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Hey there and welcome to the bringing business to retail podcast. Now, a few months ago, I joined Jasmine stars, mastermind for business owners looking to scale to ten million I knew that I was in a rut and that I had to step up my game if I wanted to hit these big, lofty goals, but I had invested in coaches previously without clearly defining what I wanted to get out of the time that we spent together. So I knew that this time it was going to be different. Now, the mastermind is for eight months, and for me, it's close to $45,000

Salena Knight 0:35
to invest to be in the group. Now, at six weeks in, I wanted to update you on how I'm feeling and whether or not I feel like I am getting a return on that very hefty investment.

Salena Knight 0:52
Why do I feel so awkward here? I feel loud and smart and determined. All the things that make me stand out are making me feel like I don't belong. I know I can get what I need, in a business sense, from the people here, but I don't know. I don't feel accepted. I don't know I feel different. Maybe it's a cultural thing. The people here are great. It is not them, it is me, but I will get past this. Maybe I'm uncomfortable because I'm not the smartest person in the room, or because some of us are so alike, it's either a make or break thing. Who knows clearly not me. So I will take this time to write what I want from this. First, the experience at the hotel is nice, but again, it's uncomfortable. Is it because it's new? Is it because I'm not used to having people to do those things for me without me asking? But ultimately, that is what I am here to do, find the people who will anticipate my needs to do the little things that take up bandwidth and to take things off my plate without me asking. When I joined this mastermind, I was really clear about what I wanted. I had a growth plan. I knew what I wanted to build, and I knew that it had been built before in another niche. So even though it was extremely lofty goals, I knew that it was completely doable. Now, I had chosen this mentor because they either had access or knowledge or knew the people who had done this before. And as we went through the qualifying call her qualifying me as much as I was qualifying her, she asked me if I was in and I said, You know what? I have to think about it, because the two hour long calls are going to be at 2am my time, and I'm going to have to fly to America twice in eight months. That is a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of sleep that I'm going to be giving up. I need to work out whether I think there is a positive ROI for me. And so think about it, I did, and clearly I decided to join up, or I wouldn't be recording this. So fast forward three weeks in, and one 2am call later, I am flying to the US, and I'm flying business class, because I am a points hacker. Now I'm one of those people who doesn't I'm really going to struggle to pay $7,000 for a business class flight, but I put everything in my business through my Amex card so that I will get points. So when I do fly, I can fly business. Now to get this business class flight, I had to go from Sydney to Brisbane, Brisbane to LA, which is fine. It adds an hour to the journey, but hey, it's business. And if it means that I can lay to bed and eat better food and get better service for 15 hours, I am totally down for that little detour. But as I was looking at my reservation, I saw that the transfer time in Brisbane was only 90 minutes. Now that sounds like a long time, but the reality is, in Brisbane, you have to leave the terminal, you have to get your baggage, you have to leave the terminal, you have to get on a bus, and you have to get to another terminal, and then, because it's international, you have to go through all the customs and immigration and all of the things before you can get on the plane. And I realized that 90 minutes probably wasn't going to be enough, so the weekend before, I rang the airline and tried to get on an earlier flight, but there was nothing available, even at the airport at the lounge, I tried to get moved to an earlier flight, but there was nothing available. You know where this story is going, don't you Sure enough, the flight from Sydney to Brisbane was late, and it wasn't late just a few minutes. It was late 40 minutes. So now my 90 minute transfer.

Salena Knight 5:00
Time is down to just 50 remembering that actually when you are flying International, the planes board 40 minutes beforehand. So I'm now down to a window of 10 minutes to disembark the plane, get my bags, get out to the bus, wait for the bus, get on the bus, go to the next terminal, and then get through customs, and then get to the gate. You know that this gate was the last possible gate that you could possibly reach. Now, I was lucky to discover that my luggage was going to be checked through all the way, so there was a few minutes shaved off my transfer time, but nevertheless, I was still going to have to hurry fast forward. I did manage to make the plane, which was fantastic. However, when I got to LA I was standing at the baggage carousel, waiting and waiting. My bag is minion yellow. Lana calls it the Minion bag because it looks like a minion. In fact, she wants to put two eyes on it and a set of glasses to make it look like a minion. That is how bright my bag is. And so I'm standing at the luggage carousel waiting for my bag, and it does not turn up. Then a random gentleman came up to me and he said, What are you doing?

Salena Knight 6:25
I'm waiting for my bag. He said, Oh, were you on the flight from Brisbane? I said, Yes. He said, Your bag didn't make it.

Salena Knight 6:33
Oh, just go follow all the people, go up to the top of the ramp, turn right and lodge a claim. That's not going to help me, but nevertheless, it is very late by this point, so I trudge up with another 20 or so people. I lodge my paperwork for my bag to be delivered to me the next day. I can't see how that's going to happen, but I am putting it out there. So then it is time to move to the hotel. At this point, it is around about 9pm I, along with a whole bunch of other people, had to wait over an hour for the hotel bus, and at midnight, I finally checked in to the hotel. Actually, those times don't line up. It must have been just before midnight that I checked into the hotel, because I luckily had, in my haste to get off the plane, I had thrown the business class pajamas into my hand luggage, and thank goodness I did, because for three days, the only clothes I had on was the maxi dress that I was wearing on the plane and a set of hotel pajamas. It was just after midnight when I realized I could wash my clothes,

Salena Knight 7:47
and so I walked out to the front desk and said, Do you have a laundry room? And they said, Yes, of course, we do. Thankfully, those business class pajamas came in handy, because that was all I had to wear. I put those pajamas on, I walked down to the laundry room, and I put my clothes on to wash. Now, thankfully, it was a tap and go. So I was able to tap my phone because I had no cash. Remember, I'd just gotten off the plate. I had no cash, but I knew that I was going to have clean clothes. And so the next morning, I woke up, my dress was dry. I had to dry my socks with the hairdresser, but nothing was going to stop me, because I was on my way to the production studios of airpost, and I've had them on the podcast. Now, I had booked this tour to look at their production studios while I was recording the podcast, and so it had been prepared for about three weeks beforehand. Now, I wasn't quite sure how to get there and where I live in Sydney, we quite often catch public transport everywhere. If I need to go to the city, I hop on the ferry. If I need to go somewhere else, I hop on the bus. And so I pulled out my Google Maps, I plugged the destination in, and I went outside the hotel, and I caught the bus into downtown LA and I had left early because, remember, I had no luggage. All I had with me was my carry on bag with my iPad, my laptop and a book and just a few bits and pieces. And so I knew I was going to have to get myself some makeup. I was going to have to do my hair. I didn't even have a comb to do my hair. And so I left quite early, and I arrived in town. My appointment was for 11am and I arrived in downtown LA and I knew that there was a Macy's just across the road, thanks to Google Maps. And so I was like, I will go into Macy's. I will buy myself a hair iron. I will buy myself some makeup that travel insurance can sort it out later. And so I walked into Macy's, waiting for them to open at 10am and I'm standing at the door waiting the doors open. I walk into the makeup department, and I start looking.

Salena Knight 10:00
Around, there is nothing in this Macy's, I'm talking about. The shelves were empty. And so even though I was prepared to buy stuff, there was nothing for me to buy. And I have this meeting in 50 minutes, and I still have to get to the meeting. It literally got to the point where I was using the sample makeup, putting it on in Macy's so that I could have something on my face. I did manage to buy myself some mascara, and I did have some lippy in my bag. So I managed to put a little bit of concealer on for those bags under my eyes, and a little bit of foundation. I had my mascara, I had my lipstick, and then I managed to finally get myself a hair iron, but I did not get it at Macy's. I had to go down to a Walgreens and buy myself a hair iron. And so then I had to go back to Macy's, because there are no bathrooms in Walgreens, and find a PowerPoint and do my hair. Needless to say, I was a little bit late to that appointment. Anyway, we had a blast at with the people from air post and I had a blast. We had a blast together. They took me out for lunch. I went to a Michelin starred restaurant. Well, not a Michelin starred restaurant. I went to Grand Central now, not Grand Central Station, but Grand Central Market. And there were all these different food vendors, and I actually managed to eat this amazing Mexican from a Michelin starred Cafe vendor. I'm not sure what you call them in these markets. And so anyway, my time was up, and it was time for me to get on the bus and head over to the station so that I can catch the train down to San Diego.

Salena Knight 11:53
Alrighty, so I'm prepared to catch the train over to the station, at which point the air post people were like, You are not catching the train. You are not catching the bus. It is way too sketchy. Here's the thing about Californians that I've discovered. You guys Uber everywhere.

Salena Knight 12:10
You guys need to catch public transport more. Anyway, I conceded. I called the Uber. I got on the train to San Diego, and when I boarded the train, I sat at a table. There were four seats with a table, and I wanted to get some work done. And so as I sat down, there was a sign that said this is reserved for groups of three or more. I was like, I will just wait and see, because these are the only seats with tables. Anyway, a gentleman came across and sat across from me, and funnily enough, he was Australian, and the train took off. We got to chatting. We had a great conversation. And then the train guard came, and the train guard told us we had to move unless we had three people. And so my newfound friend went and managed to round an extra person up, the lovely Renata, who was a lawyer, who was on her way to San Diego for her work retreat, came and sat with us, and actually I got no work done on that train, because the three of us had a fantastic conversation all the way down to San Diego. So then I'm in San Diego, remember, I have no luggage. I managed to log in to the website and see that my luggage has gone from Brisbane backwards to Melbourne. Now it needs to get to LAX and then three hours down the road to San Diego. I had no idea when it was going to come, and they had no way to call me because I didn't have a phone. I only had an ECM with data. Anyway, I caught the bus the next day. Yes, I caught the bus. You guys in California will be horrified, but I caught the bus to target to get myself some clothes and some essentials. But you would think by now I would be absolutely so frustrated because I get to target, there are no clothes. There is only a couple of a couple of little things. It's a very, very small target. But I did manage to get myself essentials, and when I got to my Airbnb, thank goodness they had a washer dryer, because I still had no clothes. Well, fast forward to day three, and I finally managed to get my luggage. It just turned up. I was heading out to lunch with my friend Gina, and there was my minion suitcase sitting in the lobby. I was so excited. So with that, I hopped in my Uber. After five days with my friend Gina, and I headed up to Newport Beach. And yes, I had to Uber, because it was the only way to get there easily. I had organized myself a very fancy hotel. And if you know me, you know that I am a hotel room snob, but I my friends had used my air miles or my frequent flyer points. This place was fancy. It is, I'm gonna say I've stayed at some nice places. It is.

Salena Knight 15:00
Probably the fanciest place that I have ever been to. This hotel is so fancy it has a driver that will pick you up and take you where you want to go. And so the driver picks me up that evening, and he takes me to a beautiful restaurant on the waterfront for the first get to know you. Drinks. We had amazing food, and I got to know the people who were in the mastermind with me, but it's always a little bit awkward at those events, isn't it, because you never know what to say, even though we'd met once, virtually, it was 2am for me on that call, I had taken some notes, but I didn't really know who was who I didn't know who I was going to connect with hence what I wrote in my journal. I come home from that event, I'm feeling okay, and the next morning, the hotel driver takes me to my mentor's house. Remember, this is for free. I feel so bad because I don't have any cash to give him a tip, can't get Venmo if you don't have an American phone number. Anyway, I arrive at her home, and I have to say, I was as excited to meet her in person as I was to look at her home, because I have seen so many pictures of this house, because I love the designer who designed it. When we arrived, there is this gorgeous, healthy breakfast for us, and I was, you know, even though I'm making chit chat and making small talk, I feel very awkward because during the drinks, I hadn't had anyone who I had, you know, truly had that connection with, and thought, Oh, I'm just going to hang out with you, which sometimes can happen when you go to these kinds of things. But I met this one amazing lady called Susan, who I did have that little bit of a connection with. So we sit down at these two big tables, and Susan is not there. I later find out that Susan is Jasmine's mentor, so my mentor's mentor and we sit at these two massive tables inside of Jasmine's lounge room. There are eight people at each and they are decorated with gorgeous flowers. And when we sit down, there is a personal note for each person and a beautiful Moleskine journal and pen. And so the whole welcoming experience was very welcoming. The whole experience was to put you at ease, to make you feel like you were genuinely wanted, and you're being invited to somebody's home, and they did an amazing job of that. So Jasmine welcomes us to her house and then talks about how we never give ourselves space, space to think and space to ask questions. And then she proceeds to say, for 20 minutes, I just want you to write. You don't have to share this with anyone. Whatever comes, comes. Maybe you're going to write about what you left, maybe about what you're feeling, maybe what you're excited about. Maybe you'll write about the stories that are going through your head, whatever it is, just right now, remember, I am in a room with 15 overachieving women, and there are 15 sets of eyeballs looking around the room at each other. I'm pretty sure at this point, I am not the only one thinking lady, this is a Business Mastermind, and I am all for a little Woo, but I did not come here to journal my feelings, because the truth is, in the lead up to this, we had just sold our house, we had moved into temporary accommodation. My dad had just died. The new house that we were buying wasn't ready. My cortisol levels and stress levels were through the roof, and all I wanted to do was come to this mastermind and focus, and I was more than happy to keep those feelings pushed in a box with a key and put in the attic. I mean, 20 minutes, lady, seriously. But we do, because that is what we're here for, to make ourselves uncomfortable. And so we write, I write about how I feel awkward and uncomfortable, and I wonder if I'm the smartest person in the room. And by the way, I am so not the smartest person in that room, which is amazing. And after that, we lead into a hot seat. Now if you have never experienced one, they are awesome. You get up, you put forward your obstacle, your question, your idea, and you get group feedback. So the first one was amazing. And then Susan, the lady that I had connected with my mentor's mentor, gets up and does a presentation on leadership. Now I didn't know that Susan was the guest at the time, I thought she was one of us, and I had secretly confided in her during the healthy breakfast that I felt awkward and weird in the room, and I was wondering if I was the smartest person in the room, and that was just way too bragged and why? Who am I to think that?

Salena Knight 20:00
That, and then this lady gets up and does a presentation on leadership. And at this point, I am cringing. On the inside, there is something about this woman that makes you open up. She is not judgmental, but she will give you advice, and so I don't think she's going to listen to this, but at that point, I felt even more awkward, but I got through it. Over the next two days, I managed to meet some amazing people, form some friendships again, realize I am not the smartest person in the room, and I came away with page after page after page of knowledge and insight and a plan to make this year and every other year grow and grow and grow. I have already mapped out how we are going to get to eight figures, and then the ideas that will take us to nine figures. So I'm six weeks in a 2am intro call, a flight to the US, feeling all kinds of awkward. I've since had another 4am call. Now, those calls, thanks to daylight savings here in Australia, are at 4am for the next couple of months. What's changed? Have I seen ROI? Well, I will admit that I came back excited, which a couple of days in, turned into massive, all consuming feeling of overwhelm. I had too many things. I had too many ideas. I had half of a notebook of ideas, and I didn't feel like I had the people or the processes or the systems or even the finances that I needed right now to achieve the goals that I wanted to hit. And on top of that, my family had moved into our new house whilst I was gone, and so when I arrived, it was to a new home with boxes to unpack and everything to organize. And weeks later, there still is now part of that event was to form an accountability group, and this week, we had to write down what we were going to achieve in the next 30 days. And I actually didn't know, because I had too many things inside of this notebook. I had hired two people in this short period of time, and I didn't want to make the same mistakes I had made before, where I had brought somebody on, but by the time they started, I was so overwhelmed and I had so many things on my plate that I just threw everything on them. And I'll admit, I have no habit of doing that, but I quite often have waited too long to hire, and then you get to this point where you just want somebody to take it all off of your plate. So even though I had this plan mapped out and I had two new people on board, I had to curb back everything that I wanted to do so that I didn't overwhelm them. So when we were asked for our goals, I actually didn't know what I wanted to achieve in the next 30 days, and very uncomfortably, I said to my group, can you guys post your goals? Because at this point, I don't have the focus to focus on my own. I had so much going on. It is peak season. It is the lead up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday. I had a house to unpack. I had these new hires to onboard, and I had all of these plans that I wanted to do something with, and it felt like too much, but as my group started to write their goals in Slack, I was motivated to push through. I knew that there were things that were going to have to happen. I had to onboard new team members Black Friday was going to happen, and in fact, it was a passing comment by one of the people in the group that set me on the right path, the amazing Cara, just literally a passing comment mentioned that she had mapped out her 2025, marketing calendar the whole year for the first time ever, and I knew I needed to do that, but not just marketing. I needed to map out my revenue streams, and then from there, how many leads were we going to need based on the conversion rates, and what was I prepared to pay cost per lead? So I took myself off to the beach, and I didn't even take a calculator. I had a pen and a piece of paper and I mapped all of this out. I knew that, if nothing else, this would get me prepared for the scary ad spend budget that I was potentially going to have to put out for the next year. And once I sat there and mapped it out, I mapped out the different programs. I mapped out how many people we would need to get into our database if we had different conversion rates, a 2% conversion rate, a 3% A, 5% A, 10% A, 20% and then I worked out from the data that I knew off the top of my head, how much it cost us to acquire a customer. And then I from there.

Salena Knight 25:00
Mapped out the ad spend budget, and then I realized that I did not want to spend that much on ads, and so what I was able to do is then reverse engineer all of the things that I needed to do to get those costs down. I knew that I had to fulfill my potential customer funnel for way less, and that I would have to nurture them, and I would have to provide value to them, and then I would have to look to convert them, just like you have to if you don't want the hefty ad spend. How are you going to get new people on your email list? How do you increase open rates so there are more eyeballs on your stuff, so that the connection is being built so that when you want the conversion, when you want the sale, it is much more likely to happen. This is business, and this is the fun stuff for me. And so as I wrap this podcast up, do I feel like I've had an ROI on my investment already, 100%

Salena Knight 26:00
and whilst I can't say I have done anything to get the dollars in the bank right now, what I have done is started setting up my team, my vision, the strategies, the reverse engineering, the ad spend, the people, the resources that I am going to have to put in place, or that I have started to put in place for an expansive 2025

Salena Knight 26:25
I am so tired, but I am also so excited about what this next year brings for me, because this time, I feel like I have the plan being around business owners. And to be clear, we are all in vastly different industries, a restauranteur, a lawyer, a photo booth owner, a health coach. Being around these amazing women with a mentor and her team, which has been amazing. This is the first time I've been in a mastermind where the team were as important as the mentor themselves, the team, the president of her company, the CEO, the ops manager, they are literally showing us what they are doing in their business so that we can go and duplicate it into ours. Being around these amazing people to help guide me, to answer questions, to make me think differently, to make me Zig when I want to zag. It has been worth the investment, and I am only six weeks in. I still have another six and a half months to go, and I look forward to updating you all along the way. Guys, thank you so much for joining me. This episode was a little bit different. I don't normally go into these kinds of personal details, and I have to admit, when I wrote that, I guess, journal, when I wrote that, journaling down inside this diary, I did not think I would ever be reading it out to anyone. So if you've enjoyed this episode, let me know. Send me a DM. Make sure you leave a review. Thank you again, and I can't wait to see you on the next episode. 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. You.