217: Digital Marketing on Instagram & Building a STAN Store

Kylie: 0:00

And a lot of people like ask me too. They say, you know like well, are you? Like? Do you regret opening the bakery? Like was it a waste? And it wasn't a waste of time? If I didn't open the bakery I wouldn't be here now.

Camille: 0:20

So you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business sharing your voice. So you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business sharing your voice. How do women do it that handle motherhood, family and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know this is Call Me CEO.

Camille: 0:40

Welcome back, everyone to Call Me CEO. This is the place where we celebrate women and mothers doing incredible things, changing the world and also earning independence in a way that may be something you have never even considered. And today's guest is a story that, once I heard about her and saw her online, I immediately was hoping to share her story, because it is such an inspiring one and also a new age way of creating online product and business. Her name is Kylie Barker. She is the owner and operator of the handle Tism Treats, spelled T-I-S-M-T-R-E-A-T-S, and I'm so excited to have you on the show today. Kylie, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, I'm so excited to be here too. So one of the things that attracted me to your product is that you have such a unique community and approach to your business. So tell us a little bit about what it is that you do and the business side of how you were able to transfer that into a business online through Instagram.

Kylie: 1:47

Yes. So it's really niche and I am happy that I got into such a strong niche on the internet. It was kind of hard to find at first, but I am a baker. I had a home bakery for a couple of years and then I actually moved into a commercial space and had a brick and mortar bakery. It was pretty hard to run all by myself. I couldn't hire any employees, so I worked the bakery as long as I could. The owner of the building was really nice. She was really flexible. We just kind of went with it as we could and I said you know, know, I don't think I can do this anymore. I have four kids. It's really hard to do by myself.

Kylie: 2:28

So, um, I took a long time studying online to figure out how I could make a different income, you know, to support my family, because there was just there was no way I could get a regular job. You know if, if you've ever tried to get a nine to five with, you know, four kids and managing appointments and everything else, it's just it's so hard. So I found out about digital marketing on Instagram. I saw it a lot and I was like, oh, that's so cool, but I don't think there's any way I could do that by myself. Like I bake things, so like you know who's what are, what would people buy from me? But I kind of got to a point where I was like I really have nothing to lose now, so I'm just going to wing it and I put my recipes up for sale and then I went from there. So now I sell recipes.

Camille: 3:27

I went from there, so now I sell recipes, which is so smart because I have been sharing free recipes through my blog since 2011. And I do make money through ad revenue. That comes primarily from Pinterest, but I have never sold an individual recipe. Which I think is so smart, like why that people buy recipe books. People are consuming these recipes and so in my mind, as a critic of this from the outside, looking in, I think, who would buy these? Because there's so much for free. So how did you create such a niche or an allure for that that people were willing to buy digital niche or an allure for that, that people were willing to buy digital.

Kylie: 4:07

It is hard to think about at first, because I thought the same thing. I was like you know, will people buy this Because you can find anything on Pinterest? And that really comes down to marketing the way you present yourself online, the way you show your product, and also making something unique. And it's just, I found a way to show my products in a way that made them really interesting. You know, people are like that sounds really cool. And now I'm curious. So it's like half marketing, half building curiosity. You know that was my route that I wanted to do. I wanted to build a blog and, you know, try to generate income that way, and I actually tried that. But it was really hard. Building an entire website is not only hard but it takes a long time to build up, like you know, hundreds of recipes and, just you know, a blog worth visiting. So, yes, that was really in my in in the cards to make money quickly.

Camille: 5:12

No, that's so smart because even now, when I I mean for years, had women coming to me and asking how can I make money from home, and I I have always said, you know, 10 plus years ago, doing a blog was easier to get into, but it did take a lot of time.

Camille: 5:29

So, now that's why I built the 60 Days to VA program, because being a virtual assistant, it's more immediate that people need it and want it. Now, where yours is so smart, because immediately you were thinking, okay, what hurdles can I overcome and make a product that people want to buy. So what are what were some immediate, I guess, ideas or videos that took off. That really helped you get traction on Instagram, cause that's not easy either. So what was it? Do you think that allowed you to do that?

Kylie: 6:01

Um, I made videos for a little while before any of them, you know, got traction. I was in the 200 view jail for a long time, but I started whenever I wanted to sort of let go of the bakery. I really pivoted my content to other bakers versus I was just showing off my work, like for customers, you know, and that wasn't generating any traffic really, you know, they just didn't care about looking at cakes and moving on. So I pivoted my account to appeal to other bakers and I had a video go viral like like a week after. I really started working hard on it and it was. It was what was it? Things I say no to as a custom baker. And that was it. Would it? It made people want to comment on it, like particularly other bakers, but it was controversial to people who were not bakers. So it it attracted everybody and that was a little scary, but that's what did it. You know, something controversial.

Camille: 7:09

That's clever. I I think that that negative it's almost like a negative controversial question is oftentimes what gets people's minds going, whether they're for or against, or you know, that sort of thing. So when once you made that pivot of speaking more towards the baker which I think is so clever because it's not your everyday consumer, it's more a specific niche of people creating this for businesses themselves what else propelled you forward from that video on?

Kylie: 7:42

Once I got a lot of traction on that video. I I made like a part two that got a lot of traction on that video. I I made like a part two that got a lot of traction too. And I was, I had my rest. I had like two recipes listed for sale at that point. They got like like a few purchases and I sell them for three dollars. So you know they're really low cost. It's not a high risk for people. But, um, I didn't have any content about them specifically yet. I just they were just kind of in my bio.

Kylie: 8:10

And after those two videos were viral, I made another video and I I showed my cake. Like the video was me pouring cake into a pan and I I still really don't know what was so interesting about that, but it just, you know, it's one of those videos. It's kind of random and you just like want to keep watching to see what happens. It was like and I think that video also just garnered a lot of attention and in the caption I was like hey, you know, this is my banana cake recipe. It's kind of famous in my small town. Everybody requests it, people reorder it all the time. I sell out of it every day and that made people really think like you know, wow, this recipe like sells out every day. That's interesting so and it was unique. You know you don't see it every day.

Camille: 8:58

Yeah, that's really clever. Now, backing up, just I would love to know the timeline of when you are we in this. In the space of what year is this? How long were you posting? When did you go from like a physical location to then going digital? And how long were you posting before you saw that traction? Because obviously it takes time to build up that content and you were kind of refining your what you were creating. What was the timeline with that?

Kylie: 9:28

um started home bakery in 2020, like it was like at the end of 2020. Um, I did that until 2023. I opened the physical bakery in January of this year, 2024. I actually had been working on it for about three months because it was kind of just a stagnant space in a building and I helped her, like, clean it up and renovate it and that's kind of how I made it my own. So I took a few months to do that. I opened up in January and by, yeah, end of April May I I noticed, you know, like this really isn't working for me anymore. I'm not making the money to sustain the building and my family. I started making content that pivoted to bakers in May the very beginning of May and I had 90 followers on my Instagram like and probably half of those was like my family and friends.

Camille: 10:29

Right, and what number are you at? Now I think I'm at like 62,000. Wow, that is amazing. That is amazing. That makes me want to trash every my old account and like start over, cause I feel like there is there is some truth to accounts that are older just kind of being dead, where if you start over new it doesn't mean that you can't have that kind of traction or build if you have the right content and attraction. So that's really encouraging.

Kylie: 11:03

I made that Instagram account in 2020. Like I said, it was just dead. I would post pictures of my custom cakes and had, you know, no activity on there. And I rebuilt that old account just a few months ago.

Camille: 11:19

That is so inspiring. That is so inspiring. I hope, if you're listening to this and if you're anything like me I'm just thinking, okay, I could do better Like, there's a way to like take this message of finding a niche perspective and also a service that people are looking and attracted to buy. So one of the things that you're doing really well that I've been really curious about is building a stand store. Talk to us about building a stand store, because this makes it so that you don't have to have a full website, you don't have to have all of the ads and marketing it. You can use your social media to allow people to purchase right from your link in bio yes, I love stand store.

Kylie: 12:00

I saw a lot of people in the digital marketing space using it. That's that's initially where I saw it. It was so easy to set up, Like I. I just got on there and I had it set up in five minutes. You literally don't have to deal with, like, any of the payment information it connects to Stripe, so you just you can take people's payments and you don't have to deal with any of that. You can just upload your products really fast. You type in your listing the description and upload your pictures, and it's really the best thing ever. It saved me so much time I I also have a Shopify site that I built for four months and you know I the stand store saved me all this time. I still get way more traffic to my stand store than my Shopify.

Camille: 12:50

Yeah, and I think it is very user-friendly for the customer too, cause I've purchased your, your digital media account. I think I did. I went to I better have, cause I wanted to purchase it and see cause on her Instagram you can go and learn her strategy that she did for building her Instagram, which I think is really cool.

Kylie: 13:12

I have a little mini Instagram course and I have a like a digital product guide for beginners, so you can either learn how to just build your Instagram or you can, if you're interested in just learning about digital products you can learn exactly how to do that like from the beginning, and it also includes all the instructions for the Stan store too.

Camille: 13:31

Very cool, okay, so I wanted to bring this up, with your permission, that this new business that you are creating in 2020 and this whole new direction as a busy mama for came out of a place of necessity for you, and I would love to have you share the journey that you went through to get there. I think that it's really easy to look at, maybe, a story like this and be like, oh, but she had just the right thing and it was so perfect, and look how easy it was for her. And that is not the message. That is the truth behind this story, and I love that you share that side of your story, too, as an inspiration for so many that are struggling right now.

Kylie: 14:14

Yes, it was a really long journey, to say the least. I wasn't a baker. Like my whole life I never went to school or anything. I was a behavior therapist, you know, for children with autism, like I said, and in 2020, in February, my partner, who is the father of my children he actually passed away really suddenly. It was just completely unexpected and, as you can imagine, you know someone that has kind of not a cookie cutter life, but you, you know we were doing okay. You know, like we had our kids, we had a house, it was nice. It just completely fell apart, like I didn't know what to do. After that, I was very, very depressed for a while, you know, expectedly. But after, right after that happened, covid happened, you know, the whole entire world shut down. Like two weeks after I emailed my like family leave email, you know I let them know what happened they send another email that says, hey, you know, like the all of our positions have been dissolved. Right now, like you, I'm sorry we're letting you go.

Camille: 15:30

So I also had no job. Oh my gosh by March 2020.

Kylie: 15:34

um, at that point, I think it was like, really shortly after that school ended, you know, they said we're going home for spring break and we don't know if they're gonna come back back. So, like the world just kind of like completely shifted for me. Everything fell apart, and it was crazy, to say the least. My family helped me so much. My dad, like he just helped me through that whole thing, but it's funny like we didn't have any sort of life insurance or anything, which wasn't good. You know, nobody expects that to happen, though, when you're 25, 26.

Kylie: 16:14

So, I was kind of just, I had no job. I was a single mom. Now I literally had nothing to my name. I had my car in our house, which I wasn't doing very good keeping up everything. So we did, we ended up getting, you know, you know this stimulus check. I got a stimulus check and I bought a KitchenAid mixer. That was the first mixer I ever had.

Kylie: 16:35

I I had to bake my son's birthday cake in May um of that year. So I baked the cake and I just I decorated it as good as I could. You know, I didn't have any money to pay for like a fancy party or get a custom cake, so I just did it myself. And the funny thing is, at that party everyone loved the cake and they were like, oh my God, like you made all these treats, everything is so cool, like you should do that. I want you to do that for our party. So I was like that's really weird. I feel like I'm not very good at this. But I was like, okay, so I made the cake for someone else's party. The word got out about that party too and I was literally like using box cake mixes, and they knew that. You know, they were okay with it. But I was like, okay, you know, like people like what I'm doing, so maybe I could do this a little more.

Kylie: 17:30

I was kind of just surviving up the stimulus checks at that time, you know, like I saved money. I was just getting by however I could. So I made a Facebook page for my bakery and I just I just went with it. I literally had no strategy, nothing. I didn't know what to do. I was making cakes for people and it just took off, like I was. I started to make, you know, a part-time, full-time income just from making these cakes, which was awesome for me. And I kept doing it. And the business grew so much Like my page, my local page, had thousands of followers. Everyone told me, you know, like you should start a physical bakery and I I was like, no, you know, that's really expensive. I tried to get a business loan because I really started thinking about it and I actually got denied. So I was like, okay, you know, that's not really in the cards right now, but I was still saving money however I could.

Kylie: 18:30

And then a friend of mine owns a flower shop in my town and she was like, hey, the other side of my flower shop is just sitting there Like there's nothing there. Maybe you could work in there. We used to have a cafe in there and I was like, really, so it already had all these like hookups, you know the hand wash thing. It had all the things needed for a commercial kitchen. So I was like, yes, I'll do it. And for three months I this was in 2023. Now I were in my home bakery all the way until then, in 2023 of October, I started renovating that room. Of October I started renovating that room. I bought a commercial oven off of Facebook marketplace. I laid these peel and stick tiles, I I just got everything I needed for inside there and I did a soft open in January of 2024.

Kylie: 19:24

Um, you know, it's still just me and the kids. I um, you know, it's still just me and the kids. I I'm still, like you know, struggling, but you know I'm doing okay, I'm getting, I'm figuring it out, I'm getting by. I have the brick and mortar bakery for five months open, but it's it's really not making that much money. You know I have to pay the rent there. I have to pay business insurance making that much money. You know I have to pay the rent there. I have to pay business insurance. I have to pay so many things now and it's just a lot, a lot more than anybody tells you about. And you know, repairing things and buying like bulk ingredients was just, it was a lot and kind of falling behind all over again. It was feeling like 2020, all over, like I was. I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent. I was, I was scared. I, you know, was relying on government assistance at that point because I didn't know what to do. I tell this story on my Instagram. I was just having a really bad, like couple of weeks. I was really depressed, I didn't know really depressed, I didn't know. I just didn't know about the future at all.

Kylie: 20:30

And this lady that I made a custom cake for came in the bakery to pick it up and she started like screaming. She started cussing and just making everyone in the place feel so like uncomfortable. She said this was. I made her a custom cake. She said it was the ugliest thing she had ever seen in her life. She was, like I said, cussing like you're gonna get money back it's, this is awful and it was a good cake. Like yeah, I stayed up until 2 am the night before making that cake, oh my word. So I was so upset, you know I didn't know what to do at the time. I gave her all her money back and she was like she took the cake anyway. She was like this is feeding a party of 200 people and every single person there is gonna know that you are awful. You have the worst establishment. I'm never gonna recommend you. And she still took the cake.

Kylie: 21:22

But that day like, just completely like ruined me. I was so upset. I was like I'm staying up until 2 in the morning making these cakes and this happened and like I don't know what I'm going to do now. That was that was like at the end of April, like I said, so I that night I stayed up the whole entire night and I was like I have to find a different way to make money because I can't keep doing this. And you know people are like don't let that lady like break your spirit. You know, but that is really hard when you're already going through such a hard time, that just it ruins your whole life. You know what I mean. Yes, yes.

Kylie: 22:00

So I literally stayed up the whole night, like the next, like two or three nights, and I was like I'm gonna do this digital marketing thing. I don't know if it's gonna work out for me, but I'm just gonna wing it. I'm gonna try to sell some digital things. I actually I had a couple of like little templates and I also had my recipes. You know that I had a couple of like little templates and I also had my recipes. You know that I had written down in a notebook for my bakery. So I just I created a Canva template for my race for my recipes and I opened a stand store and I put them on there and I was like we'll see how this goes. I really don't have anything to lose, but I have to figure this out. So I pivoted my content, I uploaded my recipes and I went viral. A week later this was in May now and everything changed like right then.

Camille: 22:55

Wow, you know, it's interesting to hear those bits of the story where things feel so terrible, because they are.

Camille: 23:02

It does feel terrible and I I've been in a place where someone has ripped into me at a personal level, where you feel so down and depressed, and that is a place of decision where you chose to take that and turn it into fuel for doing something different, which is interesting because I think in some way we can look at that and go what a terrible person Like that just ruined my life. But it also gave you fuel. You took it and used it as fuel to propel you in a different direction, which is now giving you more flexibility at home and, I think, will continue. You're just going to be able to come up with more recipes and your digital offerings and it's going to get better and better, because the way your account popped up into my feed, I didn't know who you were and it's. You are blessed by the Instagram gods. They love you and the content is good, so it's like just staying in that trajectory is so empowering to think that you chose that and used it as fuel instead of allowing it to bury you.

Kylie: 24:08

Yes, I talk about that situation a lot, that every time I talk about it like kind of goes viral a little bit Cause I'm like I mean, lady made me quit baking. You know what I mean. It's like hooks like that. But you know I'm glad it happened. You know it made me so upset at the time but, like you said, I really just turned it around and I was like I'm done with this, I got to do something else.

Camille: 24:33

Yeah, you're really good at coming up with hooks for your videos. How do you do that? Any advice that you could give people for that videos?

Kylie: 24:42

How do you do that, any advice that you could give people for that? Um, I want you know I try to pay attention to other people's content. That I really like, you know I. I just try to see what other people are doing, what works, and I try to think about, like, when I want to make a video topic, I'm like what would bring them in, like what would make this interesting at all? Because if, like, just saying banana cake recipe sounds boring, I'm like, so how can I entice them? This is the best selling recipe in my bakery. It's sold out every single day. It sells out of every market vendor event. People keep coming back for it.

Camille: 25:19

You know that sounds a lot more interesting market, vendor event, people keep coming back for it. You know that sounds a lot more interesting, which is very powerful to be able to say that too, which I think is an interesting part of your story too, that you haven't had the physical location long, but that experience and that proof of product makes it so your digital product is more valuable. You know that people see that and go, oh well, I like baking for my community, or I'm thinking about doing this. Or even a consumer oh, I want to make a cake that people are raving about. Like that's so.

Camille: 25:50

The fact that you've had that experience and been able to have it as part of your story is even more powerful. I think that a lot of times we look at mishaps or redirects or you know, maybe a stumbling block in our way, thinking that it's, that it has no benefit. But again, I think you use that to your benefit of like, hey, had I not opened this physical store, I wouldn't know or be able to say this banana cake sells out and I can't keep it on the shelf. Like that's such a powerful thing to be able to say and bring online.

Kylie: 26:23

Definitely. And a lot of people like ask me too. They say you know, like well, are you like, do you regret opening the bakery? Like, was it a waste? And I, it wasn't a waste of time. If I didn't open the bakery I wouldn't be here now. You know I'm so happy I did that and I got the experience. And you know I got more experience with people and, like you said, my recipes and I'm able to talk about them more and talk about what other people think of them. So I'm just glad everything happened the way it did.

Camille: 26:51

Yeah, well, you're amazing. Your perspective and your ability to work through hard things is so inspiring, and I hope all of you that are listening will please go check out her Instagram account. I'm going to spell it for you again it's T I S, m treats, which is short for autism, which you had mentioned, that your son has autism and that you, you'd mentioned earlier you were recently diagnosed. Is that right? Yeah, is that something you talk about on your, on your channel at all?

Kylie: 27:20

A little bit. I talk about my son. Um so my son, he's 13, he, he's what they call, like in quotations, low functioning. I don't really like that term, but you know it is what it is. But he, you know, has taught me so much in in our journey together in life and he, he always keeps going, no matter what, and he, you know, is a huge inspiration for me. And the tism thing, we actually I always say that to the kids, like my oldest son, he has autism, but my youngest son also was diagnosed, which is crazy. I'm like there's definitely some like genetic factor here.

Kylie: 28:01

But anyway my youngest son. He has autism too, and you know, when they do funny things around the house like I, just always I tell other people I'm like oh, that's just the tism, it's fine, don't worry about it.

Camille: 28:15

Yes, which?

Camille: 28:17

I love that I love that it's a more lighthearted approach, because this is something that I have family members who have been diagnosed with autism and there seems to be I am hoping, more with time that there's a better understanding of what a spectrum of autism can be. I think what was painted in the beginning of using that word. I feel like there's such a large spectrum of what that even means and that it doesn't have to be so shrouded in shame or to make it seem like it's a bad thing. So I love that you say that, because I think the more awareness and lightheartedness and what makes us different, makes us wonderful, you know is that's so empowering too.

Kylie: 29:05

So I I so agree with that. Like it's just, you have to make light of it somehow. You can't just always be so serious. Like things are hard you know we've had to deal with a lot of health issues and just hard things with my kids and you just, if you make it so serious, you're never going to, you know, have any fun in your life, so we just make it silly.

Camille: 29:28

What are some tips that you have for young mom entrepreneurs with kids, like how do you balance it all? How do you, especially with you, know having special needs in the home too and not knowing you know giving them what they need and you what you need? What are some things that have helped you to keep we know it's never a perfect balance, but somewhat of your sanity, what are some tips that have helped?

Kylie: 29:54

Oh my goodness, Besides caffeine, I, I, what I would say is I have a planner and I just try to manage my time as well as I can. I try to make lots of time to do things. I ask for help. I wasn't always good at asking for help, but, you know, after I lost my partner, you know I, I literally had no choice but to ask for help from people. And that's what I would tell anyone is just manage your time.

Kylie: 30:25

Set aside time for the things you want and need to do. Make a schedule of every, of your entire day. If you need to, like I'm going to take the kids to school, then I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this while they're at school pick them up, make dinner, do chores, like just. You have to block out the time to do the things you need to do, and that's what I did. You know, like I said, I stayed up all night, a bunch of nights, trying to figure out what to do. That wasn't exactly healthy, but I, you know, I'm set on something and I didn't happen like you have to. I had no time. I was, I was gonna go broke and lose my house. You, I had no clue at that time I was. I was going to go broke and lose my house. You know, I had to figure something out.

Camille: 31:05

Yes, well, I'm very impressed by you and I hope that those who are listening are as well, which I know they will be. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your experience and a very vulnerable story, and I'm so sorry. You lost your husband and have had to go through so much heartache I can't imagine, especially with having such young kids. You are absolutely amazing and I hope you know that I appreciate that I'm doing my best. Awesome, that's all we can do. Well, everyone, thank you so much for listening.

Camille: 31:36

If this episode has been inspiring to you, which I think it was, please share it with your friends, because it's stories like this that help to motivate and encourage us to do things, even when we don't have all the answers. It's moving forward with fear or with tenacity, or sometimes with curiosity, and I think that Kylie is exceptional at that. So thank you so much for sharing that with us today and we'll see you guys next time. Thank you for having me. You're welcome, hey CEOs. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. If you found this episode inspiring or helpful, please let me know in a comment and a five-star review. You could have the chance of being a featured review on an upcoming episode. Continue the conversation on Instagram at callmeCEOPodcast, and remember you are the boss.