You don’t need permission to launch your subscription box. You just need a plan.

Good morning. Happy Monday. I want to know if you've been sitting on your subscription box idea, waiting for someone to say, yes, that's a great idea, that's good enough, waiting for that permission. You don't need permission. We just need a plan and you need a little healthy push from me. You might be feeling like you've got the idea, you've done the research, but you're just sitting there waiting, waiting, waiting. And I want to ask you today, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for permission? Because if that's what you've been waiting for, you don't need permission. And I'm going to help you work through that today. All right. Good morning, everybody. If you're new around here, I got some hair flying away here. I'm Sarah Williams. With Launch Your Box, and we do this fun episode every Monday morning. It's called Monday Momentum, and it's just a little, little taste to help get you going, get you motivated to make progress, maybe help you with one thing, connect with each other in the chat, bringing our community together. But we do this almost every Monday while I'm not— when I'm not traveling. And today we're going to talk about the fact that you don't need permission to start your subscription box. If you've been waiting for someone to give you permission, we're gonna talk through that today. Maybe you've been stuck somewhere along the launch path and you're just spinning your wheels and not making progress. Maybe you've launched your subscription box, but you've been delaying a relaunch. So we're gonna talk through that today. I'm gonna come over to the chat real quick and say good morning, and then we're gonna really dig into what this looks like. All right, good morning everybody. I see Wanda's here. I am streaming live on YouTube right now. You can find me on YouTube and this is my YouTube channel right here, Sarah Williams Subscription Box Business Coach. I'm also streaming on Facebook page, that's the How to Start a Subscription Box page. So you can find me in both places. Good morning Andrea, hi Nikki. Good morning Dana, good morning Lexi, good morning Rebecca. Morning Christina, hey Amanda. I see, oh my gosh, so many people are here this morning. Good morning everybody. Okay, here's what we're going to do. First, I want you to recognize the fact that you might be waiting for permission from somebody. Okay, let's talk about what that looks like. You're like, no, I don't need permission to do anything, Sarah. I'm independent. I do. But let's talk about what this looks like because you might be waiting for this and you don't even realize you're waiting for this. Okay, so maybe you've done endless planning. With no execution. Maybe you've been asking people about your idea with no real progress moving forward. Maybe you keep pushing back your launch again and again. And there's really this really underlying fear that is with this. So tell me, tell me in the chat if this is me. You've been planning and not executing. You've been doing endless amounts of research but not putting it, not implementing anything. Maybe you've been asking people if your idea is good. You're just waiting for that external validation. Maybe you keep pushing back your launch date because you're like, I'm not ready yet. I still need to do XYZ. If this is you, I want you to tell me this is me in the chat. And it's okay. Because what we have to identify is that there's this deeper fear underneath all of this. Okay, that could be The fear of failure. What if I put this thing out there and it— no one buys it, it doesn't work? What if I, what if I fail at this? What if I waste my time, effort, energy, money? What if I'm wasting all of this? There's that fear of that. There's the fear that nobody's gonna see you, right? So maybe there's that fear that if I do this, nobody will even watch, nobody will even see see what's happening. And I want you to feel like it's not procrastination in a way, because you're human and you're only capable of so much, but it's this inherent fear that comes into play and that's what stops us from moving forward with anything that we do, right? And it's normal and it's natural and nothing is wrong with you, but we have to figure out how to get out of this permission trap. That we keep putting ourselves in. Okay. And so what I want you to understand, and I want you to write this down— if I got Post-its all over my desk, grab a Post-it, grab a piece of paper. I want you to write this as big as you can. Okay. Action creates clarity. I want you to write that down. Action creates clarity. You're not getting clear because you're not taking action. So instead of taking action, you keep doing more research, asking more people, looking for more validation somewhere. You're in this permission trap. But if you would just take some action, it's going to provide so much clarity. Maybe you're watching and you're like, I've already launched my subscription box, but I've been thinking about X, Y, and Z, and you haven't pulled the trigger on it because you're really busy doing the subscription box. You've already launched. And so you keep researching, you keep putting it on the back burner, you keep researching, you keep putting it on the back burner. But action creates clarity. I'm in the kind of the same trap with my salon. I want to install a head spa and have hair treatments at the spa, at the salon. And I keep researching, I keep asking questions, I keep going down a TikTok rabbit hole about head spas. And if I would just order the dang thing, I would know, like my fear is that I'm going to invest in this and no one's going to book an appointment or no one's going— like, no one's going to pay the amount I need to charge to come do the head spa. But I don't know that. I'm just creating this conversation in my head and I don't really know. So instead of me taking action by ordering the head spa and finding the treatments that I want for the hair, I just keep researching more and I never take any action. And I told myself this morning when I was there getting my hair done, I was like, okay, Summer months are coming. The salon is slower in the summer. The blow dry bar is slower in the summer months. We need to have something new, fresh, and fun. And that's this head spa. And I need to take action, right? Because action is going to create clarity for me on this. It's going to create clarity if I've priced this right. It's going to create clarity of whether that's what my audience, my customers want. Okay, so I want you to think about what clarity you need right now and what action is going to provide you that clarity. You don't know how your idea is going to land until you say it out loud. Have you said it out loud to your audience? You don't know if people actually want your box until you've built a waitlist. Have you built that waitlist? Because we've talked about the waitlist a lot, but if you've never put that into action, how do you even know? You don't know what's going to be the ideal thing in your box until you test a few box ideas, right? It's like driving in the fog. You can't see the whole road. But you can see like 20, 30 feet in front of you. Right now, I want— you're in the fog. I need you to take action so that you can see what's in front of you. Don't think about the whole road, but think about that 20, 30 feet in front of you. What is the next right action step to bring clarity to you? That's what I want you to do. So we have to start shifting. Okay, we have to start shifting. So I want you to ask yourself this question too. Andrea says, and the brain fog, you're in the brain fog. This, ask yourself, am I learning or leading? Am I researching or am I selling? Like, what are we doing right here? Are we in this endless hamster wheel of looking and learning and researching and not implementing. Are we doing that right now? Just put, "I'm doing that. I'm doing that." And it's okay. I just told you I've been doing this with the blow dry bar, right? And I don't know why I just keep doing it instead of taking action. But we've got to get out of the research mode. We got to get out of the thinking mode. And we need to get into the action mode. What did I tell you? Action creates clarity. If we don't take action, we're going to be stuck in this research mode for another 3 months, another 6 months, another year. Tell me in the chat how long you've been thinking about your subscription box right now. Or how long you've been thinking about the next thing in your business and not taking action on that. Tell me in the chat. You don't need to know more. You just need to start implementing the things that you know. And if you start implementing those small things Some of the things we just talked about. Have you announced that you want to start a subscription box? Have you actually built a waitlist and started talking about this potential subscription box? Have you put together some box things like themes? I'm sorry, not things, themes, and actually curated it. Are you learning? Are you leading? You don't need to know more. You need to start taking action. You don't need like a 40-page business plan either. You just need the launch plan, okay? One that you'll actually use. And we can talk about like 5 simple things you can do today, but we have the detailed launch plan inside Launch Your Box, okay? But if you're not there yet, let's pull Let's pull it back and simplify it a little bit, okay? Let's talk about number 1, we've gotta define your box purpose and person. Who is it for? What value does it bring? What problem do I solve? What experience am I delivering? Can you clearly say that? And I would bet 90% of you on here know who your box is for, what problem you solve, or what experience you're creating. I would bet 90% of you on here know that. Then you've got to plan out 3 to 6 months of boxes. We've got to lay this out. I do have my Post-it note challenge right here. My 6 in 60 workshop is right here. We've got to get it written down. We have to take these thoughts from our head and get them out. So if you haven't taken the 6 in 60 workshop, it's a free workshop. It's inside Launch Your Box. If you are not inside Launch Your Box, you can go to 6in60workshop.com. I think Carrie's with me today and has a link for you. She'll put it in the comments. But we've gotta map out what this looks like. You can't keep coming up with these ideas as you're laying in bed at night and not actually putting them into a plan. You've gotta put together your first 3 to 6 months boxes, okay? Now, action number 3, remember, action creates clarity. We need to set up a 90-day launch window. Not someday, not this summer I'm gonna launch, I'm gonna launch sometime in the fall, I'm gonna launch in a few months when I'm ready. Fuzzy targets don't get hit, and that is a fuzzy target. Pick a month, pick a week, put it on your calendar, and let's talk about it. We've got to set a launch window because if you just say, I'll launch this summer, or I'll launch this fall, or I'll launch soon, it never comes because it's never a date on your calendar. It's never an action. It's a thought in your head, but not written down. And then number 4, I need you to create the simple waitlist landing page. We have to start collecting people. We have to figure out if people want our box, right? And we can tell ourselves in our head all the time, I don't know, I'm not sure. But if we don't start collecting people, if we don't get feedback that people are interested, we're never going to know. And we have waitlist landing page training in Launch Your Box as well. Like, look, we've got to do this, and it doesn't have to be overdone. We just need a simple waitlist landing page. Simple. And number 5, we've got to get visible, and we've got to start that right now. I would guarantee that if if you feel like I'm talking to you right now today, you've probably been hiding. And I want you to write, I've been hiding, if you feel that way. You've not been showing up on socials. You've not been serving your audience. You, you just hiding right now because of that fear. We have to get visible, and we have to do that by getting social, and we have to do that by being consistent. So if you've been hiding, we got to come out of hiding right now. People need connection right now more than anything. Like I just told my good friend Susan Bradley over the weekend, we were talking about stuff, and I said we have to connect with our people right now the same way that we did in 2020. People need connection. They need to feel connected to what they're buying from. That sets us apart from Amazon. That sets us apart from these big brands. They're not connected to Amazon. It's just convenient. They need the connection, and you've got to come out of hiding. If you're watching me right now live, if you're watching me on the replay, I think you already know what you want. You're not lost in the sauce. You're just hesitating. You're stuck in that I need permission loop, and you're not moving forward. If you need permission, I'm here to give you permission. The only thing between you and launching your subscription box is momentum. You don't have to be fearless. You're gonna— I still have fears all the time. I still have fears, but I push past them and I keep moving forward. Even when that fear hits me hard, I have to keep going. Small action is action. It doesn't always have to be the big huge things. You don't need more time. You don't need more research. You don't need more learning. You need to decide right here that you're ready to take action. Because what happens if you don't? If you listen to this and you're like, yes, Sarah's talking to me right now. I need to do this. Who do you need to do it for? You need to do it for you. And you've been hiding and you've been paralyzed by fear. You've been telling yourself you're not good enough. You've been telling yourself this won't work. Something inside you is holding you back. And we have to quit doing that to ourselves. So I'm going to give you a plan. For this week. I want you to go through those 5 steps we just talked about. Keep it simple and let's start taking action. You've got to build clarity. You've got to build momentum. You've got to build belief that you can do this. And if you don't have belief that you can do this in this moment, take the belief that I know you can do this. I know you can do this because I've watched hundreds and thousands of Launch Your Box members go from nothing to super successful businesses. I've watched women in their 60s build a business for the very first time. I've watched women that were in the professional corporate world leave their 9 to 5 because they're making so much income from their subscription box business, they don't have to punch a clock anymore. I've watched people like me small-town girl from Texas build a multimillion-dollar subscription box business with one idea and 44 subscribers? If you don't have the belief in yourself, lean on my belief that you can do this. But we have to start taking actions. You're not going to get in the game if you're sitting on the sideline. And the longer you sit on the sideline, the longer that time passes you by. Next month, you could have a waitlist done. You could be talking about your subscription box with your audience and building momentum up to a launch. 3 months from now, you could have launched your subscription box and have your first 20 subscribers. A year from now, you could have hundreds of subscribers generating recurring revenue for your business. But if you don't start now, it's not gonna happen. And I know it's scary, and I know there's a lot of fear involved in it, and I know we're, we're talking about all these things, but we have to keep pushing ourselves. You showed up today to watch this for a reason, and I wanna— it's not because you just love hanging out with me. I wanna— I want you to really ask yourself why you showed up today for Monday Momentum. I know you have it in you, so let's go. Action creates clarity. Small action builds up to larger action. We have to start taking action this week, okay? I'm counting on you. I believe in you. Lean on my belief in you that you can do this. All right? Let's have a great week and let's take action. Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I have to tell you something exciting before you leave. I have it on my notes. Here, and my team is probably, like, screaming in the background. You have to tell them what's happening. All right, so here's what's happening tomorrow inside LauncherBox. If you're a member of LauncherBox, type LYB in the chat for me. Um, I have a very special announcement, um, of something that the team and I have been working on. It is something we have never done before, um, and we are going to do it with you inside LauncherBox. It's going to help you take action. It's going to help you make progress. And we're going to do it together and we're going to make the big announcement tomorrow. And I'm going to ask for your commitment to join me in this tomorrow when we make the announcement. But I'm really, really excited about it. We have really two goals. For the second half of 2025 with Launch Your Box, and that's progress and connection. Those are the two things that everything we do for the rest of the year is going to help you make progress and build a connection with you. So we're going to share something fun that's coming up this summer that we're going to do together, and we'll share that tomorrow. I don't even know when we're announcing it, but just be on the lookout from from me and the team tomorrow because we're gonna, we're gonna do something we've never done before and it's going to be very exciting. All right, we got lots in store for you guys this the rest of this year and we're excited about it. If you're watching and you're like, dang, I really need to be in Launch Your Box, I told the team I wanted to give y'all a secret link to join because we have the waitlist up right now. But if you're here on Monday Momentum and you are ready to take some action, I would love to have you join our community. Carrie, can you— do you have a link that you can give them? If you'd like to join us right now in Launch Your Box, there's really no— there's no better time than right now. We can take a lot of action together and we're going to start by the announcement that's coming tomorrow. All right. Okay. I got to get to work. I got a lot of stuff to do today. But I want you to make your to-do list. And I want you to start taking action because we can do this. And people are making really good progress right now. And I'm here to help you and my team's here to help you. So let's go. Action creates clarity. I'll see you soon.