(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 Podcasts. Now e-commerce is an integral part of growing your retail brand. Now, all right, when I say retail, I don't necessarily just mean if you have a bricks and mortar store. Whether you are pure play e-commerce or you're a retail brand or a retail store, having e-commerce is essential in this day and age. Now, some of you might be lucky enough to have an e-commerce manager on your team or someone who looks after the website, does all the updates, uploads your products, puts all your marketing in place, and others who are listening are probably still DIYing it. Now, regardless of where you are at with those, different areas of your business, the simple fact is having somebody on your team, whether that person is an employee or it's a freelancer or it's an expert that you have access to, is one of the differences between you staying where you are and you outshining your competitors, which is why it is so essential for me to have e-commerce experts on my team to make sure that we are giving the people inside of our programs the most up-to-date information so that they can make money, they can get more sales, and they can increase their revenue. So, what I wanted to do today is bring on the amazing, the beautiful, the talented Kerry Clark, who is gonna go through with you the key things that she says, she audits dozens of businesses every single week and the key things that she sees that people either overlook or they just forget that these are core things, core processes, core systems, core essentials, core essentials is a double negative, isn't it, that's a double positive. Okay, these are the things you have to have in your business when it comes to e-commerce. So, Kerry, welcome to the show. - Right, thanks for having me, Sal. - But don't promise, how did you end up in e-commerce? - Well, it was a little bit of a roundabout, I actually did a weird degree in interior design. - I did not know that. - Yes, and a big retailer group in South Africa, they chose me as a graduate to actually go into buying in Hollywood. So, I actually started my journey in buying and then slowly obviously got involved in a various retail and then I took a really big leap of faith and I moved to Cape Town and joined a starter e-commerce business. So, that was about 20 years ago that I got involved and started learning the e-commerce world was a very startup and I actually joined a startup that worked in virtual products. So, we didn't hold the product and stock that we actually bought in a firm supplier. So, there was a lot of issues that we kind of faced. So, I think that threw me in the deep end and then I obviously realized my love for e-commerce and I kept on learning more, I learned coding and yeah, I just kept on growing and then I moved into managerial positions, different e-commerce retailers and then I stepped out onto my own so I could actually help a lot more business. So, that's what the knowledge I gained from the bigger guys. It just gives me a little bit more to live for every day than working for the big corporates there. - And I love that you get so involved with our five Xs. You are like part of their business. You are not only helping them but you become very emotionally involved and it's like you are there, you're part of it. You're on this journey with them and I know sometimes it can be a little bit difficult and I think we forget, it's really easy listening to podcasts and going on to LinkedIn or Facebook and seeing all the success stories because that's the thing that we want to talk about. But the simple fact is for every success story, there are a million hurdles that most retail, e-commerce and product brands have had to go through and no one talks about that stuff. And so, with this little series, what I wanted to do is share with the people who are listening the everyday obstacles, the everyday hurdles, the everyday brick walls that our clients come up against because I am sure that if people are listening to this podcast, it's never a one off. You know, we hear, we talk about what's happening inside of our five Xs businesses and it's never a one off. To me, it is always this pool of obstacles that we are constantly trying to help people overcome. And you have this expertise when it comes to e-commerce as well as business strategy. So, I'm gonna jump in the deep end and ask you, what is the number one thing that you see day in day out that retail and e-commerce brand owners do that if you could just flick a switch, you would be like, this is the thing that everybody needs to have sorted. - So, you know, the biggest thing started on, I think a lot of them forget that they have to have those beginning foundations. So, a lot of people wanna jump to the end and the pretty and the free and all of that. But if you don't actually have the core and the proper foundation to build on, then you actually can't have the pretty and the freely at the end of the day. So, I do find a lot of people rush off the bat and they need to kind of bring them back to the entry level and make sure that those foundations are correct. So, I know, like you mentioned, a lot of people don't have the luxury of having an e-commerce manager or being able to afford a free line. So, for example, that's an expert in the field. But there's a lot of things that you can do on your own to get your business ready to then move up the levels and then hand over to somebody like that. And that's everything to do with getting that website correct and the basic fundamentals of actually selling. And that's what a lot of people forget and they kind of rush to try and market and all these type of things. So, when you start working with a retail or e-commerce business, what is the first thing that you look at? Now, it doesn't have to be an e-commerce thing. I'm just talking about businesses overall. What is the first thing that you jump into to try and find what's called a quick win? - So, yeah, so for me generally it is, I have to order to what they're doing. And generally, it is a quick win because once we've done the audit, there's generally first things, the speed of the website is my number one that people don't realize. And it's a quick tool you can go and check so many people are sitting on and e-rating. And that really is a crucial part in your, you know, foundation because that's affecting Google, that's affecting your website users coming on the site. And that is probably your biggest thing that if you change can make a big deal. So, when the next thing-- - I was gonna say, when you say speed of the website, can you just give us a little bit more information about what do you mean? - So, basically this is how quick the website interacts with you. So, a lot of things slow it down. So, images load slowly. You try and check out, every page goes slowly. So, people get annoyed. They don't want to continue their check out. They think it's only something. Why can't they see this information? Why can't they zoom in? And then they actually get irritated in their jumble when they go find another website. They can give them that kind of information, fast, clear. So, it is really crucial in that type of thing. And Google also recommend that, this is all part of your SEO journey. So, the faster your website, the better you get ranked on Google and the better that you get started to sit up the top in organic rating. So, it's a really crucial thing across the board for your customers to get the best view of your website and actually get to use it correctly. - So, how do we fix that? Without going into too much detail of people are like, well, first of all, you mentioned there's a tool. So, what is the tool that we can use to see how fast our website loads? - Perfect, so there's a tool called GT matrix. So, and I'll share all of this on a little masterclass thing that you can share with everybody. And it does tell you how to, but you can log in as a free user and run a quick test on your website. And it spits out whether you're an A, B, C, D or E rating. Ideally, you want to sit at an E at an A or B maximum rating to make sure that you're actually doing the best. And it does give you a little bit of a breakdown of what is the biggest areas. Generally, it comes from images. And the beauty of images is there's a lot of plug-ins and apps across WordPress or Shopify that can quickly change this in an instant. And they optimize your images and your images go faster, they're clearer and your customer ultimately gets a very experienced. And there's a lot of little things that, you know, moving images, everybody wants this pretty stuff. It slows down your website. These lovely shadows on pictures or buttons, it slows down your website. So, you know, it's such a small, small little tweaks that you can instantly get a faster website. Before you have to even now kind of get a technical experience person or, you know, somebody to go look at, you know, all the coding at the back. There's small little tweaks that you can actually do to make it better. - And I think you are so right about that concept of week. We aren't prepared to wait. Right now I am in some temporary accommodation as we've sold our house and we're moving to a new place and it's funny how we are so used to fast internet these days. But the place where we are, the internet is not that fast. And when you have three people all using the internet, it slows down. And I was trying to check out on my phone to buy something and it seemed to be going forever. And the first thing I thought was, is this a scam website? And I actually closed it down and went to my computer to double check. I had not clicked through to the wrong thing. And I was in the right place and it wasn't their website. It was 100% the internet where I was staying. But it is that momentary, oh my God. You know, am I being taken for a ride? Is this a scam like we are so on alert that anything that is friction in that buying journey is enough for people to go and find their products somewhere else. So we think that having more images and feel free to jump in, we think the more images we have of a product, the more likely someone is going to buy. But at the same time, if you're just uploading products, what you're saying is that if those product images aren't optimized or if those videos aren't optimized, you could actually be doing a really big disservice to your website and to your customers. Is that correct? 100%. And there's such a quick way of fixing that. So you don't have to take and get extra people to now downsize your pictures and it becomes a huge experience. You know, these are things that you need to have on your website all the time because every time you upload products and a lot of customers are getting products every single day. So it's quite a big thing. These absent plugins, do they just kind of fix it for you? So it's a great foundation to kind of have firstly, it's fixing your speed, making your images better for the customer. Do you have a favorite app that you use for that? - I've got a list because they are, I work with both WooCommerce and Shopify people and everybody has different budgets. So certain ones can do it a few other things so they clear your cache and I don't want to give you all the technical words because sometimes it goes over everybody's head. But some do very specific just an optimization and some do a little bit more. So it's based on the client's kind of budget that we can work with. - Okay, so speed of website is very top of mind. What else do you, what are the things that you're looking at when you're doing the audit? - Yeah, and the audit, okay. So I've kind of got like a top 10 things really. So normally I'll look at your speed, try and make sure that how, when is our starting point, right? It will go as through headers and putters which just basically headers your top navigation is really important. Can the customer easily find the product in as least amount of clicks as possible? So instead of trying to now want a T-shirt, I have to go through seven different channels before I find that T-shirt. - And it's funny for that, that I always find it intriguing. And I use this great example, which is when I was working at the school canteen, I convinced them to install a POS system. And they did, and they thought it was amazing. But muffins, like a take style muffin, there are the simple categories that you had to choose from. And there was hot food, frozen like ice blocks and things like that, breakfast and snacks. They were the four, and drinks, five categories. I always thought muffins belonged in snacks. And they had put muffins in breakfast. And every single time a muffin came up, I clicked the wrong category. And it's the same when you're thinking about that hierarchy, which is you might have an idea of what you call it, but is that what your customers call it? And for us, something like a raincoat, like I don't remember looking for a raincoat and having to go to like women's clothing, tops, outerwear, blazes. Like you said, there's like seven different clicks just to find a freaking raincoat. - And you know, Sarah, everybody's doing this, right? I've got big, big players that are in the game. And we've got them on our doorstep. You don't have to map out your own taxonomy and canopy. Use them to help you and guide you because they've got the big teams researching. How are people searching? Do they search it with tea at a chute or do they just search in a chute? You know, it's all, it's little things like that, that we need to go back and understand how awash, exactly like you said, how our shop is shopping. If you think something is gonna be listed as an X word, it might actually not be that word that the customer is trying to look for your product. You know, so you might put like, we've got a lot of people in crafts. So they might put threads as like threads they're gonna sew with, but most people might be shopping for cotton instead of looking for a thread. But they category might say, three and so somebody does a note, they can't find the product, they go onto another website. So it's little things like that. As soon as you get that wrong, again, it's a frustrating point of conflict between the customer and your website. I really like that idea, and we say this quite a lot, which is look at what the big brands are doing and take the bits that work for you because they have the money, they have the teams, they're doing the research, they have downloaded software onto the websites to heat map what people are looking for. So if you go to their website and you see how they've laid it out, there's a pretty good chance that they have done the background for you, they've done all the hard work. And you can just go and take that and implement that into your business and just adapt what you need to do. - Exactly, exactly. It's a very, very easy tool, basically. It's a free tool, taking what they've actually paid for. (laughs) All right, so first of all, we've talked about speed and then we looked at headers and footers. Now, I know we talked about auditing the business and I don't want to, this could be a whole podcast on the 10 different things that Carrie looks at auditing the business, but what we're here to talk about today is the biggest obstacles. So maybe if you can just run us through another couple of things that people should be looking at if they're auditing their business and then we might move on to where you see the big obstacles because they're very different things because one is you as an expert coming in to make decisions on how to work with someone and the other one is the actual problems that people are having. - So yeah, so exactly like you said, there's the basics that you're gonna, you've got to get right on your website and that's everything from understanding your product, making sure your customer understands the product and they shop with you and don't go to somebody else. So I think in a nutshell, your images, your descriptions, your speed, your making sure you've got the correct information for a customer to give you creditability like you mentioned, really crucial that people come onto your site and they know that you're credible and that they're gonna get their product. I think the biggest area where people suffer is they just, they forget how important it is to conceptualize their actual website beforehand and it's almost all thrown together. And I think that comes back to stepping back and understanding your product and understanding actually who your customer is because you can't design something without really understanding. And then again, comes down to your strategy of your business 'cause you have to understand these people generally you should've understood them before you started buying your product. So it's all interlinked, right? And I think that's the same as your pillars, you have all of these pillars and they all crucial parts and they come together because if you don't understand them, you can't make these things. And I do find a lot of people go down these halls that they don't get to actually know their product, what is their product selling for? So also a lot of times at audit companies, I go look at some of the competitors and their miles more expensive. And this is not a problem always, everybody's value is different but then you have to have a point of difference. So do you offer speed delivery? Maybe the other guys are cheaper but they don't offer those type of things. So a lot of people forget about getting those, the core understanding of what their product, so their product speaks to their customers. So it's just bringing back people to their home routes so they can actually sell their product the best way they can. - I think you bring up some really crucial points there. I'm not gonna let you gloss over them. So some really crucial points that I heard was one, no, would it cost to run your business? Because a competitor's pricing should never be your own pricing, whether it is cheaper or more expensive. You need to do you and that might mean that you're more expensive than the competitors but like you said, maybe you offer speedy delivery, maybe you have a wider range. You need to know why you're different from your competitors and I love what you said about, it feels like people throw websites together and what I tend to find is, and I can put my hand up 100% and say that, I have been there, I have done this, it's happened in my email marketing, it's happened in my website, it's happened in my messaging is, as your business grows and evolves, your offering changes, your customers change and the customer journey changes. So those things will happen just as you get more experienced and you understand your business better. And when you start to understand how things work, how the money looks like, what does the customer journey look like? Do I want to be paying for people to come to my website with paid ads or am I going to do an organic marketing strategy and I'm prepared to wait a little bit longer? All of those things, and you said the core foundation is all of those things, people forget that they affect your website because I'm just thinking now of one of your clients with a luxury brand and this is what I love is I get to see all of these different retail and e-commerce people. And one of your people has a luxury brand, but one of the things that you found as an obstacle in their business was that the one the pricing didn't really work, but also feel the look and the feel of the website didn't equate to people paying that premium. And so this happens, like I said, as a result of as your business grows and your market changes or maybe your production costs go up or there are so many different factors that it is a really important part as the owner of the business and the founder and the CEO to look at where are we at right now? What needs to change? And as I said, I will put my hand up and say, this is one of the things that we're doing in our businesses. I'm looking at email automations going, oh my gosh, we wrote those five years ago. It is really time to to dig those back out and do a little bit of a refresh because times have changed, AI is here. Like there are so many things that have changed in business and it's the same with people who are listening is like, you probably need to update your emails. You probably need to update your navigation. Like you said, you probably need to update speed because so many people are putting things like videos in, but did you go back and check the speed? - And that's like a multi-customer's example. Like I said, that actually come to me and the first thing they straight away say is, how do I market my business? How am I gonna do the marketing? And I actually have to always bring them back and I say, do you have a lot of money? And they all shake the head, no. - Every one, everyone has a limited budget. - We all have. And I said, do you want to waste your money? And they all like no. But I said, if you don't correct and connect the dots on your website, you're gonna be throwing the money away every day because people are gonna come onto the website and bounce and now you paid money, expensive money to Google, Facebook, whatever you bought the customer, only for them to leave and go find at somebody else. So if you don't fix those things and those points of friction, all the money and the expertise and the fancy companies you can get to do your marketing, it's never gonna compute because you haven't fixed the actual real problem. So exactly like that, you've got to constantly update that. And this is saying, once you've got all that fixed, you have to manage that every month, every week. You have to, as an owner, you need to be going on your website every single day and checking. Is your checkout working? You know, you could check your speed every day. And exactly that because things are changing, apps are updating and things can break before you know it. If you're not actually involved. And I'm not saying in our business, we treat in your business, for example, that we'd close for, we treat them to be the CEO, you know? And you don't have to do that every day, but you can train somebody else to get to that point that they're constantly checking your website. - Now a quick question is for you. - Yeah, I like to say, and I'm happy to be proven wrong, I like to say the two best hires in your business, that, sorry, the two easiest hires from a, easy to manage and easy to see a return on investment are an email marketer and an e-commerce manager. And the reason I say that is because an email marketer should be able to get you a return on your investment generally within 30 days. Worst case, maybe 60 days, if they have to build everything from scratch, they will be able to more than pay for themselves very, very quickly, and it's easy to quantify. And I feel like e-commerce managers are the same. Like if you invest in someone, if you're very, very clear on what you need this person to do, and you've mentioned so many things already, like you need to be checking these things daily, you need to be checking speed, headers and footers, uploading products to your website, videos, all of that stuff, yes, you might be doing it right now, but that is not where you're gonna be making money as the owner and the founder. So to me, it's really easy to get a pen and paper, have it beside you, and just every time you're doing something on your website, you write it down. And then you start to collate a list of things of, oh, if I hire for this position, these are the things that person needs to be able to do. Now, some of those things they might not be able to do, because you're probably a bit of a jack of all trades or a jill of all trades. - Yeah, so we like to pull them together. And maybe, if you haven't already got the e-commerce manager, maybe you can pull a bunch of these things together and you can find those people. But to me, an e-commerce manager should be able to pay for themselves relatively quickly. Is that your understanding as well? Because sometimes I'm a little bit over ambitious. - Yeah, no, definitely, because I think the two really work nicely together because they've both got the same objective, obviously make sales, and the one is getting the website constantly working. The other one is making sure that's all the points. So e-mail marketing is not just sending out pretty mail. It's all those points that the customer is jumping in. So your band little cards, your flows, when they jump on, how quickly are you gonna, you know, send them a message. So that e-mail marketing pushes also that information to that e-commerce manager. So they're two pieces that work really nice together. And that's why, like you mentioned with e-mail marketing, you get returns quite quickly. You know, when it's all, it's in a nice kind of sequence together. - I think you just said the most important thing on this podcast and you probably don't even realize it. You said their job is to get the sales. And I think a lot of people who are listening think, if I hire an e-commerce manager, or if I hire a VA, what I'm gonna get them to do is upload products to the website, maybe change a banner out here or there. But the reality is an e-commerce manager is in charge of getting sales. That is their responsibility. Now that may happen with conversion rate optimization. That may happen with upsells and cross-sells and all those kinds of things, which is why I think they're so easy to hire in the sense that you get a really good return on investment quite quickly. But don't forget that their job is to make you sales. And sometimes the prettiest of anything doesn't convert. I know I have some of the ugliest ads out there and they make me cringe, but I'm not turning them off because they get the sales. - I think so with a lot of people forget and they get confused is an e-commerce manager and like an assistant, an e-commerce manager is strategic. So they know to change banners. They know to change call to actions. What's gonna work with our customer? How do we change? Are we getting better results? Do we have carousels on our homepage? Are those working? Maybe jackets is your best seller. And it actually converts the most when you put that and people. And then maybe you put bikinis, maybe one or two people shop. So you change it. Do you put actual just big categories? Oh great, lots of people love it. Do you put blogs, do they? Is that how your people actually shop? And then they start to buy different things off links of the blog. So an e-commerce manager will look at all of the ads, not just when they're uploading and just load it and say, okay, that's very nice. They will say, okay, I've just uploaded 10 new products. Where can I implement this now onto the home page? It's newness. How can we see that maybe this can sell? It's not just a quick fixed paste, put on, okay, next thing. And they'll look at things always. Cons Bachelor, is your descriptions correct? Is it aligning to the way your business and your customer shop? Do we need to edit them? Should they be shorter? So all those things. And that's where an e-commerce manager is more strategic looking at the whole website versus an assistant which just isn't just an uploader, really. And that's their job because they're learning, right? And they're gonna learn through that to become the bigger person. And that, to me, is really important because the strategy, all the things that you've just said in e-commerce manager is responsible for, the strategy just forms part of it. But for me, what that highlights is whether you are running a retail business with an e-commerce business tacked onto the side for one of a better work, 'cause I know a lot of people with bricks and mortar stores kind of forget about the website or your play e-commerce or your product brand that sells maybe through wholesale and has a website, all of those things that you just listed in one breath is a lot of work. And so it is really easy to be able to overlook these things and you set it to try and skip to the end and to go, I'll just spend more money on ads. But spending more money on ads is only going to upset you and frustrate you if you don't know your profit margin, if you don't know what the pricing should be, if you don't have the navigation correct, if your website speed is slow, if your head isn't full as all these things that you've just said, it can be a full-time job. It doesn't have to be a full-time job. You can start with somebody who is part-time, but when somebody is focusing on one thing, that is when you get results. Where focus goes, results flow. And it might be your job as the owner of the business now, but it shouldn't be your job long term. - No, no, you do need to step away because also I think you get so entrenched in the business, you don't always see what's in front of you, where somebody that's almost focused on just that, that's what they do in one of the time, whereas when we're overlooking our minds or shifting everywhere. So, and I think to have those focused educations, and we discussed this earlier, email marketer, and a website, e-commerce manager, they're very different people, and I think that's where everybody gets confused. You can't expect the same returns for somebody being an e-commerce manager, running your social running, because again, they then splitting their focus. And as much as we wanna be a jack of all trades, it does come with its downfalls to the stage, because you can't be sometimes a professional when there's so much newness coming out in each area. - Yeah, you can't stay ahead of it all. I mean, this is why I love having people like you, because you are way smarter at this than me, and you are in there, you're looking at, you're reading all the Shopify updates, you know what's happening. I can't be across every Shopify update, we're commerce update, strategic update, clavio update, like, that's not my job. - And it doesn't be like, I think COS mustn't think that they bad or what they do, because that's why they hire somebody to help them and do their job, right? So you don't have to understand everything, you just have to have a realistic understanding of what is people doing for you and what do you want them to achieve? So your KPIs, what do you want this person to get for you? What do you want that person to get that overall that you're trying to get as the umbrella for the business? - You just mentioned they're having that holistic understanding. Do you find one of the biggest obstacles when you start working with a retail or an e-commerce brand is the expectation of the owner or founder having to learn to do something rather than just paying someone to do it? - You know, a lot of people, and I know they want to, like I was trying to say, they want to understand everything and feel that they're in control. But it just takes them so much longer. And then they're taking their eye off the biggest progress is actually managing the company. So as soon as they start to tackle and learn and understand new courses, then they have to fiddle, maybe put this button in a knife, but for all, you know, them and 10 buttons that they were supposed to know, they didn't get any returns, now they go back and now they have to do another course and that kind of thing. You know, rather than that time, probably actually adding all these tiny little learning things, they're just higher the person that just does it. And you don't always have to spend a lot of money on these things. They have people that do these for more reasonable, but then they get your returns quickly and then you can tickle. Okay, that's not trading. Great, that's fine. And then the money comes into the business a different way. Then you can kind of move and allocate different resources. But a lot of people do try and take it on themselves and try and learn everything, which we can't. - I wish. - And we should have to. - Yeah, I think wanting to learn everything is a procrastination tactic. I had a call just this morning with an agency that we hired and they work on the backend of our CRM. And I said to the, it was actually the founder who I had a call with because I wasn't particularly happy with the results they've been getting. And I said to them, for the amount that I pay you, you need to give back my business manager at least 70 hours a month. That's my breakeven point. Because at 70 hours a month, I could have just paid her to do the work. So you need to give her at least 70 hours a month, but for me to make a return on investment, you have to give her back more. Like you have to free up 100, like my goal was 100 hours. And in that time, she is then going and working on putting strategic things in place, new communication plans, the things that she is great at rather than doing the implementing. And it is that one of the ways I break things down is if I want to invest in something, it's how many more units do I need to sell to be able to afford it? That's one of my big, big tricks. If you guys ever want to know, I have a lesson called making money to on demand. Here's the TLDR. Basically, if you want to invest in something, work out how many things you need to sell in order to pay for it. So if you want to buy something worth $1,000 and your average order value is $100, then you have to sell 10 of them to be able to pay for it. And then when you do, you go and buy that thing. And it's the same with people. If I'm paying someone to do a job, I need to know what their return on investment is going to be. And maybe that is ours back. Maybe that is an outcome like a KPI getting hit. And this procrastination slash, wanting to be in control slash, I need to learn the things. To me, as I've gotten older and more mature is just a way of hamstringing the business because if you need to learn how to do that thing, it comes at a cost. And that cost is going to be the growth of the business because you and I both know, you've been doing this for, I'm going to say decades, even though you look very, very young. You've been doing this for- - I think I look better. Maybe it's the zoom and filters and stuff, you know, that they give us new things. - And when you, yeah, when you think about this, someone else has 10 years of knowledge in a product. You can't afford to wait 10 years of day in, eight hours a day learning that thing. And it becomes this false sense of security to go, I'll just learn how to do it myself because you have a knowledge debt and the cost to your business while you try and learn that knowledge debt is generally going to, you're not going to get a return on investment because if you're learning to how to optimize the speed of your website, what you would be better off doing is learning how to put KPIs in place because that is going to be your best use of your time. - And I think a lot of times it cripples CEOs when they don't understand they're not getting the returns quickly. So they try and learn something, they try and implement, it fails and then they look at themselves and they're like, "I'm a failure, I haven't done this, I couldn't do this." But it's not, you just need to leave it to the experts, let them help you, help you quickly. You know, yes, I know money is always a thing, but if you try, unfortunately, sometimes you have to have money to make money in a way that they have this weird saying, I think it's gone through where it came from in the world, I'm not sure. But if you focus and you, you is your elliptical, you know, you need to make sales, you need to sell X, like you said, I need to sell tea and items to make my target and all those things, then you feed down to these people to help you. And then it makes you feel empowered because you then getting the results you wanted and quickly and not as slowly and then you take a back seat because now you're thinking you're not getting control of the business. And it's nothing about you're not a good CEO or you don't understand the business, it's just you're leaving the experts to do what they know how to do. To get your own what you want to do for the business. - Malhard, it does make sense. How hard is it for you to break that trait from the retail and e-commerce store owners that you work with? - It's, I think it's hard because it is, I think it's essentially small businesses, right? They do feel that they should have to tackle it all. And it's not necessarily something that you do. I think once you just show it to them on a clearer picture where they can take you and how quickly they can take you there, it allows you to feel a little bit less restricted on giving away that power. Because I think that's the thing. A lot of people don't want to give away that power. Are they doing this? They're doing that. You have to all this. You can't run a growing business, doing everything on your own. You have to start that way. But if you want to grow, you have to start giving away delegating. I think that's the hardest thing for people to delegate and give away because they all think they can do it perfectly. - You had been so much more in fact. - You were so much more diplomatic by say, I think you said, what did you say? I think you said giving away your power when I was just like, you're a complete control freak. Most people listening would say they are not control freaks and my answer to you and end, they say, "Oh, if I could just get rid of them." If I just had to not do emails again or if I could just have somebody look after my website or if I could just, you know, all these things that they say they don't want to do, but actually when you knuckle it down and go, okay, so you need to update the speed of your website. You need to get these headers and footers and you need to do XYZ. Go get a quote, it's $1,000, okay. So if you can sell to 10 of these things, if you can sell 10 widgets this week, you can afford to do that, go and do that thing, but then they don't want to do it. And it's like, but you have the answer. Like the answer is right there, just go run a promotion, send an email, do one thing to sell 10 of those widgets and you can have the thing that you've been complaining that you didn't want to do. My question to you, Kerry, is why do you think that is? I think it's just, I think a lot of us always think we can do it better, you know, when we do it ourselves, we don't have to then correct people and say that they want, but once you make that decision to let go, you immediately will see the business grow. It's a very, you always see it instantly because you just, you also become a better person because you can actually grow your company after the next level. As long as you keep on keeping it in and trying to do it all on yourself, you're never gonna get the business you want. If you want just a small little business, a little habit mastery that goes, you know, you make $1,000 a month for the rest of your life, then that's okay, you know, you can dabble in your, but that's not where most business owners want to go. They want to go to the next level. If you want to go that you have to separate your emotions, your feelings, and just let go and say, right, this is what everybody else better best at. I'm best at running the company, knowing the products, bringing in the products, everybody else can kind of fill in the blanks. - I have a quick question before we finish up, which is, do you find that getting people to think about the future is easy or it's really, really difficult? And by the future, I mean, like what they want from their business in the next 18 months, three years, five years, what do they want from their business overall? Like, do they want to sell it? Do they want to keep it? Is that something that you find people struggle with? - Yeah, I think a lot of people want to just stay in the present, what they're focusing on now, but if they also don't know their long-term goals, their present is actually not working for them, because what they're doing now needs to be leading up to what they're going to be wanting to do in five years. And if you've got an overview vision, then you can actually implement small things because you know that can become something bigger. And again, it all comes back to you making that all foundation, right, that you can now build on it. You know, and that is, I think people forget that your business is not now. It's what's going to be happening in the next five years, 10 years, 50, however you want from your business. Exactly, if you wanted to sell it, you can have very different goals to somebody that wants to grow it and keep it themselves, because there'll be other things that you're going to get out of it. - Yeah, there's so many more little paths that we could go down in this conversation. But I'm-- - I want to talk about e-commerce every day, all day. - I know. I know. - Yes, I'm in the group. If people ask questions, I love to. And if I don't know them, I will go and find out because I love to also learn something new and also test my mind and say, "Oh, I didn't know that, let me get onto that." - I'm going to try and wrap up. Feel free to jump in and tell me. I've written some notes as we've gone through, but I think I got way involved in the conversation and stopped writing notes. So when it comes to the biggest obstacles that we see in the e-commerce side of retail product e-commerce brands, we talked about some of those more tangible things that like the speed of the website, the headers and footers, descriptions, navigation, making sure that your products are optimized for your customer. We also talked about some non-tangible things, but how they're very important, such as really understanding the customer journey and knowing the kinds of things they're searching for, knowing why they're coming to your website, knowing why you are different to your competitors and knowing what you're going to steal from your competitor. Borrow from your competitors. - Oh, borrow, don't reinvent the wheel. - Just as long as we're not reaching any laws and any copyright and understanding someone's navigation is not doing any of those things, things we're going to take that are working well from our competitors. We also talked about stepping up as the CEO, being able to relinquish control, being able to have that vision and being able to be okay with spending money, especially when you know that you can get a return on investment. And I guess that's part of it as well. It's just mapping out what does a return on investment look like for you? If you hire a freelancer to do something, what is the expectation? And I think just in saying that, you also said like having the focus and doing the audit and just understanding where you're going because the decisions that you're going to make now will affect where you want to go in the future. And all of a sudden it just popped into my head. It's like, people get so fixated on the minutiae, like, oh, I need to change the color of my buttons or I need to invest in SEO right now. But actually, if you start thinking about what you want from your business in five years, the decisions that you're going to make, it's like, is this button really gonna give me a return on investment? Because I can almost guarantee that the people listening to this podcast aren't at that level of conversion rate optimization. If you are kudos to you, let's have a chat. But most people-- - That's when you really have done everything and then you could start playing-- - Yeah, most people fixate on these tiny things that when you think about actually, I want to sell my business in three years, the button doesn't make a difference. - No. - Did I miss anything now? - It was a little bit different. - Yeah. - No, I think there was the natural in all comes down to your foundation, getting that right and then building the business on top of it. - Oh, and you also mentioned talking about driving traffic to the website and paying for marketing, but holding off on that until you're really confident that your website can convert. And those, like you said, those core foundational things are fixed, you understand how much money you're making, you understand what traffic looks like, you understand ROI, customer acquisition cost, all those kinds of things. And I'm throwing a lot of jargon in here because I guess what I'm trying to point out is there are so many other things that you probably need to be working on in your business that fixating on things like button color is-- - Yeah. - It's laughable right now. When you step back and think about all the things you haven't done in your business as the CEO, it's like, this is on the so far down on the bottom of the list. It's like, it's in a different book. (laughs) - And that's why you said, when you start getting people to focus on these areas, because if you've got an e-commerce managed, that's gonna be their part of the strategy to make sure those things work. And again, you'll see you're gonna have your own things to make those work. And then you start delegating them to different people. - Okay, Kerry. If you guys are thinking, you know what, I kinda wanna work with Coach Kerry because we're strategy coach, Kerry, because one, she understands business and business strategy, and two, she has all of this e-commerce experience. Heat us up, send me a DM, I can see if you qualify to work with someone like Coach Kerry. But Kerry, if you could wave a magic wand and either give one piece of advice or fix one thing right now that isn't necessarily a tangible thing like speed or product descriptions, what would you, what would make your heart sing when it comes to helping people to grow their business? - I think everybody just needs to be kind to themselves. And it's a learning journey, and we're going to make bad decisions that we're gonna learn from those. And don't let it think that you're the bad CEO and you're not doing the best at your company. You've gotta try and you gotta fail to continue to improve. So you've gotta take risks, unfortunately. And it is gonna bump you on the head and you wanna fall over and you wanna scream or run away. But you're gonna come back to the point and say, "Oh, I learned all those things. Why don't I just know this?" But if you didn't do that, you're not gonna ever learn. So I think just be kind to yourself in the journey and just try and test things, go with the flow. And you never know. You could do one thing and everything could change in a day. - Yes, I'm gonna reach up there, but I just wanted to point out that in terms of, you just said something there. You always come out with these little things that you don't even realize are absolute gems. Before we finish up, Kerry just said you could do something that completely changes your business. And for me, the one that always comes to mind is VISTA print. And we talk about this quite a lot. VISTA print went from a business. And I think everyone knows who VISTA print is. They are printing company that do cards and banners and all that kind of stuff all around the world. They went from being unprofitable to profitable within hours after implementing upsells in their business. And I'm talking hours and stayed profitable after that. So like you said, it could just be one thing and having that expert knowledge, having someone who can look at your business from the outside and can do an audit and can ask you those questions. What is it you want? Where do you want your business to go? What kind of lifestyle do you want it to give you? And then mapping out a plan for you to get there is the difference between you staying stuck and you potentially walking away in a few years time, maybe with millions and millions of dollars. - Yeah, exactly. Just gonna take risks in that, scare you as hell. - We do, it's like everyone worries about all what could happen if things go wrong, but what if they go right? - 100%. They're all gonna be here to celebrate with you. - Yes, we'll be lifting you up as well. And we go to the next thing that's gonna make you millions. - Strategy coach and e-commerce expert, Kerry Clark, thank you so much for sharing all of your expertise and wisdom on the show. - That's my pleasure. It was great to talk to you about my favorite thing. - So that's a wrap. I'd love to hear what insight you've gotten from this episode and how you're going to put it into action. If you're a social kind of person, follow me at the Selena night and make sure to leave a comment and let me know. And if this episode made you think a little bit differently or gave you some inspiration, or perhaps gave you the kick that you needed to take action, then please take a couple of minutes to leave me a review on your platform of choice. Because the more reviews the show gets, the more independent retail and e-commerce stores, just like yours, that we can help to scale. And when that happens, it's a win for you, a win for your community, and a win for your customers. I'll see you on the next episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (gentle music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
