Launch Your Box Podcast with Sarah Williams | Start, Launch, and Grow Your Subscription Box

Entrepreneurial overwhelm is part being a small business owner, especially during the 4th quarter. But that doesn’t mean feeling overwhelmed is a fact of entrepreneurial life you can’t do anything about. 

Overwhelm leads to two things: burnout and bad decisions. Burnout is bad for your health – physically, mentally, and emotionally. And bad decisions can cost your business a LOT of money. 

I have 10 practical strategies you can use to reduce overwhelm and stay focused not only during Q4, but all year long. 

Start planning well in advance in order to stay ahead. Don’t have a plan for Q4 yet? Start now and plan for the rest of the year to ease last-minute pressure. Then start planning for next year. 

Prioritizing self-care doesn’t mean spending a day (or a weekend) at the spa. But when you can, do that, too! Instead, create simple, non-negotiable daily rituals like morning coffee or evening baths. Things that restore your energy and reduce the chance of burnout.

Yes, these are basic needs. But… When things get busy, especially during the 4th quarter, it’s easy to neglect basic needs. Your body knows what it needs – regular hydration and quality sleep are essential for productivity and mental clarity… even during busy seasons. 

Your inbox is a time suck. Avoid checking your emails constantly. Silence notifications and set aside specific times to handle emails. This simple switch allows you to avoid interruptions throughout your day.  

Have you ever lost track of time because you were scrolling on social media and got sucked in? Of course you have. We all have! Set aside times for social media, especially if it's a necessary part of your business operations. 

Boundaries are necessary and healthy for everyone, including entrepreneurs. Define boundaries for yourself, your team, and your customers. This allows you to keep personal time sacred and avoid overwork. 

As a leader, help your team manage their tasks by giving them a clear focus each day. This allows them to manage their own overwhelm and handle whatever the day brings calmly. 

Multitasking does not lead to greater efficiency. The opposite is actually true. Instead, focus on one type of task at a time, like emails or order processing. You’ll improve efficiency and reduce errors caused by frequent task-switching. 

No is a complete sentence. If saying yes to a request adds undo stress, it’s okay to decline. Keeping a “no mindset” opens up time for self-care and focused priorities.  

How you end your day has a big effect on your stress level and feelings of overwhelm. Close each day by reviewing tasks, celebrating small wins, and moving unfinished tasks to the next day. An end-of-day routine creates closure, reduces stress, and helps you sleep better!  

Join me for this episode where I share 10 tips for managing entrepreneurial overwhelm during the 4th quarter and beyond. Grab your notebook… !

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“Stand tall and own your buying power.” 

Is this going to be the year you find new sources for products? Have you been curious about how to order products from overseas manufacturers? Are you wondering what Alibaba is and why so many subscription box owners use it to order products at great prices? 

If any of those sound like you, this episode is for you. Marissa Sayers joined me to take us through the process of ordering products through Alibaba. 

Marissa has a lot of experience sourcing products overseas and actually handles sourcing for my business. She does an incredible job because she is very detail-oriented and knows this process backward and forward.  

Marissa gave us a detailed outline of the steps of sourcing products directly from a manufacturer. 

Realize this process takes time. Plan for 90-120 days to work through it from start to finish. In other words - Alibaba is not for panic buying! 

It’s important to remember that at the same time you’re vetting a manufacturer, they are vetting you. Coming to them from a place of knowledge will give you confidence. 

Marissa also talked about how you can work with her if you need help sourcing products. She has limited spots available to work with her and gives priority to my people. Make sure you let her know if you’re a podcast listener or member of Launch Your Box.   

As a subscription box owner, you order large quantities of products every month. When you decide to step into this world of overseas sourcing, stand tall and own your buying power! 

Join me for this episode as Marissa takes us through her process of sourcing products through Alibaba, step by step. You’ll learn what to look for, what to ask for, and what to never, ever compromise on. If you’re ready to source products from overseas, this is a can’t-miss episode. Grab a notebook and pen - you’re going to take a LOT of notes.   

Learn how to bypass the middlemen and wholesalers by sourcing on Alibaba!

Sourcing Courses 101 & 201 - https://marissa-sayers.mykajabi.com/a/2147542513/F2huURQN

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It’s the 4th quarter—also known as the busiest, craziest time of the year for product-based business owners! You've planned your 4th quarter promotions and products are arriving, but have you thought about the logistics of fulfilling and shipping all those orders? 

In this episode, I share shipping hacks and strategies to help subscription box owners and product-based businesses navigate our busiest quarter… and stay sane doing it! 

Research Shipping Carrier Cut-off Dates & Have Options 

The holiday rush can be chaotic, but with these tips, you’ll feel more prepared than ever to tackle Q4. 

Have a shipping manager or team? Have them listen to this episode to boost efficiency and reduce holiday chaos in your shop!

Join me for this episode where I share fulfillment & shipping strategies to help subscription box owners and product-based businesses navigate the busiest, craziest time of year - the 4th quarter. Grab your coffee (or something stronger!) and let’s dive in!

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“More emails equals more sales!” - Sarah Williams 

We’re more than halfway through the 4th quarter. For product sellers, it’s the busiest time of the year. It’s also our best chance to make some serious revenue. You’re probably feeling tired and maybe even overwhelmed. I’m tired, too. Rest when you can and then get to work. There are some things you can do now that will give your 4th quarter sales a major boost.

We create different types of email content during the first three quarters of the year. Email opt-ins with welcome sequences, weekly newsletters, and emails to share blog posts or podcast episodes. We’re serving our audience by providing value. 

The 4th quarter is different. During the 4th quarter, we SERVE our audiences by SELLING. We help them shop. Your customers want to shop — it’s your job to get your products in front of them. 

How can you leverage that email list you’ve spent all year building? 

The key to success is not to overthink it. These emails should be short on copy and get right to the point. Include great images and a clear call to action. Follow up your email with social media posts to match and send a text to your text list! 

Join me for this episode as I share four simple ways you can leverage email marketing to bring more revenue into your business during the 4th quarter. More emails equals more sales. It’s time to get to work! 

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Are you ready for Launch Your Box? Our complete training program walks you step by step through how to start, launch, and grow your subscription box business. Join the waitlist today! 

The 4th Quarter is here! It’s the busiest shopping season of the year and a can’t-miss opportunity to bring more revenue into your subscription box business. If you haven’t started preparing for your 4th quarter promotions, it’s time to start. 

This episode is all about maximizing your 4th quarter sales by tapping into your existing audience and subscriber base.

I’m sharing five promotions you can run this season. You’ll serve your audience by making gift-giving easy and bring more revenue into your business. 

The holiday gift box is not one of your regular subscription boxes. Instead, it’s a one-time box that your audience can buy for someone on their gift list… or even for themselves (we encourage this!) 

A holiday box is a great way to increase your subscriber base. Make it easy for a holiday box recipient to become a subscriber. 

Presale these boxes in October or early November to allow for as many sales as possible and to give you time to get inventory in, pack, and ship well before holiday shipping deadlines. 

I pre-sell holiday gift boxes every year. My audience knows to expect them and they sell out every year! 

Plan this launch in October or early November. Grab people’s attention before they get too far into the noise of holiday shopping for others – when they’re still shopping for themselves. 

Use this launch to generate FOMO about your upcoming boxes! Add a free bonus gift to get your audience excited and help you gain subscribers before the end of the year. 

3 - Gift Subscriptions

This is one of the easiest promotions you can run. I run a gift subscription promotion once a year – around Black Friday. 

I add excitement and fun by offering a free month for a 6-month subscription or 2 free months for a 12-month subscription! Gift subscriptions bring revenue in upfront and fulfillment doesn’t start until after the first of the year when the holiday craziness is over! 

4 - Curated Boxes

Having excess inventory is the nature of the beast when you’re a subscription box owner. Put that inventory to use by curating new one-time boxes. These boxes are perfect for gift-giving. Remember, this is your opportunity to serve your audience by making gift-giving easy! 

Give these boxes new names and get creative! Remember, you’re not ordering new items for these boxes, you’re simply curating a new experience using items you already have. 

5 - Mystery Boxes

Mystery boxes are a great way to get rid of excess inventory! Don’t worry about careful curation, these boxes are about packing them full of value and making it fun for your customers. They’re also about earning extra revenue and clearing out inventory that’s taking up extra space so you don’t carry it into the new year.  

If you haven’t run multiple 4th quarter promotions in the past, don’t try to do all five! Instead, choose 2-3 and start planning now. These promotions are a great way to maximize sales during this most important time of the year. 

Join me for this episode as I walk you through five promotions subscription box owners can run to maximize 4th quarter sales. 

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Are you ready for Launch Your Box? Our complete training program walks you step by step through how to start, launch, and grow your subscription box business. Join the waitlist today! 

“If it doesn’t scare you, you’re not dreaming big enough.” - Sarah Williams

Most of us launch our subscription box businesses from a spare bedroom, the garage, or even the kitchen table. But when do you make the decision to move out of the house and into your own commercial space? 

In this episode, we’re talking with Cheryl Ham of Hypnotic Yarn. She’s been on the show in the past talking about challenges she faced at different stages of growth in her subscription box business. 

While still managing a full-time career in high-pressure sales, Cheryl started selling hand-dyed wool via an e-commerce store. She added a subscription box, Yarnable, and grew that side of her business slowly and steadily until she reached 300 subscribers. 

Cheryl discovered Launch Your Box, joined, and jumped right in. When she launched again – following the launch plan I teach inside the group – something amazing happened. Cheryl more than doubled her subscribers, gaining 400 in less than 24 hours! 

By this point, Cheryl’s subscription box had taken over her house. She moved into a new commercial space and hired some team members. Her subscription box business continued to grow, reaching 1600 subscribers through increased retention and quarterly launches. 

In less than two years, Cheryl had outgrown that commercial space. Again, she needed more space. The problem? Cheryl couldn’t find a commercial space to meet her needs. 

Cheryl finally found a new space. A space so big it scared her. She knew she needed a lot more space, but 8,000 square feet? She found herself terrified to make that jump until she had a realization. Scary doesn’t always mean bad. 

Cheryl talked about how every move has meant learning new processes. Inventory management and fulfillment look different in the new, bigger space than in the smaller commercial space or in her home. 

Hiring has also been a challenge this year. Cheryl lost 3 team members this past spring and struggled to backfill those positions until after summer. Once she sought out new avenues for hiring, she was able to hire 2 new team members. 

What’s next for Hypnotic Yarn, Yarnable, and Cheryl? They’re focused on growing the non-subscription side of the business using lessons learned from Yarnable. Cheryl knows the importance of creating an experience for her subscribers and uses that knowledge to create experiences for customers who purchase one-off kits. 

Focusing on non-subscription sales allows Cheryl to maximize off-hours and weeks when she and her team are not as busy with subscriptions. It is also a great way to convert non-subscribers! 

Episode 16 - Afraid of Having 700 Subscribers?

Episode 105 - Scaling Your Subscription Box Business

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Are you ready for Launch Your Box? Our complete training program walks you step by step through how to start, launch, and grow your subscription box business. Join the waitlist today! 

Every year for the last five years I’ve sold a Holiday Gift Box. This year was no different. What was different was that my Holiday Gift Box sold out in only four days! And it brought $20,000 in extra revenue into my business. 

Should you offer a Holiday Gift Box to your audience? Yes! If you already have a subscription box, you should absolutely offer a Holiday Gift Box. And if you have an audience but haven’t launched your subscription box yet, you should also offer a Holiday Gift Box. 

Many members of Launch Your Box have used a Holiday Gift Box for proof of concept before launching. Members like Nicole who launched a one-time holiday box for guinea pig owners. When it was a HUGE hit, she knew she could launch her subscription box with confidence. She now has hundreds and hundreds of monthly subscribers and won a major subscription box industry award earlier this year. 

My process for launching a one-time Holiday Gift Box was simple and it started before I had any idea what I was going to put in the box: 

By the end of day one, I had sold over half the boxes. 

I sold out of all my Holiday Gift Boxes on day four! Oh, and I did all of this without having any product in hand. 

Join me for this episode as I share what a Holiday Gift Box can do for your business and walk you through my simple, four-day Holiday Gift Box launch plan. 

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Are you ready for Launch Your Box? Our complete training program walks you step by step through how to start, launch, and grow your subscription box business. Join the waitlist today! 

Launching a one-time holiday box in the 4th quarter is good business. Doing it without running ads isn’t. That’s why I brought my friend and colleague Josh Coffy of The Ecommerce Alley to talk with us. 

Listen to episode 169 for more about why YOU should consider a one-time holiday box. 

You should always be building your audience organically. And you should get your audience excited about your one-time holiday boxes organically. But, if you want to maximize the sale of your one-time holiday boxes, you need to use ads. 

Josh is an expert on Ecommerce marketing and Meta ads. He says that whether it’s now or later, you HAVE to figure out advertising. In order to predictably attract new customers, you have to advertise. 

I shared my favorite ads analogy. Ads aren’t the base of your marketing strategy. Your base is all of the organic audience building you do. Consistently showing up on social media, engaging with your audience… And ads? They are likee lighter fluid. They take what you’ve already built and make it burn hotter and faster. 

In Q4, people are buying like no other time of the year. Take advantage of the momentum Q4 naturally gives you. 

Josh talked about the types of ads you can/should run: 

Josh had even more recommendations including running purchase-based campaigns and keeping it simple. Start slow and increase your ads budget as sales come in. 

Josh walked us through how he would build a campaign for a one-time holiday box no matter what your budget is. He explained “return on ad spend,” what is realistic to expect, and what you need to spend to get to the desired number of box sales. 

Subscription box owners must manage their expectations and remove emotion (which is hard). Josh reminded us that marketing is a mathematical equation, not an emotional decision. Ads require a great deal of mental fortitude. 

Josh also shared that “ad-dy ads” are working right now. Customers are responding to ads that look like ads. 

As E-commerce business owners, our goal every day is to get in front of more people. As subscription box owners who face cancellations each month as a reality of doing business, growth depends on getting in front of more people. 

I asked Josh what advice he had for someone who has never run an ad. He said it might feel like Mt. Everest in front of you. After all, Meta ads can be confusing and expensive. But the only way to get to the top is to start climbing. It’s going to be scary but just do it. Start slow and small… but do it. 

Join me for this episode as Josh and I nerd out on all things Facebook Ads and how you can use them to maximize sales of your one-time holiday box! 

Episode 169 - A One-Time Holiday Box Can Validate Your Subscription Box Idea

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Audience building is the key to a successful subscription box launch. It’s also the key to the growth and sustainability of your subscription box business. In today’s episode, we’re talking about 5 ways to build an audience for each stage of the subscription box journey. 

A reality of a subscription box is that each month will also bring cancellations. They’re simply a part of doing business. And the only way to continue to grow your subscription box business is to continue to grow your audience, to get in front of new people and convert some of those people into subscribers. 

Focusing on these 5 things consistently is going to help you grow your audience – and you need to grow your audience to grow your business. 

If you’re brand new and don’t have an audience yet, you need to spend time building an audience. I say it all the time. You can’t have a successful launch if you’re launching to no one! 

Building social media content - get your social pages going and build content on those pages. Get a minimum of 10 posts up right away. See 10 Post Ideas When Starting Your Business  Get super consistent. Post daily and work up to twice a day. 

Share on your personal profile - share from your business page onto your personal page. People in your personal network are part of the audience you’ve already built. Let them help you expand your reach. 

Set up a page like ad - these ads are simply an introduction to you and what you do. People simply click the thumbs up and then they’re following your business page. This pushes you in front of people you’d never get in front of. Launch Your Box members, find the training inside the “Building Your Audience” module. 

Video - short video and LIVEs - Let your audience get to know you.  Listen to episode 170 to learn how Tracey Phillips built an amazing audience of over 100,000 people by consistently doing LIVE videos. 

Set up your email CRM - part of building your audience is building your email list. Our favorite email CRM is Klaviyo. 

If you are selling products, actively building an audience, or already have a subscription box, these 5 steps are for you. Make these a habit. You should be doing them all year round.

10 Post Ideas When Starting Your Business 

Episode 170 of The Launch Your Box Podcast

Downloadable Email Opt-In Freebie Ideas

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Are you ready for Launch Your Box? Our complete training program walks you step by step through how to start, launch, and grow your subscription box business. Join the waitlist today!

Taking action. That’s something my guest today is great at. She joined my Subscription Box Week in June and within 30 days had launched her subscription (to more than 100 subscribers) and started generating recurring revenue.  She’s been inspiring members inside Launch Your Box and I know she’ll inspire you, too! 

Tracey Phillips of Mindless Crafting started her business from a place of service. She’s a paper crafter and card maker who loves sharing her gifts with others. That love of crafts led her to start a YouTube channel where she simply crafted with her audience, teaching them and guiding them to create beautiful paper crafts and handmade cards. 

As Tracey’s audience grew, they started asking her to create her own products. She promised she would if she reached 100,000 YouTube subscribers. And she did! 

Tracey and her oh-so-supportive husband Bill figured out how to produce just one product – a stamp kit. They found a US-based manufacturer and worked with them to produce something they were proud to sell to their audience. 

They quickly and easily sold the 100 stamps they had made. Tracey realized they could have sold many more. They started adding holiday kits to their online shop for Christmas, Valentine’s Day, and more. As Tracey chose and designed items for the kit, she stayed true to what she knew worked. If she loved something and was excited about it, her audience would be, too. 

Tracey joined Subscription Box Week and jumped in with both feet. She soaked up all the knowledge.

At first, Tracey thought she wanted to start with a fully curated box. But when I talked about the ease of a one-thing-of-the-month subscription and how they could be a great place to start, Tracey knew that was the answer for her. 

Tracey launched to her community following the launch plan she learned in Launch Your Box.

At the end of the 1st night, Tracey had 50 subscribers – double her goal. And by the end of her launch, she and Bill were celebrating 109 subscribers! 

What was Tracey’s secret? She went LIVE a lot. She understands the power of letting your audience see you and get to know you. It allows people to see your authenticity. To ask questions and get them answered. To catch the replay later and still get the information. 

Tracey has advice for anyone thinking about starting a subscription box. Don’t wait for things to be perfect – she didn’t. Understand that even if the answer to a challenge doesn’t come easily or right away, it will come. 

Most of all, Tracey wants you to connect with your audience, show up as you are, and “do what Sarah says!” 

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Are you ready for Launch Your Box? Our complete training program walks you step by step through how to start, launch, and grow your subscription box business. Join the waitlist today!