5 Monthly Reset Habits for Subscription Box Owners

Feeling behind before the month even starts? In this Friday Fuel episode, I'm sharing the 5 monthly reset habits I use in my own subscription box business to stay focused, organized, and growing. So if you're overwhelmed, stuck, or just need a fresh start, this quick episode will walk you through how I reset with clarity and intention. So let's get your month back on track right now.

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 Friday Fuel, your fast burst of clarity to end the week strong and start next week even stronger. I'm Sarah, and today we're going to dig into something that I do at the start of every single month in my own subscription box business, and that's a reset. Whether you've had an amazing month or one that you'd rather not talk about, a reset helps you shake off the mess, realign your energy, and move forward with clarity. So I'm sharing 5 monthly reset habits that will keep your subscription box on track and growing without feeling all the burnout. So we're going to talk about these 5 habits today. So habit number 1, review your numbers. That's what I said. Review your numbers. If you're avoiding your numbers, I see you. But I promise you, the numbers are where your growth really lives. Every month, I want you to block out 30 minutes to review your key metrics. You can't improve what you don't know, what you don't measure. what you don't have a baseline for. So I just put together some simple list of numbers, and there are a billion numbers in your business that you could be tracking. And as you get more advanced, you'll be tracking more things. But if you're starting or maybe you're even growing, but you're not just tracking numbers yet, I want you to start with these 6 things. Okay. First, I want you to start tracking your new subscribers. How many new subscribers are coming into your business each month? That's important to know. Is one month way off from the next? Once you see those numbers, you're going to be able to take action on that. Next, I want you to track your churn. Who canceled? How many people canceled? Why did they cancel? We need to know that number. I know that number is a negative feeling towards you, but it's, it's real. Like, we all have churn. So just— I have churn, you have churn, we all have churn. Okay, you're going to have it, but we need to know what that is. And I want you to track it in not only a number, number, like how many people canceled, but I want it— I want you to track that percentage because it's going to help kind of level out your feelings around churn. Then I want you to track your total revenue from subscriptions. So what is my revenue this month for subscriptions? Is there plus or minus last month? And is it plus or minus the year before at the same month? Okay, so total revenue from subscriptions. Then I want you to track your one-time product sales or if you have add-on sales. So track that separately from your subscription revenue. So how are you doing with one-time product sales? Are you up and down versus last year? We got to know where we're at from month to month. And then there's two more things I want you to track. List building growth. Where's your list at? How much did you grow your email list this month? And then there's your social media growth. If we don't look at those two numbers, we are not growing. And there is that saying that if you're not growing, you're dying. So if your list is not growing, it's dying. You're— you keep emailing the same people over and over again. If your social media is not growing, it's dying. You have to constantly be in front of new people. So those are the six things that I want you to track. And we're going to start to really understand our business with just six numbers. Don't overcomplicate it, okay? You can create like a really simple spreadsheet and you could fill it in every month. And then what you're going to get when you start to fill it in every month, you're going to start to see patterns. And these patterns are going to help you make smarter business decisions faster. So if you notice your subscriber growth is really low one month, okay, do I need to run a promo like a free gift this month with their first box? Do I need to run an email campaign? Do I need to set up ads? That's how you take action. If you don't know that number, you don't know what action you need to take. If your churn is high, maybe we need to create some more FOMO. We need to have some more like sneak peeks of the next box. We need to get them excited about what's coming. Maybe share some more subscriber reviews. We have to know what we need to do. If your list building is stalled out, what lead magnet are we running? How can we get in front of more people? So we got to know those numbers so that we know what action to take. All right. Habit number 2, I want you to identify the rocks in your backpack. And you're like, what, Sarah? It's those lingering unfinished tasks from last month that you carry over into the new month that constantly weigh you down, like a half-done product photo shoot, a blog post you've been meaning to write, an email sequence you swore you set up, but it's not finished yet. New products that you need to add to your site. These are rocks that we put in our backpack, and sometimes we carry them from day to day, sometimes we carry them from week to week, sometimes we carry them from month to month, and they start to weigh you down mentally and creatively. So at the start of the month, I want you to do a brain dump, okay? What rocks did I not finish last month? What tasks did I not finish last month? What tasks keep rolling over week to week, month to month on my to-do list? They just feel heavy for me. What is hanging over me, draining my energy? And then I want you to look at each one of those. So once you do that brain dump, I want you to look at each one of those. Delegate what no longer matters to me. Can someone else do this? Okay, delete what no longer needs to be done. Does that really make a difference in what I'm doing? Or prioritize it. Let's finish it today because that task actually will move the needle, and I keep carrying it in my backpack. It keeps weighing me down. It keeps zapping my energy. Let's just finish it and move on. Okay, so delete what doesn't matter, delegate what someone else can do for you, or prioritize what you've been dragging around. That's what I want you to do. Habit number 3: I want you to set 1 or 2 clear monthly goals for this month. Your list of ideas is probably longer than like the shipping labels that print out for your monthly box, right? Like we have so many ideas as entrepreneurs and they're just ideas because we're trying to chase everything, but we're getting nowhere fast. So here's your challenge. Choose 1 or 2 clear, business growing goals for the month, because what we focus on grows. So think about what would actually move your subscription box forward, not just what feels urgent. So some real examples of these goals would be, I want to grow my waitlist this month by 200 people. Great. I want to set up my very first ad campaign for my subscription box. Check. I want to launch a new collection in my shop and increase my one-time sales. Great. These are all real goals. So once you know your numbers, I want you to choose 1 or 2 clear goals for this month. Stay focused. You've got 4 weeks to get to those goals, and you'll be amazed how productive you feel when you stop juggling all the things and start finishing 1 or 2 big things. Now, habit number 4 is we've got to create a simple roadmap. This is where things get real. And once you've got your goals for the month, we just have to map it out. And that's what we, we don't do. Sometimes we set these goals for ourselves, but it's the end goal and we never map out how to get to the end goal. Don't keep it in your head because that's where overwhelm starts and we start to think about it constantly. We have to break it down. We have to get it on paper. What are the 3 to 5 action steps that I need to take this month to get to my goal? How can I break it down into weekly tasks? What will I do this week? What will I do next week? What needs to happen before mid-month? Let's say your goal is to update your website so that you can dial in your messaging, right? So your roadmap might look like this. Number 1, I've got to review the current sales page and make notes on what needs to be changed. Then I've got to write new copy. So that's number 2. Number 3, I've gotta take new photos. I've gotta have a photo shoot 'cause I've gotta replace my images. Number 4, I need to update all my call to actions. And number 5, I need to test the mobile view. So do you see how this roadmap, you're creating a task list of what needs to be done to update your website if that's your goal for this month? We have to create a roadmap because what happens, we get to the last few days of the month, we realize we haven't set our goal. We have so much to do. And that's another rock that goes in our backpack and we carry it over from month to month. Get simple, get clear, get focused, and keep this list visible to you all month long. All right. Habit number 5. It's okay to have a list, but habit number 5, I want you to build in weekly accountability. This is the part that nobody talks about. You've got to have follow-through. Don't wait till the end of the month to realize that you're off track. You need weekly accountability. So every Monday I do like a 15 to 20 minute check-in with myself. What are my 1 or 2 goals for this month? What step am I on this week to hit those goals? Where did I get stuck last week? I have to do a check-in on those goals every week. Monday's a great day. Sometimes I do them on Sunday night before Monday happens, right? Because some weeks life happens and that's okay. But the point is to catch it early and adjust through the months that you keep going and you remove that rock from from your backpack at the end of the month. You want more accountability? Text your biz bestie. Say, hey, I'm working on this this month. What are you working on? Post your weekly goals inside Launch Your Box. Let us cheer you on. Give yourself Asana tasks with deadlines. I do that all the time. I'm gonna put all my tasks for this one goal, my weekly tasks in there, and give myself a deadline by Friday. This has to be done each week. You got to give yourself accountability. That's the hardest part about entrepreneurship. We are the only ones to hold ourselves accountable. So let's recap those 5 subscription box owner reset habits that I do every month. Number 1, review those numbers. Number 2, identify those rocks in your backpack that are weighing you down. Number 3, set 1 or 2 clear goals for the month. And then number 4, create a simple roadmap to meet those goals. And number 5, build in weekly accountability for yourself. So here's your Friday Fuel challenge. Set aside 1 hour this weekend or even Monday morning to run through these 5 habits. Your future self is going to thank you because, listen, you didn't start this business to stay stuck in the weeds. And not make progress. You started this business to grow something meaningful, profitable, fulfilling, and that starts with intention one month at a time. I'll see you next week for Friday Fuel.