Payments Detached - Navigating the Storm

Good morning, happy Monday everybody. I feel like I'm always full of energy, um, when I come live and, um, you know, there's a, there's a heaviness to my heart this morning and something that we're navigating behind the scenes. Um, I'm going to talk about it today, allow you to ask questions. Um, I don't— obviously I don't want to— I don't want this to scare you, um, but It is real. It has happened. Um, if you've been following along with my stories, I've been kind of updating each day. Um, but let me just break it down if you, if you don't know what's going on and you're like, what's happening, Sarah? Tell me, tell me what's happening. Um, let's, let's talk about it. So I'm gonna go back to Thursday. So this, this chain of events started really happening on Thursday. So we have 3 different We have 3 different subscriptions. I have the Tees for Teachers subscription. I have the Monogram Box subscription and I have the T-Shirt Club subscription and all 3 of our subscriptions, they run on different days. So on Wednesday, our Tees for Teachers subscriptions were running, payments were running. So on Thursday, when we were here at the warehouse, you know, the plan is we start, we pack all the subscriptions, right? We have a few bounced payments, some insufficient funds, things like that. We work through those. Over the next few days and get everything out, pretty much 95% of everything out. Well, on Thursday, it was interesting because only 40 payments had gone through for our Tees for Teachers subscription. And so the team was looking at it, we're like, something didn't process. We contacted Matt, who's our web developer. You know, he's looking at it, but we're hoping they'll just, And I'm thinking sometimes it happens, like there's some hiccup in the system. It's going to process on the next wave, which happens 12 hours later. Right. And it'll be fine. Like, it's just a weird glitch. It'll be fine. Well, they didn't. And so that started to uncover a bigger issue that we found. So what we found was that on between March 15th and March 16th on the backend. So I have WooCommerce as my subscription website and my payment processor is Stripe. Okay, so those are the two accounts that are— that we're talking about here. So on March 15th through March 16th, there was activity on the activity logs that showed all of my subscribers, not all of them, 95% of my subscribers who had detached their payment card from Stripe. So now when all of these start to process, there's no card on their file. And when you go into their Stripe account, like normally, like I can see all their transactions, I can see what card, the last 4 digits of what card they've used for all their subscription, all their payments. But it says no payment on file. So all the cards that were attached to all of my subscribers, all their cards were removed from this one specific event that happened on WooCommerce on the night of 3/15. And it went through not only my Tees for Teachers, my monogram boxes, my t-shirt club. So 95% of all my subscriptions no longer have a payment card on file. Panic. I— to say that I was panicked is pretty much an understatement. So I started going, oh crap. I'm like, okay, we just need to reattach all the payment cards. That's all we need to do. If I have to go through all of the dang subscribers one by one and attach their payment cards, I will do that, right? Like, that's what we're doing. We're talking about tens of thousands of dollars. That is about to process over the next few days. Okay. And there are no cards to process. We're talking about all these subscription boxes that I have here monogrammed for all these people that I may or may not get their payment card back. Right. This is what we're talking about. And that panic set in. Not only do I have all of their stuff mostly monogrammed for this box, but I have the next box here and the next box is on their way. Like, I'm out so much money and you guys know better than anybody that subscription box owners, when we try to recover payments, like there's this percentage of the payments that we actually recover. People don't answer their emails, people don't respond to texts, people don't answer their phones. So the, the fact of me trying to go after all of my subscribers to get them to stop what they're doing and go in, log into their account, they probably don't remember their password and put in a new card hit me like a ton of bricks, like the most overwhelming anxiety that I felt on Friday. And I just started to cry. I just started to cry. And, and I thought, my business is over. Like, I— this has been a good 8-year run. We, you know, like, it's been good, but I don't know if I can start from scratch right now. And I thought, well, would it— you know, in my mind, these things were playing in my mind, like, it's time to just call it good. It's been a good run. I've had a really successful business. But the amount of defeat that I felt in that moment, I just laid there and cried. Like, this is done. Like, I don't have it in me to start over again. And so you're talking about 8 years worth of subscriptions. You're talking about people that have been in my subscriber base for 8 full years that have gotten every single box of mine. And the fact that I only got about a 20% response rate on my email that I sent out, sent out 2 emails, about 19% of the people actually clicked into the account. I'm like, that didn't really work, you know? And so I'm just like, okay, well, this is kind of it. This is how this ends for me. And I just laid there and cried most of Friday. Now, I was— this is also after Stripe had closed out my ticket, said there's nothing we can do, something happened, we can see the event logs, there's nothing we can do. Pulled myself together Friday night and I said, listen, my name is Sarah Williams, because all the whole time my web developer is communicating with them, right? So I said, okay, My name is Sarah Williams. I am the business owner. I have been a loyal Stripe user since 2017. You have processed millions of dollars for me, like millions of millions of dollars for me over these past 8 years. This is detrimental to my business. This affects my livelihood. This affects my employees. This affects my entire business. You can't close out this ticket without helping me. Help me fix this, please. And so really quickly, that email, I think all I had to say was, I've been a user since 2017 and you've processed millions. And I said, we all lose in this situation. You, Stripe, lose. Because you're no longer getting the processing fees from my account. Again, they've processed over $10 million for me. I lose because I'm not getting the payment from my customers, which I have tens of thousands of dollars sitting right here in my warehouse of product and packaging that I have purchased specifically for these customers. My customer loses because They're not going to get their product that they've paid, that they are, they're expecting to get. And we all lose in this situation. And they did not authorize this. I did not authorize this. They did not authorize this. There has to be a resolution. So this was my email to them on Friday night that was received. Okay, we're going to reopen this. Let me get somebody on this. I think I had to say 10 million for them to even pay attention, which is sad. So that kind of bumped it up. Now, Saturday morning, there was a lot of back and forth. We, we roped in WooCommerce into the conversation. So now it's my web developer, it's Stripe, it's Woo, it's me. And there's the conversation going on and Stripe and Woo are going back and forth trying to figure out what happened. And I understand that they have to understand what happened. They just can't go give me thousands of people's credit cards, right, without understanding what happened. I get that. Uncover it. I don't care who's at fault. And they keep going back and forth at who's at fault here. And it's like, I don't care whose fault this was. Let's just fix it. Like, I'm cool. It's a mistake. People make mistakes. Help me fix it, right? They keep going back and forth. And this goes on from about 8:30 in the morning till about 1:55 in the afternoon. And I see it because I'm getting copied on everything. So I'm seeing them go back and forth. They're looking at activity logs, they're looking at event logs, like they're doing all the techie things that I don't understand, but they're talking to each other. And so I'm hopeful. I'm like, okay, they're going to realize this was a glitch on WooCommerce side and Stripe is going to fix it because Stripe has all the data that I need. Stripe has everything that I need. They have the cards, they have the customer's information. It's all in their system somewhere. They're just unwilling to unblock it for me. And that is the issue right now. So I'm super hopeful. Saturday, I'm like, okay, chill, we're going to pull this up. Pull yourself together. And then I start to calm down and I think, okay, what can I do? What can I do? I'm like, maybe they can fix it, but let me get a backup plan if they can't fix it, right? Because after I had my little pity party on Friday night, I have to pull myself together and problem solve this. So I'm thinking, okay, then it kind of goes cold. The conversation goes cold for about 3 hours. And then we reply and we say, hey, any updates? No response. We reply another 3 hours later, checking back in. This is very concerning because here's the, here's the biggest point. My big subscription process is starting tonight. My monogram box starts tonight. Those payments start processing at midnight tonight. Hey, we have a really big processing thing coming up. Checking on updates. We heard nothing Saturday night. We heard nothing all day on Sunday. This morning I have nothing. So I woke up yesterday morning with kind of this pit in my stomach that there was no response from Saturday night, and I thought, okay, I've got to do everything that I can do as a business owner to fix this. Like, like, I can't just give up. Like, I can't just sit and cry in my bed all weekend, right, over this and just walk away from this tremendous business that I have built from scratch. And so I'm like, okay, I'm gonna start with some emails. I'm going to start. And I started segmenting our subscribers. I started shooting out specific emails. If you're a teacher subscriber, I mean, this is what's happening. If you're a box subscriber, this is what's happened. Start sending out emails, personal emails, and a big batch of emails. So those were going out. I sent out a newsletter that everybody likes to read. It's like what— it's called my Hot Mess Email Series. Everybody likes read it, has the biggest open rate. I put it inside that as well. So all of this communication is going out and, and I start seeing we're getting some opens. I'm seeing the click is people clicking into their account to update it. So I'm watching those clicks, right? I'm watching that click rate and I can see about 19% of the people clicked on the account link. So of those 19% of all the subscribers, how many of them actually followed through and updated their card? And then I was like, oh, it's not enough. Like, I can't— like, 20% of my subscriber base is not enough to even cover the cost of these— of all this product I have. And so that— okay, um, I, I was like, I gotta go live if we have no resolution by tonight. This was yesterday. I gotta go live and I gotta just share this. And I was fearful of that because I'm also in the middle of a launch right now. I'm launching my t-shirt subscription in the middle of this. And I thought, if I put this out there publicly, are people going to lose faith in me? Are people going to lose faith in the security of our technology? Nothing's been hacked. Nothing's been compromised. They just got deleted. But people— I'm worried about that. I'm worried about the perception of that, right? We've got this big issue with payment cards. Are people going to have trust in me. And I thought, I either lose 80% of my business or I just be transparent and see if I can recoup this. So our plan was for me to go live. I just did a 10-minute live explaining what happened, um, and we started to, uh, run ads, um, to our subscriber list. So I took all the subscribers' email lists and we started to run ads. Now it's getting a lot of traction and a lot of engagement, so I'm sure other people that are not subscribers, um, you know, are seeing that now too. And there's a lot of people like, I just went in and updated my card, I just went in and updated my card, I just went and updated my card. And that's great. Um, there's a lot of people that need to do that for this to— for me to be even made whole or semi-whole in this. Um, and so when we look at the teacher subscriptions that started running last week, we still have over half that we haven't recovered. Um, so today the plan is we're going to start texting all of those subscribers, and then like we see what happens tonight, um, when our box subscription starts to process. I don't know how many of the box subscribers have updated their accounts. I'm just— I'm scared. Like, there's not— there's no way for me to, um, like sugarcoat it and be positive Patty all the time. Um, I'm scared. And you know, I thought I'm gonna come talk about this with you guys today so that you could understand what happened. And you're probably thinking, okay, Sarah, how do we prevent this from happening to us? Um, and the answer is I don't know yet. I don't know how you prevent this from happening. I have used WooCommerce Stripe combination like clockwork for 8 years and never had a problem. I would say you're more likely to get in a car wreck today than to have this happen to your business. Um, and so I don't know how to help you prevent this from happening. Um, I think that we have to be honest with ourselves and understand the vulnerabilities that we have, um, in our businesses. We have it with our social media pages. We don't own that. We have it with our websites. Like, we don't— if you're on Shopify, like, Shopify could take everything down today if they wanted to. Um, you know, right now the problem is there's no accountability to what has happened for me, and so there's no resolution when Stripe has the power to resolve this for me. Um, And so that's where I'm at, and I'm just gonna work really hard on, um, getting in front of my subscribers and seeing what I can do, um, there. It's hard because, you know, um, you think about social media, they— small percentage of our following ever sees what we do. You think about how many people never open an email or it never gets to their inbox. Um, but we have a— I have such a good team of people that work for me that are willing to do whatever needs to be done. Um, we will physically text every person one by one. We will physically call every person one by one if we need to. Um, but I think the real issue that I'm struggling with is that someone has the power to fix this for me and they won't. And I understand that there's some liability around giving me access to that information, but there's also some liability— somebody has to have some liability around taking all of that from me. And so, um, that's where the accountability lies. And right now I'm, I'm too— I'm, I'm too in the middle of it. Um, you know, I was talking with my, uh, fiancé yesterday and I said, you know, it's that, it's that saying of like, you can't see the forest through the trees. Like, I'm in the trees right now and I just am trying to find my way out of the trees and I gotta focus on getting through the trees right now and then we'll figure out the, the attorney situation because this is my entire business. And right now I gotta focus on getting through the trees, and the trees is getting my subscriptions processed and out the door. And, um, and so it's hard for me to see the, the forest here, um, and I will once I get through the trees, but I've got to focus on my subscriber. I gotta focus on capturing these payments in any way that I can. I've gotta figure that out in the best way I can. And I think the really important thing here is like when you build a business with authenticity and trust and community, that community comes through for you. And I saw that last night on my live. Um, my community was really stepping up, sharing my live, tagging other Box subscribers that they know into that live, sending me sweet messages, um, supporting and helping me get through this. But when you build a community like that, like, that's really important. I'm just like rubbing my hands because I'm just— I don't know what to do. Um, And so that's where we're at with this. And I don't wish this on anybody. Um, and I don't know how to prevent it from happening to anyone. It's kind of like, you know, I watched my friend Tamara get her Facebook page taken from her, her 300,000 people Facebook page taken from her last year. And you know, the thought of having to start over, losing a Facebook page like that is crippling. You spend 10, 12 years building a Facebook page and following and engaging and all of that thing, and then for it to just be wiped away like that. But I watched her start a brand new page and she has over 100,000 followers again in less than a year. And I think that that's what makes us resilient as business owners. So whatever happens through this, it might be a financial loss for me for the next few months, but, um, I'm not going to give up on it. And there's nothing in me that would just roll over and let it be it, even though I felt that way on Friday. I think anytime that we have a situation— maybe it's a bad launch, maybe it's a tech nightmare like this, um, I, um, I think we have to grieve it. I think that's what I was doing Friday. It's okay, um, it's okay to be sad about something that's not going well, but I think we can't live in that space. And that's what I had to kind of get myself— I had to, I had to grieve it, I had to cry about it, I had to have the pity party for myself, but then I had to pick myself back up. And put it together. And I would put myself together. I'm like, okay, this is what we need to do. And then I'd start thinking about something and I'd start crying again. And then I'm like, stop it, Sarah. And then you can do this. And here's the other thing. I have all these people watching me navigate this. Right. And so that's where I'm at. And we'll see how it plays out. Um, Molly, this is, this is, um, a great question. So Stu has reached out to me, um, and he's going to get some visibility around this with Stripe, I think, um, today on social media. I've also kind of reached out to the people in that mastermind to see if they have, um, any attorney recommendations, because it's not any attorney can handle something like this. I need somebody that's very familiar with digital businesses and online businesses. So, um, that— I mean, that's kind of the next— if I continue to not get any response from Stripe like that, that's what I have to do. And in the meantime, I'm gonna— we're gonna— the team and I are fully committed to contacting every single subscriber in every single way that we can. If we have to get like pigeons and fly to their house, I don't know what's gonna happen, but You know, the plan right now is we sent mass emails. We've also sent individual emails from my email account. We have sent it in our newsletter, which we know it has a really high open rate, has like a 50-60% open rate. So we sent it in the newsletter last night. Today we're going to start texting the half of the teacher subscribers that have not responded. To the emails that payments haven't processed. So we have about half of our teacher subscriptions that still need payments. And then we have the live I did last night and it's out now on— we're running ads to our subscriber list in hopes that as many of our box subscribers and t-shirt club subscribers will see it and take action before all those payments start, um, we'll start, uh, processing because they'll start processing at midnight tonight. So we'll see how many of those kick back and, um, we'll go from there. Okay, so like, that's the plan. I can't say that I'm not gonna— you're not gonna find me somewhere crying later today or tomorrow or the rest of this week, but I'm gonna keep moving forward like I would expect all of you in any situation that we're faced with um, that, you know, I've been through hard things in my life and this is just one of those hard things and I'm gonna get through it. And, um, I'm just gonna take you along for the journey and, um, we'll navigate it. And, um, if any of you are my subscribers, please go open an email, please go check my live, please, um, go. And if anybody wants to be a subscriber, I'm sure I'm gonna have a lot of openings, um, after this month. So if you'd like to get a subscription box, you know where to find me. But that's where we're at. So I don't have any giant words of wisdom for you on this Monday, except that we can do hard things. True entrepreneurs are built to outlast the storms, and I'm a true entrepreneur. So whatever you are dealing with in your own business, take a little bit of my courage to keep pushing through it and to keep moving forward, okay? All right, I'll talk to you guys soon. Thank you for all your love and support. I appreciate you.