100: Year End Review with My Mastermind Ladies

We did it. We made it to the 100th episode for the LauncherBox podcast. To help me celebrate this pod-aversary, I brought together a few of my mastermind members to talk about the highs and the lows of 2022, what we've all been struggling with, and how we've overcome the challenges that this year has brought. Come join me and some amazing women on this very special episode. Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams. Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I have a very, very special episode for you today. It is our 100th episode and we're just— the confetti is flying, the balloons are going up. But man, 2 years— we're coming up on 2 years of the Launch Your Box podcast, and I'm so, so excited. But with everything that you do, consistency matters. I have never, ever missed a week on the Launch Your Box podcast. Every single week for the last 100 weeks, our team has delivered this podcast to you. And I want you to think about that in your own business. Consistency matters. It takes planning, it takes dedication. Everything that we do, I'm talking social media, I'm talking your subscription boxes, everything that we do takes consistency. And this is just one more way to show how consistency looks. And we've gone from like a few hundred podcast downloads a month when we first started to tens of thousands of downloads every single month. That's me getting in front of new people every single month and continuing to love on the people that are already in our audience. And I want you to do the same thing with whatever you do. That could be emails, that could be social media, whatever you do. Let's be incredibly consistent with it. But today you're in for a treat, my friends. I have not one guest, but multiple guests today, and I thought it would be really fun to bring a few of my mastermind members here for a little coffee talk. And the year-end wrap-up. They're all from different industries and they have experienced highs and lows throughout the year, and we're gonna spill the tea right here. Good, bad, maybe a little ugly of 2022 right here on the Launch Your Box podcast. So grab your coffee, listen up while you're working. Maybe you're on a drive or a walk somewhere, but I appreciate the time you take to listen every single week. I'm gonna have them introduce themselves and then I'm gonna start grilling them 'cause I've got questions for them today. So Amy, I'm gonna start with you. Why don't you introduce yourself? Introduce yourself to everybody listening today.

Hi everyone, my name is Amy. I am the head dreamer at the Snooze Box. We are a pajama subscription box but kind of focused on self-care. So it comes with a full set of pajamas every other month, so we're bi-monthly, and a few kind of items you can add to your nighttime routine. And I serve, you know, women, and then I also like to say I serve men because I have so many men that come in getting gifts for, you know, their wives, their girlfriends, their moms. So I like to think I kind of serve, you know, a good amount of people when it comes to the box.

Yeah, I love it. And I know she's been working on a new box. We might share that with you before we end this podcast today. But let me jump down over to Andrea and Whitney.

Hey, I'm Andrea, and I'm Whitney, and we are Cotton Chaos.

I really wanted y'all to be in unison on that. We're going to work on that for next time, y'all. We're going to work on that.

So we have a t-shirt subscription that is monthly that— well, we have grown pretty fast in 2022. We serve everybody that loves graphic tees. Who doesn't love a graphic tee? But that is our ideal customer, anybody that loves graphic tees.

I love it, and you can tell they're my Southern girls. They're my Kentucky girls with their acts coming in hot with the accent. I'm glad they're here because they have a lot of wins to share with us on the podcast today. I've got Pam. Pam, why don't you introduce yourself?

Hey there, I'm Pam Coxwell. I'm the artist and owner of From the Heart Art. I have been selling my artwork for a very long time. We realized almost as old as Whitney and Andrea, but a long time. I have in the past, since meeting Sarah, have been working on streamlining so that I can focus more on my encouragement kit that I offer to the ladies who I think of are cheerleaders. They love to give gifts. They're the women who have a stash of gifts on hand. And then a newly added avenue is the creative women. They're important too. They love to learn to use their creativity for stress relief, to bring joy, and to help them in their faith walk. So that's, that's what I do.

And if you could see us, we're on Zoom right now, y'all, but there's no way that Pam's been selling stuff as long as Andrea and Whitney have been alive. Okay. There's just no way. She's, she's way too young for that. But I'm also gonna brag on Pam for just a little bit because she is an amazing artist. She creates the most beautiful products. And I'm so excited for you guys to get to hear from her today. And we're going to wrap up our introductions with Miss Tracy down here. Tracy, go ahead.

Hi everybody, I am Miss Tracy. My business is Miss Tracy Creates, and I call myself a serial crafter. I serve crafters, makers, DIY enthusiasts, anyone that loves anything creative. I have been doing this now. I actually had a brick and mortar for running on about 12 years and now have slowly gone into the online space, which was so scary, but it has been so rewarding. I have loved every minute of it and it has just expanded my circles and my revenue in ways I could never have, you know, dreamed of.

Yeah, it's incredible. And on top of all this, Tracy's in the middle of moving locations. So let's just add a little, a few more things to to our plate in the middle of December, but they're here. We're going to talk about all the things. I'm so glad you guys are listening today. So we're going to start, we're going to start with the struggle because this is one of the things that I have repeatedly heard from my own audience, my own group launch, your box. I've heard it in the chat, in the DMs. There's been some struggle this year. There's been a lot of struggle this year and it comes off an already hard year that we had the year before. And it seems like it just keeps repeating itself. Groundhog Day every single year. Like we think, okay, we made it through 2020. All right, 2021, I got this. What is going on? And now it's 2022 and now there's more challenges and there's an economic challenge and there's recession and there's a war going on and there's all kinds of things that just get us to the point where I don't know if I want to quit today or go harder. And I feel like I have that talk with myself at least once a week. And so we're going to talk about some of the struggles that we've had individually with our businesses over the last year, because I want you to hear this from this group today. I want you to hear that you're not alone. You're not alone in the struggles that you have with your business. We're all dealing with something in our businesses that has been a hard, hard struggle for us. So we're going to talk about that today and we're going to talk about how we have overcome it so that maybe you can find some peace in what we're talking about. You can find a solution to maybe a struggle that you're going through and just know that even in the hardest times with your business, there's a way out of it. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. We're all proof of that because we've been through it this year with many different things. And so let's jump right in. Who wants to start with this question? What one thing did you struggle most with, most with this year, and how did you overcome it? Who wants to start? I'm going to go down with Tracy. I say down because I'm looking at Zoom and she's at the bottom of my screen. So I'm going to— not that she lives further south than I do, but we're going to go down to Tracy here.

All right, thank you, Sarah. You're so right on this point because one of my biggest struggles— I'm just going to talk about one— that has been inventory. It's been shipments. It's been issues with getting enough of what I need or being sent the right thing of what I need. And it's so true because, you know, we survived 2020 and I'm like, okay, 2021 is going to be better. And it would be, but then it also wouldn't be. You know, it just It seems like we're on such a roller coaster ride when it comes to shipments, and I felt the same way this year. My groups have grown quite large, and so the larger, you know, that your subscriptions get, the larger, you know, amount of customers that you have, the more quantity that you have to have in your inventory, right? It goes hand in hand. And so for me, it was so frustrating to be short-shipped an item or short-shipped 3 items, or, you know, or finding out at the very last minute that, oh, we're not going to be able to send, you know, 2 of the things that you ordered. That caused— I'm going to call it creative heartburn because my stuff is, is in the creative industry, and it just creates that, that creative heartburn. And so what happens is I do something that, Sarah, you've talked about, then I panic buy, right? I have to panic buy because I have to get I have to fill these, you know, I have to fill my bundles, I have to get my stuff ready to go. So I go out, I panic buy, and then I'll turn around and guess what? Out of the blue, here comes some of those items like 2 months later. So that's been a real struggle. One piece of advice I would give you is, any of you that are placing your orders, make sure that it is clear if you want your back orders or not, and make sure that that is in, in writing, even if you have to email it to the people, you know, just so you have something to go back on that says, I do not want my backorder. And then if you do want it, then tell them yes, you do want it. But that can cause a problem because then you're stuck with this stuff. Sometimes there's a, a fee to return it or a percentage to return it, you know, that could be an issue. So I decided this year, right, this year, I did not want that creative heartburn, and I definitely don't want it in 2023. And because we are still experiencing shipping issues and things, I decided to do— to create a shelf in my new space. You know that we're moving, which is so crazy to be doing it right now in fourth quarter, but you know, we're crazy people, right? So in my new space, we actually have some shelving that's set up, and I'm gonna put a little sticker on it that says Plan B. Plan B. It's going to be the Plan B shelves, and I'm ordering a few things for those shelves that are completely neutral, completely neutral, something that I can put into any bundle, any— no matter the season. Like, I'm trying to get a few things in just to be that kind of safety net when something doesn't ship so that I don't go out and panic buy. And I think it's gonna— it's actually it's already something I've kind of incorporated and I'm gonna take it a little step further and just know that it's there for me to use it when I need it. The fact of keeping it neutral and not so, you know, time sensitive to a season or a holiday, I think it's gonna help me a lot. What do you think?

I think it's great. And there's something that we did, you know, 20— after 2020 debacle, when I had complete shipments just fall off in the ocean and never be found again, which I don't think were actually ever shipped. But we had to have like that backup box. So I did almost the same thing. Like we have one like whole complete set of box that could be used any time of year in case we have— I call it the camo cardigan disaster because we had to like find something within 5 days. And at that quantity, it's really, really hard to do. So ever since then, we've kind of had this backup plan. Buying early is always helpful. So like right now I have probably 4 months of product sitting in my warehouse. It feels like too much because it's taking up a lot of cash flow. And so I wanna trim that. But now that I'm a little bit more comfortable with stuff getting here on time, I just was like, we gotta have it, so I'm gonna take it now. But in turn, what happened was my cash flow was really constricted because all of that money was sitting on my dock instead of, you know, in the bank account ready for me to buy the next month. So definitely love that Plan B shelf for you. And I think the other thing, when you talk about invoices, we want it shipped complete. Like, we don't want a partial ship because we can't do anything with the partial ship. We gotta have it all or nothing. And I don't think a lot of our vendors understand that about subscription box businesses. So we have to make that very, very clear. I need it all. Do not partial ship this to me. And if it's not here by this date, I want you to cancel my invoice because that's going to do two things. It's going to help them understand that if they don't have all of it and they don't have it on time, they're going to lose your business. So we don't take partial shipments and we— if it's not here by— if you don't ship it by this date, I don't cancel my order.

Yes, exactly. And that's been kind of a hard lesson that I have learned. And sometimes you have to be pretty, you know, you have to be pretty stern in just making sure that everyone is on the same page, that I need this shipped complete. And not even just the order itself, but the, the individual items on the order, right? If you don't have the quantity of XYZ, just like you said, I'll have to cancel my order. It's tough sometimes to be, to be that person with a you know, a vendor or a manufacturer. But you just have to remember that you have to be the CEO of your business. And there's times when I've had to kind of put my, my big girl pants on and, you know, just, just lay it out for him. This is how it is.

There's a term that I use, and I started to use this early on when I had my subscription box because people really didn't understand the urgency of a subscription box. And I still find myself using this term because it's easier than having to explain to them why I need it on the deadline. I tell them I need it for an event. I'm event planning and I need it for an event. There is a drop-dead deadline that that event is going to happen, which happens to be my, my mailout, but I need it for an event. And so that's a terminology that I used, and it's really helped me because then I don't have to over-explain, and then they don't tell me, oh, well, you can use it later. And I say, no, I need it for an event. And so that might be helpful too.

That is such great advice. I'm going to take that and I'm going to run with that. I love that. Thank you, Sarah.

You're welcome. All right, let's go over to Amy. Let's talk to Amy about her biggest struggle from 2022. What's going on over there, Amy?

Yeah, so I was thinking about this question and as Tracy was talking, and I think my biggest thing was— I think we all go through it— is imposter syndrome. Like in 2020, 2021, I was like making excuses. I was like, oh, I have a full-time job, a part-time job. I was doing my master's. I was helping someone plan a wedding. I was doing all these things. So it was like, that was my reason for not, you know, growing to the point where I thought I could go or where I actually thought I could go. So I think 22— so 2022 was the first year where, like, you know, the Snooze Box was my focus. It was like no longer a hobby. I was like, I'm going to do it. And the thing, I think the thing that helped me the most to get over that hump, which I think was like a little late in the year, but was honestly the mastermind that you like put together for us because it was the first time where I got to talk to so many like, like-minded people. You know, there was, there's always Launch Your Box and like people are amazing on there, but to be face to face next to each other you know, feeling all the feelings, obviously. And then just knowing that even when you think that someone has it all together is that they have problems too, which obviously I don't want that for people. But it's nice to know that we all kind of have our own kind of thing going on. And so in 2023, I want to just always remind myself, you know, own my accomplishments. Every little thing is accomplishment, whether, you know, it's big or small for someone else. Kind of decide to be confident, kind of tell myself like, I can do this, I am this, all this kind of stuff. And then lastly, to remind myself to be kind to myself, like not put myself down or think, oh, but I'm not as good as this other person. You know, we all have our own journey and we'll all get to where we want to be. We just got to work at it. And I'm really excited for 2023.

Yeah, there's something that you said when we were out in Florida at the beach that has really stuck with me, Amy. And you said, I have a lot to prove. And I think that when you think about like, I got a lot to prove, I gotta show people that think that I couldn't do this, that I can do this. I gotta show people that I can make a full-time income at this. And when you think about it that way, it feels overwhelming. It feels like this big, huge thing that you have to accomplish. But when you really just break it down and you say, okay, this month I have to accomplish this, next month I'm going to do this, instead of this big arbitrary, like, I gotta be somebody, right? Like, I've got a lot to prove. And it gets in your head and you let it get in your head. And I'm so excited about, like, just the awareness. Like, when you just said that, I thought, oh, 2023 is going to be Amy's year. Like, I cannot wait to see to see you just blossom because you have all the pieces. You've worked so hard to get where you're at right now. There's just going to be some huge tweaks for your business coming in this next year. And the fact that you're so aware of all of that right now in this moment makes me super excited for you. And I think that there's probably a lot of people listening right now, Amy, that are feeling a lot of that, everything that you just said, a lot of that imposter syndrome, a lot of the who am I to do this? Who am I to be able to accomplish this? Or even just seeing other people being successful and think, why am I not successful already? And it gets in our head and we think, well, who am I? I can't do this. I'm not them. I don't. But you see the back end when you're with these people in person, you see their struggles. And that's what I'm hoping to help you all realize today. We all have struggles. We've all been struggling with one thing or another over the year. And so you're not unique in that way, but we all can take steps to overcome that. So thank you so much for sharing that. I'm going to go over to Andrea and Whitney. What is one thing you've been struggling with this year? You've had a lot of growth this year, but growth does not come without struggle.

One of the things that I think we have struggled with is realizing that we can't do it all by ourselves. Yes, we, we tried in the beginning, you know, we were like, oh, we got this. And we realized we were very overwhelmed. So we have put into place some employees to help us accomplish all the things that we come up with.

We really, we knew we had the potential of growth for the year. We knew for 2022, we knew. So we took the year to really reinvest our growth into being able to grow more and add people to our team that would help us get to that point to grow more. And I think, I feel like, you know, we're the only ones on this podcast that is too. I don't know how we would ever do this just by ourselves. I mean, we are the chaotic duo of the mastermind, but You can't do it all. And I think that was our struggle when we started. It was like, we knew we needed to do all these things. We knew, you know, we started your course, your Scale Your Box course. And you're like, we know we need to do all these things, but you know, we started this job because we left our primary job so we could be wives and be moms because we each have 3 kids apiece, but we're still trying to do it all. And we weren't going to be able to grow and scale by doing it all by ourselves.

That's exactly it, Whitney, because when you— first of all, you did start with two. A lot of us start with one, right? Like we're the sole person in our business for a long time. So you're like, we already got a leg up. There's two of us, which is fabulous. And your relationship is amazing. When you started to grow and you think, okay, we got this, we're going to keep growing like this at this pace. You're going to outpace yourself so fast, and then you're going to hit a plateau and you're going to be like, what is happening? Because you realize that right away and were able to go ahead and hire, you're not going to get in that plateau. You're not going to get stuck there because you've already— you're working through that momentum. It's like this, like when people go on Shark Tank, you know, I've experienced this because I ordered something from somebody on Shark Tank. I still haven't got it. It's been 4 months. I'm about to file a chargeback, but it's okay. It's a lesson learned. When you grow so fast and you don't have anything in place to keep up with your growth, or you don't go ahead and hire your growth, now they've got a bad customer experience because they couldn't handle the growth and they didn't do anything to uplevel themselves. And I guarantee I will never buy anything from them again. And that's what's going to happen when you think you can do it all and you're growing really rapidly and you're like, I can handle it, I can handle it. And then you can't handle it and then you're panic hiring or you're panic, you're panicking or you're shutting your website down or you're shutting off your Facebook page, you're going MIA for a while to catch up. You're going to have bad customer experiences and then that's going to counteract your growth and then they're not going to come back. You're not going to have a return customer and then you've just shot yourself in the foot with all the growth that you built. So you guys recognized it early on and you started to hire. You got some help in lots of different areas of your business and you continue to hire. And so So I love the way that you have overcome that and you realize like we have to always remember why we start our business. I love that you said we started this business so we could be a mom and a wife and have our own time, and then we're just killing ourselves every day to keep up with the business. But we have to get our time back. We invest so much sweat equity into our businesses in the beginning, our time, our labor, our nonstop. Like we're up in the middle of night thinking about the next Next thing, we're gonna get it back someday. And people that are in the moment, like, I need a person, you need to hire a person before you think you need to hire a person. Um, because you don't realize how much sweat equity you're putting into your business that could really streamline the things that you do. So thank you for sharing that struggle for the year. And I, and I know it's gonna be a continued thing that you continue to grow, you continue to hire, and you continue to work through. Let's go over to Pam. Let's talk about the struggle that you had most of the year. I've been waiting for one of you to say my struggle, but you haven't yet. Let's see what Pam has.

One of—

well, was deciding which is the most struggle, but I've come up with this is the, the hardest part was because I've been in business for so long, I have a lot of artwork. I have a lot of products and I have a good bit of customers that I've been trying to please. And so I had so much stuff on my website and I've had more than you, more than you, Sarah, tell me that you need to scale it down. It's just been painful almost to do that. And so we have put a lot of things in place to try and reduce the number of designs that we carry, reduce the number of products that we carry. But I still was struggling with that. And it, I think it was at the Mastermind, it helped me to come face to face with a few things that not only did I have a lot of products and a lot of designs, I also had a good bit of revenue streams. So I'm licensing my artwork to manufacturers. I'm doing wholesale, not just wholesale, we're going to wholesale shows, we're on FAIR, we have it on Shopify. Then I had a Shopify store, I have an Etsy store. I mean, it was a lot. It's just a lot. And so I had grown wide, far and wide and not deep. And so it's just a matter of, because they feel like babies to me, but I've gotta cut some things off and so that I can grow deeper and That was a challenge as well, to be patient and working through all of that because it's painful and it's uncomfortable. And like I think it was Amy said, I felt like I was letting people down because so many people expect us to have all of these design options and on all of these products. And for one, I can't afford to do that.

I—

and it's crazy to do that. So just being patient to work work through that. But then to also realize that I'd lost my why and why I'm doing what I'm doing. And so it's been painful to work through all of that, but I think it's finally getting me to a good place that I remember why I'm doing what I'm doing. So it's given me the courage, I think, and to stand up and protect my why, because I had lost that because I was trying to do all of these things to keep cash flow so I can keep my employees. And I was just doing all of these things.

You were juggling so many balls and you were doing everything that you could to keep them all balanced and in the air at the same time. And it was killing you. Yes. And when you looked at— when we look at just the paralysis that a customer has when they have so many choices. We want to give them all the choices, especially creatives. Like, I can make that, I can do that, I can design that. Sure, I can offer that. Yes, yes, yes. And that's Pam 100%. I can do all the things for all the people. I want to please everybody. I want to make everybody happy. And yes, throw 10 more balls at me because I got this. That is Pam all day long. But we are doing a huge disservice not only to ourselves but to our customers. When I have to go through and pick a design on Pam's website, I'm instantly overwhelmed because they're all amazing. How am I gonna choose? So then I'm like, I have to think about it, and then I think about it, and then I don't come back. Or I've put too many things in my cart, and now I'm like, okay, I got too many things in my cart, and now I have to think about what I want. So I, I'll come back because I can't think about it. It's too much for me to think about right now. It's like me reading emails. If you send me one short, small email I'm going to reply back. It's going to be done. You send me an email that needs 5 replies. I probably won't hear from you for a month. It's too much. So this is exactly what it is. We give them— it's called analysis paralysis. We give them paralysis when they have to make decisions. And it's— it can even be like 5 things can be too much, right? So when you looked at all of your offerings and all the things that you were doing, you were paralyzing them, but you were also paralyzing yourself. Because you were on keeping up with everything, trying to keep up, scratching, clawing your way through the year, trying to keep up with all these balls that you had in the air. And it was just doing you no good. And it was, well, this was the reason I needed to keep up with this, and this was the reason I needed to do this, and I need to do this because— but when it came down to the end of the day, it's an emotional thing to let something go. I will never forget when I made the decision to close my brick-and-mortar store. I'll never forget the time that I decided to stop teaching paint nights. I did that for years, but I knew that I couldn't grow in the area that I wanted to grow, and it was the area that was lighting me up the most. It was making me most excited about my business and also the most profitable, and I was too busy holding all those cards and throwing all those balls in the air trying to keep everybody else happy. I wasn't keeping myself happy. And so it's been like this huge, like, light bulb for you. And I know you're still working through a lot of that and it's going to get cleaner and it's going to get easier as you go. But I think there's a lot of business owners that struggle with that, especially business owners that have been around for a few years that have a lot of different things going on. It's hard for us to trim the fat. It's like, well, I love that because— well, I love that because— oh, I like to do that because— But what I like to do is actually be home with my kids instead of doing that. Right. And it's hard for us to say, I'm going to stop doing something that I know people love and excited and I can make money at to do something else or to put my focus somewhere else. And so I appreciate you sharing that. We've had lots of, lots of good shares, lots of good feeling shares. Mine's more tactical, my share, than— and I'm the feeler of the group, I think. But For me, the struggle this year was realizing all the things that had grown my business, or the main things that had grown my business, were no longer working. And I talk about that as far as social media. Um, Facebook ads had really grown my business. Social media had grown my business the most, and my reach was getting smaller and smaller and smaller, even though I was working harder than ever on social media. And I think that that was just a huge struggle for me, um, this year. And, you know, it took a lot of like, okay, reset and think, reset and think, how can I come back? Because what you don't want to do is like just give up on the thing.

It has been—

it's proven that it's done well for so long. And when I look at the numbers, still my best traffic flow instead of direct traffic is coming from social media. So I can't just throw it out the window and say it sucks because a lot of us want to do that. I got to figure out what is working now and what's working now might only work for like 90 days, but I got to, I got to do that. And then I got to keep analyzing. I got to keep digging into the data and I got to keep trying new things because if I get stuck by saying like, what's not— this doesn't work, I'm giving up on social media. Like, oh my gosh, it built my whole business. I'm not giving up on something like that. We just have to keep figuring out, we have to keep tweaking, we have to keep trying new things. And I think I've been really good at that this year, trying new things. I'm not the best at it. I still got to get my TikTok game together. I'm really good for about 7 days and then I fall off the wagon every time. But what I'm saying is it's been a struggle and I'm not giving up because it doesn't work the way it used to. We just have to find new direction, new traffic sources, new avenues to test and to keep pushing forward. And don't get down on things that didn't work like the good old days, 2019, the good old days. I find myself saying that a lot, but I got to remember, like, it's about to be 2023. Forget 2019, that is gone. We got to figure out what is working now and lean into that and keep trying and keep being consistent with the things that are working now. So that has been my struggle. Thank you, ladies, for sharing your struggle for the year. Let's talk about— let's go to the positive. Let's shift our conversation. Although I think that conversation was positive because we all found ways to overcome what we were struggling with. And I want you to hear me say, if you're listening right now and maybe you're struggling with one of the things that we shared, or maybe it's something completely different, There is a way to move past it. There is. It's not the end of the world, no matter what it is. Maybe your Facebook page completely got shut down and you don't have access to it. Maybe your subscriptions have been cut in half over the year. We still got to keep figuring out. We don't want to give up and we don't want to stop because if we stop, it takes 10 times more effort to restart than if we could just push through and try to figure out a way to get through whatever we're dealing with. Maybe it's personal. Maybe you've had a loss in some way. Maybe you, maybe you've gone through an illness. Maybe there's relationship issues, whatever it is that you're dealing with. We need to keep pushing forward. Give yourself time and grace, but don't quit because we need to keep, we need to keep building on even the smallest momentum that we have. We need to keep building on that so that we're not starting all over, because starting from scratch is hard. That's really hard. So, all right, so let's talk about subscriptions. When we look back at 2022, I wanted the ladies to share like one tactic, one strategy that they use throughout the year that helped them increase their subscriber numbers. So I'm going to go over to Andrea and Whitney first. Let's talk about one thing that you did this year that helped increase your subscriptions.

All right, so we started the year with right at 100 subscribers, and we decided, okay, we're going to ramp this up. So we did a giveaway to collect emails early in the year, and then the very next month we did a launch and we gave them 2 shirts instead of 1 that month. So that kind of boosted our people. And then we also, at the same month, we did— we followed the launch plan that you gave us and we went live every day and we added their name to our subscriber wall. On strips of like the paint strips. And so when they were able to see their names, it was like we gave them $100.

And I feel like it's, it's weird telling you what worked when we're sitting here talking about a t-shirt club with you. But I mean, we did everything you do, I feel like.

Well, let's talk about— because I did the same thing, right? So one thing that we did, I did early on the year, I don't Did you do it after I did it? Because it worked, right?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So I decided that I was going to give a free shirt to everybody that was currently a subscriber. One, retention. I think about retention all the time. And two, this would, this would give people a reason to sign up now. My subscription's open all year long so they can sign up anytime they want to. I needed to give them a reason that they should sign up now, and that was to get the two shirts. And yes, it cost me a lot of money and yes, I knew that going into that. But for me, if I could spend another X number of dollars to keep the subscribers I already have happy, that was worth it. And I'm good. If I was going to pay for that in ads, my acquisition cost was going to be more than the t-shirt cost anyway. So it was a way that I could get new people without a big acquisition cost. And we added hundreds into our subscription, which I hadn't done in almost a year. With any of my monthly, like, join now type launches. And so it was a big increase for me. It was a big expense, but I chalked it up to I would probably pay that money in Facebook ads anyway. And two, I really got a chance to love on my people. And so that worked really, really well. And then what Andrea and Whitney did was something we do in— when I do the membership launch is we add the names of the people that are coming in and we share that because that gives one content. It's content. We need all the content we can get when we're going through a launch, especially with a t-shirt, because you only got one thing to show them and it's t-shirt. So we needed content and people love seeing themselves or their name or something to do about them on your social media. So it was a way that we could highlight all of the new people coming in and they did that with their t-shirt club and they had this cute wall in their office. And they just wrote their names on like Post-it notes and they added them to the wall and they would do short video adding them to the wall. They would do pictures, they would do celebrations. So it was creating all this content during their launch to keep them visible. And that is something that everyone can do, whether you have a membership or a subscription. You can even do it with just daily orders like, yay, thank you Susan from North Dakota for ordering a sweatshirt. You know, things like that. People love that. That's how people sell stuff on TikTok all day long. They just pack orders for people. They tell you, you know, who bought stuff. So why don't we turn around and use that in your launch? And so you went— you started the year at 100 subscribers. Where did we end this year?

We are right at like 450-ish. Yeah, ish.

So we quadrupled our subscription this year, more than quadrupled our subscription. And that was really the way you guys show up. And you show up, you've leaned into short video, you went all in on your launches, which really paid off for you guys. And so there's two tactics there. Give them a free gift, don't discount. And then let's talk about them. People love to see themselves in what you do. So those are the great two tactics from Cotton Chaos. All right, let's go over to Pam. Pam, do you wanna share something that helped you increase your business this year? A tactic or strategy? Yes.

Toward the end of the year, I started something brand new after the mastermind, who I did it kind of for me, was really good. I did a workshop for, and I followed your plan, how you do your, I called it a workshop.

You call it the coaching week.

Yes. Coaching week. Mm-hmm. And it was really sweet. Um, I had a good turnout for that, and then I did the course through the classes for 3 days, and then the last day we had a Zoom, and it was just really sweet to be able to create with them and hear their voices, and they loved it. So I just launched that new creative membership in November, and so we meet once a month on Zoom, and, um, I'm excited to start. I've already got my plan going to relaunch it in January.

Yeah, what I love about the way you put this together— you put it together very quickly. It was something you've never done before, and anybody in the creative space that does like DIY or anything like that, um, hosting a workshop in a Facebook group or on Zoom is such a great way to not only, one, get in front of new people, But you're building a connection with those people. And that was the same way with my coaching week, right? Like I go all in, I spend the whole week with them. I'm teaching, I'm training, I'm loving on them, but they get to know me. They get to know what kind of coach I am before they come join the membership. And that's the same thing that you did there. You took what you saw there and you applied it to your creative business. And that's not only launched your new membership, which is going to be incredible, but it also gives you a new audience or more people that would buy your physical products. And so that is something that's going to continue to grow and continue to serve. And you kept using the word sweet, which I don't think I've ever heard anyone use when they describe, you know, business. But it was something that you needed to do for you, right? Because that's what you wanted to do. And I think that when we talked earlier about you keeping all those balls juggling in the air, You weren't doing anything to serve you. You were trying to serve other people all the time. And we have to do what lights us up. We have to do what we're passionate about, what fills our cup up, or we can be drained and burnt out so easily. And so when you're thinking about your business, or if you're listening right now and maybe you haven't launched your thing, I always tell people that you need to be your ideal customer. It works best if you're ideal customer, because if not, it becomes very transactional. And we don't— as women, we are very much invested in what we do every day, where we put our time. We want to be passionate about that. We don't want our business to be just transactional. We need more from that. So that was— that's a great share. So if you're creative, you haven't done a workshop, I highly recommend you plan one for 2023. I'm gonna jump Tracy in next.

I'm gonna just feed right off of that because being a creative, it has just exponentially grown my business by having what I'll call a challenge workshop. Right. So just to kind of feed off of what Pam was saying and what you're saying, Sarah, that was the one thing that I got the most growth from this year in my membership groups. And I mean a lot of growth because I would have these small challenge workshops and only charge like $10. And then I decided to, to treat that $10 as not as revenue, right? And that's hard because you're like, oh my gosh, yes, I'm going to make some money. But I tried not to even think of it as revenue. And then as that money, as $10 workshop fees came in, I took all of that money and turned it over into ads. And that's such a good tactic and a good technique for those of you out there that don't have a big ad budget. Like, it's just a great way to bring in that, that revenue and just know that that's going to be a driver to get, you know, an ad out in front of new people. And I basically kind of treat mine as like, you know, we're going to give you a peek behind the curtain. Like with this challenge workshop, I'm going to give you a peek behind the curtain because you're going to get to see what happens in the Napkin Club or in the Fabric Fan Club. And it's so great because they get to come, it's almost like a trial for them, right? They get to just, they get to come, they get to experience your teaching style, they get to, to meet other people, they get to realize, is this a good fit for me? And my conversion rates on those has been extremely high. The very first one I ever did, I've not, this this is the first year I've ever done this. The very first one I ever did, I increased my membership group by over 300 members. I mean, it was just, it was just wild. The second one I did was almost that much. I actually, I think it was even higher. And the cool thing for those of you, if you happen to have more than one box, like, like Amy's about to start launch another, another subscription, it was awesome because even though I brought in people just from kind of one, one niche, right? It still drove them to me. They still got curious about me. They checked out the other things that I offered. We sold a lot of product through it. We sold some kits and we had some signups for other groups. So it was, it's just a really great way to give people a look at what's really happening in your club, like, or what's really happening, you know, with the members of your box, like, You know, it's just, just like I said, a kind of a peek behind the curtain. It also does kind of help to create that FOMO because you can give them, grant them, you know, some sort of special access or, you know, maybe you're not during, maybe it's not your official launch time, but that doesn't mean you can't have a soft launch just to those people. And so it's just been incredible for me. I'm going to try to do one every quarter. I think it's going to be my goal in 2024.

That's going to be awesome because it's going to grow your list. It's going to also grow your know, like, and trust factor with people. They're going to get to know you on a deeper level. And what the tactic that Tracy's really talking about is called an SLO. It's called a self-liquidating offer. And whether you're teaching anything like Pam and Tracy are, or you're not like me where I'm just, I've got products, you can treat a lot of different things as an SLO, a self-liquidating offer. So in my case, or in Tracy's case, she has a $10 workshop. She has no costs involved in that as far as just her showing up and delivering. So every $10 that someone has bought, she's putting that back into ads to fund her ad spend to get more people in it. Because like she said, her conversion is high in those scenarios. And I don't know about your conversion, Tracy, but when I do coaching week, I usually convert between 37% and 45%. Of the people that come to that week. That is a huge conversion. That is an unheard of conversion in our world. So when you think about that, it's gonna be great conversion. So you wanna take all that money you're making. You don't have to have a bunch piled in the bank as you're making it, you're spending it. And so it's a great way to increase your ad budget for a launch. Now, if you have products only and you're not teaching anything, you can do the same thing. With one of your products. And I've tested this several times this year with a different t-shirt. I have the monogram box, I have the t-shirt club, uh, you know, I panic bought a lot in 2021, so I had a lot of stuff left over. So I started putting these into bundles and running ads to them. The goal was not to make any money off of selling them. It was to recoup my cost that I had invested in that inventory and to grow and get in front of new new people. So I put a bundle together. It typically was 2 shirts and a pair of earrings. I had maybe $20 or less in cost, maybe $15 to $20 in cost in those items. I sold the bundle for $39. So that meant everything above that $15 that I made, we put back into that ad, and we ran that ad to cold audiences mostly, and then we did retargeting to the warm audience. But that put me in front of new people. And what we saw— we've run this twice now for the year— we saw almost all of those first purchases were coming through, brand new first purchases. People were purchasing from me for the very first time because my existing audience already had that shirt. They had it from their subscription box last year, if they remember. If not, it would probably been on sale and they got it on a markdown. Like, I've shown them this shirt way much. Like, they— I'm trying to sell this thing, I'm trying to get rid of this thing, but I used it as a way to get in front of new people because new people hadn't seen this shirt. And I gave them a great deal, and I kept funding. Every time we made money, we pumped it back into the ad spend. My acquisition cost was lower than it was that I had been getting on my subscriptions, so it was allowing me to get new people. Now I got new people buying from me, they're going to have a buying experience from me, and I'm going to give great customer service. Now I've got new people on my email list that might become repeat buyers. I was seeing my returning customer percentage was getting higher, so these people will repeat buying. And we just kind of tracked this cohort of people from these different ad sets and what their buying habits were. It may take me 6 months or 2 or 3 one-time purchases to convert them to a subscriber, but it was a great way for me to keep getting in front of people with the product similar to what my subscription was. So whether you're only selling products or if you have some type of teaching where you can teach a workshop, both of these options are great and they're called SLOs, self-liquidating offers.

Yeah, and I think you're, you're so right on that because really ultimately for me, I want the conversion. I want the conversion because I, I know because of Sarah and her teaching and her formulas, I know that when I have somebody convert and sign up for my subscription, I know what their average, average, you know, life cycle is going to be in my group, which for me, mine run about 18 months. So I'm, I'm actually, I have, you have to really kind of mentally change your thinking as to it's not just about that revenue. It's about capturing that subscription person, that new person that now is going to probably stay in my group. For a year to 18 months. So I have that revenue is my ultimate, ultimate goal. Yeah, and it's just been great, and I've really enjoyed it.

I love getting to meet new people, and it's just been—

they've been so fun, and they don't require a lot of time. They really don't require a lot of time. And so that's why I'm going to definitely make them a part— these, these challenge workshops a priority in 2023. $3.

Yeah, because you're looking at that lifetime value, right? And so spending $10 or taking that $10 that you just made and turning back and putting it into the ad, the acquisition is chump change compared to what you're gonna make from that lifetime value.

Exactly.

Yeah. Okay. Let's go over to Amy. What one thing did you do this year that helped increase your subscriptions or business?

It sounds silly to say it out loud, But the one thing that I did was selling. Like, I always told myself, oh, like, I'm overselling, like, I don't want to bother them. And then I remember I had asked in one of your— your lives, like, what do I do about— like, I don't want to oversell. And you're like— you kind of gave it to me straight. You were like, look, they don't see every single post, like, sorry about it. So that kind of got me to thinking like, because I'm kind of the opposite of everyone. A lot of people from All In Your Box are business owners. They have a retail store, they have a brick-and-mortar store, and now they're starting a subscription box like after they've created that customer base. And I've only sold my subscription box for 2 years, like only the subscription box. That's all I was doing. And then at the mastermind is when everyone was like, you got to, you got to start a shop. Like, you got to like sell these other things. And so I did start doing that through email. So I would say it's like selling plus email was really big for me and people were buying. I was like, I don't know why I was so surprised.

You're shocked by that, right?

Yeah, actually buying.

Yeah.

And people follow our page to buy stuff from us, and sometimes we get in our head thinking we've showed it to them too many times or we're being salesy Sally all the time, just showing and selling all the time. But hey, people follow us because they want to buy stuff from us, right, Amy?

Yes, exactly. And then the funniest thing is that— because I've, I've always watched your lives for Frame, so I'm like, wow, are all these people just like, every time Sarah puts something out, they're buying? And I realized like the people— like, yeah, me too, I'm also one of those buyers. But I was thinking like, I looked at the people who were buying these one-off like bundles, the things that I was selling and they were my subscribers. I don't know why I was so surprised about that. It's like, your people really are your people. And like, the other part of it was like, they were— it was other people on my email list buying, and then they became subscribers. And I was like, this is so great. Like, why did I wait till now to do this? So I think just— yeah. And you also said one time, like, they can't buy something if they don't know what they can buy, so you need to tell them. And then when they do, they'll know, and and then they'll buy. So I think that was a really good mindset shift to go through this year, and I will be always thinking about it for next year too.

I was reading something the other day and it said something about your top 15 to 20 customers can make up 50% of your business, and that's powerful, right? Like, if you think about your top set of customers, and maybe that's more than 20, maybe it's your top 50 if a lot of customers. But if you just focused on those people, they are making up a huge portion of the revenue that you make every year. And then you can stop getting in your head about all these other people that may like your things or not. Whitney, you want to share something?

I know this sounds so elementary, but something that just hit home to Andrea and I a few weeks ago— we had a woman that buys a lot from us, and she told us, she goes, if y'all Sold snow, I would buy it.

And I—

but it sounds so elementary, but it's like we're running our 12 Days of Retail right now, and your customers every single day, they're buying just because you're running a sale every day. And it's the same customers every day. And if you just focus on those, that's what's gonna drive your business. Those are the people, or those are your people.

Yeah, it's, it's funny because, um, when we come in on Monday, we have all the orders from the weekend and they're all the same things. And they're like, we've— this has been sitting on the shelf for like 3 months. I'm like, yes, Sarah showed it live. Hello. Oh, that's all you have to do sometimes. They, they make the joke. They're not as nice as your customer, Whitney, about snow, but they tell me I could sell poop to one too. All I have to do is show up live and put it in a cute bag and I could totally sell it. But it's true. We gotta show up. And I think that, like Amy said, we get in our heads thinking everyone has seen everything that we've done. And the reality is hardly anyone has. And so we're like, yeah, but I've shown that 7 times and maybe somebody saw it once out of those 7 times. We need to keep reminding them and kind of get over ourselves with how many times we think people have seen what we're doing. So we're having such a great chat and I don't want this to last forever. So I would love— I mean, we could, this totally could. Maybe you're on a really long walk and I'm really proud of you. Keep walking, you're doing great. But I'm going to wrap up the call. When you think about 2023, what has you the most excited about your business? Let's go lightning speed, like speed dating. Amy, we'll go with you first. When you think about 2023, what, most excites you about your business?

The most exciting thing other than like kind of growing this news box is I'm starting a new box, which was by the help of everyone at the mastermind, the Rise and Shine box. So it's going to be, you know, who doesn't want to be comfy all the time instead of just at night? So it's going to be a new box for, you know, morning routine, kind of comfy clothing during the day. And I'm just really excited to fill my cup with that and just see where that can go.

Yeah, and I think that we're all excited for that box too. It's a great way for Amy to continue bringing monthly revenue in from her subscriptions because she's bi-monthly. This will give this subscription on the off months, so every month she'll have some subscription revenue, which is going to help her business substantially and with the stability. So that's gonna— we're excited about that for you, Pam. What's, what's excites you about your business for 2023?

I'm looking forward to having less plates to juggle and focus in on building the creative avenue.

It's gonna be great. You're just going to grow and grow in that area, and then all the other crap that you're doing is gonna get less and less. It's like I knew I wanted to quit teaching because— quit teaching the painting classes classes when I was teaching because my kids were getting older and there were so many things I was missing at night because I had a room of 50 students or whatever. Once I started to grow the subscriptions and I realized that I could replace the revenue I was making from the classes, I just had to lean into that a little bit more. And you're going to start to offset that. And then you're going to be letting go of things that are weighing you down. I call them bricks in my backpack. Like once you start taking those bricks out of your backpack, you're going to be lighter. You're going stand taller, you're going to feel more good, and also you're doing something more of what you love. Your business started doing something you love, which was the artwork, and it's still very prevalent, but, but now it feels like work and we're going to shift back to doing something that we love. So I'm excited for you as well. Tracy, 2023, what's, what's happening for you?

Well, there's lots of things that I'm excited about, but one thing I'm really excited about is my business has finally grown to a level where we are moving. We're moving into a larger space. We're going to have a warehouse space. I'm just so excited because the girls that work for me, literally, we are standing on each other's heads trying to operate day to day. And so we are just so excited, myself but also as a team, to just see that our efforts, our hard work is paying off. We're going to be able to go into this larger space. The other thing I'm excited about, you know, well, obviously it's all kind of wrapped up together, but we're going to be able to serve our customers so much better and so much more efficiently. And then I'm also excited because I'm laying some groundwork in 2023 where I am hiring some more help. I'm hiring a VA and actually looking into possibly possibly an Online Business Manager, just because again, as your business grows, so do all of, you know, your needs change, right? With every level you advance up, your needs change. And so it's just being able to identify that. And you've helped me so much to identify those things that I need to put in place now that we're starting to scale and we're hoping to continue that upward growth.

I love it.

I'm excited for you, Andrea and Whitney. What's 2023 bringing for you?

We're gonna increase our subscription. We're going to. Okay, we are gonna make ourselves a bigger priority.

I love that. For me, I think 2023 is about streamlining some things for me. There's a lot of big things on the, on the plate. I, I mean, my First full year mastermind with these amazing ladies that I'm talking to. You know how we talked about Pam, we talked about doing something for you. That was really for me. That's what I'm doing for me. It fills my cup up so much. And I realized that when we had our one weekend event. So I'm doing that for me. I got a book coming out this year. What the heck? And we're just going to really, we're really trimming the fat on the retail business. As far as too many products. I'm getting in there like Pam and I'm trimming out some of the stuff that is taking up too much space in our brains and our bank account, in our shelves. And we're going to streamline and we're going to grow. And I'm really focused on growing my list in 2023, both for the coaching side of the business and for the retail side of the business. I think more so the retail business because I do that all the time with the coaching business. But I'm going to do the things that I do well on the coaching part of the business, and I'm going to bring them into the retail business and really grow. I've got some strategies and tactics. We're going to talk about this when we get together in January, because we can't grow our business if we don't grow our lists. And so that's what 2023 is going to be about for me. So thank you ladies so much for joining me on my 100th episode of the Launch Your Box podcast. I am going to link all of their pages for you in the show notes if you want to go over and follow these amazing women. We'll get their pages on there for you. Ladies, have a great rest of your day. Thanks for joining me. We'll be back for the 101th episode— 101 episode next week. So come back, come back and join us. We'll see you guys soon. 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.