#108 - In this week's episode of Subscription Box Basics, Julie shares her typical week as a subscription box CEO.
Have you ever wondered on what is a typical day like for a Sub Box CEO? Overall, CEO’s are always known for never running out of things to do, always busy and on the go and spending most of the time thinking of new ideas and ways on how to run a business smoothly. But you have to establish a routine that works for you. Julie uses theme days to help her organize her work. Listen to today's podcast and think about how you might be able to use theme days to organize your own work as a subscription box entrepreneur.
LINKS AND RESOURCES
#108 - In this week's episode of Subscription Box Basics, Julie shares her typical week as a subscription box CEO.
Have you ever wondered on what is a typical day like for a Sub Box CEO? Overall, CEO’s are always known for never running out of things to do, always busy and on the go and spending most of the time thinking of new ideas and ways on how to run a business smoothly. But you have to establish a routine that works for you. Julie uses theme days to help her organize her work. Listen to today's podcast and think about how you might be able to use theme days to organize your own work as a subscription box entrepreneur.
LINKS AND RESOURCES
Julie (00:01):
So you wanna 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, grab a coffee, some pen and paper, and let's have some fun. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the subscription box basics podcast. I am your subscription box business coach. And today we are talking about my typical week as a subscription box business owner. So let me give you a little context about why I wanna talk about this because this isn't the typical like tactical stuff to teach you how to start a subscription box business. But I think it's really important. I've been an entrepreneur since 2011. I started my subscription box in 2016. So I've been through a lot of coaching.
Julie (00:57):
I've been through a lot of online courses and along I have established some really good systems and habits that just help me thrive as a business owner. Sometimes just like you, I fall out of those good habits. And when I do, I can see the difference in my work. So to be just brutally on with you guys, I had a rough December because I was very busy, but it was, I didn't feel organized. I felt a little bit scattered. Have you guys ever felt like that before? Where it's like, you know what you need to do? You have your to-do list, but you're just like multitasking, like bouncing from one place to another. Well, low and behold in the sparkle gross subscription box. We featured Holly Haynes, who is a business coach. We featured her in December and her training just hit me right where I needed it when I needed it.
Julie (01:56):
And she talked about habits for, you know, your daily CEO mindset. And one of the biggest things that I took from her training was to have theme days. And so I wanna talk to you today about this beautiful habit that I've created through that training, that the training that I took, that she delivered and how I improved my mindset, how I improved systems and how I improve my productivity by using theme days. So let me walk you through my typical week. I'm just gonna give you like these high level overviews of what I do. I'm not gonna get deep into the details, but I'll definitely, I'm gonna tell you about what theme I have for each day of the week and few of the sample projects that would fall under that theme. So I'm just gonna start out on Sunday because that's kind of the first day of the week for me.
Julie (02:52):
That's when I get my head straight about like what's to come for the week. And Sunday is a family day. Typically for me, I start the morning out, slow with some coffee. We do church, and then that afternoon I do a lot of family time. But in the evening before I go to bed, I make sure that I look at my week ahead. Right? So I look at what do I have specifically that is going to take up a lot of my am or that I need to make sure that I don't miss. What are my meetings for the next day, or even for the, the next week? Like, what does my week look like? And so I do that Sunday night planning so that I don't have to think about it when I wake up Monday morning and I get to the office, I already know what I need to do that day.
Julie (03:39):
So moving right into Monday, Monday is my CEO day. That is a day where I do things for myself and for my business. And when I say CEO day, I'm not talking about like, that's the day I get a massage or, or that's a day when I practice self care. No, that's not specifically what I mean that, what I mean is I do two things that the CEO would do. Those are things like planning. Those are things like getting, even if it's just like getting my desk organized so I can have a productive day. I consider that as part of my CEO day, I do weekly huddle with some of my team members that day. I check on projects, projects that I am running or that I'm responsible for. I will check on those updates. I will work on my dashboards and my spreadsheets. So I have a master spreadsheet that if you're in subscription box bootcamp, you know which one I'm talking about, my master planning spreadsheet, I check that on Monday.
Julie (04:40):
I check it other days of the week too, but it is a non-negotiable like Monday I'm in that spreadsheet. I also have a specific business finance tracking spreadsheet that I'm in that day. Maybe I'm looking in QuickBooks online that day. I'm also checking on other projects that I run specifically for sparkle hustle will grow. Like I look for ways to pitch myself and that's checking hero, help a reporter out. I check pod match, which is a software platform that can match you up with podcast hosts that need guests. So those are all things that I do on my C day. Think about what you might need to do on your CEO day, maybe where you need a lot of focus. Maybe you need to carve out time to work on very specific projects, whether you're a solopreneur or if you have a team CEO day on a Monday works really, really well for me, moving on to Tuesday, Tuesday, my theme is meetings and product.
Julie (05:46):
So Tuesday is typically the day where I do bigger team meetings. Um, maybe those will be like a monthly team call where we have our leadership team on. Maybe those are zoom calls with vendors. Maybe that is a podcast interview. I also consider podcast interviews for this podcast, uh, as a meeting. So I do those typically on Tuesdays and Thursdays, if I can. So then the other part of my Tuesday theme is product. So I need to carve out specific time to work on product. And I find that if I just work on product here and there, it's just all over the place and I don't feel organized. So I carve out specifically Tuesday afternoon, if possible, to work on placing orders, paying invoices, do a product research. So Tuesday again is my meetings and product day on Wednesday, I try to work mostly on content marketing.
Julie (06:48):
I need to carve out specific time to do content marketing because it is something that takes a lot of energy out of me. So that's videos a maybe I'm doing some podcasting. You can see, I do a lot of podcasting throughout the week, but if I need to batch my podcast, I will do that on a Wednesday. I also do editing for those videos or those podcasts and a lot of behind the scenes. So maybe I do some reels that day. Maybe I'm taking some behind the scenes photos. Wednesday for me is a good content marketing day. And while it takes a lot out of me physically and like emotionally and mentally, I do find that stuff a lot of fun. And so it's great to have something fun and creative right in the middle of my week. Now, I don't know if you're like me, but I find too that my best hours are between 10 and two.
Julie (07:43):
And so I try to keep that in mind as well as I plan out my day 10 and two are where I can be most creative, most focused. If I am doing a interview with someone else, I always try to do that on the front end of the day, because I start to like, my energy gets drained throughout the day. And I don't know if you guys are like that. You, um, definitely should play to your strengths and weaknesses. Some people are night owls and they have their best, most creative moments at at night. Some people are early morning risers and they get super focused, productive work done first thing morning. But for me, it's between 10 and two, at least in this season of my life. It it's been different in the past and it might be different in the future, but I try to keep all of that in mind too, as I'm scheduling these videos, these podcasts, um, making reels, things like that.
Julie (08:35):
So moving on to Thursday, another meeting day, so you can see kind of my meetings are mostly on Tuesdays and Thursdays. And a lot of that is going to be meetings with vendors or possible like collaborations or joint ventures, that type of thing. So the Thursday theme is meetings and growth. So I try to stay hyper focused on that day on how can I grow my business? Like I need to work on projects that help me grow sparkle, hustle grow. And so whatever that can be a lot of different things that might be working on a new ads campaign, or maybe that's doing some outreach, that type of thing. I, you can see here that like my themes have some flexibility in there. I don't like to be micromanaged. I don't like to micromanage other people. So we definitely have some flexibility in there. So speaking of flexibility, let's move on to Friday.
Julie (09:30):
Friday is my flexible day. So in the morning, typically I'm doing a homeschool group. My daughter is homeschooled. My husband is a former teacher. And so he manages and teaches her homeschool, but we also are involved in a local homeschool group that meets Friday mornings. So that's my that's on my calendar. I take her to that homeschool group and I hang out there, but I also have throughout time to do administrative work. It's a time for me to do like personal development. So if I'm taking courses or if I'm in any sort of program, I carve out time to watch videos, listen to podcasts, catch up on work, and also to have some fun. So I always like to, to practice and preach the work hard, play hard kind of mantra. And so Friday definitely I have some time carved out for fun. And then of course, you know, that bleeds right into the weekend.
Julie (10:27):
And Saturday we try to do family stuff. We try to do friends stuff and just take a break from work. Now, when it comes to running a subscription box business, there are some things that have to be flexible based off of the timing. So we ship around the 28th of each month. That way our boxes arrive in the first few days of each month. So that 28th might land on a Friday or that might land on a Sunday or a Tuesday. We don't know every single month that's different. And so there does need to be some flexibility within there. Um, I'm that kind of person that wants to ship orders out very quickly within like 24 to 48 hours. So I do check orders on the regular, but the warehouse is my happy plates. Like I love to pack up those orders and share gratitude and send them on their way.
Julie (11:19):
So I do that often, but with theme days, you could choose two or three days a week. If you have limited time, you could choose Tuesday and Thursday as your shipping days, or you could ship on Monday, Wednesday, Friday. And what I'm talking about here is shop orders. Primarily when it comes to our batch orders, sometimes we have to work on weekends. We try not to, but that's sometimes when it's the best time for our family to work on that. And as you guys, um, may or may not know my husband runs our warehouse. So he does all of the big bat shipping. He does all of the receiving and all that good stuff in the warehouse. So all that being said, yes, I check orders on the regular, but I love to be in the warehouse. So it is what it is. Okay. Let me recap what my theme days are.
Julie (12:10):
And then I want to encourage you. You look at your schedule and see if there's already themes. And if not, where can you implement those themes? So Monday is my CEO day. Tuesday is my meetings and product day. Wednesday is my content marketing day. Thursday is my meetings and growth day. So <affirmative> projects that are related to growing the business. And you can see that Tuesday, Thursday are my meetings days. And then Friday I have homeschool administrative work, personal development and fun. So that's kind of like my flex day. So what do you think about theme days? Does that sound like something that you might be able to implement to help you with productivity to help you with focus? I swear guys, once I outlined this, it gave me so much clarity into my day and helped me be way more productive throughout the week.
Julie (13:03):
It helps set the tone for when I'm going to take calls, setting boundaries. So think about that for yourself. Like where can you use theme day days a quick exercise that will help you figure out what your theme days might look like is just take a piece of pen and paper out, write down all of the things that you do for your business. And I'm not talking about like really, really granular. I'm talking about like big picture items, like making videos or going live, or, you know, working products, or maybe you have to do some graphic design work. What are those big picture kind of tasks that you do? And then see if you can group some of them together to create a theme day. Once you've figured out some of those groupings assign your theme and then look at your calendar, where does it best fit for your week for the hours that you have to work for your creativity for your energy level, you really need to look at that kind of stuff and start to map out your own theme days for an entire typical week.
Julie (14:11):
And remember you can be flexible, try it out for a week or two, see how it feels and then adjust it if necessary. But I'm telling you that once I implemented this, this really helped me so much with clarity, focus, productivity, all the things that you need to build the business of your dreams and, and to create this business by design this, this week, that feels good and helps you accomplish what you need to do every single week for successful business. I hope hearing the breakdown of my typical week in my business helps you kind of outline yours and helps you find more focus and productivity as well for your own business. I'd love to hear about your theme days. Follow us on Instagram at subscription box bootcamp and DME. Tell me what theme days you have, and if you're having any troubles coming up with those theme days or figuring this out DME, I'm happy to respond. I'm in those DMS almost every day. So I'd be happy to share more details or to just help walk you through yours. So go ahead, take some time to map out your new themed week and thanks for listening. And I'll see you in the next episode.