Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
👋 Hey - Heather and Corrie here with the Baking it Down Podcast with Sugar Cookie Marketing (a group on Facebook full of sugar cookiers turned business owners).
🍪 We're here to help you rise with your reach, flood with new followers, bake up new ideas, and make that all-important dough (while makin' that dough - see the pun there?)
🤑. What’s it about? We’re a Facebook Group turned Podcast, Membership, Book Club, and Baking 101 that’s dedicated to assisting bakers in effectively marketing online to generate more sales and better manage their businesses.
🧠 With free Facebook Live classes, hundreds of resources, and thousands of like-minded bakers, there’s a lot to learn in "SCM" (aka Sugar Cookie Marketing). ️🎧 As an extension of our Facebook group, this podcast is here to let you learn by listening. 📈 We'll cover group topics, marketing trends, and more (leaving this wide open in case Corrie wants to start singing).
💸 We take the sweet art of selling online to the cottage bakery world with marketing methods that move products (and pastries).👂 So open up those glorious ear canals because we have a podcast! Just when you’ve thought you’ve “heard” it all with those marketing "miracle" twins (that's our last name - not a proclamation), we’ve got something just for you each week!
🥣 As a baker, you don't always have the luxury of two hands needed to scroll in Sugar Cookie Marketing Group or crack open a book in Sugar Cookie Bookies, but what you can do is listen (unless you're my kid asking “what’s for dinner” for the millionth time).
👐 Hands full of flour? No problem! 👍 18 dozen iced cookies due tomorrow? Let’s do this. The Baking it Down Podcast by Sugar Cookie Marketing is a weekly podcast geared toward helping you grow your bakery business - dropping (almost) every Tuesday.
📅 We choose a topic each week that's either something new and emerging in the world of social media or something that we saw in "The Group" that was a hot topic and we bake it down... I mean, "break" it down for you. 🗯️ What you can expect in the podcast is about an hour of chit-chat with the meat and potatoes right at the beginning of the episode.
🥔 That’s when we dive into the marketing topic of the week! 📞 Oh yeah, folks can call / text / email in with their questions too - a fun way to hear from other bakers out there.
Our promises to you:
1️⃣ We always make it clean = no cursing. We understand that you are busy and could be around little ones while also trying to get your weekly dose of business growth so we make sure that each episode would make our grandma proud and keep it clean so you can listen while also living your life.
2️⃣ We always make it fun. There’s a lot of negativity in the world so we try and make the podcast an upbeat and fun learning experience for you. I mean, we try to make the Instagram updates and changes as happy as we can, but come on Instagram! Give it a rest! No more changes!
3️⃣ Other than that, we take a positive approach to marketing We are also *not* professional podcasters. I feel like we need to say this because, hey, sometimes we get giggles! We do our best to extend our marketing knowledge to you all free of charge each week at the cost of listening to our higher-than-normal pitched voices and the occasional giggle spree.
4️⃣ You can find the podcast on all the major platforms and you can typically expect a new episode each Tuesday afternoon (unless life happens). We invite everyone to listen.
Either start from the beginning or work backward! The episodes don’t build off themselves so you won’t be confused hearing one before the other. You just might miss new Lives we mention but you can always catch the replay in the Sugar Cookie Marketing Group on Facebook!
Baking it Down with Sugar Cookie Marketing 🍪
256. Baking it Down - Nextcuses
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🤷 Nextcuses - How to get around your own excuses.
In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 256 - Nextcuses, we wanted to talk about somethin' that crops up every month there's a Cookie Collab (Pipe a Park Collab is this Friday btw - oh, you won't be able to participate? Hold onto that thought.).
We get it - 🥺 life is lifing, the kids are screaming, the clients are screaming louder than the kids, the spouse is upset, the in-laws are coming over, and you're about .002 seconds from crying in a Target aisle. 😭
Your excuses = valid. None of those things is a lie. But all of those things are costing you business. 💪 But you can re-pattern your excuses to be more honest, and thus, more useful in understanding how you and your business work together.
✨ The "Five-Minute Rule"
Most excuses are born from the fear of how long or difficult a task will be.
🖐️ Tell yourself you will do the task for only five minutes. So it's not, "I'll take the twins 8-hour bootcamp on in-person cookie classes," but instead it's, "I'll start watching the Bootcamp for just 5 minutes."
- ✅ Why it works: The hardest part of any task is the transition from "doing nothing" to "doing something." Once the seal is broken, the excuse of being "too tired" or "too busy" usually fades because you’ve already started.
🏋🏽🔥💪🏼🎧 I do this with the gym (my most hated place on earth). "I'm allowed to just drive to the gym, walk in, and leave" becomes, "Okay, find - I'll do a few exercises." We're literally tricking our brains into being productive-ish. And productive-ish is better than production-less.
✨ Practice "If-Then" Planning
Excuses thrive with obstacles. The minute that gym parking lot is too packed? 🏎️💨 Ya girl hitting the gas right back home. And while it feels good in that minute (trust me - there is no higher high), I still didn't get my exercise in, and it'll cost me my cortisol, good sleep, and a healthy body.
The solution - if-then approach to obstacles. "If the gym is packed, I'll go for a long walk." 📸 And "If I run out of time to record a Reel for Instagram, I'll post a photo instead."
- ✅ Formula: "If [Obstacle] happens, then I will [Action]."
- ✅ Example: "If I feel too tired to work on that set after dinner, then I will set a timer for 10 minutes and just do the easiest task on my list."
✨ Rephrase Your Language
This is my favorite one (probably because I'm most guilty of it). Excuses are masked as "can't." "I can't do the collab, "I can't record that Reel," "I can't make a website because..."
This takes the power from you and puts it on the reason (whatever comes after the "because). It makes things appear out of your control. Switch to "don't" or "choose not to" to take that power.
- ❌ Instead of: "I can't do the Pipe a Park collab because I recovering."
- ✅ Try: "I am choosing not to participate in the Pipe a Park collab. I'm tired from a recent surgery, and I don't feel like it right now."
Why this works: Taking ownership of the choice you make helps you realize you are in control. If you don't like the way the "choice" feels, you are more likely to change the behavior. 🤔 You may think, "Well, I am recovering, but going for a walk might be a nice experience, and I have a frozen cookie I could thaw."
In this podcast, we cover 2 more approaches to turn your excuses into next-cuses. Tune in to learn about "frictionless starts" and "pay-off audits."
👂 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 256 - N
