Your Subscription Box Journey

#037 - In this episode, Julie talks about the different stages of your subscription box journey and what's new in Subscription Box Bootcamp.

Subscription Box Bootcamp gives you the tools, tech and templates that you need to start your own subscription box business.

Subscription Box Bootcamp 2.0 is coming out September 17th. Make sure to sign up for our list and you will get a special opportunity to save $500 on enrollment.

Links:

Sparkle Hustle Grow
Subscription Box Bootcamp

Transcript

Julie (00:01):

So you want to launch a subscription box and don't know where to start? Girl, you are in the right place. I'm Julie Ball, a subscription box coach and your host here at Subscription Box Basics, a podcast for new and aspiring subscription box entrepreneurs that want to avoid overwhelm. So grab a coffee, some pen and paper and let's have some fun!

Speaker 2 (00:23):

Hey, you guys, I'm back. Did you miss me? Julie Ball here I am your host of Subscription Box Basics, and I am your new subscription box coach. You may have noticed that I took a couple of weeks off, actually, it wasn't planned, but I'll tell you why I did it. It is the summertime. We are starting homeschool and I was in the middle of rerecording the entire Subscription Box Bootcamp, which is my online group coaching program. I am so, so excited at the way it's turning out and I'm going to do this quick episode to tell you a little bit about it. And then I will be back on a regular basis, giving you some coaching and giving you some tips and all kinds of great ideas for your own subscription box business. But I wanted to tell you a little bit about what's new in Subscription Box Bootcamp. First, save the date.

Julie (01:18):

September 17th is when Subscription Box Bootcamp 2.0 comes out and I am so, so excited. Make sure that you are on our list. If you go to SubscriptionBoxBootcamp.com, you can sign up for the list and you will get a special opportunity to save $500 on enrollment. Yes. So get on that list so you can save your $500. Um, Subscription Box Bootcamp gives you the tools, tech and templates that you need to start your own subscription box business. And so in the past, we've had hundreds of people go through it with tons of success. We have so many success stories that we can't wait to share with you over the next few weeks, but essentially the goal of it is to take you from point a to point B as quickly and as easily as possible. And so first before I tell you more about what we've added and what we've changed to the course, I want to tell you a little bit about your subscription box journey.

Julie (02:13):

Um, this might help you self-identify where you're at and whether or not this course would be a good fit for you and keep in mind that you can join at any of these stages that I'm about to talk about. But I think it's important for you to see and visualize the journey that you'll take throughout this course. And it's so super exciting. So the first stage is the idea stage, of course, this is where a lot of you are at. You've had this brilliant business idea. You just don't know where to start. So in the idea stage, you will solidify your idea and build a foundation by learning the business model. And by carving out your concept, it's super important that you stay in this stage in the idea stage until you understand how the subscription box model works. You've identified your ideal customer, your ideal target audience and your pain point and how you'll solve it.

Julie (03:06):

So again, that's the first stage, the idea stage, which many of you are probably at right now, and it's so exciting. You probably have a notebook full of ideas. Um, and that's, that's a good thing. So, uh, the first stage will help you solidify that idea. And then the next stage you move into is the prelaunch stage. This is where you'll establish your business operations while building the excitement around your upcoming launch of your subscription box. You're probably gonna want to stay in this prelaunch phase for about two, maybe three months so that you have ample time to build your audience on the front end. While at the same time you're building out your business on the backend. Now, if you already have an existing business or an existing audience, your prelaunch stage will be much shorter. If you have people to launch to obviously you can ramp up faster, but a lot of you are going to be starting from scratch, building that audience from scratch.

Julie (04:02):

And that's okay too. We have some great tips and techniques that you can use to grow and nurture that audience. But that is the second stage. You'll go through the prelaunch stage. Then they the most exciting stage, the launch stage. This is the stage where you've actually launched your subscription box business and you're taking orders. This stage is super exciting, but also super scary because you're sending your first boxes into the world. It's that same? Um, well, not quite, but so similar feeling is still like dropping your baby off at daycare. Like you're so nervous, but you're so excited and you just don't, you know, I know what to do with all the emotions. So that's the launch stage. It's a time of celebration. It's a time of reflection, feeling all those emotions, but also for planning for the future that moves you into the system stage.

Julie (04:59):

This is super important and it lets you evaluate what's working in your business and it helps you decide on your ongoing systems kind of helping you to lay the groundwork for a smooth monthly rhythm. Because as you know about subscription boxes, it's like a 30 day cycle or whatever, however long your cycle is it's maybe you send quarterly or by monthly. Um, it is the same set of tasks over and over and over again. So you want to really get into a monthly rhythm and you can do that by carving out your systems and you just need to also work on your mindset. That helps you plan those weekly tasks that are going to happen over and over and over again. Then you get to move into the scale stage, and that is the time in your business when you're ready to take it to the next level, by scaling your operations, reaching more people and honestly getting out of your own way.

Julie (05:54):

And so maybe that means outsourcing. Maybe that means creating ad budget, or maybe that means hiring a warehouse. In any case, this isn't a race. You just got to get clear on your goals and put your plan in place to reach them and allow you to scale. And so that's your subscription box journey. You go from idea stage to prelaunch stage to launch, to system stage and to scale stage. And so that's what we walk you through in subscription box bootcamp, no, no matter where you're at, you can start on the lessons and the modules or that particular stage. So I want to tell you a few things that are new in subscription box bootcamp. We have new trainings based off of feedback. I asked our existing bootcampers what do you wish you would have known? What do you feel that was missing? And we've added lends of new trainings.

Julie (06:43):

We've rerecorded every single video, not only to make it more professional, but also to make it more concise and to the point, and to give you the information you need to take action, we know we're all busy. So we keep these videos as short as possible. We've added new templates and we've added new swipe files. If you haven't heard of swipe files, think about, um, you know, laying out some of your email or your social media posts, where you can just copy and paste and tweak them to reflect your box and your audience. The idea behind swipe files is to get out of your own way and to help you move forward, to have progress and stop thinking about what am I going to email? What am I going to post? We are giving you a lot of that information right in the bootcamp. And then there's a few resources that we've added.

Julie (07:36):

And I'm so excited about these one, um, the dream team, which is something we've had in the past, but we're adding to it. So the dream team is a list of vendors that we love. We use ourselves and we trust and recommend to you basically. So for example, we have our go to graphic designers that are familiar with creating websites for the subscription box industry that are familiar with how to create box design. We are going to share with you our preferred box vendors and Facebook ads gurus, that type of thing, because one of the things that takes a long time is Google searching for all this information. And we want to, again, help you get from point a to point B faster. And one of those things is making big decisions easy. So we have a group of trusted vendors that you can tap into.

Julie (08:31):

Another thing that we're adding is an actual product vendor list. So we're creating a peer sourced list of product vendors for different categories, all over the place of not only product vendors that we've used, but your fellow bootcampers have used. We will be providing contact information. We'll be providing category information. So if you need bath and body, you know where to go to, if you need stationary, you know where to go to it takes a long time to product source and to find some of those trusted vendors. And again, this is just one of those resources that's going to make it so much easier and so much faster for you. And then another resource that we're adding to subscription box boot camp, which has been super successful is inventory sales. So it's inevitable. When you have a subscription box business, you may sell out some months or you may have excess inventory so months, and very often we feel stuck when we have that excess inventory.

Julie (09:32):

Well, guess what? You will be in a community of other subscription box, business owners, other subscription box bootcampers that may be interested in buying your exit, this inventory, or you may be interested in buying it from them. It's a way to get product quickly. It's a way to get product at a less expensive price. And quite honestly, it's super easy and fun. And so we will do regular inventory sales as needed, honestly. So if we have excess inventory at sparkle hustle grow, guess who gets first dibs audit bootcampers same thing with our other students, they will get to list their own excess inventory in our boot camp group. Some of these things guys are complete game changers. We've built these resources in response to our students' needs, and we are so, so excited to get them in your hands. We hope that you enroll and I'll be doing a future episode on the actual content, but if you've been listening for a long time, you probably know a lot of what already is going to be covered in subscription box boot camp.

Julie (10:36):

We take you from wanting to scale and everywhere in between, but I was just so super excited about the new things that we're adding that I had to do. I quick episode about it. So if you want to get the information about subscription box boot camp, head over to subscription box bootcamp.com, get on our list. So you can save $500. When we relaunch on September 17th, you can also find us on Facebook and Instagram now would love to hear from you. And we cannot wait to get this in your hands, and we hope that you enroll guys, thank you for listening to this quick episode. If you've been finding value in my episodes, please subscribe and leave a review. I look forward to hearing from you and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye guys.

Speaker 3 (11:29):

[inaudible].