Salena Knight 0:02
So 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 E commerce 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. 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.

Salena Knight 0:53
Hey there and welcome to the Breen business to retail podcast now. E commerce is an integral part of growing your retail brand. Now I when I say retail, I don't necessarily just mean if you have a bricks and mortar store, whether you are pure play E commerce or your retail brand or a retail store. Having e commerce is essential in this day and age. Now some of you might be lucky enough to have an E commerce manager on your team, or someone who looks after the website, does all the updates, uploads your products, puts all your marketing in place, and others who are listening are probably still DIYing it. Now, regardless of where you are at with those different areas of your business. The simple fact is, having somebody on your team, whether that person is an employee or it's a freelancer or it's an expert that you have access to, is one of the differences between you staying where you are and you outshining your competitors, which is why it is so essential for me to have E commerce experts on my team to make sure that we are giving the people inside of our programs the most up to date information so that they can make more money, they can get more sales, and they can increase their revenue. So what I wanted to do today is bring on the amazing, the beautiful, the talented Kerry Clark, who is going to go through with you the key things that she says she audits dozens of businesses every single week, and the key things that she sees that people either overlook or they just forget that these are core things, core processes, core systems, core essentials. Core Essentials is a double negative, isn't it? No, that's a double positive. Okay, these are the things you have to have in your business when it comes to e commerce. So Kerry, welcome to

Unknown Speaker 2:58
the show. Thanks for having me. Sal,

Salena Knight 3:01
no problems. How did you end up in E commerce? Well,

Speaker 1 3:04
it was, it was a little bit of a roundabout. I actually did a four year degree in interior design. I did

Salena Knight 3:11
not know that. Yes.

Speaker 1 3:14
And a big retailer group in South Africa, they chose me as a graduate to actually go into buying in howay, so I actually started my journey in buying, and then slowly, obviously, you know, got involved in various retail and then I took a really big leap of faith, and I moved to Cape Town and joined a startup, e commerce business. So that was about 20 years ago that I got involved and started learning the E commerce world was a very startup, and I actually joined a startup that worked in virtual products, so we didn't hold the product in stock, but we actually bought in it from suppliers. So there was a lot of issues that we kind of faced. So I think that threw me in the deep end, and then obviously realized my love for E commerce, and I kept on learning more. I learned coding, and yeah, I just kept on growing. And then I moved into managerial positions different e commerce, retailers, and then I stepped out onto my own so I could actually help a lot more business. So that's with the knowledge I'd gained from the bigger guys. It just gives me a little bit more to live for every day they're working for the big corporates there. And

Salena Knight 4:23
I love that you get so involved with our five x's. You are, like, part of their business. You are not only helping them, but you become very emotionally involved. And you Yeah, it's like, you are there. You're part of it. You're on this journey with them, and I know sometimes it can be a little bit difficult, and I think we forget it's really easy listening to podcasts and going on to LinkedIn or Facebook and seeing all the success stories, because that's the thing that we want to talk about. But the simple fact is, for every success story, there are a million. Hurdles that most retail, e commerce and product brands have had to go through, and no one talks about that stuff. And so with this little series, what I wanted to do is share with the people who are listening the everyday obstacles, the everyday hurdles, the everyday brick walls that our clients come up against, because I am sure that if people are listening to this podcast, this is, it's never a one off. You know, we hear, we talk about what's happening inside of our 5x businesses, and it's never a one off. It's, to me, it is always this pool of obstacles that we are constantly trying to help people overcome, and you have this expertise when it comes to e commerce as well as business strategy. So I'm going to jump in the deep end and ask you, what is the number one thing that you see day in day out, that retail and E commerce brand owners do that if you could just flick a switch, you would be like, this is the thing that everybody needs to have sorted

Speaker 1 6:08
so, yeah, the biggest thing starts. I think a lot of them forget that they have to have those beginning foundations. So a lot of people want to jump to the end and the pretty and the frilly and all of that. But if you don't actually have the core and the pop up foundation to build on, then you actually can't have the pretty and the free at the end of the day. So I do find a lot of people rush off the bat, and they need to kind of bring them back to the entry level and make sure that those foundations are correct. So I know, like you mentioned, a lot of people don't have the luxury of having an E commerce manager or being able to afford a freelancer, for example, that's an expert in the field, but there's a lot of things that you can do on your own to get your business ready to then move up the levels and then hand over to somebody like that. And that's that's everything to do with, you know, getting that website correct, and the very basic fundamentals of of actually selling, and that's what a lot of people forget, and they kind of rush to try and market and all these type of things.

Salena Knight 7:13
So when you start working with a retail or E commerce business, what is the first thing that you look at? Now, it doesn't have to be an E commerce thing. I'm just talking about businesses overall. What is the first thing that you jump into to try and find what's called a quick win? So,

Speaker 1 7:30
yeah, so for me, generally it is, we have to, I have to audit what they doing. And generally it is a quick one, because once we've done the audit, there's generally first things, the speed of the website is my number one that people don't realize. And it's a quick tool. You could go and check so many people are sitting on an E rating, and that really is a crucial part in your, you know, foundation, because that that's affecting Google, that's affecting your website, users coming on the site, and that is probably your biggest thing, that, if you change, can make a big, big deal. So when the next thing I was

Salena Knight 8:11
gonna say, when you say speed of the website, can you just give us a little bit more information about what do you what do you

Speaker 1 8:19
mean? So basically, the speed is how quick the website interacts with you. So a lot of things slow it down. So images load slowly. You try and check out every page goes slowly. So people get annoyed. They don't want to continue their checkout. They think it's only something. Why can't they see this information? Why can't they zoom in? And then they actually get edited, and they jump off, and they go find another website that can give them that kind of information, fast, clear. So is really crucial in that type of thing. And Google also recommends that this is all part of your your SEO journey. So the faster your website, the better you get ranked on Google, and the better that you get start to sit at the top in organic rating. So it's a really crucial thing across the board for your customers to get the best view of your website and actually get to use it correctly.

Salena Knight 9:12
So how do we fix that without going into too much detail, if people are like, well, first of all, you mentioned there's a tool. So what is the tool that we can use to see how fast our website loads?

Speaker 1 9:23
Perfect. So there's a tool called GT metrics so and I'll share all of this on it in a little masterclass, thing that you can share with everybody. And it does tell you how to that. You can log in as a free user and run a quick test on your website, and it spits out whether you're an A, B, C, D or E rating. Ideally want to sit at an E, at an A or B maximum rating to make sure that you actually doing the best. And it does give you a little bit of a breakdown of what is the biggest areas. Generally, it comes from images. And the beauty of images is there's a lot of plug. Tools and apps across where your WordPress or your Shopify that could quickly change this in an instant, and they optimize your images, and your images go faster. They clearer, and your your customer ultimately gets a better experience. And there's a lot of little things that you know, moving images. Everybody wants this pretty stuff. It slows down your website, these lovely shadows on pictures or buttons, it slows down your website. So, you know, it's such a small, small little tweaks that you can instantly get a faster website before you have to, even now, try and get a technical experience person or, you know, somebody to go look at, you know, all the coding at the back. There's small little tweaks that you can actually do to make it better.

Salena Knight 10:41
And I think you are so right about that concept of we aren't prepared to wait right now I am in some temporary accommodation, as we've sold our house and we're moving to a new place. And it's funny how we are so used to fast internet these days, but the place where we are, the internet is not that fast, and when you have three people all using the internet, it slows down. And I was trying to check out on my phone to buy something, and it seemed to be going forever. And the first thing I thought was, Is this a scam website? And I actually closed it down and went to my computer to double check I had not clicked through to the wrong thing, and I was in the right place. And it wasn't their website. It was 100% the Internet where I was staying. But it is that momentary, oh, my God, you know, am I being taken for a ride? Is this a scam, like we are so on alert that anything that is friction in that buying journey is enough for people to go and find, you know, find their products somewhere else. So we think that having more images and feel free to jump in. We think the more images we have of a product, the more likely someone is going to buy. But at the same time, if you're just uploading products, what you're saying is that if those product images aren't optimized, or if those videos aren't optimized, you could actually be doing a really big disservice to your website and to your customers. Is that correct

Speaker 1 12:16
100% and there's such a quick way of fixing that so you don't have to attack and get extra people to now downsize your pictures, and it becomes a huge expense. You know, these are things that you need to have on your website all the time, because every time you upload products, a lot of customers are getting products every single day. So it's quite a big thing. These apps and plugins do, they just kind of fix it for you. So it's a great foundation to kind of have. Firstly, it's fixing your speed, making your images better for the customer.

Salena Knight 12:45
Do you have a favorite app that you use for that? I've

Speaker 1 12:47
got a list, because they I work with, both WooCommerce and Shopify people, and everybody has different budgets, so certain ones can do it a few other things so they clear your cash. And I don't want to give you all the technical words, because sometimes it goes over everybody's heads. Everybody's heads, but some do very specific just an optimization, and some do a little bit more.

Salena Knight 13:09
So it's based on the client's kind of budget that we can't work with. Okay, so speed of website is very top of mind. What else do you what are the things that you're looking at

Speaker 1 13:20
when you're doing it in the audit. Okay, so I've generally kind of got, like, a top probably 10 things really. So normally, I'll look at your speed, try and make sure that how, what is our starting point, right? It will go through headers and putters, which is basically headers. Your top navigation is really important, can the customer easily find the product in as least amount of clicks as possible? So instead of trying to now want a t shirt, I have to go through seven different channels before I find that t shirt. And it's funny

Salena Knight 13:55
for that that I always find it intriguing, and I use this great example, which is when I was working at the school canteen. I convinced them to install a POS system, and they did, and they thought it was amazing. But muffins, like a cake style muffin, there are the simple categories that you had to choose from, and there was hot food frozen like ice blocks and things like that. Breakfast and snacks, they were the and drinks, five categories. I always thought muffins belonged in snacks, and they had put muffins in breakfast, and every single time a muffin came up, I clicked the wrong category, and it's the same when you're thinking about that hierarchy, which is, you might have an idea of what you call it, but is that what your customers call it? And you know, for for us, something like a raincoat, like, I remember looking for a raincoat and having to go to like women. Ins clothing, tops, outerwear, blazers, right? Like you said, it's like seven different clicks just to find a freaking raincoat.

Speaker 1 15:10
And you know, Salah, everybody's doing this, right? We've got big, big players that are in the game, and we've got them on our doorstep. You don't have to map out your own taxonomy and canopy, use them to help you and guide you, because they've got the big teams researching. How are people searching? Do they do they search it with tea and a shirt? Or do they just search in a shirt? You know, it's all It's little things like that that we need to go back and understand how our exactly like you said, how a shop is shopping. If you think something is going to be listed as an X word, it might actually not be that word that the customer is trying to look for your product, you know. So you might put like, we've got a lot of people in crafts, so they might put threads as like threads they going to sew with. But most people might be shopping for cotton instead of looking for a thread, but their category might say three, and so somebody does a note they can't find the product, they go onto another website. So it's little things like that. As soon as you get that wrong again, it's a frustrating point of conflict between the customer and your website. I really like that idea,

Salena Knight 16:20
and we say this quite a lot, which is, look at what the big brands are doing, and take the bits that work for you, because they have the money, they have the teams, they're doing the research. They have downloaded software onto the websites to heat map what people are looking for. So if you go to their website and you see how they've laid it out, there's a pretty good chance that they have done the background for you. They've done all the hard work, and you can just go and take that and implement that into your business and just adapt what you need to do

Speaker 1 16:53
exactly, exactly. It's a very, very easy tool. Basically, it's a free tool, taking what they've actually paid for.

Salena Knight 17:01
All right, so first of all, we talked about speed, and then we looked at headers and footers. Now I know we talked about auditing the business, and I don't want to this could be a whole podcast on the 10 different things that Kerry looks at auditing the business, but mate, but what we're here to talk about today is the biggest obstacle. So maybe if you can just run us through another couple of things that people should be looking at, if they're auditing their business, and then we might move on to where, though, where you see the big obstacles, because they're very different things. Because one is you as an expert coming in to make decisions on how to work with someone, and the other one is the actual problems that people are having. So

Speaker 1 17:44
yeah, so exactly like you said, there's, there's the basics that you're gonna you've gotta get right on your website, and that's everything from understanding your product, making sure your customer understands the product and they shop with you and don't go to somebody else. So I think, in a nutshell, your images, your descriptions, your speed, your making sure you've got the correct information for a customer to give you credibility. Like you mentioned, really crucial that people come onto your site and they know that you, you know you're you're credible, and that they're going to get their product. I think the biggest area where people suffer is they just, they forget how important it is to conceptualize the actual website beforehand, and it's almost all thrown together. And I think that comes back to stepping back and understanding your product and understanding actually who your customer is, because you can't design something without really understanding and that, again, comes down to your strategy of your business, because you have to understand these people generally. You should have almost understood them before you started buying your product. So it's quite a it's it's all interlinked, right? And I think that's the same as your pillars. You have all of these pillars, and they're all crucial parts, and they come together, because if you don't understand them, you can't make these things. And I do find a lot of people go down these holes that they don't get to actually know their product. What is their product selling for? So also, a lot of times at audit companies, I go look at some other competitors and their miles more expensive. And this is not a problem always. You know, everybody's value is different, but then you have to have a point of difference. So do you offer speed delivery? Maybe the other guys are cheaper, but they don't offer those type of things. So a lot of people forget about getting those the core understanding of their product, so their product speaks to their customers. So it's just bringing back people to their home routes so they can actually sell their products the best way they can. I think

Salena Knight 19:44
you bring up some really, some really crucial points there. I'm not going to let you gloss over them. So some really points that I heard was one, know, what it costs to run your business because a competitor's pricing should never. Be your own pricing, whether it is cheaper or more expensive, you need to do you and that might mean that you're more expensive than the competitors. But like you said, maybe you offer speedy delivery, maybe you have a wider range. You need to know why you're different from your competitors. And I love what you said about it feels like people throw websites together, and what I tend to find is, and I can put my hand up 100% and say that I have been there. I have done this. It's happened in my email marketing. It's happened in my website. It's happened in my messaging. Is, as your business grows and evolves, your offering changes, your customers change, and the customer journey changes. So those things will happen. Just as you get you get more experience, and you understand your business better, and when you start to understand how things work, how the money looks like, what does the customer journey look like? Do I want to be paying for people to come to my website with paid ads, or am I going to do an organic marketing strategy? And I'm prepared to wait a little bit longer all of those things, and you said the core foundations, all of those things, people forget that they affect your website, because I'm just thinking now of of one of your clients with a luxury brand, and this is what I love, is I get to see all of these different retail and E commerce people. And one of your people has a luxury brand, but one of the things that you found as an obstacle in their business was that the one, the pricing didn't really work, but also feel, the look and the feel of the website didn't equate to people paying that premium. And so this happens, like I said, as a result of as your business grows and your market changes, or maybe your production costs go up, or there are so many different factors that it is a really important part as the owner of the business and the founder and the CEO to look at, where are we at right now? What needs to change? And as I said, I will put my hand up and say, this is one of the things that we're doing in our business, is I'm looking at email automations going, Oh my gosh. We wrote those five years ago. It is really time to to dig those back out and do a little bit of a refresh, because times have changed. AI is here like there are so many things that have changed in business, and it's the same with people who are listening is like, you probably need to update your emails. You probably need to update your navigation, like you said, you probably need to update speed, because so many people are putting things like videos in. But did you go back and check the speed?

Speaker 1 22:35
And that's that's so amount of customers, for example, like I said, that actually come to me, and the first thing they straight away say is, how do I market my business? How am I going to do the marketing? And I actually have to always bring them back, and I say, Do you have a lot of money? And they all shake their head, no.

Salena Knight 22:55
Everyone has a limited budget. We all

Speaker 1 22:59
have. And I said, Do you want to waste your money? And they're all like, no, but I said, if you don't correct and connect the dots on your website, you're going to be throwing the money away every day, because people are going to come onto the website and bounce and now you paid money, expensive money, to Google, Facebook, wherever you bought the customer, only for them to leave and go find it somewhere else. So if you don't fix those things, and those those points of friction, all the money and the expertise and the fancy companies you can get to do your marketing, it's never going to convert because you haven't fixed the actual real problem. So exactly like that, you've got to constantly update that, and as I said, you can, once you've got all that fixed, you have to manage that every month, every week. You have to, as an owner, you need to be going on your website every single day, and checking is your checkout working. You know. You can check your speed every day and exactly that, because things are changing, apps are updating and and things can break before you know, if you're not actually involved, and I'm not saying, in our business, we treat, in your business, for example, that we coach for we treat them to be the CEO, you know, and you don't have to do that every day, but you can train somebody else to get to that point, but they're constantly checking your website.

Speaker 2 24:16
Another quick question is for you, yeah, I like

Salena Knight 24:19
to say, and I'm I'm happy to be proven wrong, I like to say the two best hires in your business, sorry, the two easiest hires from a easy to manage and easy to see a return on investment, are an email marketer and an E commerce manager. And the reason I say that is because an email marketer should be able to get you a return on your investment, generally, within 30 days. Worst case, maybe 60 days. If they have to build everything from scratch, they will be able to more than pay for themselves very, very quickly. And it's easy to quantify, and I feel like E commerce managers are the same, like if you invest. Best in someone, if you're very, very clear on what you need this person to do, and you've mentioned so many things already, like you need to be checking these things daily. You need to be checking speed headers and footers, uploading products to your website, videos, all of that stuff. Yes, you might be doing it right now, but that is not where you're going to be making money as the owner and the founder. So to me, it's really easy to get a pen and paper have it beside you. And just every time you're doing something on your website, you write it down, and then you start to collate a list of things, of, oh, if I hire for this, for this position, these are the things the person needs to be able to do. Now, some of those things they might not be able to do because you're probably a bit of a jack of all trades, or a Jill of all trades, yeah. So we like to pull them together. And maybe, if you haven't already got that E commerce manager, maybe you can pull a bunch of these things together and you can find those people. But to me, an E commerce manager should be able to pay for themselves relatively quickly. Is that your understanding as well, because sometimes I'm a little bit over ambitious. Yeah,

Speaker 1 26:04
no, definitely. Because I think the the two really work nicely together, because they both got the same objective to obviously make sales. And the one is getting the website constantly working. The other one is making sure that all the points so email officers, not just sending out pretty mails. It's all those points that the customers jump in. So your band, little cards, your flows when they jump on how, how quickly are you going to, you know, send them a message. So that email marketer pushes also that information to that E commerce manager. So they two pieces that work really nice together, and that's why, like you mentioned, with email marketing, you get returns quite quickly. You know, when it's all it's in a nice kind of sequence together.

Salena Knight 26:48
I think you just said the most important thing on this podcast, and you probably don't even realize it. You said their job is to get the sales. And I think a lot of people who are listening think if I hire an E commerce manager, or if I hire a VA, what I'm going to get them to do is upload products to the website, maybe change a banner out here or there. But the reality is, an E commerce manager is in charge of getting sales. That is their responsibility. Now that may happen with conversion rate optimization, that may happen with upsells and cross sells and all those kinds of things, which is why I think it's that they're so easy to hire in the sense that you get a really good return on investment quite quickly. But don't forget that their job is to make you sales. And sometimes the prettiest of anything doesn't convert. I know I have some of the ugliest ads out there, and they make me cringe, but I'm not turning them off, because they get the sales.

Speaker 1 27:53
I think sell. A lot of people forget and they get confused. As an E commerce manager, and like an assistant, an E commerce manager is strategic. So they know to change banners. They know to change call to actions. What's going to work with our customer? How do we how do we change are we getting better results? Do we have carousels on our homepage? Are those working? Maybe? Maybe jackets is your best seller. And it actually converts the most when you put that and people, and then maybe put bikinis, maybe one or two people shop. So you change it. Do you put actual just big categories? Oh, great. Lots of people love it. Do you put blogs? Do they? Is that how your people actually shop? And then they start to buy different things, off links, off the blog. So an E commerce manager will look at all of that, not just when they're uploading, and just load it and say, Okay, that's very nice. They will say, Okay, I've just uploaded 10 new products. Where can I implement this now onto the homepages newness? How can we see that? Maybe this can sell. It's not just a quick fix, paste put on. Okay. Next thing you know, and they'll look at things always, constantly, like, is your descriptions Correct? Is it aligning to the way your business and your customers shop? Do we need to edit them? Should they be shorter? So all those things, and that's where an E commerce manager is more strategic looking at the whole website, versus an assistant, which just, is it just an uploader, really? And that's their job, because they're learning right? And they're going to learn through that to become the bigger person.

Salena Knight 29:24
And that, to me, is really important, because the strategy, all the things that you've just said, an E commerce manager is responsible for, the strategy just forms part of it. But for me, what that highlights is whether you are running a retail business with an E commerce business tacked tacked onto the side for one of a better word, because I know a lot of people with bricks and mortar stores kind of forget about the website, or you'll play E commerce, or your product brand that sells, maybe through wholesale and has a website, all of those things that you just listed in one breath is. A lot of work, and so it is really easy to be able to overlook these things. And you said it to try and skip to the end and to go, I'll just spend more money on ads. But spending more money on ads is only going to upset you and frustrate you, if your profit margin if you don't know what the pricing should be, if you don't have the navigation correct, if your website speed is slow, if your headers and footers, all these things that you've just said, it can be a full time job. It doesn't have to be a full time job. You can start with somebody who is part time, but when somebody is focusing on one thing, that is when you get results where focus goes, results flow. And it might be your job as the owner of the business now, but it shouldn't be your job long term.

Speaker 1 30:49
No, no, you do need to step away, because also, I think, you get so entrenched in the business you don't always see what's in front of you, where somebody that's almost focused on just that. That's what they're doing all the time, whereas when we're overlooking, our minds are shifting everywhere so and I think to have those focus dedications, and we discussed this earlier, email marketer and a website, you know, e commerce manager, they're very different people, and I think that's where everybody gets confused. You can't expect the same returns for somebody being an E commerce manager running or social running, because, again, they then splitting their focus. And as much as we want to be, you know, a jack of all trades, you know, it does come with its its downfalls, you know, the stage, because you can't be, sometimes a professional when there's so much newness coming out in each each area.

Salena Knight 31:40
You can't, you can't stay ahead of it all. I mean, this is why I love having people like you, because you are way smarter at this than me. And you in there, you're looking at you're reading all the Shopify updates. You know what's happening. I can't be across every Shopify update, WooCommerce update, strategic update, Klaviyo update like, that's not my job and

Speaker 1 32:03
and it doesn't mean that you I think CEOs mustn't think that they they bad at what they do, because that's not that's why they hire somebody to help them and do their their job, right? So you don't have to understand everything. You just have to have a holistic understanding of what is people doing for you and what do you want them to achieve so your KPIs, what do you want this person to get? For you, what do you want that person to get? That overall that you're trying to get as an umbrella for the business you just

Salena Knight 32:30
mentioned, they're having that holistic understanding. Do you find one of the biggest obstacles when you start working with a retail or E commerce brand is the expectation of the owner or founder having to learn to do something rather than just paying someone to do it.

Speaker 1 32:51
You know, a lot of people, and I know they want to, like I was trying to say, they want to understand everything and feel that they're in control, um, but it just takes them so much longer. And then they they taking the art of the biggest prize is actually managing the company. So as soon as they start to tackle and learn and understand and do courses, then they have to fiddle, maybe put this button knife, but for, for, you know, famine, push 10 buttons that they were supposed to now they didn't get any returns. Now they go back, and now they have to do another course, and that kind of thing, you know, rather in that time probably actually adding all these tiny little learning things, they just hired the person that just does it. And you don't always have to spend a lot of money on these things. They're people that do these for more reasonable but then they get your returns quickly. And then you can tick off, okay, that's now trading. Great. That's fine. And then the money comes into the business a different way. Then you can kind of move and allocate different resources. But a lot of people do try and take it on themselves and try and learn everything, which we can't, I wish and we should learn

Salena Knight 33:53
everything. Yeah, I think wanting to learn everything is a procrastination tactic. I had a call just this morning with an agency that we hired, and they work on the back end of our CRM and I said to the it was actually the founder who I had a call with, because I wasn't particularly happy with the results they'd been getting. And I said to them, for the amount that I pay you, you need to give back my business manager at least 70 hours a month. That's my break even point, because at 70 hours a month, I could have just paid her to do the work. So you need to give her at least 70 hours a month. But for me to make a original investment, you have to give her back more, like you have to free up 100 like my goal was 100 hours, and in that time, she is then going and working on putting strategic things in place, new communication plans, the things that she is great at, rather than doing the implementing. And it is that one of the ways I break things down is, if I want to invest in something, it's how many more units do I need to sell to be able to afford it? That's one of my big. Big tricks, if you guys ever want to know, I have a lesson called making money on demand. He's the TLDR. Basically, if you want to invest in something, work out how many things you need to sell in order to pay for it. So if you want to buy something worth $1,000 and your average order value is $100 then you have to sell 10 of them to be able to pay for it. And then when you do, you go and buy that thing. And it's the same with people. If I'm paying someone to do a job, I need to know what their return on investment is going to be. And maybe that is hours back. Maybe that is an outcome like a KPI getting hit and this procrastination, slash, wanting to be in control. Slash, I need to learn the things to me as I've gotten older and more mature, is just a way of hamstringing the business. Because if you need to learn how to do that thing, it comes at a cost, and that cost is going to be the growth of the business. Because you and I both know you've been doing this for, I'm gonna say, decades. Even though you look very, very young, you've been doing this.

Speaker 1 36:14
Maybe it's the Zoom filters and stuff you know, that they give us these days. And

Salena Knight 36:19
when you Yeah, when you think about this, someone else has 10 years of knowledge in a product you can't afford to wait 10 years of day in eight hours a day learning that thing, and it becomes this false sense of security to go, I'll just learn how to do it myself, because you have a knowledge debt and the cost to your business while you try and learn that knowledge debt is generally going to you're not going to get a return on investment, because that if you're learning to how to optimize the speed of your website, what you would be better off doing is learning how to put KPIs in place, because that is going to be your best, best use of your

Speaker 1 36:59
time. And I think a lot of times it cripples CEOs when they don't understand they're not getting the returns quickly. So they try and learn something, they try and implement it fails. And then they look at themselves and they're like, I'm a failure. I haven't done this. I couldn't do this. But it's not you just need to leave it to the experts. Let them help you. Help you quickly. You know, yes, I know money is always a thing. But if you try, unfortunately, sometimes you have to have money to make money. In a way, they have this weird saying, I think it's gone through, where it came from the world, I'm not sure. But if you focus and you you as your holistic whole, you know you need to make sales. You need to sell X, like you said, I need to sell 10 items to make my target, and all those things. Then you feed down to these people to help you, and then it makes you feel empowered, because you then getting the results you wanted and quickly and not as slowly. And then you take a backseat, because now you're thinking you're not getting control of the business, and it's nothing about you're not a good CEO, or you don't understand the business. It's just you're leaving the experts to do what they do what they know how to do to get your overall what you want to do for the business.

Salena Knight 38:08
How hard is it? Does make sense? How hard is it for you to break that trait from the retail and e commerce Store owners that you work with?

Speaker 1 38:19
It's, it's, I think it's hard, because it is, I think it's a jet, especially in small businesses, right? They do feel that they they should have to tackle it all. And it's not necessarily something that you do. I think once you just show it to them more in a clearer picture, where they can take you and how quickly they can take you there, it allows you to feel a little bit less restricted on giving away that power. Because I think that's the thing a lot of people don't want to give away that power. Oh, they doing this. They doing that. You have to all this. You can't run a growing business doing everything on your own. You have you start that way. But if you want to grow, you have to start giving away delegating. I think that's hardest thing for people to delegate and give away, because they and give away, because they all think they can

Salena Knight 39:05
do it perfectly. You so much mind that you were so much more diplomatic by say, I think you said, What did you say? I think you said giving away your power when I was just like, you're a complete control freak. Most people listening would say they are not control freaks and my entity, and they say, Oh, if I could just get rid of the if I just had to not do emails again, or if I could just have somebody look after my website, or if I could just, you know, all these things that they say they don't want to do. But actually, when you knuckle it down and go, Okay, so you need to update the speed of your website. You need to get these headers and footers, and you need to do XYZ, go get a quote. It's $1,000 okay? So if you can sell 10 of these things, if you can sell 10 widgets this week, you can afford to do that. Go and do that thing, but then they don't want to do it. And it's like, but you have the answer, like, the answer is right there. Go run a promotion, send an email, do one thing to sell 10 of those widgets, and you can have the thing that you've been complaining that you didn't want to do. My question to you, Kerry, is, why do you think that is?

Speaker 1 40:11
I think it's just, I think a lot of us always think we can do it better. You know, when we do it ourselves, we don't have to then correct people and say that they want but once you make that decision to let go, you immediately will see the business grow. Um, it's, it's a very you always see it instantly, because you just you've also become a better person, because you can actually grow your company out to the next level. As long as you keep on keeping it in and trying to do it all on yourself, you're never going to get the business you want, if you want just a small little business, a little hibernation that goes, you know, you make $1,000 a month, you know, for the rest of your life, then that's that's okay. You know, you can dabble in your but that's not where most business owners want to go. They want to go to the next level. And you want to go that. You have to separate your emotions, your feelings, and just let go and say, right, this is what everybody else is best at. I'm best at running the company, knowing the products, bringing in the products everybody else can kind of fill in the blanks and

Salena Knight 41:09
have a I have a quick question before we finish up, which is, do you find that getting people to think about the future is easy, or it's really, really difficult. And by the future, I mean, like, what they want from their business in the next 18 months, three years, five years, what do they want from their business overall? Like, do they want to sell it? Do they want to keep it? Is that something that you find people struggle with?

Speaker 1 41:38
Yeah, I think a lot of people want to just stay in the present what they're focusing on now, but if they also don't know their long term goals, their present is actually not working for them, because what they're doing now needs to be leading up to what they're going to be wanting to do in five years. And if you've got an overview vision, then you can actually implement small things, because you know that can become something bigger. And again, it all comes back to you making that call core foundation, right? That you can now build on it, you know? And that that is, I think people forget that it's your business is not now, it's, it's, it's what's going to be happening in the next five years, 10 years, 15 however you want blow your business, exactly. I said, if you wanting to sell it, do you have even have very different goals to somebody that wants to grow it and keep it themselves? Um, because there'll be other things that you're going to get out of it.

Salena Knight 42:30
Yeah, there's so many more little paths that we could go down in this conversation. But I might talk about e commerce

Speaker 1 42:39
every day, all day, I know. So I know in the group, people ask questions I love to and if I don't know, then I will go and find out, because I love to also learn something new and also test my mind and say, Oh, I didn't know that. Let me get on to that

Salena Knight 42:52
I'm going to try and wrap up. Feel free to jump in and tell me I've written some notes as we've gone through, but I think I got way involved in the conversation and stopped writing notes. So when it comes to the biggest obstacles that we see when in the E commerce side of retail product, e commerce brands, we talked about some of those more tangible things that like the speed of the website, the headers and footers, descriptions, navigation, making sure that your products are optimized for your customer. We also talked about some non tangible things, but how they're very important, such as really understanding the customer journey and knowing the kinds of things they're searching for, knowing why they're coming to your website, knowing why you are different to your competitors, and knowing what you're going to steal from your can Borrow. Borrow from your competitors, they'll borrow. Don't reinvent the wheel, just as long as we're not breaching any laws and any copyright and understanding someone's navigation is not doing any of those things, things we're going to take that are working well from our competitors. We also talked about stepping up as the CEO, being able to relinquish control, being able to have that vision, and being able to be okay with spending money, especially when you know that you can get a return on investment, and I guess that's part of it as well, is just mapping out, what does a return on investment look like for you, if you hire A freelancer to do something, what is the expectation? And I think just in saying that, you also said, like, having the focus and doing the audit and just understanding where you're going, because the decisions that you're going to make now will will affect where you want to go in the future. And all of a sudden it just popped into my head where it's like people get so fixated on the minutia, like, oh, I need to change the color of my buttons, or I need to, you know, I need to invest in SEO right now. But actually, if you start thinking about what you want from your business in five years, the decisions that you're going to make, it's like, is this button really? Give me a return on investment, because I can almost guarantee that the people listening to this podcast aren't at that level of conversion rate optimization. If you are, kudos to you. Let's have a chat. But most people, that's

Speaker 1 45:13
when you really have done everything, and then you could start playing

Salena Knight 45:16
most people stick say on these tiny things that when you think about actually, I want to sell my business in three years, the button doesn't make a difference. No,

Unknown Speaker 45:27
did I miss anything? Yeah,

Speaker 1 45:29
no, I think there was the natural in. Yeah. It all comes down to your foundation, getting that right, and then building the business on top of it. Oh,

Salena Knight 45:39
and you also mentioned talking about driving traffic to the website and paying for marketing, but holding off on that until you're really confident that your website can convert. And those like you said, those core foundational things are fixed. You understand how much money you're making. You understand what traffic looks like. You understand ROI, customer acquisition cost, all those kinds of things. And I'm throwing a lot of jargon in here because I guess what I'm trying to point out is there are so many other things that you probably need to be working on in your business that fixating on things like button color is it's laughable right now, when you step back and think about all the things you haven't done in your business as the CEO, it's like, this is on the so far down on the bottom of the list. It's like it's in a different book.

Speaker 1 46:28
And that's why you said, when you start getting people to focus on these areas, because if you've got an E commerce manager that's going to be their part of their strategy to make sure those things work, you know? And again, you'll see it. You're going to have your own things to make those work, and then you start delegating them to different people.

Salena Knight 46:44
Okay, Kerry, if you guys are thinking, You know what, I kind of want to work with Coach Kerry. Because, with strategy, Coach Kerry, because one, she understands business and business strategy, and two, she has all of this e commerce experience. Heat us up. Send me a DM. I can see if you qualify to work with someone like Coach Kerry. But Kerry, if you could wave a magic wand and either give one piece of advice or fix one thing right now that isn't necessarily a tangible thing like speed or product descriptions, what would you what would make your heart sing when it comes to helping people to grow their business. I

Speaker 1 47:27
think everybody just needs to be kind to themselves. And it's a learning journey, and we're going to make bad decisions, but we're going to learn from those. And don't, don't let it think that you're the bad CEO, and you you're not doing the best at your company, you've got to try, and you've got to fail, to continue to improve. So you've got to take risks, unfortunately, and it is going to bump you on the head, and you want to fall over, and you want to scream and run away, but you're going to come back to the point say, I learned all those things. Why didn't I just know this about but if you didn't do that, you're not going to ever learn. So I think just be kind to yourself and the journey and just just try it, test things. Go with the flow, and you never know you could do one thing and everything could change in a day. Yes,

Salena Knight 48:15
I'm going to be up there, but I just wanted to point out that in terms of you just said something there. You always come out with these little things that you don't even realize are absolute gems. Before we finish up, Kerry just said you could do something that completely changes your business. And for me, the one that always comes to mind is Vistaprint. And we talk about this quite a lot. Vistaprint went from a business, and I think we everyone knows who Vistaprint is. They are printing company that do cards and banners and all that kind of stuff all around the world, they went from being unprofitable to profitable within hours after implementing upsells in their business, and I'm talking hours, and stayed profitable after that. So like you said, it could just be one thing, and having that expert knowledge, having someone who can look at your business from the outside and can do an audit and can ask you those questions, what is it you want? Where do you want your business to go? What kind of lifestyle do you want it to give you, and then mapping out a plan for you to get there, is the difference between you staying stuck and you potentially walking away in a few years time, maybe with millions and millions of dollars.

Unknown Speaker 49:23
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 49:25
Just take risks in life. Scare yourself.

Salena Knight 49:28
We do. It's like everyone worries about all what could happen if things go wrong, but what if they go right

Speaker 1 49:34
100% they are going to be here to celebrate with you, yes, lifting you up as well, and we go go to the next thing that's going to

Salena Knight 49:44
make you millions, strategy coach and E commerce expert. Kerry Clark, thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise and wisdom on the show.

Speaker 2 49:52
My pleasure. It's great to great to chat about my favorite thing.

Salena Knight 49:59
So. 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 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, 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.

Kerry Clark is based in Cape Town South Africa, and the Owner and founder of Fusion22 Digital, an agency that specializes in empowering SMEs to reach new heights across E-commerce and Retail Challengers.

Kerry's retail and eCommerce background is extensive and diverse, based on being able to work with top corporate retail companies before starting her own firm. Throughout her journey, she has accumulated a wealth of business knowledge and a comprehensive understanding of various product categories in the retail & eCommerce space.

Her primary focus is on facilitating the progress of more businesses in the digital realm, by making it fun and less daunting with a more visual approach to eCommerce with step by step roadmaps.