8 Things NOT to Do During a Subscription Box Launch (and What to Do Instead)

Good morning. Happy Monday. I'm super excited to be here with you today. I was just sending out the text for Monday Momentum and realized how much our little Monday Momentum text group has grown. So if you are not in the texting group, and here's the thing, I'm not texting you all the time. I'm texting you on Monday mornings before I go live just to remind you that I'm about to drop some gems on Monday Momentum. So if you want to be in that little texting group and get that message on Mondays when I'm live, go ahead and text the word Monday to my texting number. It's 940-204-0023. And I'll text you every Monday morning before I go live so that you get the reminder. And it just helps you start your week off with a little bit of momentum going into your week. Now the other thing that I wanted to, I'm just gonna drop this in the comments here. Facebook's wonky, y'all know this, Facebook is wonky, sometimes it's hard to find the videos on Facebook, but I just dropped my link to my YouTube channel over there for you guys. So if you are not following me on YouTube, you can find me right on YouTube, easy to watch the videos on YouTube. It's easy to find the videos on YouTube. Also, if you like watching videos, I do my podcast on video every single week, so you can see the video version of my podcast over on the YouTube. So if you're not there, go over, hit subscribe, um, so that you can get those notifications when I have a video going on over on the YouTube. So good morning, everybody. Today Y'all, this is launch week. We've been doing this really fun event inside Launch Your Box and it is called Let's Launch Together. And this week I'm launching. This week a lot of you are launching. So let me know in the chat if you are launching this week or next week. Just put launching, maybe put the date you're launching. I know some of you are launching right along with me, some of you are watching me launch and then waiting for the next week to launch. Um, but today I decided to put together 8 things, um, that you should not do during your launch and actually what to do instead. So we're going to talk about those 8 things. If you're a note-taker, this is a great live to take a note with, to take notes with, because we're going to go through these things And I think that— I think what happens is we don't realize we're doing these things and we tend to do those things. And so I'm going to give you 8 things to just eliminate during launch week, whether you're launching with me this week or you're launching next month or in the future. This is something you can go back and refer to over and over again. And a lot of these are mistakes that I've made. I have been launching my own subscription box for 8 and a half years. I have done over 20 launches, full live launches over the last 8 and a half years. And there's a lot of these mistakes that I have made along the way. And my job as a subscription box coach is to make sure that you don't make the same mistakes, that you eliminate some of the bumps in the road and get there smoother and faster than I did. So let's talk about these things. I'm going to come over here and say good morning really quickly and then we're going to jump right into it. Cameron was bright and early. Cameron was bright and early this morning. Hey Simone, good to see you. Good morning everybody. Hey Christina. Hey Beth. Hey Michelle. Good morning. Hey Nikki. Good morning Michelle. Nervous-cited? Nervous-cited. I call it anxious excitement a lot. Like I get anxious about things, but I'm excited, but I'm anxious. I call it anxious excitement sometimes. Good morning Shakira. Good morning Rebecca. All right. Here's what we're gonna do. Good morning, Diane. Number 1, if you're a note taker, take 'em down. Number 1, don't wing it. Don't wing it. I was winging everything in my business for a long time, including a launch. And we've talked about this a lot inside Launch Your Box this month about every week when I've been live with you talking about the prep. We've been prepping our launch for a month now. And I hope you've been prepping it too. You cannot wait till launch day to plan your launch. You cannot wait till the night before. You've gotta set your ads and do your emails and go live. And the problem is I did that over and over and over again. I was completely stressed out. I was completely overwhelmed. I didn't get all the things done that I wanted to do because in my mind everything is quicker than it actually is. Writing an email is 20 minutes, is actually an hour and 20 minutes most time if it's a good email. Setting up ads, you know, 30 minutes, no, that's, that's 2 hours to set up your ad campaign. Planning out all the calendar, like what we think takes a short amount of time actually takes longer. And if we're winging it, trying to do all the things we need to do every day, a lot of stuff gets missed. A lot of things get overlooked. You're not your best when you're doing those things and you miss a lot of things that could have gone better. And you look back at it after the launch and you say, man, I wish I would have prepped this so I wouldn't have been in the weeds while I'm trying to show up every day. I'm trying to answer comments on my page every day to keep the momentum of the algorithm and the launch. Yeah, I'm also trying to write the email for next day. I'm trying to plan the live for the next day. I'm checking on my ads. I'm setting up this and that. We can't do it all during the launch and we need to stop acting like, oh, it's just an email. I'll do that tomorrow. Oh, it's just an ad. I'll do that tomorrow. Oh, it's just post. I got to figure out. I'll do that tomorrow. Because tomorrow comes, half the day is gone. You've been running around like a crazy person because there's an issue somewhere in your business and you've not done the launch things. And that's what happens. And if you're guilty of that, it's time to stop it. I have to finalize the rest of my launch emails today. I already have my ads set up and they are scheduled. We have social media planned out and ready to roll for the week. So we can't go into the launch without our plan. Use the launch plan that's inside the library. I map it out for you. Map out your emails. We did that together last week. Plan your socials. We also did that together with our new custom GPT tool inside Launch Your Box. You've got to have everything locked and loaded. Have the plan. Stop winging it. It's too stressful. It's too stressful to wing it all the time. That's what ages us. Like, come on. That's where those gray hairs come from. When we keep winging everything in our business. Next, number 2: don't make it all about you. We talk about what we're doing, how I curated this, how I'm getting it together, how I'm making this, but we don't talk about the benefits for our subscriber. Okay, so we don't speak about how this benefits their life, how this might transform their shopping experience, how it solves problem. We have to use their language. We can't make it all about what we're doing. It has to be how this is beneficial for them, how they show up in your, in your lives, how they show up in your emails, how they show up in your socials. It can't be all about you. And it's hard because especially if you're first launching, you think, okay, I'm gonna show you behind the scenes, great. They wanna see that, take them along the journey, show them what you're doing, make it about them and not you. Number 3, I see so many people at every level do number 3. I see it from the newbies, I see it from my 7-figure subscription box owners sometimes, and I've been guilty of it too. Number 3: Don't go quiet. Don't go quiet. You feel overly like a used car salesman all the time when you're promoting this thing over and over and over again. You feel really salesy, right? So you start to pull back. You start to post less. You start to send less emails. You start to go live less, and you think, I don't want to keep selling this thing. But you have a short window and you can't go quiet. Sometimes I feel like it's not working, I'm just gonna give up. And I felt that before. And I've had Amber walk right into my office and say, what time are you going live tonight? And I'm like, I'm not going live tonight, I'm done. No, this launch isn't done. Until midnight tonight. What time are you going live tonight? And she pulls me right back out of the darkness that I'm feeling in that moment, because there is going to be quiet days. There is going to be days where you feel like you're doing all the things and there's no results. But you can't go quiet. You have to stay visible through every day of your launch. I want you to wake up every day and say, how am I going to stay visible today? Whether anybody's watching or not. You got to stay visible with your posts. You got to stay visible in your stories. You got to stay visible by showing up live even when you don't want to, even when you're tired, even when you're burned out, even when you feel like you're giving your all and you're not getting the subscribers. Stay visible. Show some behind the scenes. People love that. Everybody needs an Amber. Everybody needs an Amber. And if you don't have an Amber that works for you, because maybe you're still a solopreneur, who in your life can give you the pickup that you need? Maybe it's your best friend, maybe it's your sister, maybe it's your spouse. Like, hey, when I'm feeling low, I need you to boost me up, because this is a process and it's not an easy process, but we have to keep going. Number 4. Guilty, guilty with number 4. I told you, I've learned all these lessons over the years. This is nothing new to me. I've learned all these lessons. Don't ignore the objections. People are going to say it's too expensive, and normally I would hide that comment and move along. And instead, I need to address it. Actually, this box in retail costs individually in my store would cost X. You're saving 35% by getting it into the subscription box. Because just because one person put that on your, on one of your posts doesn't mean other people aren't thinking it. And it's your opportunity to flip it. It's your opportunity to show the value in a different way. Don't ignore the objections. Address them. Okay? Don't ignore them. I've been guilty of that. And then it makes me feel less than when somebody says, well, that I don't have time, I don't have the money, it's too expensive, is it worth it, am I going to like it? Address those. Okay, number 5: don't stop at the first no. How many times have we been told no in our lives? All the time. Don't stop at the first no. Sometimes we give up, we go quiet when people aren't buying right away, but sometimes people need a little time. They need to see it in their feed over and over again for the week. They need to see it in their inbox. They need to read the comments on your posts. Don't stop. Don't give up too early. Most buyers wait until the last minute. You're going to see during your launch, day one is going to be super strong and your last day is going to be super strong and it's going to feel wonky and weird in the middle days. Because people are waiting. Give them a reason to buy and don't give up on them when they don't buy right away. I had a launch, I wanna say it was either in the spring this year or fall of last year. Normally my first day is the best day and it was the quietest day of my launch and I thought, what's happening? I've never had a launch day like this. But I kept going. I didn't stop showing up. I didn't stop sending emails. I didn't go quiet. And I didn't stop because nobody really bought the first day. I kept going and it kept multiplying. Don't stop at the first no. Keep addressing the objections. Keep talking about the benefits and you're going to convert them. If you keep showing up. Number 6, don't assume that people saw it. Don't we do this? Don't we do this all the time? We just assume that because I posted it once that everybody saw it, because I sent an email, everybody saw it, because I went live, everybody saw it. We assume those things in our head all the time. So then we're like, ah, I don't want to post again. Oh, I don't want to send another email. Oh, I don't want to do another live. Don't assume that people saw it. You know, that algorithm is like 2% of the people that follow us. We got to keep showing up. We got to keep posting. We got to keep sending emails. Don't just assume that everybody knows we're launching. Don't assume that everybody knows they're getting a free teacher T bonus. With the launch this week. Don't assume that, because that's when you go quiet, that's when you stop, that's when you pull back. Okay, number 7: don't wait until launch week to build excitement. It doesn't start on launch day, it starts weeks before launch day. Something exciting is coming, something fun is coming. Here's a sneak peek. You've got to build the momentum of some big announcement that's happening. You go from 0 to 100 on cart, open cart day, and that's a mistake because there's no buildup. There's no buildup. We got to build up to open cart day. We gotta make them excited about it, we gotta energize them so that when we do open cart, people are ready to buy. Sneak peeks, waitlists, countdowns, teaser posts, build the excitement before launch day. And number 8, don't ignore them after the launch. Don't ignore the post-launch window. You have done all this during your launch and then you ghost because you're tired and you're exhausted and you're done and you've given it your all and I'm proud of you. But now we have all these new people in our world from our ads, from our emails, from our launch excitement. We need to celebrate our new subscribers. Because there's still people out there that didn't subscribe that are still watching. They might subscribe next time you launch. They might subscribe from the waitlist when you have an opening. It's great to gather testimonials from all of our new subscribers when that box goes out. We've got to nurture the audience of non-buyers. Just because they didn't buy this week doesn't mean they're not going to buy on the next opportunity. So we need to keep talking to them. We can't just ignore people once we've done the launch. We have to make them excited. We have to make— we have to show them what they're missing out because they didn't subscribe in that moment. Because you know what happens next month when those payment runs, when those payments run? You're gonna have bounced payments, you're gonna have cancellations, you're gonna have all those things. And we need new buyers to take those spots. And those could be buyers from this launch that didn't subscribe during the launch. Maybe they weren't ready yet. Maybe something was happening in their life where money was tight. Maybe they hadn't got their paycheck yet and they didn't want to splurge right then, but now they're ready. So don't ignore them because they're coming back. They're watching, they're waiting. When it's right for them, they will subscribe. So tell me which one of these you tend to do. Tell me which one. I'm going to recap them real quick. Number 1, winging it. You're always winging it. You're not preparing ahead of time. Number 2, you make it about you and not them. You're not sharing enough benefits. Number 3, you tend to go quiet because you feel too salesy. Number 4, you hide, you delete, you ignore the objections. Number 5, You give up after the first no. Well, they didn't want it anyway, so why should I keep trying? Number 6, you pull back because you assume everyone saw everything you've done. Number 7, you're waiting until launch week to build any kind of excitement. Or number 8, you don't follow back up after launch. Tell me which one you are, because I'm going to tell you these 8 came from things that I used to do. I did all of these things at some point, um, and a lot of them are lack of self-confidence in a lot of ways. I don't know what I'm doing, so I'm just gonna wing it. I didn't have a plan. Having a plan built so much confidence in me. Ignoring objections. See, I don't like conflict. I'm going to run as far as I can from any kind of conflict. So if somebody tells me they don't like me, well, I'm going to block them because I don't ever want to look at their face again. If someone says they don't like what I do, I don't want them in my world. No, go quiet because I just felt like I was selling, selling, selling all the time. All of these were me. All of these were me at some point. And I'm sharing these with you because we can overcome these. And we don't have to overcome all 8 of them at once. I sure didn't. But if you're aware of them, I'm aware that I pull back and go quiet when things aren't going as expected. I'm very aware of that. And Amber's aware of that. And that's why she comes in and pushes me. You got to have somebody that you can put that can push you in your life. If you know you tend to go quiet. So if you know that you are one of these people, or you are one of these things, how can you actively change that in this next launch? That's what I'm asking you to do. You don't have to change all of it. It took a lot of time for me to overcome all these 8 things. But if we're aware that we're doing that, if we're aware that that's our tendency, then we can fight back for that. There's no shame in any of these. But how can we get better? How can I feel less salesy? Well, I don't make it all about me, I make it about them. Boom, there's two, right? So I want you to work on these, um, and I will be in Launch Your Box this week updating you on my launch because I open cart tomorrow. Our early bird bonus email goes out today. Ads will start tonight. I have everything locked and loaded and I'm ready to go. So I'm excited. I can't wait to hear how your launches are going. We're in this together. The good, the bad, the ugly. And just know that there are all of those in a launch. So if you just expect this to go like sunshine and rainbows, it's not. It's not. We're going to have bumps and we're going to overcome them together this week. But the more we do this, the better we get. The more we launch, the easier it becomes and the more confident we are in our abilities as an entrepreneur. So cheers from my coffee cup to yours for launch week. Let's go. I'll see you inside the group this week. Have a great week.