3 Lessons I Learned From My Box Launch Last Month

Good morning. Happy Monday. It's so good to be back with you guys today. I've been gone for like 2 weeks. It feels like forever since I've been here on a Monday hanging out with you. But today we're going to talk about 3 lessons, 3 big picture lessons that I learned from my subscription box launch last month. And I think, I think it's important for us to talk about if you have just launched let's reframe things a little bit. If you're getting ready to launch, I want you to think about some things. So let's talk about it. Let me know in the chat when your next launch is. Are you launching for the first time or are you relaunching? So I would love to— let me know in the chat that you're here. Now, I've been gone for 2 weeks for 2 reasons. Number 1, I was in the middle of my launch and I got sick. I, and I'm still kind of have a few of the effects of that, but I was trying to save my voice for my lives. And so that was the reason that I didn't do a live 2 weeks ago on Monday morning. It was, it was like day 4 of my launch and I was just trying to save my voice. And then last week I was out in San Francisco and I've been a part of a mastermind for 5 and a half years now, um, with my mentor Stu McLaren. And so I was out with all of those, um, people for our mastermind in San Francisco last week. And, you know, on the West Coast it's 7 AM, so I just wasn't quite all the way together to go live at 7 AM, so I skipped last week. Um, can we get a shout out to everybody that's on the West Coast that shows up regularly for my Monday morning lives because it's early out there. So I appreciate you showing up for me. Good morning, everybody. So the question this morning in the chat is, when is your next launch and is that a relaunch? So just say relaunch and give me your date, or is it your first launch and give me a date? But let's dig into it. Good morning, everybody. I see my YouTubers are here now. Just remember, If you're on Facebook, I'm normally streaming inside my paid groups. And with the changes on Facebook, I am not doing that on Monday. So you have to come find me. Hopefully the team has shared it into the group so you can find it easily. If not, Jen, will you go ahead and just share this live into Launch Your Box and Scale Your Box so they can find me this morning? Let me come over to the chat and say hi. I could see Andrea's here. Good morning. Hey, Chris. Good morning, Vicki. Good morning, everybody. Hey, Denise. Good morning, Tabitha. Good morning, Jonica. Good to see you. It's hard because I don't know your names when you put your business names here, so you'll have to let me know. I can see that Chris is having her very first launch on July 1st. It's got to be really exciting. You've got some good time from now until then to really make some progress. So I think this live will be a little bit helpful for you because you're going to really get some insights from me. Denise is launching June 3rd. That's right around the corner. Corner. Um, good morning. Okay, good, Jen's on it. She said I shared it. Um, good morning everybody. Okay, so let's talk about it. I've got 3 big picture things and I, and I want you to think about these things. Okay, so anytime that I am launching, I give you guys kind of the first really behind the scenes look at what I'm doing. And so, um, Sometimes it puts me in a vulnerable position because a lot of you are watching me launch. What happens if I have a cruddy launch? What happens if things don't go as planned? I got sick during my launch and I was pretty sick all the way through my launch. But here's, here's number one, and I think this is really important for anyone about to launch, anyone sitting there thinking about launching and just, this is a big uncertainty for people right now. And my number one lesson learned with this launch is that people are buying, okay? People are buying. We've gone through a rough couple of years with our economy. We're in an election year this year. And, and so what I want you to understand is that people are buying. I had a 5-day launch and I sold 421 subscriptions in 5 days. Now here's the thing. The thing about it is, is that there's nothing in my subscription that's a need. Nothing in my subscription is a need. It's purely a want. Okay, a lot of you have subscription boxes that are purely a want. And so nothing in there is a need for anyone. Okay, so to have 421 new subscriptions in 5 days showed me a lot. It showed me that people are buying. And you know why people are buying? Because they wanna feel connected to your why. I really leaned into why I started my subscription and why I continue my subscription. Who's it for? Why did I start it? Why do I show up and keep delivering? Why do I, after 7, 8 years, continue to curate these boxes? What is it about that? And so I really leaned into the feelings of having someone being a subscriber. It's not about the stuff. And I say this a lot, but it truly is not about the stuff. It's about these women feeling worthy enough to give themselves something. It's about feeling good when you walk out the door every single day. And if my box my t-shirts, my accessories, my things can do that for you. I really leaned into that emotional connection that you have— I have with my subscribers. And so I want you to think about that. I can see people are saying Facebook's all wonky. I don't know what's going on. I can see a few people are here on Facebook. So just— I'm glad you're on. I'm glad you found me on YouTube. Of course, there'll be a replay over on YouTube, but Number one, people are buying. So I want you to get out of this mindset that our economy is bad. I can't launch my subscription box. I don't think anybody's going to buy it. It's purely a want. Nobody needs it. It's not the right time. It's kind of like being a parent. It's never like you're never prepared enough. It never feels like it's the right time to have a baby. And this is just my experience. But you have a baby and you figure out how to be a mom. You have a baby and you figure out all the new expenses in your life. You have a baby and you figure out life with another person. It's kind of like a subscription box. You launch it and you figure it out. There is never the perfect month. There is never the perfect year. There's never the perfect economy to start a business. People are buying. And, and I was proof of that, and I love that I could prove that for you. So if you've been sitting there scared to launch because you're feeling like the economy is really uncertain, you have— your feelings are valid because I'm going to tell you, I felt all those feels too. Gas is at an all-time high. Groceries are so freaking expensive. Everything costs more than it did a few years ago. Truth. But that doesn't stop people from buying what they want. Something they feel connected to. And that's what happened during my launch last month. So I want you to take that block that's in your head and I want you to remove it. I just want you to remove it. People are buying. Stop telling yourself the economy is bad and nobody's buying because that is false. I proved it in 5 days. I got 421 new subscriptions. People are buying. So that's number 1. Let's remove that fear. Let's remove that mindset and just know people are buying. Okay, number 2— this was a huge eye-opener for me. Number 2 was— and I, and I'm gonna reframe this for anyone that's not currently doing this— I'm going to show you why you should do this. Okay, it's not about lives. You probably think I'm gonna tell you to go live. I want you to do that, but that's not what this is about. Number 2, you need paid ads. Let me know in the chat if you've never run an ad, a paid ad, before. Just say, I've never run an ad, in the chat. Let me tell you, I had over 11,000 hits to my sales page during my 5 days. Okay, I had 11,000 people click on my sales page in 5 days. Over 9,000 of those clicks came from my Facebook ads. 82% of my traffic during those 5 days came from my ads. 9,000 of my 11,000 hits on my sales page came from my Facebook ads. What do you think my results would have been if I wasn't running ads for that launch? 82% of my traffic came from my ads. And I want that to be an eye-opener for you. I want it to shock you. I want you to say, oh my gosh, I've been doing all of this and if I would just run some ads, I could get so much more traction. 82%. I'm gonna run, I'm gonna, I've got another number for you. Hang on just a second, I'm gonna do the math really quickly. 82% of my traffic came from my ads. 45% of my sales came from my ads. So if I would have not had my Facebook ads during this launch, I would have had 189 less subscriptions, which at the end of the day would be almost half, a little less than half. I wouldn't have had the results if I wouldn't have had the ads. So if you are not running paid ads in any capacity, here's your wake-up call. We got to get visible. We got to get in front of people. We can do a lot organically, and I did a lot organically, but I wouldn't— I would have done half if I wouldn't have run ads. I wouldn't have had 9,000 clicks on my sales page. I, I would have had 2,000 instead of 11,000. Because 9,000 of them came from my ads. So we got to be real with ourselves and say, yeah, we can— I can build my business organically and I've done a great job of that over the years. But we got to be honest with ourselves. We know that social media gets this much traction, right? We know we can send email to our list and that gives us more traction than social media. I sent texts out That gave me some traction. But those ads, those ads, game changer for my launch. And if we're not doing that right now, we need to wake up. We need to get a budget. We need to start running ads for our business so that when we go into launch, our ad data is primed and ready to find our perfect person. Okay, and there's some questions here. What was your daily ad spend? How many ads? I'm gonna do a full launch debrief inside Launch Your Box next week, and I'm gonna uncover all of it for our members. Okay, you're getting my 3 lessons today, but I'm gonna deep dive into all of those questions next week inside Launch Your Box. Okay, um, So number 2, you need paid ads. And if you've been fighting it, if you've been resisting it, if you've been telling yourself, I can't afford it, you can't afford not to. We need those. We need an advertising budget in our business. If we're not putting money aside for advertising, we're literally not a legit business. We're a hobby business. We're just playing around. Every business has an advertising budget. Do you? And if you don't, you need to take a deep look at your business budget. Every business needs ads. We see commercials, we see billboards, we see flyers, we see newspaper ads. Facebook ads helps us find the right person. I'm gonna talk about my ads next week inside Launch Your Box. I'm gonna talk about what ads, what ads were working the best, what I did in mid-launch when I realized what ads were performing, and then how my adjustments performed. I'm gonna talk about my acquisition cost. I'm gonna talk about my ad spend. I'm gonna break it all down for you next week inside Launch Your Box. We need ads. Number 2, you need paid ads. So if you are new to business and you haven't quite launched yet, we can think about ads in the form of lead magnets. We can think of ads as form as like a page-like ad. That's the perfect one for you guys to start when you're brand new in business. And I have a whole training lesson on how to do that inside the training library inside Launch Your Box. Let's start with some ads. We got to get comfortable spending some money and seeing some results. So that when we go into launch, we have, we have a history of like, if I spend this, I get this. And that will help us. And I'm not asking you to spend tens of thousands of dollars. I'm asking you to set a budget, whether that's $100 or $300 or $500 or $1,000. We have to start somewhere and we have to start building our ad data inside our Ads Manager. Okay, number 1, people are buying in this economy. Stop telling yourself it's, it's too bad of an economy to start a business. Not true. Number 2, you need paid ads. 82% of all the traffic that went to my sales page came from an ad. Number 3, exclusivity and scarcity will do more for you than you think. And this is something that I've had to take a hard look at myself. But stop making everything so available. We do this because we think that we're giving. Well, what if they just want a one-time box? Well, what if I just order some more and then I have some extra so people can buy them? Well, they don't, they don't really want a subscription, but I want to be able to sell to them. We tell ourselves this all the time. I'm making it easier for them. I want the sale no matter what. Limited quantities, exclusive items, sold-out launches— it works. It works time and time again. And I've been guilty of making things too available. I've had my cart open for a while, I've had extras of everything, and I gotta pull back on that. We have to stop giving everybody what they want. There's no reason to be a subscriber. If I can go buy that box one-off, yeah, it might cost me $5, $10 more, but I don't have a commitment. I'm not making a commitment, and that's fine by me. Stop making everything so available. I've had a bad habit of having extras. I'm about to stop it cold in my tracks because there's no reason for someone to be a subscriber right now. But when they see this cute item that's coming out in the next box and they realize they can't get it after the fact, it gives them a reason. It— they stay. Do you know that my retention on my subscription box, the average retention is 18 months? Once I get them in, on average, my subscribers stay 18 months. Scarcity, exclusivity. Stop making it so available. And I'm taking my own advice. I'm taking my own advice with Launch Your Box too. I just told the team last week on Friday, we are closing Launch Your Box next month. It's too available. There's no reason for someone to sign up right now. It's too available. They can come anytime they want to. They can leave, they can come back, they can— no, we're not doing that anymore. I'm not going to be as available as I used to be. I have to give people a reason to buy, a reason to stick with it, and a reason to keep going. If it's too available and they can, oh, I'll put that off— think about, think about this. I buy a lot online. I, um, I buy a lot, a lot of like jeans and shorts and skirts because it's something I don't sell, um, online. So I'll see ads. Ads will get me every time. There was a skirt that I wanted and I was looking at it, and I, I've lost some weight, so I'm trying to figure out what size I need because that's been changing over the last several months. So I went to the measurements, and I know what my measurements are because that's how I have to buy clothes right now. And I put it in my cart, and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna wait a few more weeks, um, because, you know, I'm kind of in between sizes right now. I don't want to get it too small, but I also, if I lose a little bit more weight, I don't want to get it too big. I'm just going to wait on it. You think I ever went back and bought that skirt? No. No. If it is available to me at any time, no. And so we have to create this urgency with our buyers, or they'll be like, oh, I'll sign up next month. Oh, I'll sign up, you know, in a couple months when finances are better. Finances are never better, by the way. Hello. So if we know those behaviors, because you guys are telling me in the comments, yeah, I do the same thing, me too. Yeah, if we know that, if we know those are the behaviors of people like us, we got to give them a reason to sign up right now. We have to give them a deadline. We can't make it accessible. They cannot buy a one-off box. We have to make it exclusive and scarce. And I'm going to do the same thing with Launch Your Box. Next month. We have subscription box week coming. It's a revamped coaching week in June and save the date for that. That starts June 23rd. But after that, I'm closing the doors. You can't just come and go as you please anymore. And so I'm— that's the thing that we've got to do. And these were really big lessons for me as I was launching. And they're lessons for me in both of my businesses. They're lessons for me in the subscription box. People are buying. Launcher box. People want to start a business. People will buy your program. Okay, so people are buying. Let's get out of this mentality that the economy sucks right now. People are buying if they feel connected to you. So how can you create that connection? For me, during the launch, I was live every day. I sent emails every day. I did the Post-it note wall and people got to see their names. They felt connected to that. We were talking about where people were from one night when I was putting out Post-its and, and, and I was creating this connection with them. People are buying, so get that out of your head. You need paid ads, and I know it can be scary if you've never run paid ads before, but you need to start somewhere. I think when I very first started ads, I had a budget of $300 a month. I did. It was $10 a day, and I started there. And once I started to see results from that, it made me feel comfortable to go to $20 a day, okay? And then $50 a day. And so I want you to start somewhere. Take a look at your budget, figure out what you can afford in your business. We've got to have an advertising budget. We got to get started. We got to get visible. We— people have to know about our subscription box in order to buy it. 189 subscriptions were sold on that Facebook on my Facebook ads alone. Do you know what kind of recurring revenue that is for me? Worth it. And then number 3, exclusivity, exclusivity and scarcity. Let's remove the mindset that we have to be available in a bunch of different ways for different people's needs. Okay, we've got to remove that part of our thinking too. Well, if they don't want the subscription, maybe they'll buy a one-time box. Well, if they don't want the subscription, maybe they want this item from the box. I'll order extras. Subscription or nothing. That's what we're selling, and that's how we're going to drive people into our businesses. So I want you to think about those things. I want you to just lock in on those things because they're really great for anybody relaunching or launching. Okay, stop thinking you have to please everybody. This is your business. There's a quote from one of the guys in my mastermind that I was just at in San Fran. He says, your house, your rules. Your house, your rules. This is your business, your rules. Stop trying to be available for everybody and everything. I saw it last month when I did the sales page reviews in the group. You guys know if you, if you watch that, we're giving them too many options. We're giving them too many options. We should be guiding that customer purchase. We should be guiding that customer journey. Okay, we're, we're giving them choose-your-own-adventure journeys, right? Like, come in, you can go this way or this way or this way or this way. And then we're mad at ourselves when our subscription is not growing because we gave them too many options. If we give too many options, number one, they feel decision overwhelm, like, well, crap, do I want to just get one? Do I want to do it monthly? Do I want to sign up for the whole year? Do I want to do the 6-month plan? I don't know. Now I don't know. When I came there to sign up for your subscription, Okay, don't let them choose their own adventure. We've got to guide that, and it's just a gentle guide. Hey, you're gonna love our subscription, sign up here monthly, period. And then there's no decision that has to be made. There's no bounce, there's no I gotta think about it, there's no I gotta come back, I'm not sure what kind of commitment level I want to make with the— with— when they came there to purchase and then we just They came there to purchase and we just gave them a buffet, and now we got to figure out what they want to eat. They came for the steak, but now I've got steak and chicken and whatever else. I got all these— I got shrimp, I got crab legs. Now I don't know what to eat. I came for the steak, now I got too many options. Okay, so I want you to really think about these things. Write them down. Number 1, people are buying. Number 2, you need paid ads. And number 3, exclusivity and scarcity wins every time. You're the steak, baby. Be the steak. Okay, all right, let's get going. And for a full launch debrief Um, I'll see you in Launcher Box next week and we'll go through everything and you can ask me anything. All right, all right, y'all have a great week. I'll see you soon.