Salena Knight 0:00
Selena, 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 0:47
Hey, there. I am so excited to kick off the new year with you. Welcome to 2025 now, as far as I'm concerned, 2024 is in the past. I have packed it up away. I have stuck it behind the stinky old sneakers, and I do not want to pull it back out again. So whether you are sipping coffee, snuggled up by the fire, or like me, you are refilling icy poles in the freezer on the daily, because here in Australia, it is the summer holidays, and icy poles are officially the currency of summer. Now, zuperdooper, if you are listening, I think you should do an ad campaign all around how you are the currency of summer, because I know when I was a kid. And in fact, even as adults, zuppa Dupas, which they're probably called something different where you are, but essentially, they're really long. They're about 30 centimeters or 12 inches long, skinny, icy pole. They come in like a pack of 50. You stick them in the freezer and you pull those babies out in summer, that is what summer in Australia looks like. So whether you are curled up somewhere warm, because that is the temperature where you are or you are here in the southern hemisphere, enjoying summer holidays. Today, I've got something special for you. We are diving into three, not one, not two, but three, Game Changing questions that you could be asking yourself at the start of the year. Now, these aren't just fluff questions, like, what are your goals for the year? I know a lot of people, when they're asked that question, get really overwhelmed. These questions, they're designed to help you reflect on what's holding you back, uncover new opportunities and create a vision that aligns with your business and your life, so that this year can be so much different than the last. So grab your notebook, just like I have open up a fresh note on your phone or just listen in. You are going to want to revisit these questions again and again. In fact, I'm going to go so far as saying, if you are listening on an iPhone, I know you can click the little bookmark and save for later. I do that all the time with episodes that I want to come back to. So maybe you might want to do that with this episode. And remember, you can always say, Hey, Siri, take a note. All right. The first question that you should ask yourself at the beginning of the year is this is a reflection question, what systems or habits held me back last year, and how can I change them? So we are kicking things off with a hard truth, because sometimes we are our own biggest roadblock. And I will put my hand up and say that I know that I can fall into this trap as well, and I know it is not fun to admit, but reflection is the key to growth, and if we don't take this time to reflect, what's going to change. So what systems or habits held you back last year, maybe you struggled with inventory management, or maybe you were currently running out of stock on best sellers, or even worse, you are stuck with products that just wouldn't move. That is a systems issue. You can fix that by putting systems in place. Or perhaps you found yourself procrastinating on really important tasks and telling yourself, I'll get to it tomorrow. I'll just put it on the to do list, and it never got done. Well, that is a habit issue, so take a moment to write down what felt clunky or stressful in your business, and we all go through it. In fact, I have a podcast episode coming up where Joed, our business manager, and I sit down and talk about some horrible situations, The Good, the Bad and the horribly ugly that we went through in 2024 as we changed our systems, it was not pretty, my friends, you're going to want to listen to that one. So take a moment and write down I like to do this when there's nobody else around or. When everybody else is, you know, eating the eggnog that's left over or leftover ham sandwiches. Take a moment for you and take a moment to write down what were the things that stressed you out, what didn't work easily. I know for me, that's my word of this year is just ease and flow. I haven't got one word. I've got ease and flow. I just want things to flow more easily, because in 2024 we did not flow easily. We were flowing around some very, very big boulders. So for some of you that is going to be outdated technology that is slowing your business down, and for others it might be lack of a clear workflow or lack of an actual roadmap, and as a result, you're constantly overwhelmed. And for me, as I mentioned, you'll hear more about this on an upcoming podcast. Joed and I have been actively building our business up. And we are building eight figure systems, the systems that will scale us to ten million plus, and what we realized is that what we had, even though it was pretty good, wasn't going to serve us and the team as we grew, and it wasn't going to serve our customers as we grew, and that the technology that we were using needed to change. Essentially, what got us here was not going to get us there. Now here's the good news. I told you, I've got good, bad and ugly. The good news is that once you identify the problem, it's easy to start fixing it. You can look at tools and systems that will help streamline your operations for inventory. It might mean something as simple as investing in software that tracks your stock in real time. We did a great podcast with Carla pen calm last year, who talked about unit economics. That's not a scary term, it just means knowing what is making you money and when you should move it. If you haven't listened to that episode, I'll pop it into the show notes. And if you are a procrastinator, it might mean blocking out dedicated time on your calendar for those big tasks, or even for those small tasks, maybe you need to do a simple beginning of day and end of day so you don't spend your day rushing around trying to fight fires. Instead, you spend five or 10 minutes planning out what your day looks like. Maybe you might even hire someone to help you stay accountable. Now, for us, it was organizing where we needed to hold different information. So when we went looking for something, it didn't matter who on the team was looking for something, it would be easily found. And there was a great book that we will talk about in that upcoming podcast called come up for air. Nick Sonnenberg, if you haven't already read it, I trust you. If you want to build better systems, you need to read this book. So we are building that. And it's not been easy, but it has been game changing. And the whole concept is that you can easily retrieve information, not constantly scrambling around for it. So as I said, more on that in an upcoming episode. The goal here is efficiency, fixing broken systems and unproductive habits, frees up your time, but also your mental energy, our mental bandwidth, so that you can focus on growth instead of spending your day putting out fires. Hands up. Who wants to spend more time on the fun stuff in their business rather than the stressful stuff that is me? All right, the second question that you are going to ask yourself is, what can I do differently this year to attract and retain more of my high value customers? But you can see this one coming right? This one, I feel, is a little bit more exciting, because it's about our customers, and specifically how we can get more of the ones that we love. Our a class customers, our customer royalty, our VIPs, whatever you want to call them. How do we get more of those people? Because like attracts like, and how do we get those people to stay this year? This is low hanging fruit, my friends. These are people who already love you, who already spend with you. What can we do to make them super happy and to get them to bring their friends along. So what I heard from a lot of stores was that in 2024 average order value dropped, and when we have customers who are price sensitive, then they spend less money when the economy tightens. But when we have customers who are less price sensitive, those people who value what you sell your a class customers, they buy because they want to, and that top 20% of customers is going to bring in 80% of your revenue. I am not making this up. It's called The Pareto principle, and. It is a thing that 80% of something comes from 20% of something else. It happens with so many different things. And if you go and look at your customers, I bet you, you will find that roughly 80% of your revenue is coming from 20% of your customers. So how, how do we get more of those people, the people who love your products, who refer their friends, and keep coming back for more those VIPs, because focusing on them can create a ripple effect for your business. Because when you market to them, not everybody. You don't need to be everything for everybody, but when you market to that

Salena Knight 10:36
a class customer, by default, you will get the 80% you will get the aspirational customers who want to be along for the ride, who want to be that a class customer. So what can you do differently this year to draw those people in? Maybe it's time to refine your marketing. When you're doing your marketing, are you speaking to that person, to that a class customer, in your ads, in your emails, in your social media posts, and if not, it is time to get laser focused on what they care about, whether it is sustainability or exclusivity, or, I'm gonna say, affordability, but I don't think it is affordability. Maybe it is convenience. I spoke with one store recently who sells shirts that are $450 I can't say that I would spend $450 on a shirt. So I am not their customer. But here's the thing, I know who their customer is, and I realized

Speaker 1 11:39
after we chatted about their product and looked at what does their customer, what does the person

Salena Knight 11:45
who is spending $450 on a shirt really, really want, we realize that most people don't have to think about it, because those people have personal shoppers, something I aspire to, and the personal shoppers are much more likely to do the buying than the end consumer. So how do we get the personal shoppers to come back and be making sure that our products are getting front of their customers? Now I'm going to go out on a limb and say most of you personal shoppers are not going to be your target market, but in this case, can you see the difference between if you are trying to target somebody who doesn't do their own shopping, then the reality is, you're going to be spending a lot of time and a lot of money to end up with people who won't give you the money. And that is not what we want in 2025 so how are we going to keep those a class customers coming back. Now, for me, I love a good loyalty program, but what I don't like is dollars for dollars. So I have not really a fan of, you know, spend $100 and you get $10 back, because it's not really promoting anything. And to be fair, most people who are in those kinds of loyalty programs just it's an added bonus. You get to check out and it's like, hey, you've got $10 off. Cool, but it wasn't the thing that drove them, it wasn't the thing that got them coming back. It wasn't the thing that made them buy with this store. So if a loyalty program is something that you need in your business, or maybe you've got one in it, it's not really doing anything I want you to think beyond discounts now. Ways that you can do that is to offer early access to new collections, or to invite those customers to exclusive events or surprise them with perks like free shipping or gifts with purchase, the high value customer is probably going to and I'm not going to say for everyone, but from my experience, they're more excited about a little something, something than they are 15% off. Because one, I don't want to calculate 15% off, and two, I'm not price sensitive, so stop offering 15% off and start thinking about what your customers actually want. What does your a class customers that top 20% what do they want? And I can tell you again, from experience that high value customers thrive on feeling appreciated. Now for the $450 Shirt Company, what we talked about was things like hand delivered parcels or a shout out on social media because they're high net worth customer, they realized probably had a following, and so not only are they feeling validated by getting a shout out on social media, but the business was leveraging that audience. Sometimes something as simple as a personal follow up can turn a good experience into a great experience. I know when I had my stores, we sold products that were two big things we sold were reusable nappies and baby carriers. Both of those things can take some getting used to and can take some learning how to get the best out of it. So something simple that we implemented was just how. In our calendar when somebody bought to be checking in on them, like after a week, checking in on them and making sure that they were still, you know, did they have any questions? Were they still going okay? How could we help them? Do we need to send them a video? Did they need to come back in store for help that personal follow up can turn a good customer into a great customer. So take a moment to think, to think about your customer, royalty, the customer, that if you could get nothing but them, all of your dreams could come true. What is the one thing that you can do this month to get more of those people, and what is the one thing you can do to make your current VIPs feel more valued, because when you focus on your best customers, your business will naturally grow. Like I said, the 80% are going to come along for the ride. Alrighty. Question number three, this is about you. How do I want my business and my life to feel this year? So this is the big one, the question that ties everything together, and probably the one that most of you will have the most difficulty quantifying, is, how do you want to feel if your business was doing everything that you wanted it to do, what would make you feel like it was a success? How would you want to feel not think, how do you want to feel? I know that we have financial goals. We want to make more, we want to save more, we want to grow more. But beyond the numbers, how do you want your business to align with your life? So maybe you want to feel more in control with systems like me, with systems and processes that run smoothly and give me peace of mind and know that once I ask for something to be done, I just have to wait for the completed task to appear in my project management system. Or maybe you want to feel more energized like your work is fueling your creativity instead of draining you. No one else can answer this question for you. This question is about designing your life and no judgment here. You don't have to answer to anybody else. Design your life and your business with intention. If you want to feel balanced. What does that look like for you? Does it mean setting clear boundaries between when you're working and when you're with your family? Does it mean being able to go to the school play every year and knowing that if you book it in, nothing else is going to go over the top of it? Maybe it is hiring help so you're not working around the clock, maybe it is hiring a cleaner. So that is one thing that is off your plate, and the one thing that drains you. For me and my husband, in fact, for everyone in our family, we hate cleaning if we have to clean the house together, if it gets to you know, someday it is like the place is a mess we have to clean up. We end up so cranky, we end up snipping at each other. We end up throwing things into other people's rooms and into offices and all that kind of stuff. I just came to the conclusion a long time ago that we can tidy, but if we need cleaning, we need help, and so we have a cleaner who does it for us. So maybe when it comes to your business, it could be simplifying your product rather than having more. Sometimes you have to contract to expand, and maybe it's just trying not to do all of the things. The beauty of this question is that it is deeply personal, because success does not look the same for everyone, and that is okay. So take a moment to envision how you want to feel at the end of this year, and then think about one or two actions that you can take to make that vision a reality. Now if you're listening and you want a quick recap. Here are the three questions you're going to ask yourself, what systems or habits he'll be back last year, and how can I change them? The second one, what can I do differently this year to attract and retain more of those high value those a class customers, because the other people are going to come for along for the ride. And the third question is, how do I want my business and my life to feel this year? What systems and habits help me back? And what can I change? What can I do differently to get those high value customers? And how do I want my business and my life to feel this year? Take some time to sit with those questions. Write down your answers, and you know what you can even go back and revisit them throughout the year. They are like a roadmap, helping you stay focused on what truly matters to you, no one else what truly matters to you. And hey, if this episode inspired you, I would love to hear from you. Share your thoughts, send me a DM, tag me on social media. I am here. To cheer you on every step of the way and help you as much as I can remember, the new year is a blank canvas, and you have everything that you need to paint a masterpiece. So until next time, keep thinking big and taking bold action, because you've got this. 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.