42 | Celebrate 2025 with a "T-Shirt Business Wrapped"

A fresh take on year-end reflection: build a 2025 Wrapped for your t‑shirt business that centers around customers and what they helped you achieve this year. I'll walk you through why Wrapped works, what to include, and how to share it across social and email with gratitude.

• Why Spotify Wrapped resonates and what to borrow
• Recognizing progress you overlook during busy seasons
• Key metrics to feature with light data work
• Mixing numbers with human moments and reviews
• Closing the year with an email and a thank you
• Using Wrapped to spark 2026 product and design input
• Simple, affordable template pack to speed execution

Grab the 2025 Wrapped pack

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Transcript

Flipping Year‑End Reflection

Why Wrapped Works

Make Customers The Hero

Why You Underestimate Your Year

What To Include In Your Wrapped

How And Where To Share It

Gratitude, Connection, And Next Steps

Grab The 2025 Wrapped Pack

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey y'all, welcome back to Turn Down the Hustle. It feels so good to say that again. I am recording this at the end of 2025, and I am looking forward to kicking off this podcast again going into 2026. I took a little break from the podcast, or you could say a big break. And if you're a business owner, you know how it goes sometimes whenever you're trying out different things, and there's only so many hours in a day, especially when you have a nine to five that you're trying to juggle and banish. So life just became a little full, not in a bad way, in a good way. And as we kick off this podcast again, I look forward to sharing some of the things I've been up to this past year as we go into 2026. Now, this is the end of the year, and this is always the time of the year that we start reflecting. We think about what worked, what didn't, maybe the things we didn't get to get started on, maybe the things we want to do differently next year. And if you're anything like me, it's really easy to focus on the things that you didn't get to or the goals you didn't hit and those things that you want to now do next year. But I want to flip the script a little bit for this episode. I want to introduce something to you today that I created and it's a lot of fun. We're going to talk about all the goals and the things you did do this past year, and we're going to do that with your 2025 Wrapped. Yeah, if you've heard of Wrap before, you're probably familiar with Spotify Wrapped, but we're doing a little bit of a twist with it, and we're going to do a 2025 wrap for your t-shirt business. Now, this episode is not about numbers being skyrocket or breaking into a brick and mortar or having a six-figure year. It's nothing like that or being perfect. It's just about pausing just long enough to recognize exactly what you did this year. And then my favorite part about it is inviting your customers back into that story with you. Because the truth is your business probably did more than you give yourself credit for. And your customers played a part in that as well. They may have ordered once or followed along all year quietly. And you don't know exactly what it is you accomplished or how much you actually created this past year until you take the time to sit down and do that. And we're going to do that with the 2025 wrap. If you're looking to capture everything that you accomplished this past year and share it in a fun way, this episode is perfect for you. So let's get into 2025 Wrapped. Where did this wrapped idea come from, anyways? And why do people love it so much? So every year without fail, there's one piece of content people genuinely look forward to. It's not a sale, it's not a giveaway. You already know it. It's Spotify Rap. So Spotify Rap started about in 2015, and what it is basically a summary and basically like a digital diary of all of the different genres you've listened to, the songs you've listened to over and over again, or most, and it turns it into a social media style post that you can share with all of your friends on social media. Cosmetology puts it best. They say seeing somebody's Spotify rap results is basically getting a glimpse into their soul, the side they typically don't let you see at the pub. So it's at behind the scenes of what people are listening to that you might not know that they're listening to. And a few weeks ago, they were all posting their Spotify wrapped like summary. I didn't really understand it. This is actually the first year I've even heard of it. I'm an Apple user, so I don't get access to all of these cool Spotify rap. And what was really fun that I thought was their average listening age. It was like the 70s, the 80s, or different things like that. I thought that was fun as well. And now people are starting to recognize this on social media. They look forward to not only getting their own Spotify rap, they're also enjoying seeing other people's Spotify rap as well. And people aren't just scrolling past these Spotify raps, they're actually stopping, looking at them, and having fun with it and resharing it as well. Something that I found interesting about Spotify Wrapped, I was intrigued by it, is Spotify Wrapped is not generating new content per se for these individuals. It's content that already exists. They're basically just organizing this data and putting it in a cohesive way to present it. So like these members already know what they were listening to, what they had on repeat, but just seeing it in that visual makes it really fun. And it's fun to share as well. Spotify Wrapped is continuously improving each year. They are doing a couple of things really well. The first thing is they're taking a year worth of content and just putting it into a short, quick, burst social media post. So it might be overwhelming to go through every song you've ever listened to, but like I mentioned, they're taking all of this data and infusing it into something that's easy to share. Basically, hey, reshare this. Super easy. Also, it feels very personal. It's not like generic. Like you really like the 2000s, and then it ends there. It feels like it was made just for you. And whenever my friends were going through their Spotify rep, they were like, wow, that is spot on. And feeling that customization really meant a lot to them. Also, it creates some nostalgia. You see a song and you remember where you were when maybe you listened to it, different things like that, and allows you to connect. And then lastly, it helps you. Okay, so this episode is not about you reviewing your Spotify rap, but for those that are not familiar with it, hopefully you have some context of what I'm talking about. And then for those who do know Spotify Rap, or you've gotten one yourself, you maybe can see some of those key components of Spotify Rap and maybe where I'm going with it from here. So moving into how we can use this concept as a small business owner. So Spotify is not using rap to brag about how amazing Spotify is, right? Who is center focus of Spotify rep? They are celebrating the listener, the customer or the user is the one that is main focus. It just so happens that Spotify is the platform. And that's what I want to bring to light with 2025 wrap using it for your t-shirt business. That concept also will work when you apply it to your business because a business wrap is not just showing off like your numbers or hitting six figures or flexing growth or anything like that. It's about showing your customers the role they played in your business this past year. And I think it could be really powerful. And you can show it as here's what we did together. And when you make that shift of creating a 2025 wrap with your audience at the end of the year, I think you're really going to enjoy sharing what you've accomplished. A lot of times in our small business circles, we are always encouraging each other to share sales, share all of your accomplishments. Cause sometimes it just feels like maybe not the right platform to be sharing with your customers how many orders you're producing or different things like that. For whatever it may be, maybe you just want to keep that private. You're not sharing all of your stats like you would with other business owners that get it. But your 2025 wrap will give you an opportunity to package that all up and share that with your large audience. Let's shift gears into why I think you need to participate in 2025 wrap. If you're a t-shirt maker, there's a really good chance that you are actually underestimating your year. And I say that with a lot of confidence because I know I do it too, and I see it all the time. When you're inside your business grinding every single day of the week, whether it's work week or maybe every weekend, it stops feeling exciting sometimes or special. Orders come in, you have your system down, you print them, you press them, you package them, and you're moving on. It doesn't ever really feel like a finish line moment. Congratulations, you made it. Even if you set those goals, maybe you celebrate for a bit, but then you're off to the next goal, right? Very rarely as small business owners do we pause and take in everything that we've achieved. What happens is all of those wins or goals met just start to blur together. You maybe don't remember the two or three goals ago that you achieved. You probably remember the last one, but the one before that and before that, they're just a distant memory now. Also, sometimes a busy season feels stressful instead of successful, right? It's nice to have that extra income and making sure that your business is staying afloat, but it can very quickly become stressful. And then we forget that is actually a blessing and a sign that your business is doing really well. When you finally look back at the year, your brain tends to go straight to what you did not do. Maybe you're looking around your office with projects half-started, screen prints that you ordered, or DTF extras that you have that you meant to sell that you never got around to, the launches you skip, the ideas you never followed through on. It happens, right? But there's a certain piece to this that we do forget. And I really want you to take this away when you listen to this episode. Your customers are not measuring your business the way you are. I'll say that again. Your customers are not measuring your business the way you are. They're not tracking your missed goals. They don't even know that they exist. They're not comparing you to someone else's highlight reel while you're comparing it to that your behind-the-scenes mess. They're remembering how your business made them feel. And even better, if they gifted one of your items to somebody else, seeing that person light up, knowing how much you made somebody else feel through their eyes as well. They remember how that shirt looked on a family vacation, how you brought together that cruise design for the whole family, and how exciting that was to have everybody matching. They remember how your order arrived faster than expected. They remember the fun packaging. That's usually what I get messages on. Thank you for the freebies or the packaging, or just the design or the feel or the shirt was made just for them. And when you put together your own 2025 wrapped or business wrap, that's what's going to be ignited for them. Again, they're not going to remember, oh yeah, she didn't go to that one show. I had a show last month I had to cancel on because I had a procedure and I was not well enough to go to it. No one's going to remember, oh yeah, she didn't show up to the Winter Wonderland market. They're not going to remember that. They're going to remember the t-shirt bars I was at or the orders I did have, and they'll be reminded of that when I post my own 2025 rap. And it's going to show them that their single order, or hopefully a few orders, was a part of something much bigger. They help support a real business run by a real person. We say that all the time. That's why your rap content is going to matter so much. Beyond capturing and taking a second to figure out what all you've accomplished, but it also matters to your viewers and your audience as well. And you don't need to convince people that your business is successful. They know it is successful. It's about reminding them that their support really makes a difference. And that shift starts to change how people engage with your brand going forward. They want to be a part of something. Let's move into what a 2025 wrap actually looks like for your t-shirt business. So when people hear business rap, they might be thinking spreadsheets, complicated formulas, different things like that to figure all this out. I don't want you to think like that at all, stop right there. This is a fun type project for you to go back and complete, especially in this two-week blur of the end of the year where no one really knows what day it is. This is a perfect time to do this creative project as you are working on your end of your inventory and books, right? We're all doing that, right? We need to be working on this inventory book. So this will just be a fun project that you can take a break from when you're counting all of your inventory at the end of the year. So by now, if you haven't already taken a peek into the show notes, you can go find the link for 20 graphics that I've created. It's the price of a small coffee at Starbucks, essentially, to purchase all of these graphics. And I'm going to go through each of these graphics. So if you're looking at them, it might be easier to follow along. If not, if you don't want to make the purchase, that's okay. Use this podcast to invoke some inspiration for you to create your own graphics from scratch as we work through them. But if you're looking at the graphics, I might be able to help you better work through on how to build them. And just know I provided 20 graphics. Maybe not all of them apply to you, or maybe you don't want to use them all. It's totally up to you how many you want to use. Now, Mal, it's up to you if you want to post these as a multi-photo post and like carousel style on Instagram where they just scroll through, or you can put it together with a reel if you want to and make it a video. Totally up to you however you want to post your 2025 wrap. So the first graphic is just 2025 wrap. You'll see that there's some space above 2025 wrap. The idea is that you're going to add your business name or logo there. They are themed to a holiday theme. They go along with my piece, Love and Be Merry graphic collection that has 250 graphics. So if you are looking for engagement graphics, you can grab that as well. Moving on to your reviews. So you can take all of the reviews you've gotten this year and put together an average rating. So right below average rating, my vision was that you would put like stars. So if you have five stars, you'll list out five stars. If you have 4.8, you'll shade a portion of the fifth star. And then right to the left of reviews, I would put the total number of reviews you had. And then in that space below, it'd be fun to grab a snippet of like your favorite review and post it there. Next, the third graphic, best sales day of the year. So what you can do is the easiest way any website provider should be able to do this for you, but I can speak more intelligently to Shopify. If you download your annual report for the year, what I would do is just sort it by sales and figure out which day had the highest number. So you could download it sales by day, essentially, and then sort it by largest number to lowest, I guess you could say. And then that will tell you your best sales day of the year. And it would be fun if you reflected on what was going on that day. I know whenever I do this for my business, it's 100% going to be whenever I had a t-shirt bar or an event. That's absolutely going to be one of my best sales days. Then we have the busiest month and the slowest month. So to figure this out, again, downloading your sales report, you can figure out by month which month had the best sales and which month had the lower sales. Or if you wanted to do traffic, you could do which month was the busiest, like as far as traffic on your website, or the lowest amount. If you're not catching a theme here so far, having a website is amazing for actually analyzing, not just collecting orders, but making intelligent assessments about how your business is doing. Email subscribers, that's pretty cut and dry. You can do this one of two ways. You can either list how many subscribers you have in total, or you could figure out how many did you have on January 1st and then how many do you have today. So how many email subscribers grew in 2025? Up to you. Energy for orders. I thought this was a fun one. I threw a little coffee graphic on there, but maybe it's a certain show that kept you motivated while you were working. Maybe it's a certain drink, what have you. You can have fun with this graphic. Favorite events. So if you're into t-shirt bars or different events like that, you can list out the different events you were at this year that you really enjoyed. And then low-key, if you know you're going to be back at those events, go ahead and put a plug-in for those and put some subscript there saying, can't wait to see you next year at these events. Favorite moment. This one's fun. Is it a certain customer that said that your order just made their day? I had one where I was making an Oklahoma. I made a shirt for a 90th birthday that was amazing and so much fun. And she did a photo shoot. Like that would have been my favorite moment of the year. I haven't taken the time to think about my favorite moment. It's probably going to be something with a t-shirt bar for sure. I had so much fun with those this year. Most active group members just really keying in, even if people aren't shopping but they're engaging on social media, super helpful, especially if you have a Facebook group. So this one's going to be tricky. If you're able to comment below this podcast, please do. But figuring this one might take some work because really, Facebook, to my knowledge, only shows you group members' activities for the last 30 days. I think there is a way where you can export your group member activity, and that might give you a year, but it's possible you might just have to use your best judgment when you're declaring first and second and third place. Okay, most popular brand tee. This is a fun one. So you might have to go in and search your Shopify sales to figure this out, or SNS. If you order from SNS Activeware, it could be helpful. Or no one's saying, hey, you didn't get that exactly right. I think Bello Canvas was more popular than comfort colors. Totally up to you. Maybe use your best judgment here. And what I would do is I would go on SNS, grab one of those mock-ups where it doesn't have a person wearing the shirt, and then remove the background. So it's like a little 3D image of the popular brand tee. That would be fun. And then don't be surprised if you have some people engaging on your 2025 rap. Like you could even do something fun with it and ask if they agree with some of these. Like some people might comment on this and say, Yes, I swear by comfort color. They want to participate. Most popular color, again, you could go back and split hairs to figure this out, or you could just use your best judgment here. Most popular miscellaneous items. So you might not just sell shirts, you might sell hats, different things like that, bags, totes. You can go ahead and feature that item here too. Number of tea parties. So if you throw tea parties, those are a lot of fun. You can list the number of tea parties that you and then also top selling design. Is there a design that comes to mind that you know was a good seller for you? And then getting into some fun ones. So total orders. So that's pretty cut and dry. How many total orders did you have this year? Followed by total pickup orders. That's a fun metric to know how many people came and went from your porch. Total states reach. So again, you can use your Shopify report to help you figure this one out. So right above total states reach, I recommend you put the number. And then my idea of including the map is you can take if you upload this to Canva, you can get the little pin like a bulletin board, like a sticker or something. And then all of the states that you ship to, then you just put a little pin in there. You could do cities, but I think that's Like a little bit overkill, but if you just do states, I think that's more doable for sure. Total teas sold. If you're not quite sure, like figuring this up, you could do by like line item, but if you use infinite options, it's possible it's going to skew your like number count. So my recommendation there, if you sell majority of teas, it should be pretty simple. I would just take my total sales for the year and my average tea price and just divide it by that. That'll give you a rough number. And then the last two graphics, VIP affiliate. So if you have a brand rep affiliate, what have you, use this chance to shout them out. Like they've probably been hustling and really promoting your business all year. I would use this as an opportunity to shout them out. And why not get their code out there to help them promote it a little bit more and get a few more kickbacks? And last graphic is just say thank you. I highly recommend you put a picture of your face there, or maybe your why, like maybe a cute dog is what you're doing it for, whatever it is. Put something personal there to say thank you. And that is your 2025 wrap as far as all of the graphics go. And I created these graphics so you're not just staring at a blank canvas screen. Again, if you want to grab these graphics, you can. It'll get you started so you're not doing it from scratch, but at least you have some different inspiration just by listening to this episode. Okay, so you have your 2025 wrapped and ready to go. So now the next question is where am I posting this? There is no wrong answer. It's completely up to you where you want to post it. One of the easiest ways I do recommend that you share it is as that multi-post photo that I talked about. You can post all of the graphics at once so people can swipe through and they can even comment on each individual photo. It works really well on Facebook and Instagram. You can also turn that wrapped into the real, like we talked about. Each graphic can become like a quick visual moment and you can throw some music with it as well. This is a great option if you're trying to up your short form content or you want something that feels a little bit more dynamic. Just keep in mind if the idea is that people are trying to read your graphic, don't make it so fast that they can't read it. So maybe one to two seconds for each slide would be great. Or you could completely space out your 2025 wrap. Maybe you want to break it out over a week or a few days or a weekend, or maybe drip it throughout December 31st, the last day of the year, so you can make a full day of content with it as well. A big focus going into 2026 is email. If you are in my private club, then you know that email is a focus going into 2026. So it's only right that I also suggest that you put your 2025 wrapped in email. On December 31st, you can send a simple year in email that has your wrapped data included. You're not selling it, you're just reflecting, you're thanking them for being a part of your year, and you can drop in a few of those favorite stats there and remind them of how they help make those numbers possible. So maybe in that email, you write out all of your stats and then you link to the post so they could see it themselves. And that email does something really important. It closes the year with some gratitude. That's the best way to end a year. And essentially, once you've wrapped up 2025, it's time to start looking ahead. So that wrap can open the door to asking your audience some questions. What designs did they love most? Or what themes do they want to see more next year, or what are they looking forward to next year? When you start to get your audience engaged in that conversation, you're starting to include them and it's creating buy-in and they feel like they're a part of where your business is going versus you're just pulling them along for the ride. As we wrap up this episode, I want you to hear me clearly. Your year mattered. I need to even hear that myself. Your year mattered. Even if it didn't look the way you imagined it would back in January, even if it felt slower or messier than you had hoped, even if you spent more time honestly surviving, and you're listening to this episode, not even sure if you're going to open doors again in 2026. Either way, you showed up, you created, you fulfilled orders, you made good on your offer to your audience, you served and you built something incredible, or you sustained something that you built from scratch. And that deserves to be acknowledged. Your 2025 rapt is not about impressing anyone. It's about pausing long enough to recognize what you actually did and inviting your customers into that reflection with you. Should be fun, exciting. And when you share your rapt, you're not saying look at me, you are saying thank you. The ever-living world of GBT and AI, people are craving human connection more than ever. Yes, we have found a way to connect through technology. I'm coming to you through a podcast, you're connecting with your audience through social media and customers, but your wrap is a way to generate and show true connection, trust, and loyalty. That is what your customers are craving. If you want to create your own 2025 wrap without overthinking it or starting from scratch, I made it super easy for you. I created that 20 graphic collection, 2025 wrap packs specifically for t-shirt businesses. The prompts are done for you, the structure is done for you. All you have to do is just plug in your numbers, add a watermark, and share. You can share it as a multi-post photo, turn it into a real, even use it inside your email that you're going to send on December 31st. And who knows, maybe December 31st kicks off where you're actually going to start putting effort into email marketing in 2026. You can grab that 2025 wrapped pack right now by heading to sunkissva.com forward slash 42 or just check it out in the show notes as well. Thank you for being here, for listening, and for building something meaningful alongside me. I am really excited to head into 2026 with you, and I cannot wait to see all of your 2025 wrap. And with that's a wrap.