A Lesson Learned From Girl Scout Cookie Season

My daughter joined the Girl Scouts late last year, and this was the first time she had to partake in selling cookies.

We actually thought that this was all that the Girl Scouts were about and so we initially weren't keen on having her join (instead letting her try out Cub Scouts, which started accepting girls, for a couple of years prior).

That said, we learned that the selling of cookies is a fundraising exercise that pays the troop back in terms of activities they get to do.

Unlike Cub Scouts where we paid upwards of $300 in ongoing membership dues and getting nickel-and-dimed for uniform badges and other activities (which were impacted by COVID, btw), the Girl Scouts primarily use cookie selling, whch enabled low membership dues of $30.

But anyways, long story short, by going through the exercise of selling Girl Scout cookies, my daughter had to learn about...

• Keeping track of orders in a spreadsheet
• The concept of inventory
• Filling orders and QC'ing each order before distribution
• The team dynamic with fellow troop members
• The effectiveness of engagement with the community

I'm sure there are others that I didn't mention here, but that last bullet about engagement really resonated with me.

You see, the troop leader (who herself is an amazing woman; definitely tells you how important leadership is) organized a door-to-door exercise with the whole troop, where they went around a random neighborhood and tried to sell cookies.

Not only did this exercise give each girl confidence in putting themselves out there, but they also learned how much more effective it is to engage with the community than it is to pass out flyers and hope to get a sale that way.

Bringing it back to WA, I think the same lesson can be learned in terms of engaging with your audience in order to get the most wanted response (for example, an affiliate commission).

You can put your content out there and hope that Google notices, ranks you, and then you hope your content is compelling enough to convert.

But now I'm wondering if you really have to do more in order to engage your audience to really solidify that trust factor before even expecting any call to action to convert.

While I think our daughter might have picked up a thing or two selling cookies, it wasn't lost on me what the difference is between active engagement versus passively letting external forces dictate your fate.