Building an Audience in 90 Days and Selling out on Her First Launch with The AwayDay Box

Hey, it's Sarah, and I want to make sure you have a special invitation to Subscription Box Week. It only happens once a year. It's only $15, tons of fun, and a way to jumpstart your subscription box journey. I'm going to help you get clear on your ideal customer, help you curate several subscription boxes, and I'm delivering a brand new training to elevate your subscription box business. It's a jam-packed week of learning and fun with tons of subscription box owners. Head over to subscriptionboxweek.com and get signed up. The fun starts June 23rd. Hey newbies, listen up. On today's episode, I've got a brand new subscription box owner that will inspire you to get your box launched. She went from having zero audience to selling out on day one of her launch. Come join us.

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 the Launch Your Box podcast. I've got a guest today on the podcast. I've got Kathy here from the Away Day Box, and Kathy's got an amazing story. She's a beginner, y'all. She's a beginner, so you don't have to worry. That she's gonna come with some like 10 years of knowledge on subscription boxes with you. But I asked Kathy to jump on because she just launched her first box and I saw the excitement in the group for Kathy, people cheering her on, people supporting her through her launch. And I thought she would be a great person to interview because she's in the beginning stages like so many of you are. And as I sent Kathy this little questionnaire to ask her all bunch of questions, so I would be prepped for our interview today. I've learned a whole lot more about her and I'm excited to share that with you. So Kathy, why don't you introduce yourself and just tell us a little bit about you?

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and I'm a mom of two teenagers. Most recently I have been a cookbook author. I've actually been food writing for the last 15 years or so, and the subscription box world is completely new to me. So like you said, I am a complete beginner to it. My box is called the Away Day Box, and it's a self-care monthly subscription.

Okay, let's dig a little bit further back. I want to give a little bit of backstory to what got us to this point today. Tell me a little bit about— I was reading a little bit about your kind of your life lessons along the way that kind of helped you prepare for this moment. And I thought that it was really inspiring because what we don't realize is that almost everything we do in our lifetime prepares us for the next thing that we do. And there were just these great little tidbits that you said, you know, I did this in high school and it prepared me for retail, and then I did this and then I did this. Why don't you walk us through a little bit of that backstory? And as you're listening today, if you're going to kind of listen to Kathy's story, but you're also going to replay those moments in your backstory that might be preparing you to be an entrepreneur. So talk to me. Let's go back to high school.

High school. Oh my goodness. So my junior year of high school, my best friend Amy and I worked at the Party Barn downtown in our town, and it was a Hallmark store. And that was my, my very first job that wasn't babysitting. It was a retail store, and she often would work in the front and I worked in the back at the candy counter. You know, I got a chance to learn what it is like to work with customers and of all different, all different types, of all different natures. Um, you know, you get, you get the easy ones, you get your difficult ones. Um, you have, you work for people that are challenging. But anyway, it was, it was a great experience and it was fun to do with my friend. But mostly the customer interfacing part was what I took away most from that job. Also just understanding about how we present merchandise. My boss was always kind of honest about keeping the shelves clean, and we had— we dusted, we dusted, we dusted. I folded t-shirts like for hours and hours. I'm a very good folder today. We had Koosh dolls, because now I am dating myself, but that was really popular at the time. Gotta keep those dusted, their little furry heads, but just the importance of, you know, presenting merchandise, making it look appealing, things like that. I never thought that that would be of much use to me in my future, but, you know, these days that kind of does come up a bit for me.

Yeah, for sure. And then you said, you know, you went to college and you got a business degree. So tell me about that. Let's tell me about all these little steps along the way that you took to get us to this point.

I gotta tell you, like, I, I wish someone had told me back then to not be as concerned about trying to follow a path. Everyone always talks about a career path, and to me that sounds like something that is straight and logical. Logically, one thing leads to the next, but in reality, that's not always the way it works. And it scared me sometimes that, you know, I would go to kind of different forks in the path and, yeah, worried that, you know, well, where will I end up? That silly, but I did go to business school. I applied during the dot-com boom. I got in and started as it busted. So for a moment there, it was actually kind of a good place to be. And I really focused a lot on entrepreneurialism, actually. I really wanted to come out of school and start a company. And, you know, back then, a lot of people were doing that. I mean, you would— you kind of could write your ticket. You could go to business school and Opportunities abounded except for right when I went to school, and that's when everything kind of imploded, and it hadn't quite recovered by the time I got out of school. People were actually struggling to find jobs, and so that was really unexpected. I ended up working, and we moved to Los Angeles— or I say we because my now husband and I met in business school, and he got a job in Southern California, and so I got a job down there as well, and I ended up working in a position that was actually at like a slightly lower level than I had before business school. So, and it was, it was a little tough for me, but, you know, it was still fun to be in LA. And I did, I worked in online ad sales, so I learned a lot about the internet.

And you're getting lots of good skills here.

But all this stuff, I mean, as you look back, you're kind of like, huh, what will this add up to? But at the time, I'm like, Okay, you know, it wasn't totally clear, but, you know, I learned a lot about research. I learned about how to analyze the performance of ads, click-through rates. I knew benchmarks, I knew ad sizes, all that kind of thing. My job was to provide that kind of analysis to our team. Ended up moving on to TurboTax, which a lot of people use, and did a lot of affiliate marketing there. So a lot of the partnerships I don't know if your bank or credit union might offer a discount on TurboTax, but that's the kind of thing that we would work on. So I learned about linking up with similar businesses and how you can kind of cross-promote each other and be mutually beneficial, which again is something I use today.

Yep. Yep. I just want you to keep going because I want everybody to hear. I'm going to, I'm going to connect all the dots for them when you get to the end.

Yeah. And then I had my, uh, I got married in the midst of this and had my first child, and that's when I stepped out of the corporate world. So that was 15 years ago. I have not had a full-time job in 15 years, but I have been up to other stuff. I, about 8 weeks into being a new mom, I kind of realized that I was going to need something to do that wasn't baby related because I'm sure as you know, like that can just really just, it takes over your whole, your whole world, which is wonderful. But I kind of felt like I had this itch to be creative in some different ways. And eating was one thing that of course we still did. So I kind of got into cooking a lot more than I ever had. That year, Oprah had put a panini maker as her, one of her favorite things. And I'd wanted to buy one for my sister and I couldn't find it anywhere because they were all sold out. So it kind of dawned on me like, hmm, there's all these people who have these panini makers. Maybe I could make recipes for a panini maker. Cause someone had gotten me one. Cause usually it's the type of thing that you would get and then stick up on your closet and never use. Yeah. And so I said, all right, I'm going to use this like crazy. So I started making recipes for my panini maker and blogging about them. This was around 2008. So blogs were, you know, were a thing, but not quite as big as they have subsequently— or did become. I guess they're kind of declined a little now, but they were— this was pre-Julie and Julia, which really threw food blogs into kind of a larger, a larger realm. So I was kind of in on the food blog world on the earlier side, and I was blogging for about 5 years when I started to get requests from publishers about writing a book. And this was completely a surprise to me because I never thought I would write a cookbook. I mean, that's not— I didn't go to culinary school, I'm not a chef, but I was the only one out there writing about recipes for the panini press. So a lot of publishers were looking for bloggers at that time, especially after the popularity of Julia and Julia. So I had an audience and I had a niche understanding. Anyway, the first couple of offers were not really offers. They were like, write 200 recipes in a month or something like that, no royalties. But then one day I did get an offer that I recognized the publishing house. And, you know, I went to the bookstore and I saw, oh, they publish some books I've heard of. So my kids were really little at the time, like 2 and 4. And I thought, well, if I get a sitter, I guess we could try this. So I, I did it. I wrote that book in 2013, and then I discovered I really liked writing books. Not as much writing— well, I like writing, but I also like doing the photography, which was part of the whole deal. 2 years later, I had a new idea for a book and ended up starting my own publishing company because I discovered I also like to decide about the COVID and how it's sold and how it's positioned, because I was coming from marketing, and that's usually not something that they certainly don't ask the author to do, and it's almost kind of not your job.

They kind of tell you what they want on their— what your cover is going to be.

Yeah, it's actually in the contract that you don't get to say about that.

I'm going through that right now, Kathy. I feel like we could talk about all of this with my, my book that's coming out later this year. We're in the cover— we're in the COVID stage, and they're like, here's your covers, which one do you like? And I'm like, neither.

Yeah, no. Definitely they may or may not decide to take it under advisement, but speak your mind. And, you know, they ultimately, you're the one who's going to sell the book. So you've got to be happy with it. And that's how I felt. And so I was like, I think I will take that control. Not a lot of, not everyone wants that, but I, I decided I would take it. And so I did the 8x8 cookbook in 2015 and then the Lemonade Stand cookbook, which was for kids in 2017. And then since then everyone's like, so what's your next book? And I've—

and here we are.

Yeah, for 5 years was asking myself that question, and, you know, time was going on and on. And then the pandemic hit, and that just kind of further kind of separated me from being able to realize, like, what do I want to do here? I was starting to kind of I was starting to lose my passion for a lot of things, to be honest.

But well, I wanna, I wanna recap this before we go into the next part of your story. So what I want everyone listening to really understand is that like you went and had some retail experience at a young age. I think a lot of us do, and that counts. Like that's your customer service. That's where you kind of learned about, you know, service-based industries, customer service, front-facing people. Then you went to college for a business degree, got your MBA at Stanford, and you learned all kinds great things that are helping you propel into your entrepreneurship. Then you started to be affiliate and partnership marketing, um, for TurboTax with the other banks. So again, that applies to what you're doing right now, marketing your business, getting partnerships, affiliate marketing to grow. All of that is great things. Then you dove into this online world with your blogging, and I love it so much because there's so much that you learned when you blog, because you not only have to blog, regularly and consistently. But you also have to market that blog. Like, you can't just throw the blog out there and just expect people to go to it. And that's the same about our websites. We think we can just pull a website up, put our fun products on there, and people are just going to start shopping us. No, we have to send people there. And so you have years of experience with building that audience, growing that blog, marketing to your audience. They're using— you say here you use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, like all of that. Was emerging at that blogging time. And so you got on board really early and you learned those platforms, and then you're a published cookbook author. So there's all kinds of experience that you were using. And now the next chapter is here. Now you're officially a subscription box owner, but it's hard for people listening, I think, to figure out, okay, she's done some amazing things, How did we get here to this and to decide on your box? And I would love for you to walk us through that journey.

That it is a turn. I know. I knew that I was in a bit of a rut at that point. We were kind of coming out of the pandemic. I was going through the motions. I was trying to keep everything going, hoping to get that spark, that idea. 'Cause I've had ideas before that I've gotten excited about and could really apply myself towards. So I knew that that was when I could do that, that's what I wanted. And it just wasn't coming. Someone who knows me well nudged me to work with a coach and she had nudged me before and I ignored it. And 'cause I'm like, mm, I don't know. I just wasn't sure about, what that would entail.

It's a little woo-woo, huh? Like, I can—

A little woo-woo. I am not woo-woo.

Yes.

Um, but maybe I'm a little bit woo-woo. I don't know. But I had to just sort of realize that what I was doing was not really working anymore. So what did I have to lose? A little bit of money, actually. But I, I decided, you know, I, because I was going to have to pay for this, let's apply it. Let's apply myself. Let's go with it. Um, my friend told me to trust the process. She is woo-woo. And so I said, okay, all in. And so a goal here— I was supposed to be finding my passion.

And you're working with a coach to figure out what your passions were in this moment, at this stage in your life?

Yes. It was kind of a painful process to me. There's a whole lot of introspection, a lot of brainstorming and lists and But believe it or not, after quite a bit of this, some themes really did start to bubble up, some things that I found that were of a lot of great interest to me. And the foremost one was, was us women, moms, and how we were doing, because I know that I wasn't the only one that was feeling this kind of shadow of their former self. For a variety of reasons. And, you know, as I would some, you know, go for walks with friends or chat with them, I would see it. And, you know, I've got some friends who are, you know, going through some pretty important things in their, in their lives and their families, and it's been a hard time. And simultaneously, there was a friend of ours who had started to get us together a bit and started planning some outings, and we were all relaxing and we were having this nice time and just getting away and being together and just kind of taking that load off for a bit. And I know that at least for myself, I would go home feeling a bit better, a bit more ready, recharged, more— absolutely recharged, ready to kind of take on, because you can't really unpack the things that you, you know, need to face in your everyday but you can— the part that we can impact is how we approach it. And I thought I would love to work on something that promoted moms taking time for themselves, just getting that recharge. I think that's something that I could stay— or I imagine I'll always be interested in that. I think that's very important. I started having quite a few ideas about what that could be. There are different programs and classes and stores and things like that, that I've, I've seen in the past that I thought did a good job. And subscription box was one of the, one of the ideas that had sort of popped up as something that I actually could get going in a relatively short period of time. I mean, I know there are people who work on it for years, but I mean, we know that there are also people who bust out with it the next week. So it's something that I could I could get going on. And so that's why I decided, let's look into subscription boxes. I think I must have been reading a blog post from somewhere and they had either interviewed you or linked to you. And that's when I found Launch Your Box. And when I realized that there was a whole resource and mentoring to support me along this, that's when I decided I'm going to go ahead and do it. Because that let me know that even though I don't know anything about subscription boxes other than I have purchased some, I would have support. Yeah. And I thought with my interest and with the support, I can make this happen.

Absolutely. And so you saw this opportunity to work with like-minded people that were trying to do the same thing as you. And so you come into Launch Your Box. And you get busy. Like, you are just like, I'm doing this thing, and you're driven. We can tell that you're driven from your history that we just went through. You're a driven person. Have you ever sold products before?

I mean, to an extent. Like, when I had my publishing company, I did sell direct as well as through channels, but not like this.

Okay, so this is kind of a whole new— yeah, yeah.

I mean, then there was the store situation, but like, not like this.

So you dig in and you're like learning quickly. You're jumping in, you're making things happen. You know who you want to send a, make a box for, right? Like you are instinctively already aware of who your person is. Now you're starting to put a plan together of what this is gonna look like and you're working through the things. And I know that it's not all been easy. There has been some challenges along the way. All of us face different challenges in different areas. Talk through with me some of the challenges that you faced here.

I mean, I think the first big challenge— you didn't hear me mention in my background anything about being an engineer. I am not a techie, but I do— I mean, I, I live in the Silicon Valley, so, and I grew up here, so, you know, I know enough to be dangerous. But I could tell right away that creating a website that could accommodate recurring subscriptions was going to be, well, first of all, very important, but also beyond my scope of what I could do. You know, just as I was kind of trying to figure it out myself, I could also tell this is gonna stop me probably if I can't overcome this hurdle.

And it stops most people.

Yeah, I mean, they get into the—

they get into the tech part of this, like, we're— most of us in this industry are creatives. We can visualize what we want to put. We can create the thing. We know who it's for. But now I have to put it together on the back end and make it all work. And that stops most people. And so tell me how to— yeah, tell me how you push through that.

Well, so that's when I learned about Nicole Jenney's Shopify class. And, you know, at first I wasn't sure if that was the direction I wanted to go in because I was going to need to do the work. And I had actually, you know, previously hired someone to do web work for me. But I'll be honest, when I did that route and the site was presented back to me, I didn't know what to do with it. You know, like, I just— you know how I hadn't created it, you know, there's just a number of questions that I had. And I thought, ah, you know, it's probably not the worst thing. It's not beyond my capability. And she walks you all the way through it and it's very specific to subscriptions. So it, you know, it would be beneficial to me to learn how this site works, and I will learn that as I do it myself. Um, so I decided to go ahead and do that, and I'm very glad for that. I do understand how my site works. I have my resources for when I have questions about what to do, whether I can ask her or I can go to the— this specific apps or whatever, but the hurdle was surmounted pretty easily too. I mean, as soon as I got started with that, I'm like, you know, if I finish this, I will have a working site. So that was— it gave me a lot of confidence kind of right out of the gate that this wasn't going to be the reason that I didn't do the box.

I think that confidence is important, Kathy, because when we can take on and accomplish something that we maybe didn't think we could do right away, or for you, you probably thought you could do it, it just is going to take a lot of time, it was going to take you learning through some stuff, but once you kind of accomplish it, you're so proud of it. And I think that gives you momentum to do the hard things, to continue to do the harder things. When you can learn something, feel confident in it, and you know, if I need to update something, I know how to do that. If I want to move something around, I know how to do that. Because you did it yourself and you didn't necessarily just hire it all out. And now you're like, hey, I remember when I had to call my web developer and say, can you update the phone number on my website? I couldn't even know. I didn't even know how to update the phone number. I'm like, this is ridiculous. I just paid someone $60 an hour to update the phone number on my website. I have to learn this. And that's when I decided to learn my website, when I realized that I knew nothing about it.

Yeah, absolutely. I, I have definitely found that in the last few years that when you do conquer something that you consider to be a hard thing, it really does boost your confidence.

Yeah.

You go to the next thing.

So you get your tech set up, you got your website, you got your recurring payment set up, you're getting ready for launch day. Tell me what this launch is going to look like for you. You've been going through the training. You understand what needs to happen, getting all your pieces together. Tell me what you were hoping for on launch day. Like, what did you put together? What was your goal? Let's talk through the launch.

Yeah, well, my goal was kind of a moving target, and that was one of the— I guess that's another challenge, you know, for anyone, I guess, when they're first starting out from, from zero is how much to expect. I did not want to end up with a lot of inventory. I have had that experience in the past. So I originally thought, okay, well, let's— how about 20? And then I did my KingSumo giveaway, and that ended up actually taking hold pretty well, and my numbers went up a bit, even though I know a good portion of them were probably just wanting a product. Even so, there were still a few hundred in there that I'm like I think were legit additions to my, to my list. So I'm like, okay, I'll touch this up a little higher. But basically, I think you had a training not too long before I was going to launch. It might have been the week before. And I got out my notes and I wrote down a full plan based on that training, you know, day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4. Here are the social media posts I'm gonna do. Here are, I had a few little fun things, like I did an Instagram Live with one of my featured brands. So that was like a cross-promotion, which was nice because it, when I did that, it also showed to her group. My emails that I was going to do. And I also did a launch day gift. So I guess that's like a, uh, early bird bonus. Early bird. Exactly. Yep. Yep. I translated it to launch day gift.

I like it. I like it. I'm going to use that launch day gift.

But that, that was great. And so I had to figure out my timing for, you know, when I was going to announce that. But I just, I had it, had it all worked out. I'm one of those people who sometimes I like to kind of go by whim or what feels right, but other times extraordinarily meticulous. And I feel like when there's like specific goals and we were talking about a limited timeframe, I was going to not get probably half of this done if I didn't list it out and have checklists. Also, I was beginning to carry a lot of it in my head. There's so much that one can do in a launch, and I really wanted it to be successful. So I was like, all right, let's decide the things I'm going to do and get them out of my head and absolutely write this down. And then it actually set me more at ease knowing that I had a plan, and every day all I had to do was look up what was on the list, do those things, execute it, and forget anything. Yeah. Yeah.

Because then you're not having to figure it out every day or you're not having to remember what you thought you might want to do. You laid it out, you put your plan together, and now it's just about executing it each day. I know I have to do this. I know I have to do this tomorrow. I know I have to do this tomorrow. And that makes you feel good. Like you're probably a box checker, you know, like you just want to check the box and you feel good that you've checked all the boxes for the day. And so having that build structure, it also helps you realize you've accomplished a lot in that day too. And so just having the plan, that's half the battle, is creating the plan to then go execute. And if you never just put the plan down and you're always just winging it, you're probably not using your energy wisely during that launch because you keep having to think about what's next, what's next. When if you just take the energy up front sit down and lay it out, then you're just showing up in the best way possible. You're not scrambled, you're not overthinking everything, and you're just executing. And so that's the biggest part in anything that we do in marketing, in launching, in our email sequence, in our— like, just having a plan eliminates so much of the daily scramble that we do to ourselves trying to figure things out. And so I love that you just took the notes. You said, you know what, I'm gonna do this. This is how my plan's going to work. You probably tweaked it to be what works best for you, and then you launched for the first time from scratch. Let's talk about how it went.

It, it went well. People started to come on in. I mean, I kind of hoped— I had, you know, looked over my list and I'm like, oh, you know, I really kind of think that some of these people might do it or whatever. By the end of, let's say, the early bird portion wiped out— it was about 75% of my boxes. I felt good about that. I felt like, okay, I estimated rather well there. And then by the end of the first day, they were all cleaned. So then I was like, okay, that's good. I do wonder how many— you know, I don't want to cut it off, but, you know, was this the 20 you had planned for, or was this— no, I had upped it to 40. Okay, I have it to 40 after the giveaway.

And you sold all of those in the first day?

I sold them all on the first day, so I was, I was happy about that. Yes, I had to know all this time as I'm building the audience and trying to show what I— my vision, but without specifically saying here's what's in the box. Um, mine is a— it's a surprise. Uh, that was, that was a real challenge. It was my sincere hope that it was resonating with people, but this was like the real test. Like, are they gonna actually, um, plunk down? And, you know, the price point is— it's $59, okay, but with— and plus $5 of shipping. But depending on where you live, the sales tax on top of there really can start to nudge it to $70. So I was— had concerns, but I am glad to see that, uh, you know, I'm, I'm reaching my ideal customer and they believe in the vision. They see the value in the products that I am putting in the box, which are, um, from women-owned businesses, but also specifically women-owned small businesses, super high quality. And I've been featuring them all along. Like, that was part of my audience building, was unboxing this stuff as it was coming in. Not necessarily the very specific items that were going to be in that first box, but just items that were going to be in a box and/or on my, on my shop, you know. So I think that helped to give them enough of a preview that they were like, yeah, no, this is worth trying out.

Yeah. So I have questions. First question is, how long did you audience build before your launch date?

I did the full 90 days.

So you did 90 days?

Yeah, now here's what I said it on my calendar.

I love it.

And I had— it was like it took some discipline because I was, you know, so excited out of the gate and I'm like, oh, let's go! But I 100%, um, believed when you said how important it is to have that audience ready. And I also could tell pretty early on that it takes a lot of effort.

It does.

So I'm like, yeah, that 90 days, I'm gonna use every bit of it.

Now, did you— were you starting social media from scratch, or did you use one of your older social medias and turn it into this?

Uh, no, I did not do that because it was a different audience. Um, I did mention it to my existing, um, accounts that this was something I was moving over to. I mentioned it on my personal Facebook. Facebook once initially, and my LinkedIn. So I, I let everybody know that this was something new, but I did start these accounts from scratch. And that— I know I've heard you say it's like watching paint dry. It is so challenging. When I first started those accounts, it was when those platforms were nascent, so all I had to do was mention on my blog like, hey, I'm on Instagram and boom, I would have, you know, 200 to 300 new followers because everyone's looking for people to follow. Like, it was— and so this was really a different situation. And I, and I realized that it was going to take a bit of my effort. And that was when I, I did start to read up a bit about what are Reels. I started asking my teenager, who was like, Mom, I don't do Reels. And she's a little That's, that's Sarah Williams' mom.

It's weird that I'm on social media.

I know they're like, what are you trying to do? I don't know.

I do. I can hear my kids saying the same thing.

Yeah, it's like kind of cringy that mom's out there trying to— how do you use a sticker? You know? But so I found out on my own how to do it. But anyways, yeah, no, I realized that it was going to take an awful lot of effort. It turned out to be an unexpected fun part of the process. I discovered I actually like making the reels.

I do too.

I didn't, I didn't know that I would like that. I was a little, I was certainly intimidated by it at first, especially the idea of putting myself in them. And so I didn't initially, I actually put my dog in a lot of them because she's a Chihuahua and very cute. And, but then I realized, you know, that's probably not going to get my ideal customer. Perhaps maybe that was not going to reach exactly who I need to. And then, you know, I would found that when I did start to put myself in it, it was just resonating with people a lot better.

You're attracting the right person then, right?

I had to, you know, get past— yeah, and I realized the more I did it, it wasn't so hard. And now my, my husband jokes, as they'll see if I've done like my hair or something, he'll like, are you doing a video? Yep. Yep.

Sure am. Well, here, here's one little tidbit I'm gonna give to you just to tell you how awesome you are. Okay? So you literally started building your audience 90 days before you launched and sold out on day one with 40 people. Okay? This is where you're at. Let's talk about Sarah. When she started her subscription, Sarah had been building an audience for 2.5 years, launched her subscription box and took 4 days to sell 44 subscribers. So I'm just going to tell you that you're winning and you're doing fabulous. And if that's any indication on where this is going to go, you know where I went, right? Like, if this is any indication on where this is going, I think you've set yourself up beautifully. And I also just want to really reiterate what she just said here. Everybody listening, audience building is hard. Audience building takes a lot of work. Audience building is like watching paint dry, but you have to do it. And you can 100% take 90 days, focus on your audience building, and have a successful launch the way Kathy did. And I think that is the huge part about this story here, is that She didn't have a preset audience. She didn't have a bunch of followers. She wasn't selling products. This is brand new for Kathy, a brand new audience, a brand new page, a brand new box. She did everything in that 90 days to get her subscription launched, including building an audience full of the right people. Because when it came time to, they showed up and bought her box and they bought their subscriptions. I know you have more than 40 subscribers now after the launch, but it's the beginning. It's the beginning of a huge step to get to this point, to actually launch your box and then to sell out the way we did. We can't just go post a couple of times a week and in 90 days launch our box. That's not audience building. We have to engage. We have to give relevant content. We have to meet people where they're at. She learned how to do reels. She did static posts, like all the things she figured out. Who her people were and where they were hanging out. And she put content in front of them that they wanted to engage in. And that's what we miss a lot of times when people say, I did all the things in my launch, nobody bought. Okay, we gotta go back to audience building because we're either not attracting the right audience or we haven't done enough to build an audience full of the right people. And so I love that you audience built for the full 90 days. That's the recommendation, by the way, that I give to all of our new people, that they audience build for a solid 90 days before they launch your box if they have— if they don't currently have an audience. And so you launched, you sold out on your first day, which is amazing because then you don't have to go through the rest of the hoops of the launch, right? Like, that's amazing. You're like, yes, I'm done.

It's a bit of the pressure off, that's for sure.

It does. So tell me, I think you told me that your first box ships this week that we're recording. So by the time everyone's hearing this, her box went out a few weeks ago.

Yes.

Can you give us some insight on the first box?

What's in it? I can. Well, I guess, yes.

Just tell, just tell us.

I decided to do a different theme each month, and this first theme is cozy. Which I did announce as part of the launch. And, um, so toward that end, we have cozy items such as fuzzy socks. We have a tea— it's actually not just a tea, but it is a lovely tea that comes in a, in a mason jar. I gotta say, like, I get so drawn in by the aesthetics of things. I know that, you know, tea's a dime a dozen, but this one I actually thought looked very gift gift-worthy, which is kind of the point. And a really cute bath bomb that is a geode bath bomb. And then kind of the, the big item in the book— in the book, it's up in the box— it's a book, a novel, which I read over Christmas break, or I pre-read because the book just came out last week. And this is kind of where my publishing background came in, but because I knew that it's As a new author, finding outlets to promote your book is very important. So I thought, ooh, I actually might be able to do that because it's, it's great to be able to come up to a publisher, especially an indie publisher, and say, hey, I'd like to buy 50 copies. They're like, okay, that's something we'd like to know about. So we're gonna— so I have that book in the box and we're gonna do a workshop Forgot to mention workshops are actually a big part of my, okay, my little offering. It's the other half of the puzzle, but we're going to be able to have workshops that dovetail with the items in the box to give kind of a greater experience of being an Away Day subscriber.

I love it. I love it so much. Kathy, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us today. I hope that is inspired all of you listening to just take the next steps, sit down and do the work and follow the plan. Because if you can follow the plan, you're going to be able to execute the same way that Kathy did here. She followed the plan. She followed the 90-day plan. She followed the launch plan. She followed the tech plan from Nicole. Like, she just followed the plan and it works. And you have— audience building is more than just creating a social media. Okay. And so that's One big takeaway from today: we need to have a plan. We need to put a lot into our audience building for our launch to be successful. Um, Kathy, tell them where they can go find you if they need an Away Day Box.

Well, awaydaybox.com is the URL, and on Instagram I'm @awaydaybox.

Awesome, thank you so much. We'll be back next week with another great episode. If the idea of creating a subscription box is swirling around in your head, I encourage you to head over to launchyourboxwithsarah.com, get on our waitlist, and grab some of our free downloads to help you get started. That's launchyourboxwithsarah.com.