009: Why am I Scared to Show Up Live? | Build an Audience for Your Subscription Box with Sarah Wi...

Does the thought of showing up live make you sick to your stomach? Have you asked yourself, why should I have to be the influencer of my own business? If you have those thoughts, today's episode is going to be a great one. Come listen.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

So here I am. I've got this local little boutique that I'm selling my stuff out of. I've created this awesome subscription box and I mostly have local customers. It is online and I'm selling online, but just a few here and there. At this point, 90% of my customers were local and I loved it. I loved seeing them come in and pick up their boxes. I loved getting to talk to them. But at some point, the only way you're going to grow is by getting outside of your local audience. You've got to get your reach further. And there's many ways that you can do that. And we started down the road of, you know, Facebook ads. I was on social media, I was working social media, but again, my audience was super local. So now I was trying to appeal to people that were outside of my community. And the best way that we could think to do that was to start Facebook ads. And, and that was going, that was going well, but I wasn't really seeing a lot of results. I was gaining followers, but I was not gaining subscribers. And so that told me two things. They like what I have, but they're unsure. They're unsure about me. They're unsure about making a commitment because a subscription box is not a one and done. It's a commitment to me. And I'm sitting there struggling, trying to figure out how I was going to make this grow. I mean, there comes to a point where only a certain amount of people can be wearing the same t-shirt running around my town. I've got to get out of this little tri-state area that I'm in. And you know, my Facebook strategist kept telling me, you have to go live. I'm like, no, I don't want to go live. I don't, you know, let's just see how the ads do without, without me doing lives. And I fought it. I fought it for months. And at the end of the day, every time we would have this meeting, it would be, Sarah, you really need to go live. It's going to change everything for you. It's going to help your engagement. It's going to help you grow your audience. And ultimately it's going to help with sales. And so I was just resisting. I was resisting it at every level. And there's lots of reasons. Uh, you know, number one, I'm an introvert. You've heard me say that before on the podcast, But when it gets too people-y out there, I just tend to shut down. So for me, staring at a camera and going live and having to talk to a whole bunch of people at once was not something that I was ready to sign up for. And the other thing that was happening was that I have a lot of self-esteem issues. I was a great business person. I loved my customers. I felt like my customers loved me, but I got to put myself out there in a way that I don't know if I'm comfortable with. Like, am I too old? You know, I'm not tan. I'm I'm not skinny. I'm not these pretty little models that are so-called influencers in quotes all over the internet. And I didn't fit that mold. And I was worried that I was not going to have, you know, a good reaction. Like, why would somebody show up and watch me? I'm just average Sarah. I'm just a mom. I'm just a wife. You know, I'm just doing this side hustle business thing. I'm not, I'm not anybody special. And that's what I kept telling myself over and over in my head. And then my subscription box started to plateau and I was plateauing about the $300 to $350 mark. And I knew that I had to change some things up. Even at that point, still 90% of my customers were local. They would come in, they would get to know me, and I had to make a decision on how could I take that in-person face-to-face connection and create that online. The only way I was going to be able to do that was through a Facebook Live. I tried with posts. I did post pictures of me. I did some pictures of my family. I did pictures of behind the scenes. It was all great and it was all well received. And if I look back at that now, all those posts got the most engagement because people were getting a glimpse of me. They were getting to know me through those pictures, but they weren't really going to get to know me until I showed up on that camera and I showed up live. And so here I was. I was going to be the influencer of my business. And I took the turn because something was made very clear to me when I was looking at these other influencers. They were young, they were tan, they, you know, they were model types. And I thought, well, I don't, I don't really want to do that because that's not who my customer is. My customer is not going to relate to this person because they don't look or act like my, my customer. You know, my customer is typically a mom. My customer is typically in her thirties or forties. And I knew that these young 20-year-old models were not going to relate my message the way I needed to. And when I looked at the sizing of most of my customers, it was the same size that I wore. Yes, I have customers smaller than me. Yes, I have customers larger than me. But what I was seeing was that people related to me because of my size, because of my personality, because of my age. They— I was the influencer and I didn't even I didn't realize it at that time. And so now I have got to jump all in. I have got to jump in and figure out how I am going to show up live and get rid of all of these fears. And so I made a commitment to do 1 live a week. And so I started to do 1 live a week and it was painful. It was so painful. I would sit there in front of the camera, ready to go live. I had all my talking points written out for me and I couldn't push the button. I would tell myself all these negative things about myself of why I couldn't go live. I would put it off. I couldn't do this. And I had my VA on the other end saying, where are you? Push the button already. I'm waiting. And an hour would go by and I still had not gone live. And I was terrified. I was terrified that no one would be there. I was terrified that I would say the wrong things. I was terrified of, you know, looking like an idiot on the camera here. And so I, I didn't do it and I didn't do it more than once. And finally someone asked, hey, I thought you were going live. Where were you? I missed it. And I thought, they're, they're looking for me now. They're looking for me. I have said that I'm going live on Fridays and now 3 Fridays in a row I have not shown up because I've given myself all the excuses of why I don't want to show up. And now they're looking for me. So here it is, the 4th Friday, and I have got to go live. I went live. I talked so fast. I asked a couple of my friends to join me on the live on the opposite end, asking me questions, just kind of creating some conversation. So I felt like there was someone safe out there, you know, that I could look at in the audience, even though you can't see anyone, and I knew that I saw my friends and they were there and they were asking questions as if they were customers. And it made me feel safe and it made me relax a little bit and it made me calm down. And I needed that. I needed that for the first several lives. I talked so fast and I hit the end button. I didn't really interact with anybody. And I thought, okay, I got through that. I think I was sweating the whole time, but now I had to like do that again the next week. And then I had to do that again the next week. And so every week I would show up. I I had a whole bunch of notes that I would look at because if I didn't write those notes down, I would forget all the talking points that I wanted to get through during my live. I wouldn't show the products I would want to show. And then I would get off that live and I'd be like, oh gosh, I forgot to say all that stuff. I'd ask my friends to show up. I would go live. And what started to happen was people started to watch me and every week a few more people started joining those lives. And it got to the point one week I looked up and there was 100 people watching me go live and I thought I was going to faint in that moment. I probably should have put a little sticker over the number of people watching me go live because I panicked and I finished my live so fast because I was nervous. It got very people-y for me and I was still unsure about myself. And the thing about it is, is that I, I started to grow. My numbers started to grow. My followers started to grow. My subscribers started to grow. My sales started to grow and I really had to lean into what I was doing and I had to own it. Even though I was terrified, even though this isn't what I wanted to do, people were getting to know me and that was all the difference that I needed, that it changed everything. And I wanted to share this little podcast review that I saw before I was getting on today. And it's from E L Love. And it says, so inspiring. Sarah is real. She is honest and shares so much Allowing her followers to feel like we can really do this thing. And I just wanted to share that because she touched this person. I don't know if it's a woman or a man, but they touch on the fact that I'm real. I'm sitting here talking to you. You're listening to me while you're working, you're walking, you're drinking coffee in the morning, whatever you're doing, but you're getting to know me because I show up. You get to hear my voice. You get to hear when I make a mistake on the microphone. You get to hear my stories. You get to, hang out with me basically in this virtual world. And that's what we've got to do. We've got to do that in sales because people want to buy from people and not from a brand. Last month inside my membership, I created a little challenge for everyone and it was called the Creating Connections Challenge. And what I challenged them to do was to get out of their comfort zone and show up in a way that they had not been showing up. Even if they were doing lives, I challenged them to do more. Even if they weren't posting regularly or they were, I challenged them to do more. We've got to create connections. And we saw that more than ever in 2020 as the world was shutting down around us. People were stuck in their homes and they longed for connections and they found those connections online. People are still looking for those connections. And so any way that you can create a connection with the person that's following following you on the other end, you're going to create loyalty. You're going to create a sense of, oh, I know her, even though we've never met in person. You're creating that environment when you go live and you show up. As hard as it can be, I'm challenging you, if you're listening right now, to go live. Now here's some things that helped me as I decided to go live. One, I got my hair done, and I know it sounds silly, but there's a little blowout bar in my town that I would go to and I would pay $35 to have my hair blown out that morning. Every Friday morning I would go and get a blowout because I know that it made me feel good about myself and that, that was one barrier that I no longer had to have before I was going live. My hair looked good. It gave me a little confidence, helped put a felt good about myself. So what is one thing that would help you feel good about yourself and showing up on camera? Do that. Number 2, I already told you that I had asked some friends on— tell them your internal struggle, ask them to show up at a certain time for you and get because I was selling those. Hey, can you ask me about a subscription box? Can you ask me how I can join your subscription box? That way I didn't have to come up and say I'm selling a subscription box, but I asked them to join me before every single live. I did that for 3 or 4 weeks before I felt like I didn't need them anymore. So do something to make you feel good about yourself, whether that's a new outfit, getting your hair done, anything like that, to 2, ask your friends or some business friends to join you to help you through those first conversations. Number 3, I want you to write some talking points, what you're going to talk about. And the easiest way to go live, if you're a maker making something, your hands are busy, you can focus on what you're working on and the, and the camera, you can go back and forth. So if it's kind of crickets when you go live in the beginning, at least you're making something and you don't feel like you're talking to yourself. But write down those talking points. What do you want to you want to get across today when you do a live. And that could be a behind the scenes live, show them what you're working on, whether you're packing shipments, whether you're making things, whether you're, you know, I like to show my favorite things every Friday. So I just show them new stuff in stock, figure out a plan for that live and then write the talking points down so that you don't forget to say what you want to say when you get on camera. The other thing, you know, I already told you that I talked so fast and I ended, I didn't engage with anyone. You've got to start the conversation just as if someone walked into your store and you greeted them face to face. You want to greet those people as they're coming in on your live. You may only have a few people the first time you do a live. Make sure you engage with them. Ask them questions. I would always write in my notes, um, pause and talk to people because I would talk and I would be so nervous that I would forget to go back and talk to people. And you want to create that relationship. You want to have the back and forth. So make sure you pause and talk to people. The other thing that is important is to set the date. So when you plan out the live that you want to do, make sure you're posting that on your page. Um, if you have an email or text to make sure you send that out because it's going to force you to show up. If you never put the date out in the world, you can easily excuse yourself out of it. You can find so many reasons why you don't have to do it. But for me, Every Friday at 9 o'clock I go live. So excuse or not, I gotta show up live and I can't keep putting it off. So put the date and time out there. And I just told you that every Friday I show up at, at 9 o'clock live, make it consistent. If you can show up at the same time every single week, people will, oh yeah, it's Friday morning. I'm going to go watch Sarah live. They'll get in the habit of watching you live every single week and it becomes a routine. And I want you to pick a date and time that's easy for you, not what you think when you think you should go live, not when you think the most people are online. You've got to pick a date and time that's easiest for you so that you can't come up with excuses. I know that Friday at 9:00 AM I will go live because no one's at the warehouse at that time. So that means I can go live without people watching me. That was important because I don't need the peanut gallery in the background making fun of what I'm talking about in the moment. I know that I, you know, Friday, if I do it in the morning, I won't stress about it all day long. So figure out what time that is for you that you can be super consistent with every single week. Once you post that date, you're now committed. So you can't give yourself any more excuses because your followers are watching and they're ready for you to show up live. There's one little metric that we were looking at during our Creating Connections Challenge last month inside our group. And I want you to look at it too. Here's your challenge. Go into your Facebook Insights. And I want you to look up the last 28 days. I want you to look up your post reach and your post engagement. Then what I want you to do is I want you to plan out one live every single week for the next 4 weeks. Now, if you're already consistently doing a weekly live, I want to push yourself to doing 2 lives a week. See what happens if you can double your stats. So I want you to do that for 4 weeks. Post the dates that you're going live so you can't back out of it. If you need someone to show up and cheer you on and ask you questions, go ahead and ask them now so they're, they're ready for you. And then I want you to keep posting consistently throughout the week. Keep that engagement up, keep your reach up. And then I want you to look back after those 28 days and compare your notes. How are you doing before the challenge? How are you doing now? And just get it out there. Because, you know, once you can see what the numbers are doing for your business, it's going to take away the feelings. If what you're doing on a Facebook Live is driving sales, creating connections, and increasing your subscriber base, would you show up and do that every single week no matter how hard it was? I would. So if you can see those numbers You're going to be able to show up and do it every single week. And it's not just for 4 weeks. We want to do this every single month. I'm just challenging you to start that for 4 weeks and be super consistent at it. And then see how you feel after the 4 weeks, because you're not going to feel the greatest after your very first Facebook Live. Like it, you're probably going to want to go and delete it and it's okay. I think I deleted mine, but once I got 4 weeks in and I I could see that it was getting easier and I could see that it was getting better and I could see that it was actually changing things on my social media. I knew that I needed to stay with it. And that's the feeling that I want you to get. I don't want you to get sick to your stomach when you feel like you have to show up live, but I want you to understand that the power of seeing your face and even the power of hearing someone's voice creates a connection with somebody just like you listening to my voice. I've messed up a few things. I've stuttered. I've probably said y'all. Those— that's me. You're getting to know me through my voice. If you're watching me on a Facebook Live, you're getting to know me on camera. And that's how I'm creating connections. People feel like they're my friends. And that's what I want my customers to feel like when they get their subscription box in the mail. I want them to feel like I created that one box just for them and that we're friends. And, and if they feel that, I have done my job. So I want you to go do the Connections Challenge. I want you to show up. Don't be afraid to do the live. Don't be scared to show up and be the influencer in your business. Wondering if a subscription box is right for you? Join my $10 coaching week from March 21st through 26th. I'm going to show you how to develop your idea into a plan. Sign up today at launchyourboxwithsarah.com.