162: What is Subscription Box Week?

Hey, it's Sarah, and I want to make sure you have a special invitation to Subscription Box Week.

It only happens once a year.

It's only $15, tons of fun, and a way to jumpstart your subscription box journey. I'm going to help you get clear on your ideal customer, help you curate several subscription boxes, and I'm delivering a brand new training to elevate your subscription box business. It's a jam-packed week of learning and fun with tons of subscription box owners. Head over to subscriptionboxweek.com and get signed up. The fun starts June 23rd.

$15, one week, endless possibilities. What am I talking about? I'm talking about Subscription Box Week and it's coming soon and we've added a whole new training this year. Let's talk about it right on this episode. Come listen.

Welcome to the Launch Your Box podcast with weekly tips, tricks, and strategies to start, launch, and grow your subscription box. Now here's your host, Sarah Williams.

Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. Today we're talking about Subscription Box Week. And I'm so excited. It starts soon and it only happens once a year. I have thousands of people join me for this week. It's a one-of-a-kind subscription box coaching experience. And y'all, I cannot wait. We've changed a couple things this year. So I'm going to talk through what it is. Maybe you've never been to a subscription box week before. I'm going to tell you all about it. I'm going to tell you what's new this year because I'm really excited about it. We're prepping for it. It's going to start soon in just a couple of weeks. So make sure you get registered over at subscriptionboxweek.com. But let's start back to the beginning. I want to tell you a little backstory about how this came about for me so that you can really understand where this came from and where we're at with it. So back in 2020, back in the crazy year of 2020, I had started my membership, this membership called Launch Your Box. I started it in the fall of 2019, and I was growing. I was growing well. I really wanted to put the gas on the membership, and I was trying to figure out the best way to really grow the membership. Stu McLaren— if you guys know me at all, you might have heard Stu on my podcast or seen an interview I've done with him, but Stu has been my mentor since 2018. I've been in his mastermind, and I remember it was in 2020, and I I asked Stu, I was like, I really want to grow this membership. I started the Facebook page. It was growing very slow. I was building content. I had some lead magnets. I was growing my email list, all the things that we know how to do. I said, I really want to grow. I really want to blow up this membership and really grow it. And I'm just, I can't figure out what I need to do. I didn't know if I needed to do some webinars or if I needed to do something differently than I was doing. And I said, Stu, How do I get more people to join my membership? And he said, why would somebody want to join your membership? And he just said that to me. And I just looked at him and I— and it was really like casual, fun, really flippant of me. And I said, if people could just come and hang out with me for a week, they would see how much knowledge I have and what kind of coach I am. And then they would want to be in my membership. And I just said it like just off the cuff. I'm a smart aleck a little bit sometimes. And I just said that and he looked at me, he goes, how do you make that happen? I said, make what happen? And he said, how do you get people to spend a week with you? And he walked away and I was just sitting there thinking, okay, how do I get people to spend a week with me so that I can show them how much knowledge I have in this industry? I can show them how I teach, what my teaching style is, and what kind of coach I am, because there's a lot of business coaches out there. You really need to align with someone's teaching style and what kind of— what they value. That needs to align with you so that you can get the most out of their coaching. And so I sat there and I just remember getting my notebook out and just writing Subscription Box Coaching Week on the top, and I just started to outline like What if I could get people to spend a week with me? What would I do? And I started to outline and I thought, let me just take everything that I do in my membership for a month and pop it into a week. And then they could see what we do in Launch Your Box. They could see what kind of coach I am. They would understand the knowledge I have in this industry. And hopefully they would want to be a part of that long term. And that's how Subscription Box Week came about. That was the very first stages of it. So I launched my very first Subscription Box Week. Back then I called it the Coaching Week, and that was in the fall of 2020. And I had thousands of people sign up and I was like, what is happening? And so I was almost in a panic because I remember the first day that I went live, I was panicked about tech. I didn't know if I had enough set up. I didn't know if this was going to work. I had all these people that I funneled into a Facebook group. And you got to understand, like, my membership at that time had about 400 or 500 members in it. Now I had this Facebook group full of 2,000 to 3,000 people coming for coaching week. And I was a little bit like, I had all this anxiety about being able to perform for all these people. I never had a group that size. And I remember the first night that I went live in that group, I had over 1,000 people live with me. And I was like, oh my goodness, like, I really never had more than a couple hundred, maybe 300 max, live with me at any time. Most people watch things on the replay. So I almost started like cold sweating when this was happening. But I'm gonna tell you, that week was so incredible. This was fall of 2020. I showed up I got to be just me. I answered questions. I was live every day. I was just giving and giving, oversharing all the knowledge that I had to really show them what I was made of. And at the end of that week, 42% of the people that joined coaching week decided to join me in Launch Your Box, and it was incredible. I added 1,400 new members in that one week in my business because of the way that I showed up. And I didn't know if it was a fluke. I didn't know if it was a one-time thing. I didn't know what was happening. But I did it again the next year in March and added 1,000 members. I did it again in the fall and added more members. And I have done it once a year because it's exhausting. It's exhausting, y'all. Like, I literally show up multiple times a day live in the group and then I block everything off that week just so I can focus on the week. I'm in the chat answering questions. I'm and I'm just answering DMs and answering comments and answering posts in the group like I am all in for that week. And it's a way that I get to showcase the kind of subscription box coach that I am and the way that I serve and the way that I love on my members. And so it's an incredible week and we built it into this yearly event that we do and it's coming up in a couple of weeks and I'm really excited about it. So if you've never been to one of my coaching weeks, let me break down like what it is. It's an exclusive opportunity to see what it's like to be a member, to see what it's like for you to be coached by me, and then to see what the community is all about. So the first thing that we do inside coaching week, and this will kick off on the Sunday night, but we do something called the Post-it Note Challenge. It's one of my favorite things to do. And it's not something that you do once and you're done with it because I do it several times a year to plan out my own subscription box. And we'll have all my members, will be there, and they'll be sitting down doing the Post-it note challenge with me for their own subscription box as well. So this is something that we just rinse and repeat as one of our daily— or one of our kind of habits in curating our subscription boxes. So we're going to start the week off with that, and you're really going to be able to lay this out. Maybe you're sitting here thinking like, I don't even know what this would look like. I'm gonna help you lay this out and visualize the plan for this. When I started my subscription box, that was really what got me moving forward. I had laid in bed and I would dream about it at night and I think about what I would put in it and what would this be and how would my customers be excited about it. And I would just lay and dream, but I would never put that into action. I would never put that into a visual thing that I could look at and implement. And so when I started to do this for the very first time for my subscription box, I was able to visualize what 6 months of this subscription box could look like. And that helped me see everything that helped me make progress moving forward. That helped me take the next steps. So that's what we're going to do together. We're going to do the Post-it note challenge, whether you don't have an idea of what you want to do yet, or you already have a subscription box. Let's look at next year. Let's plan out what boxes you don't have planned out. I want you to see it through my eyes. And I want you to understand the process that I go go through every time I curate boxes. So that's going to happen on our first night. And then I've got a brand new training this year. This is something new that I'm teaching for the very first time. You're going to learn how to curate an experience for your subscribers. What I've learned over the last several years is that it's not about the stuff. People might come for the stuff, but they're going to stay for the experience that you deliver. Your retention rate is really driven by the experience that people have and how you make them feel. How does your box make them feel? How do you evoke emotion from them? Because they're not going to remember the stuff, but they're going to remember the feeling that they get when they open their box from you every single month. So I'm going to take you through how to curate this experience, and that's a brand new training for us this year. And then the best part of the week, the most fun part of the week, is I'm going to do box openings inside this group, and they're going to be from my existing members. And what they do is they send me boxes, and I usually do 10 to 15. We'll see what I put together. I haven't done that yet, but— and I try to get them from lots of different industries, lots of different niches, lots of different sizes, so that you can really see differences in the box. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to open them for the first time, my first reaction live on camera, and I'm going to open the box as if I was a customer. And what is the experience? What am I getting when I open this box? And I also am coaching in this moment. I'm going to give feedback to the subscription box owners. So it's a chance for them to put their product in front of me and let me review that for them. And you're going to get to be— you're going to get to be in the audience for this. You're going to get to see these boxes and what's inside of them. It's going to inspire you. It's going to help you think through your own box. You're going to see my feedback for them so that you can make notes and do that for your own boxes. But it's really fun to see all these different boxes and the way they're curated for the subscribers. So that's going to happen during Subscription Box Week as well. And then you're going to be able to get all your subscription box questions answered during our special live Q&A with me. I show up, I take questions. I answer them, some rapid fire, some more in depth, but I'm going to get you as many answers during the week as possible. And we're going to end that week with this special live Q&A where you get to see me answer questions. You get to hear my voice. You get to just like you're listening to this podcast right now. Like listening to someone explain something in voice is so much better than typing it out. So we're going to do that on our final day of Subscription Box Week. But here's something that's more important than those 4 trainings. You get to be part of the Subscription Box community. It's an entire experience in itself because my members from both Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box are coming to Subscription Box Week, and they're subscription box owners at all phases and all sizes and all levels. So you'll have some of the beginners, brand new, hadn't started their subscription box yet. They'll be over there. You'll have some of the kind of mid-level. They've started, they've got 100 or a couple hundred subscribers. They're in there because they want to go through this with me again. They know the value of this week. And then you're going to have some of my higher level subscription box owners join us that have 500, 800, 1,000, 3,000 subscribers join us and they're all part of our community and everybody together makes an incredible experience. They're going to answer questions, they're going to give feedback, they're going to be learning right alongside you. And then you're going to have my team in there as well. I have compiled an incredible team of experts and community managers, and they work around the clock answering your questions and providing resources from me. In this group, and you're gonna get me. You're gonna get me live every single day. Remember what I told Stu? If I could just get someone to hang out with me for the week, they would know how much knowledge I have. They would understand what kind of coach I am. You're going to get me. You're going to get me every day. You're going to get me live so many times you're going to be sick of me, but I'm there 100%. This isn't a program that I sell you and then you get in there and I don't exist. I am there. I am over-delivering every day to make sure you get the most value, you get what you need out of the week to decide if you want to move forward with me or not, if you want to start your subscription box or not, if this business model is for you or not. I am making sure that you're getting so much of me and so many resources during the week that you can make a good decision by the end of the week. You're going to see interviews You're going to be inspired about what's possible. I'm bringing my student on every day. I'll be doing a live interview every day during the week with one of my students, and these students are at different levels. These students have different audiences, they're in different niches, they're in different, they're different ages, and they have different experiences. And we're going to talk through what their journey has been on building a subscription box because I want you to relate to them. I want you to see see that this is doable for you. And so bringing the students on every day is something that is really powerful because sometimes we get into building a business or starting a side hustle and we think, you know what, I can't do this, it's too hard, I'm not smart enough, I don't know enough. And I want you to see these people from all walks of life building incredible businesses. And I want you— I want it to inspire you. So I'm going to do that every day. Basically, we've packed a month's worth of content that I would teach inside Launch Your Box, and we have packed it into this week for this one special annual event called Subscription Box Week. And so really, for $15 You get this jam-packed week all about subscription boxes. Maybe you are brand new thinking about this. This week is for you because you're going to come out of this week knowing whether this is for you or not worth it. Maybe you're already selling products. You might be selling on Etsy. You might have a little online shop. You might be selling in person in a local gift shop or boutique or something like that. And you're just unsure if you should go this route, build this revenue stream in your business. But if you're ready to build a recurring revenue stream, this week is for you. Maybe you're listening and you've already started your subscription box and you don't know what you don't know. You're going to learn lots of tips and tricks from a multimillion-dollar subscription box owner. I'm talking about me that you might not have even thought about, a different way of thinking about things, a different way of doing things that you don't even know you don't know. This week is for you. I do this every day. I share my experiences from running my own subscription box business to help you at whatever phase you are in your journey. You're a brand new beginner. I was a brand new beginner at one time, wondering if I could even do this and not knowing what the steps were to get there. Maybe you're somewhere in the middle where you were selling products. I had a great local gift shop. I was selling on Etsy. I was selling in store, but I kept having this nagging feeling about wanting to create this experience. I didn't know at that time what this recurring revenue stream was going to do for my business. I had no clue, but it's the best part of having a subscription box business. That money hits your bank account every single month. And if you're a product-based business owner listening right now, you have to wake up, you have to show up, and you have to collect your rent every day to make money. When you have a subscription box business, it just hits your bank account. It's reliable, it's stable, and it makes you calm and not panic and not full of anxiety about how you're going to pay your rent or your employees or how you're you're gonna make any money to help pay the expenses in your household. It stabilizes your business. And maybe you've launched and you've had some success and you are a subscription box owner and you're like, I'm past this stage, Sarah, I don't need to come to Subscription Box Week. What do you have to lose? There are so many subscription box owners inside this week, thousands of people will be in this group sharing, talking, working through ideas. If you get one idea from coming to this week, whether that's in my training, in my box openings, or just in the community itself, if you get one idea that helps grow your subscription box, $15 is worth it. One idea could change the growth, or seeing things through a different lens could change the future of your own subscription box. So if you've been thinking about this, maybe putting off starting your business or starting your box, or maybe you're just feeling stuck, this is your special invitation to join me over at Subscription Box Week .com for one amazing week. I can't wait, and I'll see you there. 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.