5 Healthy Habits For Your Subscription Box Business This Year

that's not real, that doesn't exist, that's fluff, blah blah blah. But I think when you enter anything that's new, you get a fresh start, right? Like, you get to leave your baggage behind. And that could be a new day, that could be a new week, that could be a new month, that could be a new year. Like, anything, it kind of just gives you a reset. Like, we're waking up today, it's a new day. What can I do in my business to really create consistency and some growth and really stabilize my business. Because it's not a get-rich-quick scheme. Like, building our businesses is not an instant success. It takes time, it takes patience, it takes consistency, it takes pushing back through, pushing through all the hard moments. There's going to be hurdles that pop up in front of you sometimes every day, sometimes every week, sometimes literally every month. There's going to be hurdles. And it's how we get over those hurdles that makes or breaks us in, in our entrepreneurship. Some of you are going to jump high and go right over the hurdles and keep on pushing and you're not going to think anything about it. Some of us can't get up that high. We might push the hurdle over, we might stumble, we might get bruised, we might come back with, you know, scabs from it. But if we keep going and we fight through that, we're going to get over the next hurdle that much better. Okay. So really what I want to talk about today is I've got 5 things that are really just healthy every day, every week habits to build into our business this year so that we can maintain some consistency and continue to experience growth. Or if we had a hard year last year and we haven't experienced growth, this could be the turning point. There's, there's a lot of people that will tell you, oh, we need to try this marketing and we need to do this campaign and we need to do this one thing. This will change your business. It's not about the next shiny object. It's not about the one thing that's going to make you rich. It's not about the one thing that's going to get finally get your business off the ground. It's not about going viral. It's not about, you know, giving a discount. It's what you do every single day that matters. You can't do these things once and forget about them for months. So this is what we're going to do. I want you to grab your notebooks, grab some Post-it notes, whatever it is that you take notes on. Because I really want you to take time to build these 5 habits into your business this year. And if we can do that and we can continue to maintain these 5 habits— and I say habits because when you do them consistently, it just becomes routine. It becomes a habit. It's like, you know, getting up and walking the dog, getting up and making my coffee. I do it every morning. It's a habit. If we can take these things and stop looking at them as like drudgery, as like, oh God, I got to do that again. No, I got to get up, I got to do my thing, and then I'm going to move on my day. That's what we need. And when we look at them as a healthy habit for a healthy business, for a stable revenue stream coming in, then it doesn't look like work. It doesn't look like I have to do this today. Oh, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of doing this. We need to do it and we need to get good at it and we need to get better at it. We need to get better and better at it and we need some consistency with it. And when you do that, it's like clockwork. It's like this morning, I didn't, I didn't say, hey team, let's plan on doing Monday Momentum this week on Tuesday. I woke up this morning and I have these thoughts and I'm like, hey, who's up? Who can go live with me? I want to do Monday Momentum today. It's a habit that I've created 2 years ago of going going live every Monday and talking to you guys and really giving you something to start your week off with. And I haven't the last 2 weeks because last Monday was Christmas and this Monday was New Year's. So I haven't done them. I'm out of my habit. I needed to get back into my routine today. And so that's what we're talking about. Are you ready? Let's— I want to say hi to everybody in the chat. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Sarah. Good to see you. Hey, Rebecca. I see Antoinette's here. Good morning. If I can't see you, I just need you to give StreamYard permission. There's a little link, probably because you're in one of the groups. You're either in Launch Your Box or Scale Your Box. If I can't see you, I see Carrie's here. Good morning, Stephanie. Hey, Jonica. Good to see you. I see Andrea is joining us on YouTube this morning. Good morning, Sam. Look at that book in the background. That book. It's been a great— it's been a great year. I got— I got the Inc. 5000 award over here. I got my brand new book that launched over here. Like, you know what? We're just winning at life right now. We're just winning. Okay. And I'm going to bring more of those healthy habits that got me on the Inc. 5000 and got me a book deal into this new year. Okay. Because it's nothing that I did. I didn't go do something crazy. I didn't go do something wild. It was that consistency, right? That consistency got my subscription box business on the freaking Inc. 5000 as one of the fastest growing companies in America. I didn't do anything different this year than I've been doing, but that consistency with that business got me not only on the Inc. 5000, but in the top 32% of the Inc. 5000 list. Okay. This book deal. I didn't go looking for a book deal. I didn't want to write a book. I had no desire to write a book. But the way I was showing up, the consistency that I had was that of showing up caught someone's attention. And that's how I got a book deal. All right. So let's, let's dig into it. Are you all ready? Okay. Number 1. We're gonna be talking about this all year long. Email marketing. You have to create some healthy habits with your email marketing, all right? We have to be consistent at it. We've gotta have weekly campaigns going out to our list. We need to have segmented lists. We need to be engaging that list, and we also need to be building that list, okay? So if that is something that we have been inconsistent with in the past, we stop now. You sit down and you create your January email promotion plan, okay? It's that simple. We have to get consistent with building a list, nurturing a list, and selling to that list regularly, okay? Email marketing, we are going to focus on email marketing this year inside Launch Your Box like never before because it's proven itself to me over and over and over. I call my email my ATM. Type in the copy and the graphics, out comes money. Your email list is your ATM in your business. And if you are not creating a healthy habit with your email list, it's time to start now. And I'm going to help you. I'm going to help you all year long. I'm going to help. I'm going to create swipe files. I'm going to give you promotions that you can run to your emails. I even got a blog that I think every, everyone, no matter if you're in Launch Your Box or not, can go look at this blog. But if you're a member of Launch Your Box, you are going to get so much training about how to build your list and what to do with that list this year. But I got a blog that I think everybody needs to check out. Okay, 5 emails to send every month. Every subscription box owner should send every month. That's 5 emails. If you just take these 5 emails that I am giving you and you, and you made them every month, you're going to start with consistency. Okay? You're going to build habits. Our email marketing is our business ATM machine. I want you to remember that. And if you haven't been using your ATM machine, you're leaving money on the table. So we're going to build our list, we're going to nurture our list, and we're going to sell to our list this year nonstop. And if you're a member of Launch Your Box or Scale Your Box, you're going to hear me talking about this over and over. So we're going to build in email marketing as our number one healthy habit this year. Okay, number 2, social media. I need you to erase this stigma in your brain that I don't like social media, I hate doing social media, I'm sick of social media. When we tell ourselves these negative things about social media, that's exactly how we're going to view it. You guys, I show my age when I say things like this, but I can remember when we didn't have social media. I was in college and our marketing classes were literally magazines, newspapers, billboards, radio, and television. We did not even— I was in college when Facebook came about. Do you even understand what you have available to you as a small business owner right now? Your social media is so powerful and we look at it as a negative. Oh, I got to go do some posts. Oh, I got to go do a video. Oh, I got to go do this. Do you know how many television commercials I have filmed? Do you know that I had a billboard at one time? Do you know how expensive that is? And you get no analytics, you get no data, you have no results from that. Social media is one of the best things that could have ever happened to small business owners, and yet we look at it as this thing we don't like to do. You got to stop talking negative. About social media. It is what you make of it. Amy says, I still have a billboard, what are you talking about? Social media is what you make it. So we're going to be social on social media. That's what it's for. That's why it's there. We're going to be social, we're going to let people know us, We're going to market. We're going to do all those things with social media. You may not love all of it, and that's fine. You don't have to love all of it. But I need you to figure out what you like about social media and lean into it. Okay? And it needs to stop being a negative thing in your mind. We're not talking about our subscription boxes enough. We don't, period. I could go audit probably anyone's social media right now, and I guarantee you're not talking about your subscription box enough. We should be talking about it every day. If we want it to be the main thing in our business, we have to make it the main thing in our business. We think everybody knows, everybody knows I got a subscription box, everybody knows it's available, everybody knows where to find it. No, we have to be excited about it. We have to keep putting it out there in different ways. We have to give that energy off on our social media that you want to be a part of what I got going on. But when we don't, they're like, oh yeah, there's that box thing that Sarah's talking about. We've got to get it out there. We've got to use social media for our benefit. And we have to quit looking at it as a negative. We've got to build healthy habits. I've got a training inside Launch Your Box members if you haven't gone through it, or maybe you just need a refresher. Maybe you just need that little inspiration, that spark. It's called Subscription Box Social Media. I've got 30 different ways to post about your subscription box in that module. I've got categories of you can do these types of posts, you can do these types of posts, and this is how you can talk about your subscription all month long without it being stale. Without you getting sick of saying the same thing. But we need to build those habits in, create a weekly template, get going, and let's start implementing. Okay, because you have no idea what the power of social media does for your business. And if you're not tapping into it, you again, you're leaving money on the table. We've got to really own social media, be social, and build a healthy habit around it. What does that look like for you? Scheduling posts, doing videos, going live? Like, what does that mean for you? And it can mean different things for different people, but we have to build a healthy habit around social media and get this negative talk about social media out of our head. We need it. That's how we're going to grow our business. Okay. Tricia says, how do we become a member? Go over to joinlyb— that's Launch Your Box— lyb.com. If you want to start the year off right, join us inside Launch Your Box. Come join us right now. We have a whole training library full of videos. You can start watching them. And then I'm there live every week giving training, giving resources, giving everything that you need to continue to build and market your business. I would love to have you, Tricia. All right, number 3, planning and curation. Planning and curation. You know, I was doing some one-on-one calls over the last couple of weeks, and I only do one-on-one calls for my masterminds, for my mastermind students, just so Um, you know, um, but I— even at their level, they're in my mastermind, they're making good money, they have lots of subscribers. Several of them expressed to me that they're not planned out very far. And when you're not planned out very far in your subscription box business, it creates a lot of stress and anxiety for you. And the goal— and I was there at one point. I was there maybe where I was a month or two ahead and it created so much anxiety for me not knowing. And I want you to really take this year and I want you to make sure you're 4 to 6 months out minimum on your planning. Do you know what your April box is? Do you know what your summer boxes are going to contain? Like, I want you to be so planned out in the future that it removes this stress and anxiety of what am I going to put in my box? What am I going to buy? What am I going to do? You don't have to purchase it all up front because sometimes we don't have the cash flow for that. But I want you to have that plan. I want it out on the wall. I want you looking at it. I want it in your Asana board, your Trello board, whatever you use for organization. I want you to really build a healthy habit into planning and curating those boxes further out than you are right now. Okay? Because that brings a level of stress and anxiety into your business that causes you to make decisions in panic mode. And when we make decisions in panic mode, we don't make the best decisions. Okay? We're spending too much because we don't have time to look anywhere. We don't have time to negotiate. I'm spending too much on freight because I've got to have it air flighted instead of getting it on a boat. I've done that too many times. I'm spending more on the product because I can't find anything else because I've waited till the last minute. Like, we're putting— we're losing profit when we aren't planned out for far enough. We're losing profit. Like, right now I'm, I'm planning fall and winter 2024. I should be planning January of 2025 right now, but I'm planning fall and winter of 2024 right now. So when I can make those decisions 6 to 8 months in advance, I know that it's going to be beneficial to my profit margin because I can ship it more economical. I can negotiate prices, look for different vendors. I, I can create those relationships because I have time. and I'm not in a crunch and I'm not stressed out and I'm not panic buying because I haven't spent the time. So number 3, we're going to build this healthy habit into our business with planning and curation. And I want everybody at least at a minimum 4 to 6 months out on their planning. Like, I want you to know what is in your subscription box 6 months out, where it's coming from, how many pieces you need, all the things when you need to place the order. I want you to know that we're not flying by the seat of our pants every month. Oh look, I'm not sure yet. We're gonna get planning and curation out. We're going to get a healthy habit. We're going to time block that in our calendar. Planning session, subscription box planning session, 1 hour every month. I can sit down and plan, and then I can make my to-do list. I need to order this, I need to get a color swatch for this, I need to do this, I need to get a sample made, whatever that is. I want you to time block that into your calendar so that we can get further out to calm the chaos. This is a healthy habit for your business. Number 4, hiring. In the chat, let me know if you were planning to hire this last year, but you still haven't. Or there's a hire you've been wanting to make but you haven't found the time to do that. Let me know, just put your little hand emoji up in the chat. We've got to continually hire, whether that's our very first hire or whether that's someone that's— we need a gap filled in our business. I did some hiring this year, some heavy hiring, some big hires this year in my business, and it was scary for me. Um, the salaries were scary for me because I had a scarcity mindset on what my business really was. Okay, you know, I think that we live in this kind of little imposter syndrome, and I know it's probably going to be weird for you to hear me say this, um, because you guys look at me differently. But I was a small business owner, sole proprietor, only person that worked for me for a very long time. Okay? I know where you're at. I was the person that checked you out at the register. I was the person that made your product. I was the person that shipped it. I was the person that took the trash out. I was the person that did the social media. I did everything. I loaded it into the website to sell it. Like, that was me. That was who I was. I did that for a very, very long time. And then when my business needs started to grow and I hired one employee and hired another employee, hired a VA, um, it really was hard for me because even this year when I was hiring some bigger hires, it's like I had the mindset that I was still the small business owner. We, we've hit over $10 million this year in our lifetime sales. And yet I still had this mindset of like, can I pay them that much? Can I afford this? And you can't afford not to hire. And even at, even at the beginning stage when I was the solo entrepreneur, It was scary for me to hire. I hired my first person before I was still giving myself a regular paycheck. Like, there would be months where I'd be like, oh sweet, I can make the car payment this month. Yes. Oh good, I can— we can go take a trip this weekend and I can cover that. Okay, so that was that. And for whatever reason, $10 million later, I still have this mindset that's tripping me up that, oh, I have a legit business. I have two legit businesses, but I'm still— something in me still feels like that solo entrepreneur, that it's okay, I can still do all the jobs. I, I, I have— I've hired people, they're doing a lot of things for me. I can still do this, but do I need to? And does that benefit my business? And is that healthy for me? One, as a person, and two, as a business owner? No, it's not. It's not healthy for my business because if I still doing— if I'm still doing all of these jobs, I can't see the bigger picture. I can't plan the curation and the planning further out. I can't see I can't be in the airplane overlooking where we're going. I'm still on the ground. And if I'm still on the ground, we're never going to get to that next destination because I can't see it because I'm so busy doing the groundwork. And if we continue to operate like that, we're going to stay on the ground. And I want you to fly. I want you to fly. We don't have to keep doing everything in our business. And I know if you're at the beginning stages and you're feeling like, well, Sarah, I'm not even making enough to really hire someone. I wasn't either. But it was something. It was panic for me when I made my first hire. I have to hire someone because I am not going to get these orders out on time. It was forced upon me to hire someone. But you know what? 8 years later, that person still works for me, and I've hired 15 more people and have a regular paycheck, and I'm living the good life. Because if I would have stayed that solo entrepreneur and never put— never challenged myself, never pushed myself out of that comfort zone, I was giving her a regular paycheck before I gave myself one. I would not be here today. That Inc. 5000 award for my subscription box business would have never, ever happened if I didn't push myself out of my comfort zone and make that first hire. That could be a VA 10 hours a week. That could be someone coming in and helping you in your shop 15 hours a week. It doesn't have to be like a full 40-hour-a-week salaried person. It starts with one. And when I hired that one person, And I saw how much more productive she made me and the business. It paid— she— that paid for herself instantly. The work she was doing paid her salary instantly. If you want to grow in this year, you need to hire. You're sitting there listening right now knowing You need to hire. You know you do, but something in your mind says, not yet, I'm not ready yet. You need to hire before you think you're ready. Promise me that you will, and I promise you that it's going to be the best thing you could have done for yourself because you're on the ground. We need to be in the sky. All right, number 4, the healthy habit for your business this year is hiring. All right, number 5, I talk about it a lot and I'm gonna keep talking about it. Commit to show up. How many people here are still afraid to show up for their business? It's okay. I was there. We've got to show up. We got to stop hiding behind closed doors. It's okay. It's okay. It's going to be messy. It's not going to be what you thought it was. It's not all glamorous. Wherever you're at, however you are, I want you to show up. It could be weekly lives. If you're not doing weekly lives, write that down. It could be once a month doing a box opening of your subscription box. If you're not consistently doing that once a month, let's start there. Baby step it. You can't just go all in. Like, I didn't just wake up one day and start going live every day. No, it freaked me out. No, it starts with one, and then you do it again, and you build that consistency and that healthy habit. It can start with a post of you. If you've never showed your picture on your social media before, take a picture today. Grab a stack of boxes, do something, share, share what you're doing. It can be behind the scenes. What are you working on today? Let's take some photos. Let's get people into our world. We've got to show up. And it's showing up for your audience. But honestly, it's showing up for yourself. Because when you can show up and you can do it consistently, it builds a confidence in you that is like nothing else you will experience. We need personal growth to have business growth. It's not separate, it's very much connected. I need you to commit to showing up. We have to build our know, like, and trust factor. And we're going to do that consistently and it's going to be a healthy habit for us this year. We're going to do it with email marketing. We're going to do it with social media. We're going to do it by showing up for ourselves and for our business. And we're going to stop hiding in the shadows. And I know it's hard and I know it's something you're going to have to push through, but we have to because your business deserves it. What we want for this year, we have to challenge ourselves to get there. We can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results. So we gotta push ourselves, we've got to challenge ourselves, we have to commit to ourselves. We want something different, we have to be different. If we want something more, we have to be more. If we want business growth, we have to have personal growth. Okay? If it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you. So we have to challenge ourselves this year. These are 5 healthy habits. Okay? We're going to work on them all year long inside Launch Your Box. We've got some new modules that we're going to be recording to help you with these 5 areas. But we have to really build healthy habits. It's not one and done. It's not get rich quick. It's not do this and you'll be successful. It's healthy habits that are going to make us sustainable, help us grow. We're going to be better business owners. We're going to be better people. We're going to have the consistency that we've been needing because we're going to build healthy habits that give us consistency. All right, I want you to commit to building healthy habits. Type I commit in the chat. We get a fresh start. We get a fresh start every day. We get a fresh start every week. We get a fresh start every month. This is our fresh start. All right, we have to take it. So I want you to tell me in the chat, I commit to these healthy habits. We're going to do them together. And there might be days that are going to feel hard. But that's the hurdle. We got to get over it. Bruised, bleeding, whatever. We got to get over that hurdle. Sometimes we're going to jump right over it. And we're not going to have any scars. Sometimes those scars are going to— we're going to look in the mirror and be like, dang, that was, that was rough. That was rough. We have to keep jumping over it. We're going to get over it. We're going to get over the next one, and we're going to get over the next one. That's what business is. It's a series of hurdles that we got to jump over. Survival of the fittest. Who's going to make it to the end? Some people are going to make it to the end with no cuts and bruises. Some people are going to look like they've gone through a war. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how fast you make it to the end. It's do you want to make it to the end bad enough? Are you willing to get the bruises and the, and the scars to get to the end? All right. I got one more thing before I let you go today. Um, we sent out for all of our members, we sent out an end of year survey. And I really need you to take 5, 10 minutes and submit that back to me. I need your feedback so that I can make our memberships the best that they can be in the next year. I'm also giving away a 30-minute one-on-one call with me to someone that has filled out that survey. So I need you to go fill out the survey for me. Tell me your thoughts. Tell me what's going on. I need to, I need to hear from you. So that I can make your experience better. I'm upleveling. I'm committed to showing up for you. So I need you to tell me how I can do that in the best way possible for you. And the more people I hear from, the bigger pool of responses that I have, I'm able to really make change for what we want in our membership this year. Okay. I just need you to do that. Look in your email. Everyone that submits it is entered in to get a one-on-one with me, and we will draw for that later this month. But I genuinely want your feedback. Like, every one of you are very important to me, and I just want to make sure that I'm showing up and serving you to the best of my abilities and really giving you what you need. Okay, I want to really give you what you need to move forward. All right. I love the commitments in the chat. I love the commitments. Let's start now. We're not going to start on Monday. We're going to start now. Email marketing, growing your list, nurturing your list, selling to your list. Social media. We are going to use social media for our benefit. We're going to love it. No more negative talk about social media. Planning and curation. Your business livelihood revolves around planning and curation. And if you're starting out or you're not planned out that far, go take my Six in Sixty workshop. Let's get planned out. Hiring. It's time to put your big girl panties on and level up. We got to hire. And number 5, and the most important, is commit to show up. Got to commit to yourself. This is about you, not about anybody else. This is about you. So we've got to commit to ourselves. We can do it. We're going to do it one day at a time. We're going to take these 5 things and we're going to build healthy habits into our business this year. All right, let's go get busy. I'll see you guys soon.