185: “It’s Never About the Money.” Scaling past 1,000 subscribers with Jane’s Agenda

It's never about the money. On this episode, I'm checking in with a past guest who has gone from 500 to 1,300 subscribers. What's behind that growth and why canceling is never about the money. Come join us.

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

Welcome back to the Launch Your Box podcast. I have a returning guest with me today. If you want to hear her previous podcast episode, go back to episode 92. We are almost 100 episodes later now as I interview her again. But Jane, let's start with a little introduction for anyone that does not know you or may not have heard episode 92 before. Tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and maybe a little snippet on how you got started.

So I'm Jane. I'm the CEO and founder of jane'sagenda.com. In 2013, we started from my living room and my laptop. I wanted to make planner pages that helped women calm the chaos in their lives because my own creation, the one that I'd used for myself, was so beneficial. I figured everybody could use this. And so we started on Etsy, uh, and then in 2020 with the pandemic, people kind of stopped buying calendars, right? Nobody was doing anything. And so I wanted to find a way to bring some joy and give people a reason to use their planners. And so we started the subscription box to give them something exciting to use their planner each month. And now it's 2025.

So it's 2025. Okay. So when we left off in 2022, it was fall of 2022, your last episode, and you had just hit 500 subscribers and we were celebrating like crazy. It's a big milestone in any subscription box owner's world. But let's go back to that 500 mark. So you're now at 500 subscribers. Tell me if— tell me what life was like in that moment when you were at 500. Let's just go back a little bit and we'll give them the journey from there to now.

So at 500 subscribers, we had to start worrying about strategy. It's, it's to the point where you can't just wing it anymore. You have to have a strategy to the way that you order products, the way you pack the box. It all becomes kind of a, an actual business is what it felt like at 500. It was no longer a hobby or a side part of our business. It became its own beast. And that started at about 500 subscribers. That was when we could start really ordering in bulk and planning ahead, but it also was when it started getting difficult. To buy from like American-made companies 'cause they couldn't get me that many of something. So it kind of changed everything about how we had to run the business.

So you're really having to start sourcing now, which was new. You were having to start manufacturing, which was new. I know at that time we, you were in a kind of a situation where you needed to hire and you needed to hire quickly. You needed to form new roles for your business 'cause your business was growing. So talk a little bit about what those challenges were as you started to grow past the 500.

So we used to all help pack the box. So we might've had 5 or 6 people on the whole team. And on box day, we all just went and all packed the box. We all helped make the items. It was very much a team affair. And as the subscription box grew, that no longer became something everybody could do. And I needed a bigger team. I needed someone to handle just the website and just social media. And that made it really difficult for everyone to start helping with the box. And because we were growing so fast, I had to hire really, really quickly. And I feel like we just stopped hiring.

Talk to me about hiring, because this is one thing that I get asked a lot. And I recently, a couple weeks ago, did a podcast with Emily Reagan about hiring for virtual help. And one thing that her and I talked about was you really got to hire before you need it. And because when you need it, it's almost too late. So talk to me a little bit about the hiring process. Where did you find people? How did this work? How did you hire people? What happened when it didn't work out with that person? Give us a little insight to the hiring process.

Uh, so we're at about 14 people, I think right now, 15. I have only one virtual person at this point, so everybody is local. I start with an Indeed ad and I, I run an app on there. It usually takes about 8 applications before somebody is meeting my qualifications for an interview, and then usually about 8 interviewees before I like someone enough to select them. So it's a process. I need 64 applications for every job that we hire.

I love that you have that figured out into your conversion rate to hire, right? Like we talk about so many numbers in our business. Technically, I need 64 applications to find that one person that I'm going to hire. And honestly, that's realistic, right? Like we think, okay, if I'm going to put my ad out there, I'm going to get 3 applicants and I'm going to find the winner. Right? That's not reality. And I kind of went through the same thing with my blow dry bar recently. I'd put my ad on Indeed and I was just getting really not good applicants in the beginning and I had to stick it out and I had to wait and I had to be understaffed for a little bit because you don't want to just hire a bunch of people that are one, not qualified, they don't have a great attitude and they're just not a good fit for you and your company. And so it's better to really just hold off on hiring until that right person comes along. but don't give up on the process, right?

Yeah, I've learned that the hard way over the years. You really do need to do that higher slow, fire fast philosophy. It's really hard in the interview process cuz everybody's in their best mindset. They've got, this is the honeymoon phase, they're acting their best. And so my rule is if there's anything that I dislike about the interview, it's only gonna get worse. Once they get comfortable with me. And so I look on their best behaviors.

Yeah, they're on their best behavior in that interview, you hope at least. So yeah, you've got to really find— and so much for me, and I talked about this with Emily a couple weeks ago, is finding the right attitude, right? Don't you, don't you feel that way? Because I think we can teach them anything. We can teach them how to pack a box, we can teach them how to answer customer service, we can teach them how to do the things on the back end of our business that we need help with, but someone's attitude, that's not teachable. And I think that that's where we have to start when we are in this hiring process.

Yeah, culture and work ethic. I hire specifically for those more than anything else.

Okay, so we're challenged with hiring. We've talked through a little bit of that. I want to just start by saying, let's talk about the growth between then and now. So you've almost tripled your subscriber numbers since we last talked in 2022. Well, let's just have a little pause applause, a little golf clap to celebrate it. I don't think we celebrate that enough. And when you think about tripling your business from a few years ago, walk through that journey for me. How did that happen? Everybody's like, their ears are perked up. They're like, I want to grow my business. How the heck did Jane grow her business like that?

The number one secret I would say is using live video. I think that really, really helped, not necessarily to grow my audience, but to have my audience trust me. And so what I've found is that when the audience knows, likes, and trusts me, it doesn't matter what I'm recommending, they're more likely to buy it. And that made a huge difference because I'm, I'm selling the same products. I'm selling them the same way. It's the same words. I'm the same person, but because they know me, they're more likely to buy from me. And we saw a huge uptick when we started going live.

Okay. And so before, were you doing lives at all or tell me what changed with the live video.

I started doing lives, I think in 2023. So I wasn't doing them when we talked last and now I go live 2, 3 times a week.

2. Okay. That's what else I was going to ask you. Tell me what your live strategy is.

Okay.

So before, I mean, heck, we made it to 500 with no live videos. I was going to say, I was like, I don't remember you doing live videos before and I know I just talk about it way too much, but we start doing live videos. Tell me what, how did you start? Did you start doing that 2 or 3 times a week or did you just start like with once a week? Like tell me what this process looked like over the last 3 years, 2 years actually, right? Because you started in 2023, right?

Yeah, it's been about a year and a half now.

Okay.

Yeah, I started with just once a week. I went live on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, which I've now removed Instagram from my live schedule. And I would go live just every Thursday. I called it my live weekly plan and peek. And I realized setting a schedule made more people show up because they knew when to find me. And so I just made that commitment and I really don't like breaking appointments. So by making that like an appointment with my customers, like we're going to do this, I was more likely to show up even if I got nauseous and wanted to throw up. I still showed up and I still did the things. And then. Uh, we added a training program where I go live and I teach them about how to use their planners more effectively. And so I do that on Mondays. And then shortly after that, we started adding a live just for subscribers. So I have a special subscribers-only Facebook group now, and I'll go live once, once or twice a month in there and show them the box. I show them things about the box. I teach them how to use the items. And so Okay.

So let me break this down for everybody listening, because here's what I'm hearing Jane say, and this is so true for me too. And I think it's really, really important for you to grasp. She had a schedule and she went live a certain day and a certain time. And each one of those days and times had a certain purpose. So when we get in our head about going live, what am I going to talk about? What am I going to say? She already knew what she was going to talk about. Right? On Thursday, she went live to do the planning, right? She did your weekly planning live with them. Super easy to do, having conversations. She was going live and planning. On Monday, she started going live and teaching. So that was different. She was teaching them how to use the planners in a certain way. And so having those dedicated days and time, number one, that helps you with consistency. Number two, knowing exactly what that live is around. You may not have the content figured out, like, okay, what am I going what am I gonna plan this week? Or what am I gonna teach this week? You're gonna teach something and that allows you to show up and put something together and go live and just connect with people. So if you are struggling with your live schedule right now, it's because you either don't have a dedicated time and day or you don't have a dedicated purpose for that live. And that's what we have to figure out. And it seems so simple, but that's how we get consistent is having a plan for what we're doing, why we're doing it, and when we're doing it. And if you can just lay out some structure like that. You don't have to have it all figured out. I know on Thursday I'm gonna go live and I'm gonna sell some things. It's Tuesday right now that I'm recording this, and I don't know exactly what I'm gonna sell yet on Thursday, but I'll figure that out tomorrow and I'll go live and I'll sell the things. And so as long as you have that structure set in place, you're, you are 10 times likely more likely to make it happen than when you're just being all loosey-goosey and like, I might go live tomorrow, I don't know what I'm going to talk about, I don't know what I'm gonna do. And that really helps you set consistency in your business.

I have no idea what we're talking about on Thursday.

Same, same, we're in the same boat, but we're going to show up live, right? You're going to see both of us live on Thursday and we're going to talk about something and we're going to make sales and we're going to connect with our audience, and that's just how it's done. So number one, you said the difference in tripling your subscription has been lives. Tell me what else.

So Last year we did your training method on how to do the KingSumo giveaway that you, you talk about, and that grew us 300 subscribers in like 2 weeks. So that was huge.

That's amazing. Okay. So you gave away 3 of the same boxes or like a 3-month subscription?

Um, I think it was actually 3 boxes for 3 months. Like 3 different people?

3-month subscriptions.

Yeah.

And how did you market that? Because that's a question I got today inside the group. How do I market my giveaway? How did you market your KingSumo giveaway?

Uh, we have a pretty good email list, so I made sure to blast that constantly throughout the process. And we ran some Facebook and Instagram ads, just real basic stuff. You teach that in the training. I just followed whatever you did.

Okay, great. I love this. Okay.

And it worked.

300 subscribers from a free giveaway. Jane, do you know how many people tell me giveaways don't lead to buyers?

Well, you have to do something to collect those people too, right? So I got, I got over 1,000 new people on my email list as well from that. Yeah. So, okay.

We did lives. We did a giveaway. What else did we do?

We do a lot of. FOMO in my business. You'll hear that pretty much throughout my, my target audience is very much moved by the idea that she can't get something that makes her want it more. And so I close down the box a few times a year. I don't let new people in. I open a waitlist and I warn them because like October to December, you don't get in. If I don't have a spot, you're— that's it. And that makes people join the second there's a spot open. So that was really big. And then let's see, I try to have really cool items in the box, like some sort of really big fluffy item. Like the bigger the item, the easier it is to hold it up and be like, look at how cool this thing is.

It's that perceived value, right? It's the perceived value because I talk about this often, like this little bracelet set right here that I have. I take it off so it doesn't clank while I'm podcasting, but my bracelet set cost the same amount, actually more, than this cute tumbler. But when I show up with this big old tumbler in my box that fills my box, the perceived value of this is higher than the bracelet set. And that's what we have to think about. Things that are small typically have a lower perceived value, and they're not as flashy, they're not as showy, right? So tell me some of the things that have been in your box that have had a really high perceived value or have been some of your subscriber favorites?

For the anniversary box, the one that we grew the 300 subscribers, we gave them a courier bag that you could put your planner in. That was over $100 value. So that was really huge. I had to buy a special box that was twice as deep to put that. And so just holding up the box got me subscribers because they're like, wow, that's a huge box. That must be awesome. So that was, that was really big. I gave them a customized water bottle. Last year that was engraved. And so that was really cool. We do journals and I give them a cashmere scarf at Christmas. I gave them a baseball cap, I think, or a beanie, big fluffy items. If there's only tiny items in the box, I'm going to see cancels. I'm going to see people leaving.

I see the same thing and I have to catch myself when I'm curating the boxes because I think everything goes together great. but then I'm like, wait a minute, these items are small. I've got to swap something out because I need the wow factor when they open that box. Right. Okay. So you just mentioned the word anniversary box. Okay. So talk to me about your anniversary box.

So once a year I make a big fuss out of that box. It's got the highest perceived value of any of the boxes. They all pretty much maintain a pretty good value, but that one, because I use this really big fluffy item, has a better value. And that's the one we push. I put a little bit more effort into that box. I give them a couple extra items. It, I think it cost me an extra $6 over the normal box. And that's not a huge amount when that box is $79.

And that's going to all your subscribers, right? This isn't a one-time box. This is, this is the box that goes out that month on the anniversary month, right?

Yes. Yeah. It's the normal subscription box.

I've got to feel like this is a great way to, uh, help your retention. Like if I know what, what month is your anniversary month?

September's box.

I know every September is the big anniversary special box. Right. And so if I'm, maybe I'm in July and I'm like, ah, I think I'm done with all my planner stuff. I'm going to go ahead. Nope. The anniversary box is coming in September. I'm going to hold out for the anniversary box. And then I get the anniversary box and I love it so much. And I'm like, well, why would I ever want to leave this subscription? I'm just going to stay longer. And then 6 or 8 more months rolls around and then you're like, well, maybe I should cancel now. Nope. The anniversary box is coming. I'm going to stay for the anniversary box. I think it's such a cool retention tactic that everybody could really put in place in their business, because when you look at $6 extra, for product costs for that box, you think about how much money we spend to acquire customers with our Facebook ads. And it's really, you're really not only acquiring new customers for that $6, but you're retaining a lot of your customers for that extra $6. So I think it's a super big win for you.

We noticed that about the March box, they start to drop off. That's when it starts to dip again. Like they last about 6, 7 months and then we start losing people. And so we try to put a fairly large item, usually in the March or April box to keep them retained. It's not usually as big as that anniversary item, but something bigger to like hook them for another 6 months.

Yeah, I love this. I love this so much. Now there's another thing that you did in September that I want to talk about a little bit because it was really big and we've talked about it a little bit because you're in my mastermind and you've shared it with all the ladies in there. But I want to talk about your anniversary sale. Because also in September you're prepping for your big anniversary sale. Talk to us a little bit about what that is.

So we release the most amount of products that we're going to release at any one time during the anniversary. We usually call it an event because it's so big. It's so much going into it. And so it's got freebies and there's usually a giveaway going on. We've got a discount, there's new products, we've got mystery kits. Like it's a, it's a whole shebang.

And so you're doing that all the whole month of September as well?

One weekend.

One weekend in September. Now, is this after the anniversary box goes out, or is this before the anniversary box goes out?

Technically, the anniversary box ships first. It's usually— we usually hold the anniversary event the end of August or the beginning of September, depending on when I have a free weekend that falls appropriately. Sometimes it's Labor Day weekend. It just depends.

Okay. And so then we're doing the big anniversary sale afterwards. Talk to me about what subscription box owners could do, because I know there's some specific tactics that you use to clear some inventory in this. Tell me about some of those that worked really well for you.

I mean, mystery kits are huge. They sell out in like 30 seconds now. It's crazy. I can have 500 mystery kits and they'll be gone in 30 to 60 seconds when I release them. So those are usually about 12 to 15 kind of random products I have left over from subscription boxes or clearance items where I didn't have enough left to put in the shop. Sometimes there's some samples, they're just excess product. And so I just grab those and I look at the value and I cut it in half. So if I would have sold it for $60, I put it in my shop for $30 and they don't get to know what's in it. Absolutely no idea. I don't tell them. I might list the types of items that are going to be in the box, but there's no preview. And those are huge. And we do those twice a year.

Are they all the same price point, or do you have a couple different price points with those?

Uh, usually they're all the same price point. We try to put about the same value in every, every one of them.

And what's, what's a good price point for a mystery box for you?

We started at $19, then we went to $24, and now I think we're up to $39, and they still sell out.

Okay, so that's a little bit cheaper than your subscription box then. So they're just like, let me grab that, I'll take that all day long. It's about half the price of your subscription box, right?

Yeah.

What else was the big revenue generator during your anniversary sale? Give them one more idea while they're thinking about this.

So we have a limited number of products and I usually buy enough to hopefully last the whole weekend, but that's about it. I don't buy enough to go months and months and months. And I tell them that ahead of time. I tell them I hopefully bought enough, but they might sell out and I won't be able to restock for like 6 months or a year. So if you want this thing, you better come get it. This time we released some new leather colors, disc colors, things like that. And those also sold out, most of them in the first couple minutes. It was insane. I had so many angry customers.

And were these like discontinued items or discounted items, or were these full price items that were just customer special?

They were full price, brand new, launched in my shop.

Okay. So these were brand new items, exclusive colors. And so you were building excitement on that kind of thing too. So not only were you liquidating older inventory, but you were introducing new inventory and really building up excitement for them.

Yeah, we usually do a pretty good markdown to our clearance section before this as well. And so those— that moves a lot of inventory. But yeah, we do about a 2-week lead. Up to any of these events and I, I do something every single day to get them excited about the event coming up. I put cards in regular orders about 3, 4 weeks before these events. So even if they ordered from me, it says, come back and shop. We really do a lot of hype. That FOMO that everything's going to go away, they're not going to be able to get it, has been the game changer.

Now let's go back to building our subscription, talk to me about things that have worked well for you. We talked about the lives, we talked about the giveaways, but as far as just logistics, hiring, fulfillment, shipping, what other things have changed for you over the last couple of years?

Well, you, you talked about how we have to hire ahead. That's absolutely true. I need to have the person 6 months before I need them because they need to be trained. I don't have time. To train them while we're behind. So we always hire ahead and that, that's been really, really big. We now, I'm actually getting to the point where we hire a year ahead because we're growing so fast. I can't estimate where we're going to be in 6 months. So just in case, just in the last year, we separated from our warehouse. So now I have an office and a warehouse because I had too many employees to fit in my warehouse that needed desks. So that was a big deal.

And that really helps your mental capacity too, right? Like I know what it's like being ping in the middle of the warehouse and I'm lucky that I have an office in here, but there's still a lot going on all the time. And when you're that accessible, people need you all the time, right?

Yeah. I, I hired just so that I could have someone turn people away. I don't like being accessible anymore. It fills up my whole day and most of the time it's employees using me as a crutch so they don't have to make a decision. Not necessarily because they can't, but because they want me to take that stress from them. And by not being so accessible now that I'm, I'm in an office farther away, I've watched my employees grow. Yeah.

They're more independent without you. You're, you're the security blanket. It's just like when mom's there, we're gonna go ask mom, but when mom's not home, we're gonna figure out how to turn the oven on and cook our pizza, right? Like that's what happens in life and, and it's It's great. So I know you've had an incredible year in sales last year. Talk to me about what's on the horizon for 2025.

Um, so we grew 85% last year, which is at year 12 or whatever we're at, 11. I can't remember. I don't know what day it is. I make calendars and I don't know what day it is.

I make calendars. I need a sign. I need, we need to put it in your office. We need that on a sign somewhere, Jane.

Yeah. Between ordering ahead for the box, I'm designing 2016 calendars. I get so confused. I have to have dates everywhere. Uh, I realized at the end of the year that I was making sales just to make sales without any real reason why I was growing so fast. And so we've kind of actually calmed down a little this year. We're still at about 56% growth over last year, which is crazy, but I feel like I'm on kick it mode compared to last year. And what do you mean by that? So like last year it was just shove content at them, send emails, throw whatever out and see what sticks, like spaghetti at the wall. And now I'm taking the time to kind of do some infrastructure. I'm making sure that my operations are more solid. My— I have SOPs for my team. They know what they're supposed to do. We're doing regular reviews now, that kind of stuff. But we also have a strategy of why are we doing what we're doing? Why, why are we trying to make this level of sales? And I make sure to I take my weekends off.

Yeah, it's important because we could, we could work all day every day. Let's be honest, everybody listening here could work in their business all day every day, and sometimes we do for many years. But then it hits us like, we're tired, we're tired, Jane. A lot— we've got kids, life is passing us by. And now that we have the ability to hire people to do some of the jobs for us That doesn't mean that we should do more in other areas. It means we should take a break. And a lot of us don't because we're workaholics and it's a hard habit to break. But I love that you're taking weekends. I'm taking weekends too.

Yeah, I actually take my vacations. I went to Hawaii last year. I had never done that kind of thing with my family. So that was a really big win to get away from the shop for 9 whole days.

I love that. Okay. Let's, Let's wrap this up in a way as if you were speaking to maybe that subscription box owner that is maybe in the 300 to 500 box range. They're growing, they're having challenges with hiring, they're not knowing what's next to come. What advice would you give someone at that stage?

I wish I had thought about at each level. So like when you hit 500 subscribers, when you hit 750 subscribers, like there are these levels that you go along. These vendors that you use regularly might be willing to negotiate lower rates on the products you've been shipping, but they won't do it automatically. They're just going to keep quoting you. If they quoted you $2 a unit before, they're going to keep doing that. And so if you say, well, now I'm over, you know, this number, can you go any lower? They usually say yes. So that was really, really big. The other thing I learned is that people are not making decisions based on money most of the time. It's, it's something else. So it could be, it could be your marketing. It could be the way you're presenting the value, the photos, that kind of thing. The price of your items, the price of your box is secondary to all of that. So I don't like when people default to, oh, my, my box is expensive. So that's why they're not subscribing. I'm the highest subscription box of my market and I still, we have 1,300 subscribers.

So You're killing it.

It's not the price.

And we have this discussion a lot too. Like every time I walk onto a plane, Jane, first class is full every single time. There's not ever been a time where there has been empty seats in first class. There will always be someone willing to spend the money. We just have to find them, right?

Yeah. It, it just comes down to showing them that they need whatever you're offering. I mean, there's people selling $1,000 bottles of perfume and purses. Like, if people are buying those, they're going to buy my $80 planner items that I have put my heart and soul into. So it's never about the price.

I love that. We're going to end it right there, Jane. If I need a planner in my life, if I need some planner covers, some planner pages, some planner goodness, where can I find you?

More at janesagenda.com.

Thanks, Jane. I hope in 2 more years we're just talking about how you tripled again right here on the Launch Your Box podcast. We'll be back next week with another great episode. Thanks for joining us on the Launch Your Box podcast. If you're looking to grow your audience, head over to launchyourbox.com and grab the 10 steps to help you start building your Audience Guide. It's packed with practical tips to help you connect with your future subscribers. Until next time, keep launching and growing on your subscription box journey.