Shelby Boolay of Noco Cookie Cakes - Losing a Job While Pregnant & Redefining What’s Possible through Social Media, Community & Cake Decorating

Speaker A: Foreign. This is Chat cpg. We're your hosts. I'm Liz.

Speaker B: And I'm Megan.

Speaker C: Thanks for listening.

Speaker A: Today we interview the infamous cookie cake lady, Nico of Noco Cookie Cakes. Nico has over half a million followers and 7 million likes on Instagram and TikTok. She's a mom of two who quietly decorates cookie cakes while her children nap. And and she has quickly turned into an Internet sensation. Nico and I actually went to college together and so as soon as I saw what she was doing, I was so pumped to talk to her because she has an incredible story. She's done cakes for Taylor Swift, Flavor Flav, Taco Bell.

Speaker C: Ah.

Speaker A: Uh, just kidding. Who knows which one is true? But seriously, her talent at decorating cakes has put the Internet into a tizzy. Nico is her alias name and she lost her high paying tech job when she was three months pregnant. Fun fact, so did I. Except Nico took her career to new heights when she followed her inkling to decorate a cookie cake and try to sell it online in less than a year. She's impacted lives everywhere and is making way more than just cookie cakes. She's making a solid living and impacts people's lives on a day to day basis. This is a story for anyone who's ever felt discouraged by being let go or felt they can't be a worthy candidate for a new job because they're pregnant or have some other life event happening. It's for anyone who needs to see to believe that truly anything is possible for you in your life at any stage or point. So we got the opportunity to interview Nico and understand where she's coming from and why being pregnant and losing her job was the best thing for her. She is truly an inspiration and we hope you enjoy her story and learn something from this episode. Before we start this episode, we want to acknowledge that we recorded this with Nico about two months ago. Nico has been incredibly patient with us as we have navigated ups and downs of our lives and taken our sweet time in perfecting this episode. We want to thank you for being here and we really hope you enjoy this episode because it is juicy as F and still completely relevant. It just took us a little bit to get it out. So thanks so much and hope you enjoy.

Speaker B: Hi guys.

Speaker A: Uh, today we're so excited to have Noco Cookie Cakes founder Nico on our podcast. Thank you for being here.

Speaker C: Awesome. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: You have like the craziest, amazing success story. You were in tech before as a product director and now you have no Coke. Cookie Cakes, you are an Internet inspirer and you've had a whirlwind year of success and also failures, like failure leading to success. So we really want to learn how you got started on your entrepreneurship journey and how you've landed in the food space from tech.

Speaker C: Yeah, definitely. I have always been an entrepreneur at heart. I definitely never planned on ending up here where I am right now. But I've always worked in startups out of college and throughout my career, my tech career. I've started a couple companies with my husband. Nothing ever really stuck though. I did like working in tech and as you said, I was a product director most recently. I've been doing product management for over 10 years and I found myself in a round of layoffs in big tech like a lot of people have over the last few years. And that was last November, so November of 2024. Oh, and I was three months pregnant, which is important to the story. We had just found out I was pregnant and then I got laid off and I had a one year old at the time and there was a lot of pressure on me to kind of figure out what I was going to do next because my husband was a stay at home dad to our one year old and so I was the only income source for our house. And I tried my hardest to apply to other tech director roles, product manager roles, senior product manager roles, kind of anything and everything. And I had some interviews, definitely at some main brand companies, but the job market is really tough. And I was going through that back and forth in my head of do I tell them I'm pregnant? Do I not tell them I'm pregnant? I'm four months pregnant now I'm five months pregnant now I'm six months pregnant. My husband had found a job in the meantime. He's a software engineer and I couldn't answer that question, but it didn't really matter because I never made it far enough in my interview rounds to get to that crossroads. Meanwhile, I was scrolling on TikTok more often than I ever had before because I had so much newfound free time. And I came across videos of this one person making cookie cakes. Her name online is Blue Cottage Bakery. She lives in Louisiana. And I have a lot of self confidence, unfounded self confidence, and I said, I think I can do that. And so one day I went to Hobby Lobby. I picked up piping tips and piping bags and cake boards and then I followed her recipes and her videos and I just made one one day and I was not good at it. It looked awful. It was not Great. But it was actually really therapeutic and really fun. And so, uh, after that I told my husband, I just want to sew one before I give birth to, to someone in my community. I think that'd be really cool. And that's what ended up happening. But times a hundred. So that's how I got the start of where I am today.

Speaker A: I wanna reiterate, you got laid off when you were three months pregnant and then you did start interviewing for jobs. So how did you feel in that process? When you were interviewing, were you telling people that you were pregnant or were you not? And were you nervous about being in that season of your life, trying to find a new job?

Speaker C: Yeah, I remember telling my husband that the timing was just awful. I actually had told my employer I was pregnant the day before. Like the evening before the morning I got laid off. Which that's not. I want to make very clear, like, that's not why they laid me off. People don't understand, like this paperwork and the decisions are made far before the morning that it actually happens. But it was just really bad timing emotionally and for my family. And so I did. I applied to probably, I don't know, 40 to 50 jobs every morning. So like, me and my one year old would sit down every morning, she would have breakfast at the kitchen table and I would be applying to jobs, sending out my resume. And I did get a few interviews and I did not tell them that I was pregnant at that point. It was pretty early on. So when I was in the height of my interviewing, I was probably five or six months pregnant because I got laid off the week before Thanksgiving. So nothing through Thanksgiving, nothing through Christmas. You know how it is in the US kind of Q4, end of the year, holiday season. And I didn't, uh, tell anyone I was pregnant because I just didn't want it to affect my chances. I was desperately looking for a job and I didn't want that to negatively impact me being considered for the role. Even though I know it's illegal with air quotations. You can't see me right now, but I'm doing the air quotations of, uh, illegal to discriminate against women who are pregnant in the hiring process. I just felt like, even if it's. We all have that subconscious bias, I feel like that it would have impacted my chances. So I never ended up telling anyone, even when I got to the final rounds with a couple companies. And that weighed heavily on me. I'm a very honest person. I'm a very upfront person. I don't hold a lot back, as a lot of people know. And it troubled me deeply them not knowing my personal situation, because I figured, let's say I do get the job. The first day on the job, I'm gonna virtually walk in and be like, hey, by the way, I give birth in eight weeks. Or let's say I do tell them and I don't get the job, and then I ruin my chances. Like, either way didn't really sit well with me. And so that decision kept me up a lot at night. But I ultimately went with not letting anyone know. And in the end, it didn't even matter.

Speaker B: I just remember Liz going through the same experience and talking to her about it, and I was saying, don't let them know that you're pregnant. But then she was like, well, I want to work for a company that respects me and, like, where I'm at in my life. And, yeah, I don't know, Liz, you should speak on it because, uh, it pisses me off for you guys.

Speaker A: Yeah, the same thing happened to me. I was let go, uh, in December, and so I was maybe a little bit further along than you in terms of pregnancy. And it was tough. Uh, it was a tough decision. I went with telling the companies that I was pregnant because, like Megan said, I felt I wanted to let them know, I didn't want to blind sign them. And then I wanted them to respect that season of life for women. And what I found is almost every single company I told multiple interviews in, they were not really excited about it. Some reactions that were not super enthusiastic. And I learned after that it was maybe best not to tell companies and to wait. What's so cool about your story is you pivoted and had this urge to create a cookie cake, and then from there have created an unbelievable following. What is it, like six and a half million likes on TikTok? And then you have about 300,000 Instagram followers, like, within. What is it, nine months?

Speaker C: Six. It's been six months. Yeah, six, uh, months. It's very ironic that, like, I felt like I had to keep my pregnancy a secret while interviewing because I was so desperate for a job. Although I would have loved to, like, disclose it and ended up somewhere that celebrated it. That's just not our reality today with the competition I was facing for a director level role. But in the end, me being at the point I started my social media seven months pregnant actually played to my advantage. People were like, holy crap. This heavily pregnant woman is doing, uh, eight hours of manual labor a day trying to just sell a dang cake before she gives birth. That is really cool. So it ended up going from I had to keep it a secret, uh, because it wasn't going to benefit me in any way to make a living, to then being like the beginning of my success story, which is really cool. It is really cool.

Speaker A: Women are so unbelievably capable, I think, in a way that men aren't. It's not to say that men don't have their own strengths, but on this podcast especially, we want to recognize that women are just freaking powerhouses and their routines and their day and their strengths might look different. But if they put their mind to something, and especially something they feel intuitively drawn to, truly we can accomplish anything we want. And I feel like you're such a great example of that. Can you describe what a cookie cake is for people who don't know? And then why no Coke? Cookie cakes is potentially different if it is from any other competitors.

Speaker C: Sure. So a, ah, cookie cake is exactly what it sounds like. It is just a slab, a giant slab of cookie dough that you bake in the oven. So it's one giant cookie in most cases, sometimes cut up into different shapes and sometimes not. You'll see a lot of rectangular cookie cakes and then you just put buttercream frosting on top. A lot of the time, or in my case a lot of the times I cut mine in half and put buttercream frosting in the middle and then stack the other half of the cookie on top of that and then decorate the top in more buttercream. So a cookie cake is really just a bunch of cookie and a bunch of buttercream frosting assembled in different ways that are aesthetically pleasing. Usually I don't even like cookie cakes, which is so funny. And I have no shame admitting that I hate frosting so much. But I love chocolate chip cookies, right? The cutoff scraps are my favorite part, not the actual cookie cake. And I think that works to my advantage because I don't eat what I make. Potential competitors. It's not about the cookie cake. So my customers don't order from me because my cookie cakes are better than anyone else's cookie cakes. The reason I started making cookie cakes, honestly in northern Colorado is because at, ah, the time last March, I couldn't find anyone who did it. And I had seen it online, but I thought, gosh, I'm going to bring this concept to northern Colorado and that's how I'm going to get my customers, because they can't get it anywhere else. Once some of the bakers around me saw me doing this online, I think they started offering them. I'm not really sure if they still do or not. Sometimes when people can't get cookie cakes for me in the past because I was too booked up, they would go to like, Eileen's class of cookies, which is fantastic. Actually, we are obsessed with, with Eileen's, Mary's Mountain cookies, places like that who offer baked cookies, sometimes with frosting on top, sometimes not. But other than that, I don't really see my cookie cakes as a product that there's a lot of competition for because a lot of my customers order from me because of me, which is mind blowing. And all of my fails and my successes and not just the cookie cake itself.

Speaker B: That's amazing. And it seems like maybe you are recognizing that you, uh, are making it because of who you are, not because of anything else.

Speaker C: Yes. No, Megan, you are right. Can you tell that I just don't believe in myself as much as the Internet does?

Speaker B: I think that imposter syndrome is so real. And I have. I own a business as well, and I can't. It doesn't make sense to me that we have almost 50 employees. Like I can't even understand it. And yeah, so I get it. I hope that you can appreciate and celebrate it because it's really awesome.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: You had this urge to make a cookie cake. Was that something you felt very intuitively drawn to or was it just on a whim?

Speaker C: I think the biggest reason I fell into cookie cake talk honestly was because my biggest pregnancy craving was chocolate chip cookies. That's why we call my newborn that I just had who isn't a newborn anymore, but his name is Chip. Because my biggest pregnancy craving was chocolate chip cookies. My phone knows everything about me. It landed me on Cookie Cake Talk and that's how I got started. I wasn't actively being like, I need to figure out what my next job is going to be. I need to start my own company. That wasn't it. This was mostly therapeutic at the beginning because I was really bummed. I was pregnant with a one year old, which pregnant in toddlers. Woof. And I couldn't find a job. And I was thinking about this last night in preparation for this podcast is I feel like a lot of us, especially like Liz, you and I, uh, were go getters in college. We were in our business fraternity together. We took it really seriously. We take our careers very seriously. Megan, I'm sure you do too. And I found a lot of my identity within my profession. So when people ask me, oh, what do you do? My answer was never, oh, I'm a mom. Even though I was, my answer was always, I'm, uh, a director of product. And so it was really hard to, like, have that stripped away from me. And so I never turned around and thought, I need to start my own business. I need to do something on my own. It was, I need to pay my bills and also be a mom at the same time. And so my intention never was to, like, find what I was best at and turn it into a business. My intention was to kind of figure out who I was beyond a director of product. And that is heavily a mom, obviously. But now it's something a little bit different than I expected, which is really cool. So I think it's just interesting timing that kind of landed me in the cookie cake space. And I do think that they're having a moment. Like, cookie cakes are going viral. Patrick Mahomes just ordered one for his birthday party. People are just now figuring out about them, and they're novel and they're cool, and so people are interested. And so I think it was just a perfect storm of being in the right place at the right time. That's awesome.

Speaker B: And so have you, like, leaned into cooking in the past? Did you grow up baking or cooking with family members, or is this a new hobby or a new, like, venture?

Speaker C: I guess it is a new venture. It is a new hobby. The extent of my baking experience in the past is, like, I would whip out the Toll house chocolate chip bag and make the chocolate chip cookies on the back of it or one pumpkin bread recipe in my family that we bake every Thanksgiving or every full. But that's the extent of my baking. I honestly don't even really cook that much. I definitely don't bake that much. I am really good at following directions, though. And so I do think that plays to my advantage is I just look up a recipe, or in this case, a recipe for frosting and a cookie cake, and I was able to follow directions really well. But, no, I had no previous experience. When I was little, I wanted to be a cake decorator. And a bus driver could have been one of those two things.

Speaker A: I mean, that kind of foreshadows that you are going to be a cookie cake. Internet inspire when you were little that you wanted to be a cake decorator. Little Nico knew that you were going to be a cookie cake decorator.

Speaker C: I know. I mean, I don't know. My parents, when I first Started this, and, um, I had 500 followers on Instagram. My mom was like, you have to tell the story about how you wanted to be a cake decorator. I was like, mom, that is not that interesting. Grandma Cookie cake is my biggest fan for sure. But I didn't think it was that interesting. But back then I hadn't even sold a cake, right? And so now I do think it's really cool, actually, that I'm doing something that that little kids dream about doing. And I do think about this sometimes Little kids want to be construction truck drivers or cake decorators or flight attendants. They don't dream about growing up and figuring out what color the button should be, whether it's purple or blue on the Internet. So it's pretty fun.

Speaker B: That's awesome. Um, so in case anybody doesn't know yet, definitely go check out Noco cookie cakes on TikTok and on, um, Instagram and all the socials. I told you before we started this podcast that I was laughing out loud at you, laughing at some of your voiceovers of the cakes. And it's so funny. So I want to know, A, how you sold your first cake, and B, at what point in your journey you brought it to social media?

Speaker C: I started, uh, making cakes before I sold one. So I was making what we call practice cakes. I was in my kitchen every day, actually, while my one year old was napping. She always naps around lunchtime. And so I usually had two hours a day to start practicing this. So I started making practice cakes and they got to be whatever I wanted. But I started with the numbers because I really did want to sell one for a two or three year old's birthday. And so I started making. And after I made my very first one, my husband was like, oh, wait, you might be good at this. You should video it. And I said, video, like, I don't know. I'm not a content creator. I don't know how to take videos of things. And he encouraged me to do it and to post it to TikTok to see if I could get anyone to, like, see my video or just see what would happen to try to sell one. I did start filming from like my second or third practice keg forward, and I posted them to only TikTok. I actually didn't post them to Instagram. And the TikTok was just for fun, like the videos of it. But I was posting photos of the cakes to mommy and me Facebook groups. And that's where I got my first sale. So I started this thing on TikTok with the video of, hey, this is day one of me trying to sell a cake while my baby is napping. And I think on day eight of those videos, I sold my first one from photos I was posting in a Mommy and Me Facebook group for, like, the Fort Collins area. I was aggressively posting my practice cake photos in Facebook groups. So if you're just starting out trying to sell your cookie cakes, I couldn't recommend Mommy and Me Facebook groups enough or like word of mouth Facebook groups for your town. That's how I got a lot of my first cake sales until I had a video go viral on TikTok. And then from there it was all TikTok and Instagram ordering.

Speaker B: So when you started your TikTok journey, did you start it with the intention of going viral or just to have fun with it?

Speaker C: Definitely just to have fun with it. I didn't have big plans. Um, right. My goal was to sell one cake before I gave birth. I never aspired for anything more. And I think that's just because I was a little bit down about what my future was going to be like. I thought I was going to go back and get a real job in quotes that you can't see me doing because you can't see my face after I gave birth. So I had the full intent. I was still applying for jobs at this point and I was still interviewing at this point as well. I was interviewing for jobs all the way up until probably I was eight months pregnant. So, like, there was a month overlap of doing these cakes and doing interviews. So, yeah, I never had the intention, but I don't know if anyone really does. I'm not really sure how other influencers I see on the Internet got their start. I don't know if they started posting aggressively to try to become an influencer or if they landed there because they were posting for fun. But, yeah, this was never my intention, but this is where I landed for sure.

Speaker A: And in your videos you call yourself Internet, uh, inspirer, but you're now at this point an influencer, right?

Speaker C: Yes, I'm an influencer. As people think about it. I'm definitely an influencer as you and I understand it on the Internet. I don't call myself an influencer because I don't feel like one. When I think of influencer. I think about someone who is much younger than me, with no wrinkles on her face, driving her nice car, drinking her greens and selling them to me while she's sipping on them in her garden in the sunshine with her Tail, you know, like, I just, I don't feel like an influencer. And it started out jokingly. I jokingly started referring to myself as an Internet inspirer because I do think that sometimes there's a negative connotation associated with influencer. But then it stuck because my audience was like, you actually are an Internet inspirer, though, Miko. Like, you don't need to joke about it. Like, you have inspired, at this point, legitimately, thousands of mostly women to start making cookie cakes or baking in general. I get hundreds of messages from women who are like, you inspired me to start my own business. I've made sales. I've received sales off of your Rolodex and your link tree. You are such an inspiration. You've changed my life. And so that had to happen at least a couple dozen times, M for me to actually start to understand that, oh my gosh, I actually am inspiring people. Not really influencing them, but just inspiring them by living out my life instead of trying to push something on them. And so that's why it started out as a joke, but now I actually do call myself an Internet inspirer. Yeah.

Speaker A: Is that the most surreal feeling to have such an impact on so many people?

Speaker C: Yeah, it was wild. It took me a long time to truly let it sink in. I've gotten a little more accustomed to it now. Like, it's a little less shocking when I get those messages now. But I remember over Easter of this year, so April sometime, I received hundreds of photos from women in my DMs who just sent me a picture of their Easter cookie cake because they were inspired by me and it blew my mind. I took a screenshot of, ah, every single message and every single photo and I ended up making like a collage video and posting it of all of these hundreds of people who were like, hey, you inspired me to make my first cookie cake. This is so much fun. I love it. Thank you so much. And as a normal lady, which I think a lot of people forget, like, I am just a normal. I used to call myself a girl, but everyone calls me a lady. I guess I am in my 30s, so I need to be a lady. But I'm just a normal lady that lives in Nowhere, Colorado, just posting things with WI FI access. And people are shocked when I respond. People are shocked when I tell them their cake looks awesome. But I'm just a regular lady. So it is a very surreal experience to think about how many strangers I'm, um, hanging out with in their kitchen on a Saturday while they bake. Because it's a new experience for sure

Speaker A: when you get all those comments. Like I have looked at your post and you have thousands of comments or likes. Does your phone like explode when you open the app? And how do you respond to that many people? Or maybe you don't.

Speaker C: I do for the most part, which is. Could be why I've developed Carpal Tunnel. But at the beginning, I, uh, replied to every comment I got mostly on my videos just to try to boost them. I don't know if that works or not, but I had this thought that if I responded to everyone and there were more comments, maybe more people would see my video. And so that's what it started out as. But I was moving so quickly because I had a young child at home that I kept spelling people's names wrong. I was just like commenting spelling errors. And so then I accidentally started calling people their wrong names because my autocorrect wasn't working. Because I was moving so fast responding to everyone. Because yes, I was getting so many notifications. And so was born the nickname thing. So now I give people funny nicknames in the comments. But that's where it was birthed from because I have all of my notifications notifications off on my phone so they don't ever pop up. But yeah, when I do open Instagram or TikTok, I ignore it now, which is really easy. But at the beginning, when you're just not used to this, you're like, oh my gosh, I have to read every single one of these. And for the most part I still do. I have a little less time. Cause I have two kids now. But if you dm, um, me, I absolutely read it and I respond probably 80% of messages because I am just a lady. And if you take the time to speak to me, I'm gonna speak back to you. But I don't get to everyone for sure. But it's important to me and I think that's why I've grown such like a genuine community, is because I talk to these people like they're real people. Because we are just two real people bonding over cookie cakes on the Internet.

Speaker A: I think if that were me, I would absolutely not respond to anyone over email or text because I would be so over responding to people on these social platforms. If you want something, you gotta call me.

Speaker C: I know, like I said, I don't. I didn't text you back last week. I'm very bad at texting people back. But I think the thing is, I used to do this as my day job. So like my day job as a product director make big decisions, but a lot of it is communication. A lot of it is like back and forth, asking questions, getting to know your users or your team or anything like that. And so I'm already used to this kind of digital conversing, if you will. And so it just felt very natural to continue the conversation. That's why I joke about my audience as my unpaid interns. Like we're all coworkers. Because I lost my job and I turned this into my job. And so now this is no co Cookie Cakes, Cookie Cake Club Corporation. You all have found yourself as unlaid interns and I'm the boss and we chat every day at the water cooler. That's what my, uh, channel is at this point, basically.

Speaker B: That's so amazing. I love that so much. I want to know what made you change to doing your voiceovers? Because I was looking at your early TikToks and it was like the ASMR style videos. M and then you started doing the voiceovers and I imagine that's when you started really blowing up. And I would like to know what encouraged that to someone decision.

Speaker C: The very first TikTok I posted, I put music to the background of it. Dear Lord, anyone listening to this, please do not go watch that video. It's so cringy and so embarrassing. But I did not consult my husband before I did that. I just did it during nap time and he watched it that evening and he's like, you are so embarrassing. He wasn't that harsh. He was just like, no, I'm gonna tell you how to get your videos to perform well on TikTok because he spent a lot of time on TikTok as well. And so he said what you need to do is not post any audio. So since you're doing this in a quiet environment, just use the original audio of you decorating the cakes and it'll be like asmr. And I think a lot of people watch it because it's very satisfying even if they're not interested in the cake part of it. And so that's what I did for video number two. I posted an ASMR quiet style video. But I'm a chatter like I have a lot to say. And so I found myself like three or four videos deep in that style with like commentary about the cake that I couldn't get across because he was right. My videos were doing really well with the ASMR sound. But I had stuff to say. So then I started putting captions in the videos with the ASMR sounds. And everyone started complaining about how the captions went by too fast and they had to pause to read. But I think it played to my advantage because people watched the video two or three times to get through all the captions and that was boosting my views. And so then I had so many people commenting on my videos that they were like, stop the captions, stop the captions. We need to hear from you. And so I felt a little bit of pressure that people wanted to hear my voice and hear what I had to say about these cakes. But I was really nervous because again, I'm a random lady, uh, in nowhere Colorado who has never posted her voice on the Internet before and didn't really know how to do it. But I did it. It was like an M A pink and green and yellow. Um, I think of me packaging the box and I just told them to stop whining about how they didn't know how to read. And I'm not going to speak to them all the time, but I will if I have the time. If Ms. Rachel's not playing in the background, I will speak to them. And thus was born my voiceovers. And I never went back after that because yes, that really grabbed people's attention and the rest is history, honestly.

Speaker A: Hey guys, we have really exciting news. Shelf Love is now a sponsor for our next episode series. My co host Megan has busted her booty to create an amazing company that is a leader in field marketing for natural and organic brands. Shelf Love offers nationwide demo and event support with a team of brand ambassadors who genuinely care about the products they represent. So when they are demoing these products because they care about this industry and health and all of the food trends that we see going on within retailers, they can genuinely connect with those shoppers. And on top of that they are really personable and incredibly detail oriented. Therefore they have helped brands climb to the top of sales leaderboards at Whole Foods and other retailers by creating those real connections with the shoppers and with the store staff. The staff is so important and they work so hard and it's really valuable to have your demo company connect with those people in store. Shelf Love is woman owned, values driven and they never represent competing brands within the same retailer. If you are ready to watch your brand shine on Shelf and Beyond, head to shelflovecpg.com and connect with their teen directly at, uh, their website. That's S-H-E-L-F lovecpg.com you can book a meeting and if you check out their socials. You can also get great tips on the latest health trends, how to get the most protein in your breakfast, and so many more. Back to the episode. You are funny. Do you think that that has played into your success? You have a lot of viral videos that are satirical, but in general, you're just a funny person. So do you think that people gravitate towards your page specifically for that reason?

Speaker C: I do. I get a lot of messages from people who say my spot on the Internet is where they come to, to escape the realities of the world right now. And that's a lot of pressure, right, to, like, be that escape for so many people. But the good news is that, uh, I don't try very hard to be that for them. I'm just living my life and doing whatever I feel comfortable with on the Internet. And people do find it to be just a light at the end of the day. Doom Scrolling got its name from quite literally scrolling through all the doom that we see on our phones every day. And so I do try to keep it light. I keep it real, for sure. Like, right now, I'm not having the best time with my injury, and we have some lows, but most of the time it's a lot of highs because nothing needs to be too serious. A lot of people do tell me I am funny, and I think it's because a lot of people try to just be really serious or talk about world events, and that's just not what I want to do. I want to have a good time. So that's what my page is most of the time, for sure.

Speaker B: Uh, I think that you're doing a really great job and you're really hitting an audience, whether they like cookie cakes or not. You're just being real, and I think that that's what draws people to you. So that's amazing. For anybody that doesn't know and hasn't gone to your pages yet, you are also famously faceless on socials. What made that decision?

Speaker C: That is a lot of the shtick. I wonder sometimes if so many people are captivated because they either wonder what I look like or love that they don't know what I look like. It all started from me, uh, being heavily pregnant when I started this journey, and honestly just not wanting to get ready to a state where I felt comfortable presenting myself online. Not that I. My followers know this about me, but I'm definitely not the kind of person who gets done up often or feels like I need to be done up to be presentable. Like I leave the house in my little sleepy PJs, unshowered. And I have zero shame about that. But I was heavily pregnant. I was new to this, and I honestly didn't, uh, really know how to fit myself in frame with the cookie cake. And I thought that it worked out well because I hadn't showered that day. Maybe I hadn't washed my hair the day before. I was seven months pregnant with a one year old. Then it kind of turned into a thing after a while. People were like, gosh, what do you look like? And I said, I don't know. Get me to 30,000 followers on TikTok and I'll show you. And then we got there, like the next day, and I was like, wait, I did not emotionally prepare for this. Let's get to 100,000. And then that day came and went, and at that point, it became my brand. And why did it start out of convenience? Why did it keep going? Because I like to keep the mystery alive. I don't know. A lot of people want to see my face and a lot of people ask me not to because they have an image in their head of what I look like and they don't want it ruined.

Speaker A: Were the people expecting you to show your face at 30 and 100,000 followers disappointed that you didn't?

Speaker C: I do still see comments come across sometimes now about, you promised us a face reveal 100,000 followers ago. Uh, and you're like, I meant a million. I forgot a zero, right? I meant a million for like 365 days. A lot of people are like, let's do a face reveal at 365 days. And I'm, uh, not going to never say it won't happen. I think that it's been really cool to amass over half a million followers across social media platforms without the focus being on what I look like and just being who I am. And I think that especially in today's society, a lot of people place a lot of their worth on what they look like, both online and in the real world. And they find their validation and think people like them because of what they do or don't look like. And not to say that I won't ever show my face on the Internet. I think I'm amazing and I would love to show the world my face. But I do think it's really cool that I can set an example of how people really do care about someone without knowing what they look like. And I think that's important.

Speaker B: Love is blind Baking Edition.

Speaker C: Actually, I Have a lot of people from Love Is Blind who follow me on Instagram. And I made a video one time back in the 90s somewhere poking fun at them. It was a baseball field, I remember, and I said a lot of Love Is Blind cast members follow me. And I think it's because they don't know what I look like and they just know what my voice sounds like. And one of them commented on that video and they were like, yes, we absolutely do love your videos because we don't know what you look like, but we know your personality.

Speaker B: That's amazing. And for the listeners who you have been like, gracious enough to be on camera so that we could have a good conversation and you're gorgeous. So if you do ever show your face, then everybody will be very excited. But I also think there's something so special in exactly what you just said. Having so much of an impact based on who you are as a person

Speaker A: and your story and experience. Because you have had somewhat of a quick success and a lot of entrepreneurs, it takes a really long time to build something. And I'm curious what it's been like. Maybe a disadvantage and advantage of having such a quick success and quick following.

Speaker C: The advantage is I figured out quickly a way in how to pay my bills, which was the ultimate goal. Right. Uh, my m husband was a stay at home dad when I lost my job. So we went from one income, um, you know, a tech director level salary to zero income. And that was really small. The advantages of such quick success was I had a lot of eyes on me and that brought me a lot of opportunities to not only be able to sell my cakes within my community, like I booked up my calendar, quite literally one cake a day, six months out in two weeks after I came back from maternity leave. But then it also brought me like business opportunities, so opportunities with brands. Having such quick success and having such a cool storyline behind it brought me a lot of great opportunities. The disadvantages were it's a lot for like a normal human being to take in. I think if someone, I don't know, I'm making assumptions, but if you're an actor, an actress, and you're trying to make this your job and your lifestyle, you might be like emotionally ready for it or emotionally prepared for what might happen when your big movie releases or your big Netflix special releases. I was very, uh, unprepared for what was about to happen to my life. I had no time to take it all in and really reflect and understand what was happening. And I don't know if there were any negative consequences. But it was just a really big lifestyle switch for sure there for a second. And then right now, as of last week, I'm suffering some physical health complications because of what I've done to my body for the last 6m months because of this endeavor. And so that's the biggest downside. But we're going to get that figured out. It is what it is. But yeah, the opportunities that it's brought me have been so worth it to me personally.

Speaker A: And, uh, what do you mean? Like, what emotions come up when this type of surreal life happens to you?

Speaker C: You kind of sit there and wonder, why are so many people interested in just. I refer to myself as this often, at least five times in this podcast. But I'm just a regular lady, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: When I go to the grocery store, which doesn't happen often. Cause I do drive up quite a bit. But when I do set foot inside of a grocery store, probably in my pajamas, no one pays me any attention. We're all just grocery shopping. Right. But on the Internet, with this Persona that I've put out there, so many people are so not only interested, but invested. And I have made some genuine friendships from what I've been doing online. But there are a lot of parasocial relationships that have formed by people in the general public and me as well. And I just find that so fascinating and sometimes a little intrusive. Honestly, like, I had the realization one night when I went to bed. Like, if I wake up and don't post a story tomorrow, I don't feel the pressure to. I genuinely like doing it, and I think you can tell that. But they're gonna wonder if I don't what happened to me. And I think that's going to exist until something happens. Either the Internet gets shut down all over the world or my account gets hacked and they never get to come back. I don't know what the ending is going to be, but I just felt taken aback that so many people were so interested in my life. And it was a very unusual feeling to have thousands of people checking in, like, hey, what'd you eat for lunch today? Or hey, uh, what are you doing? You know, like, it's just a very odd feeling. No one has ever cared about me in that massive quantity before.

Speaker B: How do you draw that line of who you tell who you are and what you do and who you don't? And how is that for you?

Speaker C: So the people who know are my immediate family and my immediate friends. And outside of that, I never told anyone. So sometimes I'll post it to my stories. But a lot of my kind of, like, acquaintances have been watching this page for months. And then I say something that kind of tips them off and they try to go figure it out. And they message me and they're like, is this real name? And I'm like, yeah, this is me real name. And they're like, oh, my God, I had no idea this was you. Or they'll. A lot of my friends have texted me one of my videos and been like, is this you? And I'm like, yeah, that's me. Uh, so when I say I haven't told Anyone, besides maybe 10 people, a handful of people, close family and friends, I really haven't. There's probably, like two or three people in Fort Collins who know who I am, and it's because they knew me. And I told them I was baking cakes and I was trying to sell them before I blew up on social media. So Target Drive Up. Rachel is a perfect example of this woman who noticed I was buying a crap ton of butter and sugar and flour from Target Drive up every week and said, what do you do with all of this butter? And I was like, I'm trying to sell cakes. Do you want to buy one? And, uh, she asked me what my business name was, and I told her, no co Cookie Cakes. And this was back in March. And then. So she knew who I was and then watched me blow up online and already knew my identity. So there's two people in our community who know me like that, but other than that, no one knows who I am, no one knows my name, no one knows anything like that, and I don't tell anyone. So I've been asked a couple times when I go out in public and I just, uh, say that I bake cakes at home.

Speaker A: Does it scare you that if you were to reveal your face, people might recognize you in public and you might become a micro celebrity?

Speaker C: I had that thought a while ago. A reason why I felt very confident in my decision not to show my face was because I was so delusional in the thinking that, oh, my gosh, I'm so famous that the minute I step out my front door, people are going to recognize me. And I just can't have that. No paparazzi, please. Um, I used to think that for sure, and now I'm starting to realize, like, maybe my world is a little bit smaller than it actually is. If I showed my face in every single one of my videos and then I went out in my Community. Would people recognize me? Honestly, I don't really know. But it makes me feel good that I've chosen not to show my face, at least for right now. Because when I am out with my kids, I don't want people to be recognizing me. Honestly, it just makes me feel weird. And that's because I'm a regular lady, and that's probably a very normal feeling to have. But will I show my face and then get recognized in public someday? Maybe. Do I want that? I don't know. That's why I'm not chomping at the bit to show my face. Because I do love leaving my house in my pajamas and not feeling any shame about it and knowing that people aren't taking pictures of me from 30 miles away when they see me. I would love it if they come up and talk to me. But also, I'm also very antisocial in a way. Like, I'm very much an introvert who likes my privacy in my space. And so I don't know actually if I would like people to come up and say hi to me. So I do think about that. I don't know if it's an actual reality. I don't know if I'm that widely viewed on the Internet that people would recognize me out in public. Like, dude dad is an influencer and guarantee when he goes out in public, people recognize him. And my husband and I, while we're sitting at breakfast on the weekends, say, all the time. Does dude dad even get to go out to breakfast in peace anymore? Because you guarantee, like, if he was sitting right next to us, we would go up to him and be like, oh, my God, you're dude dad. And he'd be like, shut up. I'm trying to eat breakfast with my kids.

Speaker A: I wanna rewind a little bit to something you said earlier about being laid off and how that was. I think you had mentioned somewhat to start discouraging. I want to touch on it again because there are so many people laid off in CPG or other industries and just take a moment to recognize, like, how did you feel when that happened? Did it feel like the lowest point of your life? And now how do you feel at this point just to say, like, it's happened to everyone and that you can get through to the other side?

Speaker C: Yeah, it was my second time being laid off. The first time was in the summer of 2020 from a tech company. I was no stranger to being laid off. And honestly, I feel like sometimes you can feel it coming, especially if you're at the director level. And honestly, you kind of assume, like, you'd be the last of the group, like, you would be doing the laying off and then it would happen to you last. That's not what happened in my case. And yeah, it's obviously devastating. It's discouraging, not only from an income perspective. Over the last nine months, I've been really sad about how tightly coupled health care in the United States is, our status of holding a job. I was three months pregnant, and then I have to figure out how I get health insurance with a husband who doesn't have a job. You know, like, it's just a very unfortunate situation to be in from so many different perspectives. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It's devastating. And I think a big part of that is because it's people's livelihoods and their identities. Like I said, like, when people ask me what I was, I was a product director. And then you just get that taken away at 8:05 on a Wednesday morning, and then you're like, oh, my gosh. What? From so many different angles. How do I pay the bills? Who am I? What am I gonna do with my time? My advice would be to anyone that this is happening to is just take a minute. I know that morning we get off that call and a lot of us literally turn around and start brushing up our resume, because that's what we feel like we need to do. And that is something you need to do, but it doesn't need to be right away. So just take your time and allow yourself to process what has happened. It has happened to so many of us. There's a lot of communities built around this topic on the Internet that offer advice and just a sense of belonging and community. And if you allow yourself that time to, like, process and take a step back for a minute, that's how I found myself in the situation I'm in today. My path isn't going to happen to everyone, obviously. Right? It's a very atypical situation, but it's because I finally started giving myself some breathing room after applying to hundreds and hundreds of jobs and doing so many interviews. From November to March 10th is when I made my first cookie cake. How many months is that someone? Do the math. That was me aggressively trying to find a job. And then like, middle of February to beginning of March, I slowed down and was like, okay, hold on, let me just process what's happening. And now I found myself in this situation. So it's very common, but it's not Going to last forever. And it's always a good opportunity to just press the restart button and figure out what you want to be spending your time doing.

Speaker B: Is it fair to say that being an entrepreneur is a bigger risk than having a corporate job?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think a lot of people would love to start their own business. I'm not an expert, so no one take this as legal, professional, career advice. But I think I'm privileged. I think that because, uh, I'm m married and my husband went and got a job, that I had the freedom to take my time to see what was next. Uh, some of that included aggressively trying to go back to corporate America where I could have been hired and then two months later laid off again. And so I had the privilege, and I recognized that, of being able to afford to go out and buy supplies to then make something that I was interested in and then have the time to not hold a corporate job to try to see if this could be my profession. And so some people have that privilege and I'm the first one to recognize that, and some people don't. Some people are single without another income in their household who have to find a way to pay the bills. And so I think it's very situation dependent. But I would say that I put off making my first cake for quite a while because I was afraid that I wasn't gonna be good at it or it was gonna be a waste of time. And I wasn't cut out to own my own business. And my husband was the person who was like, hey, when are you gonna make your first cake? Hey, don't forget that you wanted to try decorating a cake. And then literally took the kids for me on a Saturday morning to the park. It was one kid at that time, he took our daughter to the park and said, go make your cake. You have three hours. Go sit down and do whatever you want. I'm very privileged to be able to try to figure out if I'm a business owner and if that is something that suits my lifestyle. And not everyone has that privilege. But I do think that if you' thought about it and you're finding yourself in between jobs, don't be afraid to just explore what that opportunity might look like because you have the time anyway. That's what I would say.

Speaker B: Everybody needs a break from resumes, uh, and applying to jobs too.

Speaker C: Yeah, burnout is real for sure. And some people think like, oh, I'm going to take some time off in between jobs to like, reset. Corporate America is no joke. And I think that A lot of people listening to this are going to understand that I was in the corporate America grind. I started out as a product manager and like aggressively worked my way up to a director in like three years. And that was a grind that took a lot on my mental state and my emotional state. And so I think taking a break is really important. And some breaks now with all the layoffs are going to be a lot longer than people anticipated. And so I would say truly use this time to figure out what does excite you, whether that's the corporate world. Because not everyone's into being an entrepreneur or running their own business, even if it's in the corporate world. Just really figuring out like what brings you joy. I would say it sounds so stereotypical and cliche, but it's true because it really does make a world of a difference.

Speaker A: And I will say not to get discouraged if you are pregnant at any point in that journey because you are so capable. And every company should know that pregnant women are beyond capable of accomplishing, whether it's they want to stay in corporate or start something entrepreneurial like, you can do it. I think a lot of women I hear, feel like they you're tired and you're maybe not as great of a candidate as someone else and that's just not true. If anything, you are more capable and just as good of a candidate.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. I don't think you being pregnant or having young children is a disadvantage at all. Like I again going back to like, I have a lot of confidence, a lot of self confidence, but some of it is ill placed and some of it's placed correctly. I know I was a good candidate. Like, I know that the companies that didn't hire me probably now wish they did. And after the situation we were talking about at the beginning of this call, I've had people reach out to me and be like, hey, uh, do you want to come be a product director at X or do you want to apply for the senior product manager position at my company? Or a lot of people have reached out from the professional world, circling back after seeing my heavy online presence and what I've been able to accomplish and been like, hey, bring that grit back to corporate America and work for us. And I'm like, absolutely not, but thank you. So yeah, I knew I was a good candidate even though I was pregnant and you should too, because bearing a child has nothing to do with your capabilities and what you bring to the table for sure.

Speaker B: And honestly, it's like just so obnoxious that anybody would Think differently. You've really been able to accomplish so much in a short period of time. I'm curious what your next five years looks like. You just mentioned you don't want to go back to corporate America. Do you see yourself continuing to grow Noco cookie cakes? Where do you see yourself going?

Speaker C: Megan? Uh, that is such a good question. This is what keeps me up at night. I don't do well with the unknown. I'm the kind of girl that always needs to have a plan. And that is the paralyzing thought that I get sometimes is like, when does this end? Because at corporate America, the answer is when you find a new job or when you get laid off or when you get fired. There's a very clear path to what, uh, the transition of that will look like. But here it's so unknown, and I do struggle with that a lot. So a, uh, few months ago, the answer would be very different than the answer is today. A few months ago, I was dreaming of being able to open a brick and mortar store and being able to, like, decorate people's cookie cakes, live behind a glass window while they sat there and watched, like, old school King Soopers days, which was my inspiration when I was five years old. I don't really necessarily know that's my dream anymore, but it's only been six months, so it's funny to say the answer of what the next five years looks like is different just with a few months difference. Also, this question is really hard to answer because I have suffered an injury from making so many cakes and so my body physically is giving out on making cakes, which is what I've been doing for the last six months and how I've been showing up online. Funny time to have a podcast, but I am going through an internal identity crisis of, uh, what is no cookie cakes without the stinking cookie cakes. Because my hands don't work well enough to make cookie cakes right now. So I think that will have a lot to do with it. My plan a month ago was to figure out how to accept orders in such a fashion that allowed me to stay home and spend a ton of time with my kids, but also make orders to the best of my ability on a weekly basis and have those ready for people of my community and then also continue with the online thing. But my, uh, body as it stands right now is not going to allow me to do this every day forever. So I don't really know what the future holds. But I think that there's a lot of potential in social media and my Followers can tell that I'm having an identity crisis. And so they've been so kind. They reassure me all the time that they're like, hey, I came for the cookie cakes, but I'm staying because I, uh, can relate to you. You are relatable, you're funny, you're inspiring, and I just like spending my days with you. I turn your stories on at night while I'm folding my laundry, and I feel like we're on FaceTime. So regardless of if you can use your hands to make cookie cakes or not, in the future, I will be here following you for whatever you get into. And so I think that provides me with a bunch of different opportunities that I may have not envisioned for no cocoa cookie cakes previously, because I just didn't know that this was the path my body was going to take. So, Megan, your guess is as good as mine. I don't really know. We'll have to stay tuned and find out.

Speaker B: Honestly, I would argue that you could have a video of anything, and the voiceover is what people are there for because you're just such a joy to listen to. So I think that you should definitely remind yourself of that and celebrate that, because, yeah, I wasn't, like, dying laughing at your spongebob cake. I was dying laughing at your dialect of the spongebob cake. So, yeah, I think there's a lot to that. And also, it seems like you have such a good community that maybe it turns into more of a mentorship that you can offer. But I do think that it seems so far and all the success you've had so far, you're able to, like, stay humble and grounded. And I think that just continuing to stay authentic to yourself is the best way to move forward.

Speaker C: Yeah, absolutely. And so that's why I don't try to put too much thought into it. I just wake up every day and live my life as I normally would with whatever impulses come to mind. And I think that is what makes me so relatable to a lot of people, because I'm not trying to, like, display anything that's not real. We're just all going through it, live together at the same time. And that's enjoyable for me, and it's enjoyable for a lot of people who tune in. So, yeah, we'll see how it goes.

Speaker B: We didn't talk about your shut up and sit down line, and I want to know when it started, and I just love it.

Speaker C: I don't know if I've ever talked about this online before, but your favorite Video, Megan, the spongebob video. I was losing my marbles in my dark closet doing the voiceover for that video. And so at one point in that video, if you go back and watch it somewhere, like halfway through, I say, okay, everybody shut up and sit down. I need to tell you about this cookie cake. Because I was so over myself not being able to get a word out because I was cracking up so much that I was like, nico, shut up and sit down. Like, we need to get through this video. We only have 40 seconds left. And everyone in that video started commenting on how funny they thought that line was. And I had noticed when I was slightly aggressive at the beginning of my videos, they performed better than if I was just like, hi, folks, today I'm going to tell you about my cookie cake. And so I started being slightly aggressive with that line on only some of my videos, and those always performed so much better than the ones where I didn't. And so eventually I just started saying, shut up and sit down at the beginning of every video. Like if you go back after the Spongebob video, which was day 56 or 57 or whatever, all the way up until like maybe 80, I started my video saying day 67 of, uh, baking, quietly baking a cake while my baby naps. That was my intro for the first 90 days, but then I just ran with the shut up and sit down thing because people loved it so much. And that is everyone's favorite thing to buy on my merch. That's their favorite thing to comment in the comments, they're like, okay, I'm shut up and sad. Let's get into it. Like, they love it. That's amazing.

Speaker B: I love that you leaned on the community that way, Miko. We have just loved getting to talk with you and learn about your story. And we love to end our episodes with a couple of likes. Rapid fire questions. What is a quote or a phrase or something that somebody has said that you come back to in moments of stress or anxiety that helps keep you grounded?

Speaker C: Yeah, it's one that I've told myself because I'm so obsessed with myself. And it is that we are all just specks of dust. This has kept me calm for the last decade of my life, for sure. Sometimes when I'm really stressed out or worried, I just remember that we're all little specks of dust flying through space on a Rock at 500 million miles per hour or however fast it is spinning, mind you, at the same time. And it just puts everything into perspective, you know, like we all have a lot of low moments, sometimes throughout our days or our weeks or our years. And so it's really helpful to just remember that there's nothing unsolvable except very few and far between times. Maybe there is, but for the most part, with a calm mind, everything can be addressed and accounted for. And that really helps me try to turn my big problems into smaller problems from a mental standpoint. So we're all just specks of dust. That's what I say.

Speaker B: I like that. And I also have reminded myself of that recently too. Of it's, uh, so crazy how big our world is and how long it's been around. And we're just here for a half little second.

Speaker A: And when you think about social media,

Speaker C: like it's gonna just go away and

Speaker A: no one will ever remember it existed.

Speaker C: I know, it's wild. And I used to tell my employees this all the time, uh, back when I had my real person job. People get really stressed out at work, especially in corporate America. Everything is made to seem so serious and so big and there are fires constantly that you're putting out every single day. And I saw this TikTok long time ago that was just poking fun at that. And it was like, we're just marketing girlies. We're just hitting send on an email. We're just hoping we find them at their best when we send that email into their inbox. And so it's very true. Especially at work and in the workplace. A lot of things are made to seem so monumental and important and sometimes they are. But nothing is more important than like your mental and physical health and well being. You could wake up one morning and you will no longer be employed there and you're nothing to them. And not to say that you shouldn't put your best foot forward and try really hard, but don't let it get to a point that like, it's debilitating you in any way. We're just marketing girlies. We're definitely not doctors, we're definitely not astronauts. So it's gonna be okay. We're just in the food biz, guys.

Speaker B: Just in the food biz. I'm just trying to keep this shelves stocked.

Speaker C: Yeah. Uh, okay.

Speaker B: What is an industry secret or an insider secret or tip that you've learned from social media that you think the general public just doesn't know? Or maybe not a tip, but something that surprised you that you learned about socials?

Speaker C: That's a really good question. I think the answer would be everything can be content. And my husband reminds me of this, a lot the things that I thought look the worst or were filmed the worst or were the stupidest have actually been the best paths to growth and success for my channel. So I wasn't even going to post spongebob and he was the one who like, literally was like, pressing post for me because, uh, I didn't want to do it. I just didn't think that it was good enough and everything or anything is going to be enjoyed by someone out there. Like just a few weeks ago, I Posted short little 6 second videos of me, uh, pressing down the edges of my cookie cake with a spoon. And they went massively viral and gained me a ton of followers and were monetized very well on social media. And just because I'm pressing a cookie cake down with a spoon, you know, so don't be afraid to put yourself out there or, you know, content that you make out there, whether you're in it or not. I think that there's an audience for everything somewhere in this world.

Speaker A: It sounds like your husband is an amazing husband and person.

Speaker C: I am going to give him credit. Hopefully he's listening to this. He is my biggest fan. That's why we call him the Chief Cookie Officer. He gave himself that title. I just want everyone to know who doesn't know that. But we do refer to him as the Chief Cookie Officer because he actually, quite legitimately has made some great business decisions for me and Noco Cookie Cakes. Yeah. And, uh, he's my biggest supporter and he helps me out when I need help. It definitely would not have been possible without him, for sure.

Speaker B: I love that. My final question is, can you tell us how you got the name Noco Cookie Cakes or how you came up with it?

Speaker C: Yes, Megan, I regret this name every day of my life. Oh, no. I, uh, named my cookie cake business Noco Cookie Cakes quite literally because I was in northern Colorado. And so all of us in northern Colorado refer to this area as no company. And so I named myself no co Cookie Cakes so that when people saw me posting my cookie cakes on their little Facebook groups, they would understand that they could buy a cookie cake from me in northern Colorado. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up where I am now. And if I had known this was going to be my path, would I have named everything that associated with me? No. Coco Cookie Cakes? Absolutely not. But it's actually been so funny, uh, that Noco, the nickname given to me from my followers is Nico. And now people just refer to me as Nico. And then it's totally fine because that's a cute name, but that's where no co Cookie cakes came from.

Speaker B: Gotta start somewhere, you know?

Speaker C: Yep.

Speaker B: Nico, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us and share more about your story. It really has been so inspiring to learn and just be reminded about how badass women are. And just if you are in general in a place that feels stuck, that there are options. So thank you for sharing that with us. And everybody, please go to Noco Cookie Cakes on Instagram and TikTok and if somebody wants to reach out to you, Nico, and purchase a cake, how should they do that?

Speaker C: They can't right now because I'm broken and I'm not accepting orders and they are free to DM me and say hi. And then if they follow me on Instagram, that's where I'll be announcing when I'll be accepting orders again. That's like my main mode of communication. So just follow me there and they'll be up to date.

Speaker B: Perfect. And whether it's cookie cakes or something else, we're all going to be excited to continue following you. And so thank you for sharing with us. And yeah, everybody go give her a follow. Thank you, Nico.

Speaker C: Sam.