Sarah Williams breaks down the fear that no one will subscribe by reframing it as a signal to build a targeted waitlist first. Start with one detailed customer persona, create a simple landing page, collect 10 to 50 warm emails before you finalize anything, then launch to people who already know about you instead of a cold audience.
It's time for Friday Fuel, a quick burst of insight and motivation to move your subscription box business forward. I'm Sarah Williams, and today we are tackling one of the biggest fears new box owners face. What if nobody subscribes? Let's quiet that fear and get you focused on what really matters in your early stages. Grab your headphones. 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, the Friday series on the Launch Your Box podcast. I've gotten so much good feedback about the new series. So if you haven't done so, leave me a little review on your podcast or if you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and comment below. I would love to see it. But let's talk about that fear that nobody likes to say out loud. Maybe you've been dreaming about launching a subscription box, maybe even daydreaming about it during your 9 to 5 or while packing one-off orders. But then this thought hits you like a brick. What if I put this out there and nobody subscribes? And you're not crazy for thinking that. That fear is normal. And honestly, if you've never had that thought, you're probably not dreaming big enough. But let's break down that fear because it's costing you way more than you think. That what if nobody subscribes thought, it's sneaky because it sounds logical, but what it's actually doing is putting all the focus on the result instead of the process. You're skipping ahead to the finish line and ignoring the steps that get you there. And let me be honest, no one, not one person with anyone launching starts with a line of people banging down their door. Like, it doesn't happen that way. The truth is that nobody subscribes if nobody knows you're launching. And it's not because your idea is bad and it's not because you're not good enough. It's just because you haven't collected the people yet. So instead of worrying about your launch day subscriber count, I want you to ask yourself this: How can I start building a waitlist of people who are curious and interested? Because here's what I teach inside Launch Your Box, and I'll shout it from the rooftops. Is that your waitlist is more important than your launch date. I'd rather you launch to a waitlist of 50 warm leads than launch to a cold, empty internet audience and just hope for the best. And guess what? You can build that list before you ever decide on a box name or a final logo. You don't have to have it all figured out to do this. All you really need is a clear idea on who your box is for, a kind of short and sweet landing page, and something that makes them say, yes, I want to know when this opens. You gotta tease them a little bit. You've gotta get them excited because everyone starts at zero. I started at zero. Every subscription box owner that you follow, they started with zero. And even with people with thousands of subscribers now had no idea what would happen when they hit publish on their first waitlist or their first box. They could have been just sitting there thinking, what if nobody buys my subscription box? The same way that you might be feeling too. But what they didn't do is they didn't sit in that fear. That fear didn't make the decision on whether to start a subscription box or not. They focused on showing up. They built buzz and they talked to real people, collected emails and tested out their subscription box idea. They did the thing scared. And that's really what makes the difference in people that are successful and not is that we do it. We do it messy. We do it unsure. We do it uncertain. We don't do it knowing that we're going to sell out. We don't do it knowing that we're going to sell even one. We do it for the potential. We do it for the opportunity. So let's zoom in a little bit, because here's what I want you to understand. This concept of you're not selling to the internet, and this is where a lot of people get it wrong. You're talking to one person the way I'm talking to you right here. I'm talking to one person. I'm not trying to convince everyone to subscribe. I'm looking for that one person who's going to say, wait, this is for me. And I want you to think about her. And I refer to my person as her because we have to get deeply connected to this person to really be able to sell our subscription box. So I think about her. I think about what does she love? What problems is she sitting down asking ChatGPT or Googling on her phone? What would make her smile when she opens my subscription box? And when you can speak to that one person, that you've got it figured out. You can build your email list for her. You can build your content for her. When you have that one person, you build your box for her. And when you get that one person excited and then another person and then another person, That's when you start building momentum. That's when you start building a business and you're not just launching a product. It's a product. It's the community. It's the experience. So the next time that fear creeps in and whispers, what if nobody subscribes, Sarah? I want you to think about that. I want you to don't think about the result. But let's think about the journey. I'm not there yet. Right now I'm building my list. I'm collecting the people. I'm building my socials. I'm finding her. I'm finding the right person. That's the next right step for you. It starts with building a list with 10 people and then 20 people and then 50 people. You don't need thousands of people to launch. So if you're getting yourself tripped up on how many people you have to collect, you don't need that. You need the right person and you just need to get started because you're going to get better and better along the way. And, you know, I can help you do that too. So let's get going. Let's get started. Let's not think about what if nobody subscribes. Let's start thinking about what if everyone subscribes. What's your next right step? Let's start collecting those people.
