Academy Lead-Gen Plan
90-Day Rollout

1. Owned-audience activation (weeks 1–2). GHL email blast to the GG customer list + in-store QR across all 7 shops + staff referral announcement. First 30–50 leads at near-zero Jack cost. Done = signage live in 7 shops, blast #1 sent, ≥20 applies by day 21.
2. Nurture sequence live before the blast, not after. A list that goes cold before TWC clearance is wasted. The GHL drip ships in week 1 so lead #1 gets warmed from day one. Done = 5-email sequence live, every academy-applicant tag auto-enrolled.
3. Academy arc inside the existing content engine. 2 academy-angle scripts per personal-brand batch + 2–3 GG-account posts/wk, all agent-drafted. Done = academy content flowing by week 2 without adding a recording session.
4. PR swing + paid test, gated (month 2). "DFW donut chain opens a baker school" is a real local-news story; pitch it once the page has social proof (applicant count). Paid search/meta test only if organic visit→apply conversion ≥2% proves the page converts. Done = 8–10 pitches out by week 6; paid go/no-go decided at the day-30 scoreboard.

What's Stopped or Deferred

• Workforce boards / Workforce Solutions listings — killed for now. Putting an unlicensed school in front of TWC-adjacent state infrastructure while the TEC Ch. 132 application is unresolved invites the exact scrutiny we don't want yet. Revisit the week the license lands — it becomes a top-3 channel then.
• Culinary program partnerships — deferred. Community colleges and culinary schools are either competitors or partnerships that need licensing paperwork to be real. Month 4+ conversation.
• Any franchise-forward messaging for the operator track — killed. "Own a Golden Glaze" copy anywhere = FTC franchise rule exposure. Operator track appears only as "join the operator waitlist" with zero offer language.
• Paid spend before day 30 — deferred. Buying traffic to a page with unknown visit→apply conversion is burning money to learn what the free channels will tell you anyway.
• Anything needing daily Jack presence. No daily posting, no live events, no DM grinding. The GG raise + centralized kitchen are the main event.

1 · SCALE FIRST GHL Email/SMS Blast — GG Customer List

Agent drafts "we're opening a baking academy — apply / join the waitlist" email in GG brand voice; monthly re-angle. SMS only if consent tags check out (agent verifies GHL consent basis first — TCPA). UTM email-gg-list. Warmest list we own, zero marginal cost.

2 · SCALE In-Store QR — 7 Shops

One-time creative kit: counter signage, box stickers/inserts, receipt-footer line, register-adjacent poster. Copy: "learn to bake professionally — Golden Glaze Academy — apply at [QR]". Per-shop UTM (qr-store-{n}) shows which locations pull. Thousands of impressions/wk, pays rent forever.

3 · RUN Staff Referral Loop — 20+ Employees

Discord announcement + personal referral links (ref-{staff} UTM). $25 spiff per completed application (not enrollment — nothing to enroll in yet, so the spiff is legally clean). Staff are also an applicant pool themselves, and counter staff pointing at the signage doubles channel 2.

4 · RUN GG Social Organic (IG/TikTok)

2–3 posts/wk on GG accounts: behind-the-counter baking clips, "ever wondered how we make these?", academy announce. Agent drafts captions + queue; staff/Jack tap post. CTA always "apply / waitlist," link in bio.

5 · RUN Personal-Brand Academy Arc

2 scripts per existing content batch: "why I'm opening a baker school," "the Tesla START model for donuts," "hiring is broken so I built a pipeline." Operator-audience overlap feeds the operator waitlist. Does NOT add recording sessions — slots into batches already happening, so Jack-hours are double-counted, not incremental. Accretive to the raise narrative too.

6 · MONTH 2 PR / Local Media

Agent builds pitch list (Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, CultureMap, Eater Dallas, NBC5/WFAA/FOX4 lifestyle, local food pods) + drafts pitch: "7-shop DFW donut chain launches baker academy — applications open." Framing = accepting applications, never "enrolling students"; if licensing comes up: "state licensing in progress, first cohort dates announced when it's complete." Jack approves, agent sends. Runs after applicant-count social proof exists.

7 · BACKGROUND SEO + GBP

Agent ships 3–4 intent pages ("baking classes dallas," "how to become a professional baker in texas," "baking school dfw"), schema, GBP listing. Trade-school GBP category only after the TWC license — until then GBP stays as-is on the shops, and the academy gets no separate education listing. Pure background compounding.

8 · CONDITIONAL Small Paid Tests

Month 2, gated: Google search "baking classes dallas" exact-ish ($300/mo) + Meta local lead-gen creative reusing the best organic post ($300–450/mo). Expected CPL $10–35 Meta, $20–50 search for education-adjacent local. Go only if organic visit→apply ≥2% at day 30.

9 · ONCE DFW Community (Reddit / FB Groups)

One authentic founder post from Jack in r/Dallas / r/FortWorth ("I own 7 donut shops and I'm opening a baking academy — AMA") + agent-found FB groups (career-change, DFW foodies) where a person shares organically. No astroturfing — Reddit smells it. Run once in week 3, don't build a cadence on it.

KILLED / DEFERRED Workforce Boards · Culinary Partnerships

Workforce boards: killed until the TWC license lands (gate-1 optics). Culinary program partnerships: deferred to post-license.

• Daily 7:30am — GHL lead check. New academy-applicant contacts since yesterday → verify nurture enrollment + tag hygiene; flag "hot" leads (top investment band or operator-path) to Discord with a drafted personal-touch reply for Jack.
• Daily 7:35am — link + form hygiene. Every live UTM link resolves with correct params; weekly synthetic apply-form test (submit + verify GHL upsert + delete the test contact). A silently broken form is the single worst failure mode this plan has.
• Wed 9am — social queue check. 2–3 GG posts staged for the week; ping Jack only if the queue is empty.
• Fri 4pm — weekly scoreboard to Discord. Sessions by UTM source, apply count + visit→apply % per channel, band-distribution snapshot, paid CPL (if live), top store by QR scans, and ≤3 decisions needed from Jack. One screen, ≤15 min.
• Monthly. (a) blast draft queued for approval; (b) pricing-research digest (band/salary aggregate); (c) signage photo-confirmation request to shop leads; (d) staff referral leaderboard + spiff tally.
• Standing legal lint. Every agent-drafted piece of copy passes a 4-gate check before it reaches Jack: no enroll language, no tuition numbers, no job guarantees, no franchise-offer wording. Anything that trips a gate gets rewritten before Jack ever sees it.

GHL Email Blast

• Day 30: open <25% or click <1.5% → subject/angle rewrite + resend to non-openers. Click→apply <5% → the page, not the email, is the problem.
• Day 60: <10 applies/blast → drop to monthly-lite and lean on in-store; ≥15 → keep monthly + add a dedicated operator-waitlist blast.
• Day 90: unsubscribe >0.7%/blast → cut to every 6 weeks (list fatigue).

In-Store QR

• Day 30: <70 QR sessions total (~10/shop) → placement is wrong; move signage to register-line eye level + box inserts. ≥150 → print more inserts.
• Day 60: <8 applies → test copy variant ("paid to learn baking?" hook — still no tuition #s); ≥20 → this is the forever channel, expand to bag stickers.
• Day 90: per-store: kill signage only at stores producing <5 scans/mo; scale winning formats to all.

Staff Referral

• Day 30: <3 staff shared their link → the ask was buried; re-announce with a leaderboard. ≥5 applies → bump spiff visibility.
• Day 60: <5 total applies → keep passively (costs nothing) but stop promoting.
• Day 90: ≥10 applies → raise spiff to $50 and formalize in onboarding.

GG Social + Personal Brand

• Day 30: any post >2x median reach → agent clips 3 variants of that theme.
• Day 60: social <5 applies attributed → keep (brand halo, near-zero cost) but stop A/B effort. Personal brand: ≥3 operator-waitlist signups from bio link → add operator CTA to every founder post.
• Day 90: a format driving ≥10 applies/mo → weekly staple. Personal-brand arc stays even at 0 leads — it's raise content at ~0 incremental cost.

PR · SEO · Paid · Community

• PR: 0 responses from 10 pitches → re-pitch once with a data hook ("X applications in 30 days"), then park. 1+ story → pitch the follow-up wave (TV loves a cohort-start date — hold for post-license).
• SEO: any page in top 20 for a "baking classes dallas"-class term → build 2 more pages in that cluster. <50 organic sessions/mo → fine, it's free; keep 1 page/mo.
• Paid: go/no-go needs organic visit→apply ≥2%. CPL >$35 for 2 straight weeks on a platform → kill that platform; ≤$20 → shift full $750 to the winner; ≤$20 sustained → flag to Jack for a budget-raise decision (that's the >$5k/quarter conversation — not assumed here).
• Reddit/FB: AMA drove ≥100 sessions → do a Fort Worth version in month 2. Otherwise done.

GHL drip, auto-enrolled on academy-applicant, all agent-drafted, Jack approves once:

1. Email 0 (instant) — "application received." Honest expectations: "we're finalizing our state licensing as a career school; you're in line, and applicants hear about cohort dates first." No tuition, no dates promised, no enrollment language.
2. Email 1 (day 3) — the why. Jack's story, 7 shops, why GG is building its own baker pipeline (Tesla START / trade-school model). Builds identity with the brand.
3. Email 2 (day 7) — day-in-the-life of a GG head baker. What you'd actually learn: lamination, fry timing, production pacing. Concrete craft, zero promises.
4. Email 3 (day 14) — career paths. "Top graduates get priority interviews at Golden Glaze locations" — exactly that wording, nothing stronger. Plus the broader DFW bakery job market, framed as information, not guarantee.
5. Email 4 (day 30) — status update + micro-ask. "Still finalizing licensing — reply and tell us what you'd most want to learn." Replies = engagement signal + curriculum research.
6. Ongoing (monthly) — one update email. Academy progress, shop news, a baking tip. Keeps the list warm indefinitely. SMS reserved for two moments only: application confirmation and the eventual cohort-date announcement.

Operator-Waitlist Branch

Separate light track: "you're on the operator waitlist; we'll share details as the program takes shape." Nothing about ownership, economics, or offers. Two emails max until an FDD exists.

• Visit→apply conversion by week 2 (target ≥2%). Decides everything downstream, including whether paid ever turns on. If it's <1%, fix the page/form before spending another agent-hour on traffic.
• Investment-band distribution by day 30. If 70%+ of applicants pick the bottom band, the tuition ceiling is lower than the comp set suggests — Jack should know that before the TWC decision forces pricing.
• Per-store QR scan spread by day 30. Tells you whether academy demand is chain-wide or concentrated at 1–2 locations (which also hints where the training kitchen should live).
• Nurture open rates on emails 2–3. The earliest read on whether the list will still be alive when licensing clears. <20% opens by email 3 = the drip content isn't holding them.

Where This Could Be Wrong

• The donut-customer → baking-career funnel might be much narrower than modeled. People who buy donuts aren't necessarily people who want to make them for a living. If in-store QR pulls scans but no applies, the fix is a career-changer message ("get paid to learn a trade") rather than a brand message — and paid search on real intent moves up the ranking.
• The GG customer list may be smaller or colder than assumed. If it's <2k contacts or cold, channel 1 drops below in-store QR and the plan leans harder on paid at day 30.
• The 7-field form may be the real bottleneck. The investment-band + salary questions are strategically valuable (pricing research) but every field costs conversion. If visit→apply is weak, there's a genuine tension between lead volume and research quality — bias is to keep the bands and cut the "why join" free-text, but that's Jack's call.
• TWC timing is the wildcard. This whole plan warms a list against an unknown clearance date. If licensing slips past ~5 months, even a good nurture sequence bleeds; the mitigation (free community events, mini-workshops at the shops) starts costing real Jack time and isn't in this budget.