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🎤 Cookier Interview - Taylor Gandolfi with Taylor'd Cookies.

In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 271 - Cookier Interview - Taylor Gandolfi, continuing on with our cookier interview series, we snagged Taylor Gandolfi this week. She's been baking as a side hustle (more on her Italy trip below) since November, and comes from a UX degree, working a day job in public sector user experience design. When asked what she could bring to a podcast interview, her write-up explains this episode perfectly:

"My journey into cookie decorating comes from a lifelong artistic foundation; 🎨 I have loved to draw and paint since before I can remember. I wanted to be an art major in college, but my parents steered me towards a UX design degree.

Before cookies, 🐱🐶🐕🐈‍⬛🐾 I previously had a commissioned painting side hustle and painted whimsical pet portraits primarily (ex: a customer's cat playing drums for his favorite band, a dog playing for a customer's favorite hockey team, a fancy dog drinking a cocktail, etc.). 👶🏻 Unfortunately, this side hustle became unfeasible when I started having babies.

I picked up cookie decorating when I was struggling with postpartum anxiety with my second baby. 🧸 🍪 🤎 I found it to be a wonderful creative outlet, very therapeutic, and got me away from doomscrolling.

I decorated a few sets for my preschooler's class, and the preschool director saw them and was very encouraging. She approached me with an idea to partner with the preschool on presales and give back 20% of the proceeds to the preschool. 📈 From there, I was able to grow my portfolio, get other custom orders from preschool moms, and grow my social media.  

I also work full time as a product designer, ✨ with specialized experience in AI tools. As a product designer, my day-to-day looks like listening to users (or customers), honing in on what they need, translating that into concepts for digital experiences, 🚫 while mitigating risk. ✅ I use that same framework with my customers when designing cookies.

I believe for the podcast, I could provide a lot of insight to listeners on how to scale 🙍‍♂️ human-centered design practices into their cookie business. I can also speak to how cookiers can leverage tech and AI as a tool to help with their process (ex: run lean experiments to mitigate risk, then scale what works well).

As someone who works in AI, 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 I believe that the world is craving human-created products and is really tired of AI slop. With that said, AI is not something that will replace cookiers, 🛠️ but a tool to help cookers do the best job possible when embraced."

If you want to snag her prompt parameters - here it is. C-A-R-E

• 👾 C - Context. Provide as much context as possible
• 👾 A - Action. Be very specific in the actions you want it to take.
• 👾 R - Rules. Telling the AI exactly what to do and not to do, giving it constraints.
• 👾 E - Examples. Attach screenshots of what you like, AND what you don’t like. Hate something the AI won't change? Export it to Canva and make adjustments. 

She adds a really good trick for getting AI to play ball: using talk-to-type - you tend to talk very conversationally, and you talk more. The more information you provide the AI (both positive and negative), the more it has to work with.

👂 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 271 - Cookier Interview - Taylor Gandolfi.