10 Truth Bombs for Your Business in 2026
In this live session, Sarah Williams opens 2026 with a motivational “truth bomb” framework designed to help small‑business owners—especially subscription‑box entrepreneurs—focus their energy, improve profitability, and scale sustainably. She walks through ten concise, often‑hard‑to‑hear lessons, each paired with a concrete challenge or action item. The first truth bomb stresses the Pareto principle: the top 20 % of customers generate roughly 80 % of revenue, urging owners to prioritize their needs over trying to please everyone. The second bomb emphasizes protecting personal peace and energy by cutting draining products, people, or platforms. The third advocates consistent, habit‑based marketing over chasing fleeting trends. The fourth distinguishes organic reach (still essential) from paid visibility, illustrating with her own subscription‑box metrics (5 organic vs 28 paid sign‑ups in ten‑day windows). The fifth highlights the necessity of systems and processes to prevent chaos and burnout. The sixth clarifies that sales are vanity; profit margins and cash flow are the true health indicators, recommending a fractional CFO for deeper financial insight. The seventh warns against competing on price, urging businesses to deliver unique value and raise prices accordingly. The eighth underscores that retaining existing customers is far more cost‑effective than constant acquisition. The ninth reminds entrepreneurs that strategies which got them to launch won’t necessarily scale them, so continual evolution of tools, processes, and mindsets is required. The final bomb challenges owners to step out of comfort zones—trying new platforms, increasing ad spend, or learning new tech—to catalyze growth. Throughout, Sarah intersperses real‑world examples, audience shout‑outs, and actionable prompts, creating a roadmap for business owners to write down, internalize, and act on these ten truth bombs throughout 2026.
Chapters
Good morning. Good morning. Happy Monday. Our technically our last Monday in 2025. But I like to think of it as our first Monday of 2026. I'm not, I'm not here to confuse you this morning, but my brain woke up this morning and was really thinking about, okay, in a couple of days we have a brand new year. And a brand new year gives you a brand new start. And so what I wanna talk to you about today are these, sometimes they're lies that we tell ourselves and sometimes they're just things that we need to hear and sometimes we need to hear them with a little bit of tough love, but they're ultimately these 10 truth bombs that you are going to use for your business this year, and I want you to write them down today. So if you're in a place where you can sit down and grab a notebook, grab your coffee, and, and let's talk about them today because there's something— there's— this is going to be mantras that you're going to need to replay in your head over this next year as we go through our businesses. And so I want to make sure that we are good to go. We are solid with these things and that, that you really understand what they mean. Because sometimes things are hard to hear, but they're also like, oh yeah, I needed to hear that, right? Are you with me? So we're going to do that today. We're just going to pretend like we're walking into 2026 right now. Fresh mind, fresh start. Whatever happened in 2025, we're going to leave behind and we're really going to lean into being business owners, the ones that we really thrive to be. So good morning. Let me come over to the chat and say hi. I have Carrie with me in the chat. She's over on YouTube and she's on Facebook. Carrie, did you happen to share the Facebook Live into the broadcast channel? If not, will you do that for me real quick? Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Okay, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to talk about these truth bombs, okay? And what I want you to do is I want you to just remind yourself that these are important business lessons and they might be hard to hear. So let's start with number 1. Here's the truth bomb. And I looked something up because I like to put these— let me just tell you, I'm in a sweater today. The temperature dropped like 60 degrees. In the last like 48 hours. It's the first time I've been able to wear a sweater, but now I'm hot. Is anybody too hot natured to actually wear a sweater? That's how I'm like— the heat is blowing in my office and I'm like, okay, I'm hot now. I should have worn something short sleeve. But we went from 85 degrees on Christmas Day to feels like 25 this morning. I'm not doing well with it. So, um, I'll just— I'll just be pulling my sweater up and hot, cold, hot, cold. Okay. Number 1. Good morning, Jennifer. Good morning, Christina. 20% of your customers generate 80% of your revenue. Now let's stop and think about that because you're like, how does that even work, Sarah? 20% of your customers generate 80% of your revenue. And this is something that's not new. This is something that we've been told over and over and over again. And right now it might matter more than you think. Your top 20% are your lifeline. They buy more, they stay longer, they refer to others. So here's what I see sometimes, that if you're guilty of it, it's okay, because I see it, I see it often. But we're guilty of spinning our wheels and trying to please everyone. Oh, but somebody wants it in this color. Oh, but I can customize it in this way. Oh, but I should offer this because I should offer toddler sizes because I have a mom in the chat asking if I offer toddler sizes. Do you know what I'm saying? When we try to please everyone, It's not a business strategy. It's burnout. And when we have in our brain like, oh, I can do that too. Oh, I can, I can offer that too. Oh, I can do that too. We're telling our top 20% that they don't matter. Let me go do all the things that this 80% wants me to do. So I want you to focus your energy on what your top customers actually want. If you were to— here's your challenge for number 1. If you're just joining me, I see a lot of people are just joining me. We're getting into the 10 truth bombs for your business in 2026. And the first one is that 20% of your customers generate 80% of your revenue. So your challenge is, if you built your entire business on that top 20% on what they actually want, What would you change about your business? I want you to think about that. And here I, I went to look at something. Um, when you look at— when I look at my own business, for example, and I've struggled with this a little bit over the last, I would say, year to 18 months, a little bit. When I look at my business as a whole I have X number of subscribers, right? And then I have all these people that have bought one time from me on my one-time sales. And when I look at how many are subscribers versus how many one-time sales, it is— it's roughly more about 30 to 40% are subscribers out of my 100. If I were to put all of these into 100%, 30% are subscribers, 70% are one-time buyers. Okay, so in your mind you say I have a lot more one-time buyers than I do subscribers, right? 75% of my revenue every month and year to date come from these 30%. They come from these subscriptions. And do you know how much time I spend on this crap over here? Way too much time. I spend time designing collections. We spend time loading it in Shopify. We spend time buying it. We spend time marketing it. We, we spend all this time. Now I'm like trying to clearance it. I have spent so much time on the 70% and 75% of my revenue is coming from this 30%. So what would change in my business if I let this go? And we're going to talk about that. It's another one of our top 10 truth bombs today. So just want you to think about that. Here's your challenge for number 1. If you built your entire business around that top 20%, what would change for you? I want you to think about that. Number 2. I have done a really good job at this this year, um, and it's taken me a long time to get there. Protect your peace and energy at all costs. If something is draining you— a product, a person, a platform— some— a platform is draining me right now. It has to go this year. You have to let it go. Do you have an employee that's literally draining you every time you walk in the door or every time you have to ask them to do something? Let it go. It's not worth your energy and your peace. Do you have a product that feels like it's the bane of your existence? Let it go. Whatever is draining you, it's time time to let it go. You're in charge. Our energy is our currency in our business. And so I want you to ask yourself, where are you wasting your energy? On products? On people? On platforms? I want you to ask yourself, because your peace matters more than pleasing a $30 customer that's never going to be happy. Right, Jay? Jay says, yes, I've gotten rid of the peace suckers. Like, do you understand how much other people's energy transfers over to us and then our whole day goes to crap? We gotta let it go. Reclaim your time, your peace, your energy by pruning stuff that no longer serves you. Cut it out of your life. Okay, sometimes— and let's get out of the business world— sometimes it could be a friend or a family member who doesn't believe in you, who's always talking down to you about your little business. It's time to let them go too. Okay, number 3: consistency will always outperformed trend-chasing activity. Consistency will always outperform a trend. Think about that. Fad strategies, going viral, having that one-hit wonder is kind of like a fad diet. It might work short-term, but they don't last. Consistency compounds on each other. It builds trust, it builds recognition, it builds momentum. And so I want you to find 2 to 3 habits that you enjoy, and I'm talking about marketing habits, social media habits, email habits that you can commit to weekly. Stop trying to go viral. Stop trying to be punchy. Stop trying to, to just be a one-hit wonder. Let's be consistent. If you're bored with your content, switch the format, not the goal. Okay, number 4. This one's gonna hit some of you. Right here where it hurts. Number 4: organic traffic is your foundation, but paid visibility fuels your growth. Now listen, this wasn't always true. I built my business a lot on organic traffic, but it's just not that way anymore. Organic reach isn't what it used to be, and that's just the truth. But we keep holding on to it thinking, I can build my business organic. Organically. I can do all of this organically. I can grow and scale organically. We can't. It's not true anymore. A lot of us built our business organically in 2017, '18, '19, 2020, but every year since, it's been harder and harder to grow organically. And if you don't realize that You're gonna stay stuck. You still need great content that connects, but to grow, you actually need reach. You need strategic paid visibility. And I need you to understand that growth requires investment. Don't be afraid to spend money on the right things. I'm going to give you an example to this. I was looking at something this morning as I was typing my— I was getting my hair done, typing up my notes for this talk today, and I thought, let me show them an example because I think it helps. Even at my level, even at my stage, I got a million dollar a year subscription box business, okay? Y'all know my visibility sucks. It sucks. I have showed this to you over and over again inside Launch Your Box, so you're not alone when you get one like and no comments on your post. Same organically. I took 10 days to get some organic numbers for you in December. 10 days I was running no ads. Organically, I got 5 new subscribers in 10 days. Okay, that's posts, that's going live, that's doing unboxings, that's sending emails. Organically, I got 5 new subscribers for those 10 days in December. Now I've been running ads for 10 days. Okay, that's why I use this 10-day period, because the last 10 days I've been running ads. And I took the 10 days prior, um, to that so that you would have a good example. So I got 5 new subscribers organically. The 10 days that I've been running ads, I've got 28 new subscribers. Do you see the difference? We can grow organically. We can. It's still— we can still do that, but it's going to be slower growth. So you have to determine if I want to grow painfully slow or if I'm willing to get visible. Because the problem is, it's not that people don't like my comment or they don't like my posts, they're not seeing it organically a lot of times. Sometimes I'll get lucky and something will hit organically, but I've got to understand that I need to get more visible, and the only way to do that right now is through paid growth. And those 5 organic subscribers are great, but these 28 that have come so much quicker are better because I have 100 spots to fill. And if I just keep waiting 5 at a time, 5 every 10 days, I'm gonna lose more than I gain, and I'm gonna be back in a hole even further. 100%, make a new account. The likelihood of you getting unbanned from that account is, is almost zero. And it's not because you did anything, or it's just because Facebook has no checks and balances. Make a new account and get started. Because what happens— something just fell off my wall— what happens is, um, it takes time to build up enough spend. So I would 100% go ahead and get a new, a new, um, account started. Number 5: systems and processes create space for growth. Chaos kills your creativity. Systems create freedom. And if you're a creative like me, I have a creative brain. I'm always thinking, creating, doing things like that. What has allowed me to grow and scale to million-dollar-a-year businesses is because I have systems and processes. If I didn't have them, it would be chaos nonstop and I would be in full burnout mode. You gotta streamline the stuff that eats your time. Hang on, I gotta block somebody. What's wrong with people? What's wrong with people? Okay, just block somebody on YouTube. Um, focus back. Okay, you gotta streamline the stuff that eats up your time— the fulfillment, content, batching, customer service, so that you can serve your people better, but also create less burnout for yourself, okay? Think about what systems and processes you want to put in place this year, and I want you to brainstorm like 5 of them. The biggest thing that helped me was using a project management tool like Trello and Asana. So if you're still writing to-do lists in a notebook like me, I did that for a lot of years. It might be time to uplevel your processes. And then if you are using Asana or Trello, can you create templates around one task a week that you do? One task. And then you can create it recurring so that you never forget it. All the things I need to do before I do a box opening. I have them listed out so I don't forget it. I'm not chaotic. I know exactly what needs to be done. I go and do it. Okay. Number 6, sales don't equal profit. I need you to know your real numbers because sales are a vanity number. Okay. Like, I know I have some good friends in the subscription box industry that make millions $10 million, $15 million, $20 million a year. Their profit sucks. So all that money doesn't matter when they're not taking any of it home. It's a vanity number. A $2 million business with no margin is not more successful than a $200,000 business with a solid profit margin. I need you to hear that because sometimes we see these numbers and we think that bigger is better, but bigger is not always better when there's no profit to put in your bank account at the end of the day. Profit is what pays your, your bills. Revenue is just a vanity number. I could be making $10 million a year, but if my costs are $950,000, you know, $9,500,000, I got not a lot to show for it. Right? Know your costs, know your margin, know your cash flow. And I want you to set a profit goal this year. So if you're looking at your numbers from last year, at the end of this year, I want you to see what your profit margins were. What percentage is that and how do I work on increasing that for this year. I worked with a fractional CFO this year on profit, and it was very eye-opening. And it's sometimes things we don't see, um, that create the biggest friction. Like, I made all this money, Sarah, why don't I have any of it in my bank account? It's because you're tracking revenue and not profit. We have to be profitable to be sustainable. So I want you to start tracking your profits. Number 7: Cheap isn't creating value. Cheap isn't creating value. Connection is. Chasing those bargain hunter people leads to burnout and low retention. True value is quality unique, uniqueness, connection, packaging, experience. That's the true value of your subscription. Raise your prices if you're undercharging. Your ideal customer will pay for the value that you're giving. Stop trying to be the lowest price. Win with the best experience. Cheap isn't creating value for your business. Stop being cheap. Jay says, I have a fractional CFO. I've never heard of that before. Let me tell you what it is. So a CFO is a chief financial officer. A lot of times businesses like mine can't afford to have someone full-time as a CFO, um, and so you hire a fractional CFO that means that she is a CFO for multiple companies, and she works a fraction of her time on my business. And so I believe that she has 4 or 6 CFO clients. And so she acts as a CFO in my business, and I pay her a fraction of what I would pay a salaried person in my business, and I get a fraction of her time. So it's a way for you to have a C-level, C-suite level person in your business, but not have to pay for their full-time salary. Okay. Number 8, I need everybody to write this one down. Retention is more profitable than constant acquisition. Retention is more profitable than constant acquisition. It costs you more money to get a new customer than to keep your current one. You want to grow profitably? We just talked about profits. Make your subscribers feel seen, heard, valued. Surprise them, delight them. Focus on your, your current customers before always running after the next. If we have solid retention numbers, it's going to outweigh all the money we spend on acquisition, acquiring new ones, paying for those ads to get those 28 new subscribers that I got. If I could just keep 28, right, instead of constantly having to pay to go out and get 28 more, I would be winning. Because retention is way more profitable. So if you haven't looked at your retention numbers, I want you to look at that retention rate calculator. And I want you to start tracking your retention. How can you improve your retention this year? 1% is a big deal. Number 9, what got you here won't get you there. The strategies that got you to launching may not help you scale effectively. See, growth requires evolution. It requires us to evolve. Your systems and processes, like we talked about, your marketing, like we talked about, your level of consistency that we talked about, your mindset, your offers We have to constantly evolve. So what got you here may not get you to the next level. And if you've been struggling to get to the next level, I need you to evaluate what you're doing that is next level. It's like the old saying, dress for the job you want, not the job you have. That's what we need to think about. Drop what's not working. Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean you should still be doing it that way. Test some new ideas. Level up your tools and systems. Let's finally reach the next level that we've been wanting to, but we can't do it the same way if it's not working. If it's not working, stop doing it. Number 10: If you don't challenge yourself, you won't change yourself. If you don't challenge yourself, you won't change yourself. Being in your comfort zone, doing things that feel comfortable, cool. But it's not going to help you reach the next level. You have to get uncomfortable to reach the next level. So yeah, I'm going live once a week. Yeah, I'm sending an email once a week. Yeah, I'm posting every day. Cool. You're comfortable there. What would make you uncomfortable? Going live daily, showing up on a new platform, sending multiple emails a week. What would make you uncomfortable starting an ad campaign? What scares you right now is probably your next step. And I want 2026 to be the year that you stop waiting and start being bold. Get out of the comfort zone. I'm comfortable here. I'm going to stay here. But I also want to be at the next level. What is the next level activity that you're not doing? You're not challenging yourself enough to learn. I bought a new iPhone. It's still sitting on my table at home because I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to learn it, right? Like it's still sitting there. I know I need it because my phone's about to crap out and I'll be stuck, but I need, I need to, I need to challenge myself to figure it out. Tech's hard as you get older. Learning new tech is hard as you get older. Let's be bold in 2026. Let's be bold. Let's do the thing that we've been telling ourselves. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not there yet. Let's just do it. Let's do it and then come back and look what— look how far we've come. Okay. Number 10. If you don't challenge yourself, you won't change yourself. Now, I got some, I got some wins to share this morning. First of all, we've welcomed several new members to Launch Your Box over the last, like, the long weekend. So if you're new, let me know in the chat because I would love to say hi to you. We welcomed a lot of new people. If you are interested in joining Launch Your Box, Carrie has the link. We can drop it in the chat for you. But let's be bold. Let's be bold. Let's do something that challenges us. Let's do something for ourselves. Let's stop sitting on the sideline and let's keep moving forward because what we start now can actually change our future. But we have to give it a full 100% try. We can't half-ass our way through it anymore. And so I'm, and I'm, I'm saying this because I want you to see it. You can do this. You can change your circumstances. You can change your future. You can change your income. You can change the trajectory of your life. If you go all in. Peggy says, let's be bold 2026. You got to be bold. And I'm— and as I'm saying this to you, I'm saying it to me. There are things that I've been wanting to do that I'm telling myself I'm not bold enough to do, and I'm changing that this year. Brooke, welcome, glad to have you. Rose, welcome. I can't wait to learn about you guys. Now I got some shoutouts today for our members. So I've got Jen K. She received the Emerging Talent Badge for creating content on Facebook. Jen's been going through it. Y'all, Jen's been going through it. I'm going to have her on the podcast in January. She's at this stage where she needs to be bold and she's going to actually change her product offering. She's going to be bold. What she's been doing, she has given 100% to and it's not working. So we're changing it. She's going to be bold and I'm super excited for her. Courtney W got all her inventory for her first box. Do you remember that feeling? I love it when it's just every month the inventory is here and I'm like, everything's here. It's a great feeling. Paula H. Reach 1,000 followers on Facebook. When you get to 1,000 followers, you get to go live. Paula, next step, let's go live. Edie sold 17 holiday boxes this season, so I'm really excited for Edie. Devon left corporate career to start her small business. Now, these are the things. These are being bold. We've got to be bold enough to take the step. As I'm going to challenge you to do that, and I want you to think about these 10 truth bombs. I want you to write them down. I want you to put them on your computer. I want you to put them on your bulletin board. I want you to listen to this on repeat. But we have the ability to change what we want for 2026, and it starts now. All right. All right. I'll see you guys soon. Have a great rest of your week.
More from Sarah
I Almost Sold My Subscription Box… Until the Numbers Changed Everything with Ciara Stockeland
