I am ashamed to say that I spent close to, let me get my calculator out, three twelves of 36, is that right? About 36. I'm gonna say. I spent nearly a hundred thousand dollars, three years at $3,000 on a business coach who helped me to work out my goals and stay accountable. And at the time I thought it was exactly what I needed.

I just needed someone to keep me focused. He was great at telling me what I needed to do, but here's the thing.

Hey there, and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. I'm Selena Knight, your retail and e-commerce growth strategist, and this is the place where you need to be if you're looking for strategies to grow your business. Now, last year I did an episode about spending $45,000 to join a mastermind.

Now, it wasn't the first mastermind I'd been in, or even the first business coach that I'd had. But the way that it was run was very different to the usual structure, and it's been game changing for my business. But spending money to get help hasn't always given me an ROI. I mean, sure I have learned things, and in hindsight I can see that in some circumstances I was suckered into coaching or lured in by this sense of achievement, and dare I say it like a really hard nosed salesperson.

But in others, the reason I didn't get the results that I wanted. Was because I was either in the wrong place at the wrong time, like in the wrong place of my business journey at the wrong time, or I'd engaged the wrong person for the help that I needed. Oh, quite simply, I was trying to fix stuff that actually was not going to make a difference in my business.

Let me give you an example. I once joined a mastermind that put a whole lot of focus on marketing. Now, in hindsight, I can see I learned so much from that group. I. But looking back where I was at in my business, I was just trying to survive. What would've moved the needle for me back then was working out how I could afford to hire someone to take a bunch of operational tasks off my plate, to actually have time to do all of the marketing strategies that I'd learned.

So all the strategies that I had discovered, which were fantastic. Helpful, but they didn't help me for where I was at in my business or what was going to grow my business. And likewise, I later hired a business co. Oh my gosh. I do this podcast to share with you to document my journey and to share with you the great things that I do, but also the things that are not so great.

This was one of those things I am ashamed to say that I spent close to, let me get my calculator out. Three 12 to 36, is that right? About 36. I'm gonna say. I spent nearly a hundred thousand dollars, three years at $3,000 on a business coach who helped me to work out my goals and stay accountable. And at the time I thought it was exactly what I needed.

I just needed someone to keep me focused. He was great at telling me what I needed to do. But here's the thing. He had no experience in retail. Remember at this point, I had no very little experience in retail. He had no experience in e-commerce. He had no experience in marketing or even in business strategy.

He just had a lot of ideas that were really, really good. But in hindsight, they were not what I needed at the time. I didn't actually realize until over a decade in business, I. That a business coach doesn't give you strategy. They don't give you the how to do something, they just give you the what to do.

So even before investing in this current mastermind, I was tossing up between two options. One was very much focused on brand and message and marketing, and I had been following this marketing person for many, many years, and I love everything that they do. And as my business has grown. The people that we serve have changed, and I wanted to work with a mentor who would help me refine my messaging and work on that brand alignment.

The other, which is the one that I chose, was very, very different. I. The host is a business strategist and she's currently at my next level. So that means that she had just gone through all the ups and downs of scaling past eight figures, and she's been happy to share what worked and what didn't. Now, sure, she's a brilliant strategist, but the fact that I have also gotten access to her team, which at the time I was a little bit uncertain about, I thought I was joining for her and access to her.

But the reality is I speak more with her CEO and COO than I do with her. And I believe I chose the right path because I am seeing results. Investing in yourself and your business growth is something that you should never take lightly. There are programs that can cost $50,000 that won't necessarily serve you and others that might cost a fraction of that which literally propel you to the next level.

The key is to knowing what you actually need help with. Where are you at right now? Where is the business at right now? And the type of help that you need to get you to where you want to go, whether it's a course, a group training, group coaching, a business coach, mentor, strategist, there's all different ways that we can get there.

All of these things can help immensely, but equally, if you are searching for or engaging the one that doesn't align with the help that you need. Where you're at and where you want to go, then it can fall short. And what I have found is when that happens, you leave feeling very frustrated and usually you feel like you've been taken advantage of.

You feel like you've burnt that money. Even if that wasn't the case, I can now go back to those times and see that it wasn't necessarily the coach's problem or the Mastermind's problem. The simple fact was I just wasn't. In the place I needed to be at that time. So my goal is to document how I'm growing my business so that you can take anything that you need and apply it in yours or not apply it in yours if that's the case.

So in this episode, I want to give you my overview of looking back and looking forward the different types of help that I have needed at the different stages of business. So the kinds of help I took and maybe shouldn't have taken. Or now being older, wiser, what I should have been doing instead, so that maybe you can avoid some of the mistakes that I made.

All righty, so let's go back. Way, way, way back to, shh for me, 2007. Startup mode 2007. If you guys don't remember, maybe you were just young then, but for those of you who have forgotten how long ago that was, 2007, we didn't have data on our phones. I remember I had my daughter in 2008 and I had to buy a dongle to be able to send the photos to my in-laws over in the uk.

So. We could text, but you had to press, you know, the two button three times to get the letter C. That kind of, that's where we were in 2007. I started an e-commerce business back when e-commerce was, you know, still very, very fresh. So for me, 2007, let me take you back, is startup mode now generally. When you're in that startup mode, well, for me, the first goal I had was to be around the $30,000 a month mark, 20 to $30,000 a month.

And at that point I needed all of the things because, and you've been there, you're excited, you have the enthusiasm. You don't know if this is gonna work, but gosh, Donna, you are willing to put everything in and give it a good red hot go. Everything is shiny and new, and you can get lost for hours in YouTube tutorials and Facebook groups.

Just being a sponge and taking everything in when you're at this point, you need to fail a lot. Just to understand business. Honestly, without the failures, you can't compute success or what works. So if you're at this point and you're listening, we'll be proud of everything that doesn't work because it gives you data points, and at this stage, you just wanna learn everything that you can.

You gonna be watching all the free master classes, downloading all the free templates, maybe investing in some low cost DIY courses or memberships. I know that that's where I was spending my money. I downloaded all the free, I was on every single list that I could possibly be on. And I was venturing out, you know, buying $27 things, buying $97 things.

I was in a membership, which I think was at the time, a hundred dollars a month, which was a lot of money back then, but it was all about filling that knowledge void that I had, despite the fact that I had a business degree. All right, so once we got past that, let's say between around 30 to $60,000 a month, this is the part where not only I, but I tend to see.

Like, you know, accelerator students that you've realized that business is actually hard work. It is not just standing behind a counter and packing orders, you know? Or you have a vague idea about those five pillars of retail success that I talk about. Money, sales, customers, marketing impact, which is your branding and leadership.

You understand that they're there, but you need help with all of them, and you don't need strategy at this stage because how can you build a strategy when you don't even know what you're doing? Okay? You may have fumbled into this part, but you still need help with all of the things. So for me, at this stage, I knew I needed to learn more, but I no longer had the time to be scrolling endlessly through YouTube videos or.

Spending hours in Facebook groups, getting people, getting answers from people. Like I think it's like, I can't afford for you to think I just need to know what's worked online, tutorials, all those sorts of things. They were great, but I didn't have time for them anymore. So at this point, if you're actively looking to grow your business, for me it was about finding someone who could help me with as much of the stuff that I didn't know was possible.

Preferably for the smallest amount of money, but in a really structured way that. Delivered, deliver me the information in bite-sized chunks. So not full of fluff. I don't learn from the fluff. I just want, here's the thing that you need to do that will build you onto this next thing. Do this, get there, do this to get there.

It's a simple path to follow. So setting up all of those business foundations that. Maybe you don't even know that they exist. Maybe you've kind of fumbled up to this point. So as you do start to invest more and grow more, the whole thing doesn't implode. So this as the point where I started to invest in my business and I did programs that usually tended to include a little bit of group coaching.

So some of those were set up so that you learn a specific topic each month and others were about following the system. And for me, I liked the system because otherwise it was just more things in my brain.  Either take my focus away. Oh, another shiny new thing. Another, let's just try that. Let's just try that.

Personally, I like the do A, which will set you up to B. When you get to B, do this to get you sorted, to get to C. Those are the ones I found the most helpful because I got to where I wanted to go quicker. For me, that's the way I like to learn. Gimme the path. I will take the action, which funnily enough is.

How I set up the scale your store accelerator, do this, which will lead you to here. Once you get to this point, you need to do this and move on to the next point. So at this point, remember we're talking between that 30 to $60,000 a month. What I will say is I don't recommend generally to spend time and money on something like SEO.

Now don't shoot me down. I know there is a time and a space for SEO. But here's the thing that takes months or sometimes even years to see a return on. So for a lot of people at this stage in their business, it isn't going to be a needle moving exercise. Remember, there's still not a lot of profit in the business at this point.

There's not a lot of cash floating around. So you wanna be able to spend money knowing that you're going to get a return, and sure, SEO is probably going to help you, but let's say you spend $10,000 a year for an SEO agency. My first question to you is, will you make at least $20,000 back? Because that's how much you're gonna have to generate to pay for it.

And if you are, how long is that going to take? Versus stick with me here. Say I invested a thousand dollars in someone to do my email marketing, and I can quite easily track that. I make $2,000 back in a couple of weeks. Let's say the first month I spent a thousand dollars for someone to do my emails and I made $2,000 back.

Now I have $2,000 that I invest in my business. $10,000 into the SEO, which I might not see for the next six, 12 months. If I do this month upon month, every month I've got more money that I can invest back into the business. So instead of costing me money, I'm now making money. It's called opportunity cost.

It's giving away one thing for the sake of another, and there's a cost that goes with it. You just have to choose, and that's what I mean when I talk about making smarter decisions with the time and the money that you have. It's not always about what could work. So remember I told you back to that first mastermind where you learn different, you learn a new strategy each month.

All these things could have worked, but for me, at the time, I needed the path. So I needed the thing that was going to get me to where I was going to go quickest. And that's kind of where you're at in that bracket. It's like what are you going to focus on that will move the needle fastest based on where you are at?

And this is where you need to start understanding. The numbers behind your decisions. If you don't know how to work out your CAC or your CLV, or if you don't know what those terms mean, which are customer acquisition cost, or how much can you afford to spend to get a new customer and customer lifetime value, which is how much someone spends with you over the lifetime that they shop with you.

Your CLV, your lifetime value informs how much you can spend to acquire a customer if you don't know those foundational pieces. Then can you see how running ads can easily end up losing you money rather than making you money? I don't like losing money. So likewise, if you don't know your, your BEP, your break even point, and you haven't got a plan in place to do more than that in sales every single month, then you're going to continue to flounder and all the SEO in the world is not going to help you.

So what I tend to see at this point, and I can safely say I've worked with several hundreds of businesses at this point. You want programs that are gonna help you understand how money works in your business, how to craft offers that your customers are going to get to buy from you. You wanna be able to refine your product mix and understand who those best customers are, why they're shopping with you, and how you can get more of them.

You are also probably going to be starting to explore leadership. Finding some extra people. Maybe they're casual people, maybe they're contractors, but you still need to manage them and how you, and you need to know how you're gonna afford those people. And you know, that's where programs like my scale, your store accelerator fit in.

You learn for yourself, but you also learn from others who are on that same journey. So once we get past that, 60 K, six 12. So 720, so let's say at the seven 50 to. Let me think. Kind of two to $3 million. This is the point where the dip happens because your business is growing, but it feels like everything and everyone needs you.

You've probably got a bit of a team, but no one else is in charge. You might have a manager, but the business still doesn't grow. If you are not around, you are still the driving force and you feel stuck, and this is where so many owners think. Is this even worth it? Like this is hard. The shine is gone because generally at this point, you are now relying on the business income if you weren't already.

Now you have responsibilities for yourself and for your team, and so actively growing a business is work. I mean, it is hard work. So at this point, you do need strategy. You've got enough knowledge behind you, hopefully. And you know that there are things that need to be done, but which one do we need to do?

So at this point, for me, I was looking for much higher level tailored advice. I. I didn't want more courses. I was happy to learn, like, give me something and just tell me you need to watch module three. Go here. Uh, and that's what my current mastermind has, has done. It's been great. She's given me access to all of her programs, but it's literally just go and watch this one lesson.

I don't need to spend 20 hours on that. So when you're at the seven figures, you know that are, you know, well basically seven figures and above, you are looking for someone who can just keep you targeted, keep you focused. You don't want more courses. You want someone to audit your business and say, look, here is your choke point.

Fix this, and a whole bunch of problems will just disappear. You've got some cash now, so you have the ability to pay for that specific help rather than that kind of lower level generalist help. But here's the thing, at this point, everything still feels urgent and important. You want better profits, you want better people.

You want to be marketing smarter, but you're also really wary because if you're like most people and like me. You've been burnt before. You have bought courses. You've maybe had that business coach. You've used agencies and freelancers and bought programs that promised the world but maybe didn't deliver.

So it's hard to trust because now you have it all on the line. I. And this, my friends, is the part where so many business owners give up and they do two things. They either sell the business because they no longer in air quotes. If you're listening on the podcast, they no longer have time for it, or they've started a new venture.

That's the other option is they go down two paths they sell because actually growing a business is hard work or they get distracted. They need the thrill of the chase, and so they go and start something new because it is hard. Less than 5% of businesses ever crack a million dollars. But here's the good news.

If you push through, then you are in that top 5% already. You are already ahead of 95% of other business owners. And at that next level, you my friends, get shark. That's my word for it. You get. Focused, laser focused. You know what works? You've got the data, you've got the experience, you've lived the lessons, and now it is up to building and refining.

It is upleveling your team. It is moving from generalists to specialists. It is building a network of people and peers that you can lean on. But even then, I see two extremes. What I tend to see is either team bloat, so businesses have too many people and no real structure. They've just kind of. Added people on as they go, oh, we now have money to pay for a marketing person.

So they bring in a marketing manager, and then they have an e-commerce manager, and then they have an email person over here, and maybe they have an ads agency over there. They kind of just add all these people in because they haven't had the time to think about what that hierarchy looks like. So too many people, no real structure.

Or believe it or not, it's the complete opposite. Somehow by some stroke of luck, usually a great product or you are in the right place at the right time. The founder, and it's like a couple of VAs or the founder and an assistant holding together a $5 million business with duct tape. Either way, the owner is still the bottleneck, and I'm gonna say well into eight figures.

In the tens of millions of dollars. The the founder is generally still the bottleneck, or the owner is still the bottleneck. So pulling it back to, we're in the seven figure range now, moving into eight figures. At this stage, it is all about people and systems. It is finding the friction, it's removing yourself as the linchpin, and that is so hard, and that's the shift.

From founder or owner to CEO, and that is what takes you from good to great. And so here you are actively looking at ways to make the business less reliant on you. Little by little chipping away, relinquishing the burdens, removing the bottlenecks. It is about systems. People, people both in your business and without your business.

And for me, this is where a strategist really helped. So you might bring in a strategist that covers lots of different areas, like a, a, a business strategist, or they might focus on one, like international expansion or logistics. But they're going to give you tailored strategic advice on moving your business forward.

Remember, you are looking for expertise and that's what I decided I needed when I joined my mastermind. And you know, the experience that I got from that has been game changing. And that's what we do inside of our five X framework is you work with a strategist. It's not coaching, it is strategy. I know for me, I wanted someone who did what we do.

I wanted someone to come in, look at the business, dissect it, find all those money leaks and all those money fountains, and just cut back all the stuff that did not matter, shark, and focus on what would truly grow my business. And even though, well all of it. Has been really basic, boring, old work. It's been really, really hard.

But the great thing about the Mastermind, and actually as I say this at the five X framework, was that I was lucky in this mastermind to get access to her team of experts. I mentioned it earlier and when I was sold into the Mastermind, I, I didn't really see. That I would get benefit out of it, but actually I've gotten more of a benefit from the experts being able to talk to A COO when we brought on A COO and ask what kinds of KPI should I be looking at?

What kinds of tests should I be putting these through during the hiring process, talking to. The CEO talking to the president of one of her companies. Great. What am I looking for here? What would I be doing? Having all of that access and inside of our five x framework, it's an e-commerce person, it's a business strategist, it's logistics, it's branding, it's design, it's email marketing.

Having access to those people has made significant impact on the growth of our business in record time. On one side, I am so frustrated that things take so long because hiring. Hiring A COO took us. We started in January and it took until the end of March. That's a lot of time to not have somebody in that role, and I would've loved to have gotten them in the first week.

But you have to exercise so much patience as you grow your business and not settle. We've moved at record speed, but at the same time it can feel like it is a kingly slow. Now, that's business strategist at, at this. Like throughout all of these, you might also have a mentor, someone who has been where you want to go.

You know, maybe it is, you know, your parents, when I, when I actually had my store. The lady in the store next to me was a kid's photographer. Great. When you have a baby business and she used to meet with her dad once a week to as a, as a mentor. They would go and talk about the business and he would give her advice because he was an experienced business owner.

Those are the people who can give you advice. Generally because they've, they've been where you want to go. Maybe you're also looking at this point at mastermind groups or peer networks, both of which I've, I've been part of. I've, I pay to be in a peer network and then I pay to be in a mastermind, so I'm spending a lot of money at this point in my business.

Being able to on people and processes, being able to network with and learn from your peers, being able to access and network with people at that next level. And of course all these experts that have come in at the same time. So at this point, I'm seriously going to say once you hit seven and eight figures, it is about people both within your business and without.

And it is about. Processes, putting the systems, because the funny thing is the systems that got you to a million dollars aren't the same systems that will get you to a hundred million dollars. So you kind of end up going through all this all over again, but now you have the experience and you have the age, and you have the wisdom, and you've got the money to be able to fast track that.

Wherever you are in your business journey, know this, the help that you need is out there. You need to ask the right question first. What is the big thing? What is the next big thing that I need to solve in my business? The thing that if I could just crack this, a whole bunch of other proble

ms would just disappear.

And so if we go back to my example. I know I sound like I'm hating on SEO, but nailing your SEO is not going to change the trajectory of your business. Certainly not in the short term, but maybe hiring A COO does, or maybe hiring an email marketer does because they bring in the cash at different points of your business.

You need different things, so you need to understand that you might look at another business and they might be doing something. It doesn't mean it's what you need because your skills and your talents and your expertise. Completely different from that business over there. What's happening inside of your business?

What's happening on the inside is different to what is happening on theirs. And sure you can learn, but know that the thing that you need may not be the thing that they need. Because once you know that, you will know the kind of help that you need to go out and get. And that, my friend, is the next step in scaling your store.

You're welcome. Okay, go out there. You've got this, and if you've been listening to this and you've found this helpful, please, I'm really not great at asking for reviews, but my new podcast strategist tells me I need to do this, so please jump in wherever you're at. Leave a review, share it with a friend, because the more people that we help, then the more we grow our businesses.

All righty. Thank you so much, guys. I'll 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.