Beginners Boxes are Back

And they're BIGGER!

Hello people of the internet! I’m Ross, and I’m here to talk about our newly updated Beginners Boxes! Not only are they back, but they’re also BIGGER!

Beginners Boxes are Back

Before I tell you what’s inside, you may as well have a look. Then you can kinda guess for yourself anyway. Which will make reading what I have to say twice as boring as usual.

So what’s inside?

The scents inside the beginners box will vary, but you will get all of the following:

• A ceramic wax melt burner

• 2 x Teddy Clamshells

• 7 x Teddy Pots

• 1 x Room Spray

• 2 x Bags of Brittle

The total value of all the items sold separately is around £36 - which isn’t bad. Plus you get a cool grey box that could be used for storage. To be totally honest with you, part of the reason we’re able to do them at this price is because I’m totally ignoring the price of the box. I cocked up and bought the wrong size box a few months back and they’re just too big for the Beginner Boxes we used to do.

Bigger boxes mean we need to add more stuff, if we add more stuff we have to charge more. And we didn’t really want to do expensive gift boxes. So I’m blanking the cost of the box - they cost us roughly £3. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but trust me, these things add up.

In other words, once we’ve run out of these boxes we might not do them quite like this next time.

You’ll also get a choice of 5 different burners! Having a bigger box does mean we can at least do better/bigger burners, so that’s a bonus!

Anything else?

Umm… Not right now, but we will be running a newsletter giveaway soon. If you’re reading this, then chances are you’ll automatically enter. But since around October last year we’ve done a TERRIBLE job of bringing in new people. The newsletter has kinda just treaded water for the past 6/7 months - which is a good indicator of new people as new people often = new email subscribers - and it’s been very similar with orders too.

Perhaps a giveaway will help. Or maybe writing better newsletters? Who knows. Either way, we’ve really struggled picking up new people so far this year which is a big part of the reason 2023 has been a bit rough so far. It’s been rather stressful, shall I say.

Screw rather stressful. Very stressful. I think I’ve attached far too much of my self worth to the business and when it doesn’t do as well I feel like it’s because I’m not good enough. I take it far too personally. Which part of me feels like is warranted. After all, isn’t my job content? So if the content doesn’t do very well then that’s me being a bit shit.

No one teaches you about this shit when it comes to running a business. No one told me I’d end up attaching my personal identity to this bloody thing and feel every bump like a personal attack.

But welcome to running a business I guess.

We have kinda had this before where we never really felt like we were getting anywhere in terms of finding new people. Just look at the graph above. From June to October 2021 we barely moved for subscribers. Then I did a video where I “found” a sex toy in a kitchen drawer and BOOM the hamstring massager was born and we had a big jump from the silly videos that followed.

Yes, TikTok is weird and you never know when things will work.

Then we kinda floated along for a while from Feb 2022 to June 2022, then I talked about a bloody lunchbox. And the same thing happened again.

Like I said, TikTok is weird.

Sorry, I didn’t really mean to ramble about any of this. It’s not really the “business” thing to do is it? And this isn’t me on the beg. I find this shit hard to talk about as I try to be very open and honest. I wear my feelings on my sleeve - often to my detriment - I genuinely wish I was better at hiding my feelings and putting a face on. It would help in sooooooo many ways. Well, until the emotional meltdown that usually happens if you bottle shit up.

But at the same time, it’s a very “icky” thing to do to moan about orders to the people who buy off you. But honestly, this isn’t me moaning at you guys! I guess I’m just talking about how I’m feeling, as that’s kinda what I do - I speak about what’s going on every day - and I dare say this is what a lot of business owners are feeling right now? There’s almost always a level of stress present in fairness.

Although if we didn’t have three kids under 6 it would probably feel less stressful. They certainly boost the stress levels considerably 😂

To be fair, you guys have been incredible. Believe it or not, but we’ve actually had more existing customer orders this year than any other year.

Obviously we had none in 2020 as that’s when we started, so if you ordered in 2020 you wouldn’t count as an existing customer on that graph until 2021. We obviously had a LOT of new people in 2022 which is probably why 2023 is already so high.

Meanwhile, new people are a lot lower. But it’s only May I guess.

So yeah. Too much information? 😂 I’ll break it down more on the business Patreon thing that I started, since that’s kinda part of the reason I even started it.

Anyway…

Sorry for rambling at you. I really feel like I could talk all day. My “feelings” just feel all jumbled up. Then I feel like a… I wanna say “pussy” but that’s probably bad? I know you’re not a pussy if you have bad/sad feelings. But that’s the word that comes to mind, rightly or wrongly. Part of me has that “man up, Ross” attitude that I know is probably toxic masculinity, but what can I say. Maybe I’m toxic.

This was supposed to just be about the bloody beginners boxes. Sorry about that.

I’ll leave you to it.

Thank you all for reading all of this. We both genuinely appreciate all of your support. For real. Without you guys I don’t know what I’d be doing. So thank you for all of the support you continue to show us.

Much love,

Ross & Rachel x