(upbeat music) - Hey there and welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast. If you're looking to get more sales, more customers, master your marketing and ultimately take control of your retail or e-commerce business, then you're in the right place. I'm Selena Knight, a retail growth strategist and multi-award winning store owner whose superpower is uncovering exactly what your business requires to move to the next level. I'll provide you with the strategies, the tools and the insight you need to scale your store. All you need to do is take action. Ready to get started? (upbeat music) - Hey there and welcome to today's episode of the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast. Well, if you haven't noticed from the background, if you're watching the video, I am not in my office. I'm currently down the south coast of New South Wales at our Airbnb. There was nobody booked and I had had this, I was kind of at this point where I felt like I was just getting further and further behind. I felt like every time I opened up my Asana dashboard, there were tasks assigned to me. And I was at this point where I was once again becoming the bottleneck in the business. And I've worked really, really hard to try and not be the thing that holds our business back because what ends up happening is you frustrate everybody, your team, if you are the bottleneck and your team are on deadlines, or heck, if they just actually care about their work, the fact that you're pushing out these deadlines when they've done all of their part of the job, it doesn't breed a very good culture in your business. And so I was looking at our project management software, which we use Asana and I was looking at all this social media content that I had to film. I've been behind in getting my podcasts out for a whole bunch of different reasons, but essentially we would normally have five or six podcasts in the bank so that nobody was doing anything last minute. We could prepare any downloads that we might want to go along with the episode. We could obviously do promotion and set up all the backend systems. And basically, just everybody feeling like we were working in flow rather than working in chaos. On my big to do list, things that take a lot of time, social content, writing and recording podcasts. And the other thing was just giving my brain some space, which probably sounds really, really weird because it's like, how can you say you need to get all this work done, but also say that you need some space? And here's the thing. What I have found is that if I change my environment, I change my productivity. And so sometimes if I'm feeling a little bit stuck or I just feel like I need to have that little boost of energy, I will go and leave my office and work on the back deck. We've got a beautiful table out on the balcony. Sometimes that works. Sometimes I'll go down the beach and I'll just spend an hour there without even really doing an awful lot, but just trying to get a little bit of space in my brain. And we all feel that sense of stuckness at certain times in our business. And I know what it feels like when I'm avoiding getting things done, when I'm dreading, when I have this pressure building up that I'm holding everybody back, that is when I know I have to do something about it. We all feel like that at some point. That's just part of being human. But what I've found is to be able to move out of that, you have to change your environment. I got a little bit of a saying, which is change your environment to change your results. And so the house wasn't booked. I'm really lucky now that my daughter is 15, nearly 16. She can look after herself, heads at home and I just saw that there was this empty space. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna go down the coast for five days, four days, three days. I'm not sure when I'm going to be back. Thankfully, I have a really fabulous family and they were like, sure, the only thing I think my daughter want to be back for is because I have the good hair iron with me, the good GHD rather than her cheap one. While I've been down here, I have been walking along the beach, even though I usually walk every day at home, I'm walking in a different environment. I'm sitting on a different sofa. I'm cooking in a different kitchen. I'm eating different food. And it just has made such a big difference from the moment I arrived, which was in the afternoon, I had no plans to do any work that afternoon 'cause I didn't arrive until about 4 p.m. And I had all these plans to do fantastic video work, but I had ordered some new lights and I had ordered a new tripod and those did not arrive before I came. But that's okay. I was not gonna let that ruin the fact that I was here to be able to catch up and also be able to take time out. I had booked myself in for a massage on Saturday, which was extremely painful because it was sports massage, but it was just the fact that I'm in a different spot that has completely changed everything that's happened in the business. In just, I arrived on, what day did I arrive? I think it was Friday. I arrived on, no, I arrived on Thursday afternoon, didn't really do much in the way of work. I went for a walk along the beach, this kind of went shopping, got some groceries and whatnot. And then I started official work on Friday. So in that time, as I'm recording this, it is Monday. So I've had Friday, Saturday and Sunday and I didn't actually do anything on Sunday. I watched a movie, I went into town, I did a little bit of shopping, I went and sat on the beach, I read my book. So realistically in two days, Friday and Saturday, I have managed to batch out, I think probably 150 pieces of social media content. I've managed to write a whole bunch of reels, yet to be recorded, but I'm on my way. And I have written out the wireframes for five podcasts all within two days. Like that for me is amazing. Normally it takes me a whole day just to write the wireframe of content of a podcast because I like to, you know, where do I wanna go? Where do I wanna start? Where do I wanna end? Are there any stats? Is there any research? All of those things, I've just done it in two days and I'm already feeling that sense of relief that when I get back home, there is nothing pressing that needs to be done. If you're feeling a little bit stuck, maybe one of the things you need to do is change where you're working from and that can be really simple. You can, it doesn't have to cost money. Sure, you can go and hire an Airbnb or a hotel room and go away for, you know, a few days or you can just go to the library, you can go to the park, like just go somewhere different to help yourself get unstuck. Sometimes stuck is not just a business thing. Sometimes we feel stuck within ourselves and I find that this tends to happen as you start to up level in business. And I went to, so I came down here on Thursday but the night before, on the Wednesday night, I'd been to this cocktail party. It was a cocktail party for third home, which is if you've ever watched the Paramount+ series Millionaire Home Swap, Millionaire Holiday Home Swap, something on those lines, it's that. And when that came to Australia, I signed our house up to be a third home. And so the founder of third home, Wade Chealy and his team had come to Australia and had invited us to this cocktail party. And it was really interesting because on the way there, I said to Ed, I wonder if it's going to be really old, really wealthy people or are they going to be a lot of people kind of our age? And by really old, I kind of meant like 80s but it was interesting because we, it was the most secretive thing I have been to. Now CEO club, if you listen, I go to this thing called, I call it CEO club, but they are pretty secretive in the sense that you have to be invited to join. And when you go to the building where it's located, it's just a black door. It's a black door beside the Louis Vuitton's door and you don't even know if you're going into the right place. Well, this was like that, but even more, it was in a place called the Clarence Vault Rooms and it's an old electrical substation. You wouldn't even know when you walked past that this was a thing. The only reason we even knew that this was a place we had to be was because there was a little velvet rope outside the door and a little teeny, tiny red carpet. And so we're walking around going, "Where is this place?" Anyway, we finally get there and we're greeted on arrival and ticked off and we head down these stairs into the vault rooms. It's just an intimate cocktail party. I'm gonna say there were maybe 40 people there, mostly couples and the team and a few journalists. It was, as I expected, a group of older people maybe not as old as I suspected, but older people, pretty much everybody who was there had retired and very, very wealthy. When I say very wealthy, one of the conversations I had was with someone who owns a hospital. Never really occurred to me that you could find a hospital. Of course you can, but when he said it to me, he's retired. But one of the things they do is, instead of being very successful, I own a hospital. I have three homes in Croatia. I have my home in Arizona. I have my home in Sydney. We just kind of, basically, we just travel around the world using third home and enjoy life. And that was really interesting because being surrounded, being in a group, being in a room with a group of people who I would say were multi, multi-millionaires, if not billionaires. Like, there was a lot of money in this room. And everybody was really nice. They were extremely down to earth. They were open to having a conversation. They weren't big-noting themselves. You know, when you think of wealthy people and what do they talk about, you know, talk about making money, they didn't. They just talked about regular things. And it was really nice atmosphere to be in and just having these conversations. And, you know, they were talking about decorating their homes and talking about owning a hospital and talking about horses and all that kind of stuff. But what I took away from it. I do feel like a little bit of an imposter. I have to say, one, because Ed and I were probably the youngest people in the room by about 20 years, but also because I don't have this level of wealth. And I don't come from a wealthy background. And so this, you know, I have the wealth I have because I have worked really, really hard to get it. I had to leave home at 14. There was nothing handed down to me. And so being in this room with extremely wealthy people, even though they were very down to earth, maybe just kind of step back and take pause because as I looked around, remember, it's this tiny little bar, tiny little bar, very dark. You know, the alcohol was flowing. No one was drunk, which was fabulous. And it was just this pair of refinement, but being, at the same time, being very down to earth and looking around, what I noticed was, no one was trying really hard there. If anyone, it was probably us, like trying to feel like we were keeping up with the Joneses. But in fact, I say that, but actually we didn't. We were just having conversations about the places that we'd travel to because it's a travel club. Looking around this room and seeing that nobody was trying to be anything that they weren't. The other thing that I, the other feeling I got from that room was this sense of ease. These people owned 15, 20, $30 million homes. And I know that because I've seen them, some of the people owned some of the houses that I've seen on TV. Nothing seemed difficult for them. And I'm sure that comes with money, but I also think, and with retirement, but I also think it comes with this feeling within ourselves of being okay with who we are and who we hang around with. So they say that we are the average of the five people who surround us, don't they? And that got me thinking, 'cause I left that. I actually got an invitation to the private club as part of this. And it was just because of a random conversation. In fact, the conversation started a little bit, something like this. There was another young-ish kind of person in the room. And I went up to him and I said, "Oh, look, another young person, yeah, hi, how are you? How are you finding the party?" And he actually said to me, "I own the club." Okay, yeah, I own this club. I also own this and I'm a property developer and how are you finding the club? Yeah, I was beautiful and I was looking at the architecture 'cause it was built in an electrical substation and I used to work for the electrical company. And I said, "Oh, we've been analyzing where you put the floors in and how you've braced this and we love architecture as much as we love travel and all that kind of stuff." And we just got chatting about stuff. And again, there was this sense of ease of just having a conversation with really interesting people. And as a result, he gave me his card and I don't have it with me, but it was black, like matte black with some gold printing and it just had his name and I think his email. And he said, "I would like to invite you to join the club and private members club. You can only get in if you are referred by somebody else and if you take this card, this will give you the endorsement that you need to be able to get into the club." Once upon a time, I think I would have felt very proud of my achievement of, "Wow, somebody finds me so interesting that they're inviting me to their club." But actually, it just felt really nice for somebody to acknowledge that, you know, they would like to hang around me and they really enjoyed the conversation. And so if you are feeling stuck in your life and in your business, start thinking about who you surround yourself with. And who you have, who's got your back. And this is very different, quite often in our personal lives, to our professional lives. I feel like it is much easier to surround ourselves with really fantastic people in a business sense because you can go and join a club. You can go and join a mastermind. You can pay to hang out with cool people who are gonna help you in business. And I firmly believe that if you can afford it, you should definitely put yourself in those rooms because who knows where the conversation actually is going to end up. And it got me thinking, as I was writing this podcast, it got me thinking back to a conference I was at at the end of last year where I was speaking to this amazing retailer, absolutely gorgeous, had done fantastically in business. And through the conversations, I could see areas that she could improve in her business that would take her from low seven figures to mid seven figures. And I was having this conversation with, "Oh, wow, if you've done that, maybe you could look at this "or have you tried this? "Or have you looked at collaborating with these people?" And this lady was so excited from the conference in our conversation that I was just thinking she is going to nail it. Like, I'm going to see her in 12 months' time. She's going to be kicking her out of the park. But then the next day, I saw her in the bathroom just as we were washing our hands. I said, "Oh, you're looking forward to today's part "of the conference and you're so excited yesterday. "What did you think about overnight?" And she said to me that she'd gone home and had the conversation with her parents about all these things she wanted to do in her business. And they had said to her, and I'm going to say she was maybe mid to late 20s, quite young, they had said to her, "Do you really want to put yourself "under all of that stress?" Because building a business is really, really stressful. And you're going to want to get married and have kids soon. So maybe you should just be happy with where you're at. And for me, that was like a knife to my heart because he was somebody who was so excited about what the future held, but was being pulled back into safe because the people that she loved and the people that she surrounded herself and the people that she respected were telling her that she shouldn't put herself under all that stress. Just be happy with where you're at. And this is where I think we find it difficult because you love your family, most likely, and you respect your parents and you respect your elders, that's what we're taught. But how do you put that into the same perspective when you have different dreams to what they have? And you want more than what they have. And this is something that I have found personally, like I've always wanted more than what my parents have wanted. They've been really happy to just kind of work to hopefully make enough money to survive. And we grew up very, very poor. And you can see why. They're just like, if we have food on the table and any money in the bank, that's a bonus. Like if we can just pay our bills and know that we can eat, then we're happy. But I've always wanted more than that. And it's interesting, it's like, where did this come from? I don't know, nature versus nurture. Maybe it's something just intrinsic. But my parents worked so hard. They worked two jobs for years. And my grandmother, again, worked so hard. She worked almost until she died. And where did that get them? It didn't get them really anywhere. They're still in the same place now that they were 25 years ago, which is turn up, hopefully make enough money. To be fair, my parents are pretty much retired now, but they're retired on welfare. They're not retired with money in the bank. They're retired relying on a government pension to survive. So they're no better off other than the fact that they know that they will have money in the bank. But as the economy changes, that might not be enough. When you have this group of people in your personal life who you love and you care about, but they can't support your dreams, it can be really, really difficult. What do you do? That is up to you. You can choose to go against the grain and so many business owners have done that. So many business owners have put themselves in a position which is like, I love you and I respect you, but I don't have the same views as you. And I'm gonna put myself out there and I'm gonna grow my business. I'm gonna do this thing. And so that is something that you have to grapple with. And I feel like the only way you can deal with that if you have people who don't support you in your personal life is having those people in your professional life who are there, who are there to push you, who are there to show you what life can look like if all the things that you want actually turn out. And it was funny because as I was walking along the beach on the weekend, I did this little kind of Facebook live. It was like a minute and a half where I said, every time I walk past this house, I just fall in love with it all over again. And it's this beautiful kind of almost brutalist but mid-century modern type of house right on the beach front. It goes for about three blocks, three house blocks. It's got a tennis court. I've looked at it in architectural magazines, architecturally designed, I've looked at the inside and whilst not necessarily my style inside, I just love everything that home embodies. Like someone, you know, someone put themselves out there to get the money to be able to buy this beach front home and to do the landscaping and to hire an architect and to fit it out the way that they want. And every time I walk past that home, I love a little bit more, but what it does for me is shows me what's possible. It shows me what I could have. This thing that I am building, I am working on, I put all my time and effort into to be able to help other people, to be able to share the knowledge, to be able to share my mistakes, to be able to share all the things that have worked. This thing, sure, all of that validation and all of that sharing, that fills my cup. But I also want more. I want to be able to have a home like that. And the only way I do that is through doing the thing that I know makes me money. But that money that I make comes with an exchange. It comes with an exchange of knowledge, it comes with an exchange of resources. So I value every dollar that comes into my business because I know that if the people we work with, the people who buy a $5 thing or a $5,000 thing or a $50,000 thing or a $500,000 thing will get results if they take action. If you believe in yourself, if you believe that you want more, it's time to start looking at the rooms that you're in, pay attention to how you feel in specific places and in specific situations. Do they light you up or do they drain the life out of you? Nobody wants emotional vampires filling up their lives. If you are feeling stuck, you can do something about it. And I'm going to say, growing up in a family where drugs and alcohol were abused, if you were an alcoholic, trying to stay sober, you are not going to hang out with the same kind of people that you were when you were drinking, are you? It's just, it's not going to be an environment that is conducive for you getting the results that you want. Surround yourself with encouraging people who lift you up and support your dreams and will dramatically improve the way that you show up. And when the way that you show up changes, your chances for success also change. So if you are feeling stuck, switch up your routine. Instead of going into your store at 8.30 a.m., go somewhere else, go to the library and work. Instead of getting up and doing the same thing every day, switch it up, go to the gym, go for a walk, do something different because switching up your routine will change the way that your brain sends information. And for me, that is like one of the best things I could do if I ever feel stuck, it's just going for a walk, walking the dogs, going for a walk. People often say the best ideas come to them in the shower. That is because we're not thinking about the problem. Stick your air pods in, go for a walk, listen to a podcast, get excited again. So switch up your routine, change your environment to change your results, change your environment by going away for a weekend, going away for a day, being able to work in a different place. Just, hey, call up a friend and say, do you want to work together today? And having that different interaction, that different energy can completely change the results that you get just like me with all of this that I've managed to achieve in two days that I probably wouldn't have achieved in two weeks at home because I would have every time I felt a little bit stuck, I'd go and put a lot of washing on. Or I'd walk upstairs and make a cup of tea. Here, I don't feel stuck. Here, I'm just like, all right, what are we going to get done today? Yeah, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if there are things that aren't quite going to play. It doesn't matter that I forgot my awesome microphone and I just happened to have this little, teeny, tiny one beside me. It doesn't matter that my lights didn't come. Just get the thing out there so that you can feel like you are moving forward. And so going back to how you feel when you're around people and how you feel in specific environments and whether they light you up or they drain you. Think about, are you just even subconsciously hanging out in those safe spaces or with those safe people keeping you stagnant? Because when you change, change is uncomfortable. Just like if someone said to you, you have to pack up and move to the other side of the world, there's always going to be uncomfortableness. There's always going to be that slight sense of dread, that slight sense of excitement. But if you want change, you have to change your environment. And I'll give you a word of advice, a hint of something that I have found, which is probably the biggest reason that people stay stuck, is you may end up having to leave some people behind. Those people who aren't on board with where you want to be, that are holding you back from achieving your dreams, you might just have to reduce the amount of time you hang out with them. You might just have to limit your contact with them. And you have to steal yourself for those situations. But if they are keeping you stuck, if they are keeping you safe and you want more, only you can change that. And just imagine what can happen if you make these small changes in your life and in your business. All righty, thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the podcast. I would love it if you could DM me, comment on one of my posts and let me know what one thing are you going to change? What one change in your environment are you going to make to change your results? Thank you so much for your time and I wish you all the best. I'll see you back here 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 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 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. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) You
