Tech Isn’t the Real Issue, This Is...

Good morning. Happy Monday. Good to see all of you here this morning. If you're watching me this morning on Monday Momentum, let me know in the chat. I would love to say hi to you. Let me know where you're watching from today. I'm always curious about that because I'm in Central Time Zone and then I know, you know, it's a little later over on the East Coast and it's really early on the West Coast. And then I love our overseas audience as well. So let me know that you're watching this morning. We're gonna talk a little bit about tech today, and it's just something that's been on my mind the last few weeks. And here's what— how I'm gonna start this: tech is not the real issue. We're gonna break down what the issue is, and when I say issue, I'm talking about all the people that would say, I'm not techie, I'm too old, I don't want to break anything, I'm scared I'll mess it up, I can't figure this out, maybe I'm not cut out to run a business. If you've ever told yourself that, give me a little hand raise, give me the little hand emoji in the chat. Um, or just say, that's me, because I want to talk about it today. Because I noticed in the group, um, that there's some, there's some, there's some tech hiccups from some of our new members. And it's not a ton, you know, it's just there's a lot of emotions around it. And so we're going to talk about it today because when I started this business, I would have been right there with you. And sometimes I still I say that and I have to catch myself. Nicole catches me a lot when I say I'm not, I'm not a tech expert, I'm not techie, but I actually really am. And that's what we're gonna, we're gonna shift our mindset today. Um, we're gonna talk about tech and why it's holding you back this morning. Um, so give me a little hand emoji over in the chat or tell me that's me and let's dig into it. I want to come over here and say hi because I've got so many people joining me this morning. Good morning, Toya from Montana. What's the temperature in Montana? Listen, I am in Texas. It is hot. It's like today is going to be 92. It is still hot. It is late October. Like, what— where is fall? I'm really enjoying it because I'm trying to keep my tan for my wedding next month. So all weekend I've just been laying out and working on my tan, um, for the wedding. So I'm here for the warm weather right now. But I walked out of the— onto the patio Saturday morning to let my dogs out, and it was 51 degrees, and I was like, brr, where did this come from? It didn't last long. It's 92 today. It didn't last long at all. So I'm just, I'm just living in my extra summer life right now until it turns fall. Good morning, Wanda. Hey, Tony. Good morning, Rebecca. Good morning, Claudia. Good to see you. Um, good morning, Christina. Hey, Abby, from what I said, cold. Is it— I just, I look at all these northern states and I think, guys, got to be nice and cool there. I don't know, is it still warm there? Good morning, everybody. Okay, yes, me. That's me. I don't feel techie. I feel too old to learn. I feel like I don't want to break anything. I don't want to screw anything up. Yeah, these things are killing me. I'm trying to figure it out. They're killing me. I can't, I can't get this. Maybe I shouldn't run a business. Right? If that's you, let me know in the chat because 38, I would freeze. I would freeze. Yeah. So here's, here's what we're going to start with. We continue to tell ourselves these things and we're training ourselves to think that we're these things. And so there's just one saying that sticks with me. I heard it a long time ago. And I'm going to, I'm going to just take it, grab a sticky note. If you're like me, you got, you just got sticky notes everywhere. I want you to write this on a sticky note so that when you get frustrated, when you feel overwhelmed, when you feel like you can't do this, I want you to look at this, like stick it, stick it on the computer. Okay, stick it on the bottom of the computer. I want you to write this on your sticky note as a reminder. If it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you. So you're feeling right now that this is a big challenge for you. I'm just not techie, Sarah. I'm really too old to learn this. I don't want to mess anything up. I don't want to break anything. I can't figure this out. Maybe I'm just not cut out for this. We're telling ourselves this because we're challenged by this. But if it doesn't challenge you, it's not going to change you. So you can tell yourself that, and a lot of us do, and I'm guilty of it too. I've told myself I'm not techie, but I actually know a lot of stuff. So I got to quit saying to myself I'm not techie because I actually am, and I'm actually really proud that I have learned technology because here's what happens. A lot of us— and tell me in the chat— a lot of us are creatives. Just put 'I'm a creative' in the chat if that's you. We make the things, we design the things, we manufacture the things, we put the things together. We're creative. It's visual for us, and technology feels analytical to us, so we push it out of the way. We think, I'll just go do this creative thing that I'm really good at, and I'll figure that out later, or I'm— it's too overwhelming for me to sit down and work on it now. I don't know where to start. I don't even know what to do, so that feels frustrating and overwhelming to me, but I'm really good at designing this. I'm really good at putting the pieces together for the box. I'm really good at making the t-shirt, making the thing, putting the kit together, because I'm creative and I can put all the pieces together. Right? But I can't put the pieces of tech together because it's analytical, it's not creative. It actually is creative, and I want you to reframe your mind. What we do on the tech side is a huge visual creative for our business. We just can't do it with a paintbrush and a pair of scissors and anything else that we get creative with, right? It takes this. And this feels analytical to us. Okay. And so we're like, I— and if you're like me, you procrastinate on things that you're unsure of. Are you a procrastinator? Like, there's probably something on my to-do list that I keep shoving off because it feels hard and scary and big. But if I actually just block out some time and sit and do it, it would be this weight. This is— it's this brick that I'm carrying around in my backpack. Because I don't know what I don't know. So I keep putting it off. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll do it the next day. I'll do it when I have more time, when I'm not in the weeds over here running my business. So I keep, I keep carrying this backpack with brick in it of whatever the thing is. It might be my landing page. It might be my waitlist. It might be my email marketing. I just keep putting those bricks in my backpack. I'll deal with them later. I'm too busy. I've got this going on. I have to do this. And so I carry this around and I keep carrying it around every single day, procrastinating because I don't want to do the hard thing. I don't want to. This is easy. I know how to do this. I know how to design a t-shirt. I know how to curate a box. I know how to put that together. But this over here feels hard. So let's throw it in the backpack. I'll deal with it later. But the problem is I've been carrying that backpack around for months sometimes years. And so this never gets done, and it just keeps weighing me down because I never take the time to do it. And so here's how I want you to maybe shift that narrative in your mind. I want you, instead of saying, I'm not techie, I want you to say, I'm learning something new. And that makes me brave and courageous. I'm learning something new and it's going to be challenging and I'm going to get frustrated and I might eat a bag of chips because that's my go-to comfort food, okay? I might eat a bag of chips in the process and not even realize it till I get to the bottom of the bag, but I am learning something new. It's not that I'm not techie, I'm just learning a new piece of tech, okay? I'm too old to learn. You know, I see my kids, they're 17 and 19, and they are like— yesterday my daughter, she got accepted to college, the college that she wanted to go to, which is super awesome. And we're trying to navigate setting up her student account so she can set up for housing. And I'm trying to— I've got the laptop in my lap. She's sitting right next to me and I'm like trying to look for things. She's like, no, Mom, here. She grabs the laptop. And I'm like, okay, but I wanted to figure this out. Like, she's like, but you're going too slow. And I'm like, okay. They grew up with technology in their hands. We, if you're my age or similar, did not. It's more challenging. Okay, so I have to think about it. I want— slow down, like, let's read that page. Like, what did it say? I don't know. She's just clicking, clicking, clicking, and their attention span is so short. And I'm, and I'm like, I want to know how to do this so I can log back in later, right? And I have to bookmark it, and I might have to write down the steps. But that's how my brain learns. And it's okay. I'm not too old to learn that. It just takes me a little longer because I did not grow up with technology in my hand. Like many of you, right? So we feel sometimes like we're too old for this. Like even my phone, like, I'll be doing something on my phone. She's like, why are you doing it that way? It's— I was trying to Y'all don't laugh at me, but I was trying to find the flashlight on my phone and I swipe down and I look for the button and she's like, why are you doing it that way? And I'm like, I don't know, that's the way I know how to do it. You're not too old. We're learning. We have learned harder things than this. Okay. That thing you tell yourself like, I don't want to mess it up. I don't want to mess it up. Okay, here's the cool thing about tech. There's usually a safety mechanism that you can revert. You can undo that little undo button. It's there for a reason because we mess up a lot of things. We accidentally delete something, undo. We accidentally hit a button we didn't mean to, undo. Everything can be reset, and tech is figureoutable. Okay, I don't want you going into it thinking you're going to break it. I still have that feeling, like I'm unsure, I don't know, I, I don't want to mess up anything that's working. That undo button is a lifesaver. I use it every day because we always do something and it's not the right answer, but if we never try, we never figure it out. Tina says Ctrl+Z. Ctrl+Z. Just put that on another sticky note. Put that on your, on your computer as well. You've got one that said, if it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you. And Ctrl+Z saves my life. Okay. The other thing we tell ourselves is this is really challenging. This is really hard. I don't know if I can do this, which means I don't know if I can actually run a business. You tell yourself that figuring out the technology at whatever pace you need to does not define your worth. It does not define your ability to run, start, launch, and grow your subscription box. And I really want to encourage you that the more you learn, the more empowered you feel, the more in control you feel. The more knowledge you have, the more confidence you exude. When we don't know, when we don't try, we feel defeated. We don't know how— I don't know how to fix that, Sarah. When we learn it as we go, it builds this level of confidence like, I just set up my waitlist page on top of the world. What— let me tackle what's next. So I want you to start talking to you like Coach Sarah would talk to you. What would I say to you? If you were frustrated in the middle of tech, what would you say to someone else? Maybe to your child who's frustrated with something. They don't have the patience, they want to throw it out the window. What would you tell your child? How would you talk to them? I need you to start talking to yourself. You would encourage, right? You would motivate. You would make them feel like they could do it, right? That's, that's my job too. So I want you to start talking to yourself the way I would talk to you. It's challenging. There's a lot of things in business that are challenging. I think the definition of an entrepreneur in the, in the book, in the dictionary, if we still have dictionaries, maybe it's Wikipedia now. I'm old school. I'm old. So I pull out the dictionary encyclopedia, we had them all on the shelf, that's where we didn't have the internet when I was a kid. If the definition there would be a constant problem solver, the definition of an entrepreneur to me is a constant problem solver. Okay, so I want you to start talking to yourself. The way I would talk to you in that situation. Number 2, I want you to celebrate the small wins, and they can be micro wins, they can be teeny tiny wins. But we need to start acknowledging when we make progress, no matter how small, because every one of these little steps leads up to something big. I logged in to my website for the first time without help. Win. Every day, I want you to tell yourself a win that you created today. Like, I'm going to work all day and at the end of the day, I'm going to write down my win for the day and I'm going to encourage you and I'll just post it over in Launch Your Box. What's your win for today? Every day we need to have some sort of win. And that could be as a win leaving this Monday Momentum. I feel like I can do this and that's a win. I'm going to challenge myself to do this. Even these are mental wins and we need a lot of mental wins to run a business. I logged in. Great. I set up an embed form. Great. I got pictures shot so I can put it on my landing page for my waitlist. Great. You didn't get the waitlist set up already. You got little pieces of the waitlist together. Those are wins. We need to start— Jay, breathing count. I didn't cuss anybody out today. I didn't tell myself I was stupid today, right? That's a win. Adrian, we do need to give ourselves grace because what we're learning is not easy. And that's why every single person that you know is not an entrepreneur. But there's something that's, there's something that's driving you here. There's something that you can't let go of. There's something in your head telling you, I need to do this and I need to do it now. And I want you to lean into that voice. I want you to remember That confusion, overwhelm, frustration, it's part of the process. Do you know how many days I feel frustrated, overwhelmed, challenged? Ask my fiancé how many days I come home and I'm like, I don't know. I'm not just rolling through the day like everything's gravy. I'm challenged every day, but we're choosing what's hard. I'm choosing to do this as an entrepreneur. I'm choosing to build a business. That's not easy. You know what else is not easy? Going to work and punching a clock and letting somebody tell me when I can eat lunch. You know what else is not easy? Not being able to get off work to go watch my daughter's band competition. You know what else is not easy? Having one week of vacation a year. So choose your heart. Tech, figure out tech, keep my 9 to 5 and let somebody tell me what to do for the rest of my life. Is it worth figuring out when you put it in that perspective? It is. It's 100% worth it. 100% worth it. And here's the other thing. You don't need to do it alone. I see all the questions inside LauncherBox right now because we have a bunch of new people from our launch and they're working on setting up tech. And a lot of it is answered in our resources in our library. There's probably 10 questions about landing pages over the last week. We have a couple modules on— we have a couple lessons on landing pages. We even have a Tech Talks where our tech gurus walk you through setting up a landing page. But instead, we get frustrated, we vent our frustration, but all we have to do is ask for help. All we have to do is pull the resources that we know. That we have, right? Instead of being frustrated, reframe the question. Hey, I'm setting up my landing page and I'm a little stuck, but instead I'm seeing posts like, and it's the end of the world, woe is me, everything's— I'm giving up, I'm throwing my computer out the window. Reframe your mind. It's not the end of the work It's not the end of the world. It's a sticking point. You're stuck. We gotta figure it out. The great thing is we have so many resources at our fingertips. We have the help section on the Shopify website. We've got resources inside the training library. We have a Shopify course if you want your hand held through it that Nicole has put together inside Launch Your Box. She's got a link if you want to purchase that. There's so many different resources. Put it together yourself, great. Get help, great. Hire someone, great. There's answers for this instead of you feeling like it's the end of the world. You know, I can, I can see some of our members in the chat. I'm pushing 50. We'll just say that I'm pushing 50. I'm not a spring chicken. I have figured out a ton of tech over the last 10 years. I have 60-year-old members in this chat killing it. I told one of them last week I was talking to how proud I was of her. She's learning all these things and she's in her 60s and she's like, okay, what's next? Tell me what I need to learn next. Tell me, help me through this. And she's learning parts of her business that she's previously hired out because she didn't think she was smart enough to learn it at her age. And she's killing it. So every time I get frustrated with something, I look at— I use that as my reference point. Well, if she can do it, if she can figure out that, I can figure out this. And I pump myself up. And then here's another thing. If you missed Friday Fuel— so how many of you listen to my podcast? Just throw podcast in the chat. Let me know. I do this episode every Friday called Friday Fuel, and Friday I did an episode about tech and what you actually need. And so my Friday Fuel episodes are like 10 or 12 minutes or less. I say 10 minutes or less, sometimes a little wordy, and they go to like 12 minutes. Um, and it's about tech. It's about what you actually need, because you can go down a tech rabbit hole. Okay, I need this, and I need this app, and I need this plugin, and then someone's using that plugin, and someone's using that app, so I must need that too. And then I need this, and how do I connect them all together? And now I feel itchy and stressed out and overwhelmed because I need 20 things in my tech stack. You ever feel that way? Well, on Friday's episode, I just broke down 4 basic tech tools that you need for your subscription box business. Okay, so go check it out. It's the Launch Your Box podcast. But it's simple. Shopify is your website. Tech number 1, easiest thing for anyone to start, whether you're 25 or 65 or 85. Okay, Shopify. And then you need something to connect your subscriptions so that they'll run monthly, because Shopify just does one-time sales, right? One-time sales, one-time sales. Okay, so Shopify, payroll. Is the app that you need to run your subscriptions. So that's tech number 2. Okay. And until you get over 100 subscribers, just use Shopify Shipping. You don't need any— you just use what's in there. You don't need any— you don't need ShipStation right out the gate. I use ShipStation because I'm bulk printing thousands of labels at a time. You can't do that in Shopify Shipping, but you can, you can print 50 at a time. So if you get 100 subscribers, you do 2 batches of 50. You got 150 subscribers, 3 batches of 50. Until you get above that, you're cool. Just use Shopify shipping. So Shopify Payroll is the app you need. And you know what, it's free. And you only pay Payroll as you get subscribers. Cool. And then Klaviyo. That's our email CRM, Shopify, payroll, Klaviyo. If I'm just getting started, that's all I need. And if you think about that as bite-size, it doesn't feel as scary and hard. But we let all these outside People say we need this, this, this, and this, but when I'm just getting started, I need 3 things, okay? And we can take them one at a time. You don't have to figure all 3 of them out at once. One at a time. And when you break it down like that, it doesn't feel so big and scary. And so every time something gets overwhelming for me, I get out a notebook and I break it down. What are the parts of this? It's like that saying, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Let's take the elephant, let's chop it into pieces, and let's take one line item at a time. And that's how I get through tech. Tech's not my favorite thing. I'm a creative, true and true. It doesn't have to be your favorite thing, but it also doesn't have to be the reason you quit either. You're not too old. You're not too confused. You're not too untechie. You're learning, and it's going to challenge you. So let's start telling ourselves, I'm learning. Instead of I'm not good enough, I'm not smart enough, I'm not young enough. Okay, I'm learning. And the cool thing about Launch Your Box is we have a lot of people learning together, so we're going to support each other and help each other through the learning process. And here's another little tip: you never stop learning. You don't ever stop learning. This is a process that's ongoing. And so if I can figure this out now, if I can dig in and do my landing page or my waitlist page or set up a product listing now, I'm laying the foundation to learn more later. So I just want you to reframe it in your mind. If last week you were ready to throw out the computer, pull back and say, okay, new week. I'm learning, I'm learning, I'm gonna figure this out. Tell me in the chat if you're gonna figure this out. It's really a mindset shift. So much about being an entrepreneur is about what we tell ourselves and what we keep feeding our mind. Stay focused. 3 things: Shopify, payroll, Klaviyo, one bite at a time. Michelle says, I am going to figure this out. You are, Michelle. We're all going to figure it out. And the cool thing is that it gives us so much confidence for the next piece and the next piece, because that's our job. We are a lifelong problem solver for the— as an entrepreneur, which means we have to be a lifelong learner too. And we have to be open to that. You have to be open to learning. Okay. Yes, commit to yourself, commit to yourself that you are going to figure this out. Because we can, we are smart enough, we can do this. And when it gets overwhelming, take a break, walk away. Do something different and come back because you're going to look at it through a different lens. All right. That's Monday Momentum. I hope you enjoyed it today, even though we're talking about the hard things. It's necessary. We have to reframe the way we think. I will be live tomorrow inside LauncherBox, and I can't wait to see all of you there. You'll have a great rest of your day.