266. Baking it Down - AI Inspo Photo 101

Summary

Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪

Episode 266: "AI Inspo Photo 101"

Release Date: June 23, 2026
Hosts: Heather and Corrie Miracle

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Episode Overview

In this lively episode, Heather and Corrie dive into a crucial topic for cottage bakery business owners: the rise of AI-generated inspiration photos ("AI inspo") in the baking world. With AI tools now everywhere, more clients are sending bakers flawless, computer-generated cookie concepts and expecting them to be recreated in real life. The Miracles explore how to spot these images, how to talk to your customers about what’s achievable, where AI fits as a creative tool, and how to stand out authentically as a baker in an increasingly AI-influenced world. True to their style, the twins blend practical marketing advice, real business stories, humor, and plenty of memorable moments that will resonate with bakers, decorators, and small business owners alike.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. AI in Everyday Life and Business (00:09–12:30)

• AI is Everywhere
  • AI is heavily integrated into all digital platforms—Canva, Gmail, Adobe, social media, even Facebook groups. ("It's quite literally in every app. Even in my video editing app, they're like, we updated more AI." – Corrie, 09:44)
• AI as a Tool, Not a Replacement
  • Use AI as a helpful co-pilot, but retain your distinct artistry and human touch.
  • "AI isn't going anywhere. So figure out how to use it as a tool, not your business model." – Corrie (04:38)
  • It’s valuable for sifting and structuring information but cannot truly innovate or create new concepts—it draws only from existing human-created content. (06:14)
  • Anecdote: AI’s “perfection” still misses the nuance and adaptability of hand-crafted art.

2. The AI Bubble? (08:45–13:30)

• The twins debate if AI is a bubble market, like past tech frenzies, and discuss the massive local impact (e.g., data centers taking over Northern Virginia).
  • "I think the bubble is large right now... Everything is using it." – Corrie (09:44)
• AI is “everywhere, but not yet generating income” for many—drawing a parallel to the housing bubble with a focus on data infrastructure.

3. AI Inspo Photos: The Challenge for Bakers (13:49–17:46)

• Bakers are getting more and more AI-generated cookie photos from customers who expect the same results.
• The "uncanny valley" effect: AI cookies are just a little too perfect—no crumbs, flawless icing, impossible color gradients, unachievable piped details.
• "Not one cookie I've ever baked has been perfectly, levelly flat." – Corrie (15:48)
• Some bakers now simply print the AI images onto cookies, while others blend printing and piping for a hybrid approach.

4. How to Spot AI-Generated Cookie Photos (18:54–28:15)

Tips for Spotting AI:

• Perfectly Smooth Flooding (21:04)
• Lighting & Shadows: AI-generated shadows often look too uniform. (22:12)
• Lack of Imperfections: No crumbs, no piping seams, no spread—impossible in real cookies. (25:11)
• Lettering: AI letters are too consistent, lack double-layer up-and-down strokes. (23:34)
• Color Overload: AI often uses more colors than any baker would for a standard set. (24:40)
• Unnatural Gradients / Fine Details: Textures unachievable with royal icing. (22:32)
• Strange Reflections/Light: Lighting is consistent where a photo would show variation. (25:48)
• Contextual Clues: Cookies shown in sets too large or complex to stay fresh.

5. Dealing With Clients Who Send AI Inspo (31:15–39:50; see quotes below)

Key Steps:

1. Validate, Don’t Shame
   • Never mock or scold a client for sharing AI images—they likely don’t realize the difference.
   • "Validate the image. Do not say... this is AI, you dummy." – Heather (31:16)
2. Educate Gently
   • Explain (privately!) that certain details may be AI-generated and not achievable by hand.
   • Example script: “This is such a cute image—looks like it’s AI-generated, which can create perfect details that aren’t quite possible in real cookies, but here’s what I can do that’s similar.”
   • "If you took an order and you did not set the expectations that you cannot recreate it, the client deserves a full refund." – Heather (37:36)
3. Set Clear Expectations
   • Always communicate about what is possible, ideally before taking the order or deposit.
   • “Resetting expectations before money exchanges hands is the most valuable part of this sales process.” – Heather (36:52)
4. Show Your Work
   • Use side-by-side “AI inspo vs. my human version” posts as both educational and marketing content.
   • "Here’s what I was sent and here’s what I was able to create." – Heather (32:18)

Notable Segment:

• Handling After-the-Fact Disappointment (37:06)
  • If you’ve taken an order you know you can’t fulfill to spec, refund—don’t hide behind terms of service fine print.

6. AI in Marketing: Ethical Lines & Authenticity (42:15–54:37)

• AI Policing Isn’t Worth It: Time spent “calling out” others for AI is time lost from your own business.
• Your Secret Sauce Is You
  • Customers crave personality, quirks, and video—they’re drawn to authenticity over perfection.
  • "While you're stepping back, I'm stepping closer." – Corrie (64:01)
• Video Is the Human Differentiator
  • AI can fake images, but video (and your voice/hands/imperfections) is harder to fake and more compelling. (50:10)
• Don’t Virtue Signal: Publicly bashing AI puts off customers and other bakers. Stay positive, keep it professional.

7. AI as a Creative Tool (56:12–61:10)

• Use AI to “brainstorm”—for example, to generate unique themes or marketing ideas.
• Use AI to help with bulk calculations (e.g., baking supply shopping lists), flyer structure, or inspiration for content buckets—but rework the output to fit your style and audience, rather than using it “raw.”
• "I am open to using [AI] for my cookie business when I can see... it increases my output." – Heather (47:12)

8. Collabs, Community, and Standing Out (67:02–77:35)

• Group collabs (Meet the Baker, Pipe a Hobby, etc.) are shown to increase engagement, attract authentic customers, and reinforce non-AI, personal touch.
• Example: “Meet the Baker” collab where bakers reintroduce themselves to their audience with personal images and stories, not AI-generated perfection.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "AI isn't going anywhere. So figure out how to use it as a tool, not your business model."
  – Corrie (04:38)

• "Not one cookie I've ever baked has been perfectly, levelly flat."
  – Corrie (15:48)

• "The clients who appreciate hand-piped. No, I know. Eddie printers, no big blueprint are still out there."
  – Corrie (17:46)

• "Uncanny valley is when... they look good, but for some reason they look off... You can't put a thumb on it."
  – Heather (16:29)

• "You can't be the AI police and a full-time cookie decorator. You gotta have to choose one or the other."
  – Heather (29:41)

• "When you put AI in between you and your clients, you've now stepped back from your clients in that relationship."
  – Corrie (63:22)

• "It is not selfish. AI will not take your job. It is a person who knows how to use AI to incorporate in their job that will take [it]."
  – Heather (66:25)

• "People want to know that you've forgot icing bags like me and Heather forgot icing bags."
  – Corrie (64:52)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp (MM:SS) | Segment | |-----------------------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 04:30–06:30 | AI as a tool, not as the business—what it can and can’t do | | 08:45–13:30 | AI market bubble? The real-world impact (data centers, local economy) | | 13:49–18:10 | How AI affects sugar cookie bakers—AI inspo photos and customer expectations | | 18:54–28:15 | Spotting AI-generated cookie images—practical tips and tells | | 31:15–39:50 | How to professionally educate clients who send AI inspo (with scripts & recommendations) | | 42:15–54:37 | Ethical lines: using AI in business, authenticity, not "AI policing" | | 56:12–61:10 | Practical uses of AI for brainstorming, bulk lists, and content structure | | 67:02–77:35 | Community collabs, content ideas, and building authentic connection beyond AI |

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Resources & Practical Takeaways

How to Talk to Clients About AI Inspo Photos

• Validate their taste/intention, don’t shame them.
• Explain kindly that some details are “impossible by hand” or “AI-generated.”
• Share comparison shots of what you can do (vs. perfection).
• Build disclaimers into your ordering/quote process about AI images and what’s achievable.

Stand Out from AI

• Invest in creating video and personality-driven content (bios, behind-the-scenes, “Meet the Baker” posts).
• Use group collabs as prompts to authentically engage your audience.
• Let your quirks and imperfections shine—clients buy from people, not perfection.

Smart Use of AI

• Use AI for: brainstorming themes, generating supply lists, structuring flyers, organizing marketing ideas.
• Don’t use AI for: displaying products you can’t physically make, deceptive photo edits, or automating all your customer touchpoints.

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The Miracles' Tone and Approach

Fun, honest, occasionally sarcastic, always practical and supportive of cottage bakers. Never negative for negativity's sake; always focused on solutions, education, and helping small businesses thrive.

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Listener Questions & Final Notes

• How to set up a business email as a solo baker?—Use “hello@” as a generic but friendly handle, keep your personal address private, and be wary of spam.
• Should I worry about trademarks if a company abroad already registered my brand idea?—Think about long-term risks, growth, and whether it’s worth defending/competing with a big entity.

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Closing Reminders

• Participate in monthly collabs to grow your business and connect with real customers.
• Don’t lose sleep over the “AI baker” across town—focus on your uniqueness.
• Stay human, stay present, and remember: the future of baking is creative, hybrid, and still very sweet.

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For more tips, classes, and resources, visit sugarcookiemarketing.com or join the Sugar Cookie Marketing Facebook group.

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"You are the secret sauce of your business!" (Heather, 52:44)

Transcript

[Heather]

Corey, it happens to be Tuesday. You know what that means?

[Corey]

That means it's the never ending podcast back.

[Heather]

I was thinking about this if. Okay, so I have reached the end of Dateline podcast. And they're not.

[Corey]

That's so sad.

[Heather]

So sad. So sad. Really? I feel like I owe them about 200 bucks. Like, that's how much of their.

[Corey]

Just 200.

[Heather]

Not 201, not 199. 201. And because I, I'm, I'm the.001% listener to that because it's what I listen to to go to bed.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I just let it play that that Morrison voice guy put me to sleep.

[Corey]

If you're wondering what me and Heather and where we're different, I need it to be pitch black silence to go to bed. Me and Heather were just at the beach together.

[Heather]

This is our biggest trip. Perfect couple on a trip. Like, I just raised my eyebrow. Corey's getting car. I'm loading it up with. When it comes to the routine, Corey's a taco shell. I've never seen more covers wrapped around a human body. She's.

[Corey]

I have to block it out. I have to block out the sounds, the noise, the lights. Yeah, yeah.

[Heather]

So I, I, I turned on Forensic Files as one does on a beach trip. And I'm like, this is great. Corey's like, chloe's got the blinds tucked into her bed frame so they don't let anybody through. And I'm like, you let me have a little background music.

[Corey]

You watch the. And you think he's kind and he does a podcast and he talks about how to get good sleep.

[Heather]

Andrew Huberman. Thank you. Yes.

[Corey]

Dark, cool, silent. That is a good night.

[Heather]

I agree. You don't have that.

[Corey]

Hold on. I want heaters on. But I'm already heated talking about.

[Heather]

Yeah. So anyways, I ran out of the date lines because even unfortunately, when you fall asleep listening, something I do agree with, they say if you fall asleep imbibing information, your brain actually logs it and you don't have to really comprehend it. Right. Okay.

[Corey]

I tried that in high school.

[Heather]

Didn't work one year out the other. But if my brain hears one of those murder mysteries, I'm like, oh, I know how it ends. You know what happens because it's in your subconscious. My subconscious, it's logged every day. My dayline has been transcribed to my brain waves.

[Corey]

They are doing studies about sitting in silence.

[Heather]

You don't sit in silence. I've been trying to work on it a little bit. I've been going out to pick some weeds complete. Not.

[Corey]

Not having your phone play or anything. Just the sounds of nature.

[Heather]

Just. Just out there sounds an h. Sounds of a lot of bugs in my ear. I'll be honest. It'll. It'll keep you alert.

[Corey]

But they say that we're so overstimulated by the sounds of things people that we don't ever sit in silence. So that when we do sit in silence, whether it's a buzzing bee, we get a lot more irritable because we've not had to sit and not be distracted.

[Heather]

Have you seen reflect and to sit

[Corey]

with something and not be distracted. Remember back in elementary school where we would just like many other people, watch the raindrops connect with other raindrops on the car window?

[Heather]

You know what I do? It was either power lines when they go or dad's inability to pass people on the road. And this is why I. Speed is I always knew if the cars reach the same speed, we were going to fall back.

[Corey]

Yeah. See, but sitting there, you're able to be less irritable longer. You can sit in tough situations longer.

[Heather]

I agree. Back to my original original point. We have. This is 266 episodes. You could almost listen for a year.

[Corey]

Wow.

[Heather]

Not double listen. Wow.

[Corey]

Okay. As an avid re listener and watcher to Frasier, the Frasier show. I'm in the middle of it yet again for the 50th time or so.

[Heather]

You know, I enjoy it. Gonna go back into. I'm a trekking. Yeah, Star Trek Voyager start to finish. I like the moral.

[Corey]

Did you only bring that up because Noel Shamsky from Frasier did you know

[Heather]

there was like an SNL before SNL and they had a crossover between Star Trek Voyager and Frasier where Frasier was captain. It's kind of funny. It was only like five minutes. Okay, back to today's podcast traffic. Uh, AI inspo 101, how to spot it, how to handle it when your clients send it to you, and how to use it in your favor. But before we do that, I do not have a quote. Do you want to make an AI quote? AI is so new. Sound like I can get from Carl Yin and get a quote.

[Corey]

So what? Make one up from Corey. AI isn't going anywhere. So figure out how to use it as a tool, not your business model.

[Heather]

Ah, yeah, quite talking. And this has been a topic at many in Olive Garden recently that AI, whether it's a bubble or not, it is integrated into so much and it is exceptionally useful as a tool. But when you use it as it needs to be in the passenger seat, but you still need to be in the driver's seat. It cannot replace that human. It cannot replace you. It's becoming. You can kind of sense it more when people are using and specifically copy like you can see it in the images. But I even saw TikTok yesterday. I didn't install on TikTok, but I will. Have you seen the study in the World War II, they were trying to figure out the weak points of the planes that went to battle, right?

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

So when they did it, they did a spot graph and it's the plane and the outline and they're like, okay, the weak points are this part of the wings and this part of the tail. So we need to reinforce those. But it's a. Is called a survival ship bias because the planes that actually returned to the aircraft carriers were not showing the weak points. It was the planes that never came back that actually showed the weak points. So the meme was, you know, when you're starting to see less AI generated photos, but then it's like when you're starting to see less AI generated photos, it's because it's gotten better. Yes, you're sensing the wrong thing anyway. So AI is getting better, but I do not think it will ever replace that human component. Because Core and I were saying AI is based off of what human. Humans wrote online.

[Corey]

AI isn't generating anything new. It is always. And even if you put in an AI prompt, it says scanning the Internet, it is pulling off of what people have done over the. The years and years that the Internet has been around. Imagine if every website, developer, everyone with a website has been constantly uploading blog posts, things like that. AI has so much to pull from because people have literally been giving it so, so much research and data over these years. But it can only pull from something that's out there currently. It cannot make something new. Maybe it could strategize about an idea you have, but it's never going to be like in this wackadoodle bronut cronut blondie that you've created will, you know, be a huge seller because it's not existed before.

[Heather]

Not that I'm supporting the diamond trade, but it's not. It can't be the diamond mine. It can be the sifter though. It's a great way to sift through information quickly generated other people. I told Corey this morning, people don't go to create websites and write incorrect content. It's the best of what they've got. And AI could pull from the best of what other people have actually pinged AI. And I was like, how do I rank my website optimize for? And I thought a AEO stood for artificial intelligence, actually stands for answer. So it's like yeah, it's AI is constantly pulling answers when people query questions. And it said AI will not pull from its own fluff content. It doesn't like that. Likes hard facts. So even there we can't use AI to write our blog posts. We have to write them ourselves and then AI can pull from them. So great. It's a tool. How can we use a tool? But before I get into that, this is a sugar cookie marketing group podcast called Baking it Down. So you do get the real twins. We are real currently. Maybe we'll be AI generated in the future.

[Corey]

If you see a triplet, that's the Iowa.

[Heather]

Maybe it would like to go to bed with some podcast playing. You can find all this information we talk [e-mail] I just updated the website and try to keep it updated twice a month with what's coming, what's going, what you want to find, what you

[Corey]

don't want to find.

[Heather]

But I'm going to shove it down your throat anyways. And then you have Corey's quote. But what's coming, we have community groups, boot camp. We have the cookie con happy hour which is actually tomorrow. Pipe your hobby which I have to post, but it'll be our first limited collab. We'll talk about in a minute. And the Summerween cookie class kit which drops today. I know because I put it a 10 hour workday yesterday. On it.

[Corey]

Way to go. Way to go.

[Heather]

Jumping back into this topic that Corey's exceptionally passionate about.

[Corey]

It's not passion. Here's the thing. AI will not be going anywhere. So to say that you hate AI

[Heather]

don't say that to my stock investments. Oh wait, say that to my stock investment. Okay. Okay, question before we jump into this. Do you think AI is in a bubble or not?

[Corey]

I think we are at the height of it and then it will just like any. Yes, I think it's a bubble and then people will get used to it or people will be able to spot it a little bit more.

[Heather]

Do you think in terms of stock market? So we have these stocks. I don't know if OpenAI is public or not, but like Nvidia, the chip suppliers that are, you know, supplying this SpaceX which says a robot and it went IPO last week. Do you think that these Are if

[Corey]

they're creating robots, I think that whatever

[Heather]

stock you have, you're good. Do you think AI is in a bubble? Should we divest?

[Corey]

I don't think it's necessarily in this. I think the bubble is large right now. Everything is using it. It's quite literally in every app. Even in my video editing app, they're like, we updated more AI. Canva Gmail.

[Heather]

Canva Gmail. It's in. What's that one I used to play? My life starts with an A.

[Corey]

Starts with an A. Oh, Adobe.

[Heather]

It's in Adobe. Adobe now has this new thing. I log into Illustrator yesterday, do the Summarine class, and it was like, you can create a graphic, a 2D graphic, and Illustrator can have that 2D graphic. Migrate it so you can twi. If you made like, let's say you

[Corey]

made a dog and he was looking

[Heather]

left, you can have it look straight left, 45 degree angle, right. Because AI can read the direction of the dog.

[Corey]

It's on every social media thing. Because every time I write a post it'd be like, do you want us to judge this up a little bit using AI? It's now in group posts. Because I went and made a group post asking for a salad dressing that I had at a restaurant that I really liked. And it added a title to my post and it said, created by meta AI.

[Heather]

When I search posts and pull from them in Google, which means Facebook is now being Facebook group. Posts from public groups are now being indexed in Google, which explains why Facebook would want us to switch to public. When you click on that, even if the group post didn't have a title, it generates one because that's where it came from. A Google search. I saw a Facebook ad for Jelly Cats. If you know, you know. And below the ad was AI generated. Questions I could ask about the. In the ad. Yeah, the. The bubble comes from. It's everywhere, but it's not generating income. That's what the bubble is. So the housing market, everyone's selling houses, but where's the money?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So whether it's in a bubble or not, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. I don't think it's Loudoun county because 70% of the Internet has always gone through Loudoun county and now these data centers. I went to the Walmart in Leesburg.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Scenic look onto a data center or five. I know.

[Corey]

It actually mostly goes through a place that I used to live called Ashburn. And they've renamed it. The people of Ashburn have renamed it to Databurn. Because there are so many data centers in there.

[Heather]

It is peculiar. I don't think you guys truly understand how weird it is to drive through Loudoun county, which is specifically where Ashburn is and Leesburg was seeing these data centers.

[Corey]

It'll be like a million dollar house with the backdrop of a data center.

[Heather]

Well, Ashley was. Ashley was. Our older sister on Saturday was saying that, you know the movie Aaron Brockovich is Julia Roberts. I think it's based on a true story of this town where the something, the runoff from some chemical plant poisoned a lot of the people. Right. Okay, okay. This same woman, Aaron Brockovich, who's a real person, says data centers will be that to this generation. With the pollution that it creates, who knows, right?

[Corey]

I saw in the news. I know you're like, the twins are dogging on data are on AI. I know we use it, so I can't be dogging on it. The humming sound coming from the buildings.

[Heather]

Will you see that guy on his porch? And I think he was in Loud county and he was reading. It was loud. I even said to myself, like, what if I looked outside and they built a data center here in West Virginia, which is the next wild frontier for data centers. Yes.

[Corey]

I'm surprised that it didn't go to West Virginia first. With how much land you guys have,

[Heather]

I think there's some tax incentives in it.

[Corey]

But to build it next to a residential neighborhood is weird to me.

[Heather]

It seems exclusively. Find an apartment complex Chick Fil A.

[Corey]

We need to find bad parking on a major road. Data centers.

[Heather]

Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's. Put your Trader build the Trader Joe's in the parking lot of the data center with 12 parking spots. Yeah. So if you guys ever come to Virginia, definitely swing through Loudoun County. You'll see how peculiar it looks. It's very, very weird.

[Corey]

It's odd. They're actually knocking down giant office space buildings. Granted, they've been for lease for quite some time. They're knocking them down just to build data centers in the spaces.

[Heather]

If the AI bubble is legitimate and these data centers ever will have a million jump houses. Yeah.

[Corey]

Oh, yeah.

[Heather]

Because that's always whenever any big building

[Corey]

into our jump park, we got a

[Heather]

jump park coming in spirit. Halloween will hate to see a data center massive building. Which is funny. These data centers are so big. We have one convention center in Louden. Yeah. Dallas. It closed down and became an ikea. Like, can't we make the IKEA and the data center? Anyways, back to the topic. So my point number one, because I don't want to just rag on AI. It's here. It should be a tool. I don't think it should replace a pilot. Right. Why royal icing sugar cookie bakers get the brunt of this AI inspo photo? Because this is AI inspo 101. And it's because it's one thing for the AI to generate a drop cookie recipe, it's another thing for it to generate an image that your client sends you. And it's perfect. Yes. Yeah.

[Corey]

I will say I've gotten a few AI INSPOs over the. And it's become more and more common because AI has become more and more common.

[Heather]

You do a very interesting thing with it, though. You actually use it in marketing. And I'm going to bring that up in point four, how we can use it for us. But just my teaser is Corey will take the AI inspo photo, communicate with the client, which I'm going to talk about in a second, but then she'll actually use it in terms of marketing. Like, this is the AI photo I was sent and here's what I was able to create. And we actually did this as a collab. We did, we did.

[Corey]

It was a great one. AI cookie collab.

[Heather]

Oh, yeah. And then we took. We had AI did chat. Specifically chat. Goal post. GPT.

[Corey]

Grave Point Tavern.

[Heather]

Your point average.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Generate a bunny that was too perfect with too many details and then we recreate it within the best of our ability. Which is the important is because you're going to recreate it yourself. But that first one is AI in its effort to be perfect, discounts the imperfections of royal icing. You know, we have, you know, even your best day, you're going to have a natural slight cratering in a puffy cookie. Right.

[Corey]

Not one cookie I've ever baked has been perfectly, levelly flat. Right.

[Heather]

Then you have the. Just the photography of it has that cast. I don't know how to call it. I don't even know what to call it. One day we'll have the terminology for when you're able to spot AI but not explain why somebody called it in a thread in the sugar cookie marketing group, Uncanny Valley. And that's probably the best way to describe it. Uncanny valley is when typically described as when a celebrity has plastic surgery and they. They look good, but for some reason they look off and you don't know what to say. It's called uncanny valley. Yeah.

[Corey]

Like you stare at them and you're like, did they get their nose job done?

[Heather]

Something is not natural And I cannot tell you what it is. Yes.

[Corey]

And that's where you feel uneasy.

[Heather]

Yeah. Like huh?

[Corey]

But you can't put a thumb on it.

[Heather]

Can't even describe it in words. Like, you know, I'd be like, this is AI and dad would be like, why? And I'd be like, can't you just feel it? Yes, feel it. So the thing about royal icing and it's different from drop cookies is that the royal icing generated by AI is so perfect and it is a specific style that to recreate it is pretty difficult. Now I know you did pretty good with your AI generated. It's so funny. This week Corey sent me, someone took a piped cookie from someone else and printed was like a piped cookie. It was a piped cookie from AI and they printed it onto the cookie.

[Corey]

Someone took an image of a cookie and printed it onto an A cookie. So it was like cookie ception. Like it was two cookies in one.

[Heather]

And I see a lot of people using AI generated IM to print on the cookie and they're just cutting out the whole expectation thing because it's exactly what the client sent you minus the piped details because it's just a print and that's a whole business model that could actually work for somebody. So I'm not even ragging on that. But you have the people who are like, it's removing the art. I think it's removing the art and replacing it with strategy. Yeah, it for sure. It requires less talent to print something than it does to pipe something. And what.

[Corey]

Let me tell you, the people who appreciate hand piped. No, I know Eddie printers, no big blueprint are still out there. I once had a client and she ordered very much last minute for two

[Heather]

dozen soccer ball cookies. Okay.

[Corey]

So I said to get these done in time, I'm going to have to print them. So I printed them and then I piped the kid's name on the top. She's like, wow, I really don't like prints. So never do that again.

[Heather]

So there's.

[Corey]

Yeah, there's.

[Heather]

Well, don't be late. Donor to like. Yeah, yeah, you know what, she's never been late since. Right. So yeah, we have the clients who appreciate and to me I'd be the client. I probably go as far as I like the blend of the two. Give me a printed texture pipe on top of it.

[Corey]

Heather likes a printed background with a piped detail.

[Heather]

I think it's the, it's the like the ninja move. Like I can do. Not only can I do Easy. I can do easy, hard, blended together to create unique, like, wow. You're taking all the tools and mixing them together and truly untouchable and creates a really unique product. The problem with the AI generated inspo is when the client expects that to be reality, especially if it's not something you can directly recreate. I know we can get close.

[Corey]

Possibly.

[Heather]

Sometimes we get in the same ball field, but sometimes we're playing two different sports when that generated image and what you can produce are too far off.

[Corey]

Yes. Yeah. Here's the thing. We can't be mad at our clients for sharing AI inspiration with us. It's being shoved down everybody's throats. Literally. When you log onto the Internet, if you even search something, the first thing that pops up is what AI pulls from random websites. And below that now is like the maps and people's website websites. So if AI is always being shoved down people's throats, they're eventually going to be like, okay, let me plug what I'm looking for into AI and send it to an actual baker. When we get offended at these people, that's when they're like, but it wasn't my fault. It's been shoved down my throat. Just like it's being shoved down your throat. You have to think they're also in your shoes. They don't know. They have no idea. It's up to us bakers to explain what we can and what we cannot do.

[Heather]

Now let me ask you, and this is my point, too, would you educate your clients on how to spot AI generated images on Pinterest?

[Corey]

If they. I don't. I won't, like, take a stand on my social media and be like, this is how you can. If you order from me and your inspiration photo happens to include something that's AI. I'll take the moment to educate you on, like, hey, you see how these details are so perfect? It's not something I can do. Here's a look at a set that I did was similar. And that's probably more what you're looking for as my 0.3.

[Heather]

And you're going to stick the line because that's exactly what it's about. Back to 0.2. Now I'm starting to see. And back to that example where you're seeing fewer AI generated image. But that means they're getting better. Yeah, it's starting to fool bakers. And I see it in the groups that really have, like, less admin oversight is somebody's like, how do I recreate this? And people are like, you dummy, it's AI. Yeah. It's just like a million comments like, this is AI, this is AI. And then one person's like, wait, here's what I would do to recreate this. Right. So here's the things I would look for to tell for the bakers who are like, I'm struggling between seeing if it's reality, if it's AI, some of us can see it. I also think there's. I actually believe my own personal take that if your eyesight is going bad, it's easier to fall for AI, I

[Corey]

think because you miss the nuance that subtle.

[Heather]

Subtle whatever that uncanny valley is. Yes. One incredibly smooth flooding. Now, Corey and I, it was Liz Viz. She uses only AI generated images now for Cutter shop. But it's getting pretty good at creating imperfections.

[Corey]

It's. It's creating pipe able imperfections. That would be something that I would mess up on my own cookies. Like not mess up, but like you could tell. Like I'd pick up my piping bag in that same instance that is generating those cookies.

[Heather]

I find to kind of tell, look at the edges where the light and speaking of photography would naturally. Maybe because there has to be imperfections. We're not perfect. The cookies are not a perfect canvas. You would see a bend in the light. With the light.

[Corey]

I would say the shadows of a real cookie versus an AI cookie are vastly different. Like when we're piping on five layers on a cookie to make it like the shadow is pretty big because we have five layers deep. But AI just does a subtle same shadow. No matter if the cookie is five layers deep or just a single layer deep.

[Heather]

Yeah. I'm going to talk about Canva's new feature called Magic Layers. And Corey and I were talking or I was illustrating. I was demonstrating it for this morning and Cory's like, wow, that's fascinating. Except for it can't handle the shadows like the shadows right now at the tail. But one thing I've kind of noticed. So I'm editing the cookie class kit, the summer rain class kit.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

So I'm zooming in so close to this image. You guys have no concept of how close I am to Corey's backdrop. There's crumbs everywhere when you get that close to it. AI wouldn't put a crumb there. It's almost too perfect. Another one is gradients that a wet on wet couldn't do those textures. A lot of times when you get AI to generate like a image of a beach, it will have a texture that's impossible to create with royal icing and almost too sandy, if I'm saying. Yeah, it looks like real sand detailers that are finer than the finest marker tip you could find.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we know, like, we have tweets out there. Rainbow dust are. And drip color are the finest tips out there. And they're even, like, a little thicker than, like, a pencil tip that's recently been sharpened.

[Heather]

Back to my murder podcast, the forensic handwriting people. There's pressure points that we naturally apply when we're writing with a utensil, a writing utensil that AI would make uniform. But.

[Corey]

Well, here's the thing. If you're ever piping a D, you go up and down. If it's cursive, you would have a double layer on the upstroke and the downstroke if it shares the same thing. And that's what AI takes out. And unfortunately, as bakers, we know it's almost impossible to get that same look when you have this letter.

[Heather]

Yeah. Yeah. It would be really hard to get rid of that. And I always find, like, the biggest tell for AI generated is lettering. Whether piped or handwritten, it's just a shade too perfect. The.

[Corey]

The own. The baker that I've met, Emet, that can do the most perfect of handwriting, and I'm not quite sure how she does it with a single line is Tanya Clower Swiss out street cookies. And I'm like, is that real?

[Heather]

No, it's real.

[Corey]

I've seen her hand pipe it. Outside of that, I. I mean, if I'm doing pressure piping, you're gonna see a clock. I know.

[Heather]

Corey. Brighter. Right in the word. The thing about Tanya is she'll post that, and people are like, is this agent AI generated? Because it's almost. It's fresh.

[Corey]

So good. Whatever the consistency, she's nailed it. Have I nailed it over all these years?

[Heather]

I have not. Another tip is colors that don't necessarily add up. Too many colors. Something where, you know, a baker would never take on a project with that many colors unless they were doing it for content.

[Corey]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Heather]

Like a set. A dozen.

[Corey]

Right. Oh, when like Every. Like, there's 50,000 cookies in every.

[Heather]

It would be like you're in the kitchen. This cookies are stale by the time you're done with them because you've been working on them for so long.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And then just perfect uniformity. Like I said, Corey has crumbs. There was

[Corey]

dough spreads. Unless you have, like, no spread dough spreads. And you'll see a different in Size like a circle cookie is never a perfect circle. But AI will take what's not perfect and make it perfect. And that's like, oh, my goodness. That's a perfect circle with no icing. Like when you go around a circle with a python bag and you can join those last two, there's usually a little clump of icing there. And that's usually the seam. And I could say they started and ended there. AI will remove that.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

And then you'll have like, perfect writing where there's no up and down. I'm like, oh, my goodness, I'm horrible. It's hard to see.

[Heather]

But once you start to perceive it, if you went through this list, another one is, and I agree with this one, is lighting and reflection. Not just necessarily inconsistency. It's almost too consistent. Like in Corey's photos, I can be like, okay, you know, we have. You sent me the summerween photos. Right. And I had to go back in and lighten the lower half of the image. Cause I could tell the sun was on the front side time evening it out. Right. But AI wouldn't have the necessity to even it out because the white at the top, the white of the backdrop wouldn't match the white at the bottom. Which tells me it was artificially lit. Yeah. What I see a lot of bakers

[Corey]

doing versus what they used to do, a lot of bakers would use a background erase. Now, background erase has been out for quite a few years and gotten more popular over the last two, where maybe you take a picture and it's kind of dark in your house, it'll erase the background, which is maybe your dark kitchen countertop, and put it something a little bit lighter. The problem with that, though, is the lighting's different on top of the cookies versus the back of the cookies. But your cookies are true to life. It's literally what you baked. Now, I see when you run a photo through AI generation to delete the background, it's also fixing the imperfections on the top of the cookies.

[Heather]

That's the biggest argument I see in the unmanaged group is what AI comes in touch. And where is the line in the sand of what people just deem as a moral edit and an immoral edit, an unethical edit. And because they're like, it didn't change, but someone's like, but it changed the lighting. But Lightroom's changing the lighting. And frankly, where you take the time of day changes the lighting.

[Corey]

And you're so funny because baker's be like, you're not allowed to do that. But I only use it up to this point. And after that point, you're wrong.

[Heather]

But like, we did a podcast on absolutes. Never say never because you'll have to walk it back or you'll have to your legs because you're like, well, you

[Corey]

know, I did make this graduation got away from me and I had a 2025 grad cap hat and I really

[Heather]

needed to take 2026 because I ran a time work. But it's y.

[Corey]

Outside of that, if I didn't run out of time, I wouldn't have used it.

[Heather]

I would have ran this outlet. There's always the whole people Eddie's removing the art out of it. But I did have to buy an Eddie because it was a really complex looking. It's actually harder than you think it is. Okay, you can walk it back. You can just say, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. So that's what my point one is. It does. It is affecting sugar cookie bakers in the terms of your clients sending you this. But my point two is sugar cookie bakers. Here's how to see what is AI generated and it's. And it's a vibe that's hard to explain. But those are my eight tips to spot it.

[Corey]

But as people upload their stuff more and more to AI, AI is getting smarter and smarter because we're saying, well, I didn't like what you did with that graduation cap. Can you change it to this? So you. You're actually educating AI to be better at it. So it's going to be harder to

[Heather]

spot it, which makes it a better tool, but it also makes it. And Corey and I said, I do not believe the future will be a bunch of bakers posting AI content. I believe it'll be a bunch of bakers using AI to create good content as inspirational tool.

[Corey]

What I do think, just like in days of old, literally yesterday before AI was launched, other people were stealing other bakers photos and launching that. Now it'll just be bakers using AI

[Heather]

versus bakers who don't. So I'd seen it in another group. Someone was like, I actually saw it on Reddit. Someone's like, this baker's using my photo. And then, you know, they bullied the baker. And the baker said, well, I said it was just something I could do, but I'll take it down. But I was like, she's two clicks away from running that through a. Nobody could touch it.

[Corey]

I know, I know. So the arguments have Always been out there. It's just been a different medium. But now we're coming into this world where AI, it takes two clicks and maybe, hey, can you change what you just did there? And then you have a whole new recreated photo.

[Heather]

Imagine that. Hey, girly. I don't think this isn't my photo, but I can tell you used it to inspire AI to create a new photo. Yeah.

[Corey]

So you can't be the AI police and a full time cookie decorator.

[Heather]

You gotta have to choose one or the other. Yeah. So back to kind of business. You could, like Corey said, you could be the AI police and then you're not focusing on your business. And this is a business and a marketing podcast and we're here to help you make more money. If you want to spend it policing other bakers, listen, they don't care. That's why they generated the image in the first place. You'll spin your wheels and get blocked from every page. So I wouldn't focus on them, let them do theirs. I think the differentiator is what it comes shakes down to is the audience will start to perceive what was you and the audience will start to perceive that baker who relied solely on AI. That trust factor cannot permeate the AI generated image.

[Corey]

Well, Heather, copy. Heather did turn off the comment section of this post and this was maybe a month or so ago, but it was an interesting read. I ended up watching the news article, reading the article, but it was a baker who portrayed that they could make a cookie set look a certain way, take people's money, but then she would never bake the cookies. So it's like she didn't even turn out national. Yeah, yeah, it was crazy. So she was taking the money, the police got involved and she was ordered to repay the money to these people.

[Heather]

So. And her name is everywhere. Her real name, full government issued name is everywhere. Now when you search her bakery, you're going to get fraudulent, stealing, theft. Okay, fly by night. Maybe she closes down the business. Sure. It doesn't matter. Every job she applies for. So the bill does come due. Eventually you can, you know, the whole thing. The same thing with the ethics of how are people able to make Disney cookies and skirt the copyright rule? They're not taking the risk.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So that and this, that and the other. But in terms of business, this can be a great tool for you and we're going to talk about the ways that it can be a tool. But I want to talk about talking to your clients about the AI Inspo photo. They just sent you and Corey just absolutely knocked it out of the park. But my step one is validate the image. Do not say you always have that, that desire to be like, this is AI, you dummy. Yeah. Are you an idiot? So see a lot of bakers and they do this and I'm going to call it self righteous virtue signaling on their pages. AI is desecrating the business. And if you use AI and then they get all these likes, but all the likes are from bakers. Right. And now your client is scared to send you an AI generated image for fear you're going to lambast them in dms, right? Yeah. Right. So you're going to make them the next viral post on your page. Yeah. You know, it's always the. When the teacher walks past your desk at school, hey guys, if you're not going to do wellness tests, please just.

[Corey]

If you're not going to read the instructions.

[Heather]

So then, so yeah, you have that, that desire to kind of post like AI is ruining. I would not suggest ever doing that. Now what Corey's done, and I thought it was a great take on this is she's taken the images that were AI generated from her clients and some of the clients are like, yeah, I generated this for you. And that's how the tool. And we'll talk about that tool in a second. She's made that as content. She said, here's what I was sent and here's what I was able to create. Here's what I was sent, here's. And it's actually an inspiring thing. So your client is not afraid of accidentally sending you an AI generated image, but you're able to also set their expectations on what you're capable of, you know? Yeah. Because expectations are huge.

[Corey]

What I want as a bakery business is to make money. If you are bringing me an AI generated image and want to pay me the money, I want to translate that into cash into my pocket. So what I don't want to do is scare you away and be like, how dare you? I am an artist and you would send me AI generated crap. I can't believe you. Okay, I will lose them as a potential client. What I can do is reset their expectations. I had someone who sent me Easter. There were chicks in Easter egg eggs, basically from afar.

[Heather]

I was like, oh, that image is super cute.

[Corey]

When you zoomed in, birds were missing eyeballs, beaks were on butts.

[Heather]

I found a separate. It's called, is this AI? And it's. And it's funny, the tells now is always the background is the Giveaway. Like, AI knows that the focal point needs to be perfect, but it's like, yeah, ghost person, three arms. Who cares?

[Corey]

Three arms and 22 fingers.

[Heather]

What we want to do is validate. Don't correct in. When I ever go to a business, am I excluded? And I get shamed. It makes me not want to go. I had to drop off that old car. Car. 31 years old. I know it's covered in rust. I know because I drove it through a snowstorm with salt on the road, and I know that it is 31 years old. It's leaving rest spots on the driveway. Okay. I told the mechanic, listen, I know it's resting. I don't need to be told. I don't want to be ashamed. I know I drove it through the salt puddle. It was me. It was I. To shame your clients in an effort to educate is still not the correct answer. Validate. Oh, this is a great thing. It's actually, from what I can tell, AI generated. So what we're going to do is name the Gap app. Say, hey, I love this. This is so great. It's so cute. It's AI generated. Here's how I can tell, and here's how I'm able to help this translate to a set. Yeah. Positive. You see, everything there is a positive thing.

[Corey]

Yeah. I can say what I. I say because I've gotten more now that, you know, the time is gone. You know, even got one for July 4th. So I'd be like, hey, yeah, I love these images. Some of these ones are AI generated. So while I can't, like, recreate imperfect because the details are so crazy, what I can use it as inspiration on sets. Here's another Fourth of July set I've done in the past. It'll look similar to this. And typically, my clients are like, oh, I trust you. I was just trying to give you some things to go off. I appreciate you giving me something to go off of, because I am not the person who wants to go off of nothing. I need something to go off of. But if I can positively direct you, you're going to have a better experience. And then in the one I love, when I. I direct someone positively about AI and then they come and make another order because then I don't have to do the positive education again. You already know.

[Heather]

Yeah. So Corey's script that she gave you right there is like, oh, my goodness, I love this. This is so cute. It seems AI generated, but here is. Here's some other design marrying it back to sets. You've already done is the key here.

[Corey]

If you, Even before AI, if someone asked for a set that was maybe outside of your comfort zone, but you could get pretty close to it, but you would reset their expectations. I had someone who wanted these poppy cookies. And there is a, I want to say it's a floral class for maybe either cookie.

[Heather]

Cookies.

[Corey]

Cookies or the Miller's Wife. And it's these 3D poppy cookies where it looks like it's coming off the page. I was like, hey, I'm so sorry. That's amazing. I can't redo that. And they're like, no, no, let me send you some other poppy cookies that you can do.

[Heather]

And we were able to salvage.

[Corey]

There was still the expectation I had to rearrange to make the orders because if I couldn't meet her expectations, she was going to be met. ADD Anyways, same with the AI conversation.

[Heather]

So, yeah, this concept is not new if you are incapable of producing it, whether AI or a baker that's been in the game longer than you or a baker with a skill set you don't currently possess. Resetting expectations before money exchanges hands is the most valuable part of this sales process.

[Corey]

Can I add one thing? What we don't want to do is to take on the order, not set the expectations at the front. Create the cookies, fall short from the inspiration, and then explain it after the fact.

[Heather]

Like when the client says, hey, this isn't what I expected.

[Corey]

And we're like, hey, well, what you sent was AI generated. And that can't just be. What we want to do is have that hard conversation at the beginning. Because if they want perfection and we can't offer it, we're not the baker

[Heather]

for them, and you're never going to be perfect. Yeah.

[Corey]

What we don't want to do is take their cash, have the party tomorrow, and tell them the day before pickup, here's what your order looks like. And they're like, this is not what I sent you as inspiration.

[Heather]

I'm going to be balding here. I'm going to be bold here. Curl up your toes, tuck them under your chair because I'm stepping on them.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

If you took an order and you did not set the expectations that you cannot recreate it, the client deserves a full refund.

[Corey]

Oh, no, I, I.

[Heather]

You're 80% there. If you told them you could and you missed the mark and they're upset, and I know I wouldn't write this in the group because people couldn't handle it when they're in the trenches. Yeah, because by the time you get to the group, we've already have the clients said, I'm not happy you're. But you, you're like, but I spent the money, I spent the time. This is the best I could do. It's not bad. It's pretty close. All the validate you, you are in my take, incorrect. You did not reset the expectations within your wheelhouse. You set the client up for a disappointment. Yeah.

[Corey]

So even if it's with AI, without AI, if the inspiration is not something that you can recreate and you did not set that expectation, now you have an angry customer on your hands and you might be out the money just because you didn't take the time to set the expectation beforehand.

[Heather]

Now, and I'm going to add a terms of service clause here, but I see a lot of bakers fall back to like, but it was in my terms of service. But you didn't bring to light when you knew it wasn't something you could hit the mark on.

[Corey]

The problem with the terms of service, it is there but the problem.

[Heather]

Raise your hand. If you read a Terms of service

[Corey]

a day in your life, it ain't nobody reading.

[Heather]

Like we said, it protects you. It protects you when it needs to, but it's not a forethought. I'm not reading the terms of service for every software I download to be like, well, I barely read it for buying this house. Yeah.

[Corey]

What you need to do is, hey, FYI me, I cannot see light purple. Purple, Hey, I see there's a lot of purple going on in this set. Just want to let you know I can't necessarily see the color light purple. Here's the Americolor colors that I'm picking from beforehand. Just give me a thumbs up if that looks good to go in my terms of service. It states that I'll get as close to the colors you need as possible. I am human, though, and I will do my best to get close to those colors. What we why people don't do that, bakers don't do that, is because they hate confrontation.

[Heather]

They don't want to lose the sale. Yeah. Let me tell you, gaining the sale, taking their money, leaving an upset client to drag you for the rest of their known days on planet Earth through every group, threads through every DM you don't know is going through every other baker they recommendation recommend is going to cost you far more than potentially losing the sale. By setting expectations up front.

[Corey]

Yeah. I will say, in this time of social media people dragging small businesses isn't as common as it used to be. And it's because they know that one an admin might delete their post or something. But you don't know what people are saying in closed rooms about. You definitely don't buy it. Like, oh, your kid's graduating. Oh, that's great.

[Heather]

What are you going to do?

[Corey]

We're going to have a party ordering cake. Customer don't buy from Exodus because she did not. We don't know those conversations. So you might be like, well, I've made some customers mad. I've never heard back. You may never seen it online, but no one's coming to ring your doorbell. Like, oh, you know, Pam just said

[Heather]

this about you yesterday. Yeah, I went to a car show this Saturday hosted by the company. If you listen to all 266 episodes. A couple years ago I took my car to a shop and they did me dirty. I went to their car show this weekend. I was talking.

[Corey]

You supported them.

[Heather]

That's so funny. I was talking to somebody and he was like, why are you here? I said, I'm infiltrating from the inside. I'll spread rumors from the ground floor. So here's what.

[Corey]

If you've listened to the 266 episodes, we have talked about a client of ours, a marketing client that had a lady who made it a life mission. And I've never seen like this how she went out of her way to unrecommend somebody. So she never recommended the company she ended up using after. She didn't like this construction company, but she went out of her way to unrecommend them in every single group on

[Heather]

Facebook, created profiles for them to unrecommend. Yeah, we should write a book called A Client Scorned. My final thing is I, I would add this if the client sent you an AI generated image, I would add this not just to clickable terms and service that lives on another website. I would add it to their order quote. If you're using QuickBooks or FreshBooks or something, you can add those little disclaimers, something like final design is B is based on the baker's quoted concept. Online inspiration images may include AI generated finishes that can't be reproduced by hand. Something that when the client sends that AI generated image, we have a new set of standard operating procedure that makes sure everyone and you're going to immediately bring that up, say, hey, this is AI generated. Love it. Thank you so much. Here's what I'm capable of doing. Here's some other examples. Does this Fit for you. Great. Awesome. And then on that quote, we're going to constantly bring in that disclaimer that the AI generated image cannot be perfectly reproduced, but it's used as great inspiration. Yeah.

[Corey]

Recently, as AI has become more and more leaned on by both bakers and public alike, I saw a baker post that this customer, this potential customer had sent an entire AI generated image.

[Heather]

It was six cookies.

[Corey]

They looked perfection, for sure. And on the side was. And I'm looking for colors. Sage green, laurel from the highland cows of, you know, super specific written. And I. It would be overwhelming to receive that as a baker because it was like the clouds fog color, but not too bright yellow as the sunset, something like that. That would be overwhelming. But they just plug something into AI AI spit something out in probably two seconds, and they sent it to a bunch of bakers to see what bakers would quote. Like, they're. They're looking for a price. Honestly, that would be overwhelming to receive that because you're like, whoa, they're so specific. No AI was specific. And they just alt, click, saved as sent to a bunch of bakers. The.

[Heather]

The client used AI to interpret. Now use the baker to interpret it back to human form. Right?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So run it back through your own personal brain here and be like, what I'm getting from you, what these, what I'm hearing, how. Here's what we can come up with. Say this. And if the client's like, no, I want it to look identical, then you know it's not your client.

[Corey]

Yeah, it's not your client that. No one's her client. AI would be her client. So you could reset the expectations. If I ended up looking at the cookies individually, they were attainable. Granted, they had perfect lines. But if you could be like, hey, you know, these were AI generated, and I'm gonna have a little lump where the line joins. That's something that you could say. And then showcase your past sets that you've done recently. Like, here's what you can expect with this. Here's what lettering looks like when it comes to that. That it is a little overwhelming to receive an AI image that's done up to the hilt. And, like, there's like the perfect gold painted gold arch nemesis of mine if

[Heather]

you did not know. A lot of reflections.

[Corey]

Like, a lot of.

[Heather]

A lot of reflections. Sometimes not sometimes patchy. Like, that's my. My issue, you know, those expectations.

[Corey]

And they might be like, you know what? I was looking for the perfect set. Hey, great. I'm so sorry. I couldn't Be the baker for you. Appreciate you giving me the opportunity to quote you. Learn more about gotcha

[Heather]

when you this is an admonishment for a very specific subset of bakers. When you use AI to zhuz your photos and your cookies, you are creating an unrealistic expectation for your clients. Now essentially, you have become the AI generated inspo photo. So when you say to your clients, here's what I'm capable of, but AI has already brushed it up, you're setting yourself up for a bit of an expectation issue when they come from pickup. Now, if you're priced for low, well

[Corey]

yeah, well, even I I even risky when you're priced lower, people still have super high expectations because now you're the low, the highest end of someone's low budget.

[Heather]

Uhhuh. Which you always say the problem client is like, I'm stretching every dollar here. I need this to be perfect.

[Corey]

I sometimes like when there's a little bit of issue with my cookies. And that's hard to say because as bakers and artists, we're perfectionists. But when I can say like, you know, the D in this one is a little bit bigger than the D in the other cookie, or this one shaped a little bit different than this one shaped, or you can see where my icing separated just a TINGEE in this one, that shows the imperfections that I truly can attain every single time.

[Heather]

Like AI generated copy specifically, it's a hard to tell because it's not a visual, but it could be almost behoove us at this point to include one type of typo, which don't worry about them. I was already including them. But to have a typo or to have a missing comma or to have a missing piece of punctuation run on sentence, something, a pronoun that's not 222. Yeah, that would almost add back the authenticity because AI could never. Until it does. I'm sure. But until then, now it doesn't. So now point four. So we know what I'm trying to not to rag on AI. There's plenty of stuff to rag on it. But there's also it is a tool and a lot of us us. And I know you guys are like, I don't use it. Yes, you are. It doesn't matter what you're doing. It's coming through my car speaker at this point you can't do.

[Corey]

I know. I knew I was even on a walk and I said, see Siri, I don't want it to Siri, when does

[Heather]

the sun set today?

[Corey]

8:37.

[Heather]

I was like, oh, so we're using it. It's a great tool. It's making. It's allowing us to speak to the Internet conversationally and before. I don't use it yet. Yeah buddy. Even when you have any Alexa.

[Corey]

Are Google homes in your house? Look, you just heard me whisper that that is what it is. It is also the same thing. So. Yeah, well I would never use it for my cookie business. Okay. So you've created a weird line for yourself. The, the problem is there's no test at the end of this. So there's no like borrow this phrase.

[Heather]

I, I am open to using it for my cookie business. When I can see that with my own brain functioning, it increases my output. There you go. Why don't you use. That's what means you, you're never saying never but you're not saying you always do either. You're saying I'm open to options if it can increase my workflow without degrading my personal. Here's the thing.

[Corey]

I think the bakers are fine with that. They're not fine with the baker next door using it one one tick beyond what they're using it because their competition maybe was able to get a flyer done a little fast.

[Heather]

It's the ex. You got to see it the exact same way as a baker that was under character charging market will self correct. I was going to buy from a shop, specifically a jelly cat shop that's from the ad I referenced earlier. And every poster on their social media was AI generated. The price also of the jelly cat was too good. So I knew there was a red flag there. Yeah. Also there was an angry react on every single flyer they posted which is somebody who got ripped off and they're angry about it. So yeah gonna happen the same way as that baker that's undercharging and working it and I'm so mad. Don't worry about them. Don't worry about that. The market self corrects. What happens when the baker is using AI generated images and can't prod them? They'll get the bad reviews. They'll stop getting recommended. People will behind the scenes say hey, don't use them. I tried. It didn't go well. Yeah. Yeah. Or they'll find a target demographic who's like they're a lot cheaper because half of their marketing or all their marketing is AI generated and I'm happy with the cheaper subpar product that fits for me that's the economies of scale of that gas station in Burke. It's not. It's a disgusting gas station. It's cheaper than everyone else. It always has a line. But the guy that works there's really some sad and there's, there's a lot of cars and he's, he's on the verge of burnout.

[Corey]

That's how the market corrects. Because you can be using AI 100% to make all your pre sale samples. People are going to buy because maybe they don't know, you know, their eyesight's going bad. Heather hasn't diagnosed him with their cataracts yet. And they're going to buy from there, but they're priced lower. The thing doesn't look exactly like it does because it's impossible to pipe that. It's going to work out. It's a long con workout. It's not going to be shuttered overnight, you know, or there. But it's going to be that a customer shows up, they don't like it, they dispute the charge, you know, through their credit card.

[Heather]

They never, they drag you in a public group which we'll get into the gossip column in a second. What I'm going to say though is you'll see a lot of bakers wake up from the gilly slumber for December cookie money era, right? They'll wake up and they'll be like, I'll just get AI generated. Don't drive yourself crazy caring about it. Put your peaky blinders on. There's a podcast on putting your blinders on and just focus on what you're doing. What you're doing is working. That's why you're still in. It's still stor and we have the seasonal bakers who come and go. Don't worry, as fast as they come is as fast as they'll go. Because it is a lot of work to build a sustainable, authentic long term business. And AI can be used and should be bolt take should be used as a tool but it cannot replace the human element. And Cory and I were talking one of the biggest ways that AI cannot replace you is through video.

[Corey]

It can't. It cannot. Right at this point I was actually there was so funny that you bring that up. I was on TikTok as one does in this gorgeous lady was on there doing like a little TikTok dance. And I could spot right away that it was an AI generated lady. But she did look slightly real. But when she opened her mouth her teeth moved in a way unnatural to

[Heather]

teach me uncanny valley.

[Corey]

So I went to her account. Guess how many followers this AI account has 177,000 followers. The comments. You're so beautiful. Drop your makeup routine. Makeup routine. It's.

[Heather]

I saw this one and this girl and she looked just sad and you know she was overweight in her skin and her, she had under eye bags and the caption was before you get rid of him. And then the music got and it was like after she got divorced and the girl had lost all the way. She looks so great. And I was, was like, wow. Wow. Go, go girl. Click on the comment section and people are like this is so frustrating. You can't see this is AI. And I was like, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. I didn't see it. Click to the profile. It's selling a fitness course. It only was started a couple weeks ago and had generated all these followers from this content. Imagine you buy the course and you're unhappy with. Is so frustrating. Yeah, it will correct itself.

[Corey]

The the thing is people buy from those they know like and trust.

[Heather]

So your little quirks, your.

[Corey]

My forehead wrinkles that form here when it's a hard thing set my quirky voice. That's what makes me different. I'm imperfect. AI likes perfection. So AI would not be able to recreate me because it would need to fix a lot of things.

[Heather]

You know what? AI doesn't like flyaway hairs.

[Corey]

So it does not like them.

[Heather]

Part of the branding. Look at it. Look at an AI generator.

[Corey]

You don't get these for free, friend. These are hand, hand broken.

[Heather]

This breakage was from sleeping real hard after.

[Corey]

There's no sick silk pillowcase around. But that's what makes you different than AI.

[Heather]

So you're.

[Corey]

You are. Heather is correct. As we get to the super bowl season and PE bakers who don't bake all the time and they just open up their bakeries for December, you are going to see an onslaught of AI generated images and then saying I have DIY kits. DIY kits. Really hard for even me to spot when it comes to AI because it's

[Heather]

just a bag of I pricing and

[Corey]

they're going to get sales. What you don't want to do is close down your business because someone made one or two sales in December because it's encouraging.

[Heather]

They're making spending money. They're not making business money.

[Corey]

But for you to take the opportunity to have a thriving business from your own self because you're frustrated with other what other you are the secret sauce of your business. So if you see someone using AI generated content, inject yourself into your business business in some form or fashion. You decorating a cookie kit. You voice overing a cookie kit.

[Heather]

She said video. She just. That's the differentiator.

[Corey]

Unfortunately, even though we said that, we found two accounts that were hard to spot video.

[Heather]

But, but it, but I went through that one. You couldn't have lost that much weight in the, the 50 days. Yeah, it was some ridiculous amount. Okay, but here I'm going to challenge baby bakers and I challenge you. Don't, don't fall prey to this. It means you're in the wrong headspace. When another competitor posts that AI generated image. Do not take to the comment section and look like a petty little baker and say, this is AI generated. It's not a good look. It's not accomplishing what you think you may have. Some people like it. It's just not the branding of the positive long term happy bakery brand that we want to create. Create. But you're like, but it's not fair. It's not fair. But, but that's not your job either.

[Corey]

When I see people take to the comment section speakers take to the comment sections of someone else's post, I'm always like, oh, it's. They're too far gone. You've now become in such a negative head space where you're like, I don't care. I'm gonna out these people for their AI usage that I don't know if I can pull you back to the place that you were where you loved cookie decorating and you, you did it for the fun of the game because you.

[Heather]

Let me tell you what, the minute you call out another big freezing AI, I'm on your page finding out where you used it and I can find it. I know.

[Corey]

I, I know that copy was not

[Heather]

written by you because that list doesn't use the same emoji three times. I know, I know. Anyway, like Corey said, you can either be a successful baker or you can be the AI police, but you can't be both.

[Corey]

I know, and I feel the frustration. I don't want anyone to be like, wow, the twin. No, I feel frustrated too.

[Heather]

Why are you sending me AI hate me mail? Every dancer not hate mail.

[Corey]

Just being like that looks like the real Eiffel Tower on a cookie. I could never. So I understand the frustration, but I don't think AI is going away. I don't think. Unless it goes to a paid model. And we've seen where can.

[Heather]

Oh, it's coming. The paid model. Yeah, coming.

[Corey]

Oh, I know where canva is. Like, all right, guys, free. You're barely getting anything.

[Heather]

And then people are like, I can't use Gamba anymore because it's payment. My Botox lady, she is super in AI but she's so into it, she pays. I think she uses chat grade point average and her front desk lady is like, I refuse to pay for it. But they're both, they'll ask it the same question and it'll give the paid lady so much better of an answer. Oh, that's so their little test. So my point for is exactly what Corey's saying. It is a tool and it should be used as a tool so it's okay to get. Well, I think that's frustrating, but I'm also going to use it to beat out my company competitors who are relying on it solely by using it to increase how I present myself. So you can use it to how. And I've seen this one client gives you a really. Somebody had asked in the baking group, they wanted Sonic the Hedgehog. It was another superhero like Spider man and Jesus. This three year old wanted these three things and she's like, I don't, I don't know what to do. You can add. Let's get to chat and say generate an image. Just a concept that you could base what you are going to start looking for for these complex themes, you know.

[Corey]

Yeah, there's some themes out there. That's where my client ended up sending. The kid wanted cowboys and cactuses. That's not a common theme I've ever decorated before in my life. So because there was nothing for her to go on out there, she generated these images through AI because I was like, what is spaghetti on a boot look like? So she's like, here's a AI image. I understand it's AI but I like the meatball.

[Heather]

I was like, I can include a

[Corey]

meatball, you know, on a boot.

[Heather]

Corey and I were trying to kind of retool what we want the Class K to look like for the rest of the year. Right. And Corey's like, here's, here's the clip art I found. I run it through AI to generate kind of the theme I want. Now, Heather, I want you to take this. I don't want to use that. I want you to take this and build something else from it. So at the beach we brainstormed. She pulled up the AI generated image and then we adapted it back to something that we thought bakers could not only create, but also teach.

[Corey]

Yeah, the AI image was cartoony. And what it did was, was allow me to tell Heather what My idea was so she could see what was in my brain, but I also didn't want that to be the end. But she was able to translate that back into a human drawing to create something that I did like.

[Heather]

It was funny because sometimes Cory will say something. I'm like, I don't understand what you're saying. I understand. There's a little bit of a communication error here. And then just brainstorming, I was telling, oh, here's a great example. I wanted to write an article for the website because I wanted to optimize it for AEO, right? So I said to AI generate me the title tags and three supporting H2 tags but do not write the copy. I want to write that myself. Do give me some tips on what a in whatever language model would look for in my copy. Just give me the tips but do not write it for me. So then I was able to kind of see its structure because it was like, here's what I would look for. And I was able to adapt that as I write it as me I used it.

[Corey]

I like these ideas of how you can use it in your business. I needed to do a dough making day. That's where I really need to stock my fridge because I need it there to pull from as I get orders. I needed to make like 10 batches of dough to restock the fridge. That's how many batches I was down. I was able to type my recipe into AI and say, I'm getting ready to head into Giant, which is a grocery store up here. Tell me what I need. So it says you need 12 packs of four sticks of butter. And that was super helpful. And they were like, if they only have five pounds of flour, you need X amount. If they have a 10 pound bag, you only need a X amount. So I was able to make it. So I wasn't in there one guessing or just over buying stuff because I'd rather have more than less and run out while I was making it. So that was a great tool for me because, oh, that was a timesaver. That was a lot of mathematics that I'm not good at.

[Heather]

And my tip right now possibly is AI generated posters are not in their hay day. They're everywhere and people don't like them. What I would do is I AI generated posters are really, really great at including necessary information. I that when people okay, car show world. A guy in a group that's national will be like, here's a car show and I'll look at the flyer and I'll be like, at no point do you mention the state. You know, like, I'm sure the people who live near Hampton Roads would know that's Virginia. But the rest of us are like, where would this be?

[Corey]

It'll be like a random road and they'll be like, Green Springs.

[Heather]

Where is that?

[Corey]

By the Bath and Body Works.

[Heather]

Like, okay, but people who use AI generated images. I find that those posters do include, if not too much information, all the information I'd need to figure out where it is, you know, show up or place the order, whatever it is.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

What I would do in this current time is I would take that as inspiration and go back to Canva and remake it. Yeah. Yeah.

[Corey]

And then one you'll be. It will be able to spot the thing like, oh yeah, not everyone knows where that Bath and Body Works was. Or oh yeah, I forgot to put our handle. Or oh, I missed the time. Like, I've seen people like, totally, like, didn't even put the time and date. And it's because we're doing a million things. So what AI could do is help you notice the things that you're missing. But it. It's not the. The end all be. It's not where we land it, where we jump off ad.

[Heather]

I see a big offender on flyers specifically, AI generated is too much information. The flyer is supposed to be your title tag and your H1 tag and a few supporting sentences. What I find is AI is going to do exactly what you tell it to and you say, hey, take my pricing sheet. It's adding a million disclaimers. The font gets too small to read. Yeah, yeah. So much information. It's trying to shove. And it does a great job of kind of, you know, parsing the information in an imbibeable visual form. But it's too much information. Information. Remember that back and forth with your email is part of the sales process. If it's all in the flyer that they can't read, then what have you. Truly.

[Corey]

It was funny. I. I'm making. I'm running out of my. Right here. Running out of my cookie care cards.

[Heather]

This is me asking you. Okay, I do remember you requesting that. So.

[Corey]

Because I've asked Heather, did I make the first ones? No, I had to buy them off. The lady went out of business from Etsy. So now I'm desperate.

[Heather]

Did you give me one that already

[Corey]

have I sent you.

[Heather]

This is where my story is. Okay.

[Corey]

I've sent Heather. If you've ever worked with Heather, you know that you have to request it. The first 10 requests are just a

[Heather]

warm up, just warming me up, just letting me know that there's something that's needed, there's something out there. Then you have to do. Get creative.

[Corey]

So, like, I'll send like, fired up.

[Heather]

When K's, like, I got AI to

[Corey]

generate half of it.

[Heather]

Take him in. This is so funny.

[Corey]

So I sent Heather, like, a screen. I sent her, like, me holding my last little cookie care card. I said, this is my final one.

[Heather]

Do you think you can pizza?

[Corey]

Okay. I still didn't get them.

[Heather]

I don't remember getting that one. I remember getting the PDF that couldn't. That's because you have. No, this is.

[Corey]

Oh, I've sent that. I've sent you, like, here's the copy. You would need nothing. So when we were at the beach trip on our way back, I put it into AI, like, can you put this information on something that resembles my brand? The first little graphic it made was perfect, but it wasn't in a PDF format because I said, can I just forego Heather's existence altogether and make these? So I said to AI, I really like this. Can you turn this into a PDF?

[Heather]

And it said, sure, yeah.

[Corey]

PDF in two seconds, I click it. And my logo, it took. You see, here's my logo right here. All these dots were up here.

[Heather]

They were just at the corner. And I said to AI, why would you do that? It was like, you know what?

[Corey]

You're right.

[Heather]

Great, I need to push back there. Then they moved all the dots to lower, and I said, just don't touch it.

[Corey]

Could not handle that. So I do need Heather to please

[Heather]

make me a cookie character. You know, AI apologizes like my two X's ago. Like, absolutely. I'll definitely change my behavior. Does the exact same behavior. I'm glad you noticed that. I apologize. That's our. That's our hot take on AI generated inspo. Huge tool. Definitely don't discourage it. It don't virtue signal to your clients that they're dummies. It's actually a great tool to kind of see where their head's at.

[Corey]

Can I say one thing?

[Heather]

You can. If I can get a Diet Coke while you're saying the thing. Sure, sure, sure.

[Corey]

Our goal as business owners is to get close with our clients. So by getting close, I mean, we're. We're almost rubbing shoulders with them when they come to pick up their cookies. Instead of being like, hey, what's your name? You're like, hey, how the kid? How are the kids doing? When you put AI in between you and Your clients, you've now stepped back from your clients in that relationship by one whole foot back. Because instead of talking to them as you would talk, you've put your, your response through AI and you've sent them copy and paste what AI said to you. You know, instead of reading your grammar

[Heather]

issues or your little quips, the, your

[Corey]

go to words when you put that into AI, you've stepped back from your clients because they're not getting to know you, you anymore. They are getting to know your AI usage. So instead of your imperfect cookies when they're always perfect because you put it into AI, you've, you've stepped back from your clients, you've taken a step back in your business. And that's the number one thing that when I see my competition leaning heavily on AI, it doesn't keep me up at night because while you're stepping back, I'm stepping closer. So I.

[Heather]

Exactly. I'm so sorry I gotta interrupt you because you're just in a great point.

[Corey]

Thank you.

[Heather]

Obviously, we run the cookie college, right? And it's boots on the ground. Corey and I are tripping, forgetting icing bags, sweating through that, double booking a class, and then we're here to tell you about it. But when I see someone launch their competing cookie college and it's all AI generated, I'm like, corey, like, don't even have to worry about it because that's.

[Corey]

You're taking a step back. You've put technology, you put a whole computer, the interact in between you and your clients. People want to know that, that you've forgot icing bags like me and Heather forgot icing bags. Your clients want to know that you're a human being that doesn't have an obsession with the sparkle emoji. You know the word fluff? If that's not how you talk, your clients aren't getting to know you. When I can get to know my clients. So you know the way that I speak an email, the way that I speak on a post is the same way that I speak to them when they come to the door and I meet them in person. Person. What I have done is stepped back in front of everyone who uses AI because now they know Corey, Corey happens to bake cookies, the other people happen to use AI. Do you see where there's a difference there? In your marketing, in your conversation, in your branding. So I encourage you, instead of getting mad at other people for using AI, say, thank God they're using it, because I'm not one last person.

[Heather]

It could be compete with one less person.

[Corey]

That's why when we do these collabs and we're going to talk about the collabs that we do, When I see a local person participate in the sugar cookie marketing collabs, I'm like, oh, gosh darn it. Gosh darn it.

[Heather]

They're doing the thing. They get it.

[Corey]

When I, when we do these collabs and my local competition doesn't participate, I. I feel a joy in my soul because I'm like, there. I. I have one less thing to compete with because they're leaving money on the. The table. And I like that because I like picking that money off the table and putting it into me pocket.

[Heather]

I know that's a great point. And it kind of alleviates the stress of. That's not fair. When you're like, that's evening the playing field and letting me get ahead of it. Yeah. Because it's not selfish. That will take your job. It is a person who knows how to use AI to incorporate in their job that will take.

[Corey]

Encourage those bakers to continue using AI instead of being like, that's an AI image. I think you can do it better. I, I think they could make it even flatter. I think AI can generate even more.

[Heather]

That's what I would do. As we move on to the cookie college in these bootcamps. I know you have a review. It's about a collab. Would you mind reading it for us? Oh, go review the club.

[Corey]

So just tell them about the collab that we had on Friday.

[Heather]

You guys asked. We used to do collabs a lot and then we stepped back from it and you begged. So we're back again. This year we did collab.

[Corey]

We have done hardcore step back this year. We've done so many collabs.

[Heather]

This year we've done one a month. I know because I have to do them. I grasp to bake them. But the cookie collabs are an interesting way. Now, is it, Is it the way you're going to get a thousand comments on Instagram now? Is it the way you're going to make a million dollars? No, you're going to get a few more comments. Oh, look, if you guys are on YouTube, Corey is showing a massive uptick in her reach on Instagram.

[Corey]

This gray line is my typical post.

[Heather]

Reach, reach.

[Corey]

This was my Friday one.

[Heather]

So she's not only reached more bakers, her post has reached more of her following. Which are the people? It's bakers, unfortunately, sometimes. But it's also the people who can Give her money, which is the goal of that. So I know some people are frustrated. They're like, I didn't get a lot of comments. It wasn't necessarily. That's not the end goal. One, the big win is you're able to post content to your audience that's different from what you typically post. That's the whole win. So even if you got 0 comments comments, you still did something different and broke through the algorithmic constriction construction. Like the. Yeah, like the constriction. The hurdle. Yes. On top of that, you got comments from other bakers that allowed that constriction to alleviate to reach your followers. And then on top of top of that, you were able to experience a new content bucket type. Right? Yeah. The sad faces are. I didn't get as much reach as I thought. 7 comments. That's great. Anything over the two I normally get,

[Corey]

I'm screaming, crying, throwing up.

[Heather]

Yeah. Our collabs are always trying to incorporate both cookies and business and marketing. So this past one was our easiest one and it was meet the baker. Just introducing yourself, Corey. And I always say you'll get more engagement and reach if you actually do this. You're you, you're actually in the kitchen. Right. You're not reusing content. So Corey, when she recreated her logo, it wasn't required, but she did. And then we went to my mom's house and took a bunch of photos of her holding her logo cookie. And she was able to use that. And she said, I'm going to use that for the rest of the year. Different types of those photos that we took. And introduce herself back to her clients. This is me. And then she did a cute little take on it. She did two truths and a lie, which is an engaging type of question. Which one of these things do you think is a lie? It was her five husbands, which I allegedly think she could actually be hiding three husbands from.

[Corey]

You know what's so crazy? My husband not on social media. I said, he has a fake account. And he said, it's so funny. I read about your five husbands today.

[Heather]

Oh, even if it reached Nate, we've reached the unreachable. Also wild to have a fake account. Admit to it. I mean, I have one, but I don't admit to it. But oh, yeah. So this. The people who get it get it. This is a way to again, different, differentiate yourself from AI. We don't allow AI generated images in these collabs. So the people who are participating, which I can actually bring up the numbers, we have 63% participation. Right. We had 48 bakers total.

[Corey]

Can you bring up the past topics that we've done? Here's the thing. I want to talk about content buckets. We've talked about it ad nauseam. Content buckets are great, but the AI are the collabs that we do are a great excuse to post something you wouldn't normally post. That's why I enjoy them so much because I was never going to to go out of my way and cookie an AI Easter bunny into a cookie that I made myself. But it was a great excuse to do it and now I can use that in my marketing moving forward. When someone sends me an AI generated image, I can actually showcase, hey, this is a bunny that I've made that you can see the difference, the subtle differences, the nuances of what I can do and what I can't do. But the excuse to use these in your marketing pocket has been amazing. So we did Meet the Baker on Friday, which is always a heavy hitter. A lot of people, people showed up to that one. The one before. What was the one we did before?

[Heather]

I'll tell you right now. We did. I'm just going to read through these real quick. And then this Meet the Baker. Main street may pipe a park. AIO my. Which is actually what we referenced this time. Love reviews. Blind baker. We also did Main street last year. We always do Main Street Cookie. My logo. We did. We did a lot of meat. We did another Meet the Baker last year. We did the.

[Corey]

The blind pipe of pumpkin.

[Heather]

Then we did just the pumpkin one. Right. So pip collab. And then I'm back into 2024 when a lot of people are teaching Facebook lives. Cookie collab. Snackle lantern. That's what we call that. Oh yeah, that was fun. Cook Club Sugar My state. That was a fun one.

[Corey]

Oh, that was a fun one. I like that one.

[Heather]

We did Cookie Collaboration lab. Good night. We've been doing Meet the Baker every year ever since.

[Corey]

That one's always going to be a big one. And I encourage everyone to do that in their business regardless.

[Heather]

Now I'm all the way back to 2023, which is when we did a lot of these. But a lot of people were teaching Facebook lives back then, so it's endless. Duh.

[Corey]

Okay, well, that just tells you I wouldn't have done a pipe of park outside of the collab being an excuse. But what it did was made me a resource. It gave me more content to go off of. I went to a local park and local people were like, we love Park. It gets really sunny in the afternoon.

[Heather]

I was like, oh, that's a great tidbit. Thanks for letting me know.

[Corey]

And these are great excuses if you're like, my area is oversaturated, I don't know what, I'm not having any orders, I don't know what to bake, I don't know what to post. These are excuses for you too, believe me. If you do not do the collabs, I'm happy about that because I'm doing them and I don't want competition in my local area. So please don't do them. But if you're asking how can I get more sales, this is a.

[Heather]

This is how.

[Corey]

So Laura actually made a post on Friday after we did the collab and she said, shout out to the twins for another great collab. This is my third. Thank you. I'm so pleased I participated. We are slap bang in the middle of redoing our floors in our entire house. Our kitchen has been ripped out over the week. We have no stove. Hopefully next week. And really living in a mess. Think washing, piling up, cooking in the living room area off a small hot plate, washing dishes in the garden kind of of vibes. I had pre baked my cookies in preparation for the collab, but I only iced them the day before. Then yesterday morning had to get my son to help me with the photos in time for the collab. In the middle of the collab we had to drive about 30 minutes to his football practice. Multitasking really is a thing. I still managed to create a great post comment and interact with some really wonderful and interesting fellow bakers. I mean, how awesome we get to interact with so many amazing people right around the world. If you don't think you have time for a collab, please rethink that decision. These are so much fun and you really do get so much interaction for them. I love interacting with everyone. It's so great to practice how you'd interact with your clients and I made it happen this time around despite the chaos. That's been my life lately and I'm so happy that I did.

[Heather]

Yeah, it's worth it. We had 48 people sign up and 64% posted. 33% of you didn't post and I'd say you missed out.

[Corey]

And some people who didn't sign up posted, oh yeah.

[Heather]

But here's what we're going to do. The next one is pipe a hobby. This is Corey's idea and you're going to turn something not cookie that you're into. Into a hobby again, just kind of revisiting. Re. Acquainting your audience with who you are as a person. Something AI can't recreate. Right.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So for my example, I'm into the hobby of cars. Or I like. I'm into this rug tufting thing, and I like my cats, and I snakes. Right. So something like that. It's not something you did in your past, it's something you are doing presently. Corey, what is your hobby?

[Corey]

So I have to honestly really think about what my hobbies are.

[Heather]

I like, just. You want me to call. Yeah, I know you're not. I know it's not like a. So hobby for you.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

But the mandala rock thing would be a cool cookie. I actually just donated all that stuff. Well, that is your hobby. You like walking? I like walking.

[Corey]

I've been going to the gym.

[Heather]

Gym.

[Corey]

Playing the piano.

[Heather]

Okay.

[Corey]

Not great at it, but playing it. Reading my Bible would be a good one. What's something else that I like to do? I'm not that bored.

[Heather]

We love eating. We just. We're just passionate.

[Corey]

We do. I could put Olive Garden on that. Really? Honestly, if I wanted to. I love my dog. You could be my final pet.

[Heather]

What we're doing for this collab will be our first collab that we're limiting participation for you. So do not sign up if you're on the fence. Do sign up if you're absolutely going to participate because you're taking somebody else to else's spot because there's an issue with the Instagram hashtag. But this is my first. The Meet the Baker collab. I turned everyone's profile into a hyperlink, and I went through, clicked on each hyperlink, engaged, and I noted if you did it or did not do it.

[Corey]

Yeah. So you've been tattled on by yourself.

[Heather]

A lot of people were in the document live as I was doing it. So we had a lot of people referencing the document again. That. That allows us to get around this hashtag.

[Corey]

Yeah. If you. Here's if you like reading. If you like fall, you know, like, you're. You love Halloween. I do. I really do. If you're learning mahjong. If you like sourdough. Oh, sourdough sewing. I'm just saying we have these hobbies, like a skincare. Your hobby.

[Heather]

If you took a skincare and turned it into like a. Oh, that would. My little sister's really into the roads, which is Justin Bieber's wife's. Why else you turn that into a Cookie? Yeah. There's a band that's popular on Tik Tok called Sleep Token. Right. Okay. It's, it's. I don't know. So they're European or something, and I saw a baker turn them into cookies. The band, the Sleep Token fan base, made that post go viral because they didn't relate to the cookies, but they related to the hobby or the interest.

[Corey]

And if you like, if you've always gone to a Morgan Wallen concert, put Morgan Wallen on there.

[Heather]

There you go. Because it Taylor, the Swifties, right? Yes. So you're going to appeal to this different audience, but it's also going to tell your audience, here's who I am as a human, which is the opposite of AI. Right. So we humanizing ourselves. You're going to get the bakers to engage, which isn't the goal, but it's a part of the benefit of participating. And it's going to allow you to pull from a content bucket that would otherwise feel weird because now you can say, well, they made. The twins made me do it.

[Corey]

Yeah, they. They made me do it. All right, thanks sugar cookie marketing for the excuse to post this. And it feels a lot more natural. I love a good excuse to make a post. And I'm going to tell you, I go kicking, screaming, gnashing of teeth because I also don't want to do the collabs. But I'm so grateful when I do them and I've been forced against my will by Heather to do all of them.

[Heather]

Listen, they forced us to do this. It's a lot of work to just put them on and I'll get the Pivah Hobby one posted this week. I just have to finish up the cookie class kit we're working on. Speaking of the Cookie College, the Cookie College is, is our membership. It is paid, but you can cancel anytime. It's actually a collection of five memberships. It's the Cookie College which gets all the memberships and its own content. It is the cookie class kits which this Summerween is dropping today. It's a digital downloads. I actually have this great idea. I was talking to Corey about it. We said my set, my digital Downloads, which is 7 print files you can download, are going to be thank you related. But I'm taking it a step further. I'm going for the next three months to create thank you related digital download downloads AC in accordance with the service providers. So I'm doing the trash man postal delivery drivers. So that way, come the holidays where we do those things, you'll have yeah put out there. It's gonna be cute. It also is a baker's business basics which is the foundational marketing courses to get your baking foot in the right direction. And the transfer club which is transfers about four to eight every month just for two bucks. This the next also we've unveiled these boot camps. So these boot camps are always included in the cookie college, but they're the only thing you can purchase individually. 13 bucks. But when you purchase them, you can upgrade to the cookie college for. You'll Never guess it, $13 off. The next boot camp is cracking community groups. This bootcamp is a lot of work for the baker, but it is the differentiator between you and understanding how much lead gen is going through Facebook groups. Which if you're worried that Facebook groups will go the way of the dodo, they won't have released its own app called forums that allows us to cut out everything about Facebook except for groups. So I downloaded it the other day. It removes every notification that is not group related. Yeah.

[Corey]

So you're not going to get your cousin uncle's child Jimmy turning two post, but you're going to see that so and so posted in the foodies group looking for a custom baker.

[Heather]

A foodies group that I joined. So. So what I think is super interesting about it is when I talk to people. I met a car guy the other day said not on Facebook. I don't, I don't want to know what my high school reunion's up to. He can be on Facebook with no friends and be included in the groups and only access that aspect of Facebook. I think it's a real Craigslist killer myself. You know, it's a craigslist care. The.

[Corey]

The thing about it, that's why Facebook really was pushing groups to go public. Because there's this beta portion of it where you're like, I'm going to. To Virginia beach and I don't know. And then you can type in Virginia beach and it will actually pull from the groups post about Virginia Beach. Good or bad. I went to this restaurant. I hated it. Or I went to this one. You got to try this.

[Heather]

Even with private groups. And now has. What do you call them when it sucks them into that preview? Private groups. It always is saying your post is featured. Oh yeah.

[Corey]

Featured content.

[Heather]

Featured content. So even the inside of a private group can be featured externally. Granted, it's anonymous. Same with the anonymous posting nicknames. Groups aren't going anywhere. So using groups to grow your business. When I ever take the poll what is your number one lead source by and large, hand over fist, toe over feet. It's a community group so that's why we do want to focus on that. I think people will kind of sleep on the topic. I think you're missing out because it's work. Coriana has made me run her community group for what, three, four years?

[Corey]

Four years now.

[Heather]

Ridiculous. But yeah, we've kind of really been able to test some strategies in there, see what works, see what doesn't, see what works from the admin's perspective. What we want to see as admins, what we hate to see as admins,

[Corey]

how to stay on the admin's good side. Because what you don't want is this lead source to be taken away from you because once it's taken away it's really hard to get it back.

[Heather]

Next to impossible. Corey and I and her group, the policy is once you're banned there's no walking it back because it's not my job to read the rules for you. So some that's going to be the strategy. Our past boot camps which you can actually still still purchase is in person. Cookie classes, food, photography that sells pre sales, start to finish 3D printing, cookie cutters, cookie video basics which we talked about videos just now and it will be coming. Community groups in July and August will be procreate, designing sets and Procreate. Nice. You can learn more about all that and sign [e-mail] forward/bootcamp. And if you want to purchase those past boot camps you can go to thecookiecollege.com/boot camps plural. Brings up the category page to get those those last guys going to the gossip column again I'm pulling from stuff I've seen in a group. If you want to submit to the gossip column just go to sugarcookiemarketing.com scroll down a bit to the podcast section, you'll see a hyperlink right there. This anonymous posting is a death of groups. I hate anonymous posting in the groups now specifically the women only local groups. It's anonymous arguing with nicknames. Nobody's real. And now the point, the nicknames like DM me. And someone's like we can't DM you. And she's like message me. And we're like we can't even see who you are. It's ridiculous. So I was on the the ground floor, this lady, I mean it's a lady because it's a woman's group but it was an Anonymous penguin556 or whatever post. She was like, here's my side, here's my email. And the email I received back, it was this hybrid coffee shop, plant shop. So you go get a coffee, buy a plant and like sit and stuff. And the plants, apparently one was mislabeled. It was a pepper, a mislabeled pepper. It was the wrong type of pepper. This woman bought the pepper plants the pepper grows the pepper and it's not the pepper she wants. So she's upset because she spent her, her veggie garden so important to her and she's so angry that she's grown this incorrect veggie. So she takes and she actually does not post her side of the emails. We only see the business owner's full name, full last name, full email address. The business owner says, well, I know you said you'll never come back to shop with us again. However, I will honor that refund should you ever come back. So you know this lady has already taken to the keyboard, right? She's taken and she is then the. But I, I, the business owner wasn't placating her. She was like, you know, I find this email from you very disappointing since we've had this long term relationship that you would get this rude to the staff here when what was likely a mistake made by another customer switching the labels around was, is enough to send you. So this anonymous penguin takes to a pri, a private group of 35,000 people and writes, I'll never go to the. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? Look at what they said to me. It was so, so, you know, I'm the first person to see this because I should be working and I'm not. And I write, listen.

[Corey]

Well, you're writing as a non yourself

[Heather]

frankly as my fake profile. But I hate anonymous, I hate nicknames. So as my fake profile, which is the same thing, I know, Hot kettle black, right. I say, listen, this should have been handled privately and it was actually handled privately. You were angry, you emailed the business and the e, the business offered you recourse, a full refund when you actually said you'd never shop there again, you'd never be back. But what's going to happen is you're going to take these small businesses that are fighting for margin, drag them in a group of 35,000 trying to find an army of anonymous Internet users to go and leave them about review because that was the intention. Yeah. And you're going to be left with the Walmart garden center. And as an avid shopper of The Walmart Garden Center. Good luck finding help. You'll never find anybody at the Walmart Garden Center. You would be.

[Corey]

I would be going into the Walmart Garden center knowing the tags were switched.

[Heather]

Yeah, you, you'd say it is a surprise plan, you'll have no idea. And I said but you can't make strangers play judge during executioner when we don't know the rapport you had. We don't specifically know the poster side. And then everyone started, you know, dogpiling against OP saying you need to delete this. Well, OP did it deleted within nine minutes. But that's not fair. The anonymous Penguin will never know who it was got to escape unscathed when she wasn't able to get her Internet army around her. And while the business public name, first name, last name, email address, location, name of the business publicly dragged with no ability to defend themselves, no ability to the other side of the story.

[Corey]

We don't allow a non we don't allow nickname comments. And I see them more and more popping up and it's hard to tell everyone no nickname groups in here. So we try to remind people you are not anonymous to the ad admins. If a page is an admin of the group and there's people, multiple people adminning that page, every admin can see the person's the nickname's real name in the anonymous person's real name. You are not protected. You do not know who someone else knows. You do not know who's friends with someone else that your screenshot with your actual government name as you have put it on Facebook can be seen, sent to anywhere. So you feel protected behind these anonymous things.

[Heather]

And you know what?

[Corey]

I've never had the chance to post anonymous. It's never been rolled out to me. I think I've gotten on Mark's bad side and he's like, you will say

[Heather]

it face to face, will not say it at all.

[Corey]

So I've never been able to post it. It is not anonymous. As admins I can click to the funky draft 229 and see that it's

[Heather]

yeah, I'm so sorry. Even as not an admin I can see Anonymous Penguin 229's post history as an anonymous person. And you might think this, well, if the admins didn't want it, they'd disable it. Incorrect. You cannot disable nicknames. Currently what I've seen in some groups that are so anti nicknames is the admin will screenshot your real name and post it with your anonymous Content. Wow. So, again, if you wouldn't want it right in the corner of law, should you say it? Yeah.

[Corey]

So if you think that it might not get back to the business that you lambasted the donut shop for having too few sprinkles, it could absolutely get back there. And what you worry.

[Heather]

What I worry is that the baker sees another baker make a post. Right. Yeah. The baker switches to nickname and then acts as a client or trying to be like that. This is AI generated. And then it reveals that you weren't a customer. You were actually. Actually the competition trying to drag your competitor. It's just a bad look.

[Corey]

What's so funny is I posted like on a sales day in a. In a group or something, and an anonymous person said, is this your actual work?

[Heather]

And I said, yes, it is. Who paid to know who it was?

[Corey]

And the person was like, oh, just curious because some bakers have stole my work.

[Heather]

So you're a baker. You're a baker, and you did that in a wild, wild work. So that's my thing is, you know, there are places where if you're upset and you're allowed to be upset with a business that you can take that out. And that's a Google business profile. Reviews. You can leave recommendations on Facebook. But when that wasn't enough and you've taken it to the reviews and you've taken a. To email and then you go to step further and posting it as a nickname. I don't know. It's just a bad look.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Yeah. And it's never.

[Corey]

It's never private. That's. That would be the thing that would scare me is that I've taken all this time to build this little bakery business. And one comment about, you know, my plant being wrong is the thing that tears it down. And they had nothing connected to each other.

[Heather]

There's this I always say, you never know how crazy somebody is online. Right.

[Corey]

You don't.

[Heather]

You can cross the wrong person who makes it their life mission to either make your life hell. But what's that movie with Gerard Butler? And she honks at him in the traffic.

[Corey]

Is it road rage?

[Heather]

Yes. And he just says, my new life's mission is to make this. To torture this. This woman. Yeah. You know, you think words are words, but words cut deep and you just don't know who you're crossing. That's in a bad spot. Yeah. Yeah. Is it ever that big a deal?

[Corey]

I. If they're offering a refund, just take the refund. I'm big on. Like, if I was wronged and you're offering me my money back.

[Heather]

That's all I really need.

[Corey]

I. I'll never mention your name, I'll never recommend you, but I just want my money back and let me go my separate way.

[Heather]

Where did this like concept of like. Okay, it was a misplaced placed seed.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

That's really what the. The infraction was. Why does the misplaced seed need to have this business of 5 years shutdown? What we're. That's not the.

[Corey]

The crime match in my local community group. This is a couple years ago. Like I'm literally going through a cancer treatment and I have this woman and this man blowing up my dms. Like I'm sitting on the table waiting for her to like come in. Like my pants are off. I'm like, like why are you blowing this up? This lady post that she had a bad experience with a cleaning company. It's crazy. The cleaning company, she didn't find it to the group. I didn't know the cleaning company at all but she didn't have a good experience with it. So she posts it in this private ladies only group. Here's the thing, what I didn't know was the cleaning company side of the story. But the man who owns the cleaning company reaches out and he was like, here's the, here's the emails I sent. Here's the refund I've offered. Here's what she said. And she's gone around to all these group and she's literally just trying to take us down. Well, you know what? That's not fair either. So me with my pants down, phone in hand, I delete her post and I say dude, I appreciate you coming with Grace and allowing me to understand both sides versus being like how dare you let her post in my group. He was like, hey, you don't have to do anything. I don't own your group. But here's the side of the story. Deleted her post. She's like, where my post go? Like, no, not.

[Heather]

They're putting posting one group. They're sharing it to 10.

[Corey]

No, she had shared it everywhere. And I'm not part of your Internet army. I'm not your one stop, you know poo poo shop.

[Heather]

Like what Corey and I do and managing her community group. This is the strategy we've taken as the admins is that if you have. You're allowed to have a bad review with the business. Business should. If you want to come to the group and say I hired this company, had a bad experience. What I'LL do is approve it and I'll lock the comments and I'll say because we can't get both sides, but you're still allowed your opinion. But we don't want your opinion to go viral without the other person be able to defend themselves also. We don't want that in the group. I'm going to allow the post to go through, but I'm going to lock it. Yeah. Yeah.

[Corey]

So you can take it, read it. The post will fall on. On not a viral thing because no one can comment on it, but you can take that with you as you will. And I will say from leading these community groups, I've had people screenshot other people's comments, comments, send it to the business owners. The business owner comes to me. I don't know what you're doing, but I know that you're. What you think is private is not because people are screenshotting and sending it.

[Heather]

You don't want to read it publicly. Don't write it privately.

[Corey]

Yeah, it scared me straight. You ain't gonna see me lambast this side.

[Heather]

Just side sidebar. Corey's community group. This girl had gotten her toes done at a local toe nail shop or whatever toenail and I a girl had her. They chopped her toe clean off, basically. I'm being sarcastic, but it was like she was like they was my cuticles issue. But I'm like, even my head, I'm like like the. The cut.

[Corey]

And she had a picture of her feet, her toe. The cut was literally done by like a utensil.

[Heather]

Like it was a.

[Corey]

A sterile utensil has done this cut.

[Heather]

It wasn't like did not lay it bass. She didn't even mention the business. She said I went to a local place and I was like. And she was like, is this normal or my toe being severed? And I said to Cory, technically, she didn't land best of business. She just asked if so we approved the post and I went to the comment section. I said, if you want to know which shop it is, D mop as far as what she asked, answer the question. Is this annoying?

[Corey]

But I also want to say to the lady, you know, that's not normal

[Heather]

to lose half a toe in an appointment. You don't need to be. I had a babysit the whole thread and delete every instance of someone say just name every but yeah, girl, get your toe back. Go back to the store, give them to give. Get your half of your second toe back and go get your money back. I was on her side for that one that was they did you dirty upcoming events the collabs we have the cookie that hobby collab. I'll post it. It'll be in four weeks on July 24th. It's always the third Friday of each month. Cookie con Happy hour with Heather Campbell Berkshire is actually tomorrow. I just pinned a post about in the group if one of the details it's a at a coffee shop just five minutes off of from the Rose and Shingle Creek Hotel Midsummer membership sale. Typically we said the only way to get a discount for the cookie college is by attending one of these boot camps. But for one week out of the summer you can actually get a get the cookie college at a discount by not having to spend that 13. You'll just get that discount without the 13. So it's the best way to save outside of the vendibly that one day sale that we're coming up here in 22 weeks which sounds horrifying. I can't believe we're in July. Happy birthday America. Yeah. 250.

[Corey]

250.

[Heather]

I'm sorry an aside aside for that one TikTok my algorithm the only thing I want to watch is Europeans experiencing America for the goodness having a bl. Like this guy goes and I'm like that's a cracker barrel. And he's like this is the best gravy I've ever had in my life.

[Corey]

11 dude goes to Walmart and he is mindboggled of like about the size

[Heather]

of the meats are. So yeah.

[Corey]

He's like who would ever need this many olives? Like and he was like I love that the America flags are hang like they're noticing things that would just not be something I would notice that like at American flags hanging from the middle. A

[Heather]

Japanese guy he is found these Americans at a gas station and he's so excited to be there for some and I I'm so sorry I do not follow the sport of soccer but a lot of them are in Texas for some reason. Yeah. He's at this Texas gas station. It's the middle of the night. He hardly speaks English but they've got bought him buzz balls those little alcoholic circle drinks and he's like Microsoft buzz ball. And then he drinks it. He you know, shoots it and then everyone's cheering for him. He's like I love America. It's just.

[Corey]

It's been so like they discovered that we have endless refills of soda.

[Heather]

Oh in their drinks.

[Corey]

Yeah. I did not know that didn't exist over there. So he's like, can I refill this 1,000 times?

[Heather]

And they're like, yeah. Refills on coffee. They don't have it. They don't. They. They've never. So the big. The funniest thing is they don't have ranch. So.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Tsa. TSA had announced that you can't take the ranch ranch in your. In your onboard luggage. You have to check it.

[Corey]

Yeah. Because I guess they had so many people bringing ranch back. You know what?

[Heather]

Actually, and this is subliminal marketing. I said, you know what? Ranch is good. So I bought a salad and put ranch off.

[Corey]

Did you know, I was like, you know what? IHOP pancakes are great. And I wonder what happened.

[Heather]

Does have something going on with them. I. Yeah. It was so entertaining. If you haven't seen it these. And then it was funny. This guy, he's from Europe. You know, they got all the cool accents or whatever. He's here and he's walking in the morning and he's in, like, Texas. There's a. There's a fire of wood fire somewhere around him. Like, he's like, the air so foggy. But everyone keeps telling me, good morning. He said, I've never. Everyone's been so nice to me. So he actually got. He was like, I would love to stay in America until your birthday on July 4th. I can't imagine.

[Corey]

And they did it.

[Heather]

They got him a place to stay and rescheduled his flight. I figured July 4th is always great,

[Corey]

but then this 250th, you know, is just going to be like, over the top.

[Heather]

Because I see everyone.

[Corey]

Yeah. No, if you have any time on your hand that will make you feel.

[Heather]

Really just makes you be like, wow. And then they're like, look at the roads. You can see mountains. And some guys, like, their cars are so big and they're so fun. Yeah. The one thing the ice cubes was interesting. Air conditioning in every building is.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

Did not know that.

[Heather]

Did not people from Washington State. I didn't know you guys don't have heaters.

[Corey]

I guess they don't need.

[Heather]

Yeah, they have like a nice balmy temperature, but eventually sometimes they're a little chilled.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

I know. Maybe it was. They don't have air conditioning. I don't remember. But my cousin lived there for a bit, so, yeah, I was watching these people from other countries experience America. You know, the. The guy. This woman's interview. She's American and he's Japanese. He doesn't speak any English. She was like, hey, are you from Japan? He's like I'm Japan, don't know English. Very excited. Just really true. So they had a blast. Upcoming major holidays. Summerween is more of a vibe, but it does have start date June 27th. So our cookie class kit that will drop today is Summerween based. It's very cute. I did a 10 hour day yesterday working on it, so I should have it up. I'm done with a PowerPoint as we speak.

[Corey]

It's the beginner intermediate class. We took a poll. We'll be going back to beginner. I think it was great to test it out and see it. A lot of people said they would much rather teach more inner our beginner classes.

[Heather]

So that's what we'll head to. Will the design stay beginner and you'll have more icing colors or those going back to original.

[Corey]

So I don't mind using more icing colors. It's more the designs just need to stay on the beginner side. The hack.

[Heather]

Having more icing colors does make the cookies more interesting.

[Corey]

It makes it more cute. The thing I didn't like about the intermediate class and why me and Heather don't teach them is to make two bags of icing per one is a lot today.

[Heather]

Right. So now we're at 10 bags in this class. Two, five colors, 10 bags, which is a lot of icing.

[Corey]

The design will either do four bags or five bags, but no outline bag for it.

[Heather]

Interesting. I have a whole new respect for designing cookie class kits after seeing what Corey has to do to marry not only the theme with the difficulty level with the colors.

[Corey]

It's so it's. It's the bane of my existence.

[Heather]

They have a band and we've had, we've done. This will be like what, the 40th one or something? I know Summerween is in a week. It starts June 27th. Apparently it's the vibe of Halloween all through July.

[Corey]

And the what makes it fun is like so instead of carving a pumpkin, you. You'd carve a watermelon.

[Heather]

It's a watermelon with a jacket Jack o lantern face.

[Corey]

Yeah. And like if you were having a party, you'd put the jack o' lantern face on the cheese of your hamburger

[Heather]

or something in the class. Kids. I, I. Yeah. For some reason I get tasked with naming the individual cookies for the PowerPoint. So I did Coke. Oh no. Tree. Yeah. I did ghost host the ghost that's eating the. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Hosting that.

[Corey]

What did you do for the ice

[Heather]

cream skill or the skeleton ice Cream easy, right? It's right. Ah, you saw it, right? Yeah, I was there. I had typed something real dumb and then I was like, it's right. It's ice cream.

[Corey]

It's right there, you idiot.

[Heather]

I'll tell you what I we.

[Corey]

So we did the ice cream we had.

[Heather]

Unfortunately for the watermelon, I did Jacko melon. He was just.

[Corey]

That was it. And then you have the flamingo skeleton

[Heather]

floater Floating ghoul shoot. Let me tell you, it's really funny. Ghoul shoot. I love it right there. Creative and amazing. I tell you right now. I just got to pull up real quick. Let us see the June class PowerPoint. The class kits give you everything you need to teach an in person cookie class. Someone just wrote yesterday and they were like this is my first time teaching a class kit. And oh my goodness, everything is already done for you. Okay, So I did coke. Oh, note tree because it's got a ghost. It's got ghost coconut ice cream. Jacko melon floaty instead of pool floaty. That was grass spider and the snacking spirit. That's what I moved him to. He's a spirit and he's eating a wad of melon.

[Corey]

He's eating a wad of melon.

[Heather]

The St. Elmy about oh I'm so sorry. It's Fourth of July is in two weeks. Happy birthday America. You're 250 years old. National Sugar Cookie Day is also in two weeks on July 9th. Not sure what we're going to do with that. Just want you guys to know it's a easy post to make. At least back to school. We have a big lull through the rest of July and August and back to school is in about nine weeks, which is kind of horrifying to say. And then labor day is in 11 weeks. Stlme about it segment. You can text in at 571-556-5644 for your chance to get a month of Cookie Design Lab which has unveiled a new feature. You'll see a new button when you're logged in. Click it and we'll give you a link to share your design. Anyone can use a link to download the STL and matching image. No login required. If someone supplies their email address, they can edit and download the STL and image, but they won't be able to save it since it's libraries are a paid feature. If someone is a subscriber, they can also save the cutter and any changes to the libraries. Please check it out. While previously our terms of service had not allowed the sales of files created in Cookie Design Lab. We're now rolling it out to support people that want to sell their cutter files. It add values to those selling and buying files since the buyers can make any size and change they want, which is nice. So typically you'd go to a shop, buy the STL file. Now you can actually buy the gener, the, the. The. The working file. Then you can download the stl. So when you download an SDL file, it's locked. It's it. This is what it is, right? You can resize it, but it's going to morph the, the, the side. The cut walls and stuff. So it doesn't work very good. This one, she's actually allowing you to sell the project file. With the project file, you can then make sizing changes. You can change the logo, the wall logo, you can change the cut handle, you can flip it, reverse it. Why do you want to run away?

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

We've also added some new tutorials to walk people through the various features we've added in the last six to 12 months. So that's cookiedesignlab.com Code Twins saves you 15% off. Corey. We have quite a few texts and we have texts from last week. I did not bring in. So of the text from this week. 1, 2, 3, 4. Who's the winner? 2, 2. Hi, twins. What should my. This is 802 area code. What should my business email be? My first name is my business business name. It's sarahsbusiness.com as an example. So Sarah is her name. Should my email be hello sarahsbusiness.com or something else? I'm one of the only employees, so nobody's checking in that email but little old me. Thank you. I do exactly that. Sarah. I do my catch all, which is my, My support email is always hello ad. I find it conversational. I find it easy to remember and it's not so weird as heather heather.com, right? Because that feels like my name's Heather and I'm Heather and you can get [e-mail] I do hello at. And that's also the same email I published on the website. Now, because my business does not have my name in it, I have personal emails, personal business emails. Corey will be Cor at, I'll be Heather at. But our catch all will be hello at since you're the only person you could do hello at. And then if you're using Google Workspace, which is what we use, you can create something called an alias, which is free to make. So you can have up to 10 aliases per email address which so mine is Heather at but I also have that Vendy app. That way when people email the Vendee Blendy it still comes to me. I can still get it in my inbox without having to pay more. And with that I can also create some rules within my inbox to manage

[Corey]

those emails for our marketing clients that we've had, what we tell them we suggest is doing something broad. Not that you're going to plan on selling Sarah's Bakery shop but you never know. You might go viral, your shop might grow, you might open a brick and mortar in the option to sell down the road. You want the option to be able to give that in email address with them. If your name's Sarah and you sell it to a Corey I'd be like well my name isn't Sarah and people are going to confuse it. If it's just a broad hello at Sarah's Bakery it's a little bit easier if you're thinking down the road if you wanted to sell it.

[Heather]

Keep in mind your email address will be scraped and you will get so much bam generating a lot of these emails. So my hello ads we do for every project we do, we always do hello hello at those hello ads are just pummeled with spam. I have to clean them out. Most of it's just it's is essentially the spam you get in the mailbox just digital.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

So I in what is running your business? The email that runs your business. I don't necessarily want it to be bogged down by so much spam. So my catch all will be that one and then I'll have my personal one kind of run the business.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You are the winner. 802 Sarah@ Sarah's Cookie Business. You're the winner of Cookie Design Lab. Email me at Heather @sugarcookie marketing marketing.com do as I say, not as I do and I'll get you hooked up with Cookie Design Lab. If you're not a winner, use code twins to get 15 off another tech square. This one is not marketing related but I wanted to ask it anyways from last week. Heather and Corey, what is one item you cannot live without? It does not have to be baking related and I hope you had a good week.

[Corey]

What one item you can live without? What am I looking for? What are you choosing?

[Heather]

I'm going to choose a car. My car. I don't care what kind of car it is. If I'm having a bad day. Go for a drive. If I'm having a great day, go for drive. It's beautiful outside. I'll go for a drive. If I want to go somewhere, go for a drive. If I want to go to eat, go for a drive. Just if there is. My butt is in a seat. It's where I do my best thinking. Best thinking. Okay.

[Corey]

Make it a smaller item and a household item.

[Heather]

Then I'm not going to do the typical things like my phone at my computer. Because nobody wants to hear this.

[Corey]

Right?

[Heather]

Right? Yes. Household item. Household item.

[Corey]

Couldn't live without.

[Heather]

I was thinking this and you're going to hate this answer too. I panic when I get down to the last Diet Coke can. I did not want to leave the house yesterday. It was supposed to be stormy and ended up not reading at all. But it. It was a tornado. Where in Burke? I left to go get a Coke case. Diet Coke case. And I had this idea. I had this idea because I live alone now so I can be as weird as I want. You know Those big old 36 packers?

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I was thinking if I bought 20 of those. I hate carrying them. I hate it.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Storage room. Then I never have to go to the store again. I never absolutely. Are you doing it? I was thinking about it. 20 would probably fell in my car. So maybe 10. 10. That'd be 360 cans.

[Corey]

I wonder if the expiration date. Who knows if they go bad after.

[Heather]

But I tear through these things and granting my guys say, you might say don't drink that much Coke. I'm not finishing them. They have to be. They have to make mouth eyes burn. We call them dead when they're dead, but they're still got some in them.

[Corey]

This little holder thing has really made me finish mine.

[Heather]

It really adds. It's a yeti. We got it from our older sister, gave it to us. A yeti. Coke.

[Corey]

I love this thing.

[Heather]

You guys are into your Alanis. They make skinnier ones now. Yeah.

[Corey]

This makes me finish them. Because here space is a commodity. We don't have whatever storage unit. Heather's talking about her basement.

[Heather]

So it.

[Corey]

What you have is what you have. And I'm like, I'm drinking free and fancy at the beginning of a. Oh, yeah.

[Heather]

By the end I'm like, am I really thirsty?

[Corey]

Where's the one I had? Where's the one that was out?

[Heather]

Okay. Why would you. I know. I don't know. You'd say Diet Coke. We'll find something else.

[Corey]

I'm trying to think what would I have that I use all of the time?

[Heather]

I'm going to tell. I'm going to tell you what it is. A tv. I've never seen anyone in our family watches tv, specifically series like Corey does. My little sister and my parents are close, but Corey will watch, and anything through, she will stay. I could not imagine watching an entire series in a day. You will do that. If.

[Corey]

So here's my.

[Heather]

Here's my situation.

[Corey]

I steal Heather's Netflix, and it's only attached to my wall TV, which I only access it right before bed for 20 minutes.

[Heather]

Oh, that sounds very great way to fall asleep.

[Corey]

I turn it off, and then I close everything down, turn off the light.

[Heather]

So if.

[Corey]

If a show's really good, like on a Saturday or a Sunday, like, I'll watch that morning to night in my bed. I haven't had a show.

[Heather]

Couldn't imagine not getting out of bed, making my bed, and moving to a new area after. Okay.

[Corey]

Nate was like, do you think it's kind of selfish that you've put the only TV in the house in your bedroom and it's not the only TV in the house.

[Heather]

My son has his own tv.

[Corey]

The thing is, the TV used to be down by the count couch.

[Heather]

There's just nobody. Corey and my oldest sister Ashley have removed TVs from the main levels. Yeah, yeah.

[Corey]

Because nobody was watching it. So why have it downstairs when I would be more comfortable in my bed with a blankie over?

[Heather]

You don't go to someone's house and be like, can I watch your tv? Like, you don't visit his house and turn their TV on.

[Corey]

So in downstairs, where a TV might be, like, where my neighbors.

[Heather]

I can clearly see, that's where they

[Corey]

put theirs, there's a piece of artwork. So you're just down there. You're literally looking at each other and talking, and no one's sitting down there. So I said, let me. If I'm the only one who watches actual tv, let me put it in a place that I enjoy. I like it on my phone. I steal from Summer, her Hulu. And then Heather steals from my Paramount.

[Heather]

I do.

[Corey]

And then from my cousin, I steal Peacock. Peacock. So the. The two I watch on my phone is Paramount and Hulu. The two I watch on my big

[Heather]

TV is, you must not be watching Netflix because it's not kicking me off

[Corey]

when you're watching, because when I was vlogging in, you were on it. It was like, oh, you can't be

[Heather]

logged in in two places, as you shouldn't be. But I watched if you guys want the Crash. Yeah, I only watch documentaries. The Crash and the one with the baby. I don't remember the name.

[Corey]

It was the one where it was Fetal Kidnapping.

[Heather]

Right. And then I watched Bad Boyfriends, which is what. These are all new on Netflix. So I watch this.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

So the crowd now I'm watching Bad Roommate also wild. Oh, I heard.

[Corey]

Yeah, you've gone down the TikTok.

[Heather]

You're bad. And your documentary, you want to watch it? Heather loves docu.

[Corey]

I love a good show.

[Heather]

I don't love a good show. I tried to watch one the other night. I got the cats downstairs. We brought snacks and I was like, pluck my eyes out. I would love to be watching.

[Corey]

You don't like the character building?

[Heather]

No, I was like, this is.

[Corey]

I think we'll watch a sitcom before she, like, watches, like Game of Thrones.

[Heather]

Yeah, I did watch Game of Thrones, but my ex did. That's a great question. Thank you for the sidebar there. Also sleeping aids and I know it'll put me in early grave, but I can't sleep without them. Probably TVs on another text. Howdy from Texas. Should we experiment with a B testing? If we're using email marketing platforms like mailchimp, it's. A B testing is this new technology. Newer technology where the platform can actually shop around two types of headers of. Of titles to see which one gets more click. Whatever wins the AB test becomes the primary. It's funny. I like to listen on YouTube. Probably YouTube is where I watch most stuff. Is John Deloney. It's like a call in podcast about relationships. Let it play in the background. He will ab test the titles on YouTube. But because I probably watch most of the videos, it sends me both A test and B test. And I can always see which one's going to win because it's always the one that's more clickbait. It is. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it'll be like, my husband's cheating on me. And then it'll be like my husband has a Grindr account. That was. I saw both will show up in my YouTube notifications pushing so many out. A B testing is great. You can actually do AB test in Facebook Planner. It's very weird how it works as it's testing. You cannot go back and engage with the content until it decides who the winner is and then it actually merges the engagement back to the winning post. So yes. In terms of. Should you. If you're willing to. Yeah, absolutely. Use a B testing to see what gets people's attention. And what gets people's attention is clickbait. Unfortunately, you know, use it within reason. Right. So, okay. A great example is Sharon was on the podcast last week. So I could say, hey, we did an interview with Sharon. She's. She works for a bank. That's. That's exactly what it was. Or I ended up posting, hey, find out why she. Sharon, Sharon, her Mustang and a big blue printer have in common. Like which one is getting you more interested. Both are true.

[Corey]

It's the second one.

[Heather]

The second one. So ab testing. If you guys are wondering what it is, it's that and a lot of the technology now implements it. A lot of these newsletter senders, YouTube and Facebook for your copy and you use that through planner. You look like you're confused.

[Corey]

No. Someone left me a mean comment on my. My salad dressing post.

[Heather]

What was the salad dressing? Remember I was talking. Oh yeah, yeah. I was trying to find.

[Corey]

How can you be mean to me about salad dressing?

[Heather]

I posted something. Some guy's like, you're weird. I just blocked him. It's my power play is like block like, you don't get to see anything from me ever again. I know.

[Corey]

And it's like I looked her up

[Heather]

and she's not even in the group. It just said participant in the group participated in is being meaning about being tells you more about who they are than you. You. You get your salad dressing, girl. Another text. Hello, twins. My question today is about naming a business. I've got my heart set on using a specific word that is portmanteau, made of two common English words. Why I use a word I don't even know what I mean. This word itself, as it turns out, has been trademarked in the US By a company that's based outside of the country. While there's some overlap in terms of the product treats, my feeling is that the geographical distance should make it difficult to confuse the two companies. I would use this word in combination with a few others, potentially including the name of my town. There's definitely no other business on my in my state using the word. What say you twins? Do I need intellectual property attorney to weigh in?

[Corey]

I think what's more popular nowadays is these trademark people having to protect their trademarks. There's a big one.

[Heather]

Hot girl walk.

[Corey]

Hot girl walk. The biggest one that happened recently was Patagonia, and the Patagonia brand had to defend their copyright in order to hold on to the copyright.

[Heather]

So people like people is like, you're just being Petty. No. If you don't enforce it. The problem with Velcro and Kleenex, they end up having the same issue is we call tissues Kleenex. Well, that's a brand. It's actually a tissue made by a company called Kleenex. Same with Velcro. It's called hook and loop, made by a company called Velcro. But because they didn't enforce the trademark, the trademark was going to be. What was it called? Common something. Common. Lord.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Common use, because they never enforced it. So it became, I guess, me a Kleenex.

[Corey]

So here's the thing. While your brand is smaller, you're not going to have an issue. They're probably not going to find it. The problem is, as you grow bigger and who knows, the exponential growth that you might have, you don't want to get five years down the road and then have this lawsuit sitting in your lap. The problem is, is places like, you know, Disney, big brands have a total like office. Office is dedicated to defending, you know, the trademarks and the copyrights and things like that. Do you have enough positive profit to take that money to defend something down the road just because you liked whatever it was at the beginning of your business? I went through something similar. I never got to, like a lawsuit phase. Crumble cookie exploded across the world.

[Heather]

Even though I started in 2019. You were only a year behind them. Yeah, you're behind them.

[Corey]

They were nothing to me when I started because they were across the United States and that was like crumble spelled with no E cookies. And I was the crumbed cookies. Okay. I just made it as an Instagram handle one day, not knowing that I was going to do a business out of this. As crumble grew and as the crumbed cookies grew, I started getting people upset with their orders from I. Even though it was a crumble cookie order that they had gone into the store, then I had people submitting their resumes to work with me, and it was not me. And you see where it is mudd. So I saw the writing on the road.

[Heather]

Because Crumble ended up suing people for trademarking branded.

[Corey]

So we never know what a business is doing down the road. For them to be like, well, I don't see them doing anything over here or they never did anything with. You could become the next viral sensation and your video. Video could go viral. Even if you have a thousand or two thousand followers, you could get a 2 million viewed video and get on the radar of someone you don't want to be on.

[Heather]

We. I Did go down the wild world of trademarking to trademark sugar cookie marketing just to really see. Not that I was going up for like just to see what it was about. Right. So it ended up I filed wrong. You don't get a refund if you file wrong. So when you file incorrectly, all of a sudden all these attorneys email you. Like you publish it somewhere like this person's an idiot and file. All these attorneys reached out and like we can file for you the correct way. So I did hire an attorney and it was 700, $800. Not chum change but filing it, it was like a sugar. It's like you cannot enforce the word sugar. You cannot enforce the word cookie and you cannot enforce the word marketing. You have to be able to enforce all three together and prove that there is together. So I'll be curious, whatever your name was, if it could even be enforceable. But like Corey said, are you willing to change it down the road? Are you willing to deal with a lawsuit or even just a cease and assist and pivot? There is the, the funny part is that it's external. It's a country, it's a company not based. When I filed the, the trademark, all these other companies when it was finally officially approved. Hey you can, we can file it for you in other countries. But it was really, really unenforceable in other countries. Yeah.

[Corey]

Another aspect to think about is if there's a brand already out there and you're trying to grow a brand online. So even outside of the trademark and they search it, this is big. When people really liked Disney stuff and they want to be like Disney girl cookie baker or something like.

[Heather]

Like that.

[Corey]

When people search up Disney or a cookie baker near them and you typed in Disney. All of Disney's proprietary are like, you know, Disneyland Disney World. And the website of the cookier was never big because Disney has so much traffic going to it that you will never be able to outrank that. So you'll never be able to climb to the top of searches because you've co mingled with a big brand that was already established. Granted we don't know what your brand is, but that's something to think about.

[Heather]

I think I wanted to reserve the domain name vendy.com just because of Vendy Blendy. Just go to vendy.com right. Or something like that. But it's a, it's like a Swiss. A Swiss trucking manufacturer.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

It makes big old Swiss trucks that like build things. It's funny as far as that is. There could you get an attorney involved to audit it, you're going to be out some money for that. Yeah, but there's specific trademark attorneys who can look into that. I've known a few myself. They had really nice stuff, so I don't think they're cheap.

[Corey]

Yeah, yeah. No, I, I was sad to lose the crumb cookies. That little consonant cluster right there was nice to get rid of.

[Heather]

I hated crumbed, which is past tense. Like it's not an act of crumb, it's a past tense crumb and plural cookies. It was hard. You had to stop crumbed cookies. Now if I could answer your question, tech caller, I would say that is there anything you come up with that has less competition in search, that has less threats to your business model down the road? And that's very easy to remember. Right. In terms of marketing, what's easiest is best in terms of client recall. We only have so much stuff to remember. I can't remember anything myself. Last one. Oh, this was a great review. Thank you so much. From Texas. 281 said. Howdy. From Texas. I signed up for the cookie class kids after the event, which will not be named. And I'm just finally now opening all the files I downloaded. I'm absolutely loving these kids you all put together and I'm super thankful. I still have more than a month before I host my first informal in person cookie class. And I feel no anxiety because of all the prep work you lovely ladies have provided.

[Corey]

Thanks.

[Heather]

And I'll report back to back to how it went.

[Corey]

Oh, nice. Thank you for that. That is very nice how my brain

[Heather]

who just said she hated them. If you're still in, she could have purchased a bundle. But if she's still in the membership, she gets the Summerween class kit today. And if you're in the cookie college, you can get that included as well. It'll be cute. It'll be cute. It was cute. It was cute. Making it. Someone had asked like, I'm not. I don't have the class kit in time for Summerine, which is in two days. But I. But everyone's feedback was like, nobody knows summer we day. It kind of seems like more of a vibe. So anytime in July I would teach it. Here's the thing.

[Corey]

Summerween happens all summer long. So some people have been celebrating it since June 1st.

[Heather]

I think it's kind of a new holiday. So I don't think you've missed out on a big old celebration. It's.

[Corey]

It's getting bigger and bigger.

[Heather]

Each year. It started a couple years ago.

[Corey]

Ask me how I know. I'm a summerweenaholic.

[Heather]

I've been getting ads for. For Halloween, interior design. You're welcome.

[Corey]

I've been clicking on them.

[Heather]

It's showing up on my feed now. Going to our sponsors, our sponsor, Cookie design lab. Use Code twins to get 15% off. They were the sponsor of the STL me about it segment. So you can text in and win that as well. Bakey bake is the royal batch. Meringue powder of your dreams. Use Code twins to get 10% off. There. Daisy makes. Use code Twins10 to get 10% off. Off. I've was watching this lady, I think her name might be Katie, just showed up on my feed. She's very entertaining. She curses a lot, but she like her content is just what I find interesting to watch. But she's like, I'm in my kitchen and I gotta make 20 million cake pops in five minutes. And I'm. And it was just fun to watch. But she was the Katie, I think behind that. That syringe that Daisy makes. Cake pop. Katie. Yeah. I think it's this lady and she. They sold out out of that Katie cake pop. I think they've sold out 52 times this re 16 hours. They were completely sold out of it. Oh, wow. So if you want to go see if you can find that Katie, you can use CO Twins 10 to get 10 off of that Primera Eddie, the edible food printer. They're going to be on the podcast. We're going to do this and they have a fun announcement. I'm not sure if I can tell you guys.

[Corey]

No, not yet.

[Heather]

July.

[Corey]

She said mid July.

[Heather]

So we're going to have them make that announcement for something new that they're bringing to the industry. But right now they have Eddie and Freddie. Eddie's the director food printer. Corey loves it. It's the thing I mentioned where you can add, you can lay down some cool textures, you can get clip art. I see a lot of people doing AI generated clip art. Printing that on the cookie and then piping on top of that. That direct to food printer Eddie's $3,000. You can find them used or you can find them refurbished. I'm a refurbished girl. I'm not a used girl. That one's too risky for me. But give me the refurbed model from the manufacturer and I'm a yes. Yeah, yeah.

[Corey]

So you can get that through Primera. Once you get your Eddie, you can also score for free and actually hour with an Eddie expert and they'll go over with you how to print, how to level your bed and everything like that. All the technical things to get you printing and ready to go. Just have some cookies baked and iced. You don't have to, but it just

[Heather]

makes it a little bit easier. Yeah. See the proofs in the printing, right? Yeah. Back when Eddie first came out, they gave you, like, these, the hardest cookies in the world to test on, and you couldn't even eat them. They were as hard as rock. But it was good. Tested test, though. Like, let's eat it. We're like, oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. They discontinued that after they realized people were, like, losing teeth. But. And final Bosch Nutra Mill code Sugar cookies gets you $20 off. Now they're running sales all summer long, so definitely check back in. They do send me an email when a sale is coming. I should make more posts about it, but they think it just ran like a Father's Day sale, so you can definitely get that stuff off. Side note, before we move on to Twinterest, it's Amazon Prime Day for the next three days. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I think even goes to free Friday. I've been updating the group's Amazon Prime Day list. What do I need?

[Corey]

What do I need?

[Heather]

Yeah, I. I wanted to talk to you about some thoughts I had.

[Corey]

They have a lot of totes at

[Heather]

a discount, and I'm talking and I know, like, Camel, camel, Camel. Check to see if it's a real discount, honey. The PayPal plugin also tells you if it's the lowest price. They had Judy's Maring Powder, if you're interested.

[Corey]

In that case, I do get my. They discontinued the. Hold on.

[Heather]

Someone's attempting to come in.

[Corey]

Hello.

[Heather]

I think it was my podcast. Maybe it was your dog.

[Corey]

Oh, grabbing the door handle. Hold on.

[Heather]

Anyways, I'm gonna talk. Why? She reprimands.

[Corey]

It was my dog.

[Heather]

It was. He put his face against me. They had. And as I was talking about with God, they have. And it's not a great gift. The E Gift cards, it goes to email. You never know if somebody ever gets it. But Bath and Body works, so it's 20% off. So if you spend 50. $50. If you spend $40, you get $50. Well, I know I'm gonna spend $50. Wait, if you spend 40, you get $50 worth. No, $50 worth of. It's 20 off. So if you. If you buy the gift card, that's $50. You only spend 40, so you get $10 for free.

[Corey]

Free $10. That will give you a candle on Black Friday.

[Heather]

I know but I'm like. And just text it to yourself. You have to immediately send it out. So it's not like you can add it to your cart and checkouts on phone a physical one. I'm just saying. I just saying.

[Corey]

Me and Heather will stock up. I'm burning Heather. I'm burning the. The remainder of this one.

[Heather]

Our summer one. I oh I burnt him all the way already. But I've moved on to. I went to Walmart and had fall candles. Three workers 13.

[Corey]

Yeah but they're nothing like Bath and Bot.

[Heather]

Mom came over and she was like was that from Bath and Body? I said some things I have in my cart that I'm not going to buy a Bounty pack of eight that the you know the thinner ones that aren't. Why don't you just get those at Walmart? Because it's 15% off on Pro.

[Corey]

Is it cheaper than Walmart?

[Heather]

It looked like it. I did the honey price check thing. It's the lowest it's ever been. There's some cat toys I thought were neat. I told again something to find the studs in a wall but also told you if there's pipes or plumbing there. That's on sale. This is just in my cart right now. The refrigerator filter was on sale. Oh that's going to be the thing wasn't cheap. This. Okay. And I'm not going to buy this but I just want to look at it. That a Samsung tv that looks like a picture.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

It's you. I'm not buying it though. I know you would love to nestle behind that.

[Corey]

Thank you.

[Heather]

And then.

[Corey]

Wow.

[Heather]

I have no idea. This works. You know. Wow. The hair. The hair company products. They have this anti humidity spray. I've used it forever. I'm not sure if it works. That's on sale. These are just some things I added to my cart. Interesting.

[Corey]

I do buy my vanilla bean paste in extract there because you can really get a lot in. The ones I used to buy always would go on sale for Amazon prime day but they've since taken gone. I know it's just currently unavailable so I had a switch but those are good ones.

[Heather]

I will be buying this. I always buy muscle milk protein powder that's on sale today because it's going through. If you go through at least Amazon on your phone. Yeah. It tells me the things that I bought in the past or I'm prime

[Corey]

day deal ones that deal towards bakers

[Heather]

since Heather's literally telling parchment paper the parchment papers for class is 20 off today.

[Corey]

The scribes. If you like to do those cheap scribes at class. That's a good one.

[Heather]

That is a good.

[Corey]

It's risky click to do the piping bags because I found some of those piping bags explode. They're like not all great.

[Heather]

It is always a risky click.

[Corey]

Food safe gloves are usually ones you

[Heather]

can find going on sale.

[Corey]

Aprons. If you like to provide aprons for the class or get themed aprons, you can find those on sale. But boxes, bakery boxes, sometimes those go on sale.

[Heather]

Some of the st those C cucky stands that you mentioned in the class. Oh the stands.

[Corey]

The video boot camp that we did. Those ones are out there.

[Heather]

That gel household cleaner gel for mold that's on sale today.

[Corey]

Oh, I just bought one.

[Heather]

Oh you did. This thing's phenomenal. If you guys ever have mold that's stuck in mildew in your shower, you're gonna want this. A lot of the cabling I use to connect my computer with like a projector that's on sale. My favorite socks are on sale. And to cart I like you. I like to load up my. Running out of socks. I'm getting holes in them. I wear these suckers. One time when I first met Corey she had gone to a networking event where a flooring guy worked.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And he said the most damaging thing to your carpet. Don't wear a tennis shoe on your carpets. Don't do that. If you've ever. I like to take my shoes to the shower and use a drill bit bit with a cleaning pad sector to clean off my shoes. It's disgusting what comes off the bottom of your shoes to try to get it white again. But anyways, he said one of the most damaging things you can use on your carpet is your bare feet because of the oils that your skin secretes. So I've always worn socks at home which happens to burn through. Are you fighting with the dressing person?

[Corey]

No, I'm looking in my Amazon cart

[Heather]

to see what's going to be these

[Corey]

gradable 8 inch by 7 inch quart plastic zip bags. It's what we use at cookie class so people take the rest of their icing homes with with them.

[Heather]

That's a good one.

[Corey]

That is a pack of hundred thirty off.

[Heather]

Here's the thing and I think this is weird. They have a lot of air purifiers on sale for prime day. I I think these air purifiers truly suck up dust. But they also have my Dyson vacuum. I think it's the V8 or the detector.

[Corey]

Whatever.

[Heather]

I don't know it. And you can say you hate Dyson, you can say you love me. The ease of use of stick vacuums and the amount of crud the stick vacuums up.

[Corey]

Enco meringue powder is 20 off right now.

[Heather]

Very nice for a 4.4 pound bag.

[Corey]

The skeleton I wanted for Halloween is currently unavailable.

[Heather]

Clearly a lot of this stuff does tend to sell out again. You can check on websites like Camel, Camel, Camel or use the honey extension. That tells you if you're getting the lowest price or if they just bumped up the price and discounted it it for today. Which is not a. It's not a deal. I don't have kids or a husband, but if I did, I would get that skylight calendar thing.

[Corey]

I was thinking about that. But that has to be a universal effort in the household to make it work.

[Heather]

But it seems so cool. That's on sale as well. A lot of those. You guys have Alexis and I don't. But a lot of those ones are on sale. Those ones with the screen. So you can see if she actually. Oh yeah.

[Corey]

I almost have two too many Alexis because I've run out of rooms to put her on.

[Heather]

Yeah, yeah, there's such everywhere. Too many. Anyways, go check that out. I'll be posting some of the deals, but if you find some deals added to the thread. Yeah. The Sugar hoodie marketing Group. What was I gonna say? Oh yeah, your Twinterest. My twin. Okay, you see my. I gotta focus myself. I want to show you my makeup. Today I saw on Tick Tock I have hooded eyes, which you see if you're on. On YouTube. The. I don't have that flat skin that people have above their eye that the makeup artist with perfect wing eyeliner have. So when you have hooded eyes, which means you have a crease and you draw eyeliner up like people would do, it disappears into your eyelid socket. Is what I'm going to call it. Yeah, your crevice Prev. So what they said on TikTok is do puppy dog liner. Never heard of it before, but it's for hooded people. And you take your. You see the ridge of. Of your eyelid.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Draw straight down from there. And that is actually the shape of a winged liner for a hooded eye. I see. Or you are drawing it down. Yeah. And it. I made it shorter because it was getting a little goofyly long with the tape thing. So I did not use tape for this. But I did clean up with Minsular. Water and an angled brush miner or micellar. I have no clue. Micellar sounds better. Whatever that is. It really does clean, clean off makeup. Right? It's unlike any other makeup product. That thing will get makeup off anywhere. So I put it on the angled brush. That's like a harder tip. And I just clean up the edges. Races the block. Well, it looks good. There's your compliment for the day. That is my twin twist. What is yours? I don't really have one tonight, girl. Get you some hobbies and some interests. Nothing has happened in your life. Well, I made some cookies for someone.

[Corey]

Had to put their dog down.

[Heather]

Is 15.

[Corey]

I thought it would be a good idea. I've done it for every neighbor who's ever.

[Heather]

Can I tell them the story? Tell them the story. Corey has his neighbor and the dog was on death's door. Okay. People who love dogs love dogs. And Cory says, how is the dog Yoda? And the guy said, when this dog passes, I myself will die. And Cor, you know, and Cory's husband has the same mantra towards pets. Like the part of them dies. But this guy says, no, I will die. So anyways, Yoda did reach his end of life. So Corey thought it'd be nice to turn into a commemorative set of cookies, kind of remembering the dog and also being kind to the neighbor. So she goes to the neighbor's house and knocks on the door. And he is three shoots to the wind, drunk and upset and teary eyed. Last week on the podcast. No, you told Summer at Alberta. Oh, okay. Yeah. Because you retelling it sounds very vivid. Yeah. So he mumbles out a barely thank you. And Corey's like, oh, that was a little startling, but okay. Hey, hey. Rough, you know, he said it was going to be a rough go leaving. A neighbor says, did you hear that Yoda die? Because they live on this very. This community where everyone's really close to each other. They're not close to people, but they're close enough to know that this is a massive street. And Corey's like, yeah. And she's like, yeah. His wife texted me, please do not bring up the dog at all. He cannot handle it. Corey having just essentially delivered a bomb of cookies that are only dedicated to the door dog. And Corey said, what is one to do?

[Corey]

Even his name is on the cookie. Like, I piped it was dedicated to this dog.

[Heather]

And Cory's leaving. They're like, yeah, whatever you do, do anything but just never bring up the dog. Definitely don't deliver the cookies.

[Corey]

So foreclosure Is, I was passing by, and his wife was outside. So while I'm walking by her, they're like, they have family visiting because this is such a trying time. Her daughter's there, but then the wife says, thank you so much for thinking about us. I'm so sorry for your loss. And I kept it moving. I'm sure she appreciated me keeping it moving and going.

[Heather]

I'm sure. Maybe deal with the font of your dozen. I know she's probably like, keep your baking hands to yourself. Hilarious. Although it was nice of you, and I'm sure it landed better, but it's just hilarious, the timing of whatever you do. Definitely.

[Corey]

It was literally like I dropped it off, and my other neighbor was like, yeah, don't bring up Yoda. And I was like, excuse me. Why? They cannot handle it. Okay.

[Heather]

Oh. I said, well, I just gave cookies, so there's that. That my Twin select is Canva's new Magic Layers, which I mentioned earlier, but I demonstrated for Corey. Canva is able to take a jpeg, which is a flattened image, and the AI is able to separate the flat pieces individually and recreate the background. So you can drag and drop elements on a flattened image, which is, from a graphic design standpoint, astounding.

[Corey]

It was astounding to watch.

[Heather]

Even Cory's like, oh, no.

[Corey]

Only thing it couldn't do was take the shadows.

[Heather]

When AI figures out shadows, I guess we'll all just have to move to a commune where none of us make money.

[Corey]

Game over.

[Heather]

No need to turn on your ovens, friends. Just go find a series, and we'll go watch with Corey. Yeah, what's crazy is, is bakers have

[Corey]

created cookie photography for years. So when you're asking AI to make cookie foot, it has every aspect of a heart with, you know, a little pulse beat on it. For Nurse Appreciation Day, it is up, down, sideways, behind.

[Heather]

Crazy. Crazy. We're living in a new era, but I'd like to think it's nothing new. I'm sure that the people who bred horses were shocked when the Model T came out. I said, if.

[Corey]

If our older generation opened a smartphone and said, wow, this is the future. This is my old person moment. Wow. This is AI.

[Heather]

We. We millennials. Millennials. So we call what the offensive term is like, you're such a boomer. I call myself like, oh, sorry. I was so boomer about that. I had my flashlight on my phone. Someone's like, the flashlights up. I'm like, in it. So what will they call millennials as we approach that? What's this newfangled technology. Millennials. Yeah. Such a lineal thing of you. You're such a Len.

[Corey]

A Len.

[Heather]

You're such a.

[Corey]

We're going to be a Len.

[Heather]

I feel like it. A Len sounds like. Pause right there.

[Corey]

A Len is derogatory, and I just

[Heather]

heard it, and I felt like it was derogatory. Stop being a Len. We won't call you one. Okay, guys, we'll see you next week on the podcast. Or maybe our AI Generators generated SALS will be hosting.

[Corey]

You never know.

[Heather]

You never know. You never know. See you later, twin. See you later.