(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 the Bringing Business to Retail Podcast. Now, when it comes to my team, I am always looking for people who are better at stuff than I am. Like I would love to think that I am the smartest person in the room, but the simple fact is yes, I am smart at some stuff, but I can't be smart at everything. So when I hire my strategy coaches, now if I can just take a moment to say that a strategy coach that works with me has to have a whole different level of experience to maybe the business coaches that you've been used to. So if you've ever done business coaching, what you might find is you'll turn up and they'll kind of ask you some questions about where do you wanna go and they'll provide encouragement. They might provide some resources or they might give you some referrals, but realistically a coach acts as a sounding board. Now, the difference that we have is we have strategic coaches. So if you have a business strategist, what that person is going to do is coming to your business, order your business, put in a strategy for you to do whatever it is that you've hired them to get you to do, and then quite often they will help you implement as well. So what I did was knowing that people need both. You don't just need a coach most of the time. What you really need is someone to tell you what to do and someone who knows what you need to do and so when I put together this role of a strategy coach, I was looking for people who had real world experience in retail and e-commerce, who had built businesses quite successfully, had worked with a very wide range of different retail and e-commerce niches. And if you've done that and you've done it really well, then that got you a step closer to getting in the door. Now, one of those people who made it through the door and is absolutely nailing it when it comes to helping retail and e-commerce business owners to grow is the one and only Daniel Gibney. Daniel, welcome to the podcast. - Thank you, Sal. That's a very gracious introduction. I often feel like I'm the least smartest person in the room. So there's a mutual feeling there, which is all good. - Well, I mean, we always tell people that if you're hiring someone, generally you want them to be smarter than you because if they're not smarter than you at the job, then I mean, it's obviously different horses for different courses, but for the majority of the roles that people are going to be hiring for, your hiring is for a store manager, for an e-commerce manager, for an e-mail marketer. You don't want them to be capped out by the amount of knowledge that you have because otherwise that's the point. You could have just done it yourself. - That's right. - So you have had a wealth of experience. So for those of the people out here who haven't had the chance to work with you, I'd say, you know, that's not fair to them, but let's give them a little bit of a background to how you ended up here today because you are the successful owner of several businesses as well as being a strategy coach. - Yeah, I guess I sort of started back in and, you know, don't freak out, I will get through this quite quickly, back in probably the late '90s. (laughing) But I was, as you get to tell them a drama, this is some of my collection here, but I was buying stuff on eBay from America and bringing it in, selling it. I wanted to make a little bit more money and take a bigger risk. And e-commerce, probably, you know, early 2000s was just beginning to really sort of take off. And I thought, well, I could import some product, I could sell it, what could I do? And I had a whole lot of ideas. They're kind of very little story short, but we just had our first child, our daughter, Emily, couldn't find any hearing protection emails for her, which we needed because she wanted to play the drums, watch me play. And I found, I thought, what about EMS for kids? That'd be a great idea. And gave a shot, found a supplier, built the website myself, set up the company myself with the help of a good accountant, and gave it a shot. And 17 years later, still going. We've got officers in the US and the UK and Australia. We have logistics operations there in Asia. And so, look, that's a very condensed version of that. That's been something that's been going that whole time. I've been involved with other businesses. Some of you may be aware of a sport called Pickleball, which is really taken off to say the least in Australia. Some involved with Pickleball Superstore. We're one of the biggest distributors in the country. I've picked up all equipment. I have a barbecue business called FireSlap with my brother, who's a very successful butcher. And that's kind of like a little hobby business on the side as well. And then in addition to that, I also play drums. I call it my weekend job. And I taught drums for about 10 or 15 years while I was building some of these other businesses too. And I still do some of that on the side. And then, yeah, I guess everything I've learned that the courses, all of those, and I'm still learning, and you know what, I had the opportunity to join as a strategy coach. As you say, I sort of just told you my story, and it's what you're after, which was very gratifying. Very happy to be on board. - I have to say, I didn't even know some of that. Do you know what? I knew you were a drummer, and I knew you had M's for kids, the EMFs. But for some reason, in my hand, I never put two and two together. And I always thought you had started that business. And you've never said this, I just assumed. - Awesome. - That it was because you were doing renovations at home, and you needed them for the baby. I don't know why I thought that. - They were helpful for that. They were absolutely helpful for that. I think the thing was, I had, you know, I went to an e-commerce seminar with a friend of mine. It was already doing online fashion, men's fashion. And they basically, this seminar, you bought a website in a box, basically. And they were really pushing the idea of drop shipping, which is very big in sort of the continent of the United States, but it wasn't really big in Australia. But I rang my wife and said, look, I've got the opportunity to buy this website license. I just feel like I should do it. She goes, what are you gonna sell? I said, I have no idea. But once I figured out, this gives me the tools to build the website and get set up. And to her credit, she trusted me. And then we used the last little bit of baby bonus money that we had because that was a thing back then. And I bought the license and then for three, four months, sat there, what am I gonna do? And I looked at music accessories and, you know, drum accessories and things like that. And in the end, I still remember the day I was sitting there and I just did to my wife, we were both watching TV and I just turned to her and said, why don't you do most? And she'd heard every idea on it at the sun by this point. So she didn't even look at me. - She said whatever. - She said, yeah, yeah, it's right. She goes, what do you mean? And I said, well, you know, Emily's gonna need some. She wants to hit the drums and watch me play and, you know, you could use them, but motor racing. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, okay, this could work. That was 2007, early 2007, and I had it launched by the end of the year. - Oh, you and I, I think we were very much in the same headspace. Didn't know each other, different parts of Australia. - That's right. A vision, paths have crossed. - So I've mentioned paths, completely different things, but I was about the same time and it was funny. I was just on a call with Shopify today and I was talking about my first ever POS was actually the back end of an OzCommerce website and he was like, well, that dates you. - Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Yeah, just mentioned domain central law. Aussie male. - Yeah, oh yeah, Aussie male, yep, yep. - And, and Flash, let's be honest, you know, you were, if you didn't know what Flash was. And I remember the deprecation of Flash and how we all had to, you know, change up our websites. And I mean, building a website these days is so much easier. You know, you whack a Shopify template in, you drop some pictures in and it's ready to go. - Oh, it's incredible. It's in Korea. It's so much easier, you know, and you can make it a couple of candidates if you want, but you don't need to, so much of it is, is just set and forget, drag it and drop it and you're off of racing. So I envy some people who are starting at this point. - Oh, me too. I look back now, and this is a date. This is pretty historically dates both of us, but I look back now at the things that we used to write down in an exercise book, because we didn't have a diary big enough. So we used to have an exercise book that sat under the counter and you would write down the day and everything that people had to do. So for example, it might say, call Vicky about the cloth nappies to make sure everything's going okay. And it would just be all these call such and such, call such and such, call such and such, just to make sure everything was okay, because like back in the day, I'm thinking that we maybe had MailChimp. I actually don't remember how we used to send, well, we certainly didn't send automated emails right back at the beginning. - No, no. - And I think I remember working out, we were used to record these videos in store of how to use products like baby carriers, and then don't know YouTube back then. I'm pretty sure they must have showed me a way to embed them in secret pages of the website, because back then having video on a website slowed everything. - I was huge. - And we used to send these messages that were like, here's the link to the video that you need to watch. And it would be like, send such and such the video number two. And now you're just like, oh my gosh, like press the button, personalize emails, sending, segmentation, A/B testing. Like life is so much easier now. You can say it. - On automation. - I've got it. - I know, and I'll tell you what, I use that phrase for too often as well. In all areas of life, and particularly in e-commerce as well. - But all right. So what I wanted to talk to you today about was, I remember when you first started, and you were a little bit daunted, forgive me, feel free to jump in and correct me, but you were a little bit daunted about the fact that you had to, as a team, we provide bespoke, customized, personalized, strategic advice for each business. And you were kind of like, like, that feels like it's going to be really, really difficult. And fast forward, I think it was about four weeks and you're like, oh my gosh, everyone has the same problems. - That's, yeah, yeah. - I remember saying to you, you will find, it's like the same half a dozen things that every person needs to, the obstacles that most businesses need to conquer first. Yes, we might go onto marketing or KPIs or leadership or whatever, but realistically, they're this handful of obstacles or constraints in a business that I'm going to say 99% of people that we work with come up against. And once they can crack through those, they see results really, really quickly. So I would love to hear from you, from the skeptic, who thought that all these businesses are going to come with different problems. What are the big things that you see that, and this is businesses from six figures, right through to seven, you know, high seven figures. They're the kinds of people that we're working with that are getting the personalized advice from you and the team and the experts and me. So, and I do laugh now that you have so many niches under your belt from fabric to clothing to pet food. Like the list goes on. Yeah, I'm learning a lot as well as teaching a lot. So it's good. I think you were going to be the fabric store officially. I feel that way. I do feel that way, yeah. All right, so let's jump in. What do you think is probably the number one thing that you see? The biggest thing is probably just understanding, not what I got before that, having a grasp of numbers and figures and then understanding how to interpret them. And there are some people that are very good in terms of they have all the numbers in terms of this is our website sales versus our in-store sales and all these sorts of things. They have them recorded, but they don't really know what do I do with this? How does this help you with a lot of projections and forecasting and how do I figure out my tax and all those kinds of things? But they're also some other people that just have no idea. And we'll get to the end of the year and go, I've done this much in sales. And I'll say, okay, I said, what are your sales channels? Where did it come from? I don't know, we just sold it. And I'm the guy envy that because I'm dealing with a couple of people that are in that position that are very profitable, which is great. But I think it's not necessarily because people can't understand them or won't be able to understand them. There's just this intimidation around numbers and around finance, I think. And not just necessarily just to do with money, but to do with inventory and stock quantity and all these sorts of things. So I think a lot of people are just a bit scared to jump in and ask questions or I'll just let the account handle that and understand that and they can just tell me what to do. And I'm a huge fan of good financial advice. There's no doubt about that. But I think really a lot of people are just unnecessarily intimidated, I think, by shiggers and by numbers. And you don't have to be a mass genius. You don't have to have every last cent worked out on a candidate floor, but you need to have a grasp of, it's the health of your business. If you could have your personal health on a dashboard with your heart rate and your cholesterol and your blood pressure and all these sorts of things, you'd want to know. And if that's box, I need to fix that. How do I fix it? If that's gone down, how do I fix it? The business is exactly the same. You don't have to understand how to explain every little thing. But you need to know, look at your numbers and get a good idea of where you're at at any given time. And so access to numbers. Again, talking about, you know, people have no idea how hard it was. Now all accountings on the line, you can access it 24/7. - I remember going to the accountant, you know, at the end of each quarter with the shoe box and the big folder of receipts and things like that and spreadsheets and all that kind of stuff. And I'm like you, I am a firm believer of not leaving your accounting and bookkeeping till the end of the quarter. Because by the end of the quarter, it is too late to make any changes. Like you need to be looking at, you need to be looking at this stuff, I think almost on a daily basis, but at least on a weekly basis. Because if you get two weeks into the month and let's just say you've got a goal of $100,000 in the month and at week two, you're only at 20. You've got to, you know, to put an Australian saying in there, you've got to pull your finger out and do something to make changes, whatever you're doing isn't working. If you're supposed to be at 50 and you're only at 20, what are you going to do? And to me, this is one of the, I guess the benefits of being an independent retailer and not being part of a chain or a franchise is that you can react really, really quickly. You big box retailers, if they're having a bad month, they just can't go on sale. It doesn't work like that. They can't just call up a supplier and run a promotion at the drop of a hat. All of those things are planned quarters, if not a year in advance. So, their ability to adapt to the market is really slow. You know, it's like trying to move a cruise ship, whereas the people listening, it's like, you can make a call today, you can make a call tomorrow and you can implement something. You know, as long as you've got systems in place, how can you implement something to make changes? - Yeah, and the ability to be agile as a small business or, you know, even not necessarily a small business, but a business that's doing quite well, how do you grow and scaling it bigger, but maintain that agility, that ability to quickly move and quickly pivot? And of course, a recent example, this was COVID. There were some businesses that I was amazed. I think the statistic was something like 70 or 80 a percent of businesses in Australia didn't have any commerce website when COVID hit, which as someone had had any commerce site for 13 years, well, that point, I was absolutely staggered. - I'm with you, I just... - I couldn't believe it. - It's so easy, like, literally. - Yeah. - If you have a POS, I don't know if it is a monetary thing, like they didn't want to spend the money or they didn't want to upload the pictures, but I don't know, being in the industry, it hurts my brain to think, one, how much money were you losing? And two, how many people didn't even know that you exist? - Yeah, I think it was a necessity thing too. Look, there are businesses I know now that have my website, but it's very outdated because they don't need it and businesses okay without it, they just keep going. And I think there were plenty of businesses in that hand, no e-commerce or very little, but it didn't matter because they had their customer base and they had the usual sales channels and their usual events. But once all those got shut down, they had to go, we have to find somewhere else and they turned the e-commerce. And the businesses that responded the quickest, we usually the ones that didn't have to tell 300 staff how to use the website and get hand office permission and get financial approval, which is just I'm going to find a contractor. We've only got 50, 100, 150 products as opposed to 50,000. Quick, let's get something online. And so that ability to be agile is very, very important. But even what I was saying about numbers too, a lot of what I talk about and demonstrate, I'm talking from experience, usually where I've got it wrong. I got myself through it and fixed it and worked it out. I remember the first two years I upgraded and so kids we ran at a loss because we were just spending so much on development research that you're buying products. And I remember I think it was year three around about mid May that I looked at the rudimentary figures I had and went, oh, I'm going to make a profit this year, which is great. But then of course, I'm going to get a tax bill. - I'm going to pay tax. - Oh, I'm going to say it's that much. - I know. - So I was scrambling for deductions, digging through the shoebox, and I couldn't avoid it. And I still remember the moment my accountant used to laugh about it years afterwards, when I got like a five-figure tax bill and had no money available to pay it. And he said, I honestly thought I was going to have to catch you as you fell off his shit, 'cause I was just in shock. But I talked to the ATO, we figured it out, I got it done. But ever since then, you still get the odd shock and the odd fright, but ever since then I've got to know my numbers. I can go through my profit loss and explain everything, not down to the cent, and I've got to check with my accountant on a couple of things, but it just, it just gives you peace of mind, and it gives you a sense of control and a sense of less panic, I guess, to look at the numbers. Now, you might always like what you see. You may need to be a 50 grand for the month if you're only a 20th. Well, you may have a small loss, or you might have spent too much there, but it's true that in so many areas and in your finances, knowledge is power. And if you know about it, you can plan to fix it. If you don't know about it, you're going to get a rude shock eventually, because it will catch up with you, just like the tax office. - I remember my first year when the accountant was trying to tell me I had to do stock take, and I was like, oh, I know what's in there, and they're like, no, no, you actually legally have to do stock take, because if you have more stock than you started with, we tax you on that. And I remember, I'm like, oh, you get, remember saying, oh, I get a refund back for that, and she's like, no, no, no, no. - Before she mad, it's okay. - And she's like, no, no, you have to pay tax on that. And I remember saying to her, but how can I pay tax on something I haven't sold? And she's, it's an asset, you pay tax on assets. And, you know, I kind of joke about the fact I failed accounting twice, but then I'm such a penny pincher, like how did I not know this? But the accounting I learned at university didn't talk about that. Like, it didn't talk about running a business and things like assets and inventory. It was like, here's money coming in, and here's money going out, and it, I don't know, like, none of that translated to having a business. And then when I had a business, I remember thinking, oh my God, it's just money. Like, why didn't someone say that to me? It's just money, just getting back money. - Yeah. (laughs) - Yeah, it's amazing how numbers, numbers you get whenever, when you think of cash, it's like, oh my gosh, I've got to get serious now. - Yeah, yeah. - Yeah, well, a friend of mine runs a very large supplements company, and him and I laugh, because we did business principles of schools. It was called there in the year 11 and 12. And that poor teacher, shout out to Mrs. Bad, if you're watching, for putting up with us. But we would sort of mess around all term and make jokes and just be a bit not serious, but they would always do well in the exams. I don't know. Oh, but again, it was like, here's your ledger, and he's your profit, and here's your loss, and he's inventory, and I remember back then, going, okay, I just did enough to get through the exam. And, you know, anyone who knows me knows, I actually left school. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I went into the Bachelor of Business and quit after six months, 'cause I thought, oh, business is ultra. I'll never want to do business. So, I really was not set up to end up here, but this is where I am. But it is funny how when you do involves, and it's money, and it's your money, my goodness, you get serious about it pretty quick. - Oh, yes, yes. I did a Bachelor of Business as well, but not until a little bit later. I know, just if we could just talk about money, just for another couple of minutes. I know that you were very kind to do a session for our five Xs the other day. We're walking through what does a profit and loss look like? What are the things that we're looking for? Because we're not financial advisors. We are literally just looking for the patterns of, that number doesn't seem right. Why is that number a bit high? From the experience we've got, things are not necessarily looking like they're supposed to. And sometimes we find quite a lot of money just because people have put things in the wrong places, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, but what I wanted to ask you is, you work with a lot of people and a lot of women, and I guess the reaction to talking about money can literally go from crying and tears to a lot of confidence around money. But I'm guessing most people kind of end up in the middle. They're kind of doing a lot of smiling and nodding, and hoping that Daniel doesn't realize, I don't know what I'm talking about. How do you empower people to be okay with money? - I think most people, in fact, I'd always say all that I've worked with. They actually need to know more than they think, or they've got better instincts than they realize, or they're doing better than they think. And so I often say to a lot of people, look, okay, this isn't great, and okay, there's a bit of a mess there, or there's a bit of an issue, we need to fix, but look how well you're doing here, here and here. I've never worked with anybody in business that was a complete and utter basket case and was doing nothing right, because chances are the business wouldn't be functioning. So I think more often than not, it's actually encouraging them, and it's all good, if you don't know some things, well, I can do my life, you know, like there's always something to learn, there's always something to get better at. So you're gonna focus on what you do know, what you are good at, what your strengths are, and then when it comes to money, it's actually quite easy to get a decent amount of knowledge fairly quickly, and going through the profit last like we did the other day on that call, and I've done that directly with a number of clients, is just going through a live online, explaining what this is, and this relates to that, and this is what this means, that if this goes up, then this needs to go down, and you're not going to know I'm sitting at the time, you get to the end of the call, and people go, oh wow, is that all? That's almost their response. And again, I think there's this, almost this fear of I didn't study accounting, or I didn't do business at university, or this is my first business. A lot of it is quite basic. You buy something, you sell it for more, you make money. What does it cost you to do the selling? That's really what it comes down to, but I'm not sure what we're talking about, an inventory-based or a goods-based business. And so it really is just slowly expanding that app, answering any questions along the way, or any answer that's there. But I think really it's a case of demystifying money, demystifying profit loss, and a lot of those terms that we hear thrown around, sometimes you just use a different word. Again, it's not inventory, it's stock, or something like that, and like you said, it's not money, it's cash. It's aged inventory, it's not just old stock, it's money sitting on the shelf, and it's amazing how they can make people go, "Oh, and they suddenly realize, "I've got to clear that, or I've got to sell that." So I think demystifying is a massive part of it, for sure. - I love that. I have to say, as I look around, you can't see, but as I look around my office at the literally dozens of boxes that are sitting beside me outside of the view of the camera, that I can completely appreciate, I know one of the things that you work with people to do when you first start working is once you go through the money is you find all the old inventory, and we find a way to move as much of that as we can. But it is not easy, it is like moving house after 20 years, which is what I'm doing, and it gets so hard to pick up a box and go, do I need this, but I paid for it. Could somebody else use it? Like, do I want to let this go? Do I just throw it at like the internal dilemma that you go through to make a decision whether you keep something or whether it goes is quite difficult? And I know we've had quite a few people who've shared their stories about running a big promotion, and they've said it's like, they've been in tears as they do it. And I can understand that, but having just lived that and literally living it as we speak, I have 100% empathy for them being able to take control. Like, so many people know what they have to do, but it's the taking action that is hard. And it is that, oh, I know I have to get rid of this stock, but I don't want to make a decision to sell it at a loss or give it away as a gift with purchase or whatever, even though it's costing me money, and even though I could end up benefiting it, benefiting if it goes, it is that like we are so adverse to loss that we overlook what can happen, the good things that can happen. So I guess my next question for you will go kind of in that vein, which is sometimes it's really difficult to get people to shift their mindset from a lack mentality. Like, yeah, I will lose money in that. Or if I hire someone, I have to, that's money I'm going to lose. What are the areas that you find the biggest obstacles when it comes to changing that mindset into if I spend money on marketing, it's an investment. If I spend money on people, it's an investment. - I think it really, there's a couple of things. First of all, I'll say to people, look, it might give you $20,000 right now. What would you do with it? Oh my gosh, I'd do this and I pay for this and I get this and I get this and I go, I will see that number there. That's $20,000. And if you can sell that, I don't see if you sell everything at our price. That's $20,000. And the shock of, oh yeah, you're right. I think it's tangible things. When you've got something in front of you and you go, right, there just cost me this much, I could sell it for this much. That's great. But then if I got money for that and spent it on marketing or I spent it on something else, but that's, I can't see that, I can see this. And so it's just human nature. If you've got something, it's tangible. It's here, I've got it now, as opposed to something down the track or something down the line. So that's usually a really great exercise. No, sort of lead them into that. Almost, I want to say that track, but ask them that question. Hey, I'll give you $20,000. What do you need to do? And there's always a list. Oh my gosh, I need this. I've got to pay this off, I've got to pay this down. And then you just redirect them, go, well, you've actually got that money. You've actually got more than that money. But it's sitting right there. And you could have had that $20,000 three months ago. Sometimes it's as simple as, oh, right. Okay. And then they sort of, you know, did this how in the water and sell the first little beer that I actually sell, and they get that money in. And they go, oh, oh, I'm going to do it again and do it again. And I'm like, so many things. I remember I had an issue with my UK company about five or six years ago. We'd noticed an issue with our VAT, like our bastard turned. And a whole lot of VAT hadn't been claimed. We hadn't been, we hadn't claimed it. We paid it, we hadn't claimed it. And once I realized that, it was like, it was literally not looking for buried treasure. I'm looking through thousands of lines of spreadsheet. Oh, there's an 100 pounds. There's another 200. And it was incredible. And this money was just building up. It's the same thing. You know, if you look at inventory, you've got $50,000 for the inventory on the stock. And to some people that might sound ridiculous, I've dealt with clients that have got three or 400% more than that sitting on the shelf. And suddenly they sell $5,000. Oh, well, that's great. I'm going to sell another $5,000. Oh my gosh, that's $10,000. And it just hit this snowball effect. But it's the first kind of step to go, I've got to, I'm going to jump to that. The hard part of it is that I struggle with this. I've got a really great marketing manager. It's pushed me a lot, but we would do baby expose. And I would know that I pay for the booth and the staff and everything else. I paid this much money. And at the end of the weekend, we sold this much. So I made this much. I liked that. Marketing in particular, Google ads and Facebook ads, social media marketing, it is very easy to do. And it's much more accurate to track, spend and return. You know, the investment return these days, but there is still an element of marketing that you just don't know. And that's where I did come down to risk as well. And for some people, there's the risk of, that's the other piece of the puzzle, is how much of a risk appetite do they have? They've started their own business, they've got some. They must have some appetite to risk. But then it's the case of, well, you prepared to risk losing money on that, to get that money in and then to take that money and spend it on something else. And risk spending it on that like marketing. But then the return to huge, you know, the risk for reward thing is there's a definite reward. One thing that I see with some businesses that is quite sad is they cut their marketing spend to save money. And yes, okay, they're spending less, but then they're telling those people about themselves and the products they have, where they are. And so what happens, less people know, less people buy, sales go down. Oh my gosh, we're selling less, we're losing money. I'm gonna cut marketing even more. And they end up in this downward spot where you cut marketing your sales drop. So you cut marketing, so your sales drop. And sometimes, you know, I come in and they've been doing this for six to 12 months. So they're spending nothing on marketing, but they're getting no sales. And that can be a challenge to go, you know what? Again, it's just the language, okay? No one's buying from you. Not because your products are terrible. Not because your service is awful. But no one knows you here. No one knows you. No one knows you've got this. Then that's right. And so how are you gonna tell people? Oh, we can try this and try that. Okay, but that might tell five people or 10 people 'cause I haven't got that many social media followers. But what if you did spend money here and let a thousand people know really quickly? Not what if you could spend some money on this event? And it's just, it can be hard. And I've been there when business is tough and it appears just throwing money into something that is not a guaranteed return. You spend $50 on something and you know it sells for $150. That's as close to a guaranteed return as you gotta get in business. Whereas if you spend that $50 on digital advertising, you can get $500 worth of sales or if you don't do it right, you can get nothing. So there's a risk. So it's pushing people to just grow their risk appetite slightly but surely to get themselves back out of that, that whole that fall into as well. - And then, I mean, that falls into a whole other category of having people who are smarter than you too, doesn't it? Is like you have-- - Oh, absolutely. - You have a knowledge debt, essentially. Like if you don't know how to run ads, your chances of it going wrong are much higher. But the time to take to learn to do that is an opportunity cost of doing something else that could have made your business money. So it is trying to explain all of that. All right, so you and I can talk forever. But let me just quickly recap what we've talked about so far. So one was really understanding money and being confident that the numbers aren't scary. Like once you numbers hold no power when you know what they mean. And we talked a bit about mindset. We kind of fell down the rabbit hole of marketing. But what are the other things that you see? Like what are the biggest obstacles that you tackle? Right in those say first three months? - I think there's definitely the money aspect of things. And I think too, it's just, it really is just that people are at risk of risk. And I honestly think this has become particularly, particularly prevalent in the past four or five years because of uncertainty. And my business is I have to predict, I have to try and project, we all do. But my gosh, I can't predict what's going to happen tomorrow, the way the world's going sometimes. And COVID, I think it really gave everybody a shot because there was ups and downs and there was uncertainty and unrest. But suddenly the whole world literally got turned inside and upside down and everything else. And I still think there's a bit of a hangover from that where people are, 'cause they don't know it's possible, 'cause they know it can happen. Now yes, that was a once in a hundred year event around the four or five years out of it now. So it's probably not gonna happen again soon. But I think there's a bit of tension and uncertainty there and there's always tension and uncertainty in business. But I think as someone that, obviously I'm on the outside looking in. And so I sort of come in and say, well, look, okay, yes, you've had this struggle and you've had this problem. But if you just push a little bit here and if you take a bit more of a risk there and if you take a chance on that, there's actually heaps of upside. And it's trying to, I guess, get people out of that. So sometimes when we look so busy looking down, we don't actually look up and see what the potential and see the opportunities because we're looking at the one issue or the two or three issues within our own little ecosystem. And so for me, I spend a lot of time, I feel like just trying to lift people's tunes up. Just lift your head up, lift your head up. In terms of being encouraged and you're doing better than you think. But also, but look at that potential over there. Look at that opportunity over there. I had a chat with a client recently who, you know, is doing okay, but not doing great. But they don't even have any commerce website yet. And I said, my gosh, like, look at the numbers you're doing. - If you're doing this bad. - And you're not even allowed. I was like, yeah, there was so much upside out of here. Okay, yes, you're gonna have to spend money on the website. And usually you have to spend time, you're gonna have to figure out shipping. But my gosh, you know, there is so much potential for you here. And it was just trying to encourage them that it's gonna cost you money. It's going to be a risk, but let's face it. E-commerce and this day and age is so prevalent well known. It's not that much of a risk. It's just trying to get them to get out of there. Their own sort of funk in their own, I guess, you know, we get stuck in this, you know, just this more on set. And again, I've been there. It's very, very easy to do and it's really hard to get out of it. So my job as a coach is not going to get in and build a website and to do all the marketing, to do all the work. But I've done it before and to sit there and go, I'm gonna be right here with you. I'm gonna tell you how to do it. You've got to do it, but it's like any coach, any sport. He's not out there on the field. She's not out there shooting hoops. They're sitting back in the dressing room. They tell the players, go and do this. And if the players execute it, it should work. And that's why successful coaches are so successful because they can get those results. And so more often than not, it's just about standing back and going, okay, just come back with me and take a wider view of where you're at here. And these are issues, but there's a lot of potential. How do we deal with both? How do we achieve the potential? How do we fix the issues and just get you to a place where you're more confident and you're willing to take a bit more risk? Because you take a risk, it works, you take other risk. That's how we grow. That's how we get bigger. As people learn there's businesses as well. - How difficult do you find it to get people to think bigger? - Yeah, it can be very difficult. And I think this is something that I just did last. I am still trying to get my head around. I'm the kind of person that always wants to do something bigger. In some ways, take a bigger risk. I'm gonna have a huge risk appetite. But I want to be better, I want to get better, I want to try new things. And there are people that are just happy to stay where they are. And I'm happy to just like, I just don't want to, I don't want to do that. I don't want to grow down. I'm happy to say none of those people see doing Toyota for their program, which is good. So you get a lot of people that I want to grow, but I just don't know how I'm a little bit scared. And it really is just a case of, I think it rather than, you know, 'cause you can paint too big a picture sometimes, you've got to kind of just push them forward a little bit. Just nudge them. And sometimes it takes weeks or months of just, you just got to challenge them on one thing. And they get that one thing right then you challenge them on the next thing. And it, look, it's personality based, it's situational. It depends on who you're dealing with. For some people, it can be, my gosh, you can double your turn over 12 months, let's go. Whereas for others, it's, okay, let's just try this. Let's just get this done. And they get it and it works, they get a bit more confident. Okay, let's push a little bit further. They get that right, they get a little more confident. So everybody's different, every business is different, every business owner is different. Some people are willing to just take the leap. And some people that, you know, I've got one client in particular that just says, just tell me what to do, yell at me if you have to. And I'll do it, you know? And I'm able to go, okay, you need to fix this challenges and then they do it. And it works. And so what do they do? Great, what's the next? - What's next? - Whereas for other people, it's just try this and you've got to, you know, you've got to be patient, you've got to sort of nudge them along and they get it. And you've always got to, you know, without being condescending, you've almost got to get your seat. - Great. - Hey, you can do it. Be it worked. Let's try the next thing. - Let's do it. - And that snowball effect. And it just keeps going. So it's just a patient's thing. And it's just an understanding too. I forget that I was the guy at the kitchen table 15, 20 years ago, sending one email or waiting for my first daughter. You know, so I've been there. And so I've got to remember like so many things you learned from your experience. And I'm trying to draw on that to sort of encourage people to go on the journey that I've been on. And I still watch. - I love that. And I think you've kind of hit the nail on the head of why I think our clients do so well is because every person gets something individualized. Like the people who need a little bit more handholding, get a little bit more handholding. The people who need just tell me what to do is that, you know, okay, great. You know, I love getting on these calls because I can give you three things. And I know that on the next call it's done. And you know, not to say that either are more successful than the other, it's just that ability. And I think this is a great skill that you and the other strategy coaches have is this ability to empathize when needed, but also be a bit of a butt kicker when needed. And sometimes do a mixture of the both. And I, it makes my heart sing to hear the results that people get when the advice that they get is personalized to them. And it's not just generic advice because I cringe every time I go into, I was in a business Facebook group the other day and you know, someone asked the question and there's so much, well, I'm not doing this, but here's what I would do. And it's like, you just said, you're not doing it. You're, you're advised? - Yeah, why would someone else, why would you, why would you even bother to reply? And so this is- - And yeah, that's a big challenge. - Yeah, and it's sorry, just a jump in there. A big challenge as well is the fact that there's a lot of bad advice out there. There's a lot of, I had to say over, but there's a lot of bad agencies. There's a lot of bad businesses. And you know, if you have a one bad experience with a business in a particular field, that can be enough to put you off for good or for a very long time. And look, unfortunately, digital marketing and e-commerce is still very, very much to the wild west in terms of regulation and these kinds of things. And so that can be a real challenge for people who've tried a digital marketing agency and didn't go very well or they, you know, they got some results, but not enough, they'll promise the earth and didn't get that. And so they can come in a little bit scarred, you know, a little bit shell-shocked and it's in the case of going look, I'm not gonna sit here and give you a bunch of theories. Everything I'm telling you to do, I've done. Every risk you've taken, I've taken that and more. And I've stuffed it up and then fixed it. I'll just hope you get to the second stage. I won't make you stuff enough 'cause I learned from that. That my mistakes say to you, time and money. And it's, you know, it's like so many agencies. I think I love about what we do with the retail academies that we, you know, it's still, I wouldn't say bespoke. It's always, it is bespoke. It's tailored to you. It's not a case of right. He's just do this, do that and see you later. It's okay, what's, what does your profit want to say? What are your figures from last month? What figures do you want to get to? We apply principles, but it's okay. So here's some material that we have and his resource that we have, but he is also the experience of a person who's done it. And I think that combination is what makes it such a unique thing. You touched on something there. You didn't say the letters, but you kind of hinted. And I know one of the things that you do when we work with clients who have agencies or even team members is implementing KPIs or targets. So if you, if you have only just joined the podcast, here are three letters that I will say probably every single episode, which is KPI. KPI is a key performance indicator. It tells you whether someone or something is doing their job to the point where you are happy with the results. And the, for an agency, I think one of the things that we are able to do is look at the, quite often, the very flimsy reports that they get back from some agencies and go, oh, yeah, this is not the information you need to know is the information that you need to know. Go back and I'll call for this information. Yeah, correct. And I've written emails that just send them this. Just send them this again. You know, you don't need to know necessarily what all this terminology means. We'll certainly explain it and talk through it with you. But it's probably just a really good way to keep a lot of these other external agencies accountable. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people that go to an agency and say, here's how much money I have. Here's what I want to do. And it can very much be a cookie counter set and forget. Give us your money off you go. And this business owner is left going, I just spent $10,000. And we're not actually get for it. You know, but they have no way of keeping that agency accountable. I worked with the digital marketing agency a few years ago. And they did a good job eventually. But as my marketing manager said, she said, I don't know what they're in for. They don't know what they're dealing with. I'm not at all with logistics companies, too. I've been doing international logistics for 17 years. So I was working with a third party logistics company. It was just a line by line picking up all these errors and my marketing manager goes, I feel sorry for these guys. They don't know. They don't know what they're dealing with. But as soon as I pointed these things out, oh, yep. Oh, sorry. Yep, we'll fix that. We'll change that just because I knew what I was talking about. And I was able to pick up on things and save myself money. The idea as a coach is exactly the same thing, but I'm saving the client money. If you need to ask them this, if they need to tell you that and don't let them say, no, don't let them say they don't have access to that information. Oh, they do. They do. You just need to ask them for it. That's right. And so it's equipping people. Again, when I say to the client, you go and do all the marketing, but it's here. Ask some informed questions and the answers will tell you this. And you can use those answers to achieve this. And that's always a good feeling. We'll be sort of in power, people to do that, too. Yeah. And KPIs, even around team members, is that something that you find people get their backup a little bit about? You know, the idea of putting targets on their team. I know for many of the people that I work with is like, oh, but then I feel like everybody's going to reject that. And they're going to stop working. And then if we don't hit targets, they're going to worry that they're going to be fired. What do you see? I think a good manager, a good boss, some people really respond to that, had a rise to the challenge. And I'm a big believer. This is just a personal thing, but I like to try and incentivize as much as I can. And so I think, you know, you have targets and you have KPIs, but I think there's a way you can make it not this draconian, heavy-handed, you must do this sort of thing. I think you just go the other way. You want that target hit. You want that indicator reached, but the idea is that you motivate to get there and you motivate with reward, with excitement, rather than out of fear or punishment. You know, I've had situations where if we sell this much, the whole office gets launched or we all go out to dinner, or, you know, for me, when I first started, and Mr. Kink, if we hit a certain monthly target, our family would go out for dinner, you know, and I look at that monthly target now and I laugh because we don't see that mother target. We now get there in about four days. So I think, but back then, it was something, you know, and so I think I would say, not just for your stuff, but for yourself as well. Reward yourself with something, set yourself a goal, make it achievable. And I think that's the other thing. You know, I work with some clients where it's like, OK, here's the minimum. But if we get to this, I'm going to give them this sort of reward. If we get to that, oh, my gosh, I'm going to give them this sort of reward. And everybody wins because the staff member, the team member feels they've achieved something and they get a tangible benefit or bonus for it. But the business wins, too, and you missed the business I had a win because, my gosh, I never thought we'd sell that much. But my staff have motivated and look at what we've achieved. And I've seen that over and over again. And I think also, again, it's a personal approach, but as a business owner, there's KPI's, but I think also just looking after your staff, additional warning them when they're not expecting it. You know, I've had situations without the biggest month we've ever had. There wasn't a KPI in place in terms of if we reached this, but I just bought them a reward anyway, or given them a gift. I said, hey, look, that was our biggest month. Thanks so much. And you'd be amazed how it motivates a door card. But it also not buys. But it's sort of, you know, bring some loyalty from your staff as well. You're looking after them. You're making sure they're doing well. You're rewarding them when they work hard, they then want to continue work hard, which means the business succeeds, which means they succeed. It's cyclical. But there is definitely having KPI's is absolutely a good idea and something to work towards. But I think how you implement them, there's the very draconian, heavy-handed way, which I don't recommend, have them in place, but make them a bit less. Yeah, don't motivate out of fear, motivate out of a sense of reward and accomplishment, like, is a better way to do it. Yeah. And even, like, I love that, even reward and accomplishment, but also, like, vision and like you want to get somewhere and everyone is excited when something grows and to think that they've had a part of it. So if you keep them on board with the vision and I know that this is one of the things that I see people struggle with is thinking bigger and it's like, you know, but what if we got there and whenever I think about this, the first person who pops into my mind is Jill. If you're listening, it's always you when it comes to goals and stretch goals. And she is one of those people who understands the power of a stretch goal. Because I think every time she puts a stretch goal in place, she's much classes of a stretch goal, but she is to the goal. And even something as simple as that, like, this is where we want to be. But he's where we really like to be. And just that is enough to drive your team to go a little bit further and to drive you to go a little bit further. But also if we can go right back to the beginning of this conversation, if you have that, then all of a sudden you're looking at the numbers going, oh, we're two weeks in and oh, we're not quite where we thought we should be. Instead of being in that pit of despair, your brain can swap to right. What do we need to do to get back on track? Yeah. Yeah. Daniel, what do we need to do to get back on track? They can come to you and ask that question. That's right. And we can, you know, and there's multiple ways to do it. There's different levels you can pull to achieve that. And I think it's, yeah, again, it is that like you said, it's not sinking. Oh, my gosh, again, here we go against another terrible month. It's like, no, no, there's there's ways out of this. There's always ways out of it. How do you, how do you get that? How do you do it as an individual, as a team, as a business? How do you get back on track? It's not, it's not impossible. It's sometimes it's hard, but you learn so much as well. And the sense of accomplishment that you get once you've done it is such an incredible motivator to keep going. You know, it only takes one win. That's why people keep coming. That's why I keep going and playing golf. I only got one good shot and I'll play another 18. You know, that's all one of the takes. It's a, it's an odd adage, but it's true. Yeah. One good shot. Oh, that's it. I'm definitely coming back. Oh, I love it. I just said there you go. Just another new Daniel fact, plays drums, does volunteer work, runs several businesses, helps people, so does scale their business and plays golf and is a loving father and husband. Daniel, you and I can talk for literally hours, but I think it's probably a really good time to wrap this up and ask you if you could let the people listening leave with one piece of advice, one thing that they walk away just going, ah, yeah, I can see that if I just did that or if I thought that or if I accomplished that, my whole business would change. What advice would you give to people listening? Oh, well, I feel like I'm going to give you an answer and then I'm going to get off this and go, ah, I should have said that. It's how do they record the ending? Yeah, that's right. Do we have seven different alternatives? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Answer A, B, C, D, E, B, press A for option one. That's right. A financial donation or I think, yeah, that's a really, really good question. I'm just trying to narrow it down. I think more than anything. No, we'll load this, but you're just going to look at the fact that if you're running a business, you are, are you doing something? And B, you're actually six years old. If you've been running a business more than 12 months, you are a statistical anomaly. You're actually, you're actually beating the odds because so many businesses fail within the first, you know, depending on which jurisdiction look at first 12 months, first two years, if you're still up and going and you're still running where there's movement, there's, there's hope and where there's life, there's hope. And so I think it's a case of sometimes you just have to keep showing up. And there are some days you get to work and you're like, I'm just getting through this. And you know what? That's okay. It's not fun, but it's okay. You don't have to turn up to your business every day, absolutely crushing all your goals and thinking, I'm just flying so high. There are tough times and there are challenges. And not only are they okay, they're good for you. Because as someone that's been through some pretty hairy situations and a lot of us went through with COVID, there's nothing will satisfy and then looking back in the garden, oh my gosh, I survived that. This challenge I'm placing now, it's nothing to bear to that. But you don't get that feeling unless you've gone through the first challenge. So I think if you if you have a challenge, if you have some, some, some tough things in business, don't feel like you're Australian, don't feel like it's a lot, you know, you're, you're, it's a loss or your business as a disaster. Every single person goes through it. You will not find a successful business person on this planet that hasn't come close to failing. So don't let it keep you down. It's, it can be hard and it can be sometimes a bit depressing, but get good people around you that will encourage you, talk to other business owners who will tell you, oh, that's nothing I had. This happened and you'll actually start to realise that, oh, I should do it. Okay. So much of it is perspective. What I was talking about before about so many people are just looking down at their own little set of numbers where their own circumstance. Yes, and they can just look up and see the potential, but I'll look up and see everybody else that's doing exactly the same. It's been through far worse, so I had much time for times, get good people around you to support you, get other business owners around you that you can talk to because being a business owner is a very unique journey. You know, I tell people you live in a state of terrifying excitement is how I like to describe it. You're constantly terrifying, but it's a real thrill, you know, but the highs are higher and the lows are lower. And only other, only other business owners can really relate to it. So just even if it's one or two people that you can just have a bit of event. And if it's me, that's fine, you know, and I'll see the game. Yep, yep, nah. Hey, I've been through it. Yep, I can empathize, but be let me tell you how I got out of it. I think really, you know, I don't know. I had to answer the question sale, but I think it's more of just maybe a bit too much with an existential answer, but don't feel bad if business is tough. That's just normal. It's part of it. You've just got to push through it. You'll enjoy the successes even more when they come. You'll learn a lot and you'll get better as a result. And you never know, you might be able to help someone else further down the track. As well, I love that. And do you know, the only caveat if I had said that, that I would add is and it is this, how do you, how do you phrase this without sounding sounding bad? But don't hang around with the sad sacks who just want to drag you down. Yeah, you're saying, have those people around you, have smart, talented people around you. Yes, that's a very good caveat, especially in business. You know, not people who are doing this as a hobby and their life doesn't, you know, their life is not going to change if they have a bad month. If you have other people who are doing this, you know, I'm not going to say as a job, but doing this to survive, the answers they're going to give you or the support they're going to give you or the insight they're going to give you is very different to crowdsourcing an answer on a Facebook, you know, on a Facebook group from someone who's going through all of this. And if it doesn't work, they got nothing to lose. Whereas you've got everything to lose. Yeah, it doesn't work. Now that's a great point. That's a very good point. You got to make sure you get the right advice for the right people at the right time, you know, as a, as a drama, one thing I've always been very big on is I listen to traumas and I listen to music that is doing something better than me. So I could try and learn and I could try and get better at my instrument. And if there's so many areas of life, business, especially hanging around with people that have got bigger businesses that are making more money, selling more money, I guarantee you they will be able to give you a million stories of the troubles they've gone through, but look at where they are now, how do they do it? You know, business networking groups, all those things are great. But it's, it's really important to have that, that personal people alongside you that can empathize with you, but give you great advice too. That's a bit of a lifesaver for me on so many occasions. Daniel, give me thank you so much for your story, your advice, your multiple businesses that you brought to the world, the joy that you bring to so many people, drumming and traveling around and pickleball and a lot of the things that you do, all those things, you are a credit to society. And I am so proud to have you as part of the retail academy. Thanks, House. It's great to be a boy. I'm enjoying it. It's good. 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. [MUSIC]
