It’s Girl Scout Cookie season, and for those of you with daughters (or those of you who work in an office with people who have daughters,) you know exactly how competitive they can get with their cookie sales. Whether they outsource sales by sending order forms with their parents to work or dare you to say no when they walk right up to your door, Girl Scouts are effective, that’s for sure. 

I forced Mazzy to sell door-to-door herself, although I think city kids might have a leg up because they can sell to their entire apartment building in about an hour without ever going outside. Harlow came along and carried a clip board, where she pretended to mark each sale. (FYI, when I went to turn in the permission slip along with the cookie sales card, I realized Harlow had ACTUALLY been marking something down the whole time and there will doodles all over the paper making it fairly illegible. Oops.)

Mazzy’s goal was 135 boxes which would get her the stuffed owl but after our door-to-door sales, we had only cleared 100 with one night left to sell. I told her we could cold call friends and relatives but she would have to do the talking herself. I mean, it was pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel, but she didn’t know that and did the work. She ended up with 137. Goal achieved.

And then there’s the super ambitious Girl Scouts like 11-year-old Charlotte McCourt, who are not only motivated by prize incentives, but a desire to help support our military troops overseas. 

Charlotte found out her dad had a wealthy friend and knew an opportunity when she saw one. She just had to sell him right. With her dad’s permission, she sent the guy a letter, which has since gained national attention in part because, she cautions, “The Girl Scout Organization can sometimes use false advertisement.” In order to earn her potential customer’s trust, she included her own brutally honest reviews of the cookies.

Charlotte’s dad happens to be a producer for “The Way I Heard It,” Mike Rowe’s podcast. A video of Rowe reading the letter has gone viral on Facebook because, as he says, “If there’s a Girl Scout in your life, you’ve already been hit up for cookies—but not like this.”

So, did she reach her goal? Rowe followed up by posting a thank you video from Charlotte, in which she reports surpassing her goal of selling 300 boxes; at the time of the video, she’d already sold 7,491. That’s way more than an iPad, plus a lot of soldiers who get to enjoy some Thin Mints!

Take note, marketers: Truth in advertising works.

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