Bringing Business to Retail Podcast, Episode 9, with the Noise Whisperer, aka Terryann Daniels. Welcome to the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast. On SelenaNight.com, stay ahead of the competition by opening your doors to business experts, so you can learn, grow, and be inspired. Passionate about bringing business strategies to independent retailers. Please welcome your host, SelenaNight. Hi there, and welcome back to the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast. I'm your host, SelenaNight. And you may have noticed that I was absent last week. I'm really, really sorry, but that's what happens when you schedule all of your podcast interviews on the same day, and you lose your voice. So normally I'd have a couple of episodes up my sleeve, but on that day I was recording the whole month, and I wasn't able to reschedule everybody for a couple of days later, because a lot of these people are very, very busy, and they can't just drop their hats and come on over to my podcast. A lot of people are scheduled months in advance, so I do apologise for that, and rest assured I am currently working to get loads of podcasts up my sleeve. I wanted to start off today with a review, because I always ask you for a review at the end of the podcast, so I had a check while I was sick in bed, and there were a couple of reviews on iTunes and Stitches, so a big shout out to Sarah Jane Oz, hopefully that's Australia, my home country. I've always been a bit scared about the whole outsourcing thing. It seems much easier to do it yourself, but this has given me the push I needed to try it myself. The worksheet was great to start working out what I could, should, outsource. Thanks Sarah Jane Oz, and if you loved the Bringing Business to Retail podcast, it would be a huge compliment if you could leave a rating or review in iTunes or Stitcher. It's quite simple, you just go through to the iTunes Store, and if you click on Bringing Business to Retail at the top, it says Details, Ratings and Reviews, or Related. So if you click on Ratings and Reviews, you just add your review in. In Stitcher, if you just, I find it's easier if you just Google Stitcher Bringing Business to Retail podcast, and it will come up with the homepage, and you can leave a review there. On some iPhones, I'm told that you can actually do it in-app, but I don't have an iPhone, I'm an Android girl, so I can't tell you if that's the case. But you can tell me, head on over to the SelenaNight.com website on this episode, and let me know how you go about leaving a review. So today's guest is Terri-Ann Daniels, aka The Noise Whisperer. And it was really, I found this one was really interesting because just before I got sick, I was really struggling with everything, and there was so much going on, you'll hear me talk about it in the podcast, but I had so much going on that I was just at the point where I wanted to just switch off runaway and hide in a corner, but I didn't, it's okay. I took some of Terri-Ann's advice, and I have just been a lot more aware of what's going on around me and whether this is noise or not. So without further ado, let's jump on in and find out all about how we can reduce the noise in our lives with Terri-Ann Daniels, aka The Noise Whisperer. Hey there, welcome back to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast. And on today's show, I have Terri-Ann Daniels, aka The Noise Whisperer. And I have to say, I was a little bit intrigued. I've been really, really overwhelmed in my business for the last couple of weeks. I'm preparing a business to go up for sale. I've had virtual assistants come on board for my SelenaNight.com brand, and they've had to be trained. And then we also had to do some training of new stuff in the retail stores that I own. So it's been super, super busy, and my brain has been completely overwhelmed, I have to say. I've been using my overwhelmed sheets, which I will link up to in the show notes. But sometimes I think you can just get a little bit bulged down in the overallness of what needs to be achieved. So when I heard that there was a noise whisperer, I had to do a little bit of digging and find out what exactly this person does. So Terri-Ann, welcome on the show. Thanks a lot Selena, really happy to be here. So tell us exactly what does a noise whisperer do? A noise whisperer helps people optimize their day-to-day operations so they can free themselves up to work on only the things that generate income. So spending their time on sales and marketing, improving customer service, and all around optimizing their business to be focused on sales, marketing, and improving their customer experience. So this is not about necessarily getting out of the business. This is, it sounds like it's putting some systems in place to make sure that the stuff that you're working on is the stuff that's actually generating money for the business. Is that right? Absolutely. I mean, there is, I do have some clients who really do want to extricate themselves from their business, and if that's the focus, then that's how I work with people. But mostly, business owners love their businesses and they want to work and then they want to be involved. But they probably are getting to the point where they want to do only the things that only they should do. So maybe it's negotiating a joint venture partnership, maybe it's searching out new products or thinking about a refit, different things like that that are really high-end, and are the things that really need the gold, the years of experience that a business owner has to bring to bear on that task. As opposed to things like worrying about the alarm going off and nobody responding and making sure the team are filling out their paperwork properly and so forth. So aligning the business owner with being able to focus on the things that bring the most value, really optimising their time for the outcomes that they're trying to achieve. And that's super important. I mean, I talk about that a lot about moving yourself out of working on those menial jobs, not necessarily menial, but the jobs that don't actually make the business money. So like you just said, if the alarm goes off, it's a big deal if you have to go out and turn it off, isn't it? Because you could be spending that time doing something that actually makes money on your business, even though it's probably in the middle of the night. It's all about focusing on income generating activities, essentially. That's what it comes down to. It is. So what happens when you go into a business? What's the first thing that you do? The first thing I do is I help the business owner reconnect with that original dream, that passion, sometimes that fantasy of why they wanted to be in a business in the first place and remodel that for their current scenario, their current life, their current dreams, aspirations, and goals. And then we work right back to how they actually want to interact with their business each day. Do they only want to receive a dozen emails with really important information? Do they want to interact with their staff every hour to get an update or just once a week with a report? And so once we work out how they actually want to interact with their business and how they want to spend their time, what things they want to focus on, then we sort of essentially reverse manage the business to deliver that outcome for them. Because a business owner, they need to be passionate. They need to love their business. They need to want to wake up every day and dream up new things that are going to drive it forward. And if they're bogged down, frustrated, and annoyed with the day-to-day nuances of running the business, then they're not going to be in that passionate flow state. So often it's difficult those first few days because people don't really even believe that that's possible. But as soon as they start to see a few small wins, then it's like a snowball effect they immediately buy in and they want to transform their business. So we go back and identify where they're spending all their time. I bring my templates on board, so things like my noise log allows them to essentially do a brain dump of everything that's on there to do lists that have been on there for things that irritate and things that take their noise that they shouldn't. And the way that it's laid out allows them to identify what are the big wins, what are the money generating activities, which things are a priority over other thing, which things are outward focused as in their brand for interfacing, their communication and client interfacing, as opposed to internal systems and processes. And then I go through a process with the owner to help them take their knowledge and document it so that their team, who they've probably invested a lot of time of money and training and recruiting, can go and run that business for them, up to the point that they feel comfortable. And that's a process that it sounds like it's a lot of work and it is a lot of work, but it's very, very doable. And the results happen very quickly. Usually the thing I focus on for the owner is making it so their email drops to just a bear hum. Within about a week, they're giving like 90% less emails than they've ever had in their lives. We'd all love to get down to inbox zero. Well, inbox 5%, I think it's a. I would love to do that. And I think I talked about this in one of my other episodes about how I actually went off and created some new email addresses, so that things like newsletters that I wanted to subscribe to instantly went to newsletters and knowing that at any one time that I should be directing people with different sort of email addresses. And there's lots of tools that you can do this, but it just means that if I do it that way, I can access it as well as say my assistant. So the podcast email where she does all the booking, I can I can log in there if I need to clarify something, but essentially she does the tool and the throw and the booking and the confirmations and all those sorts of things. And what that's great for Selena is it means that you're able to take one step back. And often what happens is the business owners are so inexplicably entwined in every single process of their business that even a 13 member wanted to take initiative and take something off their hands. They couldn't because they don't have access to things. So they don't have passwords or they don't have authority or the trust model hasn't been set up in such a way that the owner feels comfortable handing that work over. So those very first up steps are exactly that separating themselves out from email addresses and logins and so forth. So that's exactly what we're doing. I was just about to ask you, so how do you change that business owners mindset that it's okay? Because I find that especially people who've worked in their business and potentially they're just taking on new employees now. Or they maybe have had a casual, but they have the casuals just kind of filled in. They haven't actually had not necessarily management role, but an input role into the business. How do you break that mindset from the business owner? To be honest, it's really easy. That's why this very first step is helping the owner re-identify with why they're in business in the first place. And often it's around things like to earn enough money to have a wonderful family holiday once a year, to be able to spend time with friends and family, to be able to afford education for their children. Really just fundamental life dreams and life wishes that were the original motivator and to feel part of their business community to perhaps be an authority in the work that they do. So once you re-ignite that passion and that connection to that original goal and sort of life purpose of why you're doing something, it's really easy to overcome obstacles. It's really easy to put in the hours that you need to in the initial phase of handing work over. Excuse me, because sometimes it is more difficult to transition or to change, and it does take a bit more time. But the momentum that you get from that really kicks into place very quickly, it's not something that you put three months into and you don't even notice a difference within the first week, you'll notice a difference. And that alone is like this fuel for the fire to keep going. So there's really no magic bullet and there's certainly nothing that I can do when I work with clients to shift their mindset. I try to do that by helping them re-identify with why they're doing it in the first place. Once they have that why, the passion just, it just lights up and usually they're pestering me, right, what's next, let me, this kind of thing I've got a holiday booked in and three months time, I'm going to have this finished. Which is great, I was going to say I bet you at the beginning, it's actually quite hard to get people to do, that's kind of the hardest part, is actually reminding yourself why you're doing this and what it was you wanted out of your business, because it's a thinking thing, it's not a doing thing and it's kind of, you have to get down into your own consciousness again and and I guess for some people it could even be a little bit emotional, but once you break through, like you just said, it becomes so enlightening and you have this reinvigorated passion for what you do and all of a sudden you can start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Absolutely, it's liberating because you start to believe in yourself again, you have this energy that just came from nowhere, you have some tools and I think the tools are the key, I think if I didn't first show people the tools that I was going to give them that would make everything I'm saying possible, they wouldn't trust me enough to invest in that process of reconnecting with that passion of why they get up and work hard every day, so whenever you work with anybody you really have to back up, I'm going to take you through this process that's going to be difficult, but trust me, here's all the tools you're going to need to come out at the other end with this lifestyle that you've designed for yourself and living that lifestyle yourself I think is a really great, I don't know, it's a great set of testimonials for when you do work with clients, so you know, that's a good motivator. Yeah, that's what I do in my own business and I want that for other people, so and obviously just getting results as quickly as possible, that's why the first week that I work with people, the results have been really quickly and then I don't need to convince them week two through to week six because they're already on board. Yeah, so you're talking about these tools that they're using, what sort of tools are they? Well, the the noise log is the first tool that I get people working with, which is basically a brain dump of everything that's driving them crazy, everything they've ever wanted to fix, all the nuances of the day-to-day operations that they wish just ran smoothly, and then that makes it possible for them to start actually writing a small project or a task around each of those things and either outsourcing it, which I strongly, seriously do, or sort of empowering their team to go on and take advantage of software tools and training and so forth to upskill so that they can take responsibility for those tasks. And then I basically reinvent their email for them and that involves setting up either a separate email address for the noisy type emails, emails you want to receive, but you don't necessarily need to see in your inbox. So that could be things like supply newsletters. Absolutely, supply users, association newsletters, maybe you do a Google search on your particular product that you sell, updates from magazines, maybe your competitors, your researching, all that kind of information that's really rich and great to have on hand, but it's not necessary to hit your inbox at their whim. So either setting up a separate email address or setting up filters within your own email address. Oh, I heard a great tip the other day and I actually popped it on my Instagram page and I can't remember where I heard it, but it was on a podcast and where that if you type the word unsubscribe into your email client, it will actually bring up everything that you're subscribed to because the word unsubscribe is actually going to be in that email somewhere. And I did it and I was like, oh my god, I thought I'd set up this other email address for all these newsletters, but clearly I'm still getting about 80 newsletters. And it was like I said, it was things like I subscribed to my competitions newsletters. I'd like to know, you know, are they having a sale? What products do they have in? What do they put in there? So I went on a big gum. I went on a big cull to move those across to the other email address. And that's the perfect thing to free up your inbox immediately. I mean, I get probably no more than, I don't know, five to 10 emails a day and they come into my inbox. And I know that they're important because they hit my inbox because nothing else does. And that's my way of knowing, gosh, this is something that needs my focus. So things like that immediately just reducing the noise as much as possible in that first week. And noise is something I term as anything that takes you away from focusing at least 80% of your time on income generating activities. So once we've got the email under wraps, then I work with people to start documenting their knowledge. So often, the frustrations around having to do everything yourself are rooted in the fact that you can't hand them over to somebody else because you haven't documented them properly. And so if you get out to document them, then again, this momentum starts to kick in. You realize, gosh, you know, I've got like, there's actually 300 things that I do just without even thinking. And 280 of those I personally don't need to do. And it's funny, the things that we just habitually take on responsibility for doing, obviously, in the startup phase of your business, and maybe you don't have a team yet. And that's exactly what you have to do. But if you want to grow your business, you need to clone yourself, you need to be able to step back, handwork over, monitor and manage that work, but empower your team. I mean, people really want to do a great job. And if you set them up with all the tools they need, they'll do that. And they'll reward you with outcomes, they'll free up your time in your headspace. So things like having a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly checklist. And that's sorry, just to put in the system thing is, you know, when people say, you know, what was the one thing that somebody you wish somebody would have told you when you started your business, it was that it was, I wish someone would have told me literally from the minute I opened the door of my shop to start writing down what I did, because it was probably two years in. I had some casual employees here and there, but it was about two years in when I brought in my first kind of permanent casual person. And she came in and she was just thinking, she was just sort of wondering and going, oh, yep, and I'd show her how to do, you know, the point of sale system and she'd get very confused because if there was a labor or a return or whatever, and she just said, you know, why isn't this written down? And I remember thinking, yeah, why is this not written down? But the point I'm saying this is, it took me 12 months to write down what is now a process book for our retail stores. It is literally impossible to go, I'm going to knock this out in a week. If you've got a business, like you said, there may be something that only comes up once a quarter, and it's not until it comes up, you think, I don't need to be doing this, you know, I could, but I forgot to do it in my process book because it only happens once a quarter. And that bit about empowering your team, it's another one of my strengths, one of my strengths, one of my big things that I espouse in retail is kind of selling stuff is a bit boring sometimes, you know, if you are, if you have the same products that you're selling every single day, it can get really, really boring. Now, in a lot of businesses, those people could be doing something else for you, and that doing something else is the difference between them enjoying coming to work and not. So I know that in my retail stores, two of the girls actually look after the blog and our events, and they love doing that. Yeah, sometimes I think it's a pain in the hours, but they know that if it's not very busy or if it's pouring down with rain and there's not a lot of customers, they've actually got something that they can do and not just dust, like dusting needs to be done, but you can only dust so much. That's exactly right. I mean, not only are you getting the outcomes from your team doing the work for you and you free yourself up to focus on income generating activities, you make yourself have your heart. They often are just starved of things to do. They want to be helpful. They want, they want to learn, they want to advance their own skill sets. Maybe they want to learn. And that's the business as well. Exactly. And honestly, these days, if you have a young team and perhaps you're like, "Aslan, you're in your early 40s," your younger team are going to know social media inside out. And if you're clever, you're going to allow them to help you build your social media because they just know it. They live it. They know the tools inside out. They could teach you a lot. So, you know, invest in their training, perhaps give them a, you know, logging to something like lynda.com, which is a really wonderful online training school for all sorts of different software. They could be making flyers. They could be making gorgeous Facebook posts. They could be handling your Instagram for you. And you can do all that really securely and keeping your brand in place by communicating what your expectations are. So, I digress to you, sorry, back to you. It's just one of those things I'm so passionate about. And when somebody brings it up, I'm like, "Yes, yes, you're just reinforcing what I'm trying to tell everybody. Listen to what I'm saying." Excellent. And okay, so after doing some documenting your knowledge, so to be able to do that, you need some systems. So, it's things like, "Here's the template you need a heading, you need your reference, let people know what they're going to learn, break it down into modules, make it visual for the visual learners, put the bullet points in for the people that just want the quick update or put the three paragraphs in for the people that really like to read the detail. And build an actual training plan for each of your employees. So, let's say you've got 100 modules to run the entire store. Employee number one, this week, I need you to go through and learn the first three modules. And so, they've got their own daily weekly checklist to train themselves. You don't need to be in there sort of telling them to get trained each day. You don't need to actually, you know, train them personally because you've documented your knowledge. If you, the really easy way to try and connect with why this is so valuable to do, if you consider that McDonald's has, I don't know how many stores are around the world, many? Thousands, tens of thousands. And they're all hundreds of thousands. By, they're all run by really young people who train each other. Through really well-documented training programs. So, if, as a brand, whoever owns that particular McDonald's franchise, can and trust the McDonald's brand, their investment, all the OHNS and potentially poisoning customers, you know, outcomes of what could go wrong. If they can do all of that and manage that so well with a bunch of really young people who've probably never had a job before, just through training, imagine what you could do in your own business. And I think, I think people get a bit hung up on this in that they think it has to be super highly processed and polished and perfect. But I know that I've done, I've done videos that are literally me walking around with the phone going and this is where we put such and such and then we get this and this is how we do gift wrapping. And it's just literally the phone set on a book on the side. But staff don't need highly polished, they just need to see how it gets done. And to add to that, your team can create those training manuals. If you've got a team member who just is great on camera or loves making mock-ups in Canva.com or something like that, empower them, just put them on an extra day a week for the next month and all they do is document what they do. And they probably love it. So you also don't even ask. And it's saying it from not just the boss's point of view, I think that's also really good if you've got that option to be able to, yeah, and potentially they do it better than you do anyway because they're out there doing it all the time. Exactly. And then also, once you have the training down, whenever you bring on a new team member, they can be successfully selling as quick as possible. So they don't need to go through the, being thrown in the deep end for the first two weeks, they didn't even know that they should offer an upsell. Because... I only laugh. I don't laugh at that premise, but we have to remember that bringing back to McDonald's offer is, example, is simply the fact that some of these people may never have had a job before. Now, in retail, everyone thinks they can do retail. And it's things like that. It's the upsell. And it's listening to what people are saying. And if someone's saying, you know, what else goes with this, they want you to sell them something. And they want you to look them in the eye. Yeah. And know that you've actually listened to what they've said. And this is the thing that goes with whatever it is that they were looking, the problem that they were looking to solve. So I laugh about the upsell, but you, I think, is that when you're so entrenched in your business, you forget what it was like back at the beginning and how you had to learn this stuff yourself. Right. And once it becomes really well known to you, you don't realise how much you do through just an automatic response. So breaking each of those things down, documenting them, either yourself or in conjunction with your team, and then developing an induction program that you know your current team must go through to sort of formally train themselves. And then also any new team member, the current team can train them because they've got the tools to do that. And then what you can do once you've at least got that down is go back through the, if there's a particular aspect of your business you're focusing on, and perhaps that's something fun you could do with your team. It's okay. All of March, we're going to focus on greetings. What a, you know, 100 different ways that we could greet a customer when they walk through the door and do a fun little brainstorming, maybe search YouTube for some great examples, and really sort of focus people on one specific thing each month and have like a debrief at the end of the month. You know, how did that go? Did that change the dynamic? Did it increase sales? And then you can kind of break down the sales process and the interactions and sort of pull out sections of that and focus on them so that you're sort of investing in actual sales training, not just how to run the shop each day as far as opening the doors and you know, clearing the till at the end of the night. And making it fun. Oh, exactly. Like putting, you know, not a monetary target, but putting another target on there. And that, you know, that target might be, you know, fine, like you said, find 12 different ways in one day to do that. And it's just like a little personal target that you've got within yourself. Nobody's going to call you out on it because you're not documenting it. But it's like a little, now little benchmark for yourself. Can I come up with 12 different ways to say hello to somebody? Exactly. And I have fun and ask them about their day and so forth. And they're, they're the things that really affect people. They, they leave a lasting impression on you when you walk into a store, which I think is so important. Some other things that I help my clients do is start to think about outsourcing. And I mean, I imagine in retail, because I come from a retail background, my family phoned pubs and roller skating rinks in a motel and I've worked in hospitality. And so I understand retail as far as being people focused. But as a business owner and retail, you may not necessarily realize that outsourcing is such a massive opportunity for you. So even things like salespeople, you can access salespeople online by the hour, perhaps to have them go through your training and tell you what things you're missing. Now, I did read on your website that you have a course coming up about virtual assistants and just give us just a quick brief couple of minutes about that. And I only ask because we just finished a four part series on outsourcing. So I'd love to hear the just did a quick, quick grab of what you look for when, but what's in your virtual assistant course. Okay, thanks. So Lane, that my, so my course is called the seven day virtual assistant challenge. And I have a personal mission to get, to get as many people using a virtual assistant or to do outsourcing as possible. And the reason for that is it, it gives you access to this incredible pool of talent, skills, knowledge and background that we've just never been able to access before. So tools like elance.com and odest.com, they have literally hundreds of thousands of talented professionals out there available by the hour sometimes to assist you in your business. So the courses around taking somebody from thinking about or knowing they want a VA to actually having one and having put a job through with that VA and paid them within seven days. Well, that's fantastic. That's, we'll put a link up to that into the show notes because I think that sounds like it perfectly complements, complements the series that we did. And apart from the outsourcing, do you have any other tools or apps or planning tools that you can recommend? Definitely. Probably the, the, the most powerful book for small business owners, certainly for myself that I read years ago and I continue to reread is The Emus by Michael Gerber, the very famous book about identifying the different roles that you play in your own business and realizing which ones you're brilliant at and which ones you're not. And that's really great for helping you identify the things that you should continue to focus your time on and the things that you should either outsource or hand over to your team. So it's a really great read, it's really modular, so it's great to digest in sort of sections. And I would even consider having your team read it. So that's probably one of my favourite, favourite business books. It's a great book and it's, sorry, you've got, we've caught the course of each other. And the, I think the good thing about that is it gives you a very bird-eyed picture of a business organisation. So it sort of looks from above, like you were saying it, the different sections of the business and what you enjoy doing and what you're great at. And we, I kind of alluded to that in part one of our outsorce or part two of the outsourcing series, which I'll link up to when I put together a sheet of the things that you love doing and the things you really don't like doing. And I'm sort of hijacking your interview here, but something else I listened to on my run this morning, I was listening to a podcast with Jamie Tardy and the guest who I didn't catch, but I'll go back and I'll pop the link again in the show notes. He was talking very, very similar to what you're saying about, right back at the beginning, you were saying about pulling out those tasks that you really don't enjoy doing it. He was calling them PIA tasks. And of course, she said, well, what's a PIA task? And she said, it's a pain in the ass task. These are the ones you should be aiming to get rid of first. So do you have any tips for, I guess, for, not necessarily identifying them, because it's pretty easy to, when you're working out those systems back there to go, you know what, this is what I really hate doing. But I guess, how do you identify that and then give it to somebody else without making it their pain in the ass task? Well, I think you have to identify why it's a pain in the behind. Usually it's because it hasn't been optimized. So you don't have the password. You're not really sure what you're supposed to do. You don't have an example of how best to do it. Maybe there's not the right software on that particular machine you're using. There's a whole layer, multiple layers of noise, that's often built into just one task. And it's a demotivator. If I said to you, Selena, or we have a perfect example today, I had a problem with my Skype. So that's a perfect example of a noise issue. So the way to take the pain out of tasks, so I have this concept of business as usual. So there's always going to be tasks that somebody is responsible for to make sure that business as usual happens, which is open the doors, allow customers to come into the store, greet them, assist them with their questions, provide them different, you know, products to consider, sell them something, take a payment, thank them for their time, and see them out the door. So that's business as usual. You have to receive stock, you need to check things off. So making those business as usual tasks as efficient, optimized, and as smooth as possible makes them a joy to do. Because something that has previously taken sort of 90% of your day, all of a sudden only takes 30 or 40% of your day. Because you've got the right login, the software is up to date and on all the computers that anyone would need them for. There's documented visual reference manuals of how to do that task and what to do if you're not sure and who to talk to, if something goes wrong. So once you have that in place, actually the pain that people associate with those sort of menial or repetitive business as usual type tasks, actually people get quite a thrill out of doing them and doing them really efficiently. So that would be my advice to really break down each of those tasks and think what's the most optimized way that somebody could do this? Great advice. And I think when you're just talking it, just brought up another thing is sometimes people like doing the things you don't like. I hate accounting. It is the thing that I procrastinate the most on. But you know what, an accountant and a bookkeeper, they love numbers. They like the fact they can get things to tally up. Exactly. So I guess that's the other thing that you could then do is once you put that process in place, you then go, "So who would be the person who would be the best fit for this?" Because it's not me. Exactly. And frankly, as a business owner, you know, obviously if you have a team, working on the business as usual types tasks is not the best use of your time. You should be networking, going to trade events, researching competitors online, understanding social media and how you can impact it, building your email list so that you can perhaps develop a membership program with your customers. Like the sort of things that you could be doing to improve your business and grow your sales is exponential, really. And once you decide that that's your focus, you very quickly want to optimize all those business as usual type tasks and hand them over to somebody else. So that's really easy to do once you at least have it down on one page, so to speak. So with things like my noise log, it makes it really easy. You can identify, you know, what is the priority for you? It's like, a zero priority is, "I'm going to get really cranky if I have to put up with this match longer." And number one priority might be, "This blocks me from doing my day-to-day job with ease." Or, "This is something that's going to immediately bring in sales." Maybe this is something that's going to take five minutes and it's going to solve four different other noise tasks, like maybe something to do with passwords or software. So you can really, really easily and quickly see, "Gosh, it's really obvious which things we need to focus on first because they're going to free up all these other things." So how on average, how long do you think it normally takes a business owner to get, to reduce their noise quite significantly? And I only ask this because I don't want people to go, "Yes, I'm going to do that." And then a week later, maybe their noise levels only drop by five percent. What should you be aiming for and say in that first week and first month? And the first week definitely should be aiming to get into emails in. Like that's usually the biggest, it's the most obvious and easy to fix noise issue. So certainly within the first week, your email should drop to a really dim sum of no more than sort of 10 or 20 emails depending on your business. So that's definitely something you should expect and you can achieve in the first week. And it really depends on how complex your business is, how much of your knowledge is already documented, how big a team, what sort of things you can hand over. But if you make a three-month commitment to actively step away from the day-to-day operations of your business so that you can focus on these income-generating activities, that's something that's very achievable in the first three months. Of course, there's going to be more to document and as you say in your own case, it might take 12 months. But there's people like yourself, Selena, that can help business owners to do that documenting, to think about how to run the businesses effectively. So it's not as though perhaps with yourself, you started years ago, you didn't have somebody like yourself. Hold on, and they do now, so they don't have to reinvent the wheel. No, times have changed so much in the last 10 years. Just to put this in completely irrelevant in terms of retail. But when I had my daughter six years ago, I remember my husband buying me a pre-paying dongle to take to the hospital so I could have internet access. Like, that doesn't happen these days. You just take your phone. I was very scared of everyone. I say, that was very sweet. But that was only six years ago. So times have changed so dramatically. And that in itself can sometimes be overwhelming, trying to keep up. But there are so many tools, like you were saying, that you can use, put your phone up against the wall and record yourself doing something, which you just couldn't do 10 years ago. And that's why outsourcing is, for me, one of the biggest levers anybody in any business in any industry can pull. Because within five minutes of setting up a profile on eLance or Odesk, you have access to hundreds of thousands of people all around the world. And it's only growing. They're predicting there's something like 2 billion more people coming online in the next three to five years, which is just incomprehensible. And so you have access to people with skills far beyond what you could ever invest in in your lifetime. So being able to take advantage of those skill sets for your business is probably the one thing that's going to help your business grow. Educating yourself on what's possible through podcasts. I mean, I listened to, to religiously one social media marketing with Michael Stelzer. Brilliant. And also another one by Kevin Rose, called Foundation. And the reason I listened to that one is it's a tech interview style podcast. It's a video podcast. But the people that are interviewed on that podcast, they're at the cutting edge of all these software tools that everybody uses every day. And apart from the fact that they're brilliant tools, they know customers inside out. They know their sales journey inside out. They think really deeply about how to interact, communicate, connect with, sell to, upsell to, and engage on social media with their customers. And they're dealing with millions of customers at a time. So you can really learn outside of your own industry and your own business model from people doing things that are really changing the world. And you have access to these people through free podcasts, which is, I think, just brilliant. Oh, I know there's so much to be learned. There's so much free information out there. And, and the reason you're on the podcast advocate, obviously, but I love them because you can be listening to them while you do something really boring. Like when you're folding the washing, when you're cooking dinner, when you're out for a run, all those sorts of things, you can actually be learning while you're doing something that, you know, is not necessarily at the top of your, "Hey, I'd love to do that job." So clean. And, you know, there's kind of no excuse. It sounds a bit harsh, but there really isn't. If you want to grow your business, you have never been in time in the world where you don't have this much at your disposal. And it just takes connecting to somebody like yourself, Selena, who'd done it before, who knows retail inside out, having some tools, having some systems. I mean, asana.com is a brilliant project management software system, and it's free. People can avail themselves with these tools. Their team can work remotely. They can, they can step away within, I would say at least three months, it will take to feel confident that they can step away, but they can dramatically step away from their business within three months. Which is fantastic. I'm really mindful of the time. We've had you on for quite a while, and so much information. I've written a whole bunch of notes down, and I'll make sure that they all go into the show notes. But where can we find you? You can find me at noisewhisperer.com. Fabulous. And there's a whole bunch of information there. And we'll pop a link up to the seven day virtual assistant course. And I always love to finish off on a question. It's a retail question that I ask everybody. And I love to hear what the answers come back in. But the question is, what makes you go wow when you walk into a retail store? What makes me go wow? What makes me go wow is the energy and the vibe in the store, and the way that I'm approached. So if someone approaches me in a really unhurried, relaxed, really warm way, as in the tone of their voice, if they look me in the eye with a gentle smile, but not kind of that sort of affronting, commanding my attention in the approach. I'm kind of more on the, you know, take it easy. Softly, softly. Softly. So that warmth. I suppose it's the same sort of thing. I mean, I always consider when I walk into a store that I'd love to be greeted as if I'm walking into somebody's home. And that's definitely gives me a wow feeling. And that doesn't cost anything. This is like the whole premise behind the course that I'm launching is having this thing called a heart, you know, the heart-centered retail business, a people conscious retail business. And it doesn't cost anymore to have people who are genuinely interested in asking you how your day is. Right. I couldn't agree more. It's nothing. It's just training. It's setting expectations. It is. And it all comes back to what you said right at the beginning is writing down on paper, the why is you put this business together and actually conveying that back to your team. Well, thank you so much for today's interview. So much information there. And I really do hope that some of these tips that Terriann has given us will help us reduce the amount of noise that's going on in your business. And if nothing else, I would love to hear about how you've managed to reduce your email inbox. So thank you very much, Terriann. Thanks again so much for listening to the Bringing Business to Retail podcast today. The biggest compliment you can give me is by leaving a review on iTunes or Stitcher or heading on over to the blog and leaving a comment. I'd like to finish off with another review from Nell on Stitcher, outstanding five stars. These podcasts are incredibly comprehensive, full of useful information and are actually quite inspiring. A definite must have for anyone in or considering starting up in retail. Thanks so much, Nell. I've been working on a new thing for you and I'm really excited to be talking about it. Next week, it's a challenge, a 21-day challenge to help you get customers before you open your store. So more about that next week. The editing is just happening. I'm really excited about all of the how much impact this could have for you if you're starting a business. And even if you're already in business, there's loads of hints and tips and tricks that you could get benefit from. So stay tuned for next week when we talk about the challenge and also we have a fantastic guest. Until then, have a fantastic day wherever you are in the world. [Music]
