Subscription Box Answers

Get Clear on Your 2025 Subscription Box Goals—and Go After Them!

• Liam Brennan

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No matter where you are in your subscription box journey, now is the time to get crystal clear on your goals for 2025 and put a plan into action. 

Whether you're preparing to launch, scale, or sell, having a clear strategy with actionable steps is essential.

Commit to pursuing your goals aggressively, so by the end of 2025, you can look back with pride at everything you've accomplished


If you have a question you want answered on the show make sure you head over to www.SubscriptionBoxResources.com and join the FREE Facebook group and post your question there.



Speaker 1:

Welcome to Subscription Box Answers with your host, liam Brennan. You're no rubbish, no crap. Straight to the point podcast with real, actionable tips, real strategies and insights from the industry which will help you start and grow your own successful subscription box business. You ask the questions, you ask the questions, you ask the questions. Liam gives the answers. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 2:

Welcome back to a brand new episode of Subscription Box Answers and happy 2025. I can't believe I'm saying that 2024 went by so quickly. On today's episode, we're talking about preparation for this year. Preparation is key If you want to push on and have a really successful 2025 when it comes to your subscription box business. It's so important. We need to get very clear on our goals.

Speaker 2:

So we're obviously in January now, right, and January can be a weird time for any kind of subscription business, mainly because people overextend themselves during Christmas. They spend a lot of money. They come into January they're like new year, new me, I want to sort out my finances. I'm going to cancel my subscription. So that isn't great. Now, depending on your niche like if you're in the health niche or the finance niche, or obviously if you have a gym and you're selling subscriptions January can be very good, but for other companies, myself included, it can be a bit more challenging churn wise. But that doesn't need to hold you back because the upside is CPM prices usually drop in January and you can acquire customers for a cheap enough price. The purchase intent obviously isn't as high as over the Christmas period, but the CPM price is cheaper, so it kind of balances itself out. I remember last January we got a lot of people signed up, but anyway, preparation is the key for 2025. I really mean this.

Speaker 2:

You need a very clear goal of where your subscription box is going. Are you scaling it up? Are you selling it? Are you launching one? Are you quitting your job and going full-time in your business? Everybody listening will have different goals, so you need to get really clear on what your goal is and reverse engineer it backwards. Look, if you're looking to launch a box, that's great, but what steps do you need to follow to have a successful launch? Where can you get that information? We obviously have a lot of information about that on this podcast and I obviously have my Subscription Box Founders membership for new people looking to launch a box. But anyway, if you're not getting it from me, that's fine, but get it from somewhere. If you're quitting your job, what kind of revenue does your business need to be producing to make that happen? How much money do you need to save up as a lifeboat to make that happen? Now is the time to get moving on this stuff and start planning and start taking action.

Speaker 2:

If you've been building your business for a few years, and 2025 is the year you're going to sell it. What does that look like? How do your books need to look? What kind of price are you looking for it? How will you justify your valuation? When are you going to start working with a broker? All of these things need to be considered early in 2025.

Speaker 2:

Now, if you're looking to scale your business up, what is the goal? I know the majority of people listening to this will be looking to scale up, and that's exactly what we're doing in BusterBox. We want to surpass 30,000 subscribers and continue growing our at the box revenue, our extra subscription revenue and revenue in our new ongoing store, which has done very well over Christmas, and some other revenue streams we have as well. Now, if you're looking to scale it, what is the goal? I really recommend getting very clear on the goal, because only when you're clear on the goal can you put a plan together and the resources needed to make that goal happen. It won't just happen magically. You won't just wake up one day and have 10,000 new subscribers. It doesn't work like that. Now let's say you have a fashion subscription box and this has been running for a number of years. You have, say, a thousand subscribers and your goal is 5,000 by the end of 2025.

Speaker 2:

What do you need in place to make that happen? Here are some things to consider. Do you need capital or are you able to scale up with what you have? Will your business support it? Pretty much as the business in a place to support the growth you're looking to go after? If it is great. If it's not, you need capital.

Speaker 2:

If you need capital, where are you getting it from? Are you going to try and raise some money through investors? Will you do a crowdfunding campaign? Will you take some debt from the bank or will you use one of those debt platforms that give you some cash up front for a percentage of your revenue till it's paid back? What's the plan here? What's the plan forward? Get very clear with it and start taking steps. If you're looking to do a crowdfunding campaign, okay. What crowdfunding platform are you going with? How many investors do you need to start reaching out to? Do you have any of these relationships in place? If you don't, it's time to get moving, because raising capital takes time. Whatever your situation is, I would advise getting very clear on it early in 2025. Time goes by quickly and if you want to get anywhere. It's time to take action very, very early. If you need capital to achieve your goal, how much? I would look at your average churn so you can work out how much subscribers cancel on a monthly basis and then map out how many subscribers you will need over the next 12 months to hit your goal. Then work out your average customer acquisition cost and multiply it by the number of subscribers you need. This will give you a very good idea on what the capital requirement is to reach your goal.

Speaker 2:

Next point what else do you need to make your plan a reality? Are you lacking skills or knowledge in your team? If somebody gave you all the money you needed, tomorrow do you have the skills and knowledge to grow the business or are you missing that? If you're missing that, what is the solution? It's time to look closely at this and identify gaps in your knowledge and skills. Do you need to hire somebody? Do you need to work with a consultant to learn quickly? Do you need to join a program to get all the support you need? Subscription box experts will be opening again soon. That's for people who are looking to scale up. If you don't want to join, that that's fine, but where are you getting the knowledge from? You need to get very, very clear on this. Whatever gaps you have, it's time to close them up early this year so your plan pays off. You can have the best plan in the world, but if you lack the skills or knowledge, you will most likely spend another year going round and round and round in circles. Now is the year to break out of this cycle and get very honest with yourself and address what you need. There's no shame in this. We all have to learn from somewhere.

Speaker 2:

Next point Is there any big problems in your business that have been holding you back? Maybe you have been burying your head in the sand and not addressing them. Example Maybe your churn is out of control. Maybe your supply chain is all messed up. Maybe you were banned from an ad platform due to something completely outside your control. Whatever the problem is, let's address it nice and early. We need to get past this problem. It's time to address it head on, early this year so your plan comes together. Most things can be solved, but if you bury your head in the sand, nothing will happen and nothing moves forward.

Speaker 2:

Is your aim this year to get a pay rise from your business? Okay, that sounds great. There's so many people I've been speaking to and they're like I'm going to get a big pay rise from my business this year. Okay, what are the steps you're going to take to make this pay rise happen? That's great. I hope you get the pay rise, but what you're saying isn't really making sense, because you've no plan on how you're actually going to earn more money from your business. How many new subscribers do you need to get the pay rise? Do you need to sell more add-ons to existing subscribers? Do you need to sell more one-time products? Whatever you need, it's time to get very clear and then start taking action. What are the action steps that you need to take to make your goal happen?

Speaker 2:

First, identify the goal and then map out what resources you need, what action you need, what gaps are missing from your team. Identify it all and put a plan in place to do it all. It's the only way you're going to move forward. Especially if you've hit a wall in your business and you feel like you've just been going around and around in circles for a long time. It's time to push forward. And when it comes to business, okay, this is so common. It happens so often to people. They hit a wall and they do end up going around and around in circles for a long time, but not this year. It's time to break out of that nice and early. Do not say this is my year and then by the third week of january you're back, going round and round in circles with no plan and no direction. It can easily happen it's happened to me in the past but this year it's time to avoid that and actually make a clear plan and reach a goal that will make you really, really happy this time next year.

Speaker 2:

Now, if you want more of a tactical podcast on what to do to have a good January, I highly recommend going back and listening to the one I recorded last year, as all the same stuff applies this year. It's all about getting clear on what the goal is and going after it very aggressively. I hope this helps. We'll be back next week at the exact same time as always. If you have a question you want answered on the show, head over to subscriptionboxresourcescom, join the free Facebook group and post your question there. And can I ask a big favor, if you've been listening a while and you've enjoyed the episodes and you feel like you've got a lot of value from this podcast. Would you mind giving me a review, either on spotify, on apple podcasts, wherever you listen to the show on it doesn't matter, it just helps me get it out to more people. Thanks very much. We'll be back next week with more content. Chat to you then.