NAME: How To Have Customers Lining Up To Buy (Dionne’s $30k Sale Story)-audio.mp3
DATE: 2023-06-06
DURATION: 4335
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SUMMARY:
Selena Knight welcomes Dion, the owner of Little Kinfolk, a baby and big kid boutique in Saskatchewan, Canada. Dion explains that Little Kinfolk outfits babies from premie sizes up to size 8-10. He got into the kids clothing niche because he had two kids of his own and couldn’t find the items he wanted for his oldest. Selena explains that the kids clothing niche is highly competitive and there is a lot of cheap, low quality items. Dion then shares his story of how he created more than $30,000 in revenue in one weekend.

The speaker was inspired to open their own baby store after being disappointed with the quality and variety of the baby items available in their local boutiques. They invested $50,000 out of their own pocket and took out a loan of $150,000 to get the store up and running. They were able to make $30,000 in their first month of business, proving that their venture was a success. The conversation with their partner about this decision was likely filled with excitement and anticipation for the future of their business.

The speaker and her husband decided to take out a loan within the parameters of their family to help fund the speaker’s business venture. Even though they don’t owe the bank anything, they know that they have to figure out how to make money and pay the loan back. The speaker and her husband have different roles when it comes to the business; her husband is the one who wants to know the plan, while she is the cheerleader. The business launched online November 1 of 2021 and opened the physical doors at the end of February 2022. Knowing that she had to be profitable from day one, the speaker factored in that she would take a wage from the start. This loan changed the speaker’s mindset by making her realize that even though businesses may not make money in the first few years, it should be making money as soon as possible.

In this conversation, the speaker talks about how she had to factor in a full-time salary from the beginning of her business, even though it wasn’t a glamorous one. She went in with wild abandon, not really knowing what she was doing, and it had a big effect on her business, her family life, and herself. She was doing all the things and feeling overwhelmed, tired, and burnt out. Eventually, she reached out to Scale Your Store for help and broke down crying four minutes into the call as she was so stressed out.
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TIMESTAMPS:

0:00:00 “Creating $30,000 in Revenue in One Weekend: An Interview with Dion of Little Kinfolk”

0:02:46 “Investing in a Baby Boutique: A Conversation with an Entrepreneur”

0:05:02 “The Challenges of Starting a Business with a Loan: A Conversation with Kitten Caboodle Owner”

0:07:56 Heading: The Impact of Doing All the Things on Business and Family Life

0:09:42 Heading: Reflections on the Challenges of Starting a Business

0:13:32 “The Dangers of Becoming Too Attached to Outcomes: A Discussion on Marketing Strategies”

0:15:44 “Managing People and Setting Goals: A Discussion on Overcoming Comfort Zones and Challenging Oneself”

0:17:10 Conversation Summary: Utilizing Digital Marketing to Improve Website Experience

0:19:19 Conversation Summary: Increasing Sales with Buy Two, Get One Free Promotion

0:21:56 Heading: Successful Promotion Results in $7,000 Profit with $27 Investment

0:23:38 Conversation on Investing in a Business Education Program

0:25:29 Conversation Summary: Investing in a Business and Moving Stock

0:28:02 Conversation Summary: Planning a Warehouse Sale for a Clothing Store

0:31:32 Discussion on Overcoming Emotional Battles When Moving Stock

0:35:22 Conversation Summary: Strategies for a Successful Retail Sale

0:37:07 Heading: Preparing for a Successful Warehouse Sale

0:42:44 Conversation Summary: Pre-Event Marketing Strategies for a Successful Sale

0:44:37 Conversation Recap: Opening Day of a Pop-Up Shop

0:46:38 Retail Success: Reflections on a Busy Opening Day

0:49:44 Conversation Recap: Setting Goals for a Successful Sale

0:51:57 “Successful Online Sale: Over $22,000 in 24 Hours”

0:53:50 “The Benefits of Being Open to Suggestions: A Conversation with Deon, Owner of [Store Name]”

0:59:39 Heading: Hiring Success Story: Poaching a Store Manager from a Dying Mall

1:01:27 Debriefing a Successful Promotion: Reflections on What Worked and What Could Be Improved

1:02:35 Analysis of Warehouse Sale Promotional Event

1:06:11 Heading: Reflection on Missed Opportunities for Customer Data Collection

1:08:15 Interview with Selena’s Client: How Investing in Her Store Led to Success

1:10:17 Interview with Selena Knight, Owner of Little Kinfolk Boutique

0:00:00 A: You.

0:00:02 B: Hey there and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. If you’re looking to get more sales, more customers, master your marketing, and ultimately take control of your retail or ecommerce business, then you’re in the right place. I’m Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires to move to the next level.

0:00:33 B: I’ll provide you with the strategies, the tools, and the insight you need to scale your store. All you need to do is take action. Ready to get started? Hey there, Dion. Welcome to the bringing business to retail podcast. I am so excited to have you here because you are one of those people who, let’s be honest, completely validates me because you do what I do and you get great results. So anyone who does that is always going to be one of my favorites.

0:01:09 B: But welcome to the show, and I am so excited for you to be able to tell everyone how you created more than $30,000 in revenue in one weekend. So tell us a little bit about what do you do, what is Little Kinfolk and who is Dion?

0:01:28 A: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. This is my first, no second podcast I’ve ever done, so I am happy to be here. Little Kin Folk is a baby to Big Kid Boutique in the heart of the Prairies in Saskatchewan, Canada. So we’re right kind of smack dab in the middle, and we outfit little babies in clothing from premie sizes all the way up to a size about 810. So for those kids right before, they kind of hit those extra small sizes for the men and women, and that’s what we do.

0:02:01 B: And how did you end up in kids land, as I like to call it? Because it’s a really difficult niche. It is highly competitive. There is so much saturation and so much really cheap crap out there, which I know is not what you have. But how did you decide that this was the niche that you were going to go into?

0:02:23 A: Well, I have two kids myself, one who’s eight and one who’s two. And when I was pregnant with my now eight year old, we couldn’t really find the things that we wanted for him. In our city and where we live, there’s about 250,000 people, and so we were traveling over 8 hours away to go to baby boutiques to find the items that we yes.

0:02:46 B: Crazy. Hey.

0:02:47 A: And ordering online. And so at the time, I didn’t really think much of it, but I went to a couple of boutiques and was just like, oh, my gosh, it’s so beautiful in here. Like, I could talk about baby stuff all day long. Like, I just love it. And I love talking about birth and pregnancy and all that goes into that. Fast forward six years later, I’m pregnant with my second boy, and nothing had changed.

0:03:11 A: I was still only able to find the things that I was after really online and wasn’t impressed with what our local boutiques had. And we have about three other stores here in our city. So for the amount of people who live in our city, that is quite a few stores. But I still was disappointed with the quality that was out there, the variety that they had. It really played a lot towards girls. And I have two boys, so that made shopping even more difficult. So instead of complaining about it, I decided to quit my very secure job, my high paying job, and to open my own baby store.

0:03:54 B: And people who are listening are going, I think that’s my story.

0:03:57 A: Okay, definitely.

0:03:59 B: Before we get into your $30,000, what was the conversation with your partner like about that? Because are you happy to share maybe some information about what did you start out with? How much money did you start out with? Did you take a loan? How much was on the line here?

0:04:17 A: So we invested in our business personally out of our own pocket, $50,000. And then we have a loan for $150,000 through family member. So it is an actual loan that we have to pay back with interest and all the Kitten Caboodle, but we don’t owe the bank anything. So we decided to do it within the parameters of our family and then what we wanted to contribute. So when it comes to the success of the business, not that this family member has their hand in the pot and is controlling anything at all, but there is that relationship on the line that this money has to be paid back and this business has to be successful.

0:05:02 A: There’s no way around it. I have to figure this out. I have to make money. I have to pay this loan back. When it came down to having this sale or even like the success of the business, these conversations with my husband were, he’s a good cheerleader, but he also wants to know what’s going on and what’s up. Mine is the opposite.

0:05:22 B: Mine is the cheerleader. And just like, you’re smart, you got this.

0:05:28 A: That is not my husband. I love him. He is a great supporter, but he’s also like, what’s the plan, babe?

0:05:37 B: Do you normally have a plan?

0:05:41 A: Yeah. But that doesn’t mean that it’s going to work. As you know from a lot of people who have joined your course, we can write, like, when you think, oh, we’ll have a 50% off sale, or, oh, we’ll run whatever type of a discount. Just because you run it doesn’t mean it’s going to work.

0:05:57 B: We’ll talk about more about that in a moment. How many years have you been in business?

0:06:01 A: Now? Maybe we should say, how many days have I been in business?

0:06:09 B: Whatever your answer is is as much a surprise to me as it is to everybody. Else listening.

0:06:14 A: Oh, boy. So we launched online November 1 of 2021 while we were under construction here. We’re in over 100 year old building, so we were getting our space all done and we opened our physical doors here at the end of February, 2022. So we just celebrated a year at the end of February. Wow.

0:06:36 B: So tell me when you came into this, because this is something I find quite fascinating, that because you had this loan and it’s a proper loan, doesn’t matter where it came from. The fact is it’s a loan. You have to pay it back, you have obligations. Did that change your mindset right from the beginning? Like, so many people go into business and say, oh, businesses don’t make money for the first two years or three years or five, some arbitrary number of years. I’m like, well, businesses really should be making money as soon as possible.

0:07:07 B: And you kind of mentioned this just before, but how did you come into the business? We’ve got to be profitable from day one, pretty much.

0:07:15 A: I factored in that I would take a wage day one, so there was none of this. I’m not going to be paid. My husband actually works for a missionary organization, so there was taken a hit from going from my old job down to this job, but there was no I don’t know how people do that, how they open a business. And you hear people say they didn’t take a paycheck for the first two or three years, and that blows my mind. I’m like, I’m factoring that into my basic costs and right off the hop, it’s having somebody come in and work for a little bit and me, full time pay.

0:07:56 A: And I mean, it’s not glamorous pay when you’re getting started, but yeah, I knew right from the beginning we had to make money and start making money quickly. And I had no idea how I was going to do that. I was just you and I have joked, like, I’m just nice, and you’re like, oh, the nice people were so nice. And I’m Canadian, so I’m going to say sorry 100 times while you’re in my store. I went at it with wild abandon, but truthfully, didn’t know what I was doing.

0:08:28 A: As I spoke to your team when I was joining scale your store, like, I’m a go getter, but I was going and getting in nine different directions and definitely needed some help.

0:08:42 B: So how has that affected? Because where you’re at now seems very different just from a few weeks ago, I’ll be honest, from the conversations we’ve had over those first twelve months. How has that having to do all the things affected, do you think, your business, but also yourself and your family life? Because this is the biggest thing that people come to us with is I’m doing all of the things. I’m tired, I’m overwhelmed, I’m burnt out, I have no bandwidth left to take anything on.

0:09:17 A: Yeah, it’s definitely a hard place to be. I remember doing my call with one of your team partners about joining Scale, your store, and it was like four minutes in and truthfully, I broke down and started crying because I was so stressed out. And she was just like, so comforting. And she was like, I know. I could just hear in your heart, like, you’re doing everything and you’re so tired and you’re a mother and you’re a wife, and you’re like, juggling all of these balls.

0:09:42 A: So it definitely is exhausting. It’s taxing on your family. It’s taxing on your mental health. But that being said, it is also scary to take the next step and bring somebody on as you and I have chatted about. But that’s a scary step, but will also provide me with far more freedom in order to work on my business and not be in my business every single day. And so just with that and the knowledge that I’ve gotten over the past however many weeks I’ve been in this.

0:10:12 B: Now, I’ll just say eight weeks. Eight weeks?

0:10:14 A: Yes. Yeah.

0:10:17 B: You’re in our Five X Framework program, which is Scalia Store, plus that additional coaching mentorship all the roadmap. I know we talk about the roadmap and your plans to deviate from the roadmap.

0:10:33 A: It’s not uncommon for you to be like, stay on track, Deon. I’m like, I’m good at that. You’re like, then we don’t need to focus on that if you’re good at it. I’m like, Right, but it’s easier than what I have to do. It’s easier, but I mean, don’t open your own business if you’re looking for easy, that’s for sure. Easy is where you’re staying and collecting a paycheck, and you don’t need to think and be creative or anything like that.

0:10:58 B: What were you experiencing apart from doing all of the things, like, what were you experiencing prior to eight weeks ago? What did business look sleeplessness?

0:11:10 A: Oh, definitely sleeplessness. Like, anxiety attacks, wondering like, how am I going to pay back this money? How am I going to make money? And also when I decided to join the Five X Framework Group with Scalyour Store was in notoriously the worst time of the year to be in retail, which is January, February. So it was like, low. And then I felt low. Like, you come off of Christmas and you’re on this big high.

0:11:39 A: And then I was like, where did all the people go?

0:11:45 B: This was your first Christmas, right? So you had my experience before, right?

0:11:50 A: So people warned me. But when you’re living in it every day, it’s a very depressed state to be in, in my opinion. So you’re trying to do everything that you can possibly do, but people aren’t shopping because they’re also just come off of Christmas. Their houses are filled with stuff, and then they’re getting all of those bills from Christmas. So unless it’s a necessity, buy and you know, shopping at a boutique, there’s not a lot of things that are driving necessity.

0:12:23 A: It is a slower time of year. And so it was a really tough time. And I’m friends with a lot of other business owners who are not in boutiques or in retail. They have restaurants and coffee shops and stuff like that. And they were very encouraging and just rooting for me and telling me to hang in there. But it was a really tough place to be. Plus, you’re juggling everything on the storefront side and you feel like you’re doing everything that you could possibly do to pay the bills. But yeah, it was a really hard place to be at that time.

0:12:54 B: Okay, I really want to dig into you were doing everything you possibly could to pay the bill. What did that look like? Because what you’re saying is probably what every other person here is feeling and thinking. Or if they’re not doing it right now, they’ve felt that way. Maybe in January, maybe in some other month. Winter here is June, July. So for us that tends to be pretty quiet, depending on which niche you’re in, of course, because now you just made $32,000 in a weekend.

0:13:27 B: So realistically, you hadn’t tried everything, but what did you think was everything that.

0:13:32 A: You tried at the time? Because we were new here’s, the dazzly part of being new is we were selling out of things in hours when we were new. So we had post about something and it would be gone. And because we were the new shiny thing in town, it was really easy to become accustomed to that. So then when you are just posting on Instagram or you’re posting on Facebook and it’s crickets that emotionally also doesn’t feel good.

0:14:05 A: Doesn’t feel good for your bank account, doesn’t feel good emotionally when you’re not seeing any traction there. I had actually worked with marketing business here in our city who also does radio ads. Talk about lighting money on fire. They’re the nicest people, but I won’t be doing that nice.

0:14:28 B: They’re so nice. I feel like this needs to be a trigger warning for every if you ever say the word says so nice, I think it should say nice.

0:14:42 A: I need to make money effort.

0:14:44 B: But this is the thing. It’s so easy. I’m not immune to this. Trust me, I am not immune to this at all. But it is so easy to be attached to the person rather than the outcome. And you’re like, but they are so nice. And we see this a lot inside of Supercharge actually, where what got you here won’t get you there. And the person who was perfect for your business, maybe they were the all rounder and they jumped in and did everything, got you here, but now you’re like, But I need an email marketer. Or I need a store manager that comes with experience, or I need someone who knows Google and Facebook ads. And all of a sudden you’re like, oh, I’m kind of at this tipping point, which is uncomfortable, and I’m going to have to be separate. I’m going to have to manage people, I’m going to have to put KPIs in place, got to put goals in place, like all these things. And a lot of people just don’t want to go there. They’re just quite happy to just stay. And this is where so many people get stuck, where they just stay in comfort. It’s like, this is just a job.

0:15:44 B: I’ll turn up, I’ll get paid, I got my helpers.

0:15:47 A: Like, I go on holidays and I.

0:15:49 B: Shut the shop, whatever that looks like. And if that’s what you want, that’s okay. But some of us want more than that.

0:15:56 A: Yeah, absolutely. And I’m the type of person, I can’t just stay stagnant. I have to be growing and challenging myself. So, yeah, they were very nice people, and they even ran a bunch of Instagram and Facebook ads for us. And here’s the hilarious thing, is I can’t even remember the amount of money I gave them. And I didn’t see in three months a single sale come from that, not one. So talk about discouraging.

0:16:28 A: I’m like, I didn’t even get my money back.

0:16:31 B: Okay, so here’s the question, right?

0:16:33 A: Yeah.

0:16:34 B: You and I, if we’ve been working together, then two weeks in, I would have said to you, okay, so what’s the KPI? What data are they giving you? What’s the metrics that they’re telling you? Did you manage them at all? Or were you just sitting back going.

0:16:50 A: I’ve got my reports.

0:16:51 B: They’ve got all these excuses. They tell me I have to wait. Like, I’ve been there, I know these agencies. They’re like, it takes us six weeks to get everything sorted out and to understand the market and bloody, bloody bullshit, bullshit. And meanwhile you’re going, and that’s like another few thousand dollars and nothing’s coming back in.

0:17:10 A: You don’t know what you don’t know when you’re in it. So I’m like, okay, I’m seeing these reports and the click through rate and how many people are going to our website? Also, something that I’m doing right now is updating our website. My theory was, if they’re coming to the website but they’re not making sales, and I like feedback from people. I’m like, what is our website experience like? So instead of me throwing more money at this type of marketing, I’m going to upgrade my website through a professional person, not Dion, the non website designer, to include upselling and bundling and all of that good stuff versus wasting.

0:17:53 A: Again, I can’t even think of the amount of money it was, but that they had spent just driving people to a website. So I tried to deduce really where the problem was. Was it my website? Was it them? Ultimately, at the end of the day, it wasn’t a positive experience as opposed to what we’re doing now.

0:18:13 B: Okay, so let’s talk about that. You’ve come off the back of a very negative experience working with someone who’s going to help you grow your business. I don’t even know the answer to this. Did you get our nine ways to move stock? How did you end up in our funnel?

0:18:28 A: We were meant to be together across the oceans, you and I destined to be friends. I think it was through Instagram.

0:18:40 B: Instagram ad.

0:18:41 A: Ad or a Facebook ad. I’ll say instagram because I’m not on Facebook very much. And I was like, nine ways to move stock. Like, hello, I’m desperate. You’re going to tell me nine free ways to move stock? Yes. I think I watched that video six times. Pause, back it up, write down more notes, brainstorm the ideas. Write down more notes. And then I think you sent me a follow up email asking if I wanted to do a free call to talk to somebody. And I believe I chatted with Elizabeth.

0:19:19 A: Yeah, she’s when I cried, too, bless her. She’s probably like, I did not anticipate this.

0:19:25 B: Oh, no, it happens a lot. Don’t you worry.

0:19:28 A: That makes me feel so much better. I was like, hold it together.

0:19:31 B: Hold it together, because someone is listening to you, and you are now in a position of having someone who is not judging you. And you can let all this stuff out. And we’re going to give you a couple of things that you can. Before you got on the call to Elizabeth, you must have spoken to somebody else because you would have spoken to someone on our sales team. Maybe you cried there, too. Yeah, I don’t know.

0:19:56 A: In which case, totally, okay. No, I held it together. I held it together for that call.

0:20:01 B: But that’s the whole point is we listen and we’re like, okay, so here are the big problems. If you could fix them, here’s a sales tip, guy. This is sales training 101. Here are your problems. If we can fix them, will you buy the thing?

0:20:16 A: Yeah. What will you do? You’ll do the thing. Great.

0:20:21 B: Buy it. Like on the counter.

0:20:23 A: Definitely.

0:20:26 B: That’s our sales funnel. I don’t try and hide it. If you buy the low ticket thing, we give you a free call. We’ll give you advice. If you want to work with us, great. If you don’t like all the love in the world, we hope that it’s helped. And then some people move on to the program. Now, if I remember rightly, you took the nine ways to move stock and you made about $5,000. If I something like that, let’s start there because we’re going to okay, we’re moving into the conversation. Everybody is listening in. How the heck did she make 30 grand in a weekend?

0:20:56 B: Let’s start with the little win.

0:20:58 A: Sure, the little win. So from that nine way smooth stock, I was like, okay, I’m going to do a buy two, get an additional one for free. I will start with that, and let’s just see what happens. And in that weekend, I think it was actually just over one day on a Saturday, we sold $5,000 that day, and only in the store.

0:21:28 B: I even know the story.

0:21:31 A: Yeah, it was wild. It was crazy. And we had people with heaps on our counter, like, going back for more people who came in, and then their husbands were annoyed that they were shopping, so they took their husbands home, and they came back and bought more things.

0:21:46 B: Squishy one.

0:21:48 A: No, that was so this was buy.

0:21:50 B: To get the third $5,000.

0:21:56 A: And then after that, I was like, okay, in the nine ways, move sock. You talk about, like, bundling. But I came up with a different idea and talked to Elizabeth, and I was like, in my idea, I want to move pajamas. I got too many pairs of pajamas. You need to get the heck out of my store. So I went to our local Costco, and they have squish mellows there, and you can get eight of them for $24 or $22. It was a low price.

0:22:26 A: And so we bought I think it was five or six cases of squishmellows, and we did a buy a pair of pajamas, get a squish mellow. And so the squish mellow is actually only can’t even do the mouth. $3, but you’re buying a $50 pair of pajamas. And then any that we I think we had a case of eight left over at the end, so we just returned them back to Costco.

0:22:52 B: And I get out of here. How much did we make on that promotion?

0:22:58 A: That promotion we made just short of $2,000. Okay, so that’s good. I moved a lot of pairs of pajamas.

0:23:05 B: I remember saying to you, but what about the time it took to go to Costco?

0:23:09 A: I was like, I ordered online free shipping right to my house. I was like, don’t worry, Selena. And even if I did go to Costco, I’d be like, I got it. Well, I was buying my family groceries. I’m not going out of my way. I’m a multitasker.

0:23:23 B: So so far, we’re doing right. $27 investment. $7,000. I think most people are happy with that. I think at this point, we’ve kind of convinced. You come on into the five x framework. You’re like, if you can make me that much money that quickly, come on in. All right.

0:23:38 A: Definitely.

0:23:39 B: How were you feeling when you handed over your credit card details? Because it’s thousands of dollars.

0:23:50 A: Honestly, I think it was Shelley.

0:23:54 B: Shelley?

0:23:54 A: Yeah. She’s so sweet. I think I was like, she is so nice. I think I was like, Shelley, I have to put through a credit card payment, so you have to wait. And then she phoned me back, like, two or three days later. I was like, I don’t have room on my credit card for this.

0:24:13 B: You even had time to think about it. Like, you’d sort of said yes, but then you’re like, now you got three.

0:24:18 A: Days to back out of it. Definitely. What made you go, this is the.

0:24:23 B: Thing.

0:24:26 A: I think because I had proof from doing that two for one, buy two, get another one for free. Talking to Shelley, you’re also the guarantee that’s in it. I mean, you have to put in the work, but if you’re putting in the work, you will see a result also. I talked to my husband and he was like, you got to do it. To be honest, I opened a retail store and I didn’t know anything about retail. I never worked in retail.

0:24:58 B: I got to pay myself right from.

0:24:59 A: The beginning, I got to pay myself. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know much, but I know I need to take on my paycheck. That’s what I know. And I talked to my husband. I also talked to some of our other friends who I mentioned are in business. And I was like, how much money have you ever spent on a Mastermind or like an educational program? And she’s like, $10,000.01 that you went to is $25,000. So she’s like, if they’re good, they require an investment.

0:25:29 A: And not only that money, but your mind, your emotions, like all the things, your time definitely needs to go into it. And I feel because the investment, like Canadian dollars wise, it was because we paid it in American dollars. But she goes up, that also is part of the buy in. Like, you know that you’ve put that money on the line, there’s no walking away. You have to get the most out of it. I have to make that money back because I can’t tell the person who has given me this loan for the business, my bookkeeper, my accountant, they’re going to be like so we just continued to go downhill. We cut that big check and we just kept rolling down.

0:26:17 A: I like to tell people when I’ve made a decision because it holds me accountable and then it also has their support in it. So then when I tell my husband, no, there’s a 05:00 call, I’m on with Selena tonight. He’s on picking up two kids, getting supper started, doing all the things that he knows. This is my time to educate myself on my business in order for us to grow, succeed, make money, pay the.

0:26:43 B: Bill, feed those two kids, let him live his visionary. That’s right. Love job that he has.

0:26:51 A: Exactly.

0:26:54 B: Okay, so we’re now some eight, somewhat weeks in.

0:26:58 A: You got your roadmap from memory.

0:27:01 B: I can’t remember what number two and three were, but number one was you had a crap ton of old stock that we needed. You’d already done a good job. You’d already got rid of the pajamas. You already got rid of a whole bunch of other stuff. But there was a 60,000. I can’t remember what the number was?

0:27:17 A: Yeah, it was just shy of 60,000. So I had made some errors in my again, no idea what I’m doing. Don’t forget that. No idea. I made the fatal error, which as soon as you know what it was, you asked what was the thing on the nine ways to move stock. You said every piece of clothing or whatever you have in your store is costing you money. It’s paying rent to sit there and did you make the fatal mistake of holding back things for another season? And I was like, she’s talking to me. I did that. I have a fault behind this door.

0:28:02 A: Yes. Just stressing me out. Every time I go back, they’re just weighing down on me. And so I remember talking to Elizabeth and being like, elizabeth, I have this great idea. We’re going to do a fill a bag. And she’s so nice. Oh, like, say more words, Deon. So I tell her I’m all excited and then I priced it out and this and she’s like, okay. Are you open to other ideas? I’m like, definitely. That’s the key. That’s what I’m here.

0:28:31 A: If you’re in this group, it’s because you don’t know what you’re doing. You need help. I would never be so bold as to be like, no, my one and only. I think conversation with Elizabeth, she was like, you got to do a warehouse sale. And so we talked it through for about an hour and brainstormed. And she was like, do it off site. So my first task was to find a place to do the sale. And so that’s what Elizabeth and I came up with. And so I got to work. And actually right across the street from our building is another 100 year old warehouse building where they have rentable spaces.

0:29:07 A: And so we rented a space over there. I always tell you in square feet.

0:29:14 B: And then I have to do and I’m like, you’re in Canada, you don’t use feet.

0:29:21 A: I use feet. I don’t know, maybe our space was I can’t even think maybe 300 sqft. Imagine like a really open area where they just provide tables for vendors. Okay. And so we took over about a third of it. Okay.

0:29:38 B: Not the hugest of space, but still a big space. All right, so moving into the sale, how far out? This is the good stuff. She’s going to tell you all the things she did to have people lining up around the block and waiting 2 hours to pay. Okay, this is freaking amazing. I didn’t think I told you this. This is actually way more than I.

0:30:02 A: Thought that you were going to get.

0:30:06 B: Expectations. But I was like, yeah, you just nailed it. Okay, so you’ve been given the task. Go and find the space. How many weeks out are we from the sale?

0:30:17 A: Four. Four.

0:30:19 B: Okay, so you’ve given yourself four weeks to get this done. Then what?

0:30:24 A: So we locked. Down the rental of the space for a whopping $130. I was like, I can handle that rent. And the reason why we wanted to have it off site is because we didn’t want it. First of all, now looking back, I’m like, imagine that craziness in my store. That would have just been absurd. Second of all, we didn’t want it to confuse with I already have a full store of stock, 2023 spring stock. I don’t want people being like, is this on sale? Is this on sale? None of that. So we decided to put it off site.

0:30:58 A: And so my store was open across the street. We are literally just right across the street from each other. So I locked that down. My next steps were to go through. I chatted with you and you were like, anything, Dion, that’s over 90 days old, it’s in the sale. And I was like, good Lord, this is going to be empty. Pretty much like, that’s what you think. You think an emotional battle. And it was very emotional going through it because you paid money for it. You know, it’s a beautiful piece.

0:31:32 A: You know there’s value to it, but it’s just not moving. So it is suffocating you. And for me, it felt like a chokehold. And so I was like, I have to do this. And there were many times where I had, like, a mental battle about it, where I was like, there’s got to be another way I can’t do this. How will it look for my brand to do this? But that’s where I would say it really is important to have supportive people around you.

0:32:01 A: And one of my good friends was like, people we know in town have a massive furniture store and it’s beautiful, but they also have a warehouse area where, like, anything that’s cracked dinged last season, whatever. And she’s like, right? She’s like, do you think less of that furniture store? And I’m like, no. She’s like, so how is this any different? I’m like, oh, I like it. I don’t know, because it’s me. Like, it just feels mentally this is.

0:32:33 B: Very brave of you to share this because people think it’s a shirt, it’s a pair of leggy. Like, why are you so damn attached to it? But this is why you being very open here is so important. Because you’re saying to people, you are attached. But you need to have a business mind when you’re doing this and you are going to come up against these feelings, but you just got to go with it. You got two choices. You either face the uncomfortable or you don’t. And you stay safe and you stay stuck.

0:33:11 A: I remember part of the nine ways to move your stock. You make reference to that in there and I just kept reminding myself of like, I will have freedom on the other side of this. It’s better for me to even just get back my cash than to have $60,000 worth of stuff in the back. It’s not doing me any good. It is really paralyzing me, and I made a lot of mistakes in my first year. One thing that I was really encouraged by was your team saying, like, but, Deon, you’re coming to us year one. People come to us at year seven, and we’re helping them. But you’re getting on this quickly. You recognize that there is a problem here. You’ll never make that mistake ever again by holding back that stock.

0:34:05 B: Like, all the money you’ve not lost. That’s like a double negative, right?

0:34:11 A: On my future money.

0:34:12 B: On your future money that you haven’t lost.

0:34:15 A: Definitely. And so, yeah, it all looks like fun and games, and at the end result, it was a lot of money, and it was really amazing. But it did come with emotional battles that I fought all along the way. And in the nine ways to move stock, I believe it was that video. You say, like, you have to think like a CEO. You cannot make an emotional decision on this. This is business. And so I kept reminding myself, this is business.

0:34:44 A: It doesn’t matter that I like that shirt. It’s old. It has to go the end. And so I kept reminding myself of that. And if I’m going to be the CEO of this company, I have to think like that. I can’t think like a tiny shopkeeper.

0:35:00 B: But I bought this thing, and it’s beautiful, and I sometimes they’re going, it’s so why are you so dumb? People like, it’s. Why are you not buying? Like, don’t worry, I did the same thing. I’m like, Why would you not? It’s like mavis. We’ve spoken about Mavis. I remember Mavis to our Supercharge program and her going to me, I don’t understand how you can guarantee that you would make me more money.

0:35:22 B: Like, I don’t understand. And then, like, three weeks later, I’m like, okay, I get it now. $15,000. Okay, I get it now.

0:35:29 A: Yeah. Did she say sorry? I know she’s Canadian. She probably threw a story. Sal. Yeah. All right, let’s get sorry I doubted you.

0:35:39 B: If people have got their pen and paper, if you haven’t, we should have this. We should turn this into a lesson. Okay, so we have the space. We’re holding it off site. We have the space. We have around 60,000 retail dollars worth of stock. What are we doing that gets people lining up around the block to come to this sale?

0:35:59 A: Walk us through it. Okay. So I have weekly calls with you and the team there, and so what we came up with was that Instagram stories were not enough. So you were like, Deon, go watch the video on how to come up with a great Facebook ad and how to market it and how to choose who it’s going to go to. And you also challenged me on sending emails, and you said to start doing SMS and I’ll get to that, but we kind of ran out of time for it. But you were like, you need to be sending I want to say that you said, you can correct me if I’m wrong. Five or six emails a week.

0:36:46 B: I would have said, yeah, in the week before twelve.

0:36:51 A: My face. I was like, are you kidding me? That’s a lot of emails. So leading up to this, you guys talk a lot about clavio. And I was like, what better time to learn a whole new thing when.

0:37:07 B: I didn’t have clavio before this? You didn’t tell us that.

0:37:11 A: I never paid for a Facebook ad. I didn’t have Clayview. I’m either nothing or I’m 1000%. So I’m like, I got to learn Clayview. I got to get all my subscribers over there, my email subscribers, and then I got to figure out segments, the whole thing. Many late nights. Many late nights. So I started by doing teasers, just saying, like, something big is coming, and blurring out pictures and saying, it’s happening this day.

0:37:44 A: Save the date. You’re not going to want to miss this. Pretty much. We did a whole week of just like hype about the sale, but people didn’t know what it was about. So just like teasing people. And I had people come into the shop and be like, what are you doing?

0:38:00 B: I didn’t even know it was a sale. It was just an event. They didn’t know what this event was because I was going to ask you, did it affect your sales in the lead up?

0:38:08 A: But we can get onto that because they didn’t know what was happening. Okay, so I did really, my email campaign was two weeks. So two weeks before the sale, I did all just hype about essentially nothing. Like just saying, like, oh, I really did it well, want to miss this. Just emails about that. Like, you better tell your friends. They’re going to be mad if you don’t tell them to show up to this event.

0:38:39 A: Like, everyone’s going to be talking about this. I didn’t know if everyone was going to be talking about it. I was just making it up.

0:38:47 B: I think we need to steal Dion’s email campaign.

0:38:52 A: It was fun, but I was just honestly sal you. And I talked every week and I just did what you told me to do. So you were like, you got to be emailing out to your royalty list, which is my top 4%, and you got to let them know as soon as we announced that it was going to be a huge warehouse sale, you got to be saying that they can shop early. And I was like, okay, so my royalty people can come in and shop early because they’ll feel special, whether that’s their thing or not. Give them the invite because they deserve to feel special.

0:39:28 A: So sending out emails like that and we decided to do door crashers we decided essentially what price point things were going to be at. So there were different specials. Buy this, get this. Pajamas, $20, $10 teas.

0:39:46 B: Did you know how many people were going to turn up? Did they have to register?

0:39:52 A: They did not. That was something you and I talked about. But I am the only person who works here.

0:39:58 B: Well, you were the only person who works. We’ll get on to that.

0:40:02 A: We will get on to that. But we decided we had to sort everything by size. We me had to sort everything by size. And we have these plastic crates that we sell in our store. They’re made out of recycled material. They come in many different colors. They’re very cool. And so we had to sort them into every bin and then we just sorted by size. But we didn’t sort by gender just to get people more of that, like, rummage sale mentality.

0:40:32 A: And with $60,000 worth of stock, that took a lot of time. So you encouraged that. And that was one thing that I still wonder if it would have taken things next level, that next level. If they had to register, it would have been nice. Or to get them to put their SMS in. Like, that’s something that I’m working on in my business, and I really want that. But managing motherhood, being a wife, the store prepping for the sale, many late hours, I was like, at a certain point, you have to just be like, I am going to do my very best and allow yourself to just have peace with that.

0:41:16 A: That was my theory. Especially since I was alone quite a bit doing these things here. I did recruit one of my friends to, like, fold things and put them in a bin. I’ll pay you in coffee and lunch or wine. Wine, yes, please help me.

0:41:36 B: With the royalty. Were they bringing friends? You gave someone the option to bring friends, right? Or are you getting there? Am I just budding into your conversation?

0:41:44 A: That’s okay. So our royalty people, I didn’t say that they could bring friends. I was just like, you come if they bring people. I wasn’t too picky about it. But then we ran an instagram contest, essentially share this post about the sale. Tag four friends that you want to take to the sale. And we’re going to choose ten people. So that’s 40 people coming early so they will join the royalty members. And that was crazy.

0:42:17 A: So we just bought for free an instagram contest ticker that picks ten people. So it was just at random. Couldn’t pick my favorite people, make it nice and fair. And they got to bring people. And people were crazy. They were like, do you need the names of my people? Do you need I’m like, I mean, sure, I’ll take their emails. I don’t need their name.

0:42:44 B: Phone number will do. It’s a mess.

0:42:46 A: Definitely just send me their number. That’s it. And then the week leading up, I think I sent out, you scared me with the twelve emails. You were like, go hard with the emails. And I was like, I will go halfway to what you were saying with the emails. And so I think I did. It started on the Sunday that we announced actually what it was, and we were having the sale on the next Saturday. Every day an email went out and then we did two emails a day from Wednesday through Saturday. And on Saturday, I think four emails went out, counting down the time, like, the sale is about to start. You better get down here.

0:43:26 A: We’re 1 hour into the sale.

0:43:28 B: I love you.

0:43:28 A: Right now we have an hour left. We’ve got 30 minutes left. Genius. That wasn’t me, that was Selena.

0:43:38 B: You did it. You took the advice and you did it. Did you have any feedback on that from the people who were there? Like, I saw the emails.

0:43:45 A: Yeah, like, just people just saying like they were so excited and they were so hyped up, and I think everything just piles one on top of the other to create this craziness because that’s what it was. It was crazy.

0:44:02 B: Did it open at nine, is that right?

0:44:05 A: Yes. So it opened at nine. So I came down to my shop at eight and I was like, getting my two tills all ready to take next door and making sure everything was ready to go. And I crossed the street, headed across to where we’re going to have the sale at 815 and there’s 20 people outside and I’m like, oh, I’m starting to sweat. I’m like, the doors aren’t opening for 45 minutes.

0:44:37 B: These are the people who the only people who are here are the competition winners and your top 4% of customers.

0:44:44 A: Yeah, maybe 70 people were invited. That doesn’t mean everyone would come. But people were lined up and they were ready to go. So we were inside and just kind of like everything was ready to go, so I kind of felt awkward. I was just like, there’s all these people lining up outside. And then we kept peeking through the window and we’re like, oh my God.

0:45:09 B: Did you think that should we let them in early?

0:45:12 A: No, I was worried that people would be disappointed because you’ve created this hype. I’m like, what if they think there should be more things? What if they don’t like what we’ve brought? What if it’s just all that negative self doubt that just gets in your head? No one said that to us. In fact, like you mentioned earlier, people waited two over 2 hours to pay for these items.

0:45:40 B: No one was like, in what world?

0:45:43 A: That wasn’t happening. It was crazy. So doors open, 09:00 doors open, and in comes I would probably say 65 people. Wow. And so for the first 15 minutes, we just kind of stand there because no one’s ready to pay. They’re going crazy. And there’s this one papa, like a grandpa, just standing there, and there’s his wife and his two daughters, and they’re just throwing things at him. And I’m like, oh, my gosh, what on earth is going on?

0:46:19 A: And my worry was that they were going to come up to pay and then start sorting out what they wanted and didn’t want. And there was none of that. Nobody did that. He just came. Yeah, no big deal.

0:46:35 B: Was he the first sale that you put through?

0:46:38 A: No. They probably shopped for oh, my goodness. 35 minutes, 45 minutes. Wow.

0:46:45 B: What were you thinking on that first sale? Because you can see the people coming in.

0:46:50 A: You’ve got this.

0:46:50 B: Oh, my God. What if they don’t like my staff? But they seem to be having fun, right?

0:46:56 A: It was like nervous jitters. Like, I was like I don’t know how to explain it. I had also only had a banana and a cup of coffee. I was not well prepared for this. I was like, sheerly running on caffeine and adrenaline. It was very poor health day, feeding myself day. Yeah, I was pretty excited, and I was just like, okay. And then at one point, because you’re so busy, I was like, oh, it’s starting to die down, forgetting that the rest of the population is coming at 10:00 a.m..

0:47:31 A: I look up and there’s, like, the doors across the room, and it’s all glass, and I can see that it’s packed with people because it’s so loud in this day.

0:47:42 B: The doors are shut at this point, right?

0:47:46 A: And so a friend of mine went out and videoed it, and these people were all in, and then, like, down the street, it was bananas. So they all come in and then for four straight hours. So from ten till two, we just were ringing people in. Like, I would look up and I’d be like because my customer service side is like, I don’t want those people to wait so long. I’d be like, line. Like, it was just it went on forever.

0:48:17 A: And my friend’s like, Stop looking at the line.

0:48:21 B: Just scan foster, keep your head down.

0:48:25 A: Be quiet. So we’re just beeping people through and ringing people through, and it was wild. Out of all the hours that we were there, we didn’t have one customer who was mad. No one annoyed about the time to wait. Like, they waited an hour to get into shop. Some people waited over 2 hours to pay. People were just pumped by the time they made it up to us. We were quick to apologize, to be like, oh, my gosh, thank you so much for waiting. And they’re like, no problem.

0:48:57 A: They were thrilled to be there, so it was a very cool experience. I definitely needed a chiropractic adjustment. It was a lot of being bent over like this. And like I said, friends just randomly showing up and just putting coffees in front of us because there was no going to the bathroom. When you have a lineup that is that long, there’s no like, time out, everybody.

0:49:21 B: Let’s go get bathroom break.

0:49:23 A: I need some fresh air. There’s none of that. They will eat you alive if you’re not hustling hard. And so it was wild. And I remember at about 215, it finally died down enough that one of us was on the till. And I went to the bathroom and I came back and I was like, okay, I’m going to check where we’re at sales.

0:49:44 B: Hold on. Before I get you to do that, before you reveal how much we’ve kind of talked about this, but there was actually two parts of this sale.

0:49:52 A: Definitely.

0:49:53 B: Let’s just rewind to the conversation you and I had about putting some goals in place for this sale. I remember having my calculator out and you saying you had $60,000. I’m going to get my calculator again. And you were like, okay. I’m like, what’s your average order value? And you said $6,000 was your first goal and you said your average value was eight.

0:50:15 A: And I’m like, you, selena were so nice.

0:50:20 B: You were like, ever since I’m nice, deon.

0:50:25 A: No, you were like, so you’re going to sell approximately 100 pieces. I don’t know. Yeah, as soon as you said that I was like, oh, no, that is a stupid answer. Then, yeah, that’s fair.

0:50:38 B: And I think I’m pretty sure I don’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure I said 22,000.

0:50:44 A: And you went, yeah. I think I was like, all right.

0:50:49 B: Well, take it easy.

0:50:51 A: Why don’t I say 18? Because I wrote down 18 on my paper. I was like, you can say 22 all you want. I’m going to say 18.

0:51:00 B: Do I think goal as well?

0:51:03 A: No, I think you wanted me to. That was my stress goal. Up from 6000. Okay, that’s really pushing myself.

0:51:13 B: Fast forward 02:15 p.m.. Just come back.

0:51:17 A: I’m like, okay, I’m going to go on my shopify in my heart, based on everyone I’ve rung in, I’m going to say we’re at $7,000. I was very tired and on like three cups of coffee. Math is not my forte. So I reload my shopify page and it comes up as like 19,800 and some dollars. And I was like, shut up. Like, that bitch was wrong. People there shopping. I would have been like screaming. It felt very surreal.

0:51:57 A: Very surreal. We still had another. We were open for the sale until 04:00. So we did another. I think we ended that day just under $22,000, $100 less. And we still had believe it, we still have things left over. So I decided because this sale was only in person and there were a lot of people, we have customers who live out of town and people who don’t live in our city at all, I decided that we would run it the remainder online the next day.

0:52:33 A: And so emailed everybody knew ahead of email. I’m an email queen now. Sent out more emails saying this is when it’s going to happen. People like, messaging me on Instagram and they’re so excited. And we launched it. I want to say at 01:00 on Sunday, I probably could have started earlier, but by the time we took down the sale and did everything, I was recovering. And the next day I had to mother a little bit and go to church and do the things. I was like, I need some regular life before we get crazy again.

0:53:13 A: We launched at 01:00, and within 20 minutes, we were over $1,000. And probably to a lot of people, it wouldn’t be a big deal to have over 100 people shopping on their site, but I never had 100 people shopping on my site. And we had people all over the States, and we have a couple of Australians who shop with us and people who are in Ireland. And I’m like, this is bananas. And so I spent a lot of my afternoon just, like, eating chips, just watching the orders refreshed.

0:53:50 A: Like, New York just bought this. Whatever.

0:53:54 B: Yes.

0:53:54 A: Just refreshing, just watching that money come on in. And so that day we did, I think it was an additional 150 sales. And so, yeah, we ended the end between those two sales days just under $30,000.

0:54:19 B: You sure it was just under? Just over.

0:54:22 A: Just under.

0:54:23 B: Okay, all right. Maybe it’s my wishful thing.

0:54:25 A: You trust me in my bank account. All right.

0:54:31 B: You know how proud I am of you, because the fact is, you did the things. You weren’t close minded, you were open to suggestions. What do you think of your old filler bag concept right now?

0:54:46 A: I think back on places that have done it, and I’m like, damn, you shouldn’t have done that.

0:54:53 B: I’m smarter than you, honestly.

0:54:55 A: But I’m like, oh, I have a different idea for you. You don’t live in my city. We have different ideas. I’ll share it with you. Let me help you. Yeah, in theory it’s such a great concept, but then when you talk it out, you’re like, oh, yeah, that’s not a good idea. That won’t make me the most amount of money. At the end of the day, it might have moved stuff, but I needed back as much cash as I possibly could have.

0:55:28 A: And so this was the right way to do it, in my opinion. And it really is. Like, my whole philosophy is especially for this, is be coachable. So if you told me to do something and I mean, that doesn’t mean that I just nod endlessly. I have conversations with you where I’m like, okay, but what about this? Or what about this or that? Makes me feel uncomfortable. Like, we talk it through, but I have to trust what you’re telling me and then test it.

0:55:59 A: And it obviously tested very well, got a whole bunch of money back in my bank account. My stockrooms practically cleared out.

0:56:08 B: And so how does it make you feel? Because we don’t advocate sales. If we can, we will try everything else to maximize your profits, but you got to this point where it’s like, there’s so much there just isn’t any other option at this point. How do you feel now in retrospect, knowing that you sold those products for a loss, essentially, or I say a loss, I don’t mean it like that at all. For less than what you probably hoped.

0:56:38 A: To get for them. Do you even care now? I don’t care. I cared right up until the sale. And what was funny is people would bring things up at the sale and.

0:56:51 B: They’D be like, this is so cute.

0:56:52 A: I never saw it in your store. And I’d be like, freaking hung there for a year, dang. It like you didn’t want to pay full pump for it now, seriously, I could tell you every spot it moved to in my store. At the end of the day, the feelings that I feel now, the freedom I feel, the relief that I feel far outweighs my care for those items, it’s just closed. It had to go. It was too much of a weight on me to keep it around.

0:57:30 A: And so I kind of had the mindset not that I shared this with customers, but I had the mindset of like, it’s got to get the hell out of here. By the time the sale came, I was like, you got to go, friend. You can’t live here anymore. And I remember you saying, like, deon, you take that $10, take the $10 and get the thing out of here. If you need to sell for $10, you get it out of here.

0:57:55 B: You bought something that you can okay.

0:57:57 A: That’s right. You take that $10 and you make different decisions going forward. Then I’m like, all right, Sal, I’m going to do it. I feel far better.

0:58:06 B: Let’s fast forward, what, two weeks? It’s been only like, two weeks now. What has happened in your business since then?

0:58:13 A: Well, I kind of thought that there would be a ripple effect where people wouldn’t shop with me after because they had been all shopped out. That’s not the case. Yeah, it’s been a great two weeks since then. I’ve definitely stayed on top of sending out emails and being more proactive in that, definitely learning more and more about that. And I have made the very brave decision by coaching someone. I hired my very first full time staff.

0:58:48 A: And so it’s very thank you. It’s very exciting, scary. But as some of my friends like to say, the business needs with the business needs, and you can’t make it to the next level if you don’t have that person in place. I can’t keep doing what I’m doing and then expect better results for my store if I keep things as they are. How did you hire? Her name is Coral, and I went to a dying mall in our city, and I went to go find someone who was giving me great customer service. So I went shopping, and she gave me wonderful customer service, and essentially, I ended up poaching her and what role she will be working her way to being my store manager.

0:59:39 B: Amazing. I love the way that you said when she upsold me, she was trying to eat. Like, that was it. You up on my team.

0:59:46 A: I was like, hello? Say more words. Sell me more things.

0:59:52 B: I love this, that you were just like, I’m just going to go shopping for a new employee.

0:59:57 A: Definitely.

0:59:57 B: I’m not recruiting. I’m just shopping for a new employee.

1:00:00 A: I tried it, and I was so annoyed with the people that applied. Like, I tried the old fashioned way. Like, you put out a job ad.

1:00:09 B: Not an old fashioned way.

1:00:11 A: No, just terrible. Oh, my goodness. It was turning up terrible results with these people that were coming in, and I was like, there has to be a better way. I like finding people in an authentic way, meaning they are in their natural habitat of doing what they’re doing in their job. And so how they’re going to treat me? Do they even look up? Do they even say hello?

1:00:35 B: Do they even break on their phone?

1:00:37 A: Exactly. And, like, are you trying to help me find something? What does the store look like while you’re working? What is the conversation like that you’re having with me? Are you going to upsell me? How are you talking to me? And she was amazing. And one of the best parts for me is in my conversation with her, when she came in for the interview, I said, what? Ultimately, if you had your dream job, what would the hours look like? And she almost got emotional, and she’s like, actually, what you’re offering of Tuesday to Saturday? Because my husband works Tuesday to Saturday, and I always work Sunday Mondays, and we haven’t had a day off together in, like, four or five months. And she’s like so to be able to have a Sunday Monday off with my husband every week would be life changing for our relationship.

1:01:27 A: And I’m like, meant to be. I like it. It’s meant to be. It’s meant to be. And so that’s also important to me, is making sure not only that they will do a good job here, but that we’re a good fit for them. It was the same in my old job. It has to go both ways.

1:01:46 B: Okay, before we finish up, I know you have a piece of paper there. And again, gold star for you, because you actually filled out a debrief form, which is what we get people to do after you run a promotion. So can you quickly run us through the things that worked and the things that.

1:02:02 A: Didn’t.

1:02:02 B: Or things that you change.

1:02:04 A: Do you want to tell everybody why I have the sheets here?

1:02:06 B: Selena, why do you? Because you told me to.

1:02:11 A: She was like, Fill up that sheet. And I was like, I’m going to fill out the sheet. She didn’t ask me about it.

1:02:16 B: Did you find the process of filling it out, though? Like the fact that you can look back in a really unbiased way?

1:02:23 A: Did you find it?

1:02:23 B: Cathartic or enlightening? Because most people don’t want to fill out the paper. They don’t want to do the work right. That’s why they’re not you. They’re not getting these results because they don’t want to spend 15 minutes filling out the form.

1:02:35 A: Yeah, I definitely found it. Enlightening I also am a very like I want to come back to this again hopefully never that I’m doing a warehouse sale. Let’s be clear. I don’t ever want to have $60,000 worth of stock that I have to do this again. But I know myself well enough. And I’m aging enough that I know I won’t remember. It doesn’t matter how much I think I’m going to remember every little step I took. So I Have to Write It down and so I want to put a File folder in my cabinet to Be like, these are the promos we ran.

1:03:06 A: How did it play out? And here are the facts about it versus me just being like, I think it was great. And look, sometimes they went on a way in a prayer.

1:03:14 B: As you know, sometimes you run a promotion and you’re like, my people didn’t want this thing.

1:03:18 A: Definitely just to give everyone watching or listening a dose of reality. I ran a May Long Weekend promo and it did not go well. But did I talk to Selena about it first? No, I didn’t. Okay. Live it, learn it, live it, learn It. Not everything will be perfect as you Go Forward. So my ad spend was a whopping $145. I spent $124 on my email and then I also calculated in my $130 that I had to spend for my Space next Door.

1:04:01 A: We ran social media stories and posts. We only added 31 new customers to our database by doing this, but it.

1:04:11 B: Paid off customers from the Tagging.

1:04:19 A: You know what? We got more followers, but I need to figure that out in the future of how to Take that. Like, you and I talked about this and that was something I didn’t execute on, which is like sending people to our website to get them to essentially enter them by having them put in their email and their phone number, be a little bit more strategic in that area versus like Instagram. Followers are great, but that’s not money and that’s not targeted people and that’s Not I mean, at the end of the day, the emails are gold. If everything else goes away, you can still sell to people when you have their emails and so that is something that I’ll do in my 1st 90 days and like plan it for going ahead.

1:05:03 A: I just don’t have that knowledge right now with Clavio and how to do that. But I do believe in that resource and know that that will be something that helps me grow. One thing I did learn that I wrote down on my sheet is we need to have more tills running if we ever do an event like this ever again. Even just one more till. Just one. I don’t know if they have this in Australia. I just have to tell you this quickly.

1:05:33 A: Like when they take kindergartner kids out and they have to hold a rope, hold onto a rope. We freaking had pregnant women with handfuls of stuff and a friend of mine escorting them. They looked like kindergartners with a little rope across the street to be rung in at my store because they were so pregnant and so much stuff and they just couldn’t stand in the line for 2 hours. So my friend would be like who needs to go to the store, use the bathroom, you want to be checked out at the store across street. So you’d just see a dozen women like little ants in a row crossing the street and I’m like well I hope they don’t rob me blind.

1:06:11 B: Who would have thought of that, right? But the fact that that’s a great thing that you learned was one that customer experience two, one, freeing up the space, but also just that oh my God, these people actually care about the fact what other warehouse say am I going to where I’m holding all this stuff and I’m pregnant and they’re just looking at me? Definitely that’s going to build the loyalty.

1:06:39 A: I hope so. I mean as you and I have recently talked, we want to be known as friendly, kind, not necessarily nice, but going over and above for our customers, right? That’s what sets us apart from Joe Schmo in our city. So what didn’t work? I would need to think about that a little bit more. I think I could have gained far more email addresses, SMS’s, things like that that I wasn’t able to capture based on time and my inexperience and the fact that I’m a solo person at my store.

1:07:16 A: So I missed out on I believe tons of data that was there. So looking back I’m like oh, I definitely missed out on that, having SMS but I wasn’t gathering that information ahead of time. So now it is in place and I’m not sure what I could have done to gather that at the time and I don’t know if there is even an answer for that. Yeah, we can talk about that. Okay. Later, Dion. I’ll get you girl. I got you girl.

1:07:51 A: But definitely, I mean that’s critical information that I need for growing and those people were there so that was a missed opportunity for me. I got them at the sale. I got their money. They took my stuff. And so all of that was great. But how do I reach them again without it being through Instagram posts and things like that? So I definitely need to be growing in that area as well.

1:08:15 B: Okay, I think it’s time to finish up because you and I have talked for ages and we’re so chatty. We are so chatty and you’ve been very open and very vulnerable sharing a lot of this stuff. So thank you. Any words of wisdom to people who are out there feeling the way that you did eight weeks ago?

1:08:38 A: I would say don’t be afraid to take that step and commit to yourself and to your store by investing in this program and investing in yourself. That’s really what it is. It is scary and it is a big amount of money. But if you do feel the fear that I felt and the worry that you have and that you feel, like, almost suffocated by your store and the decisions that happened, you have to take that investment in yourself. I mean, it was one of the biggest decisions I made and I have no regrets about that. And it’s just a good learning curve and everything is just learning.

1:09:25 A: Once you make that decision, you can actually breathe a little bit and everyone’s here to help you. And so don’t stay stuck because you’re afraid.

1:09:35 B: That’s like a tweet. If I tweeted, that would be a tweet.

1:09:38 A: I got to make that like a.

1:09:39 B: Real let’s be honest, I’m not making anything. It’s all your team. Well, thank you so much again for sharing and being so open and walking everyone through, because we see this success. But at the end of the day, we’re like, well, what did they do? And you’re like, actually, I just was scrappy. It was messy, but it worked.

1:10:04 A: That’s right. And I just think, like I said to you and you were like, you want to be on the podcast? And I’m like, I’m just going to say I did what Selena told me to do over and over and over again.

1:10:17 B: The team gave you some good tips there.

1:10:20 A: Definitely they did. But if you commit to something, it’s because you have the experience. I wouldn’t have been in the position with $60,000 worth of stock in my back room if I knew what the heck I was doing. So at the end of the day, what do you have to lose? All right. Got to go for it.

1:10:39 B: The perfect point to wrap this up. So thank you so much again. And if people want to check out your store and maybe even just check out your socials because you are really great at socials, where can they find you?

1:10:49 A: Thank you.

1:10:51 B: Sure.

1:10:51 A: On Instagram, we are little Kinfolk, K-I-N-F-O-L-K. Or you can find us on our website, triple w dot littlekinfolk CA. Awesome.

1:11:03 B: Check it out. And definitely check out the socials because they are great at socials. And you can see some pictures of the videos of the event there as well.

1:11:13 A: Awesome. Thank you, Selena.

1:11:16 B: So that’s a wrap. I’d love to hear what insight you’ve gotten from this episode and how you’re going to put it into action. If you’re a social kind of person, follow me at the Selena knight and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review.

1:11:45 B: On your platform of choice. Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and ecommerce stores just like yours, that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it’s a win for you, a win for your community, and a win for your customers. I’ll see you on the next episode.