Sarah Williams shares five lessons for launching a subscription box: build around customer problems, not your preferences. Get a waitlist bigger than your launch day. Focus on keeping subscribers, not just acquiring them. Your first box costs way more than you think due to packaging and shipping minimums. Play the long game with 12-month metrics broken into 90-day goals.
Thinking about launching your subscription box? Hold up! Before you do, I've got 5 things I really want you to hear first. These are the lessons that I have learned the hard way and the ones that I see trip up new box owners all the time. I want you to launch smarter, not faster, and this episode is for you. This is your Friday fuel, so let's get into it.
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, a short, powerful weekly dose of clarity for your subscription box business. If you're dreaming about launching your subscription box, or maybe you've already started, You're probably wondering why it feels harder than you thought it did. This episode is for you. I've worked with thousands of subscription box business owners at every stage, and there are 5 things I always find myself coming back to, things that I wish I could go back and tell every single box owner before their first launch. And that's what we're talking about today. Real talk with clear action steps so that you can build smarter from the get-go. In less than 10 minutes, you're gonna give your mindset and your strategy a little boost. So let's dive in. The first thing that I want you to know is that your box isn't about you, it's about them. So many people build a box around what they love, but here's the thing, your customer doesn't want your box, they want their box. Solved by you. You might be your own ideal customer, as am I, and that's helpful. It's very helpful, but it can also be limiting. You're not creating a box for you. You're creating an experience for someone else. So I want you to write this sentence down. My box helps blank by solving blank. So your box helps who, what type of person by solving a blank specific problem? If you can finish that sentence clearly, it's time to pause and get more specific. Go talk to your potential customers, run a poll, and send a message to your email list. What are they struggling with that your box solves? And I don't want you to overthink this. Like, for a long time I thought, oh, I just wanna sell the pretty things. But my box actually, actually solves a problem. It solves that problem of not knowing what to wear, not knowing what to pair with it, not knowing how to be trendy and accessorize. And that's what I had to dig into. And that's who my ideal customer is. So I want you to do the same thing. Now, number 2, your waitlist is greater than your launch date. Now, you might have heard me talk about this in depth a little bit in episode 188. Go back and listen to that if you haven't. But once your offer is solid, it's time to talk about the how. So putting that launch date on the calendar without building interest first, that's like me opening a store and forgetting to invite people, forgetting to post about it, forgetting to include anyone. So I don't want you to rush the process. The time that you spend building your waitlist will pay off like tenfold when it comes to launching. So I want you to get clear that your wait list is greater than your launch date. And if we don't start building that now, we're, we're not gonna be as successful as we've hoped. So here's your action that you can take from this. I want you to create a simple waitlist opt-in landing page. I want you to offer them something to kind of sweeten the deal, to give them a reason to give you their info. That could be early access. That could be a discount on their first box. That could be a chance to win a free month, whatever that looks like for you. I want you to map that out and then I want you to do some waitlist building activities. Okay? So go post on Facebook, Facebook or Instagram. Or wherever social, whatever socials you are into, go post about your waitlist. I want you to run an ad. You could spend as little as $5 a day to getting people on your waitlist. And I want you to be consistent and about talking about your subscription box so that you can keep driving people to that waitlist. Okay, so number 1, your box isn't about you. It's about them. Please remember that. Number 2, your waitlist is bigger than your launch date. And number 3, retention is where the real money is. Okay. And so a lot of people I know at this stage when they're starting their business, they're focused on subscriber acquisition, especially from the get-go, from the jump when you're first starting, but that's only half of the equation here. If you lose half of your subscribers each month, you'll always be stuck in the hustle of acquiring more and more and more. But retention is where the profit happens. It's how you build the stability in your business. So going into launching your subscription box, I already want you thinking about retention. So what can you add to maybe next month's box or the third box that you send out, a little personal touch, a bonus item, a surprise note. Little things make people feel seen, and seen subscribers, they stick around longer. I've got some ideas. I put together a whole PDF for you. So stop what you're doing, get out your phone right now, and I want you to text me to get this. So you're gonna text me at 940- 940023. Pause it right here. Text me at that number, 940204023. Text me the word surprise. Okay, what I'm gonna send you back is a link to my 10 Ways to Surprise and Delight Your Subscriber. And, or if, if you don't have your phone handy, go ahead and check the show notes and grab the link to get it. But All we have to do is surprise and delight them every now and then, and that's going to help retain them. Okay. So number 4 of the things that I wish I could tell every subscription box owner before they begin is that your first box is going to cost more than you think. That first box is almost always more expensive than people plan for. Why? Because you're not just buying products. You're buying packaging, you're buying tape, filler, inserts. You're probably overordering at this point to hit minimums. Shipping alone can throw you off completely if you're not careful. And if you grow too fast too soon, you might find yourself cash poor and unable to fulfill what you sold. So here's what I want you to think about. Start small. Start with a small manageable quantity. Maybe that's 25 boxes, maybe that's 50 boxes. If you're a larger business, maybe that's 100 boxes depending on your budget. I want you to make a list of everything that you need for that first shipment, not just the products. I'm talking about packaging. I'm talking about filler tape, labels, inserts, printed cards. I want you to figure out shipping. I want you to test multiple zip codes so that you have a good understanding of what this is gonna cost. And once you've got that list, Price it all out before you sell a single box, and then ask yourself, what can I simplify or scale back on in that first month to protect my profit margin? You don't have to go all in right away. You need to go into it wisely. We can be profitable on month 1 if we understand the scope of the costs. Okay, and then number 5, Let's play the long game. People automatically think that it's let's get rich quick, let's launch a subscription box and we're rich. Launching a subscription box is not a sprint to being rich. It is a long-term business model that grows slowly and steadily if you do it right. You might be tempted to compare your beginning to someone else's middle, but please don't. Most of the people you look up to started with 25 or 50 boxes and they packed them themselves, maybe at their kitchen table. But what made them successful was staying in it and learning as they went. So I want you to define the success in your terms. What does success look like 12 months from now? Get real clear on it. Is it more subscribers? Is it more time freedom? Is it Consistently $3,000 a month in recurring revenue? Like, what is success for you? And now I want you to set a 90-day goal that moves you towards that version of success. And I want you to continue to focus on progress, not perfection, and stay in your lane. Someone else's middle does not compare to your beginning. So I want you to take these 5 things today and I want you to take action. You don't need a flawless launch. You need a focused launch. And these 5 lessons are what I wish I had the beginning of my journey, but now I'm giving them to you.
