From Guessing to Growing: The Shift That Doubled Her Subscribers with The Cheerful Baker

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In this episode of the Launch Your Box Podcast, I’m welcoming back Lauren Jacobs of The Cheerful Baker. You might remember Lauren as the incredibly talented cookie decorator who leveraged her appearance on the Christmas Cookie Challenge on Food Network to launch a cookie cutter subscription box.

Lauren started her subscription with just 18 subscribers. She had national exposure, a creative skill set, and the desire to turn that moment into something sustainable. What she didn’t have was a perfect launch, polished systems, or a smooth tech setup. But she did it anyway.

And that willingness to start imperfectly is what set everything else in motion.

Over the years, Lauren has steadily grown her subscription box, and in this conversation, she shares what has shifted most recently and how those changes have dramatically impacted both her business and her confidence as a business owner.

When Creativity Meets Data

Lauren describes herself as a feelings-driven person. She’s an artist. She creates beautiful cookie designs. She loves the creative side of the business.

But what she realized last year is that she had been making nearly every decision based on instinct instead of information.

So she decided to change that.

The first step was clarity around her ideal customer. For years, she had wondered whether her box was best suited for hobby bakers, business owners, or casual decorators. Instead of continuing to guess, she sent a short survey to her subscribers and gathered real feedback. Then she took that survey data, along with her subscriber list and demographic information, and uploaded it into ChatGPT to help her analyze it.

What she received back was surprisingly detailed. It identified patterns in age, location, business ownership, and behavior that she had never clearly articulated before. For the first time, she felt confident that she understood who she was actually serving.

That clarity influenced everything that came next, especially her advertising.

The “Chicken Ad” That Nearly Doubled Her Subscription

In the late summer, Lauren created a farm-themed cookie set. She loved it, but she wasn’t convinced it would appeal to the masses. It felt niche. She almost decided not to run ads for it.

Instead, she paired what she had learned about her ideal customer with recent ad training inside Launch Your Box and decided to test it.

The results didn’t explode overnight, but they built steadily. She monitored her campaigns inside Ads Manager, allowed them time to optimize, and then made adjustments based on performance. One variation - a chicken-themed design - began outperforming everything else. She turned off the weaker ads and allowed Facebook to allocate the budget toward the winning creative.

That single campaign brought in more than 80 new subscribers and nearly doubled her box.

What changed wasn’t luck. It was her understanding of acquisition cost and lifetime value. Once she understood how much it cost her to acquire a subscriber and how long that subscriber typically stayed, she stopped viewing ad spend as loss and began seeing it as investment. That shift in mindset removed a tremendous amount of fear.

Even when a later campaign didn’t perform as strongly, she didn’t spiral. She had data now. She knew one campaign’s performance didn’t define her entire business.

Planning an Entire Year with Confidence

The next evolution came in January.

Lauren wanted to stop operating month to month. She wanted to plan intentionally. So she surveyed her subscribers again, this time asking them which cookie themes they would be most excited about in the coming year. The response was strong, and it gave her insight into which ideas had the most demand.

Then she exported four years of Shopify sales data and used ChatGPT to help her identify patterns in growth, seasonality, and subscriber behavior. The analysis revealed something powerful: her subscription had grown an average of 26% every year. It also showed clear seasonal trends in acquisition and cancellations.

With that information, she built a subscriber growth forecast for the year. She matched her strongest themes with historically strong acquisition months. She set realistic monthly goals instead of vague annual hopes.

And for the first time, she could see the year mapped out in front of her.

To support that plan, she hired an artist to create her cookie set designs in advance. Instead of scrambling each month for creative inspiration, she now has structure. That alone has reduced pressure and freed up time.

The Bigger Impact

While the strategy is powerful, what makes this conversation so meaningful is the outcome.

Lauren’s subscription box has paid for both of her sons’ college tuition and living expenses. Her oldest is graduating this year. Her youngest is halfway through.

Her goal was never to build a million-dollar business. It was to send her children into adulthood debt-free. And she has done exactly that.

She has also grown into a confident, data-informed business owner along the way.

What I love most about Lauren’s journey is that she did not start out organized or analytical. She started by being creative, hopeful, and willing. Over time, she layered in systems, strategy, and data. That progression is available to anyone who is willing to implement what they learn.

If you’ve been operating on instinct alone, this episode is your invitation to add structure to your creativity. The combination is powerful.

Join me for this episode of the Launch Your Box Podcast and learn how Lauren used surveys, data, and ads to transform her business without losing the heart behind it.

Where to find Lauren: 

• The Cheerful Baker on Facebook 
• The Cheerful Baker on Instagram
• The Cheerful Baker Website