful is Facebook groups. So for that reason, I'd focus on my Facebook page and cultivating a local community group. She was like, no, they're getting leads. I can feel it. I know it. I see their views.

B (49:54)

Views is also not necessarily a metric for sales.

A (49:57)

Right. I said to Corey, some of the companies that we've worked with in the past, I'm like, they're million dollar companies, but I've never seen them recommended a single time in a Facebook group. And we're different with cookies. But I'm like, just because no one's recommending you doesn't mean you're not generating leads. Absolutely not generating income. So you may see they're on TikTok. They may get a million views. Is it converting? Because to me, the conversion is probably the metric I'd focus on there. Views are great if you're paid out of the creator fund. Yeah.

B (50:24)

I have grown two accounts, not to any big numbers, but two accounts to over 17,000 on there. And I can tell you that the. It's a lot of the Rewards program and TikTok shop that is really pushing these people. And it's cool to be like, I have 40,000 followers, you know, but at the end of the day, I see them, I see huge content creators are broke.

A (50:45)

Yes. They're abandoning their channels. I told Corey over the Weekend I downloaded TikTok per my usual ceremonious download. And it was this man. And he was cleaning really, really, really, really disgusting carpets. And what he could do was fascinating. I watched the entire thing. He got 2, 3, 4, 5 views from me and he got a follower. He is in Atlanta. He'll never hear from me. I'll never buy a single thing. But he got my view. And if he's paid out of the creator fund, he'll make money. Great. That was deserved. Yeah. But if he said, I don't care about the $5 I make from views, every time someone calls me to clean their entire home carpets, I make $500. I am worthless to this man.

B (51:17)

Absolutely.

A (51:18)

I love that he made the content for me. Thank you so much for doing that for me. I loved watching it. However, I am a burden to your analytics now. I know. So I see a lot of bakers will look over at other bakers, be like, look, they're making content for bakers. That must be great marketing. But corn, I say that's a little muddled because now you're saying, hey, bakers. And, uh, here's my affiliate link for Amazon. Definitely buy this turntable.

B (51:40)

It's so funny. It's like, hey, bakers, I made a zillion dollars off the back of my clients.

A (51:44)

Hey, Claus, do you want to buy this? I need to tell them I made a zillion dollars. So that muddled messaging, I'm not saying it's wrong. I'm saying it needs to be either intentional. But don't look over your shoulder. That's what they're doing. That must mean it works. They may not be even using Rudolph guiding their sleigh by night. Right. So we definitely need to make sure that the metric that leads us is the one that is shining light on what we want out of 2026. And if it shift the year, great. Thank you so much for listening to your metrics. They were telling you something. You sat down and you said, what are they telling us?

B (52:14)

Let me tell you my taste test challenge videos. My audience doesn't like them. You guys don't like them. You like the first video and you like the last one. I can't blame you. You just need to know, do the cookies stay fresh till day 12? It would behoove me to make one singular video. Me just eating 12 cookies in a row and then the last one saying, wow, they all tasted great. And I filmed it every day and put it in one video. That is the con. That's what you guys are telling me. So it. It would behoove me to take that instead of being like, I'm gonna do a longer taste test video of five months. No, that's not the answer.

A (52:48)

And you've gotta listen. You gotta listen to the metrics that matter and then make your decisions and be able to adjust quickly. You always say that big corporate conglomerates, there's too much rotate to turn around, turn the ship around, and then you're like, wow, we started on this direction. This direction, wasn't it? But.

B (53:03)

But it's.

A (53:03)

We're too far. We're too deep in this, and we can't change it. The benefits of really small companies, single solopreneur companies, is that you make all the decisions. You get a turnaround, you can pivot in a day. So, you know, we say one of the ways that a solopreneur makes themselves unpivotable is 10 year leases, 5 year leases. It makes it a little bit More difficult. But a lot of us, the large majority of us, you guys are working from your home, your cottage. You don't even require a license. You can move pivot. Move pivot. Right. Yeah. So something to keep in mind. Metrics track it. They said you can't. If you don't track it, you can't manage it. Something. There's some phrases that if. Without tracking, you're flying.

B (53:41)

1.

A (53:41)

And if you feel like, oh, I don't know. I don't know what my.

B (53:44)

You can't change what you don't track.

A (53:46)

Yes. I like that. Thank you. It was better than what I said.

B (53:49)

Yeah, it was.

A (53:50)

If you can't track it, you can't change it.

B (53:52)

Block it. No way.

A (53:53)

So, yeah, find out what the metric is. Find out the analytics that support that metric and let have it guide you in 2020.

B (54:02)

Yeah, let's go into 2026. Knowing a little bit more.

A (54:06)

We'll dive in a little bit more of the important stuff. I do want to warn people there's tracking too much.

B (54:11)

For sure. Heather me tracking too.

A (54:13)

Less.

B (54:13)

Heather tracking too much.

A (54:14)

Somewhere in between. I narrowed it down. Sometimes I'm like, this is a pointless thing to track. This big number is pointless for me to track. It has no relationship to anything we do. Corey going viral. And that's why I always think viral is so funny. Corey got these viral videos she posted. There was a screen print or something. It was silk screening. It was weird because you saw a white cookie and then she put something on it and then she went. And then it became an outline, and people were like, wow, you're a magician. It went viral. It made us zero dollars. Yeah. It bumped up this weird Facebook number by thousands. This number will swing by a hundred people a day. Yeah. I'm pointing at the smurl behind me. That smurl. That tracks that number. Yeah, it's. It. Unfortunately, it's too. I didn't pay for the longer smurl, so it's. That's hilarious. Yeah. It's 100. So what happens is that while they went viral, it must have been the right thing to post. I'm only going to post silkscreen printed cookies. I want to tell you. We made zero sales. No people joined the sugar cookie marketing group from that video. I know. So but you're like, but look at all the views. But what were the. What was the metric I needed? I'm not getting paid off of views. It's not the. It's not the metrics I would make. Yeah. And so that I'M gonna say, don't do what we did. I even say to Corey, shoot, I think it's going viral. Like, do I even. Sometimes I'll even like turn off comments. I know. So just something to keep in mind. I think you have to have a guiding light. I don't think if you don't have one, you're always gonna feel discombobulated. You're gonna feel directionless. Going in all the places and going nowhere forward.

B (55:44)

Posting everything. Nothing's working. I. I've shown up every day.

A (55:47)

What gives?

B (55:48)

And it's because you didn't have an ultimate goal to work towards.

A (55:53)

Yeah. Focus on that and then that will tell you where to take it.

B (55:56)

Yeah. My goal is to have a big pop up next December.

A (55:59)

Okay. So Corey needs to focus on what would support a big pop up. And she was like, well, I'd need a newsletter. Well, then I'd need a CRM. So now I'm like, well, what do you know you need to do?

B (56:07)

Yeah, you'll see. My content now instead of just sets is a lot of singular cookies to.

A (56:11)

Get people used to the fact Corey's even actually gone ahead of schedule. And she's like, while I was making cricut cookie Christmas cookies this year, what was I gonna say? I was making karma cookies. I have actually done my pre sale photos for next.

B (56:25)

Yes. Yeah. So I said, whatever I make this year, I'm gonna make sure that my colors are universal between them all. And I'm gonna take them now. So when I hit the market next year, end of November for my December pop up, I already got it ready.

A (56:40)

You got a December pop up, which we're renaming not Pop up because we talked about it with our sisters and they're like, I don't know what that means. What do they grab and go? Grab and go. Your. She could have two metrics you choose from. Sales of the day of or people who came by. Which one's gonna be more important to you?

B (56:59)

The sales.

A (57:00)

So you. If one person came and bought everything, you were successful. Yes. In marketing.

B (57:05)

At the end of the day, if I'm trying to make sales, what I will track and tell them this is even. I want to track what. What was sold the most of. Because what I know is if the singular cookie did not sell, but the pack of four minis sold your next year.

A (57:22)

Oh yeah.

B (57:22)

Now I'm gonna give them more of what they want.

A (57:24)

Right.

B (57:24)

And that you want to track those things so that you know.

A (57:27)

So Corey, if she wants a big December pop up she may consider actually doing a couple of pre Run, Grab and Goes, which we're renaming it so that she can see. Okay. It may not be the designs I'm gonna focus on, but it may be the pack. Did they like the DIY kits? They sell more of this.

B (57:41)

This.

A (57:41)

And then you're going to look at that. A cohesive hole. Okay. But in Christmas, we have grandmother, we have kids. Valentine's Day is couples. And you're going to have to kind of go from that.

B (57:49)

My thing went down.

A (57:52)

Scooches. We only got 15 minutes left. Do the texting questions. Cookie Design Lab. They're a sponsor. Actually think they're actually going to be at Eddie Con. We're not going to be there.

B (58:03)

I need the login, friend. I want to try it.

A (58:06)

It's my Gmail. Did she gave you a free year? Yeah.

B (58:09)

And you said it ran out. You had to renew. Give me the thing.

A (58:11)

You email Malia and you tell her you want it. We have three texts in. 1, 2, 3, 2, 2.

B (58:17)

Right there in the middle.

A (58:19)

Hi, twins. You are a winner. 716 area code. Where do you think you're from?

B (58:22)

71 6. That's Vermont.

A (58:25)

Vermont. Weston, New York. Not bad. You're close. Oh, good. Maybe please. People from Vermont. Up there. Up there and then.

B (58:32)

Yeah.

A (58:33)

Hi, twins. I have a story to share, and I'm curious how you would have handled this situation. An older woman showed up at my house, rang the do bell, was greeted by my husband. I made him answer because I wasn't wearing a bra because it was in my sweatpants and I was decorating cookies. She asked him if we were open, quote, unquote. I threw on an apron real fast. I ran to the door, so confused. And I asked her how she found me. She said that she had won one of my giveaways this summer, which would have been in the. Which would have been in my cookie cupboard on my porch for her to pick up. Okay, I can see where this is going. I've never met her in person. She just thought she'd stop by and see if I was open. She wanted Barbie cookies for Christmas. I told her I'm fully booked for 2025, which is true. And I sent her on her way, most likely with complete shock still over my face. My question is, who does that? I'm not a brick and mortar. I'm not even on Google business listings. I'm blocked. Long story. And, Corey, if it had happened to you, how would you have handled it? So to kind of break down what I think I read there she had done a giveaway and you had to come to the porch to pick it.

B (59:28)

Up and she gave away something that was already made.

A (59:31)

Sounds like this lady didn't understand the parameters there and never came to pick it up. Just thought I won a set of cookies. I'm going to stop by this bakery and see if they can whip them up real quick. I'm going to say this is heavily based on user error of the person, just misunderstanding a lot of different aspects. These are kind of hard to plan for, these types of miscommunications because very rarely are you going to ever experience this. So you don't necessarily need to add it to your terms and conditions. You don't want to give away and you don't show up within seven days. Like that's a worthless to most people who understand. I won this giveaway. What I would do for her.

B (60:07)

Well, here's what I would do in my copy throughout the year, what I've did. Everything's made to order. So baked to order, made to order. Just making sure that I include that into my copy, whether it's on my website, in my posting, in my emails that everything's made to order, that people know that at the end of the day, I don't just have things on hand and I have people that email me all the time. Do you have anything left over? Do you have anything that you haven't. You've just made for fun? Can I just buy anything off of you if you wanted to. If someone came to my door and she was like, I want Barbie cookies and I need them tomorrow, I'd be like, I am so sorry, but I.

A (60:39)

Would love to take your order in 2026.

B (60:41)

If she just wanted anything, she.

A (60:43)

I'm sorry, she doesn't want to pay. She won a giveaway. She thinks. I think the user.

B (60:47)

Let me tell you what I think. She won the giveaway in the summer and came and picked up the order on there. So she got her information from that giveaway. She didn't know that she doesn't just have things on hand.

A (60:56)

And I think you're right. So she. She's saying, I liked your cookie so much, I want to put some order on it.

B (61:01)

Just didn't know that you can't just show up. And there's something.

A (61:04)

She just thought that the lady's like, but I'm clearly not bakery, brick and mortar. So if the woman came in the middle of the summer, she would have known this is somebody's house.

B (61:13)

Absolutely, absolutely. But I know People, people ask. People are always asking me, do you have something on hand? At the end of the day, I'm posting funny cookies that were one offs that I made on excess of an order. So it looks like if you thought that I posted a funny cookie today, someone's like, how can I order this? I made the cookie two years ago. They're not knowing that this is just content cookies. At the end of the day they think you have cookies all the time you're posting I made this funny cookie regardless if you say you could buy it or not.

A (61:38)

Okay, I agree. You're right. She has come to the house before her thinking it was a bakery. Was. She knew it's someone's confusing by the name.

B (61:45)

Sure.

A (61:45)

Probably Bakery bakers you walk into. Absolutely. The lady doesn't have a global business listing, so the other woman had to have gotten the address from her director, which means she's gone to the house. Okay. What I would have done, I would have been like, oh, I'm so sorry for that confusion. Yeah, it takes about this long to make cookies. I'm fully booked, but let me get your email address. I'm going to send you to some other bakers that may have availability.

B (62:05)

Sure.

A (62:05)

That said, if it's something you want to plan ahead, I would love to bake for you in the future and I'm super sorry. Then I would out of the goodness of my heart only give her something I had pre baked if it was available.

B (62:17)

And I have.

A (62:18)

And it wouldn't have been a dozen. No.

B (62:20)

It would have just been a controversy to be.

A (62:22)

Yeah, I'm so sorry.

B (62:23)

That's all you could do.

A (62:24)

Here's a car cookie for you. And again, my. I don't think the baker.

B (62:27)

The baker is not wrong in this.

A (62:29)

Absolutely right.

B (62:30)

But that's why I'm saying in the copy throughout the year. And you know, this could just be, you know, she's an older generation. Maybe she just, she didn't read. She doesn't know. I would include the words made to order in more of my posts. So people don't think you have things that are on hand.

A (62:44)

Possibly. And I wouldn't do it in a threatening way. No. I would say people, hey, this is how long it takes to plan. I make a reel. I'm like, first we, you know, voiceover. First I sit down with a customer and we talk about their ideas and concepts. It takes about a week for me to get back to the customer with what I think we can do and I invoice the customer. Then, then I go to the kitchen. Oftentimes customers will place an order a month out because I've fully booked up closer to event days. So I like to encourage my customers, place your order now. We can still get to it then.

B (63:10)

What's so funny is my neighbor who I talk to often and I, I have made orders that I've never posted in my life and I'll just get a wild hair and just post them one random day.

A (63:20)

If it's spaghetti, those are gone.

B (63:23)

But my people who are not in the baking realm and do not run businesses, think that what you post is what you have just made. So my neighbor came out and she's like, did Laura order those? And I was like, what? And she's like, the thing you just.

A (63:36)

Posted today, I was like, oh, I'm so sorry.

B (63:37)

Mine's from like 52 years ago.

A (63:38)

I would be like this, you know, and so buy a gift for me.

B (63:41)

Yeah, we're. I'm telling you, like take pictures and like segment your, your set. So like when spaghetti day rolls around, you have a post to. Someone would see that and be like, oh, they made spaghetti cookies for spaghetti day. Let me order them. So at the end of the day we have to train our audience by.

A (63:55)

More information figure Jerry has weighed in. You're completely innocent. Death to the other lady. Just kidding. Explanation to the other lady. Yeah, people will find a way to be confused. Don't punish your other clients for that. Just handle it in a case by case.

B (64:09)

It's so random.

A (64:09)

I wouldn't even need to add it.

B (64:11)

To my terms of service.

A (64:11)

If you're wonder if you want validation, I think you handled it right.

B (64:14)

Oh, you handled it. And if you had nothing to give her, you had nothing to give her. You can't turn, you know, can't squeeze blood out of a turn up. Either had cookies that you didn't.

A (64:21)

You're either wearing a bra or you weren't. We gotta hurry up here. I love hearing Cory's guesses as to where this is from. A281. And I have.

B (64:29)

Hold on that. A281. Texas, you think?

A (64:36)

Houston.

B (64:37)

I was correct.

A (64:38)

Houston, Texas.

B (64:40)

You're welcome. You're welcome.

A (64:42)

I love hearing Corey's guesses as to where they're coming from each week. Looking on averages, I'm surprised Texas doesn't get it more often. Seeing about 80%. Just a rough estimate seem to be from there. Or maybe that's here. It's funny, Texas has some of the best cottage food logs because you have a lady there that's like ambitious in doing it because of that. And you're just in their amount of size of Texas.

B (65:03)

There's a ton of bakeries.

A (65:04)

Everything's bigger in Texas, including cookies. Yeah. But it's so funny. I think the restrictive laws are actually in New York City and New Jersey I think has really heavy Maryland now.

B (65:14)

You can't have like pre bagged icing anymore.

A (65:16)

I think that. I think it comes from the laws. The bakers follow the laws. If it's easy to enter. Oh yeah, for sure. But I'm never not. I'm always surprised. They did. Didn't they do a cookie con in Texas? But the Florida one still puts more out. It gets more attraction. I think it's because Disney's right there.

B (65:32)

I think so.

A (65:32)

Very interesting. So funny that. Yes, that was Texas last one.

B (65:35)

Oh no.

A (65:35)

This is the same text twice. I love it.

B (65:37)

Love it.

A (65:38)

So our podcast sponsors tell me we.

B (65:41)

Have Daisy makes and that's molds that you can interest.

A (65:43)

Keep having. Move along.

B (65:45)

Okay, help me then. Come on and help me.

A (65:47)

Remember Baking Me Crazy.

B (65:48)

Yes. Yeah.

A (65:49)

Baking Me Crazy Eddie, the edible food printer.

B (65:51)

Yes. Go on. Just go in front of you. I have no.

A (65:56)

And also I don't like your attitude. Oh, they taking my sweet scrolling down to the bottom.

B (66:00)

That's wild.

A (66:01)

If you go to the website and you can scroll through it, a lot of the resources that we talk about here are easily accessible from sugarcookiemarketing.com yes. Cookie design lab. We already talked about Baking Me Crazy Royal Batch Code Twins. All these discount codes are listed. Also you can find links to find the spreadsheet of other non podcast sponsors who have given you guys discount codes just for being in the show. Royal Batch marketing.

B (66:22)

Yeah.

A (66:22)

Yep, I just said that.

B (66:23)

Thank you.

A (66:24)

Bosch and Nutrima is running a sale. If you use code sugar cookies at checkout, you save 20 bucks. It pays 20 bucks. So that ends on January 1st. I know a lot of people are thinking, is it. You always have that baking rush where you're like maybe I could have used the bigger machine. Might want to consider it. They have an artiste. But Corey said if you're trying to.

B (66:41)

Do big dough days, if you have a very dry dough, you're not going.

A (66:44)

To be as happy fair. And it's a motor difference because the Artisa is almost half the price of the Bosch universal. Plus in white you can hear.

B (66:52)

You can hear the. The universal is like we will push through hard butter.

A (66:55)

Corey said she's like coaching the artistia.

B (66:57)

I'm like, oh, you got it.

A (66:58)

Got it. Come on, Be like your big brother. Yeah. So that takes us through today's podcast. I know we're going to retool the podcast starting next week, but I have to finish this because this fish is free if I get there on time. Good morning.

B (67:09)

Do you have a twin tress? We got a little crazy.

A (67:12)

I just want to talk about the tufting class.

B (67:13)

Okay, go ahead.

A (67:14)

We did go, and Corey fell on her own sword. Do you know the first person? So it was a little more hands on than I thought. Yeah, it was hands on because we were the only three people there.

B (67:22)

And. Which is great.

A (67:23)

It was great.

B (67:23)

I couldn't have.

A (67:24)

So when you got there, they said you're billed by the canvas size you choose, not how much yarn you use. And they had a wall of yarn. So the interesting part, it kind of parallels cookies, because I was asking Corey. You needed a projector, you needed a stand. You project it onto this canvas, then you trace it with a Sharpie. Yeah. And then you take that canvas, you fasten it.

B (67:42)

Unfortunately, like we say with cookies, you go from the inside out. This was just up and down. Right.

A (67:46)

You could only actually go up. You can even go down. It seemed like a limitation of the tufting gun, but it was the tufting gun that most people have. So you load the yarn into it just like you thread a needle. But everything is like times 15 big. Right. So, like instead of just this tiny thing, it's this mat. The tufting gun is the size of probably your pinky finger. The tufting gun needle. Yeah. And then you fed it into there, and then every time it punched a hole through the canvas, it actually cut its own yarn. Yeah.

B (68:09)

It was crazy.

A (68:09)

Yeah. And you had to keep an eye out that your yarn wasn't too taunt because it would pull back out of the tufting gun. Nothing was really while. I'm sure.

B (68:15)

And most people got into cookie decorating because the videos were nice. And you're like, that looks like something I could do. I thought I would be good at the tufting things because the videos make them look easy. That is someone who knows what they're doing. Because you can tuft too close to a prior tuft, and then you got a double tuft.

A (68:32)

Yeah. So it was pretty interesting. We were probably there for what, an hour and a half, maybe even start to finish. Yeah. So we had projected it, we traced it, and we all did, like a small square. I almost want to say it was about less than 12 inches, made 10 by 10 and you could use as much yarn as you wanted.

B (68:46)

The yarn.

A (68:46)

And it created a massive mess of yarn.

B (68:48)

Oh. Because it cuts it every time. So there was. And then you pull out your little accidents.

A (68:52)

There was a ton of yarn on the floor. It was very easy to make a mistake and pull it back out. It was the equivalent of scraping off your ice.

B (68:58)

Yeah, that's exactly.

A (68:59)

But you could do it by threads. You could just say, so I had made a watermelon, I had seeds. She was like, what you're going to do is make the whole watermelon red. Then you're going to pick out where you want to put your seeds.

B (69:06)

What's so funny is our minus Ashley's. Me and Heather's looked really like what we wanted it to. And. And if I. You have a beginner's high because you're like, whoa, my flower looks like a flower. But I'm sure of someone who has been in the tufting world for a while. Been like, it's a time.

A (69:22)

It's a time.

B (69:23)

But just like with cookies, like, you.

A (69:24)

Could be like, wow, I made a heart.

B (69:27)

And you look back.

A (69:27)

And I said, cory, I. How bad I am, knowing one day I'll be amazing at this. And then they actually did the trimming for us, which actually is a harder part. So you put glue on the back and glue a canvas to create this rug texture. We didn't do that. And then they were going to trim it for us, which we didn't do in person. So I'll pick the up in two weeks. I thought it was fun. I thought it was great. What's your twin?

B (69:47)

That's my twin. Let us hear twin. Goodbye, my friends.

A (69:51)

We'll see you later. Merry Christmas. Let's track it in 2020.