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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 245 - Gimme Gimme Strategic Giving, it's the season of requests to donate, sponsor, and give to local causes, PTAs, and networking events.

It's all about strategic giving in January - and we're here to tell you - it ain't all bottom line blues when it comes to this form of marketing (you see that right there? We didn't categorize it as "selling").

🎁 First up - What is strategic giving?

Strategic giving is the opportunity presented to your bakery to partner with companies that move your business forward, while not necessarily generating income at the immediate start.

🎁 The benefits of strategic giving.

With every strategy, there are pros and cons - but for strategic giving done right, I think there are more positives than negatives.

• 🎀 Giving is good, makes you feel good
• 🎀 Support your customers

When it comes to strategic opportunities, consider your local audience first - they're likely connected to communities, causes, and PTAs - a win-win when you can support them and get exposure.

• 🎀 Reach people you wouldn’t normally reach
• 🎀 Cheaper than paying for an ad
• 🎀 Create relationships with new people
• 🎀 Showcase you working in your community (rally behind a like goal)
• 🎀 Get more orders

Strategic giving is marketing. In the same way you'd run a Facebook ad and spend money to acquire new customers, donating to a raffle can have the same effect - but the catch is it's a slow burn. 🔥 Patience is key with this form of marketing.

• 🎀 Break into an industry
• 🎀 Downside of strategic giving
  
  

🎁 Downside of strategic giving.

Like we said - what goes up must come down. With anything that has benefits, it could also cost you, and with strategic giving, that's build into the name. Because it's a gift, there's no guarantee of a return on your investment. But in another way - the return is the *feel good* feelings you get from supporting a cause or community.

• 🎀 You might not get any new customers
• 🎀 It impacts profitability

I like encouraging people to make a budget line item for strategic giving, that way it doesn't feel like a bottom line buster, 💸 but rather a marketing invoice you're paying through product (or monetarily if that fits your strategy).

• 🎀 Can leave you open to bad reviews
• 🎀 Loss of potential future opportunities

🎁 Creating a Strategic Giving Goal.

A wo-man with a plan! Create a giving goal, then create a marketing campaign around it. Do you want to use strategic giving to increase your social media impressions? Partner with a cause that's active on socials. Want to support a cause you vibe with? Find a charity that directly impacts that and partner there.

• 🎀 Do you want awareness? Social media?
• 🎀 Support a cause?
• 🎀 Last-minute opps

Using community groups to find quick strategic giving opportunities is a really neat (but also a lot of work) method of giving. Finding someone who dropped a cake and posted about it = offer them free cookies. Community groups are an amazing way to reach hyper-local customers.

• 🎀 Do you want to reach a new audience?
• 🎀 How many opportunities are you willing to take?
• 🎀 Maybe it’s just not the right fit for you right now.

🎁 How to turn down opportunities

You need to have a boundary around giving because it can get out of hand and burn the baker out real quick.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 243 - January Task List, we're tryin' out a new(ish?) format + coming up with a list of ideas you can use to get your sugar cookie bakery headin' in the right direction this year.

Could you do all of these tasks? 🦸‍♂ Only after you finish saving Louis Lane from the high-rise fire. ⚡ But since we're not Superman (or woman), tackling just a few of these each month could just be that one thing that puts you over your competition.

And in the world of stiff icing and stiffer competition, 🤏 every little inch counts.

💡 We're just going to list out our list from the podcast so you can reference it, and I'll add my $.02 throughout.

• ⚡ Rollover tracking spreadsheets to 2026
• ⚡ Update CRM with December contacts
• ⚡ Create an outline of your content buckets for 2026
• ⚡ Schedule out January content calendar
• ⚡ Add December contacts to newsletter lists
• ⚡ Segment newsletter lists

💡 Segmenting a list means separating the list by contact category. So let's say you taught an in-person cookie class and had 10 people sign up, and then in December, you sold 15 custom orders. That's 25 emails, but segmenting them as "📝 List - Cookie Class Attendees" and "📝 List - Custom Clients" would allow you to send really targeted emails to them in 2026.

• ⚡ Stage quarterly newsletters now (as drafts)
• ⚡ Get inbox to zero

💡 New to "inbox zero" - it's paring down your inbox until there are zero emails. Then, each day, you get it back to zero. How? 📬 Deleting, archiving, replying, labeling, and unsubscribing. Let me tell ya - it's a battle, but booooy is it refreshing not to be overwhelmed by your inbox!

• ⚡ Set up inbox labels to manage inbox
• ⚡ Audit recurring expenses
• ⚡ Setup financial tracking software (YNAB)
• ⚡ Update website to reflect 2026 offerings
• ⚡ Audit website for dead or broken links
• ⚡ Update auto-responders in email and social
• ⚡ Update social media bios
• ⚡ Replace pinned posts on social profiles for 2026 timestamp

💡 If your pinned posts are already "up to snuff," it's still worth the repost for the 2026 timestamp. Your pinned posts are the first written date your audience sees when clicking to your social profiles. 📆 Having those say, "YES, I'M STILL HERE IN 2026," signals you're in this to win this, this year.

• ⚡ Lay out an in-person cookie class schedule
• ⚡ Audit supplies - packaging, business cards, bows, etc.
• ⚡ Purge expired inventory
• ⚡ Organize and purge product photos - label for easy search
• ⚡ Organize receipts and mileage logs for taxes
• ⚡ Create email templates for quick replies to inquiries

💡 Email templates are my Gmail JAM. You can easily create them by writing out the email as a template, the same way you would write a normal email (I write in ALL CAPS and [brackets] to know which info I'll need to update every time I trigger the template). ✍️ On the formatting bar of a new email, click the three stacked dots - then hover over Templates, and finally click Save draft as template. Now you can trigger that draft every time ya need it.

• ⚡ Create a list of active, local groups to market to in 2026
• ⚡ Audit pricing to ensure costs are covered + profit
• ⚡ Update Google Business Profile with 2026 hours + holidays

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 242 - Losing the Loser, it's the LAST day of 2025, and it will be the first day we start talkin' to ourselves with respect and support. Because we're gonna lose our internal loser - that baker bully that beats us up every time we get into our own heads.

This year, we're professional framers - re-framers - and we're takin' a new, fresh look at our 2026 goals. By adjusting our internal monologue to be both supportive and curious, we remove the excuses holding us back and the bad joojoo that's gotten some frequent flyer miles sittin' in the back of our heads telling us we're not gonna make it as a baker.

"What's with the lightbulb emoji?" you ask. 'Twas ol Tommy Edison who penned, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." 💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡💡

Didn't reach your goals in 2025? You didn't fail. You found a handful of ways that didn't work. And this year, you'll outfit a new handful of ways that do work.

💡 New Year's Resolutions

Don't beat yourself up over missing the mark on your New Year's Resolutions. They're there as benchmarks, not pass / fail grades. Figure out why last year's goals were a bit too much, then adjust! Use them as indicators of goals that need resizing, not as a big giant F.

The brain needs small wins, so maybe break down a BIG goal into quarterly or monthly slices of the big goal - 🧠 that way your brain gets to reward itself while still puttin' in work towards that big goal. How bad would it be to say, "I got to 80% of my BIG goal by accomplishing 8 supporting goals."

• ❌ Bully Baker: I didn't accomplish any of my resolutions.
• ✅️ Believer Baker: I recalibrated how big my resolutions can be before they become overwhelming.
  
  

💡 Missed Classes / Courses

Raise your hand if you're a course hoarder like Corrie. 🙋‍♀️ All hands up? Great. Stop feeling like a loser. You don't need to take every class. Find 1 class that fills a knowledge gap and start listening to the first 10 minutes of it. That's it. 💯 You just passed the "I started a class" test, and you got an A+.

Free yourself from the guilt of not taking courses, and instead - dip a toe in. I promise this new approach will make you feel like such a winner.

• ❌ Bully Baker: I suck at macarons, I don't enjoy them.
• ✅️ Believer Baker: I'm really close to figuring out macarons. I just need one final course to close the gap.

💡 Uggo Photos

Photography = looks easy, feels hard, gets overwhelming. We see the posts all the time, 📸 "My photos are so ugly." 😔 Great - you identified the problem! Now let's baby step the solution. First, focus on lighting - let's keep props off to the side for a minute. Got that nailed down? Let's try staging next.

Build up. Don't fall back. "Being perfect at photography" is a goal too big to bite down on. 🐘 How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

• ❌ Bully Baker: My photos suck.
• ✅️ Believer Baker: I'm glad I'm consistently taking photos now, but I understand there's a gap between what I want and what I'm getting. I'm going to approach each aspect individually - lighting, staging, post processing - and work from there.

How you speak to yourself is how you'll show up to others. Hate your work? You'll think no one likes your bakes. Hate the hustle? You'll blame other bakers. Hate your clients? You'll treat every single one of them as a nail, you hammer.

Be good to yourself in 2026. You'll thank yourself for it.

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🧮 Stay on Track Track Track - Metrics to guide your marketing.

In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 241 - Stay on Track Track Track, the twins have spreadsheets on the brain just in time for the new year.

While yes, you can start a spreadsheet any time on any day in any month of the year, it does help to have it ready to go on January 1 - that way, you can look at your bakery's entire fiscal year, start to finish.

The key to spreadsheets and data tracking is this: first, determine the goal, then let the goal guide what you track.

If you want to become a social media influencer, you'll focus on content and views. If you want to increase sales, you're going to focus on customer acquisition. If you want to focus on corporate orders, you're going to track business networking event contacts.

That's why there's no "one size fits all" for reporting and record keeping. What your goals are in 2026 =/= the goals of your closest competitor. So stop lookin' over the fence at what they're doing and focus on the reports.

🧮 Increasing Returning Customers

Let's say your focus for the first 3 months of the year (Q1) is to cultivate returning leads. You're going to shift from finding new clients (yes, you can still look for new clients, but it's not our driving metric).

To cultivate returning clients, you may be tracking these types of metrics:

• 🔢 How many past clients did you add to your CRM?
• 🔢 How many emails have I sent to past clients? What was the open rate?
• 🔢 How many past clients placed new orders in 2026 YTD?

🧮 Increasing Corporate Leads

If you want to set a goal of increasing corporate leads, you're not going to naturally do a hard push towards cookie classes, right? That's not the right fit for the goal = corporate girly era.

To increase corporate leads, you must increase corporate exposure, and that's likely through business-centric networking events and apps like LinkedIn. You're likely going to create a segmented email list for corporate contacts.

To cultivate corporate orders, you may be tracking these types of metrics:

• 🔢 How many networking events have you attended?
• 🔢 From those events, how many contacts did you add on LinkedIn?
• 🔢 From those LinkedIn contacts, how many did you drop off a "pop-by" to?

🧮 Increase Order Totals

If you're looking to increase the total ticket sale (the amount you make per order), you're going to focus on tracking your price increase, your production costs, and your upsells.

To increase order totals, you may be tracking these types of metrics:

• 🔢 How many clients added an upsell to their order?
• 🔢 By what percentage did I increase my custom orders?
• 🔢 What was my order ticket average in 2025? What is my order ticket average in 2026?

Yes, you can run concurrent goals, you can run campaigns for various durations, and you can absolutely abandon a goal if you determine it hasn't been fitting your overall strategy. Knowing when to cut a goal off can be just as valuable as knowing when to double down.

When determining which metrics to track, ask yourself:

• 🧮 What is my primary goal?
• 🧮 And if that's my primary goal, what metrics support being able to track and determine if that goal is being met, missed, or in progress?

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or watch it on YouTube) by searching for Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 241 - Stay on Track Track Track.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 240 - Burke Lake versus Everest, we're winding down 2025 and taking a look at 2026 through the lens of goals.

🥾 Yeah, yeah - you look back on this past year and realize you can't even remember what your new year's resolutions were, let alone whether you met them or not - and for good reason. Sometimes our "bright and flashy" goals are more claimed to summit Mt. Everest rather than to walk the local park a few times a month.

👣 While telling people you're trekkin' down the local hiking path (which is Burke Lake for me) won't garner many likes on social media, it's the "walking path" goals that actually get you to Mt. Everest, 🧗 not the other way around.

Find your "Burke Lake" and then build small steps to that. Everest will come in time - and that time may be a few years from now. But a 1% improvement across 10 areas of your business each month in 2026 = 120% improvement. 🏔️ And that is how you climb mountains.

🏔️Social Media

Instead of the mountain of "I'm going to add 1,000 followers this year," consider a small path approach to social growth in 2026.

• 🏔️ I will feature 1 local business each week on my page.
• 🏔️ I will cross-post that feature to 1 local group.
• 🏔️ Grow my page by 3 local followers each week

👍 These small steps will put you in front of your target audience who actually can place an order. I can get 1,000 followers from a viral reel or a cookie group follow train - but what then? Maybe a few likes if I'm lucky.

But three locals each week? 😍 That's 156 local people by the end of 2026 who can actually give me their money and eat my cookies. Bonus = featuring a local business = potential for corporate orders too.

🏔️ Email Marketing

📧📧📧📧📧📧📧 "I'm going to send out a newsletter every month."

Solid goal, and I love it. But if that was the same goal you had in 2025 and didn't meet, maybe it's a bit too aggressive. Let's "Burke Lake" it a bit. 💌 Just getting started can be half the battle - so break down "getting started" into three small steps.

• 🏔️ I will organize my client emails into a spreadsheet.
• 🏔️ I will sign up for MailChimp and import my list.
• 🏔️ I want to send out 1 email each quarter.

One email a quarter doesn't sound like much, but if you sent 0 emails later year, that's 4 more chances to make sales to your audience than you had last year. Plus, it's consistent, which means good marketing. If you want to send more than 4, great! But set the goal bar at an attainable distance so you're guaranteed a win.

🏔️ Websites

So many bakers start their year off claiming, "I'm going to get a new website." And for all the right reasons. 💻 Websites = more sales. But often they get overwhelmed with the myriad of endless options recommended by other bakers - Shopify, WordPress, Hotplate, MyCustomBakes, Square, Jotform, Bakesy... you get the point - it's seemingly endless.

Burke Lake-ify it. 🌐 Start by setting up a simple form. Yes, it's not a website. But yes, it'll start you in the right direction and buy you some time and space to work up to that.

• 🏔️ I'm going to start taking orders through JotForm.
• 🏔️ I will test out MyCustomBakes and Square.
• 🏔️ I will choose one of those platforms.

And if you feel like switching it next year, you can. Sky's the limit. But at least this year, you can say you got the website monkey off your shoulders.

🏔️ Photography

"I'm going to improve photography," is

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 239 - 2025 Best Bakers Gift List, it's the most wonderful tiiiime of the yeeear. It's the Top Baker Gift Ideas podcast you're supposed to intentionally accidentally leave playing for the gift buyer in your life.

This is twin2's favorite yearly podcast tradition, and she states, "If I got just about anything on this list, I'd be stoked," and now you can window shop her wishlist with today's 2025 Best Bakers Gift Guide.

Want hyperlinks? Here's the Google Doc with links (I don't think any of them are affiliate, but if we have a discount code, I included that where I could).

🎁 Stocking Stuffers - Sub $50

Being generous here, but anything sub-$50 we threw in as a decent stocking stuffer. Listen - the cookie hustle is willing to take as much of your money as you're willing to give it, so we had to draw a line somewhere.

Some of my favorites from this list:

• 🎄 The Flour Funnel - $24.99
• 🎄 Uber Eats Gift Card
• 🎄 Moft Phone Stand - $39.99
• 🎄 Duke Cannon Bloody Knuckles hand cream - $11

🎁 Under the Tree - $50 - $500

Probably our best mid-range options, these "under the tree" gifts range between $50 and $500 (wide range, we know, but the podcast needed to draw a line somewhere). We tried to come up with a list for the business baker, so one that doesn't feature a bunch of stuff you likely already have, and if you have it, it was something you'd be again (think: food coloring).

Some of my favorites from this list:

• 🎄 Hulken Bag (Large) - $125
• 🎄 Amazon Hand Massager ($79+)
• 🎄 NutriMill Artiste Mixer - $249 (use code SUGARCOOKIES)
• 🎄 Stand-Up Freezer ($298)

🎁 Subscriptions

Kinda needs to be in a list of its own, but for the hobby-turned-hustler, subscriptions are always a welcome gift to save us from our recurring nightmares. And we've got a creative list of them, too. If the baker in your life already has it all, taking on a few of their software payments would be very welcome (even if you can't easily wrap it).

Some of my favorites from this list:

• 🎄 Sprinkle Factory STL Library - $250/yr
• 🎄 Spotify Gift Card
• 🎄 Cookie Design Lab - $100 (use code TWINS)
• 🎄 The Cookie College (use code BAKINGITDOWN for 10% off any subscription for the next 7 days - consider it an early Christmas gift)

🎁 Santa's Chosen Bakers - $500+

Maybe you're the baker who never thought ill of a late-showing client. Maybe you're the baker who was always prepared for class and never forgot the icing or the HDMI cable. And maybe you're the baker whose icing refuses to bleed. In that case, you may have made Santa's Chosen Baker list this year, where budget isn't an issue.

Some of my favorites from this list:

• 🎄 Bosch Universal Plus - Stainless Steel - $549 (use code SUGARCOOKIES)
• 🎄 Eugene's Electric Dough Sheeter - $1,005
• 🎄Eddie D2F Printer - $2,995 (they have cheaper refurbed options)
• 🎄 Dreambox - $2,800

Check out this week's podcast to hear how we came up with this list, which was twin2's favorites, and what she wouldn't buy a second time. And to all you good bakers out there who Santa may have missed - maybe a decent time to play your own secret Santa and treat yaself!

👂 Snag this podcast on any major podcast player (Spotify, Apple Music, Audible, Amazon Music, or watch it on YouTube) by searching for Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 239 - 2025 Best Baker Gift List.

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In this week's Baking it Down Podcast - Episode 238 - Vendy Blendy Inside Info, we're in the final stretch of the Vendy Blendy - and we're spillin' all the secrets in this final-prep podcast for Friday's BIG Baker Sale.

Are we hype? Yes. Are we delirious? Also yes. Are we tired of saying the word Vendy Blendy? Getting close. But it's the f-i-n-a-l c-o-u-n-t-d-o-wn-.

🟠 The Most Important Stuff

If you read nothing more than this - here's the most important stuff to get the quickest bang for your buck on Friday:

• 🟠 Join this Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/vendyblendy/
• 🟠 Save this Google spreadsheet: http://thevendys.com/

That's it - two links. And even ig you only clicked the second link (the spreadsheet with the discount codes), you can shop 68 Vendys at 25% off (or more) for 24 hours and never have to even touch Facebook on Friday.

Got that saved? Good. 👇 Read on if you want day-of insider info.

🟠 Day-Of Insiders

🤫 First - Heather isn't making the event posts (like the BIG DOOR PRIZE posts). A page is - it's called Vendy Blendy. And yes, it still is Heather - but it's also now Corrie, that way we can both help you instead of Heather getting 1,452,693 notifications and Corrie living her best life scrolling mindlessly on TikTok.

🤫 Second - the BIG DOOR PRIZE entry posts start going up at 7:00 AM est. This is different than what we said earlier - because building out the schedule, we have a lot more door prizes this year than last year (10 Bambu Minis, 5 Bosch Mixers). Then they go up every 45 minutes - but some of the threads will lock, but not all of them (despite each post saying that it will lock).

🤫 Third - each post made by the page (the event posts) will tell you the next 5 things on the event's schedule, but the Vendys can post whenever (we don't collect this info from them). The group is set by chronological order, meaning check back a few times throughout the day, and just scroll down to catch up.

🤫 Fourth - the valuation of all the day-of door prizes is over $18,000, and the pre-event hype prizes total just under $3,000 - so you have the chance to snag a portion of the $21,000 pie (free from purchase requirements).

🤫 Fifth - The door prizes of each Vendy and the valuation have now been added to the Vendy spreadsheet - you can check that out here: http://thevendys.com. Some Vendys are giving away multiple door prizes, but they'll tell you how to win them all in the same post. They can post these whenever, but the winners must be posted at 9:00 PM est.

🤫 Sixth - The Bosch mixers must be claimed by Dec 1 by 6 PM est - no exceptions. That's different than the 7 days you'll have to claim the Vendys door prizes and the Bambus. Why? We can only budget all these BIG door prizes if we shop their sales, and NutriMill's sale ends on Dec 1 (use code SUGARCOOKIES to save $20 at checkout - shameless affiliate plug). Bosch doesn't ship to your address? You claim the Black Friday sale cash equivalent instead - so yes, enter Canadians!

🤫 Seventh - The Live Google Sheet gets deleted at midnight. Want to shop these Vendys at a later date? Go to File > Make a Copy. There will be no posting, commenting, or emails about the Vendy Blendy after Black Friday. Have an issue with a Vendy? Their support email is in that spreadsheet too (another reason you should save it), but the twins ain't your life raft if something sinks instead of swims.