Julie: 0:01

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. Hey everybody and welcome back to Subscription Box Basics. Thank you so much for joining us today. I have a guest with me. She is one of my star students in Subscription Box Bootcamp, and I can't wait for you to meet her. So I'd like to introduce to you Becky Launder from the Modern Direct Seller box, which I have in my hands, dnd it's so amazing. Becky, welcome to the podcast!

Becky: 0:46

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here with you.

Julie: 0:50

Yeah. And you joined bootcamp not long ago. Like you are a fast mover. When did you join bootcamp?

Becky: 0:57

I think it was in September.

Julie: 0:59

Yeah. So we're only not even what, not even six months barely. So that's crazy. And you've had a lot of success. I cannot wait to unpack your story, but a lot of people will be meeting you for the first time. So why don't you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and we'll just start there.

Becky: 1:14

Yeah. Sounds good. So thank you for having me again, excited to be here Becky Launder my business is MyConsultantTraining.com and my box is the Modern Direct Seller box. So flashback to a few years back, I was working in the corporate world and marketing strategy for a leadership training company and kind of fell into the world of direct sales, which I accidentally did really well in and loved. It was never part of my career path to step away from my corporate job that I'd still be in some executive role right now. And my direct sales business really took off. So after working with several direct sales companies, I completely stepped away from the sales field and really just focus on training and strategy for direct sellers and direct sales companies. And most recently introduced to the Modern Direct Seller box to provide my audience with all kinds of fun goodies, to help them work their business, grow their business, spoiled themselves and their customers and their team. And also look good on social media. So we have some fun training on different ways to use the box when you're showing up online.

Julie: 2:30

Awesome! It's such a good idea. And I was looking at your website and this something that really stuck out to me. It was This Ain't Your Mama's Tupperware party.

Becky: 2:40

Yes. There's a new, modern better way to use some great online marketing skills to run your direct sales business. So, you know, direct sales kind of has a bad rep for being the spammy gross market. And so I'm on a mission to change that and teach people the right way to grow a really successful direct sales business.

Julie: 2:59

Awesome. So you had the consulting side of your business already set up. You have an Academy, right? And you have a podcast yourself, so you have a lot of moving parts already. And so you decided to add another stream of revenue, which I think is super smart. So let's, let's take a step back. Let's tell everyone a little bit more about your box. Like what's in your box, give us the details. Like what's the size of your box, everyone that's listening. There are new and aspiring subscription box business owners. So they want to know it all. So dish us on like how you came up with, like, why did you add the box? What do you put in it? All that good stuff.

Becky: 3:38

Okay, good. So yes, I have a membership academy. I'm about 550 members in my online membership academy. And that Academy is really geared towards direct sellers that are looking for training. They're looking for strategy, they're looking for community. So I already really had an established customer base on an email list and a website. I knew how to take payments on memberships. And I'm really familiar with that model of having that recurring monthly income, which is dreamy.

Julie: 4:08

Right?

Becky: 4:08

And so it wasn't that long ago that somebody had asked me,"Hey, like, why don't you put together a shop? Like, have you ever thought about adding to your website, a shop of supplies and products that direct sellers are constantly purchasing for their business.?" And I started asking my members and my communities. This is where my market research came in.

Julie: 4:29

Nice.

Becky: 4:29

Hey, what would you want in a shop? And what kinds of items are you buying for your team and what kind of goodies would you look for as you're trying to figure out this whole online marketing scene.? And it wasn't that long after that, actually someone on my team, Jenna, she said,"You know, Becky, I think you should just make it into a monthly box. How fun, how fun would it be?" So it honestly started as a little bit of a passion project, full disclosure, my husband and I work together and we have always done digital products. I have courses, I have an online membership. Like we don't do physical product. I used to, when I was in my direct sales businesses, I had all of my, all my product, all organized, but you know, we really stepped away from that. Our garage at one point was clean and we didn't have a whole bunch of product hanging out in our garage. And my husband was like,"No physical product. No, no, no, we're not, we're not doing this". So I convinced him like,"Let's just, let's just pilot it. Let's just see what happens. Let's just put a webpage up and let's just see who is interested". So I won that battle because a people subscribed on the first month. He said,"Okay, maybe you're onto something, let's give it three months. We'll let see how things go".

Julie: 5:50

Yeah. And you're thriving. Okay. So what do you put in the box?

Becky: 5:54

Yes. So every month is a little bit different, but there's always a couple different themes. So there's something to help you work or grow your business, which I'm a total office supply junkies. And there's some office supplies in there, some fun goodies. Back in December, we did these really cool scratchers that you could use to send to your customers with a prize. People loved those. Things that are going to really help you make more money in your business is the objective there. And then we have a whole category around things that you can treat yourself with. So we've done like a face mask or we've done a hot chocolate bomb. We've just done some fun, little goodies that you can enjoy. And then the other category is really how to show up on social media. So I've tried to put some things in there that people can use as they're running their business, like confetti to throw up in the air or some fun balloons that they can use for social media photo. We we've come up with some really cool stuff of different ways of different products that you can use as you're showing up to build your business online and a fun and unique way. And then they also have training, which I call Outside The Box. So they have their outside the box training where they can log into our courses and check out a monthly training and get a workbook where they can download it and fill out information as they're thinking about whatever that theme is for the month.

Julie: 7:15

I love it. And so was it, was it difficult to add this additional stream of revenue to your business? I mean, you said you already had a lot of the technology setup. You had to now learn though the product sourcing side and choosing a box. And for those listening, you, you should know that Becky sends a box like a Brown craft box and she has custom tape on there. And so it looks actually really beautiful because she, when she put it together and I'll have to share a picture of this in the blog and on social media, the, the tape itself has got her logo, like the step and repeat, you know, where you have the logo over and over it, but it's different colors. So it just pops like there's, there's like a dark purple and then a pink. And so you can really dress up a plain craft box to be on brand. And then do you still do the label then to on top of that too?

Becky: 8:09

Right.

Julie: 8:09

Okay.

Becky: 8:11

Yeah. So we just updated the label. So it's kind of like one third of the labels on the top of the box. And two thirds of it is on the front of the box, if that makes sense. So we have a custom label where it's like, it's here, you know, with all of our social media contact info. And honestly, you know, back to the question that was the hardest part for us. Like we, I can deliver training all day. I can add a course online. I can create a digital workbook, but the idea of a physical product working with suppliers has been a little bit more challenging and being reliant on someone else and a timeframe that you know is on them. If it's digital, I can whip that up tonight and have it up on my website tomorrow. No big deal. But you know, when you're working with different suppliers and honestly the box itself was probably my biggest hiccup in launching. And I got so hung up on, you know, should I do a custom box or should I do a plain box? Do I want to spend the extra money to go get custom branded boxes? And actually as we're recording this podcast, you guys, I am in my garage cause that's the quietest place in my house. And Julie can see behind me, there's a bunch of boxes. These are custom boxes that we did not use.

Julie: 9:20

Wait, wait, you got custom boxes, but you're not using them?

Becky: 9:24

Yes, this is what happened. So we ordered the boxes and we had some major delays from our supplier. And so it kind of at the last minute was like, we gotta come up with a backup plan. These custom boxes are not arriving on time. So we went to the Brown Craft box and I bought the custom tape from Sticker Mule. And I had that on hand and I'm like, you know, let's just print some labels from our home printer and select these things together and get this first box out and people liked it. And then when I looked at the price difference of doing a custom box versus the craft box, I didn't want to take a couple dollars away from product that I could put in the box just to make the outside of the box, look a little bit prettier. So for now we're sticking with the craft boxes. Our labels are getting a little fancier. Our tape might get a little flashier, but we're going to stick with the craft boxes, at least for the short while, until we really get in the groove of things and our profit margins, just get a little bit bigger and then maybe we'll switch over to the custom boxes. And I got them behind me when we're ready to do that.

Julie: 10:31

But when you're ready, you're ready. Yeah. And you could always use those for a special edition boxes. Like if you're celebrating, you know, your company's anniversary or the holidays or something like that, so you'll find a use for them. But I think what you've done so far is great with the craft box. It just goes to show you that you don't have to come out of the gates, like with the custom box. Yes, it can help depending on your target audience, but you've done it. You have done a great job on it. And I love the way that, so you have your tape that seals the box and, decorates it. But then this it's kind of like a square ish label, maybe a rectangle you're actually using it to seal the box as well.

Becky: 11:08

Yes!

Julie: 11:08

So it's like, it's like working to brand the box, but also to seal the box. So it's very efficient.

Becky: 11:15

Yes, it works very well. And we're so excited because this next month we're not packing our own boxes. We have a fulfillment center that we're working with. So that was like a huge win. And maybe part of the compromise with my husband, that we are entering the world of physical products, but we're not going to pack 150 boxes in our living room. So that's exciting for us.

Julie: 11:37

It's a smart move. It takes up a lot of space. And so often when we are getting into those numbers and I usually say 250 is kind of that sweet spot, where most people are going to get the profit margin and they need to get out of their own way. Like it takes a lot of time to build the boxes. Cause remember these boxes come flat packed. Do you have to first build the box? You have to unbox all the products, repack them in your boxes. So there's a lot of moving parts on shipping day and packing day.

Becky: 12:07

Yeah. We already had so much happening in our business. I just, we were at the plant. I'm like, I can't take six hours away from the other work that I need to be doing in the business to pack boxes. So we jumped the gun a little bit, cause we're only around 150 boxes, but we're working with the local fulfillment center and they're also doing our printing. So they're printing our labels. They're printing our inserts, they're handling so much of the infrastructure, which I'm just thrilled about.

Julie: 12:35

That's a beautiful thing. I love that when I was working with a local fulfillment center for a couple of years before we moved, we were in, we work with Shipmonk now and we moved because our local like mom and pop warehouse couldn't do our shop orders. They were only, they didn't have the software capability. So we were able to manage it just through Google sheets. So you know, we would have a tab for each month and I'd say, this is what's coming. This is what you're going to receive. This is what's going to go in the box. So we made it super simple and they also were a print shop. So they printed out our gift messages, which was helpful to take that off our plate. Yeah.

Becky: 13:13

We also have Google sheet, we borrowed it from you. It was in the bootcamp.

Julie: 13:18

From bootcamp, there you go.

Becky: 13:19

We're living it. It's a tab that is always open on my computer.

Julie: 13:23

Same here. Swear, all of the templates that we use in bootcamp, we still use to this day in my own business. And so you can definitely scale with those. So let's talk about some challenges real quick. You said the, you know, learning the product side of it was a challenge. The custom boxes was a challenge. What were some of the other challenges that you had to overcome in those like first, like pre-launch or those first few months?

Becky: 13:51

Well, you know, it was interesting because since I already had a little bit of a following, I kind of, you know, we launched, I, I joke that I threw up a landing page and we filled an empty box because literally I didn't have any examples of what was going in. It, I hadn't ordered anything. It was just kind of a pilot. Like, let's see what happens. And, so it went well obviously, and then it was like,"Okay, we got it. We got to scramble and make sure we get product in time". So we had about a month and a half lead time from when we prefilled the boxes to when we launched, but that was definitely pushing it. So we ran into a couple of issues where we are shorted a couple items from a supplier. And I was like out at a craft store at 11:00 PM at night, before we were shipping, like buying washi tape to add into our boxes.

Julie: 14:42

I've done that too.

Becky: 14:44

Right. There was, there was some little hiccups along the way. But generally like things have actually gone pretty smooth. And I attribute that to being part of your program in bootcamp, because we literally went through the courses, we followed the instructions and that's what we've done and it's gone really, really smoothly. Oh, one thing that I did learn is not to include anything perishable in the box. So that was probably an obvious one, but any anybody listening, that's thinking about a box and wants to put a hot cocoa bomb in there. They have a shelf life of about two weeks. And if you're shipping to Canada, sometimes it takes longer than that. So just little things like that along the way that we've learned like, well, that was, Oh, Oh, here's another good one. I bought product that didn't fit in the box. That was a mix-up, the product itself fit, but the outside packaging didn't fit in the box. So when I asked for the product dimensions, it fit, but we didn't have enough time in that first run to get product samples and we just went straight to ordering. So that was a big lesson that we're really trying to get ahead on. Now it's making sure we always have a sample ahead of time before placing a bulk order.

Julie: 15:55

Yeah. It's so smart. And I think it's important to what you said is you might know what the product dimensions are, but packaging, a lot of the things that you're going to buy are packaged for retail store. So they might have like a hang tag or they might have a box to sit on a shelf. And so you have to make sure not only that it fits in your box, but it's going to fit with the other things in your box too.

Becky: 16:17

Exactly. And so my husband, his background is electrical engineering and the whole time he was like,"Is everything going to fit in the box? Like, have you measured at all?" And I, you know, this, this is him, that's a little resistant to the physical product idea. Did you measure it? I'm like, yeah, yeah. Everything's going to fit in the box. Of course, it's going to fit in the box. And then I got 200 or I got 150 or something of this item that didn't fit in the box. What did you do? We actually returned them and they took them back. So that worked out in our favor, but at one point I was going to repackage them, like take the outer packaging out and try to just put it in there. But I just felt like it looked, it just didn't quite look as professional. So we ended up shipping it back and we got something else instead that was even better. So it all worked out in the end, but yeah, another little hiccup, little challenge, you know.

Julie: 17:06

We all have to learn the hard way on some things you are not alone. I've heard it from seasoned veterans in my industry. You know, like I just didn't realize how big this product was going to be. And then the things you said about food is there's a couple of things you have to keep in mind. One, you want to make sure that any food is clearly labeled and it has that expiration date printed on it. So I know like when I'm, if I were to put a snack item in Sparkle Hustle Grow box, which we have done a lot in the past, I always make sure, like I say, what is the expiration date? I need to make sure that it's, I like to get asked for like one, that's going to be three to six months beyond my shipping date, because you just never know one, you know, we order things in advance. So we obviously need them in advance. We need them to last longer than that. You want to make sure that you're storing them in a good way. It's like, if you're in a warehouse, you want to make sure that that warehouse is temperature controlled humidity controlled. Like this item need to be cold or, you know, so you have to think of all those things. And the other thing you need to think about is destination. So like obviously you cannot ship chocolates in the middle of the summer to places like Texas and California and Florida.

Becky: 18:22

It'll be a melted, melted mess when it arrives.

Julie: 18:26

So are you in San Diego?

Becky: 18:27

I'm in San Diego, yes.

Julie: 18:28

I thought so. I love San Diego and I just that's one of those places I think of, I was like, Hmm. If I were to ship this in November, what's it like in San Diego?

Becky: 18:39

There you go. There you go. Yeah. Luckily it was the January box, but I mean, we did, I had to substitute things out for some of our customers in Canada. And that's the other thing too, is just the cost of shipping. I grossly underestimated how much it would cost to get a box from my home to their home. And we're absorbing a lot of that shipping costs, which I'm sure a lot of other box boxes are doing right now just is a lot. And you don't want to pass that entire cost onto your customer, but that's an area that I'm hoping as we grow and have a little bit more volume, we'll be able to have a little bit more negotiating around the pricing, on shipping with our UPS provider.

Julie: 19:21

Yeah. And I think there's that there's volume discounts. You can use software, that's going to help aggregate you with other business owners that will help you get those volume discounts. We like to use Pirateship, but they only serve USPS.

Becky: 19:33

USPS, yes.

Julie: 19:33

So if you're using UPS, do you use ShipStation or one of those other softwares or do you buy direct?

Becky: 19:42

So we negotiated some rates with UPS direct, so that worked out pretty well. And then we just have like a plugin on our website that generates the label. So everything is happening seamlessly behind the scenes. And I feel like we're getting a pretty comparable price. It's actually pretty similar to USPS, but, um, we initially launched with only$6 for shipping. And so we've increased that to seven and we're still, we're still covering a couple dollars per box.

Julie: 20:08

Yeah. I think that's pretty typical. It's such a hard conversation to have because the higher you raise your shipping rate, the more turnoff it is for a customer. But now I think it's becoming more clear to people that yes, you can get that stuff from Amazon, but when you're shopping small business, like that's not how it works. Shipping is not free at all. And so we have to find other ways to cover that in our margin, if we want to keep that shipping cost, even the perception of that shipping cost low. And it's so hard, it's so hard to build that a box and say, free shipping, and then you lose all of those dollars from your product budget.

Becky: 20:55

Right? Exactly. Exactly. So we're still charging shipping on top of the box cost. And I like, it hurts my heart because I hate paying for shipping, but I know at the same time, like we still have to make sure that this is a profitable venture. And so that's something that we've definitely been trying to navigate over the last couple of months to make sure that we still have really strong margins and that we're not, you know, asking people an unreasonable amount to pay for shipping on top of the box.

Julie: 21:23

Yeah, I agree. And if you're listening, you're thinking about raising your shipping rate January is typically in either just Q1 is typically a good time of the year to raise your rates because that's when most of the carriers are either rolling out or considering their annual rate increase. And so that's a really easy way to communicate with your customers. Our carrier raised the rates. We are absorbing some, we are passing some along to the customer. This is a business like we, I know it's easier for me. I feel like in you because our customers are small business owners. So they might understand a little better. Know, a typical consumer who isn't buying shipping for products and they're not in that world. They might not get it as well. So I feel like we can be really transparent. You and I can be very transparent with our customers and say,"Hey guys, we are running a business. Just like you are, our shipping rates are going up from the carrier and this is how we're going to handle it". But if you're shipping to a, you know, a typical consumer base one that is maybe not business owners, that might be a harder conversation to have.

Becky: 22:30

I think so. I mean, people are used to Amazon. They ruined it for us, even though I get an Amazon package, like every day.

Julie: 22:41

We have one of those cameras, those ring cameras in our driveway and in front of our house. And every time I swear, every time it triggers, it's like the Amazon Prime truck. I'm like prime's here.

Becky: 22:53

Yep. Just another day.

Julie: 22:56

Okay. So let's move on what you are. You've got your hands in a couple of different industries, you know, you're course creator, you've got membership and now you have the subscription box. What, one of your favorite things about the subscription box?

Becky: 23:10

Okay. So hands down the surprise and delight factor. So just the excitement that I get to see from my customers around getting something in the mail, you know, it, especially being in the online world where so much of what we do is virtual getting physical mail and getting so excited to open and unbox that, and not knowing what's inside like that part of it is so fun that, you know. They get to kind of have this experience every time they get to open the box to see what's in it, what products are going to help them with their business for the month. It's going to help them think outside the box. It's going to help them show up better on social media. So I absolutely love, love, love, seeing all of the photos from my customers, the unboxing videos. I think it's more fun for me than maybe even them, because I get to see it posted on social media and how excited they are when they get something that they maybe would have never purchased for themselves, or even thought of using for their business and find it super, super fun and exciting.

Julie: 24:18

Well, I have good news for you because it doesn't get old four and a half years in, and I'm still, every time I ship out boxes, I get a little bit, and then I head over to Instagram a couple of days later and start searching for our hashtag like looking for all the unboxing videos. And I just love that about the business. It's so fun. And I just realized this the other day I was telling my husband, I was like,"I think one of my love languages is gift giving." Like I love to give, and I always thought of love languages as what people are doing to me or for me, or like filling my bucket. But it's also like what we're doing for others, like that can fill our own bucket. And it sounds like you love giving gifts.

Becky: 24:59

Well, I do. It is. And I always did this in my direct sales business for my customers or somebody hosted a party for me or for people on my team. I'd always drop happy mail in the mail for them, because I knew that just sending a simple hair bow to match a dress that somebody bought for me or sending, you know, a little bit of stationery to a new rep that had joined my team, that, that made a world of difference and their experience and how they thought about their relationship with me. Like,"Oh, not only is she great. And I got that dress that I wanted, but she also threw in a hair bow. How cool was that?" Right?

Julie: 25:35

And a hand-written notes sometimes, right?

Becky: 25:37

Exactly! And I think that's why people love shopping small and they, they want to choose us over Amazon on some days, right? There is that personal relationship. Yeah. So I love that piece of it. And I think maybe I was missing it a little bit when I stepped away from the direct sales field and actually selling, and was completely focused on digital products. So I'm coming back to it and I'm loving them.

Julie: 26:07

I'm so glad you're loving it. Okay. So you're still new in this. So you can really relate to a lot of people who are just in that startup phase. What's one piece of advice that you can share with these new and aspiring subscription box business owners.

Becky: 26:20

Ooh. Okay. So I think the biggest win in our launch process was the pre-sale. So I would definitely take a pre-sale approach. Like it sounds kind of crazy selling an empty box, but as long as youknow the categories of what you're going to include, and maybe some examples of the type of product that you're going to have in the box doing that, pre-sale really validated our idea. So that presale was an opportunity for us to practice our messaging and practice our marketing and think about what our customers were looking for before we went out and spent thousands of dollars on product. So I, I loved that part of our launch process and would a million percent duplicate that time and time again, because it really gave us a little bit of a little bit of leg room too, to kind of get started. And we had a little bit of a running start. So we pre-sold the last week of October and our boxes didn't ship until the first week of December. So we had a good, like six weeks in there that we were marketing. We were promoting and also figuring out what we were going to put in the box all at the same time. But that pre-launch really created a lot of buzz. And we did a giveaway. We used KingSumo for a giveaway. And there was just a lot of excitement among our followers around the launch. And they helped us launch because we created that buzz with the prelaunch.

Julie: 27:55

I love it. You really did follow the bootcamp roadmap.

Becky: 28:01

I'm a good student.

Julie: 28:01

Awesome!

Becky: 28:01

When I saw the course, I was like, I'm not going to try to figure out how to do this on my own. I'm just going to let Julie tell me all the things I need to do. And I am going to follow every single step, no need to reinvent the wheel here. She's got it down.

Julie: 28:14

Just do what I say, right. Someone told me that when I joined a program, they're like,"Just do what it says and you'll succeed. I promise. Just do what they say". So with our presale, we did, we pretty much sold an empty box as well. I got on, I think it was either Amazon or Uline and bought, I think maybe like a 10 pack of hot pink boxes. Cause I knew I wanted my box to be pink, but I didn't have a custom design yet. The only thing I had was a logo. And so I took a picture of the pink box out on my back deck and then I used Canva to drop my logo on it. And I was like,"Hey, there's, there's the box". That's what I started marketing with. And I was like...

Becky: 28:55

That's exactly what we did. We took brown box canva stock photo, and then took our proof of the sticker mule tape and put it over the picture. And ironically, we were like,"Oh, we're just going to do this for a hot minute because we got these custom boxes coming". And then we were like,"Oh, that actually worked out great". And we're just going to stick with that for awhile.

Julie: 29:16

I love it. Yeah. See, we so often we overthink things, just make it so people know it's a box. You have to show them that it's a tangible mail item and that's what we both did with that. So that's awesome. I'm just so proud of you and I'm so happy for you. Where can people follow you and find you online so they can either subscribe to the box or just, you know, see what you're up to? What would those places be?

Becky: 29:40

Yeah. So if you want to check out the box, it's ModernDirectSellerBox.com and I'll live my direct sales training community. All of that is over at MyConsultantTraining.com and I like hanging out on Insta. So you can always DM me over@moderndirectseller.

Julie: 29:59

Awesome! Thank you so much for joining me today. What a treat to hear your story. And, I just appreciate you being such a star student and sharing your experience.

Becky: 30:10

Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Julie,

Julie: 30:13

Of course. And so listeners, I hope this gave you some inspiration if you are, especially if you already have a business and you're thinking about adding an additional stream of revenue, this is an easy way to do that. You can pilot it just like Becky did. See if it has legs. See what your existing audience thinks about it and pull them, survey them, ask them what they would want and ask them what they think is a really great way to just even start that conversation. So again, Becky, thank you so much. Everybody, thanks for joining us today. And we'll see you on the next episode.

Speaker 3: 30:54

[inaudible].