Skyrocket Your Online Business: Easy Steps to Massive Growth

21 Mar

Guest: Sarah Williams

Starting with a quaint brick-and-mortar store, Sarah Williams quickly pivoted to revolutionize the subscription box world in 2017 with Launch Your Box. Her dedication to exceptional customer experiences has turned her venture into a multi-million-dollar success. Beyond running her thriving business, Sarah empowers other entrepreneurs through her programs and shares her journey in her debut book, One Box at a Time.

Here’s a summary of the great stuff that we cover in this show:

In the ever-evolving world of e-commerce, finding the perfect formula for business growth can often feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. But what if I told you that the secret to massive growth might just be simpler than you think? In a recent episode of the eCommerce Podcast, I had the pleasure of speaking with Sarah Williams, founder of Launch Your Box, who shared some invaluable insights on this very topic.

🚀 The Art of Entertainment in eCommerce 🚀

Sarah emphasised a crucial point that many of us in the e-commerce sector tend to overlook: the essence of live selling isn't just about pushing products; it's about creating an experience. It's the art of entertainment. This approach takes you beyond the standard sales pitch, inviting you into a world where engaging with your audience on a personal level becomes the key driver of your business growth.

🌟 It’s Not Just Business, It’s Personal 🌟

Think about it: instead of a typical sales spiel, you're in your kitchen, sharing your favourite broccoli soup recipe. This slice-of-life method adds a human touch to your brand, making it more relatable and engaging. It’s about inviting your audience into your world, showing a bit of your life behind the scenes. This personal connection is what turns casual browsers into loyal customers.

🌱 Serve, Then Sell 🌱

"The importance of growing your audience by serving them first" – Sarah’s words couldn’t be truer. In today’s saturated digital market, the businesses that stand out are those that add value before asking for a sale. It's about building trust, offering your audience something meaningful, whether through helpful tips, engaging stories, or practical advice.

💡 Creating an Unforgettable Customer Experience 💡

What's your superpower in eCommerce? According to Sarah, it's creating an exceptional customer experience. It’s not about the number of products you sell but the quality of the experience you offer. This focus on experience is what sets you apart in the crowded eCommerce space. It’s about understanding your customer's needs and exceeding their expectations.

🛍️ Leveraging Social Media for Growth 🛍️

In our conversation, Sarah also highlighted the importance of platforms like Facebook for audience growth. Despite popular belief, Facebook remains a vital tool for engaging with an audience that is ready and willing to spend. It’s about consistent engagement and producing content that resonates with your audience.

📈 Personalisation is the Key to Connection 📈

One of the most powerful tools in your eCommerce arsenal is personalisation. S It’s about tapping into the unique desires of your customers and catering to them in a way that feels individualised and special.

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The journey to skyrocketing your online business is paved with learning and adaptation. By focusing on entertainment, serving before selling, and creating exceptional experiences, you can take significant steps towards massive growth. Embrace these strategies, and watch as your business reaches new heights.

And for more in-depth insights and actionable tips, make sure to tune into eCommerce Podcast. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of online business and uncover the secrets to success in this digital age.

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At the eCommerce Cohort, we're committed to helping you deliver eCommerce WOW through our lightweight, guided monthly Sprint that cycles through all the key areas of eCommerce.

What happens in a Sprint?

Each Sprint is themed-based. So using the topic of Everything You Need To Know About Subscription eCommerce as an example - here's how it would work:

Sprint Theme: Marketing.
Week One: Coaching Session -> Marketing.
Week Two: Expert Workshop -> Everything You Need To Know About Subscription eCommerce.
Week Three: Live Q&A with our experts and coaches. This is a time to ask questions and contribute your thoughts and ideas so we can all learn together.
Week Four: Submit your work for feedback, support, and accountability. Yup, all of this is to provide you with clear, actionable items you can implement in your eCommerce business or department! It's not about learning for the sake of learning but about making those constant interactions that keep you moving forward and ahead of your competitors. Sharing your work helps cement your understanding, and accountability enables you to implement like nothing else!

Who can join the eCommerce Cohort?

Anyone with a passion for eCommerce. If you're an established eCommercer already, you'll get tremendous value as it will stop you from getting siloed (something that your podcast host, Matt Edmundson, can attest to!).

If you're just starting out in eCommerce, we have a series of Sprints (we call that a Cycle) that will help you get started quicker and easier.

Why Cohort

Founder and coach Matt Edmundson started the Cohort after years of being in the trenches with his eCommerce businesses and coaching other online empires worldwide. One of Matt's most potent lessons in eCommerce was the danger of getting siloed and only working on those areas of the business that excited him - it almost brought down his entire eCommerce empire. Working on all aspects of eCommerce is crucial if you want to thrive online, stay ahead of your competitors and deliver eCommerce WOW.

Are you thinking about starting an eCommerce business or looking to grow your existing online empire? Are you interested in learning more about the eCommerce Cohort?

Visit our website www.ecommercecohort.com now or email Matt directly with any questions at matt@ecommercepodcast.net.

Matt has been involved in eCommerce since 2002. His websites have generated over $50m in worldwide sales, and his coaching clients have a combined turnover of over $100m.

Matt: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the eCommerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmundson. Now the eCommerce podcast It is a show all about helping you deliver eCommerce wow. And to help us do just that, we have a very special guest today, Sarah Williams, all the way from the other side of the water all the way from launch your box.
We're going to be talking about everything to do with subscription businesses. Oh yes, and Sarah knows everything there is to know about it. No pressure, Sarah, but the stakes are high. Before we get into that though, let me just tell you welcome to the show. If this is your first time with us, great to have you.
Great that you could join us. If you haven't done so already, check out the website ecommercepodcast. net where coincidentally you can sign up to the newsletter and all of the notes and the links from our amazing guests like Sarah come straight to your inbox. Automagically. Yes, they do. And you can click through, you can connect with them.
You can see what they're up to. It's awesome. So check it out, ecommercepodcast. net. And of course, this show is brought to you by the wonderful [00:01:00] eCommerce Cohort. eCommerce Cohort is a monthly eCommerce membership group that you could be a part of if you're not already. Why not come and join us? There's some great stuff in there.
We have expert workshops delivered every month by eCommerce experts. Plus, that's not enough. You get to join in the live recordings of this podcast. Oh yes, so you can ask questions direct to the guests yourself. Ah, come check it out, eCommercecohort. com, be great to see you in there. And before we get into it, let me give a big shout out to Subsummit, which is where Sarah and I collided for want of a better expression.
If you haven't checked it out already, check out Subsummit. com, Subsummit24, I will be there. It's a great place. Are you going to be there, Sarah?
Sarah: I am going to be there.
Matt: That was a yes, I should have put a sound up, sorry. Yeah, she said yes. Ha. Schoolboy era. Ask a question, make sure you turn up the volume. Now, let's talk about Sarah.
Starting with a quaint brick and mortar store, Sarah [00:02:00] quickly pivoted to revolutionize the subscription box world in 2017 with Launch Your Box. Her dedication to exceptional customer experiences has turned her venture into a multi million dollar success. Beyond running her thriving business, Sarah empowers other entrepreneurs through her programs and shares her journey through her debut book, One Box at a Time.
We're going to get into that. And actually, Sarah, it's also fair to say you have your own podcast. You are a seasoned podcaster, aren't you? With your Launcher Box podcast.
Sarah: Yes, I love the podcast.
Matt: Did you enjoy doing it? Do you enjoy getting the guests on and chatting away?
Sarah: It's one of my favorite things that I get to do, the podcast. I love it.
Matt: yeah, I'm with you. You just get to speak to some incredible people, don't you, and you just have some fun doing it and learn a lot along the way and you don't necessarily have reasons for it, it's just that I enjoy chatting to people and it's a wonderful thing to do. Thank you for joining us.
Thank you for being here.
Sarah: I'm really excited to be here today with you [00:03:00] guys.
Matt: Yeah, in the midst of, because at the time of recording, let's just say It's a busy time of the year, isn't it?
Sarah: It's slightly busy in the fall, just a tad. If I were to pan this screen over and you were to look at my warehouse right now, it would be a shocker.
Matt: Yeah, mayhem and chaos would be the the order of the day, no, which is fair enough. It's fair enough. Tell us about the subscription business that you've got, The Frame by Sarah what's going on with that? Just to give us some fram framework.
Sarah: Yeah, so I started the business as a kind of a add on to my brick and mortar business. So I had a personalized gift shop that was just a local brick and mortar shop. And in 2017, I decided I wanted to have a subscription box as a way to take that local customer and make them the VIP of my business. And so I started this subscription box.
It's called the Monogram Box because my brick and mortar, we personalize everything. So we do the same thing in the subscription [00:04:00] box, which you could say is a little challenging because every single box that goes out this floor is customized. And so that's what makes our subscription unique and special is that it's customized for the subscriber every single month.
And we pride ourselves on that. Than that. We love that. And our subscribers really love it. So we started that in 2017 with 44 subscribers. And we ship out thousands of boxes every single month now. And it's just been a great journey. It's been a great journey.
Matt: Fantastic. So you basically thought, I want to start a subscription business. What is the single way to make it way more complicated and way more difficult to myself? Let's do that.
Sarah: Absolutely. If I can go back and tell myself, till 2017, Sarah, what I know now, I would say Stop it right now. You, that is not. Scalable. What are you doing? You're going to kill yourself through this process. But no, I just took it as a challenge. Cause in my mind, I didn't think I was going to have this multimillion [00:05:00] dollar subscription box business in mind.
I really just would really love a hundred subscribers because at that time, a hundred subscribers. Would have paid my monthly overhead for my brick and mortar. And that was the goal. That was like my big goal. If I got a hundred subscribers, my rent, my utilities, and my one employee would be paid for. And then everything I made in the brick and mortar, all the profit I made in the brick and mortar would just be extra on top.
So the goal, when I started this subscription box was just to bring some stability into my overhead expenses. And and I never imagined that it was going to explode to what it is today.
Matt: So does, is the Brick and Mortar business still running or is it purely online now? Sure.
Sarah: So in December of 2020 after COVID showed me that I didn't need the brick and mortar to be successful. I went all, I went online in 2020. The only thing I really had online before was my [00:06:00] subscription box. I was still very local. When COVID shut down my brick and mortar store, I pivoted and put everything online in that panic of what am I going to do?
And that showed me that I could reach a lot more people. And that my local customer base, cause it was huge. It was probably at that time 70 percent of my business was my local cover customer base And it was also about 70 percent of my subscriber base, too So I felt like to be relevant to those people I still needed to have my local brick and mortar store But when I got shut down and we went online. Everything exploded and I no longer fit that brick and mortar, like I needed bigger space, I needed more shipping capabilities.
I needed more fulfillment capabilities. I could no longer do this in the back room of my brick and mortar store. So in December of that year, we moved to a warehouse with the intention that I was gonna go all online. I shut down the brick and mortar store and we were just going to focus online. [00:07:00] But during that transition, something kept tugging at me, this local customer base that I had hundreds of people walking around my town in the same t shirt that I've designed for the month.
And it was almost like this disconnect for me. To not be able to see them, to not be able to help them in person, to not be able to get their feedback that I had all gotten from my brick and mortar. So when we opened our warehouse and closed the brick and mortar, we took the front 12 feet all the way across of our warehouse and we made a faux retail store.
So that our customer Could walk into our warehouse. It feels like a boutique in the front. And we are able, they're able to shop and pick up orders and pick up their subscription boxes and have interaction with us. Now we are only open during our warehouse hours, so we aren't keeping boutique hours anymore.
But it was the hybrid. It was. Still have a personal connection with our local [00:08:00] subscribers. They can still feel like they can come in and see us and talk to us. And, but yet we're in a warehouse environment so that we can continue to fulfill and ship in the capacity that we needed to.
Matt: That's really interesting. I've seen this actually a lot. More, certainly more recently where businesses went pure warehouse the dingy warehouse, but actually some of the warehouse locations are quite. Are quite handy, aren't they? They can be quite helpful. And so I've now seen a lot of warehouses, put stores in shop fronts.
There's actually a big chain in the UK called Screw Fix, which build an entire business out of this like a DIY store. So there's no shop to go shopping around. You buy everything through a catalog, you go pick it up. But a friend of mine who runs an online tool business has done the same thing, massive warehouse selling power tools, which is just beautiful.
I love to walk around it. But he has this amazing sort of store at the front and you would never know what's behind that wall. And so I'm really intrigued. The hybrid model seems to be working. 'cause you've got the warehouse space, right? The staff are already [00:09:00] there. So the staff can be doing picking and packing and customer service inquiries.
I suppose you've got to fit it out, but is there any real massive extra overhead? I doubt there probably is really, so is it working well for you?
Sarah: It's working very well and we can see say, subscriber pickup day, like when we have our boxes ready to ship out and we send out a text for our local subscribers and it's pickup day you're going to see a huge increase in sales of in store sales that day. They're coming through your front door, they're walking by all those display pieces that you have out, the mannequins, the sale tables, whatever you have out.
They may have seen me on a Facebook Live selling a cardigan that goes with the t shirt that's in the box. And they're like, I want to see that cardigan that Sarah was showing us the other day. They're here. They can try it on. And they're leaving with more purchases than just their monogram box that they came to pick up.
So it's, it's like It's not like Walmart pickup, they bring it to your car, you're never walking by the aisles, but you're going to pick things up if you do go walk in and pick up [00:10:00] your items. And that's really what we've done here is we've created kind of the impulse when people are picking up their orders, but it also gives them the ability to connect with us in person.
And that is so important. And that's what people miss. When they go from having a brick and mortar to all online, they're missing that connection, which makes our customers super loyal to us.
Matt: Yeah. No, it's very clever. Very smart idea. But a thing that you mentioned there, Sarah, that I want to pick up on is you do the subscription box, the, the personalized stuff in the subscription box, but you just said are we, they may have seen me on a Facebook live selling a cardigan, which will go with the t shirt in.
So it's there's more to this story than just putting stuff in a box and shipping out. It sounds
Sarah: absolutely. Absolutely. And these are just, I call it expansion revenue. So we have a solid revenue structure with our subscription box and it is 75 percent of our overall revenue, our [00:11:00] subscriptions. Which is amazing because we can count on that every single month. It's not like we have to show up and sell to pay the bills.
We know 75 percent of our revenue is reoccurring. It's going to hit our bank account every single month. So the other 25 percent is our expansion revenue on our subscriber base, on our subscription base. So when I curate a box, I'm also curating pieces that could be great add ons to the products in this box.
Example, there's a t shirt in every one of my subscriptions. What are we going to wear with the t shirt every single month? In the winter, we're going to wear cardigans. In the summer, we're going to wear kimonos. We might wear, earrings and hats and shorts and whatever else that we want to curate.
That'll go with the subscription box because these are just ways that are easily expandable on the current revenue that we're already have when I order the stuff for the subscription boxes. I don't have to worry too much about how much to order. Is it going to sell? Will I have to mark it down? That stuff's already sold.[00:12:00]
So when you think about a subscription box business, and I'm ordering 100, 000 of this today, I already know that's going to sell. sell. There's no risk involved in it for me. It's already sold whether I'm going to sell it next month or three months from now, I'm ordering it. It's sold. So then I can add on to that with the stuff, but I don't have to be as risky with it because I know all these subscribers are going to have this shirt.
And it's cold, so they're not going to want to wear a t shirt by themselves in the month of December. What can I'm going to order a navy cardigan, because I've got navy ink on this shirt. They're going, I'm going to pair it, I'm going to show up live, I'm going to show them my navy earrings, I'm going to show them my navy cardigan, I might have a cute crossbody purse that I have with this outfit.
Now I'm giving them the complete look, and they can choose whether they want more than what they've got in their box or not. So it's, what can I use to compliment the pieces that are already sold and things like that. So that's what I look at. And when we're curating out a year's worth of boxes ahead of time, I can [00:13:00] easily cure, curate the collections that I want to sell in addition to that box that month.
Matt: that's really powerful. And it's interesting. You, you, the stat that you gave 75 percent of your income is from subscription. 25 percent is this expansion revenue. You called it, which is a great phrase. And that is, I think that's quite. Typical. Normally a sort of 70 30 ratio is what you can, is normally what with companies that have core hero products.
And you go you can boost 30% by just by adding some cleverly chosen add-ons and upsells to this single product. And it seems that you are doing that. So another thing I appreciate you are just talking and I'm just thinking, wow. And I'm listening and I'm going, you mentioned Facebook Live now.
Let's talk about this a second because you're obviously doing what is fast becoming nicknamed live shopping, right? And big in Asia not so massive here in the UK or in the States It's getting bigger certainly when you're doing apparel it seems What's your experience [00:14:00] with live shopping?
Sarah: So this is what happened when I decided to go online. I was so local, Matt, that I was really having trouble connecting with these now online customers that didn't know me, right? So when someone walks into my shop, and especially in the beginning, I was the person checking you out. I was the person packing your box.
I was the person steaming the clothes to put on the racks. That was me. Call me and I got to know you that way. So someone came into my shop. I was the one greeting you. I was the one checking you out. I was the one asking about your family or whoever and that's how I got to know my customers and that became such this I had this cult like following because they knew if they came in the store, they were gonna see me and so they come in to talk with me and look what I had new.
So when I went online, there was a disconnect of how could I connect with all these people that didn't [00:15:00] live in my town, that didn't know me. And that, the realization for me was like, I need to go live. I'm, I need them to get to know me the same way my local customers got to know me, because that's what's driving my business.
It's that return customer, it's that loyalty factor. It's that no lis no and trust factor, and people on the internet don't even know who I am. And why would they come back? Why would they? Why would they shop with me when there's a million places to shop? So I had to differentiate myself and I did that with live selling.
And I was very uncomfortable with it in the beginning. I didn't want to do it. I fought it at every turn. I tried everything else. I spent a lot of money on ads so I wouldn't have to do it. I was like, I'll just do more ad dollars. I'll just do this. And I finally just realized like, okay, suck it up. You're going to have to do this if you want to grow your business.
So we have to make a plan for this because I'm a structured person. If I can make a plan with some structure that all I have to do is just keep [00:16:00] implementing, like I'm more likely to do it than just spontaneously. So created a live structure, showed up live. Very uncomfortable. No one was there. I begged my three friends to come live and ask me questions, ask me about the shirt I'm wearing, ask me about the earrings, ask me how you can be a subscriber.
It's because I needed some kind of conversation because it was just me and the screen and nobody was there. And I did that for weeks. And I just got better at it and better at it. So once a week I would go live and then there was this one Saturday that I went live and I was like, people that I didn't know watching, I was like, Oh, there's people other than my mom and my friends watching me.
And then all of a sudden I could see there was a hundred viewers and I panicked and I finished my life. I was like, there's a hundred people watching me right now. What is happening? And so I panicked and I turned off the live, but I went again. I went live again the next week. And then I started having people buy that I didn't know that weren't from my town.[00:17:00]
And I was like, all right, this is working. We're going to keep showing up. We're going to keep just being me because they're relating to me. I would pick five or six things around the shop. These are my favorite things of the week. Let me show you this tumbler. Let me show you these earrings. Let me show you this bracelet.
Let me show you how you can pair these together with a cute sweatshirt. Whatever it was. And I would talk, I would tell little stories about my kids, or my day, or how I spilt coffee all over myself on the way to work, or just things that were relatable to the moms and the wives and the women that were watching me, and that's how the business grew up, and it really, you could see these pockets of subscribers, so I would have I remember it vividly, I had like my first subscriber that wasn't in my town, she was from Colorado Springs, And I was like, I have a brand new subscriber from another state and I was so excited about it.
And then there were like four subscribers all in the same town. I'm like, she's sharing this with people. Like she's telling people where, and then I saw it in Utah. I saw this little pocket of people in Utah in [00:18:00] the same town. And then it just started to build and build. And that's when things started to really explode.
But I just kept showing up. I kept being myself. I kept just Talking about my products and my subscription boxes and people got to know me the same way That they did when they walked into my store?
Matt: Super powerful. Super powerful. And do you just do that on Facebook or is it Facebook and Instagram? Do you stream to multiple places?
Sarah: Right now it's, I just do that on Facebook because I get nervous when there's too many things going on and I have the ADHD and so I just do it on Facebook. I send the replay out in the email. Sometimes I'll take snippets and throw them on Instagram reels, but I just, I'm just a simple person. I like to focus on one thing and my audience is on Facebook.
If we're going to be 85 percent of my social. Traffic comes from Facebook. So I just focus on them. And if I can repurpose that in any way and get some other views, then I do that too. But I just focus on what's [00:19:00] working
Matt: Facebook Lives, are you still doing them?
Sarah: every week. And right now I've been doing them every day. Cause it's the 12 days of Christmas. So I've been live every single day for the last, this is day seven. We're promoting, we have a special promotion every day for 12 days. Cause this is December 7th that we are recording this, but I do it.
A couple times a week now. I also do it for my coaching business now. It was so successful in my eCommerce business that I do a live every Monday on my coaching page and it's just, how can I serve them? It's called Monday Momentum. How do I get you started on your Monday as a small business owner?
Here's a tip for this week. Here's an email marketing campaign I want you to send this week. Here's something I want you to do on your socials this week. Here's a little tip to get you out of your head, whatever you're struggling with. Like I just do a little 20 minute kind of pep talk every Monday and give them one actionable thing to focus on to get them motivated for the week to work on their businesses.
Matt: Wow. So you're you're getting right into it then. We're not [00:20:00] just once, we're twice a week now we're across multiple things we're doing Facebook all the time. I'm intrigued.
Sarah: my coaching, I am streaming on YouTube as well, because I do have an audience there, so I can stream in multiple places at once. So I stream on, I stream in my paid group, I stream on my free page, and I stream on YouTube all at the same time on the Mondays.
Matt: Sound, it sounds Sarah, like you've got a lot going on, right? So what was a simple subscription business? I say simple because you made it complex, but you have this subscription business, which you've then done the expansion stuff for, which has grown that, and you've got a coaching business. Yeah.
Yeah. And you thought, I know what I'll do, I'm not busy enough, so I'm going to write a book, right? And so tell me about the book.
Sarah: So the book is the book deal happened very unexpectedly. I didn't, Matt, I didn't say, Oh, I really want to write a book someday. That's what was on my bucket list. I'm going to write a book proposal and I'm going to really, I'm going to try to get a book deal. That wasn't on my radar at all. I thought you, you just said it.
I'm [00:21:00] busy. I ain't got time for all that. But I was at an event where I was speaking and it was a charity event. And in return for our time to. We've got a Mastermind Day with each other, and the host of the charity event facilitated this Mastermind Day. And the CEO of Hay House Publishing was in that room with me.
And we were, it was my turn for my hot seat. I'm talking about my business and I'm having to give them a little bit of a backstory of who I am and what I do so they understand what my question is. And right on the spot, he offered me a book deal in that meeting.
This is how my little book, One Box at a Time, came to fruition.
So I spent the next year writing my book. I had to submit a book proposal. He didn't just give me a book deal, I had to do the work. But I wrote a book proposal and so I put together, like, All the things, it's a personal story wrapped into the business strategies and tactics along the way. So [00:22:00] this is how I built my audience.
This is how you're going to do it. This is how we're work on fulfillment. This is where the logistics come in. This is where we started to scale and this is how you're going to do it. And so every chapter is my journey. Like you're going to. You can see my whole business journey along the way in this book but then every chapter has the strategies that I implemented that I line out for you so that you can do the exact same thing.
And then also every chapter has one or two stories of my students that I feature in each chapter of how they did that particular chapter in a way that is unique and different. So if you don't see yourself in me, you can probably see yourself in one of my stories. We have hundreds of success stories of people that have gone from scratch to million dollar businesses using my strategies the same way I did, and I put that all in the book.
Matt: Fantastic. I'm looking forward to reading it, because it's a fair, it's a fair, it's fair to say it's a fairly New Publish, isn't it?
Sarah: Less than a month it's been out and we've hit the [00:23:00] top Amazon charts for women in business for, I've hit the entrepreneur number five on the entrepreneur charts. So we, we've hit some top charts over there and we've got lots of great reviews on the book. So I'm really excited.
Matt: Check it out. One box at a time. So let's dig into some of the contents of the book. Some of the strategies. Chris George was on the podcast. Yeah. Chris from Sub Summit, right? What a legend that man is. He basically said if he was starting out any business in eCommerce, he just wouldn't do eCommerce.
He'd just do everything on subscription. Just the way he, just how his brain works. I'm just going to do subscription now, isn't it? I'm I get where he's coming from I'm probably a little bit more hybrid in my thinking, but if I'm thinking of starting like a subscription business you get this question asked a lot, and I'm sure the answer is, I don't know where would someone start if they think, I like the idea of the subscription box model. Where would you start?
Sarah: I think anyone, whether that's eCommerce or a subscription box model, [00:24:00] they have to start building an audience. And I think that is probably the most overlooked thing. We have to start, we, you got to identify who the customer you want to sell to, no matter if it's one off products or subscription.
And then we have to start building content and building a following for that person. If you want to start with a subscription box, it's really understanding that person who that person is so that you can curate. You have to have a good understanding of what is being made. It's not about the stuff.
A lot of people going into a subscription box think it's, Oh, if I just get the best stuff, I'll have the best box. It's about the experience that you're creating for them. You can have a box and there's, high name boxes and I'm not going to call anybody out. It's full of stuff. It's full of brand name stuff.
It's so random. There's no expression. Experience to go along with it. And that's our superpower as small business owners. We have the ability to curate an entire experience every single [00:25:00] month with each box that we have. It's not about putting random stuff in there. It's about thinking about what that ideal customer is thinking, feeling, and doing.
Every single month of the year as a mom, as a busy Southern mom, that is my ideal customer. What are they thinking, feeling, and doing in the month of January? I know exactly what they're doing and I can curate a box exactly for that person so that when they open it, they're like, Sarah made this just for me.
And I get that comment. So much like Sarah made this just for me. And that's where you should start. That's how we have to start our subscription box business off. Like really understanding who we want to sell to so we can get in their head and curate an experience for them.
Matt: Super powerful. It's interesting in your own story, you started, you said you started off with 44 subscribers, so it wasn't like you just blew up overnight, right? It's taking you a few years.
Sarah: everyone starts from scratch and I didn't have venture capital and I didn't [00:26:00] have investors and I didn't have a trust fund to start a business with. Like I'm just a regular person and I just thought I can do this. I want to do this for my customers. I want them to feel special. That was the whole premise around starting the subscription box.
How could I make that customer that was coming into my brick and mortar about once a month, that loyal customer, they would come in and buy something for themselves or they would come in and buy a gift for somebody else. How could I make them the VIP of my business? That loyal customer that I saw on a regular basis, I would make it exclusive just for them.
I would make it special. Special. I would personalize it. It would feel like a gift for them every single month. That's what I wanted to curate when I started my subscription box. And I told you my big goal was to have a hundred subscribers. And that's why I thought the personalization wasn't a big deal because I can whip that out. Little did I know that thousands and [00:27:00] thousands of monograms later that I would be doing this on a larger scale. And I went through a lot of like ups and downs, figuring that out as I was scaling. I was scaling very quickly. I didn't have the equipment to scale that quickly. I tried outsourcing it for a while and that just became a disaster after the disaster.
And I thought, okay, I either need to do this. And do it right and I need to bring it all in house and I need to be able to control and manage the outcome of this or I need to stop doing the personalization because it is a train wreck right now. And so that decision came probably about 800 subscribers in.
Matt: Okay.
Sarah: I, and I was literally still the one sitting behind the machine monogramming for 10 hours a day. And I thought this is madness. I cannot keep up doing this. My, my business was like, my marketing wasn't getting done because I'm the one running the embroidery. I was the only one in the building that knew how to run the embroidery machines.
Like I had [00:28:00] people doing all the other things, but I hadn't. Hired someone to do that. So every month and I would get done and I would be exhausted. I'm like, crap, I got to start again next week cause we got a hundred more boxes to get out next week, and so it was just like, alright, I got to figure this out.
Tried outsourcing it. That was a disaster. And I said, okay, if we're going to continue to personalize. We have to do it right. I don't want this janky personalization that was happening by outsourcing it. And so I bought the equipment, I hired the people, we moved into the warehouse, we had the space to have all the equipment that we needed.
It was a big investment, but it was either I was gonna continue to scale to pay for that investment or I was gonna need to pull back the option. And I made the decision to scale and that's when we hit 1, 500, 3, 000. That's when we started to really go. And as we continue to grow, we continue to buy more machines and we continue to train more people to run the machines and we continue to personalize [00:29:00] in more ways than embroidery.
We, we do printing, we do Engraving, we do embroidery. So any different month there might be, something different in your box. It's not always embroidered, like we might do embroidery this month and then we're going to move to DTF printing next month and we're going to have that on an item in it, and so it's different ways that we're.
Now able to monogram items because of the decision to scale and it's profitable and we have it all in house now, so we have the control over it.
Matt: Which is incredible, really. And I'm listening to you talk and I'm thinking part of me thinks actually having a warehouse full of all those machines will just be fun. It just sounds like there's a lot of fun. Sounds like it's very hard work at times, and I'm sure it is. But it sounds like actually you.
It comes across in your voice, Sarah, that actually you're you deeply care about this business. You're obviously, very passionate about it. And I think that's probably the secret in a lot of ways to the success. It's nice all the other [00:30:00] trips and, and stuff that we can do in scaling, but I think if you've not got that passion, I don't know how you do it for the long haul.
I I think you give up quick, right?
Sarah: You do. And that's what I tell a lot of my students, Matt, because when they're picking something, when they're picking their niche or they're picking their customer base and they're just getting started, I tell them, I need you to be passionate about it. I need you to be able to talk about it every day.
I need you to get excited. Excited about it because if not this E-commerce rat race that we're on is a roller coaster, and if we don't love what we do, we're gonna burn out really fast. There are gonna be hard days and you're like, why am I even doing this? I don't even like what I'm doing.
We have to love what I we're doing. We have to love the customer that we're serving. It's not transactional. I know that a lot of our brains. Think of things as transactional because we want to be profitable. We want to make money. That's why we're doing this. We're not doing this for fun. I'm not out here packing 3000 boxes a day for fun.
I'm doing it because it's building my livelihood, but I also deeply [00:31:00] care about my customers and I deeply care about the outcome of this box that goes out every month. And if we don't have that passion behind what we're doing, Our business won't be long term like to I'm about to be 11 years old in business, okay?
And in small business years, that's like dog years. Like I feel like I'm You know what I mean? Like one small business year is like dog years because so many businesses don't make it to the one year mark. So many businesses don't make it five year mark to make it to 10 years of being a small business owners.
That's a big feat. That's 27 dog years for me. And I feel every one of those.
Matt: I feel them to my bones, man. No I've been in business since 1998 yeah I definitely am feeling them. Let's go back a little bit Sarah, if I can, and just pick up on the, on this idea, right? Where you start is you build an audience, right? This is what you do. How do you. What are some of the things, I mean you've talked about doing Facebook lives, but what are [00:32:00] some of the things that people should be thinking about if they, and in a lot of ways I'm quite fortunate because if I started something for a niche, we've got probably that niche, I've got, a hundred thousand emails, I've got that audience to start something in if I'm not already doing that subscription business, but let's assume I haven't, right?
And I'm starting with very relatively minor skills. What's your advice?
Sarah: So we got to build our following and we've got to build our list. And those are the two places that we really have to hone in on. And we do that by serving before we sell. Okay. So that's, Something that I teach a lot. We've got to serve our audience before we ask them to buy something from us. And that's how we create these really loyal customers.
So in what way can you serve your audience? So if I think about somebody wanting to start something in a pet industry what pet is that? Like we have a amazing box in our community. It's a guinea pig box. And she has tons of subscribers, but [00:33:00] it's for guinea pigs. So how could you serve the guinea pig community?
For you show up and start selling them a subscription box. It's like, how often should I clean my guinea pig cage? What does it mean when my guinea pig's not eating? Like, how are we going to serve these people so they'll start to follow us? And so that's what we have to put out first. It's that content that gets us noted.
As the guinea pig expert, right? So that could be some opt ins. That's going to be building our list. That could be, your 10 point checklist on how to care for your guinea pigs. Okay. That's a great opt in. We know everyone opting into that is a guinea pig owner, and then we're going to sell them a guinea pig box.
Okay. So it's finding that niche and then how can you serve that niche? Okay. And so for me, I have more of a. Want based subscription. It's just fun. It's just cute. It's just pretty. Like it's just a girly thing. So one opt in that works really well for me and my business are phone wallpapers. And Matt, if you're not familiar with [00:34:00] it, it's just this cute little design that's on your phone screen.
And I make them their, that's my t shirt design for the month. So if they like this little wallpaper enough to give me their email address so they can download it to their phone for free, they're probably gonna like my t shirt design because it's the exact same design that's on my t shirt. And now I can sell them into my t shirt subscription through an automation.
So I'm building the list first, I'm building my following. And the ways that we can build our following is publishing content that's serving. I also love to do page like ads. Those build a following really well. We can typically get a page like for under 50 cents right now. So if you could start to build, a thousand followers from a page like ad right in the beginning stage of your business, then you're going to have somebody to market to.
That's one of the biggest issues we have as small business owners is we get ready, we built this great subscription box. It's going to be wonderful, but we don't have anybody to sell it to because we haven't built our list and we haven't built our following. But a page like ad could just [00:35:00] be me. We got to have that connection point.
I want to see your face. That's our superpower with small businesses. We're not a brand, we're a person. And I could be wearing a monogrammed pullover, have my monogram on it. And I could have a bag that has my monogram on it, on my arm. Okay. So this is what I do. If you like the fact that I have monograms on my outfit.
You're going to stop your scroll and you're going to read my page like, Hey, I'm Sarah. I'm from a small town in Texas. I'm a mom of two teenagers. I love tacos and margaritas. And around here, we personalize everything. If it's not moving, we monogram it. And if somebody Love is a monogram. They're going to like what I'm wearing or holding and they're and it's a page like ad, so it has the button, the little thumb buttons on Facebook so I can instantly like her page.
Now they're going to start to see my content. Now that hopefully they're going to start to interact with me. Now when I go live, I have someone new that I can get to know and trust me. And that's how I'm continuing to [00:36:00] build my audience. And that's how you can do it in the beginning. And I still run a page like ad every single month of all year long.
I run a page like to cold audiences because I have to continue to grow my following. I have to continue to grow my list, or I'm going to keep showing up and selling to the exact same person every single month. And I'm never going to grow. I'm going to have cancellations every month in my subscription.
It's a guarantee. It is a guarantee. If I don't go after a new audience every month, that number is going to dwindle and dwindle because I don't have anyone new to sell to. And so we have to do that every single month as eCommerce businesses.
Matt: I love that. You know what you remind me of, Sari, as you were talking there is do you remember at Sub Summit 2023? Going back in time, all that distance in our memories Neil, did you hear Neil Hoyne speak? The Google strategist guy? He was one of the main speakers at the, on the stage and I, he's been on the podcast, actually, as we speak, his episode is out live.
Really fascinating chap. And [00:37:00] he was talking about, data and Google strategy and all this sort of stuff. And it was fascinating. And he was talking about the personas that marketing people have which I thought was really fascinating. So the actual marketers themselves have these sort of personas.
And the first one he talked about, Was the bar persona and the bar persona. He said, picture the scene. There's a chap obviously my language here, he's not English. There's a chap walks into a bar and he basically goes up to every woman in the bar and says you marry me just straight away.
And of course most of 'em are gonna say no. And he said, this is what. The Bar Persona marketer is they just literally, they show up and they're like, buy my stuff straight away. There's no courtship. There's no there's no drawing you in. And I thought it was a really good analogy of what we try and do sometimes with our marketing.
It's just here, boom, buy it. Rather than, hey, let's get to know each other a little bit. Which is what he talked about. And so this is why. Your page like strategy and just delivering value to people [00:38:00] before serve them before you sell them I think is a really good thing. Are you all right there?
Yeah, you seem to be coughing a
Sarah: I'm trying not to cough on the podcast.
Matt: The trouble is the more you hold it in the worse it gets right
Sarah: Exactly. Exactly.
Matt: Been there. So yes, sorry all of that said It just connects me back to what Neil Horne was talking about And so you're still doing the same strategy.
Sarah: This point in my business, it works. And this is what I think as we get, Later in business, as we get more established, more polished in business, we think we have to keep jumping through hoops and trying all these new fun things. But when we just go back to the basics, what built our business and just re energize them, the basics work.
We just have to keep working them.
Matt: do you let's say I am going to do a subscription box where my key target audience is probably more, say, Instagram based rather than [00:39:00] Facebook based, are you still doing the page like ads because Facebook is so big that at least some part of your audience will be on Facebook or are you doing something entirely different?
Sarah: think if you are focused only on Instagram, you're leaving money on the table with Facebook. And I can see it with my own students. Some of them are very big on Instagram and it's very different from the way I am because my audience is mostly on Facebook. But when I challenge them to lean into Facebook a little bit more, they are amazed at the result.
Because they've focused on Instagram so much, they didn't see Facebook as being viable, and they didn't see their audience being viable. But what's happening is, they've missed a whole section of people that now they're tapping into. And it's incredible to see their results on Facebook when their Instagram could have 30, 000 followers and their Facebook could have 300 followers because they don't [00:40:00] put any attention to it.
And when I challenged them for a month, focus on Facebook for a month, and they're getting, they're going live on Facebook and they're getting sales instantly. They're shocked by it so I would tell our Instagrammers not to count Facebook out because it's still very viable for a lot of businesses.
Matt: Yeah, I love that. I still see whenever we do live streams, we're with YouTube. We have a different company that does podcast productions. And so we see the live streams going out, whether it's Facebook YouTube, even Instagram lives in a lot of ways, by far the most engagement you get is on Facebook.
It's really quite fascinating, even still today, the comments, because you can reply under comments and that can start little conversations, you can't really do that on YouTube, it's just all very linear it's still, and the ability to instantly share that live onto your Facebook feed.
Without really thinking about it. Whereas if I want to show you a YouTube live stream where am I sharing that to? I now have to open up [00:41:00] Facebook to share it because it's, do you see what I mean? There's no feed to share it to. And so all these things means to me, like Facebook's not going away and the engagement still, it's still out does everything else, and we've tried them all and it just fascinates me that it's it's just there.
It's just not going anywhere. Is it? It intrigues me.
Sarah: Yeah. And people are like Facebook is dead. If Facebook's dead, it's cause you're not using it. And that's what I, that's what I tell them because Facebook is very much still. And if you look at Facebook users right now, they're the ones that have the money. They're in that age range where they have expendable income.
They have they have the extra income to spend on the things, the luxury items or the additional items, the, not the needs, but the wants. And so you're not tapping into that audience you're leaving a lot of money on the table.
Matt: Brilliant. So the strategy then is simple, isn't it? Grow your audience don't count out Facebook, have a look on Facebook, serve your audience, [00:42:00] deliver content, be constant, show up, do the live streams, even if you really don't want to do the live streams and someone always says to me whenever I say this about live shopping, I'm actually I'm going to ask you, Sarah, because I get this asked a lot, but I've only got one, one, two, three, four products, a handful of products.
It's not like I can turn up to every live stream and do something different or model some new clothing. How would you respond to that?
Sarah: would respond with, you've got to make it entertainment. Okay. So if you only have a handful of products and those are your core products and that's what you sell all the time, you've got to show benefits of these. You've got to show different ways people are using your products. You also just need to give some entertainment factor.
It's not always about buy buy, but it's like, What are you doing for the day? What are you into? You could be making something in your kitchen. If you're, if your audience is a woman of my age, which my audience is, they're going to watch me put together broccoli soup in my crock pot today.
[00:43:00] And that's an entertainment factor for them. That's why people are on social media. They're not on social media to buy. They're on social media for entertainment. So if you don't have anything that, if you feel like you've, All four of your products this week do something different. Maybe you're using something in your everyday life that is your product and you can show them how you're using it.
You're not selling them anything. You're just. You're just serving them. Who's your customer? My customer needs a crockpot meal for tonight because they got kids to feed and they've been working all day and they are tired. They're gonna tune in and they're gonna see what I'm cooking in the kitchen and they're gonna relate to me.
And then when they see that cute monogram bag in their feed from one of my ads or one of my posts, they're gonna be like, oh, yeah, I love Sarah's stuff because I'm a person to them. So don't worry so much about live selling all the time. How can we be entertaining to people in our audience and how could we attract more people?
If someone then shares my broccoli soup that I'm making [00:44:00] in the crock pot on their Facebook feed, I'm sure other moms are going to go look at that and I might have a potential of having a new customer see my stuff. So you don't have to worry about having these perfectly polished branded Instagram pages and Facebook pages.
We just want to be real. Like people just want to engage with real people. They want to be entertained. They want to be lifted up. They want to feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. That's all social media is.
Matt: Yeah, that's super powerful. It's why I love podcasting. And I because it's easy content creation. I'm not going to lie. If I think about the last 45 minutes to an hour. We've been going. I've not had to think about anything. It's all, I'm just asking you questions and picking your brain, right?
It's none of this has come from me. Which is, so it makes it easy. It's a wonderful conversation. It's entertaining. People get drawn in. And we constantly show up and now we have thousands of people listening to the podcast, which is just brilliant. I definitely don't take it for granted.
Sarah: Is how [00:45:00] you are serving your audience, right? You're serving your audience in this way before you ever ask them to buy any of your products. You are teaching them who you are. You are letting them know and trust you by your inflections in your voice or the jokes that you may, they're getting to know your personality.
This is your live, right? So the people watching you on video as we're recording this podcast and the people listening in their earbuds, they're hearing our voice. which is so personal. They're getting to know us on that level because we're just normal people. We're just talking about the things we talk about.
And that's how you're building your audience and you're serving your audience.
Matt: true. And actually, 75 percent of people that listen to podcasts are either in the car or they're walking the dog. You're in very personal space when they're engaging with what you're saying. Which makes it quite an extraordinary medium, but anyway, Sarah, listen, I'm very aware of the time and you've been super generous so far.
If people want to reach out to you, if they want to connect with you, find out more about your book, [00:46:00] your course, your coaching, where do we go? Fantastic.
Sarah: Just come over to launchyourbox. com. Super easy to remember as you're walking the dog, launchyourbox. com. You will find everything that I do over there. You can follow me on the socials. I go live every Monday for a good little business pep talk if you need that in your ear on Monday morning. And I have a wonderful podcast as well.
I show up every week and deliver great content, strategies, tactics, and some great interviews with my students. And that's the Launch Your Box podcast as well.
Matt: podcast. I'm a subscriber. I do listen to it. Fascinating some of the stuff that comes out. I'm like, Ooh, I take some notes which is great. So do check it out. LaunchYourBox. com is the website to go to. We will of course link to all of that in the show notes which you can get along for free with transcripts on the website, or it's come into your email.
If you've already signed up, listen, Sarah, I thank you so much for coming on the show. Super grateful. Love the conversation. Do you know what I loved? Your passion, and I love the [00:47:00] simplicity of the message. It's not complex what you're talking about. You've just gotta graft a little bit. I dunno if that translate actually that translate across.
It's gotta work a little bit, hustle a little bit. Be passionate, show up, be consistent. But I love the simplicity of your message and love what you're doing. Thank you for just being so awesome today and bringing all that to our audience.
Sarah: Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. I could, we could talk about this all day long,
couldn't we?
Matt: I feel like we're just getting warmed up, if I'm honest with you. So many more questions, but no, it's fantastic. Also a big shout out to today's show sponsor, the eCommerce Cohort. Remember to check out that membership group, ecommercecohort. com, you're going to want to be in it. Because I'm in it. So why would you not be in it?
It's just, it's the way it is. Also, be sure to follow the eCommerce Podcast wherever you get your podcasts from, because we've got some more great conversations lined up. I don't want you to miss any of them. And in case no one has told you yet today, let me be the first. You are awesome.
Yes, you are. Created awesome. It's [00:48:00] just a burden you have to bear. Sarah has to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it as well. Now, the eCommerce Podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes this show possible is the beautiful, amazing, talented Sadaf Beynon and equally beautiful, talented Tanya Hutsuliak.
Theme song was written by Josh Edmundson. And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website. You know it by now, eCommercePodcast. com. That's it from me, that's it from Sarah, thank you so much for joining us, have a fantastic week, wherever you are in the world, I'll see you next time, bye for [00:49:00] now.