What to Double Down on After Black Friday (If You Want to Scale in 2026)

I remember my very first holiday season with my product business, Cuffs Couture. And it was sort of that August, September time when I decided I was gonna launch my website. I was gonna get my e commerce website up. I'm gonna get it in time for the fourth quarter and that way when the holiday season comes around, everybody's gonna be there and ready to buy. And that just wasn't the case, right? I launched it. You might have heard the story before I've launched it. And crickets. Nobody knew that I existed. Nobody knew that the website was there. But the coolest thing that happened when I really started implementing all the things I teach you on the show and in my programs is this idea of other people's audiences. How do I get in front of other people's eyeballs, right? Like where I don't have to create my own customer list and create my own audiences. And so what happened for me in that season was we ended up in a magazine, actually in multiple magazines. We ended up in Touch magazine. We had a half a page feature of the business and sales started to roll in. And it was so busy during the holiday season that I remember my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time, I was like, hey, we've gotta pack the car full of all of our stuff and drive it up to Sacramento from la, because I get to make these cuffs in real life. As I'm getting these orders in, I'm gonna bring all my packing supplies and ship them from the local UPS shop in the middle of, like farmland. This was my plan. So it was so, so exciting and so thrilling. But also, I was selling so fast. I was selling outta my product and I had this like, pit in my stomach that the concept was like, what's gonna happen after the holidays, right? Not even the concept. This idea of what's gonna happen after the holidays, is it just gonna go radio silent? Am I gonna be able to keep this thing going? Are people even gonna buy it? When we're not in the season anymore of holidays and gifting or, or even having this magazine article come out? And that is what I want to dig into today. This idea of, okay, when you hit success or we come out of a really busy season, how do we keep the ball rolling? How do we keep growing? How do we grow in seasons that maybe don't feel as normal or natural, or maybe it's not even normal or natural. It's this idea of growing in a season that not everyone is busy buying and gifting and purchasing products. But what I know to be True. And what I've taught so many students over the years and so many of my one on one clients and what I implemented in my own business was creating sales every single day of the year. Now we know that we have high seasons and low seasons, but you get to have consistent sales all year. So if that sounds like something you want, no matter whether you're just starting out, you've been in business and you know you get more sales during the season, but you really want more, or maybe you already have a six figure or seven figure product based business and you're like, but I want to keep it going. I want to keep it growing to the moon, right? You want to go to the moon? Then stick around my friends, because we're going to dig in today. 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. 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, so strategy and support and you too can be the next million dollar product boss. Let's do this. Hey, I'm Jacqueline Snider. I am the host of the Product Boss podcast, your go to mentor and guide for all things product based businesses. So if you make and sell physical products, maybe you're selling on Etsy, Amazon in person markets, you're selling wholesaler on platforms like Fair, and you are selling direct to consumer. Maybe it's on your own website. This is the show for you. This is where you're gonna get weekly support to help you grow your business. No matter what you sell, no matter where you are in the world. We are going to teach you actionable growth strategies, ways to get more eyes on your business, ways to make more sales and how to really align that with the vision that you have for your life. Because this beautiful business, this thing that you're making and building and growing and putting so much time into gets to be the vehicle to your dream life. It gets to serve you and your vision. So I'm airing this episode before the Black Friday Cyber Monday weekend. And the reason I'm doing that is that I really want you to go into this weekend. And we've got tons of episodes before this one where I've really leaned into how to make more sales, how to get past a plateau, what kind of Black Friday Cyber Monday offers you can create. But I'm airing this one earlier because I want you to really start thinking about after the Cyber five, after Black Friday, after Cyber Monday, even after our cutoff dates for Christmas. Because whether or not you have the best season ever or you didn't quite hit all the goals that you wanted to hit, we get to still think, what do we get to create moving forward? Step by step, we create an action plan and we keep going. And we keep going, growing. You're going to walk away with three specific things that you can double down on in your business so that when we hit 2026, you're not spinning your wheels. Okay, so this is why I'm going to air this episode early is because I really want you to start to pay attention. I want you to really track what's working and what's not working. So as you're moving through this season, I want you to track your best sellers, what you're known for, what your customers are buying from you. I don't want you to get into January and feel like this January scramble of I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I'm planning, I don't know what I'm selling. So common mistakes that I see happen for people during the season is they sell and they sell well, but they don't track what they're known for or they don't track what their best sellers are. So when I say what you're known for or what your best sellers are, what I really mean by that is, what are customers telling you they want from you? It's usually the thing that they'll exchange their money for. And so what you really need to believe here and know is that you don't need to always be adding new product to your business. This is where I kind of have a little scuffle shuffle with Etsy coaches and whatnot. Where on the Etsy platform, they're telling you that you have to create two new products a day to be found and to be listed and to grow. Now, the reason that I actually don't teach Etsy specifically, but you can apply my strategies across any of these sales channels and is that I don't love to teach you how to grow within one specific platform that keeps you really, really stuck. And from a sustainable business perspective, I've been in this industry for over 20 years. I grew up in this industry. I've worked as a fashion designer at major brands and had massive responsibilities and understood what it took to grow these businesses. Like a $25 million business that was still run like a mom and pop. And what I know to be true is that you need to have ownership over the products you create. Product development costs money, right? Like the more stuff you make, the more it's costing you money. It's costing you money of cost of goods, it's costing you for photos that you're creating, listings, your time. I know a lot of you are solopreneurs, but your time is your most valuable resource. So when coaches are telling you new products, new products, new products, it's just because they're trying to help you play in an algorithm that's not sustainable for your business. And so what I really want you to think about is what worked this holiday season, what is working and how can you continue that on? You have such valuable data right now. What are people leaning for and talking about? What are people buying? What are they gifting? Let's say you're a candle company and you're like, oh my gosh, my eight ounce jars sell really, really well. Okay, they're really loving the seasonal scents. Then know that so that when you go into the new year, okay, my customers love my holiday candles, they love my seasonal scents. I'm going to come out with more of those. Let's say you're a jewelry company and the trend right now feels like layered necklaces and you're just seeing people buy not one necklace, not two necklaces, but even three necklaces. Or maybe you're stacking them on your neck. Then you might think, okay, necklaces are really trending. Are necklaces continuing to trend? What other versions of necklaces can I bring out into the new year or do I continue the same ones moving into it? So I really want you to start to look at your data. That's what a business owner does, right? That's what really takes you from being a hobbyist to a business owner to an entrepreneur that looks at data. You don't have to just guess this. So I don't want you to launch without data. I don't want you to launch without looking at what the dollars are telling you which is what's selling. Also, the other thing I want you to look at is what's working for you. So which sales channels are working? If you did a bunch of in person markets and those do really well because you're in front of your customers, great. If you are starting to get traction on your website, or maybe you have traction on your website, you send an email. You know, I send an email, a certain amount of people are going to open my email and then they're going to end up coming to my website and buying. Perfect. If you're selling through another sales channel and it's really working for you, great. I want you to really think about this season as a place to collect data, to look at what's working and what's not working. You're going to want to jot this down in a notebook. I had a friend of mine tell me that every year I would freak out in December. It was post Christmas. That time between Christmas and after New Year's, Sometimes like, that's it, my business is done, no one's buying. It's like, it's like crickets over here. It's completely silent. Where is everybody? Well, it was just how the season went. It went quieter. I knew that I was so, so, so busy in those months before and then after, it was quiet. And if I could build that into my rhythm of what I was creating every single year, then I would know, okay, yes, I can actually take a trip, let's say after Christmas, because it's quiet in my company. And if I would start to mark that down into my Google calendar so that I could look from like the last year and be like, oh, okay, what happened in December last year? Oh, it was quiet too. It's not me. My business isn't broken. This is what's going on. So another thing to look at when I talk to you about your bestsellers and what you're known for is look at what people are buying from you. What kind of bundles are they creating, what kind of products, what kind of offers are working. Track that too, so that you can take that in to the next year and be like, this worked or this didn't work and why? And then also like I was saying, what do you start to sell in January? What was working and how can you now update those products to make sense for the second part of winter and early spring? How can you make that work? So you do not need to reinvent the wheel, my friends. You just have to think, how do I make this fit into this season for my ideal customer, avatar, how do I make it fit? I had a student once, she sold a massive amount through Black Friday Cyber Monday. I mean, she just blew it out of the water for the entire weekend. And she was so over it. Right. A lot of times, I think that product people, and even me as a fashion designer, we create the stuff and we're creatives, and so we kind of tend to get over it. We're like, I'm going to move on to the next thing or I'm going to. I have a new idea that I want to bring to market. And so she wanted to retire this product. She's like, I'm done. I sold it. It was. Was the holidays. It's done. But the thing that I coached her through, that I'm going to coach you through here on the show, is that if it's working, you keep going with it. Sometimes we assume everybody has seen it, but honestly, nobody has seen it. You have not possibly reached the amount of people in the world. When you reach a billion people, great. Now maybe we've covered one eighth the world's population, but until then, if it's working, you keep selling it. If it's working, working, you watch your data grow and grow. You watch your sales grow and grow. When you know it's not working anymore, that's when you're like, okay, it's actually sales are starting to come down. Sales are coming down no matter what I'm doing. That was working before. That happened for me in Cuffs Couture, where towards the end of me with that product line, phones started to change. The size of our phones started to change. And so because it was a wearable wrist wallet, people would ask me, where do you put your phone? And I was like, I didn't have an answer. And I didn't want to create product, product for phones. So for me, at that point, years and years later, I was like, okay, I think I'm. I think I'm wrapped on this. But when it was growing, you think I was over my Celeste cuff? Yes. I made so many of those and so many versions and so many colors, but people kept buying them. And I had the Tatiana cuff and same thing. I made so many versions, so many colors, and people kept buying them. Only when the sales started to dip did I retire it. So the student of mine that I told you, like, she blew it out of the water. She wanted to stop creating this product. And I coached her into looking at what was selling and how to take that and move it into the Next year, how to sell it in the new year. Now, this product is the core product of her business. This style is the core product. It doesn't mean she doesn't have variations. In fact, she does. She has variations of different colorways, different print prints, different sizes because it's an apparel brand. But it was something that she's like, oh, I was going to run this for the holidays and be done with it. But the data, the sales showed that it still worked. So she went from a $12,000 business that could only sell things with discounts to the next year, an $81,000 business, a couple years later, a $400,000 business, and within five years, she had over a million dollars in her business with, with this one product style in lots of colors, lots of variations. In fact, she stopped selling the other products that she had been selling the whole time and really focused. So if you want a six figure business, a seven figure business, this is the key. It's actually selling less and not more. And the data that you pull together here in this holiday season is really going to set you up for success. So I want you to ask yourself, what if the answer is not that you get to keep changing and changing and changing things, but what if the answer is to focus? What if the answer is to commit to what's already working in your business? What would be possible for you then? What would be possible if you committed to what was working? Everything would start to feel easier. Marketing would feel easier. Product descriptions, photos, websites, how you were marketing in your booths, or showing up and trying to sell wholesale. I tell my students this all the time, but a confused customer doesn't buy. And so if you can really hone in on a product, what you're known for, or a category, that's really going to make it so much easier for you. You know, we explore this all the time in my seen and sold bootcamp. In that bootcamp, it's this idea on the very first days where we're really looking at like what we can be known for. We're looking at our top sellers and then we're looking at what if we could actually hit our revenue with that one product? And people's minds are blown when I teach them how to figure this out and the strategy behind it. So I want to bring that to you. You here. When you commit to what's already working, you get to one know what's working and track it. You get to price it for profit. You get to have a better pricing system to it because you're you're doubling down on what's working. You're getting a lower cost of goods. You are able to scale your production. There's so many different things that you get to do that are easier when you focus, when you commit. Now the other thing to think about, some people I know, if you're listening and I get this question all the time, it's like, okay, but how do I just sell this one thing? Well, if you're a candle company, you sell, sell seasonal candles. You have lots of different scents. If you sell little girl dresses and there's lots of variations in sizes, that little girl is going to want that dress in all different color, colorways. Let's say you're a cosmetics brand or you're a beauty brand and you're making skin oils and face creams. You might have a tallow company that's like a really big trending product line right now where someone might be doing tallow balm and a cleanser and an oil, for example. And you're creating a system or a regimen where I think people get really stuck, stuck and held up here is when they're like, but I'm doing all the things. So they're doing face creams and body creams, they're doing candles and, or room sprays and soaps. That's where it starts to kind of pull apart and almost be a different customer with a different want or a need. If you're a gift shop or let's say you do subscription boxes, you still want to be known for something. I just coached a student today who has a, like a swag company. You can business to business, you can hire their company to create swag for you with your, your business name on it. Right. And so she felt really lost because she's like, I have all of these products and I can work with all of these people. But the thing that we really looked at was, well, what do people keep buying from you? And she's like, a lot of the apparel, they really love the apparel. Great, then that's, you know, instead of having all the things and doing keychains and, and hats and all the things, maybe you do, but maybe you have a more built out apparel line for people to choose from because that's what you're known for. So I'm not telling her to get rid of everything. I'm just saying focus on the stuff that people are already buying from you. That's what she can grow to next year. So what if then she kept really trying to sign clients and get More customers for shirts and sweatshirts and custom products like that. It'd be so much easier than trying to also sell them keychains or mugs if that's not what they're buying. So when we have this data, we get to follow the crumbs. We get to think through this and think, okay, what are the crumbs telling me? What's working? Don't throw it out. Don't be over it. Keep it, keep it going. So let's talk about the three things that you can do right now to double down on what's working and grow your business in 2026. So we talked about the first thing, which is your bestseller. Don't retire it, refine it. Okay, don't retire it, refine it, update it, make it seasonal, make it something that people want to buy in the new year. You get to create new scents, new flavors, new colors, new prints, new variations. Or maybe it still works and you're creating new promotions around it, but you want to have that feeling of new, new, new. And you can create it and market, market it differently for the season. So the second thing that you can do right now to double down on what's already working. And this is going to be counterintuitive to a lot of what I teach, but I' tell you it here because what I've really realized is we get to focus and fix. Focus and fix are my first few steps in everything I teach all of my students. So focus is what are we going to be known for? Fix is where are we already selling? So where are you already selling? What is your main sales channel, what's working and how can you double down on that? So a lot of times and even in the past, the way I taught you was like, get on multiple sales channels, which I still 100% am behind. But what I want you to really think about is like, what's working right now? So we don't want to jump to another sales engine or another platform the second the season ends because you already have momentum there. You already know what's working. You can actually refine and improve, Refine and improve. So some of you might be like, but in person, markets are my thing, but they kind of die down in the winter. Okay, well where else can you get in front of customers in that same way? Can you do pop ups? Can you travel and do a market somewhere else? Are there other places that are doing indoor markets? If your website starting to sell, how can you make your website better? If you're selling wholesale and you're selling more on wholesale. How can you improve your wholesale orders? Get more stores and get them to come back and buy again. So whatever is working for you right now. The second thing I want you to do outside of being known for something is really think, how can I double down on what's working? How can I really refine it, really fix it and let it keep growing for me as we go into the new year? The third thing that you can do right now to double down is to analyze your customers behavior. So what does that mean? That means you listen, you watch, you look, you pay attention. They're giving you feedback in real time. What they're clicking on, what they're picking up, what they're asking you questions about, what listings are getting the most messages. So you really want to think, what's the feedback I'm getting? What did they buy? What did they bundle? Another thing you could look at is what did they add to cart? I usually ask students this. I'm like, okay, so what are your bestsellers? Great. Now they're like, well, I don't know what to bundle or I don't know how to raise my average order value. And I'll be like, what are people already adding to their cart that you can pay attention to and be like, oh, they, they buy two tallow creams together or they tend to buy the tallow cream and the oil or they buy two room sprays together. They buy the big one and the small one. You really want to pay attention to customers behavior because they're actually already telling you bundles or offers or promotions that you can create based on what they're just naturally picking up and buying. So once you understand this, you get to go into the new year with a sales rhythm. What am I focusing on? What am I selling? Where am I selling it? What time of year? Right. Like how am I going to make this thing match the time of year? Where am I selling it? What's the sales channel that's working and what are customers buying that I can repeat and create offers back to them. That gets to be the rhythm and the plan for your new year. So here's a prompt I want to create for you. Okay? So if you're driving, you can come back to this. Write it down. If you're sitting at your work bench or wherever you're at, go ahead and pull out a notebook because I want you to write this down. My best seller this season was and you fill it out and I'm going to double down on it, buy and fill that in. So my best seller of the season was, and I'm going to double down on it by give yourself a power statement like that. Give yourself a plan, take some time and pay attention and then think, how am I going to double down? This is going to be the very beginning of your action plan. This is what I want you to remember. I want you to repeat what works, Repeat what works. Refine what's ready, refine what's already working. And this is the hard part for a lot of creatives. Retire what's not working. Let it go. Bless and release. Retire what's not aligned. Maybe you're like, this is the last season I'm doing this. I spoke to one of my students in the collective and she was saying actually it was the room sprays and soap. She's like, I'm gonna do the soaps cause I've already created them. But I'm really just. And I bought the materials, but I'm gonna be done with it this season and then I'm gonna see how I do and then not do it in the new year. So that's a choice, right? She's gonna create stuff, she's gonna test and try, but really she's like, I know my room sprays work. I'm gonna do more of that. And if I, if I can remind you of anything, I want you to double down on what's working. Okay? Double down on what's working. That's where your growth lives. That's where you're going to see the momentum start to kick in. In 2026. You are going to be unstoppable. Unstoppable. So remember, double down on what's working. And you're getting this, this episode early, early in the season so that you could really start to pay attention. Now, I don't want you to miss the data that's coming in that you get to pull from and mine from, because this is gold. Now, my friends, I've created a brand new special freebie for you. I'm so excited to get it into your hands and it is going to be awesome. I want to help you grow your business in a simple way. Right in about 10 to 30 minutes a day, I wanted to give you a 14 day action plan. It's a focused sales action plan. It's something that you get to really lean into and create. So click the link in the show notes. I'm going to give you this, the step by step, 14 days to get more eyes on your business, to make more sales and you get to start to think like how do I repeat this process? How do I look at my business in a different way? How do I systematize it to grow? How do I create plans? And that's what's there for you. So if you love this episode, just so you all know, I actually have a YouTube channel. We'll drop it in to the links in the show notes because my dog was sitting with me for part of it and we get to get cozy and talk about all things product based businesses. So go ahead and subscribe. Like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. And if you're loving the show, make sure you follow it. Hit that follow follow button and send it to someone you love. Send it to a fellow product boss that could really use the support and education and growth this season and beyond. So until next time my friends, I will see you next week. Thank you for being here and listening all the way through the Product Boss podcast. If you love our show and it has helped you in any way in your business, would you mind doing two things for us? Subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode and leave us a review. 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