I Almost Sold My Subscription Box… Until the Numbers Changed Everything with Ciara Stockeland

Last year, I was very close to selling my subscription box business. I had a buyer, we agreed on terms, I had a purchase agreement ready to sign, and then I did something I hadn't done deeply enough for years. I looked at my numbers, and what I discovered inside my business completely changed the direction of everything. In this episode, I'm, I'm opening up in a vulnerable way about my business. The good, the messy, and the surprising. And I'm sharing the financial shifts that made me decide not to sell after all. 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 the Launch Your Box podcast. We have a juicy episode for you today, um, some things that I have not shared yet at all publicly, um, and I brought like the almost the— I want to say like the best and the worst person to talk about it with because she knows, she knows all the details. Um, it's like, um, someone digging in your panty drawer. That's what Sierra has done with me over the last probably 14 months that we've been working together. So Sierra is my guest today. She has been a guest on the podcast before, but if you've not heard that episode, Sierra, why don't you give just a quick introduction on who you are, what you do, who you serve, and then we're going to dig in my panty drawer today, I guess.

Yeah, it's kind of like when you always say, like, I wish I could be a fly on the wall. Your guests today get to listen to, they get to be a fly on the wall. So I think it's going to be interesting. Yeah. So my name is Sierra, third generation entrepreneur, been around small business forever. Started my first retail store in 2006, built that, grew it, franchised it, lost everything including my home in that journey. And through the loss of that, figured out that knowing your numbers is actually really quite important. So, so when I launched my next business, which was actually a subscription box, I decided I was going to do things differently. I was going to build from profit from day one. I was going to pay myself before I paid anyone else. And I built that, grew it, and sold it within 18 months. And through that, started meeting with product-based business owners that were asking the same questions I had once asked. How much inventory? What is cash flow? How do I read financials? I have so much money coming in. Where is it? I can't find it. And so I launched the Inventory Genius Program. Never in my wildest dreams had any intention on coaching or anything like that. But I just started helping people keep more cash in their business, pay off debt, and I love it. And so that's what I do now through the Inventory Genius program.

Awesome. It's like, it's the one thing that we need, but we hate thinking about it. That's how I like to describe it. Like, I hate— it's like going to the dentist. Like, you need it, your teeth need to be maintained, but you hate doing it, right?

Yes. But you know what happens when you don't, right? Get that cavity and don't take care of it, your teeth fall out.

We don't want any teeth falling out today. So I'm gonna take you back to— well, this is really prior to January 2025. Sierra and I casually met in the online space because we have a mutual friend, Susan Bradley.

Yeah.

And so we knew of each other. We've, we've done each other's podcasts before, um, things like that. Well, I invited Sierra to come out to my January Mastermind in 2025 out in Palm Springs because when I got their surveys back A lot of their challenges were cash flow, inventory, cash flow, profit margins, inventory. I have no money. Help me, Sarah.

Help me.

Help me. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I need to call Sierra. And so you came out in person and spoke with the mastermind. And as I was listening to you give your presentation and working with them, your workshop there, I just thought, oh gosh, I need to be better at this. I need to be better at this too. I think a lot of times, and this is where, this is the vulnerable part of me, I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs, and I am the same, hear me say that if you're listening, we build a business, sometimes it was a hobby, sometimes it was a fun thing to do. We made a little extra cash on the side and that was really great. I made money to like take my family on vacation and I didn't really look at the business numbers. And as my business was growing, it was growing a little faster than I could keep up with it. And if I had money in the bank, that meant I was doing fine. And if I didn't have money in the bank, I was stressed out. And so as I started to grow and grow and grow, I never really dug into those traditional business inventory profit margin things. I just thought, oh, everything's fine. I can pay all the bills. I got, I got a paycheck. I can, I can pay the rent this month. Payroll's not going to bounce. Like, everything's fine. And So we go through this building our business and I'm so focused on marketing and acquisition and curating and all the things that I really did not put a lot of effort into knowing the numbers. And I knew some numbers, I knew the numbers I thought I needed to know. I had a good understanding of what it needed to run the business and the business was running fine. Don't hear me say that it wasn't, everything was fine. But I was at the point where I was in this pivotal year. 2025 was a very pivotal year for me because some things were happening with my business. I knew my lease was up, my 5-year lease for my warehouse was up at the end of the year, and I knew I had to make some decisions and I wasn't sure what decision to make. And so going into signing this 5-year lease, I knew that my last child was going to be a senior in high school. And I also knew that I did not want to renew it for the next 5 years. Aside from that, I had no idea what I was about to do. And so I, I talked with Sierra that day at the mastermind and I said, how do I work with you? I have got to figure out what I'm going to do, what I want to do with this business. I think I want to sell it. I don't know what that even looks like. I don't even know if my books are in order enough to sell it. If you're looking at my business, from a financial standpoint. Talk to me about what I need to be doing better so I can sell it by the end of the year. And that's kind of where our journey started, was January 2025.

It did. Yeah. I mean, I want to start by saying one thing that I really admired. I will never forget being in that room. You're the leader. This is your group. And you were taking notes, listening and asking questions. And I was like, oh, when you find a humble learner. And I think that's just a really good lesson for all of us. You are never too smart to stop learning. And I just really admired that you were like, you know what, I'm an expert in what I'm teaching, but I'm not an expert in everything and I want to be better too. So I just want to say that because I think that's really important for us to remember. We need to be humble learners. But yeah, I remember when you just chatted with me and you're like, hey, I mean the business is making money, like it's growing, but I don't really know what I want to do. In the next stage of life? And does the business still make sense? And if I don't want it, can I sell it? You know? And so we just had that conversation. I'm like, well, first of all, let's prep it so that if you decide to sell it, you can get max dollar for it. Because we all put a ton of time and energy into these businesses. We're really creating an asset, right? And, and a lot of times we don't think about when we exit, we want to get the best possible price out of that exit. Another thing that we don't always think about as owners is like, when we're in the middle of stress, we think we don't want something anymore. And I always tell people, maybe you don't, and maybe we don't need to keep it, but if it was making really good money and running really efficiently, would that change your mind? You know, then you're like, wait a second, this isn't as stressful as I thought it was. And so I always tell people, okay, maybe you don't know you're going to sell it, maybe you've decided already you're going to sell it. Regardless, we should do the exact same work. Because when we get to the end of our project, either you have a more valuable asset to sell or you have something that maybe would fulfill what success looks like to you. So yeah, so we just signed up and started working together and we spent the next year doing analyzing, cleanup, changing things. And we can talk about all of that as you want to here today.

Yeah, let's talk about it because I think the first thing was you had to get a really clear understanding of my financials. And so that's the panty drawer. The financials are the panty drawer, just so y'all know, like they look at everything. So when you first looked at my books, um, let's talk about some of the first things we started working on.

Yeah. So when I start with someone, I always say like, send me your most recent profit and loss statement, your balance sheet. It's a little bit of forensic accounting for me, and I can look at it and just quickly pull out some things that look a little off or areas where I can see immediate opportunity. Um, and so that's what I did with you. Like, again, your business wasn't a mess, But I was like, where could we find more opportunity? Where could we arrange things a little bit differently? And looking at that penny drawer, I know a lot of people are like, that's so embarrassing, or I have so much debt. Some people have so much debt. I have seen it all. I've seen it all. Nothing shocks me. Nothing scares me. And you guys, I've been there too. Remember, I started today by telling you I lost my business. So I've done a lot of things wrong. And so there's no judgment with me. I'm like, let's just see how we can do things better. Where's our opportunity? So we dug first into your balance sheet. I wanted to make sure that the inventory that you had, that you owned, was being recorded properly. When we sell an asset or we sell our business, we want to make sure we get max dollar for it. And part of that sale is the asset part of it. So if you have inventory and you've just been expensing it out, meaning it comes in and you just throw it on the P&L.

Yes.

But you still have a bunch of it in your warehouse, we actually own that. Like, that's an asset and we don't wanna be doing that. Also, when we're recording improperly, we can't really see margins. So the first thing we looked at is like, how are you recording your inventory? Let's record it properly. We had to do some adjusting. So we had to take a physical inventory and have our accountant do a physical adjustment on the financials for us. But then we had, okay, now we have like a good benchmark. Here's what we own. And now we can start to see actually what the margin is. And then the next area of work was to go and dig into margin and how we could get more margin for you.

And let me give you a couple action steps here if you're listening, because that feels like a lot of accounting terms and it feels like, what did she say? Let me tell you what we did. So the first thing that we did is we weren't actually putting the cost of goods inside each product in Shopify. So when we were throwing products in there, we were putting the retail price, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes we put costs, sometimes we didn't know that number, sometimes it was— we had to figure it out and we didn't take time to do that. So we were missing a lot of cost of goods inside Shopify, so we couldn't actually see what our profit margin was because we weren't recording it. So that was something very easy to do, and we created a couple different things. Like, if you manufacture things yourself, like our screen printing and things like that, we just estimated a number. So like, if I'm printing a t-shirt that has one color, we estimated this this is the cost of the t-shirt, this is the cost of printing. So it, depending on what brand of t-shirt we bought, we took that price of what we paid for the t-shirts and then we put, here's a one-color print charge, here's a two-color print charge, three and four. And so that's how we started. So we didn't ever have that number, so we never put anything there. So none of our t-shirts had cost of goods on them, and it was the main thing that we're selling. Yeah. And so that was like the easiest thing to really start with. Then there's these reports in Shopify that you could print each month and see your profit margin, see what you sold, what you're, you're selling stuff at. And so that was like key number 1 action step for us. Let's get cost of goods in everything in Shopify so we know exactly what our margin is for each product. And we know at the end of the month where we landed overall with our profit margin there. The other key thing that we did that I still love and to look at this day is we created this subscription box spreadsheet with profit margins. So like, you know, I have a budget. I have a budget. I'm gonna— I'll use that loosely. I have a budget for products in the subscriptions, and sometimes I go over and I don't really think about it. I don't— no one asked me about it. No one's questioning it. Sierra was questioning everything. And so we had to now really put pen to paper on what our profit margins were for the subscription boxes. And it was each level of subscription box. And so, and it changes month to month because I'm not spending exactly the same amount of money every month for these products. And so what that is, like, we put the monogram box, item 1, item 2, item 3, item 4. This is what item 1 costs, this is what item 2 costs, item 3, and item 4. And then we would put the t-shirt club, the combo version. If they added a t-shirt, it was, it was this cost. I didn't know the cost because again, it was that ink charge. It was the different t-shirts I was ordering. So we were then every single month, we were calculating every single piece of our subscription box, including packaging. And so we could directly see, and I could see the months that I had a lower profit margin. I'm like, ooh, spent too much money. And I could kind of compensate for it the next month. If I went over one month by a few dollars, I would try to trim a few dollars the next month so that it would even out. Put my eyes on something that I hadn't had my eyes on at all in 9 years of running my business.

Yeah.

Um, and so it was— that was— those were two really big things for us that we did right away.

Yeah. And I mean, I want to take just a, a hot second here and talk about why that is so important. Your margin is so important. First, margin and markup are not the same thing. People need to know that. So The, the nice thing about subscription box business, typically you're not marking a ton down like you would in like a retail store, but you do have some of those overages that you do blowout sales on and whatever. So markup would be, I bought the shirt for $5, I'm selling it for $10. Margin is, at the end of the day, after all the shirts were bought and all the shirts were sold, what was that difference in price of what I sold it for versus what I bought it for? And so if you don't manage your margin, you could be bleeding so much profit opportunity. If you're like, I have so much debt, I can't get in front of it, I never can take a consistent paycheck, I always start with margin first. So we first wanna make sure inventory's recorded properly, which we did. Then we started looking at your margin and we played around with it and I was like, hey, if we could increase your margin by 4%, look what that would do on your bottom line. Look what that would do for your extra profitability. And then you play around with it, come to a place that you're like, okay, I can live with that increase. Here's how I'm gonna do it. Now I'm just gonna run the plan. And then it gets to be the numbers don't become so scientific and scary. It, we're all competitive, we're entrepreneurs. So you're like, ooh, I wanted a 60% margin. I was at 59%. Like you said, how could I do better next month? And now we know what to look at and we have control again.

And, and I think that was the other thing that you really challenged me on. And I think this is important for everyone. To listen to is that we were at a 50-something percent margin on the subscriptions, and you said, how can we get this to 60?

Yeah.

Can we change packaging? And it— your first response wasn't, can we increase the price?

Yeah, everyone thinks I'm going to tell them that. Yeah, I don't really.

Your first response was, can we, can we reduce packaging costs? And how can we do that? Can we buy differently? Can we buy, um, better so that we're getting like all these little things we're adding up? And 50 cents here and 30 cents here, and all those things were adding up. And so she challenged me to get my profit margins to 60%, not only on those subscription boxes but also on my one-time product that I was selling in the store. Some of it had 40%, some of it was 50, some of it was 75. But how could I ensure that I was getting a 60% profit margin on my one-time products and my subscription boxes. Because at the end of the day, my— if my goal was to sell this business like it was for most of last year, um, I needed to show that this was a highly profitable business.

Yes, yes. And the margin's the best place to start. So we dug into that and we started with that and did some cleanup. And then we moved to more operational cleanup. So like operational expenses. I don't know how much you want to share, and I don't want to step out of line, but I'll just say a lot of businesses, we just don't know what we don't know. And so we just throw it here and we throw it there and we mix it all together. And we have one entity with multiple things, or this business is paying for that business. And so that kind of going back to the forensic accounting, which is such a fancy term. And you guys, I'm not an accountant. I just know how to solve problems and I know how inventory works. But I use that forensic accounting, right? Like digging into it, figuring out the mystery of what's going on. We had to separate things so that it was super clean too. Because if you're going to sell a business, you want the potential buyer to know exactly what they're buying and exactly what they're not buying.

Yeah, that was something that we had to clean up, you know. And I don't know how many of you have, say, multiple businesses, and we tend to just lump everything together. And that was key for me to be able to have a sellable business, is that I had a lot of mixed pots on a lot of mixed expenses. So example, this employee works about 75% for Launch Your Box and 25% for Framed, but all of her payroll is either in Launch Your Box or in Framed because just, just lump it over there. Or I'm using this, this office for both businesses, yet I'm paying for it out of Framed and not Launch Your Box. So there was a lot of recategorizing things that started to make sense for me, and I could, we could really see how profitable this business was once we itemized everything. And we also took on the profit and loss statement, we took subscriptions and separated it from one-time products so we could see, um, subscription sales versus the rest of the sales. And, and that was also a huge, huge eye-opener when it came to the business, is because I'm working a lot of hours on Framed, and a lot of those hours were on the one-time products that weren't making very much money compared to the subscriptions. So that was another thing that we kind of updated. Um, do you want to, you want to give them some more? You can tell them all the things.

We're okay.

We're opening the panty drawer today.

It's all out there, guys. Yeah. So I mean, one thing that I think made our project really successful is you have a phenomenal bookkeeper.

Yes.

Accounting firm. So that's really important, you guys, when you start doing some of this work. It just always stuns me when we have bookkeepers that are so obstinate and unwilling to do this type of work. So when I come in, of course, I say, of course they feel a little threatened because they're like, I'm bringing in a consultant and she's going to tell us to— And so I'm always happy with my clients. I will have conversations and let them know I'm not here to tell them that their work isn't good. I'm here to make sure that everything is very clean, very organized. Your bookkeeper was phenomenal and he just answered our questions. He helped me reorganize the financials. So that's what you all should expect. If you have an obstinate bookkeeper, you need to remind them they work for you. And what you're trying to do is keep more of your money. And if they're not happy with that, we can find you a different bookkeeper. But that was really key. So yeah, we just organized the balance sheet. We started organizing the P&L. We had to go back and rework some things with taxes to separate things out. And then we created forward projections. So now we know where we've been. Now where do we wanna go? We put some class tracking in place so we could see on a profit and loss statement in Framed, here's what this subscription box does. Like you said, here's what the store does. So you can really see the parts of your business that are more or less profitable. Cuz once you have transparency into those numbers in your business, that's when you can make changes.

Yeah.

It's when you're just living out of your checkbook of like, I've got cash, so I guess we're doing good, that you really miss out on profitability. So we did all of those things. You worked with your team to help them implement and collect data for us. And then we looked at the inefficiencies in your backstock in inventory. So how do we clean up old inventory? This is always a funny phase that we get to, I get to with clients. It's about like 75% all the way through the year together and we have to start liquidating old stuff. But now they love their margin and they're like, I don't wanna get rid of it. It's gonna wreck my margin. And I say, Okay, it will change our margin for a while, but it's an intentional change. We know why we're doing it. We know how long we're doing it for. It's much different than how you were living in the past where you just buy and sell, buy and sell. Yes, our margin's going to dump for a little while while we clean out old decision making, but there's an intention behind it. So can you talk about like how that felt? Because that, that's a hard thing, that emotional like It's been a roller coaster.

Okay, here's the first— when we talk about inventory, let me back up just one second before we go in here because we're talking about bookkeeper just a minute ago.

Yeah.

And I want to just talk about this for a second for anyone that's newer that may not have a bookkeeper. I'm going to tell you that this is one of the most important things you can do for your business early on. I waited way too long. I was in the weeds with accounting. I was in the— if you like, it is tax time right now. If you feel like you are stressed out and in the weeds during tax time, it is time to get a bookkeeper. I no longer feel that way. And I'm going to tell you, I went through a lot of years trying to do it all myself, do all my own bookkeeping, all my own taxes, all, all of that. And it was so stressful on me and it wasn't productive. There were so many things that I missed. By having a bookkeeper and not just an accountant, not just someone to file my taxes because you still got to prep all that stuff for your taxes. But they will keep up with your business all year long. They will provide you with a P&L statement. And when you're just starting out, it's not that expensive. When you got all this going on like me, it's a little more expensive. I got 3 businesses now, but It's one thing that you need to do. And if you're sitting here listening going, I need to do this, you need to put this on your to-do list for this week. You don't want to go through another year. You don't want to go through 2026 and still don't have a bookkeeper. When you're making $50,000 or more in a year, it's time for a bookkeeper. My problem is I waited till I was making $300,000 in a year before I got one and I was drowning. And then it's making sure that someone, it feels like a teammate for you. Like, I ask questions, talk to me about my P&L, tell me what you're seeing as a financial person, help me with this. And so I just want to, I just want to, if you're feeling overwhelmed by, she's got a bookkeeper and accountant, you need a bookkeeper immediately. It's probably the first thing you need to hire out for your business. It's going to keep your sales taxes in line. It's going to take keep your income taxes in line. It's also going to help you when you start hiring people and you have payroll or contractors. So I'm going to tell you that first. Now, what were we talking about? I was going to go into depth with something and I completely forgot.

Me too. We're of that age. I don't know, but that was a good thought. We'll come back to it. The train will come back into the train station here. But no, that bookkeeper conversation, that is actually really important. Like, you have to have one. I think it's You guys, I did the same thing. I did the same thing. I was like, oh, I could save $300 a month by doing my own books. I had no business doing my own books. I had no idea what I was doing. I messed it all up. When I finally hired my first bookkeeper, I was arguing with him on what cost of goods sold was because I didn't understand and I had messed it up. But, you know, I mean, it was just a mess. And then what happens is your stuff is so tangled up and messy, you filed your taxes incorrectly. Now you have to go back and just pay the $300, pay the $500 and have someone do it accurately. And now is a good time because the farther you get into a year, they always have to do catch up for the year. Right now they can look at whatever we have for last year's taxes. They can just right-size it, start a clean balance sheet and go. But yeah, definitely don't wait. Don't invest everything you have into your business, but then don't take care of it. But I'm going to save $300 a month on bookkeeping.

And sometimes it's not even that expensive. I think my first bookkeeper was $100 a month. And, you know, and I would also ask if they have knowledge about product-based businesses.

Yes.

It's a very important part of collecting the data correctly and keying it in correctly. And I totally remembered what we were talking about.

Okay. I knew it was going to come back. Okay.

So you were asking me about the inventory.

Oh, yes.

We went through this inventory cleanup. I want to tell them a little bit about what we did and kind of stages that we did it in. So the first thing we looked at was how much one-off inventory I had and that I was buying from the— for the shop. Because remember I told you 75% of my revenue was coming from subscriptions, but yet I was spending all this time buying inventory. And if you're into apparel or anything like that, you— they come in lots. So you buy a lot of clothing, you buy a— you buy a pre-pack is what they're called. And so you might get like a small and 2 mediums, 2 larges, 2 extra larges, and a 2X or something like that. Well, the problem is I would sell the large and the 2X right away, be sold out. I need more pre-packs. I would never sell the smalls. I'd always have mediums left over. I always had 3Xs left over. I sold large, extra large, 2X. Those were my hot ones. I would sell some mediums, some 3Xs. I hardly ever sold smalls, but I was required to take them. And so when we first sat down and we looked at my inventory of like, those are always going to be losses. Those are always going— out of every pre-pack, I'm always going to have an X number of loss. So how do we stop buying pre-packs? And that was kind of the question that she posed to me. I'm like, well, I can stop buying apparel. I'll just create my own products. And so in January, I stopped buying apparel pre-packs completely. I bought nothing. If I sold something, it was t-shirts because I could order the number that I wanted of any size, and I also could order them on demand. So we— I started getting out of ordering product hoping it would sell, and I started focusing on product that I could order just in time, basically. So my t-shirt, um, my t-shirt vendor is in Fort Worth. I'm in 2 hours from Fort Worth, and so I could order a shirt today and have it tomorrow, period. And so I no longer had to stock inventory. I could create a new sweatshirt, a new t-shirt, a new hoodie, a new tank top today without having inventory, any inventory on hand, start selling it tomorrow, order what is being sold. It comes the next day and I'm shipping it out. That helped me tremendously. And I no longer went to market to buy all the cute things. This is okay. I'm going to relate this to like Target. We go to Target for laundry detergent and bananas and toilet paper and bananas. Okay, that's what we go to Target for. We should never ever go to Target for those things, right? And then you come out with pillows and a new top and a cute swimsuit and a pair of sunglasses. And this is what happens when you go to market. You go to market strategically. I'm gonna buy this for this collection. I'm gonna buy this for this collection. Oh, that's cute, let's put that in there. I'll take 10 of those. I'll take 5 of those. That's cute, that would go so cute with that. Um, that's what we do in Target. And what What was happening is I was buying all this cute stuff that I would find as an impulse. Yeah, sitting on my shelves still today. So I stopped buying at market. Yeah, I completely stopped buying at market. So I stopped buying apparel pre-packs because they were killing my margins, um, and I stopped buying at market. And so I would go to market— I still go to market— I don't buy anything. I get ideas, um, and then I think about it, and when I come home, if I still want to buy that for my shop I placed an order online. This impulse buying for my shop at market was like me going to Target for toilet paper. It never— I'm coming out with $200 worth of stuff every time. And so, um, that was one thing that I had to change my behaviors. And so now the other challenge was I had about $80,000 in cost of products sitting on my shelves. From leftover subscriptions and leftover, you know, Target buying that I was doing at market. And so now the goal was not to buy anything, create collections that I can sell just in time, and work through this inventory. And we spent this entire year doing that. And you know what? My sales weren't down. I just sold the things I had instead of buying new things that were going to sit on my shelf. And I kept restyling them. This shirt goes with this cardigan and this bag and this cute pair of earrings. And I no longer bought product. And it was hard, and it was hard for my employees too, because they're like, what are we selling today? Because every week I was bringing in new products so I could go live and I could do the Home Shopping Network and sell. And now it was like, okay, let me walk through the warehouse and figure out what we're selling this week. We're gonna sell this blanket from 2 years ago. We're gonna sell this sweatshirt that I can make on demand. And we're gonna make— and I'm gonna pair it to go with this bracelet and these earrings that I've had for the last year. And so Everything was intentional, and my sales were up last year.

Yeah, and your margin was up because we weren't buying and marking down, buying and marking down.

And that was just this cycle that I was on. And also, I got a little more strategic on buying for my subscription box. You know, there should be like a 12-step program for us. Yes, but I have to buy subscription box product pretty far out. Like right now I'm buying October, November, December, right? And so I have these big ideas that I'm going to have all these subscribers then, right? Because I've got all these marketing plans and launches and campaigns. Realistically, I'm going to go back and I'm going to look at October, November, November and December for last year and the year before and the year before. And I'm going to buy on the average of those numbers. And I'm not going to pretend that I'm going to increase my subscription box by 500 subscribers between now and then. I want to, that's always the goal. Does it happen?

No.

And then what happens is I've overbought. I'm sitting on hundreds of pieces of inventory month after month after month, and I didn't have a plan for growing. You know, I thought my launch was going to go better, but I just refilled the 200 that I've lost the last 4 months. right? And so instead of growing by 200, I'm refilling and I grew by 50. So this 500-piece order that I've added on is not making sense. And that was something that I had to get— I had to get real, you know, I had to talk to myself like, Sarah, this doesn't make sense. In my mind it made sense because I, I can get there.

I'm optimistic.

Yeah, in my mind I'm like, I get 400 new subscribers on every time I launch. Why, why can't I do this? Well, yeah, but I wasn't thinking about all the cancellations that I'm backfilling.

Yeah.

And so that was a big change for me too this year.

Yeah. And I think having, because you had the store, I remember we were sitting in your office when I, and I want to tell you guys too, again, like I try to be very empathetic. I won't tell you what to do. Like I won't be too bossy, but I like to ask questions, right? Because I want, when I'm done working with someone, I want them to have the critical thinking and the problem solving that they're going to need long after they've ever talked to me. And so I remember we were sitting in your office and I was like, tell me about the store. Tell me what's going on with the store. And so you're talking about it and all your things and all the thoughts, and you were emotionally attached to it because that's what launched your business. Like you've been around and your customers love your store and things change though. And so we looked at, okay, so you tell me what you think. Now let's look at the numbers. And yeah, you're making your sales, like your sales are all coming from your box. So why are we taking 75% of the cash and putting it into the business that only makes 25% of the sales? Like we need to flip that script.

Wisdom.

Yes. And once your numbers were organized, your financials made sense to you, you could think about that critically and without emotion. So then you could say, yeah, well it doesn't make sense and I don't wanna give all that cash to the store. So now let's change the way that we do it. And that helps us change behavior in our business once we take the emotion out of things. So I think that was, yeah, it was just fun for me to see you kind of work through that process in your mind.

I changed a lot of the behaviors throughout this year. And here's an example. We just did a lucky bundle. Okay. So this would be my St. Patrick's. Normally I would have done a big St. Patrick's 6-day drop collection, and I would have had green shirts, button-ups, long sleeves. I would have bought specific jewelry that would have gone with everything. Um, I would have bought some new bags and launched a whole new collection. Instead of that, um, I took a look at what I had and what I could repurpose. I had 92 green polka-dotted tumblers from the Christmas box. Okay. Yeah. And so I thought, okay, what could I do with this to create something for St. Patrick's Day. And it wasn't a whole collection, it was one bundle. I ordered a Just in Time, um, sweatshirt, a green sweatshirt. We printed on our DTF machine a pink and green Lucky Thing. We sold that. We put a pink name on the, um, on the green tumbler. I attached an upsell for these pink earrings that I had left over from a different subscription box back in August. And so that became my one and only St. Patrick's Day item, and I sold 85 of those in a matter of weeks because I didn't give them all the options.

Yep.

Because I didn't have a ton of things for them to choose from, and I got rid of all those tumblers that I was sitting on, and I, and I didn't— I don't have any green sweatshirts left over because we ordered exactly what we needed. And, um, it felt really good to create something like that instead of doing all the things. Because it would take me weeks to curate a collection. I would do shopping, I would do design work, I would do ordering, I would do marketing with it. And all I had to do was like one ad set with a couple pictures of me wearing the thing. And we sold the heck out of those. And that was the shift I needed instead. And giving me permission to not have to do the big collections so that I had something to sell. And that was really important to me. We also did what we called $10 Tuesdays all year last year in an effort to liquidate products. Um, $10 Tuesdays was either the item was $10 or the item was $10 off. So I chose weeks where everything I showed was $10, and it wasn't a ton of stuff. It was like 5 to 6 items that week, and they're all $10 this week. Or— and then the next week I have 5 to 6 items that are all $10 off. So if it was like $40 item, I gave it like— it was now a $30 item. And so that was one day one way that we were working through our inventory, um, all year long and while still doing the rest of our business.

Yeah. How did your— so knowing that we were working on trying to get to that 60% margin, but yet you do have to liquidate and get rid of old stuff, how did that feel?

It felt like I, I was— I focused on two different ways. So my focus was getting 60% profit margin on the subscriptions and liquidating the one-time product at whatever margin. So that's where my focus was. I got to get rid of this old stuff. Some of the stuff I'd had for 2 years, it's way too long to be sitting on your shelves. And so my goal was how can I get rid of this and how can I increase the margins over here? Because I knew if I could increase them slightly on the subscriptions, that's 75% of my business. Yeah, that's where it's going to matter. It's not going to matter too much over here. So the goal was liquidating here and protecting our margins over here.

Yeah, I love that. So forward thinking, like from today forward, we're working on protecting margin, managing margin. Past decisions, it's about getting cash out of it. Yeah, like cash out of the past. I always tell people it's cash on hangers, cash in boxes. That's what inventory is. You have to look at it like every single piece of inventory is a dollar bill.

Yeah.

And you have them all over the place. We want them in the bank.

Yes.

So yeah, thinking about that old, the old decisions as cash, and we need to get that cash out again.

So I want to, I want to share a little more. I want to dig into my panty drawer just a little bit more to make it a little juicier for them while they've listened to us all this time. I want to talk about the sale and then the not sale. Yeah. How should we start this? I'm sorry, I'm trying to think. I, we put the business, okay, here's what happened. I wanted to sell the business. We tried some things on our own. Sierra and I reached out to a few larger businesses where I felt I could be acquired. There was interest there, which made me excited, but there was not a lot of follow-through. So we made the decision in the summer that we were going to hire a business broker to sell the business. Um, and so we had to get some things together. We had to dig through the panty drawer and get all the reports, um, there. And we put the business up for sale. At the beginning of August and immediately we had offers.

Yes.

You want to talk about that process a little bit?

Yeah. Yeah. So I always tell people, it's really funny. There's, it's just like, it's like anything in life. People are people. We think the same way regardless. Right? So I told you when we started, I was like, okay, today we want to get rid of it because we're tired and it's not, it's making money, but it's not doing exactly what we want. But then when we decide we want to sell it, suddenly it's worth $1 million. That's what everyone, and you didn't have a business that was failing. Like, I talk to people who— we really have a lot of financial stress, right? And they're like, I just want to close up shop. I'm, I'm dying here. And they're like, I'm just going to close. And I always say, well, why wouldn't you sell it? And then once they decide they want to sell it, they're like, I want $1 million for this business. I was like, yesterday you wanted to give it away for a dollar. So we had to talk through, okay, what's reasonable? What makes sense with the industry? What are some of the goals of, like, what you want to get out of it cash-wise? What What, you know, what are some things that would make this sale successful for you? And then how do we get there with profitability? Because then it's all based on numbers. Like, you can't just say I want $2 million for something. It has to be worth that on paper, or at least you can justify that. So here's what you wanted for your business. How do we back into it? How do we work towards profitability to get you what you want? Then we have a buyer, and they, they are me— they're more cruel than I am. Let's just say I try to be sweet and kind as I through your panty drawer. I feel like they're like, this is ugly. I hate red. I don't want— you know, it's like when you put your house up for sale and everyone's like, I love the house except I hate the rugs that they have and I don't like this. And, you know, and it's very personal. And so there's a lot of emotion because people are picking apart something that you've created and they're saying all the things that they don't like about it and what they would change. And that's very difficult. So we had to work through kind of what those conversations would look like. Um, and then, you know, pull together. And then they want different numbers and they want to dig into a lot of things that don't always make sense. So we had to kind of work through those pieces. But as we started to talk more and more to potential buyers, because you had multiple people very interested and our broker, you're like, I don't know. I mean, now that we've kind of turned the ship around and we're doing some pretty cool things, maybe, maybe I want to keep And so then we had to shift into what would make it worth it for you to sell it, or what could we do if you kept it for a while longer?

Yeah. So there was this period of, um, a buyer we were working with, and, um, they were kind of dragging their feet on everything. I was ready to sell it, like, let's go, it's done. We'd agreed on terms, we'd agreed on price, like, I'm ready to move on, let's go. Um, and I was really busy in those months leading up to that. I was preparing for my wedding and there was a lot. I was launching Launch Your Box in that timeframe. And so my head wasn't as clear as it needed to be to make these big decisions. And they drug their feet long enough that on my honeymoon, I remember Voxering you. I'm like, she's going to kill me for Voxering her on my honeymoon.

You're supposed to be relaxed.

And there was things like, and it wasn't that anything was wrong, but in my mind, I'm sitting there on the beach one day, I was by myself and I was just relaxing, and you start to think about life and things. And I thought, okay, this deal isn't going to go through, um, and so if it's not going to go through, I gotta have a plan B. I gotta be out of my warehouse by November 30th. It's like November 17th right now, um, and I had luckily talked to my landlord and said, hey, I'm working on selling the business Can you put me on month to month for a little bit while I figure this out? He's like, sure, no problem. So that was all gravy. So I just had to figure it out. And so I thought, I don't want to continue on in this way. I need space, I need freedom, I need time back, I need bandwidth back, and I need this to be more profitable. Um, because we dug through my panty drawer and I needed to make some shifts. I had a lot of overhead costs that were just eating a lot of my profits away. And so while I was sitting there on the beach, an episode of my podcast came into my mind about the fulfillment center. And so I pull it up on my phone, I have my earbuds in, and I'm listening to me talk to Ryan about fulfillment center. And we used my example, my box as an example. So I thought, if I don't renew my lease, I have to go to a fulfillment center And if I go to fulfillment center, that means I have to take the monograms out of my box. So that was always like the hiccup of why I wouldn't go to a fulfillment center. So I go and listen to that episode again, and we're calculating my box, and I'm doing the math on my phone while I'm sitting there, and it is less than my rent at my warehouse for them to fulfill my box. So now it's, it's less than my rent minus payroll minus utilities minus all the things we need for my machinery because I won't need it if I'm not monogramming. So then I had to wrestle with, could I rebrand? And so I voxered Sierra and I said, I have a thought. I don't know what's going on with the buyers, but here's my plan B. And she said, I'll look into this, but I'm not looking into it until you get back.

Okay.

So I was like, I'm gonna let her— you dig into it. I set up a meeting with fulfillment center when I got back on Monday. I got her some numbers. She sent me the plan of what that would change for my profitability of my business. And I sat there in shock of what that was going to do for my business by moving it to a fulfillment center, reducing, rebranding and taking the monogram out and, and then And she showed me the plan on how I could almost double my profit. And I was like, okay, okay, I'm going to keep the business. And that same day, the buyer said, okay, here's your purchase agreement. And I was like, no, no, we're not doing this anymore. And my business became like, it was like this new spark that ignited in me. When your business, my business is good. I wasn't losing money. Let me, hear me say that. Um, but the time it was taking me to run this business for the paycheck I was getting felt off for me. And so I didn't want to continue to do that. But when I could see, if I shift all my efforts just to subscriptions, I'm going to reduce my workload by half. And if I move to a fulfillment center, I'm no longer tied to that warehouse. So that gives me the freedom I'm looking for. And, um, I am going to save so much money, so much profit back into my business. And Sierra knows that the biggest, hardest part of that conversation was my employees.

Yeah.

And so I wrestled with that for a long time, but at the end of the day, this is a business and you need to be profitable. And if you're not profitable, your business is not going to last anyway.

Yeah.

And so the way it was running right now, I wanted to sell it because I wasn't making enough money at the end of the day to make it feel like all the work I'm doing was worth it at the end of the day. That has changed.

Yeah.

Because of the changes that we did. I'm so excited. I was telling Scale Your Box today, we were on Zoom today, and this is just a little secret that doesn't go anywhere but the public podcast.

Yeah.

I have more cash in my framed bank account than I have had for 4 years.

I need a testimonial. You got to write that down on paper for me. I will. So exciting.

And it makes me so— and I'm still, I'm still paying for the warehouse, but I am in such a better place because I've liquidated this old stale inventory. And we're shifting to the fulfillment center and it makes me excited. Can I sit down and curate 12 boxes? Heck yeah, I can. And it's not going to take me every day. Can I sit down and design 24 t-shirts because of my 2 t-shirt subscriptions? Heck yeah, I can. And all this other stuff that I was doing to fill my time or to keep my employees busy, because honestly, that's where it was coming from. They didn't have enough work by just filling subscriptions for the month for me to pay them all month. And how do you keep employees for a week and a half every month? Month. Like, it's not doable. And so I was creating all this work for me to keep them busy, to keep them employed, to keep us going, when it was just burning me out badly. And so yeah, we've rebranded. Um, our new subscription box comes out this month, and, um, fulfillment center will start fulfilling in May. And I'm very excited about the change.

Yeah, you know, I talk a lot about how I help people move from financial stress to financial freedom, and a lot of the conversation in my world is on debt and heavy stuff. But financial stress looks different to different people, right? You didn't have debt, you were profitable, you're taking a paycheck, but it wasn't fulfilling. It didn't feel good to you. You've said that multiple times. It didn't feel good. The exchange of value for what you were putting in wasn't there anymore. And you just wouldn't— I want people to really hear the reason you could make that decision was because your finances were finally in order. After. Yeah, because you knew what the numbers were, you knew how to look at them, they gave you information and power to make good decisions. Because a year prior, you just didn't have— you didn't have any of that decision-making ability because you didn't know what was going on with the numbers. You knew you were selling, you knew you could sell, you knew there was money in the bank, but you didn't have the power to make decisions. Just tell a buyer no, right? Like, for a pretty substantial sale and be pretty big amount of money. And you're like, you know what, I think I'll pass. And that's financial freedom. And so getting yourself in your business to a place where you have the freedom to say yes to what you want to say yes to, no to what you want to say no to, and to really have the business that serves you, that's the power that the numbers. So whether you're an accountant, bookkeeper, scientific mind or not, knowing that the numbers give you power, that should be enough incentive to figure out what they mean for your business. Yeah, yeah.

And I just, I want to just give this information to everybody out there because you don't have to wait until you're burnt out. You don't have to wait till you think that my only option to, to get my life back is to sell this business. But it's about taking these little steps along the way to change the business. Just because you started it one way does not mean it always has to be that way. And I think the important part here here is we got to start with a bookkeeper. So that's number one. You've got to have a profit and loss statement. You've got to know what you're working with from month to month. Then we've got to know our margins. So based on our bookkeeper helping us figure— like, even if that's building a spreadsheet like we did, we just put our boxes in there. What am I actually spending every month? Going into Shopify and putting the cost into every single product listing that you have so you you can see it, and then reducing the amount of extra inventory you're hanging on to for whatever reason, um, and continuing to grow your business in a profitable way. And now I have more money for ads, uh, which are growing my subscription box every single month right now. Um, and so that feels great too because the money I'm gaining back in my business is fueling the growth of my business And we just need to figure out how to get the money back in our, in our bank accounts.

Yeah, I love it. It's been such a fun project and I'm so excited for you with the fulfillment center, the freedom that's going to give you. I think one more thing too, just the numbers and the freedom that gave you to say no to things in the business, like to say no to the monogramming, things that were really scary. Yeah. Things are scary for us when we are on unsettled ground. When we're like, I don't know, what's this ramification going to be of this decision? But because you had the tools and the numbers, you were able to say, I can shed that, I can simplify that, I can get rid of that. So even in the concept of in and of itself, you could make better decisions to create more profitability.

Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. And you can work with Sierra. You don't have to work with her on such a high level. I used her as a fractional CFO in my business. Business, but there are lots of ways that you can work with Sierra on these things. Sierra, why don't you talk a little bit about that and where they can find you? Yes.

So I think the best thing would be to go to the website, sierrastockland.com. Up at the top, it'll be blaring in yellow. I'm always doing a free workshop. I would say just start there. So I have the Debt Detox workshop that I'm doing. I rotate it with the Product to Paycheck workshop where we talk about how to take your inventory and turn it into a paycheck. So there's always a workshop. I would just start there. And then if you're like, okay, I've done a couple workshops, or I've read your book, Sierra, or I just jump to the front of the line, on that website there's a Work With Me. Click on that, you can book a consult call and we can chat about your business and how I could best help.

Yeah, because I know that all we need is a little bit of help behind the scenes to help us move forward in our business. And I'm so excited that I took that leap with you back in January 2025 because it's changed everything about my business. So thank you for being here. Thank you for sharing all of the ins and outs of what we've been working on together. I hope you found this episode helpful, and we'll be back next week with another great episode.