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

Alright, Jennifer thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What do you think matters most in terms of achieving success?

I believe the definition of success can be interpreted in different ways for different people. For me, the defining moment when I knew I was successful was when I realized that I was truly happy in my business journey. I had created this business from the a mere thought, educated myself in every aspect of baking, and realized that my talent was being put to good use. Some may look at success in dollars, fame, popularity, or tangible items where as I look at it from a different perspective. Success for me was the joy my business brought me, the smiles on my customer’s faces, the words of appreciation from those that I have helped celebrate milestones, and the acknowledgment of my family. Success for me is not a one word answer but instead a feeling of growth and happiness.

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.

As I have stated many times, I am not a baker. I am nothing more than a creative dabbler with a YouTube University degree. I am a self taught cookie artist that is constantly learning and growing. I am the owner/operator of Cookie Chick, a cottage food bakery based out of a small rural town in Alabama. I work from my home kitchen to create edible art in the form of decorative sugar cookies, custom cakes, cupcakes, and much more.
I help my customers celebrate anniversaries, birthdays, engagements, baby showers, graduations, etc. My customers come to me with a theme in mind and I take it from there by being creative to help provide edible works of art for their event.
Cookie Chick has given me a means of helping others by spreading God’s love and the ability to help with fundraisers and things that are important to my customers.
I love having creative freedom to take a simple theme and research in order to create something that my customers are proud to show off at their events. I jokingly say that I can pretty much “cookify” anything!

How did you build your audience on social media?

I would say about 95% of my sales come from social media. The main platform I use for my business is Facebook. Social media has so many algorithms that it’s hard to keep up. For me, what has worked was to create a business page where I posted images of my work weekly. I would then share the post to my personal page and friends/family would share to their pages and so on. Facebook has allowed me to reach new customers through friends of friends that I normally would not see on a daily basis. It allows a larger audience than a local newspaper or magazine ad would. Not to mention it’s free advertisement. Once others started sharing my posts, my customer base grew along with word of mouth. If you have a great product it speaks for itself which takes your advertisement a long way through referrals. For someone starting out in the business I would suggest to start with a simple business page on Facebook. Share your work or retail items through posts to your immediate friends and family. Keep the audience engaged on a daily basis. This will give others a reason to share your social media and advertise in a way that reaches people that traditional advertisement would not.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

The baking business is pretty cut throat. It seems there is a new baker popping up locally weekly. Some make it and some fizzle out. For me, I was determined to continue learning and always have the ability to offer new products. The competition is fierce in this industry but as long as I am better than I was the day before then I am my only true competition. One of the things I have struggled with is learning to find a happy medium between personal life and business life. I am constantly thinking about how I want to grow my business, what creative way can I make an order stand out, or what new technique can I learn? It was hard for me to turn off the business switch and go into personal mode. Because of this my personal life began to be affected. I wasn’t taking the time I needed to with my family or taking the time I needed to rest properly. Working the long hours in the beginning caused a medical condition to go into a full blown attack. I have an autoimmune disorder called Rheumatoid Arthritis which causes my body to basically attack itself. It affects my organs such as heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. It also attacks my joints causing them to deteriorate and become debilitating and painful. I had to find a happy medium of where I could allow my body time to rest. I also had to make sure to spend quality time with my loved ones where I am able to shut off my mind to the business and focus on them. It’s something that you learn to strategically balance.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mycookiechick.com
• Instagram: @cookiechickcookies
• Facebook: @cookiechickcookies
• Linkedin: https://linktr.ee/cookiechick
• TikTok: @cookiechickcookies

Image Credits
All photographs taken by myself