This chat has ended.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
This chat starts later than usual (at 4 pm CT) in order to accommodate the 16-hour time difference from the US to our featured guest in Melbourne, Australia.
Lately, we've been getting a larger than usual number of business questions in our forums. They run the spectrum from cottage food law to pricing to time management to . . . you name it! That being said, Cookie Connection is extra pleased to announce that Michelle Green of The Business of Baking, and also a past Cookie Connection business contributor, will be joining us live to help answer some of your many business questions.
For those of you who don't know Michelle, here's a bit of background, extracted nearly word for word from Michelle's blog (with her permission, of course) . . .
Michelle Green is a chef, cake decorator, writer, mentor, business educator, and mom, and like so many of us, wishes there were more hours in the day! She is also the mastermind behind The Business of Baking blog, which was created for people who want to make a living doing what they love – namely baking and decorating sweet art.
Michelle was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, USA, but now lives in Melbourne, Australia. She's been a cake decorator since she was 16 years old, when her sister asked her to make a cake for her wedding shower. Back then, Michelle relied entirely on tubes of gel icing and containers of Betty Crocker frosting purchased from the supermarket. It wasn’t until many years later that she finally took an actual class in cake decorating (a Wilton level one buttercream class, to be exact). She loved that class so much that she decided to go to culinary school, where she got certified as both a chef and pastry chef. During that time, she still made cakes from home (very illegally) for fun and no profit. (She charged $30 per cake and was thrilled to get that kind of cash in her pocket!) Michelle later went on to work in several cafés, catering companies, and bakeries before finally opening the doors to her own custom cake business, which she operated for ten years.
Michelle now focuses on mentoring other cake and cookie business owners (and aspiring owners) through her blog, her book (also entitled The Business of Baking), and her in-person and online classes.
Photo credit: Michelle Green
To learn more about Michelle before the chat, please visit her blog and read her past Cookie Connection posts here. Michelle recently opened enrollment in her online course, so please check it out too. Though entitled "Build Your Profitable Cake Business," the course covers principles that apply equally well to cookie businesses.
And, of course, we do hope you'll join us at the appointed chat time. If you can't make it, no worries! You can log your advance questions now by following the instructions at the top of this chat page. (As always, it's super helpful for questions to be logged early, so our guests are able to prepare answers beforehand and to field more questions during the live chat time.)
Please note that any advance questions will reveal one at a time, in the order received, only after the chat goes live. Do not expect questions or answers to appear immediately.
Also, as with all of these chats, you have a special opportunity to see inside the minds of some extremely talented people, so please read the information and links above, and come prepared with some challenging business questions for Michelle!