Subscription Box Beginner Checklist

Good morning, everybody. I'm trying a little something new this morning, so I am going live, um, in my— on my public page and inside the group. I'm just testing all the things, um, for today, so some of it's a little delayed, um, on the other screen, but I am here. We're trying the technical things. I had a question asked in the Scale Your Box group last week. If you could go with the new changes on Facebook and the third-party apps, could you stream on a public page and in a private group with the RTMP setup? And the answer is yes. I'm gonna take a, I am doing it right now. So technically I am streaming on my public Facebook page right now, my public YouTube page right now, and also in my private Launch Your Box group. Group. So I got all the tech set up. Yay for me! It's a, it's a win. I'm gonna take a picture really quick, um, so I'll show you the setup of what it looks like on my screen, um, when we get in there. But good morning everybody, happy holiday Monday. It's Memorial Day. I hope that you got some good relaxation over the weekend. Whether you're working today or relaxing, I'm glad that you're here. Let me come to the chat and say good morning. I can see that the team is here with me. Sarah's here. Good morning, Andrea. Good morning, Joanna. Hey, and I, hey, Jonica. And on inside the Facebook group, I can't pull your comments up, but I can see Mandy Lee is here. I can see that Bev is here. Good morning, everybody. We're gonna talk through getting started today or kind of getting over the hump of where you're currently at because sometimes you get going, you have a lot of momentum in the beginning because you're super excited about getting started. So you jump in, you dig in, you get going and you kind of get stuck, right? Like you kind of get a little bit stuck with where you're at and you're not sure what the next step is. So team, will you drop the links in here for me? I have got basically a beginner's checklist and I'm gonna talk you through that a little bit. It's a free download. So the team will drop a link in here for you. I love a good checklist. List. And here's, here's why I created this for you. Sometimes we just need to check the boxes, right? Like, we can get our business going, we can get started, but we don't know if we're actually doing the right thing. That's kind of the first problem. And we don't know if, if we're doing like when— what we should do next. So we get started, we all gung-ho, we have this momentum going, and then we're like, is this what I'm supposed to be doing? And then what do I do next? So we created this subscription box Beginner Checklist. Let me know in the chat. I want, I want to just check, you know, your levels here with me this morning. Are you a brand new? Just put like super, super newbie, like I don't have a business. I want to start a business and I want to start that with a subscription box. So tell me that you're like brand new. Just put newbie there. Maybe you are selling products right now, so you have a business. But you want to start a subscription box. So put start a box if that's you. And then third is you've already got a box going and you feel like you've, you've launched, you made some traction, but you're ready to scale. And I want you to put ready to scale in the chat. Let me just see where you guys are at. Newbie, don't have a business yet, want to start. What did I say? What did I say? The second one, subscription box, start a box. Thank you, Jonica. Start a box was you've got a business, you're ready to start a box or you've already launched and you're really ready to scale because that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about the different phases today and what we should be doing to get that. And, and we can grab this checklist. I saw this quote today and I shared it on my personal page and I want to share it with you guys really quickly. I shared it on my personal Facebook page this morning. So let me pull it up. But I really just wanted to, I wanted to share these thoughts with you because I think no matter what stage that you're in, that we need to understand this, okay? And so it's a quote that says, small steps, big business, okay? Success starts with small actions— taking a step, getting one customer, making an order, getting a sale. Your business might not be where you want it yet, but keep going. Trust the process. Celebrate each achievement and keep working towards your goal. If you're sitting here watching me this morning and you feel like your business might not be where you want it yet, um, I want you to understand that we all have those feelings. But sometimes we get into this thought that I'm going to start a business and I'm going to start it on a grand scale and it's just going to blow up. And that's not what happens in reality to most people. Now, that can happen to some people, um, but it's not reality. And I, I want you to realize that this process doesn't always start on a grand scale. And so you might be feeling like you're in this beginning stages of unknown and you don't know, like, okay, when's my moment? When's it gonna hit? When am I gonna have success? And I want you to know that it will come, but you have to trust the process. And I can see that Lexi's here with me this morning. And I would tell you that Lexi's— Lexi, we're going to have to do an interview during Subscription Box Week next month. But Lexi is one of those people that got her business started. And I don't know what she was hoping for, whether she was hoping for the grand scale, but it took a lot of time and it took a lot of work and it took a lot of She says, trust the process. It took a lot of her trusting and not giving up. There were so many times that she could have given up. And I saw a post that the team did featuring Lexi last week, and it said a year ago, a year ago, she was at 40 subscribers. A year later, right now she's at 400 subscribers. She 10x'd her business in one year. But it took a lot of years to hit that breakthrough. It took a lot of trying. It took a lot of trusting. It took a lot of learning and implementing. And so when we start our business and maybe we launch it and we get maybe 20 subscribers, we might feel disappointed in that. But you've started. And that's what I want you to understand today. That's what I want you to think about today is what have I done to just get started? And then what have I done to take the next steps? Because we can't just start and then stop and think it's going to— something's going to— someone's going to come knocking at our door and want to buy 100 subscription boxes. Like, that doesn't happen. Okay? We can't start it and be inconsistent. We can't start it and get too busy and then come back to it. If we start and stop and start and stop and start and stop, we're not making progress. We've got to trust that when we start something, We have to put continued effort into it and we have to put continued effort into it even when it feels like that effort is not getting us anywhere. Okay, so let's, let's talk through this checklist. I want you guys to grab this checklist. It's completely free. You just have to opt in for it. The hopeful entrepreneur. I can see there's some of you in the chat that are brand new and this is where you're at. You're in stage 1 and that's the hopeful entrepreneur. And I've got a checklist here on what you need to be working on. If you're in this stage, this stage is that you're currently not selling products. You want to start with a subscription box. You're feeling overwhelmed by all the things that you need to do to make this happen. And you're unsure if this is even an option for you, but you want to give it a try. That's the hopeful entrepreneur. And there are several things on this checklist that you can really get started with. Now, I saw several of you say that you are ready to start your subscription box. So this is you. You're in stage 2 and you're a proud product seller. Okay, so you're selling individual products either in-store or online already. You feel a subscription box is the next revenue stream for your business. You're excited and hopeful and you can see this for your business. But you're unsure where to start with your subscription box. If this is you, you need to start right here in stage 2. And here's the checklist for stage 2. This is what you should be working on right here. And I think that's the problem that a lot of us have, is that we don't know what we should be doing at each stage in the business. And so if you're a proud product seller, maybe you're selling on Etsy, maybe you have your online shop already, maybe you're just selling in person and you're not even online. That's what I was doing. I had a brick-and-mortar store and I wasn't even online yet. This is where I was when I started my subscription box. And so this will give you some resources and tools and you can start checking those off. And I know that when you can start checking those boxes, a lot of these tasks, a lot of these things that we need to do, they don't have an immediate outcome. So it feels like we're doing something with no outcome. There's no return on what we're investing in here. We're— our time investment, our money investment. We're not getting a return because we haven't launched yet. So when we can see this checklist of what we need to be doing and start just checking off those boxes, we are— you can see that you're making progress. It's a visual representation of making progress in your business. And sometimes that's all we need to keep going. It's all we need to keep going because you're like, oh yeah, I've done that. Boom. Oh yeah, I've done that too. Check that out. Look at me, I'm further than I thought I was. And when you can start checking the boxes of the things that you need to do to get launched, um, you're going to feel better about the progress that you're making in your business. And you won't feel like you're just on this hamster wheel of, I don't know what I'm supposed to do next. I guess, uh, Sarah says I gotta do this, I guess I'll go do that. But there's no return on that, right? There's no return on that. That we can see immediately. You're going to see your return on it later when we launch. But right now, when you're in that in-between building stage, it feels like there's no return. So you feel like, I'm just going to keep selling one-off products because I, I can see the return on that. I can see I made sales today. I can see that I'm shipping products. But if you don't spend time getting through this checklist and making progress towards starting your subscription box, you're not going to get to the recurring revenue stage, that stage that stabilizes your business, that stage that took Lexi from 40 to 400 subscribers monthly. You're not going to get there if you don't dig in and start checking off those boxes. So that's what this is helpful for. This is a quote, and I'm going to tell you a little story about this. It's in this packet. It says, don't be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try. And people ask me, you know, when I have been interviewed before on podcasts, like, um, were you ever afraid to fail? And my answer is immediately no. I'm not afraid to fail at something. Do you know how many things that I have tried and failed at? It's part of being an entrepreneur. We have to figure it out. And if we don't try anything We're not gonna know what's gonna work for us. When I decided to leave my Fortune 500 company and be an entrepreneur full-time, there's fear there. I had a stable paycheck, I had great benefits, like there was fear there. But what I feared more than failing at what I was about to do was what if I don't do this? What if I look back in 10 years at this moment in time and I never did that. I never took the leap and I'm still working in that 9 to 5 job. I'm still punching a clock. I'm still working for somebody else. I'm still unfulfilled in what I do. That's the fear. That's the ultimate regret that I would have had. And when I told myself that it doesn't matter if I try this and it doesn't work, it doesn't matter if I try this and I'm not successful. But that fear of not trying it and looking back in 10 years and saying what could have happened, that's the regret I would have had. And especially when I see myself now, you know, I'm 11 years into having my own business. If I would have known what was coming over those 11 years, I would have taken a leap like that. But it's unknown, right? We don't know. And there were some years in there that it was a little, it's a little dicey, it's a little shaky in there. I don't know if I'm making enough money to contribute to my household. I don't know if this is really worth it. I'm working like 50 million hours a week and I'm paying myself $100 for the week, right? Like, you have that stage in your business. That's part of the process. But we have to be willing to go through that process to get to the other side. And that's why it's important to have a roadmap. Of where I'm at and where I need to be. Now, stage 3 is subscription box bound. Okay, let me tell you what stage 3 is. You have an online platform, you've made decisions about your box, you know what will go in it, and you're ready to launch. You're feeling hopeful but unsure what to expect with your launch. You're wondering how many boxes you need and what happens if you don't sell them all. And you're hoping that your packing and shipping Fulfillment goes well. So this is where you've got— you've done all the things. All you have to do at this point is launch. Okay, you've done all the things in stage 2. Now you're ready to go. And I love this picture that's attached to this. Do you see this picture right here? This was the very first month of my subscription box. I have brown boxes, not the cute turquoise ones. I have white labels on the side with my logo on them, not a cute fancy colored label or a stamp. Like, I— you just have to start, and then once you get started, you get to uplevel from there. And I just started. I started with 44 subscribers, and once you can just get yourself started When you get to this point where you've done all the backend work, you're ready. You've got all the components, you've handled, you figured out logistics, you handled product sourcing, you've got your tech stack ready. All you have to do is launch, plan your launch strategy, and we have all those resources for you. Stage 4, you're a subscription box biz owner. In this stage, you've launched your box. You figured out packaging, product shipping, and fulfillment at your level, whatever level that's at. You have subscribers, but you're ready to grow. You feel like it's manageable, but you want more, and you're wondering how to gain more subscribers. Those people that said they're ready to scale, you need continued growth, and continued growth is just as important as your initial growth to start. So if you're at this stage, there's some things that we need to do. And I've been working on, I've been working on a brand new module for our library. Whoo, I've been working a lot of hours on it over the last week and a half. I'm going to deliver it live at Sub Summit to everyone that's there at the workshop, but it will be going in the library later in the year. But it's all about that continued growth. Christy says, I started in stage 4. I started— she came into my world in stage 4. She had a box, but it was so messy. Sarah's training helped me clean things up and triple my subscription box. Let me tell you how proud I am of Christy. She had this incredible business. She had a big community. She was selling one-off products. All the time. She would sell out, but she's at a stage in her life right now where she needs to be a caregiver for her parents. And having this stable recurring revenue, the systems and processes that she's figured out through the trainings, and just being able to stabilize her business where it's not reliant on one-off sales has allowed her to spend the time that she needs with her parents, to step back and say, you know what, I built this incredible business that pays us well, it— and I don't have to show up and sell anything if I don't have the bandwidth for it because I'm caregiving for my parents. And, and it's— that's what we're building long term. That's what I want you to see from this. We can sell one-off products all the time, but we're in that hamster wheel. I got to show up and sell. I got to show up and sell. If I don't sell X number of dollars today, I can't pay the rent this month. I got payrolls coming out. I want to pay myself this month so I can cover the car payment. Like, whatever that is, we have to show up and collect rent every day. When you build recurring revenue in your business, it allows you to pull back. You don't have to sell every day. Your products are sold. Those payments are going to hit your bank account every month. Yes, you can still sell one-off products. Christy does. I do. But my business and my livelihood are not dependent on that anymore, and that's a game changer for product-based businesses. So I want you to think about that. I want you to think about the quote. You've got to start. If you're not sure where to start, I've got a checklist for you that takes you through 4 stages. There's resources. It's 8 pages. You can print it in black and white. It's just not as pretty, but it has all the good information. This is how I started. This is my beginning right here. This brown box. And I want— I show you that because what you see sometimes is thousands of subscriptions. You don't see my beginning. I started, it was messy. I didn't have it all figured out. I figured it out along the way and I grew along the way. And as I grew, I up-leveled and I learned and I put systems and processes in place and I went to the next thing. And now I have an incredible business that pays me very well. I have incredible customers that love what I deliver to them every month, and I'm able to employ 16 people with this business. I give 16 people paychecks from this little business that started with a brown box. And I want you to understand that it just starts with getting started. So if you're unsure on how to get started, grab our free checklist. Maybe you're stuck somewhere in stage 2 or 3, grab the checklist and let's keep making progress. There's no time like the present. So grab that today. The link is in the chat. It's free. Just give me your email list and you know what you're going to get on my email list. Just give me your email. You'll be on my list. I'm going to send you free resources all the time. I'm going to send you information about podcast episodes or blogs that we're writing, content, resources that are going to help you along the way. So you guys have a great Memorial Day. Enjoy your holiday. Don't forget to be visible today. People are scrolling, so get in front of people, okay? And, um, let's have a great day whether you're working or relaxing today. Have a great day, and I'll see you guys soon. Bye.