052: It’s Time to Start Your Box!

2022 is your year. Let's take the first steps into making your subscription box dream a reality. It starts with this one thing. 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.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I got to start this episode with a little shout out. I get the 5-star— I get any of the reviews that you guys leave on my podcast, and I got one this week and I just wanted to share it with you. I want to give a shout out to— and their username is Sometimes Need Help. And you know what? Sometimes all of us need help. So that could be any one of us right now. But this person gave me a 5-star review and they say, I'm a listen to podcasts while working out kind of person. Kind of gal. Now I'm a listen to podcasts while I'm in my car kind of gal. But she says, I'm a listen to podcasts while I work out kind of gal. And because of the show, I now keep a notebook with me to write down ideas I want to take action on when I get back to the office. I like that Sarah breaks down things into smaller steps and gives concrete examples to each one along the way. I also love hearing from other small business owners who started, struggled, made some missteps, and kept going on to achieve great results that in the work. My Wednesday routine equals wake up, have coffee, download the latest episode, and listen to it later in the day or the week. So thank you for that 5-star review, but I wanted to share it with you because sometimes when we see coaches or other marketers that show up, they just make it look like it's all success, success, success. Like everybody can wake up and have a million-dollar business overnight, and that is not reality. And I like to show you all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, the wins, the struggles, because we are going to go through that. And the last thing that you want to deal with on your own are those struggles. The last thing that you, you want to feel isolated, like I am the only one that is having these struggles, or I am the only one that failed at this, or I am the only one really just muddling my way through this, when the reality is we all do it. You just might not see that. I struggle. I make mistakes. Mistakes. I deal with failures all the time, but it's how we deal with that, it's how we learn from that, and it's how we keep pushing forward that will make or break us. And so I love just opening the window to all of that and showing you all of that, because when you go through the struggling times— because you're going to, just note to self, every entrepreneur goes through a struggle, and it could be daily, it could be once a season, it could be yearly, it could differ, but you're going to go through that. And I want you to know that you're not alone when you go through that. And I want you to learn and listen from other entrepreneurs that have gone through that and how they overcome it. How do they bounce back from that? Because that's what's going to make, make us successful. So today's episode is really for my new newbie box people. These are— this is for new people getting started in the box industry and You know, even if you have been around a little bit, don't just leave. But I want to talk about really starting the year off with a plan. And maybe it is just making the decision that I am going to put one foot in front of the other this year and I am not going to leave this year without making my box dream a reality. And so we, it starts now. Like, let's not wait till the summer to start it. Let's start now. And we really need to start with a couple of things. And this is, this is where people kind of get tripped up. They start with other things and then they're, they're struggling because they didn't start with this thing. They didn't start right here. And we have to figure this piece out before we can move on, before we can be successful, before we can do any of the other things that we need to do. We have to figure this piece out first. And I think it's where I see most people really just like in a tailspin because they haven't figured this piece out first. And so everything else that they're trying to do, it doesn't fit or it doesn't make sense. Or they don't know variables to make it make sense because they didn't figure out this thing. And so it's going to help you be more organized. It's going to help you stay on top of things. It's going to help you take steps to further those goals and dreams this year. And it's really hard to take those steps forward if you can't even visualize your subscription box. So I'm talking about today, really visualizing who your box is for. We're going to talk about that. And you might have an idea in your head, but we're really going to dig into that. Who is my box for? And maybe you've started your box. Already and you're listening and you're struggling with marketing or you're struggling with retention or you're struggling with, um, getting new subscribers, maybe because we really haven't nailed down who our box is for. So let's walk through that together on today's episode. And we're going to start with calling their ideal customer. So this person that we're creating a box for is our ideal customer. And what I really challenge you is to describe your ideal customer in 3 to 5 words. And if you're just staring off into the blank sunset, like, I don't even know what she's talking about. I don't even know how to describe my ideal customer. And that's the problem. That's the problem that we run into because we're unsure. It's like, okay, well, maybe it's someone like me. So let's, let's drill down on that a little bit more. Is your ideal subscriber a man or a woman? There's our first check, man or woman, or maybe it's a kid, maybe it's a girl or a boy, maybe it's a teenager, maybe it's a grandma. What is this person? How old is she or he? Are they professional? Do they have a certain profession? So are you curating a box for, you know, we have the dental box, we have a nurse practitioner box in our group. Is it for a specific person that has a specific profession? Do they have a certain Hobby? Do they have a certain love of something? You've heard on the podcast Amanda's story about this Hobonichi planner. Her ideal person has a Hobonichi planner and loves it. So who is our ideal person? What do they— what do they like? What is their trait that's going to make them different and make them want to be a subscriber of yours? Are they cat lover? Are they a dog lover? Do they live in the South? Are they Christian? Are they Jewish? Where do they live? Where do they hang out? What do they do for fun? Like, have you thought about this for your ideal customer? When I started to think about this for myself, you know, I was like, well, I'm my ideal customer because it's my style, it's the things I like. And so when you really think about who I am as a person, I'm a mom. And not all my customers have to be moms. It's not a trait. There's nothing in the box that says mom on it. But I say mom because typically moms are super busy doing for other people. They have kids to care for. Sometimes they have a spouse to care for. And so they're really busy doing for other people and they tend not to do for themselves. 9 times out of 10, if you're a mom listening right now, when you go to the store anywhere, like whether it's the grocery store or Target or wherever, you're buying things for your kids over yourself every single time. That's typically what moms do. And so my customer doesn't buy for themselves a lot. And so that is one of the traits of them. So I think of them as a mom. So I, I, my customer is a woman, she's probably a mom, and she typically would live in the South. Now that doesn't mean that all my customers live in the South, but when I say, why I say that is because my box is called the Monogram Box and monograms are a trait of people that live in the South. They love monograms. A lot of people that live north don't necessarily love having their initials on things, or they don't understand it the way people in the South do. People in the South say it's not really yours if it's not monogrammed. And so they love, they love a monogram. They love to see things personalized. And so I'm feeling like this person is typically a Southern woman. And if you looked at my sales across the USA, a huge majority of the people that I sell to live in the South, live in Southern states. So when I describe my ideal customer, she is a Southern busy mom. In 3 words, I can tell you she's a Southern busy mom. And I think about what does she like to do? So when we, we dig deeper into those character traits, so my Southern busy mom, what does she do for fun? Well, ideally she's 30 to probably 50 or 60. If she's got kids at home, they're probably in sports. Sports are really big in the South. And so she's— if she's got kids, she's probably schlepping them to sports, sporting events, or band things, or they're going to football games or things like that. I think that's where she's spending her time. If she's a professional, you know, she likes to look nice. She maybe needs things for her job to carry her stuff in. So I'm thinking about the things like, where does she hang out in her free time? What does she like to do? And so those are the things that I want you to think about, and I just want you to spend a little bit of time on this. And you can even give her a name, like, who's— what's her name? Maybe she has a name, um, and maybe that's typical of a name of somebody, and, and that's your ideal customer. But if you already sell products, you probably have a really good idea of who this person is that shops with you, um, especially if you have a physical location. They're coming in, they're shopping with you, you get to see their face, their name, and you get to know them a little bit better. It's harder in the online space because all you see is like their name and their address coming through your website, but you don't really know much about them. And you could look, you could definitely look into your customers that are following you, and you can just click on their Facebook profiles and you can click and look at the things that they follow. So if you did a little research on who follows you, if you're unsure about this part of the activity, just pick about 10 random people that follow you on your page and look at other things that they follow. Do they like quilting? Do they like decorating? Do they like yard work? Like, what are their interests? What are their hobbies? What are their ages? You could probably get a lot of research just by randomly checking out who your followers— who your followers are, because we need to know this about our person. We don't want to talk to everyone. We're not showing up and marketing to everyone. Our box is not for everyone. Our box is for our ideal customer. And if you've listened to any of my podcasts, you know that I really believe niching down will bring you more success faster than trying to go broad. So when you think about who this person is for you, I really want you to know who that person is. And then we're going to be thinking about what our ideal customer is thinking, feeling, and doing every single month of the year. So what are they thinking, feeling, and doing in January? What are they thinking, feeling, and doing in February? What are they thinking, feeling, and doing in March? So if you're your ideal customer, it's going to be easier for you. But maybe you're a woman listening right now and you're creating a box for a man. You might need to interview some people. You might need to talk to your cousins or your husband or your uncle or your friends and really dig into some research on what they're thinking and feeling and doing each month. But we're just, we're not talking about products yet. We're just talking about this person. We've got to nail down this person before we can even look at products. Once you figure out who your person is, our next thing to figure out is what type of box we're going to have. And I don't mean like a cardboard box or a mailer or shipper or whatever. I'm talking about Are we going to create a monthly box, one that would ship out every single month? Are we going to do a quarterly box, something that they only get every quarter? We could also do something like a bi-monthly box. That's every other month. And then one thing I really want you to consider is if we don't do a curated box with lots of things at all, could we do a one thing of the month? And I just want to run through these with you really quickly. And let's talk about the pros and cons. We can't do anything else until we figure out the frequency and the type of subscription that we're going to provide. So let's talk frequency first. So we can do monthly— let's just talk monthly or quarterly, and then if you want to do bi-monthly, it's going to be somewhere in between the monthly and the quarterly pros and cons. So pros of doing a monthly box: it's easy for marketing. When you have something new and fresh every single month that you can promote and market to your audience, it creates this newness every single month. Um, exciting, don't miss out, kind of this urgency and scarcity that you have something new every single month. And it really builds momentum and excitement. You have lots of content to share because if you have a whole new box every single month, there's all kinds of content that you can share with prepping the box, packing the box, shipping the box, each one of the items in the box, and unboxing. Like, you're going to get all of that content opportunity every single month when you have a monthly box. You'll also be able to really build in a routine with your subscriber. So once a month I'm going to get my box, once a month I'm looking forward to that box showing up. It's going to be like clockwork. It'll just show up at their door, they'll get that box, and it's a routine for them. Now, the cons on that is that the products might build up, right? So if I get a box full of stuff every single month, do I have the ability to consume that before the next box comes, or am I going to start to have too much stuff? And so that becomes a challenge for retention when we talk about that. The other thing on your end of it is that you are constantly having to curate and pack a box. So for this next year, you're going to have to curate 12 boxes, and by the time you get January's box, you know, packaged and shipped and out the door, it's time to do it all over again for February. So it's this constant, this constant flow of having this workload all the time that you're going to have to manage your life around too. But the really the best part of having a monthly box is that monthly revenue, that monthly revenue that hits your bank account at the same time every month, steady eddy in my bank account. I can count on this money to live on, to pay my employees, and I never have to worry about showing up and having to sell stuff all the time because I know I have this recurring revenue coming into my bank account every single month. And when you think about that The cons are, okay, I have to work every month at this, but I'm going to get paid every month at this, and that feels great. And okay, if they've got— if I got to make sure they have enough stuff that they can actually consume it before they get the next one. So we have to figure that out in the process, but that's really the gist of having a monthly box. Now when we look at maybe doing quarterly, there's lots of different reasons why people choose to do quarterly than monthly. The, the pros are that you're not feeling like you're on this packing hamster wheel all the time. Like, okay, I just got all the boxes out for January. Let's start again. And it's this constant, like, rat race. And sometimes our box owners feel like, I can't take a vacation. I can't live my life because if I go out of town for 10 days, then I'm behind. So we have to build in some processes and that comes with growth. If you have 50 boxes, you're not going to be doing that all month, so it's not a problem. But as you grow, your workload increases, so we just have to keep hiring. That's a way around that. And the other thing about quarterly boxes is that sometimes you can charge a higher dollar amount and really curate a better overall experience than you can with a monthly amount. And that's not always true. We do have some high-end subscription boxes. That, you know, they have lots of subscribers every single month at a high price point. But quarterly does give you an option that you could charge a little bit more. They don't have so much product to consume all the time like a monthly box would. But here's the downside: you don't have that monthly recurring revenue, so you're going to have to stretch your money to last the whole quarter. So that's definitely a downside. Um, it's really hard to keep the momentum going. There's not a lot of content like you have with a monthly box of like something new and fresh every single month. You have to really stretch your content and keeping the momentum, keeping the excitement built from quarter to quarter. You can't just be excited the month that the box shows up and then 2 months you go dark because you don't have anything to talk about because you've already talked about it last month. You've got to figure out a way to create a solid content plan and keep the excitement and the momentum building from quarter to quarter, um, because you don't have something fresh and new every single month. So those are the pros and cons of monthly and quarterly. They both can be wildly successful. You just have to know what you're going into going into those. So if you know you want the monthly recurring revenue, you know you want the excitement that builds with the monthly, Subscription, you've got to build a plan for being able to keep up with it monthly. And in the beginning, we all were, we're solo entrepreneurs, so you can only handle what you can handle by yourself. So as you grow, you have to build a plan of hiring people and getting help so that you're not exhausted and stressed out. Quarterly, quarterly is great. It gives you a little bit more freedom with your life. It gives you time and space, and you only have to curate 4 boxes a year instead of 12. It does come with not the recurring revenue every single month, but if you're smart and savvy and you can take that chunk in the quarter and spread it out over your months, you're going to be just fine. There's one thing that I want to talk about here, and that's the one thing of the month. And it's something, you know, that I wish if I could go back, I wished that I would have started that first before I did my box. I might not have started the box after I saw how easy the one thing of the month was. And I'm talking about sending that one item a month. Month. And you can do this in lots of different ways. For me, it's a t-shirt, so it's our t-shirt club. They get a t-shirt every month. That's it. One t-shirt goes out, good to go. You could do this with like a candle of the month or a beef jerky of the month or whatever of the month you could think of. A one thing of the month could be way better than creating that whole box. And let me tell you why. You have to pack one thing instantly. That's easier. You don't have to keep up with buying x number of products every single month for your box. So for me, it's one product. I have to come up with one product every month, and packing one item is so much easier than packing 5 items in a box every single month. So it's just easier, it's less labor-intensive. We can get way more subscriptions out with the One Thing of the Month than we do with the boxes. So it just, it's just a simpler process and my profit margin is actually better than my box because the box has so much labor, a lot of different products and the packaging. My profit margin on the one thing of the month is, is better. My packaging is a fraction of that box cost. If you guys have ever looked at custom boxes, you know how much a custom box is. But because this t-shirt is a soft good and it's the only thing in the box, I don't have to use a box. So we use custom poly mailers, which the box is 100 times more than the poly mailer. It's like pennies. It's pennies on the dollar. And so it's going to cost me way less in products, in packaging and labor, which ultimately gives me a higher profit margin. And I'm also able to sell it for a lower dollar amount than my box. So therefore I have more subscribers because of the price point there. So I'm able to go higher in volume, less cost, and more profitable. And honestly, it's just easy. It's easy. And then your customer doesn't get too much stuff because if you're listening, if you've ever gotten like a FabFitFun box, I mean, it's, it sounds like a great concept, right? You get this box stuffed full of stuff. Like it is got so much stuff in it. It says it's worth $250 in value. I have no doubt that it is. Um, but half the stuff you don't even use. Like, literally, I would pick 2 or 3 items out of the box and the other stuff would just sit there. I wouldn't use them. It's too much stuff. It's not stuff that I love. It's not stuff that I'm consuming. So then it sits there and I collect it and I collect it. With a One Thing of the Month, You know that customer wants that one thing. And if you give them enough of that one thing that they can only consume it in a month, like you don't send them like a 3-month jar of, of body scrub every single month, it's not going to build up and they're going to have to cancel. But you send them 30 days worth every single month, they're going to be ready for their next shipment. It's not going to build up on them and you're going to retain them a lot longer. So I want you to think about monthly versus quarterly. And I want you to think about that one thing of the month. We've talked a lot today about your ideal customer, from who they are, what their character traits are. And I really want you to zone in on that, but then really understanding what type of subscription that you want to start. I have a workshop. It's called the Six in Sixty Workshop. It's a free workshop. And in this workshop, we're going to take that ideal customer and we're going to plan out what 6 months of that subscription is exactly. So whether you choose monthly, whether you choose quarterly, or if you choose one thing of the month, you can lay that out in the workshop with me and really curate the items that will go in their box. You don't have to feel stuck, okay? Like, I don't even know what I'm going to put in my box, so how do I move forward? Because you— if you can't plan out what this would look like, because if you can't visualize what would be in this subscription and how it's going to look, you can't even do packaging. You don't know what kind of box you need. Maybe you need a bag. Maybe you, you don't know what size you need. Is that going to be custom or is that going to be a blank box? You don't know packaging until you know what's going to be in that box. Shipping— you can't move on and look at shipping because you don't know what it will cost to ship. You don't know the weight of these items. You don't know the size of the box because you don't know the contents of the box. You can't start the buying process because you haven't figured out what you're going to put in the boxes. So you can start searching for products, you can start setting up wholesale accounts, going to markets, or contacting makers or manufacturers. I mean, you can, but you're just spinning your wheels if you don't know what's going to go in that box. And packing day, what does that look like for you? How, how is it going to work? How much product are you going to have? How much space are you going to need? What happens if you get 100 subscribers? What about 300? How much of an area is your— is it going to fit in your garage? Will fit in your living room? Do you need to rent a space? It's really hard to move on to packaging, shipping, buying, and packing if we haven't laid out what would be in these boxes for 6 months. And if you're stuck on what is going to be in these boxes for the first 6 months of your subscription, then you need to go over to my 6 in 60 workshop. It's totally free. I do this every 6 months for my own business, and I encourage all of my members to go into and do it every 6 months. We call it the Post-it Note Challenge in the membership. It is called the 6 in 60 workshop online, and you can go to 6in60workshop.com. It's the number 6, not the letters. So the number 6, I-N-6-0 workshop.com. It's a free webinar. And you can spend an hour with me and we're going to lay out what 6 months of your subscription box will look like, what products are going to go in there, what the theme of your boxes are going to be. And once you visualize it, you can take the next steps. Then you're ready to start talking about packaging. All right, let's, let's dive into packaging. Then you're ready to talk about shipping. Then you're ready to start setting up accounts with wholesalers and start buying some product. You're ready to set a launch date. Like you're ready for the next steps once you visualize it and lay it out in the Six in Sixty workshop. So my challenge to you is to head over there and really do the work. If you've listened to this today and you've really thought about who your ideal customer is, you've made a decision on what style of box you want to do, then let's start putting the next pieces into place. And that's curating the next 6 months worth of boxes. So just head over to 6in60workshop.com. I also have a couple bonuses on that workshop that you can grab, and I would love for you to text me a picture of your Post-it note challenge once you go through that workshop and you complete it. And you'll see all of that inside that free workshop. So I'm going to tell you one more time, and we'll also put it in the show notes It's 6in60workshop.com. It's completely free. I want you to just visualize it because once you visualize it, you're going to be excited about it and you're going to be motivated and ready to take those next steps. If you've been sitting on your idea for a while, let's stop sitting on it. Let's get to work. Let's make 2022 happen because in 6 months from now, You can have a totally functioning subscription box business in 6 months. It starts now. Head over to that6in60workshop.com and I'll see you there. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.