259. Baking it Down - Posting Every Day

Summary

Podcast Summary: Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪

Episode 259: Baking it Down – Posting Every Day
Date: May 5, 2026
Hosts: Heather & Corrie Miracle

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on the fast-evolving world of content creation for bakers, zooming in on the strategic art of “posting every day.” Heather and Corrie address the challenges and opportunities presented by today’s saturated social media landscape, heavily influenced by the rise of AI-generated content. They share practical strategies for building genuine engagement, connecting personally with your audience, and converting followers into customers—all while keeping it real and fun for bakers juggling flour and Facebook.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Value of Community & Upcoming Events

[01:31–05:01]

• Announcements: Main Street May cookie collab, 3D Printing Bootcamp, and a new Cherry Cookie Class Kit ("beginnermediate" level).
• Heather's favorite kit of the year: St. Patrick’s Day and carrot/cookie themed Easter kit.

2. Main Theme: The Goal is to Be Valuable, Not Viral

[05:01–05:32]

• Quote: “The goal is not to go viral. The goal is to be valuable.” — Joe Pulizzi
• The week's topic: Posting consistently with a diversified content strategy.

3. Why Consistent & Quality Posting Matters

[05:32–10:32]

• Heather & Corrie reflect on 10 years in marketing: What worked then won’t work now.
• AI has accelerated the volume of content online, making unique, value-driven content the new “king.”
• Useful history: TikTok was once Musical.ly, trends change; staying adaptable is vital.
• “If it takes less time to create than to read, it’s AI slop.” — Heather referencing a TikTok insight [09:25]
• Wikipedia has banned AI-generated content due to a lack of authenticity; end-users can sense when content is AI-generated.

4. Standing Out in an AI-Dominated World

[10:32–12:42]

• The new challenge: Differentiating yourself from ‘AI slop’ by showcasing genuine, human experiences, and personality.
• Real-life example: Corrie’s son uses AI for homework—lack of authentic voice is obvious.

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Posting Strategies: Three Key Buckets

A. Content That Creates Engagement (Polls & Opinions)

[12:42–16:47]

• AI tends to create wordy, boring “word salad” posts; people connect more with short, personal, opinion-based questions.
  • Example: “Which Nerf set would you pick for your birthday?” Simple, engaging, and to the point.
• Engagement isn't just likes & comments; it's watch time, caption clicks, video replays—signals algorithms use to push content.

Notable Quote:

“A question followed by word salad—what’s the point? ... Ask simple, opinion-based questions, even if it’s mundane.” — Corrie [13:58]

• Drama Content: While more engaging (quitting, customer drama), it has an expiration date.
  • Example: “Hanging up the old apron” posts see far more engagement but should not be overused.
• Vulnerability works: Corrie’s personal cancer story was her best-performing post.

Notable Quote:

“Drama posts win, but if you keep crying wolf, people realize it's just a publicity stunt.” — Heather [20:52]

B. Content That Connects (Show Your Human Side)

[23:38–30:21]

• Connect by sharing personal stories, hobbies, or even daily life.
  • Example: Corrie posting a non-baking movie review; followers engage because they see the person, not just the cookies.
• Community involvement: Using local collaborations (Main Street May) and group postings to bridge the gap between business and audience.
  • “People buy cookies maybe once or twice per year. How can they think of me between those two times?” — Heather [25:36]
• Humanizing your brand builds trust and loyalty:
  • Embrace relatable struggles (HOA violations, parenting moments).
  • Genuine, non-sales posts matter as much as sales ones in groups.

Notable Quote:

“How can I ask someone to like, know, and trust me—if they never get to know me?” — Corrie [23:59]

C. Content That Converts (But Don’t Overdo It)

[36:44–41:35]

• The 80/20 rule: 80% engaging/resourceful content, 20% sales.
  • Example: Use national holidays as an “excuse” to post cookie photos, subtly reminding your audience of your skills.
• When fully booked, don’t “turn off the lights”—keep posting to build a pipeline of future customers.
• Introverted bakers: You still must show some of yourself; algorithms now “require” it for true reach.

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The Authenticity Pushback Against AI

[41:35–45:17]

• AI makes writing captions easier, but it flattens everyone’s content into sameness.
• Meta’s detection and tagging of AI posts may decrease their performance.
• “Misspellings and run-on sentences might become authenticity markers!” — Heather [41:35]
• Real-life authenticity beats AI perfection:
  • Example: A local bagel shop “breaks all the rules”—posting raw and honest content, her audience loves it.

Notable Quote:

“Her audience did not like her AI-generated post… They wanted chaos, not curated emoji listicles.” — Heather [43:31]

• Even big brands are buying local authenticity (Coach’s local baker collab story).

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Actionable Takeaways

1. Inject Humanity in Content

[44:39–46:26]

• Use AI as a helper, but always add your personal touch.
• Differentiate: If the trend is “big” and corporate, go “small” and personal.

2. Try Diversified Content Types

• Connect (stories, life updates)
• Engage (polls, drama, opinions)
• Convert (soft and hard sales pitches)

3. Don’t Fear the Camera

• Film at local spots; audience loves seeing your face and hearing your honest takes.
• Showcase “behind the scenes,” even mundane chores, to deepen bonds.

4. Community Is Key

• Facebook groups are in a resurgence—post in them, not just on pages.
• Non-sales posts in community groups build priceless trust (“post about your dinner, local finds, or even an HOA woe”).
• “If you can’t say it with your whole chest, maybe it wasn’t worth saying at all.” — Heather (re: anonymous posting) [66:29]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• “The goal is not to go viral. The goal is to be valuable.” — Joe Pulizzi [05:01]
• “If it takes less time to create than to read, it’s AI slop.” — Heather [09:25]
• “A question followed by word salad—what’s the point?” — Corrie [13:58]
• “Drama posts win, but if you keep crying wolf, people realize it's just a publicity stunt.” — Heather [20:52]
• “How can I ask someone to like, know, and trust me—if they never get to know me?” — Corrie [23:59]
• “Her audience did not like her AI-generated post… They wanted chaos, not curated emoji listicles.” — Heather [43:31]
• “If you can’t say it with your whole chest, maybe it wasn’t worth saying at all.” — Heather [66:29]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:04–05:01: Introductions, community happenings, upcoming events & class kits.
• 05:01–10:32: The evolving social media landscape: AI, content volume, and value > virality.
• 12:42–16:47: Three content buckets: engagement, connection, conversion.
• 20:13–23:14: The risks and rewards of drama/vulnerability in posts.
• 23:38–30:21: Building real connections; personal stories and community trust.
• 36:44–41:35: The 80/20 content rule; gentle selling, staying visible, AI limitations.
• 41:35–45:17: Pushback against AI perfection; authentic, raw content that resonates.
• 54:28–55:07: Do’s and don’ts of humanizing content (show your life, not your dog on the dough!).
• 60:17–61:19: Challenges convert to real engagement & orders in community groups.

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Overall Tone & Style

Upbeat, humorous, and approachable—Heather and Corrie speak directly to the cottage bakery crowd, blending solid marketing advice with sisterly banter and plenty of memorable asides. The energy is always inclusive (“no cursing!”), designed for busy bakers multitasking in the kitchen.

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Useful Links & Recommendations from the Episode

• SugarCookieMarketing.com – Get access to discussed resources, events, and classes.
• The Cookie College – Ongoing digital education membership for bakers.
• Bootcamps: 3D printing, video content, and more—short, focused, beginner-friendly.
• Community Collabs: Main Street May, Meet the Baker (June 19), and ongoing Facebook group challenges.

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Closing Takeaways

• The market is flooded with content—especially AI slop—so now, more than ever, human connection is the edge.
• Diversify your posts: Engage, connect, then convert.
• Show up, be authentic, and let your personality (quirks, pets, grammar errors and all!) shine through—your future customers want to know YOU, not “another baker.”
• Determine your own “posting every day” rhythm, and focus on quality over sheer quantity.

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For more resources, join the Facebook group “Sugar Cookie Marketing” or visit sugarcookiemarketing.com.

Transcript

[Corey]

Foreign.

[Heather]

It is Tuesday yet again. We find ourselves yet again on a Tuesday. The first Tuesday of May.

[Corey]

I cannot believe it is May. But would it be a May Tuesday if the podcast wasn't on it?

[Heather]

It's not. Unless there's a pod, there's no Tuesday podcast. Are married together.

[Corey]

But welcome to the baking it down with Sugar cookie marketing podcast. We are actually a spin off on a group that's Facebook. The reason why we're a spin off and we're not just on the Facebook

[Heather]

is because bakers like and what in the boomer did you just say? We're not on the.

[Corey]

We're on the Book of Faces. I love when they say that we're not on the book of Faces because bakers like to bake and sometimes they can't be sitting in front of screen. Regardless if we're always on our phones, sometimes we have to be elbow deep in butter and flour. So this is a great way for you to listen to two ways to grow your business. So you feel just a tinge bit more on the know of, you know, what trends are coming, how to sell your pre sales, what's a hot topic in the baking world. And that's kind of what we bring

[Heather]

to your little years every week. I love it. I'll take two used cars, please, and one watch.

[Corey]

No, I tried to do it less salesy. I tried to do more conversational life.

[Heather]

If you want to buy a watch,

[Corey]

I got one of those for you too. Heather's got a quote for us if you would like to give that.

[Heather]

Yeah, a couple of things. If you want to get most of the access to the content we talk about in the podcast, go to the website sugarcookiemarketing.com and what's coming is the Main street may collab at the end. The second to last Friday in May, we got 40 people signed up and I think that's a solid number. 40 people are going to impact their local community by cookifying a Main street business. Now this is a really cool way to possibly get into corporate orders, but it's definitely a great way to get engagement from your local audience. We have our 3D printing boot camp on Thursday. Today's Tuesday, so it's in two days. It is all teed up and ready to go. I just have to schedule out some posts in the Facebook group that's included in that boot camp and then we are letting you all in. And we have dropped the cherry cookie class kit. Now this was Corey's brainchild and it came out really really cute.

[Corey]

It's super trendy right now. Cherries and I mean anything fruit. You got my heart. So this was a cherry themed and it's like, it's intermediate but it's beginner friendly. Intermediate. So you're not like doing like, you know.

[Heather]

I say it's beginner media. Love that we'll be stealing.

[Corey]

Come up with it.

[Heather]

But you can copyright it by me.

[Corey]

But it's very cute. It's cherries and bows. Bows and cherries. Cherries and bows.

[Heather]

That's the interesting thing. The cookie class kits have been doing it since 2023. That's 12 kits a year. And then we've added in some extra kits on top of that. So that's a lot of kits. But typically you follow the major holidays. This year we took a deviation to add in kids. You could teach kind of whenever. Which is this cherry one which is very feminine. We got pinks. We got a lot of reds. We got white.

[Corey]

The flower one we did last one. You could teach that any old time.

[Heather]

Yeah. So it's all really come together now.

[Corey]

You're working for you. What has been your favorite so far this year?

[Heather]

Let me pull them up. I really.

[Corey]

We have a cherry one that just came out. We did the flowers one last month. We did a Valentine's Day one which was super Valentine's day.

[Heather]

Oh, you did an Easter one. I'm sorry, the Easter one. And I know it's like Easter specific. It was exceptionally cute.

[Corey]

It was adorable.

[Heather]

And then. Oh, March was cute. Irish icing. And then February did love letters and January snow and sugar. Which was a set of like a Christmas sweater. It's not a Christmas tree. It is a tree. Snow laden tree. Snow Lane. Corey said stop calling a Christmas tree. It's not a Christmas. I'm gonna say of these. I thought that I never have celebrated. One time I accidentally went to a bar when I was like 22 on St. Patrick's Day. Yeah, that one was stupid cute. But because I don't actually. It's so cute. It's a tie between St Patrick's Day and I'm gonna say carrots and cookies. And I think he was super cute. He had a lot of skills. That was actually an intermediate class.

[Corey]

That. That was a lot. There was a ton of steps in that one. But he turned out super cute because of the steps. The cherry one I think is just cute because, you know, the cherries are adorable. Anything circular and red.

[Heather]

The cherries is so trendy. I think I almost wish we were teaching this one. In July, we're doing frosted fruits.

[Corey]

But we are doing frosted fruits because it's more beginner friendly and I don't have to make as much icing bags. So we will be sticking with the frosted fruits.

[Heather]

Yes. And that was another deviation we took in 2026 to allow us to have more of a wide open design. We have incorporated more icing colors and icing types. The people asked and we answered. Great. I just made the PowerPoint.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

The quote is the goal is not to go viral. The goal is to be valuable by Joe Pulizzi. And that's about the topic. So the topic today is posting consistently with a diversified strategy. A lot of the things we talk about on the podcast are different types of strategies. Strategies. You can adopt a strategy for a short time. You can have multiple strategies running. They're just different ways to approach how you market. And in this specific one, this is a content generation strategy. Yes.

[Corey]

Me and Heather have been in the social media creation world websites for almost 10 full years.

[Heather]

I've been doing it since I was

[Corey]

23 together, fully focused on doing it for our clients. The crazy thing is what worked 10 years ago will not work today. And I hate it. And I love it at the same time, I hate it because we have to constantly be learning new things and that's hard to do because we're like we have so many things we're already doing. But I love it because if you're newer, if you took a big break, if you're coming back, if you're just starting out, it gives you the opportunity to break forth and you don't have to sit in line because someone started their bakery 10 years before you.

[Heather]

The best example of it is that TikTok used to be called musically. Musically. I think it was musically.

[Corey]

That was very boomer of you musically, the musical.

[Heather]

Anyways, you could go viral by dancing. It was a dancing app. Dancing on video and now TikTok. Today you try to dance and unless you trip and fall, you're not going to go viral with the dancing video. No.

[Corey]

If anything it's more cringe now and now it's more relatable content either how to's are. You know, I'm my daily. My dating life sucks. Let me tell you about the date on I went on last night. You know, behind the scenes.

[Heather]

I'll let you know. I've watched every single one of those

[Corey]

I know are so good. The thing is we have always said con. You've heard it, we've said it on the podcast, many times content is king. The problem with that statement now is AI is so out there, ready and easily accessible that content is now being produced at a higher rate than even it was before. Five years ago, not every business was on social media. Today, if a business isn't on social media, we think that either they close down or something's way wrong with it. So every business is actually, actually on social media now. Creating content. Then you have people, personal, personal pages creating content. You have weird random accounts like I follow all the Christmas accounts creating content. Now there's so much content on the

[Heather]

Internet, content is no longer considered king. When we had a chronological feed and not every business had you, Corey and I started our company, but we used to find people without websites by looking up their Google business profiles.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Where people could add them themselves. The end user would add the business and there would be no website. Now it' very rare for me to find a business with no website.

[Corey]

And what was crazy is we had, we had worked with businesses that had no social media accounts, making their accounts. Oh, we look like we looked like God on high, like marketing superstar.

[Heather]

It was back when you used to have to use their logins, back when the page decorated was the only idea.

[Corey]

Like Rick H Vac and his, his password was like, I left my dog 2, 3, 4.

[Heather]

Something wasn't good. Now with Corey, like Cory said, like, to generate a piece of content posted to social media is. Is you can automate it. At this point, you don't even have to be involved in it because content is now everywhere. Content is no longer king. It is quality content based in a strategy that stands out in this very, very crowded arena.

[Corey]

Very crowded. So even just before a couple months ago, quality content was easier to attain because people would be like, oh, I have to log on to Canva and make this flyer that. That was a few steps in between. The day got away from them, so they were never able to make the content. Now you're plugging just a little bit of information to AI and it's just creating a flyer in.002 seconds and you're able to post it. There's so much more content going up just because of the ease of making content. But.

[Heather]

And that includes copy as well. So that does, that does.

[Corey]

So you actually happened on a guy that talked about AI slope.

[Heather]

Yeah, it was an interesting take. It was a guy on TikTok and he said, if it takes less time for you to create the content than it does to imbibe the content, you've created AI Slop. Meaning I can go to AI, say, make a flyer, make a caption. I can post it. To read that entire caption in that flyer takes longer than it took to generate it. That's AI slop. And I thought that was an interesting take because they said it's offensive to the end user because they're like, I know you didn't write this. The perception of AI generated content is there. And I don't know if we can bottle it up and label it yet, but you can start to feel in it. And there Corey and I were talking about Wikipedia published Wikipedia officially banned AI generated content. You can't. You can't put AI generated content on Wikipedia. But in their AI generated content wiki, you can read how your people are figuring out that this is AI generated. And it's that do, do, do. It's like the rhythm, the. The cadence of how it likes to do comparisons. It likes the EM dash, it likes all these things. But you can start to feel that people are saying something about this authentically. You authentic. Here's the thing.

[Corey]

Me and Heather run a local group and it's so funny, it's on a post approval because I hate drama that much that I'm willing to read every post that goes up. So this lady had posted she was looking for a shared office space. Not even something you'd probably need to run through AI, but was so funny. What she had copied and pasted to post into the group was like, hey, I can make this sound a little bit more jovial, but this should pass your community group guidelines and rules and not get pinned for disobeying the rules

[Heather]

she had pasted into the copy where she was asking for the shared office space. So now I'm. This isn't an anti AI podcast. This is a how to differentiate yourself in the world of AI written captions and sales post and posters. Because I think you're going to have to to. I was telling Corey, gone are the days where we used to dog on people who said, thanks, Tim, for your first birthday. Like, we're like, that's not enough content. You need to have a sales. You need to have kind of a structure, follow a framework. Now we need to say we're going to dog on the AI generated sales post, which has just replaced the Happy birthday Tim with this. The cookies understood the assignment. Happy to have a happy birthday to Tim. And on your birthdays or on your special days, I am here to help. Hashtag random hashtags that make no sense.

[Corey]

Yeah. So I was telling My son, who I can tell is using some AI software on his homework. I said, not only do you not use these words in real life. I said, there's no, there's no humanity in there. I said, there's not one run on sentence. There's not a grammatical error. Like, my job was. It was like, parents, please read over this and see if there's any grammar errors. I'm like, creating grammar errors because I'm that bad at grammar. I'm like, I think you should put a comma here. No, the comma did not belong. But I'm telling you, either love or hate a comma. You know, either pry it up from my cold, dead hands or I never

[Heather]

want to see it again a day. So now they're like, why are you allergic to this?

[Corey]

This doesn't feel like it was written by you because it feels so written by someone who isn't you. Because I know who Archer is, and Archer isn't saying, you know, derived. I don't think I've heard the kid said derived from his entire being to the 16 years.

[Heather]

The subtle nuance is how much of you have you have you omitted from this? And you might say, well, I don't know how to incorporate myself here. And that's what these strategies kind of help us bridge the gap. And Corey's got three interesting strategies. I know if you're in the cookie college, he had talked about them on Monday. But content that creates engagement. Now, AI is not going to be able to necessarily help you with that because you're going to have to know your audience. So Corey has been in 2026 testing these types of posts. Somebody had asked Emre had asked, what you're posting every day, what is the goal? And Corey's like, my goal are these three things. So kind of walk us through what you mean when you say content that creates engagement. And you have in parentheses, polls and opinions. Yeah.

[Corey]

So content that creates engagement. What AI is great at doing is it will ask a question, but it's so sandwiched in so many word fluff that no one takes the time to read it. So it'd be like, I really loved creating these cookies that stood the assignment. Would you create these cookies that understood the assignment? Anyways, we're creating more cookies that understand the assignment. No one's reading the first part to even get to the second part. But AI is doing its job. It's. You said, ask, give me engagement in this post. I'm sure that I'm going to ask a question.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

And it's asking the question. The problem is is because there's no you in there, people aren't taking the time to read it because it's a word salad. A question followed by word salad. What's the point? So what I'm saying you have to have tough skin to ask people's opinions because if you get ruffled easily, it's going to be hard. But say you did two Nerf gun sets. One Nerf gun you did in a certain color scheme. The customer, the next customer wanted it. Put those side by side and says nerf or nothing. Which one would you choose?

[Heather]

Okay.

[Corey]

Short, sweet, to the point. There's not one sales in there. But what I'm doing is I'm asking you and what people say opinions are like buttholes. Everyone's got one, you know. Which one would you choose for your Nerf birthday? We. We don't care what the answer is.

[Heather]

We.

[Corey]

We've baked both. We wouldn't paid for both. Our goal is to get in front of the algorithm. So asking a question that just is opinion based is a great way to get there. The other day I did a review on a movie that I watched.

[Heather]

I read that. I read that.

[Corey]

I did not like to take this selfie. I didn't want to take a selfie in the movie theater. In the movie theater. Has nothing to do with baking. But what my caption was. Here's what a baker did on her day off. I took my son to the movies. Here's my write up of this random movie project. Hail Mary. It is a way to connect with my audience outside of just the cookie post in the AI caption. You know the grammatical error there. My opinion I liked the movie. I could say I hated the movie. It's opinion based. But it's its personality and it's my Persona is in there. So creating content that creates engagement is a way to trick the algorithms. You know, if we're just always sell, sell, sell. There's no engagement people scroll, scroll, scroll. So we have to trick the algos in some way. Opinions, polls, asking where are you taking your mom for mother's Day? Asking hey, does anyone know a good burger joint? I'm looking for something under $15. Guys. Does anyone know any summer camps? You're like but this has nothing to do with baking. I we can't just sell because that's also boring. So we have to create a conversation and creating engagement so we can trick the algos and we can get in front and we can reach more people.

[Heather]

Putting the face to A name is kind of what we can make that in a buzzword. I've seen a prevalence of AI tagged content and now it almost seems like. So if you post to Facebook and it senses or detects that there's an AI, whether it be the. The subtle watermark in the Gemini generated stuff or somehow it almost seems like it's able to read it in the text now. So I don't know what that means. It tags it AI. It has something.

[Corey]

The next word it says AI info. And then when you click it, it says, we suspect that something in this post is generated by AI.

[Heather]

So that means the AI of Meta is tagging this post as AI generated. It's warning the end users and I would like to think it could have the potential to depreciate the content because it senses what the end user wants and what it doesn't. So corning through that noise by creating content, that's so not what you'd expect from a sales page, a business page that I can get in front of my audience. Everyone's competing for this audience's eyeballs. But when everyone's generating AI and Corey's like, I'm doing a movie review, possibly I can get there without having to do paid ads. Yes.

[Corey]

Could I plug into AI? Give me a write up for Project Hail Mary.

[Heather]

A thousand percent.

[Corey]

It's probably going to do it way better than ever. I could.

[Heather]

Project Hell Mary is the name of the movie they went to see. Yes.

[Corey]

And Ryan, I want to say Ryan Gosling's in there. He looks great for. I think he's our age. And the guy looks like he has an age today. Yeah. Maybe a little older.

[Heather]

I don't know.

[Corey]

He looked fantastic. I'd love to know his skin regimen. The thing is, I could type that into AI. AI is going to spit out the best movie review that you would probably need to read to want to go to that movie. But then you're like, like, I still don't trust it. If I'm like, hey guys, I don't like sci fi, but I was actually didn't want to go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie because I didn't want to miss the next part. You're going to be more apt because I'm a human being and I'm telling you a true human experience on that. So you're going to be more apt to read through it. That's a big goal, spending time with it. We think of engagement as only likes, comments and shares. Engagement is so much more than that it's tracking. If you watch the video, it's tracking the lurkers on your page that never do anything. But they expand the caption, they expand the comments, they click through the photos, they watch the video, they replay the video. That's what it's tracking. And that is a way that you're signaling to the algorithms. This content's kind of good. People are sticking around for this content. Let's put it in more feeds. It's keeping people on the platform.

[Heather]

It's keeping people on the platform so now we can serve them the ads we got paid for. So remember, meta service is always trying to keep people on the platform by having an experience that they want. I don't want to call it an enjoyable experience because some people like having a miserable experience. It's going to try to reward that miserable experience with misery and enjoyable experience with enjoyment. That said, so we can keep you there long enough to give you that advertisement for Ray Ban meta glasses.

[Corey]

Yeah. Yeah. Me and Heather were talking before while we were discussing this podcast topic. A big engagement bucket that some people love to pull from is the drama bucket. Unfortunately, with cookies, they're not that dramatic. If we think about cookies in general, they're slightly boring. We're doing the same Baby in Bloom set for the 52nd time. So there's not much drama to pull from. You do see that you can pull into not necessarily drama, but you can be like, the hook. I can't believe this client would ask for this set. Yeah. And then proceed to be like, because I love Diet Coke so much. And this was a Diet Coke set. Super trendy right now. Those are hooks that you can bring people in. We don't want to be like, I hate my customers and here's why. If you're gonna buy from me and question my prices, how dare you. That will pop off, I promise you. Because it's drama. Dramatic. The problem is you can't pull from that every day because we're like, oh, here Corey goes again. Another drama post.

[Heather]

There's a. Sometimes when we think of dramatic, we think of, like, anger and yelling. There's also the drama of quitting, which is a sad tear, hanging up the old apron and calling it quits. Guys, that is a type of drama because it invokes an emotion. So any.

[Corey]

Anytime I see a baker post hanging up the old apron, I actually go look at the prior post before it and it will have just an average number of likes. Let's say it'll have 11 likes, maybe two comments. The hanging Up. The apron post will always do, like, phenomenal numbers. It'll have like 82 likes, 27 comments in, you know, shares, which is crazy because that's not what their typical page post performs.

[Heather]

Like, what kind of happens in the brains of somebody who's, like, trying to crack the code of engagement is like, wow, that sad post did really well. I'm going to constantly hit up the sad content bucket, but how many times can you cry wolf and quit before people realize, oh, this is just a publicity stunt of sorts.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

It's a ticking time bomb. It's got an expiration date on it.

[Heather]

Right. Because your audience will then feel duped. It's interesting. In our area, apparently there's a lady named Rosa who works for Mama Lucias in a mall I used to go to to get our uniforms when we were 12. I. I would have never known she was there. However, they made a post and they said, mama Rosa from Mama Lucia. She's worked here for 39 years. She has to retire. So this will be our last week in business. She has health issues. The entirety of Northern Virginia has flocked that mall to buy the food. It's actually become a problem because people were getting upset they weren't getting the food. But this tiny shop who's winding down, hit the content bucket of street. Got an old lady, she's worked her whole life here, and now she needs money for medicine. Like it. It evoked in a lot of people an emotional response. But they can't put Rosa back in to do that again.

[Corey]

Take her back out.

[Heather]

Right. We can't keep having this because it. But you see that drama, Those drama type posts do perform better than the average post. It's the reason why we hate rubberneckers. But when it's our turn to drive past a car accident, my head is on a swivel like you. I. The thought of even not looking at the car accident would drive me up the orange. Yeah. And.

[Corey]

And the reason why people were like, well, I'm not. I'm just closing up the apron. I don't know why people are so. It's relatable content. Like there's a struggle somewhere in there. I'm gonna expand it to see if your struggle is the same as my struggle. Because if we're struggling the same, I feel one sympathy towards you and empathy towards you. If it's something I can't relate to, I'm like, ah, another baker bit the dust. That content performs really well. It's so hard to always it. And it's this psychological. You got a reward for being dramatic. So it makes sense. Let me keep being dramatic. But I promise you, your audience groweth tired because not everything is a level 5 alarm when it comes to.

[Heather]

Corey had a great example last year. She had a cancer diagnosis and she was like, I don't necessarily want to post about my private life. And I'm like, well, that's not fair to people who really want to encourage you about your private life. So she ended up posting about it and it performed really well.

[Corey]

Well, it was the best post of the year.

[Heather]

It was vulnerability. It was, you know, empathetic. It was sympathetic. It was all the emotions. But now Corey can't be like, I got cancer again. Like, we can't keep hitting the content bucket without exhausting our audience. But you can see that the vulnerability of letting people in is closer to that. So Corey's review of the movie is. Yes. Is it kind of peeling back the onion layers of sales and being like, and here's a person who's making the sales. Yes.

[Corey]

And that. That is my next one, which is content that connects. Connecting to your audience is huge in this onslaught of so much content that's being created. The AI flyer, which has been a hot topic in local groups that I've seen, they're like, if I see this, I scroll right on by. You know, that is not connecting with your audience. You're checking a box, you're getting a post up, your page has been posted to, but there is no connection. You're not even in the yourself. AI did the heavy lifting there. I do not like to share my personal life anywhere. I'm a very private person. But what I have said, how can I ask someone to like know and trust me, which equals sales if they never get to know me? That's very hard to do. That's asking a lot of my audience. So I, for the longest time was just another cookie baker. You didn't know Corey. You just know mixing bowl made cookies. That's great because that's what I am, the business that makes it. But why buy from Mixy Bow? Why not buy from the lady down the street? What's in it? And it's that connection aspect. So you also need content that connects. Whether you're connecting your audience with your other audience. That's great. You're creating a community. Very hard to do. By the way. SCM is a community. We've had inside jokes. Greg Gericle. We have had beads. You know, that was huge.

[Heather]

Prop fridge ants.

[Corey]

Yeah, Prop fridge baked ants. That community aspect is huge because you can see now in SEM, people like Heather will be like, tag a baker. You found an SEM that you put. People will be like, I met this baker in SEM six years ago and we're still friends to this day. Community and connection are huge when it comes to standing out and making your business memorable. People buy cookies maybe once or twice per year on average for birthdays and maybe a holiday here and there.

[Heather]

So how.

[Corey]

What, how can they think of me between those, those two times? That's very hard to do when we can't even remember what we had for dinner last night.

[Heather]

Corey. And against my will. And I started a community group in her area. And the rule to be able to sell in the community group is that each week you have to make one non sales post. And there's the businesses, the business owners that get it. It's. It's women only. It's the women who get it and the women who do not see that we're actually trying to help them build a level of trust within that group before they make the sales pitch. So it becomes the issue of make a non sales post before you make a sales post. It'll be the most low effort non sales post. And then when it comes to sales Saturday, it'll be a lot of effort in the sales post. And we're like, no, what you're missing here is it wasn't the request to just post slop. Yes. It was the request that you build into this community. People will recognize you as a pillar or a source of information. And then you come in and you cash in on that. And when, when most people don't seem to see the correlation there is that we're helping you build trust by forcing your hand here. But if you're doing the most low effort way to build trust, well, there's no trust build. The memes are cutting it.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Here's the thing.

[Corey]

In my local area, which this local group is, HOA has just issued one bajillion violations to absolutely everybody. Everyone is struggling with HOA violation. Did you get one? Yeah, I got one too. I got two. The way to connect with someone is on the non sales post. Be like anyone else.

[Heather]

An HOA violation.

[Corey]

I'm looking for someone who could come and mow my lawn on this day because I have to have it done by this day. I can be empathetic and sympathetic towards that because, yeah, I need a lawn guy to come to mind. You know, my foundation separating in the front needs to have some Grass over is.

[Heather]

That's.

[Corey]

That's what the HOA violation was. If they just phoned it in, shared a meme that, you know, was maybe like, you know, you're a mom, you deserve a day. You check the box. But you didn't connect. You missed the connection part. And the connection part is, well, Corey had an HOA violation. I was able to help her. Now she made this sales post, you know, I would like to connect with Corey Moore. I'll support her that way. And it might not be, I get a sale from them next week, but I might get a sale from them next year.

[Heather]

Or you might get a some them referring you to somebody. Oh, I know Corey's in this group and she is always. Cory and I laughed when we implemented the rule of one non sales post per sales post, which was, let me tell you, like turning a aircraft carrier around, whatever that.

[Corey]

If it's difficult, that's what it was.

[Heather]

It was difficult. A woman said, I don't know what to post on the non sales day. And we're like, but you know what to post on the sales day. She's like, right, well, I guess I just won't make the sales then. Like, instead of seeing that for what it was, great connection. And we're like, it can literally be a picture of your plate of food at a restaurant in the area. It doesn't even have to be in that specific area. And she was like, well, then I guess I just won't post whatever that is. And it's probably just being difficult because she wants to be told no. But the thing is, what we're trying to say is connect with these people and then cash in on that connection. Because, like, Corey keeps saying, know, like and trust.

[Corey]

What's so funny? I was on a walk and I ran into my exact neighbor. I like my neighbor because we can do the whole, hi, see ya, have a good one. Okay? On this walk, her dog wanted to say hi to me, so I had to linger for just a little bit more. And she said, hey, Corey, I, you know, I've been missing those videos that you and your sister did when you went about town and showed places I've been wanting to go to Bourbon and Fig, and I just don't know what to expect when I get there. And I said, you know what? On May 22nd, I'm doing this collab where we do a highlight a business, and I should probably do Bourbon and Fig with my sister. That's a great point. Does she comment on. On the videos? I do. She's in that group. No, she doesn't. But she, she was imbibing them. So me being in the video review and showcasing the thing was actually helping me and I didn't even know it.

[Heather]

And then building that. Consider this strategy again is content that, that creates engagement. And now we have content that connects with the audience. Why it's why we do these collabs. The Main Street May collab is a great way to connect with your audience and showcase a cookie. So the collabs always have that marketing spin and that connection with the audience. If you're struggling to get engagement or traction, try out one of these collabs because it's going to be one different than what you're posting, which is now the AI version of thanks Tim for turning two.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And then you're going to be able to relate cookies because you're cookifying a local business to the local area where people either say I want to try that or I love that place or I hate that place. Which is still engagement.

[Corey]

It's still here's the thing in June, it's going to be a meet the baker. The collab that's the lowest hanging fruit because you're literally talking about you, you, you, you, me, me, me, me. Here's why I started. Here's what I love for cookies. Here's when I started with my everyone's favorite topic themselves. It, it's themselves and it's going to perform well because you're getting in front of the camera and you're showcasing, you're showcasing the humanity behind your business. The problem is that you also can't sleep on the ones that's the Main street cookie club in the pipe of park because those are resourceful. Those are showing you like guys, I'm in the same community that you are. Here's my face behind this cookie that I'm holding at a park. You've probably passed and now you're like, wow, wow. Corey really is sitting in the same traffic I am. I kind of like her a little bit more. And I learned about this park and I learned about this business. So yes, the low hanging, easy to do collabs are easy to do. Like the AI club was hard to do because we were literally recreating things. And you can see the numbers are a lot lower on the collabs that are a lot harder to do but the efforts higher.

[Heather]

But the payout is also higher.

[Corey]

You're not investing in me and Heather. I could care less if you do the collab. If my competitors don't do the cloud lab. I'm happy because that means I have more chance to end up in more feeds. The thing is, this is you investing into your business. And that's harder to do because you can't just plug it into AI and have it spit out something. You're literally getting the car, driving to a park and being like, okay, they have a doggy water bowl. Let me note that. They have the little bike fix thing. They have some workout equipment that, you know, you're, you're, you're putting yourself in your business, the humanity part. And that's why people buy from you and not the grocery store or the lady down the street. It's because they like you.

[Heather]

I always say real estate agents, there's so many of them. Since the 2006 and 7 housing boom and the 2008 housing market crash, we have a lot of real estate licensed real estate agents in the area competing with us. We also have a high cost of living area and a lot of people moving. There's a lot of, because of the military, there's a lot of trans transients. So the real estate agents have what I feel is always the highest level of competition for that newsfeed. They do, they do. And they've kind of found themselves in these unique places where they're creating local content. So we talk about this one, it's called the Burn. But all they do is publish what's coming in, what's left. And that is weirdly a sense of drama. So I like to read it. It's also a sense of curiosity and it's also hyperlocal. But they're very resourceful.

[Corey]

Resourceful. What's coming common.

[Heather]

Yeah, I love to hate that it's a mattress discount. I hate that it was something I didn't know was there. Now it's closing. So what you see the real estate agents do in a higher level with, you know, the higher margin, because they're selling houses and stuff, they create this more interesting content. But we as bakers are like, I don't know what to post. I don't know. I'm just going to post my cookies. Nothing's working right. But look at what the real estate agent, they're not just posting their listing, they're posting this all really fascinating content. Content where they're going to this restaurant or they're trying this drink or they're going to this networking event. They're producing content and then they're turning around and telling us. And now we think, oh, wait, that's a Real estate agent. Yeah, I was listening to this real estate agent.

[Corey]

That's a great tie in. Cookies are boring. Real estate is boring. So we're working with two kind of very boring verticals because cookies is just sugar, flour and a cute design. Houses, there's probably a bathroom, a kitchen and it's for sale because we can't always pick from the drama content that maybe influencers do or some other, you know, especially like carpet cleaners when they showcase a house and you're like all the house is disgusting. Like they're going to get clicks just because the house is dirty. We're more boring like real estate agents. So you'll be like the real estate agents showing this food place. But they're not a commercial real estate agent. But that food place, that restaurant is in the area that they service where their number one clients that they sell most of their homes to, interspersed in their are sales because they do need to make a living but they become a resource to their audience. And then now I'm not thinking of, of this real estate agent, Sampson Properties. I'm thinking of Jill Mathis with Samson Properties.

[Heather]

Yeah, it really just kind of blends there. So when you're like, well I don't know what to post, it's because you're just thinking hyper focused on like do I post this cookie again and again and again? No. But the answer is no. With this strategy you're going to do content that engages, content that connects and that connection is going to be more of that interpersonal, that personal stuff stuff.

[Corey]

You know, kid graduating, your son finally won his lacrosse game. Your husband lost a job but got a new one.

[Heather]

I can see that one does. Well when there's like an adversity we would all hate to be in and then we rise from the ashes and we find this option or we can support somebody you can't always pull from that Hubs can't keep losing his job. I know before we start getting divorce recommendations, uh, but some you're probably thinking of this and like okay, post this on Instagram or Facebook page. But I'm saying post this in groups, specifically the content that connects in community groups. As the admin myself, I love it. I almost want to kiss the poster who gives us that nugget that they could have posted anywhere but they chose our group to do it. Like that's where you can really get a lot of connection. And remember everything's governed by its own algorithm. Groups are different than pages. I think pages are the most appreciated and groups are kind of in their new heyday. That's why you see a lot of group technology coming out. Like this nickname stuff, the incentive to go public versus private. And these anonymous features. Right. Because I think Facebook's like, we have a way to keep people on the platform by using these groups which have killed off forms. Anonymous forms.

[Corey]

Yeah. Here's just a vertical. Like if you did the main street cookie collab and you're like, yeah, I want to be resourceful. I want to show off the restaurant, but how can I tie it back to cookies? If you always, like, did a printed logo of their cookies and but. And you did a short reel and listen, I hate to be in front of the camera, but you're seeing my face because the algorithms require it. And I say, guys, we're at Bourbon and fig. And then I take a bite of the cookie. Let's head on in. I've tied the cookies into the video. And you're like, wow, what weird. Why is she eating a cookie in the caption? Hey, I'm Corey with Mixing bowl cookie company. I like to go around and showcase the restaurants because I love supporting small business.

[Heather]

And then show them the parking lot because everybody likes to know what the parking stitch is. They do, they do.

[Corey]

And our last one is content that converts. I wish we could just be influencers, but we do need to make sales because that's what our business does. So in interspersed with this 8020 rule, like me and Heather like to say 80%, you know, quality content, 20% sales. You have seen some. Some lady finally was like, I, I know a national holiday because they come to your page and you're always posting about them. That's my covert sales. That's my way to post a random set on a random Tuesday and be like, happy Cinco de Mayo. What it does is it's showcasing that I can make quality cookies with clean lines and clean lettering under the guise of something that doesn't feel so salesy. It's not like, buy my cookies. Granted, if you're doing pre sales, we're going to be asking straight up for the sale because we got a time to lock in. But if you're focused on customs in your book app out a, you know, a few months in advance, you have a little bit more wiggle room there

[Heather]

to create that really interesting content. Yeah, sometimes when we're like, we're booked out, we're like, power down the system, like, turn off the lights, we're booked. But when you're booked, you can stop doing so many call to action you can lean into these other ones, the content that engages and the content that connects and then leave off the. Maybe reduce it down to 10% if you're booked out or you know, kind of say kind of opening up new things or whatever that is. But powering down the whole, the whole business because you're booked is not a great long term strategy.

[Corey]

I want to be sympathetic to people who say I started this bakery business because I just want to bake. I fully with you.

[Heather]

100.

[Corey]

I understand a lot of bakers are introverted because, you know, we started this in the privacy of our own home and we were hoping to continue it that way. With social media being so big and you looking to grow your business, you can't tell the algorithms what you want them to do. They're telling you what they're requiring of you. So yes, getting in front of the camera is not my favorite thing to do. Snapping a photo in the movie theater. Why People are around me, I hate it.

[Heather]

I went, not when the movie was playing. You're making yourself mad if you go,

[Corey]

the lights are on, people are there. The movie was empty. So I was like, this is going to be.

[Heather]

I even said, archer. He was sending me pictures. And I was like, are you guys there long?

[Corey]

I went to the local farmers market market on Sunday and I felt an outof body experience to have my phone on me, filming my feet walking through the market. But did I die? No.

[Heather]

Cory's coming up this week to go walk Harper's Ferry. I bought an annual pass so she can use that content as a weekend getaway. It's not that far from where she is locally and feature some local things that people. If you want to do a day trip is what you'd call it, but for that local content that connects. So you can really turn anything with just a few photos into one of these types of strategies.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah. And I am filming a video that I'm gonna post on Sunday, a Sunday reset day within with a. For a baker. And it just shows that, you know, I cleaned the house, I got a last minute order, I baked those, I printed a cookie cutter, I went for a walk. And what it's tying people to is my humanity.

[Heather]

Vanity.

[Corey]

Oh, wow. She cleans too.

[Heather]

But it's also, it's subtly about your cleanliness.

[Corey]

It that it is. It's showcasing my business. You'll see my dog in that video. You're like, but Corey, dogs and cookies. I do have a dog. So people who are like, ooh, dogs and cookies. They're not my ideal client because I do have a dog. But the people who are like, you know, I'm okay with dogs. It's a billion dollar industry. Odds are a lot of people have dogs are seeing like, she does have a dog, dog. And I like dogs. So I like that she likes dogs. But she's also clean, and I like that she's clean because I'm ordering food from her.

[Heather]

Right. It's interesting. It would be inauthentic, and I understand why people would have a tendency to think this way. It would be inauthentic to be like, I love dogs. My dog is my best bud. And then to act like you've never seen a dog in your life when it comes to your business, it would be hard. You'd be quite the actor to be able to pull off hating dogs and loving them at the same time. So when you're trying to build that authentic brand, while you can appeal to everybody who doesn't like dogs and people who do, just being yourself does shine through, I think. It's hard to not be ourselves.

[Corey]

It's. It is hard. So, AI, for me and Heather, were talking about people who had a hard time writing the caption. So the words that go with a post AI was a shining grace that came down from above because not only is it giving you the words to say, it's. It's structured it correctly, it's grammatically correct, it's got a sales, A FOMO in there. You guys better book now because we're running out of time in June for graduates orders. Something like that. The problem is the more that and more that people use AI, the more everyone starts sounding the same. And you see, it's easy to scroll by things that sound the same.

[Heather]

It was funny. Cor. I were talking about this the other day. Have we reached a point where incorporating a typo is actually the strategy to prove that it was handwritten?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Is the misplaced comma, the one you

[Corey]

need the run on sentence?

[Heather]

The.

[Corey]

The. The paragraph of text? Is that where it belongs? So, Heather, so funny. I don't know how commas work. I know. You take a breath and sometimes I'm like, I want to breathe here, and then sometimes I don't want to breathe here. What's so funny? Every time I write on meta, like Facebook, it's like, do you want us to rewrite this? There's some grammatical errors in this, but I'm like, no, no. I like to breathe mid sentence.

[Heather]

But having really nicely written post in grammar was a sign of professionalism but it's just funny. Like it's is AI. The AI tide has risen the bare minimum of what's acceptable as a post. So it's almost like doing the counterculture of having an unprofessional post is what's cutting through the just overwhelming blood of.

[Corey]

We get marketing. Our marketing company gets emails scraped all the time because my email's listed on the website. So they send these robots, the robots scrape the email and they mass send emails. I got one last week and was like, hey, this isn't written by AI. Like that was the subject. Hey, this isn't written. I was like, because they all are.

[Heather]

Was it written by AI or was it written?

[Corey]

It was. I didn't even. I just caught the subject line and I said, I don't know. I don't believe you.

[Heather]

There's this crazy dude in a car group and he sells high end cars. Right. He's just chaotic. But he started incorporating AI written sales captions. And it's funny, his audience were like, we do not like seeing you. We like the chaos. So his AI captions are really long and comprehensive and actually include all the information you need. However, the audience was like, this isn't what we want. Then last night he took a screenshot of his competitors and smudged out their phone number and put his own there. And people were like, this is the

[Corey]

content we paid for.

[Heather]

And it was like, wow. The uncurated, just raw stuff is what's performing so much better for this guy than this curated listicle emoji.

[Corey]

Yeah. Me and Heather were talking about this bagel shop. This bagel shop shop isn't just. I'm enamored by it because she breaks all the technical rules of social media. She posts 52 times a day. You know, she. She sells out early and people complain and she addresses it head on. Like she's like. And to the people who are mad today, like some things I would never do was so funny. She's been so authentic in her business that she goes viral quite often. Especially viral for a local business.

[Heather]

For a bakery that closes early. Like, it's really hard. Hard.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

She's been able to accomplish the out.

[Corey]

She's got the Algos working for her. Recently she did an AI post. Like, so it was just created by AI. Nothing out of your normal. They're everywhere, everyone's doing it. But her audience did not like it because they didn't feel like it was authentic to her. Of course she made another post. It's like there ain't enough time today.

[Heather]

And that one performed well, but it was authentically her.

[Corey]

She was authentic. In a robot, that's what I say.

[Heather]

There is like, AI has a great place. Like, it's filling in gaps, but it can't be the. The end all, be all. It can't be the ending point. It's got to be along the path of, let me take this and then go back and make it sprinkle my own humanity back in.

[Corey]

Yeah. Me and Heather have done a lot

[Heather]

of H Vac websites.

[Corey]

And the thing with H Vac websites, the more boring it is, the better it is, you know, But. And then h. It seems like then every H Vac website looks and sounds the same. So people who click to 3 different h vac websites are like, which one do I choose? They all sounded like they are trustworthy and they're not going to steal my money.

[Heather]

So it's funny. I got a. I got a request from a cousin's friend and he wanted an H Vac website. And I said, there's a reason they all look similar, because it builds trust. But to stand out, we need to take photos of you at the house shaking the hand. But he was like, well, I don't like how I look. Can we get something else? I was like, no, dude, you. That's what they want to see that. But I was like, right now, your H Vac website looks like a CrossFit gym. And right on the top, it said the AI summary of our reviews. And I was like, oh, my goodness, we almost have to hate AI as this brand. And I was thinking about in terms of his positioning, because he is a. He was a firefighter. H vac. You need to lean into firefighter and you need to lean into being the little guy. Remember, because in our area, all the H Vac companies were bought out by these conglomerates. Him saying, I am the little guy is the differentiator, when that used to be the detractor. I'm the little guy and I'm here to steal your money. Now we're the little guy. And I'm here to add that custom care that you used to know and love.

[Corey]

And that makes no sense because he's probably like, I want to be like the big guys, so don't I need to replicate what the big guys do? No, your differentiator is that you're the little guy that's going to get you to the big guy money.

[Heather]

Well, I would say the big guys realized the little guys where the money at. They bought these companies, but did not Rebrand.

[Corey]

They kept their same small names. So even though they're a big conglomerate, they still have like Twin Air. And I'm like, twin Air. I know that man sold because he sold out to Ars American Residential Services.

[Heather]

My, my grandmother loved. I don't know, their tagline was the standup guys. And their, their thing was we're behind the camera Snell. So Snell sold out in the last couple of years. And then of course, now it's not so much that we're doing what's right. It's a ticketing system. They have to get in and out as quickly as possible with as many upsells. Right. Because it's now money generating thing. But my grandma's like, something's changed about the company. So we googled it and we're like, oh, they sold. And she's like, I just wish they were still the little guy. So now the marketing pivots to like, we are the little guys. Get AI away from me and give. I'll shake your hand myself. And I told him, I said, your friend's gonna hate this, but he needs those little blue booties that they wear on the bottom of their shoes.

[Corey]

Yes. Yeah.

[Heather]

I said, we're not appealing to men. We're appealing to the stay at home wife or the mother who is letting him in with her children to fix a huge issue with in the dead heat of summer. That's who we're speaking to.

[Corey]

Yeah. And that feels so weird because we're like, we want to be big. We're trying to grow our bakeries. If I just show them that I'm a stay at home mom that's struggling some days because my kid didn't sleep at night. That feels small. That feels tiny. I feel minuscule. But that is what's winning right now on this world where everything feels ginormous, enormous. How can you be yourself?

[Heather]

The person. Right. Yeah. I thought it was interesting. Corey got hired and a bunch of bakers across the nation got hired by Coach to create local.

[Corey]

They had to follow.

[Heather]

They had to be these specific four designs, but none. There was no parameters around exactly what they expected from the bakers. So now all these bakers came and I said, well, that's such a unique way for Coach, a conglomerate to get on the level of hyper local. So Corey brings these cookies to the store in the mall that we love to go to. And all these people at the mall got to experience at Hyperlocal Baker. Not. And you can tell because they're. They went for the full custom. It Wasn't just like, it just wasn't all printed. It was these pan pipe things you mixed in printing. But it felt hyper local for a big company to do that. I find it to be very unique form of marketing in this current day and age.

[Corey]

The craziest part, great on Coach. Every one of us little small bakers ran to make a post that coach had invested in the little man. They got so much more Runway way out of their marketing because they didn't hire one giant company that printed them off and sent it to them. They hired a bunch of little people like me who was like, guys, I made it big. Coach finally knocked on my door.

[Heather]

Is Corey takes his coach post and posted in all the local community groups where she gets the most engagement. Because people are like, oh, I love Coach too. And he's a coach is a cookie. Coach got a bunch of free marketing. I bet they couldn't have paid you for that marketing. They paid you for the cookies and then you did the marketing for.

[Corey]

I said, hold. I will be. I will be your best marketer this week.

[Heather]

So just think that just an interesting way when, when the tide changes to be like, everyone looked big, probably to be able to cut through is look small, look organic. You're getting. You know, you say before it was efficiency. When you call into the call center, people were complaining. And this is, this is an interesting story from Jeff Bezos is that he said the biggest complaint is that people were calling in and having to wait for two hours for customer support. So then they fancy. They said, let's make customer support shorter. And they got a down to like two minutes. But they were like, people were still upset because I think it was something funny, like it was actually hanging up on them. But you see when everyone moved to automated answering, now you can see the marketing is when you call, you speak

[Corey]

to a real person. Yeah, we got full circle. Yeah.

[Heather]

And it's always going to be that shifting of the tides. When people look big, go small. When people look small, go big. And then you know that I.

[Corey]

No, I totally agree. It was so funny with me and Heather's marketing company. We had someone who inquired and they're like, yeah, I think I've seen your trucks and around. No, you have not. Not have a truck. But we, we portrayed ourselves as bigger online because it was more trustworthy at that time. Now if we wanted to get new business, we would be like, hey, these.

[Heather]

Hey, you're working directly with us. You're calling in. We're not. You're not squeaky Voice.

[Corey]

You're going to hear it on the other line.

[Heather]

Yeah. In web development, it used to be like, we can make you a website and it'll work really well. Then it became like, you work with us and we're not hiring it out to India like you're wearing or you get it made in America by America. Like you know, that kind of. And you can kind of see how. So as AI has changed the landscape, which has been one of the most drastic shifts in marketing I've ever seen, because it was the day OpenAI opened chat, GTP, GPT, whatever to users. It was shifted everything that day.

[Corey]

It. I have to say, my son, we were on our way to school this morning and we were behind a plumber's truck and his logo was an octopus.

[Heather]

And we.

[Corey]

My son, I wasn't saying anything, but my son was like, it's really weird that he has an octopus as his logo. And I said, yeah, it's, it's odd. He's holding every plumber utensil in his eight little tentacles. I said, maybe they're like saying we can do it all. And he's like, yeah, you would think they would just have like a man with a belt on. And then he paused and he said, if every plumber's truck had a man with a belt on, they'd all look the same. And I said that you had have just mastered what that eight tentacle octopi on the back of the truck is doing.

[Heather]

Yeah, yeah. It's just real interesting, you know, so that takes us through that. So the strategy here is, you know, Corey's testing. I think you're trying to post once a day or something, right?

[Corey]

I am. It doesn't have to be once a day. I just wanted to see what happens with my numbers. If there's so much more content going up now everywhere, do I need to be. Be just as prevalent? Me and Heather were talking about it though. If you make AI slop or trash content and people are scrolling by your daily posts now and never engaging signal to the algorithms, your content isn't good. So you'd actually be working against yourself just trying to check the box to post something every day. If you can post five times a week quality content and people stop and engage with it, I think that's where the answer is. So I have been posting every day. I think I will actually go back down and post four or five times when it's really quality, like when it's a movie review or I'm asking an opinion or it's a national holiday or I'm really excited about it.

[Heather]

I said I did.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

It's just real fascinating how that all works. So I hope you guys, if you're struggling with what to post, this could be a nice strategy. Again, a strategy can be for a short time. You can implement it for 30 days. Let's say you do it for the month of May or you do it for the month of June. I can't believe we're already talking about June. I felt like a curse word, four letter word June. Uh, but I would say yeah, tides are changing. Tides are shifting and it doesn't mean you gotta drown. You can still grab a life jacket and float in the opposite direction.

[Corey]

Yeah. Inject yourself in there. If you love a comma, have a double comma in there somewhere.

[Heather]

I tell you, if this is something you haven't done before, it will feel like an outof body strange alien experience to post it.

[Corey]

Trust the process.

[Heather]

Yeah. Corey's telling you from the point of experience it seems to be working for her right now. Right. Do you feel like your engagement has increased?

[Corey]

I it says my photos have increased. Have increased my engagement by 268%. Like percent over 100. We're way over 100. We're 268%. Fantastic. It's telling me that's what my audience wants to connect with me. My dog turns 10 tomorrow. Raymond. Right. That's a great way. And I know Baker's like dogs cookies. No, that's showcasing my. I got an old dog. I, I, you know, I, I grew him from a baby to an old man. He's a senior, a senior citizen. A super senior now you know, that's a great way to connect. So just thinking outside the box a little bit and incorporating yourself because I

[Heather]

think what's interesting is Corey's gonna do a clean my house with me on Sunday. She's also going to mention she has a dog. Now what you don't want to do is mention you have a dog and the dog's sitting on your b. There is, there is a right and a wrong way. Yes, yes, you.

[Corey]

Yeah, I know that we told. You've heard our older sister looks at everything but the subject matter of a photo. So we want to make sure is we don't have our kid with, you know, the elbow deep in the flower of the set we're about to make because. Did you wash the kids hands? We don't know. You know but having your kids as a, as a showcase in your business, big the kids eating the Dough that you're about to use.

[Heather]

Not.

[Corey]

Not big, not great, not great.

[Heather]

Might get you some drama though. Maybe that's too. So something to consider there. Moving on. Unless you have anything else to add.

[Corey]

That's all.

[Heather]

Yeah, we have our 3D printing bootcamp launches on May 7, which is today's Tuesday, so that will be Thursday. Got it all teed up and ready to go. If Corey said, if someone takes a boot camp, what will they learn? I said, if somebody takes this boot camp, they'll have the correct printer, the correct filament, and they'll be printing their first cookie cutter in two days, assuming, okay, you have to order the printer, so you got to wait for shipping times. But I bought it so that you is if you take this class and you do not know how to print cookie cutters, you will know how to print cookie cutters.

[Corey]

Then that. That's our goal is I told Heather, these boot camps need to be focused on people with not a lot of time, but they need a solution fast. So the next one after this is going to be about videos, how to create videos.

[Heather]

And it's, it's.

[Corey]

It's going to be, you know, quick and dirty. It's not going to be where, you know, lights, camera, action. It's going to be where you know

[Heather]

how to set it up.

[Corey]

You know, the apps that I use, you can create a quick reel. You can can put photos and videos in a template and create something so that it works with your business, not you become a full movie theater production agency.

[Heather]

Yeah. I said to Corey, I'm trying to do this rug tufting thing. And it is hard when there's not a group that's admin liked SEM where I can't ask a dumb question and have people be rude. It's hard to learn. It's just not ideal. It's discouraging.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I left a group this week because I was like, what are my feelings? I'll come back later as a nickname, name and post. But what I was saying is what I wouldn't give for somebody to give me three hours worth of content to get started with the right materials because it's costing me a fortune to buy the wrong things. So what we said, we. These boot camps are somebody who said, I have this problem. I want a solution. I want to watch a couple hours of content that's focused just on the solution. So our old boot camps, which we started in February was in person cookie classes. March was food photography that sells. April is pre sale, start to finish. May being 3D cookie cutters, you can go back and buy those modules now. I want to tell people the boot camp was an effort to show you guys what the cookie college is. We were saying, like, the cookie college kind of exists behind this pay wall and this big curtain. It feels like the wizard of Oz. Like, don't look over there. So we said, In 2026, how can we get people to experience a cookie college without having to necessarily sign up yet? And these boot camps come with a lot of perks, and I'm really happy with how the 3D printing one came out. So I give you a couple STL files, But Cookie Cutters by Nori has created a custom file just for the bootcamp attendees. And cookie design lab, which is one of the modules within this boot camp, is giving everyone who attends, who pays for or cookie college member a week of cookie design lab so you can take those skills right into the real world. And that's all included in the $13. And to sweeten the deal, get your $13 back by signing up for the cookie college during the boot camp. And you get all that future content as well. So we're really focused this year on letting you guys know what a treasure trove the cookie college has grown to be over this many years and this much content. Every somebody says, how often do you update the course list? And I say, four to five times a month. The cookie college gets a bootcamp. The digital downloads gets a digital download kit. The transfers get about four to eight transfers, and then the cookie class kits gets a kit as well. So that's constantly being updated. And that cookie college membership gets all of it?

[Corey]

Yeah, it's all the end of community.

[Heather]

So the community, you're like.

[Corey]

But at the end of the community, it's not hyper focused. It's more broad. We have to police it a lot more. In the cookie cutter college private Facebook group, we are doing Monday morning lives where we check in and we have a Monday morning meeting. We have post in there and challenges. So challenges, whether it be, you know, a water drinking challenge, a walking challenge, I can't remember all the challenges we've done over the years. There's been a business.

[Heather]

We did a sleeping challenge. We did a photo organization challenge. We did a decluttering challenge. Oh, we did a touch of challenge. They asked us to bring the challenges back, but incorporate them with the bootcamp. So this month, I'm going to build some challenges in the cookie college about creating cookie cutters, finding a. You know, we use even Canva and Kind of incorporating what we learned in this bootcamp and bring it into that cookie college group so that the learning keeps going on.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's been fantastic. That group is in it to win it. Let me tell you what I think

[Heather]

I'm going to do, and I challenge you to this, Corey, is I usually do an onboarding membership live on the second Monday of each month in the cookie college group, but I was thinking of shifting that and doing it in the sugar cookie marketing group so people can see what's included in. Oh, that's fun.

[Corey]

That's a great idea. And I mean, Heather, I've tuned into just about every single one of those. Echo Heather in the comments.

[Heather]

Yeah, I always say of course. Okay. Even when I don't tell her, she still finds a way. So our upcoming bootcamps, we have 3D printing cookie cutters, and that's in two days. June is creating cookie videos. So Corey's just like we're doing at the boot camp that starts on Thursday. I go to the Bamboo website and I tell you exactly what to order and how to get it the cheapest. Like, Corey's going to tell us which stand. I know she's bought 50 of them, so she's going to tell you what's trash, what's keep. And then we have in July cracking community groups. And that's because we feel like July is a bit slower for bakers. Now you can start setting the groundwork for cashing in at Christmas.

[Corey]

And that the community group one goes back to today's podcast topic where Heather said the lady was like, I don't know what to post when it's not for me. And making sales. This is that. This is how to overcome that and create the relationship so that your sales posts do pop off.

[Heather]

That was a big challenge we did in the College. It was 30 days of posting in a community group and we only sold twice in those 30 days.

[Corey]

Yeah, crazy man.

[Heather]

And someone said they had secured quite a few orders. She, you know the challenges, best laid plans. She had gone through the entire 30 days and not everyone one did. And she's like, wow, it really did pay off. That's fantastic.

[Corey]

I know. Donna tunes into my Monday morning lives and I'm like, sorry, guys. We keep talking about content creation.

[Heather]

It's good.

[Corey]

She's like, my page has grown 8 to 10 people every week since we started doing this. And I said, that's awesome.

[Heather]

Consistency and quality content. In August, I have an exciting one for procreate, kind of incorporating procreate. Into cookie design. So if you're trying to design a set, we'll just go through which app to date, download how to load it up on your iPad, and then how some of the basics are working in layers and clipping masks.

[Corey]

That's great.

[Heather]

I saw a baker.

[Corey]

Her post obviously went viral and she was telling her customers she was no longer creating designs. It takes too long. So maybe this is a great way to streamline it and there's a happy medium in there. You don't have to go so crazy.

[Heather]

But if you're doing tiered pricing, which we talked about in a prior podcast, this could be a part of that incorporated highest tier. And then I would definitely limit it to two chances. Change logs.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Going to the gossip comm. Okay, if you guys want to sign up for the cookie college stuff, you can go to thecookiecollege.com forward/bootcamp and you can get a list of all those past, present and future. If you purchase a future boot camp, it it unveils itself at a designated time. If you purchase a pass bootcamp, it's immediately accessible. Nice. Would love to have you guys join us. Okay, Gossip calm. I saw your post on the SEM page about anonymous posting and nicknames. I guess my gossip is how it's really negatively affected groups in groups where you in groups where you know you'd get some flack for asking a dumb question. It's now like they know they can hide behind quote unquote unique Sunflower 92 and they go out of their way to add hate where none would have been needed otherwise. I'm just so over it.

[Corey]

I got interesting.

[Heather]

Interesting. You can apply to remove nicknames. Anonymous posting you can disable completely.

[Corey]

Question for you. Why is that local community group we run don't doesn't have anonymous as an option.

[Heather]

I don't know. Seems like I've always heard that there's a bunch of beta versions of Facebook floating around there testing things. There's groups from what I can see. There's groups I'm in where there's anonymous posting is available and nicknames are available and ones they're not. But it's all within my own account. That's so funny.

[Corey]

Yeah, because I'm so grateful that it didn't roll out to ours because I didn't want to have to enforce it. It is in the SEM and I appreciate you guys sticking to the rules

[Heather]

and not using that.

[Corey]

There's nothing we need to be hiding under the guise of a nickname in sugar cookie marketing.

[Heather]

Someone in the group she had just joined and she's like it just seems like you guys might be creating a problem where none existed because she's like there is a place for anonymous posting when you want the anonymity. And I agree what I think and I'm not sure met is as clean cut as this to hope that it was intended as a place for you to get answers by being anonymous. Yeah, I think that would be nice if everyone used it that way. So in Corey's community group we've disabled anonymous but the nicknames hasn't rolled out to it yet. So people will say can you the ad admins post this anonymously and the content they're posting about is medical help or unemployment and things or they're you know they're unhappy with a neighbor and they know the neighbors in the group. Right. So that's a place where that would make a ton of sense but it seems like when it's willy nilly and everyone has access to it it's just way to be controversial.

[Corey]

Yeah Heather. Heather has a love hate with relationship with when I let people post anonymously through me at at the end of the day the admins can always see who's posting so whether you think it's anon or not the admins know who you are. So I said if they want to post anonymously let them send the post to me and I'll post it on their behalf. It was funny someone posted yesterday because we see an uptick when one person posts anonymously. Then there's like five that are submitted after that post anonymously. I'm looking for a yard guy. Please message me if you know someone. But I was like I can't because you're a non no everyone no one would be able to message you.

[Heather]

But also why did we need anonymous with my big gripe is like people just want to post anonymous for no reason at all. Just be like anybody knowing a good yard is like that down need to be anonymous. Cory will do it and then she'll get five more people making non needed anonymous requests. It's so funny.

[Corey]

It's so funny to see what people want to be anonym for.

[Heather]

Yeah I find so in Corey and I said that the is it. I don't even know if this is the word the devolution the devolvement of community groups that allow both nicknames and anonymous posting queries like it's like half sunflowers yelling at ambiguous sunglass profiles.

[Corey]

It was so funny. There was this local group and she was like, guys, posting anon because I don't want to tell people I don't have friends, but I'm really looking for friends and I don't know how to make them okay. She was anon saying that the problem was every comment was also anon. I said, no one's becoming friends here because everyone's anonymous.

[Heather]

Yeah, it's really almost brought out the worse in people where the feature could have brought out the good and additional feature it seems like it has created. Here's what my hot take was. They should. They should remove anonymous completely. Allow the group admin to be able to enable or disable nicknames. Because the difference between anonymous posting is the post exists externally to the profile that created it. Yeah, meaning? Meaning like if Corey switched over to anonymous and posted it, you could never track it back to Corey. Yes, the admin knows, but it doesn't create a a Rolodex ever post Nicknames actually create a second profile within your group profile and that nickname profile profile does retain the information you've posted.

[Corey]

Can. You can't post as a nickname. Correct. You can only comment as a nickname.

[Heather]

You can post and comment as a nickname. However, you can have posts go to admin approval. You cannot have nickname comments go to admin approval.

[Corey]

See, I don't have the option to be a nickname or a non anywhere. So I'm like, just like I gotta say with my whole chest or I

[Heather]

can't say at all. And really, isn't that the lesson? If you can't say it with your whole chest, maybe it wasn't worth saying at all.

[Corey]

Yeah, so, so funny. Like there's a post yesterday that went up and she was like, I'm trying to get something on Facebook Marketplace and I'm not getting messaged back. She was a non saying that the comments below were all anon, but I was like, well, shoot, I gotta say that, you know, like sometimes I get over inundated when 10 people want something from Facebook Marketplace. So I start with the first person and work it down. But I felt weird saying it because I'm like, they're anonymous saying it. Should I be anonymous for flying without I choose.

[Heather]

I don't know. It's not my favorite. Whoever submitted this, I agree. I think it is to the detriment of Facebook groups to have anonymous and nicknames specifically both of them at the same time. But yeah, now you can apply to remove nickname capabilities in your group, but it has to be an application.

[Corey]

I think a non post way better than a non Nicknames Post Go to post approval. So you can already see if it's going to be drama or not.

[Heather]

But Nick nicknames Post Go to post approval. You can enable that. Oh, it's the comments from both that cannot be nicknames you can't disable at all. Anonymous comments you can disable, but it disables the whole feature craziness. Yeah, I agree.

[Corey]

I don't like it.

[Heather]

Upcoming events we have our Main Street May Cookie collab, which is what we talked about a lot today. And that's in two weeks on May 22nd. Get that yawning girl. June again. Corey referenced it as one of the easiest collabs we run each year. It's the Meet the Baker collab and you'll be posting a picture of yourself holding a cookie. I walk you through all of this stuff. I help you with copy as well. And that'll be in six weeks. On June 19th, CookieCon Happy Hour sponsored by Heather Campbell Workshop Donna H's. That is in seven weeks. I can't believe it's already June and Cookie Con. And that Happy hour is June 24th. The details are in the events tab of the group. The Vendy Blenny is, thank goodness, 29 weeks away. And Wemby.

[Corey]

And if you're a cookie college roomie, there is a meetup for you guys. You can find it in the Cookie College group under events.

[Heather]

Thank you so much, Kim Sims. Kim. Kim Sim posted that. It's not her name. I just they all major holidays upcoming. We just passed Nurse Appreciation or Teacher Appreciation Week started this week, which means Nurse Appreciation Week started this week. I'm going to drop that one because it seems like so few people are baking for Nurse Appreciation Week. Now, Mother's Day is in a week, so if you haven't pestered your kid to buy you something, now would be the time. Graduation is in five weeks. It's area dependent along with the last day of school, which we have six weeks for us. But that's going to be very different for you guys, depending on where you live.

[Corey]

My son is in his final three.

[Heather]

Wouldn't it be his final two?

[Corey]

May 22 is his last day.

[Heather]

That is also the date. What is May? Oh, the collab. His last day of school is May 22nd.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So then he's in his last. Oh, he's final three. Wow, that seems so early. I thought we got out June.

[Corey]

The thing is, because they didn't take as many days off as the county did.

[Heather]

Oh, nice. So last day of school. Not for Archer. Is in six weeks. Father's day is in seven weeks. And then Summerween is in eight weeks. And that's actually the cookie class kit I think you're working on.

[Corey]

I am working on it.

[Heather]

It will.

[Corey]

It. It is going to be a brainchild because there's not a lot of Summerween sets out there because it's just become more popular as of late. But if you know me, I'm a hollow Halloween freak.

[Heather]

So who loves Halloween, Christmas and Thanksgiving? Like you're flying the tempest. Tell us what Summerween is because I see people asking, is it a summer themed Halloween or is it Halloween in the summer?

[Corey]

It's a summer themed Halloween. So it'll be a go. A skull on an ice cream cone, you see?

[Heather]

And he's dripping a little bit stupid. Cute.

[Corey]

Yeah, I think it's a. A watermelon slice. But he's got a jacket o lantern face.

[Heather]

Oh, that's so funny. Thank you. Thank you.

[Corey]

I'm just reviewing.

[Heather]

I can't wait to see what the other four are. And then fourth of July, Independence day is in nine weeks. That's crazy. That takes us through half of the year. It feels like we just started this year. I don't feel like I've hit six enough.

[Corey]

You know when you get old enough,

[Heather]

you go into warp speed.

[Corey]

Because you're old. We're in warp speed.

[Heather]

Me and you, the booms.

[Corey]

And someone said most people live till 80. So when you're 40, me and you, you've hit midlife. So if you're going to have a crisis.

[Heather]

Tis the season. Cris coming on.

[Corey]

Hello, crisis.

[Heather]

We have two text messages this week. You guys could get cookie design live for free. I told people who take the course. Yeah, the boot camp, like text in to get cookie design that like somebody's got to win. But now they all get it for a week. But if you want it for a month, text in a 575-565-644. My YouTubers. Corey's holding up what looks like a shark cookie cutter. I know it's a filament. We just loaded.

[Corey]

It's the shark and it's for a cuz graduation is here to get these school logos in more of a custom shape. I use cookie design lab to get me there.

[Heather]

Cookie design lab. And we teach you how to use that in the bootcamp this week. So we have.

[Corey]

I just gotta say cookie design lab.

[Heather]

Heather teaches you.

[Corey]

There's nothing to teach.

[Heather]

It's so easy. Like you.

[Corey]

You upload it and then it's good to go.

[Heather]

It's funny. The day one is purchasing the correct printer, and then we assemble it together and I've got. I've got another printer sitting over there just for you guys. And the second day of the module, which is this Friday, it starts off with purchasing a cookie cutter. But cookie cutters by Nori gives us one. So you're going to download the STL she gives us. It's included in your bootcamp. And then we go to cookie Design lab and create it. We create a cutter, and then we go to Fusion. And I just want to show you how chaotic like it used to be. Yeah, I said Fusion. It's just a war zone.

[Corey]

I. And just for context, I've not ever logged into Fusion. I don't use Fusion. If that was my only option, I wouldn't make cook gutters. But because Cookie design lab is out there and this little guy. This is what Heather actually unboxed and chose you. This is the Bambu A1 mini printer.

[Heather]

It's all you need.

[Corey]

It is all you need, friends.

[Heather]

And it's pretty neat. I mean, we had this thing set up, so I think in the coursework, you're looking about around three hours worth of content over the two days.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So it'll be enough to kind of really get a good understanding. So we have two text messages this week.

[Corey]

Number one.

[Heather]

Number one, one is the area code 213, which I googled already is LA. It says. Oh, it's about the bootcamp for the 3D printing bootcamp. Do I need to have a printer before I take the class? No. That was a good question. Because we used to say that the boot camps would be archived after seven days. We did away with that. You have access to the bootcamp for as long as the product is supported. Which means you could take module one on Thursday. Thursday. Order the correct printer, and then wait until you get it next week, and then take module two. Whenever you get that printer or get it assembled, go back to module one.

[Corey]

I would say listen to the boot camp as you've ordered your printer, listen to the boot camp through so that when you get the printer now, you're just plugging and playing. You've already listened to how it works.

[Heather]

Yeah, I sped it up. I did let you guys see the printer self level, but I put some jazzy music and I took 40 minutes and squished it into five. Nice, nice. So you guys can kind of see how he self levels. And the printer is pretty neat, so. Pretty neat for that pretty night. Pretty Night. You like my answer pretty night. Erico213 if you email heather sugarcookiemarketing.com you get cookie Design Lab and you're perfect

[Corey]

person to get it. You're happy about the 3D thing. You get a we.

[Heather]

And so people ask this if you've already got Cookie Design Lab or you've paid for a month, she can tack it on to the end of your month so it's still worth texting into the podcast. Yeah.

[Corey]

Handy.

[Heather]

My final text. What?

[Corey]

It's handy.

[Heather]

Dandy handy. If Corey likes it and she loves to kick, yell, scream and throw things with progress, then you know something. Albany, New York I think this is our girl Deb. I love Deb. She always listens to podcast. Hey, I was listening to your podcast. Thanks Deb. The most recent one and you talked about follow up. So what if I have a customer and it says hey, I want you to make a cross cupcake? And I say, sure, I can do that. Here's my cost and here's what I need to get from you and I need to pay up for friend, but you can get refunded within a certain time. Like my husband, like my usual kind of spiel. And I hear nothing. So they ghosted me. But you're saying I should still follow up with them when I'm thinking, well they probably didn't like the price and I'm wondering if I should have included the price. Should I just say yes, I can do it and then wait for them to come back and then I give them the price. Let me know. Thanks so much for all you do. Deb from Albany, do you get what she's asking? Yes. You said in last week's podcast we said, hey, follow up, follow up. If somebody ghosts you, there's still the potential like hey, just following up there. She's saying, but I think they ghosted me because of price is too high. Do I leave off the price or do I include it?

[Corey]

So Deb, great question. People have microwave mindsets. I know when I get an email, most of the time I'm reading it from my watch. That's how crazy life is. Because I'm doing something, an email comes in. So when you give them the quote, I would even include it in your original email with the price. I'm going to follow up in two days to just make sure you have any questions and you set the expectations. So regardless, they've come to you. They do want your code cookies. Now it's do those cookies fit the event budget or do they not we're going to set the expectation. I'm going to follow up with you in two days. So the door is open and it's going to be closed. You have two days to make the decision or move along. And that's a great way to, to allow yourself to follow up where you don't feel pushy and you're like, I'm here to answer questions, but it's in the guise is I'm trying to close this sale or I'm trying to move on from it.

[Heather]

If you feel like the price is creating the ghosting, you can add more value in your pitch or alternatives to the price. So the more value is like, I can absolutely knock these out. There's going to be exactly what you want. You're going to love them. However, if this exceeds your budget, let's say you might get the tendency that the budget's on the lower side. If we can definitely work around that to find something that fits your audience. Now, let's say they still ghost. I really like the excuse for people to be like, hey, I've got somebody else vying for the spot and I want to give it to you first because you got first dips. Is this something that you want to move forward with? Can we find an option that works for your budget or should it close us out? No harm, no foul. I'd love to work with you again in the future.

[Corey]

The thing is, I see you're getting hung up on is you're thinking that they don't like the thing because of the price. The problem is if you make them beg for the price, you're going to lose them just because you're adding a whole extra step and they're still going to see the price and it might not fit the budget. So what Heather, I think is a great idea is add a lot of value you before you quote the price in that email. So, hey, they actually come freshly baked. Every cookie is heat sealed, they're made fresh, they last for two weeks. And here's the price of the investment. Let me know if that fits your event budget. To have them beg for the price. You are also going to get ghosted because they people just don't have that kind of time.

[Heather]

I agree. Moving on. Thanks guys for texting in. That's numbers 571-556-5644. Or if you're listening to a podcast player and it has the text, text in or text us at the top. That works as well. Moving on to our beautiful sponsors who make this podcast what it is today. Cookie design lab. Code twins get 15% off or sign up for the bootcamp, get a week free and some. You know, there's a lot you can do here with 3D printing in the cookie college in the month of May. Also I give you two SDLs. Two SDLs.

[Corey]

That's why I said Heather's going to be generous and she's going to give us some files. And editing Heather's digital downloads. Once you take that, 3 has a STL file in there so you can recreate the little designs.

[Heather]

One of the files is my Berry from the digital. He's so very cute. Thank you so much. Daisy makes. If you use Code Twins, you get a discount on the cake pop. If you. Corey was making cake pops the other day. Yeah.

[Corey]

So pop mold. It comes with a roller, which is great. And then a shelf which you actually put.

[Heather]

Put them on.

[Corey]

And that with holds their shape up while you're working. So if you're unfamiliar with cake pops, you got to put the stick in. The stick needs to like make sure he's stuck in there. So during that you put them in the little tray and then when you're ready to pop rock and roll and dip them, they're ready to go.

[Heather]

Pop rock and roll. I like that. Bakety bake Code twins get you 10% off the best meringue powder you've ever seen in your life.

[Corey]

It is my go to. I wouldn't sell it if I didn't like it. And that is got three ingredients already in it. Vanilla extract, corn syrups, which gives you a softer bite. And white food coloring, so it's bright white. You don't have to buy it any extra if you don't want to.

[Heather]

Dream come true, Eddie. Eddie Primera's Eddie food printer. We actually talked about it when I was talking about Corey's coach ordered you posted on your page. Maybe it's worth.

[Corey]

Not yet. I'm getting the hype ready. I'm going to do a whole a little unveiling.

[Heather]

It was interesting to see how many people took. How many many bakers took their own spin off of these four cookies. And Cory incorporated Eddie. And then at one point you incorporate Eddie and you pipe on top as well.

[Corey]

So I thought I could go a whole thing. So we have two fully piped, one Eddie and piped. And it's a purse. And I said the purse flap can be piped in. The back of the purse would be Eddie and then one that was fully Eddie. But I saw bakers who did all of them piped and some that were all Eddie. Some that were Eddie and then like circled in hand.

[Heather]

It was really cool to see. That was like a collab. Nobody knew they were in.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

And then last but not least is Boss Nutra Mill. Now, you use code sugar cookies. It's an affiliate link. It's the only one of these that's an affiliate they released and I posted about it in the SEM group. A clear bowl. Now, there were some interesting things that people noted. It has a handle on it.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Someone said, is it glass? No, it's made of plastic. Somebody else said. And then it was a top drive versus bottom drive drive configuration. Meaning that I want to say the handle.

[Corey]

The one thing that I don't like on the Bosch Universal and the artiste that I have is when you get butter on your hands and you have to. Honestly, you have to unlock it by. By turning it.

[Heather]

Okay.

[Corey]

But when you have butter on your hands and the dough is so heavy in there, it's super hard to turn it because your hands are so slippery. So a handle would get you a handle on that process.

[Heather]

So you would want the handle.

[Corey]

You'd want the handle because it's hard to get.

[Heather]

Some people said. Some people said, you know, someone's like, there's. This is pointless. The bowl is still a bowl. But somebody's like, it'll allow me to see if the incorporation of ingredients specifically for the icing colors that like, don't

[Corey]

sometimes on the bottom. Even though it's a. It's great. It honestly, to me, mix mixes dough better than a KitchenAid does. Just to know that it's fully incorporated top to bottom means you wouldn't have to waste time or put it back in and be like, I gotta have to make it go more rounds just to make sure.

[Heather]

Because I don't know if it qualifies for their affiliate discount. But they. If you make a review, they give it to us at a little bit of a discount. Is it something you do a review for?

[Corey]

I would if it fits CRT Stay or the Universal.

[Heather]

It's a universal.

[Corey]

Oh, yeah. Then I would.

[Heather]

Yeah. I think it's made only for the universal. Oh, funny, funny, funny. Anyways, code sugar cookies on that saves you $20. But not for that bowl. For specifically. However, if you do use that code, any buy the bowl, which is not qualifying for promotions yet, it does pay into the podcast and it would be a thank you from the twins. Yes, thank you.

[Corey]

Thank you.

[Heather]

Appreciate it. Okay, my twin, I have a couple here A pot roast from Walmart. I went to Walmart's meat section and it was a pre made pot roast. I just throw it in the crock pot. That thing is simmering now and let me tell you, it is delectable smelling.

[Corey]

I want to tell you that Heather has lived a life of non cooking at home. So she's discovering these things for the first time.

[Heather]

Oh no.

[Corey]

So her cooking of hot roast at home. The great thing about Walmart is they have like veggies.

[Heather]

Veggies, the meat, the seasonings. All I did is add weta and put it in the thing and start it so it's simmering as we speak. That was my one. Another one, my twin dress is Michael Gurdley from YouTube. He just goes and tells you why business is closed. Big, big businesses. Yes, very interesting. I've listened to all of them. Subway, Carmax, Target, Sears is not closed.

[Corey]

It is on a decline.

[Heather]

It's always why it's on the decline. Team. You wish I was listening to Molo so I don't play in the background. He's got one of those voices where you're like, oh, I could talk. Talk when to sleep. Yeah, maybe it puts you to sleep while you learn. Learning why you say. And then my third twin twist is more of a question. This is Bean.

[Corey]

That's my Beanie Baby.

[Heather]

This is Bean. He is the newest addition to the podcast. Here's the thing. He is little and the lady said whatever I had to get him, even if I thought he needed to be older. She's small, but mighty small. But poopy. He is tent trained, which means she keeps him in a tent like a, a cat tent. When he's not frolicking, she says, put him back in the tent. It's how he knows used to use the bathroom. And yeah, as soon as he goes into the tent, he uses the bathroom. However, if he goes into a place where there's a low hanging over a low overhang, like a closet with a cloth closet with the clothes hanging pretty low. He walked in there and popped squat. So like would I just make sure he always has multiple feet of space above him? Is everything going to be a litter box with a low hanging lid? What am I watching?

[Corey]

Our mother has a cat that refuses to dookie in the right spot. And I just know that is not a fun life to live if fun.

[Heather]

The lady was like, you gotta, when you're not playing with him, put him in the tent because that's potty training him. But I just feel like he's thinking

[Corey]

the thinking for him.

[Heather]

Because I'm you're like let him play.

[Corey]

Let him play. He'll have fun when he gets put away.

[Heather]

She said as she okay, so I have these cat tunnels and these little things they can play in. He walks into that thing and he treats it like a litter box. Like I'm like you or your brain is like this is is got a roof. It's a litter box. Like he's definitely thinks roofs mean poop. Do I said what does he need

[Corey]

to live out in the outdoors?

[Heather]

Because your house has a roof, your

[Corey]

closets have a roof.

[Heather]

Maybe nothing can ever be low over his head. I mean he was so innocently trying to cover up his little dukes with the air. Poor little baby. That's how I caught him. I was like what is that sound of carpet? The rustling of carpet. So those are my three things. The pot roast from Walmart. I'm loving it. I'll report back onto how it tastes here in about 7 hours. Hour. Michael Girdley on YouTube documents how big businesses made the wrong decisions.

[Corey]

It it's interesting.

[Heather]

I've listened to him before.

[Corey]

He you can get business marketing advice for your small business. You're not like a billion dollar company but just to see where they went wrong, where they scaled too much, where they went too much in one direction.

[Heather]

The target one. He said that the shtick about Target was that you go in for one thing and walk out with 30 because we had such interesting stuff. But the Target Reddit card, the 5% off a specific item meant people change their buying behavior unpredictably is that they went in to just buy the one thing at 5% off instead of the I'm here to buy one things but I leave it 30. Interesting.

[Corey]

Yeah, it's. It's you can derive things for your small business just from his little inputs and things. And it's the blockbuster one had me in a chokehold.

[Heather]

I'll be watching that at lunch today. Okay. Do you have anything twintelect Twinterest My

[Corey]

twinterest rest is I love finding nature on my walks. I've been doing this 10k steps a day kind of thing so I've love when I encounter nature on my little nature walks. And I found a turtle today and I talked to him.

[Heather]

He was not scared.

[Corey]

I said you are very rotund and you're on your way to the watering hole. I can tell. So skedat because if someone else finds you they might move you because my twin terrain esting fact they live in one square mile their entire lives, and they live between 30 to 100 years when not messed with by humans. If you were to take them from their one square mile, they don't know where the food or the water source is, and it tends to cause them to die earlier.

[Heather]

My confession is, when we were growing up, we did put the nail polish on the shell. In hindsight, I. The shell is a part of the body.

[Corey]

This was before the Internet, Before AI

[Heather]

could have written the caption and tell us not to. I know, know, I know.

[Corey]

Yeah. But no, we did find the nail polish guy years and years after.

[Heather]

Yeah. So he really did left it within that little mile, which I'm sure to him, he's like, this is the biggest world planet in the thing. If Bean was there, he'd have been like, I can't wait to poop everywhere in this one.

[Corey]

Mr. Bean, you be nice to my little baby man.

[Heather]

Mr. Bean, we are nice. He is in a tent currently. I have a lot of tents. It's not my best look.

[Corey]

The tents are everywhere for it. You're so such a bachelor in a bachelorette life.

[Heather]

I had to. Repairman had to come over, and he walked in and I was like, oh, my goodness. What does he think I'm running 10th City inside, Heather's like, I'll get a couch later.

[Corey]

So, like, her living room is an office.

[Heather]

Here's what's going to change your perspective on housing. It's a collection of places to put your butt. It is seats in every room. And you're like, here's a different configuration of seats. Here's seats. Seats that are comfortable. Here's a seat where you can lie vertically in it horizontally. I'm sorry. Here's a stool. A higher seat. It's just when you count the number of seats you're putting in a house, your car is two moving seats. Yeah.

[Corey]

No, we constantly want to sit.

[Heather]

I want to find a good sitting spot. You guys enjoy buying your seats. As for me, in my house, we'll poop in the corn.

[Corey]

Poop in the corn. Okay, guys, we'll see you in the group. Join SEM if you aren't already in there. We are letting people in. Just make sure you answer the questions and we will see you on the inside.