Salena Knight (00:00)
At my first trade show, I was so excited, aisle after aisle of products. Reps calling out, there were samples everywhere to put in my little tote bag. That whole buzz of this could be the thing that changes my sales. I hadn't been in business long enough to know what I didn't know yet. I just knew I finally had a store, a real store, not just even an e-commerce store. And I was standing in a giant hall full of

Salena Knight (00:29)
everything that I could possibly fill it with. Now some of it was really easy to walk past. It just didn't fit. But some of it I just wanted. I liked it. That was the whole reason I was going to buy it. My customers never entered into those decisions. Fun fact last year I sold the house that we had lived in for 20 years. And as I was going through all of those boxes that you have in the attic, in the garage, in the storeroom, I found in one of those boxes

Salena Knight (00:59)
These sew-on barrettes, these little sort of flower things that you sew onto clothes. Now here's the thing. I bought those at my very first trade show, what, 17 years ago? And they didn't sell. I remember discounting them. I remember moving them all around the store. I remember clearing them. I tried every trick I could to move them. And what, nearly 20 years later, here they were sitting in a box in my garage, coming back to haunt me.

Salena Knight (01:29)
Hey there and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast, where we're we talk ways to make you money and to grow your store. Now, those barrettes had absolutely no business being in my store because I ran an eco-baby boutique. So we were looking at eco-organic natural products for babies and mums. Now, so on Barrett's, they were not eco, they weren't even baby, and they had nothing to do with what my customers.

Salena Knight (01:58)
were coming into my store for. I remember being so excited waiting for all those boxes to arrive, waiting in anticipation for dozens and dozens of boxes to turn up the following week, ready to go on my shelves and sell. The reality was came in dribs and drabs over a period of months. But the money didn't go out in dribs and drabs I paid out tens of thousands of dollars almost straight away.

Salena Knight (02:25)
For stock that sometimes would take months to land, let alone be able to sell. And some of it, I ended up having four, five, or six versions of basically the same thing. I liked the variety. I got swept up in the moment. But my new mum customers, they didn't want the overwhelm of trying to choose from five different choices of the same thing. If I'm honest, while all that money was going into stock that never should have been made into my store, there was other stock that I should have.

Salena Knight (02:54)
really leaned into harder and just didn't. Money that I could have put behind what my customers already wanted instead of spending it on what I wanted. But I didn't realize that at the time. After a little while, I just thought I made one bad purchasing decision. I mean heck, we always make a bad purchasing decision, right? It took years before I understood that it was something much bigger than that. That I genuinely didn't understand what

Salena Knight (03:22)
My money was w there to do. It was not just a case of how much do I have to spend? It was more about what does this dollar, what is it supposed to achieve for my business? Nobody had ever sat me down and shown me the difference. I was making all of these decisions by feel. I was calling it business sense. Heck, I had a business degree. I knew what I was doing. And I would just chalk it up to sometimes you make the wrong decision.

Salena Knight (03:52)
But 17, well, 18 years later, I was holding a little packet of Barrett's in a box and it was still teaching me something. Here's why I'm telling you this now. Instead of leaving this as a fun, bad trade show purchasing story, because pink season is coming and it puts us, every single one of us, back in that exact same position that I have been in there. Standing in front of a decision with money on the line, having to choose without always knowing.

Salena Knight (04:22)
If we are going to choose well, you are gearing up for your biggest quarter of the year. Now, you might go into this thinking, well, I've got $70,000 to spend for each month, and your gut says, spend that, don't go into debt, be grateful you're not borrowing a cent. But here's the thing: your business might actually need $150,000 worth of stock a month to meet what this season is genuinely going to demand. So you sit there and you realize, well, you need to make a decision.

Salena Knight (04:50)
Do you trim down the order to match how much is in your bank account? Or do you find a way to fund the gap? I mean, you know that moment I'm talking about. The supplier's reorder form is open on your screen, or you're sitting there adding things to cart. You are literally looking at the quantity field and you're thinking, do I need that many? No. I'll delete that. No, I'll just make that number a little bit smaller. It's that moment, that same moment.

Salena Knight (05:18)
That I was standing there at that trade show with just a bigger number attached to it. And probably a whole lot more writing on it than a simple packet of one bad buying decision of barrettes that are little flowers that get sewn onto clothes. So this year, going into peak season, that buying decision carries more weight than usual. Borrowing has become more expensive across pretty much every single market for a while now.

Salena Knight (05:47)
And so what you're going to find is you'll have this instinct to play it safe. And safe is going to feel more justified than it has ever felt. And if you have ever beaten yourself up about that buying decision, if you've ever overordered and felt reckless or underordered and missed out on tens of thousands of dollars, I want you to hear this. It's not about willpower or discipline or being more careful next time. You are likely just guessing.

Salena Knight (06:16)
And guessing with good intentions, the same way that I was guessing when I stood in that trade show. This is what people do. It's just a gap. When I sold the house, I threw those barrettes out. Seventeen years, too late to even matter. But I'm still telling you this story because they're a pretty good reminder that money that you don't understand doesn't just cost you in the moment. It follows you around, just like those barrettes did.

Salena Knight (06:46)
For nearly two decades in a box in a garage. Yours might be following you around right now in the shape of a decision that you haven't made yet. You're about to make a lot of decisions. Q4 is fast approaching. Peak season doesn't start when your customers show up, it starts months earlier, now, when the buying decisions that you're making make a difference. Before a single extra customer walks through your door or goes to the website. By the time the season arrives,

Salena Knight (07:15)
The ceiling on how much money you can make, you will have already set that. Not by how well you sell, but by how well you bought. And that is exactly why I want to help you get ahead this quarter. I am running a series of masterclasses over quarter three, and the first one is built around money. On the 30th of July, I am spilling the tea on how most retailers will leave tens of thousands of dollars on the table during Q4 and how to stop that.

Salena Knight (07:46)
In our second masterclass in August, we will dig into how to work out what products to buy, how much to buy, when you need those products to arrive, and how you're going to sell it. And I'm gonna make sure this one drops just before the big buying fares in Australia and in America. And in our third masterclass, you'll uncover how to get more people buying before Black Friday and Christmas so that your Q4 sales are not relying entirely on discounts.

Salena Knight (08:13)
Now these are all completely free. You can register for one, you can register for two, you can register for all of them over at https://salenaknight.com/q3. If you want to put yourself in the best position to have a profitable peak season, don't leave money on the table. I want you to know what to spend, what to stock, and how to build demand before everybody else.

Salena Knight (08:39)
Register now over at https://salenaknight.com/q3. I'm looking forward to seeing you there and thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I would love it. If you listen to this one on social media, tag me and let me know the thing that you bought that is still haunting you. Alrighty guys, thanks so much.

Salena Knight (08:59)
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.

Salena Knight (09:08)
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 on your platform of choice. Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and e-commerce stores just like yours that we can help to scale. And when that happens,

Salena Knight (09:38)
It's a win for you, a win for your community, and a win for your customers.