â Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing đȘ
Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing đȘ
272. Baking it Down - S-Tier Lead Gen for Cottage Bakers in 2026
02:10:06
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- [00:02]
A
Corey, it is Tuesday.
- [00:04]
B
It is.
- [00:05]
A
I'm so sorry. It's the first Tuesday of August.
- [00:07]
B
I cannot.
- [00:08]
A
Where has the time going?
- [00:10]
B
It's.
- [00:11]
A
It's fine.
- [00:11]
B
And they said the older you get.
- [00:13]
A
Does this mean we're old?
- [00:14]
B
Because it's flying by.
- [00:16]
A
I'm rounding up to 40. I said I'm a 40.
- [00:18]
B
No, you're trying to do. I decided I don't like you doing that anymore. I'm 37 and I'm 37 till the day I'm 38 and I'm gonna take it slow.
- [00:26]
A
You're a young ripper snapper and I'll just tell you what's coming if you don't know. Corey and I are twins. We're not identical, but most people can't tell us apart. And the. We come with information from the group on Facebook called the Sugar Cookie marketing group. It's 50,000 bakers. So it's a nice little segmentation of what the industry represents as a problem question solution today.
- [00:49]
B
Yes, yes, it's great. If you are just starting off getting in there, you're going to get your, you're, you're going to get an answer for every single question you have. If you are down the pipeline a little bit and you're asking like how can I connect my Shopify store to my Google business profile, not so many answers. But we can definitely help you out. If you didn't know, our background is actually in marketing and our specialty is in local service based businesses. But we, we did find that cookie decorating falls in there because most people only service locally so they're not shipping all the time. I know I try to ship for like just you know, to see if it would work. You can now ship in state in Virginia. I saw that and I did not see many Virginia bakers open on that train.
- [01:34]
A
You should unpaid ship to me in West West Virginia. So unpaid. But let's test.
- [01:41]
B
What if I do three different. Three different packaging styles.
- [01:44]
A
Three different. I want the same set of cookies. So take a dozen. Do three, three and three. Get a small thing and then. And we can just test and I'll open it up and possibly eat for the test. I see that this is just a ploy. No, no.
- [01:57]
B
Get cookies to your door.
- [01:59]
A
We need to tell them the truth.
- [02:01]
B
It was so funny. Heather does like my cookies. We taught a cookie decorating class a couple weeks ago and typically we eat the cookies after the class.
- [02:09]
A
Means it's a ceremonial ending of a cookie class.
- [02:13]
B
You know, you did good. When you get to eat the cookie after class. But there was one extra one. But we were going to go to lunch, so I said, don't eat that one. And it's. It's gotta go. And because the icing was still wet, I was just gonna toss it. And Heather's like, what if I package it weirdly and it makes its way home to me?
- [02:30]
A
I'll let you know. You know what I was eating on the porch yesterday? A floaty flamingo made of goat. Floaty flamingo. Yeah. There's. I am team, and I know that there's two different camps for this. There are teams. I want the meringue powder. I hate the taste. I want it to dry down and, like, effervescent. If it piped directly into my mouth, it would. It would be the perfect. But she puts it on the cookie at the class. It's not crusted at all. Ah, that's my.
- [02:58]
B
That's.
- [02:59]
A
That is Heather's.
- [03:00]
B
She would take a wet cookie over a dry cookie. Any old bit.
- [03:04]
A
No, I would take a double stacker. So Cory and I in the class during class. Yeah. The class is out an hour long,
- [03:09]
B
hour and a half long.
- [03:10]
A
I'll be like dips. And if I. She does like a. On top of. On top of. Which I call dry on dry, because double layer.
- [03:19]
B
Double stuff ruins lunch.
- [03:22]
A
But it's just. It's just my favorite thing. So. Yeah, we. If anybody wonders how we can talk about how to teach cookie classes because we're teaching the exact same ones we sell. And Corey just said the two I'm working on for Christmas and Halloween are being or will be the ones we teach.
- [03:37]
B
Yeah, because they're so stinking cute that I'm ready to unveil them myself. You know, you can tell if I teach it, then I like it. If I don't teach it, I don't like it.
- [03:46]
A
Well, we teach all of your classes. We teach all of the class kids. K will look at her own selection of the classes she came up with and be like, I think I want to do this. I think I want to do this one. I think I want to do that one. Yeah. So who we are, we're the twins with the sugar cookie marketing group on Facebook. If you request to join and try to get you in on Mondays, you can find most of this information, if not all of it, on the Sugar Cookie Marketing.com website. Try to keep that updated multiple times a month. And what's coming is not coming. It's the midsummer membership sale.
- [04:14]
B
It's now.
- [04:16]
A
And the procreate Bootcamp is this week, so those are two things down the pipeline. Now, Corey's already sent me a ladybug. I haven't come up with a name yet.
- [04:27]
B
Cute as a bug in a rug. Bug in a rug.
- [04:30]
A
Class.
- [04:30]
B
I'm not, obviously, the punny twin.
- [04:33]
A
I have to limit the size of the title.
- [04:35]
B
It is a very, very cute class. There are five royal icing colors, but if you wanted to, you could make the inside of the daisies. Two yellow transfers. Those are the only time yellow appears there. So if you wanted to make one less, just do two plops on a piece of parchment, let it dry, you're good to go.
- [04:53]
A
Great to know. I will turn into transfers. And that's one thing I got to brag about is is this is all really done in house. In the world of AI Regurgitation. Which. It has its place, and I do like the streamlining of it sometimes. The human element. The baker who's cursing. This cutter is too thin. And her twin who's cursing. She's so picky. Yeah. With our powers combined, you kind of get something that's been vetted. AI Great. But it kind of doesn't.
- [05:18]
B
It doesn't have the brain of the. It doesn't know that a piping bag is the size of a turnip in your hand. And it will put the colors too close together where the class is going to be five hours long because you're waiting for everything to cross. That's the one thing I like the human element of because it does not know that thing.
- [05:35]
A
Can you hear being with the trash right now?
- [05:38]
B
Cannot. Cannot.
- [05:39]
A
Instead of buying cat toys, you know what I've been doing?
- [05:41]
B
Buying trash bags.
- [05:43]
A
Yeah. Specifically Amazon. Anything that comes in Amazon box. The box I cut out windows and holes so they can run into. And that stuffing. I just. And they just. It's the best toy because every time I throw it in the air, it falls in a different way. And let me give you this tip.
- [05:59]
B
Not that I don't. My cats have since crossed the rainbow bridge. I'm just down to one dog who is a super senior. As far as age goes. That's what they call.
- [06:09]
A
Corey's been thinking. Cory's been calling. Right. A super senior for the last seven years.
- [06:14]
B
When Christmas comes in Hobby lobby, they have these long Christmas garlands I once undecorated for Christmas. So it must have been January or so. And I put it on the ground. My cats like running
- [06:30]
A
pine needles.
- [06:31]
B
It was.
- [06:32]
A
Yeah.
- [06:32]
B
But it was a garland, so it was really long. They Love jumping into it, jumping out of it, sitting behind it.
- [06:39]
A
That I've had the idea of it and I'll never start is like shipping a box, but the box becomes the toy and it comes.
- [06:46]
B
I'm gonna be honest, I think that is already something.
- [06:48]
A
Yeah, well, it should be something more because I haven't seen it. Ok.
- [06:52]
B
Okay, since you're here for marketing, let's dive into the marketing. I actually saw this pretty fun TikTok this past week and it was a marketer and they were being asked what tier do they place certain social selling
- [07:05]
A
platforms that may be the boomer translator as the boomer in this scenario here, it's like S tier which is superior. A tier which is really great. B tier, which is pretty okay. C tier, which is middle of the road. Like D tier is the worst. And I've never seen anything get to like after.
- [07:21]
B
The thing though with sugar cookies is a little bit different. So that's why I said we have a different perspective on this game that we can bring to you. So I actually have a pretty lengthy list and I want to not only ask Heather where she'd put them on the tier but to explain why in her thoughts behind it. So we get a little idea in to the marketing mindset of a online marketer lady person.
- [07:46]
A
Now just to extrapolate, if you guys want an additional tip here, this, this S tier is what's called the trends called S tier ratings or whatever. You could do this and. And do it in terms of like you could get your husband or spouse to interview you and you rank your favorite themes and then you could use
- [08:03]
B
your own reel that I I'd be sat as the kids say that one
- [08:09]
A
and I would kind of say like you could do it themes you wish people would order that would direct people to making those orders for those wish list items or themes. Yeah, you decorate in the past like in somebody would just be like Ghostbusters and you'd be like, oh, E F tier. You know, I hated doing it. Or they say, you know, hello Kitty. A tier is so great with the color. Like something like that, right?
- [08:29]
B
Yeah, something like that. So they can actually see the passion behind I should do that. Like most people don't actually come to me for wedding sets. I. I'm the birthday cookie lady, which I like birthday cookies. So if I wanted to get more wedding sets, I could do a video what Heather's saying and bring attention more to that. I don't want it because I don't
- [08:47]
A
like the flor world in the delicate
- [08:49]
B
Lettering and the gold and stuff. Give me a birthday. Give me a bright color birthday. Okay, so let's dive in. I have my list here and I'm going to write as we go what Heather rates them as. Again, S means superior. So we have A through F. Just like normal grade school.
- [09:05]
A
No, either, which I saw more of the A's.
- [09:08]
B
I saw more of the F. I know.
- [09:12]
A
I got a lot of book recommendations from this approach.
- [09:14]
B
Okay. And then S is just peak performance. But Heather's going to give us an idea why she will call these each and every one. So first off is LinkedIn.
- [09:28]
A
That is going to be my C tier for two reasons. It is an afterthought app for most bakers, which means it's low competition that would bring. However it is, the app itself is designed for business people. You have to. You have a business page. I don't think the algorithm favors pages there very much. But I would use my personal LinkedIn profile, which I know you do, Corey. You're big into this approach. So it might be like B tier for you, but for C tier for most bakers. Because you have to kind of be active on LinkedIn for it to work. You create your connection. So these are your connections. You want to connect with somebody. That's what it's called, friending over there. And then you would use that to create. You still gotta create that direct connection, which I believe involves still in person, face to face. So going to that networking event, I know a lot of your network of people you've met in person through past jobs.
- [10:23]
B
That's. That's my one caveat is to make LinkedIn work for you. You could go in, friend, quote, unquote, connect with anybody with a pulse. That's defeating the purpose. We want connections that know us because those are the ones that we can actually convert. So, yeah, you're right. I've met a lot.
- [10:40]
A
Corey spent years and years in networking through a job she had. So she connected with a lot of people that now she can say, here's cookies and I see you Coryell post updates all the time. She's probably my most active connection. And she'll go and comment with other people and then she'll secure more of those what are not commercial. I'm saying corporate orders.
- [10:59]
B
Yeah.
- [11:00]
A
And if you're like, well, I got this, Eddie, I really would like him to pay him for himself. I would go to a networking event, BNI's. You can go to 2 for free or you pay the 20 entrance so you don't have to join.
- [11:10]
B
Yeah.
- [11:10]
A
Uh, you get everyone's business card. If not they'll go through the entire room and you can write down, you go and connect with them. Say hey, met you at this event. You can go connect with them on LinkedIn. Yes. Then I'd start really kind of promoting but you got to really put in to take out of that app as well. So C tier for most bakers.
- [11:26]
B
For me, you, I would agree. The one downside to LinkedIn right now that I'm seeing is it has so much AI automation that like when it's my birthday, if like if someone has a birthday it'll be like hey, do you want us to send this? And you can just click yes. It's the most unpersonalized approach to social media I've ever experienced in my life.
- [11:46]
A
Asterisk. When stuff becomes super unpersonalized, the personalized creator will shine bright like a diamond. Thank you.
- [11:54]
B
If you read through someone's post on LinkedIn and said hey, I really enjoy it. I like the part where you said here but here's my opinion that differs from that.
- [12:03]
A
That's fantastic.
- [12:04]
B
I posted an update yesterday about nextdoor changing its advertising policies and someone has a bot account there that says hey, I like LinkedIn. Read my latest blog post.
- [12:16]
A
If you're gonna phone it, if you get phoned in input, you get phoned out output like you know it's not going to be, you're not gonna get the results you want. So in all of my rankings for this, if you're using AI to write and post and create, it's it's going to be a non start for me
- [12:32]
B
and I will say that LinkedIn has very very vehemently discarded any AI. So if you want to end up in the wrong feed, post an AI menu on there. They really want it to be corporate, what you made, you behind it, things like that.
- [12:50]
A
Even the copy and AI writes like a LinkedIn post. Actually does pretty good writing that way, writing a style. But I can though I say AI is like plastic surgery. If it's good, you don't know it's there.
- [13:05]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I want to say if you're considering LinkedIn, they don't want to see you laughing and goofing off about your latest cookie cutter order. This is a little bit more corporate, a little bit more I'm going to show off and tag the brands I want to work with. Not so much behind the scenes giggle gaggle. Hehe. Haha.
- [13:24]
A
I would say hey guys, I got to work with at Coach and Coaches a great company. Here's how we approach this order. Here's what came of it, here's what I was able to deliver, and here's the final results. Yeah, it's again, more business centric. It's not like it's not per.
- [13:37]
B
As personable as like Facebook or Instagram as it should.
- [13:41]
A
We need something that's kind of reserved for business.
- [13:45]
B
I'm gonna agree with you on the c. Oh, interesting.
- [13:48]
A
Because you're a big LinkedIn girly.
- [13:49]
B
I know, but it's hard. It's, it's, it's a weird app right there.
- [13:54]
A
For those of you who use LinkedIn, you can create business business pages, which is allow. Allows you to tag the business page within the business page. It operates just like Facebook now where you can create your own posts. But I find that LinkedIn works best. Create your business page but as yourself, not making the sales pitch, but making those breakdowns and connecting with the audience or like, hey, I went to this B and I was so great to hear from this company. Here's what I learned.
- [14:14]
B
Yes.
- [14:15]
A
Love that.
- [14:16]
B
Okay, we have Next up is Next
- [14:18]
A
door, which just had an update yesterday.
- [14:21]
B
This past week actually, where you can no longer advertise your business on personal neighbor profile.
- [14:30]
A
I'm sorry, you can, but reach is limited, which shows me the. The change of the algorithm as AI is able to read and ingest.
- [14:38]
B
Yeah.
- [14:38]
A
And make almost what I horrifyingly say, decisions. It keeps more businesses, I'm going to say honest because that was actually always a rule in Next Door is that you needed to sell through your business page. You shouldn't sell through your personal profile.
- [14:51]
B
So let me just give you a rundown of what nextdoor is. I've been on nextdoor for a few years and I've been on the creation side and then just like as an end use, if you live in an area and there's not a next door chapter, you can actually say to next door, hey, I'm a neighbor. I live in this area. There's no next door segment like neighborhood where I live next door will allow you to send 100 postcards for free to your neighbors.
- [15:17]
A
Still do that? I know we did that when you moved to your new location, but when I moved here, I decided, let me check out the next door. Yeah, there's no next door from my specific community where they're still building. But it leached me onto the next door that's probably a half mile up the road.
- [15:30]
B
If it has so many people that pop up like say the Houses start selling around you.
- [15:34]
A
It'll start.
- [15:35]
B
It will want to section back off and create your own chapter.
- [15:39]
A
You become the admin when you create the chapter. You do, you do.
- [15:42]
B
And I did not like that.
- [15:43]
A
The way next door works is like a wedding cake. You have your direct area, you have your extended neighborhood, and then you have your really wide neighborhood. Which is funny because Corey's down in Woodbridge without traffic. It's maybe 15 minutes from Burke, but my aunt saw her post because my aunt was in the wide, broad version of it.
- [16:01]
B
Yeah. So if you don't have a lot happening in your neighborhood, you will start spilling over and seeing what's happening near you. Which as a neighbor in a community, I want to know what's happening in mind, but I also want to know what's happening around me too. So next door has the ability for you to create a business page on there. You can actually advertise by paying next door, but you're a neighbor person in your personal profile. So like Facebook has personal profiles, you actually have what's called a neighbor profile. And that's just you, Corey and Heather living in your respective homes. Homes. The newest thing they did was you can no longer, without limited reach, advertise your business through your personal account on there. Because, you know, just like Facebook wants to get paid, next door wants to get paid. So they actually make you create a Facebook, not Facebook, a next door business account. The difference though is you actually have to verify it to make a post. With ein, you have. They had a list of things you could do Ein doing business as you know, you. But your name has to match and your business name has to match and you get verified instantly when those match. If you are just starting off and you are like, I haven't filed for my llc, you are limited now on that app.
- [17:15]
A
Well, I'm curious how. What did you post that it notified you that the post had limited reach because you clearly posted as your personal profile.
- [17:22]
B
No business. It was someone else had actually that post. I have not broken the rules of next door because I didn't want to get banned yet.
- [17:29]
A
Technically not a rule. It's shadow banned. So in the world of Internet law, you know, forum law, I guess there's banning, which means you can no longer participate, but there's something called shadow banning, which means you can participate and to you everything looks fine, but the reach is restricted. Now nextdoor, instead of shadow banning, which is always pretty secretive, it's publicly shadow banning, saying, hey, that reach is going to be limited on this post. We suspect you're selling here. Yeah.
- [17:54]
B
And Facebook has come and I, I'll make a post on Facebook. If I put a link in there, it'll say, hey, you're reaching less people because we don't like this shadow banning. The word is actually enigma. And you can't ever look be like was I shadowbanned on next door? Shadowban doesn't exist. It's just something behind the scenes.
- [18:13]
A
A lot of what people feel like is shadow banning. I suspect that a lot of what people feel like is shadow banning is actually algorithmic restriction based off the quality of the content.
- [18:22]
B
I agree.
- [18:23]
A
Which next door is like not. We're not even hiding that. We are telling you that you are using this incorrectly. The AI has found your post and indicators. Like that is, you know what I used to see Lincoln bio. And then they started spelling bio funny or like you know where the link is. That's they know that the algorithm is indicating that this is a sales post. You wouldn't send someone to your link in bio unless there was something to purchase or over there.
- [18:45]
B
Yeah.
- [18:46]
A
So the ways to stay away from that if you still want to test it. And again, I haven't tested on next door but it would be like, hey guys, I'm thinking about putting on a cookie class. Which set should I decorate again? None of those words necessarily flag sales. But you're, you're flirting with it. Yeah.
- [19:02]
B
So what would you put next door ads on your list?
- [19:07]
A
It has such a poor reception with bakers who live in rural areas. In bakers with high populations, I'm going to say it's C tier. And for bakers and rural areas, I'm going to say it's D tier. Cnd. Cnd, Yeah.
- [19:20]
B
I gotta agree. Starting off your business and using nextdoor to give away products as you're creating things was a great way to get your name out there. They actually have a portion where you can like sell stuff, you know, garage sale type stuff where you can do things for free. That's a great way to get your name out there. And that bypasses the whole having to have a verified business page account.
- [19:44]
A
So you again what? It all comes back down. Did you create the relationship before you try to cash in on it?
- [19:51]
B
Yeah, because next door doesn't care if you have a relationship or not.
- [19:53]
A
It doesn't. But like I went to my next door here and I was like, where's the best tomato farm stand?
- [19:58]
B
Yeah.
- [19:58]
A
And then I got about 20, 30 comments, which I was pretty impressed with because to me, West Virginia, Absolutely. But they were very active in their opinions of tomatoes.
- [20:06]
B
And on your personal account, you can say that you work at. You have a little bio, so you can say that you work there and you can actually tag your business page on there. So if you do create the relationship that you can still create it. It's just now farther apart from.
- [20:22]
A
You can see that my rankings are following how much effort it is to make that platform work. Yeah. Yeah. But again, if you guys are high population areas where you say, hey, Facebook marketplace or Facebook group seems really saturated, you have a next door that's probably really active that you can put the time and effort into to grow kind of a external referral base. Because I guarantee you nextdoor is not as saturated as Facebook is.
- [20:49]
B
Oh, yeah. And plus, it's. It's. So it's your neighbors, the ones that are right down the road that are the easiest ones.
- [20:55]
A
You never have to argue about, like, where do I pick it up? Right down the street.
- [20:59]
B
Yeah.
- [20:59]
A
Yeah. No, I think that's. That's true.
- [21:01]
B
I do.
- [21:01]
A
I do agree with the C and the D. Okay.
- [21:03]
B
This is having a website. What do you feel like that falls under.
- [21:08]
A
I'm always going to put websites at a tier. I'm gonna. I'm so sorry. S tier. I'm gonna say you, you don't own anything on the Internet, but the closest ownership you have is a website. And some of you guys are getting by just fine without one. But I think you'd find that you're getting. Would get by even better with one. I, you know, I don't know. Facebook these days is putting weird stuff in my feed. Anything that's trending, it's like this post from. So this car show and I was in nowhere near I could ever drive to. And the guy was throwing in the towel. He didn't get enough signups. He's been doing this for years. The market's changed. And you didn't see this post, did you?
- [21:42]
B
No, but I just know how it ended up in your feedback. Yeah.
- [21:44]
A
And he was like, it's. And don't. He says in his just rant, don't tell me it's about marketing. Immediately. Click to his Facebook page. There's no website. The. The information is@gmail.com. there's no event made. All of that could have lived on a website. And I find myself going to websites often to find the collection of information. I find it perplexing that businesses think communication exists in a feed where the feed is restricted by an algorithm.
- [22:10]
B
I. I Know, just to know that you are a subservient to an algorithm is hard. Granted, your website does face the, the Google algorithms and as far as ranking. But what your website can do is bypass the noise, bypass the clutter where someone finds you and they're like wow, I feel really confident. But to the other instance of that, if you just make a website and forget about it and it becomes out of date. So yeah, it's going to work.
- [22:39]
A
In the antitrust practice there's a positive trust factor where the information on the website's very updated and that's a conversion factor. And then there's the out of date factor with actually a trust erosion where you're like, you know, well this is out of date. So I don't trust this. So again it's on you. But it is S tier in that you own it, you can update it, it allows you to be the central hub for all social media.
- [23:02]
B
Yeah.
- [23:03]
A
It is the number one conversion point, you know, because how do you convert on Facebook? Well, you need to shop. Do you qualify for shops? How do you go on Instagram, link in bio. But then you got to go to this and that and the. But the website is the center point where you can collect emails, you can make sales, you can output information, you can give people updates. It is, it is something you're missing out on if you don't have it. I'll be as brave as to make that.
- [23:24]
B
I, I do agree. Am I tech savvy?
- [23:27]
A
No.
- [23:28]
B
Would I say that if Heather died tomorrow and I needed someone to update my website, I would hire someone.
- [23:33]
A
I said right here, girl.
- [23:35]
B
Absolutely. The thing with a website, it can sell your class tickets. It's, it can, you can highlight your pop ups, it's around town content for your blog, it's about you content, it shows your latest designs.
- [23:48]
A
E commerce websites create logs of orders. So that car show guy was like, I process refunds, you'll have to message me. I don't remember who's paid what.
- [23:57]
B
See and, and that looks unprofessional.
- [23:59]
A
Yes.
- [23:59]
B
But if you are trying to get these bigger orders, maybe brand partnerships that you're looking for, you want to know that when someone comes to your website, they're most likely going to buy from because they feel so confident in you. That is what My website is. My 247 salesman. He is my 247 salesperson.
- [24:18]
A
It is the ability to capture. This is a buzzword. It's called user intent. Right. So if I'm on Facebook and something I've gotten This ad for this cat Christmas tree Heather Campbell book starts putting pressure on me to buy it and tempted. That wasn't an intent. I had no intent to buy a cat shelf Christmas tree. Right. So they had this ad. This company has to create within me and a want I did not have. Yeah. And then from that one it needs to create a need which is doing through scarcity. Well, we always sell out of these. Sold out five times. Right. If I wanted a cat Christmas tree and I hadn't seen that, I'd go to Google and I'd say cat Christmas tree and I would get somebody with the intent to spend money. If you're googling that series of words, your intent is to expenditure cash. Sure.
- [25:04]
B
Yeah. Oh, you're, you're the closest to.
- [25:07]
A
I'm the closest. Fine. Which means I'm the cheapest to convert. The need and the want are already there. I just need the push of availability. Right, yeah. You cannot create that by showing up organically in the feed of somebody who didn't know you existed. That would take those 15 to 20 touch points or 8 to 15 whatever article you want to read.
- [25:25]
B
Well, you got to see once you, you scroll through a feed, if you accidentally touch the wrong button, your feed updates and whatever was there is no longer absolutely. You don't know where it went.
- [25:35]
A
Yeah, I know. Look at this. In terms of these two intents, this is kind of. These are user. This calls search query, which means the keywords I type into Google. You tell me what the intent is. Best meringue powder, sugar cookies near me. Which one of these two people is about to buy cookies from me? Cookies near me. What is the meringue powder person about to do?
- [25:55]
B
They're a baker and they're getting ready
- [25:56]
A
to make it themselves and they don't care. So the person the meringue powder company needs to target the user that says best meringue powder. The baker should never target the person saying googling best meringue powder. They are not intended to sell. They're intended to make a purchase of meringue powder to bake themselves. So you can kind of see and the only real way nobody's using Facebook search for that kind of stuff. There's. We're still finding ourselves back in Google or these, you know, search engines. So that to capture that website you gotta have it. It's a central hub. Everything connects to it. It's actually a ranking signal anyways if you wanna show up in maps.
- [26:28]
B
Yeah, I know that my Google Analytics comes to me monthly. I like to open it up to see where I'm failing and where I'm not. The number one search query for the month of July, June. I mean, was cookies near me.
- [26:42]
A
So that tells you that. And sugar cookie classes. When people are searching those, they're searching because they want to take a class. Yes. Yeah.
- [26:51]
B
No, highly, highly. I agree.
- [26:53]
A
S tier website. S tier bar none. If you took one thing away from this, get your website. Get your website.
- [26:59]
B
Unless you're my competitor, then keep doing this.
- [27:01]
A
Don't please go to LinkedIn.
- [27:03]
B
Yeah, you don't even need a website at that point. Okay, the next one Facebook business page
- [27:10]
A
I'm gonna go back to. I'm gonna go back to a tier on this one. It's part of the equation. It's a must have. It's one of the biggest lead sources, not the number one lead source. It's actually the second lead source I've seen from other bakers reporting it. It is allows you. If I say if a website's an announcement, the Facebook page is the beginning of a conversation.
- [27:33]
B
It's a billboard, honestly.
- [27:34]
A
Billboard, Right. It's an ever evolving billboard. The expiration of. If I posted something on Facebook this week, by next week I would not get any engagement on it. That would have run its course. It would have been buried. The algorithm would have no longer favored it. So what I'm going to say for a Facebook page, a necessity for most cottage bakers, if not all I know you got the cottage baker that's like, well, I don't like Facebook. Well then you don't like making sales over there. You are leaving money on the table. There is no way around that. You guys are allowed to choose to
- [28:03]
B
opt out of these.
- [28:03]
A
But please understand, with every action there's an equal and opposite reaction. I don't want to be on Facebook. You don't get Facebook leads.
- [28:10]
B
I will say the Facebook business page dashboard has become elite. If you've never looked into the dashboard part, the dashboard up there is your incentive to create the Facebook page. It is telling you what your work, what you posted, how you posted it, what it did in the feeds of people around you. Did they respond well to it? Great. Did they save it a lot? Was it shared a lot? Did you get a lot of comments? It actually tells you you about the people who interact with your content, which is fantastic because no longer is it. You collect people on your Facebook page and they see everything you make. That is, that is a thing of the past. Now it is more algorithmic based. Did your hook perform well, did your photo stop the scroll? Did your caption cause comments and you can say like, oh, my post does really well with, with women between 29 and 45 that have two kids and here's their interest and here's when they're on social media most and you can kind of get a broad capture understanding
- [29:13]
A
of who it is.
- [29:14]
B
Yes. Yeah.
- [29:15]
A
So I'm on Google search, you know and I know that these big companies are constantly selling our data and yes, they're painting a picture of exactly who we are and it is affecting things. But right now if I go to Google, let's say open incognito browser, it knows my general area. If I open it in a typical browser, it knows my search history and it knows my IP address. It doesn't know that Heather's wearing pink today and she's all hungry and she wants a catchy like it doesn't know all of that. Facebook's like, hey listen, this is their gender, this is their age, this is where they're located. Here's how long they were sitting here, here's where they clicked off. It allows you to really get a scalpel into the performance of your content it in it.
- [29:55]
B
And that's. That is so valuable when you're thinking, should I create a Facebook page? My answer is yes. And Heather's right. It is a tier. The thing why it's not S tier is because it is so algorithmic based. It's no longer chronological order which me and Heather live the heydays of those.
- [30:13]
A
We were just talking about Facebook in its origination back in 2008 when we made profile.
- [30:18]
B
Yeah, yeah. Just crazy how much has changed. But it's such a great place to grow your audience, to cultivate your audience,
- [30:26]
A
to understand your audience. Yeah, yeah. The website, it gives you metrics like bounce rate. They click through here, here's where they click to. So click through rate. Here's what they clicked on and here's when they left. Okay. You can say here's what I'm going to optimize about my website. But when I get Facebook metrics and Cor and I were comparing phones the other day. I'm Android, she's Apple iPhone. And I was like, look at this new metric on my Facebook business dashboard and it was called hook and hold rate. So hook how many people watched for the first three seconds and hold how many people people stayed till the end. Yeah. And we were comparing off the videos we've been posting because it's video based Hook and hold which video performed well, and then we were trying to understand why. And it turns out for the hook and hold rate, those decorating videos specifically, Cory was using a corn starch powder duster. Yeah, that did really well because it was a unique tool that not a lot of people understood. But in my video about printing sugar cookie cutters at home, while the reach was lower because it was very specified to bakers specifically, I was really proud of my hook and hold rate, although they were lower than course because I was like, this is be. This is mid funnel. Mid tier.
- [31:32]
B
Yeah. And. And it wasn't that Heather. Heather fan. She got enough because hers didn't perform. It was different. And we talked about it.
- [31:39]
A
We've talked.
- [31:40]
B
I know there's podcasts endlessly about the sales funnel. There's hitting it at different aspects. Someone down the sales funnel, you're going to have lower numbers, you're attracting a fewer amount of people. But that's okay because you're working them down the funnel. Little duster pouch like, this is. People are like, what is that? You might not even have an oven.
- [31:59]
A
Some of the highest performing videos that we've ever posted to sugar cookie marketing. Social profiles is always an extremely weird tool. And it was screen printing or whatever you call it. It was the dragging of the icing through the stencil and it was that cornstarch one. And it's a lot of people who are like, I'm not even bakers, but I didn't know this existed. Yeah, that is great for reach. It's not great in terms of conversion because a person who's like, well, I'll never bake a day in my life, but that's interesting. Thank you for the view. You will not convert into a paid order.
- [32:29]
B
If you did not have a Facebook page, you would not get all those analytics. And those analytics, if you utilize them, is going to help you become a better marketer because you're going to see what works and what doesn't. So I agree. A tier Instagram, what do you think
- [32:44]
A
I'm going to say for my personal experience, it's B tier. I do not think it competes, however, for the baker just gnashing their teeth right now. Now, I understand that for some bakers it has become their primary lead source and I love that for them. Instagram, in an effort to keep up with TikTok, has a more broad based reach algorithm. Right? It's yes. Yeah. And a lot of us are miscategorized. I saw that big this week. TikTok's been putting a lot of pressure on being categorized correctly to get the trending audio. As a business, you. You. You wouldn't be able to afford it. So what we do, the workaround has been to say you're a creator, which means I'm business, so I'm not held to the copyright standards here. I'm a creator. Like, I still need a little bit of business, but I'm just making cool stuff. Those people are safe to use trending audio, but businesses that pull a profit from the content should not be using trending audio for that reason. If every baker recategorized correctly, I think that that would shift their experience on the app.
- [33:50]
B
So what Heather's saying is when you go to find, let's say you do a reel that is 91 seconds, most of the audio that's available to business accounts is only 90 seconds or less. And that's because after that, then Facebook has to give a portion of the money to the. Whoever created the sound. Whoever created the song owns the Facebook doesn't want to do that for your little cookie decorating reel. So what? Bakers don't like that? Because who wants to have the song end before the video does?
- [34:22]
A
Nothing brings me out of a tearful video. Then it's just like, stop.
- [34:25]
B
Just a sound of silence. So that's why bakers get around it. I do think Instagram has been around long enough that people who utilized it in high school, who maybe are now in their late 20s, go to Instagram before they go to places like Facebook. Facebook has an older genre of people. You know, our grandmother utilizes it, and she's what, 87?
- [34:51]
A
Yeah.
- [34:52]
B
She does not utilize Instagram.
- [34:54]
A
I saw that she had kind of. Does she looks. She does not lie. Yeah, she does.
- [34:59]
B
So if you were saying, my target audience is people with younger children, moms with younger children who like birthday sets. I could see Instagram being great. I utilize Instagram and I've gotten sales off Instagram. A lot of people vet me by my Instagram. It's not my number one lead source, but definitely it's. It's on my docket.
- [35:20]
A
Tell me if I'm wrong here. My. My personal funnel. Me as the end user. I. I get the idea. So let's say I'm in a Facebook group and someone's like, it went to this. I find a new faux places up the street. They say, right. So I would say, okay, let me go to the Facebook page if they tagged it. Sure. Let me make sure there's a website so I can just get the vibe if they're here to stay for a good time and a long time. Yeah. Then I say, let me look at their Facebook page post. And then if I don't see a lot there, I go to Instagram because at least I feel like Instagram I can be more like, hey, quick. I feel like Facebook's a little bit more intentioned, Instagram's a little bit more behind the scenes. I got my stories, I got my highlights, I got agree. Yeah. And that's kind of the ecosystem. What I rarely, never, probably ever do is go find them on TikTok. Is it local provider?
- [36:06]
B
Absolutely.
- [36:06]
A
Tik tok.
- [36:07]
B
And we'll get to that one Next actually is a wild, wild west as far as it's really trying to become a local resource. But right now it's still.
- [36:16]
A
It's got some, it's got some legs. It's got some legs.
- [36:19]
B
It's getting legs. But okay, okay. So you gave instagram A beat. TikTok is my next one. As far as a local cookie baker making local orders, where do you give TikTok?
- [36:31]
A
I'm gonna give it C tier, just like LinkedIn. Like it has legs, but it needs a very intentioned approach that I don't know, a lot of us have the bandwidth for. Have I discovered local businesses on TikTok? Yes, but mostly for UGC content, which is users not affiliated with the business, going to the business, tagging the business and tagging location. It really, if it doesn't tag location or use some kind of location based hashtag, I'm not finding it. Yeah. I find that the owner of the business is limited in terms of the content they can create. They're not creating ugc. UGC is somebody. And you guys, you guys, the buzzword, you don't know, but you guys know exactly what the type of video it is. It's like, hey guys, today I went to LA Yoga in this local space down in Alexandria and it was really fun. They had llama babies and llama babies climbed all over us. That's where you're like, oh, this person had experience that they're not. Not affiliated with directly.
- [37:21]
B
Yeah.
- [37:22]
A
Likely behind the scenes they might be affiliated with. They might have sold that video to the content creator or been paid to keep it on their channel. But I'm discovering this through the eyes of somebody else discovering it. Yeah.
- [37:33]
B
What's interesting was I had gone to this smoothie place and I wanted to tag business.
- [37:42]
A
A theater, a smoothie. Oh, I think you said a movie place. I was like, theater.
- [37:47]
B
I said, oh, yeah, I guess that's great.
- [37:52]
A
Did we watch it getting made? I feel like that's pretty.
- [37:55]
B
I went to a smoothie, like a fruit smoothie place, and I wanted to tag them because I made a video about them. And TikTok said, if you write a review about this location, we'll give you five cents to spend in TikTok shop. Just five cents.
- [38:10]
A
Oh, so it's like a UGC incentive external from the company.
- [38:15]
B
I see what it's trying to do. It's trying to create a marketplace. If I interact with local content, I get shown more local content. Sometimes I like that, sometimes I don't like that. Sometimes I just get on TikTok to discover something new or hear someone's dramatic story. I don't want to get on there to find my next smoothie joint, but I see that it's trying to. It's studying everything you do. If you interact with something at all on TikTok, be prepared to see an onslaught of whatever that is.
- [38:40]
A
TikTok's algorithm is one of the most sensitive, which I love in a way I hate because I'm like, well, too much breakup relationship advice. Like, I wanted a little of.
- [38:48]
B
Bit.
- [38:48]
A
Bit of giggle gaggle. Here's what I'm going to say. Caveat. TikTok is C tier for the local cottage baker, but it is a tier for the person selling a digital download or a product that can easily be shipped nationally. Yeah.
- [39:04]
B
Because you're absolutely able to reach so many more people that just have the interest in baking. So let's say, you know, mixing bowl cookie company. If you're near Woodbridge, I can make you an order. Okay. That doesn't pertain to a lot of people, but if I'm like, hey, I'm mixing bowl cookie company and here brand of meringue powder that I swear by and you can get a discount code XYZ, that pertains to so many more people. And TikTok is so much user interest based, not location based.
- [39:33]
A
Yeah. So like anybody who sponsors this podcast, if I were them, I would be on TikTok every day. Eat, breathe, sleep.
- [39:40]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [39:41]
A
Yeah.
- [39:42]
B
I would say that would be your main.
- [39:43]
A
Yeah. If this podcast appeals as a sponsorship for you, then TikTok should also appeal as a primary aid to maybe even S tier marketing channel for the cottage baker. If you're like, I'm not going to sponsor the podcast, you know, and I may be wrong here. I saw some sponsors of Cookie Con this past year. It look like local cottage bakers and I even Asked myself like what are you, what are you getting out of this? You can't. You're a baker, you're selling. A baker selling and baker's cookies that they can bake. I don't know, you know that they
- [40:09]
B
had some digital download and just haven't separated their business.
- [40:13]
A
So again, the same concept if, if you wouldn't sponsor CookieCon, I don't think TikTok should be your primary thing yet. Now with TikTok I would make a business channel and I would be the UGC content creator. I'd go as Corey going to mixing bowl her, her TikTok for her business and then going to the smoothie company and making them cookies. So now people are following Corey not because she's a baker but because she's exploring the local area and then they know she's a baker when she does produce that content.
- [40:39]
B
I do want to maybe ask you, would you move it up to B tier here for the fact that knowing that these videos, these short form videos on social media are now ranking factors
- [40:52]
A
when it comes to Google in search because it applies to also Facebook and Instagram, I'm not going to scooch up my TikTok but I am going to say content type reels are S tier. Reels are video based which you're just going to call it vertical video because TikTok and Reels are two different apps. But vertical based video, it even applies to YouTube now. Now. But vertical based video is so S tier currently Cory and I were talking about that you make Cory's like. I think Instagram is handing out reach like candy right now for reals only.
- [41:24]
B
I'm sitting at 1.2 million views in
- [41:27]
A
the last 30 days. Yeah. And that's. And then she's producing reels, you know, daily. And some of them aren't me based and some of them are like action based and some of them are just like review based. But that type of content to get to produce 1,2 million views, which is an incredible amount of reach. It's. It's just right now until the algorithm changes.
- [41:49]
B
Yeah. And I want to say, even though I like the content I make, it is nothing groundbreaking.
- [41:54]
A
No. So again, it comes back to strategy. Again, every piece of this is a part of the strategy. Not one. This podcast can't make a million dollars and the next podcast won't. But listening to 272 podcasts, you'll create a strategy that will make a sustainable business over the long term, which is actually the goal. The one hit wonder stuff, the Flash in the pan. It's not something queer enough I teach because it's not something I'd want to create. This is not something I believe is sustainable. Yes.
- [42:19]
B
Because that now that TikTok Facebook reels and Instagram reels rank are a ranking factor in Google, I no longer on my mixing bowl TikTok post like and here's what you need to do if this customer does this. Because if my customers are searching for a local baker and that video shows up like oh, I hate when clients do this. This that is going to erode any well wishing of potential. So what I've gone back to is just showcasing my work. Not necessarily personal theory.
- [42:54]
A
Personal theory unfounded. No research. Because AI is taking over user search. Right. So now instead of just googling cookies near me, we ask the AI what's a good bakery near me. Right. Yeah. So it's more this AEO thing. I have seen an uptick in my personal use experience of Google indexing Facebook posts from public groups and Google indexing TikTok videos. Yeah.
- [43:19]
B
Yeah.
- [43:19]
A
And I believe so that those can be indexed which means searchable so that the AI can now pull from those. Because I needed to take out an earring. I wanted to take out this bottom earring to put this loop in and that thing was like fused together. So I go to Google and I write the question as if I'm typing AI even though it's within Google search. And I said how to get out barbell stuck earring. I don't know, something like still you'll pry the cold dead boomer search queries for my co. And it was like here is a TikTok video where a girl walks you through that. Now the only way it was able to know is because her caption explained
- [43:51]
B
it, but I was able to watch
- [43:53]
A
the video through a Google search on TikTok. Crazy. Crazy. And we'll have to wondering is rubber bands. Rubber band.
- [44:01]
B
Oh, interesting.
- [44:02]
A
And it worked immediately.
- [44:03]
B
We'll have to talk about SEO as far as social media posts go one
- [44:06]
A
day, but not today.
- [44:09]
B
Next Pinterest.
- [44:11]
A
You know I have a big problem. Pinterest in terms of what bakers see it as versus what the results I see coming from it. I think in terms of ego. S tier. I think in terms of business. F tier. F F tier for a cottage baker. F tier for someone selling a digital product online to bakers. A tier for your ego stroke joke. Esther. Esther.
- [44:35]
B
The thing with Pinterest and I, I tried to make it a go because it used to be so Popular for bakers to have a Pinterest account. And I said, oh, yeah, a place for people to discover. No, Pinterest is an ideas account, but that's where people go to get ideas to send to another baker local to them.
- [44:50]
A
I also want to say, you bakers get bent out of shape when someone lists your photo on Pinterest because you're like, they're stealing my idea. And technically you're right, they're using it as inspo. They're listing it as inspo to send to their clients to get ideas from. To recreate themselves. So in that term, thank you so much for posting on Pinterest. You've birthed a thousand ideas. But have you converted. And that's what I'm ranking a lot of these on. Have you converted a local buyer?
- [45:15]
B
Yeah.
- [45:15]
A
You could do that on your website.
- [45:17]
B
Absolutely. The thing with Pinterest, I get clients sending me their Pinterest boards for me to have ideas to create them in order. I rarely. I don't think I've ever had someone send me me. I found you through Pinterest. Can you make these especially because I can't ship. Pinterest is global and I can only work with people local to me. Like it. It does not make sense there. Maybe if you were able to ship nationally a little bit more. I find that people actually steal photos and use them as content on their own socials or website from Pinterest specifically.
- [45:51]
A
Do I have Pinterest for somebody who's ragging on so hard? Yeah, I do. I bought this house and I wanted to. Wanted interior design inspiration. But you see, right there is a keyword. I wanted inspiration. I didn't want to make the purchase. I wanted to get the idea to formulate my desire to make the purchase. Now, what I find in my end use of Pinterest is there's a lot of sellers, it's a lot of ads. Yeah. But again, they're able to ship. So I'm looking up interior design and they're trying to sell me a piece of furniture that works really well. Sure. But for the local cottage baker, especially the one who cannot chip, it would not be worth my personal time if it was me.
- [46:26]
B
Yeah, the time, the energy, the trying it I have not seen. And then I've abandoned my Pinterest thing because I didn't see the benefits too.
- [46:35]
A
Now, if you're selling your icing recipe, I'd be on. Yes, but there you have a different target demographic, which means you have a different strategy. So always say, like, watch where you're getting the information from. Getting your information from. That's not to say that somebody who doesn't have the same selling intent of you can't provide you great information. They may have a user base that is selling like you and they're able to extrapolate kind of like the cookie colleges. Yeah. But if the user is like, hey, I'm going to tell you how to make money online selling icing recipes and then you're taking that and saying I'm going to try sell locally with you. You guys have two different targets there and they're not going to translate well to each other. They will not.
- [47:13]
B
Next Google Business profile just you can
- [47:17]
A
even hear it in the name. For those who are wondering, this is your listing in Google Maps, but it's also your list in search. Yeah. It's how the AI can pull from a local base listing. It's essentially signaling to search engines. I'm hyperlocal and you're also. I'm service based. Yeah.
- [47:35]
B
If you've ever wondered where people say oh, how can I get more Google reviews? This is the place that those land.
- [47:41]
A
This is going to be S tier for me. Just for the fact that it encompasses everything a cottage baker would need to make local in person sales. So we have the listing and maps already. Yes, we have the Google reviews, which is, what do you call it when you look at something and it makes you feel like you want to buy from it because you saw the good reviews. We're going to call it the feel good metric. But there's a buzzword I'm missing on this. We have the ability to respond to reviews, which is a conversation, right? Yeah, we have the ability. Now you can go and connect your social media profiles. Before you'd have to kind of signal it. Now you can actually connect them. We have hours, we got services, we've got website links. And now and you, you've posted a million of these.
- [48:25]
B
It has a tiny, tiny, tiny, a
- [48:28]
A
teeny tiny social media kind of feed.
- [48:31]
B
It does it's update. It's called, it's called a post. So similar you find Facebook the post you can either do a discount, an update or an event.
- [48:41]
A
So you again you may be saying like nobody's seeing these really, we don't care. We want the AI to see that. And you can see it in an instant when someone's like hey, I'm looking for sugar cookie decorating classes near me. And Corey Mixing bowl posted that. She's teaching this class in McLean. She posted a it to Her Google business profile and Gemini is the AI of choice that this person's using. Again, we're trying to create that web to catch everybody. So that's going to be S tier for me. I think it is the most local based listing you can make. Yeah, it's pretty close, but it's just not as well adapted to.
- [49:15]
B
The thing is with all these like you have, you know, you have people who use Instagram but they only look the feed. People who use Instagram but they only surf the stories. This is what this list is doing. We're trying to catch someone at their most comfortable spot where they like to shop. If you like to shop through the Maps pack, that's where we want to catch your.
- [49:34]
A
I'm a big maps girly. I'm a big maps. Me too.
- [49:38]
B
Me too. I don't know.
- [49:39]
A
I've added some new features in Maps, specifically on mobile where I can save listings and I can break them down by emoji. When I get into my car, like I saved every farm stand, those are in my tomato post and I save them under the tomato emoji emoji. Now when I get into my car and it connects to my maps, my car displays all these little tomato emojis on my drive to say hey, you're pretty close to this farm stand if you want to go.
- [50:01]
B
Yeah. So I, I honestly I that's. If I could attribute where I get my corporate orders from, it would be
- [50:07]
A
there in my website and I'd say we said LinkedIn with C tier and I agree that Google business profile is S tier and the other things can play a supporting role with. I wouldn't focus on it what I just recommended as a C tier if my S tier is aren't dialed in.
- [50:22]
B
Yeah, yeah. Definitely do the S tiers first and then work your way down. Okay. Next is the Facebook group. You have no ownership over it though.
- [50:29]
A
Facebook group is the number one Legion source cited by bakers for six years running.
- [50:36]
B
So what are you gonna S or a s or a. I'm gonna say a tier.
- [50:42]
A
Okay. Because I'm not the owner of it. There's pretty strict rules around it. But because it's such a high legion factor, the thing is in the, the in the hands of the right baker, it can be a tool. If I had taken the boot camp on and that boot camp is the lowest attended boot camp for the highest rated legion source by bakers for six years. And that is not lost on me. Which tells me that even though those Facebook groups are oversaturated because everyone's tagging every baker. So few bakers actually tap into it as making it a primary resource. Which to me is, while it feels oversaturated in terms of quality, is extremely unsaturated. And it's still a great place to park it to create that relationship. But that temptation to pitch, pitch, pitch and then add value, it's. It's just on the tip of tongue. And that's the only reason why it's not S tier is because bakers do not know how to cultivate that tool. And to be the absolute business boom resource it could be.
- [51:40]
B
I know the I want to tell people the easiest thing to do is start a group. The hardest thing to do is get it going, going.
- [51:47]
A
I'm gonna grab a Diet Coke, but I want you to tell them Corey and I she's planning to move the next eight months, right?
- [51:53]
B
Yeah.
- [51:53]
A
She was like, I can't withstand running the group again. Like I'll get rid of this group and I probably will become a very high valued member. But not the admin.
- [52:03]
B
So I know we've talked about it at length. There's 4,000 people in the group that I created, which is fantastic. Those people know me inside and out. I post every day in that group. Am I posting sales? No, I actually follow the sales rule and I only post on Saturdays. But they know me. They know my husband's a cop. They know I have a teenage son. He got in a car accident last week. He's fine. But that has been great for me to build a relationship. But the headache in the time and the effort to grow and maintain a very valuable space on Facebook is just almost too much for me that if, if I could really take a step back and I have to when I move because I'll be too far away from this group that I've created.
- [52:49]
A
I have a way still running it because it makes me.
- [52:51]
B
I want to be a very good group member that utilizes the steps that we we mentioned at the boot camp but is not in an admin style role because I would like Truly the thankless job. It's the thankless job. It's a lot of time and energy. People only reach out to you when they're upset, but nobody thanks you when they're happy. Have I gotten a tremendous amount of business from it? Absolutely. I can honestly say that was a great move on my part when I moved to this area starting this group. But it has taken just a chunk load of time.
- [53:27]
A
And you know what? If you do run a group and nobody's told you. Thank you. And it's a quality group. Thank you. Because I feel it. I'm an end user of a bunch of groups and I'm like, I can tell when somebody's behind the scenes making this thing run like a well oiled machine. And I'm like, thanks so much. That makes it so like I hate it when I go to a group and I'm like, somebody's going to be a bully. But I need to ask the question.
- [53:47]
B
What's funny is with the onslaught of AI there's this one lady, she's like a group starter, connoisseur. She has added me to every because I joined one of her local groups. Dead in the water, no engagement, spam constantly. She's added me to five different other ones because she can invite people who are in one group to another group. It she's just invited me to five dead other groups. She can say she manages groups groups,
- [54:12]
A
but they're not quality. Thank goodness. It's still a quality over quantity. And with public groups, you see the disparity widen quite a bit more. I have a very specific antique Dodge Viper in a very specific color with a series of very specific problems I've had to pay to fix. I am the knowledge expert in paying other people to fix those problems, right? So some gentleman said, hey, I'm actually about to buy the exact car that I have. And what do you guys spot are the problems? And I'm like, this one, that one, the other. This is going to cost you this. I know because I paid it. This is going to cost you this to fix. So here. And he was like, what do you think I should offer? So I met and somebody was like, it was a participant, which means you're not even a member of the group. And he was like, you're a loser. And I was like, you can't win for losing, you know, you can't win
- [54:54]
B
for being a loser.
- [54:55]
A
If you find yourself either new to market and you still got the bright eye, bushy tail, really, you know the boot camps are on sale. We'll talk about that in a minute. Go buy that boot camp on Facebook. Group community group marketing be you can cut the line of bakers who've been around for seven years. You can cut that line. You can listen to me, listen to me, my young grasshoppers. The people who've been in that long are no longer putting in the effort that you still have the energy to put it in. I don't blame anybody because I find myself there Too. But you can make. You can find legs in a Facebook group that's well established that prefers a single baker. You can do it. It'll take putting blinders on. Don't take everything personally. Yes, that baker was around longer. Yes. They get recommended more. That's what's fair. But you can also carve out a space there, and both of you can win.
- [55:44]
B
All right, so a for that one, a Facebook personal profile
- [55:49]
A
has to be a tier, because you can't make the Facebook page anymore without the personal profile.
- [55:56]
B
Okay.
- [55:56]
A
However, in terms of sales, I would actually t. Make it B tier. So I want to. I want to adjust that. I'm going to say B tier. I think it has a place. Place for sales, but I don't think it should be the primary place. Now. Within personal profiles, there's now two versions of them. There's the personal profile, you know and love, where you. If somebody has to request you. Now there's this thing called creator profile, and I think you kind of have to be invited to it. It becomes an option when Facebook.
- [56:23]
B
It's like when you collect so many friends, it's like, hey, you want to be a creator now? It's. It is not the same as a personal profile. I think gets treated more as a page.
- [56:33]
A
It gets better analytics, and it allows something called followers, just like a page.
- [56:38]
B
Yeah.
- [56:38]
A
So in a personal profile, you're still capped at 5,000 friends. If you know 5,000 people that well, I'd question how well you know. But a lot of people, when I see somebody with 5,000 friends, I'm like, you're using this as a sales channel. You don't know 5,000.
- [56:51]
B
You're collect. You're a people collector.
- [56:53]
A
Right. So if you switch to creator now, you retain the 5,000 friends, but people now will begin to follow you when you switch back. And you can always switch back and forth once you get the opportunity. Switched to creator, which I did. I was a personal profile. Switched to creator, and Creator had 8, 1800 followers.
- [57:10]
B
Yeah.
- [57:11]
A
Got tired of that because those followers can see the posts I mark as public for followers. Got tired of that, switched back to personal, and I lost the 1800 because they.
- [57:22]
B
They followed you. And then you're like, I want to be private again.
- [57:24]
A
And they're like, yes, a follower is an onlooker. It's a fan of sorts. Like, they're not a fan of Heather Miracle. They're just. That's the access to me is as if they're a fan, but a personal friend. They can see and again, I can, I can monitor what people can see. But that friend connection trumps the follower connection.
- [57:44]
B
These creator accounts came about when influence influencer marketing came about. You're an influencer. You don't necessarily have a business. You are your business. You influence people to buy from businesses. So you don't need a Facebook page because you technically you're not going to file an ein on your own name and your yourself.
- [58:02]
A
But content creators, influencers, they would stand to really well. And if you're a creator profile, using that as a sales channel makes a ton of sense. It's a little bit closer to you. It's not as far away as your business page. Yeah. But again it's kind of mudding the waters because I'm still Heather Miracle at the end of the day, that's what you're saying. So you can, you can follow me around. I would say if my business page was my billboard, my creator personal profile is my behind the scenes. That's how I use now. I like my privacy a ton. So for me it's probably F tier. But for the bakeries using strategically and I think, and don't quote me on this, that only creator profiles can get the blue check. I don't know that personal profile scan. I think you might have to switch over to creator profile which allows you to get a lot more insights per post. Yeah.
- [58:51]
B
So that, that is true. I see a lot of small town bakers. They and listen, this is how we all started. So I ain't talking to me. It's how I started. We make these cookies, they look kind of cute. We post them. People are like, oh my goodness, I love them. Your aunt sue from down the road said, oh my goodness, I didn't know you started this. And then you find that your church people are like, oh, these are so cute. And then you start posting regularly every set that you're doing because you're so proud of the work you have like in a goo goo amount of reach on a personal profile that you do not have on a Facebook business page page. So I see a lot of bakers are like, I don't want to switch over because then I have to have like strategy behind my post. Whereas like now if I post like my granny is like singing my praises in the comments.
- [59:35]
A
It has a place, man. It has a place. I don't think it has a longevity place. It's a startup place. As a new baker S tier, as a seasoned baker B tier.
- [59:45]
B
Yeah, I see this. It wanes on a family's Relationship. Not necessarily like I don't like her anymore. It's that, oh wow. Corey posted another cookie photo. Now they interact with it less and it's all algorithmic based. So they interact with my post list. Now I post my kid graduated from the 10th grade. It doesn't even show on their feed because I have inundated them with so much.
- [60:06]
A
I tell you what, in the starved world of sales pitches, the minute you post your actual life, we're going to like it.
- [60:12]
B
Yeah.
- [60:13]
A
You go back to sales post and be like I was back to the.
- [60:15]
B
So what I see a lot of bakers do is they abandon their Facebook page because. Because they don't like that it's limited reach. So they use their personal profile.
- [60:24]
A
What Facebook wants you to do. You can see it's guiding you over there.
- [60:27]
B
Yeah. But then you have. You have exhausted the relationship with the people you care about. You know, eventually Heather will stop commenting on myself. You know what?
- [60:35]
A
A little bit on the tiktoks which going back a little bit. But here's. There is a guy. So the Dodge Viper hobby. Right. Right. So this dude flips Dodge Vipers. But he uses his personal profile to really connect with his audience in a way that I'm like, I don't have the nerves to do that. Yeah. And his ability to use that. If you do not care what people think about you, that's going to be an interesting strategy. That seems to really pay off. But you have to know that what comes with the good comes with the bad. On I know.
- [61:04]
B
And putting yourself in the line of fire.
- [61:06]
A
I just love my privacy. And this is a. I don't mind if my privacy is invaded a approach and that's cut out. There's certain people who are just exceptional at it.
- [61:15]
B
Yeah. So what you gave that a B. I got to agree.
- [61:20]
A
The next is newsletters because I know how marketing works. Newsletters is S tier. It is cutting through social media. I don't even care about social media with a newsletter. Newsletter allows me to get to the last place where I was thinking about this. Our grandmother is 87 7. It's almost 90. I know.
- [61:42]
B
No, don't round her up either.
- [61:46]
A
I'm almost 70. She. She and I have to check our email every day. Yes. Because I need to know when that bill's coming due. I need to know. I got this like this property tax bill. I'm checking emails from the mortgage company to see how it's applied. I have. I'm required by law are by losing my house that I have to check my email address. It is my golden handcuffs. So by sending a newsletter. Yes. It might end up in updates or promotional spam. My grandmother doesn't know how to set that up. She's still using aol.net like I know how to set it up. But most users I can see in my family, most users are not setting up tabs. There's no promotional tab. As long as you're staying within the parameters of what is not spamming them. You're gonna get my grandmother, you're gonna get her. But.
- [62:35]
B
And so what's Heather saying? Like this is. Okay. It's not algorithmic based.
- [62:42]
A
It is somewhat. When you have the tab split.
- [62:45]
B
Yes. A little bit in that but it's still chronological. Meaning that when it comes in it finds a spot and it's the last bastion of chronological. And I and you know what Google
- [62:57]
A
tried to it's called Inbox zero Inbox. It was called Inbox Google Inbox. So Gmail created Google Inbox. I was one of the first adopters of it. And it stopped chronological and did intent and we all hated it. And they went to the Google graveyard. Newsletters are the ability to communicate with somebody without what I'm calling these days. The noise. Yes. Yeah, I'm not checking my mortgage companies Facebook Facebook page ever.
- [63:25]
B
I don't care what you're doing, but
- [63:27]
A
I will check every email you send.
- [63:29]
B
I will tell you. Having Facebook as an app on your phone makes it easy to get a post up. So if it's easy for me to get a post up, it's easy for that. My competition who are also bakers to get a post up a newsletter is like we need a bigger screen. We're opening our laptops.
- [63:45]
A
We're. I'm a big screen. I'm a big screen email girl.
- [63:49]
B
You know the first thing that gets chopped when a baker gets busy is things like the newsletter which leads it wide open open for you to step on in and utilize someone's chronological inbox
- [64:02]
A
that they have to check every day.
- [64:05]
B
Yes. Yeah, I'm in there all the time.
- [64:08]
A
I have an inbox for my home. I read that on Reddit. It's a cool little systematic hack is create an email address for your home and then every the pest control company, the mortgage company, the hoa, they all email to there. That way I can cut through all the spam am but I'm in these inboxes, all of them. I have one for sugar cookie classes. I have one for just who I am as a person. I have one an email address is
- [64:32]
B
like a cell phone number. We are not getting a new one every day.
- [64:37]
A
That's where the one I made that has my birth year in it.
- [64:40]
B
Mine still has my ex husband's name in there and I'll be dead before I let it go.
- [64:45]
A
You know, I like to call Corey by her email address. So just keep her humbled. Yeah, I know where you start.
- [64:49]
B
Started what? I have to pee so bad. But my next one I want you to talk about is you can either choose text which is SMS or yelp because you were.
- [64:58]
A
I'm gonna add one. Why use in the restroom? Because I want you to come back for these two because I don't have opinions but I'm going to talk to why you go so skedat. Okay. SK Facebook Marketplace. She didn't add her her o2 cents. Facebook Marketplace again within the ecosystem of Facebook book is an interesting one for the average baker. I'm going to put it as f tier. It is not the place for most of us to get our leads this thing though. In the past one month, Facebook has spun off Facebook groups as an an individual app called Forums, which is so funny because Facebook groups killed forums. I'm big into cars. Cars have always had forums. I was would purchase some vehicle, I would join the forum immediately. I would start understanding more about the car. And that's where all the knowledge base was. Well, forums. Those forums that I was joined over the past like 20 years, they're like they've archived to read only and they've moved us to Facebook groups because that's where the conversation's happening. Genius. For Facebook to kill off forums, then spin off groups into an app called Forums. It's not lost on me. Then Facebook this past week announced a standalone app for Marketplace because what they're finding is that.
- [66:14]
B
Well, can I make a correction to that please, Steve? It's not a an app for Marketplace. It's just for the seller portion of Marketplace. You'll only so access. If you want to buy stuff on Marketplace, you can only access that on Facebook right now. If you are a seller, you'll want the sellers app and it helps you create listings, track your listings. Have your crystal ball.
- [66:37]
A
Crystal ball. I believe they spin off Marketplace just like a thousand percent. A thousand percent. Do you want to know what I was looking up on Marketplace last night?
- [66:44]
B
What?
- [66:45]
A
What do you think?
- [66:45]
B
Cat tree?
- [66:47]
A
No. Marketplace. So used.
- [66:50]
B
Yeah.
- [66:50]
A
I don't know. A piano.
- [66:53]
B
A piano in Harmer's Fairy, there's one for free.
- [66:56]
A
But I was like, yeah, Think about that.
- [66:58]
B
Free Netflix. We like a little Pay to Play. Yeah.
- [67:02]
A
Kind of need a little bit of value. How to do. So what did you list? Marketplace at has a Facebook. Marketplace for most bakers is F tier, but for the baker, that works that way. I'm going to say it's oddly B tier.
- [67:15]
B
I'm going to say I tried Marketplace
- [67:17]
A
years ago and it was the Wild, wild West.
- [67:20]
B
I've done it this year. I've actually made a few sales from it. Tremendous amount of tire kickers.
- [67:25]
A
But also, how do you rank it?
- [67:27]
B
I'm going to give it a B.
- [67:28]
A
B tier. So both Cory and I agree that F tier initially. B tier. If you make it work, make it work. What is that? Project Runaway Project One way.
- [67:36]
B
Okay, we have word of mouth is the next one.
- [67:40]
A
That is S tier.
- [67:42]
B
Yeah.
- [67:42]
A
Word of mouth is the cheapest lead you can ever generate ever, in the history of all time. It will never not be that. Why? Because you've already spent the acquisition cost. You've already cultivated, you've already converted. They already know how it works. They liked it enough that they told somebody else. Yeah.
- [68:01]
B
And that. Listen, I'm so sorry.
- [68:04]
A
Word of mouth. I'm talking like that. Repeat customers is the number one. Word of mouth is right there. So repeat customers. S tier. Word of mouth. Like, yeah, yeah.
- [68:16]
B
I love a repeat customer. I will roll out the red carpet for a new customer. But, boy, you will get extra from me as a repeat customer. I don't have to wow you anymore. You were wowed. Now I just have to keep my wow. Wowing. What I see a lot of bakers do is they get comfortable with repeat orders and then, you know, take them for granted.
- [68:38]
A
Yeah. Yes. And you're like, it's like the, you know, that bestie you already had, like, okay, you meet somebody for the first time, you're like, hello, Konichiwa. I love to. I'm a great person. I'll be fun to be around. Then you have this friend who's like a commonplace friend. They're like, yeah, yeah, just grab something for the phrase. It's like, yeah, you know, I got nothing.
- [68:55]
B
Go to Walmart.
- [68:56]
A
Grass on your way.
- [68:57]
B
But then I can see I have this one lady, she's bought from me for years upon years upon years. And I was growing just a tinge resentful because she never placed an order on time. And I was like, yeah, come on, girl. Come on, friend. Man, listen, I. That I trained her that way. She's just doing what she knows.
- [69:16]
A
That's a Great perspective.
- [69:17]
B
Yeah. Re myself that. So when she was like, are you too busy? And I said, girl, for you, I'm never too busy. She always orders. Who doesn't? Always tips me an extra additional dozen almost of tip. Why wouldn't I?
- [69:30]
A
Yeah. So where's the pain and suffering?
- [69:33]
B
Shut your face, get in the kitchen
- [69:35]
A
and make her order.
- [69:36]
B
No word of mouth. And repeat customers.
- [69:38]
A
S tier and here all day long. You can make an entire business on word of mouth, returning customers, and you'd never have to worry about this other stuff. Now you should worry about it. But, like. Because our natural aging and moving of people does shift. Shift our demographic. But you could, you could have an exceptionally healthy business if you could make it off a word of mouth.
- [69:57]
B
Especially if you live in a town that doesn't have a lot of people coming and going. And there's a word for that.
- [70:04]
A
I can't think of transient.
- [70:07]
B
I unfortunately live in a very fluid area. People are constantly coming and leaving. So it's really hard for me when I see a repeat person, I'm like, oh, my gosh, you're still here. But if you can live in a, like a smaller, not even a smaller town, just a town that doesn't have, you know, so many military bases and, you know, government entities in there, you have people that you can ju. You can age with them. You, you, you making their first order. You're making the kids 6th birthday order. They could just be your bread and butter.
- [70:38]
A
In terms of cottage bakers, we don't necessarily think like mechanics and hair cut cutteries.
- [70:45]
B
Yeah.
- [70:45]
A
Because we think like, oh, I have to earn each order. No hair, the haircut. As soon as I'm gonna get my haircut on Thursday, as soon as I leave, they're gonna like, do you want to book in six months? Because they're building a book of business. Same with mechanics. I gotta get my oil changed every 6,000 miles. 7, 500 miles. Right. So they're trying to say, when do you want to come in next? The haircut is great because they can predict my hair is going to grow. Yeah. The mechanic has to kind of hope I fall within the parameters of a listen.
- [71:12]
B
They're putting a little sticker my thing.
- [71:14]
A
They're judging. They're like, it's either bakers, you can build a book of business. You can do the same exact thing. And that comes a lot in using newsletters and then using something that cultivates that point of contact, which is CRM's customer relationship management. It's right there. It's managing the customer relationship with you.
- [71:32]
B
Oh to not to, to wake up and not feel like I have to market ground zero every single time is amazing because I've, I've baked for this one kid. His name's Knox. It's just a unique name but I baked from first, second and now like third. I'm like, I've.
- [71:51]
A
We can try to milk this business and hope that Knox has a brother. Knox will eventually age out of the demographic that wants the cookies. But we can get Mrs. Knox mom to, to kind of next kid that next party and that's that cultivation of it. But you can build an entire business. Forget everything we talked about by doing word of mouth and repeat customers by focusing on, on the population that already likes you.
- [72:13]
B
Yeah. And I. That is slept on. If you constantly feel then that you're getting new clients, that you always have to wow. And you're not getting repeat clients, it could be something along the customer journey. They, they just don't feel taken care of after the fact.
- [72:26]
A
Or even worse, you just didn't pop. I'm a, I'm like a, like a one hit wonder for most companies. I'm like, oh God, that was great. But if they contact me again. I spent six hours this week in a tile and growl class. From a class. If you listen to the podcast they took back in April on power tools. Well, they email all the time. They called me up, they're like, hey, would you like to take this class for free in exchange for review? Yeah, that was what it was about. But I was like, wow, I have now a relation. Like I know Nicole, I know Rich, I know Hans Judson said he gave me a quote of my house. Like I'm building a relationship. You know where I'm going to tell people to go take a class on how to maintain their DIY house.
- [73:02]
B
And if you're wondering how to build a relationship, we go back to the newsletter which is a relationship building entity right there. Because you're staying in front of them even after the fact, after they've long come gone, eaten the cookies, pooped them back out. You're still in their inbox saying, hey, I remember you. How are you doing something like that? We have the next one is text, which is called sms. When it comes to marketing, SMS is
- [73:28]
A
as good as you want it to be and as bad as you can make. Does sell to me in a certain way. I love it more for reminders. So my dentist, dentist. I also have a dental appointment. The botox people and the haircut people have all moved SMS reminders and I love it.
- [73:48]
B
That's because you still find value.
- [73:51]
A
Yes.
- [73:52]
B
In their service.
- [73:53]
A
I signed up, I wanted to get a pair of heels from Steve Madden and To get them 20% off I had to sign up for SMS. Of course it started with email and then I was like, but if you really want it, you actually have to give us your phone number. I really wanted the 20% off. Now I've unsubscribed from every text because it's every minute of the day. The Paula's Choice scenario where it's like, oh, Paula's Choice.
- [74:14]
B
I'm like, I have unsubscribed and she has burned a phone number and started a new phone number and it's. I'm like, how many times do I got a report?
- [74:22]
A
Yeah. I'm like, that's not fair that I have to keep unsubscribing from SMS because you're switching the, the, the list I'm on. Here's one SMS thing I've never unsubscribed from. They messaged me about once a month. Month and it is Bath and Body Works. They only message me when there's a steep sale.
- [74:39]
B
So I want to say this comes down to segmenting your audience and that's
- [74:46]
A
what Paula's Choice is allergic to.
- [74:48]
B
When you. And when you Paula's Choice, if you sign up, you get a discount form. So they're getting new people signing up. But they've gotten me who's used their products 10 years ago. But they're sending us the same exact, exact text all the time. Like Paula, I couldn't have gone through the bottle yesterday in a day.
- [75:05]
A
It's. Yeah, because they're like, she's in the general list. Send her a reminder that everything's on sale. But it, it was like, what are you saying? It was like three times a day. Ridic. Yes.
- [75:14]
B
Yeah. So segmenting your audience, which means cookie class participants get a certain text from you once a month when you open your new class. Custom order people get a text from you when your books are open for the new month. And then pre sale people pre order people. People get a text from you when you do your pre sale job, you're going to have a way better user experience, a way better retention rate. I'm going to tell you that audience opt ins.
- [75:41]
A
Opt ins for list segmentation are so strong. Your list will be widow. There'll be little baby list. Yes, they will be strongest list, strongest little baby you've ever seen. Your Life. I went to a mechanic shop in Cor area called Gabes. Yeah. I now live an hour and a half away from Gabes. But they recently adopted a new program that sends SMS texts. Yeah, I unsubscribed immediately. There's no chance in hell I could ever make it out there. Also I thought that was kind of weird. And so their, their unsubscribe rate is through the roof right now. Which makes sense. They just kicked it on. Last time I went to Gabes was probably three years ago.
- [76:14]
B
Yes. Yeah. And they're just.
- [76:16]
A
When you kick on these programs, you're going to get a lot of pushback. It's new. You didn't segment before. It's yes. Yeah. You don't want to buy a list ever. We just don't live in the economy where that. The marketing economy where that's judicious at all. Yeah. But if you say okay, I want to move into sms, I do have these text message clients. Ask yourself, did they opt in? It's fine to start the opt in today and start with two people. That's two people who really wanted to hear.
- [76:42]
B
Strong people. I could see text being good for the cake pop carts which seems to be taking off letting them thanks to
- [76:48]
A
the drop drama here.
- [76:49]
B
The. Here are the flavors of the week. Here's the hours. Here's my address. That would be okay. I see great with bread people. Not great with just custom order. Because.
- [77:02]
A
Which is why Hoplite, which charges a ridiculous fee, works off of SMS drops. So when you have a drop type business, which is sourdough, which has a short shelf life, I imagine people with farm stands could do it really well.
- [77:15]
B
Yeah.
- [77:15]
A
And like you said, what was your other example? Okay. With the K Pop arts. Yeah. So what would you rate? I'm going to say a. With a definitive plan, SMS could be a tier. S Tier.
- [77:29]
B
I'm going to say a tier.
- [77:31]
A
A tier.
- [77:32]
B
But your plan and strategy have to be so stinking strong.
- [77:36]
A
The sending to more people is not the strategy that wins with sms. Don't do it.
- [77:42]
B
Don't be Paula's choice. You'll be the Paula unchoice unsubscribed.
- [77:47]
A
Okay.
- [77:48]
B
One that you signed us up for that. I hate threads. Explain what Threads is.
- [77:55]
A
Facebook came out with its Twitter ex competitor called Threads. Now Threads, instead of creating a new account is based off of Instagram profiles. So Instagram is very media heavy, which means you can't. I'm sorry, it's media only. You can't post a text thread on Instagram you could do it as a graphic, but you still created media.
- [78:17]
B
Yeah.
- [78:17]
A
Reds allowed Instagram to speak to a character. Limited word post that way to take on. Take to take on Twitter. X. Right?
- [78:29]
B
Yes.
- [78:30]
A
I'm going to say it's going to be D tier. To me it is the wild wild west. I do. We do have one for sugar cookie marketing. A threads account and it's signed in on my. My phone. I'll log in there and it'll be like rioting and gnashing of teeth and then it'll be a local person saying, are there any local bakers near me? But I'm like, I'm seeing this and we're not local to you. Why am I seeing this? Yeah, that.
- [78:55]
B
Because people buy with their eyes. Specifically when it comes to custom cookies
- [78:59]
A
and things like that. You can do photos on it.
- [79:02]
B
Yeah.
- [79:02]
A
It's not meant for that.
- [79:04]
B
Meant for it. So what Heather actually has it set up and this is why I hate it is she has it cross posted to two threads.
- [79:12]
A
When I postposting something, it means I don't care about.
- [79:15]
B
It's an afterthought.
- [79:16]
A
It's.
- [79:16]
B
There's no strategy behind it. You're not making content organically for it and it's just wasted space. Yeah, we're on it, but we've not gotten one thing from it.
- [79:26]
A
Let me tell you that.
- [79:28]
B
So what do you rank Threads
- [79:32]
A
D I opened it. Dear Sephora employee, my makeup setting. Has any separating. Has anyone ever made a small change to shop Shopify then one that's location based? Are there no people in West Virginia on Threads? As an entrepreneur, I hate the chat. GPT fires like it's just none of this would buy from me. Babies exist and moms need coffee. What is this? The daily brief for social media managers. So that's probably where I think this would work well. But okay, here's one. Made some pumpkin cookies for my niece's bday shower over the weekend and I had to show you guys three likes. Cute stuff. Three likes. That wasn't worth the effort. Yeah. Because that's a Facebook post right there.
- [80:15]
B
So then that brings us to the next is X. So X, if you don't know it was called Twitter. It was purchased and the name changed to X.
- [80:22]
A
It used to be called a tweet. Now it's your recent views on your threads are made public to everyone on your profile. That's what I just said. Oh shoot. How embarrassing. I would say if Threads was DT or for the local cottage maker, Twitter is FT or X is FT here.
- [80:39]
B
Yeah. I don't even have an account on X for my bakery business because you
- [80:44]
A
know like I can't preview a tweet unless I create an account now which I get. It helps with conversions how I see it. But I was like trying to find a picture and it was indexed the image but when I went to go snag the picture it was like a meme template. When I snag it was like no, you got to create an account that's.
- [80:59]
B
Yeah, it's more for a short thought, a short opinion piece. It's not for the cottage home baker trying to to sell a birthday set.
- [81:09]
A
If you are somebody who loves controversial stances or you love drag out brawls online, perfect set for you. Maybe say it's your S tier smash them in the face. For the cottage maker that's listening to this podcast, I would not even factor it into my marketing strategy as it sits today.
- [81:30]
B
Yeah, that's the first one we said
- [81:32]
A
don't even be on it. The threads and threads at least is integrated into Instagram and allows you the cross posting. X is just, just trying for what we're doing. It has a place for other people. Sure. Yeah.
- [81:45]
B
If you're like an influencer or someone.
- [81:47]
A
Politicians seem to love to Talk on the YouTube. For the cottage baker it is going to be. It's going to be F tier but for the baker selling a digital pro, a digital subs something knowledge base. If you're a cutter shop and how to make the cutter. I'm gonna say It's a tier. YouTube is the last bastion of horizontal video.
- [82:12]
B
It is also and it's on its
- [82:15]
A
way out because you have the shorts. Shorts which I never. I'll be honest, my user. I'm never watching a short. I don't like it. I would go.
- [82:22]
B
I think you're not logging into YouTube to watch a TikTok style video.
- [82:26]
A
I'm watching a documentary. We'll be locked into this channel for three, three hours.
- [82:31]
B
But YouTube knowing that people are favoring that short form vertical video has created what's called shorts and they're obviously short.
- [82:41]
A
Do you know what the absolute bar nut you would scream the number one highest performing video in sugar cookie marketing is video YouTube. It's a short of us with a buzzcap. It, it, it gets thousands of views. It has nothing to do with our business. It's a trend from four years ago that is the number one performing video. Now in terms of a company like Eddie who sells a machine that has tutorials around It a tier, if not S tier. Those are also the highest performing videos you have are Eddie how to videos.
- [83:15]
B
Yeah.
- [83:16]
A
In terms of the local cottage baker trying to reach local outside of reposting. Remember I told you if you're. If you're just cross posting, it means you don't care. Outside of cross posting your local stuff. I just. Just don't see it worth the effort today. Not when reels and tik toks are handing out reach like candy.
- [83:32]
B
I would say maybe if you were a brick and mortar. There's a little bit more space on.
- [83:37]
A
What are you gonna do? What 3 minute to 10 minute video to an hour video.
- [83:40]
B
You could highlight a class. Highlight something coming up. Highlight, you know, the town hall.
- [83:46]
A
You'd have to create a whole separate strategy just for the channel. I know, I know.
- [83:51]
B
So that's where I see most bakers fall short. People are logging onto YouTube to learn something for free.
- [83:57]
A
For f. Did you just log into my. I was logging into YouTube just last night. We're teaching the bootcamp and procreate. I wanted this. I. I wanted this hack that I already knew how to do, but I just needed to remember the setting was some guy. Here's it in two seconds. Thank you so much. Goodbye.
- [84:10]
B
Yeah, that's subscribe. You're on YouTube for views. Yeah. Subscribers, if you can talk them into it. But people aren't logging in there to buy something. They're logging in to learn something. Something. And they don't want to pay a dollar for it.
- [84:24]
A
So Corey and I, as sugar cookie marketing should be on YouTube because a lot of bakers are like, how do I make more sales? So I'd go to YouTube. Here's a video about this YouTube owned by Google. It's actually an index now, which means being searched by the AI.
- [84:39]
B
Yes. Yeah, yeah. So definitely F tier for the cottage home baker.
- [84:45]
A
Yelp. I'm gonna say Yelp is D tier. It used to be. It'd be something if you had asked me 10 years ago ago when none of this. These other business profile options. Yeah. Heather was a Yelp elite.
- [85:00]
B
Guys I got voted in by a party of a panel of people to be elite. Panel of peers voted Heather in based on our pizza profile.
- [85:09]
A
A lot of piece there. And I want to tell you, Yelp got, I'm gonna say, too big for its bridges. I know. I think got greedy. Greedy ads. The repression of good reviews when they were merited. The onslaught of bad reviews and they weren't merite. And then frankly, what I believe happened is that Google said, well, I prefer Google Business Profile. You're listed in my Google search to favor Google Business Profile, which Yelp is just a review engine. Why would I go to Yelp when my first click is right there? I can see exactly what people think on a Google. Yeah.
- [85:40]
B
I think Google pulled the rug out from under Yelp. Yelp used to be the pillar of where you would go to get authentic reviews of local places. It was the heyday day.
- [85:51]
A
It made businesses slaves.
- [85:53]
B
Yeah.
- [85:54]
A
So for the cottage baker. DF not F tier. Because to even create a profile. Yeah. Make your profile, but really just to create the webbing. The webbing of like, I'm here. But I would not even.
- [86:04]
B
That's what I utilize it for. To even put a logo on Yelp is nickel and D. It's a monthly thing.
- [86:12]
A
Once they get your phone number.
- [86:14]
B
Oh, they call me all the time. They literally call me all the.
- [86:17]
A
The time.
- [86:18]
B
I do actually have a profile listed there and I update it because when you search for my business, it shows up under me and that's just one spot that my competitor isn't showing up for it. So I update it probably once a quarter. I'll add some of my latest things,
- [86:34]
A
but outside of that, next 10 years, I'll see. I'll predict Yelp won't be around like it was. It'll either be sold to private equity, but it won't.
- [86:44]
B
I think Google said, we want that platform back. We're having our maps. That's where the Google reviews are. It's one less click for the end user.
- [86:54]
A
Yelp isn't making money because really, to find the Yelp profile, I was going through Google because I had uninstalled the Yelp app.
- [87:00]
B
Yeah.
- [87:00]
A
Years ago. Yeah. It's pretty ridiculous. At one point you would have heard me say, s here and that if
- [87:06]
B
you did cookies near me, Yelp would have been the first website to show up and you would have clicked there. And whatever Yelp said was the authority figure. That's who you bought from.
- [87:16]
A
And now. So it's lost. It's standing with its nickel and diming. It's like, yes. A failing business model that's still trying to cash in a little bit. And. And. And it's.
- [87:26]
B
They're just predatory. If I update it, someone will call
- [87:30]
A
me the next day. I. Which. And you just know the person's like, I don't want to do this either. You can just hear it in the voices. The company working for, I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago, I. I created Their Yelp listing, which had me as the point of contact for the account. Well, I don't work for them anymore and nobody's changed my phone number or like they should. But these Yelp people would call it out. I said, listen, listen. I'm going to give you the owner's personal cell phone number in exchange for deleting mine.
- [87:56]
B
That's who they want.
- [87:57]
A
They want the person who's willing to pay.
- [87:59]
B
But it is crazy. It used to be huge. The companies I worked for for always paid Yelp. Yelp ads were ginormous back in the day and now it's just nothing. It's a relic. Relic. Okay, My last one of our list. You've done great MySpace, which if you did not hear, is making yet another comeback supposedly.
- [88:20]
A
I'm sorry, I was not in the first wave of MySpace. We're not allowed to be on that app at the time. I got the second the Justin Timberlay wave of mine. Space, pointless, Worthless. It did show up for my name. It was just a music dashboard. I don't even like good music. So like it wasn't even great for that MySpace. Now I'm going to say it is a broad stroke. Early adapters to new platforms tend to be favored. It's why The TikTokers with 20 or 50 million followers were first to platform. Yeah, if they take the big risk because likely it goes nowhere. But what if it went somewhere and those people were the person person who put all chips in red and said I think it'll go somewhere. They put all their effort there and then made money for my experience. For the amount of time the cottage Baker has, that's going to be F tier for me. We just don't have the time to be the early adopter.
- [89:08]
B
The problem with my space making yet another attempt at a comeback and they're resting their laurels on it. It's not going to be an algorithm.
- [89:17]
A
It would have to be very nostalgic. I think to me through to make it through. Here's the thing.
- [89:23]
B
There's so many new, you know, Lemonade was one that when Tik Tok was
- [89:29]
A
on it on Tik Tok, I use rest.
- [89:31]
B
They're still trying to push push it. But Lemonade, when Tik Tok came back, it was about to be banned. So Lemonade was going to be the. The successor to it. When Tik Tok got bought out by a US based company, Lemonade just took. Just took a be a nose dive. So is TikTok always trying to get
- [89:49]
A
sorry a little Blip there. I thought it wasn't recording this and I was so.
- [89:53]
B
And I said that was great information
- [89:55]
A
that they'll never ever hear.
- [89:57]
B
So that was all I had. As far as what is out there now, out and about past, present, future, resurrected MySpace and how you could utilize
- [90:10]
A
that for your business. Using applies today and it is August 4th, 2026. This would sound probably different in. In 365 days. Oh sure, yeah.
- [90:20]
B
Who knows what Facebook meta spin off.
- [90:23]
A
I want to let you know I was a real big Google plus user.
- [90:27]
B
I didn't even bring up Snapchat.
- [90:30]
A
Snapchat loses money every year. I don't think it'll be around as long as in. In this iteration. But like I was a big Google plus user and then they were like, yeah, it's not making us any money. So yeah, I got to download all my information.
- [90:40]
B
I do want to tell you what we've learned from these companies is pivoting is huge when it comes to to their business as well as your business. If something isn't working, if you're getting pushback or users are leaving, it's okay to relook at your business and see how you can create something that people want. So maybe the bronuts, maybe the hot cocoa bombs of years gone by aren't as popular. That's okay. It doesn't mean you're a failure. It means you're pivoting so that your business is viable for years to come.
- [91:11]
A
It sounds sucks in the pivot. It benefits in the long term if you force like no, I'm not changing against a pivot. Congratulations. You have just let your competitor squeeze in and even the newer competitor. So in a weird way, this is both a blessing and a curse.
- [91:26]
B
A blessing and a curse. And you see that these are constantly changing as far as the algorithms, the way that the layouts, the insights, the dashboards are always changing, changing. So yeah, we made this in August 4th. This might be out of date by next year, but it tells you that it's okay for the big businesses to change as well as it's okay for you to change. If cookie classes don't bring you joy anymore, that's okay to take them off the roster. Just because the lady down the street offers them and maybe sells out does not mean you have to. If you are literally saying I don't want to wake up on Saturday because
- [92:03]
A
I don't want to to teach this class. Love that twin. Love it. Moving us on. Unless you have anything else to add,
- [92:09]
B
that's all I had b girl talk
- [92:11]
A
about the cookie college. The cookie college goes on sale once during the summer. It's one of only two sales we run. And this is the longest sale we run. It's seven whole days. We got a lot of good stuff up here. It started. The sale started yesterday, and it runs until Sunday.
- [92:25]
B
Tell me a little bit about it.
- [92:27]
A
So you got to see, we've been doing this for quite a few years. So that's five years worth of content. Content stacked on each other. And that content is the cookie college, the class kits, the baker's basics, the digital downloads, and the transfer code. Those are the five memberships that we offer. Yeah. This year we've added boot camps, and in the past five years, we've actually had cookie class kits that have archived, which means you weren't able to get them outside of these sales unless you joined a membership. So I know some of you guys are like, I'm a one and done. I don't like memberships. The memberships are the cheapest way to get all of this content. But if you are one and doner, I feel there. So just to tell you, the cookie College is typically $76 a month. This week only 68. No purchase required outside of that to get the code. It just applies at checkout. The class kits is always $63 a month. This week only 31.50. And it gets you a 20, 26 lineup, which is those intermediate and then beginner media that we shifting to for the next six months. You can cancel anytime on these memberships. So you could sign up today, download it all tomorrow, cancel it the third day. Baker's business basics is typically 36, but now it's $18 a month. Now, the caveat with that one is you get a discount code to get the cookie college at the rate today, whenever you feel like upgrading. So if you're like, well, I'm not for the $68 today, sign up for the Baker's Business Basics in two months or three months. If you're like, now I'm ready. You can make that jump and get that discounted rate. Yeah, the digital downloads are these kits that I talk about. We did the trash man, I did the mailman. Now we working on a cleaning company. It's seven printable files, including an STL transfer sheet, cookie tag, cookie backer, et cetera. That's typically $10 a month. Now, you can get it for $5 a month. But you also get, when you sign up for these, all the content that's been published before this month.
- [94:10]
B
So it's, it's pennies on the dollar
- [94:12]
A
if you scan these. This is, this is if you have been interested. If you're on the fence, here's that the transfer club is $2 and now it's 50% off for a buck. And you get 300 transfers immediately and then you get transfers added each month that you membership is active. The boot camps are $13 one time fee. Now there is a discount code to get $5 off, bringing that down to $8 on all the boot camps we've offered so far this year. And the class kits from 2023 to 2025, you can individually purchase those for $10 each. That's, that's 36 classes that you can just buy for $10 each. Now if you say what's the best bang for the buck? It is signing up for the cookie card which gets everything listed, including those 2023-2025 classes, the 2026 classes, the digital downloads, the bakers business basics, the class kits, and all that material from the cookie college and its boot camps for 68. Yes. Yeah. And I know a lot of you guys have been capitalizing on this to find these deals for the next seven days. If you're listening to this podcast in the future, you probably missed it. If it's next Tuesday, you can go to the cookiecollege.com and everything you need to know and how to sign up is right there. I also did the math for you, tell you what to save by just signing up during this week. The next sale we run isn't for four and a half months. So if you were on the fence here, now would be the time. We also have some yearly discounts. If you want 680 a year for the cookie college, it gets you two months free on that discounted rate. So it brings it down to like 57amonth. So you're so 60. Same with the class kits. Instead of paying 3150amonth, you can get them for 315. You get all the class kits this year, which Cory's working on on Halloween and Christmas and Ladybug one is next.
- [95:52]
B
Heather has that have that one in her on her roster of things to do. And then we're doing, going back to the main one. So we have Halloween, you think Spider Jack o' Lantern.
- [96:01]
A
I saw it guys, and it was cute.
- [96:03]
B
It was cute. And then we have November and instead of just doing typical pies, you know, and turkey legs, it was a fall farmers market theme is what we're doing there. So that'll be cute. And then Christmas will just be something typical. I have not come up with that one. I'm working on with sweet pink olive on that one.
- [96:19]
A
Great. And the digital downloads also have a $50 a year that saves you $6 a month. And over the course of you that saves you 70 bucks. All of your Q and as are answered atthecookie college.com until Sunday. You can snag all of these until Sunday. The discount codes on the boot camps works until Sunday. And then, yeah, you can join us. Sign up today. Cancel any time. It'll just run you out through the next three days. So if you sign up for the class, get today, you get the eight class kits that are dropped and you're guaranteed in the next 30 days to get that love bug one.
- [96:50]
B
Cute. It's cute as a button, cute as a bug in a rug.
- [96:53]
A
Next boot camp actually is on Thursday to Friday and it is designing sets in Procreate. And like I said during the bootcamp that I recorded, it is the minimum you need to know to not get overwhelmed so that you leave the class knowing exactly what I promised. You know how to design mindsets in the app called Procreate on an iPad with an Apple pencil.
- [97:14]
B
I will say I've had two inquiries that have asked for that and I don't know how to do it. So I had to say no, just trust me. And I will say that's not as assuring to someone who's never ordered from me to say, just trust me. They don't know me. So if I had that capability and could draft something up fairly quickly, you know, down and dirty with it and get them some something, it would. It would solidify in their brain that they've chosen the right baker.
- [97:42]
A
If you say I'm have no drawing talent, welcome, you're among friends. Neither do I. And that's why I want to say that the class, it tells you how to make yourself look better than you are. That's because that's where I exist solely as a human, is finding ways to make myself present better than my knowledge base. And I can tell you how to get that pencil to stop showing the shakes. How cut corners by using duplicate and selection and color wheels and palettes and mockups. There's a lot of hacks, and I say that the app has endless potential. But what this bootcamp covers is how to get to the end result as quickly as possible. Yes, you can spend the rest of your life building on that. Yeah, you wanted to be able to produce a sketch next week. You'll be, you'll be set to me
- [98:25]
B
if I was a like a random person looking to make an order for my wedding that I've thought about since the day I, you know, turn 15, it would add a lot of value to me to come up with the designs with you. So I felt confident right now I send them a picture of their order a day before pickup. And I'm always holding my breath and I know they're holding their breath to
- [98:49]
A
see if the vision communicated verbally only was in alignment. Yeah. So we'll actually be importing fonts and using that for the text you could use to project. We'll also be tracing the outline of a cookie cutter from a shape shop which benefits a cookie cutter shop because then you'll purchase the cutter from. We working with Nancy from Kaleido Cuts. Oh, the most popular. Yeah. Might as well start with that. And then we're going to use a canva as if somebody sent us a birthday invite to build the cutter, shape the design the sketch from that. Oh nice. So you have a couple options. Yeah. You can use a plaque which a lot of us have. You can make something custom which you could go back to the boot camp on 3D printing cookie cutters. You design yourself and use that and then you have just the knowledge of base of working in layers. Non destructive buzzwords that you'll know if you take the boot camp. All our boot camps are on sale now. You get $5 off using Mid Summer Boot Camp 5 at checkout on the boot camps. Everything else, all those memberships is the discount is automatically apply so we have to worry about the discount codes. I saw some of you guys just picking and choosing which boot camps you want. I think that's a great approach to that. You can go back. They're evergreen as long as the content is fresh, which it all is. We recorded it this this year. The in person cookie classes boot camp is probably the biggest bang for your buck because you get a cookie class kit included. But if you want it all, including the boot camps, including the class kits from 2023 to 2026, including all the cookie college content in the private group, you're going to want to join the cookie college membership.
- [100:17]
B
Yeah, you'll save a bunch by just joining that because you'll get access to everything versus just cherry picking what you want. You'd you get. You save more just joining the cookie college if that's your end end game.
- [100:28]
A
And we also get a lot more of these Two. Who would want then. Hello. Hello.
- [100:33]
B
We're doing a walking challenge in the cookie college.
- [100:35]
A
You're doing really well.
- [100:36]
B
Oh, I just holding myself accountable. I walked more just so my. My steps looked higher the next day.
- [100:42]
A
Yeah, the walking challenge is every. Everyone beg for these to come back. Every day during the month of August, you check in with your steps for the day prior and you're like, that's kind of pointless. But moving your body is really healthy. Especially as somebody who's like entrepreneurial home cottage. Don't see the light of day if I don't have to. Like really pushing yourself to get out there and move your legs.
- [101:06]
B
Move your legs. Podcast on your walk. You know why the birds are chirping?
- [101:10]
A
Yeah, buddy. And these two little voices will trigger those bird chirps. So it'll be great. And great gossip column. No submission. But I have my own.
- [101:17]
B
Let me hear.
- [101:18]
A
It is unrelated to cookies, but it is related to nickname posts. Okay, so I'm not even in this group. It was some group from Fauquier county and it was a nickname that was hooting in a hollering at a girl he saw while he was on his motorcycle and asking if she remembered him. It's a nickname and it said, come in here and I'll reach out to you. But the admin could see the nickname was a married man and posted him and a picture of his family next to him. His hooting in a haretta. You are not completely safe. And what I see in the baking groups posted as nicknames is so mean, atrocious. You just don't know when an admin's gonna just be like, you know what, here's what that person's name is.
- [102:04]
B
Do you kiss your mom with that mouth? In our local foodies, do you kiss
- [102:08]
A
your mom with your anonymous avocado?
- [102:11]
B
In our local foodies group, they've made a rule after it not being a rule for quite some time. So imagine a group of 150,000 and trying to get the word out that you can no longer be a non. Now, what the admin does, if she sees a comment that's a non, she screenshots the person and puts it under their comment so you see exactly who it is. And that's her way to dissuade people
- [102:33]
A
using, sorry, I was in a car group. It was a viper or something. And a guy asked such a normal question. It's just a normal question, but he was in a. An ambiguous penguin or something. I was like, ambiguous penguin? Why not just post this as yourself. That is such a normal question for this group. It was like, what oil should I use or something. And he is like, honestly, I hate that it shows up under my name to people who are not in this group because it's a public group.
- [102:58]
B
Yeah.
- [102:59]
A
And I was like, I get it, I get it. But for everybody else that's using it
- [103:02]
B
as a little brat, I saw one
- [103:04]
A
and I just assume a mom.
- [103:06]
B
It was in a mom's group. Then she was like, I just want to know pumpkin patch that isn't muddy like and named one. Okay, but she's anonymous that you just wanted a non money pumpkin patch. But every comment and that it was answering was anonymous. And I mirror. I think so a black mirror episode where no one's talking to anyone because every. And listen, I might be coming from a place where anonymous is not an option for my account and I might be jealous that I can't just say things I want to say.
- [103:42]
A
If I ever, if I ever switch over to nickname, I have to ask myself, why can't you say that with your full chest? Yeah, what.
- [103:49]
B
What are you doing?
- [103:50]
A
If you can't say it as yourself, maybe you shouldn't have been saying it at all.
- [103:54]
B
Here's the crazy thing. In my little community group, it does not have the the option to to do anon or post nicknames. Thank the Lord. I would not want to to be in the group after that. But I do let people submit a post and they can say, please make this anonymous. It's funny. People will make a post and it'll be like, yeah, let me know if you can help me. But I'm like, you're anonymous and it's posting through me. There's no way they can. So I actually have a template and it says, I'm not the person. Don't reach out to me. I don't know their name. I'm not. This is not my issue or my problem. And then off one lady, I did it. I copied and pasted in there. Okay. It's an on so people don't know it's from. She's in the comment section with her full government name saying, can I DM you? Why did you submit it?
- [104:40]
A
What I told Corey is anonymous and nickname, whatever. That breeds more of itself. So don't. Like I told him. I told Corey, listen, I'll help you around this group, but I'm not doing that whole I'm posting as somebody else because I said those posts don't need to be anonymous. Yes. Every once in a while Somebody is having a baby and doesn't want their friends to know or they got laid off. They don't want their friends. But most of it's like, my dog is throwing up on the couch. Please post it. Honestly, I was like, we don't. That doesn't need to be covert to me. If.
- [105:10]
B
And there are very few instances where it's appropriate. If the question you have, it's probably an answer on Google. Like, you would just need to bypass the Facebook group altogether and you'd get your answer like, someone. Does someone know an affordable electrician? You just go to Google and type in affordable electricians.
- [105:28]
A
Yeah, that. That tile and grout class I took this weekend, which is my twin interest. This guy, he's like, I. They have another class on how to vet your contractor. And this guy could not get anyone to call him back. And then the instructor is like, well, how are you finding these contractors? I asked my friends. He's like, nobody is hiring more than one company. They don't. They're only going to just recommend their experience. And I was like, oh, that's true.
- [105:49]
B
Absolutely.
- [105:50]
A
What's his other options? He can't get anyone to call him back. That's my gossip column. So just like, if you're willing to write, write it. Also be willing to assume somebody will know you wrote it, because one, the admins do, but the admins always know.
- [106:05]
B
So it's not even a non. Thank goodness. I don't even care enough to remember the people's names that post it.
- [106:10]
A
But just that lady was like, can I DM you? I said literally, you were the lady who submitted this post.
- [106:16]
B
Why did you need me?
- [106:19]
A
Upcoming events, the midsummer membership sales. The next seven days started yesterday, so it ends on Sunday. If you've ever been on the fence about joining, please join us. We got some cool things coming down. The Piper Blonde.
- [106:29]
B
My blind.
- [106:30]
A
My blind. The Venny blendy is in 16 weeks, which is feels ever closer. Feel like we started almost 52 weeks when I said it's the time is ticking. Back to school. Some of you guys done been back to school. We're not back to school here in this area for three weeks was our turn. Three weeks.
- [106:46]
B
Yeah. He goes back on the 25th. An odd Tuesday.
- [106:49]
A
I hate that. Is that because labor day is the 24th or something? Not.
- [106:52]
B
No, nothing is on the 24th.
- [106:54]
A
Give those teachers one last big old breath.
- [106:55]
B
Yeah, I'm sure it's their in work day. Labor Day.
- [106:58]
A
Not a big cookie day. But it is the signal to me that we switch over to fall brain.
- [107:02]
B
Yeah.
- [107:03]
A
In five weeks. NFL season is in five weeks. Which that NFL themed cookie class gets on sale for ten bucks. Makes for a great diy. Thanks. Yeah. Canadian Thanksgiving to our our hat neighbors. That's 10 weeks. Halloween, 13 weeks and Veterans Day is 14 weeks. So we're narrowing down the year. We're definitely swiftly approaching. Can't believe it's already August at the end day. The of. Of August. It's mid August is back to school.
- [107:28]
B
Yes.
- [107:29]
A
So we really. This is our lock in month. This is the Runway to. Oh my goodness. Push to the rev limiter. Drowning candle from both ends. Holiday season.
- [107:38]
B
Yeah.
- [107:39]
A
I survived the J's yet again.
- [107:41]
B
I opened up my calendar for August to December and I can tell the people who have gotten home from vacation are logging in and booking now.
- [107:50]
A
I have a short weekend trip next week. I could have sworn it was in two weeks.
- [107:54]
B
Weeks.
- [107:54]
A
Could have sworn. Could have sworn. But that's how fast the rest of the year will be coming at us. Crazy. And then you're like, I'll never do this again. And then we're back at February. Valentine's Day. Yeah.
- [108:06]
B
Doing it again.
- [108:07]
A
One text in. So the text number 2282 automatic winner to 15 off of cookie Design Lab Code Twins. But if you text into the podcast, you could get a chance to win a month of Cookie Design Lab, which is one of those songs softwares like, okay, in this procreate course, I'm going to show you how to do designs and sketches. But how much more competitive and flexible could it be if somebody sends you their Canva, which we're going to do, we're going to take a Canva invite, turn it into a sketch, and you could turn that into a custom cookie cutter. And you can do with Cookie Design Lab.
- [108:37]
B
Yeah.
- [108:38]
A
Once you and Corey was printing up a storm yesterday. A storm.
- [108:42]
B
Maybe a storm.
- [108:43]
A
And she. Once you can make your customers custom. Now you're not a custom cookie baker. You're custom custom cookie.
- [108:49]
B
Oh, it's. It's added. Yeah, sure.
- [108:53]
A
Because a lot of times those bakers are like, okay, here's what the invite says. Does anybody know Flamingo looks kind of like this? That I can buy today, get it shipped tomorrow, and the Etsy shop isn't on a summer vacation for the next few weeks. And I don't have to spend $50 to get it from Australia. I know. And Cookie Design Lab using code twins at 15 off is going to be how to do. And if you're overwhelmed, it's not Overwhelming. It's very much easier than you think. So easy. A Corey could do it. Yeah.
- [109:16]
B
And if I'm doing it, it tells you it's easy.
- [109:19]
A
Our texting question is. Hi twins. Thank you so much for all you provide to the cookie community. Well, thank you so much. Redding, California I want to start planning holiday cookie classes. I know we're still in July, but living in San Francisco Bay area events get planned out early. Do you have any suggestions on how to find businesses that are good fit for classes? When contacting this businesses, would going through DM or their Instagram be okay or should it be a formal email? I'm gonna say all of the above and in a series of things I there's a racetrack, an autumn racetrack down the street and I was looking at their social media just to find if I want to do spectator spend a Saturday there. And it was like for the fastest response message us on Instagram. I find that to cut through the clutter everyone has the business app and Facebook app on their phone so you can go to them quickly through Instagram. However, I'd probably leave lead with an email. What do you think I'd leave with an email?
- [110:10]
B
Follow up with an Instagram?
- [110:12]
A
Yeah, so I gotta sneeze. So delve into this.
- [110:16]
B
It's so funny. I we utilized Instagram to get a lot of the vendors for the Vendee Blendy last year but some one shop did just thought it was unprofessional to use that. I think the world is changing though where most people are super receptive for it. But don't leave email out. Email is a great way to introduce
- [110:34]
A
give them too much information and Instagram is going to be be that stripped
- [110:37]
B
down like hey Fawn up down and dirty. This is what the email said a recap here but I would love to just you know get on your docket. But you can find more information via email.
- [110:46]
A
Just search this. So how I I'd layer that is send the email, end it with I know we're really busy and you guys probably are not thinking of holiday classes. If I don't hear from you by Friday, I'll shoot you a message on Instagram. Don't worry about it. So it kind of softens the blow. Doesn't look like a stalker. It doesn't look like you're pressuring them because we don't want people to feel pressure pressured. But yeah, remember when we talked about this and we have a couple podcasts on it. Always lead with how you can value them. So instead of I need a space. Be like, I would love to bring 10 people to your space. And here's kind of how I plan to do that. Here's what my classes look like. If you have pictures from past classes again, remember the businesses need foot traffic and you're promising them the ability to do that. When you promise them that, that then you could say, hey, you could provide a discount if you wanted so people can go shop at your shop after.
- [111:36]
B
Incentivize them. I have X amount of followers, my Facebook page. I'll make a post about you X amount of times. You can leave literature. I have a newsletter that I send out. We can include you in the footer
- [111:46]
A
how you provide that UGC content. So while we're trying to warm up, if you can't hear it in the underlying messages, we don't want to pay to rent this space. We want to keep that money. Somebody in the sugar cookie marketing group was like, I'm opening a brick and mor day and I'd like to rent the space to cook you years and I want to charge a flat rate. But they were like, we'll do percent. Like the bakers are like, hey, I don't want to pay you at all. You know, but I get that this is a baker who's like I could fill the space myself. So we got that. Give and take and finding the compromise which puts the most money in your pocket while also benefiting that business is this is a strategy. Yeah.
- [112:19]
B
So I like to do it non monetary first. Especially if you have a little bit of a following on social media. That always works best. But as cookie classes have gotten a lot more popular since, you know, the onslaught of this we've brought it, talked about it endlessly over the years. So now it's super popular to teach cookie classes. You'll find a lot of people want to do like a division of the but everything's negotiable.
- [112:41]
A
Everything's negotiable. Here's what I'm also going to challenge you. It's a numbers game. So find about 5, 6 spaces you like and send them all that email. You're going to get some nos. That doesn't mean you're worthless as a human being. It just means that wasn't a perfect fit for both of you. Finding six. If you end up with three awesome. Then you got three spaces to choose from. Yeah. And that means you're a great salesperson. It's a 50% conversion rate on at least getting the ball going.
- [113:08]
B
Yeah, the ball going is the hardest Part once it's rolling, it's easy to create that relationship. As with what we talked about earlier in the podcast, you never want to treat your. Your solid homies poorly. So you always want to make sure that you're leaving the place better than you found it. Always making sure to do the shout outs for them, never taking them for granted.
- [113:28]
A
And yeah, Cora and I found a space. It's limited in seating but we don't have to pay for it. So it is worth the. The trade off for us because I consistently post my classes. So we've already posted our Christmas and Halloween classes and they have now reached as of this week a wait list.
- [113:43]
B
Nice. Nice.
- [113:44]
A
So I, I was.
- [113:46]
B
My last week was push the class week. So.
- [113:49]
A
So I, I think we're booked out now cause it was one of them definitely has a wait list. So reading Pennsylvania, I agree with you. Find those locations now. One, you don't have to compete with bakers who all are looking for spaces in that go time and then you can start booking those out because what the ba. What the. When bakers wait till the month before
- [114:08]
B
they really only have two weeks promotional
- [114:10]
A
runtime before they have to make the call.
- [114:11]
B
Yes.
- [114:12]
A
Yeah. Yeah. And when it happens is somebody's like well I haven't been able to fill class. Well what was your run sometime? Well I. Well I have the class in two weeks but I started two weeks ago. Well that's. I understand why I did that makes total sense. However now you gotta. You're in that like there's four people but I needed 10 people. But do I. Yeah, yeah.
- [114:28]
B
Stress running discounts.
- [114:29]
A
It is stressful working like to ask people to pay for something in July. That's in December I'm gonna get cancellations. But again the trade off there is. I'd rather know that I got mostly of the class full and I got a wait list now. So I, I'm better on my cancellations now. I can even add an extra class if we wanted.
- [114:45]
B
Yeah, we did a six month run instead of a full 12 month.
- [114:48]
A
We did back off that because we were finding a lot more cancellations as would be who knows what's going to happen 12 months from now. Except for my dentist who makes me schedule every six our sponsors. Without these sponsors and full disclosure, none of these affiliate links except for one, they're not even a sponsor. These are not affiliate links. If you use these discount codes, these are between you and the sponsor they have offered you directly. We don't make a cut from them. I love that you're using it because it signals that you are listening to the podcast. But this is between. This is the buy. It is not required to be a sponsor to offer a discount. These people have to do this for you guys specifically, Cor and I see nothing of this. So if you sign up for Cookie Design Lab using code twins, that's 15% off that cookie Design Lab has given you directly. They have a five day pass and a year pass. I actually pay for the year.
- [115:36]
B
That's a seven day pass for $5.
- [115:38]
A
Excuse me. I'm so sorry. I'm in the year so never look at you poppers pay for seven days. Bakey bake. Code twins get you 10% off. That's Corey's favorite meringue powder. There's many meringue powders to choose from. But you like that one because it has white food coloring, corn syrup and. Hold on, hold on.
- [115:54]
B
Vanilla extract.
- [115:55]
A
Vanilla extract. I was never going to get that.
- [115:57]
B
I do want to say Eddie, which is Primera. They wanted us to actually talk about Connie, which is the cake sheet printer. They are doing pre orders now and it's shipping in September so we're in August now. You'd be getting it by next month.
- [116:15]
A
Can you explain to me in terms of Eddie's a direct to food printing on top of a cookie printer, what is Connie?
- [116:21]
B
Connie is prints on wafer paper or icing sheets. And you know, there was not a real great printer beforehand. A lot of people used a Canon printer.
- [116:31]
A
Yeah. Which always the alleged is did it run through paper first for. We don't know.
- [116:36]
B
If you didn't know, Primera is actually a printer company. Before it ever made Eddie, it focused on these big old printers. So what they've done is when they've segued into Eddie using edible food coloring, they've also solved that there was a need for people who use cakes who like to do these sugar sheets, the burnaway cakes, things like that. They're still big and a lot of people use them. Especially if you don't have an Eddie. This would be a great segue into getting one because you could still do, you know, know the portraits and you know, the baby invites and use the
- [117:06]
A
photos and things like that.
- [117:07]
B
So they are taking that now if
- [117:09]
A
you would like to sign up. Okay. See, can we order? Oh, let me see. It is on their website, Connie. Oh, it is priced. Ha. It is considerably cheaper than the Eddie, which would be a great tool for the arsenal. It is Connie, the cake sheet printer. So I guess that means it's width. It can cover an entire cake sheet.
- [117:28]
B
Well, so that's a size of a piece of paper. So you just cut it down to size.
- [117:32]
A
Yeah. Very nice. It is 1000. Oh, that's a chat bot. Sorry. 1695. The max area is 11 inches by 17 inches. And pre orders are live right now. Now accepting pre order ships mid September 2026. Nice. Guarantee your spot. You expect your ship date mid September and that is the benefit of the pre order. So you can go to primera.com and the URL URL if you're not using Google is forward slash. Connie Cakesheet printer.
- [117:59]
B
Nice. So that is their announcement that they wanted to do. So now they've really entered all of the baking realm. They have the cookiers, the cake poppers and now the cakers are all covered.
- [118:11]
A
It's engineered to stay clean and ready even after sitting idle. And they're working on its NSF certification which will be the first printer at edible printer.
- [118:22]
B
Nice.
- [118:22]
A
That certification that you know onto the edible sheets. Very cool. Are you tempted? Are you tempted?
- [118:28]
B
I do say not a caker but I'd be tempted to have it.
- [118:31]
A
But where do I put it? Where's the space? But it looks pretty narrow in terms of, you know, I'm always a big like how much space in my life is this? Yes, I do. I know there's a ton of edible food printers but Eddie takes the smallest footprint.
- [118:46]
B
So if you in this teeny tiny
- [118:48]
A
townhouse, maybe in your new house or get a bigger cookie room, it's also
- [118:52]
B
going to be a teeny tiny town. I'm, I'm an empty nester now. I mean I'm, I still haven't for
- [118:56]
A
two years getting empty. Cory San is staying at my house next week. But we, I oddly I only have one bed because I'm one person so I'll have to have a bunk bed. Bun, put him on the floor. So Daisy makes use code TWINS. 10 for 10 off. I love watching Daisy makes on social media. That is a great, great. She's a great person to watch. She's everywhere, always, all at one time. And she has just a robust marketing strategy. Again, it's cookie, it's cake pops for the cookies. I love that tagline because it really explains that she takes the enigma of cake pop cake balls and turns into this system that really resembles cookie cutters. Yeah, it really does.
- [119:37]
B
And they're a natural. If you wanted to add it, you would be using hers to make it make make sense for you. Especially if you're a cookier. We don't have, like, we're not cake poppers. We don't have like all the time to mold them and shape them. I need a disc and I need it now.
- [119:53]
A
Yeah, it's pretty impressive. It's the only way Corey's really been confident in doing it.
- [119:57]
B
Yeah, I don't really. I'm not calling myself a cake popper, but I can kind of.
- [120:01]
A
Did you say somebody ordered a bunch for me? That's next week. I gotta make. Are you using the daisy make system? Is it? I think so.
- [120:08]
B
I think.
- [120:09]
A
Very nice. So it just is a better approach with the kickballs. It's always like snowboarding versus skiing. Like, it's hard to get started with snowboarding, but it's really hard to get good at skiing. Yeah. So they're like cake balls. Really hard to get started. Really hard. Like. But cake. These cake. What do you call them? Not balls.
- [120:26]
B
Just. It is the round circle. It's a cake ball, but it's so heavy it doesn't want to stay on the sticks.
- [120:32]
A
And then he cries and he cracks and he sails and he leaves weeks. It's just a lot. So definitely check out Days of make codes twin 10. We talked about Primaria and Eddie with their Connie and their Freddie and their Eddie. And then this is the only affiliate link. They're not a sponsor of the podcast, but they have been very gracious in donating mixers to vendee blendies and giveaways like that. It's Bosch Nutrimil. And the code there is sugar cookies. You get 20 bucks off, they give us 20 bucks to run the podcast. Corey, what's your twinterest? Do you have one?
- [121:00]
B
My twinterest. I wanted to show you.
- [121:02]
A
Show you.
- [121:03]
B
This is called the Village candle. It's a brand. Found it at the grocery store. Nothing burned longer than this candle.
- [121:09]
A
Did it smell good the whole duration?
- [121:11]
B
Yeah, it's orange cinnamon. And I just want to say, if you want a long burning candle, this is the one. Bath and Body. They'll have my money till the day I die. Their candles burn fast.
- [121:23]
A
They do. They do. And you're putting in hours on these suckers. I'm lighting mine for the hour. I'm looking at it. You're leaving this guy chugging along?
- [121:30]
B
Yeah, leaving him. Come on. This guy was good. Unfortunately, full price. They're 27.99 at a random grocery store.
- [121:37]
A
20.
- [121:39]
B
I bought him at 50 off in January.
- [121:41]
A
You'd have to go.
- [121:43]
B
So he was 15ish dollars. But he just finally burned after burning him so Many times.
- [121:49]
A
So what is your next sniff?
- [121:52]
B
They don't have a ton of different.
- [121:53]
A
What are you choosing?
- [121:56]
B
I wanted to have him again. An orange cinnamon. What?
- [121:58]
A
We just raided Bath and Body Works.
- [122:00]
B
Oh, I'm almost done with those, so
- [122:02]
A
I'll have to out what I need to go next. I only got two. Oh, but you remember I told you they're on sale the other day for 12.95.
- [122:07]
B
I had to say, I'm burning the uggos, so I'm burning Paris Cafe right now.
- [122:12]
A
I hate that. You know what? I'm burning the I. The beach one. It's the one that we got for the.
- [122:16]
B
That one was great. That one was.
- [122:18]
A
It is so strong.
- [122:19]
B
The pean caramel ones, they're. They're not made for a small space. They're overwhelming.
- [122:25]
A
They're overwhelmingly sweet.
- [122:27]
B
So I told myself, burn the ones you don't like before you go to the store there.
- [122:31]
A
Then you'll have in one, burnt one out one. Burn one.
- [122:35]
B
Yeah, that's where I'm at.
- [122:37]
A
Mine. I. I'm not a Lego person. I'll never be a Lego person. But I bought my first and last Lego. I got it right here. A Lego set.
- [122:47]
B
The Dodge Viper.
- [122:48]
A
Ugliest Lego I've ever seen in my life.
- [122:51]
B
How much did that set you back?
- [122:53]
A
64. My little budgeting twin that always ask me what I spend. I know you said, Cory said, make home fun, and then you won't leave it. That'll take me forever. But you left to make home fun. I wanted to see. And I was like, you know, it's like, does my target have it? And then I was like, now I'm dedicated to the hunt and pack. And then I found it when I didn't think it was there. And then I bought it, and I'll put it together and then I'll display it. And then I think, that's pretty ugly. I don't think it looks like a Dodge Marker, but, hey, I think they're.
- [123:21]
B
I. I also gotta say, when I'm bored, I'll bake something random that I find on Internet. You're not a baker, so you don't even have something to eat up your time in that realm? Usually I have every ingredient that I
- [123:34]
A
can just be like, oh, yeah, I need to get your rug done. Which needs to fill up the frame of other rugs I just finished last night. The. Actually, this morning. I was doing it this morning. The floor mat for my car. I guess I gotta fill up the frame, so I'm gonna Add one more for your colors. Cuz I got so many of them. I was thinking of making a flower. It's gonna be like. It's gonna be like, like 14 by 14 inches. Because that's the last part of this.
- [123:58]
B
A little, little tiny baby.
- [124:00]
A
Yeah. Just a daisy with your colors in it.
- [124:02]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [124:03]
A
Remember when I made a daisy, it look like an egg. You did, you did. Now I know all the hacks and it's just like cookies, except for there's no expiration. But there's also nobody asking in Facebook groups for a rug.
- [124:15]
B
So yeah, that, that is true. You're not wanted.
- [124:19]
A
You're not wanted. Nothing expires because nobody wanted in the first place. My twin select, I went. There's this guy who started up a DIYers course. Like you go and you take courses on diying your home stuff.
- [124:34]
B
Yeah.
- [124:34]
A
They liked my energy and they wanted me to leave a be recorded for review. In exchange, they gave me tiling route class. Did I know it would be six hours of my life on a Saturday? No. Do I have a whole new respect for mortar, back buttering and tiling down to the gray routes? Lines that have to slope water down? Yes. Oh, my goodness. The trades. If you work or your hubs works or your wife works in a trade, they earned every penny they kept. That was six hours and we did one tile.
- [125:05]
B
Do you feel like you could tile someone's backsplash Right now?
- [125:08]
A
That's actually the next class is tile backsplash. It's an eight hour class, but you can walk away. You tile a kitchen in that place.
- [125:15]
B
No way back.
- [125:16]
A
Yeah. And I went because the class had just finished. And he was like, it's funny. We teach demo class and they'll demo class to. He's like, ecosystem.
- [125:25]
B
Are you gonna take that class? Eight hours. But you could use a backsplash on your kitchen.
- [125:32]
A
I really could. And I was asking him because I was like, what are. There's me and another woman. We're there for backsplash energy. But then she reveals that she was also for powder room flooring. The big thing about tiling is he's like, floor tiles are a different monster because humans are. Humans put pressure. Yeah, tile. And he said, with tile in the flooring of a bathroom, you have water working against you. Human pressure on a single plate. It was just fascinating. It's a lot. I can see why DIYers get on YouTube and think that's enough. I was really impressed with this whole business model that you can go and take a class he by Nate by trade. He's a Tyler. Yeah. Construction part is additional. But he was well known for tiling for the last 30 years.
- [126:12]
B
Years.
- [126:12]
A
And I was like, this is grueling and the knowledge base you need. And he was like, yeah. And that's half of what this is, is you get our phone number and our email to say, what do I got? How do I got to purchase? One guy was there. His house had asbestos in it. I was like, dude, maybe you shouldn't move.
- [126:27]
B
That would be a natural progression for cookiers who know you're bad before you're good.
- [126:32]
A
And the time in is making mistakes and failing forward. And I was even thinking he was like, the guy who just started his company is learning off your project. Yeah. And he's like. And he's charging accordingly. So. And I was like, the cookie. Just get started. Is learning every order and charges accordingly because their labor rate should be lower. But it is a time in experiencing. And he's like, a lot of this I know because I've made the mistake 10 years ago, 15 years ago. Yeah.
- [126:57]
B
And I. I will say I can look at a cookier and cookie class and I can say, I know what's. What you're running into right now. I've.
- [127:04]
A
I've seen it a million times myself. A couple of things I took back is I was like, this is a great application of teaching cookie classes because we're the same. Really. We were icing the grout. We were piping it in there. It's easy to get lost in your own jargon because you're experienced and.
- [127:21]
B
Yes.
- [127:22]
A
So he kept using like mortar bed. Mortar bed Schluters. And I was like, what does those words mean? He was like, oh, Schluters is a company that sells waterproofing materials that you tile against. And mortar bed is the bottom of your shower has to be graded towards the. So I'm like, oh, no to self. If you're teaching a class and you're like, meringue powder and dry time and 15 seconds.
- [127:40]
B
Yeah.
- [127:40]
A
The rest of us are like, what does that mean? What is that?
- [127:44]
B
Yeah.
- [127:45]
A
No, that's very true.
- [127:46]
B
And it's specific in the marketing world
- [127:49]
A
where those buzzwords are like everywhere.
- [127:53]
B
And then you start saying these buzzwords. People are like, what are you talking about?
- [127:56]
A
Right. Just all the. And it changes every so often. My greatest example, you know, the bakers who don't want to teach because they don't want to change train their competition. Yeah. I left that class saying, saying, I'll never Do this myself. I will hire this out. I have learned that this is very much more difficult than I anticipated. I have gotten actually got their phone number to for remodeling.
- [128:19]
B
Out of the hundreds of people that we've taught cookie classes, I think two still do it.
- [128:25]
A
A lot of people will come back and just say, I just like you doing the hard work. But they'll place orders with Corey as well.
- [128:32]
B
Yeah, yeah. So I, I don't see as me training my competition. I think one lady sells it occasionally and that's about it.
- [128:39]
A
Oh, there you guys have it. Do you have any twin to take a tile and grout class?
- [128:44]
B
Would I take a tile and grout class? They had.
- [128:47]
A
They have some also creative classes, like intro to sewing, that quill papering. It's not just like, oh, yeah, you
- [128:55]
B
know, I went to the wreath making class in December.
- [128:57]
A
You like a class?
- [128:59]
B
I've gone to a macaron class at Sur La Thomas Job.
- [129:02]
A
You know, I'll say. I, I don't like classes, but wow, do I know that they serve a purpose? Like, what if I said I was gonna do that by myself? Like, he was.
- [129:11]
B
I know.
- [129:11]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, yeah.
- [129:13]
B
We went to the sourdough class. I bought a pasta making class for Ashley and her husband one time. Honestly, I'm a class fan.
- [129:20]
A
You, you thrive in classes.
- [129:23]
B
I hate going to them. And I love after I've gone.
- [129:26]
A
And that's what I, I, I got to the parking lot, I was like, how long is this class? Oh, my goodness, six hours. And I was like, I'm glad I didn't Google that ahead of time. Yeah.
- [129:33]
B
Now you have a people Who Cookie at CookieCon for eight hours.
- [129:37]
A
Wow.
- [129:38]
B
Wow, wow.
- [129:40]
A
I was exhausted.
- [129:41]
B
Yeah.
- [129:43]
A
Yeah. Okay, Cory, let's cut them loose.
- [129:46]
B
Cut them loose and edit this. So my being sad about this not
- [129:50]
A
recording is no longer in. I might include it. Okay. And guys, don't forget to go to the midsummer membership sale. We'll see you this time next week. Hold on.