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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.