Welcome to the She Sells Differently podcast. We are so blessed that you're here. And today I have an exciting guest that I know you listeners are going to just love this episode. I have Selena Knight from the Gold, I say Gold Coast of Australia, but are you from the Gold Coast? I actually grew up on the Gold Coast, but no, I live in the beautiful Manly, Sydney now. But I am, I have one foot in the U.S. in California because my mom actually is from San Diego. So I do go back to say, not to say my mom's family, they've all passed away, but I did. I've got, my heart lives in San Diego half of the time. Oh, well, I've always wanted to visit Australia. It's one place I have never, one continent I've never been, one country I've never been. And so I hope to get there one day, but I'm excited for this conversation.
So this holiday season could be your most profitable one yet. And I know my listeners are all going, yes, that's what I want, but how? And so if you are wondering how, then this episode is for you. And especially if you have been relying on your past strategies of discounting your products and thinking that that is going to help you get there. So I'm excited that Selena is joining us today. She's a former award-winning multi-store retailer turned powerhouse retail strategist, and she has a business called the Retail Academy, and she's helped hundreds of independent retailers and e-commerce brands across Australia and the US build profitable, sustainable, and highly sought after businesses. So we are going to talk exactly today, how to double your sales this holiday season. Welcome Selena.
Oh, thank you so much for the invitation. Can we start with, I love money?
Yes. Amen. Because I feel like talking about money needs to be normalized. I mean, we are in business, my friends, and business is for making money. We actually have a mantra in our company, which is, or an affirmation, whatever word that you want to use, which is the more money I make, the more people I serve. It's a bit of a play on words because obviously we would serve more customers if we made more money, but also the fact that we can then, I mean, it's a proven stat that women put a vast majority of their money back into the community. So, and I'm sure that you have a lot of women like I do who are listening. And so if we are able to make more money in our businesses, then we get to share that wealth. Or you know what? You can buy a Lamborghini if you want to. I'm okay with that because the dealer still gets his money. The salesperson still gets his money, like the money is still being spread around.
Yep. And so I'm so glad you said that because that's really a mental stigma, I think, that we as women struggle with of just the battle of the mindset of money and earning money. And this is, we talk a lot about faith on this podcast, and I think it's especially something hard for Christian businesswomen too. And something I always am battling of, you know, and you just nailed it. You just nailed it, Selina, because you said when you are able to make more money, you're able to serve more people. And that ultimately is the purpose too, is to be able to serve and to give back to other people. So.
I mean, if we think about what it is we do, I always say florists have the best job in the world because they literally sell happiness and joy and excitement. And even in the sad circumstances of someone passing away, they're selling comfort, they're selling celebration of life. And to me, florists, you guys have got it made because it's just like, no one is unhappy when they get flowers. Like I'm allergic to most flowers, but that's beside the point. I still get happy when I get flowers. Hilariously, my next door neighbor has just moved. I've just got a new next door neighbor and she's a florist. And so I get all the leftovers. It's really, really lovely. I feel like the universe has kind of gone, here you go. You can just, I'm just going to give these to you.
But at the end of the day, why do you get into business? And I think a lot of people start with, oh, well, there was a product that I liked or, and I couldn't find it or, you know, I kind of fell into this. I thought it would be fun to open a retail business. I've done wholesale. And so I, that's exactly what I did. I saw a gap in the market. I couldn't find what I wanted. So I went off and I did manufacturing as we had small, we used to sell baby goods up to the maternity to the age of two and all back when eco was not a thing, it wasn't heard of. This was, I started in 2007 at the beginning of the global financial crisis. High school economics and my business degree did not prepare me for what happens when you go down into a recession. I feel like either it did and I just chose to ignore it or, you know, I blindly went into it because it was the right time. I was pregnant with my first daughter. This was back when we used to sell on parenting forums. So if I can, I don't know how old your listeners are, but if we go back way back to sort of 2007, 2008, we did not have data on our phones back then friends, just to remind you that this is what the world was like a mere, you know, 20 years, years ago. I remember when I was in hospital with my daughter, I had to buy a dongle to connect to my computer to download the photos to send to my in-laws who were in England. And you know, that whole process, it wasn't just, you know, click and send. And so my first kind of side hustle was importing nappy making fabrics. So my first business was selling eco products like modern cloth nappies and baby carriers back before they were a thing. And because you couldn't buy them here in Australia, I was making them very, very badly. Mind you, like, please don't, don't judge me by my sewing, but this is what I would do. And then I would be on these parenting forums and I would see all the patterns. And in the end, I was just, I like to keep my money in my pocketbook. And so I'd be like, well, why am I paying $10 a yard for that? When I could just go buy 500 yards from the manufacturer. And then I would just, I would pre-sell. And I didn't know it was a thing back then, but it was kind of like, you know, Hey guys, I'm going to buy, I'm going to import 500 yard roll of this fabric. Who wants in? And people would just go, yeah, I'll take five yards. I'll take two yards. And some other hobby businesses would start to buy.
And so I literally, the things you learn, I literally rocked up and maybe some of your listeners have done this because they're in wholesale. I turned up to the docks to collect my four rolls of fabric. I had a pickup truck. I had my baby in the, in the baby seat and you come in and you line up, they're called slots. And you line up in like down this massive road for your slot to open. And when your slot opens, you, you go on in with all the massive, you know, semi trailers. And I pull up to the gate and the guy says to me, you have a baby in the back. I'm like, yeah. And he goes, no, no, all worlds of no, you cannot bring a baby to the docks. And I'm like, well, that doesn't, that does not say anywhere that I, she's, she's I'm talking baby, baby, like not even toddler, baby, baby in, in the capsule. No ma'am, it's not happening, but I have to get my fabric. No, no, no. Wow. I organize to come back the next day, have somebody look after the baby. By now, if you've ever been, if you've ever had product at the docks, you only get about three days to collect here in Australia. And so now my product has gone into storage, which means you have to pay. So after three days, it goes into storage, which basically just means they'll charge you. So I line up the next day. I go through the whole process again. It's hours waiting for your slot to open. Wow. I get, I pay, I pay the money very begrudgingly. I pick up the product. I come back. Lesson learned. This is why there are freight forwarders. And you use one of those from then on. And you can't take a baby to the docks.
So that was kind of the beginning of me going into wholesale, going into manufacturing, going into retail. And the reason I bring this up is because as we go into the holiday season, a lot of people are going to be strapped for cash. It doesn't matter if you are wholesale, it doesn't matter if you are direct to consumer. But the fact of the matter is we have to buy a lot of inventory because people are going to be buying more. I mean, the stats are there. $10.8 billion on Black Friday alone in the US. How much of that are you getting? And this is what I'm adamant about. How much of that is going to independent retailers? The average American spends $1,200 on Christmas. About $902 on presents. The rest on food, decor, a bit of travel, a bit of entertainment, those kinds of things. $900 on presents. How much of that money are you getting? And let's make sure you get some of that.
Now, if I can be so bold as to just go on into why, you probably aren't going to get as much as you want. Are you okay with that?
Oh, yes. Let's dive in.
I'm a very straight shooter. The simple fact is you aren't promoting enough. Now, you mentioned before when we first got on, Andy, that you are against discounting. We are in the same boat and we are both rowing together because I don't believe that discounting should be the only way that you promote. But the problem is most retailers and wholesalers e-commerce stores all associate promotions with sales and sales being a discount. And you can see why because you just have to go to any mall and everything's been on discount this year because retailers have overordered. They're just clearing stock out.
And so, if the only way that you're attracting customers or trying to get customers to come back, and it does not matter if we're talking wholesale or direct-to-consumer, if the only way you're doing that is by a new product drop, all that money went into inventory, or a sale, what's the opposite of ka-ching? We end up with a cash flow discrepancy. And so, if we start to employ different strategies to get our customers to come back, which is not just training them to wait for a discount, then you will make more money. I mean, I can almost guarantee it because you're just putting your thing out there.
And so, I have five pillars of retail success. Money, which is understanding how money comes into, moves around, and goes out of your business. Customers, I think that's self-explanatory. Sales, which is all the different sales strategies that you can employ. Marketing. Marketing is telling the world that you exist and getting people to want what you sell. It's very easy to do one. It's really hard to do both. And I think a lot of people shout into the void about, hey, look at us, we're here, look at our products. But then they don't get people to want what they sell. Or they have the best products in the world and no one knows about them. You know, people will rave about their product in secret. And so, the world's best kept secret. So, it's really hard to do both. The last one is impact, which is all about brand and leadership, team culture.
And so, if we just come back to, I think there are three, well, I think they're all of them, but I think the three big ones we have to look at here is money. And so, when we go into a promotion, our first thought is generally, I'm here to bring in the dollars. But the thing is, that is not the only promotion out there. You might have a promotion that is to build your customer database. You might have a promotion that is to increase your average order value. You might have a promotion that is to clear old stock. And those are very different types of promotions that all require very different strategies and probably different segmenting as well.
And it's the same if you are in wholesale. You always need more customers. You always need more retailers. How are you bringing those people in? How are you enticing them? I'm going to guess for a lot of the listeners, they have some kind of discount on the first order. You know, put in your first order and we'll give you free shipping or put in your first order and we'll give you 10% off. It's like, so you are literally training them from the first interaction that they should not have to pay full price. Okay, you're positioning it as it's 10% off to kind of entice you to come in. But the reality is, if you can give me 10% off once, you can give me 10% off again. Like any smart, you know, financially savvy person is kind of going to say, well, you ate it on the first order, you can eat it on the second order. You know, so why would we do that? Why would we incentivize our customers, whether it is direct to consumer, whether it is retail, that the first thing we're going to do is give you money off? Yeah. I don't get it.
Here's the thing, we've done some testing. I think we've all been guilty of it, you know? Like, of course, because we see other people do it. Yes. And we look and we go, well, if they're doing it, I guess it must work. So I should do it as well. Or my customers expect it. But do they? Have you done the testing? Do they really expect it? They have done it. There are some brands where a discount works better. Funnily enough, those brands don't always see a huge uptake of the use of those discounts. Now that's okay. Like if you find that it brings the people in and they're not using it, great. As long as you understand the money side of things. Yeah. But if you find that they are using it and then they probably don't stick around, or depending on how big you are, you might say that the same person has seven different emails in your database so they could get that 10% off seven times. Yes. Do we really want that customer? Like, do we really? Because they're just fickle. They're only there when things are discounted.
And we talked earlier about discounting and we got like, I'm with you. I don't think it should be the first motivation, but there's a time and a place for discounting. And there are retailers and wholesalers that sit at the other end of the spectrum, which is, I never discount. At which point I can almost guarantee that you are not making a great profit margin because you aren't aware of how money works in your business. Because the minute you get past, I mean, I'm at 60, I'll stretch it to 90. The minute you get past 90 days and do not tell me, well, I manufacture my own products, so I need to have more than 90 days. No, that just means you haven't ordered well. It literally costs you money to have that inventory sitting there. It's costing you in insurance. It's costing you in rent. So it doesn't matter if I don't care if it's in your spare bedroom. I don't care if it's in a warehouse. I don't care if it's in your back stock room. It is still paying rent. It costs you in mental clutter. And then it costs you in cash. So the minute it sits there, I've worked this out. One $20 item has an opportunity cost of a million dollars over a year.
So, and I say that because if you'd sold that $20 item and you got your $20 and it costs you 10, then if you could sell that every single day, I think I worked it out at one every week, not even one every day. So if we sell that $20 item, we now have $20. Let's call it a candle. We buy a candle for $10. We sell it for 20. And you're probably thinking that's a cheap candle. Let's call it a travel candle. Then in one week, we have $20. We can go back and buy two without $20 because we now have $20 in liquid cash. I'm not accounting for cogs. It's okay. Don't worry. We'll get there. So we now can buy two candles. We can sell those two candles. We'll make $40. We can now buy four candles. When we multiply that out over a year, that is over a million dollars in opportunity cost on one $20 item. And I can guarantee everybody listening here has more than one $20 item.
I want to call this out too, because this is something that I have been preaching to all of my clients. And I've talked about on this podcast for, I mean, since the day, I mean, for the past two years that I have been on the air. And it is talking about that exact concept of how fast you're turning your inventory, but also the concept of really simplifying your product portfolio because of that. And I think a lot of my listeners out there are candle makers because I'm a candle maker. I have a candle business. And so I love that you use that analogy, but it's really hard when you're a creator or a maker, as you were talking about yourself and you see all these beautiful fabrics or these amazing scents or candle jars, and you just, you want to go make, make, make, right? But the problem with that is, especially if you're wholesaling or you're buying in bulk, because you want to keep your costs down that to your point, every time that is sitting on your shelf, that is costing you money. And I love that you just quantify that and opportunity costs over a year, because that's mind blowing. And we're not even talking about the cost of rent, the cost of insurance. I'm just talking about the literal cash that you have foregone because you got so attached to that scent that nobody actually wants to buy.
And I think that it's the sunk cost fallacy. It's a psychological factor, which is I invested in this thing. I want to get a return. And it's like, well, this is not about you. The only thing business is about when it comes to you is making you money, right? You are in business to serve your customers. And yes, you may be using your skill set. You may be using your ability to curate, but at the end of the day, the customer is telling you what they want to buy. And you are not a failure. If you made a burnt fig and cinnamon scent and nobody liked it, it's like, that's business. I'm going to guarantee you no one ever has had every single product, a hundred percent success rate. This is why you can go to a charity store and buy a brand name with the labels cut out because we all did it wrong. Because humans are fickle people. It's not a failure. It's just the cost of doing business. And I think we get so caught up in our identity of being a successful business owner that sometimes we forget these are just products and our customers are just people. And we're doing our best to try and figure out what it is they want, but we're not in their heads.
And the other thing I was talking about pre-sale and I think pre-sale is underutilized with independent retailers. It is a huge thing. Sephora do it for their Christmas advent calendar. I mean, if a company like Sephora is doing it, why the heck aren't you? Especially when it comes to trying to work out if what customers want is actually what they will pay for. Because it's easy for people to say, yes, I would buy that. And we've all been there. You put a poll out on social media and everyone says yes and gives it thumbs up and hearts it and you bring it in and nobody buys it. But you all said that you wanted it. So I brought it in. Come on. Where's the money? Show me the money. Yes. No, no. How about you show me the money and then I'll put my money or I put your money in and I'll get the product. Right. That's what I mean. That's the beauty of a pre-sale of put your money where your mouth is and then I'll go execute on it. You know?
Yeah. And so I think as we come into the holiday season, we do a lot of pre-selling with our clients, particularly coming into the holiday season, because it can be really difficult to guarantee stock. And so your suppliers will say, you know, you know, I can only give you 300 units or I can only give you 20 units. Or if you make it be like, I know I literally can only make 800 of these. So why would we not want the cash up front? Right. You're actually building the hype as well. Like you're building that marketing, which is getting people to know that you exist and want what you sell. So if your customers can see that this is a bestseller or this sold out last time, I mean, these are marketing words that are literally proven, psychologically proven to get people to buy. So you can go from, you know, you can have a product that is centrally placed, but you put the word bestseller on it and it's proven you'll get an uplift. You put the word staff picks on it or sold out in five days. You will get more sales. These are promotions, but they're not discounts. So how are you going to promote your products? And pre-sale is great. Pre-sale is the complete opposite of discounting. It's you're giving me the cash, not me. You're not taking my cash away from me. And so, yeah, there are lots of different strategies that we can employ.
And I'll hand over to you because I could literally talk about this for four days. We just did a bootcamp and I talked about this for four days. I don't think everybody here wants to listen to sell talk for four days. So I will get you to ask me the questions because they're your listeners and you have a really good understanding about what they want. So instead of me just talking, instead of me assuming I know what they want, I will hand it over to someone who has a better idea.
I love this. And what's interesting about this is I'm just absorbing. I'm over here taking notes because I, you gave me several nuggets of wisdom. One of them that I hadn't even thought of is adding staff pick or even, you know, I'm thinking about my website, like, you know, Andy's favorites. So, you know, and I utilize limited edition all the time. And one of my favorite strategies that I do or that I really love, I, um, I love this brand a walla. Um, I, I took this from them. They make amazing, um, water jugs, whatever. And so every month I'm on their email list and they do limited edition drops of new colors of their water mugs, whatever you call them. And I'm always excited to see what color they come out with, you know? And so it's, they don't discount. It's not a discount, but it drives an excitement and urgency. Now it, I don't necessarily buy every month, but I'm always excited to a seat. They're keeping you engaged. They're keeping me engaged. These are water bottles. Y'all they're water bottles, you know, orange. Right. And so it's just kind of funny. Um, it's, it literally is just a promotion that they do, but it's not a discounted promotion to your point. And so I love that. What are some other ways that you see some small e-commerce or retail brands create the urgency and excitement without the discount and competing on pricing?
The limited time is really good for me, but if you couple that with a timer, so putting a timer on a website page, putting a timer into an email, um, putting even a timer onto your social media, like if you're having a countdown timer on your social media, you can just do that in a real, uh, it is proven again. Like I am a, I call myself a pop psychologist. I have literally no degree in psychology, but I am so interested in why we do the things we do. So I'm always absorbing podcasts. I just interviewed, um, an amazing behavioral psych, a sales psychologist actually on my podcast. And we were talking about the different ways that you can use things like urgency and FOMO as we come into Christmas. And for me, timers was a big one. The wording is huge. And I mean, you could just go into chat GPT and you can just ask, you know, who is the best sales psychologist in the world and give me five strategies. And, but what we have to do then is come back and say, but which ones work for my customers?
Now, a lot of your people I'm going to guess are makers. So I was just reading a article by a behavioral psychologist called Danny Zane. And he was talking about how when you relay the story and the enjoyment of making it is proven to sell. I think it was like 67% uptake rate. Don't quote me on that, but it was a really, really high number. And so they did some studies where it was a chocolate Brownie and one Brownie was just like, you know, made with the finest ingredients. And the other one was, you know, chef Andy had the, had the most enjoyable time baking this with your ingredients from all over the world. Well, that one, when they put the, when they put the maker's enjoyment in over and over again, people chose that Brownie. And I'm like, huh, I would not have thought that I would have thought like finest goods because it's really important to tap into what your customers, I call it their currency. And their currency could be aspiration. It could be convenience.
Now, if we're talking about your customer's currency is aspiration, they're going to want really nice things, but at a price point that they can, that they can afford. I'm not going to say it has to be affordable. I absolutely despise that word affordable. And I think anyone who uses the word affordable, it's probably going to be out of business in three years because they don't have to. That's a relative, but you and I both know we don't like to pay full price for anything, right? So what is affordable to us will translate into the pricing structure that we have. And that's going to attract usually very mid-market people. And who are the people in an economic tightening who have less money that market, right?
What we are seeing with our clients time and time again, and this is across everything of the spectrum, fabric stores, clothing stores. We have a couple of homeware stores that it is expensive things that sell. So one of the fabric stores we work with just did a pre-sale to try and prove sale wrong. And I'm good. You can do everything you want to prove me wrong. And she's like, I don't think pre-sales will work. You know, it's the fabric business. There's people who've ruined it for pre-sales where they didn't follow through. So I'm going to pre-sell these $400 pair of scissors. Guess what? Sold out, could not get any more from the manufacturer. Took literally all of the manufacturer's stock. She's in Australia. The manufacturer is in England. $400 pair of scissors. Who buys a $400 pair of scissors? I don't know. Her customers, clearly. And it was this test that made her realize that she could bring in more expensive products. And I'm seeing this literally across the board.
We have another store that does garden decor. So, you know, outdoor, small outdoor furniture, pots, statues, things like that. Again, a glass cloche. So like the glass dome that sits over a plant. I mean, like this is where I'm like, if you would have asked me, I would have been like, I don't know about that as a pre-sale. Sold nearly a container load. And they're not even her product. The supplier had to order another container load. This is not a big store. This is a small store in Tasmania. I don't know if any of you know where Tasmania is. It's down near Antarctica, right? It's population is teeny, teeny, tiny. They sold out. So if you understand what your customers want, you can, you know, that is game changing to have that kind of cash coming into your business.
And so as we go into the holiday season, it really is, as I said, I like to talk. So I'm going to fast track to, please can I give you some actionable steps if you're listening and we can continue talking afterwards, but I need you to walk away with something that can be like, oh my gosh, you just talked and talked and talked and I came away with nothing.
One, when we go into any kind of promotion, you must know what it is you want from this promotion. What is your goal? What is your outcome? Because if you are running a promotion to build your customer database, do not come to me and complain you made no money. Because that was not the purpose, right? If you are running a discount sale and you brought the sales in, but you have no profit, don't come to me and say you have no money. That was not the purpose. The purpose was to move the old stock, to make it liquid, to give you the cash. You know, if you're doing something that is about increasing the average order value or the stuff, then you can come and complain if you've got no money, right? Clearly something didn't work there. But if we don't know what we want, how do we know how to even write the marketing for it? Because a campaign to build your customer database is going to have completely different wording to a campaign to clear our old stock. They're just not going to be the same. You're not going to employ the same strategies. You're not going to employ a 24-hour flash sale to get new customers. But you might do that to clear our old inventory, to build the hype, to build the awareness. And so number one, what is it we want?
Okay, once we have that, who exactly are we targeting? So you and I both don't like discounting and there's a time and place for discounting, which means the person who has seven emails on your database is there for a reason, my friend. They're the people that we're selling the flash sale stuff we need to get rid of too. So they have their time and place. But it really does mean taking a bit of time to go into your database, to go into your email, whatever it is you're using, and go, this message, this promotion is for this group of people.
As a VIP who buys everything on pre-order because I want the latest, I don't want to hear about your sale. You just actually are devaluating my whole experience with your brand. And it's just noise. So it is listening to, it is understanding our customer.
So what is the app? What kind of promotion are we running? What is the outcome? Who is this for? And then how are we going to sell it? And so are we going to sell it online? Are we going to give our VIPs access? Because of course, if we're running like a pre-sale, we might want to give the VIPs access before everybody else. Again, there we go. That's a very different strategy.
And so without knowing the kind of promotion we're going to run, we kind of can't do the rest of it. Or if we do, we're just making it up as we go along. I would rather have a framework, which is like, I'm running this kind of campaign, here's my run sheet for that. This is the kind of campaign we're doing, here's my run sheet for that. Once you build those, then deploying different types of campaigns is pretty easy.
But if you are just kind of, you know, and look, I've been there. I say, I share everything because Sal has been there. Oh, I don't know what email I'm going to send out this month or this week. This is the one thing. A lot of you send them out monthly. That's money that we're losing. Right. Even if you are sending out weekly, you are still losing money. You just have to sign up to any brand and you will probably get three emails a week. Minimum usually.
Pardon? I said minimum usually. I mean. Oh, minimum. Yeah. And they have these systems built out, which is, you know, if you don't open, they'll just resend you the email because they know that we, you know, we're busy. We go in and masterly everything. It doesn't mean I don't want it. I just don't have time for it right now. And so we have to be getting back in front of our customer.
And that's probably the next thing I would highlight. It's probably one of the biggest mistakes, which is you aren't actually promoting your promotion enough. And so if you put around about 3% of your social media followers, we'll see a post on a good day. So if we have a hundred followers, that's three people. If we have a thousand people, that's 30. If we have 10,000 people, that's 300. Now that means those three of those 300 people, how many people is this offer actually for? It's not going to be for everybody. Maybe it's for half of them. Okay. We're now down to 150, but is this the right time for them to buy or is the offer something that they value? Like the reality is for every social media post, unless you have a ridiculous following, I'm usually impressed if you get a handful of sales because we need, at the moment they say between seven to 21 touch points. And so if I just see one post, like this is a micro moment. In the meantime, I spilt my cup of tea or the phone rang or I've got to get on a podcast. We get distracted and then I forget. And so I rely on the email to come to remind me I want that thing. And then I rely on the email to come again to remind me that I want that thing. And then I really would like a text message that says I've got like five minutes left because I'm a busy person and I'll just click the button at that point.
And we worry that we're going to our customers. But actually not putting your offer in front of them over and over again is a disservice to them because you're just saying that you care more about you rather than louder for the people in the back. Amen. It's your job to be there. Yes. And so how do they need you to be there? I will almost guarantee that people won't unsubscribe. And if they do, they weren't meant to be there. Yeah.
So as entrepreneurs, we take that and listen, I built some thick skin after after 19 years in sales. I have built some thick skin when it comes to that. And I still like when I see an unsubscribe, I'm like and I'm you know, whatever. But I can't imagine for someone that has not been in sales and they struggle with what that really is. You know, the thing is, is they could have multiple emails in my email CRM and they're just unsubscribing from one of those emails because they got the email three times. Right. And so I, I think as entrepreneurs, we often take things way more personal, whether it's someone unsubscribing or, you know, our products and we need to slim down our product collection, our portfolio, and we get attached to things way more than if we're working for a company. Right. Yeah. And so it's, it's just a lot harder from that aspect. Why do you think that is?
Because everything we're doing, it's, it's personal in nature. We own the wins, we own the failures, we own all of the decisions and it can, it can just be a lot more personal, both good and bad. But I think that there is a, I think that it is so important to learn how to have some balance and some boundaries there between your work that, and you said it really well early, early on in the episode, you said it's just products and it's just customers. It's just people at the end of the day. Right. And I love that you said that because we, not everything we create is going to be a massive success. And when you go ahead and have that frame of reference, then when you do, not if, but when you do create something that doesn't do well in the marketplace, you can say, instead of saying, wow, this is a failure, you can say, you can reframe it and say, what can I learn from this to make the next thing I create even better?
I think if you ask most people who've been in business, I mean, whether we're talking about a social media post, whether we're talking about a product, I can tell you a story and I just found a piece of fabric to validate my story. But there is the thing that you think is going to go viral, the thing that you think is going to sell out, never is. Isn't that the truth? Always. I had this dress, we used to manufacture little baby girl pinafores, like very vintage style. And I would bring in the fabric from America because you guys have beautiful fabric. And I bring in bolts and bolts of fabric. We would send them off to the manufacturer. And I had this fabric. I didn't know I was going there. I would have had it on my desk to show you. It was green, like a minty green. And then it had all leaves kind of on a darker green. Beautiful fabric. But when it came back as a dress, I hated it. I was just like, no one is going to stick this on a baby. It doesn't work. I threw them into a trash bag. I literally lobbed them in my best basketball style up onto a box. The shelving in my storeroom was maybe like 15 feet high. It was ridiculous. And right at the top was like empty boxes and stuff. You would need a ladder to get there. And so I remember throwing this garbage bag full of these dresses. I did not want anyone to ever see them, never see the light of day.
Fast forward, I'm going to say a couple of years. It had rained nonstop for about a week. And one of my team members, and people don't go out with babies in the rain, and we were on a strip mall. It's not like we were in a big shopping mall. So people don't go. Anyway, it was quiet. So Tanya decides she's going to clean the stock room. And she's pulling everything out. She's dusting things off. She's putting things on clearance if they've been there for a while. She finds this trash bag full of dresses. I come into the shop and I see them literally lined up on the front table. She's hung them. And they're cute little baby dresses. She's hung them across the front table. I am ropable. I'm like, what are they doing there? And like, these are ugly, get them off. And she said, we've sold four of them this morning.
How much money did I lose from, I think there were 50, we should do 50 in a run, 50 dresses at $40 each. Bearing in mind, this was like 15 years ago. 15 dresses times $40 sat in a storeroom for the best part of two years. That's literally, it's probably $100,000 when we opportunity cost that out. That's probably $100,000 because I decided to play the almighty and say, actually, this is not good enough to sell. But it usually happens in reverse. We're all like, yo, this is the best things in sliced bread. Why are you not buying it? And they just don't.
So the reason I say that is because it always happens. I guarantee you, it will happen. I'm sure Sarah Blakely from Spanx has got a product that never quite worked. It may not have even met the light of day. Maybe it didn't pass quality control, but ask any business owner and it happens. And all I'm going to say from that is we learn something, like you said, and it's a test. And we never know what the, it is literally a roll of the dice to see is this going to work and is it not? And if it doesn't, what do we learn?
So one of the things I will finish up with is once we know our outcome and our goal, and we've set our targets, we understand who we're going to run this offer for, where we're going to run it. I really, really stress having a debrief afterwards. And I don't care if this was a flash 24 hour sale, or if it was a huge product launch, it could be a simple one pager. It's very basic. What worked that we would like to do again? What didn't work that we should, what did we want to do that we didn't get around to? Because quite often we'll run out of time or things will happen as we run a promotion and we're like, didn't even think of that. So what didn't we do that we would like to? And then what did we do that we won't do again? It's just something as simple as that. If you just keep those in a document after every promotion, that you will see, oh, this is what happens when we run presale campaigns. This is what happens when we run discounts. This is what happens when we do an inventory clear out. And then you just rinse and repeat. We do not have to make things complicated. Do more of what works. Simple.
Yes. I love that. And that is something that is so important as a reminder, whether you sell products, you sell services, whatever it is, that we make things way too complicated. I'm, I'm preaching to myself right here right now. We make things way too complicated and simplicity scales. Yeah. You know? Yeah. So what a good reminder. So thank you so much. This has been such a helpful time of, I'm, you know, like I said, I've been over here writing notes and just such good wisdom. And I know that my listeners are going to want to follow you and learn more. So if they want to follow you, where can they find you online?
So I am salenaknight.com. So it's S-A-L-E-N-A-K-N-I-G-H-T. I'm the Salena Knight on all the socials. And I have the bringing business to retail podcast, where we talk all about strategies that will make you more money in your business.
Awesome. Yes. So we will link all of that in the show notes and thank you so much for sharing your wisdom today. I loved this.
I love talking about, I love talking about growing businesses and making money.
Yes. Amen. Amen. There were so many things that I was like, that is just a mic drop moment. We need to quote that and I love it. So well, and thanks so much everyone for joining us today. And we will have a fresh episode of the She Sells Differently podcast for you next Wednesday. And until then we are cheering you on.

Andee Hart is the host of the She Sells Differently podcast and a business coach who helps women build profitable, purpose-driven product-based businesses.

With a background in sales and a deep understanding of the mindset challenges that come with growing a business, Andee works closely with makers and ecommerce founders to simplify their strategies, increase revenue, and sell with confidence - without relying on constant discounting or burnout tactics.

Through her podcast and coaching, she combines practical sales strategies with honest conversations about money, mindset, and what it really takes to grow a sustainable business.