267. Baking it Down - There's Such a Thing as Bad Publicity

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪

Episode 267. Baking it Down - There's Such a Thing as Bad Publicity
Published: June 30, 2026
Hosts: Heather & Corey Miracle

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Episode Overview

This week's episode explores the controversial topic of bad publicity and online drama in the baking and small business world. Through recent viral examples and personal anecdotes, Heather and Corey break down how drama unfolds in online baking communities and why it can be so damaging—sometimes more than helpful—for small businesses. Their advice is tailored for local bakers and cottage business owners suddenly caught in the crossfire of social media storms, with practical steps for managing your reputation and responding constructively (or, sometimes, not at all).

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Table of Contents

• Opening Banter & Bake Biz Updates (00:02-13:24)
• Key Topic Introduction: Drama in Baking Communities (13:24-20:40)
• Case Studies: Cake Pop & Salon Drama (20:40-25:35)
• How Online Backlash Happens: Lessons for Small Business (25:35-36:47)
• Core Advice and How to Respond (36:47-53:12)
  • 1. Pause Before You Post (25:35, 28:10, 32:01)
  • 2. Respond to Your Audience, Not Just the Reviewer (41:15)
  • 3. Speak Once – Then Disappear (44:45, 45:03)
  • 4. Don’t Over-Explain or Defend (50:44-53:11)
  • 5. Long-Term Focus Over Winning Arguments (59:53, 62:41)
• Why Public Drama Hurts Your Biz—and How Algorithms Reward It (63:03-71:43)
• Final Recap: Clear Steps for Handling Drama (75:18-78:15)
• Other Notable Segments: Member Announcements, Updates & Product Shoutouts (85:12+)
• Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

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Opening Banter & Bake Biz Updates (00:02-13:24)

• Heather is recovering from food poisoning and there's plenty of light, funny sibling banter about the ordeal and why tomatoes and lactose might have been to blame.
• Brief intro to their Sugar Cookie Marketing Facebook Group, podcast, and latest offerings (boot camps, digital download kits, collabs, etc.).
• August collab and class kit updates; new themed digital downloads and the benefit of joining the monthly membership.
• Recap of digital kits for service workers (trash company, mailman, etc.).
• Corey shares how time-intensive each kit and cookie class is to produce ("It's a 40-hour project." – Corey, 12:10).

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Key Topic Introduction: Drama in Baking Communities (13:24-20:40)

• Heather introduces the main theme: what to do when your business is caught in a wave of online drama.
• Related quote:
  • “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty but the pig likes it.” — Heather (13:27)
• Reminder: lessons are often learned best from observing others' mistakes.
• The episode will focus on turning viral industry drama into lessons for local, small, service-based businesses.

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Case Studies: Cake Pop & Salon Drama (20:40-25:35)

Cake Pop TikTok Drama (14:10, 16:34, 17:19)

• A small creator shares a Fruity Pebbles cake pop recipe on TikTok, hoping to gain followers.
• A large creator with 700k+ followers accuses her of stealing the recipe and threatens legal action.
• The small creator, overwhelmed and genuinely upset, records a tearful response in her car.
• Online “armies” take sides, cross-platform drama spills over, and the large creator’s collaborations get canceled as backlash explodes.
• Fruity Pebbles (the brand) even drops their own recipe to join the viral wave.

Salon Drama in Community Groups (21:42)

• Example of a bad haircut review escalating into TikTok content and a flood of comments from employees and friends, blurring personal with public.
• Both cases fuel hundreds of thousands or even millions of views.

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How Online Backlash Happens: Lessons for Small Business (25:35-36:47)

• Universal lessons: Even if you're a local baker not on TikTok, you aren't immune. Every small business has a digital footprint through comment sections, reviews, or local groups.
• “It’s not if, it’s when… you will end up on social media in some form or fashion.” — Heather (24:43)
• Taste—and customer satisfaction—is highly subjective. You can’t please every “taste bud.”
• Heather and Corey’s own run-ins with local review groups and how small disputes can morph into viral drama.
• The danger of responding in haste or defensively: “When emotions run high, you get tunnel vision.” — Heather (29:50)

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Core Advice and How to Respond

1. Pause Before You Post

(See: 25:35, 28:10, 32:01)

• Do not respond immediately when attacked or criticized online.
• Emotional “adrenaline dumps” can trigger panicked, defensive actions you'll regret.
• Time and distance will let you respond with clarity:
  "What you want to do is just wait it out." — Corey (34:41)

2. Respond to Your Audience, Not Just the Reviewer

(See: 41:15)

• “Respond to the audience, not the reviewer.” — Heather (41:15)
• Your real audience is everyone reading—not just the person who left a negative review.
• Compose replies to show potential customers how you handle issues gracefully.

3. Speak Once – Then Disappear

(See: 44:45, 45:03)

• Make one calm, clear statement and then stop. No back-and-forth, no “feeding the fire.”
• If you must say something, say it kindly, briefly, and move on:
  “You will always be able to provide your statement. You do not have to do it right now.” — Heather (80:03)

4. Don’t Over-Explain or Defend

(50:44-53:11)

• Resist the urge to write long explanations or prove your point.
• Overexplaining is perceived as begging for approval (Heather: "Overexplaining is a form of begging." – 52:21).

5. Long-Term Focus Over Winning Arguments

(59:53, 62:41)

• Even if you’re “right,” a defensive battle in the public eye can damage your business in the long haul.
• “Being right doesn’t sell cookies. Being the baker people feel good about does.” — Heather (67:07)
• Short-term wins (more engagement, viral posts) mean little if your reputation suffers or local sales tank.

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Why Public Drama Hurts Your Biz—and How Algorithms Reward It (63:03-71:43)

• Drama posts get huge reach and engagement, tempting creators to feed the beast for quick growth or ad revenue.
• But the “followers” drama brings are not quality customers, and posting normal business content after a viral drama tank your reach (the algorithm “punishes” you if you stop delivering drama).
• “The sustainable business is the non-dramatic business… you’re gonna have consistency.” — Heather (71:11)
• Example: bakers with big but drama-fueled platforms struggle to actually sell cookies—in the long term, they'd be better off starting over.

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Final Recap: Clear Steps for Handling Drama (75:18-78:15)

• Pause before you post.
• Respond to the audience, not just the reviewer.
• State your position once, kindly, then stop.
• Do not argue in the comments or seek to “win.”
• Separate what is “fair” from what helps your business long-term.
• “The internet tends to forget… but if you keep adding to it, it grows.” — Heather (76:51)
• For context and emotional distance, keep a “crisis-response” note saved (Heather will send this in the newsletter, 79:12).

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Other Notable Segments: Member Announcements, Updates & Product Shoutouts (85:12+)

• Bootcamp, collab, and digital download info for bakers in their group/membership.
• Sponsor shoutouts: Cookie Design Lab (code: TWINS), Bakey Bake meringue powder (code: TWINS), Daisy Makes cake pops (code: TWINS10), Prima Eddie printers, and Bosch mixer update.
• Personal recommendations and light banter section with “Laffy Taffy” as their treat of the week.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty but the pig likes it.” — Heather (13:27)
• “Drama doesn’t flow just one way. It flows both ways.” — Corey (14:07)
• “It’s not if, it’s when… you will end up on social media in some form or fashion.” — Heather (24:43)
• “Pause before you post.” — Corey (25:35)
• “Respond to the audience, not the reviewer.” — Heather (41:15)
• “Overexplaining is a form of begging.” — Heather citing an internet quote (52:21)
• “Being right doesn’t sell cookies. Being the baker people feel good about does.” — Heather (67:07)
• “The sustainable business is the non-dramatic business… you’re gonna have consistency.” — Heather (71:11)

Funniest/Sibling Banter Moments

• Corey: “Did you poison yourself with the tomato or the cookies?” (00:15-00:57)
• Heather: “Take me out back and put me out of my misery… Props to people who deal with chronic illness.” (01:44)
• On Day-to-Day Cookie Biz: “It’s a 40-hour project.” — Corey about creating class kits (12:10)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

| Segment | Timestamp | |---------------------------------------------|---------------| | Opening chat & group updates | 00:02-13:24 | | Topic intro (“never wrestle with a pig”) | 13:24-14:07 | | Cake pop recipe drama breakdown | 14:35-20:40 | | Salon drama example | 21:42-24:21 | | The inevitability of online backlash | 24:21-25:35 | | Main advice: Pause, respond smartly | 25:35-36:47 | | Case study: Pizza place gone viral | 38:35-40:39 | | Main steps recap | 75:18-78:15 | | Useful advice for local and PR disasters | Throughout | | Announcements, promos, wrap-up | 85:12+ |

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Takeaway

Main Message:

For business owners, especially in “cookie land,” “cake pop land,” or any small, local niche, drama may be tempting but it’s always more costly in the long run. The lesson: Don’t feed the beast, keep your cool, focus on long-term reputation, and promote positivity.

“Being right doesn’t sell cookies. Being the baker people feel good about does.” — Heather (67:07)

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This episode is a must-listen for anyone caught up in an online squabble—or for those wanting to avoid being the next viral case study in bad publicity.

Transcript

[Heather]

Corey, it's Tuesday. I'm barely alive. Can I explain to people that my wet rat. Look, if you're on YouTube. Food poisoning since Saturday. Where'd you go? Where?

[Corey]

It wasn't where we went to lunch because I also ate of that.

[Heather]

Could it have been the tomato? I did not eat tomato. But other people did. And I'm the only one who got sick. And then I went home. I had a lot of cereal. I'm lactose intolerant. Could this be lactate in the net? Need of it in the lab.

[Corey]

But we're on Tuesday. Yeah, I don't think it lasts that long.

[Heather]

But really, that's all I ate on Saturday.

[Corey]

But you went out to eat by yourself on Sunday.

[Heather]

Because I. I was feeling not great and I thought it was just a hunger pang.

[Corey]

So it happened on Saturday.

[Heather]

Whatever it is. I believe so. Could it have been not. Don't roast me.

[Corey]

Those cookies you ate, only you ate them.

[Heather]

I devoured them.

[Corey]

Those were the only thing I've eaten

[Heather]

between Saturday afternoon and Sunday. I'll never eat again. That is what food poisoning does, right?

[Corey]

It has been. So no tomatoes ever. For always and ever. You know what?

[Heather]

The tomato from that farm stand. Iffy at best. I'll have to find. I did have cottage cheese with it, but I don't think you're the only person to eat that. Yeah, there's safety numbers. That's a lot. Safety numbers. That's a lot of lactose, though. I had cottage cheese and went home and had milk.

[Corey]

For someone who's. Are you lactose intolerant?

[Heather]

Are you lactose and love it. I'm lactose intolerant. Ish. Like, it's such a great day. But the ice cream tasted wonderful. It's worth the risk.

[Corey]

I don't think it was that, but Godspeed with your healing.

[Heather]

Listen, take me out back and put me out of my misery. Poisoning people who deal with chronic illnesses. Props to you because even a small bout of something really just destroys every will I have to get. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, not one.

[Corey]

This is. This is not Heather md.

[Heather]

This is the. You guys have any suggestions, please let me know.

[Corey]

This is the Baking it down with Sugar Cookie Marketing podcast. If you didn't know, we're actually a spin off from a group that's on Facebook. It's called the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group. You can look it up. You can request to join. We've been letting people in. There's no backlog of people. Just make sure you answer the questions so we make sure you are not a robot or an artificial intelligence. We don't know how they are, but they are everywhere now. So if you could just answer the questions. You don't even have to spell things correctly.

[Heather]

We'll let you in.

[Corey]

As long as you're a one body.

[Heather]

You say you want to learn how to bake. You're in. You're in. There's about a thousand people pending who didn't answer the question.

[Corey]

So you answer the questions but not me holding you back.

[Heather]

You're holding yourself back.

[Corey]

So if you just answer those, I know me and Heather will probably mass delete the pending people who didn't answer the questions. Give you another opportunity though. There's a glitch somewhere in the matrix when people go to answer questions I don't know, I always find them and answer them. But who am I but around?

[Heather]

It's joining in haste. And I also believe when you scroll down to a post and it recommends other groups and you just click join all, I think that's where the glitch happens. Oh, that could be. That could be.

[Corey]

I, I, I take back my what?

[Heather]

What were you thinking? And I say, you idiot doesn't know how to use technology.

[Corey]

If you're wondering what we fe podcast, it's either hot topics in the industry, it's questions we see people run into in the group, or new marketing trends that are coming. Whether it be an update to a social media platform or something changes in the algos like they like videos now over photos against my will. That's what we bring to you and the hot topic. This one is probably something that's ended up in your feed in some form or fashion, especially if you are a baker and follow baking accounts online.

[Heather]

But here's my big take. I want to say that if somebody is a bully or they acted bullyish and you now feel like it is okay to bully them back, you are just as wrong. But before we jump into that, I have to do my quote what's coming? Community groups Boot camp. I've actually scooched it from this week to next week. I forgot this was America's 250th birthday. So we'll be doing that next week. So if you bought a ticket, no sweat. Or ticket a pass. If you registered for it, you'll just show up next week again as if you buy any of these boot camps. Unlike how we first said it, you now get eternal access to it for as long as the product is supported. Because it turns out people aren't glued to their computers as we Initially projected. So that'll be community groups, boot camp, and then the next bootcamp we have is. Wow, I can't believe it's already August. Procreate.

[Corey]

I felt like when I wrote that

[Heather]

down initially I was like, that's six months away.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Now it's just we're July 1st is tomorrow correct? Yeah. 31 days in July.

[Corey]

Correct. July 1st is tomorrow. That's. That's the six month mark. That is it.

[Heather]

The now we're in June 25th is. Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. July 2nd. I had to Google it because I actually might schedule a post about it. July 2 is the halfway point of the year.

[Corey]

Well, if you saw my free content calendar, I drop in the group. It's also on there as well.

[Heather]

It. But just. I'm so sorry. I think this year's flying by.

[Corey]

Oh, done flown by. Done. Flown by.

[Heather]

The next collab is the first collab where we actually restricted signups. That is for two reasons. I want 100% participation rate. Also, it is hard to search hashtags. It's glitchy. So we thought if we had you register, limited the registration and then I put those in a spreadsheet with clickable links, we could get not only a higher percentage participation rate, we could also get more comments per post and not that whole like, I'm participating and nobody's finding my post, which is happening. It's so frustrating for this year.

[Corey]

Yeah, absolutely. I think it'll be.

[Heather]

Go ahead.

[Corey]

The thing is, it's already filled up, but the people, the ones who have filled it up, I'm expecting to see you there with me on that day.

[Heather]

They had to click a button that said, if I sign up, I will participate because I'm taking somebody else's spot.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Yes. Yeah. And then I asked people to come up with some new collab ideas and they had some really interesting ideas.

[Corey]

Which do you have? Remember any off the top of the head?

[Heather]

Initially it was a charity. Did we do that one, like pipe like a charity close to your heart type thing? No.

[Corey]

We did do choose somebody you wanted to give free cookies to. That was as close to the charity as we've probably gotten. And you chose someone? We ended up going to the seasons

[Heather]

52 and baking for that was a. That was a Thanksgiving club.

[Corey]

But that was the as close to the charity as we got. And that's what we did. Choose somebody you want to thank.

[Heather]

I like that. Here are some ideas. Recreate one of your first cookies, which we did that a couple years ago. We did.

[Corey]

I did. Bob the Blob recreated the heart.

[Heather]

I thought. This one is interesting, Donna, a self portrait cookie that can't be printed, so you have to pipe yourself.

[Corey]

That would be very tough for me.

[Heather]

Okay. Donna also had a cookie inspired by your favorite song. Ah, I gotta find a favorite song. Good night, Josh Groban is gonna be the.

[Corey]

Oh, yeah, yeah, probably.

[Heather]

Josh, you could do a Christmas song, a cookie of an object from a movie, and people have to guess the movie. I thought that was fun. Oh, that's a pretty good one.

[Corey]

That would be hard.

[Heather]

This one would be funny. Opposite hand only cookie. Oh, that's hilarious. She says do it with your dominant hand and then do it with your non dominant hand. So you make two cookies. Oh.

[Corey]

So it shows you for those ambidextrous

[Heather]

people out there slaying. A cookie decorated like a drop cookie. A sugar cookie decorated like a drop cookie. Your favorite ice cream place in town, your favorite restaurant in town. So that's kind of the Main street collab, I guess.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Say goodbye to summer. Decorate a cookie related to your favorite summer activity or event.

[Corey]

Oh, I into that one we could do pipe, your favorite season. And that would be getting to know your audience or your audience getting to know you.

[Heather]

This one is a spin off of the main street. A local business your business couldn't live without. So a baking supply store, chiropractor, coffee shop. A local landmark. That's interesting. A landmark. We've never done that.

[Corey]

It's like Main Street.

[Heather]

A lot of people were doing landmarks. It's kind of like the pipe of park too, because you're telling people about things. Baker's guilty pleasure bonus if you can associate it with like a business like a bookstore, a nail spa, I guess

[Corey]

that goes into the hobby one that we're doing.

[Heather]

Guilty pleasure. Hobby. True, true. So those are the ideas. Thank you guys for pitching those. We'll have to pick one soon because August is upon us. August is upon us. The quote. Oh, yeah, I'm so sorry. The next thing I dropped. The digital downloads is a. Is a kit of seven printable files. And all those print files match each other, so they're all within a theme. So if you download one kit file, like we did Fall Favorites and we did a Halloween one, they all match. So you get the stl, you get the pd, the transfer sheet, you get a social media. It all matches. Right. You get a cookie card, cookie backer, things like that. The one I thought would be fun for the next series of digital downloads is. Thank you Cookies, but very specifically tied to the service industry of people that support your home. And so that's nice for you to give to your own people that help your home. But it's also for like pop ups and pre sales for your clients to buy those around Christmas time. The first example is the trash. The Trash Company.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

It says thank you for keeping it clean. And I made a little kawaii trash bin.

[Corey]

Listen, every year I do gift my trash man's men. There's three of them cookies in cash. But yeah, it'd be cute if it was more themed. Usually I'm just throwing something in there that's Christmasy.

[Heather]

Ish. Yeah. So I thought I would do Trash Company, which I just did. Mail.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

UPS or FedEx, like delivery. And then what was the other one? Maybe cleaning company. I haven't decided yet.

[Corey]

I like that I do gift the mail person something because I don't get a ton of packages. So the UPS and FedEx in there, always different people, which is crazy. I don't know if we're like in the middle of a, of a route where someone gets to pick and choose,

[Heather]

but it's never the same people. Yeah. So that's the digital download. So you can. Our digital downloads is a membership. It's $10 a month. But if you signed up today for $10, you get this kit and every other kit I've dropped, which I think this is the tenth one. Nice, nice.

[Corey]

I'm going to try to recreate it on a cookie. I love to see it.

[Heather]

Yesterday. I'd love to see it. I made my first video and I used. I had AI generate. I find if you submit to AI very clean graphics. So I made that trash can in Illustrator. Right. So I had perfectly clean lines. Then I say turn this into. I said a prompt was this into a cookie and incorporate icing mistakes. It looked terrible and I was like, reduce icing mistakes by 80%. And then it looked pretty, it looked pretty legit. I had texted to you and you said, wow, it even incorporated the dough spread. Yeah, it did like it.

[Corey]

It's almost like if someone did pipe to the edges, you could see the dough behind what you had shown.

[Heather]

Yeah, it felt like Star Trek reduce mistakes by 80%. And so then I made a video and said, could you get. It was my first video, guys. It's my first video.

[Corey]

It was great. It was great. I went and hyped you up with

[Heather]

all the accounts I had. We also dropped last week. I added a bunch of transfers to your membership and we did the summer wean class kit, which is the last of our intermediate series. I think you kind of said, yeah,

[Corey]

we're going back to beginner just for the ease of it. I. We have to take feedback and we have to pivot when the feedback comes in. And I wasn't married to intermediate. I like beginner classes too. So we're going back to inter our beginner classes for the rest of the year. The next one's a lemon themed sweet pink. Olive has already sent me the cutters. They're not here yet. So before you say, where is it? I have not received them. So there's a few steps in between before I can get it together. But it will be a lemon theme, which seems to be trendy right now.

[Heather]

How many hours do you think you put into getting the cookie, baking it, decorating it, and photoing it for the kids?

[Corey]

It takes a 40 hour project. Two full days.

[Heather]

Two full eight days. Yes.

[Corey]

To bake it, to photo every step of it. To decorate two sets before I know what steps need to be decorated for the PowerPoint.

[Heather]

So you do three sets? Technically, yes. Yeah. So and I'm put. I, I track it when I get a class kit from Corey. If I start my day working on the class kit, I do take a lunch break. I'll end my. It will be a 10 hour day minus an hour for lunch. But like these class kits just take a lot of steps. And if you guys have ever made your own class kit, you say, oh, I understand why this is easier to buy. So yeah, the Summerween class kit is super cute. It's. It's the cross between Halloween and summer. So they've got a ghost eating a watermelon if you wanted to. Someone had mentioned that they were teaching the class, but they wanted to use a transfer for that watermelon. I added those to your membership as well. Oh yeah, Yeah.

[Corey]

I think you had actually a transfer watermelon already in there.

[Heather]

Gonna be a watermelon and they're gonna be a pumpkin. Is that you find it funny iteration. Oh, but the lemon cookie class kit, I saw a preview of it. The lemon lemonade class is a fun little summery vibe. Definitely taking into July and August. But that one looked cute too. Yeah, very cute.

[Corey]

So diving into the topic, don't you have a quote?

[Heather]

I have a quote and it says, never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty but the pig likes it. And that's a really common quote. I think we said it growing up. But I want to say like again, we're taking a topic that's, that's buzzy right now or whatever and applying it to local service based businesses because we can always apply something to ourselves and learn a lesson. And I always love learning lessons from other people's maybe missteps and so that we don't have to take those missteps. And that's what today's podcast is on. My challenge to you is if you feel entitled to getting into the drama with people in the comment sections of groups, please understand that you leave yourself wide open to that drama coming back at you.

[Corey]

Yeah, drama doesn't flow just one way.

[Heather]

It flows both ways.

[Corey]

If you've been under a rock, you have noticed that the cake pop world is alive and well and popping with drama. This week it seems like every, every industry or every vertical of baking has its drama every other week. So it might be sourdough and then it might be drop cookies and sugar cookies. There was sourdough drama. I followed it for a while.

[Heather]

You guys are too busy trying to keep it alive.

[Corey]

That problem is is you stole my idea. But you can only do so much stuff with sourdough. So, you know, I, I don't know. It's. What's out there is already out there in the cake pop world. This week a large creator on TikTok, I think is where it originated, had said someone stolen her recipe and this was a small creator. I don't think she had a ton of followers at the time. I don't know, 1,000? That's more than I could say.

[Heather]

So larger than me relative when you're really small, quote unquote.

[Corey]

But you'd only started K pops two weeks, had shared a recipe in hopes to hit the algorithms just right. You know, sharing, you know, techniques. I do that all the time. If you're on the sugar cookie marketing socials, sharing techniques is a great way to promote saves to get followers. So it's, it's definitely a content bucket I try to grab from all the time. Granted, there's not a lot a ton

[Heather]

of flavors in sugar cookies, so I

[Corey]

can't really pull from that bucket. I only work with vanilla. So grab your vanilla, grab your vanilla bean paste and pour. That's about as far as I could go with cake pops. There is no end to the amount of different recipes, whether it be vanilla sheet cake, chocolate, chocolate, lava, pistachio. There's a million different flavor combinations you can do out there and customers really love it. Especially if, you know, you can get really creative with sugar cookies and don't get me wrong. You can get creative with cake pops, but if you are just doing circle cake pops like me, what you're trying to sell people on is the taste. Like, the taste is great. I can make custom taste.

[Heather]

Sugar cookie bakers are like, the design. The design.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

I feel like cake pop people end up getting crazy with their designs as well. Yeah.

[Corey]

Mind blowing, right?

[Heather]

I think typically it's been the taste of taste, but now you got the taste.

[Corey]

People like me who like, grimace when

[Heather]

someone says they want to order of cake pops.

[Corey]

We're like the taste test.

[Heather]

Don't worry about the design. It's crying. The crack is a part of the design.

[Corey]

Yes. What happens is this smaller creator post a Fruity Pebbles recipe that she had created and shared the recipe in her caption in hopes to get some more followers. Followers in a few more shares and saves another creator. This larger creator has about 700, 800,000 followers on her social media. Assumed that this smaller creator had stolen her recipe. She takes to the Internet and has her Internet army go and report the other girl's account. From my understanding, this is what happened.

[Heather]

I think she sent a DM and said, take it down or I'll sue you. And this is. I'm paraphrasing. I always tell people when I'm like retelling something. Please understand. It's like a bunch of I can't remember anything, so that's just my vibes.

[Corey]

She does. She sends her a message on Instagram and gives her seven minutes to either respond or take the video down, but says she's going to go with legal action because this recipe is apparently copywritten the Internet. Okay, honestly, that goes the. The smaller creator deletes the video just like how the larger created won it. But what she didn't plan for was the smaller creator is in a Walmart parking lot in her car sobbing. Like, sobbing where you're like, wow, that's a genuine sob. There's fake crying. She's real crying.

[Heather]

Those were our crocodile tears.

[Corey]

Real or fake, whatever the real ones are. She was doing those ones and she's.

[Heather]

When my upper eyelid starts getting swollen, it's. That's a real. Yeah.

[Corey]

You know when my. When my throat closes, it feels like I swallowed a rock. Giant rock.

[Heather]

That's how you know it's real.

[Corey]

And I can't get the words out.

[Heather]

Doesn't even matter. So she's sobbing.

[Corey]

What she ends up saying is, I don't. I. I didn't ever buy the recipe. I can't even show you the receipt. I didn't buy her recipe. I just put together this fruity pebble recipe. She says I stole it and she's planning to sue me. I just started this two weeks ago and now I'm so sad. That's basically the gist of her video. Okay, the Internet, who loves what the crazy thing about algorithms is? It will drop you any old place. You can say, I've never made or eating a cake pop before and it will land you on a video of cake pops. And you're like, wow, why am I here? Oh.

[Heather]

Which is the danger the algorithm is. It feeds the. It feeds the monster, right? So likely this thing could have been resolved in dms. Okay? Someone takes it publicly, but then the other party takes it publicly and then the algorithm's like, let's just take this to everybody. Let's just bring everybody into this. All opinions are great. What do you have to say on this, you person?

[Corey]

Oh, yeah, we tell you and I punch the ear. Why I can't pull from the drama content bucket when I say it.

[Heather]

It's so tempting because it does so well. But it is a double edged sword of unpredictability.

[Corey]

It is a double edged sword and Heather will say it till the day she dies. How you get them is how you keep them. Here's the thing. This post of this smaller creator blows up and people are going over. The crazy part is the larger creator did make a video about the smaller creator. She didn't like add her or anything, but someone sold my recipe and they put it in their caption. So people are putting two and two together. No one named each other, but people have put two and two together. And it has, I want to say it has blown up insanely everywhere. Even in the local community groups I'm in, I'm seeing Fruity Pebbles cake pops recipe.

[Heather]

Adding on to that Fruity Pebbles, the company drops its recipe again. I guess it's been out for a long time. Again, a lot of this is just hearsay and drama. Applied stockpiling or whatever. But then, okay, as it turns out, the bigger creator dirty deletes a couple videos, turns off comments, which signals something that lets people run with their own thoughts and then post an apology video that left to interpretation people did not like the. The Internet judge during executioner has weighed heavily and said no. Okay. And then with the fallout of that, more on a industry based level, the collaborations with the bigger creator, people are cutting them off. Okay, Just fuels fire everywhere. Drama. Popcorn. Extra butter. Extra.

[Corey]

More like cake pops. Extra.

[Heather]

Fruity Pebbles. So, okay, that's the whole. That's the gist of the story. And I'm sure if you're living under a rock or a cake pop, you've seen it probably hitting your feed. And now it's just a bunch of people that have nothing to do with anything. Just leaving opinion. Okay? That is the drama. At the same time, the salon world is going through the drama where a girl goes to salon, hates her haircut, leaves a bad review. I saw that too, because it's just. Because it's the algorithm. It's like, this is the last time I've been involved in a salon drama. Never has the algorithm brought all sides to my video. So the girl goes, leaves a bad review, but also links to her TikTok and the bad review in her review on the TikTok, which I'm not sure if you're allowed to do or not, never named a salon, just said she had a bad experience. Right? So she did leave the salon one star review and then writes this experience, but never, ever, ever names anyone, I guess, except for the salon. This hair stylist gets her, I guess even her boyfriends, her friends, her other stylist. To go to the comments section of that TikTok.

[Corey]

Let me give you some background.

[Heather]

Give me your drama, girl.

[Corey]

Oh, I will stop on a drama

[Heather]

post and I will listen.

[Corey]

You will not see my name anywhere. I will not like anything, but I will have listened to every side 42 times and have formed an opinion. The lady had gone to a junior stylist, which a junior stylist is just learning. So you do save money on the haircut, but then you run the risk that this person is learning on you. The junior stylist finds this TikTok of the lady and does a very nice like, hey, I'm so sorry you didn't like your haircut. I'm a junior stylist. I'm still learning. I would love to offer you the complimentary haircut that we talked about over the phone. Please. If you would like to come, I would like to fix this issue. Okay.

[Heather]

That's the same concept of I messed up your cookies. I'll give you a discount on a future cookie. Like, I'm sorry the current ones are messed up. Why would I switching when it's your hair? But okay, go on. Right.

[Corey]

So unfortunately her, the junior stylist posted a pretty nice comment, you know, to say like, my bad. I'm learning. Never accusing the client of like, how dare you come with a wet head of hair and Give me that to work with. She says, I'm. It was my bad. If you'd like to come. I, I have no idea. That's how much I don't go into a salon.

[Heather]

Okay.

[Corey]

I. I think I've gone once in the last two years to a haircut. And he, he thought he knew me,

[Heather]

and he did not.

[Corey]

So we were like, you know, talking. He was like, what are you doing? Your hair's so dry. And I was like, this is my first time here. He's like, oh, I thought someone you knew. Anyways, it was dry. The problem is his. Her friends and her boyfriend do come to her aid in the comment section. And it goes a little left to center left.

[Heather]

The salon stylist did right. She did write.

[Corey]

But she wrote a very nice comment. Like, I'd like to make it right. I'm a junior stylist. Learning on. You thought you knew that.

[Heather]

But, you know, everyone has a camera.

[Corey]

Oh, everybody has a camera. So that everyone has these metaglasses. We're going, oh, metaglass. Yeah, I know. Yeah. That leads us to the topic at hand. Because social media is now so prevalent, people are wearing their cameras on their eyeglasses with meta glasses, and people have their phones on at all times. There is a time where we used to be like, hopefully you never end up on social media in a bad light. Now it's not so much that. It's when you end up. Yes, you will end up on social media in some form or fashion. It might not take the world by storm, but it could take your small local community by storm. And the same principles that you would need to do if you hired a giant PR firm, which is thousands and thousands of dollars, to do reputation management. We don't have that in our small bakery wallets.

[Heather]

Add another hat to your 17 PR. Another set.

[Corey]

You are a PR manager. Congratulations. The same thing is being prepared before it happens to you. Because when it does happen to you, it is going to feel like you are on a deserted island by yourself.

[Heather]

And you're going to. You're on the deserted island, but there's 12 jurors deciding whether you live or die.

[Corey]

And the sharks are in the water.

[Heather]

It's just an overwhelming. And it would be different if we were robots or part of the Borg, but that kind of stuff happening to you is extremely triggering. Gets a lot of emotional juice, is flowing really fast, and then it. It almost creates tunnel vision. In motorcycles, people will say, have you ever been in an accident? And you say, no, and I never will. I'm really safe. And then they always say it's not if, it's when you will be in an accident. And it doesn't matter if you're really safe or not. It is not if, it is when. And that is the same thing with bakers. And you're like, well, I'm not on TikTok, so this doesn't apply to me. No, no, no. You are on the Internet. You have a review profile on Facebook, you have a comment section on Facebook, you have a Google business profile because you're listening and putting in marketing things. You are by lack of not even being on TikTok. It doesn't matter. People can still make a video about you.

[Corey]

I want to say that opinion based content performs well. But you know what's the number one opinion based thing on the human body? Taste buds. And you cannot, no matter what you do, make every single taste bud happy. So regardless if you think like, no, I may I, I just bake sugar cookies, someone's going to not like them. Somebody is not going to like them. Not because they don't like you, but because maybe your cookies are too soft, they're too pretty, they, they melted in the mouth too. Well, you know, you cannot make everyone happy. So the chance that you end up on the wrong side of an opinion based piece is extremely high. Especially when the algorithms are telling people we are rewarding dramatic content. So keep creating drama. Now it's just people are pulling. There was another post that went viral and this girl, she was a pretty big creator, said crumble cookie. One of those brands, one of the big brick and mortars threw my cookies at me. It's so funny. The crumble cookie that she went to posted the recording and not one cookie was thrown. It was literally placed in a box in front of her. And she. But because the algorithms are saying create drama content, because drama content keeps people on the platform, people are pulling from every angle to create something dramatic so that they can hit the feeds, grow the following, get the brand deals, get paid for the views, and that's what you have to be armed with moving forward. Even as a small local baker that can't ship cookies that can only service the zip code 22192 if it's going to happen.

[Heather]

If you listen to last week's podcast in the gossip section, it was that company that was half a cafe or half a plant based thing. Like yes, the anonymous nickname poster said he screenshots everything that makes her look good. It's a woman's group and says, everyone let's stockpile and get angry at this company. Hadn't she worded it better, she could have gotten a little Internet army going in. She was still in the wrong. So you see the risk here is the if then when is even not even if you play every single card correctly, it can still happen to you. So this is what today's podcast is on is if it happens regardless of if you did everything by the book. So our point one is, and probably what every single one of these instances could benefit from is pause before you post or comment. Even though our radius is small, we're not on TikTok. The memory is forever and longer than the memory is the screenshots.

[Corey]

The screenshots are ever when something happens, whether someone says that person stole my photo that you create, you used AI to create your menu. You, you know, stiffed me a cookie when I needed it is a feels like an attack. And because we feel attacked, we go on the defensive and then we feel the need to. To do a rebuttal right away because we're, we're trying to save ourselves.

[Heather]

I gotta defend myself. If they're gaining traction, I'm losing my footing. That's what it feels like.

[Corey]

Yes. So what we do in the heat of the moment, you know what, the cake pop lady, her, her recipe might have been similar to the other ladies, but because she posted with such haste, she wasn't able to sit down with facts that maybe a few things were different. But she said, that looks word for word for mine. I'm going to make a video about it. And that's what blew up. If you see something online and I see a lot of local bakers, maybe be like, I saw someone using my photo. And you post with a lot of angst and you don't get to control the conversation. You only get to control your caption. People can run and go and harass somebody else and that's what you're like, I see bakers come back. Please, guys, don't harass her. I. I reached out, she said she was sorry, but it's too late. Damage done, relationship broken.

[Heather]

In the example of the cake pop one, I think the, the biggest supporting argument for this pause before you post is that in the apology video, and maybe it was one of the deleted ones. It was. I gave her plenty of time to respond and I didn't get a response. Unfortunately, the smaller creator had screenshotted receipts with timestamps and, you know, the Internet is forever and it's just, you know.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

And it had been seven Minutes. The I gave her some time and I didn't respond. Turned out to be around seven minutes. So that was no time. And now you can see that when emotions run high, like have you ever been in a car accident? Right. And you don't remember anything around you because you create tunnel vision. Because the brain is like I'm focused on survival here. And I think when we have these kind of Internet issues, these Internet backlash, you kind of create the tunnel vision you've got. I gotta. I gotta. I gotta say something now. I gotta do it. And you're not able to release that tunnel vision. And the only way to get emotions down is time.

[Corey]

Is time just adrenaline. Have you ever seen.

[Heather]

I'm sorry, you probably have. But I know I exclusively ever come around a corner and there's placement there.

[Corey]

See him every day around 5 o'.

[Heather]

Clock.

[Corey]

When my husband. Adrenaline.

[Heather]

Oh yeah. Her husband's police officer.

[Corey]

Adrenaline.

[Heather]

It's secreted in your body so instantaneously it's almost something like.

[Corey]

But the gut they call adrenaline dump. Like when you don't get pulled over. But now your body has to do something with the. The adrenaline that it hurts. My legs. My legs will physically for 30 minutes.

[Heather]

But you know, one time with that motorcycle I did almost ran somebody. It was I. I bad on me. I didn't know the law. When it's a double yellow line and there's a fire truck oncoming, the opposite traffic has to stop for the fire truck. You didn't know that?

[Corey]

Unless there's a divided median.

[Heather]

I thought that was first. I know the school bus laws. This was a fire truck. No. Yeah.

[Corey]

If there is nothing in between you, you gotta stop in case they need to cross over.

[Heather]

Let me tell you, everyone stops but me. So I. And this motorcycle didn't have abs. So it's really easy to skid out. I'm locking up the brakes. You can hear but okay. I. If you ever ridden motorcycle, all four appendages have a job. Right is throttle, left is break, right foot is break. I don't know. Whatever. I was so shaky I had to pull off on the spot because I couldn't shift. Sit down.

[Corey]

Yeah. No. There is nothing like it. And the same adrenaline that Heather faced on her almost near death experience is the same adrenaline you would get if you wake up and find that someone made a video about you. Adrenaline doesn't know a difference.

[Heather]

It says survival. It is.

[Corey]

You might be dying or you might be the crux of someone's drama.

[Heather]

We're going to give you some extra Energy, just go, go really quick. So when you pause, that adrenaline's still sitting in you and the feeling is miserable because you feel like. It feels like the same thing. Like I need. My body's telling me to run and do something or reply to something or post something, but I'm being told to go against what my brain is telling me as survival, you know, and it's always important to know, like lizard brain. Like, that was great when a lion was chasing you. Now in the age of the Internet, it's not while the brain is saying, hey, listen, we're going to give you some extra adrenaline.

[Corey]

Go, go, go.

[Heather]

Yeah, it is different. We're not in the same. There's no bear behind us.

[Corey]

Instead of running with your legs, we're running with our thumbs. And that's the problem.

[Heather]

So, so you guys may say, I don't get how. I'm not selling recipes. No, no. We're going to bring it back to the macro scale. You get the bad review from a local customer and you do that like you go to the baker group. That's not managed. And you said, here's what happened. And every single baker's like, they're just trying to scam you. They're just trying to get free cookies. And you take that energy because you've only given it 30 minutes. And you go to this review and you write the very curt lawyer speak, you know, and I refuse to. And here's every reason you're wrong. And what you've replied to is this infraction, high adrenaline, no time, no thought, with a bunch of baker haters behind you telling you, yeah, yeah, stick it to them. Tell them, you know. But what you've signaled to everyone else working with you is that when I have a problem with this baker, I risk it not being resolved. And I am shamed for that problem. Yeah.

[Corey]

Heather remembers this. This was when I was brand spanking new.

[Heather]

I.

[Corey]

Someone asked in a local group, can anyone make these firearm shaped cookies? My husband's getting a promotion. Hey, totally fine. A bunch of bakers were like, I can, I can I. Of course I'm gonna throw my hat in there. I was brand spanking new. No orders coming in, desperate at the point. So I said, oh, yeah, I think I can make those for you. End up making them for her. She was happy. She goes about her way. I got my fifth sale, whatever that was. I can't remember back in the day. Okay. She does something rather nice, which normally would go very well for me, but she posts a picture of the Cookies in a group and says thank you at and at the time. The crumb cookies for making these cookies. The comment section go haywire. Not the way. Not wow, she did really well. The comments are like how dare she make these firearm shaped cookies. I'm stressing, texting Heather. Heather, what do I do? Look, I'm in this group. I don't know what to do. And Heather said just step away from it. It'll die. It'll die down. No one's if you don't add fuel to the fire. There's no fire to fuel the

[Heather]

drama basis. And I'm if you're wondering who's watching and reading the drama, it's these two right here. You and I. I'm texting Corey. Do you see this? You see that? See this? Random. And we'll get to bed on Saturday. Be like did anyone see about the salon? Salon? Anybody? You know? Because it's just not a lot going on. When you add those responses that enrage, that add more heat. Like Corey said, fuel of fire. You are feeding the beast. The machine wants more drama. And those quick replies, they add to the drama. I'm gonna, I'm gonna use you as an example here. Okay. The. The two creators. The likelihood of them to cross paths in the real world are next to none. Yes. That's why I tend to date people really far away. The odds of us having to have that awkward conversation at a gym, Never going to happen. Yeah, smart, smart. Corey has a local community group. Hyperlocal. We talk about it all the time. It's a great way to generate leads. The community group is run the exact same way as the sugar cookie Martin group. Sales are limited. But Corey really wanted to keep the sales day round. She thought it was helped create community. But if you post outside the sales day it says you're going to be removed. No exceptions, Right? Just what it is. When you join the group you read the rules, right? So she had someone break the rules, ban them from the group. Which is protocol. It's what we've done for these five years. You'll never guess who moved in next door. Four doors down.

[Corey]

Four doors down. I could see her moving in.

[Heather]

Here's the thing is that small business will cross paths with the person they've offended. You know, so we a small business. That person who placed the order with you has friends that live next door to you. And they'll be at your market tomorrow, they'll be at the market next week. They'll drive past your pop up, they'll be Kind you guys will cross paths,

[Corey]

they'll become your neighbor, literally.

[Heather]

That is risk, of course. Like, oh, no. Which is funny because you didn't do anything wrong.

[Corey]

I didn't do anything wrong.

[Heather]

And I.

[Corey]

If she says one thing, I will

[Heather]

have a conversation with her.

[Corey]

It wasn't like I went. And the great thing is I didn't go badmouth her online. So now where I'm like, I have to hide in my house. No, all of it was just taken care of. And is it going to be awkward

[Heather]

that she's my neighbor? Yeah.

[Corey]

But that tells you in this small world that we live in, especially in our local communities that we service, to think you'll never run into the comment. Someone comments something, you comment something. But to think you'll never run into those people. And me and Heather live in a very populated space. And me and Heather have run into people like from this local community group. Me and Heather one time went to Tyson's mall. That's not near us. That's about 40 minutes away from us. Someone from that group messages Heather. Are you guys sitting at Coastal Flats? We were.

[Heather]

We were.

[Corey]

So that's the crazy part. You think that you have this security behind a screen that no one can reach through and get you. No. You do not know where your body is going to end up. Whether you go into a restaurant and see somebody you know, whether you walk into your farmer's market and somebody that you, you wronged online shows up there.

[Heather]

Here's what you have to keep in mind. You might say, well, the person who left the review, the person who got into it with me, they're wrong. And they could be. And that's. They could be 100% wrong. They could be liars saying you threw the cookies.

[Corey]

The customer is not always right. And me and Heather will say that they're not always right.

[Heather]

If your response was sent to the head of the farmer's market, would you be embarrassed by how you spoke? Because that's actually who's also reading your replies. That's what the impact. You think you're talking to this one person? No, no, no. We're talking to everybody, Corey and I, professional lurkers. I'm reading all sides of the story. You'll never know. I was here. I leave no trace. But I. We're developing like, ooh, how did that reply go? We have talked about in the podcast years ago, the pizza place that sold the lady a bunch of food and the food arrived subpar. She leaves a three star review.

[Corey]

Three star review. He wants to Remake the burger, takes it to her a remade burger because he had her address because it was a delivery. She is not expecting a burger at the late hours of the night and ends up writing a review that she felt like the man was stalking her, trying to force her to eat this burger to give her give him a five star review. It takes off like it get on the Wendy Williams Show. That's how big this one got.

[Heather]

The tiniest pizza place imaginable in Northern Virginia. This is on a national actually made international because I think I saw European.

[Corey]

It did.

[Heather]

It did. Right? Because. Because here is. We got a man, we got a woman who said, I had a bad experience. Three stars. Which isn't the worst experience most people forget. There's two, three and four stars, right? Well, I see five and one. And then here's a guy coming late at night pounding on her door saying, open up. I. You know, yeah, it looks bad. But it grew legs and it ran. Until Corey decided against my will to go there and see if we could help him change the. Because his response to this was terrible. He became exceptionally defensive. We even said, can you stop replying? Can you just stop doing what you're doing? You are defensive and you are only reaffirming that you are the problem. Because defensiveness. Yeah.

[Corey]

As two lurkers that me and Heather are. And I said, I have got to see this crazed pizza dude burger man in person. When I walked into this tiny pizza joint, one, it was empty. So awkward. Because it became desolate after this review went viral. I saw a very sad young man, probably my age, standing behind the cash register. And that was the person, the owner. And he. And I said, dude, are you the owner? And he's like, first he lied and said no, and I don't blame him. And I was like, yeah. I said, I would like to help whoever the owner was because you're adding fuel to the fire. And you're this isn't going to go away. It's just growing. And he was like, no, wait, it was me. And I was like, I feel really bad for you.

[Heather]

You'll never guess the strategy we gave him is the same one we're giving you. And I'm happy to report that pizza place still in business, ironically moved next to Corey.

[Corey]

Move next to me. I can't get away from it.

[Heather]

A staple in the neighborhood. People really like the product. Yeah, my cat's back in the move.

[Corey]

And that was nigh eight years ago. So they were able to come out of that. Not because they were doing the right thing. But because they listened to these steps and allowed me and Heather to take over the social medias and we took the access away from him and its comments.

[Heather]

Right. So again, when you're hiring are local, there's no anonymity. Can you hear the cat just bellowing? No. Oh, God. Okay, so pause before you post. Point 2. Respond to the audience, not the review, which is what we're kind of talking about. Oh, my goodness.

[Corey]

No one can hear it.

[Heather]

Can't hear it on my can. It's just the louder I talk, he hates my voice. I don't blame him either. So respond to the audience and not to the reviewer.

[Corey]

When you.

[Heather]

If Cory and I get in a spat, which happens, I'm talking directly to her. Also that thing she did to me 15 years ago, right?

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

We're. We're in the mud together. We're the two pigs wrestling when Heather

[Corey]

kicked me in the womb. I'm bringing that up.

[Heather]

Yeah. One time I had. One time I slapped corn in the face. She brings it up constantly. And we were like 10.

[Corey]

I've only been punched in the nose once. Heather did it on.

[Heather]

What did you do?

[Corey]

I pantsed her on the bus. She punched me with my nose across. I swear. You. You. You caused my nosebleeds because I didn't have one before, but I've had them after. You know what?

[Heather]

You're welcome. Just don't panic. A bad review feels personal, but people are reading it and deciding whether to walk up to your table next week. Let's say you do a vendor market.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

That review. That is personal is not personal at all. It's actually being broadcasted to a lot of people. There was a local baker who got a DM that felt like a spam, because dm, spam, dm, you can kind of pick up on. It feels like it's too short. It uses. Yeah.

[Corey]

How much do you want for this? Can you bake this tomorrow?

[Heather]

Yeah. The baker said, and we always say, just don't engage with spammers. One, what's the point? Just wasting your time. She was like, I think a few expletives and then, you know, bleep. You spammer. Well, it wasn't a spammer. It was not a spammer as a real person. But she had blocked the person. So the person like, you know, we had that. That should have kind of lived locally. But okay. Blocking, you can't. You can't have a dialogue. The person took it back to a foodie's group of tens of thousands of people and said, is this how they treat them? Right?

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

That little small infraction became a massive opinion piece. Right?

[Corey]

Opinion piece. And that's the, that's the crux of this is me and Heather don't. Heather doesn't even bake at all. She's not making cake pops. Me and Heather aren't going to salons and getting our haircuts. Me and Heather aren't always buying pizza from local pizza joints. But we're there forming opinions in the comment section based off of just the content that the creators have made. So when you're talking from one person to the other, when. So you feel wrong, so you make a video talking to the person who wronged you. We are sitting there like an audience in a movie theater watching this go down, forming opinions on both based on you talking to another person. You've made it public, you've made it. You've put it on our plates and now we're digesting it. What you want to do in this situation is you'll never change the mind of the person who doesn't like you. They do not like you. They thought your cookies were dry. Unless your cookies become wetter, you're not going to change your recipe based on one person. So what you want to do is talk to the audience, the people who believe in you, the people who are like, this is so unlike. I don't think she would act like this. This isn't of the character of her. We've usually had a good experience. You're not talking to the person who already says they'll never buy from you again. They are a lost cause. There's no need to talk to them directly. If you make a video, you want to talk to your audience. Hey, guys. And I'm just paraphrasing. Me and Heather are not a PR team at all in any sense of the word, but we have gone through

[Heather]

our fair share of heat.

[Corey]

Gone through our fair share. Hey, guys, you know there's this recommendation or someone doesn't recommend me. And you can see that going around. I just want to appreciate everyone who does recommend me. I've, you know, love my recipe. It came from my grandma.

[Heather]

It's a staple in my thing.

[Corey]

Thank you for your continued support. Ah, both closed chapter.

[Heather]

Closed.

[Corey]

We're moving on.

[Heather]

Corey's getting to my point. Three, which is speak once, disappear to. Really? But, but, but. No, no. That, that one speak though, has to be well rounded. Me and Heather, I'm sorry, back to your one point though. I'll say this If I don't like somebody and they offer recourse, I'll like them again.

[Corey]

Yeah. Yes.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

You know what? You can change my, my, my positioning on you. You can change my positioning on you. Doing.

[Heather]

We went to the beach, me and my three sisters. So it was the four of us and there's this just hole in the wall local watering hole restaurant that's become a tradition to start the beach trip at this place. It's called the Ocean View Pier Restaurant. Love it. Terrible experience every time. Love it. We'll always go back. So we go there. The Diet Coke machine wasn't just down, it was down bad.

[Corey]

I don't know. I want to tell, I want to tell you. The Miracle family is the connoisseur of the Diet Coke. We can taste. If you put a bunch of Diet Coke, I can tell you if it's fountain, if it's a can, if it's a bottle, or if it's a glass bottle. That's how fine tuned these taste buds are to the L. Diet Coke.

[Heather]

So this probably was a Diet Pepsi anyway. So we're already on the left foot, not the right. But it was flat, something was old and it tasted like mold. I don't know, it just wasn't good, right? Whatever. It happens all the time. Not a big thing. But my little sister had a huge problem with it because it was the only like it was what she had been looking forward to for the four hour drive. So she says to the lady, hey, there's something wrong with Diet Coke. Hoping for some sort sort of recourse. She didn't want to drink it. Corey and I hate confrontation. So sometimes we'll suffer through a. I'll sip the top. Sometimes I'll suffer through a Coke Zero to get to a Diet Coke refill. But my little sister said, no, I don't, I don't want to drink this. I think something's way wrong with it. She says to the waitress, something's wrong with the Coke. Is there any way I could get another one? And she's like, well, it'll be exactly the same as if to now Summer. It put her in such a foul mood because Summer's like, now she's making me feel like the dumb person, the idiot.

[Corey]

But I think what happened with the waitress, she thought Summer was making her feel like numbers. She took it personally when it should have been we should be blaming Summer waitress against the Coke, against a Coke fountain thing. Like, oh man, let me go try it again. I'm not sure if it's going to be fixed. But I appreciate you letting me know. Let's try it and see if it works better. Let me know if Summer even got another flat chemical Diet Coke. She would have been like, well, at least she tried.

[Heather]

She was. She was on my side.

[Corey]

Yes, yes,

[Heather]

that recourse would have gone along. And far. However, the waitress replied to the personal attack. She said, you.

[Corey]

What?

[Heather]

You think I poured this Diet Coke from my secret Diet Coke session? It's not good enough for you? That's the energy she came at it with, right? Why? When you make your statement right one, remember, you have waited a while, and I'm not talking who have waited 10 minutes. You have waited 24 hours. Yes, but your brain is going to tell you, no, no, no. They're talking bad about you. Maybe it's six hours, maybe it's 24 hours, but whatever. You're texting your twin sister and saying, how does this sound? How does this sound to other people?

[Corey]

You have to get someone so far away from the. Like, my husband could care less about my issues with someone not liking the taste of cookies. So what you want to do is find someone who's not attached to the problem. If someone's as passionate as you, you're gonna have an issue because they're gonna side with you. And that's what we don't want. We don't want an echo chamber of people like yourself. That's why when you come to the sugar cookie marketing group and you're like, guys, you know, they want a refund because they don't like their cookie order. You're gonna find the baker to be like, you took 52 hours. They deserve to pay. That's an echo chamber paper. That is not what you need. You need someone who has no feet in the fire, no marshmallow on the stick, no hot dog in the bun, no cake pop on a stick.

[Heather]

You will think and people will tell you and they'll be incorrect but slightly correct that SEM favors the refund. The SEM being Sugar Cookie Marketing Group. That's the admins, that's me, Corey. We favor the refund. Right? Right. Because you're like, they'll go through the comment section and they'll delete anyone that says no refund. Actually, I won't. I will not delete someone that says, I would not refund this order. What I will delete is someone says they're trying to get one over on you. This is a scam artist. They're just trying to steal from you. These are thieves. Don't refund because you are not bipartisan. You are talking from a personal experience. I can tell that energy is right there. So you are not valuable to op, which is the original post. You're not valuable to OP because you are not not seeing it as a tertiary, unrelated third party. You are seeing it through the lens of this happened to me one time and I hate. Right, Right. Unlike you, you're telling someone else to do what you didn't have the but behind.

[Corey]

Unlike you, they won't. You don't get the blowback that they will get depending on their response.

[Heather]

That's why it's satisfaction.

[Corey]

Oh, yeah.

[Heather]

That they stuck it to them. But you don't have to deal with the fallout. And what I don't want is I'm going to come to sugar cookie marketing, say, hey, I got this advice group you guys run and it's tanked my business. What do next? Yeah.

[Corey]

So I won't delete. When someone's like, I would do a 20% refund, that's totally fine. It's when you're like, they are out to be the demise of your business that you're. You got too much energy. You're coming in at it through your own lens. And that's not helpful in a situation where someone has a lot of emotion and adrenaline going through their bones.

[Heather]

Back to the statement, here's what I would stay away from. You might want to prove your point by providing very, very detailed explanation. Right. So someone's like, I didn't like the cookies. Right. Okay. So they didn't like subjective. A lot of people, like some people don't the, you know, the whole soap taste, the almond extract soap taste.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

You might want to say, well, here's this. And then you did this. And then that's how I've argued with my, my boyfriend. So one, I've never won an argument with them, so. But it feels like we're proving our point. Like I'm providing evidence. Here's why this person's wrong and I'm going to tell you every single way why they're wrong. However, in the example from last week's gossip column with that plant cafe, that lady provided a ton of evidence that just proved she was wrong.

[Corey]

Yeah. Yes.

[Heather]

In the example of the K Pop drama, a ton of evidence was provided that proved that the op, the bigger creator, was wrong.

[Corey]

And that's, that's a hard pill to swallow because then we're backtracking. And backtracking is hard to do because things last forever. You Think you've made a comment. And I'm talking local group. You think you've made a comment about this, you know, burger trucks, burgers being too flat and dry and that. That won't ever come back and bite you in the buns. That's a burger pun right there. People are screenshotting, screen, recording, recording things all of the time.

[Heather]

Have you seen the big thing on TikTok? The anxiously attached girlfriend and she writes the. The paragraph of blue text or whatever you iPhone people have. And it. And they're like, just delete the text. The. The explanation. They won't read it. Yeah, like that long text, it takes up the whole screen. Like, just delete the text. Just write the simple statement. Just pull back. Like how that you should handle the guy who doesn't like you is how you should handle these upset clients. Right. Don't pour so much energy to it.

[Corey]

Don't beg.

[Heather]

Don't beg.

[Corey]

I heard this statement over explaining is

[Heather]

a form of begging. Yeah.

[Corey]

And that is so true. The more you're over explaining something, you're begging people to take your side because you're grasping at every. And then they did this, and then they said that, and then they did this and then they did.

[Heather]

Wow.

[Corey]

This is a. A small pamphlet that I'm having to read through.

[Heather]

And it.

[Corey]

When it doesn't go your way, you're like, oh, my goodness, this was not what I thought it was going to be. Now I have to backtrack. People are not siding with me. Me. That's where Heather's saying the statement is. Short, quick, to the point, not accusatory, but saying like, hey, thank you for supporting me. I appreciate it. Taste bud.

[Heather]

What I always like is, thank you so much for the feedback. I'll take this back to the kitchen. But you're like, but that wasn't fair feedback. Okay, we're taking back to the kitchen that it wasn't fair feedback and how we're going to reply. When you add receipts and timestamps and information and explanations, it is a defensive posturing.

[Corey]

A defensive.

[Heather]

But I'm not trying to defend myself. I'm just trying to be honest. It's defensively honest. Whatever it is. It's. I'm defending myself against you. Defensiveness in business is a rough place to be. It feels right, but it also feels wrong. But the results will typically be wrong. Like, yet there is the case, and you guys can think of it, where Corey said the crumble cookie company or whatever some franchise said, no, that isn't what happened. Yeah, and there's cases where that makes more sense, where the, you know. But there are many more cases where the right and wrong is very blurry. It's very blurry.

[Corey]

I want to ask you as a small baker, do you have enough money to fight a lawsuit? That sourdough drama that happened like a year or two ago ended up in a lawsuit that the creator, who was going after another sourdough baker, had to take the videos down. But then she had to mount a defense, start a GoFundMe to support the lawsuit because they were taking her to court. That's where this can end up. You don't know what a simple post, a simple response can do because we don't know the pockets of the people around us. Maybe they have a rich father in law who's willing to fund the whole defense. Maybe they are married to the mom who is a, a lawyer who does this every day.

[Heather]

They just have enough time on their hands to eternally drag you. Like I said, if someone offers me recourse, it really backs me off the edge. They might say, well, you were a little wrong. If they say, the other day we went to the beach with my family, right? And the way I ordered dessert was really weird. The way I set it, you know, I, I, yeah, I even went back and I was like, so we had ordered two desserts, but she brought out three. Three, yeah, but I had said it really funny the way I did. I said it, I said it right, but I said it wrong at the same time. And then so she brings out three and, and I was like, oh, my goodness. I think we only ordered two right there.

[Corey]

I know.

[Heather]

Well, I didn't know until later, until I thought, like, why, why were we left? Right? She could have said, no, you ordered this. She could have easily said that. And she wouldn't have been totally wrong. Yeah, the way I ordered it was kind of funny. But she said, you know what? I'm billing you guys for two, but you're gonna eat three.

[Corey]

I made a post to sugar cookie marketing, and I said one thing I know for sure, I'm gonna give you a refund because you are not gonna stress me out over a dozen cookies. Take that money and run. I want your piece back, person.

[Heather]

You're not, that's not that telling the client. You're right. You're telling the client. You're not worth my brain space fighting this. You're not telling the client this. Actually, we're just saying it to ourselves, right?

[Corey]

That is so true. Here's the thing. I every, I've been doing this for a long time. Every time I make an order and I want to tell you, every single time I make an order, I always am second guessing myself. What if they hate it? And if you are a baker like me, you are doing that too. And what I say to myself, well, Corey, worst case scenario, they'll have the cookies and they'll have their money and you'll have your peace and you can go forward. Do I have to refund all the time? Absolutely not. But in my brain, it is something that adds so much peace to me because I will not lose sleep over flour, sugar and eggs mixed together. That's just not going to be me when you take it to the grave with you. You have to make sure that you're willing to fight that long con of battle. They can be your worst nightmare because if they take the time, every time someone goes in a community group and asks for a sugar cookie baker and they take the time to either DM the person say don't choose this company or publicly say I had a bad experience with you don't control that. That is out of your control. You can control the narrative on your Facebook page, but here's the thing. What are you going to make a post about it every single day?

[Heather]

Hey, don't listen to this.

[Corey]

No, you have to make sales. Your pre sales Christmas is coming, your classes need to be filled up. But what they can do is make the time time. And that's dangerous because you it's already stressful trying to grow a business and do the marketing, but now you're going to add someone who's doing the opposite. Like every time I do something, they do something else. Whoa, whoa.

[Heather]

I don't got the energy on to that one. You are hastily on. Everyone's a keyboard warrior, right? We're all going to sit behind a screen and be like, what I stayed doesn't have any repercussions on me beyond this screen and this keyboard. People on the Internet are crazy. So the bigger creator said, I've been getting a ton of death threats. We don't know. We know that's not fair. Right? So you stole my recipe and now I'm being threatened with my life. You might say, well, that's still just a keyboard warrior. There are people out there who are crazy. There are people out there who diagnosed have mental issues that will act on them. It's dangerous. Right? You all the time, if somebody posted something and somebody showed up at their house or sent something in the mail that said I know where you live live. Here's the picture of your Here's a Where do you go to school? There's a guy on TikTok and his whole thing is you give him these obscure photos and he tries to pinpoint where you're at and how they do it. Do you remember that that guy don't let your dreams be dreams guy. He had hung some flag or something in the obscure no place but they figured out based on the trajectory of how the sun and the angle to the full and they went and stole the flight. It became like a game where he could not hide the flag good enough for them not to figure out where it is. I'm just saying there's people on the Internet who have a ton of time and are crazy and a lot of

[Corey]

us have to put our addresses like on the boxes of the cookies. Like so whether you're meeting up someplace, you know you might have to have the address on the box. I know I'm putting them on every single box.

[Heather]

You might you listen to this podcast. You're sending out a newsletter by law, unless you have a an office that your address is on that newsletter letter. That's how it's required. So you're like, well they'll never get my address. They never bought from me. All I have to do is sign up for a newsletter and hope that one day you finally send out that Q4 email trying to get me to

[Corey]

go to your I couldn't imagine someone showing up at my door upset of something. I would the the My house is like my safe space when the door is closed. I feel like ah a sense of peace and relaxation. If someone showed up and knocked on the door and said I don't like you because you posted xyz, I would feel a sense that something was taken from me internally.

[Heather]

The safety is no longer there. As I've been bedridden the last couple days. I was watching a Netflix documentary on stalking. I think stalking is one of the most disconcerting feelings. Somebody watching you and you don't know they're doing it. Like what a dangerous, overwhelming feeling of extreme panic to me. I I've had not a lot of stalkers, but I've had a woman that was would call me from random numbers to see if I'd answer and it was like she just didn't want me ignoring her. But I was like this. This really bothers me.

[Corey]

Yeah. Discombobulating to have some to be on someone's mind when they're not on yours.

[Heather]

Right. And Then maybe it sounds like your dating life. I'm just kidding. Hey, nobody there stalking me. Don't even. That guy I dated that showed up after I asked him not to. I didn't like that feeling either. Anyways, people on the Internet are crazy and I date crazy people. Okay, the last one and kind of the issue with this, this CAKEP drama is it became a legal standing. Well, it's copyrighted. We started using legalese. I'll have my attorney contact you. This is copyrighted, right?

[Corey]

Whatever.

[Heather]

It turns out you can't copyright ingredients and there's some box mix or whatever. That I'm legally right does not apply to the court of social media public opinion. Yes. So you can say I am.

[Corey]

I am so right.

[Heather]

Heather and Corey, thank you so much. I'm not gonna listen to you because I am not so right. I'm legally right. You're still right. Wrong. So back to the motorcycle comparison, because I was thinking about the other day, whether you are not you're right or wrong on motorcycle, if a car is involved, you're wrong. Meaning that you can say, I have the right away here, but if the car pulls in the intersection, you're. You're going to have a massively bad day. Right? But I was right, Heather. I was right on my two wheel tiny thing where the. My roll cage is my rib cage, but I was right. But you're wrong. Even when you're right, you're wrong. And I think that can apply here too. It's not fair that they did that. This. It's not fair. And let me validate you. It's not fair that they did that. But it doesn't make your response correct. So the local equivalent of that kind of legal versus reputational split is it might be unfair, the customer might have been rude, but it still doesn't matter. It still doesn't matter.

[Corey]

And let me just tell you, if you're like, well, they don't even. I don't even sell cake pops. I just, I'm just in the creator rewards program. No. No bad publicity around here. Every view makes me a few dollars. Here's the thing. Me and Heather, when we do the Vendee Blendy, each year will look at someone's social media presence and if they like to lambast companies and customers, we will shy away from them because God forbid we're on the receiving end of that. There's. We have no control. So what we have to do is the best thing in our interest. That's what you don't want your Customers, if you like to bash a customer. Because the drama content does get views, clicks, comments. And we like that. It feels good. The algorithm, we're finally winning. You don't know who you're risking in your future. Maybe it's that big, you know, corporate order that you could possibly get that would be reoccurring, that would be life changing for you. But if they go and see that you're always making content about your customers. Ah, this customer showed up late. Oh, this one was so annoying. It will perform well on you. You're going to get pennies on the dollar from the creator rewards program. But what you're risk opportunities that you don't even know exist. So it's fine to say, well, Heather and Corey, you're down because I get this much every month from the creator rewards program. Hey you, do you baby, it's your bakery. But what I don't want you to do is be like, wow, I can't seem to to bust through this. Corporate orders are, my orders have fallen off, I don't know why.

[Heather]

And I scroll back and I see that you engage in a ton of Internet drama. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Corey]

It's, it's not, it's a short term

[Heather]

perspective of a long term repercussion where the long term you can't see what it cost you. Yeah.

[Corey]

And me and Heather have said it many of times. I wish that I could put my elbow deep arm in the drama content bucket for the views and the clicks in the comments because that will boost me in the social media. But when you get people with drama, they need to be fed and let me tell you, the drama is hungry and it is a never ending thing that you have to foster because when you get people with drama drama, they come and follow you. You'll be like, oh wow, I increased. Look, I have 500 new followers. Hey friends, this is me. You know, you'll get me at however and then you post your Christmas retail and it's crickets. There's an engagement rate ratio. The amount of people you follow your content is shopped to them. And that's how the algorithms decide. Okay, this subset of people like the content, let's push it out to more people. Okay, they liked it. Push it out to more people. Well, when it's your Christmas pre sale and that's going to put money in your pockets for your Christmas presents and that falls on deaf ears and you get no likes and no comments, guess

[Heather]

what you're gonna have to do next? Back to drama.

[Corey]

Back to drama. Guys. I can, I can't move this. No one's buying from me because the drama is. It's delicious. Me and Heather eating it up. But good lord, to feed the drama, I've seen people abandon their social media account accounts. They'll have like 70, 90, 100,000 people and they'll be like, yeah, someone followed me for this one drama post years ago, but I've not been able to get any reach from it after. And it's because you've tanked your engagement rate.

[Heather]

The algorithm wants you to stay within this lane that performs really well and drama performs really well. So once you enter the drama algorithmic lane, it's like you can never leave. And if you do leave, we're going to punish you by a lack of reach. So then you're like, well, I gotta go back to drama.

[Corey]

It's such a psychological mind mess because you're like, like. But I'm getting likes when I post this. Girl, I understand. I'm watching it. I'm not even liking it. I'm. I'm giving you my two views.

[Heather]

The big creator average views is a dream for me. 500,000 views per video. These ones are tipping at 3 million and I believe by the end of the day those videos will be 3 million views. Do you think if we went by the metric of views, which probably getting paid from a greater fund for views?

[Corey]

Sure.

[Heather]

Do you think it was a good call or a bad call?

[Corey]

Well, when you are a content creator, they will say there's no such thing as bad publicity. But when you are also twofold. So if you're a content creator that just gets paid off of brand deals, that's one thing. But if you are a content creator that also supplies things to local clients, you can ship stuff, stuff, you are running the risk. You might get a great payday from the views that you're getting. You might. The 3 million views couldn't even imagine. But now 3 million people have formed an opinion about you. Will they stay around? Will they buy from you? Are all those inflated numbers going to stick around in one, two, three years from now? Or is your content creation hat too big and now your small business hat is ruined from it?

[Heather]

The small business has one that we run the big risk from. And a lot of us are not cut out for to be high drama content creators and just don't have the bandwidth for the mental capacity the creators who can withstand those Internet storms. Fascinating. Teach me.

[Corey]

What's so funny is to imagine if you imagined 3 million people. Listen to you. You're on a stage and 3 million people have listened to you. That alone would drive me. I would just feel so lost in the sauce that 3 million people have an opinion. I don't know who those people are.

[Heather]

Are.

[Corey]

Someone made a funny TikTok and they were like 15 views doesn't feel like a lot. But if 15 people were beating you up, that would feel like too many.

[Heather]

It's a good thing. My this. I wrote this down and it said being right doesn't sell cookies. Being the baker people feel good about does. And that's what this all comes down to. It may feel so right to engage, to defend, to write a dissertation submittable with legalese to the court of law. Law. I'm legally right. I'm morally right. I'm right. I'm right. I'm right. You're still wrong. If you can't make sales, people on the Internet, crazy people in the Internet crazy. They're going through that big creators legally. Seeing where she's legally misstepped and reporting it. Yikes. And I've seen these, even on a smaller scale, I've seen people go and email the farmers market heads up and say if you have this vendor here, I'll never go. And if you allow them to come back, I will, I will drag the farmers market. In terms of the farmers market, who's just got to sustain itself. It's farmers markets. I think their margins from the host perspective are really thin because you're.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Subjected to rainstorms. They're going to say the health of the farmers market is my goal. If you're the cancer over there, whether you're right or wrong, does it behoove me to cut you out to save the hole?

[Corey]

It does. At the risk that you might be the local favorite cookie baker late. But to save the body, they might have to cut off the arm.

[Heather]

Right. But you, you're like, but I was generating income. You're also generating drama. It's just too much of a risk when the margins are so thin. Yeah.

[Corey]

What you don't want to position yourself is the person that no one will touch with the ten foot pole because they're scared that they'll end up on the wrong side of something with you and you have no qualms with making a video. That creator, the big creator, the cake pop lady has her recipe book that you can buy. Someone has already ripped the recipes from that and posted them online. So all the recipes from the book can be found online now. So her, her revenue that she got from that Gone. Can we afford that?

[Heather]

There's this psychological phenomenon, I don't know what you describe it, but when somebody is bullying somebody else, it now allows people who are morally conscious to feel like they're morally allowed to bully the bully.

[Corey]

Yeah, I don't know if you can call someone a bully and then be a bully yourself.

[Heather]

But, but it's like I only shoot, I only shoot back when I'm fired at first. That's what I've seen these other content creators, this is content creator and gets in a ton of drama to baker and she'll be like, well, I only fire back when it's fired towards me. But I'm like, but those are now two different stances. Like I'm not a bully, but I am when I'm bullied and I see the, well, I'm only defending myself. Again, back to that dangerous word. I'm defending myself. It just gets dangerous. It gets. Like we said, you're wrestling with pigs and pigs like it. I'm gonna get dirty. I'm not good at it. I'm not good. If someone says something mean to me. I think about it for the next two to five business days. You know, I think you're, you're a

[Corey]

different breed, if you can put it. But I want to talk to us on the people who are not involved in the drama. We are not the two people involved in the K pop draw drama. You have grown your audience with local people. What you don't want to do is risk that and have an opinion piece because you know it's going to pop off because you have an opinion about who's right, who's wrong. Your audience is not in the vertical of baking. They're probably doing whatever they like where if they have kids, they're probably on kids content. If they're homemakers, they have homemaker content. We don't want to muddy the lines and create content that it means something to us because we're in the baking world. But our audience that we have grown with local people who actually hire us to do the baking. We don't want to create that content there because we've muddied the lawns. We want to make sure that our noses are clean, our clothes are clean and people know that my 4th of July pre sale is ending tomorrow and you need to get your orders in.

[Heather]

The sustainable business is the non dramatic business. It's, it's hard work though because you're fighting for every like and out there.

[Corey]

Let's let me tell you, you ain't

[Heather]

Gonna have a lot of views.

[Corey]

You're gonna have a little view, but

[Heather]

you're gonna have consistency again. I wonder. I was thinking about the smaller creator and I don't know their handle or whatever. I was thinking they, they probably garnered a lot of followers from here. Oh, from this drama. Right. Because everyone likes the underdog. But would you want. Want outs? You'd almost have to change your strategy now to go to content generation. Even then they followed you for the drama. Technically, even though it was not your choice, you engaged in it. They followed you for the drama. I have this massive following. I'm sure. But your original thing to sell more

[Corey]

cake pops is now.

[Heather]

Right? You're not making local sales. I can almost guarantee you might see a spike in local sales.

[Corey]

For sure.

[Heather]

Someone could support you. But as a long term strategy change, would it almost behoove you to start over and create another account? That's been a thought I could had.

[Corey]

That's when I see people start over in one to two years. Like, it's fun to be like, I have an account and I have 30,000 followers. People even said, like, I have a platform. Like, at 30,000 followers, that's a platform. But to do what? The platform of random people on the Internet, like, they're not coming to your wedding, they're not sending you a Christmas gift.

[Heather]

I logged on to TikTok on desktop and I went to the creator Insights, which the analytics for the, for the page. Right. And at no place does it tell me how many followers we have, because it doesn't matter. It tells me engagement rate, the reach, the stay time on the profile. It does not care how many followers because that is still a massive vanity metric. That's from a yesteryear. You know, you remember the whole, like, I have a hundred thousand followers. You're gonna give me a free appetizer now. It says 100,000 followers. What's your engagement rate? How many of those hundred thousand dollars? See your content. Content.

[Corey]

When me and Heather had our marketing clients back in the day, it was huge to have a bigger following.

[Heather]

You could buy followers.

[Corey]

It was the most common thing that you'd be like, I need to buy a thousand followers. I'm trying to get this off the ground now. The follower count means nothing. And if you were going for a brand partnership or you're trying to get sponsored in some, they're like, what's the engagement rate? How many people are coming on average on the. And they'll say the average of the last 10 posts. Like, you might have a drama one that popped off. But the one before it was like two likes. And like the comment was from your mom.

[Heather]

That.

[Corey]

That's the thing that people need to realize. We don't want to give that up just to garner a few followers.

[Heather]

Because this very small baker. I don't know why I'm fascinated with the case study I've created in my own head. Their average post, two likes, a heart. That's the average. They'll do a political cookie and it will take off 200, 500 likes, dramatic comments, arguing, and then they'll go back to the reggae content. One like one heart. Yeah. And I'm like, that would be. You got to feed the beast or. But it's not feeding your family, you know. Well, I mean, a couple bucks from engagement. Keep going. How, how, where, where do you have to sell your soul to to continue gaining creator rewards program?

[Corey]

If when you sign up for it, it says we can change your pay rate at any given time. So it's not even something that you can. Can plan on. Like as a monthly, like, I will get a thousand dollars a month from Meta. That's not true. I. You'll get pennies on the dollar. The. It almost is like the better your stuff performs, the. The fewer cents you get. And what it's doing is this. And Heather, it's a variable reward system which me and Heather have talked ad nauseam about. And it's this gamble. So it's like, okay, it's telling me if I create drama content, I'll get more views and I can get more money that way. And do you see where we're playing this gambling thing? It's exhausting. It's one ex create content anyways. But to always have to create dramatic content. I couldn't imagine my brain being like, how can I spin this customer being four minutes late into a drama post?

[Heather]

Ah, yeah. It's almost like you gotta look for it.

[Corey]

I don't know.

[Heather]

How stressful is your personal life? I think we started these businesses so we can kind of manage our reality. Instead, we've become a slave to an algorithm that cannot be satiated.

[Corey]

And that's where you say the crumble cookie person threw the cookie at me. And then they post the. The footage of them just putting it down. And that's the. You've reached rock bottom. Yeah.

[Heather]

They have proof that they never know who's recording you. So just to recap our points are. Pause before you post. Respond to the audience, not the reviewer. State your side once, kindly, then stop. Don't Corey added this one. I forgot to mention it. Don't go to comments. Don't go to comments. Definitely not on your page and respond. And I wouldn't go to comments on my own page and respond. Turning off comments Comments. If your, if your reply fits this, me and Heather say this.

[Corey]

If what you says say you're not willing to change the answer on, then that's it. There's no, there's no further conversation. If that's it, turn off the comments. You've got to move on with your

[Heather]

life, make your next post.

[Corey]

But if you're like, well, I'm willing to get, get a little dirty in a comment section, people are screenshot that

[Heather]

what you're trying to do is you're trying to convince people, you're trying to convince people switch sides. And again you just, you're just right there knee deep mud. My final one is separate the is this fair from what helps me with my business long term? Right. Even if it's unfair. Even if it's unfair, what helps my long term strategy. And you're gonna see yourself kind of on our side of things, right? Not saying that we're perfect, but we have endured some blowback over these five, six years that we've been doing this. I find that not engaging or barely engaging, making the statement, turning off comments, it should just it you what, have 24, 48 hours of a stressful thought and then the Internet forgets. While the Internet is forever, it also tends to forget. But if you keep adding to it, it grows, it gets likes and then it gets, it gets everywhere. Yeah.

[Corey]

And and to say that you'll never misstep. I, I could not be me to say that every comment will be PR Perfect. It's just we're not built that way. We're passionate people. We got adrenaline flowing through us. Someone might say, you know, call out one of our personal ins. Insecurities. And it's so hard to not be like, you know, gritting your teeth, you know, hitting that thumb.

[Heather]

It hurts your feelings.

[Corey]

It hurt your feel, it hurt your feelings. And I, that's why I'm not built for it. I am not built for it. And that's why I don't invite the drama in because I will cry. I will cry. It will fester in my brain. It'll be all I, I will feel like alone on an island. And then people will be like, well, I, I poopooed there and left and they're, they're going about their life back.

[Heather]

Okay, so to wrap this up I know we. If you. You may say, well, I didn't know about this. Now you guys have just told me about it, so I'm gonna go look it up. If you do look it up. Up to you. I'm going to challenge you to not get your keyboard out and get involved in the drama either. A lot of people think that what they say in these baking groups is private. No, again, that's this exact same statement. So you weigh in or make your little anonymous post or nothing is truly anonymous on the Internet. The admins can always see it. I can see my fake profiles, can see everything you're pro posting. Don't involve yourself in the drama. Learn from it.

[Corey]

There's customers that join SEM all the time thinking that they can find sugar cookies. And I, I totally understand sugar cookie marketing. I'll go see who can make this market. To me, baby, we don't know. We don't know.

[Heather]

Just if you just think twice before you say, why? Well, they. I'm gonna weigh in on this. I'm gonna go. Even liking a comment, even a liking comment is weighing in on it. You might say, well, I'm protected to. No, you're not. I can see your name right there. We have removed people from sugar cookie marketing who laugh, react at somebody in an effort to bully them while they say, well, I didn't say anything. Well, you took an action that did something that portrayed an emotion. So I'm just saying don't involve yourself in drama. Learn from it. Take it and apply it to your business and have a protocol set before you get emotional again. It's not if. It's when. When you get emotional because the thing happened that you didn't want to happen, you will lose all logic. If you want to.

[Corey]

Heather will send this out in the Wednesday, Wednesday newsletter copy and paste it to your notes app. So when the time comes, like, do be like, you know, nuclear reactor, like in your notes app, have like, like go here first and just read through that before. And that's just going to give you the distance, the time, the. Okay, I'm gonna take a deep breath. There's a protocol out there that I can, can partake from. Someone's been there, done that, and then you can just be ready for when it happens to you. And it's being ready. That's the part. Whatever.

[Heather]

And you said nuclear reactor. I was thinking of the documentary Chernobyl, but one time I went to a nuclear reactor, had it, went on a tour. When anything goes wrong, the number one thing they do Is turn it off. Just turn it off. Give it some space. You know, I think we can learn like when a car's engine's about to blow up, like stop turning it on. Like turn it on off.

[Corey]

Walk away.

[Heather]

So I think the big thing here is when the emotions are high, just turn it off and walk away. We can always come back to it. I always tell people, you can always, you will always be able to provide your statement. You do not have to do it right now. You do not have to reply to that text from your ex right now. You can do it in 24 or 48 hours, 17. You can, you can. And the way you reply will set a lot there. So I hope that you guys can take this. Learn from the pizza place, learn from the cake pop people. Learn from, from the sugar cookie marketing group twins. That there is. Don't feed the beast. Just that's really. The Internet's a wild place.

[Corey]

Wild and wonderful, but not always wonderful.

[Heather]

What a great tool. What a horrifying tool.

[Corey]

It's so crazy. I was just thinking with the Internet at one point in time there was businesses who were like, you know, download our app for easier use. Now it's not even up for negotiation. They're like, do you not not have the app? I went into T Mobile and they're like, well, you need to have the app.

[Heather]

I hate that T Mobile.

[Corey]

Yeah, but I'm say so now the world is online by force. You don't even have a choice.

[Heather]

You must live. Our grandma is 87. She turned 87 two weeks ago. She, you know, she was like, this technology is so hard. And I said, get. You know, she was, she was sad that she wasn't getting it. I said, I can't believe that you're forced to have to learn this at almost 90.

[Corey]

Yeah, but the world says you must,

[Heather]

you must learn Internet. Yeah, like I had to pay a bill like it was for like the sewer. And I was like, what if I like what is my option if I don't pay online? They're like, you have to drive to the sewer bill play building and, and pay it in. Like that's so inconvenient. But it's make it as inconvenient as possible so they have to get online. But like, what if the email. My grandmother uses aol.net I never thought

[Corey]

that the world would be able to get onto. You know how your debit card now has a chip. I said, no way is the world going to be able to. The world has caught up now. Everybody knows What a chip means. I remember it was such a learning people. You're like, what do I do? And they're like, is it a chip? Remember it was like, do I slide

[Heather]

it or is it a chip?

[Corey]

I feel like the gas stations are

[Heather]

like, yeah, you can stand here about 10 minutes while we think about the chip. Why gas stations take show. But now they have this, like, tap the chip. I'm so sorry.

[Corey]

I'm.

[Heather]

Maybe you're stealing all my information, but that's so much faster than sticking the chip in. Grabs a card from your hand.

[Corey]

I still feel like putting. Inserting it helped me. Word off bad people.

[Heather]

Now they actually have skimmers. I don't know. It's just crazy. The technology is crazy. It's only changing this weekend. I. You have all these AI apps, dedicated. Oh, it's an AI app that makes apps. So I told Corey I was just going to play around with it in 40 minutes. I had a landing page. Pretty darn good.

[Corey]

Pretty darn good.

[Heather]

And I sent it to Corey this morning and she was like, oh, wow.

[Corey]

You know, I. My prime version of Google. I don't want to say her name

[Heather]

because she's staring at me.

[Corey]

I'm like, do you talk to people? I'm having a conversation in it while I'm doing laundry. Like, how do you know who you're talking to? And she's like, it's a voice recognition and I'll start learning you. And the way that I learn you is how I respond. So she was like, if you have a gamer in the house, I know it's short and sweet, but if you have a baker in the house, I'm like, she know that.

[Heather]

Horrifying. Horrifying. Also the ever expanding echo chamber of hearing what we want from the things around us.

[Corey]

Yeah. Because if you ever talk to AI, it likes your ideas.

[Heather]

It just is. I'm going to validate you. I'm going to tell you kind of what you want to hear. It will.

[Corey]

And if you're like, I don't think you're right. And you're like, you know what? You're right about that. I shouldn't have said that. But it will be like, yeah, don't go burn your ex's house down. And you're like, yeah, I think I need to burn it down. They're like, you know what? What? You know, start a small fire in the front. Maybe call 911.

[Heather]

Just give them a little scare for me to push back on that. Let's go stalk it. Like, it's just, just wild. Moving on. I hope you guys take a lesson from that. It's going to be part of my gossip column in a minute. The Cookie Go Boot Camp. I am blown away. Kristen says. I know I recently posted about taking Heather and Corey's video boot camp, but how it helped me with and how it helped me with editing. But holy cow, look at the views on my Instagram. I've never had this many and they're all organic. Thank you so much for the great information. It was so, so worth it to attend. So we do these bootcamps. We do them monthly. This is the only month I'm going to scooch it to the second week just for time and lactose intolerance, if I be honest with you guys. So July is cracking community groups. This is not so much as like open this app and click here. This is more of a subjective and what we found that works for the ever complicated landscape of community groups. So Corey is eventually, she said in the next year going to move from her community group she manages. And she said, I don't want to manage community group anymore. It is a lot of work. I want to join community groups. And I was like, interesting, because now you do not have the power. And Corey's like, but I'm going to implement the cracking community groups thing that the becoming the community group admin's best bud. Yes, I'm going to do that and then I'm going to use their management to help me increase my business without having to manage it myself.

[Corey]

Yeah, I'll get my time back, but I will know how to engage in a group that is beneficial to the admin. Become the admin's partner pet.

[Heather]

What is it?

[Corey]

Yeah, admin's pet. And then it will be the best of both worlds. Has it behooved me to create that local community group? Yes. I've gotten so much recognition in sales from our neighbors.

[Heather]

Somebody should be the conversation. So July 9th and 10th will be the cracking community groups and it'll be just the strategy behind it, an actual game plan with 30 days to implement. And if you did that 30 days for every month of the year, you're going to be the admins pet. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're going to get more recommended. You're going to get more recommended than the other bakers because it's always that everyone's recommending everyone but me. That's always that feeling.

[Corey]

Right.

[Heather]

How do you turn that around? Well, I can't sell. They don't have A sales date. Well, okay, this is how you turn it around.

[Corey]

This is.

[Heather]

You do that. But it is time in. This is a long term strategy. But if we started in July, which you absolutely can, and you implement it through July, August and September come November. October, November, December, that Q4 Super bowl, we say for bakers, this is what's going to get you that recommendation. Yep, yep.

[Corey]

Add a girl.

[Heather]

Next we have Procreate. And then in September, Corey wanted to do Google Business profile optimization. Google Business profile is her listing in Google Maps. And that's how you believe you're securing most of your corporate orders? Absolutely, absolutely.

[Corey]

I don't think they would be finding me on social media since there's so many bakers and Facebook is hard to search. You can't be like local bakers to Woodbridge, Virginia. You're typing in bakers and it's pulling anyone with the word baker in the name. So if the corporate orders, I've gotten someone from a big company from DC Coach, the brand coach, Neiman Marcus and all the vendors from Neiman Marcus.

[Heather]

You in a yoga studio.

[Corey]

Oh, a yoga studio loves to see me coming.

[Heather]

And then sometimes she turns her. Her group leads into corporate orders because the wife has the landscaping. Husband. Yeah, yeah.

[Corey]

Yes.

[Heather]

Yeah.

[Corey]

They all work simpatico. But having a Google business profile and updated. Oh yeah, I've been watching Frazier non stop.

[Heather]

I think he says simpatico.

[Corey]

But having a Google business profile. If you feel like social media is over saturated, this is the way to get you at the top of diversification searches.

[Heather]

And then we have the AEO answered. Engine optimization is the new form of SEO, which is search engine optimization. So answer being you're asking. A lot of people engage with AI by asking a question. It's funny, I, I didn't feel good so I was asking AI. I was just asking like I didn't want it to anyway. It's like we can't diagnose. I know, I didn't want you to,

[Corey]

but I was like, it was like

[Heather]

based off how you're answering this question, asking this question, I think I believe. Don't, don't assume anything about me. I said so. So funny.

[Corey]

Amazon has rolled out a, a like prescript Dr. Med, MD, online MD portion and I had to take it for like a UTI or something.

[Heather]

So.

[Corey]

But who wants to go into a doctor's office for a uti? Not I. So I was like, yeah, not you

[Heather]

and not T. And not us.

[Corey]

Not hot. None of us.

[Heather]

Not, not.

[Corey]

Not four of us.

[Heather]

But it was so funny. I just talked to AI and AI

[Corey]

said, unless you need an actual metal doctor, we're going to ask you a

[Heather]

few just simple questions. Question.

[Corey]

I never talked to a doctor the entire time.

[Heather]

You know, it's so crazy. That's Virginia law, telehealth. But West Virginia requires a doctor to call me.

[Corey]

Oh, to call you.

[Heather]

Yeah, just moved. I moved two minutes over the state line and it was like, yeah, I can't talk to you. Like, oh my goodness. I wait, I didn't move.

[Corey]

I feel like you're lying. West Virginia, wild, wonderful. But also under doctors.

[Heather]

Yeah. So the guy calls me and I'm like, yeah, I just moved over state line. He was like, oh, then you're good. Goodbye. The other boot camps you can actually go back and purchase. That's the fun thing about these boot camps is they're membership free. However, when you join a live boot camp, you do get the discount for the membership, which we're actually running our only sale outside of. And I can't believe I'm saying this, I posted the link to the Vendy Bundy, but before I get there, February, you can purchase in person cookie class kit in person. Cookie classes. How to teach those. I saw someone purchased that yesterday. Go get a girl. Uh, if you're wondering, the best months to teach cookie classes, December that followed by November, followed by October.

[Corey]

But I want to say me and Heather try to teach a class in July, but it was a themed like 4th of July theme. Did not do well. But me and Heather also have the class in July coming up in two weeks and it's sold, sold out.

[Heather]

Because it's not theme for the die theme. I find the week leading up to 4th of July, which is what we're in right now, people are like, it's gonna be a long weekend of hot dogs. Like, it's not like it's gonna be a long boring weekend. It's gonna. They're not going to cook a classic. For some reason it's outdoorsy and family oriented.

[Corey]

Yeah, people aren't here for a long time. They're here for a short time. So it's not like, what can I do to keep them? Like, Graham's is coming for two weeks

[Heather]

in Christmas, but she's not coming for two weeks in the fourth of July. So when we, we taught under the sea in July, that one's sold out.

[Corey]

And then we tried 4th of July, did not sell out. And now we're at.

[Heather]

And it sold out. Sold out in two kits and two kits.

[Corey]

I know I had to make them.

[Heather]

So. March Food photography that sells. I believe that AI is pretty impressive with its photography, but the shadows always tell the truth. I made my second video ever for the sugar cookie marketing TikTok and it was on new Magic Layers. Who can canva. It's a new feature called Magic Layers where it analyzes the images and breaks the flat JPEG into separated layers. Wildly impressive. Really hard to do in Photoshop.

[Corey]

Encourage Heather on TikTok to go post those other places. I know she's finding TikTok because she feels like it's a wasteland over there.

[Heather]

No, no, no. I am not opposed. I was just dying yesterday. I was going to, but I couldn't stand up. So I am going to do it. But do encourage me. I need to encourage man. March Food photography that sells. Oh yeah. The one thing about the new Magic Layers is the shadows. It still struggles with the shadows the day it figures out shadows. You had 26 saves on that. 26 saves. I'm going to be doing marketing and like application tips, you know? Yes, yes, we like that. April pre sale, start to finish. May 3D printing. Cookie cutters. Love that one. Might be doing some tips on it. June Cookie video Basics. That was the one where the. The rooming review was about. They took that video class. I took it because I had to edit it and then put a fire under my.

[Corey]

You guys are welcome.

[Heather]

Apparently it was a dog boss I've ever taught. Yeah. Because it's. And I said of course, feature marketing. We just want vertical video. It's also the combat approach to AI.

[Corey]

It is. Yeah.

[Heather]

Because it is really hard and people can sense when it's AI generated. I saw in a. I saw in a form on Reddit.

[Corey]

It.

[Heather]

A guy was like, I have a. I think he was H Vac, but he used AI to generate an intro and outro. He's like, I'm getting a ton of hate on that. Because they knew it was AI. They wanted you. The raw you.

[Corey]

I would been looking up energy mints. Mints free breath that also have like a kick of caffeine in there. You bought me. Yeah, I know, but you said they tasted horrible. So I was like, let me. But I ended. I clicked to one and now I'm getting every ad. There's one company that has just AI generated people holding the mints. But I'm like, I can't take you so seriously. No, that's not even a real person. And her teeth move when she talked.

[Heather]

AI hates fingers and teeth. You remember when you See not be able to fingers at all now just oh yeah now it's. Now it's.

[Corey]

Remember when it would be like. Like it's like a baby on the ocean but like the sand was a part of the baby's leg.

[Heather]

That was a big. That was a wild time.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

July community groups and then August we'll be doing procreate if you choose to design for that. My gossip column was a post I saw in other group because I don't think anyone submitted one. But the post in the other group I was just. I was just a lurker as one does. It was a lady and she did a really great set. I mean you really couldn't have said anything bad about the set but the customer didn't like it. But the set was amazing. It was. It was great. It like something it's not those one. I'm sorry. I did look at the cookie co show some missions. What the heck. What do you guys think?

[Corey]

Excuse me, I need to go back to kindergarten.

[Heather]

I was even like this. Someone did and it was meticulous. A 3D cookie cart out of cookies with zero imperfections.

[Corey]

Someone did like Buzz Lightyear. A box of Buzz. It was five different cookie. I couldn't imagine one. I think the. Are the cookies as hard as rocks? Like no one's I think got a B.

[Heather]

You had it transport them a million times but I just couldn't imagine.

[Corey]

Just stuff was ridiculous.

[Heather]

Just ridiculous.

[Corey]

Makes me look like an elementary child found a piping bag.

[Heather]

The picture this was. It looks like this was a great set. It wasn't some sugar shows. It was just great. It was like a set that you'd make up and people would love. But the client didn't like it. Who's right and who's wrong? Well, the judge and jury of a public non admin community group or you know, Facebook group. She posts and they said like the client is a scam artist. This person. We know nothing of the client. The client is a scam artist. They are out to steal from you. Block them immediately. I don't want to be like you guys. And it just happened to be in in line with today's podcast. Although I did my lurking a couple days ago. You guys don't have to deal with what happens after she blocks this client.

[Corey]

That's the scary part. Like they I can say I my opinions many of them and we all have opinions. I can give you an opinion if you. That's why I told like my husband I said sometimes I think say things to you And I'm not looking for an opinion. I'm just looking for agreement. Because if you ask anybody something, they're gonna form one. Whether it's good or not. They're just gonna have one.

[Heather]

But that's what I was saying. When people come and say, it always starts with they've already responded to the client. But I'm wondering if you guys would have said the same. Like, you're not asking for help, you're asking for validation. Validation. You feel like you responded in haste. You've already responded. You may have overstepped your response here. And now you want a bunch of

[Corey]

bakers who will tell you what you want to hear.

[Heather]

Because we love to see you fight for us. Yeah, that's the danger of it. So I would say if you do need help with response, don't word it in a way of writing defensively. Like, here's everything I did right. Here's everything the client did wrong. What should I say? Like, you're going to get spun in answer. That's going to be what you wanted to hear. But I don't think it'll be the right response.

[Corey]

I think you need to count how many Eyes and me's are in there. And if there is a majority Eyes and me's, you've gone too far one way.

[Heather]

What we do in Corey's community group, she makes me run against my will is somebody will have a bad opinion about a business. And you're allowed to because businesses and people are imperfect. We all make mistakes. But the businesses aren't allowed in the group specifically, business pages aren't allowed. And then men aren't. So if they had a bad experience with a business and the there was a male there, he's never able to defend himself. So we only get the one side spun of the story. So what I'll do is I have it in my notes app. I'll copy and paste it. Thank you so much for the feedback. It's information like this that helps improve our experiences living in this community. However, I'm going to lock the comments because the other party isn't here to defend themselves. Since we can't get both sides of the story, we're just going to leave your side of the story. Except for toe girl. I feel like I left the comments open because that girl's toe was cut off and she deserved.

[Corey]

She. She never named the business.

[Heather]

So she didn't violate. She didn't. But toe. Get that toe back, girl. You did not deserve to lose that thing. You guys have to listen to a couple of podcasts to go to get the intel on that upcoming collabs. We have the cookie that hobby collab and Corey and I will go through your recommendations and pick one for August. We're now limiting collabs to 30 bakers. So if you sign up, please participate. You've taken the spot from somebody else who wanted to sign up. I think this would be a great move to be able to keep the collabs around while also maintaining a higher participation and thus engaging engagement rate. Yeah.

[Corey]

So now listen, I'm always going to do them because as much as I hate them, they behoove me to do

[Heather]

It's a great content bucket. It's a unique content bucket. It's great engagement, introduces yourself to your audience and it breaks up the clutter of buy my cookies, you know. Yes. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Upcoming events the midsummer membership sales in two weeks will be the only time to get the cookie content of it at a discount without the Vendy Blendy sale or without joining a boot camp. But when you sign up you get all the boot camps we just mentioned immediately at a discount. Yeah.

[Corey]

That means you can start doing videos of your cookie classes while you're taking photos of your people in your 3D printed that you made and posted in

[Heather]

a community group and then you have a retail and then the Vendy Blendy. I've actually linked to the Vendy Blendy in his sugar cookie marketing group. Last year I made a note to myself that I wish I'd put promoted the pendies a little bit earlier. So that is why you're seeing that here at the end of June, beginning of July I'll be opening it up to vendors past vendors in August and new vendors in September. September, September. That's in 21 weeks. The upcoming major holidays is the Americas 250th birthday is this weekend. It is on Saturday. Does that mean people get Friday off or Monday? Do people get off for that? I think. I think they do.

[Corey]

I think they get one. Not remembrance but one what is the

[Heather]

word when you observance one day observance independence National Cookie Day is July 9th. Not sure if anybody does anything but

[Corey]

it'd be great time to make sugar cookie day more specifically.

[Heather]

So sorry it didn't fit in my my table that's in on July 9th. Back to school is relative to your area but it's the average in our area it's August 25th forth. Yeah it's just random now they're trying to go through all year, all year, school year, but with bigger breaks. Not for me. I my.

[Corey]

What if it was a four day week?

[Heather]

Shoot. Tempting. Not sure. I think my childhood brain would have wanted what felt like three months off Labor Day. Not a big holiday, but just kind of a line in the sand that this is when things start picking back back up September 7th and the NFL season. Some of you guys do DIY kits for that sells well. Like the kickoff is September 10th.

[Corey]

I think it does better towards like Thanksgiving where people are watching all those. And then the. The touchdown.

[Heather]

I meant the super bowl.

[Corey]

The touchdown.

[Heather]

Touchdown day when whoever ends up in the super bowl that like when Kansas City got in last year and Taylor,

[Corey]

they got in every year.

[Heather]

I guess those bakers get to profit big whenever that like whoever is winning something we. Who knows when it ends up in your state which don't worry, I'll never

[Corey]

end up in Virginia.

[Heather]

I have a football team. We have the.

[Corey]

Yeah, we have the commanders.

[Heather]

You big old. It's not Virginia. That's Washington D.C. commanders.

[Corey]

No, Virginia is. No, it's the commanders.

[Heather]

That's who we choose to align with. You speak.

[Corey]

And you said does Virginia have an NFL to West Virginia? You can't dog.

[Heather]

I don't think West Virginia had one either. West Virginia. So they're there though. I'm sure they do do

[Corey]

it.

[Heather]

No, it does not in West Virginia.

[Corey]

So I wonder.

[Heather]

I mean we just don't. Why wouldn't Virginia have one?

[Corey]

It's in Ashburn.

[Heather]

I live the DC Commanders train in Virginia.

[Corey]

In. In Ash. In Dadderburn.

[Heather]

But as you see, this week is supposed to be super hot.

[Corey]

Yes. And we're in a drought in Virginia. I'm not sure about West Virginia over there.

[Heather]

Well, let me look at my lawn drought. Not trying to fight it with my water bill. Moving on. Cookie Design Lab is a sponsor of our STL Me About it segment. Use code Twins for 15% off. They've added some new features and they've actually updated their branding. Same Cookie Design Lab, same great support, new features. If you text it in, you have the potential to win a month of Cookie Design Lab. That phone number is 571-556-5644. But if you're listening on a podcast like Spotify, you can just click the text in button and. And that counts as well. It comes in a different way. But I still. We got two of these two. Could you pretty please stl us about Mr. Munch and baby Bean? We'd love to see and hear what our favorite mascots have been up to lately. Sincerely, the Podcast Cat Appreciation society. This is 281-281-513. You are.

[Corey]

Can I run to the restroom while

[Heather]

you do this endless talk? That is so rude. Yes, you may. Uh, I want to say I let Corey's son watch the cats for the week we were at the beach, which was. Which was great for me because I didn't think about it. The Bean cat, the cat named Bean, he eats raw food. Um, in hindsight, what a challenge because raw food has to be hand dished three times a day. So having Corey's son Archer watch the cats was great. He. I did not leave a measuring spoon. I actually haven't bought yet. He. I said measure it with your heart. Like just scoop. Like a plastic spoon, scoop on a plate. No, that dude triple fed this guy at the point that he was, you know, he's quite, quite ravenous. He was walking away from meals, which is fine. They're not going to eat themselves to death. But he is huge now in comparison to what he was when I got him. And thus he can now climb up things. But to hear his nail in the furniture I just bought as he climbs up to snuggle with me at night. Love it and hate it. Munch and Bean now get along really well together. Munch is the cat I had before actually got Bean, so Munch wasn't so lonely. They get along, they wrestle, and then Munch will go outside. He likes to sit in the garage in the dark. He sits there about five hours and they reconvene and wrestle around with each other until nighttime. Munch is the I love you, but don't touch me. Bean is the I love you so much I'm going to sit on your throat while you're sleep. Give me a little bit more of the Munch. The Bean one is a little allergy inducing. My other text was an interesting one. Cory had to Google it. Oh, no. The CEO of Bosch abruptly resigned. What kind of implications do you think that might have for bakers who use the beloved Bosch mixers? But Corey looked up the reasons for that.

[Corey]

Yeah, it didn't seem like it's going to be. They said the. Unfortunately, as CEOs come and go, it's the what the profits look like if there's low profits. Just like a football team. They're going to switch out the, the. The head coach and see if they can't find someone. So it, it was very vague and very PR written. You know, the trajectory. He wants to do new things in his Life, close a chapter, open a

[Heather]

new book, kind of. Please don't ask, please don't ask why? Sipping down either way. Do I feel, feel like that'll have an effect on Bosch?

[Corey]

No.

[Heather]

Bosch is a massive company. I know we only speak it to it as a universal but it's the washer, dryer and all these machines.

[Corey]

Yeah.

[Heather]

Don't they do like airplane engines or something?

[Corey]

I think they do.

[Heather]

I think that these big conglomerate corporations that are publicly traded with IPOs, I think they do this as much as the coach of the D.C. commanders, not Virginia does as well.

[Corey]

Yeah. It seems like once you're a CEO, you're always a CEO. He'll land on his feet and come

[Heather]

out on his feet with his golden pair. I said these like cats I'm reading. It was like I always dreamed that one day I'd be able to focus on shareholder profits. Doing it for the shareholders. Moving on. Email me at heathertruckercookiemarketing.com and I'll send you a picture of Bean and Munch and give you that month of Cookie Design lab again. If you didn't win and you still won it, Code twins gets you 15% off. I know they have a short pass and they have an annual plan. I'm actually in the paid annual plan myself. I didn't even use Code Twins because I want to support our podcast sponsors. Which brings us to our podcast sponsors. When you people purchase from these podcast sponsors with the discount code, you signal to the podcast sponsor that this was a great buy and for them. So thank you.

[Corey]

And you save money, you save cost. Yeah.

[Heather]

And you save.

[Corey]

We win.

[Heather]

The podcast sponsor wins. Cookie Design Labs code is Twins. Bakey Bake is a meringue powder Cory swears by. Are you baking our fruits class icing with no cor. It's just amazing. She can't touch it for if you

[Corey]

were wondering what if people always how do you get that puff? Why are your cookies so shiny? Your whites are so, so white. It's because I use the Bakey Bake meringue powder Royal batch. And royal batch has vanilla already in

[Heather]

it so it tastes delicious.

[Corey]

It has corn syrup, so it gets you a soft bite. You can always add more if you want to. And it has vanilla extract or vanilla food coloring in there, so it's bright white. The reason why I don't use it in my cookie classes because I make so much icing I don't want to. And I'm not wasting on my cook on my cookie class students. But I Have other ones that I would much rather get rid of before because I use. Use the royal.

[Heather]

We will allow it.

[Corey]

How dare you sound like a bad T shirt.

[Heather]

Code for that one is twins Daisy makes which is the cake pops you have. Do you why you still make the round ones. And she's got this whole system.

[Corey]

I am actually moving to her system fully and completely.

[Heather]

She went to Cookie Con. I was looking at her post and their branding at Cookie Con was cake pops for cookie people. Which is hilarious because cookie people are like I hate cake pops. But these.

[Corey]

And you roll out the. The dough. You roll out your cake pop dough similar to how you out your sugar cookies. And you use their cake pop mold system which is similar to a cookie cutter cutter. So the reason why I do the circle ones is to get rid of the packaging I had for them. I don't want to waste. I'm trying to get. Get it going.

[Heather]

Yeah. If you guys were interested in adding that, maybe you go check out the drama and you want to now get into that. Which I'm sure this will actually put a lot of people onto baking cake pops. Yeah. Funny how like negative press is actually kind of good press in a weird way. And I believe all the creators will actually make it out scot free or like pretty fine.

[Corey]

Right?

[Heather]

The Internet.

[Corey]

God.

[Heather]

Daisy makes code is Twins10. They have a really cool system. It's really hard to explain. You almost got to see it in action. Which they post on their social media constantly. So I have to make a video

[Corey]

because I do have a cake pop order coming up.

[Heather]

Oh, please make a video. We'd love to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give her a little shout out to code is Twins10. 10% off. Tell people on your vid.

[Corey]

Okay.

[Heather]

Ciao ciao. Twins.

[Corey]

Twin with an S. Twins 10 or twin 10?

[Heather]

Twins 10. She included us both Prima Eddie. I have to reach out to them because they want to be on the podcast in July. But they released at Cookie Con Connie the cake printer.

[Corey]

Yeah. I saw people really jazzed about it. I don't necessarily do like wafer paper edible images, but this Connie. So now they have Eddie, Freddie and Connie.

[Heather]

She said. She said we should have named it Corey. And I said you honestly missed an opportunity.

[Corey]

But people were super excited because the Canon printers are hit or miss. It's just like, you know, a printer. I don't know we need them. But they are the worst things ever created. Created. But do you want me that you'd

[Heather]

get a printer that uses print paper and I know don't run it through. But they're like. But these. You know, the. The. It's always the. If the filament is food safe, but you bake it. Right. But it's always. Is the printer. Is the printer food safe if you only use edible ink in it? But they're like. But in testing, they run it through one or two times with non edible. Who knows?

[Corey]

I. That's. It's beyond mine. I always. But the cake people seem super stoked about it. And if you didn't know, primarily, ERA is a printer company. That's their main labels.

[Heather]

Printing labels in, like, really large manufacturing printers is their bread and butter. Then they entered the edible space and really have just kind of turned it around. Like, really just created a new part of the industry. Yeah.

[Corey]

So I'm super excited to see someone get Connie and use Connie and let us know how it compares to, like,

[Heather]

a typical canon that they would use. Listen, if you're, like, scared of new technology, you also got to see the benefit of it. And as long as these companies are still generating income from bakers, they're able to introduce new technology that shortens our workflow, which makes you. So I really like anybody who's implementing like Daisy makes. Turning around the cake pop world, making it easier for us. Primera. Turning around the edible printing world, making it easier for us. Love it. Love it. Bosch. Nature mill. Speaking of the CEO violently stepping down, let's support them and use a code. Sugar cookies to get $20 off and maybe save someone their job. Wrapping this up. My twin trist. When you check out on Amazon, and then it's like, do you want to buy groceries? And I'm like, who buys food on Amazon? Me. I am. This was my impulse buy. It's Laffy Taffy fruit combos, two in one flavors. I'm gonna be honest and judge me for it. My favorite candy is Laffy Taffy. It's hard to find.

[Corey]

It's good. And my mouth is watering with you saying the word.

[Heather]

Don't buy this one. Okay. Food poisoning. A chat was like, you demonize my drug or toys. I got guess it was like, whatever you do, don't drink alcohol. Okay. Like, don't eat lactose. Okay. But it was like, and don't eat sugar. And I was like, and don't eat Laffy Taffy. Yeah. And I was like, well, I'm gonna just have to power through that and see what happens. Delectable 1. If you get an old batch of Laffy Taffy, it's impossible to eat.

[Corey]

Miserable is one of the sides a banana flavor. Because I would be sad.

[Heather]

It is, it is. And I hate the banana flavor myself. But it was delectable because it's paired with wild beef berry. Oh, strawberry kiwi. Okay, that's delicious. Mango passion fruit. Delish. Wild berry banana. You got to trust the process.

[Corey]

Yeah, I would have to trust the

[Heather]

process there because I these things, I can't wait till end the podcast and pop one of these bad boys on. Because they're new, they're incredibly soft.

[Corey]

Oh, because they're new, they're incredibly soft.

[Heather]

I already know elevating. And I bought them on Amazon. I bought them on Amazon in that hail Mary prime day deal. Check. I don't think it was on prime sale. I was just like, yeah, what are these? I love Laffy Taffy. It's hard to find it. That was $5 for the bag, which I felt was fine. Candy's expensive. It's expensive. Walmart. Like a little bag of mixed candy. $15.

[Corey]

Yeah. Wild 15 berry and kiwi combined

[Heather]

Mystery scoops.

[Corey]

I've landed Drama. Drama brought me there. Drop me off there.

[Heather]

Variable reward system system.

[Corey]

So mystery scoop businesses, if you think there's a niche of a niche of a niche, that is what this is. If you walked into a grocery store and and put a quarter in that little vending machine and turned it and something popped in your hand and you've gotten excited, that's what this is. On a larger scale, I just have to tell you, the mystery scoop thing is wild to me because it is

[Heather]

a form of gambling.

[Corey]

Not, not saying bad, not good, bad or different. But if you get a three thrill, a dopamine hit. When you see what you got and you don't know what you got, Mystery

[Heather]

scoops is for you. Here's the thing.

[Corey]

You can buy, let's say two mystery scoops. One a typical mystery scoop, one a supersonic.

[Heather]

You want to just play in the background while you're decorating. Yeah, I did.

[Corey]

Yeah, absolutely. Because I was like once I watched

[Heather]

one because you were in fizzy crock pot world for a while.

[Corey]

Yeah, I was in fizzy Crockpot. This one is self made. So fizzy crock pot jewelry thing. The jewelry is designed by a big corporation. These, this is your hand picking the wins. You're picking what people can possibly get their niche. You can say, like, I want to do. I want to do vintage scoops. So everything has to be like an old spoon or an old book.

[Heather]

You drifted it, now you're repurposing it. But you're like $30 a scoop.

[Corey]

It can be 30 to 70 to $90, depending on what the goods are, depending on what scoop you buy. So you can say, I want a supersonic scoop. It's. There's a better word for it, though. Oh, a luxury.

[Heather]

Super. Sorry, Luxury.

[Corey]

And so they'll. What they'll do is they'll scoop in the. These beads and the beads all translate to an actual item. What's so funny?

[Heather]

In the beads, blank.

[Corey]

So the bead will be like a red color, a green color, and a purple color. And she'll hold it up to a sign and she'll match it and be like, you get one pair of socks. That's literally everyone is getting a dopamine hit because not even the scoop lady knows what you'll get.

[Heather]

But you win every time because you're.

[Corey]

You win something every time. You can say, is there one thing that would.

[Heather]

It's extremely valuable, and it's worth the risk of ending up with a bunch of crapioli.

[Corey]

The. The funny thing is to watch people unbox their scoops at home.

[Heather]

Home.

[Corey]

They're acting like they have always wanted a pair of socks. Like, socks was the newest thing. And they've never gotten a pair of socks before. They're. They're like, oh, my God, I got these socks. Like, as if they weren't wearing socks. When they're opening, they'll be like, nothing has anything to do. Like, just the random scoopers. They'll be like, oh, I got these stickers of cats, but I have dogs, you know. Or they'll be like, oh, and I got an under eye patch. And then look, this

[Heather]

not for individual resale packaging. And open. Opening it.

[Corey]

And like, nothing has a price tag on it. So I'm saying scoop does. The scoop has a price. But I think people are going to places like 5 and below getting things on clearance or getting a pack of five. Opening the pack and you get like a thing of bubbles, which normally would come in a pack five. But you're getting one little bubble wand and people are acting. Oh, it will be anything.

[Heather]

Two cans of bubble wand get.

[Corey]

And. And they'll be like, this bubble wand's great for my kids. Or I have a niece that could use it. Like, they're discovering where these things are going to end. It's just fascinating. They'll be like, oh, this blanket. I could use this candy.

[Heather]

Like, watching it. You get the high a little bit, too. To see what they win.

[Corey]

I'm almost in awe to see. Like, I'd Be like, I would be

[Heather]

sad if I got a sticker.

[Corey]

But they're like, this is the best sticker ever. In your scoop preferences, you can be like, I don't like the color green.

[Heather]

Green.

[Corey]

So what the scoop person will do is try to avoid the color green for you. So if they pull something that's the color green, they'll put it back and opt for something of similar or like pricing. So the drama happened when some lady didn't like that she got a journal. Like a blank journal. And so the lady put it back and got her like a tissue box. And they're like, I'd be really sad

[Heather]

if I got the tissue box.

[Corey]

Like, totally opinion based. Like you're just having the opinion over something someone else's scoop.

[Heather]

I love a tissue box. I love a tissue. I need to have a tissue with an arm's reach at all times. If I'm out of tissues, I put it on my list. Like, first thing that I get a Walmart Tish.

[Corey]

But you can. So because everyone's different, everyone has different taste buds and different palettes. You don't know if they're going to be happy with what they got from you or sad with. But at if you are a scoop getter, not the scoop giver, if you're paying $30, they cannot give you $30 worth of product.

[Heather]

They gotta get $20 worth of product. Considering shipping and profit. And then.

[Corey]

Yeah, so you're never gonna get more than what they have. You're always gonna get. But it's like they're sad when they're like, wow, this only seems like 15 worth of stuff and I paid 25. That's just shipping and a profit. She had to make something she can't scoop for free.

[Heather]

Scoop. It takes some time and effort. You are wild. Well, I guess we all have our. Our secret. Our stash of things you like to imbibe.

[Corey]

I just like to see someone unboxing it and then they'll be like, oh, a spatula. I always needed one of those. You didn't know you're getting a spatula.

[Heather]

I didn't.

[Corey]

You know, you need

[Heather]

to be a human with a brain that doesn't live in logic. A pen.

[Corey]

Oh, my God, it a pen.

[Heather]

Okay, guys, I'm going to go try to to eat a cracker.

[Corey]

You're going to eat a laffy Taffy, you big old boo.

[Heather]

You know what? I'm suffering too much. I got to give myself a little. All right, go get your own dollar. Okay, Goodbye.