055: Building a Profitable, Sustainable Business with Susan Bradley

Do you ever look at someone else who's further along in their business and wonder if you're ever going to get there? My biz buddy Susan Bradley and I are sharing our thoughts on how different our results are based on several different factors. Come hang out with us. This episode is a lot of fun. 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 podcast. We're doing a co-podcast with Susan Bradley today, and I'm Sarah Williams. Um, but so if you don't— if you're listening to me, to me on Susan's podcast, I'm Sarah Williams. I am the founder of Launch Your Box. I also have a subscription box of my own, and I teach other people how to start, launch, and grow a subscription box. And if you're listening to me on my podcast, Susan, will you introduce yourself?

Yes. Hello, I am Susan Bradley. I am the founder of the Social Sales Girls. I teach online store owners how to grow their traffic and so they can get more sales on their website and finally have a job that pays— they have a business that pays them well. And I'm also an online store owner, and we're going to talk about that today.

What's the name of your podcast for my listeners?

So my podcast is The Roadmap to $50K on Shopify, and you I am the Launch Your Box Podcast.

So we're recording this at the same time for both of our podcasts. So we're going back and forth a little bit, but we're together and we're together out in California for a mastermind that we're in together with our mentor, Stu McLaren. And we've spent the last several days meeting with this wonderful group of entrepreneurs in every different space possible. And Susan and I haven't been together for about 2 years because the border— she lives in Canada, I live in Texas, the borders have been closed and Gosh, we've been missing each other.

Yeah.

Even though we talk every day, every day. And so we serve a similar audience. We do, I do training in Susan's membership. She does training in my membership. And we thought, how fun would it be for us to do a podcast today? We had, we had some obstacles getting, getting here though.

So guys, we really do talk every day and we have so much in common. You know, we just, we don't have to do a lot of explaining with each other, and usually that's a really good thing. But this time, Sarah, this little incident that we had this weekend, it was—

there was definitely a problem with our lack of communication, our miscommunication, or basically no communication.

So here's the deal. So, uh, Sarah and I, we are very close friends even though we haven't seen each other for a couple of years, and we like to stay together when we come to these meetings and we try and tack on a little extra time to strategize and help each other with our businesses. And so I said to Sarah, where do you want to stay? And she said, well, I want to stay on the beach. And so I said, okay. And then she sent me a couple of links from, I think it was Airbnb, Airbnb or VRBO. And she said either of these. And so I just picked a link and went and booked it and thought, okay, that's off my list.

Never trust your friend. That's the first thing. Never trust your friend. Never trust your friend.

And so, so, you know, that was a couple months ago. Yeah. Yeah, it was a couple of months ago. And I just looked at the first pictures, really. I just kind of browsed it and it looked like a great location.

A great beach.

On the beach in California. And so when you're a Canadian in January, someone just has to say beach and you are there. But what happened was we, we both came on the same flight. I flew to Dallas and then we flew to San Diego together. Sarah got a car for us and that went off beautifully. Yeah, just share that. And then we had a long, long debate about whether we would go straight to our accommodation or go to the grocery store first. And we decided we'd go to the grocery store first. And so we did a little drive-by of our, our house that we had rented before the grocery store. And we thought, well, it is right on the beach and we'll look great. It did look a little rough.

It didn't look great. The location looked great, but let's be honest, we drove by it and instantly all you see is a rusty garage door.

Yeah.

And we're like, huh, interesting. Okay, let's go to the grocery store.

What do you want to eat? So, so when we came back from the grocery store, uh, realized we had both been up since like 3 in the morning, our, in our time zones. And so, uh, and This, this house was on the beach, but it had a lot of stairs. Remember, Sarah? Like a lot of stairs. And of course we have all our luggage, and my friend here cannot pack for a few days. Like, we had her entire wardrobe to drag up the stairs and two giant bags full of who knows what, and all the groceries that we bought for a whole time. So we drag all that up the stairs, huffing and puffing.

After, after we put the code in on this corroded lock. There was like, you don't even want to touch. It's like almost like, where are we? And we didn't just skimp on this. Like, we paid thousands of dollars for this place. So you don't expect that you're going to walk into this rusty, corroded— that's our first impression. So that was the first impression that we had.

Then we dragged everything up the stairs, and then I read the directions and it said, make sure you don't go into the wrong unit. And I'm like, wait a minute, I thought we had the whole house.

Yeah.

And Sarah had no clue what I was talking about. Then it became very apparent that neither one of us looked at this place.

We didn't look at the listing.

The beach.

We looked at the beach.

So we opened the door to try and find which one of the units was ours. And that smell of mold just hit us between the eyes. And so we went in and Oh gosh, you ran to the sliding doors and opened them up as fast as we could. And we were both being really careful because I thought she picked this place, and I thought you picked this place.

Yeah.

And I didn't want to like— I haven't seen you for 2 years and I'm gonna just like rip you a new one about like, what, why did you buy this? And your face, I mean, it would have been priceless. And so we walked around it. The furniture was horrendous.

It was like 1990s, like that tweed couch kind of feel. It was bad.

And the smell.

The smell. We could have dealt with the furniture had the smell not been there.

Yeah. So, so I'm like, oh, how are we going to get out of this? And, and I don't want to hurt her feelings, but can I talk her into going somewhere else? And she was thinking the same thing. So ultimately we realized that nobody had checked this place out, that we didn't know what we were doing. And I got really brave and called and asked for a refund.

Yeah. And they were like, Sure, we'll refund you right now. Like, no questions asked. So then we instantly knew they knew this place was horrendous. They knew it was horrendous and they didn't question why we didn't want to stay there. So we get all of our crap. Yes, we do.

Several trips.

We drag it all back down the stairs and we sit in the car and we're like, okay, now we're homeless. What are we going to do?

And somehow I feel like the owner is somewhere looking at us, both on our phones, madly trying to find a place for us and our—

all of our groceries.

Yeah.

And all our luggage.

So So using my phone, which anyone who knows me knows that, you know, that's a huge problem for me right away. I barely use my phone, but I did it, found another place on, I think, Airbnb, went to book it and got halfway through booking it and my phone crashed. And I was like, oh, Sarah, like, what are we going to do? Like, it is getting late now and we have no place to stay and a lot of groceries. And so I went and booked another one. We found another. I went back when my phone came back up again and the place I was trying to book was gone. I should have realized that was a clue, but no, in our minds we're like, oh my God, somebody just snatched it.

They're so fast. Hurry, grab another house before it's gone too. So now we're panic buying. And I say this in my business a lot, like, don't panic buy for your business because you end up spending way too much money. And so now we're panic buying a place to stay tonight. She checks her email and now she has two. We have three houses, actually.

Three houses. The one that we are sitting in the driveway of, the one that I bought when my phone crashed, and then the panic buy. And I just don't know what to do. It's starting to shut down. And then the one that we booked, the last one. I'm thinking, well, it says you'll get your code tomorrow morning.

Yeah. So we're like, where are we going to stay tonight? We'll just be sleeping on the beach in the car somewhere. People do that, right?

Sure. So then we called, remember we called poor David, David, like, we are not crazy. Honestly, we had a place, we don't have a place. And thank goodness David was kind.

Yeah, that was our third house. So David's the owner of our third house. And I know he thought we were crazy.

Yes. But suspicious. I just booked it, calling him, say, can I have the code?

Can we have the address and the code like right now? We're like in the driveway. So we drive over, it was like a 10-minute drive to the new house. It's beautiful. And we got settled and we just laughed because I think We do, we do these things. You guys on the outside might think we have it all together.

Yeah.

But clearly we don't. And it was a, it was a huge realization that nobody has it all together.

No.

Like, let's be honest. Nobody has it all together.

No. We were holding on by our fingernails.

Yeah, for sure.

Yes. So lesson learned. And so we now know that Sarah Williams has never used Airbnb or VRBO in her life.

I just go with people, other people make the reservations and I just, I'm just show up. Like, I give me the door code, I'm in. I've never got my own, you know.

So, and, and as long as you're with me, you never will.

And you trusted me because I had sent you the links and I trusted you would look through my links and make a good decision for us. And we just blindly trusted each other. And I think that, I think that that's what makes us good friends. It also, it also helps us realize that We don't have to be perfect.

Yeah. Anyway, funny story. We just thought you would enjoy that because it just is so real and raw. And it was just— it could have been a movie.

It could have been. Yeah.

And it could have gone a lot worse than it did.

Yeah.

So anyway, the good news is we got settled into this beautiful location and then we had a great day just strategizing about our businesses, our retail businesses. Yes. So Sarah owns— tell everybody your business.

So my business is called Framed. And we, it's like a more of a, like a women's boutique. We do a lot of like custom graphic t-shirts, jewelry, handbags, and we monogram and personalize everything. And my business started in 2013. So I'm in year 9 of my business right now.

And then there's me. So in 2018, I sold my big business, the end of 2018, and started this new little business. And the Social Sales Girls was well established and a very, you know, busy, concern when I decided that I needed to start a new product-based business from zero, no products, and share my journey with my audience. And that's, that's not the end of the story.

No, Sarah, it's not. We were, we were both working on our retail businesses that night, and, um, we were— you were working on the Sock Doggo, I was working on stuff for my subscription boxes and Framed, and it instantly became clear about where we both were in our businesses. Yours is newer, you work on it part-time, very part-time. Mine is like a hobby almost. Yes, mine is established, year 9, and I would say that I'm in the business almost full-time. I'm not, you know, I do have a very big coaching business as well, so I would say I split my time between the two. But the little activity I was doing generated big results on Sunday. And the little, the same little activity you were doing was not generating very many results. And we talked about that night as we were sitting on the couch, why is that? And then it's because of where we're at in our businesses. Absolutely. And we thought it would be great to just pop on this podcast to talk through what that looks like for both of us, because you might be in the position of where Susan's at and her brand new business, working it part-time, but you see people like me, established business, lots of employees, and it feels effortless, and it might discourage you. And on the, on the flip side, you might be in the, in the stage where you're doing this part-time or you're working full-time and you wonder if it can ever get to the place where it's consistently running. You don't have to do, you don't have to jump through hoops all the time to make sales and things. And so we want to talk about it.

Yeah, just, just because I think that our whole industry, our industry is geared towards celebrating the big huge results and actually almost making you feel like you're doing something wrong if you don't get that right off the get-go.

And they, and they, it looks like it's instantly. Yeah, it looks like let me throw my shop, my website up, put some products in it and bam, I'm gonna magic happen. I'm standing in my driveway next to my Ferrari, you know, like that, like that's what the industry has us led to believe sometimes. But in reality, that might not ever happen for any of us. And we have to, we have to be able to manage our expectations. And we talk through how do we manage our expectations. And for you, let's talk about your part-time business, brand new business. How do you manage those expectations?

Well, you know, just like everybody else. Who we all— I mean, we joke that I don't have any feelings, but actually I do have a few feelings. And I've had long, you know, lots of times where I felt like I'm failing at this business because, uh, because it's been harder than I thought it would be, even though I have lots of experience. And I think, gosh, am I ever going to get to the point where I feel confident like I did with my former business, that even if I step back a little bit I could get the sales. And so for me, it's been, you know, when I am on my game— and I'm not always on my game, to be quite honest— but for me, it's been what are the things I can do that are going to give me the most ROI on the time I have. So I have a very busy business already, and so I have a very little amount of time. So what do I do to get the most result in the time that I have? And how do I remind myself that this is a process and it's going to take some time?

It's going to take time. And I think what we talked about that night was that if you're working only these small amounts of time in your business because you do have a full-time job or you have a full-time family, that you can't expect full-time results, right? Like, if you're working at your business 1 hour a day or 3 hours a week, you can't expect to achieve the same results as someone that's working their job 8, 10 hours a day every day. And so you need to manage those expectations for yourself or you're going to feel bad all the time.

Yeah.

And you know, we look at my business now where basically what happened Sunday night was I showed up live for about 25 minutes, um, unboxed my subscription box. And we saw not only my waitlist converted to all the empty spots I had on my waitlist. So I sold all those spots. But I sold thousands of dollars worth of extra product, uh, what I was showing live. And it took me 25 minutes to do that. And so, but that's not what happened in the beginning. No, that didn't happen. And that happened at year 9. And you can get to that point, but I put in a lot of full-time hours. It started part-time, it built to full-time, you know, 2 years in I finally hired someone when I couldn't even afford to hire them. And then that grew and grew. And really, my business— you know, you called it the hockey stick effect, which I'd never heard that before.

Yeah, well, because, because it was just a key moment on Sunday. Like, I'm trying to do the things that are going to get me the most return on my investment of time, and you're at the stage where the things that you do that gets the biggest result is very different.

Yes.

And so it is the hockey stick effect. It's like you can bump along. I think we talked about it. You bumped along for about 6 years before you really felt like your job was— it was so cool when we talked about it— your job really is selling and buying and buying.

So we talked about this hockey stick effect. So those 6 years, you could kind of see them like they were a little bit of a flat line, like the bottom of the hockey stick. You know, you're, you're having sales, you might be growing a little bit, you're having sales, you might be growing a little bit. But again, I was the shipper, I was the buyer, I was the trash taker out, or I was all those jobs. And then you hire someone and it's not like when you hire someone, you get like double the results because there's now two people. You get more than that because you, you're more productive. And two years in, you see that bump of my business when I finally hired someone, even when I couldn't pay myself regularly. And that created momentum for my business. And once I hired that first person, it created enough momentum to pay myself, pay her, and then we keep building and we hire someone else. So then, then you, you know, we are kind of just bumping along still. The hockey stick is going up a little bit, but at year 6, you can see where that just spikes. All the things that I have been doing for the 6 years were just building this momentum that was going to take off at some point, and I couldn't see that point coming. But when it did, it took off. That is the arm of the hockey stick.

Yeah, and that is why I have to encourage everyone who is at this stage that I am with my business is think about how you use that part-time time on the things that bring the most ROI. Don't be hiding in all the things that don't get you the sales. You, you do have to do those things still because you don't have employees, but you also have to spend some of your time, actually a good portion of your time. When you say, Sarah, building that audience, yes, making people offers, actively working on things that will bring people and sales into your business, like leads and sales into your business.

And if you hide in all the busywork, the fulfillment, the logistics, right, the other things that you have to do, and you don't show up on the marketing side or the business building side, because you're so tripped up in the everyday activity to do whatever it is you need to do this, it's, it's like this ebb and flow. Yeah, like when I started my business, I could show up and sell, and then that was great. But now I had to go fulfill and ship and make the things, and then it— the, the show up and sell suffered. And then I got all the things out, and now I'm ready to show up and sell. So it was never consistent. It was always this up and down. It was like this feast and famine kind of— I would have good sales days, and then I would go dark because I had to fulfill those orders.

Or you were feeling down. Like, when you start feeling down, sometimes you think, oh, nothing works, right?

If you're not gonna show up days without any orders, you're like, I'm a failure, my business sucks. I can't do this.

Yeah, let's throw it all in the dumpster, light it on fire.

Exactly.

So my job, I think, in this podcast episode is to encourage you that how you're feeling is normal, but you have to manage your expectations and you have to remind yourself not to hide in the activities that are gonna keep you where you are.

Yes.

At your stage of business, it's completely different. I feel like it's like you actually have to take a little risk and hire before you're ready.

You do. You have to hire before you're ready for that role because if your business starts to grow and you don't have the infrastructure on the back end to handle the growth, all that growth is for nothing because you're going to lose it. You're going to have customer service issues, you're going to have shipping issues, you're going to have, you're going to have the things that you can't keep up with that's going to give your customers a bad experience, a bad taste in mouth. You're going to lose your following, you're going to have this bad aura around you because you, you weren't ready for it. I would encourage you to start to hire before you can afford it. And maybe that's— if you're listening, maybe that's a VA. Maybe you don't think that you can afford a VA, but honestly, you can't afford not to hire a VA. You need help with those things. Like, we were sitting on the beach talking about, um, like fumbling around trying to build a landing page or a waitlist or hiding, thinking these are the things that are going to move the needle for you. But you spending 5 hours on the landing page when you can hire someone to spend an hour on it, and you can focus on the selling activities.

Exactly.

And that's my job now. I'm good at the buying of the product, curating the boxes, and showing up and selling it. And then I leave all the rest of it to my team. And you may not have a team right now, but you're gonna get there. You— it starts with that first hire, and then you get to show up and be in your zone. Like, if we don't have any sales for the day, like, hey Sarah, we need you to go sell something. And I'm like, all right, I got this. I'll go pull some stuff off the shelves. I'll go 5, and then they're busy for the next day.

But that's a skill you develop over time.

Very much so.

And just like we were sitting on the beach watching the surfers, and I said to Sarah, hey, this is just like what we're talking about. You just don't wake up one day and be good at that. It's— and so you need to start practicing that when your business is small, making it a big part of how you spend your time, even though you may only have an hour a day to work on your business.

Yeah. And, but you have to manage that expectation. If you have an hour a day, one, you have to be super productive in that hour, not get tripped up in going down rabbit holes. And you have to understand that your results are going to be from that hour of day. So like Susan says, you need to work on the things that are going to move the needle and quit worrying about all this stuff that doesn't until you can get out of the other job and you can work full-time in your business. Then you can play around with the blog. Then you can be on Pinterest. Then you can do the things, but right now you need to be emailing. Mailing, you need to be on social media, and you need to be selling to be making that revenue to then do the other things that will help you grow your audience. And, and the other really important factor that we talked about was you gotta have a friend.

Totally.

Because these days are hard.

Even a friend who sends you to a dumpy Airbnb.

Even a friend you no longer can trust with her decisions.

Yeah. Even a friend who tells you, you know, tells you really how it is. Because we were laughing about this too, is that when you get a friend who's in, in business, there's so much less explaining to get people to understand what you're trying to achieve, the barriers in your way to achieving that, and how all of it makes you feel.

They will never understand, never understand. If they are not an entrepreneur, they will never understand the highs and the lows that you go through on almost a daily basis. Yeah. And, and honestly We can't expect them to, and we can't expect them to give us good advice. And at some point they're going to stop inviting you to lunch because all you're doing is talking about your business. But when you love your business and you're passionate about your business, being able to talk to it, you know, through with someone that gets it, I mean, wow, it's just, it's amazing. It's priceless. And you know, it relieves the burden of you having to make these decisions alone, or when you're having a bad sales day, right? And you're in that moment of like, I don't know what else to do. Can you give me some ideas or just talk through what you're thinking and make sure, like, am I thinking through this clearly, or is this really off the wall? Because you're gonna have those days too.

Or am I just plain losing my mind?

Yes.

So, and we had that moment, like, on Sunday night. So Sarah's selling, like, you know, thousands of dollars. I'm sitting there on the couch going, could you "Stop for a minute so that I can talk to you about this issue I'm having with sock doggo. I need help making a decision." And, and, you know, I could tell my husband that all day long, and his answer would probably be, "Oh, well, maybe you should just stop then. Yeah, maybe you should just quit." And, and, and lots of people just don't understand what you have invested. But I think the other thing we want you to walk away with is it's all worth it.

Yeah. Even though it's hard, it's, it's gonna be hard no matter what stage you're on. I still have the hard days, and you know who I pick up and call? I call Susan. Yeah, I'm like, Susan, this is so hard. I'm so frustrated with this, this, and this, and we talk through it, and then I feel better about it, and then I move forward. I don't dwell in what I'm upset about. I don't dwell in what went wrong. I move forward because I've been able to unpack it with somebody.

Yeah, someone who's probably had it happen, right, a time or two. So we're both here to encourage you that it will be— your journey will be better with a friend or two, and that even though it feels really hard, and so many times you might feel like you're, you're doing it all wrong or that you're just not good at this, we're both here to encourage you. I mean, I have had wildly successful retail businesses where I could make a good living and have a nice lifestyle. Sarah has one right now. And we're— I think we're here to encourage you that it is entirely possible for you.

And this is what we want you to take away from the episode. Keep going even when it feels hard, because it's going to take time. It doesn't happen overnight. Manage your expectations. The time you put in will dictate your results. And find a friend.

Yeah, find a friend. I have one more.

Okay.

Actually, expect to do it wrong a couple of times before you get it right.

You're going to rent the wrong house. On the beach. And, and it's okay. Yeah, you just problem correct. We problem solve, we get there. And that's what we do every day as entrepreneurs. You're gonna rent the wrong house. Yeah, it's not going to meet your expectations, you're gonna feel bummed, you're gonna do the wrong thing in your business, and you're going to be wrong, bummed, but we can laugh about it. Now you just pivot and you problem solve. And you, you call it course correct, I call it pivot. And you just move forward and you keep going and you don't get stop. You don't get tripped up in what went wrong instead of what you can do now. Exactly.

Problem solving is maybe the best skill for an entrepreneur.

Yeah.

Be able to solve a problem. Don't do the poor me.

Yeah.

Listen, my friend, we have had so much fun. I can't wait to do it again.

Yeah, you can find— you can listen to Susan. What's the name of your podcast?

The Roadmap to $50K on Shopify.

And you can find me on the Launch Your Box podcast. It was great sharing our laughter and woes with you today, but keep going, keep moving forward, and we'll be back next week.

Sounds good. See you soon.

Bye. 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.