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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 226 - Podcast Guests Heather and Kim, you asked for less Heather and Corrie, and now you get Heather and Kim! Close enough, right?!

Heather and Kim are self-titled "ESBs" - emotional support bakers - and really break down the value of having a baking buddy to partner with, vent to, talk shop with, and have in your corner when Uber steals your order.

👋 Meet Heather Campbell Brookshire of TheCakeWhispererUSA

If you've ever come to a CookieCon Sugar Cookie Marketing Happy Hour, you've likely met Heather Campbell Brookshire. She's best known for her 3.5xs debut on The Food Network and her Gingerbread Facebook Live (I don't have the link to this still, but she's workin' on getting me a copy).

• 📌 Disney Trip Planning - https://www.reachforthemagicdestinations.com/heatherbrookshire
• 📌 Cookie and Cake Competitions 101 - https://youtu.be/3fIZT96Wdek

When she's not slingin' icing across the silver screen, Heather is the embodiment of "A Disney Adult," and 🐭 also doubles as a Disney Trip Planner (free for the hiring for those uninitiated by the Mouses' rewards plan).

Heather's been baking more cakes than cookies for 10 years (come this October), and gives us a quick deep dive into how to get featured on the Food Network. The key, she says? Try, try, and try again - and just when you're about to give up, expect an email.

👋 Meet Kim DeMille Sims from Beans and Brews & Wesley's Treats

Kim thought cottage baking lacked enough stress (lol), so she dove headfirst into owning her own Beans and Brews franchise in Spring, Texas. Now she's taken her knowledge of allergy-friendly baking into the brick-and-mortar world.

• 📌 Allergy-Friendly Baking Basics with Kim DeMille Sims - https://youtu.be/2Ll5hN9Mi-c
• 📌 Beans & Brews - https://www.beansandbrews.com/coffee-shops/spring-rhodes-shopping-center/

Kim's dream of owning her own coffee-infused bakery started when she was 12, and for the last three years, she's earned an entirely new vocabulary, from "FDD" to handling the SBA.

She pipes us through her backstory, employee turnover, what her future plans are, and ☕️ how she got to owning her own dream coffee beans in this week's podcast.

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or watch it on YouTube) by searching for Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 226 - Podcast Guests Heather Brookshire and Kim Sims.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 225 - Diamond Demand, we're telling EVERYONE they need DIAMONDS right NOW. 💎💎💎💎

Just kidding - this is just an analogy, so before you make this into something it's not - we're not talkin' about the diamond industry or bl🩸ood diamonds - we're just comparing a not-necessary-for-life luxury good with not-necessary-for-life luxury bakes. And there's somethin' we can all learn from the "very very slightly" interesting podcast comparison.

Diamonds are a luxury item, but how can my local Tysons Corner Center mall be home to so many jewelry stores? It's because while they're selling a similar product (diamonds), they've each carved out their niche among the competition. Blue Nile focuses on web-based marketing, Helzberg is a chain, Mervis is a D2C brand, and Lenkersdorf focuses on diamond watches.

They're all competitors, but because of their respective niches, they aren't really.

💍 1. Dye-Free Baker = Ethically Sourced

Okay, no - I'm not supporting the train that using dyes in your food coloring makes you unethical, but the comparison here is that diamond suppliers who spend more money to focus on ethical sourcing measures tend to charge more. Thus, they incorporate that messaging in the marketing to counter the price gap between their competition.

Same with the dye-free bakers. They can use the current climate to market the potential health benefits of a dye-free approach, niching them down a lil' bit further and also still allowing them to charge enough to cover their costs + make a profit (dye-free food coloring is quite a bit more expensive at the time of writing).

💍 2. Luxury Branding = Tiffany's

If there's one diamond company known for color, it's "Tiffany Blue." People will regularly overpay for that teal color because they're buying the luxury experience and the branding, and they don't mind payin' the big bucks for it.

A baker who wants to niche down can focus on the buyer's experience. Website, branding, check-out, communication, packaging = hit this out of the park and you're in a "name your price" arena.

💍 3. Volume Baking = Wholesale Importers

Now this is where you'll find twin2 supporting her shiny habit. Diamond importers that sell wholesale cut out the middlemen, the fancy packaging, and the white glove treatment in exchange for selling you more for (allegedly) less.

This is the baker that, like Corrie's not-client requested, "slaps icing on a delicious cookie." Some buyers (like the twin) just want a good deal at the sacrifice of everything else. Bakers who focus on cheaper prices and cheaper production will niche themselves away from the higher-end branded baker.

💍 4. Drop Cookiers = Moissanite

Now now, down dog - this isn't to say drop cookies are cheap knock-offs. Rather the point is that they're not even competing with diamonds at all. They're a completely different product snagging some market share that the diamond sellers wouldn't be able to sell to anyway! People who want a giant, delicious drop cookie likely won't love the steep price of a vanilla-only sugar cookie. This is a neat way to niche it up. Talk about a power play, the baker who can sell both sugar cookies and drop cookies.

We compare the "lab-grown" baker in the podcast, but I need to go get some meds and some sleep, so give the podcast a listen!

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or watch it on YouTube) by searching for Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 225 - Diamond Demand.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 224 - Main Street Money, the Main Street Cookie Collab is BACK and it's in two weeks on August 28th at 11:00 AM est. This is a fun collab because it incorporates so much "local" than our other collabs do. ⚠️ Keep in mind, this collab is on a Thursday, not our typical Friday - much thanks to my inability to read a calendar.

⚠️ Also, heads up - we've shifted the time an hour later to 11:00 AM est - 12:00 PM est. We did this so our West Coast friends don't have to be up early to participate.

📌 1. What's a cookie collab?

A cookie collab is a single-day, single-hour online event where a group of bakers design a cookie (or a picture) based on a specified theme. At that designated time, bakers will post their cookie creations to Instagram using a specific hashtag (#SCMCollabLocal). We use a unique hashtag for each collab - ⚠️ meaning don't use the same hashtag as the last collab.

During that hour, all the collabers will engage with other bakers' posts by liking and commenting (but not following). It lasts for 1 hour, and it's a great way to increase engagement by hijacking the algorithm to show your post to more of your followers. A win-win-win. Some collabs are invite-only, but this is an open invite. All we ask is that you register to get reminders and help with your captions (not required, but appreciated).

📌 2. Details on this Main Street collab

This is one of my favorite collabs because the potential pay-offs are so much higher than our other collabs. The Main Street Collab is just that - you find a local business and turn their logo into a cookie. Yes, it's similar to the "cookie my logo" collab we did last month, but this one ups the ante because we're featuring a local company - more on that in a minute.

• ➡️ Time: Thursday, 11:00 AM EST
• ➡️ Date: August 28th, 2025
• ➡️ Use Hashtag #SCMCollabLocal
• ➡️ Register Here: https://form.jotform.com/SugarCookieMarketing/main-street-cookie-collab

📌 3. How to choose a business to feature

Don't feel overwhelmed here - the easier this is, the better. But if you're looking for some tips to maximize potential with this collab, here's what we recommend:

• ✅ Find a hyper-local company.
• ✅ Consider featuring a restaurant or coffee shop.
• ✅ Try to pick a business that already has a bit of a following.
• ✅ Choose a company that's active on social media - specifically on Instagram (bonus if you see they reshare a lot of content).
• ✅ Find more ways you can squeeze content from this collab-featured business.

📌 4. What you're going to post

At 11:00 AM (est), you're going to post the logo cookie on your Instagram. Ideally, the photo of the cookie is taken in front of the business's front door (bonus if you get their logo in the pic too) - you'll likely get more traction that way. Your local audience will think, "Oh hey! I've been there, I love that place!"

Your caption is going to feature either facts about the company, your favorite menu items, or why the location means something to ya - make it interesting for your readers (and for the company you featured - they'll be delighted to read about themselves).

You're also going to tag the company's Instagram handle to see if we can get their attention (and possibly a reshare). Once you post, you're gonna engage with other bakers who used the same hashtag while they come to your post and engage too! This is a fantastic way to get your start in corporate orders - some bakers will eve

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 223 - Business Victim Mindset, we are in the slowest baking month of the YEAR. Yep - last week of July / first week of August = the Google trends report where "sugar cookie" is least searched.

Conversely, 📊 the end of the slowest month begins the uptick of our busy season - but that's not the point of today's podcast. We're focusing on the "hanging up of the apron" baker who looks for indicators that the industry is dead. Pack it up, boys, ain't no one want cookies no more! The cows came home, and they didn't bring money with 'em.

WRONG. While it feels that way, this has always been our yearly industry ebb and flow. "The J Months" (💸 January, June, and July) make you question if you're good at business at all, and the Q4 months make you feel like you're on top of the world.

We are here - August 3 - 9. 🕵️ In this graph from Google Trends, we see a year in Google search for the term "sugar cookies." That peak is the week before Christmas. That trough? That's us literally this week. 🎄 So if Christmas is 100%, bakers are looking at 14% of our highest order volume (📉 data doesn't exactly mean that, but it can be extrapolated as a decent representation of our calendar year as bakers).

Why are we talking about the low point of baking leads? Because it's during this time that bakers let their business happen to them. They are reactive. They let the ebbs and flows control their moods. 😞 Low leads = low mood. The proverbial "hanging up the apron" quitting posts tick up around this time.

😢 It feels like the end is nigh. But here's today's challenge: happen to your business. Something's not working? Try it a different way. Class didn't book out? BoGo tickets until it does. Summer rain watered your sales numbers at that last farmer's market? Lightning flash sale it is.

1. Your farmer's market event gets rained out

If there's anything more unpredictable than when Corrie will be on the podcast, it's the weather on the day of a farmer's market. We can't control the weather, but we can control our perspective on it.

• 🤕 Business happening to you: You baked everything. You had high hopes for sales, now you're sulking because it was a total wash.
• 💪 You happening to your business: You jump on an impromptu Facebook Live to see if anyone wants to snag a "lightning flash deal" on your bakes. You gain a new audience of last-minute orders, and your product doesn't go to waste - you even recoup some of your costs, maybe even some profit.

2. There was low attendance at your vendor event

It happens - the vendor coordinator drops the ball (ahem - wedding vendor expo a la 2024) and no one shows up. But you prepped, spent money on your displays, baked, and even lugged your Eddie there for a photo-booth setup.

• 🤕 Business happening to you: You pack up early and leave. You then complain about the entire event and coordinator in a local community group - heck, they deserve it for wasting your time.
• 💪 You happening to your business: You realize attendance is low, but you brought your DSLR camera. You start connecting with other vendors and take a few photos of them in action. You grab their business card and make a connection, thus potentially securing a referral source.

3. There was another baker at your holiday market

Nothing's worse than showing up to a Holiday Market full of your competitors, especially when they told you that you'd be the only cookie baker.

• 🤕 Business happening to you: You complain to management and forever burn that bridge.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 222 - Return of the Twith, the twin is BACK in business, and she means business with this week's topic: reach isn't everything.

We played a clip from marketer David Glu, who lists how your audience's interactions might signal what your content isn't doing for them.

• 📈 Low Likes = Your content isn't relatable
• 📉 Low Comments = Your content isn't thought-provoking
• 📈 Low Saves = Your content doesn't add enough value
• 📉 Low Shares = Your content is not engaging
• 📈 Low Views = Your content is missing a good hook

I like this approach to diagnosing a reach problem because it doesn't allow you to say, "Well, nothing's working, I'm going to quit making content." Instead, it forces you to look at the reach problem as a symptom (🤔 "What do I need to tweak here?" versus a profile problem (😓 "Facebook is limiting my page reach.").

🔨 One of those is in your power to fix, and one of those is not.

But also consider how many people you're reaching. 30 per post? 100 per post? 1,000 per post? Seeing other bakers reach hundreds of thousands of people every time they twiddle their fingers across a keyboard can be disheartening.

But imagine you were asked to speak to a room of 30 people. Would you be nervous? Of course.

How about a room full of 100 people? Talk about a lil' perspiration station under them armpits, right?

How about an auditorium of 1,000 people? That'd be a MASSIVE audience. Yet when we see the reach of "30 people" in our Facebook metrics, out the window goes the thought that those people ARE potential buyers.

If 30 people placed an order with you tomorrow, would you be booked out for a month or two? Then remember which metrics are guiding your content focus.

Your hyper-local followers are your target audience as a local baker, so no - you were never supposed to expect to reach 100,000 people with that post, because if 95% of those people aren't able to place a local order with you, it wasn't the metric to score your content by.

Yes, focus on metrics. No, don't let the wrong metric trip you up. Reach isn't as important as conversions (aka people opening their wallets). Yes, they're related, but they're more like second cousins, not twins. When one does well, it's not always indicative of the other doing well.

🎟️ My class kit social media posts get max 3 - 4 likes. My cookie classes? Already booking out in December at $85/ticket with a waitlist. My conversion metric outperformed my engagement metric, and I'm fine with that because, to my business model, conversions are more important than likes.

Join the Main Street Cookie Collab on Thursday (ahem), August 28, 2025, at 11:00 AM EST. It's a great way to produce hyper-local content. But then take that content in a few directions. That's what a good marketer would do.

• 📸 Make the single-image Instagram Main Street Collab post.
• 📸 Make a carousel post featuring the cookie, the menu, the restaurant's facade, the lunch you ordered there, etc.
• 📸 Make a Reel outta your trip to turn the business into a cookie.
• 📸 Post your photo roll-up to a local FB group and write a restaurant review.
• 📸 Have your FB page audience vote on which business they want you to cookie-fy next.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 221 - Money Talk with the Miracles, Corrie's still outta commission, so we've got another Miracle sister as a stunt double - meet Ashley with YNAB.com.

Ash is the older (and wiser) sister and also an employee of an app that helps folks manage their money. Now, this is not a sales pitch; that said, I do use the app (and pay full price - what happened to sibling hookups?!), and we're giving away 3 months of it in the Sugar Cookie Marketing group.

But we are talkin' about the "YNAB Way" - an approach they take to help business owners and individuals look at the way their money works differently than we're typically told to. The goal of this unique approach is to remove the "ick" of budgeting and replace it with a spending strategy. Basically, they put you and your money on the same side of the war against debt and dollar dread.

Here's the "YNAB Way" approach as it applies to bakers:

• 💵 1. What does this money need to do before I’m paid again?
• 💵 2. What larger or less frequent spending do I need to prepare for?
• 💵 3. What can I set aside for next month’s spending?
• 💵 4. What goals, large or small, do I want to prioritize?
• 💵 5. What changes do I need to make, if any?

The key is giving every dollar a job. That means each month, every dollar you intake gets assigned a role, aka a job. In your "money that came in" line, there will ideally be 0 dollars because all those dollars were moved from the "ready to be given a job" and then were allocated to some line item in your budget.

That's where the 5 steps come in.

The first "job" your dollars need to tackle is the things that, if not paid, you won't have a business next month. Think website hosting fees, licensure fees, and booth fees. Got those dollars assigned? Cool - we're still in business.

Step 2 - The next are those not frequent but very necessary expenses (YNAB calls them sinking funds). These are things like yearly renewals, oven repairs or replacements, insurance policies, heck, maybe your Cookie College yearly renewal you got at a MAJOR discount during the Mid-Summer Membership Sale next week (you smart spender, you) - all things you gotta have, but aren't monthly bills.

Step 3 gets your money working ahead. Instead of just funding your bills for this month, imagine a world where next month is already accounted for, too. *Sighs in relief* As wise older sister Ash said, "We're trying to level out the financial roller coasters."

Step 4 is my personal favorite. Once the bills are all budgeted for, we can start prioritizing our dream spending. Ash says you can learn a lot about a baker through their budget, especially when it comes to goals and wants. Think buying that Eddie, or going to CookieCon 2026, or spending with (budgeted) reckless abandon at The Vendy Blendy.

And we end with Step 5 - the overview and the adjustment. We see what we had to spend, we see what we will spend, and we now see what we want to spend - where can we optimize? Where can we dream bigger? Where can we spend less? Like Ash says, "It's a constant conversation with yourself about how you want your money to work for you."

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or watch it on YouTube) by searching for Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 221 - Money Talk with the Miracles.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 220 - Ope, It's Amy!, we continue on our "regular scheduled programming" departure to introduce our first ever podcast guest - 🎂 Amy Russell of CookiesTakeTheCake (https://www.instagram.com/cookiestakethecake)!

💥 Now here's the funny part: Amy has been a part of the Sugar Cookie Marketing moderation team for like almost 5 years, and yet we've never met her before. Attempted to? Yes, many times. But she's 16 hours away in Missouri, and we're dying of heat exhaustion in the Nation's Swamp... I mean, Capitol.

But claim that no more, 🚦🚗💨 for Amy went an additional 8 hours outta her way to be the first ever podcast guest as Corrie preps for her hysterectomy surgery (today actually - she'll be under when you're reading this email. 🙏 Healing thoughts, twin #2!).

Why give this podcast a listen? Amy's got a unique story - 🥣 like many bakers do, how she found herself on a whisk and a prayer is an interesting story involving starting with gluten-sensitive cakes and migrating into the wild world of sugar cookies due to their ease of freezing - something that comes in handy when you've got 👦👦👦👦👦 5 boys under 17 years of age (🏥 ER visits seem to be their favorite vacation destination).

Amy has structured her business in a way that allows her to juggle everything that life throws at their family of 7 - from church missions trips to after-school sports activities. 🔧 Her bakery is a tool to not only add income to the family's bottom line but also the flexibility needed to play Manager Mom - 🔧🛠️🪛🔩 all of which are more tools she uses to increase her brand awareness and network to new potential clients in a pretty neat way (I won't spoil it for ya, you can hear it on this week's episode).

👂 Since I don't have kids and Corrie only has one, it's an interesting listen to see what it all looks like under the hood of a large family.

The big takeaway from Amy? She says to find your niche. In her words, "If the market's saturated, ✍️ then call me the ink." And her defining statement is that there's enough work to go around if you're willing to niche for it. And I'm here for this. There's enough cookies to go around when you're the gluten-free, mini-baker serving an area outside a massive city where your unique setup allows you an even more unique marketing opportunity.

Tune in next week for Podcast Guest #2 - the older Miracle sister!

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or watch it on YouTube) by searching for Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 220 - Ope, It's Amy!