← The Product Boss with Jacqueline Snyder
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, hey, product bosses. All right, so we are wrapping up 2025. We are coming out of a whirlwind season where we've had everything from Black Friday, Cyber Monday, last minute sales, we're shipping in time for Christmas. I mean, it's been a whirlwind. That's what Q4 is. Q4 is go time for product based business owners. But before you move on, what we want to talk about today and what I'm bringing you in this episode are the three things you must know before you move into 2026.
- [00:30]
Hi, I'm Jacqueline Snyder and this is the Product Boss podcast. I've helped launch and grow thousands of product based businesses, even one of my own. And over the last 20 years, I've seen behind the scenes of businesses just like yours. Whether they are makers, manufacturers, artists, or food and beverage businesses. I have spent so many hours studying it all. I've discovered what makes them successful, what mistakes they could have avoided, how did they turn their ideas into successful business? And what are the strategies that they have used to make more sales and be discovered by more customers? Customers. And this is what this show is all about. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking to become a million dollar product boss, I'm here to give you the permission to chase your dreams no matter how big or small. All you need is the right mindset, a little courage, strategy and support, and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this.
- [01:21]
A lot of times, a lot of students come to me and they're like, God, I wish I had a crystal ball. I wish I could just predict the future and know what to do next. And in today's episode, I wanna talk about ways that you can do that. Because for me, every single year in business now, I've been in business for over 20 years, and every year it felt like I was like wiping a whiteboard and moving on to the next thing. So what I mean by that is I had all this information, all this data, and I was like, all right, do, do, do. Done with the year. Let's move on to the next. And I would literally freak out every December. Why? Because December felt like, okay, it was the wrap of the year, but I don't know what I'm doing next. And I don't even know what just worked and what didn't work. And I just kind of felt like this, I don't know, confusion. Have you ever thought that? I don't know. I mean, that comes up so often. I talk to my students about this all the time, especially when I'm coaching in the collective. A lot of people come to me and they could be any range, they could be just starting out. Maybe they're making $2,000 a month, $10,000 a month, $30,000, $80,000 a month. And at every single phase, there's going to be a section of time where you go, I don't know. So what if you did know? Or what if you were able to look at the numbers, look at the information that you have, right? It's math, not drama, and then make decisions from that. So a lot of times what I see business owners do around this time of year is they're just in that hustle mode. It's kind of like survival time. And they're not really thinking through tracking, right? Tracking or paying attention. So in this moment, what I want you to do is slow down for a second, okay. And if this is an episode that you're gonna listen to right now, and then maybe come back to when the season feels a little slower, do that as well. Because what I want you to do is really think through what do I need to know? What is my business telling me? And the problem here is that oftentimes people make decisions without data. Do you? Because that concept of I don't know is really more of a curiosity. Question of what am I pretending not to know, right? What am I pretending not to know? What am I avoiding looking at? And the thing for me, especially every December, I would sort of freak out a little bit because if you haven't heard this, that the J months are the slow months. Okay? So let me break that down really fast. January, June and July are the J months. And we're just about to roll in to J Month number one of 2026, which is January. Now January can be a really, a great month for some product based business owners, especially if you sell any do with New Year new you, right? So supplements or activewear products, right? Like you're selling activewear clothing and it's for everyone who's gonna go to the gym finally and keep that New Year's resolution. Or you know, maybe you're selling melatonin CPG products and people are like, okay, I'm gonna get the sleep. And they start to buy your products. But everyone else, maybe you're selling candles, jewelry, pottery, artwork, they're kind of in a freezing spend, right? They're in this, this time where they're really thinking like, okay, I just bought all the things I decorated my house for. The I bought all the people, all the presents, and I don't know that I'm going to spend anything right now, which is why February 14th comes along and there's Valentine's Day to get people to buy again, and we get to start marketing that in January. Okay. So I just want to explain to you what the G months are so that you can really start to think, what can I do now? Right. What can I do now in December to really plan for the first day month, which is January, and really prep for. What do you get to do? How do you get to look at all of the data that you've had from this year and move it into. And roll it into January so that you can have a January that feels pretty good. So I want you to start to track these three numbers starting today, and we're going to break them down. So the first number that you're going to look into is. Wait for it, your bestseller. I know you hear me talk about the bestseller all the time. It comes from the known for framework. So known for is something that here at the Product Boss we're known for, where I teach my students, I teach product based business entrepreneurs that they want to be known for something. And what do I mean by that? I mean that you want to be known for a product category. For example, if you sell jewelry, fantastic. At least you're just selling jewelry. You're not selling jewelry and hats and clothing and candles and all the things. Because that makes you more of a retail shop, then it makes you a brand. And I know, wait, you're like, wait, Jacqueline, hold on. But there's these brands that sell it all great, but they're way further advanced than you. So we're going to just pause on that for a second. So let's say you sell jewelry. Now, as a jewelry brand, your best seller is going to tell you what you're known for. So what does that mean? Let's say you sell rings and earrings and bracelets and necklaces, but your necklaces sell best. That is your best seller. It doesn't mean that you only sell necklaces. It just means that your best sellers, the things that drove the most revenue for you in this holiday season were your necklaces. If you're a jewelry company and you know that your bracelets sell really well, Great. Now you know, it's your bracelets, and you can have a first bestseller, a second bestseller, a third bestseller, and so on. Now, let's say you're a home fragrance company. Maybe you sell home fragrances like room Sprays or candles. We'll go with candle companies. If you're a candle company, you might be known for your candles, right? And the definition of this might be I'm soy wax or coconut wax or natural fragrances. Snarky sayings, right? There's all the different things that people know about your candles. Maybe you know that your best sellers are your 8 ounce jars or your 16 ounce jars or your sample pack during the holiday season. Another definitive thing that you can figure out here of what you're known for and also what's your bestseller are the scents, for example. So you might say that holiday scents are your best sense. So depending on what the season is, your candles stay the same, but you change the scents that people buy. So when we talk about this section of like the data point that I want you to track here, the number it's what are you known for and what are your best sellers? So break that down into category, break that down into like an actual specific product. Right? It could be that like the necklace I'm wearing, that this leopard necklace with pearl was my best seller, but my chunky necklaces sell the best. Does that make sense? So your bestseller is going to tell you what your customers want to buy, what you're known for, what they're going to spend their money with you on. Now here's the goal. And if you've been a student for a while and maybe you're a student in the collective, you've been in my boot camps, you're in the sales accelerator wherever you've been. You may have heard me talk about the 8020 rule. So what's the 8020 rule? Well, it's the Pareto principle. And the way that we use it here at the product boss is 80% of your revenue can come from the top 20% of your products. So what does that mean? You're a jewelry company and the numbers I want you to look at is everything that you sold in the season. And when I say season, let's look at Q4, the holiday season. So everything that you've sold and take a look at the top category that's performed, you'll see that 80% of your revenue is driven by the top 20% of your products. So it could be all necklaces or 20% or it could be, oh my goodness, that pearl necklace necklace with the leopard sold 80% of my revenue. Right. Maybe you sold out of something. So what you want to look at is where the percentages are coming from if you have a lot of different products. Okay. Because I coach on this all the time. So let's say you're like, well, I have no idea. I'm thinking about you, Laura, if you're listening, Laura does amazing wood sculptures and cutouts, right? So let's say she'll do a bear dress like Santa Claus, and then she'll do an elf dressed like Santa Claus, and she'll have all these different wooden sculptures. And Laura loves to do things like one offs. She's like, I don't want to do more than one. I want to do one offs. So when we're doing that, it's a little bit harder to track what your bestsellers are. But what you can pay attention to are people buying the woodland creatures, right? Or maybe they love whatever these creatures are with Santa hats. But what I coach Laura on and what I'll coach you is if you have a lot of solo products and you have no idea, find the consistencies, meaning if you're a one of a kind business or custom, find what's consistent, what people are buying consistently. It could be, I coached someone that sells table decorations, like holiday table decorations, so they knew the size and that it was seasonal. And people really like the stand up and the vase versus the wreaths, for example. So I want you to really look to what you can see as a consistent data point that you can track. Now when I coach you, we do work towards this idea of like, well, what can we scale? What can we take that's a bestseller and repeat it? Because it's really hard for you to figure out your bestseller if you've never, you can never sell it again. You have no idea if it was just a random person that walked in the booth or, or found it on the website and bought it. And you're like, hey, it was just a random person that bought it. But let's say you had five of them and you sold out of all five. Or you had 50 of them and you sold out of All 50. Now you're able to track your data points a bit better. So going back to recap this number, is your bestseller or what you're known for? Think about the 8020 rule, right? 80% of your revenue comes from 20% of your product. And I want you to track this. Is it a category? Is it a style? Is it a color? Is it a scent? What is something consistent that you can track to let you know, okay, I've been known for this, and this is my bestseller in the season. Now, why do we want to do this, right? Like, why do we want to track what your bestseller is. Why does this actually matter to you in this moment? Let's say, okay, you're like Jacqueline, you're saying 80, 20, 80% of my revenue. Hahaha. I don't believe it. Cool. Go look at your numbers. So let's make it smaller. Let's say 60% of your revenue came from your top sellers, right? Came from one specific product or came from one specific category. Wouldn't you want to know that? Because what this data point is telling you, what your customers are telling you, what your sales are telling you, what your revenue is telling you is sell more of this. Sell more of this. That's your crystal ball moment, right? You just have to look at what you've done to know where you're going. What if it's like all signs are pointing to this? More, more, more, more. You'll hear me talk about the Juicy Couture tracksuit. Shout out to all my 90s girls. Okay, but let's go back to the 90s when Juicy Couture came out with the tracksuit. Now, I studied this brand, and I've known this brand forever because I lived in Los Angeles and we used to have this really cool store, Fred Siegel in la, which is where all the cool up and coming designers were. If you were cool fashionista, you'd go there. And when I was in fashion school, we would go there and like, shop the store and see what's happening, what's trending, what's going on. So Juicy Couture had been selling way long before the tracks, suit, velour, matching outfit ever came out. Okay. Before Paris Hilton wore the top to bottom pink with Juicy on the booty. Alrighty. But I owned, I think it was like 1997, I owned a pair of denim jeans from Juicy Couture before the tracksuit. So let me break this down for you really fast. That means that they were a full fashion brand, A fashion collection where they were selling lots of different products, right? Maybe they're selling denim. They were selling sweat sweatshirts and T shirts and all different apparel. Not bags, not jewelry. That came later when the brand was bought out. Okay? But let's stick to apparel. Now, at one point, those ladies designed the tracksuit. They thought, oh, let's make a matching top and bottom with a zipper and velour and these colors, and let's try and sell it. And guess what? It was their best seller. They sold them and they sold them and they sold them. And not only did they sell them, they sold so many that they Came out with more colors, they came out with more styles. You could get the short sleeve puffer, you could get them as booty shorts at one point. Right. You could get them in all sorts of versions back in the 90s. So what did they do there? They looked at what their best sellers were. They made more of them, they made more variations. They made it match the season. So let's give you an example. Let's say you had one of those tracksuits and it was long sleeve zip up hoodie with the long pants. Cool. Well, how do you sell that to someone in January and February and March? In the summer months, you make it short sleeves, you make shorts, but there's still the matching tracksuit. And do you think that they were so over it that they never wanted to see another piece of velour again or figure out another way to make a matching tracksuit? Probably. But it also sold their company for, I think it was like $200 million, which was equal to a billion dollars when they sold it. They were like, maybe we're bored creatively, but we like making money. And that's what you get to really think about. You get to really think about this idea of, okay, what's selling and how can I adapt what's already selling to a new season, to a new month? People want to buy new, they want to buy the next great thing. How do you think they keep selling us more iPhones? The latest iPhone that just got made, it just has an updated camera. But they make them in new colors. Right? The new, the Apple headphones. Like, you could learn so many branding, brand and sales tactics from Apple. The headphones, maybe they're updated a bit, but they came out with new colors. How do you get someone to buy another $400 headphone set? You change the color, maybe a little advancement. So that's really what you get to think about in your product business. How can you take your best sellers from this season and adapt them into the next season into January, something new, something revamped, revitalized, redesigned for the season. And here's what I want to tell you. Okay? This is going to be like. You're like, you're going to have to get over being bored.
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I say that as a creative. I went into fashion design because I was so I couldn't do the same thing. My husband's an actor. Okay, not only an actor, he's a Broadway actor. They do eight shows a week saying the same words. Eight shows a week. That is like purgatory for me. That is. That is not what I want. I'm like, give me something new. Give me something fresh. I'm a creative. I want to do things that are new all the time. So fashion, to me, felt like that. But even when I worked at these big brands that I worked for, we knew what our bestsellers were, and we came out with new colorways. Maybe we came out with new fabric styles. Maybe every so often we took the fabric and the colorway and we added a new piece to it, but we always stuck to what worked. I knew exactly when I worked for the lingerie company, which was a global brand, okay? I knew exactly what styles we always made in. Every season, we just came out with new colors. Every season, new colors. Same fabric, same style, okay? And you sell it till it doesn't make you money again, okay? You don't sell it and be like, oh, it didn't work, but no one saw it. You sell it and you sell it and you sell it, and you get so bored selling it, and you sell it all the way to the bank, right? That is how brands grow. They keep making variations or keep selling the same thing over and over and over, and that's what you get to do. Your creativity is not going to be threatened by a bestseller. So I know you artists out there and makers and creatives just like me. I know you. I literally am you. I tell my students, I'm like, if you're bored, get a hobby, right? If you're bored, take a Friday and do the creative things that you want. But the thing that's keeping you stuck, the thing that you don't even realize is actually getting in the way of your growth, is your creativeness and your want to do something new and different and change all the time. That's literally the thing getting in your way of the millions of dollars in your bank account. So you get to decide, do I want to do the thing that works and sell more and more and more just like Juicy Couture did, or do I just want to be creative, treat this like a hobby, and make money every so often? If you're listening to this podcast, I think it's the first option where you want to make money. You want to sell the heck out of your stuff, and you want to have leisure time and money in the bank account and all the things so that you can go be bored on an island somewhere or on an African safari, right? Like, you will have time to be bored, and then you can be creative there. But right now, let's make money from the things that sell Best. Which are your best sellers? The second number you are going to look at when it comes to tracking numbers and moving into the new year is your average order value. How do you find your average order value? You say, well, if you're selling on a platform like Etsy or Shopify, you can look up your average order value. If you don't have that, or let's say you've been selling it in person markets. I'm going to give you an example. You may have made $10,000 over the last three months and you've made 100 orders. Because you can look at your orders and say, I've made 100 orders. I mean, $10,000 over the last three months. Divide the 10,000 by the 100 and you know that your average order value is 100. Because $100 times 100 orders equals $10,000, which means that's a pretty great average order value, 100 bucks. So you get to look at what your average order value is because that's also giving you data on what customers are spending with you. This number, your average order value is another crystal ball moment because it really gives you so much data to think in so many different ways of how to sell. I mean, how to sell in person, how to sell on your website, how to sell wholesale. And speaking of wholesale, if you're selling wholesale, your average order value will be different for wholesale orders because that's selling to a store versus to a direct to consumer. Okay, so you'll have two different average order values. My wholesale average order value versus my direct to consumer average order value. So if you want to make more money and you want to grow faster, the best way to do this is to raise your average order value. I know it's crazy, but literally this metric shows you how much people are willing to spend with you or on average that they have been. And all we have to do is get them to spend just a little bit more. Let me give you a few examples of ways that you could raise your average order value right now. So let's say your average order value is $28 and you sell products that are like $22 to $30. Maybe they're buying one thing at a time. How could you raise your free shipping threshold to make them add one more thing? Because guess what? People don't want to spend on shipping. They don't want to spend on shipping. They don't want to give you their money for shipping. So that is a massive thing to think about. They would rather add something to their cart than pay you for shipping. And that's why I teach my students about the free shipping threshold and what number to put it at when you know what it is. Let's say it's $28. Maybe you change your free shipping threshold to $35 or $40. That will force people into making this choice. Point of deciding, do I want to give you my cold hard earned cash for shipping or would I rather get something for it? And majority of the time they will add something to their cart right there. It bumps your average order value up. A second way to do this. And I teach this inside of the challenges and bootcamps and if you've been listening for any amount of time, is really thinking about bundles, how to sell more of what you're already selling. Going back to point number one, the best seller, can you sell a bundle of your best sellers? I'll give you examples. Let's say you sell something that's a consumable good. It could be something that you eat. It could be body cream or face cream, something that people use and they use up and they need another one of them. Can you sell a three pack? I was just coaching Nancy on this Skin divas and I was just coaching her on this because she sells cool products that run out, right? She sells facial products that like our stem cell and, and bio skin repair and all these amazing things that are happening with her brand. And I asked her how often do people run out of that product so she could sell, let's say a three pack. And I gave this example because there's another brand out there that does this. It says results after second bottle. So if I sold a three pack of the skin cream and I said the results are after the second bottle, customers are automatically going to think do I want to buy one? But I'm not going to see the results. Do I want to buy two? Well, I'll get the results after the second bottle or do I buy three and then with three, it's the best savings and I have enough to last me for three months so that I can see the results and have enough after I see the results. So this idea here is you can either sell, if you're consumable, you can sell three packs, two packs, you can sell multiples of the same product or you can create bestseller bundles, something that your bestseller is in with other products. You see this all the time. I love the holidays and I love Sephora as an example because Sephora will go and they'll work with different brands at the retail shop and they'll basically think, okay, what, what is the regimen? It might be the dry skin regimen. It might be, you know, if you follow Sol de Janeiro, they'll have a gift pack that has the body spray, the body cream, and I don't know, one other product in it. So they're leading with their best sellers and they're creating a bundle around it, which people want to buy. They don't want to make decisions. When you create bestseller bundles, you're actually helping your customer because they're so overwhelmed with so many other decisions. If you could just give them the thing, be like, everything you need is right here in this pack and it's our best sellers or customer favorites. They're going to buy it. So that's another way that you can increase your average order value instantly by creating an offer, using your bestseller and making it a bundle. Now the other way that people will raise their average order value is. Let's just give it as an example. Thinking about a grocery store. I know I haven't been grocery shopping since 2020. I order everything online. But when I do go in there, or when you remember going in there, think about the checkout line. You're lining up in the checkout line and what do they sell you, right? Immediately there's like drinks on the end. Then there's magazines, there's gum, there's gift cards, there's random stuff in the aisle as you're waiting to check out. Next time you're shopping, take a look. That is actually an order bump, right? That's someone. They're asking you to spend more money. You came into the store to buy the thing that you wanted to buy and you're standing in line and you're like, maybe I need chapstick. Huh? That's a magazine. I don't really buy magazines, but that magazine seems interesting. I'll buy that. Or oh, my kid asked me for gum, I've got to get gum. Or oh yeah, I have a gift card I need to buy for somebody. All of that is right there in the aisle. While you're waiting, you already have intent to buy. You're already pulling out your credit card or your cash to pay for the thing you're already shopping. And so it just gets you more in the mood to buy more. And so those small add ons at checkout, which are called upsells or cross sells, are another way to get people to spend more money with you. Another way that people do that in this season is free gift with purchase. And you could really Think about that as you roll into January. You know, what sort of free gift with purchase or what kind of offer can I make them that's going to make sense to this season to January. So why does this matter? So many times when I coach students, they're constantly thinking, how do I get more customers? How do I get more customers? How do I get more followers? If only more people knew I existed. Great, perfect. We talk about that in so many other ways. But what if the people who are already buying from you just bought a little bit more? They just spent a little bit more. Think about that. Think about if you went from your hundred dollar average order value to adding an extra 20 bucks to that hundred dollars. Okay, now you take the 20 times your hundred orders and now you've made an extra $2,000, right? So you've gone from $10,000 to $12,000 just by getting those people to spend $20 more with you. The math is so simple. This is such an important number because if you can get the people who are already buying from you, they already have intent to buy, they've already added to cart, they're holding it in their hand, they're in front of you with their cash and their credit card, they're like, I want to buy this thing. If you get them to spend just a little bit more, you don't need any new customers to make more money in your business. It's just so easy. So think about the ways you can apply that to yours. Now, one of the things that I see reflecting here, so you've heard me talk about this, but I think our, you know, our businesses are trying to teach us something. They're really a mirror to who we're being or our beliefs that we might have. And so in this moment, when we're talking about your average order value, which is ultimately getting people to want to spend more with you, raising your average order value, what might be coming up for you is this feeling of scarcity or how could I ask them to spend more? Or what if I give them free shipping and they're not going to spend it or they're not going to want to add in. There's so many, many things that come up when we're talking about pricing and offers and strategy, because a lot of times you might be thinking to yourself, well, this is not how I would buy. But you are not your customer. You need to think like a marketer and a salesperson. And if you look at what the big stores are doing, you can repeat it in small ways that Work for your business. And let me tell you, this strategy is helpful to your customers. If you offered me a bundle of your bestsellers and I knew that I could get three and not have to order for a while, awesome. If you gave me a bestseller bundle and it was like, great, these are all the things that I need. Perfect. If you offered me free shipping with us, with me spending more, and I was already debating between this or that and now I can spend more money, buy the two things that I want and not have to pay for shipping. Amazing. So I want you to reflect back for yourself what's coming up for you in this moment when I've given you these strategies of average order value, raising the spend that a customer makes, what's coming up for you, that's getting in the way, and whatever that is, you get to release it. You get to be like I am in service to my customers. This is what they need. They're not going to buy it if they don't want it, but if they want it, at least I'm making them an offer that's going to make me more money. The third thing I want you to look at in this season is where are your sales coming from? Okay, this is a massive number. We can go back to the 8020 rule, right? Of all the places that you sell, perhaps 80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of the place that you're selling. Right? We could flip these numbers around. But really what I want you to do here is really think about your main sales channel at the product boss. I also talk about it as a sales engine because it's something, it's an engine that runs without you or runs with you. Right? It's just the way that your, your business makes sales. It's your sales machine. So where are your sales coming from? So looking at all the places you sold, maybe you had an online store and you sold at markets and you got a couple wholesale orders and you're selling on multiple sales channels. You get to look at what did best, what performed best, and ask yourself why? What was the sales channel that worked well and why now? A lot of the students that I coach at this time of year, maybe they did a lot of in person markets that's really been driving sales. Even if you did a bunch of in person markets, you get to look at which market performed the best and why. You know, was it the promoters and the people that they had there? Was it a more aligned customer avatar for you and audience? You know, maybe you were in the wrong spot. At market, maybe you were in the right spot. At market, you get to just look at the data. This whole episode is about looking at the data. It's math, not drama. Okay? Your business is literally leaving you clues the whole way. You get to be a detective. So what I want you to do is stop guessing and actually look at your numbers and think which sales channel performed the best for my business. If it was in person markets and it's in this season, great. Now you know, in person works really well. If you have a definitive market that did well, great. Some people are getting to the point in the season, if not already, that markets close down this time of year and they don't reopen until the spring because of the season, versus if you're in Los Angeles or Florida or different places where markets can stay open year round. And this is really where people come to me and entrepreneurs come to me and they feel really stuck in one sales channel and they want to figure out ways that they could start to sell in other places without being completely reliant on them. Right. Or being reliant on the season. We get to have, you know, multiple things happening at the same time. But in this season, I want you to stop guessing which channel works and actually look at the numbers. It's going to tell you and then ask yourself why. Then you get to look at it and say what worked, what didn't work? So let's say you've been selling on your website and you're like, this is the highest. I just got a message from one of my students recently that was like, literally, she like 900x. I don't even know what that number is. But she did bonkers, crazy numbers from last year to this year, and she saw it working really well on her website. So if I were to coach you in this moment, I'd say, great. What was your best sales channel? My website. Why? What did you do? And then you'll tell me, right? And so this is what you get to reflect on for yourself. I sent more emails than I've ever sent. I've been working on list building the whole year. I posted a bunch on social and had a keyword that they posted. I sent out mailers. Everyone I met at in person markets, I got, got their email addresses and emailed them. I created an offer that was undeniable. You get to really look at the sales channel that worked and ask yourself why did it work? And then track that. Track it, because you will forget this time of year next year. Happens to me every December. I'M like, oh my God, the whole business is crashing. Nothing's working, it's gonna break, right? Cause you know, this is an entrepreneurship. A week, two weeks feels like forever. And then the new year would come along and everything would shift and change and it would feel better. But if you're not tracking it and writing it down and paying attention to what worked and didn't work, then you won't be able to repeat that again next year. I've had another student who, who had an influencer post about them, right? So massive influencer. Things went viral, sold out. Amazing. Is that something that we can repeat all the time? Maybe, maybe not. So you get to make a decision. Okay, if I could get one massive influencer to post about me once a month or at least a version of that, or once a season, right? That really drives sales. Shout out to Hannah B Jewelry. When I was coaching her and she's at like multi six figures now. After working together, she knew that when influencers posted her brand because for her brand it was really specific. But when influencers posted her brand, she would go gangbusters and make a ton of sales. So that got to become a part of her strategy versus. I have another student who really was driving all of her sales through in person markets. But the entire season worked on building her email list, worked on nurturing her list, worked on sending emails. And then finally when it got to the season, started making offers they couldn't refuse, right? So she was doing he get this pack or get this bundle or gifts for people under 50 bucks, buy one, get one. Right? There were lots of offers created through email. So what worked for that person was building the email list at in person markets, sending the emails, making offers they can't refuse. And so when we look at that student they had in person markets was their number one sales channel and online was number two. But before online was nil. Right. And I know so many of you want to get out of like get out and under from, you know, being an in person markets and being completely reliant on Etsy. And so these are the ways that you start to do it. Step by step, bit by bit. But it first starts with you knowing your numbers, right? So that's what you would do online or which markets brought in the best customers, they had the most aligned customers, you sold the most. Okay, asking yourself questions because I had another student recently who told me this market has done well for me every single year. But there was a snowstorm. Great. You couldn't control the snowstorm, unfortunately. So we got to pivot and make other choices and decisions. But if you know the market does well. But it was a snowstorm, okay, that's like a bleep, a bleep out on this data point. The other thing I want you to track is if you're doing in person markets, for example, is what offers did you make, how is the booth set up? Take photos, track it. If you're selling online, you're selling on Etsy or on Fair, what listings are getting the most clicks and the most views? And why was it on Pinterest? Did someone post about it? Did something go viral? Was there a trend? And all of a sudden you had the product that matched that trend? And also looking at wholesale, did certain stores reorder? When did they reorder? What did they reorder? What do they want? The thing that I see product bosses and product based CEOs do at this point is they operate in two different ways. They're either hustling for every single order or they're really focusing on being seen in the right places where the right customers are. So what I want you to do in this moment is look at the data points, like what sold best, right? Going back to your best sellers, how you sold it, how much money people got to spend with you, and then where it sold best. And this number is going to give you data and it's going to tell you what you can improve, what you can do better next year, what you can repeat. But it's going to start with you tracking these three numbers. So these three numbers are the entire story of your business. And why I say that is because the idea here is what's working, right? What's working. And we went over that. How are people buying? How are your customers buying? What is their behavior? How are they buying? You get to pay attention to that. Where your growth lives. Like, where can you grow the best? You know, they have the saying of like, don't beat a dead horse. Keep trying the same thing in the same place, doing the same thing you've always done well, then you're just beating the dead horse versus let's get the horse and ride away into the sunset on the one that actually works. And finally, the one thing I want you to reflect on from all of these data points is gathering the information from the season and moving forward into the new year with this new version of you. Like, who you get to be. You get to be the entrepreneur, the CEO mindset, the leader of your business, not someone who feels like they're flying by the seat of their pants or that says I don't know. Because you do know. Don't pretend you don't know. You know you've gotten the data points. You're gonna go back through your business and you're gonna follow the breadcrumbs and it's going to lead you exactly where you want to go. Okay, friends, so if you love this episode and you want to figure out how to take these numbers and really grow your business into 2026, then I might have the perfect thing for you. So if you've heard. Over the last few months, my team and I have been taking calls with our listeners, with our students, with all of these product bosses and entrepreneurs to talk about ways in which the product boss can help you grow your business in the new year and beyond. And so if that's something that feels good to you, we are offering free alignment calls. So these alignment calls are ones in which we get on a phone call with you and we talk about what do you want to happen in your business? What's your vision, what's getting in the way? And then we talk about ways that the product boss may support you in that. It might be in our number one program, the Collective, which is a brand new group coaching program that also has access to all of my curriculum feedback coaches. It's just so immersive, so incredible. The wins that I'm seeing in there and the community that I get to coach in there, plus our other coaches, it's just a game changer in this industry. So it might be that the Collective is the right fit or it might be one of our other programs like the Product Boss sales accelerator. If you're interested in seeing if this is in alignment with you and how the product boss can help you, we're offering these free calls. All you have to do is head to the productboss.com bookacall theproductboss.com bookacall but wait, before you sign up for that call, I wanna ask you a favor. If you sign up, would you mind showing up for that call? Of course. Things happen and get in the way. But don't just book the call. Take the spot and not show up. Because there's so many other people listening to this episode that also wanna book a call and you might be taking up a valuable time slot that could have helped them level up their business. So book the call, show up. We want to help you. We want to see how we can get aligned with you and help you grow in 2026 and when you do, I can't wait to see how we can support you in your level up. Now, if you're listening to this and you're listening on the podcast, or if you listen to podcasts, make sure that you're following the show. And if you didn't know this yet or maybe you're watching on YouTube, we have a YouTube channel that you can watch the video as well. So make sure that you're following or subscribing so that you can get notified every single week when a new episode comes out so we can support you in growing your business. All right friends, until the next one.
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