A Fort Wayne Dental Receptionist Sold 23 Gift Baskets Last Thanksgiving. This November, She's Turning Orders Away.
She asked us not to use her last name. Her coworkers still don't know how much she made in December.
Updated September 2026 · 6 min read
Last October, Jenna, 36, had $89 in her checking account and a $143 grocery order she couldn't pay for. She put back the good coffee and the pumpkin bread mix and told the cashier she'd "grab those next time."
Twelve months later she is politely telling her neighbors that she is fully booked for Thanksgiving.
What changed wasn't a raise. Jenna still works the front desk at the same dental office in Fort Wayne, Indiana, four days a week. What changed is what happens at her kitchen table after 8 p.m.
"I'd tried everything that was supposed to work"
Jenna is quick to say she is not the entrepreneurial type. She had already lost $1,800 on a leggings MLM that is still in boxes in her garage. She'd spent a summer making jewelry for Etsy and worked out she was earning about $6 an hour. She'd paid $697 for a Pinterest course she never finished.
"Every single one of those needed me to be someone I'm not," she told us. "A salesperson. A designer. Someone with followers."
The gift baskets started as a favor. Her sister-in-law was hosting Thanksgiving and asked Jenna to bring "something nice for the table." Jenna put pumpkin bread, a jar of cranberry jam, cinnamon sticks and a small pie in a wicker basket with an orange ribbon. Her sister-in-law's neighbor saw it and asked if she could order two.
"She paid me $75 each. I'd spent maybe $29 on each one. I drove home doing the math out loud."
The $27 that started it
That week Jenna found a short course online called The Gift Basket Formula, written by Sarah Whitfield, a mom from Indiana who had started the same way and now sells several hundred baskets a year from her kitchen. It cost $27. Jenna bought it on a Wednesday night, "mostly out of spite," she says, because it was cheaper than the leggings.
The Formula is not a business course. It's a step-by-step photo guide to building a basket that looks like it cost $100, 40 recipes for what goes inside, two short video classes, and — the part Jenna keeps coming back to — printable box templates. "I was going to pay $8 a box at the craft store. Instead I printed them on card stock for about sixty cents. That's the whole margin right there."
She built her first "real" basket from the Thanksgiving recipe that Saturday, took one photo on her counter, and posted it in her neighborhood Facebook group with the exact wording from the course's Launch Kit.
By Sunday night she had four orders.
Eight weeks, in her own numbers
Jenna kept a running total in a notes app. She let us print it on the condition we don't round anything up.
| Weeks | What happened | Sales |
|---|---|---|
| 1–2 | 4 Thanksgiving baskets, neighbors | $380 |
| 3–4 | Teacher gifts + 2 hostess baskets | $1,015 |
| 5–6 | Christmas orders start, a realtor orders 6 | $2,410 |
| 7–8 | Christmas rush, turned away 5 orders | $3,120 |
| Total · 27 baskets | $6,925 | |
Her cost across all 27 baskets, including ribbon, cellophane and printer ink: about $2,300. Roughly two-thirds of what came in stayed with her.
"It's not a fortune," she says. "It's the Christmas we couldn't afford last year, plus the car repair, plus the first $1,000 I have ever had in savings."
Why baskets, and not the other things
Sarah Whitfield, who wrote the Formula, has a simple explanation for why this works when Etsy and MLMs don't. "A gift basket is local. Nobody in your town is competing with you on Amazon. And every basket you deliver is an advertisement — the person who gets it, and everyone who was in the room when she opened it."
The other reason is timing. There is always a gifting occasion four to six weeks away, and people always leave it to the last minute. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Valentine's. Mother's Day. Teacher week. "You're never selling something people don't already buy," Sarah says. "You're just the one who has it ready."
And it fits between things. Jenna builds two or three baskets in an evening after her kids are asleep. A basket takes her about 45 minutes now. Three or four fit in the back of her Honda Civic.
The part nobody talks about
When we asked Jenna what the money changed, she didn't talk about money.
"I stopped saying 'we can't afford it' in front of my kids. I stopped asking my husband if I could spend forty dollars. I have something that's mine, and people in my town know me for it."
She paused. "I'm not invisible anymore."
612 comments
Bought this in August after reading this. $2,140 in four weeks doing teacher and back-to-school baskets. The box templates are the reason it works, I was about to spend $200 on boxes.
Made $73 profit on my first basket for a coworker's baby shower. Not huge but it's the first time I ever got paid for something I made with my hands. Doing 3 more this weekend.
$4,100 last December. I'm a part time nurse. A realtor found me and orders closing baskets every month now. Wish I'd started in October instead of mid-November.
I'm 62 and my grandkids help me fold the boxes. 19 baskets for Christmas last year. If I can do it anyone can.
Skeptical about the "no inventory" thing but it's true, you take a 50% deposit and buy the supplies with it. First basket cost me nothing out of pocket.
Town of 4,300 people here. 14 Thanksgiving baskets last year, all from one Facebook post. Small towns are actually better.
Class 2 (the pricing one) fixed my problem. I was charging $45 and feeling guilty. Now $85 and people say "that's it?"
Ok I just bought it. It's 10pm and I'm reading it at the kitchen table. Will report back.
Reporting back: 6 orders. Two were for Thanksgiving already. My husband is folding boxes as I type this.
For anyone wondering: no MLM, nobody to recruit, nothing to buy monthly. It's a guide, recipes, templates and two videos. That's it. Worth 10x the $27.