Tired of Starting from Zero Every Month? This Free Training Will Change That.

I want you to think about something for a minute.

What if 75% of your monthly revenue hit your bank account on the first of every month…before a single bill came due? Before you had to worry about rent, payroll, inventory, any of it?

That's not a fantasy. That's what's possible when you build a strong subscription model. And on the podcast this week, my friend Sarah Williams was here to tell you exactly how she did it, and how you can too.

From a Little Gift Shop to Thousands of Subscribers

Sarah Williams is the founder of Launch Your Box, and if you ever want to start a subscription box, she is genuinely the person to learn from. She is really good at this.

Her story starts in 2013, when she opened a bricks-and-mortar gift shop in her hometown, selling personalized items (think monograms, engravings, etc). By 2017, she'd been watching another brand in her niche run a subscription box. She could see from the outside that they were putting filler products in to make the box look full, and their customer service on social media was rough. Sarah thought: I can do this better.

So she launched — to her local audience, her retail customers, her Facebook followers. Nothing fancy, just a plain white box with her logo on it. Just: here it is, who wants one?

Forty-four people handed her their credit card that first month.

Within three months, she had 100 subscribers, which was enough to cover her rent at her retail building and pay her one employee. If you've ever run a brick-and-mortar, you know exactly what that means. Every single day you have to show up and figure out how to get people through the door. Every day you're wondering where the rent is coming from, let alone a paycheck for yourself. The subscription stabilized all of it. The bills were covered. Everything else that came through the door was actual profit.

“The subscription stabilized everything. I thought: Okay, the bills are paid. Now everything that comes through the front door is where I can actually make money."

She had no idea the thing was about to 10X itself. By the end of that first year, she had gone from 44 subscribers to almost 700. By year three: 3,200 monthly subscribers. She also launched two spinoff subscriptions from the first one. And here, almost a decade later, she's still running a thriving subscription business with thousands of members.

In 2019, she turned that expertise into a coaching program called Launch Your Box after people blew up her DMs asking how she was doing it. She launched with 19 members. Within the first year she had 1,600 students. Since then, over 8,000 students have learned to start, launch, and grow subscriptions, many of them into six and seven-figure revenue streams.

"Get Over Yourself If You Think It Won't Work for You"

I want to pause here for anyone thinking: that sounds great for her, but my business is different.

Open your mind. The kinds of products we see people building subscriptions around would genuinely surprise you. Sarah has a member in her community running a guinea pig subscription box. It got so successful she launched a bunny box, which has now outgrown the guinea pig box.

There is a lane for you. You just have to find it and lean all the way in.

And here's the thing I keep coming back to. I was a brick-and-mortar retailer for 20 years before WeSqueak and The Social Sales Girls. If I had been able to wake up on the first of every month knowing my fixed expenses were already covered? I think I would have enjoyed my businesses a whole lot more.

Financial stress is the biggest stress of running a business. It will keep you up at night. But imagine buying inventory and knowing it's already sold. That changes everything about how you show up and the decisions you're able to make.

In 2020, the pandemic forced Sarah to take her business fully online. Best thing that ever happened to her. Now she's an online retailer with a subscription box, and here's the number she shared that I want you to really sit with: she has seven-figure revenue in a year, and 75% of it comes from one product that she rinses and repeats every single month. And that money hits her bank account on the first of every month, before any bills come due.

The Subscription Box Summit: June 16–18 | Free to Attend

Sarah has been working on something for six months, and when she told me what it was, I was immediately in. She is putting together the biggest subscription box virtual summit you have ever seen. It's called the Subscription Box Summit, it runs June 16th through 18th, and it is free to attend.

She pulled together 20 experts from the product-based business and subscription box world to walk you through three days of building a subscription from the ground up. And the way she's structured it is smart — because after years of teaching this, she knows exactly what people need and exactly where they get stuck.

It comes down to three things. You need an audience. You need a box. You need a launch plan. One day for each.

Day One: Build Your Audience

This is the step that makes or breaks everything.

We want to do the fun stuff. We want to source products, design packaging, curate themes. Building an audience feels hard and unsexy and not particularly exciting. So we skip it and go straight to the box. And then we launch to crickets and wonder what went wrong.

If you do not have an audience, a subscription box will not work. Day one is entirely focused on fixing that, whether you're starting from scratch, you're in a rut, or you're transitioning to a new ideal customer and need to rebuild.

Speakers on day one include Stu McLaren, Ashley Alderson, Christi Bottel, Dylan Jaris, and me.

I'm teaching a session on how to double the number of email addresses you collect. Here's what that training covers: a gated page. It sounds more complicated than it is. A gated page is simply a page on your website where, when someone clicks it from your navigation menu, a full-page popup takes over the screen. It says something like: This page is only for our insiders. They drop in their email address, submit it, and the page opens up behind it.

The reason it works so well is that it creates real FOMO. People want to know what's behind door number one. What we see is that about 70% of people who hit that page will sign up, because they have real intent. They came to that page on purpose. And once they sign up and they're right there with what they were looking for, they often buy on that same visit. It is the best and most profitable lead generation we have found.

Our expert Claudia Howard walks you through step by step how to build it for your store. If you watch that training, you can have it set up that same day.

The last session of day one is called Build Your Audience Plan. Sarah brings everything from the day together and helps you build a concrete action plan on a worksheet so you leave knowing exactly what to do. She is not letting you walk away with a head full of ideas and no next steps.

Day Two: Build Your Box

Once you know your audience and you know who you're building for, it's time to build the box.

Day two covers product sourcing and curation, packaging, and — critically — profitability. Because a beautiful subscription box that doesn't make money is not a business. Sarah also spends time on the question of whether there's something you love, something that genuinely lights you up, that you could turn into a real business. Entrepreneurship changes, and you have to be able to get yourself up and do the work every day. If your business has stopped sparking joy, day two will have something for you.

There's also a session specifically on layering a subscription onto a retail business, whether that's e-commerce or brick and mortar. You can absolutely have both (Sarah does).

Box Genie joins on day two to walk through all different types of packaging — for your existing products and for your subscription box — so you can actually make informed decisions.

And Sarah is teaching the Six and Sixty Workshop, where you will curate six subscription boxes together in one session. If you're sitting there thinking I don't even know what I'd put in a box, that session will get your wheels turning fast. You will leave knowing exactly what you could do.

Speakers on day two include Heidi Easley, Candice, Amy, Sierra, and Marissa. And members from Sarah's community will be on every single day, showing how they actually built their audiences, curated their boxes, and launched their subscriptions.

Day Three: Build Your Launch Plan

This is Sarah's favorite day. After you've built your audience and your box, you need a launch…and this day covers all of it. Different launch approaches from successful subscription box owners. Using paid ads to support your launch. A repeatable launch strategy you can use over and over again. The systems and software you actually need.

Sarah has a Shopify expert, Lincoln, walking through how to build a website from scratch in 30 minutes, step by step on screen; connecting all the pieces, explaining anchor dates, setting up the subscription app. If you've ever wondered exactly what tools you need to get a subscription running on Shopify, this session answers it.

She also has real member stories: Courtney, who launched over and over to crickets before joining Launch Your Box and finally had a successful launch when she was nearly at the point of giving up. And Lexi, who went from one subscriber to 1,500 using her launch method (after COVID shut down the entire bridal industry and she had to rebuild from scratch). And Cotton KS, who rinse and repeats the launch strategy consistently and has built their subscription to over 1,000 subscribers.

You get Sarah three times on day three. She walks you through your launch plan, your emails, your social media. You leave day three with everything mapped out on your calendar, ready to execute.

How It Works

The summit is all virtual. Each morning, all the sessions for that day drop at once and you have 24 hours to watch. You can pick and choose what to watch if you can't get through everything. Sarah goes live in the Launch Your Box Summit Facebook group every afternoon to answer questions, talk through the sessions, and help you figure out how to apply what you've learned to your specific business.

The last session of each day — Build Your Audience Plan, Build Your Box Plan, Build Your Launch Plan — is Sarah bringing everything together and walking you through the action steps, so you leave each day with a real plan, not just notes.

The All-Access Pass

The summit is free. But you're probably going to want the All-Access Pass.

Here's why: when the summit ends, it's gone. If you don't have the All-Access Pass, the recordings disappear. No coming back to rewatch. No referring back to the launch strategy when you're three weeks out from your own launch. It's just gone.

The All-Access Pass gives you lifetime access to all the recordings, a full workbook — Sarahh and her team went through every single presentation and built a guide you can follow along with and make notes in — and over $2,000 in speaker bonuses. These aren't free giveaways. Every speaker was asked to contribute something they actually sell. There are full courses, memberships, a Profit Genius book, 25% off your first Box Genie order. It's a lot of real value.

I'm also contributing a bonus: a mini course called Design Packaging the Easy Way. Three videos that show you how to design your entire subscription box using digital papers — without being a graphic designer. It includes mockups you can use right away to start building a wait list and selling.

The All-Access Pass is $67 if you purchase before the summit starts. It goes up to $97 once the summit is underway. When it's over, it's over.

One More Thing

Sarah said something to her members recently that I want to share here, because I think it matters.

The summit is in the summer. And sometimes we hit a lull this time of year. Especially if you have kids home, your routine is off, you want to get outside and actually enjoy the season. But if you've felt a little burnt out lately, if you've lost your mojo, if you feel like your business needs a reset — this is it. Come to the summit. Just come and listen.

If you walk away with one idea on how to build your audience differently, it's worth it. One idea on product sourcing that makes your box more profitable, worth it. One idea on how to market your business better during launch, worth it. Sometimes we just need something to spark that energy again.

Go to https://www.launchyourboxwithSarah.com/launch-your-box-summit-register.com to register for free. And I'll encourage you to grab the All-Access Pass while you're there — not because of the bonuses, although they're great, but because you'll want to be able to go back to this. This is the kind of training you'll come back to over and over as your business grows.

I'll see you there.

RELATED LINKS:

The Secret to growing a business you love with Sarah Williams https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/the-secret-to-growing-a-business-you-love-with-Sarah-williams-episode-96

What happens in a Coaching Week with Sub Box Queen, Sarah Williams? https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/what-happens-in-a-coaching-week-with-sub-box-queen-Sarah-williams-episode-25

The email strategy behind Sarahh's 7 figure business https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/the-email-strategy-behind-Sarahhs-7-figure-business-episode-14