We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christy Williams a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Christy, thanks for joining us today. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

I manage all my social media on my own. This wasn’t really a choice, I honestly have never even entertained the idea of having someone or a team manage it for me. The results for me have been pretty incredible honestly. I am a full time home baker, so I don’t have a storefront where I’m getting foot traffic or people posting pictures or video reviews of visiting my shop because it doesn’t exist. I learned pretty quickly that social media was a way for me to connect with people and give them a front row seat to the growth (or demise) of my business. I started out doing only Royal Icing cookies, which are show stoppers and I would post pictures of the finished products and people would like the pictures. Share them. But it was always of the cookies. When I started expanding my menu and doing things other than cookies, I realized that the internet is inundated with pictures of cupcakes, cookies, treats, baked goods. So one day I posted a picture of myself in my kitchen and just talked about my favorite song that I currently have on repeat and random thoughts I had. A lot of times these posts don’t even mention anything about baking. But what it has done is connected me with my customers in a way that I actually don’t think I’d be able to do in a shop setting any way. I love to have fun and I don’t take things in life too seriously, because life is pretty hard for the average person. So although I make cookies and baked goods for a living, I enjoy using social media to make people smile and laugh and just have a general sense of joy brought to their feed. so much of social media has become advertisements that I feel like just sharing a bit about yourself and being personal can really make a big difference. I interact so much more with people now that I have started making silly videos and posting more personal content, which is why I actually think it’s a more successful form of social media if you can make time for it, to do it yourself. I realize this is easier said than done, especially for larger companies, however, I think a more personal approach is what people are truly craving. I also think just doing your own thing is the way to go. There are a lot of people who imitate others and your stuff can get kind of lost. Being true to yourself and embracing your nerdiness or goofy sense of humor, while at times may seem embarrassing, is actually refreshing. Being genuine and authentic on social media will set you apart.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

So, I became a home baker by accident. I was working two part-time jobs that paid minimum wage and couldn’t afford groceries so I needed a side hustle. One of my jobs was working register at a little bakery and people kept coming in and asking about Royal Icing Cookies. I Googled what the hell that meant. Then started YouTube-ing videos. I hit up a couple friends from out of town that I had seen doing those types of cookies. I focused on perfecting the base recipes first because I had always been creative, drawing and painting since as far back as I could remember, so the decorating part didn’t scare me. Once I got that honed in I got my first order from my brother for his law firm and did logo cookies. From that moment on I never went a weekend without a cookie order. And I never paid for any advertising. Each cookie was the advertisement. It was a very fortunate and happy accident. I was never a baker, the idea of making baked goods for a living was never on my radar. About 8 months into doing this I decided that I was getting too busy for my part-time jobs and was able to quit one and eventually the other becoming a full time home baker. I lived in a little 600 foot apartment that I had already outgrown but it was all I could afford.

Business was going well. I was able to pay my rent and afford groceries. Some weeks were tight but I lived simply and made it work as a single person with a single income. Then COVID happened. I was primarily an event based business at that point and although I had added other cookies to my menu like chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin my best sellers were still my royal icing cookies. People started rescinding their orders and asking for the deposits back. At that stage in my business I didn’t have the clause that your deposit was non-refundable. For the first time since I started my business, my bank account was back down to nothing and I was worried about what I was going to do. In that moment, I was sure I was going to just close Little Chunk of Goodness and have to try to find a job, probably in customer service, where I had spent most of my adult life, despite my college degree (although it’s in Creative Writing so….it doesn’t really seem to count in the business world).

I felt bad for myself for a few days, then realized that I was one of the lucky ones. I had become friends with people in the business community at that point and I couldn’t imagine what they were going through. To have a shitty little apartment to try to pay the rent for was one thing, but rent for your home AND storefront costs. I started focusing on others instead of myself. I didn’t have money to support these business with their new takeout strategies, but I did have time and a social media platform. So I used the ingredients I had and started pushing my regular cookies, the chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin. But I made royal icing logo cookies of local businesses in the area and I would put one for free in a dozen regular cookies. All I asked was that people took a picture of the cookie and tagged the business featured to bring awareness. I intended to do 20 business and ended up being able to include over 80.

That not only helped other businesses, but the community really rallied around me and it boosted my regular cookies into existence. So during COVID my business actually grew. Which was incredible. People were also on social media much more so I was able to connect and have fun with people on a more regular basis. I started doing cookie naming contests where I would create a new flavor of cookie and then have my followers name it for me. That is still how I name new cookies that will be staples on my menu.

As restrictions lifted I would sell my cookies at the farmer’s market once in a while and pop up at local events with a table and my goods. I started doing videos with people in community where I asked them questions about nothing in particular and they would have to decorate a cookie that I had previously done. It was called Sweet Talkin’ With Little Chunk and it was a lot of fun to show people just how challenging cutouts were without just saying, “Hey, this is harder than it looks.”

One night I thought it would be funny to do a cookie of Bernie Sanders. I kept seeing that viral image of him in his mittens and I cranked it out and posted a picture of it. It was purely for fun but it went “sort of” viral. I ended up on the news and it was shared by a lot of different places. It was amazing how that all happened. People still know me from that like almost 3 years later. It was great timing though, because it happened in January, during one of my “slow” months. I wasn’t slow that January.

After COVID and my Bernie experience I was right on the cusp of being able to move to a bigger spot. An entire house opened up for rent but I couldn’t afford the house AND a new oven. I needed to be able to increase my capacity. My friend Andy bought me a huge professional mixer so I could make larger batches however I was doing everything in a single oven with one tray at a time. So I wanted to get a double oven but I couldn’t afford the down payment on double rent AND an oven so I did something I never thought I would. I put out a GoFundMe page asking my followers for help to get my oven. I was asking for $3,000 and I raised over $4,000 within hours. It blew my mind at how generous the community was. I had 82 different people/families donate. Most of whom I’d never met. Some even out of state despite my business being strictly local. I have a sign in my kitchen with everyone’s name who donated hanging on the wall next to my oven to remind me every day to be thankful and never forget.

I was able to move to a house and increase my output. My business continued to grow and I collaborated with a handful of businesses in the community on different projects and ideas. Royal Icing cookies were now only a small part of what I did. I started doing FAST BATCH, a concept I came up with, after hearing so many people saying that they wanted cookies, but they had to order so far in advance (a week) that they rarely did. To resolve this issue I would, once a week, do a FAST BATCH, where I’d post on social media with a link that had everything I had available that day, right that moment, to purchase for pickup on that day. It was my answer to being too poor to afford a store front. It worked pretty well and I sold out most of the time. I also had a lot of people say they enjoyed the game aspect of it, because if you weren’t quick enough you might miss out on a flavor you wanted.

Being a non-traditional baker I make it my goal to make as high quality products as I can. I work very hard on recipes and test out new products on friends that I know will be brutally honest with me. Because I want to do well, but I want people to be glad that they got my product, not disappointed. I also have always not had money, so I want people to not regret having spent their money on my items. I’m kind of a quality control freak. Probably to my detriment and why my stuff is typically small batch.

I started doing cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate bombs, and jams. Some things worked. Some things didn’t. But I enjoyed the fact that I could have variety. I could try new things. My customers encouraged my creativity. It was refreshing and like nothing I had ever experienced. I learned a lot selling my stuff to a few businesses before I found my perfect fit. I now currently supply cookies, cinnamon rolls, energy bites, and cheesecake bites to a local coffee shop called Shale Craft Coffee. And although I don’t have a storefront, we have a partnership and they even put my logo on a sign on Main Street (where the shop is located). It’s given me the chance to not only expand my menu but also provide goods to people on an on demand basis versus ordering. Although I still take orders and get quite a few a week.

Due to the high demand at Shale Craft Coffee, I have had to put Royal Icing Cookies on hold. Now that so many cookiers use edible printers it’s hard to keep up and they’re so time consuming that it cuts into my other options, which are hard to keep in stock at Shale. So my business has truly evolved in a beautiful way. I also, although no longer do Sweet Talkin’, I’ve started doing dancing videos with local businesses when I need to get out of my kitchen and “stretch my legs”. It’s solely for fun and luckily I have a lot of wonderful customers and followers who like having fun too and indulge me. I wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for them honestly. I feel fully supported and loved by my people. They make what I do so much fun.

I am still a single person run business. So I work 7 days a week. Sometimes friends offer to help wrap items but I once had a friend come over and help me wrap items for four hours and he only wrapped four items. This isn’t a joke or an exaggeration, this actually happened. But as you can probably tell, I’m can be bit of a talker and as you can imagine, if I’m friends with another talker…well…four items is what you get.

I love my brand because I think Little Chunk of Goodness represents more than just cookies and baked goods. I hope when people see my little face they think of fun and it brings a smile to their face. Then I feel like it’s mission accomplished. And if they walk away saying, “wow, that was a great cookie”, well, that’s just a bonus.

I do have big plans for the future but nothing is solidified just yet, but I am always working towards goals and this one is a big one. I think I can do it. But only time will tell, really. But as of right now, the thing I’m most proud of is the community that has been created around my brand and the people who have made it happen.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

I feel like I am constantly pivoting and trying to keep up with all the changes in our world. Demands change, tastes change, but my biggest pivot was probably during COVID. The Quarantine Cookies with the free logo cookie when you a bought a dozen of my regular cookies really was game changing for me. It was really what brought my business come to life. It’s crazy to think that I was going to shut things down. And now here I am, supplying goods 7 days a week to a local coffee shop.

I’m glad that things turned out the way they did for so many reasons, but the biggest lesson I probably learned from that pivot was the fact that I could fight back with my creativity. I didn’t give up. I tried to come up with a solution that didn’t just benefit me but others as well. I think it truly opened my eyes to the fact that I could do this. As a single woman with a single income running a business all by myself, sometimes it gets overwhelming and can be panic inducing. But I’ve had less panic inducing moments since I overcame that hurdle. It made me stronger as a business owner for sure and really helped my confidence.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

My audience started with people admiring my artwork on cookies and now I have people telling me how much I made them laugh in a video. We’ve gotten on a much more personal level and I’m here for it. If you’re starting out and are willing to be authentic and genuine I think you will be surprised at how many people will relate with you.

I just started having fun with people and I try to be pretty interactive and engaging. Some times I’m busy making cookies, my hands covered in flour, and my phone will go off with a notification and I’ll be irritated and then I open up a comment or message of someone telling me about their funny baking experience or telling me how well my items went over at their event and it truly is worth the extra effort of connecting with people. Because ultimately I think that’s what social media was designed for.

Sharing failures and successes. Telling embarrassing stories. Being vulnerable. Being funny. Being yourself. Making your business personal is so rewarding. I have a lot of people who have been there with me from the beginning. Watching all of this unfold. When I see people out they will hug me and tell me how proud they are and how fun it is to watch. I literally get goosebumps just thinking about all the great interactions I’ve had over the course of my business. I’m in my fifth year and more motivated and thankful than ever.     

Contact Info:

• Website: www.littlechunkofgoodness.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlechunkofgoodness/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/littlechunkofgoodness
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/littlechunkofgoodness
• TIKTOK: LittleChunkOfGoodness