5 Things You Need to Know BEFORE You Launch Your Subscription Box

Good morning. Happy Monday, everybody. I'm freshly back from vacation and excited to pop in and talk this morning. I put together a little list of 5 things that, it's what I wish more subscription box owners knew before they actually launched their subscription. So I've got a list of 5. If you're a note taker, Today's a good one to bust out the notebook and make some notes today. But I want to talk about it because the best thing that we can do is, is live and learn, right? And when people have gone before you, let me grab the microphone. When people have gone before you and done something, you can really learn a lot from other people. And not only have I gone before you, but I coach thousands of people that have launched their subscription boxes and I get to see firsthand and what it's like inside their business, what it's like inside their launches. And I put together some things that I wish, I wish more subscription box owners actually knew before they launched. Now, if you've already launched, that's okay. We're going to talk about some things because we always want to relaunch. So I want you to, I want you to work through these things with me today and, and we're going to talk about them. So let me come over to the chat and say hi, good morning to everybody. It looks like people are still looking for the live. So if you're joining me on the replay, let me know that you're here. I can see Wanda's here. Good morning, Wanda. Hey, Lexi. Rebecca's here. Brenda's here. Hey, Shawna. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Beth. Okay, so here's what we're going to talk about. We're going to start this now. If I could sit down, if I could just sit down with every single subscription box owner that came into my world and just talk to them about these 5 things before they launched, I think I think it would make a big difference in the way that they build their business, the way they launch, the way that they move throughout their journey as an entrepreneur. So the first one we're going to talk about is that your box is not about you. It's about your customer. And I think that a common mistake for people is that we launch a box based off of what we love or what we want rather than what your ideal customer actually wants. And it's kind of that double-edged sword because a lot of us are our ideal customer, right? So like I am my ideal customer. So when I'm putting a box together, I think about what I would want, right? But I also have to remember that there are thousands of people getting their box and everyone is not exactly like me. And so I have to be very conscious of what my customer is looking for. And it's something that we learn throughout the time that, you know, we are with our customers. We have to keep asking them. We have to keep asking them what do they want, what do they want more of, what do they want less of. We have to keep that constant communication open for what they want rather than what you want. It's about them and not you. And when you can make your subscription box about them and not you, that's the most important thing. Okay. And so, you know, you also need to solve a problem for them. And a lot of times people will tell me, well, my box doesn't solve any problems. I would have told you the same thing 8 years ago when I started my subscription box. I would have said, well, my box is just a box full of fun, cute things for women. It doesn't really solve a problem, but it does solve a problem. It solves a problem of what am I going to wear? What am I going to pair it with? How am I going to accessorize this? And so I want you to think about that problem that your ideal ideal customer has when you're creating your subscription box. So here's some questions that I want you to really ask yourself, whether you're brand new and you are just starting, you haven't officially launched anything yet, or you're in the midst of it, because we can always improve our experiences, right? So who is my ideal customer? I want you to get so clear on who that person is. It's not just a man or a woman. It's not just, um, you know, somebody that likes cute monogram things. Like, who is she? Who is my person? My person typically lives in the southern states, although I have subscribers in 49 of the 50 states, okay? But the majority of them are in the South, okay? So who is that? That's what I want you to ask yourself. And what problem am I solving for, for my customer? And if you can get clear on that problem that you're solving for them, that is what is going to help you curate the next box and the next box and the next box. Right. And why would they stay a subscriber beyond that first box? What is going to make them stay? I want you to ask yourself that. If I'm subscribing to your box right now, me subscribing to your box, what would make me stay past that first box? What do they want? What are they asking for? Your box is about them and not you. And that's what you need to really dig into. If you're not clear on who that ideal customer is, if you're not clear on what they want from you, if you're not clear what benefit you're providing for them, you're going to fall flat. So I need you to get very, very clear on what you're putting in that box. And I'm not— and I don't mean the physical items. I mean who it's for, what you're giving them, the value that you're giving them, and the benefits of them getting your box. We got to get clear on that. And if you're somewhere kind of wishy-washy in the middle, then you're not clear enough and you really need to sit down and work through that. Okay. Number 2, if I was sitting down with new entrepreneurs, um, this would be the next thing that I wish they knew before launching, that your waitlist is more important than your launch date. We get this date and we put it on the calendar and we get super excited about that and we throw the date out there. Okay, I am officially launching on this date. But what we don't do is we don't take the time to actually build up the hype, create the waitlist, and collect the people that we're going to launch to. It's one of the biggest mistakes is just rushing into the launch without an audience. The more people you have excited about your box before you launch, the more successful that very first month is. So my tips for you for that is start building your email list months before opening your subscription box, before launching. Build your email list first and continue to build it every single month in between launches, in between promotions, even after you launch. If you asked yourself right now today, Self, what am I doing to build my email list right now? Could you answer that? If you can, drop it in the chat. If you are actively building your email list this morning, today, tell me what you're doing in the chat. And if you're not, that's an opportunity for you. We have to be building that list. We have to be building that waitlist. All you have to do is create like an irresistible opt-in or lead magnet. You can, you can give them, you know, early access. You can provide a special discount on that first box. You can run a giveaway. There's so many ways that you could be building your list right now and building that waitlist, collecting all the people that you wanna sell your box to that are saying, hey, here's my email, I'm interested in this subscription box. We need to collect them right away. Okay. And then the other way that you can really build the waitlist and build your list is that I want you to get real good at organic social media to help find your ideal customer. Number one, we gotta get clear on who that person is so that we can go find them and build our following and build our list. Um, but we can do that through organic and paid social media. So if you're not running any paid ads on social media, that's another way that we can build a waitlist. That's another way that we can build an email list. That's another way that we can get in front of our ideal customer when we know who she is. Okay. So number 2, your waitlist is more important than that actual launch date. And so many entrepreneurs don't understand that. And we should be list building 365 days a year, period. Whether you're in day 1 of your journey or you're 8 years in like me, every single day we should be list building. Okay, number 3, retention is just as important as acquisition. And what I mean by that is we get so focused on getting that new customer, getting that next customer, finding the new subscriber, that we're just losing them by the day over here and we're not even paying attention to retaining them. It takes so much to get a new subscriber, right? We got ads, we got emails, we got lives. We're doing all the things. We're jumping through hoops. But we're not retaining the customer. It costs you a fraction of the amount to retain one of your subscribers than it does to acquire a brand new subscriber. Your retention is just as important as acquisition. And one of the things that most new entrepreneurs before they launch are solely focused on acquiring. Once you launch, now the goal is retaining them. And acquiring more along the way. But retaining them has to be high on that level. You already paid for that acquisition in some way, whether that was worth your time, your paid ads, your effort, your emails, whatever you did to acquire that customer. It is so important to retain them. Getting your first 10, 20, 50, 100 subscribers is so, so exciting. But keeping them, that's where the real businesses are built. Subscription churn can quickly kill your momentum. You launch, say you get 50 subscribers, and within 3 months you're back down to 30 because you didn't do anything to retain them. It needs more than just cool product. They need an experience. What are— what is the experience that you're creating with your subscription box? That goes back to number 1. We were talking about what's the benefit? What benefit are we giving them? And what's your retention strategy? How are you keeping customers excited month after month? We have the hype squad. We do unboxings, we do subscriber shares. We're talking about our subscription daily. We're asking our subscribers to share. You have to keep them engaged. That community, that's important. Your subscriber community is important. So anytime that you can build a community around your subscription box, you can build some personalized elements into your box. You can build some surprise and delight into your box. Those are key to long-term retention success. On average, when my subscriber comes into my world and, and says, here's my credit card, Sarah, I'm going to give your subscription a shot. They stay for 18 months on average. Some have stayed a lot longer than that, but on average, 18 months. Do you know how much time, effort, and energy it would take for me to get 18 sales out of one person, one customer? I would have to jump through hoops constantly selling and promoting and putting things in front of them to get 18 purchases from one customer. But when I acquire them and I give them the benefits that I'm providing in my subscription and I build a community around that subscription and I give them an experience with that box, they stay on average for 18 months. And that's priceless because I only had to acquire them one time. That retention— number 3, retention is just as important as acquisition. We got to keep them. We can't just go get them. We got to keep them. Okay. All right. Y'all with me? Jocelyn says her stay for 15 months. That's excellent, Jocelyn. If you know your retention rate, if you know how long they stay, you'll know their lifetime value. That's it. Lexi has people that have stayed for 45 months. I have subscribers that have gotten the very first box 8 years ago that are still receiving their boxes from me. That's a lot of boxes. And so when you can build an experience like that, they're going to stay, and you don't have to keep selling it over and over and over again. You're just keeping the ones you already have. Okay. Number 4. If I were to sit down with people and give them something that I really need them to know before they launch, number 4 is very important. Your first box will cost you more than you think. Okay. Many new subscription box owners underestimate how much it actually costs to get that first month into their customers' hands. There is a lot of hidden costs, and it will level out for you, but I need you to understand that that first month, it's going to cost you more than you think. Okay, so we just need to be prepared for that. Businesses cost money. It costs money to run a business. Okay, um, you're going to have to buy product, and you might not be able to buy the exact number that you need. You might have to buy overages because they come in quantity packs. You're gonna have to buy packaging, whether we start with some basic packaging or custom packaging. Packaging costs money. It's gonna take time, effort, and energy to fulfill those. We're gonna have to pay for marketing because if we're in a legit business, we have to have a marketing budget. There's gonna be shipping, and there's gonna be shipping expenses that you did not expect. I remember the very first time that I shipped a box to Virginia. And it was a subscription box, and I was floored by the cost that it took to ship my box from Texas to Virginia. Of all states, it's not even the furthest state away, but for whatever reason, Virginia was so expensive for me to ship a box to, and I had to like figure that out. You're gonna figure it out, okay? So you've got to plan for higher than expected costs your first few months. It's going to level out for you. I want you to make sure that you're ordering some samples or you're seeing some things in person before, um, before you actually buy the product, because you can make a lot of buying mistakes by not physically touching and seeing the product before you buy it. And then, um, I want you to start small, knowing that this first box is going to cost you a lot. You've got to understand your budget. You got to understand your limits. If you don't have unlimited resources where you can just start really big and go sell 300 subscriptions, great. But if you need to start with 50, you could do limited early bird spots that will help with urgency. And you can really manage those costs up front so that you're not sitting on a bunch of inventory you didn't sell. You're not out of pocket for a bunch of product and inventory and packaging and all the things before you've actually made any money. But you can start small. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of launching, but you have to know that there are costs involved. Okay. And I want you just to be prepared for that. It's going to level out. Growing costs a lot of money too. So having rapid growth, you think, oh man, I just went from 100 subscribers to 400 subscribers. In 3 months. If you do that, you're going to be cash poor for a little bit. And anybody that's gone through rapid growth knows exactly what I'm talking about, because when you have 100 people paying you for your subscription box and then you've got to order product for 400 people, there's not enough money there, right? So you have to build it in slowly. I just built it in slowly for myself. I did 50 and then I did 75 and then I did 100 and then I did 150. And if I would have gone to 50 to 600, I would have been broke. I would have been stressed. I would have not been able to afford it, and I would have had to get like a loan, and I didn't want to run my business that way. And it's okay to do that. If you want to go big, go big, but just know there's costs involved in that. If you need more organic slow growth so you can catch up with the numbers, then you, you can just plan your growth, okay? It's just something people don't think about. If I'm getting paid for 100 subscription boxes, right, and then I need to go buy 400 for the next month, I don't have enough money from the 100, right? So we just have to plan accordingly so we don't put ourselves in a bad position and just grow ourselves out of a business. Somebody told me that early on in my entrepreneurial days, that you can grow yourself out of a business. You can grow so fast that you literally grow yourself out of a business. And as I grew, I grew pretty rapidly. And it was a, it was struggle for me financially because I was growing so fast and I needed all the things. And it wasn't until I kind of leveled out that I actually started to see that profit come back to me. And I was like, oh, okay. So the last 8 months were crazy and stressful and I didn't have enough money for all the things. But now that I've leveled out, I'm seeing that money back in my bank account because I'm not going and buying double and triple the things that I needed every month, right? You can grow yourself too fast and you can grow yourself out of a business. So just be careful with that. Number 4, your first box will cost more than you think. Okay. Number 5, I talk about this often, but I think that you have to understand I see it sometimes in our community, inside our private Facebook group, inside LauncherBox. Um, it's a long game. It's not a quick win for us. It's a long game. We're building a long, sustainable business that has recurring revenue. And sometimes I see the new— the newer subscription box owners come in and they're like, Wow, you have 500 subscribers! Wow, you have 1,000 subscribers! I only have 50. You didn't see the beginning of a lot of these people's businesses. You didn't see the people struggling to get their first 10. You didn't see me at 44 subscribers. You see me at thousands subscribers, thousands of subscribers now, but we all start somewhere and we build this business the right way, playing the long game. And I don't want you to compare your beginning to someone else's middle. And I think we play the comparison game a lot in our brain— in our brains. I'm going to say in our mind, but I said brines. In our brains, in our minds, we play, we play this over and over, and we tell ourselves we're not good enough, and we tell ourselves that we're not as good as somebody else, or we're not as successful as somebody else. But you don't know how long that journey was for somebody else. Um, and so I don't want you to compare yourself. Don't be care— don't compare your beginning to someone else's middle. Um, it's exciting to launch your subscription box, but a sustainable business doesn't have this giant success overnight. I just told you in number 4 you're going to have cash flow issue issues if you grow too fast, right? So it's the long game. It's, it's like, what can I do now to build this great business for my future that will pay me over and over and over again with one acquisition cost? That's what we're building, and that's what you should get excited about. And Jen, whether that's your first 10 subscribers or your first 100 subscribers, here's some things that I want you to think about. Everything's a test in our business. Everything's kind of an experiment. If something doesn't work, we pivot. If something doesn't go the way we planned, we pivot. And we have to be open to change and we have to be open to testing and we have to be open to pivoting. We can't sit on something that's not working and keep asking ourselves why it's not working. We have to keep testing and trying something different and getting in front of new people and trying a different, you know, price point. And maybe that's a different set of products for our box. Maybe I've got the wrong ideal customer. We have to keep pivoting. We have to keep trying. You've got to prioritize your customers. You got to prioritize the subscribers that handed you their credit card and said, here, take my money every single month. You have to prioritize those people because again, number 3, retention is just as important as acquisition. And you've got to be in it for the long haul. You can't just say, oh, I'm going to start a subscription box today and I'm going to retire next year. Hello, I don't think that works that way. A great subscription box is not just about the product, it's about the experience. It's about the community that you're building and the relationship that you have with your subscribers. So we're building something that fills our cup, we're building something that fills their cup, and we're building something that's long-lasting and sustainable and provides a nice income for us. So let me know, of 1 through 5 in the chat, what is the lesson that you wish you knew before launching? Number 1, that the box is about your customer, not you, and get real clear on that ideal customer. Number 2, that your waitlist is more important than your launch date. Number 3, retention is just as important as acquisition. Number 4, that first box is going to cost you more than you think. And number 5, it's a long game, not a quick win. Which one do you wish you knew before launching? Let me know in the chat, and let's think about these things. Maybe we need to nail down the ideal customer. Maybe we're not clear on that. Okay, maybe we need to be building that waitlist and building that list. Maybe we're not actively building a list right now. Let's get on it. Maybe we haven't thought about retention very much. Maybe we don't even know what our retention rate is. I want you to go dig into those numbers and remember it's a long game. All right, all right, y'all have a great, great week. And I'll see you soon.