We were lucky to catch up with Gina Nuber recently and have shared our conversation below.

Gina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

It wasn’t my life long goal to become a small business owner. I earned my degree in Forensic Anthropology from Lee University in 2020, and also brought my son into the world the same year. So, my life in academia was put on hold and instead of pursuing graduate school immediately, I wanted to be present with my son. I’ve been in the artistic/creative world since I was 14 and decided to follow my love for art and intertwine it with my love for baking! It was a bit of an internal battle, to put everything I worked so hard for on hold but it felt like the right time to recenter myself as a new mom and take time for me and my family rather than my career. You see all those fun and captivating TikTok’s or reels of cookiers flooding and decorating cookies, and I had always been interested in trying it out. Let me tell you… it was not easy. At all. But I kept practicing nearly every night for a few months and gave them to my husbands co workers, my family, neighbors, etc, and after receiving extremely positive feedback, I told myself “why not? Let’s do it”. So here we are! My big change for 2023 is introduce “did you know” education on fascinating, fun and engaging topics through art on cookies, maybe book reviews too.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I create custom-decorated cookies for special events, birthdays, weddings, etc. I also bake an assortment of holiday cookies for Sunago Coffee Co, a coffee shop in Hardin Valley. Initially, I worked with oil paint as an artist, so one of my favorite techniques is hand painting artwork or designs onto my cookies for a beautiful and unique finish. I’m learning new techniques daily and strive to make all of my orders one-of-a-kind!

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

When you see all these baking videos, flooding or decorating reels on social media, it looks easy and quick. This general assumption is beyond false. These bakers do not get enough credit for how much work they put into a 15-30 second reel. It takes hours to perfect. It is NOT as easy as it looks and mistakes are inevitable. Unlearning that preconceived notion that it’s just like the videos, “looks easy enough”, is something I learned the hard way. I think we all have had to unlearn and check ourselves on the synopsis vs reality for almost anything we see on social media nowadays.

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

I turned my private personal page into my business page, that way I already had a good foundation of people I know from around the country to spread the word. I, personally, no longer wanted to keep my own account for mental health reasons and channeled that focus towards growing my business. I’ve grown 50 followers in my first month of using my business account and I think one of the key moves I made into helping bring people to my page was doing a giveaway. Giveaways are always fun, people love free handmade things and the thrill of the odds of chance. If you have a Facebook business page, joining local groups is huge as well! Share all of your posts on there and that will attract a ton of local eyes to your page.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://my-business-103860-101497.square.site/
• Instagram: @coffee_and_leaf
• Facebook: Coffee & Leaf