040: A Week with Sarah

Have you ever wondered what a week looks like in my business? This week I'm doing something just a little different on the podcast. I'm going to take you through day by day of what a typical week looks like for me. Come join me. 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. Welcome back to the podcast. Today we're doing something a little different, and I'm kind of excited about it. I've had a lot of requests like, Sarah, what does your week look like? What do they look like? How do you get everything done? You know, if you don't know me very well, I basically run two large businesses. So I have my retail business, which is where We sell online. I have a warehouse and we have our subscription box, the Monogram Box. So that business is called Framed and it's very busy. And then I have the other side of my business, which is Launch Your Box. And that's the coaching side of the business. We do a lot of information, a lot of education, and we have thousands of members in both Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box. So it's how do I manage both of those businesses? How do I get everything done that I need to get done in a week? And what, what do my days look like? And, um, a shout out to Cheryl. Cheryl is one of our mentors inside Launch Your Box and a member of Scale Your Box. And she said, I would love for you to record a podcast, just a daily podcast of what your week looks like. And so here I am, I'm starting it today. Um, technically right now you're listening to this later, but it is the last week of September and it's a good week for me to do the podcast because there's a lot of different things going on. I really call this week my transitional week in the months because we finished with our September items, we're prepping for October, and we're kind of in this, we're in this lull of things are done, but what can we do to get ready for the next wave? And so that's what this week is for me. And so it's the perfect week for me to take time and record a little bit of information every single day of what I am working on and what I do as far as the CEO of my business. And so we're going to start, we're going to start right now. We're going to start with Monday. It is Monday morning and Mondays can feel hectic for me sometimes because there's either, it can go two ways. I either unplug completely for the weekend, which about 50% of the time I do that. I don't check email. I don't do social media. I don't check on the groups. I'm just, I need to unplug. So there's, that can go one way. Or there's usually a Sunday, um, you know, afternoon catch-up, which I actually did yesterday. Um, and that really kind of makes Monday a little bit easier. I kind of dread Mondays if I take the whole weekend off. So, um, but it's necessary sometimes. So you take that when you need it. But last week we were at Sub Summit for the whole week. And so we've been gone from the warehouse, myself, my assistant, we were gone all week. So I needed to kind of check in on the business. On Sunday and just make a game plan for this week. We had a great team meeting last Monday. We don't meet every week. We don't even meet every other week. We just meet as needed. Um, but we had a great team meeting with, um, the virtual team, the in-person team, as we're prepping for coaching week that is coming up in a few weeks. And so everybody knew what they needed to be working on. So I don't feel behind that I was gone because the team is there taking care of all those details. But here's what Monday looks like for me. So here's what today is going to look like. Um, I got here about 8:30 this morning. So one little thing about me is that I work way better in my office at the warehouse than I do at home. Do I like working from home every now and then? Yes, but I am so much more productive when I'm out of that environment and in this work environment. So I choose to come to the office, um, 5 days a week most of the time because I get so much done. One of my big goals for 2021 was to leave work at 3 o'clock. And it might not seem like a lot if you are listening, but it is a big deal to me. I am what you would call a workaholic. And so I work all the time from literally the time I wake up to the time I go to bed most days. I love my job. I love what I do. It, it brings me joy. It makes me happy. I feel fulfilled. So I love to work. But I also have a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old, and I know that in the early days of my business, I traded a lot of my time with my kids to build my business. And I'm at a point where I don't have to do that anymore and they are not going to be there forever. So my goal for 2021 is to be home at 3:00 for my kids. They get out of school and, you know, if you have teenagers and you're listening, your kids don't care if you're home or not. They go to their rooms when they get home and you probably don't see them until dinner, but just being there, knowing I'm there, knowing that, you know, I'm just home with them, whether I'm working while I'm there or not. I am there, and that's important to me. So the goal today is to leave at 3. Sometimes that happens and sometimes that doesn't, but I feel good about my Monday because I spent Sunday afternoon kind of going through catching up with the things. So I'm just ready to go this morning. So what I caught up on on Sunday Uh, I went into the groups. So I have two memberships, Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box. And I plan time in my schedule every single day to go into the group, answer questions, and just be present. I did do that last night, so I don't have to do that this morning. I also went through my black hole of an email box last night and, um, and just forwarded any messages that I received that my team can take care of, forward them on to them. So So I know they're going to take care of anything that was in the email box over the weekend first thing Monday morning. And so I get to the warehouse and the first thing that I do on Mondays— I have this notebook and I really thought about creating my own notebook to put in my shop, but I have this. It's basically a rolling to-do list. I have my big wall calendars. That's my big picture. That's how I plan out dates and launches and events. And schedules, but I have this rolling to-do list that is in just— it's like a little— I would say it's a— maybe it's not a big notebook, but it's not a tiny notebook. It's kind of a medium-sized spiral notebook. And every week I create my to-do list. And so the first things that go on to the to-do list for the week are those things that I have to do every single week, and that's my content. I create 3 pieces of content every week for my businesses, and that is 1 podcast episode, which, you know, you're listening to right now. That is 1 Launch Your Box blog and 1 Framed blog. Now I have an amazing team, so all I have to do is create an outline for those blogs, and my copywriter and my VA handle the rest of that. But I have to sit down collect my thoughts together and then send it on to them so they can put it together. As far as the podcast, it's awesome because all I have to do is record. I download it and put it in our Google Drive. They do the show notes, they do the editing, they get it all ready to rock. So I just need to sit down, have some quiet space for myself, create a couple of pieces of content every single week. And this is how we build our audiences. This is how I build my audiences. And so that is the first things that go on my to-do list. And then as I'm checking my email, I may need to follow up with people, I may need to do some other things, so I start a to-do list. And so it's rolling, and I don't do a new page every day. It's usually a week. Sometimes I have to use another page by the end of the week, but I just start writing down the things that I need to take care of for the week. I need to plan my Friday lives, and then there's random things that I have to do this week. I need to pay my affiliates. Their commission. I need to plan a gift box launch. I need to follow up on 40 missing sweatshirts. I need to get some product ordered for our t-shirt club for the next several months, and I need to follow up on some more product. And there's a couple appointments that I have this week, personal. So those are all on my list here so I don't forget about them. So I also, on Mondays, I look back at my last week's to-do list. There are always things that I didn't get done. There are always things that I didn't get done from the previous week. So I move them to the to-do list for this week and they get highlighted because they've already been on my list for a week. And either I'm putting them off, I'm procrastinating, or, you know, there's some other thing. So if I highlight them, they're top of mind. I need to get them done. There's no more putting this off, Sarah. I'm telling myself to do it. So I always tell the team, if it's not on my to-do list, it ain't happening. So I've got to get it on the list to make sure it gets done. I get pulled in 80 directions every day. And so I always come back to this list. So it's got to get on this list before I can do anything else. Now the warehouse crew will be here in about 15 minutes. And so once they get here, we kind of talk through the week. There's— I have 6 people on my warehouse crew, and every week kind of looks different in my business. We have 3 different subscriptions that we pack every single month. Today we're going to pack our teacher subscriptions, and this is my smallest subscription, so this is the one I'm most hands-off of because they've got it. I trust them. I'm not worried about it. Not that I'm worried about my other subscriptions, they're just very large, so I help prep and manage those, but they have this one. I'm not worried about it. So they'll come in and they'll pull all the orders from the weekend. So we usually have really heavy order shipping on Monday because a lot of sales happen Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. They'll pull orders, they'll personalize orders, so they'll be monogramming, and they have their roles. One person picks them, one person— another person monograms, another person shipping. They're all kind of working together, so they have their roles. They know what to do when they get here. But laying out a big game plan for them— okay, let's get orders done first thing this morning, and then while you're doing orders, while the three of you are doing orders, I need you to prep the teacher subscriptions. We need to print invoices, we need to print labels, we need to print shipping labels. So we need to fold the shirts. We have to pick up the shirts from the screen printer this morning. So we'll send someone over to do that. And then the team will come together and all those shirts will go out in this afternoon sometime. I am recording podcasts today. I love to batch record podcasts and I really love to batch write blogs too. I'm not as efficient at that because it takes more mental capacity than just throwing my microphone on and talking. But today I'm recording 3 podcasts. So I have those set up today, which take about an hour apiece. And then I'm also meeting today with a couple fulfillment centers, 3PLs. I use my own warehouse and, um, I know that that's not realistic or the best thing for everyone. So I'm constantly doing research and providing resources for my members. So today I am meeting with a couple fulfillment centers in hopes to find out information and resources for members of Scale Your Box. And so I have two meetings. One starts in about an hour and the other one is 30 minutes after that. So hopefully I'll find a good contact there and be able to schedule some training inside Scale Your Box for the upcoming months. But that's my plan for today. All of that needs to get done so I can get home at 3, and it starts right now with me going through my notebook. I'm going to make my to-do list for the week. I'm going to talk with the staff when they get here at the warehouse on what the game plan is. And then I'm going to jump into a day full of calls right after that. So I will be on calls till about 2 o'clock today. And then we'll see if my hair is on fire and I'm not leaving at 3, or if we've had a good day, my team is handling everything, and I get to go home at 3. I'll be back tomorrow to let you know how the rest of the day went. Good morning, it's Tuesday. I'm back in the warehouse. It's about 7:30 this morning. My morning— I'm definitely a morning person. I typically wake up about 6 AM. I get up, I get ready for work, um, and get the kids off to school, and then I just come straight to work. You probably heard yesterday that, um, I'm most productive at work. I'm also more productive when I'm alone. So being here an hour before the warehouse crew gets here helps me with a few things. I can kind of get my thoughts collected, do a little bit of the deep thinking work in the mornings. I also like to take some pictures, record podcasts, talk to my groups in the mornings before I get bombarded with questions or issues or problems throughout the day. So that's the plan this morning. I jumped on to record record my session of the podcast early. Um, and the good news is, uh, we got all our orders out from the weekend yesterday. We got all of our teacher subscriptions out yesterday, and I didn't have to do anything. It's amazing. They handled it from start to finish, from failed payments to, you know, issues to shipping to everything. They handled everything yesterday. I didn't touch a thing in our teacher subscriptions. And there was even like some damages on a couple of the shirts. They just, they handled it all. And that's, it's taken us a while to get there. And it's taken me personally, not them. They're great. They're fabulous, but it's taken me the time to let it go. And I know if you have your subscription box and you're listening right now, it's one of those things, it's your baby. And it's really hard to just step back from it because you've built this thing, but they're fully capable. And if you give them the opportunity ability to lead, they, they will take that ownership, they will take that leadership, and they will lead sometimes better than you do. And it's just amazing to watch them step into these roles and really take ownership of my business the way that I would. And so I'm really, I'm really proud of them. And I'm kind of proud of myself for just, you know, I was kind of forced not to be in the middle of anything yesterday because I had several calls and I was recording podcasts. I was really stuck in my office all day. Normally I'd kind of walk out there I'm like, what are y'all working on? Get into their business a little bit. And they're like, go back in your office, we got this. So I was forced not to, not to be in the middle of it yesterday. And they handled everything so well. They even started prepping our October box yesterday. So they were organizing monograms, making their game plan. And I could see they were all huddled around the table at one point in the afternoon, working through, you know, problem solving something. And I said, do y'all need my help? And they were like, nope, we got it. And I'm like, okay. So I, I'm, I'm learning to step back a little bit, let them work through it because they're fully capable. And it allows me to work on other things, allows me to follow up on product that I need for fourth quarter, allows me to plan that next box. It allows me to work on content to build our audience. It allows me to do things that they can't. And so I'm all for letting them do that. So on the agenda today, because we got so much done yesterday, today feels very light and fun and not so stressful. We have got to start monogramming. So we have a lot of monogram— so our monogram box, one piece of every, of every box is monogrammed, which, if you're listening and you don't know what a monogram is, that's your initials. In the South, we love to monogram everything. And so we've got to start monogramming today and get the box rolling so that we don't feel behind next week. Next week is the first of the month for us, and so everything just hits really hard. So if we can do everything we can in this last week of the month to get prepped and organized and monogrammed, it will make next week and the week after so much easier for us. So the goal today: start monogramming. And we've got a good— they got a good prep yesterday to get started today. We've got to fold the rest of our boxes. So a couple weeks ago, when they didn't have a ton to do, they started folding boxes for this month. So we need to finish that. We are still waiting on our t-shirt club. To be printed. So that's at the screen printer right now. So in the meantime, everyone can monogram. And then for me, I'm going to help with the monogram process, organize and make sure they're good. But I also need to plan out my gift box launch. So we do a holiday box every year and I'm about 30 days out from that launch. So I need to get— I need to get the plan together so that the team can build the assets. And what I mean by that is we need graphics, we need emails, We need social media copy. Um, we need products built on the backend. So we need to have those assets ready so that I'm not scrambling the night before trying to get everything ready for our, um, gift box launch. So if I can give them all the information I need to 30 days in advance, everyone has time to do their job. And we're so much more efficient when we are planned out. So I'm going to get in the groups this morning and talk and cheer them on and give them advice. I'm going to create my blog content today. I got my podcast recorded for 3 weeks yesterday, so I don't have to do that for a couple weeks, which feels awesome. I'm going to get blog content over to the copywriter today, and I really need to sit down and do some ordering of product for the store, for the boxes. I need to check in with my team member that does a lot of sourcing for me and see where we're at with all the products that we have coming overseas. It's a, it's an intense time right now, and I feel like it's only going to get worse over the next few months. So I got to get ahead of it because it's going to become pretty stressful this holiday season. Right now, I saw an article yesterday that there are 70 ships at berth, which means there are 70 ships sitting in the water, cargo ships sitting in the water that can't even get to port. And so they're just sitting in the water waiting for their time to get to port. And then when they get to port, containers are stacking on top of each other because there are no trucks to drive the shipments across country to be delivered. It is already bad and it is the end of September. I cannot imagine what is going to happen over the next few months. So in my mind, We've been reworking some of our subscriptions, unsure if the product's coming or not. What is in the US? What can I make? What can we make? Because we can make a lot of things. We have embroidery machines, we have a DTF printer, we have a laser. What can we make for our subscription box and how can we get ahead of this so that we are not in trouble come December? And so I'm going to work through a bunch of that today. If I can get all that done, get out of here by 3 o'clock again, I'm thinking I might take a half day off tomorrow. I've been gone. I need to do some things around my house and for myself. So we'll see if I can get— the goal is to stay focused, get my work done so I can take a half day off tomorrow for myself. So I'll keep you posted tomorrow morning. Well, it's officially Wednesday and I worked a little late last night. There were a lot of things on my plate and it just kept adding to it all day long, but I am going to take a half day off today. I have already made a nail appointment. So it's a done deal. So that means I have to get in here and get focused this morning. Wednesdays are literally my favorite day of the week as far as my work week, because I'm by myself. And I think it's important. You know, I work with a lot of people all day long, and that could be the virtual team, it could be the in-person team, but I need time alone to sit in my thoughts. I need time alone to be creative. I cannot be creative when there's so much going on around me. I can't even think, let alone be creative. So today is— I've held space in this time to be creative. I'm going to work on a new teacher tee design. I'm going to work on my October— not October, November t-shirt design. I already have October done. I've got to check and see what's available. Now here's the thing about t-shirt subscriptions. I don't get too far ahead on these designs anymore. I used to, I used to plan 2 or 3 months at a time. But you don't know what's available as far as colors, sizes, quantities. So the goal today is to go through my t-shirt vendors, pick the shirt. I don't have a design in my head yet, but I'm going to pick the shirt first, and then I'm going to design something to go with that shirt. In the past, I have made a design and then found a shirt that I like to put it on. I cannot do that anymore, so I have to design with colors and everything based on what is currently available. Available. So I can't get too far ahead of myself with those things. So I'm going to find what's available, and I have to buy it right now because what's available today could be sold out tomorrow. So I'm going to do that today and get all of that done. I don't have a lot on the to-do list other than to be creative, and I love that because that means I can take my time. I can sketch, I can draw out my thoughts, I can change things, I can, I can do all of my designs from start to finish. And when I say my designs, starts with me drawing it on my Procreate iPad with Procreate. I take that into Photoshop and I edit and clean up anything I want to clean up. Then I have to make a black image for my screen printer and then layered images for the different colors. Then I make my mock-up and then I get all of that organized inside our Dropbox, send to the screen printer, put the graphics in, watermark the graphics, put those in for our graphic, you know, our VA to do Pinterest and all those things. So I have to create all those assets. It's not just about drawing the design. I have to do all the pieces of the design, and that can take a few hours. So having this freedom on Wednesdays to just sit and be creative and not have a bunch of other stuff I have to do, admin stuff, and that's what I like to do. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go get my nails done, and then we'll be back tomorrow morning, um, and we'll see what's on the table for Thursday. It should be a big day. We should be able to— hopefully we have our t-shirts to start prepping our 1,500 t-shirt club subscriptions. Um, and if we don't, we're going to start to get behind. So the goal is that the screen printer, it gets them done today. So I'll check back in with you tomorrow. I am back. It's officially Thursday, and I can't tell you know how good just taking— leaving work early, putting it away for the night feels the next morning. So I did leave early yesterday for my nail appointment, and then I have to take my daughter to soccer practice, um, 2 hours away, um, every Wednesday. So last night, her and I loaded up in the car, we left in the afternoon and, um, went to soccer practice, and we don't get back till about 10:30 at night. So I get time with her I unplug because obviously I'm driving and I can't be, I can't be answering emails and social media and all those things. So it's a nice way to unplug, forced unplug I should say. But I feel a little bit more refreshed this morning. So here's, here's what's happening today. Our t-shirts are not finished yet, so we really want to ship those on Tuesday. They're going to take at least a full day of prepping, folding, bagging, all of that stuff. So my warehouse crew does not work on Fridays, so that leaves us feeling a little bit stressed out for Monday. So I'm hoping we can at least get some of them today and get a little bit ahead, but we'll play that by ear. Because we don't have t-shirts to prep, I'm going to have, um, the crew here continue to monogramming. We're ahead as far as prepping for the October subscription, so I'm going to let them continue monogramming until we have word that there are some shirts we can go pick up. And we kind of have to look at the timelines today because our subscription process is on the 5th, the t-shirt subscription. We usually ship those on the 6th. Well, we are normally prepped and ready at this point already, and we're not. So we're probably going to have to adjust our schedules. So we've got to sit down and look at our schedule for next week and make sure everybody's here at the right times and everybody knows what the workload looks like for next week. And then what we're going to do, if we can get shirts this afternoon, we're going to start folding, bagging. We put our little sticker insert in the bag with it. We sort them by size so everything is full. All the mediums are folded, they're bagged, they're in boxes that say mediums so that when the payments process, all we have to do is print the invoices and the shipping label, label We slide that in the bag, put their shipping label on top, and those are ready to go. We can get 1,500 subscriptions out in about 2 or 3 hours if we're prepped. So the goal is to get as much prepped as we can. It does look like I'll be here a little bit over the weekend working on some things because it feels like we're a little bit behind. It's that, it's that tricky transition from the last day of the month to the first day of the month and where it all lands. So that's, that's the goal. Today is also our late night at the warehouse. We're open till 6 today. I will not stay till 6 unless I'm needed, but I have got to work through that to-do list that I started on Monday. I'm about halfway through it, but I don't want to look at it tomorrow and have to work super late on Friday because I didn't check a bunch of those things off. So the goal today is to get a lot of this quick to-do list things taken care of, buttoned up, and nailed down. I don't want to keep dragging those over into the next week. I need to put closure on them so my next week is clear. So that's the goal. I gotta go get busy, and I'll check in with you tomorrow morning, which will be Friday. It's Friday, and it's not morning anymore. It's about lunchtime, and I wasn't able to give you an update in the morning because the morning My mornings on Friday are just jam-packed full. So every Friday morning, you know, you've heard all week that I get here early. I get to the warehouse early around 7:30. Well, on Fridays I get my hair done at 7:30. So every Friday I have a standing date at the blow dry bar. So if you've not heard of a blow dry bar, you just go get your hair washed and they blow dry it and they curl it. And it's, it's amazing. You don't have to do your hair. There. It's awesome. So every Friday I go do that, and it's just something— if you heard any of my early podcasts, you've probably heard me talk about how I did it a long time ago to help me feel good about myself when I would show up for my lives. Well, I still do those lives on Friday, and I still get my blowout, and I love it. I love everything about it. So when I go get my blowout, then I rush to the warehouse, I get set up for my Friday morning live. So went live this morning and did my Friday Faves on my retail page and went through all my items, um, which the great thing about that is on Thursday my assistant preps all that for me. I tell her what I want to do on Friday, she makes sure the products are loaded in on our website, she sets up a table for me with all those products, she even prints out a list of what everything is and how much it costs. So when I'm live, um, I have all that information. I So all I have to do is pick out what I want to talk about and she sets it up for me. And so today I'm going to put together an email for the Friday Faves that I just went live about. So I'm going to email my list today. I also did a second live today, so I don't always do a second live, but I did a second live on my how to start a subscription box page today. We're getting, we're launching, um, we're in the middle of our launch for coaching week. So that started yesterday. Coaching week is now open. Um, subscription box coaching Week. So that is something that I do twice a year. It's a whole week of fun. So the goal is to funnel a large audience into the $10 week, and then let me show them how much knowledge I have. Um, give them some training, help them spark all of these ideas. And then the goal is to have them join me inside Launch Your Box. So this is my big launch for the membership. So I'm going to go live today on my How to Start a Subscription Box page. I'm going to tell them that Coaching Week is now open. They they can start to join and get them excited about that. And so, um, and then I've got to get some stuff prepped for our subscriptions. So this morning is all about, was all about the lives. After I get done recording this, I'm going to grab some lunch. And then for the afternoon, I have got to get some stuff organized and prepped because next week we've got to pack like 3,000 subscriptions. And so want to make sure that we're not figuring that out when we come in on Monday morning, the plan is set, this is where we're at, this is what we're doing, and everybody has their role and can go. I know that if we can be more planned out, more prepped, everything goes smoother. If we're kind of all over the place, we make mistakes, things take longer, we're not as efficient. So I would love to put that plan together for them so when they come in, um, they'll be ready to go. And it looks like I'm going to have to work tomorrow. So I'll be here at the warehouse. We've got a new printer, and I'm the only one that can really use it at this point. And so I'll be printing all the rest of our monograms. We have about half of our boxes monogrammed, and so we need to do the other half. So I'm going to go print the monograms for them so when they come in next week they can finish all that up. Up. But it's great. We're having a great week. I hope you learned a lot from this week, just of what I do every day. Content is important, whether that's content in your retail business— I just talked about the content that I do for Framed, which is the live, it's ordering the products, it's creating the content with the blogs, um, the social media content. I do that every couple of days. I spend an hour working on that social media stuff, scheduling it so that I don't have to do it every single day. You can batch any of your content pieces, whether that's social media, Pinterest, blogs, buying products— all that stuff is considered content. So if you can work on that in big chunks instead of having to do a little bit every day, you're going to be more efficient, it's going to be more streamlined, you're going to feel better about about what chunks of things you have to take on each day. But I also need to finish that to-do list. I've got, um, about 4 or 5 things on there. They're going to take a little bit of time that I'm going to do today and tomorrow, and then hopefully I can take a full day off on Sunday again. So I hope you enjoyed this look into my week. It's, it's a lot. It's fun. Um, I do have to spend— probably gonna spend the next hour in my groups answering questions inside Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box and seeing what they are working on and how I can help them. And then I'm gonna get stuff ready for my own subscriptions. So I hope you enjoyed this week. Let me know if you loved it. We could probably do it again one of these days, but it's a— just look inside of all the things that I juggle. I know you're all juggling a lot. I know a lot of you that listen don't have teams. And I'm going to tell you, in the beginning I did not. I did everything myself. And it just starts with hiring one person and giving that one person a role and letting them take some things off your plate. And then as your business grows, you hire the next person. Don't think you have to go out here and hire 5 people at once because that's really hard to do. But just think about that role, um, that you would want to take off your plate right now and think about how you can hire one person to start doing that. And as your business grows and your revenue grows, um, you can look at hiring the next person. So I hope you enjoyed the podcast this week, and I'll see you back next week. Make sure you subscribe to the Launch Your Box podcast. I'd love for you to take a minute to rate and review it. Let me know which episode is your favorite so far. Far. Don't forget to join me next week right here.