If your business looks successful on paper, but feels far harder than it should

behind the scenes, then this episode is for you. Over the years,

I've worked with hundreds of established product businesses and the same five

problems come up again and again. These are not beginner mistakes,

but these are things that show up once you've got momentum and

you've grown a business. Today, I want to talk you through those five

issues and how I help founders fix them inside my retail by

design program. Welcome to the Resilient Retail game

plan. Hi, I'm Catherine Edley and in the next few minutes you're about to get

powerful real world retail strategies from insights shared both

from my guests and myself, backed up by my 25 years

in the retail industry. Keep listening to learn how to grow a thriving,

profitable product business. Let's jump in with this latest

episode.

So the first issue that I see is people whose

businesses are working but they feel chaotic. What

this looks like is constant reacting and firefighting. There's

no breathing space to think strategically. They're making

decisions under pressure and everything feels

urgent. Now, interestingly enough, these businesses,

they are often really, really fun, really driven

business owners. And one of the things that's almost happened is that

they've slightly become a victim of their own success. They've got

loads and loads of really exciting projects going, they're getting

invited to lots of different things, they are getting lots of different

opportunities to put their business out there or to

collaborate with different people. And basically they're generating

a huge amount of interest and excitement. But

whereas that is something that works really super well in the early days, once they

get a bit bigger, it suddenly starts to feel really, really

stre.

So in terms of what's really going on here, often I find that people who

feel very chaotic, very stretched

thin, chasing lots of different things, they have got no clear

foundations generally in place to help them anchor decisions. And they've

also just got more opportunities than they've actually got

capacity to deliver on. So what we actually

do, generally speaking, if someone comes to me and we're talking about

lots and lots of exciting things, lots and lots of different opportunities, often

what I encourage them to do is to really strip back all of

the noise and to deep dive into what is actually happening.

So for example, we've probably all as business owners

had an invite to an in person networking event

or even to contribute to a podcast or do

a collaboration with another business. And again, at the beginning you are

really trying to understand what works and who's already

got a connection with Your customer. And you're trying to do a lot of

different things. You're trying lots of different product types, you're

trying lots of different types of messaging, you might be trying lots

of different social media platforms, for example.

You're basically just doing everything you can to put your business out there and

to really try and reach as many people as possible. But at a

certain point, that desire, that need to push through

and to get your business out in front of as many people as possible, that

actually tips over from being something that is a

benefit to being something that can start pulling you back or getting

in the way, you can start becoming the bottleneck in the business. Because

a lot of the time these types of opportunities will rely on you as the

founder. And then all of a sudden the kind of

day to day the bread and butter of the business can start suffering. So when

people come to me with this type of issue, what I suggest that we do

is we sit down and we go over their numbers. We work

out what is actually making a difference. So we would look at, for

example, the most important sales channel. Where is

most of your sales coming from? We'll look at which marketing

activities are actually having the biggest impact. We will

also have a look at if they've done collaborations.

Another way I see this manifest itself is they're selling across, you know, 10 different

platforms, but yet probably of those,

seven or eight even are just extra work. And

so it's a question of going through, identifying essentially

the fundamentals. Where are the sales, where are the profits, where do

we need to lean into? And also where can

we pull back from? And I think one of the hardest parts

about this is that we all have a belief that more is better and

that if you say no to an opportunity, that means that we're going to be

missing out. But it's just really remembering that

we are not going to be able to get everything done. So focus.

Identifying the key things in the business that we really need to be spending

our time on can make a huge difference and also

energizing you versus what's draining your attention sometimes as well.

It's about identifying, okay, I want to do one thing like this a

quarter, but I'm not going to be doing something like this every week. That's especially

important if you doing things to really boost your business

profile. It can feel really hard to think actually, am I

going to be missing out if I don't do this. But then sometimes we have

to look at what is it costing you to be constantly running around and

not Unprioritized. So a lot of the time with this, it's about

getting your priorities right.

The second reason people come to me is because they say things like

I don't really trust my numbers. Lots of people will say that

they don't really like to look at their numbers, they don't really like spreadsheets.

Sometimes people have come to me because they've worked with somebody else who's created something

for them, but they don't really understand it and they don't really understand how

to work with it. Again, they might have an accountant who's told them some

things, but they don't really know how to apply it to their business.

So this can manifest itself in cash flow issues. Turnover looking

healthy, but cash feeling really tight, not understanding where it comes from.

Stock can be something that they feel like they're really guessing with

and they're maybe not really sure which reports to look at or

maybe they're second guessing them and potentially making

decisions based on instinct alone in terms of what's really going

on here. Usually this is about the fact they've got access

to data, but they don't really know. Most

importantly, the clear link between the data and the

decisions. So there's no loop in their business that's allowing them to

take a look at their numbers and then act on them. As I was talking

about in the retail sales game plan in a session recently, the

three Rs you want to record, you want to review

and you want to refine. So basically making sure that you're clear on what

your numbers are, what they're telling you, and then you can take actions off the

base of that. In terms of how I help,

I am a big believer in meeting people where they are and finding ways that

work for for them. People often don't like

certain styles of spreadsheets or they need to see the information in a way

that makes sense for them. So I will work with people to find. Does it

need to be more visual? Does it need to

be a report that they can see on Shopify? Is it a

spreadsheet that we've mapped out together? But the first thing

that I will do is identify which numbers they really need to look at

versus the noise that they can ignore. How to understand

what's going on in the business quickly and easily, how to set goals

so that they know what they're aiming for and how to turn the information

into action as opposed to feeling overwhelmed.

So again, it is about honing in on the things that matter so

that you can move forward.

The third issue is

that people often feel like they're busy all the time, but they're not

moving forward. So this is really related the same issue

around the business feeling chaotic. Again. This can

be about the fact that there are too many

things going on. There could be too many products that they're trying to bring in,

they're selling on too many different places, they're doing too many different

marketing activities without understanding which one is really driving the business

forward. But the other thing that

I would look at in this particular case is where I'm busy all the time

and not moving forward is I actually will often get people to do

time tracking. So there are plugins that you can use

or a notebook. I will get them to map out

their time for me, help me understand what it is that they're actually

doing and that is really, really beneficial for a few different reasons.

First up, I work with quite a few people who are time restricted.

So not everybody has a full 40 hour working week to

devote to their business. I work with lots of people who have caring

responsibilities, whether that's small children or other

relatives. I have people who are working

part time, sometimes even full time, or they just have

certain snippets of time that they can work on the business.

It's especially important if you've got restricted time to really

understand how to use it effectively. So one of the things that I will

do is I'll start by time tracking. I'll start understanding what it is that they're

actually spending their time on. This also has the benefit of helping

understand where they need to deprioritize. For example,

are they trying to do something that isn't actually impacting things? And then it

also starts helping us map out where they might need more support.

So what are they doing? What impact is that having on them personally?

And therefore what support do they need to bring in? One of

the things that's really beneficial for that is helping people with

just understanding what they can drop and what they can rearrange. Some people

work really well with time blocking to say I'm going to spend all Monday

doing my marketing and Tuesday afternoons going to be product

development, whatever it might be. Some people absolutely cannot work like that.

They just know that they're not going to do the time blocking. But there are

other things that can be really beneficial in terms of checklists or

things that they can go through to make sure that they're covering everything in

terms of actually working out whether or not what

they're doing is worthwhile it's also something that comes out of time tracking,

understanding what it is that's taking up all of your time and how you can

use that time more effectively.

Issue number four, I hear this all the time is that everything

sits in my head. I hear this so many times. It's such

a common theme when I talk to people. They

are unable to delegate as effectively as they'd like

because they are the bottleneck for decisions. It feels really

risky to delegate because they don't have clear processes. No one else is

seeing the full picture. And then the emotional and mental load starts

to feel really, really heavy because they're the only people who see the full thing.

A lot of the time this comes from that idea

of what got me here isn't going to be what gets me there. And it's

because when you first start out, you absolutely have to be scrappy.

You have to be able to turn your hand to almost anything. You have to

be able to wear lots of hats. It's a real mark of how people get

to that first six figure stage is by just diving in,

getting things done and being able to, as I said, turn their

hand to everything, just make it all happen themselves until the business

gets to the point where they then become the bottleneck. Everything's in their

head. And if you went on holiday for a month, then the whole thing

would fall apart. So often that's to do

with just organic growth with no structure

being put into place. This is something that I work with a lot of people

on and it's all about then starting to map out

what's living in your head and what needs to come out of your

head and get down on to some kind of documentation.

It could be a trello board, it could be laminated checklists

for your team to make sure that they're all doing the same thing. It could

be a series of tutorials that you

video yourself doing on your computer so that you can start handing things off.

But if you've got everything in your head, it can feel really, really overwhelming and

it can be hard to know where to start. So one of the things that

we do is we work out over the six months that we work together. How

are you going to start handing various different pieces off? We do it piece by

piece. We look at who can help you as well. Because sometimes you're not

the best person to create those training documents. Sometimes you want your team

to start creating some training documents so you can see what they think they're

doing, make sure that they're on the right path, but then also get the support

so that you're not the one having to create absolutely everything from scratch.

A lot of this is about putting into place some structure to

help you move to that next level where you can actually

take some time off, for example, and step away. For me personally

as a consultant, to be able to work with someone who's then able to take

a two week holiday in August where they could never take time off

before because they've put that structure in place, they've trained their team,

they've got that all around them to support them. That is a

hugely rewarding feeling. And for me that is a real mark of success for

the program. So I'm here to help as a strategic

partner to help you really understand what you need to map

out, work out and define what support is actually

needed in your business and help reduce that decision fatigue and

second guessing. I've worked with a lot of people to help them, for example,

recruit, bring in the right role, help them identify what that

role is, what they need in the business, and also with

the benefit of being able to help them model what they can support

financially. Can you pay an additional

wage for this type of support and if you do

decide to go ahead with that, what expectations you need to have on your sales

increasing in order to cover that additional cost. So there's a lot of work

that we can do there in order to get things straightened out and

you as the founder to be carrying less in your head.

The fifth issue that I hear is, is that people

say this business doesn't fit my life anymore. I've fallen out of love with

my business. Sometimes people come to me and that will be the reason that they

want to join Retail by Design is because they believe in the business, but

something isn't right. They feel that they've had success, but

somehow it is not sitting right with them. It

feels misaligned or unsustainable. They may be even

starting to feel a little bit trapped. Maybe they're starting to wonder

are they on the right path and they would like to step back,

have a look and think about where do I want this to go?

What's my five year vision? What am I actually trying to do with this business?

What are the bits that feel really difficult and awkward? Can we work our

way around them? Is it rewarding you financially enough? Are there any

adjustments that we need to make there? This is something that

again, it's a big question, but it's the great thing about Retail by

Design is that we have got the time and we have got the space to

for you to really think those thoughts, to talk to other people

who maybe have been through similar things or asking themselves similar

questions, to get support from our mindset coach

to make sure that you really understand the numbers, the fundamentals with

the Ask doctor so that you know that

you're on the right path and you've got all of the information

that you need to make the decision. Because I am a really big

believer in this idea that there isn't a one size fits all

version of success. For some people, what success looks like is going

to be completely different from what success looks like for somebody else.

And yet we're almost all told the same thing in terms of what success

should look like. And it can be quite confusing and quite demoralizing for

people who say, do you know what? I've actually done this, but I don't feel

good about it and I don't know why. So we have time to examine that,

to dig into the bits that you are passionate about, to understand

where the things are that are maybe wearing you down, maybe

identifying what support you might need to overcome those and basically

helping you fall back in love with your business and create

it again in the image that you want in aligned

with what you believe success should look like and makes it more rewarding

for you, both emotionally but also financially as well.

If that's something that is contributing to the way that you're feeling

about the business. These problems are incredibly common. If

you're listening to any of these and feel like they resonate, then

this doesn't mean that you're failing. It means that you've outgrown

the level where you are running this on instinct.

And what you need instead is some structure. And structure can

feel like a scary word or something that might sound like it's going to

be restrictive, but I honestly believe that having a structure

that is designed with you in mind as the founder, that will help give you

freedom. So this is exactly the work as well that

we do inside Retail by Design. We have our 10th cohort for

retail by Design will be kicking off shortly in the next couple of weeks. Do

head over to resilient retailclub.com take a look. And why not

book in a call. It is a very relaxed opportunity to tell me more about

what's going on in your business. Tell me if any of these resonated or what

resonated with you or what's going on for you. And if it feels like the

right fit, I'll tell you you more about retail by design. Thanks so much for

listening, and I'll see you next week.