Checklist for Growth Audio
===
[00:00:00]
[00:00:00] There are things we could do to elevate our thinking, elevate our beliefs, and really change who we are. And there are. Or a few things I wanna point out today is one, it takes me, the rules of retail are changing one by one. Corporate retailers are closing their doors, and some call it the death of retail.
[00:00:18] But those rules never applied to independent retailers like us. We're writing our own rules. We're here to answer the questions about how to grow your business. Stay competitive and still have a life. I'm Joshua, or, and this is the Retail Initiative podcast. Welcome back to the Retail Initiative Podcast.
[00:00:37] This season has been fun. I hope you've enjoyed it. If you haven't checked out the other episodes, last episode, I went into my story, which was really the first time I ever shared it publicly. I honest a little nervous about it, and today I want to talk about a checklist for growth. I like, what are the things that you need to do?
[00:00:57] Uh, so I got a, a [00:01:00] DM a few days ago, and honestly it's a DM that I've gotten a ton of times, and if you're the one that sent it, I mean, no shame in this and I hope that this is encouraging, but the DM said, uh, Hey, do you have resources or a checklist for me to grow online sales that is easy to implement?
[00:01:20] Do you have a checklist to grow online sales? That's really easy to implement. Like not confusing. The technology's not hard, and I don't know why, like normally I kind of, I'll point to a webinar or something, but this one stood out to me and I don't know why. Cause I've gotten that exact message in different words a hundred times.
[00:01:40] And so I wanted to record an episode on like, what is that checklist? And here's the hard truth. There's not a checklist. There's not a checklist that takes you to the next level. Now, that is kind of not true in the sense that I, I could tell you activity to [00:02:00] do. You need to have a website experience that's really good.
[00:02:02] You need to be posting on social media. You need to be updating your site. You need to be buying inventory. You need to be bringing in new items. You need to be understanding your customer. And all of those things are good, but here's what's hard about all of that. I can tell you brands that have a decent website, they post on social, they're doing reels, they're sending emails, they're sending text, and they're not gaining traction.
[00:02:30] All of the boxes are being checked. Have you ever been in that situation, like in health, if you've ever like tried to get healthy? You might hit this plateau where you're checking all the boxes. You're eating healthy, you're going to the gym, you following an exercise routine, you're doing the things, but the results aren't where you want it to be.
[00:02:52] It's possible to do the things and not get where you want to go. Why does this happen? Why? Why do we check the [00:03:00] boxes and not get where we what we want? And I think it's because we don't have the right strategy behind it. If we're only focused on the tactics, the things that we're doing, whether that be our site or our social strategy or whatever, is that really gonna move us closer to our goals?
[00:03:21] I don't think so. Now, it might help a little bit, like consistency is good, and if you're posting on social on a regular basis and you do that long enough, a lot of times results will eventually happen, but the results will come much faster when you have a strategy. And so what. Are those key things, because I can't give you a checklist of do this exact thing, but I can't tell you.
[00:03:42] Yes, it's showing up consistent. Yes. It's a side experience. Yes, it's your emails. Yes, it's all of those things, but behind it all, there's a strategy. What is that strategy? What are the things to focus on? And I talked about these pieces before, but I, I wanna revisit them cuz they're that important. The [00:04:00] first is you as the CEO and you're like, wait, how, how am I a strategy?
[00:04:05] Well, part of being leading a successful business is being the person capable of running a successful business. And the good news is, is, is if you're like, well, I don't know how to do this, this, and this is, we can elevate who we are. We can say you, I'm not there yet, but I, I have everything at my disposal to get there.
[00:04:28] There are books we can read, there are courses we can buy, there are podcasts we can listen to. There are things we could do to elevate our thinking, elevate our beliefs, and really change who we are. And there are are a few things I wanna point out today is one, it takes being a c e O that is focused.
[00:04:47] Focused on understanding what moves the needle on showing up consistently on growing the brand. And focus means that we begin to learn how to say yes [00:05:00] to the right things and we say no to others. I, I tend to re see in my own life, like when I'm not really moving the needle and I am. Busy. I look at my calendar and it is just booked back to back to back.
[00:05:16] And if I'm honest, that was me this week and I started tracking my time by 15 minute increments and I realized that I wasn't really doing the things that are high leverage activity, meaning like there are some things that, whether it's me doing it or it's someone else doing it doesn't really make a difference, but why am I as the owner doing those things?
[00:05:38] It's like, you know, In your house, you know, yes, you could go mow your yard, but is that really the highest leverage activity or is it time with your kids? That was a weird aha that I had last summer, is I actually really enjoy working in my yard. I love mowing and all of those things, but as [00:06:00] life got busier, realizing that, you know what, it was almost.
[00:06:04] Is ridiculous for me to spend an hour and a half, two hours every Saturday morning on my yard instead of spending it with my family. And so that's when I was like, okay, I gotta go back to the yard company. Even though I enjoy it, it's not where I am the most fruitful. And the same thing applies in your business is we have to focus on saying no to the things that don't move the needle.
[00:06:27] And we say yes to the things that does. A lot of times we say that we don't have time. We say that we're busy. We say that we can't get to the priorities, but then when we think about it saying we don't have time really means we're saying yes to all these other priorities. We're saying yes to everything else except this thing that we say we want, but we're not prioritizing it enough because I don't believe that we don't have time.
[00:06:56] I just believe that we don't prioritize. And the thing [00:07:00] that we're saying we don't have time for just isn't a priority at the end of the day. I said this for years where I was like, I don't have time to get to the gym, but I did have time to watch Netflix. I did have time, uh, to read in the morning. I did have time for all the, these other things and not bad things, but I, I couldn't say I didn't have time to get to the gym because I was just choosing to prioritize other things over it.
[00:07:28] Next, as a ceo, we have to be curious. We can't have this mentality of like we said it, we launched it and, and it didn't work, and then that doesn't work. Period. I posted this on social media. And social media just doesn't work. No, but we have to have a curiosity to it. Our site goes live and we immediately turn on our, what's working?
[00:07:52] Why is it working, what's, what's not working, why is it not working? And we stay curious about it. That's one of the things like look at a, look [00:08:00] at a kid and look at the way that they approach something. They just have a curiosity to it. And I think as entrepreneurs, we have to be curious. Uh, and really emotionally disconnected from what's working and what's not.
[00:08:15] When we're posting reels, we see, okay, is this working or is this not working? And if it is, why a cool thing that you can do. If you have a reel that really takes off, um, take the audio. And take the exact same audio and rerecord a new style of video to go with it. And then you can also take the same style of video, but do it with a different audio and you can see which piece is, is going to take off from that.
[00:08:42] That's an example of doing that from a real, but this applies to all types of business. Uh, and then lastly, we are committed, committed to our success. We are like not going to give up until we get there. And if we believe in the impact that we can [00:09:00] make, that's not a hard one to do. So that com being the c e o, really up-leveling our beliefs in what we're capable of is at the center.
[00:09:11] And then there are two major cornerstones here. When that, when we think about our site, our social, our email, it comes down to two things. The first is your brand. Not your store, not your website, not any of that. It's your brand. And if your brand's a person, what would they sound like? What would their voice be like?
[00:09:31] And it's, there's three things that make up a brand. There's the visuals. This is the obvious one. This is your logo, your fonts, your colors. I would say it's the vibe and, and hopefully when we look at your site, your store, your other channels, there's a consistent visual between all of them. Similar colors, similar fonts, a similar vibe.
[00:09:54] I, I love using that word cause I think that really encompasses all of it. Then we have your [00:10:00] voice. If your brand was texting someone, how would they really talk to a human? Because some of us would, our brand would actually have a really informal tone. But when we look at our product descriptions, we write like a robot.
[00:10:12] And so instead, how can we write. With that like funny, goofy tone, like O, OMG girl, you're not gonna believe how you're gonna feel in this Suzy dress. The soft cotton will blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All of that stuff. We have an informal tone and on purpose, and then you have the experience. This is the way that your brand helps people.
[00:10:36] This is the questions that your brand asks. These are the core problems that they solve for your customer. So on one side of this pillar, Of this foundation, you have the brand. On the other side of it, you have your perfect customer. This is who you serve. This is your one perfect customer. And the where all of this comes together is the [00:11:00] relationship between the two.
[00:11:01] And when we look at a customer, I like to look at them in three different levels. First, we wanna start with demographics. This is their life stage, their income level, their marital status. This is the basic stuff, and this is where if you Google like customer avatar worksheet, that's what you're gonna see.
[00:11:16] And, and they're good things. We want to understand that because when we hone in on those things, instead of trying to be all things to all people, we can fully help one person and people that resonate with them. So if we serve, you know, moms in their thirties, well, there are 20 year olds that have a more mature taste and there are 50 year olds.
[00:11:35] That are more youthful at heart and they all resonate, but we're not trying to serve people from the ages of 20 to 55. And, and this is one of the most powerful decisions you can make in your business, is fully serving one person and the people that resonate with them. The next level is how they shop.
[00:11:54] When they walk into a dressing room and they put on a dress, what are they thinking about? What are they looking [00:12:00] for? And when we understand these things, that helps fuel how we're doing our navigation, that helps fuel our in-store merchandising. It fuels everything that we do because we understand the core things that they look for in what you sell.
[00:12:13] And then lastly is what keeps them up at night and why do they get out of bed in the morning? This is the touchy feely stuff that can sometimes be really hard, but it, it becomes important cuz that influences our copy, that influences our social media. It influences the way our brand connects with them.
[00:12:31] So to go back to that example earlier, you know, they're a 34 year old mom, and if we think deep down who they are, you know, they have these goals, they want to be a good mom, they want to be a great wife, they want to kinda keep up with the Joneses in their community. But deeper than that, she also remembers what college felt like when she had this sense of individuality and you know, she was her own person and now she's mom and she's wife, and [00:13:00] these identities that aren't her, and she's trying to balance the two.
[00:13:04] How can our brand speak to someone who's struggling with these dual identities? We get the opportunity to talk about being, uh, gosh, I had a friend who did like hot mom summer and that was the funny trend that she did, and it was kind of pulling in the best of those worlds. Um, but when we understand these things, we're able to create, take our brand, and take our perfect customer and really create an incredible experience.
[00:13:32] And when these things start to resonate, that's what makes the checklist work. That's what makes updating your site. Staying consistent on social emailing on a regular basis, sending out text merchandising in the right way. The things we know we're supposed to do, we just don't do. It's those things that will start to move the needle when it's backed by the right strategy, and that's what the strategy is.
[00:13:57] So I'm grateful for you. Thanks for listening to this episode. [00:14:00] Can't wait to see you next time.
