Sarah's Launching her Box!

Good morning. It's Monday and it's time for Monday Momentum. And this week we're going to talk about my launch. I am launching this week. I am doing all the things this week. We're going to talk about what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, the strategy behind it, and how you can just rinse and repeat the launch playbook. So that's what we're talking about this morning. I'd love to know in the chat When is your launch of your subscription box or when is your next launch, like your relaunch? So this is a relaunch for me. I've had my subscription box. I'm trying to think of how many years is it? 7 years, 8 years. It's somewhere in there. 7, 2017. I don't know. It's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot of years. I can't do year math this morning. It's too early. I haven't had enough coffee. It's been a lot of years and this is our annual subscription box launch. My goal with this launch is to gain a new, a new 5,000, not 5,000. Oh my gosh, I can't talk today. Let me have a drink of coffee. Hold, please. My goal with this launch is to add in another 500 subscriptions to our subscription box. So that is our goal. That's how much product we have. And so we're going to go all in with this. This morning. So let me know that you're here. I can see a lot of my YouTubers are here. Now let's just talk about this little elephant in the room really quickly. StreamYard made its changes. Well, it's not really StreamYard's fault. Bless StreamYard's heart. It's Facebook. Facebook made changes that aren't allowing third-party apps to stream into groups anymore without using a code. Now I'm going to try the code tomorrow. Inside Launch Your Box. And so you'll see me inside Launch Your Box, hopefully on StreamYard. If not, we'll work around that. But that all changed today. So I can only stream on public profiles now, which is my YouTube channel and is my How to Start a Subscription Box Facebook page. So that's where I'm at this morning. Thank you for finding me and getting here this morning. And that's what I'm going to do until there is a solution to stream back into the groups. The Launch Your Box group and the Scale Your Box group. But you can find me on YouTube. You can find me on my How to Start a Subscription Box page. Here's the name of the YouTube channel right here. Here is the name of the Facebook page. So wherever you're watching me, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel. I would love to have you over there. We're making content specifically for YouTube right now as we are growing over on YouTube. But wherever you're watching me from, that's good. I can see my YouTubers are here. Good morning, Myra. Good morning, Dawn. Good morning, everybody. I can see Susie's here. Good morning, Andrea. Good morning from YouTube. I see Selena's here. I can see my Facebookers are here. I see Stephanie's here this morning. Good morning, Lexi. Good morning, Cameron. Antoinette's here. Good morning, everybody. So wherever you're at, we're going to figure it out. Here's what happens when things change. We change with it and we, we can't fight it. We just got to go with it. It's out of our control. So that's what we're doing today. We're figuring out how to stream where we need to stream. Um, and so that's why we're showing up here today. And I'm going to try the workaround tomorrow. So here's the workaround as I know it. The workaround is there's some code that you have to put in, and I haven't figured it out yet. You can tell. Um, I'm gonna try that tomorrow as I stream inside the Laundry Box group. The problem is I won't be able to see the comments and pull them up onto the screen like I can now. So I have to pull up the comments from Facebook directly and just watch them. I won't be able to pull them into the screen like I, like I did with Shanita's comment here. So that will be the difference as I stream into the groups. Okay. So let's talk launch. Let me know in the chat if you are, when your next launch date is, when are your, when is your first launch date? Or when is your next launch date? Here's what you get from me. You get full transparency. You get a front row seat. You get to watch me put into action what I tell all of you to do. And that's what we're talking about today. I am basically taking the launch module that I have created for you inside the Launch Your Box library. If you're a member, type member in the chat. I'd love to see if you're a member. And I am putting it to practice. I'm taking it, I'm using it as my playbook, and we're going to talk about what I'm currently doing. So really, the launch started for me yesterday. Okay. But I don't open cart until Friday. Do you see the buildup here? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be building up to my open cart day on Friday, and we're going to talk about that. This is my annual launch. And so what's happening right now is I am working on engagement posts. So I want to actively engage as many current subscribers as I can right now. So that is the goal over the next 4 days is, is really engage with my subscribers. Here's what I'm trying to do over the next several days. I'm trying to create engagement subscribers. I'm creating social proof so that I can use those in other areas. I'm going to show you what I mean here in a minute. I want to be talking about the subscription box every— there is nothing but a subscription box going on on my page this week. Okay. So I am not redirecting their focus to buy anything else this week but becoming a subscriber. Okay. So let me show you a couple of things. And this is something that I did for the first time last year during my launch, and I decided I was going to try to see if I could replicate it this one too. And it's working. So I know if I can do this and I can repeat it, it wasn't just a fluke that you guys can do this too. Okay, so let me show you. This is what worked really well last year, and it was just something really off the cuff that I did. I posted a picture of me, posted a picture of me, and this copy, I changed it. I'm going to tell you in a little bit what happened. So I posted a picture of me holding the box and I just basically said, we're about to launch, we're about to open the cart this week to hundreds of subscribers. And subscribers, let me know what you love about the Monogram Box. So I repeated it, but here's what I did. I did a different picture. This picture needs to be new, fresh and fun. You don't want to take an old picture— sorry, I'm going to scoot over a little bit here. Um, you don't want to take an old picture that they've already seen because they're going to keep scrolling. This picture needs to be a new environment and new— so here's what I've never taken a picture for this business in my office like this, okay? So they haven't seen this backdrop in my life before. They haven't seen it on social media before. So I thought, let me do something different. They always see me in the warehouse. So they're probably just going to keep scrolling on by. And so I decided to take this picture in my office. And of course, I want to wear a monogrammed item, something that relates to my subscription in some way. In the picture, I'm wearing a monogrammed t-shirt and I'm just saying I've been prepping for this all week long or all month long. On Friday, we are opening our subscription spots to hundreds of new subscribers, something we haven't done in over a year. "Hey, if you're a subscriber, tell me what you love about your subscription below. It would mean the world to me." And I also tease them with, "I've got some great surprises for you this week and I can't wait to share more." Okay, so this is my post. Now I posted this yesterday and I'm already making really good traction with this. So this is last year's post. Let me show you this. Last year I posted basically the same copy. With this and you can see I was getting a lot of traction. Now remember, I don't have a huge page. So for me to get 91 comments on anything is a big deal. For me to get shares, that many shares, that's a big deal. For me to get 300 likes, that's a big deal. So what, and I didn't have all this in the beginning, but what I saw was I had like 30 subscribers that had commented on this. It was basically the same copy. I was getting a ton of likes, I had some shares, and then I was like, you know what, this would make such a great ad because there's all this social proof in the comments of this post. All these subscribers are telling me what they love about my subscription box. So when I got to OpenCart, I went back in and I changed the copy to more sales copy and I took this and ran it as an ad exactly as it was. So I had all that social proof in my comments of subscribers that loved it. So that's when I changed the copy to this. And it was just slightly, it's not a lot of copy. And I threw the link in there to join because I was opening cart on Friday. So that's the plan for this post. I'm gonna take this post, I'm gonna let it keep juicing up. And here's the trick with this. So you don't wanna just go reply to every single comment right off the gate. You wanna slow play this, okay? Every time I go reply to a few comments in here, it kicks it back up in the algorithm. So I will get onto this post 3 or 4 times today, and I'm going to reply to 3 or 4 comments at a time. I'm just responding to my subscribers. It— and then what you're going to see when you do that, you're going to see more comments almost instantly because it kicks it back up into the feed more. If you go in like I had 20 comments on it yet last night. And I was like, I could go reply to all those, but I don't want to do that all at one time because I need the juice to keep going. I need this post to keep building so I can use it for a really great ad coming up later this week. So I would go respond to 3 or 4 and then I'd have about 5 more comments on there. I'd go respond to 3 or 4. I'd have some more comments. This morning I did the same thing. I was getting my hair done this morning. I went and replied to 3 or 4 more comments. I've got like 5 or 6 more comments now after that from other subscribers. So I'm going to keep, I'm going to keep juicing this post up so that I can use it to run an ad. I'll change the copy to sales copy and I'll publish this as an ad later this week. It worked great. It was my best performing ad, the most convert, the best performing ad I had last, last launch. So I tried to replicate that once again and I think it's working. So that is engagement. Now, make sure you're going back and commenting on that stuff because that's really, really important to keep the juices going and to keep it pushing back into the algorithm. Now, I've also taken the, the launch social media plan from our library. So in the library, you get a blank worksheet and you also get suggested plan right here. I took the suggested plan and I pulled up what I did last year. So because everything's in Meta, I went into the Meta Planner and I went back to the month, the last time I launched, and I went through and I looked at all my posts from the last launch and I looked at what got the most interaction and engagement. And so I went through those and I ended up saving them onto my Asana board. I was like, oh, this one was really good. I pulled the copy, popped it onto the board. I pulled the picture, popped it onto the board. Some of them I replaced and put new pictures with and some with— and used the same copy. Some of them I left exactly the same. I'm gonna, I'm gonna post exactly the same as last year. So I pulled those out and then I slotted them in to my plan for the week. And you can see the ones with the The ones with the checkmarks I've already scheduled. So I've already got several days worth of posts scheduled. And so what I decided to do when I looked at, I looked at the posts from last year from the launch, and then I also kind of looked at the last 6 months of just my regular social media posts. And I, I took a look at what was, getting the most reach and engagement from what's working now. Like, that's what I always think about, like, what is working now in my business. And so what I noticed, and I know this, but I didn't realize it as heavy, but it's the personal posts. And I know you guys hate to hear this, but when we can be ourselves, when we can be a little bit vulnerable, when we can share something that means a lot to us, that is relatable to someone else, you're going to get a lot of engagement. And I shared something on my framed page last year and it had over 1,000 likes to it and it had 180 comments on it. And I started to look at that post and I'm like, what was it about this post? I have never ever had anything that had 1,000 likes on it. Like, I don't, I don't I don't have that. That's not normal for me. And so it, and it was, and it was like probably quadruple of what an, what a really amazing post would be. So I started to look at that post and it was a very vulnerable post for me. And so I decided to put a few of those kind of warm, vulnerable posts into this week that I didn't before. And so you're going to see a post tomorrow morning that is a very vulnerable post for me and it's really tied into the why of why I started my subscription box. And so I have a feeling that that post is going to get a lot of traction and a lot of engagement and I need that right before my launch. I also have and a post that I'm gonna schedule on Thursday evening that's more of a vulnerable post from me. And so I've got those kind of built into my schedule. I put 'em, I put 'em right here. And it's, and it's a picture of you again. And it's a different setting. You can't just go take, you can't just have a stock picture of yourself that you use for everything and keep rinsing and repeating it. It needs to be in different places. It needs to be different. Clothing. It needs to be in different areas. It needs to feel different. Okay. And so when I get ready for this launch, I'm taking pictures. Like last week, I took several pictures on different days based on what I was wearing, and I purposely wore this monogram shirt today because I want to take a few more pictures for the rest of my posts. I've got a monogram on. I can go take some more pictures with— in a, you know, something else, um, and use them in different— I can take them in different areas. I can go set up some boxes and make it look like I'm packing. I can go stand in front of my wall of boxes over here. I can go into our unloading dock and stand in front of all the pallets of product that's there. There's some different settings that I could take some pictures in today to really help with these social media posts. And then when I have one of those posts that are really heartfelt for me, I've got a different picture of myself. Okay, so that's kind of a tip to make sure that you are taking lots of different pictures and you're not rinse and repeating the same picture over and over again through your launch. You can use the same pictures from your last launch. Nobody remembers, nobody cares. But don't use the same all week long because they get their fatigue. They'll scroll right past them. Now, the other thing with these engagement posts, you know, I'm working Sunday to Thursday engagement posts, all these juicy comments about what people love about their subscription. I'm now going to use them in more posts. I'm now going to use them in emails. I'm going to use— I'm going to reference them when I go live. Like, I have content now from that one post that I made yesterday. I got 30 comments of why people love their subscription box. And so, um, that's another thing that is a little, little— this little gem in here. And I've And I've done a couple more posts like this morning. I put— there's a post there that says your favorite box from the last year. So now on Thursday, I'm going to reveal the top 5 boxes from the last year and it's going to be from the comments on that post. So whatever they chose as their favorite boxes, that's going to be my top 5 on Thursday. I'm also going to use another review for a box here. And so I'm waiting to get some of those posts from Sunday and I'm going to use it here. So I'm going to use these repeatedly out throughout the launch. It's content that I'm getting. It's user-generated content from the comments of your engagement posts. Okay. Now, once I get through the engagement posts, I'm going— I need to finish up my emails today. I was working on them Friday. I didn't quite finish them because I wanted to use some of the juice from the launch, which means I want to use something in the moment. So I'm going to take that post from yesterday. I'm going to mine some of the comments and I'm going to start to use them in my launch emails. Now here's the great thing is that inside the launch module in Launch Your Box, I line out your emails for you. I tell you what to send, how many to send, and what needs to be in each email. So you don't have to, you don't have to come up with that strategy on your own. You're welcome to deviate from it, from whatever works for your business, but it gives you a plan so you're not out here just winging it all day long. So I have those emails built from last year. All I have to do is update copy, update pictures, throw in some of these new social posts, and I've got good. So once you build these assets for the first time, you could just literally rinse and repeat them. Now the other thing is my ads. I can go back and look at the ads that I've used last year, see which ones performed well. I know the one I just showed you was my best performing ad last year. I'm gonna rinse and repeat it. I'm gonna try a couple new things. What's really been working for my ads right now is less graphic-y ads. So more in the moment ads, more just behind the scene ads, less perfectly placed graphics. And I'm gonna have some great perfectly placed graphics, They look really great. My marketing, my marketing director put those together and they look great, but I'm going to do some more in the moments again. That's why I wore the monogram pullover today, because I'm going to go take some of those pictures, some more in the moment things. And we have tons of pictures from around the warehouse, but I'm going to get a little bit strategic with some of the ads that we're going to try this time that are different from last time. Ads are all like a big experiment. They're all about testing and trying. And if I know what's working, from current ads that I'm running for products, I know that I just need to rinse and repeat that again. What's working? That's what we need to do. Okay. Now, the other thing after ads is lives. So I've got my lives planned out and I've got them on my schedule. So I've got them and we talk about these in the launch module too. I'm going to start my lives on Friday. I'm going to go live every day through the launch. So I'll be live through the launch there. And that's the plan. I've got all that figured out so that when it's time to show up live, I'm not scrambling around figuring out what I'm going to talk about, where I'm going to set up and all those things. I know, I know what I'm going to do, know what I'm going to do Friday. I know what I'm going to do Saturday. I know what I'm going to do Sunday. I have them all written out. Okay, and then the other thing that, the other thing that I wanna do is I wanna prep my Post-it wall. So this is one of the best things that I do in my launch. I teach you guys this inside LauncherBox as well. But if you haven't seen the subscriber wall, this is me exhausted on close cart day of my launch last year. But I keep adding to my wall as subscribers keep joining. This is my home office. And so I want to make sure I've got everything ready and prepped for the wall because it's something visual that my subscribers really love. And those of you that replicate this in your own launches know how much your subscribers love seeing their name on the wall. And so just getting that ready to go so that I'm not trying to do it all last minute because once subscribers started coming, they started coming very, very fast. So the goal is to get that wall prepped and be ready to go and it'll really start to fill up towards the last day of your launch. And then what I was doing was I was doing my lives in front of that wall so they could see it grow. And so that was a really fun, this is a really fun way to really promote your new subscribers, to celebrate your new subscribers. And, um, and so those are, those are things. And here's the goal. The goal is to get 500 new subscriptions. Um, when— let me see, when Close Cart Day is— 500 new subscriptions by Wednesday. Um, and so, and I don't know, like, you know, I know what I did last year. I did over 400 last, last time. Um, so I'm gonna be pushing it a little bit, but I feel like it's time. Like, I feel like it's time for me to go really hard with this. I've kind of laid low for a few years and just maintained my numbers, and now it's time to push. I told the team, um, that, um, I wanted to add 1,000 new subscriptions into the business this year, and so we're gonna try it with 2 launches. So that means I got to get 500 and 500. And, um, and I'm excited to dig into this. And, um, you really can get a front row seat to this, one, as your coach. Um, I'll be sharing some things in Launch Your Box throughout the week. Um, I do a series called Launch Diaries. I do that for my Scale Your Box students. where I just am raw and real and usually exhausted, and I talk to the camera about what's happening, how I'm pivoting or adjusting, how I'm feeling. So that's the Launch Diaries. I do that for my Scale Your Box students, and then I'll give you guys updates in Launch Your Box. Um, but, um, you can really watch this with a front row seat just by following my retail page. You're going to see everything that I teach you in the launch module as it unfolds throughout the next 10 days. And, um, and you can do that. You can come follow along, come watch, come see what's working. You're going to be able to tell on my social media what's working and what's not. Um, Lisa says, will you close the cart at the end of this launch? So The goal is that I sell out so that I can close the cart. Yes. And that's what happened during my last launch. I sold out and closed the cart and started the waitlist again. And that's the goal. So I'm hoping that I'm able to close the cart again. Theresa asked if I'm going to be launching all 3 of my subscriptions or just focusing on 1. So I'm going to launch 2 of my subscriptions because of the way they line up. Let me show you what I'm talking about. So So I have 3 subscriptions. I have the Monogram Box, I have the T-Shirt Club, and I have the Tees for Teachers. The Monogram Box and the T-Shirt Club really are combined together and they align together. Now the cutoff dates for both are really close together. So I'm gonna roll them into each other. Let me show you what I mean here. So we're gonna promote the box and the T-Shirt Club through the start of the launch on Friday the 26th. And the, the payments— the cutoff date for the box is May 1st. So that will be the cutoff for the box. So that will be the last day. I'll do the big push. We'll do— we'll go all in. Now I'll be completely exhausted by the first, but because my cutoff for the t-shirt club, um, isn't till the 5th, we're going to continue the launch. I won't be going live every day, but all of this social media will be all about the t-shirt club, and we will have separate t-shirt ads that will run from the 2nd to the 5th. So, and then we'll do emails like, basically, if you didn't get into the box, you can join the t-shirt club. We'll be promoting that. We have bonuses for both, so I'll be running launch bonuses and I've ordered enough for the total. So it's not necessarily an early bird bonus, but just an entire launch bonus. I decided that it's easier for me to figure out how much I need, and because I have to order them so far in advance, um, I'm trying this differently this time. So there are two launch bonuses. There is one to join the box and one to join the t-shirt club. But if you upgrade to the box and the t-shirt club, the combo box or the ultimate box, you're going to get both bonuses. So that's really what I'm going to promote starting on Friday is I want you to join both. So let me, let me have both. Join both. You're going to get both bonuses. You know that if you're a subscriber of mine, you know they go together. The t-shirt matches the box, so it all kind of goes together. So it makes sense to promote it all together. And then once either I sell out of boxes, hopefully, or we close cart on the box, I will continue with the t-shirt standalone, and the bonus will continue until the 5th as well. So that's kind of the goal. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens. Um, and here's the thing, I can see that several of you are new. Um, I want you to start engaging. Your engagement ads are going to look similar to mine, but not all of them will be the same because you don't have current subscribers. So how do you build excitement? When I was launching my teacher subscription, I just kept doing like, it's coming soon. And then the comments were filled with like, I'm so excited. I can't wait for my teacher teas. That's what I was using as social proof. That's kind of what I used in place of current subscribers was the excitement that I was building. So I want you to find ways to do that. You can still do the picture with your box or the poly mailer or whatever it is. And generate some excitement even if you don't have subscribers that you can use as social proof. I use those on my sales page. I used those on my emails that went out. I used the excitement when I started that teacher subscription. So just tweak this to fit where you're at with your business. The goal is engagement this week. So I'm gonna be engaging. I am doing all the posts for the launch because I want them to be personal. And then Amber's helping with the comments and we're going to, we're going to be locked and loaded and I'm going to give it everything I got. No matter what happens during this launch, I'm going to, I'm going to show up every which way that I can. I can do anything for this time period. I can do anything for 5 days. I can do anything for the week. I can do anything no matter how tired I get. No matter if it's not going well and I get down on myself, I got to push through that and give it my all because I know when I show up, I know when I give it 100%, I have results. And so if I have a bad day during the launch, I got to keep going. And that's the goal. And you're going to see your coach do exactly what I teach. So pull up a chair and watch me launch this week. It all starts Friday morning. All right. Take notes, dig into the launch module inside Launch Your Box. If you're not a part of Launch Your Box, go over to joinlyb.com because you're going to want to come hang out with us and dig into all of our amazing training lessons. But it's launch week, it's go time, and I'm here for it. So I'll talk to you guys really, really soon. Have a great day.