My first store was in a little arcade right behind the main street. I thought it was the perfect place. The rent was reasonable. There were a lot of families at the beach across the road. I could pop a sign out on the main road and I would be set. On one side of my store was a kids talent agency and on the other side was a family photographer. Could there be a more perfect place for a baby and kids shop?

Every day for years, I would write on a chalkboard A-frame sign and walk it outside around the corner to the main street. I thought I was doing a great job because I wrote something different on that board every single day. Eventually, when I had team members come on, it was always fun to see what we would come up with. Sometimes they were little memes, sometimes things about the weather, but they were always fun. It was actually a joy every single morning, writing on that chalkboard.

Now, this board as an A-frame was pretty heavy because it was going out on the street - a super industrial heavy thing. So dragging it around to the main road was not the most fun thing in the world, but we did it because I thought it was a really key piece of marketing for us.

That A-frame chalkboard sign used to sit out the front of a small grocery store. Our shop backed onto it, and people were going past every single day - thousands of people. There was also a bus stop next to the grocery store, so literally tens of thousands of people would go past that sign every single day. But I cannot tell you how many times people would come in years after we'd opened and say, "Did you just open?"

I would explain that no, we'd been here for years. And they would say, "I just saw your sign out the front." I got a little bit snarky after a while. I'd think to myself, are these people just blind? Well, that's until recently I did the exact same thing.

I moved here to the beach around 18 months ago. Just recently, I was looking for a gift to take to a friend in America, so I walked down the street and realised there was a store I didn't even know existed. This is a street I walk or ride down if not every day, probably five times a week. It is the main shopping strip in my area. And here was this store, right there. A beautiful window display, gorgeous fit-out, exactly the kind of place I would shop and the kinds of products I would buy. But for 18 months, I had walked straight past it.

Not because I wasn't their customer - I 100% was their customer. I walked past it because I wasn't present. I was busy, in my own head, mentally reviewing my shopping list or on my way to grab food. It never quite registered as somewhere I needed to go right now.

And then the day I actually went in, the store was exactly as good as it looked from the outside. The owner was warm and knowledgeable about their products. They clearly cared deeply about what they sold. Everything in the store was beautiful. I did buy something, and I left thinking, why did I wait so long to go into that shop? Why did I not even realise it was there?

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A few weeks later I ran into that store owner at an event and we got talking - because if you've ever been around me, you know that if you're talking retail, I will talk your ear off. I found out she had been in that location for nearly three years. Three years on a street I was going up and down nearly every single day, selling something I would have bought at any point in those three years.

It was such a mental slap in the face that I started recording. All I could think was: I wasn't blind. I just didn't need the thing. In that moment, I realised I was exactly like all those customers who used to walk past my A-frame sign - until they actually needed the thing. And until they needed the thing, they weren't even aware the shop existed.

I know there's a thing called the reticular activation system - it's why, if you buy a brand new car, you suddenly see that car everywhere. This is the same thing. Until you need the thing, the shop doesn't appear.

So I asked her how business was going - because you know I will 100% poke my nose into everyone else's business. She did what a lot of store owners do and gave me the version that sounded okay. Ticking along, getting by, reasonably busy season, hoping the next season would be a little stronger. So I asked what she was doing for marketing. She told me she posted on Instagram when she had time, she'd done some letterbox drops when she first opened, and she'd been thinking about starting an email list for a while but hadn't quite got there yet - because after all, this is a tourist area, so a lot of people would never actually come back and shop with her.

And I thought, here is an incredible business. A genuinely lovely person with a beautiful range of products, an owner who clearly cares deeply, and so many people like me who don't even know she exists.

She was one of the world's best kept secrets. And the thing about being the world's best kept secret - it almost sounds like a compliment. It has the quality of a hidden gem, an undiscovered treasure. There's something that almost feels romantic about it. I remember people walking into my store and saying that when I first opened, and I thought it was a compliment. But it is not a compliment. It's actually a really big problem.

And I want to talk about what that actually costs - because I don't think most store owners in that position ever sit down and truly work out the number. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you'll know that I love me some money maths.

Let me paint you a picture. I'm going to break this down into simple numbers because Sal is not great at air maths. Give me a calculator, give me a spreadsheet - I'm good. In my head on the fly, not so much.

Imagine your retail or e-commerce store is doing 100 transactions a week. If more people knew you existed, you could reasonably be getting four extra sales a day. Four times seven is 28 - let's call it 30. So that's 30 extra sales a week. Not a huge transformation from 100 to 130. It's literally four extra sales a day, to people who are already looking for what you sell and simply don't know you exist.

Let's say you have an average transaction value of $80 - which, from what I've seen for independent retailers, is actually quite conservative; most tend to run around $100 to $120. But let's say $80. Thirty extra sales at $80 is $2,400 a week, which is around $10,000 a month, which is $120,000 a year.

That, my friends, is the cost of invisibility. That is the cost of not being seen by people who would happily buy from you if they knew you existed. $120,000 a year left on the table - not because you haven't got good products, not because nobody's buying, but simply because they don't know you exist.

Now I know some of you are thinking, but Sal, I try. I'm not invisible. I've got a website. I post on Instagram. I really do try when it comes to marketing. And I'm glad that you're trying. But I'm also here to push you, because trying and actually being seen are two different things. Yes, you can exist. But being seen, having a presence, and creating a reason for someone to come in and buy with you - whether online or in store - that is a completely different concept.

My store in my arcade existed. The store I'm telling you about existed. She has beautiful window displays. She has a sign. Technically visible to anyone who walked past - probably even millions of people every year because it's a high tourist area. And yet I, someone in retail, didn't go in for nearly two years.

Visibility is not the same as presence. Visibility is when a potential customer - someone who wants what you sell, who would already choose you - knows that you are there and knows they have a reason to come in and shop now. That is a very different thing. And that is what most store owners are missing. Not the presence, but the reason. They have the website, the shopfront, the email list, the social media. But what they don't have is a reason for people to buy.

Here's the observation I keep coming back to, and I've been sitting with this for a long time. Most of the store owners I've worked with - and I've worked with literally thousands, from Australia, New Zealand, Europe, North America, South Africa, Nigeria, and a lot of other countries - most of them are not invisible because they don't care about marketing. They're invisible because they've never sat down to think about the real cost of staying that way.

And there's a belief that runs underneath a lot of independent retailers, and I think it comes from a genuinely good place: if you have a good enough product, if you have great service, the right customers will find you. Quality will speak for itself and word of mouth will be enough. But if you feel like you aren't getting the sales you want and that's what you're relying on, then it's not working, is it?

Then there's the second-guessing. When you are showing up, promoting, putting yourself out there, but it starts to feel a little pushy. It starts to feel like you're chasing the sale rather than people coming to you. Like you've become a used car salesman. I understand that feeling - I've had it myself. There is something quite uncomfortable about saying loudly, and more times than you ever feel comfortable, come and buy from me.

Even still, when I launch a product and I see the emails going out - buy this thing, buy this thing, here's where you should buy this thing - even I still inwardly think, is that too many? Have I hit too hard? The answer, my friends, is no. You have to say to people, come and spend your money here. Here's why you should choose me over every other option you have available right now.

That doesn't come naturally to a lot of people who got into retail. They got into it because they love the product, they love people, they want to build something they believe in, they want to serve their customers. But here's what I want you to hear: that discomfort, as real and as completely understandable as it is, is not free. It has a price tag. And I've just shown you roughly what that can cost.

Every time you don't send an email because you don't want to bother people, there are customers who would have bought something from you that week who simply didn't. You're one step further from those four extra sales that get you the extra $120,000 a year. Every time you don't post because it feels like you've already talked about this product enough, there are people scrolling past your competitors who would have chosen you if they'd seen you first. Every time you put off a marketing campaign because something more urgent comes up, the month is going to get quieter than it needed to be.

And then the month ends and you look at the numbers and it feels inexplicable. You go into a Facebook group and say, is anyone else experiencing slow sales? And 200 people will tell you, yes, it's the economy. And you feel safe. And nothing changes.

So let me tell you what I've observed in the store owners who break out of this. They aren't superheroes. It's not that they suddenly become comfortable rockstar marketers. It's not that they wake up one day with a completely different personality and start confidently putting out campaigns. What actually shifts - and I've seen this with enough people to know it's a pattern - is that they stopped thinking about marketing as a job and started thinking about it as a service to their customer.

Because here's the other side of my story about the woman with the beautiful homewares shop. When I finally went in and bought something, I was genuinely delighted by the entire experience. I left thinking about the two years I'd walked past without going in. Not frustrated at her, but frustrated at myself - at the gifts I could have given, at how many times I would have bought from her. I was exactly her customer. But she didn't show up for me.

Probably not because she didn't want to. She said she was posting on social media, she said she did the letterbox drops when she first opened. But I don't think she knew how to make me see her. She was relying on the physical presence of the store to bring in customers. But the customers who don't know about you aren't waiting somewhere else. They're happily finding what they need from your competitors. Those competitors might have inferior products, worse customer service - but you know what they're doing? They're shouting a lot louder than you are.

And all because your customers don't know you exist. When you think about it that way - when you stand on the other side of the equation - the discomfort of marketing starts to feel less important than the cost of staying quiet, especially when we can put a number on it.

So let's talk about what changes when you actually start marketing consistently. The store owners who become more visible all describe the same shift. It stops feeling like chasing the sale and starts feeling like connecting. Emails stop feeling like a horrible chore and start feeling like conversations - a way to talk to your customers. Campaigns stop feeling like begging for the sale and start feeling like giving people a reason to come and shop with you, something they already wanted to do. We can't make people buy things they don't want to buy. But what we can do is show up and give them a reason.

And the revenue that comes when you do that starts to feel less random. I won't say this happens immediately, although when it does happen in a sudden burst, it does feel like you've won the lottery - and I can say that because I've seen it happen over and over again. But when you do this consistently over weeks and months, the roller coaster starts to flatten out. The months you wish didn't exist stop being horrible and start being mediocre. And mediocre months become decent months. And decent months start to really stack into something significant.

Because that's what consistent visibility does. It doesn't just create sales - it creates predictability. Knowing roughly what's coming in, knowing that when you run a campaign you'll make around this much on average - that helps you plan your orders, make decisions with confidence, rather than just looking at how much is in the bank right now. And that is worth more than any single campaign could ever be. That peace of mind, that confidence, that ability to plan ahead - that is what the store owner in my local area was missing. Not product, not passion, not a beautiful fit-out. Just consistent, deliberate, purposeful marketing to make sure that the people who could be her customers knew to come to her.

Which brings me to what I'd love to tell you about today. I mentioned last week the Marketing That Works Bootcamp, and I want to go a little deeper into it because I think the connection between what we've just been talking about and what this bootcamp actually does is intertwined and important to understand.

The bootcamp is built around one core shift: hit-and-miss marketing isn't going to give you consistent sales. Consistent, predictable revenue almost always comes from having a real, intentional campaign - one that gives every email a reason, gives every social post a direction, and gives your customers a clear reason to buy from you right now. And that, my friends, makes marketing so much easier.

What I see constantly is store owners posting a little on TikTok, a little on Instagram, a little on Facebook, a little on Google Ads, feeling like they should be doing more but not knowing what more looks like. The reason it all feels exhausting and disconnected is that none of it is being driven by a purpose. It's just activity. And activity without purpose is just noise. That is what this bootcamp helps fix. We're not looking at what's working in the algorithm right now. We're looking at what's actually been getting in the way, and what you need to change if you want your marketing to work.

It's a live paid bootcamp, run over four sessions, designed specifically for established retail and e-commerce store owners who are tired of marketing that feels hit and miss - tired of throwing the spaghetti at the wall and hoping something sticks.

Registration is only open for two weeks, and that's the reality of a live event - it starts when it starts. After that, doors close, and I don't know if I'll be running it again this year. So if you've been thinking you need some help with your marketing, now is the time to stop thinking and start doing something about it.

The link will be in the show notes. You can register at marketingthatworksbootcamp.com - it does exactly what it says on the box. Go and take a look, see what we cover, and if it sounds like exactly what your business needs right now - which I think it probably is - go and get yourself registered.

Because the retailers who break the visibility problem are the ones who decided to do something about their marketing. They decided that being the world's best kept secret was costing them way too much money.

Alright, that's it for today's episode. I don't want you to be the world's best kept secret. Let's fix that over at marketingthatworksbootcamp.com. I'll see you in there.