The 3 Most Important Habits for a New Product Business Owner

Thinking about launching a product-based business, or maybe you're in the early days wondering what actually matters most right now. In this episode of Friday Fuel, I'm sharing the 3 most important habits that I wish somebody told me when I got started. These simple, powerful habits will help you build real momentum without burnout, without overthinking, and without second-guessing every single step. Let's ditch perfection and build something that lasts. This one's for the starters, so grab your headphones and let's go.

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 Friday Fuel. Today I'm going to give you a quick dose of real talk. And strategy that's going to help you grow your business. So let's talk about just starting a product-based business. If this is you, and that includes a subscription box, whether you're starting with just selling one-time products or maybe you're starting with your subscription box, this episode is for you because I'm going to share 3 habits that I wish someone told me when I was starting. And these aren't fancy strategies. So I want you to hear me say, like, these aren't advanced level. They're just the kind of habits that build real businesses. So if you're feeling unsure, if you're feeling overwhelmed, if you're feeling like everybody has like this business secret that you don't know, these habits are going to be helpful to you. They're going to get you out of your head and really into motion. So let's talk about habit number 1. If you're a note-taker, jot it down. Write these down. You probably need to just put them on your bulletin board or vision board or behind your desk or sticky note on your, on your computer. Perfection doesn't get you paid. Consistency does. Consistency over perfection is habit number 1. What I see over and over and over again is that too many business owners wait until things are perfect. Before they start. I was teaching inside Launch Your Box yesterday and I could see it in the chat. They're waiting and what they're waiting for is never going to come because there's a lot of us perfectionists. I used to be one at one point. I got over that. I realized that it was holding me back and all I had to do was be consistent. I didn't have to be the best. I didn't have to know everything. All I had to do was keep being consistent. And what I see and what I saw yesterday in our group was, uh, I'm not ready yet, it's not there yet, I'm not comfortable yet. And, and we're waiting for some feeling, we're waiting for some trigger to say I'm ready. But here's the thing with perfectionists, and if you're one of them, this is gonna, this is gonna spark something. It's never gonna be ready for you because perfection never comes. There will always be one more thing you want to do. There will always be something that needs to be better. There will always be the next thing before you can do anything. So really what you're doing is you're telling yourself not to move forward. And showing up builds consistency. Doing builds consistency. And that's going to lead to buyers and subscribers. So what consistency really means for me, and I'm going to give you a really simple strategy here— social media. How are you showing up on social media? Are you posting consistently? Are you engaging consistently? Are you sending a weekly email to your email list? We, we can't keep ghosting people because we don't know what to say. Are you talking about your product even if no one's liking it? Ship that box even if you didn't have shipping figured out. You're going to get better at it as you go. You can't perfect something that you never start. And here's really where that perfectionist trap comes in. Waiting, pushing your launch back 3 weeks because your photos aren't professional. Not emailing your list because you're not sure what to say or the right words to say. Spending hours reworking your website instead of just publishing it. But what happens when you just do it? People start watching. You learn faster and you can fix things faster. Your confidence builds from doing. When I launched my first subscription box, I didn't have a custom box. I literally had a mockup of a white box and I transposed my logo on it. I didn't have professional photos. I had no branding. I just started. I started and I started telling people about it and I started showing it on social media. I was showing behind the scenes and that's how I got my first subscribers. It wasn't perfect. It's still not perfect. It's never going to be perfect. So I'm going to tell you this right now. It's never going to be perfect. Done is better than perfect. I want you to pick one thing that you've been sitting on and I want you to do it this week. Send the email, post the video, publish the website, Whatever it is, we got to move forward because consistency beats perfection every time. Habit number 2: Talk about your product all the time. Talk about your product. Talk about your product. Talk about your product till you're sick of talking about your product. And then I want you to talk about your product again. If you're not talking about it, nobody knows about it. And in your head you think, I've talked about it so much, everybody knows, and nobody's interested. You have to repeat yourself. You do. Just on auto repeat all the time. Your audience sees such a small percent of the things that you post. If you are lucky, 5 to 10% of your audience. It's nothing. You have to talk about it. You have to go live about it. You have to post about it. You have to email about it. You have to share it on your personal page. It's hard for new business owners because they don't want to be salesy. They don't want to be pushy. I already posted about it yesterday. I'm tired of talking about it. But the reality check is that your audience needs to see and hear your products, your offer, multiple times to take action. Most people need to see it 7 to 10 times before they make a purchase. You're not being annoying, you're being consistent. There's a difference. So what is talking about your product look like? Do behind the scenes. It's not always a buy me post, it's not always here it is. Behind the scenes footage while packing, sharing unboxings, um, and customer reviews, going live and showing what's inside or how you're making something, countdown posts, things like that. They're not direct sales, but are going to get you sales. You don't see Target running one commercial and saying, oh, I already told everybody it's, it's Dollar Days at Target. You don't see Amazon Prime putting it out there one time that it's Prime Days. It's over and over and over. And we need to see that that many times. We need to see that consistently before, oh yeah, it's Amazon Prime Days. If I saw that one time, I would have totally forgotten about it. And you should too. I want you to talk about your product today. Make it casual. Make it personal. It doesn't need to be perfect. I just want you to do it. And then I want you to create a plan to keep doing it consistently. Habit number 3: Track what's working. You can't grow what's working if you don't know what's working. The earlier you start to track your numbers, the smarter your decisions become as you start to grow. You don't need fancy spreadsheets or complicated systems. You just need to pay attention. So what can you start tracking right now? Let's start tracking social media followers. Am I growing? Can I check on that? Am I getting engagement? Are people messaging me? Track that. If you don't see your now to next month and you don't see what you're doing is working, you're not going to keep doing it. Let's talk about emails. What emails are getting the most opens? What emails are getting the most clicks? I want you to take a look at that and do more of what's working. I want you to figure out what is selling more product. Is it the posts? Is it your lives? Is it your ads? Figure that out, track that, and do more of what's working. Stop wasting time doing things that don't move the needle. I see this over and over. Well, I did this and I did this and I did this, and I'll say, well, how did that work for you? I don't know, I just did it. We don't know, we're just going through the motions. You've got to know what's working with your audience, and then you can double down on what's working. And here's the thing about business. What's working for me might not work for you. What's working for you might not work for the next person. We have to figure it out for our own audience. We have to experiment with that. Don't overthink it. I want you to pick one thing that you've been working on— audience building, sales, um, conversions, whatever it is. Pick one thing to track this week and let's build a habit of tracking that all the time. Now, these 3 habits, they actually don't cost you anything. You don't need any special training. You don't need any fancy software. You don't need a team. You just need to start building these habits into your routine. I gave you 3, and everybody listening, no matter what stage you're at in your business, can apply all 3 of them to your business in some way. I want you to show up consistently, even if it's messy. How can you show up consistently starting now? I want you to talk about your product. Go back and audit your socials. Go back and audit your emails. How much have you actually been talking about your product? And number 3, I want you to find a few things this week that you're working on that you can measure. Measure your actions, measure your activity. So when you find something that works, you can keep working it. You don't need to wait until you have it all figured out. I want you to build some habits in now because your future self is going to thank you for it. And if this episode has been helpful for you, I'd love for you to share this episode in your stories and tag me because I love hearing what's working for you. I'll be back next week with another Friday Fuel episode.