Skyrocket Your Online Business: Easy Steps to Massive Growth | Sarah Williams

Matt Edmundson

00:00:02.320 - 00:01:51.220

Well, hello and welcome to the E Commerce Podcast with me, your host, Matt Edmonds. Now, the E Commerce Podcast is a show all about helping you deliver E Commerce. 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 youh 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, ecommerce podcast.net and of course, this show is brought to you by the wonderful E Commerce Cohort. E Commerce Cohort is a monthly E Commerce 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 E Commerce experts.

Plus, if 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. Ecommerce cohort.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 sort of collided for want of a better expression. If you haven't checked it out Already, check out subsummit.com subsummit24. I will be there. So it's a great place. Are you gonna be there, Sarah?

Sarah Williams

00:01:51.690 - 00:01:53.050

I am going to be there. Yes.

Matt Edmundson

00:01:53.130 - 00:02:39.200

That was a yes. I should have put a sound up. Sorry. Yes. She said yes. 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 quickly pivoted to revolutionize the subscription box world in 2017 with launch youh 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 gonna 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 launch A Box podcast.

Sarah Williams

00:02:39.680 - 00:02:41.520

Yes. I love the podcast.

Matt Edmundson

00:02:42.000 - 00:02:45.360

Did you enjoy doing it? Do you enjoy getting the guests on and chatting away?

Sarah Williams

00:02:46.080 - 00:02:49.920

It's one of my favorite things that I get to do the podcast. I love it.

Matt Edmundson

00:02:50.380 - 00:02:56.940

Yeah, 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.

Sarah Williams

00:02:57.340 - 00:02:57.820

Yeah.

Matt Edmundson

00:02:58.060 - 00:03:05.740

And you don't necessarily have reasons for it. It's just I enjoy chatting to people and it's a wonderful thing to do. Well, thank you for joining us. Thank you for being here.

Sarah Williams

00:03:06.220 - 00:03:08.540

I'm really excited to be here today with you guys.

Matt Edmundson

00:03:08.620 - 00:03:15.260

Yeah. Yeah. In the midst of cause at the time of recording, let's just say it's a busy time of the year, isn't it?

Sarah Williams

00:03:16.150 - 00:03:29.190

It's slightly busy. 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 Edmundson

00:03:29.350 - 00:03:42.870

Yeah. Mayhem and chaos would be the order of the day now, which is fair enough. Is 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 framework.

Sarah Williams

00:03:43.560 - 00:04:10.360

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.

Matt Edmundson

00:04:10.760 - 00:04:11.050

So.

Sarah Williams

00:04:11.200 - 00:04:42.970

So we do the same thing in the subscription 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 in that. We love that and our subscribers really, 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 Edmundson

00:04:43.210 - 00:04:54.090

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 Williams

00:04:54.809 - 00:05:31.160

Absolutely. Like, if go back and tell myself, you know, tell 2017 Sarah what I know now, I would say, stop it right now. That is not scalable. What are you doing?

You're going to kill yourself through this process. But I just took it as a challenge because in my mind, I didn't think I was going to have this multi million dollar subscription box business in mind.

I really just would really love 100 subscribers, because at that time, 100 subscribers would have paid my monthly overhead for my brick and mortar.

Matt Edmundson

00:05:31.420 - 00:05:31.620

Right?

Sarah Williams

00:05:31.620 - 00:05:50.780

And so that was the goal. That was like my big goal. If I got 100 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 the subscription box was just to bring some stability into my overhead expenses.

Matt Edmundson

00:05:50.780 - 00:05:51.420

Okay.

Sarah Williams

00:05:51.660 - 00:05:56.540

And. And I never imagined that it was going to explode to what it is today.

Matt Edmundson

00:05:57.330 - 00:06:01.650

So is the brick and mortar business still running or is it purely online now?

Sarah Williams

00:06:02.050 - 00:08:38.340

It's kind of a hybrid right now. So in December of 2020, after Covid showed me that I didn't need the brick and mortar to be successful, I went online in 2020.

The only thing I really had online before was my 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, because it was huge, it was probably at that time, 70% of my business was my local customer base, and it was also about 70% 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 in that brick and mortar. Like, I needed bigger space. I needed more shipping capabilities, I needed 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 going to go all online.

I shut down the brick and mortar store, and we were just gonna focus online. But during that transition, something kept tugging at me.

This local customer base that I had and hundreds and 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 always thought from my brick and mortar.

So when we opened our warehouse and closed the brick and mortar, we took the front 12ft 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 are able to shop and pick up orders and pick up their subscription boxes and have interaction with us Now. Now we are only open during our warehouse hours, so we aren't keeping boutique hours anymore. But it was the hybrid. It was.

We still have a personal connection with our local subscribers.

They can still feel like they can come in and see us and talk to us, but yet we are in a warehouse environment so that we can continue to fulfill and ship in the capacity that we needed to.

Matt Edmundson

00:08:38.980 - 00:09:45.260

That's really interesting. I've seen this actually a lot more, certainly more recently where businesses went pure warehouse, you know, the dingy warehouse.

But actually some of the warehouse locations are quite, quite handy on there. They can be quite helpful. And so I've now seen a lot of warehouses put stores in shop fronts.

You know, there's actually a big chain in this in the UK called Screw Fix, which built 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 because you've got the warehouse space right. The staff are already there.

So the staff can be doing picking and packing and customer service inquiries. So there's, 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 Williams

00:09:45.740 - 00:11:01.370

It's working very well. And we can see like, 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, 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, you know, it's kind of like, it's not like, you know, 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 your items.

And that's really what we've, 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 Edmundson

00:11:01.980 - 00:11:28.700

Yeah, no, it's very clever. Very, very smart idea. But a thing that you mentioned there, Sarah, that I want to pick up on. Right.

Is you do the subscription box, the, you know, the, the personalized stuff in the script subscription box. But you, you just said like, oh, we, they may have seen me on a Facebook Live selling a cardigan which will go with the T shirt in.

So it's like there's more to this story than just putting stuff in a box and shipping out. It sounds like.

Sarah Williams

00:11:29.340 - 00:13:51.880

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% of our overall revenue.

Our subscriptions are. Which is amazing because we can count on that every single month. You know, it's not like we have to show up and sell to pay the bills.

We know 75% of our revenue is reoccurring. It's going to hit our bank account every single month. So the other 25% is our expansion revenue on our subscriber base, on our subscription base.

So when I curate a box for the month, 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. Well, 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, you know, earrings and hats and shorts and whatever else that, 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 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.

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. 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 it, it's sold.

So then I can, 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. So what can I I'm going to order a navy cardigan because I've got navy ink on this shirt. So they're, 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 complet 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 complement 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 easily cure curate the collections that I want to sell in addition to that box that month.

Matt Edmundson

00:13:52.680 - 00:14:52.850

That's really powerful and it's interesting. I mean the stat that you gave 75% of your income is from subscription.

25% 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 you see with companies that have sort of core hero products.

And you go right, well, you can boost 30% by just by adding some cleverly chosen add ons and upsells to this single product. And it seems that you're doing that. So another thing, I appreciate you're 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 with live shopping?

Sarah Williams

00:14:53.810 - 00:19:16.030

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, Right.

So when someone walks into my shop, and especially in the beginning, I mean, I was the person checking you out. I was the person packing your box like I was the person steaming the clothes to put on the racks like that. You saw me and I got to know you that way.

Right. 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 going to 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 live in my town, that didn't know me and that the realization for me was like, I need to go live. 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 like 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 Kind of a structured person.

If I can make a plan with some structure that all I have to do is just keep 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, like, ask me about the shirt I'm wearing. Ask me about the earrings. Ask me how you can be a subscriber so.

Cause 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 there was, like, people that I didn't know watching. And 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 live. I was like, there's a hundred people watching me right now. Like, 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.

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 in some way.

I would pick, like 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 spilled 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 you know, it really. You could see these pockets of subscribers. So I would have, like. 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 the same town. And then it just started to build and 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 Edmundson

00:19:16.670 - 00:19:23.550

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 Williams

00:19:24.270 - 00:19:58.120

Right now I just do that on Facebook because I get nervous when there's too many things going on and I have this ADHD and I'm 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% 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 working.

Matt Edmundson

00:20:00.030 - 00:20:03.070

So Facebook lives, are you still doing them every week?

Sarah Williams

00:20:03.070 - 00:20:58.400

And right now I've been doing them every day because 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 because 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 e commerce 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 your work 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 and to get them motivated for the week to work on their businesses.

Matt Edmundson

00:20:58.720 - 00:21:07.680

Wow. So what, you're getting right into it then. We're not just once, we're twice a week now. We're across multiple things.

We're doing Facebook all the time. I'm intrigued.

Sarah Williams

00:21:08.240 - 00:21:21.520

Coaching. I am streaming on YouTube as well, because I do an audience there, so I can stream in multiple places at once.

So I stream online, 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 Edmundson

00:21:22.050 - 00:21:45.570

Well, it sounds, Sarah, like you've got a lot going on. Right? So what was a simple subscription business? Well, I say simple because you made it complex. But you.

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, 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 Williams

00:21:46.770 - 00:23:58.060

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. Like that 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. You just said it. I'm busy. I 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 speak, we 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 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 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 all the things. It's a personal story wrapped into the business strategies and tactics along the way. So 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 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 unique and different. So if you don't see yourself in me, you can probably see yourself in one of my students.

Because 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 Edmundson

00:23:58.700 - 00:24:05.140

Fantastic. Well, I'm looking forward to reading it because it's fair to say it's fairly new publish.

Sarah Williams

00:24:05.140 - 00:24:24.680

Isn't it like less than a month it's been out and we've hit the top Amazon charts for women in business for I've hit the entre number five on the entrepreneur charts. So 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 Edmundson

00:24:25.160 - 00:25:12.660

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. You know Chris from subsummit, right?

What a legend that man is. He basically said if he was starting out any business in E commerce, he just wouldn't do e commerce. Almost said just do everything on subscription.

Just the way he just how his brain works. I'm just gonna do subscription on everything. 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, you know, 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 Williams

00:25:13.820 - 00:27:06.260

I think anyone, whether that's E commerce or subscription box model, they have to start building an audience. And I think that that is probably the most overlooked thing we have to start.

You gotta 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 an experience for that person. 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 because you can have a box and there's, you know, 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 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 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 Edmundson

00:27:07.210 - 00:27:16.330

Super, super powerful. It's interesting. In your own story, 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 Williams

00:27:17.050 - 00:30:59.160

Everyone starts from scratch. And I didn't have venture capital and I didn't 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. 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 could whip that out.

But little did I know that thousands and thousands of monograms later, that I would be doing this on a larger scale. And I went through a lot of ups. Downs and. 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, okay.

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 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. To run the embroidery machines.

Like, I had 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 gotta start again next week, because we got 800 more boxes to get out next week, you know? And so it was just like, all right, I gotta figure this out. Tried outsourcing it. That was a disaster.

And I said, okay, if we're gonna 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 going to continue to scale to pay for that investment, or I was going to need to pull back the options. And I made the. I made the decision to scale, and that's when we. We hit 1500, 3000. Like, 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 in more ways than embroidery. We. We do printing, we do engraving, we do embroidery. So any different month, there might be, you know, 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.

And, you know, and so it's different way 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.

Matt Edmundson

00:30:59.160 - 00:31:46.320

The control over it, 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 deeply care about this business. You're obviously, you know, very passionate about it. And I think that's probably the secret in a lot of ways to the success.

I mean, it's nice all the other trips and, you know, 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 think you give up quick. Right?

Sarah Williams

00:31:46.640 - 00:33:19.980

You do.

And that's what I tell a lot of my students, Matt, because when they're picking something, you know, 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 about it.

Because if not, like, you know, this E Commerce rat race that we're on is a roller coaster. And if we don't love what we do, we're going to burn out really fast. There are going to be hard, 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 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 3,000 boxes a day for fun.

I'm doing it because it's building my livelihood. But I also deeply care about my customers, and I deeply care about the outcome of this box that goes out every single month.

And if we don't have that passion behind what we're doing, our business won't be long term. Like, 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.

Being a small business owner is like, that's a big feat. That's, that's 27 dog years for me. And I, and I feel every one of those here.

Matt Edmundson

00:33:20.860 - 00:34:14.710

I feel them to my bones, man. No, well, I've been in business since 1998, so 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 that, I mean, you've talked about doing Facebook lives, but what are 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 100,000 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 and I'm starting with very relatively minor skills. What's your advice?

Sarah Williams

00:34:16.230 - 00:35:56.000

So we gotta build our following and we've gotta 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 an amazing box in our community. It's a guinea pig box and she has tons of subscribers. But it's for guinea pigs.

So how could you serve the guinea pig community before 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, you know, 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, you know, 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 it, it's just this cute little design that's on your phone screen.

Matt Edmundson

00:35:56.000 - 00:35:56.560

Okay.

Sarah Williams

00:35:57.270 - 00:38:34.250

And I make them. 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 going to 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, really well. And 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 have anybody to sell it to because we haven't built our list, we haven't built our following. But a page like ad could just 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 Loves 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 button from Facebook second instantly like her page. Now they're going to start to see my content now hopefully they're going to start to interact with me.

Now when I go live, I have someone new that can get to know like and trust me. And that's how I'm continuing to 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 guaranteed. It is a guaranteed.

If I don't go after a new audience every month, that number is going to dwindle and dwindle and dwindle and dwindle because I don't have anyone new to sell to. And so we have to do that every single month as e commerce businesses. I love that.

Matt Edmundson

00:38:34.410 - 00:40:14.220

You know what you remind me of, Sarah, as you were talking there is. Do you remember at sub summit 2023, I mean, 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 he was talking about, you know, 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, will you marry me? Just straight away. And of course, most of them are gonna say no. And he said, this is what the bar Persona marketer is like.

They just literally, they show up and they're like, buy my stuff straight away.

There's no courtship, there's no drawing you in And I thought it was a really, really good analogy of what we try and do sometimes with our marketing. It's just like, here, boom, buy it. Rather than, hey, let's get to know each other a little bit. Right. Which is what he talked about.

And so this is why your page, like strategy and just delivering value to people before serve them, before you sell them, I think is a. Is a really good thing. Are you all right there? You seem to be coughing.

Sarah Williams

00:40:16.460 - 00:40:18.380

I'm trying not to cough on the podcast.

Matt Edmundson

00:40:20.220 - 00:40:23.020

The trouble is, the more you hold it in, the worse it gets, Right?

Sarah Williams

00:40:23.100 - 00:40:24.270

Exactly, exactly.

Matt Edmundson

00:40:26.980 - 00:40:36.900

Been there, been there. So, yes. Sorry. All of that said, it just connects me back to what Neil Horn was talking about. And so you're still doing the same strategy?

Sarah Williams

00:40:37.700 - 00:41:03.920

Yes, still, even at 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 Edmundson

00:41:04.800 - 00:41:27.520

And 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 Facebook based.

Are you still doing the page like ads because of Facebook is so big that at least some part of your audience will be on Facebook, or are you doing something entirely different?

Sarah Williams

00:41:28.720 - 00:42:39.050

I 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 results 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 kind of 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 put any attention to it.

And when I challenge 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, like they're kind of shocked by it. So I would tell our Instagrammers not to count Facebook out, because it's still very, very viable for a lot of businesses.

Matt Edmundson

00:42:39.930 - 00:43:44.320

Yeah, I love that. I still see.

Whenever we do live streams with you, I mean, 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.

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 share a YouTube livestream, well, where am I sharing that to? I now have to open up 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 still outdoes everything else, you know, and we've tried them all. And it just fascinates me that it's sort of. It's just there. It's just not going anywhere, is it? It intrigues me.

Sarah Williams

00:43:45.110 - 00:44:22.210

Yeah. And people are like, well, Facebook is dead. Well, if Facebook's dead, it's because you're not using it.

And 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. Like, they're in that age range where they have expendable income.

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 Edmundson

00:44:22.530 - 00:44:52.860

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, 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, actually, I'm gonna ask you, sir, because I get this estimate asked a lot, but I've only got 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 products. You know, 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 Williams

00:44:53.500 - 00:47:00.630

I 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 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? Like, what are you. 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. And that's 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 you. If you feel like you've shown 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 crock pot meal for tonight because they got kids to feed and they've been working all day and they are tired. They're going to tune in and they're going to see what I'm cooking in the kitchen, and they're going to 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 in the crock pot on their Facebook feed, I'm sure other moms are gonna go look at that. And I might have a potential of having a new customer see my. 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 Edmundson

00:47:00.790 - 00:47:35.000

Yeah. Yeah. That's super powerful. That's why I love podcasting, you know, and I. Because it's easy content creation. I'M not going to lie.

If I think about the last, you know, 45 minutes to an hour we've been going, I've not had to think about anything. It's all. I'm just. I'm just asking 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.

It's a wonderful conversation. It's entertaining. People get drawn in. And so, you know, we constantly show up.

Now we have thousands of people listening to the podcast, which is just. It's brilliant. You know, I definitely don't take it for granted.

Sarah Williams

00:47:36.600 - 00:48:15.210

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, like, 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 life, right?

So the people watching you on video as we're recording this podcast, and the people listening in that earworld, 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 Edmundson

00:48:15.610 - 00:48:41.610

Yeah, so true. And actually, 75% 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, I don't. 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, your course, your coaching. I mean, where do we go?

Sarah Williams

00:48:42.330 - 00:49:09.750

Just come over to launchyourbox.com. super easy to remember as you're walking the dog. Launch your box dot com. You'll 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 Launcher Box podcast as well.

Matt Edmundson

00:49:10.150 - 00:50:05.140

Fantastic. Do check out the podcast. I'm a subscriber. I do listen to it. It's fascinating.

Some of the stuff that comes out I'm like, oh, 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 a transcript on the website or it's come into your email if you've already signed up. Listen, Sarah, thank you so much for coming on the show. Super, super grateful. Love the conversation. Do you know what?

I loved your passion and I love the simplicity of the message. It's not complex what you're talking about. You've just got to graft a little bit.

I don't know if that translates actually that translate across the Atlanta. You just got to work a little bit, hustle a little bit, be passionate, show it, 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 Williams

00:50:06.100 - 00:50:10.060

Thank you for having me. I enjoyed it. We could talk about this all day long, couldn't we?

Matt Edmundson

00:50:10.060 - 00:51:26.580

Yeah. 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, big shout out to to today's show sponsor, the Ecommerce Cohort. Remember to check out that membership group, ecommerce cohort.com youm're gonna want to be in it because I'm in it. So why would you not be in it?

I mean, that's just, you know, it's the way it is. Also, be sure to follow the E Commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast 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 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 E Commerce podcast is produced by Orion 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 Banon and equally beautiful, talented Tanya Hutzlek.

Theme song was written by Josh Edmondson.

And as I mentioned, if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the website you know by now e commercepodcast.net so 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 now.

Sarah Williams

00:51:36.670 - 00:52:00.910

Sam.