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Every day you have a choice. You can wake up and choose to give in to mediocrity and complacency, you can choose bad habits and poor choices, and you can do the bare minimum to get by and fly under the radar. Or you can choose to make today the day that sets you apart from the crowd, you can choose to start doing the right things, the things that will set you up for success. You can choose to create a life that is worth living, worth waking up to, and worth sharing with the world around you. Today You can choose to start with a win.
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Speaker 2
the most important part about being an entrepreneur is don't let your fears hold you back.
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Speaker 2
You never know what's around that next corner.
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Speaker 2
So when you're your own ideal customer, you know the pain points, you know the messaging, you know how to speak to your audience.
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Speaker 2
If we never start the thing, we can never make it better.
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Unknown
Welcome to start with a win where we unpack franchising, leadership and business growth. Let's go.
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Speaker 1
Ever wondered how a simple idea can transform into a thriving business? Today we talk about that on. Start with a win.
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Speaker 1
Coming to you from area 15 ventures and start with Win headquarters.
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Speaker 1
It's Adam Contos with start with a win. We're chatting with Sarah Williams, the incredible subscription box queen. Sarah isn't just your average coach. She's an entrepreneur who's not only talking the talk, but walking the walk every day in the subscription box industry. She's the mastermind behind one Box at a time, a bestselling book that's been making waves in the entrepreneurial world.
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Speaker 1
Sarah is also the driving force at Launch Your box.com, where she helps others turn their passion into profitable subscription box businesses. If you ever thought about diving into the world of subscription boxes, this is really interesting or just want to hear from someone who successfully scaled her business from scratch. You're in for a treat today with Sarah. Sarah, welcome to start with a win.
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Speaker 2
It's great to be here.
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Speaker 1
Awesome. Hey, you have a really cool back story, brick and mortar to subscription. I mean, reoccurring revenue. Building a great business empire, if you will, and then helping people grow theirs. Take us back to day one as you became an entrepreneur. What does that look like? How did you start? And? And it will stair step our way through this.
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Speaker 2
I'll take you back to day zero because I think this is important too. I worked for multiple fortune 500 companies, and it was a time when, businesses were closing and I had lost three jobs. I had been laid off three times from my corporate jobs. And on that third time, I decided I no longer want someone else to have control of my future.
00:02:15:08 - 00:02:34:07
Speaker 2
I'd never set out to be an entrepreneur. That wasn't that wasn't what I wanted to do. But it just kind of fell in my lap. Like I realized that I no longer wanted to depend on somebody else for my income and my future. And so I started I started my business, and it was really started as a side hustle.
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Speaker 2
I was working for some. I was working for another entrepreneur at the time. This was after the third layoff. And, I was really running her business and I thought, well, why wouldn't I do this for myself? So I went out on my own. I started a little gift shop, I a little brick and mortar store. I live in a town of about 100,000 people.
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Speaker 2
So it's about a medium sized town. Not not a big metroplex or anything like that. But I started a gift shop and, it was great. I was like the only employee. So if I went to the bathroom, I had to close the store, you know? You know how that is. So, it started there. And what I was noticing is that I was starting to have a regular customer.
00:03:11:00 - 00:03:33:00
Speaker 2
I found a small gap in our market. I was personalizing the gifts in my gift shop. So nobody in town did that. And so I was starting to have the regular customer, and, things started to grow for me. And, I was started to do Facebook lives. So this was early like 2014, 15, and I was starting to do Facebook Live.
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Speaker 2
This is what all the cool kids were doing. I thought, this is what I needed to grow my business and my customer come in like, I saw that thing you were showing on Facebook Live, but I was then sold out. And so I felt like this disappointment with them as they were coming in. And so I was following some larger businesses that had subscription boxes.
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Speaker 2
And in that time it was only big businesses that were doing subscription boxes. And so I kept thinking, man, I could do this, but I could do it so much better than they're doing because I would see cheap prices, low quality items, just not a good, experience. And so I thought I could really do this. And so I decided I was going to launch a subscription box, and it was really just for my local customer.
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Speaker 2
I had no idea it would turn out to be what it is, but it was for that local customer. I wanted them to feel like they were the VIP in my business, so it was products that no one had ever seen before. It was First access exclusive. There were only certain amount, so I had that scarcity factor in there.
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Speaker 2
And so I launched my little subscription box and I got 44 subscribers and I was so excited. My goal was 100 subscribers, because that meant the rent in my building and my brick and mortar would be paid for, and then my foot traffic would bring me profit. Right. And so that was the goal just to kind of cover some of my fixed expenses.
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Speaker 2
I wanted an employee. So I was like, I need to have regular income to be able to make sure I can pay for someone else's paycheck. And that's really how it started. And that 44 subscribers turned into 1000 in 9 months. And that changed everything for my, my little business. And and here I am.
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Speaker 1
So that must have, obviously, the dynamics between running a brick and mortar and doing a subscription service and then having it blow up. Yeah, you've got some supply chain and storage issues going.
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Speaker 2
Off stressful, let me tell you, I had never sold anything online before. I didn't have an e-commerce store, so this was the only product that was on my website. And the only thing I had to figure out how to pack and ship, I had to figure out logistics. I had to figure all of this out on my own.
00:05:31:00 - 00:05:46:21
Speaker 2
And I'm like, well, because the first 44 subscribers were all local, they just came in and picked up their box, and that was excellent because it brought automatic foot traffic into my shop. They were in there, and then they might have seen something else on social media, and they were going to grab that too while they were in there.
00:05:46:23 - 00:06:04:07
Speaker 2
And so that was bringing a lot of foot traffic into my brick and mortar. But once I started to get out there online, there were these little pockets of places where I would get like, I'm in Texas. So I would get like a subscriber, say, in Colorado Springs. I'm like, oh my gosh, I have my first subscriber outside of my state.
00:06:04:09 - 00:06:25:04
Speaker 2
And then I would get 4 or 5 subscribers in Colorado Springs, and I knew they were sharing where they had gotten their box. And then I'd see a little pocket in Utah, and I see little pocket in Arizona and see a little pocket in North Carolina. And so this is how it started to grow. And so now I had to figure out how to be online the same way I was with my customers that would walk through my door.
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Speaker 2
And so that was a challenge for me. And I had to just show up. I had to talk to them as if they were in my store, and I had to show up as me, because that's how I had built relationships in my town. I had a really great following in my town because I built these relationships, so I was the only worker in the store.
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Speaker 2
If you came in my store, you talked to me. And so I was trying to replicate that online. And that's really how I grew so quickly.
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Speaker 1
Okay. So take me through that. When you started doing those Facebook lives, how many followers did you have on Facebook? Oh.
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Speaker 2
Probably like 1000 or 2. Like probably 3000 or less. I still don't have a big audience. I have a multi-million dollar business with like 30,000 followers. And so what I knew was that I needed the right person. And this is where people get really tripped up with audience building. They think they want everyone. They want anyone, anyone that'll follow anyone that's like anyone.
00:07:18:03 - 00:07:40:17
Speaker 2
That's not who we want. We want our ideal customer. That really decreases your reach. It really decreases your engagement. And you're not going to be successful if you have a small audience with the right people. I had the buyers in my audience and I blew up with very small following. I at one point had more subscribers than I had a following.
00:07:40:19 - 00:07:58:20
Speaker 2
And so it was it was one of those things where I was just really talking to the right person. I'm from the South. We like to put our our initials on everything, our monogram on everything. And so that's who I was speaking to. I would show up and speak to them and I it was struggle at first.
00:07:58:21 - 00:08:28:15
Speaker 2
I'm not the most self-confident person. I wasn't back then. And so it was a struggle for me to show up. Like, I don't think I look good today. Oh, my hair is not done today. Oh, I don't have makeup on the way I want to today. I don't know, I don't like what I'm wearing today. So I give myself all these excuses not to show up, but when I would just show up and be me and talk about the hot mess of my day that I'd had with my kids or the store or whatever was going on, people were engaging, people were relating to me, and that is how I built my audience.
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Speaker 1
Wow. How often were you doing that?
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Speaker 2
I was doing it once a week. I that's all I could stomach at that time. I was so nervous all the time. I was doing it once a week. Now I do it about twice a week on the retail page. But I was just doing it once a week and I would show up and I would gather like some of my favorite things in the shop, and I'd be like, here's my top five things of the week.
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Speaker 2
And I would just show them. I'd put them on my little mannequin model. I would talk about my day. I'd always try to tell a story about something good or bad, or whatever has happened to me in the last few days, and that's how I was connecting with the audience. And then I was showing them, you know, a cute t shirt or a cardigan or a purse or some earrings or whatever I was selling in the boutique that day.
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Speaker 1
Awesome. I it's it's amazing how this blown up and how many years over time has so you started in 2014 doing this.
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Speaker 2
So I started the subscription box in 2017. I started the retail store in 2013. So that's kind of where I, I am with all of that. I'm eight years in on the box. We've curated, almost 90 boxes at this point. Different boxes. I'm in my warehouse right now, so I have a warehouse and not a retail store anymore.
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Speaker 2
We ship over 3000 boxes every single month across the country. Yeah, it's pretty incredible.
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Speaker 1
And what's your box subscription called? If anybody wants to look it up, it's.
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Speaker 2
Called the monogram box, and it's for women. One item in every box has your initials on it. So we actually custom customized every single person's box. We have sizes in every box. We have lots of variables and every every box, but it's really girly. It's cute. T shirts, sweatshirts, cardigans, purses, jewelry, accessories, all the fun things. And it's really a treat for yourself.
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Speaker 2
As women, we do so much for other people in our lives. We rarely take care of ourselves and this is something that's just for just for you.
00:10:21:02 - 00:10:41:02
Speaker 1
You probably just cost me some money in my house. Thanks. I wanted to. I want to dig into your book. Okay. So you wrote a book one box at a time. What? You know, obviously, the inspiration was the success that you found in this and the connections you've made. But take us through this. I mean, first of all, writing a book is not easy as you fit that in.
00:10:41:02 - 00:11:02:19
Speaker 2
It's not easy. Well, here's the part of the story that you may not know. As the subscription box was blowing up rapidly, my DMs were filling up. How are you doing this? How are you sourcing product? Where are you buying packaging? How can can you help me do this in my business? And this is where my coaching business started, from.
00:11:02:19 - 00:11:19:09
Speaker 2
And so this is now the fall of 2019. So a couple of years after I started this subscription box, I now decide that in order and I want to serve people, that's who I am. That's what I do. But I I'm behind the embroidery machine ten hours a day because I'm the only one that can work it at that point.
00:11:19:09 - 00:11:42:20
Speaker 2
So I didn't have a lot of time on my hands to do this. And I thought, what if I did a membership? I love reoccurring revenue and I have found how amazing that was in my retail business. How can I replicate this in an educational coaching style business? Well, that was with the membership. And so all the people that had DM me, probably 40 or 50 people that had DM'd me over this period of time.
00:11:42:20 - 00:12:10:02
Speaker 2
I just reached back out to them this couple days in fall of 2019. I said, I'm going to start this program called Launch Your Box. It's completely beta. I don't have anything built, but I would love for you to help me build this out. And I'll give you a founding member price to this membership. And so I DM'd all the people that had DM me 19 people said yes and click to buy.
00:12:10:04 - 00:12:29:09
Speaker 2
And so now I had 19 members and I was like, okay, now I gotta build something. And so over the next 3 to 4 months, I started building out a library of training, how to build your audience, where to buy packaging, how to deal with shipping, all the logistics involved, how to launch a subscription box, what to do after the launch.
00:12:29:09 - 00:12:49:08
Speaker 2
Here's your email campaigns. Like all the things that I had done for my own box, I was now putting into this training library and so they helped me like what I thought they needed was not what they needed. I thought they were more advanced, like they had, you know, and they were really beginner. So I had to like pull back and say, okay, I need to start from the beginning.
00:12:49:10 - 00:13:08:00
Speaker 2
And so that's how I built launched your box. And then four months later, I launched it out into the world. I didn't even have social media for that. All I had was my retail page. So I had to build a Facebook page and an Instagram from scratch. That's like watching grass grow, by the way. And so I launched it.
00:13:08:02 - 00:13:10:06
Speaker 2
I got 100 members on my first launch.
00:13:10:08 - 00:13:10:23
Speaker 1
Wow.
00:13:11:01 - 00:13:36:12
Speaker 2
I launched three months later and I got in 500 members. My second launch, I launched four months after that, and I got another 1200 members. So I'd gone from making a few hundred dollars a month to making six figures a month in my coaching business in one year, and that changed everything for me. And so that was where Launch Your Box came in, and I built another program called Scale Your Box.
00:13:36:12 - 00:13:54:05
Speaker 2
For the people that have launched and are wanting to scale. And then I also have a mastermind of my six and seven figure entrepreneurs. In my world. But this is how the book came along. This is my long story to tell you how the book came. I was speaking at a charity event I had no, this was not on the bucket list.
00:13:54:05 - 00:14:11:01
Speaker 2
Atom. Like we weren't doing this. I'm not a book writer. I don't even read much. I listen to podcasts and audio books. I don't I don't read a lot. And I don't have time for that. Right. Like there's none of hours in the day. So it's never on my radar. But I was speaking at a charity event and I got done speaking.
00:14:11:01 - 00:14:31:20
Speaker 2
I come off the stage and the CEO from hay House is there, and he says, you should write a book. I'm like, now I got time for that. He's like, I'll publish it. And I was like, what? He goes, email me when you get home. And I was sitting there and Dean Graciosa was there speaking at that event as well.
00:14:31:20 - 00:14:52:07
Speaker 2
And and I was like, he's like, book deal. And I was like, now I don't have time for that. He goes, Sarah, this will be an eternal opt in for your business. And he talked me through how his bestselling books have been like this, opt in for his business, how he uses them for down sales, and how when someone reads your story, they become very connected to you.
00:14:52:12 - 00:15:11:21
Speaker 2
And I was hooked from that minute and I went home and I sent him an email. I'm like, he's never going to reply to me. And he did. And I got a book deal from hay House, and I spent the next year writing a book. And that's how one box at a time came about. It's my story of building a box with also tactical, actionable steps of how to do the same thing.
00:15:12:02 - 00:15:21:19
Speaker 2
And then every chapter has 2 or 3 of my student stories that have applied this one particular tactic in their business, and what has happened from it. So that's really what the book is about.
00:15:21:21 - 00:15:29:17
Speaker 1
Vice. So you mentioned Dean Graciosa, were you coaching with Dean or Tony Robbins or anything like that? What kept you going during all of this?
00:15:29:20 - 00:15:53:15
Speaker 2
Well, no. Dean was speaking at this charity event with me that as a first time I met him, I had never met him before. So I was just in the room with him. And I think that's really, as an entrepreneur, you just you just walk into every door that's open for you. You know, I got asked by someone to be at that charity event to speak about subscription boxes, and he was speaking about something else.
00:15:53:15 - 00:16:09:03
Speaker 2
So it was like predictions for the next year in different industries. And so I was there about the subscription industry, and he was in the room with me, and I had a conversation with him. And it led to this led to everything. And I think as entrepreneurs, we may not know, like I was very nervous going out to that event.
00:16:09:03 - 00:16:27:14
Speaker 2
I didn't know anybody at that event. I knew there were some big names at that event, and I was I was a little starstruck, a little nervous, but there was a reason I was in that room and I needed to just own it and look what came out of that. And and I think that that's the most important part about being an entrepreneur is don't let your fears hold you back.
00:16:27:18 - 00:16:35:04
Speaker 2
You never know what's around that next corner. And that was the book for me. And, it's been an amazing journey with the book.
00:16:35:06 - 00:16:42:08
Speaker 1
Awesome. Well, so a big part of your philosophy is building a community. Tell us about that.
00:16:42:10 - 00:16:59:01
Speaker 2
I believe in having a community for whatever business you have, whether that's a service based business like my coaching group or a product based business like my subscription box. For the subscription box, you know, I they're they're my subscribers. I show up and I talk to them when I'm live. I'm like, hey, subscribers, what are you doing today?
00:16:59:01 - 00:17:24:12
Speaker 2
You know, and I'm like, tell me in the chat what your favorite item from the last box was. I am speaking directly to them on a Facebook Live, and that is what builds community. They show up for every live they're buying everything else I have to sell in my store. Aside from that subscription box there, anytime you see my box ads running, my subscribers are on there talking about how much they love their box, that kind of social proof you cannot buy.
00:17:24:14 - 00:17:43:00
Speaker 2
And so building that community in a public forum the way I do, because I don't have a private Facebook group for them, it's all publicly I'm speaking to them, and I'm also showing all these other people what it's like to be a subscriber. Like it's it's something bigger than yourself. It's not just a box of stuff. It's a complete experience.
00:17:43:00 - 00:18:08:05
Speaker 2
I've curated an experience with every one of those boxes, and those people feel like family to me, and so that's what I've created there. As far as the coaching group, man, that fills my cup up and I'm more than you could ever know. I have this group. I have several groups because I have a lunchbox failure box in the mastermind, and those community are so tight and so helpful to each other.
00:18:08:07 - 00:18:34:17
Speaker 2
I've just never been in a business space where I've seen people doing the same thing, helping each other. It could be the same type of box. It could be the same niche, it could be the same audience. And they're literally helping each other get their boxes going. And that's what building a community is about to me. It's not about competition, because technically we could all be each other's competition, but we when we help each other, we're going to both get there.
00:18:34:17 - 00:18:39:16
Speaker 2
That much faster than if we were trying to do it and holding all those secrets to ourselves.
00:18:39:18 - 00:18:49:10
Speaker 1
Wow. So how do people pick, a niche for their box? Is it something that they go, you know, do you teach them to go research it and find something that is on?
00:18:49:16 - 00:18:50:02
Speaker 2
No.
00:18:50:06 - 00:18:53:01
Speaker 1
Attended to, or is it their passion or. Yeah. What? What is it?
00:18:53:02 - 00:19:12:16
Speaker 2
That's it. I need you to be deeply connected to what you're selling. And so when I have students come in, I think about a student I had last year that come in and what she. It was a woman wanted to sell men's ties. Okay, let's do this. If this is what you want to do. She kept falling flat because she her messaging was off.
00:19:12:20 - 00:19:34:03
Speaker 2
She couldn't connect with her audience and it just didn't work. And the minute she flipped to women's accessories, it took off, because that's who she was. So I really love when you're your own ideal customer. So when you're your own ideal customer, you know the pain points, you know the messaging, you know how to speak to your audience.
00:19:34:03 - 00:19:53:01
Speaker 2
And that's super important. And so I think about, you know, what are you passionate about? What what things in your life are going on? Like, what do you love to do? It could be a hobby. We've got pickleball subscriptions in there. It could be a pet. We've got guinea pigs subscriptions in their bunny subscriptions. It could be something you like to do.
00:19:53:03 - 00:20:13:20
Speaker 2
The literary book club, super amazing subscription. She has thousands of subscribers, and she curates an experience with her box every single month. We have a box for women dentists in there. Like you can go super niche and the riches are in the niches. When we try to go too broad and try to be for everyone, our audience cannot find us.
00:20:13:22 - 00:20:20:12
Speaker 2
And so when we can niche down, we are that much more visible then being for all people.
00:20:20:13 - 00:20:26:12
Speaker 1
Awesome. Hey, let me ask you this where can people find you online if they're looking for your book, your course, things like that.
00:20:26:17 - 00:20:40:07
Speaker 2
All the things are at launch. Your box.com. I also have a podcast. The launch box podcast. But yeah, you can find freebies, resources, all the things that lunchbox.com and my books over there too. It's also on Amazon. You can grab it off Amazon.
00:20:40:12 - 00:21:06:02
Speaker 1
I love it. The biggest, biggest recommendation that you have for entrepreneurs, you know, because a lot of people struggle at that at the starting line, they never really get going because they're it's get ready, get ready, get ready, get ready. And they never go. So I mean, what what recommendation do you have to get people off the dime to get them moving and start making money with a membership community subscription?
00:21:06:02 - 00:21:07:01
Speaker 1
What have you.
00:21:07:03 - 00:21:29:08
Speaker 2
Do at mercy? You saw I just talked to you about how I started my coaching group that is a multi-million dollar coaching group now. I started it with nothing my brain and a Facebook group. I had no software, I had no nothing built and I just said, hey, come do this with me and we'll figure it out as we go.
00:21:29:11 - 00:21:48:05
Speaker 2
If we never start the thing, we can never make it better. And we're so busy trying to make it better and perfect to actually start it, and we're doing ourself a disservice. If I would have put all these modules in and launched my coaching group, knowing what I know now, I would have had to redo it anyway because I that wasn't what they needed.
00:21:48:05 - 00:22:11:17
Speaker 2
They needed more beginner and I was thinking they needed more mid-level and so I would have done it wrong anyway, so why not lob it out there and do it messy and make it better and better? As you grow these 19 people, nine of them are still with me. Five years later. And so once you dig in and work on it, you're going to figure out what you need.
00:22:11:17 - 00:22:26:13
Speaker 2
You don't always know that. And that's why you fail to start, because you don't know what you need to get started. And you keep hesitating, thinking you're going to figure it out. You're not going to figure it out until you start. That's that's the biggest that's the biggest hurdle for entrepreneurs.
00:22:26:13 - 00:22:30:06
Speaker 1
I love this if we never start the thing, we can never make it better.
00:22:30:10 - 00:22:31:06
Speaker 2
Yeah.
00:22:31:08 - 00:22:53:07
Speaker 1
Incredible. Sarah Williams I mean, this has been just a masterclass in getting a business off the ground in mindset and growth ideas. I mean, I I'd love to spend hours with you picking apart supply chain and suppliers and things like that. That's that's for another conversation another day. But you've shared a lot of gold with us. I have a question.
00:22:53:07 - 00:22:59:14
Speaker 1
I ask all of the great leaders on our show, and that's how do you start your day with a win?
00:22:59:16 - 00:23:20:08
Speaker 2
Well, the first one is having a cup of coffee for me. But I start my mornings with a cup of coffee and I get inside my community Facebook group for my coaching students every day. I want to feel deeply connected, and when I log in to that group, it's very noisy. They're very chatty, but there's always a win going on.
00:23:20:08 - 00:23:33:05
Speaker 2
Every single day. Someone got their first subscriber, someone had a sold out launch, someone got their tech stack set up. Like, that's a win. Every day I see that in my community and that's how I start every day.
00:23:33:07 - 00:23:43:07
Speaker 1
I love that Sarah Williams, the Subscription Box Queen, thank you so much for all that you do in helping these entrepreneurs build their businesses. And thanks for starting with a win.