I want to give you a real update on something I’ve been building, and then I want to tell you about something that happened to me today. The update first. I’ve been heads-down on a new course called From Oven to Market based on my book of the same name. It’s the course I’ve wanted to build for years: how to actually sell the bread you bake. Pricing. Packaging. Booth design. Customer connection. Scaling without burning out. Nine modules, a full recipe library built for selling, an AI tool that turns your story into a real website. The whole thing. It should have been finished last week. It is not finished. Life got in the way the way life does, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But it is close. Very close. I am in the last stretch and I want you to hear it from me before I start announcing dates. Here is the part I really wanted to share with you today. A box arrived on my doorstep this morning from a member of our community. Carolyn Bajoie runs a cottage bakery in Baton Rouge called NANA’s Old Fashioned Teacakes. She sent me a sample of her work. I want to tell you what that unboxing was like, because it is exactly what I am teaching in the course. White shipping box. Weight in your hands. Open the flap and there is pink crinkle paper folded over the contents, not stuffed, folded. Pull it back and there is the first teacake in a clear sleeve with a white label, a little teapot logo, “NANA’s Old Fashioned Teacakes, Baton Rouge, LA,” phone number right on the label. Lift it out and there are three more stacks underneath, sleeved, tied, labeled. Stacked the way you stack things you are proud of. I had not eaten a single bite when I started writing this. I needed you to understand the experience of the box first, because that is the lesson. Customers eat with their eyes. The first impression is the package. The anticipation is part of the product. Carolyn understands this in her bones. I am going to feature her ( @Carolyn Bajoie ) in the course as a real example of what presentation looks like when somebody takes it seriously. I will also tell you the teacakes themselves are excellent. Soft, lightly sweet, the kind of recipe somebody has been making for years and refuses to change.

His name is @David Smith . We crossed the line today, bakers. One thousand members. And the seat we'd been holding for that milestone moment now belongs to David, out of Bothell, Washington. David found us through a friend, joined quietly, and is already showing up. He loves fishing, cooking, and learning Greek. The kind of person who appreciates a process that takes time and rewards attention. That tracks with bread, doesn't it. David, welcome. You picked a good crew. Jump into the feed when you're ready and introduce yourself. Tell us what you're hoping to bake, what you've already tried, or what's been giving you trouble. Whatever you bring, this room will meet you where you are. To the rest of you: this milestone belongs to all of us. Every conversation, every Saturday bake-along, every loaf you posted whether it worked or didn't. Every time you answered another baker's question before I got there. That's what one thousand looks like. Shannon at 800. Amanda at 900. David at 1,000. And we're just getting started. Perfection is not required. Progress is. Henry ⭐🔥

Family. I’m out this afternoon celebrating Ryan’s graduation from FMU. Master’s degree. Proud day. Get your poolish going and feed those starters tonight. Tomorrow is Pretzel Bread Day and you don’t want to be playing catch-up. I’ll be back late tonight from the ceremony. See you in the kitchen. ~Henry ⭐️🔥

A few days ago I sat down with @Des Dreckett of Content Revenue Lab for a podcast interview about how we built Crust & Crumb Academy. Des runs one of the sharpest community-building Skools on the platform, based out of England. He posted a teaser in his group this morning ahead of the full video dropping. I wanted to share it here because the question he kept coming back to is the one I get asked most often: how is Crust & Crumb growing the way it is, and what are we actually doing differently? My answer is always the same. It starts with the people. The tools, the content, the work, all of it sits on top of that. Strip out the members and there's no community to build. I'll post the full interview here the moment it drops. In the meantime, if community building is something you think about, go say hello to Des and tell him where you're from. He's good people. 👉 https://www.skool.com/content-revenue-lab-4761 ~ Henry ⭐🔥 ---------------------------------------------------- This guy grew his Skool community faster than almost anyone else on the platform - video tomorrow I've just finished interviewing one of the fastest-growing community owners on Skool and I'm still in the edit suite putting the final touches on the video. It drops tomorrow. Here's a snippet to give you a taste of what's coming. Henry built Crust and Crumb Academy into a powerhouse community and the way he thinks about using social media to drive growth is something every community builder needs to hear. This is the kind of conversation that genuinely changes how you approach things. Watch the clip, then come back tomorrow for the full video. In the meantime, you can check out Henry's community here: https://www.skool.com/crust-crumb-academy-7621/about?ref=c75adaa832e449d8b1ef463c22b1d8a9

I saw your comments on yesterday's teaser. A lot of you said scoring is the thing that scares you most. The part where you feel like you're about to ruin a loaf you spent all day building. I hear you. And I'm working on something for that. In the meantime — if you've got a loaf with a score that didn't go the way you planned, post it here. Don't be embarrassed. That's how we learn. I'll show you what happened and what to do differently next time. Coaching, not judgment. That's what we do here.