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SUMMARY:
Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award winning store owner, welcomes listeners to her Bringing Business to Retail podcast. Selena discusses how she pledged to go live on Instagram for a month without frills, which she is proud of herself for completing. She explains that the purpose of the exercise was to test if going against the grain of what everyone else was doing would help her business. Selena also emphasizes the importance of understanding what your customer wants and having the right metrics in place to assess what you sell. She stresses the importance of having systems in place and avoiding the trap of either selling out too quickly or having too much product.

The speaker recently tried an experiment with their Instagram account where they decided to go live and have conversations instead of just posting content. The experiment was a success, as their followers increased by 40% and they had many people reach out wanting to work with them. This validated the speaker’s idea that it’s easy to gloss over social media, but that if you create conversations with people, they will listen. One of these people even had a blue tick, indicating they were verified with lots of followers. The speaker was happy to know that their information was helping people.

In this conversation, Instagram influencer Georgia Perry (Gpez) shares her story of how she grew her business to the point of having a successful retail store, only to have the wheels fall off. Georgia then went on to talk about the highs and lows she experienced, as well as what happened when the business imploded. Despite this, she has since gone on to have a successful business, and this conversation inspired the speaker to create something new. Through this conversation, Georgia provides inspiration to anybody who may be struggling in their business, and encourages them to seek out the advice they need to succeed.

The speaker talks about their experience of having nobody to turn to and how this lack of support and guidance can lead to burnout and business failure. They discuss how they created a new program that provides knowledge, support, and cheerleading to help entrepreneurs grow their retail or ecommerce business. The program provides a roadmap to scale a business in 90 days or less.
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TIMESTAMPS:

0:00:00 “Uncovering What Your Business Needs to Move to the Next Level: A Discussion with Selena Knight”

0:02:52 “The Benefits of Instagram Live: Increasing Followers and Driving Sales”

0:05:02 “Replay of Instagram Live with Georgia Perry: A Story of Business Success and Overcoming Adversity”

0:06:30 “Creating a Clear Roadmap to Scale Your Retail or Ecommerce Business”

0:08:52 “Introducing the Five X Framework: A 90-Day Program to Take Control of Your Retail or Ecommerce Business”

0:11:05 Conversation between Selena and Georgia Perry on Instagram Live

0:12:27 “Exploring Social Media Strategies for Small Business Growth”

0:14:48 Analyzing Customer Data to Improve Business Systems and Strategies

0:16:25 Conversation with Georgia Perry: Exploring Email Marketing Strategies for Creative Businesses

0:19:39 Reflection on Accidental Launch of Business: A Conversation with Selena Powerpins Founder

0:21:24 Reflection on Growing a Business: A Conversation with [Name]

0:25:19 “Reflecting on Business Decisions: A Conversation with Sky Townsend”

0:30:44 Reflection on Creative Struggles: A Conversation with Sky

0:32:26 Conversation on the Challenges of Pricing and Selling Artwork as a Creative

0:35:59 Heading: Understanding the Value of Customer Experience in Selling Art

0:39:05 Conversation on Managing Inventory and Understanding Customer Needs

0:40:51 Reflection on Closing Kiosk and Rebooting Product Side of Business

0:44:59 Conversation on Business Growth and Financial Forecasting for Retail and E-Commerce Stores

0:46:57 “The Benefits of Delegating Responsibilities: A Conversation with Mel Wells”

0:49:50 “Lessons Learned from Rebooting a Business: A Conversation with Jeep”

0:51:33 “The Benefits of Setting Realistic Deadlines and Listening to Your Gut in Business”

0:55:11 “Strategizing for Success: Leveraging Gut Instincts and Data to Improve Business Performance”

0:56:57 Conversation with Selena Soo: Unlocking the Power of Knowing What You Want

0:59:12 Conversation Recap: Selena and Georgia Discuss Humanizing Business and Ecommerce Growth Strategies

TRANSCRIPT:

0:00:00 Salena Knight: But It’s really important to know what Your Customer Wants, but Also How much of everything that you need, because You Are losing Out On Money if you Don’t Have the Product, but you’re also losing money if you have too much product.

0:00:14 Georgia Perry: So it is definitely something that I started from nothing, not knowing anything about business, really struggled with and still struggle with about not having systems in place or not even just having enough metrics in place to assess. Okay, so how much did we sell in this season? How much did we sell at wholesale? How much did we sell at retail? That’s gotten me into so much trouble both ways. Especially in the height of my wholesale stuff.

0:00:39 Georgia Perry: Like selling out so quick, not being able to keep up with demand, then feeling like personally guilty for letting people down and not having XYZ. It’s a real trap. It’s really tricky.

0:00:57 C: Hey there, and welcome to the Bringing business to retail podcast. If You’re Looking To Get More sales, more customers, master your marketing, and Ultimately Take Control of Your Retail or Ecommerce business, then You’re In The Right place. I’m Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi award winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires to move to the next level.

0:01:27 C: I’ll provide you with the strategies, the tools and the insight you need to scale your store. All you need to do is take action. Ready to get started. Hey there, and welcome to today’s episode of the Bringing business to Retail podcast. Now, if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that in January I pledged to go live on Instagram for a month. No glamour, no frills. Just going live when I had something to talk about. And I’m pretty proud of myself. Whilst I didn’t quite make every single day, because that included weekend, I’m pretty sure I got about 27 out of the 30 days.

0:02:13 C: So I thought that was a great effort. Now, the point of the whole exercise was that you don’t have to do what everybody else is telling you to do, basically to see if that worked, because I was so tired of people telling me that I had to create reels and I had to create all these different types of carousels and stuff that just took me so long to create. It was actually quicker for me just to go live and have a conversation or talk about something. And then now in the background, we are chopping up all of those instagram lies and creating little snippets of content.

0:02:52 C: But my exercise was trying to see if that actually worked. And here’s the thing it did. I am so proud to say that one. My followers increased significantly by about 40%, I think. And two, we had many people reach out wanting to work with me or my team. That’s the main driver, right? The Whole Point Of Instagram And Social Media is to drive sales to your business, drive followers to follow you, to eventually convert them into customers.

0:03:27 C: And so that has happened. So technically, it was all a success. And one of the things that I was so happy about was that I started creating conversations with people because people would reach out to me and tell me all about their businesses. They would tell me the struggles that they were having, they would ask questions. And it’s so easy to gloss over social media because it does feel like you’re just speaking to avoid and you’re just kind of shouting stuff out and hoping that people listen.

0:03:58 C: So when these DMs I was going to say emails, when these DM started to come in, it was really validating to know that the information that I was putting out there was helping people. Now, one of those people, in fact, when she commented on one of my Instagram lives, she had the blue tick. And I wasn’t quite sure what the tick meant because it wasn’t blue in the little comments section. And I’m like, oh, what does this mean?

0:04:24 C: And she said, oh, it means I’m verified because I’ve got lots of followers. And anyway, we got to chatting into DMs, and this was the amazing Georgia Perry, aka Gpez, if you were on Instagram. And she was telling me about how she had grown her business to the point where she had a retail store that was turning over a lot of money, but the wheels fell off. And so I asked her if she would come on to an Instagram Live. And in this conversation, Georgia shared the highs and the lows and they were very high and they were very low.

0:05:02 C: And she even goes on to talk about what happened when the whole business imploded. Now, spoiler alert to rush to the end. Georgia now has a very successful business and has changed tack a little bit. But what I wanted to share with you, and I’ll be honest, the audio on this one is not 100% studio quality because I think we just had our air pods in. The point was never to use it again on a podcast, although I probably should have organized that.

0:05:33 C: But after listening to it and hearing so many other stories as a result of the Instagram Live, I wanted to share this with you. So the audio is perfectly listenable, but it’s just not studio quality with studio marks. So if you’re having a tough time, if you’re feeling a little bit challenged in your business, or you just want a great inspirational story, you’re going to love today’s replay of my Instagram Live with Georgia Perry, aka Jeep.

0:06:01 C: Now, the funny thing is, it was this actual Instagram Live that kind of pushed me to create something that we haven’t done before during the conversation, or maybe it was the pre conversation Georgia had said to me, there were so many times I just wish I had someone to tell me what to do. I had no one to turn to. I had no one to get strategic advice. I had no one to tell me if this was a big problem or a little problem.

0:06:30 C: I’m sure like you guys, taking action is never a problem. Doing is never a problem. But knowing where to put your focus and looking at the future and what the business looks like and how you’re going to interact with the business in the future, well, that’s where things can go a little bit pearshaped. And when you don’t have that clear path, then what ends up happening is you ping pong around. You jump from one thing to the next. You’re just trying to cross things off your to do list, but as a result, you don’t get any traction and you end up just flopping on the sofa at 10:00 at night, exhausted, but knowing that there is still more to do.

0:07:16 C: And that is a vicious cycle. That is what leads to burnout. That is what leads to businesses imploding. And Georgia is going to tell you her story about how all of this happened to her and how it was just too much. Without that support network, without the knowledge, and without the cheerleaders, which, let’s be honest, sometimes we need knowledge, sometimes we need to kick up the butt, and sometimes we just need someone to listen and to cheer us on.

0:07:44 C: And without that, that was the difference between her business going on and her business closing. And that really stuck with me. The knowledge is one thing, but the support is another. And so it had been ticking over in my brain like if Georgia was facing this, how many other people were facing this? And so over the last few months, in fact, we are frantically finished putting the final touches on it. As I record this just a couple of days before this episode goes live.

0:08:19 C: We have crafted an entirely new program that gives the knowledge, that gives the support and gives the cheerleader aspect that you will need to grow your business. So if you’re looking to create a clear roadmap to scale your retail or ecommerce business, one that you can use over and over again in 90 days or less, then listen in closely. Because my Five X framework is a program where we will work together for 90 days.

0:08:52 C: And by the end of that 90 days, in fact, in 90 days or less, you will understand how to confidently diagnose which pillar of retail success is holding your business back and build out a quarterly plan that allows you to take control of your business. And it will reduce the overwhelm, it will bring in you more sales, it will get you more customers. And of course, when that happens, you have more growth. Now, because of the aspect of working with my team for this program, I have actually had to put a cap on the number of people that we bring into the program each week.

0:09:29 C: Now, just to be clear, this is not my Supercharge Mastermind. My Supercharge Mastermind has strict criteria to be able to come into the program and I’m really selective as to who comes into the program. You have to do an interview with me before I’ll accept you in this Five X framework is kind of like a mini version of the Supercharged Mastermind. It is a 90 day version, whereas the Supercharged Mastermind is a twelve month program where we work together.

0:09:58 C: This is a 90 day program, which of course means that the investment to come into the program is significantly less than my Supercharged Mastermind. So if you’ve looked at the Mastermind and thought, that’s a little bit out of my reach. Or you just know that having the ability to create a clear roadmap to scale your retail or ecommerce business on repeat, plus having access to me and my team to be your guides, to be your mentors, to be your cheerleaders and to give you the kick up the button when you need it, then check out Selenanite.com

0:10:36 C: Fivex. I will put the link in the Show Notes selenanite. Comfivex for X ray and have a look and see if that’s something that you’re looking for. As I said, I have put strict limits on the number of people who can come into the program each week and it is a first come, first serve basis. So if you do want to join the program, you may have to wait if we are already at capacity for that week. But trust me, the wait is going to be worth it.

0:11:05 C: Selenanite.com Fivex and you can check it out. You can book a call with my team and see if it is the right program for you. Now let’s jump into this very juicy story, very inspirational story from Georgia Perry.

0:11:21 Salena Knight: Hello. Today I’m going to do something completely different that I have never, ever done before and fingers crossed it works. Well, today I want to bring somebody onto my Instagram live because you know that I have made a decision to go live on Instagram every single day. So let’s see if Instagram is going to do its thing and let her on.

0:11:47 Georgia Perry: All right.

0:11:48 Salena Knight: Hi, how are you? Can I just say we had to have a bit of a giggle yesterday. We did like not a trial run, but we did like a little pre chat yesterday and Georgia was like, I’m so nervous. And I’m like, lady, you have 40,000 followers and I have 2000 followers. You have a lot of people.

0:12:07 Georgia Perry: It’s like way out of my comfort zone. But I feel like that’s the theme for this year for me. So here we are.

0:12:13 Salena Knight: All right, so look at I reckon these are all your people joining. So hey, to all of Georgia’s followers, I think we should just do a quick do a quick introduction because they might know you or they might know me. So I’ll start because this is you.

0:12:27 Georgia Perry: Out of your comfort zone.

0:12:28 Salena Knight: And hey, I clearly love to talk. I’m Selena Knight. I’m a retail and e commerce growth strategist, and I’m really good at speaking and strategy. And so I am going alive every day on Instagram for a month to see if I can just throw the whole algorithm thing out the window and just do what I’m good at and see if it works.

0:12:48 Georgia Perry: That’s me.

0:12:49 Salena Knight: That’s Georgia. You’re up to, Perry.

0:12:51 Georgia Perry: I’m an illustrator, a small business owner, a Melbourne based creative. I work myself. I love what I do and I’m jeep on instagram. I have no idea how or why.

0:13:10 Salena Knight: But someone who says they don’t go online obviously done something wrong.

0:13:14 Georgia Perry: You’ll get this, Lena.

0:13:16 Salena Knight: You’ll get a tick, I’m sure. Actually, it’s funny because we put these demands on things like followers, but actually you are better off, in my opinion, having a smaller amount of followers who actually like what you do and will buy your stuff rather than having 40,000 people who just like everything and never convert.

0:13:36 Georgia Perry: Totally agree.

0:13:36 Salena Knight: Which is where most people I have.

0:13:38 Georgia Perry: A few more followers than you, but I engage with probably like 10% of them. So you’re exactly right. Numbers don’t mean exactly what we think they mean sometimes.

0:13:49 Salena Knight: All right, I have a question for you on that before we even jump in. How do you track the people who are on your social followings when they.

0:13:59 Georgia Perry: Become and I should, I think, at the moment, because as we kind of touched on yesterday, I’ve gone very small with my business again, and it’s just me and like one other person, my partner, I see familiar names. I see familiar faces popping up. But as far as actual metrics go of who’s coming and buying stuff from me, I have no idea. And that’s where I’m kind of sitting this year, like wanting to actually put some more systems in place and actually start using that data and seeing who is interested in products, who’s interested just in my illustration work, who’s coming to me for what, basically and how many are eventually converting to kind of customers on my shop. So I wish I had an answer for you, and I need those answers myself.

0:14:48 Georgia Perry: But I’m going to get there. That’s one of my goals for the year.

0:14:51 Salena Knight: One of the simple things you can do for that is just using Google UTM tags. So when you put something, it’s actually not right. You just google UTM tag for umbrella, t for Tom, m for metrics. It probably stands universal something. Metrics, I think is what it stands for. Anyway, UTM tag and what it will do is you type in the URL of wherever you want the person to go. So say you would use this in your LinkedIn Bio, for example.

0:15:27 Salena Knight: So you would type in where you want it to. That button, the URL it goes to will actually be like this really long thing that no one else can see. So it’d be like Georgia Perry.com Au instabio. Maybe you did a campaign like you did an actual like this, so you could be selllive something. So you put in the source that it came from. So that would be like Instagram or Facebook. Or maybe you do paid ads you put in the campaign.

0:16:03 Salena Knight: So this might just be instagram live. And then you can put in the name of the third thing is but there’s another third thing, maybe the traffic. I can’t remember. So essentially what will happen is in the back end, you’ll be able to see exactly where it came from. Google Analytics, I was looking at some.

0:16:25 Georgia Perry: Expensive program, clavio, I think for a similar type of thing, it’s like but.

0:16:30 Salena Knight: Clavio doesn’t have email marketing program. It’s not expensive to a degree. What I love about Clavier is an email marketing program, but what I love about it is it has AI, and that AI tracks what’s called browsing and buying behavior. So if someone comes to your website, it cookies them. So in the back end, this is not PG rated, guys. So if you’ve got little people like sticks and headphones in. So I thought that I can’t be asked sending an email where you literally drop in a product block and then you click a button that says personalize.

0:17:14 Salena Knight: And so the email you get as a customer will be different to the email that I get based on what we bought before.

0:17:20 Georgia Perry: Yeah, totally.

0:17:22 Salena Knight: Does that make sense? Really? If you ever say to me, I can’t be bothered, I just don’t have the time to send an email.

0:17:32 Georgia Perry: Pretty much common scene, feeling like I don’t have time. I’m a creative. That’s not in my wheelhouse. Like, I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know how to do that. That’s been me at times, and I feel like I’m coming out of that now. And I really want to take control of the business aspects of being a creative because I know so many people in similar situations who think it’s just too hard basket.

0:17:55 Georgia Perry: People buy from me. That’s cool if it happens, Luke, and that’s great. But I’m so interested in actually being a bit more tactical and being a bit more strategic and growing my business because it’s exciting and there are tools.

0:18:08 Salena Knight: For these people like us who say.

0:18:11 Georgia Perry: I’m creative, I’m not a business person. Well, it’s like, well, maybe we are.

0:18:14 Salena Knight: That’s bullshit, right? So can I just take a step back and say, I know a little bit about your story and the fact that you’re saying I’m small and I just want it to be me. It’s like, lady, you have had a seven figure freaking ecommerce business. So can we talk a little bit about that? So tell us a little bit about your story. And I’ve called this, I’ve titled this When No One Tells You how to Prepare for Success or something like that, because this theme has come up quite a few times with a few of my clients inside of my programs. Now, guys, Instagram live, we have to have some kind of call to action. This is what I discovered. So if you are interested in checking out Georgia’s designs and buying her stuff, head over to Georgia Perry.com Dot Au and check it out. And hey, if you like what you see and you think you might want to hang out with me and work with me and my team, you can just send me a DM and we can have a chat about that. So, Georgia, tell us.

0:19:09 Georgia Perry: Just my background is in design. I’m a designer, train, graphic designer, illustrator. And around eight years ago, I made one product and it was a lapel pin, like a little enamel lapel pin. And it was really fun. And I put it on the internet and it just kind of launched into this business. It was very much of a time, I’m not sure if you were across Selena, but enamel the powerpins became a bit of a movement in the artist’s kind of independent creative community.

0:19:39 Georgia Perry: I don’t know how or why. It just became this, like, boom. This tiny little souvenir like product accidentally launched a business for me. So from there I made some more and then I made some cards and I made some textiles. I started making some bags. Little by little, this kind of business grew itself without any planning, without any money or backing. And then I got some interest from stockers, so I said yes to that.

0:20:09 Georgia Perry: All the while just googling, how do I make a line sheet? How do I do this and do that? I had no idea.

0:20:17 Salena Knight: Hey, you want to like yourself? That’s good.

0:20:21 Georgia Perry: What is the thing called where you get but I learned a lot. And so that eventually grew and wholesale became kind of like the main tool for us. Wholesale was huge. And then I kind of over ambitiously. Got a retail space in Fitzroy, like a really cool suburb in Melbourne, which I love. Ended up with a team of six, I think maybe at the height. Again, how do I employ someone like, I had no idea what I was doing.

0:20:54 Georgia Perry: But I loved the product. I believed in the product and loved people and loved that aspect of retail. But I just got to this point where I was out of my depth. I don’t know, just some unexpected personal stuff. Like, I started getting ill and I was so stressed out. I didn’t know how to be a manager. I didn’t know how to be an effective leader. I didn’t have structures in place. Yes, I did something’s right. I knew how to make a beautiful shop. I knew how to make products.

0:21:24 Georgia Perry: I knew how to make it sound good, smell good, look good. So there were essential parts there, but I guess the fundamental framework behind it. I was so out of my depth and luckily we just had a twelve month sublease so we could test the idea. I wasn’t locked into like a ten year commercial lease or anything, thankfully.

0:21:47 Salena Knight: And at the end of that, I.

0:21:48 Georgia Perry: Decided to not renew it because I just felt so out of my depth and uncomfortable, I think. And instead of kind of addressing that and leveling up my skills, I chose to kind of go small again. So I shut the shop, sacked everyone, went back to it, just being me at my house, designing things and just selling things here and there. And now I kind of look upon that as I miss aspects of that. And first and foremost, like, the sales, like we were making money, but I wasn’t doing the right, evidently.

0:22:28 Georgia Perry: But yeah, I look back on that now, obviously, as one does with rose colored glasses, thinking it was such a great, inspiring, fun time. Yes, I was stressed out of my mind, but there are so many aspects that I really love and moving forward. I’m at this stage now, like post, COVID I’ve had a baby where I want to grow my business again and I want to do it right this time. So that’s kind of where I’m at. Yeah, I still do commercial work. I’m a full time working illustrator, so that’s the bread and butter.

0:22:59 Georgia Perry: But I really want to grow this product side again because I know that I can do it. And I’ve learnt so much in the few years since doing that and I just feel like, I don’t know, there’s a lot left on the table. I feel like I have a lot of opportunities that I’ve wasted and I kind of want to get that back. Not perhaps like a physical retail space, but I just really want to invest in myself again as a business person, just with some new energy and some new plans behind it, I think.

0:23:30 Salena Knight: Yeah, that sounds fantastic. I mean, 100% I have been there. Like, on the surface, you’re like it’s like the duck and in the eye. And I often tell the story because it’s one of those things where you look back and you don’t realize at the time.

0:23:46 Georgia Perry: But I remember I walked into one.

0:23:48 Salena Knight: Of my stores many years ago and I opened the door and there was this little corridor. It was like maybe 2 meters long, late. You kind of walked in and then you turned into the shop. And I remember just putting the key in the lock and opening the door and just walking in and kind of looking at the walls and walking into the shop and just falling on the floor and bursting into tears. And it was that moment. It sounds like you probably have something very similar where it’s just like, this is not what it was supposed to look like. This was not what success was supposed to look like. Like me coming in here in the stockroom. Like, I walked into the store room and I just sat in the corner and I rocked and I cried.

0:24:28 Salena Knight: And it was about 08:00 in the morning, so the shop wasn’t open, no one was there. And it was just like, I just can’t keep doing this. There’s something that was something is broken here. And I guess the difference between potentially what you and I did was you went, Fuck it, I’m out. And I went, Fuck it, I’m all in. And I sold my house and I just went, what’s broken? And just tried all these things to fix it. And I made a lot of mistakes, but the outcome is I went on to sell that business, I grew it into multiple chain of stores, sold that business, and now I work with other people to help them to grow their businesses. But I think at the time, you don’t know that that’s the moment you’re going to look back on.

0:25:19 Salena Knight: But in hindsight, you do. And you have two options, right? And neither is right and neither is wrong. We just chose different paths. And what I see happening with you back in, back in that it’s still something I see every single day. And it’s this concept of everyone prepared tells us to prepare for the worst case scenario. So have the money in the bank or have the plan B, or have the stock us and the shop and all these sorts of things. But actually what happens when it all goes right, but sometimes it goes right too fast.

0:25:51 Georgia Perry: Oh, my gosh.

0:25:51 Salena Knight: We had like 80 stocks. Yeah, we were under the US.

0:25:58 Georgia Perry: We were in Colette.

0:25:59 Salena Knight: In Paris.

0:25:59 Georgia Perry: We were in by all these six stores. And I feel like, again.

0:26:07 Salena Knight: I squandered.

0:26:08 Georgia Perry: Some of that by not doing things properly, not keeping up with the demand, not having a scheduled way that I release products. It was very kind of like haphazard, the way that I would design and release products. The whole thing was just, yeah, maybe too much, too soon. Yeah, I’m not sure, but you’ve got.

0:26:30 Salena Knight: This benefit of hindsight now, so I would love to know what made you decide to walk away and go small? Because I literally have two clients at the moment who have done the exact same thing. And so I would love to know what was going through your mind instead of let’s get a partnership or let’s get a business mentor or coaching or let me go into a course or something rather than moving forward. You decide.

0:26:59 Georgia Perry: Yeah, gosh, that’s a really good question, actually. I think part of it is fear of failure, of acknowledging that I had done the wrong thing. I had got myself into this mess of my business and I don’t know if there was, like, an element of shame attached to that, of, like, admitting, like, hey, I need help, and not, why didn’t I seek funding? Why didn’t I? This is the thing. I think part of it is a personality thing.

0:27:38 Georgia Perry: I’m a Gemini, and I’m very like it’s like all or nothing. I’m very in or I’m very out. And then I was having sleepless nights. I was trying to have a baby. I was doing about to start IVF. I was just like, if I have to choose right now, I’m going to choose me and my health. Only now, in hindsight, I think, what if I had got a partner? What if buyers are buying now? But I don’t know. I think it’s, by and large, a personality thing and just a priority thing.

0:28:12 Georgia Perry: I don’t know. I just chose to go small. Yeah. Much to my own good in some ways, bad in other ways.

0:28:21 Salena Knight: But sometimes if I had the brain.

0:28:26 Georgia Perry: I have now, I think five years ago, shit would be different.

0:28:31 Salena Knight: It’s funny. I listened to a podcast the other day, and the guy was saying something along the lines of, you should never I’m just going to paraphrase this and probably butcher it at the same time, but he said something along the lines of, you should never be ashamed of where you’re at by looking at like by comparing yourself to the younger generation. And, for example, like, you you’re younger than me. But when I first started out, like, social media only just existed, and we we didn’t have these YouTube videos and tutorials and Masterminds and membership sites, and, like, you literally found somebody to talk to.

0:29:10 Salena Knight: Nowadays, like, people who are 14, 1516 can start a business and end up with seven figures because all that shit is out there for them to learn from. And so we go, Why wasn’t I at that same place? I’m 47, and I’m like, oh, my God, why am I not bigger business by now? And it’s like, because the stuff wasn’t there, the infrastructure wasn’t there as we were coming up. And so I would say, don’t necessarily feel ashamed of the fact that you made different decisions because, one, you’re at different points in your life, but also, two, maybe you just didn’t have access to the people and the information that you needed to make those.

0:29:53 Georgia Perry: Definitely. I think it’s column A, column B, for sure. Yeah.

0:29:57 Salena Knight: It’s very complex.

0:29:59 Georgia Perry: Business is a very complicated thing, especially when you are essentially an artist and a creative as well.

0:30:05 Salena Knight: Particularly.

0:30:06 Georgia Perry: And I know a lot of people in life kind of cohort feel the same. It is a struggle between that commercial mentality and your heart as well, and your personality. Like, it’s a struggle, for sure.

0:30:21 Salena Knight: I don’t know if you just saw it, but I’m going to give you, like, a boost of confidence. Hey, sky Townsend just said, watching you pull back from situations gave me. More confidence to consider what I was doing that wasn’t right for me. So to take anything away from that was that you going through that helped somebody else to make decisions for them, which is you kind of got to look at it and go, something good.

0:30:44 Georgia Perry: For the biggest stories. It was one of the biggest stories when I had the business connecting with people, whether it be customers, suppliers, whatever, and post having kind of the retail store and everything. It’s been the same. It’s been the customers that still say, oh, I love the mug that I got from you five years ago. I still use it every morning, and it makes me happy every morning. That kind of stuff is really life giving.

0:31:08 Georgia Perry: And also, yeah, I have been pretty transparent about that stuff and work stuff and business stuff and private stuff like IVF and President Non story. But I feel like it’s the people and stuff like that. Sky, that’s so sweet and yeah, I appreciate that. There’s no problem with making mistakes. I think the only problem is repeating them. So there’s stuff that I won’t ever do again, and there’s stuff that I would do again.

0:31:36 Salena Knight: Can we talk about this creative thing? Because I have worked with a lot of you. I mean, our creative director, she’s one of the I have worked with an artist who now let me just turn behind the pole. That’s her artwork up there. I have worked with her, and she now owns an art gallery, right? Like, I remember she was telling me, giving me paintings for free, and I’m like, just let me give you $100 for something.

0:32:06 Salena Knight: This is worth more than nothing. And she now owns an art gallery and is an established artist all around the world. But even now, like, ten years later, she still struggles with putting her prices up. It’s just the fact that she’s got to the point where she’s like, I actually can’t paint quick enough.

0:32:26 Georgia Perry: I have to put the prices up.

0:32:28 Salena Knight: Just to kind of slow down the orders. And so I want to talk to you about we didn’t really talk about this, but I hope you’re okay. As a creative, why put me in the headspace? Because this is not me, right? I am. So type A, give me A list, all that kind of stuff. I love making money. I love what we can do when we make money.

0:32:48 Georgia Perry: I love being able to share it.

0:32:50 Salena Knight: And hire people and make the world a better place. So I love money. Creative people seem to think that I’m just going to call it art, in whatever shape or form it is, is mutually exclusive to being healthy.

0:33:05 Georgia Perry: Perhaps it comes back to that mentality of selling out the life of a creative or the life of an artist is expression and the struggle. I mean, I’m a commercial artist, so I don’t lean as far that way myself, but I think maybe that is that element of selling out. I don’t want to put my name on too many things. I don’t want to be seen to over commercialize or perhaps that plays into it. And also, I guess, at the heart of a lot of creatives I know is self doubt and some anxiety.

0:33:45 Georgia Perry: I feel like I create some of my best ideas when I’m in a bit of an anxious spiral. So I feel like it’s partly, again, a personality thing. It’s like, I don’t know, just getting past that self doubt and believing like, what I make does have value. And I don’t know, I think it’s a real mixture because for me, I think partly because up until now, my brand of products has also been my name. And that’s been a really kind of push and pull kind of point for me as well, because I feel this vibe of like, I don’t want to annoy people.

0:34:28 Salena Knight: Some people might just follow me for.

0:34:30 Georgia Perry: Illustrations, how many people might follow me for parent content or whatever, but I feel like I don’t want to annoy people by trying to sell to them, you know, and that’s that goes again back to that. I don’t know, that self doubt and not and it’s like, if I feel like that, how am I meant to project anything else? You know? I guess it’s again, that combination of stuff like, I know, I just don’t want to feel gross and annoying like.

0:34:55 Salena Knight: I’m selling, but that’s retail, that’s business. I know, and that’s a big thing.

0:35:04 Georgia Perry: I know. And that for me. And gradually I’ve done a lot of thinking and learning around it and I don’t feel like that all the time, but it’s like in one’s darkest moment you just think the reason why XYZ isn’t selling or the reason why traffic is down on the website, whatever it is, because I’m annoying. People are getting sick of this or people are getting sick of that, and it’s like, I know.

0:35:27 Salena Knight: Have you had this before? Can I tell you what’s annoying? Can I tell you what’s annoying? Right? I think this is the perfect juxtaposition. I am a customer of art. I don’t get art. I literally like florally type pictures. I wasn’t arborist and a horticulturist. It’s the only stuff that makes sense to me. And so when my friend became so expensive I can’t afford her anymore. I was looking for some other artists and I found another artist. I think her name is Natalie Martin or Nicole Martin? Can’t remember.

0:35:59 Salena Knight: Anyway, found her on Pinterest. There’s this picture I really want and so the original has been sold. She does prints, but she only did the print, I think, in like a three. But I wanted an a one or a zero. I wanted a big ass picture to hang in my stairwell. So I messaged them and said, can I have this printed in a one or AO? It’s not on the website, and her people wrote back and said, no, we only printed it in a three. I’m like, okay, all right, well, can I do a commission?

0:36:33 Salena Knight: This was last year. It was like, no, she’s on maternity leave. Okay, this is like three emails. No, she’s on maternity leave. Sorry, me. Okay, can I go on a waitlist for a commission? No, sorry. Check back next year. So as a customer, I’m like, I’m sorry, I don’t understand it. Like, okay, she does limited edition print. She does 50. All right, you did 50 in a two and a three or a three and a four, do another $50, and you already have the process set up. Like, I don’t understand it. As a customer, it just infuriates me to the point where I end up going and buying from somebody else. And so when you think your art is not valuable as a customer, I’m sitting here going, freaking hell. I just want to give you some money.

0:37:32 Georgia Perry: Selena or another business podcast I listened to recently where they said, don’t think of you yourself as taking money from a customer. When you sell them something, think of if you don’t sell it to them, you’re denying them something special.

0:37:48 Salena Knight: That’s me. That’s an exact example, right? Like, you’re not taking my money. You’re actually making my customer experience worse or devaluing your product to me because I can’t give you the money. And I see this all the time, and this is like something that happens with out of stocks. People go, oh, it’s great. We sold out in 48 hours. I’m like, Right, so how much money did you lose? And they’re like, no, no, but we sold out. I’m like, yeah, so how much money did you lose? Like, you know, if you sell out of something and there are other people who want that same thing, yours is a bit different because it say it’s original art. But if I’m going to buy a handbag and other people sell that, you literally just lost my sale to somebody else because you didn’t forecast correctly or you didn’t put me on a waitlist or a back order or something like that, where I could give you my money now and know that it would come. So I think this is really important to kind of switch the conversation here, but it’s really important to know what your customer wants, but also how much of everything that you need, because you are losing out on money if you don’t have the product, but you’re also losing money if you have too much product.

0:39:05 Georgia Perry: Starting from nothing, not knowing anything about business. Really struggled with and still struggle with about not having systems in place or not even just having enough metrics in place to assess, okay, so how much did we sell in this season? How much did we sell at wholesale? How much did we sell at retail? That’s again, me withdrawing and being like, I’m not good with numbers. I’m not good with math.

0:39:26 Salena Knight: I don’t know.

0:39:26 Georgia Perry: I mean, I guess we should just order 200. That’s gotten me into so much trouble both ways, especially in the height of my wholesale stuff, like selling out so quick, not being able to keep up with demand, then feeling, like, personally guilty for letting people down and not having X-Y-Z. It’s a real trap. It’s really tricky.

0:39:49 Salena Knight: Yeah. No, I totally agree. And, hey, if you have just joined, this is the amazing Georgia Perry. She’s a commercial illustrator. She has fantastic products with awesome artwork. You can check her out at Georgia Perry.com au. And if you haven’t met me, which is probably more the case, because she has way more followers than I do. I’m Selena, and I’m a retail ecommerce growth strategist. And if you like what you hear here and you think that we might be cool working together, send me a DM. And I’d love to have a chat with you.

0:40:17 Salena Knight: All right. Can I ask you about what the future looks like? Because you’ve been there, you’ve done it. You’ve had a seven figure business. Can I ask what you did with all the stuff?

0:40:29 Georgia Perry: We had a bunch of sales and warehouse kind of sales. I ended up with basically nothing left from when we closed Kiosk. Yeah, that’s just what we did because I didn’t want to look at it. I didn’t want to look at any of it. I didn’t want to think about it. I wanted to shut the door, walk away, and pretend it never happened, basically.

0:40:51 Salena Knight: Which I find so remarkable because here I am going what I’m saying is this is not a failure thing, because I’ve seen this happen so much, and, like, on the surface, it looks like everything is amazing, but in the back end, it’s all just a big pile of top mess. And the thing is, is the point, right? That’s what I’m saying. You now have all this knowledge.

0:41:26 Georgia Perry: Definitely rebooting my product with the product side of my business, for sure. I’m looking at splitting off my kind of illustration and commission stuff and having my business as a separate channel now just to get a little bit of separation from my name, get rid of that kind of emotion so I can detach it emotionally a bit from it when it’s not my name. And that’s what I loved about having chaos in the real life shop.

0:41:58 Georgia Perry: It wasn’t just called Georgia Perry. It was called chaos, which gave me, mentally, a little bit of separation. It allowed me to kind of step back and view it as its own thing. So I’d like to do that again. So separate myself out and reinvest in the product side of the business, but with some proper strategies and some proper tools in place that I have never had before. Because this is the thing. If I can get back to the numbers that I was doing and the funnel was having interacting with customers and finding stores and getting approached by stores. It’s so exciting.

0:42:40 Georgia Perry: If I can get back to that, but also have some proper, you know, stuff in place, like some proper business.

0:42:50 Salena Knight: Stuff, I feel like foundation principle strategy.

0:42:56 Georgia Perry: Like I said before, if I had the brain I have now, five years ago, it would be so different. Yeah, I’m excited to kind of get to do that again. So basically, I don’t think I’m starting from scratch. I just feel like I am reshaping the product side of my two point. And I’m really excited. I’m excited and nervous. It feels, again, the creative, ancient brain, like, it feels overwhelming. It feels like there’s a lot of work to do, but I feel like I know a bit more about what I need to do now.

0:43:29 Georgia Perry: It’s not just like throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. If I can slowly build up again bit by bit in a very sustainable, reliable, organized way, I’m excited. Yeah. I’m excited to see where because I’ve got so many ideas for products I love shiny objects syndromes, Lena, you have to know.

0:43:54 Salena Knight: But here’s the thing. Can I give you some suggestions?

0:43:57 Georgia Perry: So what?

0:43:57 Salena Knight: I would say a couple of things that without knowing too much, and I am not a financial advisor, so do not make financial decisions based on our conversation looking like from the quick conversation we’ve had about what the business looked like and what it sounds like you really love. Like you said, the product design, the product sourcing, the stock of sourcing, all that kind of stuff is going into 2.0. Let’s just say you had the physical store is putting like a store manager in place and you stepping away.

0:44:27 Salena Knight: That’s not your thing. That is their thing. Like you said, having I find drawing out like an organizational hierarchy is really beneficial here. And so you sit at the top and then who’s doing the marketing? Is that you? Is it somebody else who’s managing the store? Who’s managing product and finances? Now, sometimes that is more like the same person is doing more than one job. But it also means that because you’ve been there before and you’ve grown, you can see well.

0:44:57 Salena Knight: Okay, so the store manager might be.

0:44:59 Georgia Perry: Able to do if I find the.

0:45:01 Salena Knight: Right person, they might be able to do some of that inventory forecasting as well. But I know that when I hit a certain level, I’m probably going to have to work with like a virtual CFO or put some kind of money related person who that their job is that they give me that financial advice to do the forecasting. And I think one of the things that retail and e commerce store owners do, which is exactly what you did, you found you either fell into it or you really loved a product and you were like, I think more people should get access to this product, and then it grows.

0:45:31 Salena Knight: But nobody’s told us how to run a business. I’ve got a business degree. It didn’t teach me how to run a business at all. I look back now and go, oh.

0:45:41 Georgia Perry: My God, there was, like, four years.

0:45:42 Salena Knight: Of my life, and I was just wasted. Like, apart from accounting, which I failed the first time, there wasn’t anything in there that actually I’ve gone on to use in the future. And so I think when you draw out what does the business look like now? And then what do I want the business to look like? And that’s really important because so many people can’t even tell me what that looks like.

0:46:05 Georgia Perry: Absolutely.

0:46:06 Salena Knight: But what do you want? I just want to make and do my art. Okay, but how much money are we earning? Do you want the shop? Do you want to just have e commerce? Would you want print on demand or how hands off? How hands on? Do you want to be? Like, what do you want your role to be? Who do you want to report to you? Anyone? Like, just one person who’s the CEO and you just become the creative person and the visionary, or are you okay with other people reporting back to you and you managing that? But it sounds to me like you had a lot of people back when you had Kiosk, but maybe they all didn’t know where they belonged and what they were responsible for, and as a result, you were doing I call it well, I don’t even know you’re at Folio level. I think people like you’re still at manager level, where it’s like, I’ve got to be in all the things.

0:46:57 Salena Knight: And that next level up before you hit CEO is Folio, which is like, look at me. I got my own business. Everything everybody wants me to answer every single sense.

0:47:08 Georgia Perry: That was me. I was a headless cook. I didn’t know what day it was. We had so much to do. I was doing and this is a lesson as well, in terms of organizing a business and organizing your roles. I was doing, like, 2% creative work and 98%, putting out fires, like dealing with day to day running of the shop, dealing with hiring and firing, dealing with HR issues, and even such a small team, dealing with real estate, commercial real estate agents. And there was so much shit that I was just doing all of it because I didn’t know how to delegate. I didn’t know how to write down those roles and responsibilities for people.

0:47:52 Salena Knight: Let me jump in. Can I ask you a question? Was it that you didn’t know that what you had to do, or was it more you liked the feeling you being in control of all the things? More?

0:48:08 Georgia Perry: The second one, I think, being busy. I’m an eternal busy person. I grew up with busy people. It’s my go to way of being 100% default mode. It’s learned by default mode.

0:48:26 Salena Knight: I’m with you, but busy doing the things that make you money and grow the business is so much more important than busy for the sake of being busy. So if you would have just, like, in hindsight, let’s just take that. You would have just said, if we work together, pay sale. Do you have a commercial lease person? Yeah, I do. Here’s that person. And you just walk away. I mean, the whole business suffered if you were only at 2% creativity, because, like, this for Kiosk 2.0 or GP 2.0 is that when you separate it out, all of the business, creativity and products no longer rely on you. There’s no requirement there for you to go, you know what? I can bring other designers in that fit with my brand and my aesthetic and can do the same thing.

0:49:16 Salena Knight: Oh, my God. It doesn’t have to be all mel.

0:49:21 Georgia Perry: And I think I had to kind of have that walk through that fire the first time to realize what I don’t want. So, yeah, there’s a lot of important lessons there and a lot of personal growth as well. That’s a lot of self development, realizing that, hey, I have to let go. I can’t keep doing this. So, yeah, there’s like a certain amount of humility, I think, as well, with this kind of business change.

0:49:50 Salena Knight: All right, so 2.0 is rebooting the product side with under a different name banner. If we were sitting down having this Instagram live, I keep saying Facebook live.

0:50:00 Georgia Perry: Because you know what?

0:50:01 Salena Knight: I hang on. Instagram. If we’re having this Instagram live twelve months from now, and I’m like, oh, my God, jeep, you have been a freaking success. What have you done?

0:50:12 Georgia Perry: What does it look like?

0:50:13 Salena Knight: What does it look like?

0:50:14 Georgia Perry: It looks like ease. A day and a week and a world where business and life feels there’s a sense of ease. Like, I know what’s happening when I know who’s accountable for what. And it’s not all me, financially secure, less kind of working towards some bigger financial goals, like owning a home, having a studio space where we feel creative. And perhaps it is a small team again. Yeah, there’s kind of a few different prongs there, but by and large, just having a business that feels easy is the wrong word, but that feels flow.

0:51:04 Salena Knight: It’s in flow. Right? We talked about this the other day too, because that was one of the things that I said too, was because we put so much effort into growing the business last year and we brought on a fractional CMO and we brought on a fractional sales team and all this kind of stuff that there was a lot of even though I was letting go of a lot of things, there’s always that the hiccups right at the beginning with every like it’s like the synergy. It never just works seamlessly. There’s always this.

0:51:33 Salena Knight: There’s always the teething problems. And when we had our team meeting back last week, started the year, and I was like, what does everybody want from the business this year? And it was funny. Everybody said the same thing as you. It was like, we feel like we put all the effort in, so now it’s time to reap the rewards. It’s like the ease. And we came up with the word flow. There’s always going to be hiccups, but not this.

0:51:55 Salena Knight: Everything at a deadline because we have all. We are like you. We work everything to a deadline and we do fantastically. We are shit if there’s no deadline. All right, let’s put these pretend deadlines on ourselves so that it’s like, okay, instead of saying batching for me, I was getting to the point where we used to batch six months worth of podcasts, or six weeks at least worth of podcasts. And then it got to the point where we were doing every single week, and the podcast editor was like, oh, I need this. And my team was like, oh, I need this. And I’m like, this. This is too much for everyone.

0:52:33 Salena Knight: And so now we have more realistic views. Like, okay, so over a month, we’re going to batch three months worth. So that looks simply have that content. And even though there’s the kind of semi deadline there that everyone can work to, it then means that the next couple of months we can forget about it. And so it is really about, I think, identifying where are you putting all the energy into your business?

0:52:57 Salena Knight: And where is that urgency, which is not good because that’s Cortisol level overload for everyone. How can we bring down the Cortisol levels and end up with a better product, but still feel like we kind of had that deadline to meet? So that was one of the things that we put in. And thank you to all the people who say they love that. This chat is like the most engagement I have ever gotten. So I’m so excited.

0:53:25 Salena Knight: That would just be like my little piece of advice. There is just looking at what are the things that trigger that sense of urgency and not distress, but that’s just the panic mode and how can you change what that looks like? For us, it was these artificial deadlines, which we work to, and I think that’s great, but it also means that you kind of know that because it is a little bit artificial, you’re like, oh, okay, if I go over by day, the world’s not going to end.

0:53:58 Georgia Perry: Yeah. Rather than having just everything’s open ended, it’s just going to be done now. It’s just going to be done yesterday. Yeah, there’s a bit of accountability there. Sure.

0:54:06 Salena Knight: All right, I want one piece of.

0:54:08 Georgia Perry: Advice for the business.

0:54:09 Salena Knight: Listening. This is your complaint.

0:54:15 Georgia Perry: Listen to your gut.

0:54:17 Salena Knight: Feel like it’s a whole different episode.

0:54:19 Georgia Perry: Yeah, listen to your gut when it’s not working, you know, and it’s just having the courage to listen to that and make changes. Stop what’s not working.

0:54:36 Salena Knight: But sometimes when it’s not working, I say this from personal experience. Sometimes when it’s not working, it doesn’t mean you should screw it out. So, for example, I can give you one example. So we brought on a salesperson, and he was shit. He was just crap. But it didn’t mean we had to get rid of having a salesperson. What we worked out, though, is actually if we brought in a sales agency where we weren’t just relying on one person, it meant that one, it made our availability open up.

0:55:11 Salena Knight: It meant that we could give more strategy calls to our actually serving the customer better because the concept was good. Just our execution was crap. So it really was like going back to the drawing board and saying, all right, this is the right idea, but it’s not working, so why is it not working? So I love listening to your gut, but I think you also need to in some cases, like, I’m not going to say look at the numbers, but listen with your head as well because the gut saying it’s too easy to write.

0:55:45 Georgia Perry: And the thing that I’ve just gleaned from this is that the thing that I did when I was closing Chaos and having all that drama is that I listened to my gut. But my go to then was like, it’s all or nothing. Well, this is what’s wrong. This is what’s causing the pain. It’s the business. This is what’s stopping me from so it’s got to go. Rather than looking at the nuance of that feeling of thinking, something’s not right, what levers do I need to pull to kind of fix this?

0:56:19 Georgia Perry: That’s what I do now with this.

0:56:21 Salena Knight: Brain that’s like, oh, I got a scratch instead of getting some. That would be my suggestion to listen with your gut is listen with your gut. But also think just don’t always come out replace from a fear. It kind of ties back to the original conversation, which is everyone tells you to prepare for the worst, but no one tells you how to prepare for the best. And so it’s the same thing. It’s like the easy way is, oh, my God, this is worst case scenario.

0:56:57 Salena Knight: Not, oh, my God, this could be best case scenario if we just 100% powerful.

0:57:05 Georgia Perry: Powerful.

0:57:07 Salena Knight: Okay, my piece of advice would be know what you want. Because so many people can’t answer that question, or they’re really vague. They’re like, I want ease and not using you, but I want ease and flow, or I want to make more money. Let’s quantify. Because if there’s no number, if there’s no metric, then how would you know when he got any energy, too?

0:57:41 Georgia Perry: The Gold Coast always move. There’s never that sense of accomplishment. There’s never those celebrating small wins because there’s no small win. You get to the win and then it’s just onto the next one.

0:57:52 Salena Knight: So absolutely the next thing. Yeah, I think you really have to like that’s where things like targets and KPIs, which sounds so boring, but actually what they are is just what does success look like for me at this point and at this point, because then you’ve got something to measure it against. It’s like, oh, okay, I got to here and I’m not there yet. Okay, I can sit back and reflect. But if you don’t know where there is, how do you know what to fix? Or how do you know that you’ve done really well? And to keep replicating, like, do more of what works?

0:58:31 Salena Knight: Number one sip in business.

0:58:33 Georgia Perry: Do more of love notes and I think sky with your gut, but fact.

0:58:38 Salena Knight: Check it with your head.

0:58:39 Georgia Perry: I like that.

0:58:40 Salena Knight: Yeah. I like that right now. This has been so good.

0:58:47 Georgia Perry: Thank you so much. Selena, I really, really love your stuff. This is why you would resonate with a lot of my followers, because it’s a lot of creative people, a lot of creative business people. And I just feel like you in contrast to other business strategists and stuff, I love your delivery. I feel like you understand humanity behind business and I yeah, no ignore.

0:59:12 Salena Knight: So I’m wearing as well, so that always helps. All right, so, if you have just joined us, I’m Selena, and I’m a retail ecommerce growth strategist. This is the amazing Jeep, aka Georgia Perry, and you can find her awesome artwork and illustrations over@georgiaperry.com dot au. Thank you guys so much for joining us. And thank you, Georgia. This is the stuff that makes my heart sing. Like, if I can do this every day.

0:59:40 Georgia Perry: Thanks, everyone. And thanks for joining, everyone. It’s been so nice to see some familiar names pick up, so maybe I’ll do this more.

0:59:48 Salena Knight: All right, bye, guys.

0:59:51 C: 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 night and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review.

1:00:20 C: On your platform of choice. Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and ecommerce stores just like yours, that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it’s a win for you, a win for your community and a win for your customers. I’ll see you on the next episode.