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☎️ Not All Leads Are Created Equal

Let's define some words before we jump into this week's podcast topic:

• ✅ Lead: someone contacting you to secure a potential product or service
• ✅ Qualified Lead: a lead that has been vetted and is willing to pay your price or work with your availability
• ✅ Converted Lead: a lead that has turned into a sale, a sign-up, or a confirmation (ideally this is when money exchanges hands)

️🎯 So - the goal of marketing is to generate leads - ie. get the phone to ring and the inbox to ping. But the goal of sales is to convert a lead (generated from marketing) into money (a conversion). 

🤔 So how do we qualify leads? Ideally, before they even see the lead in our inbox. That's where lead qualification comes into play - doing things to ensure that the lead that hits our Facebook messenger is one that's ready to reach into their wallet and pay our price. 

If you find that your leads often turn into Casper, 👻 you probably need to qualify them better before they reach your inbox.

📠 Lead Qualification:

To qualify a lead before they ask how much then play the "let me ask my husband" card, let your marketing do the heavy lifting. How? 📸 Great question - high-quality photography is a perfect jump-off point along with these other tips to get ya cut out to qualify leads:

📞 Higher end, better photography
📞 Copy that includes high-end keywords (not discount verbiage like "sale") 
📞 Base price listed multiple times / places
📞 Posting in places where the ideal audience exists (not in Buy Nothings / FB Marketplace which is OBO)

🚗 Allow me to demonstrate my point on why photography makes a world of difference. Here's a Mercedes AMG-GLE. I don't own this car, but boy would I love to. It's the same car in two different photos. The top photo - is in an insurance claims lot. The bottom photo? A photo taken from Mercedes' website.

🚘🚘 It's the same car in both photos - but one makes you think, "Wow - that's a $$$ car," and one makes you think, "Hm, maybe I can actually afford this - I'll just need to teach one cookie class every day for the entire year. Easy, right?" 

💰 Another great way to qualify your leads is by having your base price posted everywhere. 

😩 "But twins - what if that drives them off?!" 

Perfect - that's the goal. 💸 When you're just too far apart on price, you've got a recipe for a tire kicker on your hands. If I think you're going to tell me the cookie quote is $20, but you tell me it's $120 - there's very little salesmanship you can say to help me make that monetary jump. 

By posting your "my prices start at" disclaimer, you help people qualify themselves. 🧼 Just like Car Wash Steve, had he said, "Car detailing starts at $100," I wouldn't have been emotionally side-swiped thinking it was a $40 service. 😲

A great way to implement these base price notices is through your Facebook and Google auto-responses.

Here's where you can access your auto-response messages through Business Manager (on desktop). Go to business.facebook.com > click on the Inbox icon on the left > click on "Automations" button on the top right.

📠 Lead Conversions:

📞 Quick Response Time
📞 High-end Customer Service 
📞 Easily Accessible Booking Process
📞 Social Proof (Reviews)
📞 Professional Email / Website
📞 Accepting Credit Cards (Multi Payment Options)

Once the qualified lead hits the inbox, it's time to turn into a salesman. Listen - they already know what your base is. They're even ready to reach into their wallets. How deep they reach is up to you selling them.

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📍 Community Groups 101 - Creating Your Greatest Lead Source

Community groups - you love them, you hate them, you love to hate them, you hate to love them - but they are a lead source powerhouse, and we're not ones to sit on the sidelines when it comes to making that dough (baking and monetary types). 

So what happens when you get banned from a community group? Or when your community group doesn't allow sales? Or if your community group is a dead group plagued by mobile detailing duct cleaners? Well - you make your own community group.

And that's easier said (on the podcast) than done, but here's some tips to get you started in crafting a value-added community group from scratch.

📑 1. Branding

📌 Group Name should be Brand + Location + State
📌 Create a Page + Group
📌 Branded Graphics (Cohesive across Page + Group)
📌 Comprehensive About Section
📌 Group Settings (Private / Visible / Discoverable) 
📌 Add Secdonary Admin + Page as Admin

You'll want your community group to include both your city and state (this will vary depending on the population of your locality), but we need to optimize for Facebook Search (a version of SEO) - so include the city and state (unlike Corrie who has now found how just how many "Lake Ridges" there are in the US). 

Create a corresponding business page - yes, you'll have to run another page, but pages allow for more flexibility in ads and you can also set the page as the group owner, cross-link the page and the group, and run ads as the page (group ads are slowly rolling out). 

Regarding branding - update the group's cover to match the page's cover - pro-tip: find a photo (or go out and take a photo) of a recognizable fixture in your community - it'll resonate with your audience when they see it and think "hey, I live there! I'll join this group!" 

Write a few paragraphs as your About Section. About sections are SEO real estate but they also help your audience know what the group is about. Answer "who, what, where, when, why" to cover all your "about section" basics. 

Your group is discoverable, but we don't want a free-for-all. Set your group to private (this will force people to answer the entry questions - more on that later), visible (hidden groups are invite only and not our goal), and discoverable (Facebook will recommend your group to others). 

Facebook groups no longer allow admins to boot primary admins (awesome), so add one as a back-up (make sure it's someone you trust with strong passwords). You can also set your page as an admin. Any content managers should be set as mods.

📑 2. Content Strategy is a Growth Strategy

📌 Create Value-Added Content
📌 You'll be Talking to Yourself on Posts
📌 Go out and Make Local Videos (About Town) 
📌 Create Resource Lists
📌 Create Weekly Content Buckets 
📌 Post Consistently!!!
📌 Hyper Local - Memes / Videos
📌 It'll Require Monetary Investment 

The hard part of making a valuable group is coming up with the valuable content. It's work - and it's hard work, consistently, over a long period of time, with very little thanks. Trust the process. Build it and they will come... to find out where the local splash pads are. 

For a bit, you're going to be talking to yourself, and it'll feel weird. Get a family member to start a dialogue in the comments (this helps with the group's engagement and the post's reach). Hit the pavement and record local about-town videos! Again - no one will watch them at first. Trust 👏 the 👏 process. 

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📑 A list of EOY Tasks to set you up for sales in 2024

Hopefully you've survived the holidays and with NYE being a more muted cookie holiday, you get a chance to breathe, meet your kids you've not seen in 6 months because you've been sequestered in the kitchen, and take a little time to binge some good ol' Netflix. 

During this lull of a week in between 2023 and 2024, here are some easy wins you can knock out to set yourself up for some sales in 2024 (hey - businesses don't get a break, amiright? The salesman never sleeps!). 

📑 1. Update your cover photo.

Some of you beautiful humans be rockin' a cover photo longer than my last relationship - brush off the cobwebs and give that photo-heavy real estate some TLC. Lean into the day of Loooove if you want to signal to your audience that you'll be offering Valentine's Day cookies, or - if you're just not ready to acknowledge 2023 is over, upload something generic that'll tie you over until you're caught up (on Netflix or heart-shaped cutters, we won't judge). 

📑 2. Repost your pinned photo(s).

Even though your pinned content is still valid, Facebook does us dirty by timestamping posts - so that pinned post you made in 2021? It's the first thing your potential clients see when they click to your page. And not all Facebook users are upto-date on how the New Page Experience works in regards to pinned posts - so we recommend reposting and repinning - just for the sake of the timestamp. 

📑 3. Update your email vacation message.

I get to read a lot of your vacation (aka auto responder) messages when I send out the Onesday Wednesday newsletter every week - and heads up, some of them will be out-of-date come the new year. Give your auto-responder a once over and update any mentions of 2023, Christmas, Booked, or Holidays to reflect the new year's information.

📑 4. Update your email signature.

Corrie said to leave this one out, but if you're like me and see your email sig and sell-able real estate too, don't forget to update it to reflect 2024 data (some of you have "booked until X" in your signatures). Also - high five for makin' even our names work for us! 

📑 5. Update your FB auto-responses.

This one is one I always forget. Your auto-responses on your business page likely has some old information. And even if it doesn't, Facebook's newer Merge Tags are pretty neat and something I'd incorporate in 2024 to increase open rates and responses in Messenger. 

People are much more likely to open a message that starts with "Hey Sarah" rather than a message that says "Hello customer." (that is, if your name is Sarah).

📑 6. Update your bios (FB and Insta).

A lot of you smarties use your Instagram bio and Facebook (super way-too-short) bio to sell - so don't forget to update that with 2024 data. If your bio says you're booked until December, you're gonna want to update that lest your audience think you're some superhuman baker who's booked out until 2025. 

📑 7. Edit your Instagram Highlights.

I forget this one - Instagram highlights. If you're not familiar with highlights, it's the row of circles below an Instagram bio, but above the feed grid. These allow the account owner to take stories (that expire after 24 hours) out of archive and permanently attach them to a profile. Make sure you update these. Sometimes the content is just old (like who wants to see a class you taught 3 years ago), and sometimes the content includes your pre-sales for a Nov 2023 pop-up. You'll want to clear that out and update it for 2024 offerings.

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💚 Burnout Boundary - How to ward off the Spirit of Grinch-Mas.

'Tis the season to h-h-hate your bakery business. I can't even judge, I'm a slave to the "cookie SuperBowl" where we sell the MOST volume all year x10 (see the diagram from Google search queries for "Sugar Cookies" below). 🔥 It's our time to shine - shine - shine, baby, and then go out in a glorious flame of burnout bust! But that's bad for business. 

So - here's Corrie's list of burnout boundaries to save ya from your sleighin' self this holiday season. 

💚 1. Raise Them Prices. 

A lot of you are leaving money on the table you're bent over to make that last batch you undercharged on. Does raising your prices lower your sales? You betcha! But does raising your prices also mean that those fewer sales go a longer way? Yes. 

📉 Let's say I have a classroom for 10 students and I charge $20/ticket. If I sell all the tickets, I make $200. 

📈 But if I raise the price to $50/ticket. Let's say 60% of people no longer attend the class (fair, it's out of their budget), and I only sell 4 tickets. But guess what - I still make $200, but now I only have to render services for 4 people - saving me time, ingredients, and headaches.

💚 2. Focus on Your Favorites.

Let's face it - some of us hate customs - they're time eaters, they're complex, they require a ton of work. So why are the last 23 posts you made to your page featuring customs? Market what you want to move! If you want to sell class tickets, I should see a heavier presence of class-related posts. If you want DIY kits to do the heavy lifting on that bottom line, I better so some DIY kit photos - packed, unpacked, finished, kiddo with icing bag in hand - you get the point.

💚 3. Don't Disappear. 

It's easy to take off especially when cookies aren't bringing in your primary household income and you have some flexibility (️🏆 Heyo to my trophy sisters and brothers! Take me with you!). But imagine going to a mechanic's shop for an oil change for years only to roll up and find they've closed temporarily. 

🚗 You check back next month. Nope.

🚕 You check back month 2. Nothin'. 

🚙 Your car needs oil - so you find another shop. 

BUT WAIT! They reopened! 😫 They want ya back! But you've moved on. Same with your clients. Take fewer orders - heck, reject 90% of them. But the big disappearing act is killin' your holiday sales. 

💚 4. Make Those Money Menu Makers.

Some products just have bigger margins - and they're a great way to buy back more time and less burnout. For us - it's classes. I can sell 10 class tickets at $75 a ticket to make $750 bucks. At the same time, it'll take me thirty DIY kits at $25/kit to generate the same amount of money. 

If you're willin' to stand in front of folks for 1.5 hours, then the classes will generate far more income for a lot less work. 

💪 (have I mentioned we do even more of that work for you in the class kits memberships?)

💚 5. Website Bouncers.

😈 Make your website be the bad guy. Corrie loves to let Jotform break the bad news that the date the client wanted is sold out (or maybe she's meeting me at the mall) so the client can't get to it and bog down your boundaries. This is a great option for those of us (hey - you are my people) who have weak "nos" and strong people-pleasing tendencies - 🔗 remove the weakest link: YOURSELF. 

💚 6. Get Tunnel Vision.

Listen to this week's pod to learn why all the best options is actually the worst option when it comes to boundaries

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🏫 The Cookie Class Kits Explained and how you can get all 13 kits for $4.84 each

Okay yeah - Heather here. I made a calendar boo-boo and thought I'd be in town on Monday, but turned out, I'll be outta town, so I had to record the "Tuesday Podcast" for the "Onesday Wednesday Newsletter" on Sunday - so, 👋 hello from the past. 

Since I had to podcast a la solo, I figured I'd walk you through why the Cookie Class Kits are a great deal right now. And I'll break down what ya get, for how much, and when you need to get it by.

🎒 1. What are the Cookie Class Kits.

The Cookie Class Kits are everything you need to teach a cookie class - the class curriculum, the promotional materials, the copy, the supplies list, the decorating videos, the class PowerPoint, the math - yeah it's a lot.. All you need to do is add you (the instructor), the dough and cutters (also linked in the supplies list), and a venue. We wanted to take the "overwhelming" out of teaching classes - and thus the Class Kits were born from years of teaching classes, learning from mistakes, and adjusting - and here's what we're left with - everything that'll make a successful cookie class experience! 

🎒 2. Why You Need to Sign Up Now for the Deal.

Every year, we archive old courses and classes. The Class Kits Membership is no different. All of the 2023 classes are archived on December 31, 2023, to make room for the 2024 class content.  

But right now - you can get both the old 2023 classes AND the 2024 classes (class kits drop a month early to give folks more time to promote the class and sell class tickets) for the price of 1 month's membership. 

🤔 "Why would anyone not have waited until December to sign up then if you get EVERY class for the price of just one class?" 

I like how you do baker math. The reason folks signed up all year long (and didn't wait until now) is because they wanted to teach the classes ✨throughout✨ 2023 as we dropped them. They paid a premium to access them as soon as they dropped (first week of each month). 

But you, you procrastibaker, you - you get to benefit from laziness and snag them now to teach in 2024. 😴 as the sayin' goes - you snooze, you win. Wait...

🎒 3. When the Deal Ends.

Okay - technically it's not really a deal - it's just good timing on your part. But that timing ends on ⚠️ December 31, 2023, when the 2023 classes disappear (you can still snag them in The Cookie College level membership), and you're left with the 2024 classes (⛄ we already have January's Build your Own Snowman Class and ️🏈 February's Superbowl-themed Class is in the works). 

🎒 4. How much it Costs.

So - each month you're a member of the Cookie Class Kits, it's $63. 💵 Meaning you can sign up for one month, download everything (all 13 classes), then hit the cancel button and that'll mean that you'd get all the courses for $63 - which comes out to $4.84 per class! 🤑 Hey - I ain't no genius, but I know a good deal when I see one (I am also biased - but it's a good deal - trust me - these courses take forever to make). 

🚫 Cancel and never be rebilled again - ooor - 👀 stick around for the 2024 classes (️🏈 February's will drop in the first week of January to give people over a month to promote the class to attendees). 

🎒 5. What's the Catch? 

The catch is that this deal expires in less than a month - 😭 so this won't be nearly as good a deal on January 1, 2024, as it is on December 31, 2023. 🤔 Hey - why not download them now - even if you don't teach c

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🙊 Vendy Blendy Marketing-endy

and what you can learn from our blendy blunders.

We may not be allowed to talk about "the event that shall not be named," but that doesn't mean we can't learn from it! A lot of marketing goes into the yearly Vendy Blendy, and it seems like each year we learn a little more from both the Vendys and the Pendys (turned Spendys). 

So let's take a look under the hood on how the Vendy Blendy can help your bakery market better in 2024.

🔊 1. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat

3️⃣ We marketed this event over THREE months to over a hundred thousand collective followers across our socials. I'd wager we made over 150 posts dedicated to this event across all the accounts. We dedicated podcasts to it (20,000 monthly listens), newsletters (6,000 subs per email), and the SCM family of groups (over 50,000 members). It was a lot of marketing. And yet 2 hours before the event, I still had folks asking me "What a Vendy Blender is?" 

Your marketing isn't being seen - so you gotta repeat it. And repeat it. And repeat it again. Your audience just isn't seeing as many of your posts as you think they are.

🔊  2. Chicken and the Egg.

🐔 The Vendy Blendy requires both Vendors to sell and Penders to spend. 🥚 But Vendys won't sign up unless the Pendy numbers are high. And no one wants to pend if there are no shops to Vendy. 🐣 What do? We had to market both - back and forth - until we got both numbers high enough.

Much like marketing a cookie class, you'll have a chicken / egg scenario. 🏢 You need a free venue to make your margins so you tell the host you'll bring people to their shop, but 👨‍👩‍👦 you need people wanting to take a class to be able to secure the free venue. Market to both. Ask your audience if they want to take a cookie class. Then tell the venue, "Look, I've got 20 people interested in walking through the door a business that lets me host." Then turn back to the audience and tell them you've secured the venue - you just need to sign up.

🔊 3. Two Separate Campaigns.

👥 Corrie was assigned "Vendy Aquisition" and 👥 I was assigned "Pendy Aquisition." ✌️ These were two completely different marketing strategies running congruently, but completely separately. The messaging to one audience (get some great marketing and make some solid sales numbers) was completely different than the other audience (hey get some great deals!).

You're going to need to do the same things - 👉 a campaign for classes, 👉 a campaign for your farmer's market event, 👉 a campaign for customs. They'll be posted to the same page, sure - but they'll be completely separate campaigns when it comes to marketing (targeting, messaging, CTAs, etc.)

🔊  4. Diversity in Marketing Channels.

😕 "I'm worried I'll annoy my audience." No - because you'll diversify your outreach. You can post to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Nextdoor, email list, Google Business Profile, TikTok, FB Groups (Community and VIP). Sure - you may annoy yourself, but diversification in your outreach strategy will allow you to hit more targets across more websites. 

Just like the Vendy Blendy - 🎙 we have people that listen to the podcast, 👍 but don't use Facebook. 🖼 People that use Facebook, but aren't on Instagram. 📑 Some folks just want the freebie transfers in our emails and don't need the group content! D-V-E-R-S-I-F-Y. 

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🎁 Best Baker Gifts 2023 (feel free to forward this email) 

🎅🏻 Corrie had a genius idea (they come around to her once a decade) to ask bakers what they think other bakers would want should they find their names scrawled on Santa's nice list this year. 📜

Ho-Ho-Hold your credit cards, because some of these are really creative! We've come up with an "actually affordable," mid-grade, and budget-buster list for you... to forward to your... ahem... in-home Santa. 

🧑‍🎄 So if you find your friends and fam askin', "What the elf does this baker want?!", here may be a decent shopping start line. Heads up - none of these are affiliate links, so click away unimpeded, my friend! 

🎁 1. Actually Affordable

1. A Spotify Subscription Gift Card
2. Amazon Hand Massager 
3. Vanilla Beans for Extract (Indri's is a good place for this)
4. Stupid Car Tray
5. Ender 3 Pro (they go on sale from time to time - don't pay full $)
6. UberEats Gift Cards (for delivery on busy days)
7. Bakety Bakey Royal Batch - 1 Lb (code TWINS saves 10%)
8. Acrylic Turn Table
9. Skincare (Duke Cannon's Bloody Knuckles Hand Cream) 
10. Aprons
11. Cookie Cutter Subscription Boxes
12. Heat Sealer
13. Cute Baking Tees (Doughmestic / Bakery Tee Co)
14. Scribes 
15. Ring Light
16. Americolor Basic Six Kits
17. Edible Ink Markers
18. Small Fisker Scissors for Cutting
19. Coffee Mug Warmer
20. Rubber Spatulas (skip wooden handles)
21. Cookie Countess Rolling Pin
22. Filament
23. Universal Attachment (code SCMARKETING could save some $)
24. Box Cutter from Amazon
25. Two Dollars Transfers Club

🎁 Mid-Grade

1. Anti Fatigue Mats (for feetsies comfort )
2. Kitchen Aid Auto-Sifter Attachment 
3. Plum Paper Planner Gift Card (for the pen / paper girlies)
4. Bambu P1P Printer
5. Dehydrator (Cabellas is what Corrie uses - 10 tray)
6. Bakety Bake Royal Batch - 5 Lb (code TWINS again - 10% off)
7. House Cleaner 
8. Massage Gift Cards
9. Apple Pencil (2nd Gen)
10. Custom-made Cookie Signage / Pick Up Box for Porch Pick-ups
11. Sweetest Tiers Stencil Holder
12. Photography Backdrops (code SUGARCOOKIE saves 20%)
13. Airbrush (Sweet Pink Olive / Cookie Countess)
14. Kodak Luma 150 Projector 
15. Stands (Shop Canvas / Arkon)
16. Half Sheet Pans (Corrie suggested Nordic Ware)
17. Chua Mats 
18. Nielsen Massey Vanilla Extracts 
19. Hulken Bags
20. Nutrimill Artiste Mixer
21. Cash for Cookie Events (CookieCon / SoFlo)
22. Fancy Scribes (The Sugar Cookie Dealer)
23. Americolor Nifty Fifty
24. Monthly Class Subscriptions: Artee McGoo, Sams Cookie University, Colorful Cookie, Cookie Class Kits by Cookie College

🎁 Budget Busters

1. Eugene Dough Sheeter (save $25 with this link)
2. Create a Room
3. Primera's Eddie
4. Bosch Universal Plus Mixer (maybe try code SCMARKETING)
5. Bambu Carbon X1C Bundle
6. A Year in Cookie College (get 2 months free when ya sign up)
7. A Cricut (to print stencils / packaging)
8. iPad Pro (and Procreate)
9. Americolor Heavenly Seventy 

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or your desktop) by clickin' here - Episode 139 - 2023 Best Baker Gifts List.

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🤑What if I Gave You A Million Dollars...

Would you do it? 🤔 "Do what? But also - yes," you might ask - and that's exactly the point of this week's podcast. If you knew you were going to get a million dollars for taking a benign action, most of us wouldn't think twice before we did it.

Full confession - 👕 I was cleaning out my closet, 👖 donating what I hadn't clearly worn in over a year to the VVA nonprofit to resell in their thrift stores. 👚 As I'm perusing this jam-full closet, my brain is jumping through hoops to make excuses as to why I suddenly may need to wear that shirt tomorrow that I haven't looked at in 2.5 years. 🫣

🧠 Wild the mental gymnastics our brains can flip through. Also wild to think at one time I thought I could pull off a crop top. But I digress...

So - I thought to myself, 🤔 "How many shirts would I throw into that donation pile if I was offered a million dollars to only leave hanging what I actually wore?" I can guarantee you that I wouldn't think twice before another half of my closet found the donation bag. 

🤑 I'd do a lot of things for a million bucks - and purging my fashion faux-pas would be an easy one to add to the list of "can do's." 🤔 But why is it so easy for me to purge my ponchos when there's a million bucks on the line, but take away the green stuff, and I suddenly think I can make Mary Janes work at 35!?

Incentive - 💵💵💵 specifically, incentive we can see. 😜

The issue with running a business is that the incentive is often hidden behind time and tasks. 🥸 We aren't sure there's a million bucks on the other side of making that post or going Live on Facebook, so we think up excuses - much like me with the 🤔  "Well, maybe I do need that shirt that's 2 sizes too small." 

But how do you know that there isn't a million dollars? 🥧 There's a giant proverbial pie out there - and there's enough slices of said pie to go around. But the catch is - only you can cut your own slice. 

💰 And the way small business owners cut their own slice? Put the work in. Put the excuses to bed. Show up. Repeat. Until that million dollars - or that paid-off mortgage, or the kid's college tuition, or the... or whatever that hidden incentive is? Work until you get that.

💳 Work as if you knew someone would give you a million dollars if you did the thing. Whether posting to social consistently, entering your corporate girly era, joining a local chamber meeting, teaching cookie classes, hosting a pop-up - 💰 do it as if you had a million-dollar check waiting for you on the other side - because who knows, there just might be.

Listen to this podcast on all major podcast players (Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Pandora...) or by clicking here to listen to Episode 138 - If I Gave You a Million Dollars.

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😵‍💫 Surviving Q4 - the fight for the newsfeed

It's the time of yeeeear... when the reach is low and the engagement is even lower. What gives?! I'll tell ya what - the deep pockets of big corporations capitalizing on the "year-end consumer" who is primed to pay. 

It's a fight to the feed death in Q4, and we've got some tips and tricks to help you gain some ground.

🥊 Reset Expectations.

We're in a battle of the business and the newsfeed is the fighting ring. Bigger companies with bigger pockets are paying bigger bills to win Facebook bids. Lots of 🅱️ Bs, but the 💯 A+ will be earned by the page that understands this and uses it to create compelling content to fight through the feed clutter. 

💁‍♂ Listen - it's going to be harder to reach your audience. Your engagement will be lower. And that's okay - because knowing this will help us to create a better campaign to adjust to the deeper pocket punches. 

🥊 Be Annoying.

Corrie is very adept at this (lol). But seriously - no one is being annoyed by your posts because no one is seeing your posts. So 👏 be 👏 annoying! And don't just post the same thing 10 times - yeah, that's not ✨quality✨ annoyance. We need to be ✨creatively✨ annoying. 

• 👊 Use the Stories feature. 
• 👊 Host a Facebook Live. 
• 👊 Post a Reel. 
• 👊 Create a poll. 
• 👊 Make a feed post. 
• 👊 Run an ad. 

All of these are features to sneak into the feed and annoy your audience in a way they don't think is annoying - but it's everywhere all the time. 

🥊 Be Consistent.

Be consistent! It's so easy to get all those holiday orders in, tuck your head between your legs, and head off to the kitchen only to reappear in January wondering if all the sales followed the groundhog back into his burrow. We may get busy - but we can't be too busy to market - unless we're willing to leave the sales to our competition who is willing to be present on their pages. 

🥊 Test. Test. Restest.

Your audience shifts into 🧠 "year-end consumer brain" in Q4, and adjusting your content will be a necessary step in making sure we're still resonating with that audience. How are we gonna do that? Test and retest! Long-form content (example below), short-form content, different creative (aka pictures), videos, Lives, emojis (Corrie thinks I use too many... 🙂😄😆😅😂🤣😊😌). 

Test it - see how they respond. Then retest it again - see how they respond ✨ again ✨. Wash, rinse, and repeat until your audience is primed to react, respond, and reach for their wallets. What works in 1️⃣ Q1 isn't likely going to work the same in 2️⃣ Q4. Adjust accordingly.

🥊 Learn to Pivot. 

📆 Sometimes you hoped your audience would like Advent Calendars and sometimes your audience just happens to 🚫 not like Advent Calendars. 😭 We can't cry over spilled meringue powder - but we can pivot! 

💃 If advents don't sell, swing back by pivoting to DIY kits - test, test, and retest and see if that hits your audience's sweet spot. Test PYOs, test cookie classes, test DIYs, test customs - and keep pivoting until you find the product your target audience flips for.

🥊 Admin Day.

Set aside an admin day - this is a day you are NOT allowed to touch a Bosch, Kitchen-Aid, or oven. On this day, you realign yourself each week to stay on top of posting, follow-up, invoicing, and customer relations. ❌ This day SHALL NOT BE A BAKING DAY ❌ - 🤑 no matter how tempting the rush fee charge may be. 

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⤴️ The Last Rule Bender - bending the rules for the bottom line

You know we preach policies. 👏 Protect your boundaries. 👏 Charge your worth. 👏 Guard your peace. But you may be surprised to know we also say "bend the rules." You see - the policies are the "big bad monsters" we use as our fall guy. 

• 🤷‍♀ "I'm sorry - my policies state no refunds for no-shows."
• 🤷‍♀ "Oh man, I wish I could! But my policies say that payment is due at time of order."
• 🤷‍♀ "Darn it - I would, but the policy states that there's a rush fee for orders placed with less than a 5-day runtime."

💪🏼 The policies are in place to protect us - but that doesn't mean they're written in stone (or rock-hard, stale dough). You see - by bending certain policies, we can snag the bag and come out lookin' like our client's hero (🦸 wearing an apron as a cape in this scenario).

 🚩 The key to effective rule-bending is knowing when there's a win for the baker and the client. A win-lose rule bend is a loss for someone, so might as well just stick with the policies. Let's look at some examples.

🗒️ Rule Bender Example 1: It's a Pick-Up Date.

Let's say you have a set pick-up date on Saturdays, but the client wants to move it to Friday. What do you do? 🦨 Tell them "ain't no way, honey bun - rules are rules and your hiney better be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed come Saturday at 8AM!"? I mean - you could. It's in your policies. BUT - could you snag a sale by bending just a little? ⤴️ For example, a rule bender would say this:

🗒️ Rule Bender Example 2: It's Delivery.

Corrie doesn't offer delivery - ⤴️  that is until she bends the rules a bit. When she got an order from a large department store in our local city center, 🧈 you butter believe she jumped in her car. Why? By bending the delivery rules, she snagged a HUGE sale - and another, and another - from the same store. So when a big account asks for front-door delivery, it may be a good time to do some old-fashioned rule-bending.

🗒️ Rule Bender Example 3: Class Credit.

Corrie and I have some pretty strict class cancelation policies - unless we bend them a bit. Here's the thing - 💳 Eventbrite doesn't tell you this, but if someone does a chargeback, they'll 100% refund them (and not ask you). 🏦 So - if I bend my "no refunds" policy and turn it into a future class credit, I may be able to snag an additional sale for the now-empty seat AND get that future class money from the credited sale. One of those "win-win" scenarios.

🗒️ Rule Bender Example 4: Copyright Copy Cat.

🚫 Corrie does not offer copyright cookies. But she bends the rules with likenesses. (Where that legal line in the sand is between you, your liability policy, and Disney lawyers and is a bit too deep to swim in in today's podcast but I digress). 💃 But the likeness of a copyrighted character can be just enough rule-bending to snag a sale. 

Most rules aren't meant to be broken. But many rules are meant to be bent. Knowing which ones and how far to bend them comes with practice - and keep in mind, bending the rules may be makin' the sale, but it also leads to a bit more liability exposure. So weigh your options and make sure you have a fully funded oopsie budget to stave off bad reviews for bent rules. 

⛔ "No" is only a complete sentence for a bad salesperson. Find the common double-green-flag ground for you and your clients to both win-win while you laugh all the way to the bank.