051: 5 Ways to Reinvest In Your Business in the New Year

We're going to talk a little bit about reinvesting in your business today. And what do you do with that to make sure that your business is going long-term? That's what we're going to talk about today. Going to give you a little bit of momentum. What are our goals look like? What do we need to achieve so that we can reinvest in our business to give us even more momentum going into January?

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.

There was one thing that you could buy right now for your business, what would it be? And I'm just talking about reinvesting in your business. There's this saying that says, um, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, and then you sell the lemonade. Then you take those profits and you buy more lemons, and you sell more lemonade, and then you buy a bigger lemonade stand. And that's the The same thing that we need to do in business. So as we are generating more sales over the next, you know, 30 days, we need to figure out what we want to reinvest in. And I want you to make a reinvestment. It doesn't have to be a huge investment. It could be as simple as— I see this person right here— the shipping label. Like, how much, how much productivity does it take to one, purchase the labels that you have to put in your printer, and then it never fails, you're out of ink, and then you have to go buy more ink. If you bought a shipping printer this season with some of your profits, you don't have to buy ink. You can keep your shipping labels in stock. Like, there are things that we can do that will help us. So I put together 5 things that I want you to consider reinvesting some of your holiday profits from. And I want you to just jot down, like, what would be your top 3? If you had profits from this Christmas season, what would you reinvest in? Would you get that bigger lemonade stand? Like, what would you do? And I don't want you to take it all as a draw. Like, if you're not paying yourself, you got to pay yourself. Like, profits mean after all the expenses come out, you pay yourself, and then what's left That's what, that's what I'm talking about. Reinvesting that into your business is only going to help build momentum going into the new year, and it's going to help your business long-term grow and grow and grow. And so number 1, marketing is the first thing that I would reinvest in. And I'm not talking just Facebook ads, but I'm talking about like, could you pay a blogger or an influencer? Could you set up an affiliate marketing program? So investing in some either software to do an affiliate program with or paying an influencer or doing those Facebook ads. If you've never ran a Facebook ad or, you know, whatever that is, I'm not telling you to go set up a park bench at the bus stop with an ad. I'm telling you, do it in a way that you're going to see a return on your investment. So if you've not done Facebook ads, it's time to reinvest a little bit of our budget into Facebook ads or doing you know, doing those things like paying for an influencer to do a box opening for you, paying a blogger to do write-up for you that you can use in your business. Those are all marketing functions that you should regularly invest in once you're making a profit. So that's number one. Number two, it's technology. So websites— raise your hand if you have a website that's kind of been like pieced together, feels like it has Band-Aids all over it, and maybe it's time for a legit person to come in and overhaul your website. That means your checkout could be quicker, your website could run faster. Um, you would have maybe a graphic designer work on your website. Like, my website in the beginning felt like it was just Band-Aids on top of Band-Aids. And so reinvesting into a site that can run better and quicker, that's one way that you could reinvest in your business and you're going to see an instant ROI. You're going to see an instant return on your investment when people don't have hiccups at checkout, when they're not abandoning their carts because logging in or whatever the case may be is clunky on your site. So that could be one option too. Number 3, products. Um, here's an opportunity, and you know we've been struggling with this, um, all my Subbox owners, we've been struggling with products coming on time, especially if they're coming overseas. So could you take some of your profit from the fourth quarter and reinvest it in inventory to get ahead of your subscription box? So right now you might just be buying inventory one month at a time because that's all that your cash flow allows, and that's okay, and there's nothing wrong with that. I was, I was there for a long, long time before I was able to take some of my profits one Christmas And I was able to buy 2 months at a time, and then I was able to buy 3 months at a time. And so then what happens is now I'm 3 months ahead, my product's here, and then when the payments come out for next month, I can be 3 months ahead again. I just continue the process by taking some of those profits from the fourth quarter and investing in getting ahead of my inventory. It relieves so much stress. So that's a wise way to do it. Now, a lot of people say don't buy too much inventory with your profits, and that's not for subscription box owners when we're buying, because it, it stifles your cash flow, right? Is it— it stifles your working capital. But as subscription box owners, we're buying product that's already sold. And so the, the, the good thing is you don't have to sit on the inventory. You know it's sold, you know you have subscribers. Just get it in a little bit early, use some of those profits to help reinvest in some of those things. Number 4 on my list is people, investing in people. How many people watching today, raise your hand, would love to hire their first employee? Maybe they just need a virtual assistant to help them with 5 or 10 hours a week. I think it's a great time to take some of those profits and hire a VA or hire someone in person that can help you pack and ship and make you know, graphics for social media. Like, this is a great time to start that. I hired my first employee ever in December, and it was, it was out of a just panic that I wasn't gonna make it through the month because my order, my order load was so high and I couldn't do it myself. That person still works for me 6 years later. So I thought, I'm gonna hire her temporary, I'm gonna— it's gonna help me get through this crazy month that I've got going on, but She's never left. I've never not had work for her. 6 years later, she's still here. So investing in your people, maybe you want to hire an extra person right now. Maybe you want to hire a virtual assistant, take some of your profits and hire that person. What you're going to see there, a complete return on your investment. It's going to help you not feel chaotic all the time. It's going to help you grow your business, build your audience. Having that extra person on your team, maybe it's time for somebody that's been working with you to get a raise. So reinvest in your people. That's important thing. Take those profits and look at it as investment. And the fifth thing that I have on my list today is equipment. We've talked about the Rollo printer, $189 on Amazon. You can grab a Rollo printer. Do you know how much headaches a Rollo printer solved when I invested in a Rollo printer? Like, you never need ink. Think about how much money you spend do you spend a month on ink for your shipping labels? You never need ink. It's a no-brainer investment. It's a no-brainer investment, a Rollo printer for shipping labels. Another thing that I waited a little too long to invest in was an actual paper printer. And I have one in my Amazon shop. It's on my blog this week, my top 10 Amazon favorites for your subscription box business. But I had this little inkjet printer I probably bought for $100 or $150. But it always had paper jams and I was always replacing the ink. And you guys know I have thousands of subscribers and I'm printing packing slips and order invoices and all this all day long. And I was using this really old, just not equipped for that kind of printing. I needed more of a commercial printer. And so a year ago I invested in a new printer and I'm telling you, we can print thousands of packing slips in, I would say, a tenth of the time it used to take me on the, um, the regular printer. And so invest in an industrial printer. I have one in my Amazon shop. I think Kelsey's here and she's got my Amazon link over there. But that's something— I think it was maybe $500 or $600, but it saved me hundreds in ink. It saved me so much frustration with paper jams and print— I could only put so much paper in the thing at once, you know. And so it's an investment. It's saving me time. It's saving me money. It's saving me like stress whenever I'd have to print all the packing slips for the day. Those are little things you can invest in. I have a t-shirt folder on that list. If you have t-shirts, do invest in something that will help you fold those. You don't have to think about it. It's really mindless. Um, you know, I invested in a new printer this year to, to print graphics for t-shirts. I saw someone said heat presses. Somebody wants an embroidery machine. Those are great investments And those are going to help you with taxes. Any asset that you can have for your business reduces the taxes you're going to have to pay. So look at those as not only investment to grow your business, but also an investment for your business and to reduce the amount of taxes you'll pay at the end of the year. I always try to buy something at the end of the year to help reduce my tax, my taxes that I owe. So invest in those equipment that's going to make your production easier. It's going to help you be more creative and do more things, but invest in those things. So that's number 5 for me. So I want you to tell me in the comments, tell me what your top 3 are. If you had the money to reinvest your business, if you're profitable at the end of this year, what would you reinvest in? And I love, I love that Jay said this. Jay said, my dad bought me a t-shirt folder. How many of us have business items on our Christmas list for our family? Like we want things for our business. I think it's okay to do that. It's okay because you're creating something for the long term and it will, it will pay you back tenfold. So tell me what your top 3 reinvestments are you would love to invest in this year. You know, we talked about marketing. We talked about tech, meaning your website. We talked about inventory, having our products here faster, like having more months established in our inventory. We talked about people hiring. That's a big deal. And we talked about equipment. So if you could make your dream wish list right now of what you want to reinvest in your business, I want you to just jot it down. And then I want you to really consider what would it take for you to be able to pay for that? And we're going to go get that. We're going to go get what it would cost to have those things so that we can reinvest in our businesses. It's the best way that we can keep our business going and scaling and growing. If we stop, if we stop investing in our businesses right now, we will stop growing. So we have to continue. I love it. Very specific. Cassie says, one, I want a DTF printer, I want a website, and I want more training. I like that. Paulette says website, VA, marketing. Marcela wants a warehouse. Um, Lisa says just the roller will— just the roll-in will be like 200 boxes. Reinvest it. Think about it. Maybe not as a solid purchase. Maybe you can't afford to pay for that piece of equipment upfront right now. But what would the monthly payment be if the monthly payment is $150? How many subscription boxes do you need to add to your recurring revenue to pay for that piece of equipment for the next year? Is that 4? Is that 5? If you needed 5 subscribers to be able to buy that Roland, Roland printer that you want, and you only needed to add 5 subscribers a month for the next year, let's do it. Let's go get those 5 subscribers so you can have that equipment. When I think about hiring people, I think about how many subscribers does it take to pay for that person. So I think about, you know, a VA that we've hired recently. How many more subscribers do I need that would pay for that person's salary every single month? Figure, do the subscription box math. That's— I do everything when I want to take a vacation. I think, okay, how many more one-off boxes do I need to sell this Christmas for us to be able to take that vacation? It's all subscription box math. If I want to have this piece of equipment that costs me $300 a month, how many more subscribers do I need to pay for that piece of equipment every single month? Just do the subscription box math, because once you have them, all you have to do is love on them and keep them, and that will help you keep reinvesting in your businesses. So let me repeat our little story today, our little analogy. When life gives you lemons, sell the lemonade. Then you go buy more lemons and you sell more lemonade, and then you buy a bigger lemonade stand. That's what I want you to think about over the next, over the next few weeks. It's go time. We really only have a few weeks left. If you're an online-only business, you essentially only have 2 more weeks to capture sales. So what can you do now over the next 2 weeks that will capture sales? If you are a physical location, you have up until Christmas Day, but it's go time. Let's make some profits so that we can reinvest in our business in the new year. Hope you got some momentum today. I'll be back next week right here. Y'all have a great day. Make your list, your top 3, and then let's do the subscription box math. So that we can get there. I'll see you guys 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. Don't forget to join me next week right here.