Podcast Interview : Tracy Vasquez of Sugar Beez

Today is an exciting day because I'm interviewing Tracy Vasquez, the owner Sugar Beez, a cookie company that mostly makes really beautiful royal icing cookies. Tracy hails from Wonder Lake, Illinois. She's the mom of five grown-up daughters, and she works full-time as a police dispatcher. She is a very interesting person and her experience has been quite different to that of most of the other home-bakers that I've spoken to on the podcast, so listen in today, to hear Tracy's story.

Last year, Tracy was approached by a national grocery chain. They asked her to supply their stores in Illinois with her cookies, and then that expanded to include Wisconsin as well. Tracy discovered that she had to obtain a GFSI certification from the Global Food Safety Initiative, to provide supermarkets with her cookies. So for the last year, she has been going through the challenging process necessary to become certified. In today's episode, she talks to us about this process. We also talk about marketing, working full-time, and raising a bunch of beautiful daughters. Tune in now, to find out what Tracy has to do to obtain her GFSI certificate from the Global Food Safety Initiative. 

Show highlights:

• How this all started for Tracey.
• Why Tracy has never spent money on advertising.
• The benefits of SEO.
• Tracy discusses the conscious choice she made to follow the website and SEO path to make her name known.
• The bulk of Tracy's business comes from Google or Instagram.
• Tracy has accepted that she does her best work under pressure.
• Making cookies brings a good balance to Tracy's life.
• How the supermarket approached Tracy.
• Tracy talks about the arduous process of getting certified.
• Some of the crazy things you have to consider when applying for certification.
• Tracy hired a technical writer to help her understand what she could not understand before. This motivated her to keep moving forward.
• Although it has been pretty costly, Tracy has learned a lot, she's grown, and she's become empowered from doing this process. 
• This process has helped Tracy become faster and more efficient, and her life has really improved as a result.
• Tracy makes custom cookie cutters for every order.
• Tracy offers her advice for going through the certification process as seamlessly as possible.
• All of Michelle's classes are now available online.

Links:

To find out about Michelle's classes, go to www.thebizofbaking.com 

Sugar Beez's website: www.sugarbeez.com 

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