Hello, good afternoon. We begin with breaking news from Buckingham Palace.
The King will go ahead with a state visit to
the United States next month. Have you ever looked to
the news and thought to yourself, is this really the
right time to be trying to sell things? Welcome to
the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Erdly 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. I saw a
post on social media recently from a small brand saying
how hard it feels to sell right now.
The world is feeling chaotic, everything feels uncertain, and they
were wondering whether it was even appropriate to be trying to sell products.
And the thing is, is that's not the first post
of this kind that I've seen. I probably see, if
not one a day, then at least a couple handful
a week of people talking about this and talking about
how they found it really hard to show up on social media,
how they've been struggling in their small business to keep
showing up and keep selling. And it reminds me of
the meme that Vicky from the incredible card company Mean Mail,
if you don't follow Mean Mail, then go check them out.
She shares this meme every so often and it shows
the world literally on fire. And then there's Will Ferrell saying,
does anybody want any more cards? And sometimes she posts
it with a blank and other people repost it with
their own products in. But the thing is, is it's
funny because it captures something that so many independent business owners feel.
The world can feel like it's falling apart and meanwhile
you're trying to sell candles, cards, jewelry or clothing.
And the fact is that this can feel really uncomfortable.
For many people who start product businesses, the idea of
going out there and proactively selling is something that doesn't
necessarily come naturally to us. So when we do put
ourselves out there and maybe we don't get always the
reaction that we want, or maybe we look around and
all we see stories that make us feel like maybe
this isn't the right time, it can feel really, really difficult and really,
really uncomfortable. This is the only thing I would say though,
about all of this, which is that this is a
conversation I have had so many times with business owners over the years.
And I started my business in 2018, in 2020, of course,
we had the pandemic. This was something that people really grappled with.
And if you were running your business back in 2020,
then you may well really resonate with that, that people
were being criticised for leaving their houses to going to the post box,
for example, to keep posting things out to keep their business going.
And it's something that comes up when the news cycle
is particularly difficult or full on, which feels like most
of the time these days.
I've heard it during recessions and whenever people are feeling
overwhelmed and people ask, is this really the time to be selling?
Is this really the time? Is it appropriate for me
to be getting out there and sharing about my business?
Personally, I think that there's lots of different layers to this.
I've often said that running your own business, it's a
lot like a crash course in therapy. It makes you
confront all kinds of different things about yourself. It makes
you confront the way that you think about money. It
makes you confront how you believe in yourself and your self worth.
It can really be something that's quite challenging. And every
time you put yourself out there and you don't see
sales coming back in, it can make you feel like
there's a judgment on you personally. And every time you
go out there and you do see sales coming in
and sales are going really well, then you might ask yourself,
is this going to last? How long is this going to last for?
And is it all going to end? So there's already
a lot of noise, as it were, mental noise that
goes on in people's heads when they're running their business.
Because I honestly think that unless you've actually stood in
front of people with your products in front of you
and offered them to them and asked them if they want to buy,
then you may not be aware of just how challenging
and confronting that is to you as a person. So
if you have friends who don't have their own business or family,
they may not get it. They get the. It's almost
like the existential angst of having to put yourself out there day in,
day out. So I think that that is part of the issue.
I think that also we're just exposed to so much information online.
We get real time updates from around the world. And
it means that whenever there are very difficult things happening,
which is a lot of the time, then we're constantly in it.
It can feel like there's no switch off and so
it all lands on our screens and it's all something
that we're then having to almost. It's like a hurdle
that we have to overcome. Before we even get into
the difficult part about showing up and selling our products,
selling our business, which even without all of this noise going on,
it can also feel really difficult. So it's easy if
you think about it to look at all of this and say,
isn't this frivolous? Isn't this just something that's not that important?
Who cares about what I sell right now? Or even worse,
is it wrong for me to be promoting my products
when all this is going on? And if you've ever
grappled with these thoughts, if any of this is resonating with you,
if you're nodding along thinking yes, I definitely have had those thoughts,
then I just want you to know that's completely normal.
And I talk to a lot of people who go
through the same thing. I talk to it with my
one to one clients. I talk to it inside my group programs,
inside the Resilient Retail Club. People bring this up all
the time that they say that either they almost disengage
and then they find it really hard to re-engage or
they've been trying to keep engaged, but it's been a struggle.
So it's completely natural. It's probably part of the business
journey and it's also something that many, many people experience.
However, the problem with all of this is that you,
it can also become a self fulfilling prophecy and it
can stop you from doing the thing that your business
actually needs to do. And here's the thing that's worth remembering.
While small business owners are sitting there wondering if they should wait,
if they should pause or tone things down, the big businesses,
they just keep going. They keep selling, they keep marketing,
they keep launching products. Partly because they have a duty to their shareholders,
partly because it's run by salaried employees and not people
who are having to kind of grapple with these thoughts
and these moral dilemmas individually, but also partly because they
understand something very fundamental, which is that for a lot of people,
the show must go on. People still live their lives.
They still celebrate birthdays, they still buy gifts, they still decorate their homes,
they still treat themselves. And if the big brands keep
showing up while the independent brands step back, guess who
the customer ends up going to? I can assure you
100% that at any time of crisis, the big retailers,
they are not thinking about whether or not they should be still advertising.
They are thinking about what their next offer is, how
to keep engaging a customer, even when the customer may be distracted.
So I want you to remember that, that the big businesses,
they just keep rolling and here's the irony of it all.
Even though the big businesses, they don't trouble themselves with any of this,
they keep going. The independent businesses are actually the ones,
in my personal opinion, are the least detrimental form of
selling that there is. If you think about why you
started your business and you think about why the people
that you know started their business. I've worked with hundreds of retailers,
small businesses, e-commerce businesses over the last eight years that
I've been running my own business.
And I can tell you one thing. I very rarely
or if ever almost meet people who started their small
business because the only thing that they cared about was
getting richer at the expense of other people. Now, there
is nothing wrong with wanting to start your small business
with the intention of getting rich. I completely am 100% behind that.
If you're sitting here listening to this, I'm willing to
bet that you and everybody that you know who runs
a small business started it because you wanted to do something better.
You wanted to reconnect with your creativity. You loved curating
or creating products that you were really passionate about. You
wanted to build something meaningful.
You wanted to connect with your community. You care about your customers.
People start small product businesses, open independent retailers, the vast,
vast majority of people that I speak to, they want
to do things a better way. They've seen a gap in the market,
they've seen a lack in the way that things are currently done,
and they really, really want to do things better. Almost the overwhelming majority,
to the point where I can barely think of anyone
who doesn't fit this mould. They start their business, and
I'm sure you did too, because they wanted to leave
the world as a better place than it currently is.
So they care deeply about the way that they source their products.
They care deeply about the people that make the products.
They care deeply about their customers, how they send their products out.
They spend hours agonizing over the sustainability of their packaging
or the choices that they're making. So you are not
the people who are the ones who should be wondering
if what you're doing is right right now, because you
are a force for good. I truly believe that small
businesses are a force for good, that they help communities,
that they help customers, that they help show that there's a kinder,
better way of making the retail industry and that you
really should be showing up and sharing what you do
and what you have with the world. So if you've
got a product that genuinely brings joy, is useful, or helps with connection,
if you've got one of those products and it can help your customers,
then you are almost duty bound to sell it. So
if you've been sitting there thinking, should I be talking about this?
Yes, 100% you should be talking about this. Are you
thinking that everyone's going to be watching you talking about your business,
thinking, this is really inappropriate given the state of the world?
No, they are going to be delighted to see somebody who is ethical,
who's considered, who has really thought about the products that
they create or curate, putting them out into the world
with connection and with joy.
If you're listening to this and you're thinking, okay, all right,
sort of believe you, maybe, but is anybody spending money?
The answer is yes, absolutely people are spending money. In
my talk last week in Retail Roar, I ran through
some of the industry stats in terms of what's been going on,
but essentially the headline news is that spending is broadly
in line with the year before. So, yes, people are buying.
And more importantly, there's a lot of research around something
that is known as the lipstick effect or small luxuries.
You may have heard about this already, but there's evidence
to show that at times of economic downturn or great uncertainty,
people don't stop buying completely. Instead, they often shift towards smaller treats,
things that make them feel better, things that help them
connect with people that they love. I saw this very
clearly recently on Mother's Day. I went to Columbia Road
Flower Market in London. It was absolutely heaving.
If you've never been to Columbia Road Flower Market, it
is quite literally what I would call my happy place.
It is a road full of stalls full of flowers.
They are only open from 10 till 3 on a Sunday.
But surrounding this market there are some incredible, beautiful independent retailers.
So it's an absolute haven of independent retail. And another favourite of mine,
a really great market. And everywhere you looked, people were
carrying huge bunches of flowers. People buying flowers for their mums,
people buying flowers for themselves, people buying little gifts, people buying house plants.
And it really struck me how important this is. These things aren't frivolous,
they aren't meaningless. It's how we as humans show love
to each other in many different ways. It's how we mark special moments.
It's how we connect with each other. And if you'll listen to this,
you're most likely an independent retailer or e-commerce business that
a lot of your products will be bought as gifts,
either self gifts or gifts for others. And gifting is important.
You're providing those moments.
You are providing that ability for people to reach out
to people that they care about in their lives or
to themselves and say, I love you. Here is something special.
And you cannot underestimate the importance of that. If you sell children's goods,
then you're being part of people wanting the best for their children.
If you are selling jewelry, again, it's part of that gifting process.
If you're selling fashion, it's how people express themselves. None
of this is trivial and it can be easy to
fall into the trap of thinking that, oh, I just
sell candles or I just sell this, and is this
really important right now? But the thing is, is you're
doing so much more than that. You have built a business,
you have built a community, you are doing things a
better way than has been done for at least the last 60,
70 years.
And you are standing out and saying that this is
what you believe in and that is really, really important.
Now, having said all of that, I also completely understand
how difficult it can be to show up online when
the news cycle feels overwhelming. As I said, I'm not
100% sure our nervous systems are really designed to take
in this amount of content all at once. And I
think it can be a lot. So here's a practical
thing that I often suggest to people is make sure
that you've got a personal account for your social media.
It's a really good idea at any point anyway. But having that separation,
having a business social media where you are only following
accounts or interacting with people on themes, on accounts, on
content that is really related to your business, that will
help you have that separation.
And then I'm not saying that you need to stick
your head in the sand. I'm not saying that you
need to ignore everything that's going on. But if you want to engage,
follow the news, engage with what's going on, do that
under your personal profile so that you have some kind of separation.
Because what a lot of people describe to me is
that they almost feel ambushed. Like they go into their
social media and they just don't know what they're going
to be faced with. Or they just, they get very
much sucked in because it's something they're interested in, but
then very quickly feel overwhelmed. But I think having your
business account and your personal account can be really helpful.
Because imagine this, if you were working in an office for a company,
then they wouldn't expect you to be engaging with news
or outside content unless that was, of course, your job during the day,
they'd expect you to be focusing on your work and
then looking at that in your personal time.
And I think that because lots of us work from
home or work for ourselves in a studio or a shop,
then the lines can get blurred. So if you can
create that boundary again and almost every time you open up the apps,
ask yourself, am I going on here to consume as a personal person,
or am I going on here to engage as a
business and pick the right account and it can really
help social media for your business feel a little bit
calmer and a little bit less fraught. This is something
that I myself did in my business. I realized that
I was definitely getting distracted when I went on to my business Instagram,
and I had to be very disciplined and unfollow all
the people that I had been following, refollow them from my personal account,
and get much more intentional. I did that around the
beginning of the year and it has made a significant difference to me.
I felt that I've been much more able to show
up on social media, talk about what I need to
do for the business rather than getting distracted and sucked
into the things that I would be following on my personal account.
And then obviously, when I want to look at my personal account,
then that's completely separate. So if you've been feeling conflicted
about selling right now, I just want to say this.
Your work matters. The world needs you. The world needs what you do.
Independent businesses bring creativity, connection and joy into people's lives.
Selling something that genuinely improves someone's day is not trivial.
Helping people express love and connection that they have for
one another is not trivial. It's part of how communities function.
So yes, the world can feel uncertain, but it doesn't
mean you stop showing up.
And in many ways it means that what you do matters even more.
Thank you so much for listening. Please do take a
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