305: Here's The Advice That Changed Everything For Shelley

You are going to love this because this is a great story and it applies to you. So here's the basics. Our client Shelley joined my inner circle program a year ago and she did it even before her website was live. But once she joined, she dug in and she followed the program and she paid attention. But still she wasn't getting anywhere near the results she wanted. So when things weren't working for her, she booked a one-on-one coaching call and that call resulted in a big shift in her messaging, what she was messaging. Now that call was seven months ago and today she is on the podcast and she's sharing her journey. What happened between that call and now? And she's doing it all the way to this launch that she had recently where she actually sold 500 units. It's a great story. I want you to come and listen because not only will you learn a lot, but this is something that you can absolutely do too. You can replicate this success. So come join me. I'll see you on the inside. Welcome to the e-commerce roadmap, the podcast for store owners who are growing their sales without spending a fortune on ads. Each week you'll learn actionable strategies and tips that will fast track the growth and profitability of your e-commerce business. So buckle up and join your host Susan Bradley as we dive into the work that will grow your sales this year. Okay, so I am so excited to introduce Shelley Sandefard. She's a lurker inside of the inner circle and a few weeks ago she came in and shared this amazing, so generous story of kind of a little bit about her journey and then how finally she, everything came together for her and she had a really good result. And I thought what I thought was it was very excited for you, Shelley. But what I really thought was so generous is how you were, you just shared everything with the members and how inspiring it was for people. And so I'm so excited to welcome you here to the podcast. Thank you. I'm so happy to be talking to you. Yeah, big for agreeing to talk to me. Offers you money. Because I know it's a lot to ask for you to take some time in your day and come, but I'm really appreciative of it. So now I'm hoping before we dive in that you will actually share your, of course, we know your name, but the name of your business and just really quick, a little bit about what you do and how you got here because you've been an inner circle member for about a year. Yep. So I'm going to stop talking and let you take it over. Okay. The shock that I own is called barkinbone.ca. I essentially make dog skeleton art for lack of a better, lack of a better phrase. I started off just with me selling prints and that was the main thing that I did. And 2025 was the year where I was basically going to experiment with try my art and other things. I think one of the, my art is what I like to call emotionally chilly. Right. There's no emotion to it. There's not a pretty scene. It's not pretty. It's like a diagram almost. And it does lend itself well to being placed on other things. So I thought maybe we'll take this year and experiment. That's what it is. It's dog skeleton art. It's very niche. It's one of those things that some people get it. Most people don't know why the world somebody would want that. But yeah, that's the shop in a nutshell. I run an Instagram page that came for a good four years or so before the business called meet on bones and I've been running that since 2021. And if you want, I can dive back into the story of how we got to meet on bones. I think, yeah, I think people would love to know because you and I had a little conversation before we started. Nobody just wakes up one day and decides to start one of these businesses. Yeah. I think that your journey is really relatable. So I would love it. If you give us the quick version of how it all happened and when the light bulb went on for you that, oh, maybe I can sell this. Yeah. The Apprentices and Science and was in academia for many years. I have, I have a doctorate related to science. And before I left academia, I, even though my research didn't involve dogs, some dog work did come across my radar and became really interested in how genetically manipulated dogs are, whether it's a skeleton, the body to do any task that human beings want them to do. And so there was always an interest in that. And even though it wasn't my research per se, I was always following what was going on because I just thought it was really neat. And I left academia and started to work in science communication and basically create explainer videos and I still do it, still freelance for science based companies, organizations and so on. And some number of years ago, I used to pitch work and decided that dog science was really neat that everybody should be interested in it because of how cool it is. And I started to try and pitch a little dog science series where I created some skeletons and tried to pitch that and that didn't go anywhere. Complete and I don't read you a silence. Turns out not everybody is as interested in dog science and dog stilatives as I am and that was hit to my ego, but that's okay. But they sat on my computer, that art sat on my computer from about 2018 to about 2021. And when I came across it, I was going to delete it. That's my computer was full. And it needs to free up space because you work in animation. It's heavy, right? If your computer is not light, everything slows to a grinding halt. So I was going to delete them and decided that I would start up an Instagram page instead. So that was 2021. It's called Meet on Bones. I haven't changed the name of the Instagram page. And I just started posting dog skulls and eventually that evolved into creating dog skeletons did not know what I was going to sell. If anything at the time just wanted to share art and wanted to do that without asking permission. When you freelance, you only create art when people ask you to create the art. So it was an opportunity for me to just make something and just throw it up and just. It was your creative outlet. Yeah. Were you an artist before this? Was I an artist before this? So yes and no. I grew up loving art as a kid. I think as a lot of people though, you decide you're going to air quote grow up because you can't make a living as an artist. And so I moved into the sciences and it wasn't pretty much gave up art altogether. From the time I was about 16 or 17 till literally like into my 30s, I literally didn't look at even really think about art. And then I had a, I was laid off for a stint. I was working as a postdoc and the lab I was working close down and I had about three or four month layoff between jobs. And just out of the blue, I just picked up illustrator and decided to play with it. So that was around 2005, 2006, I think. So about 20 years ago, I picked up illustrator and started to work in it again and have been in and out of it ever since. So cool. I love that story because it's, I think it's just so common and it's actually a little bit hilarious that you spent all those years getting your doctorate and now you're doing hard. I already, I know. Yeah. So crazy. So crazy, but isn't it great that you can? Isn't it? Yeah, I do love it. Yeah. So let's talk about so you, when you came to us about a year ago in the inner circle, I asked you if you had a website and you said no, but you had obviously decided that you were going to try and make a business of this. And what I know is that it's hard. Yeah. It's hard and I know that so often the first thing and the second thing and the third thing we do, doesn't work. And so what did you, what happened once you got a website up and running and you were ready to like get some sales? Yeah. So like you said, I had joined the inner circle just before removing the password from my Shopify store and was already diving into the inner circle, diving into that platform. And so the very first thing I did was I tried the perfect giveaway, like what better way to start a website than to try giveaway. A few weeks after that, I tried a Black Friday sale. Neither one of those went particularly well. And then into January, I was in the process of running my third event. I'm just basically throwing everything I can and just see what would work. And with the idea that I was going to give this thing a go, because I had been making this art for a few years now and hadn't really done a whole lot with it. And so 2025 is going to be the year I figured out whether this thing was going to work or not. And if it wasn't going to work, I wanted to be okay. I wanted to know that I did all I could do with this thing to try and get it to work. But into January, I'm into my third event. My website is like three months old. I'm still playing around, but I don't really know what I'm doing. And it occurred to me that I could be doing a thousand things. And I think probably like a lot of your members, my biggest problem was a traffic problem. I just could not get people to the website at all. So it's very hard to make decisions when you can't even get eyeballs on the thing. Like you can't make decisions if people, if you're getting a ton of traffic and nobody's buying, that's a signal. If you're not even getting traffic, like what, you don't know, I realized I could be doing a thousand things. what I wanted to do was hook up with somebody who had experience. and somebody who could take a look at my site, have never seen it before, take a look at my socials, never seen them before, and give me some feedback. I can say, okay, what I think you need to be focusing on, take these two or three things, focus on these things now. So I really just was looking for some direction, and that's why I reached out to Tina. I think I met up with her like the very end of January. - That was your first coaching call. - That was my first coaching call, yeah. - And so you were really just looking for someone to tell you what to do. - Yeah, yeah. I wanna tell you that I've been in this world for a very long time. There are things where I just want someone to tell me what to do. (laughs) - So I think it's so normal. And so you just, yeah. - And Susan, it's frustrating being so busy. And because you can be busy doing nonsense, right? You can be busy in not moving the needle and not figuring out a way to bring traffic to your site. I said, "If I'm gonna be this busy, I would rather have this sense of, okay, this is gonna lead me to the answer. Is this gonna work or not gonna work?" Like I would rather know that if I'm have to be this busy. - Yeah, you're so true. You can fill up a whole day, really. - Now totally, it's so easy to do. I've been working for myself for over a decade, right? Doing service work and you can absolutely fill up your day with unrelated garbage. - I'm out of your office and your husband says, what do you do today? What did you do? - No, no. - Shut up. - Shut up. What did you do today? - You just started playing off of me. - I just started playing off of you. - So what did Tina say to you? How did that conversation go? What you end up doing? - Oh my gosh. So Tina said so many things. She was so kind. And I'm gonna tell you the first thing, actually wasn't the first thing she said, but the thing that she said that stuck, really stuck. She said to me, "Shelly, you're gonna have to decide whether you wanna be an artist or you wanna be a business one." - Gonna have to, yeah, just from a mindset perspective. For most of the year when I've made a decision since then, I've literally thought about that at case. Is something an artist would post? Or is it something a business, someone who's trying to run a business would post? Because she went to my social media page. And the first thing she said to me was, I don't know what you're selling. I'm on this page, but you're telling me you sell prints. I'm not even seeing mock-up of prints. I'm not seeing, I don't have any sense that I need to go to your website and spend any money. And she's like, "If your content shows up on my Explorer page on Instagram, I don't know what you do." And that, I don't wanna say it hurt, I feel biased, that it was absolutely, it was absolutely true. And she said, "We talked a little bit about my sales up to that point. I had made a few sales, but not many." And she said, "Do you have any repeat buyers?" I said, "No." I sold prints. People would buy a print and then they'd bounce and I'd never see them again. So we, she basically talked to me through, get your art and some mock-ups, like start being a little bit more intentional about what you post. We talked a little bit about the audience that I was using on meta. 'Cause I do know who my audience is. And I think that's an advantage. I know exactly who they are. But my targeting through meta had tried some ads. My targeting was bit or mess. And so she also guided me through some other ways, other companies that I could try targeting my audience through. So that was also immensely helpful. And then I think we were closing it on the end of that meeting. So I knew, "Okay, be more intentional with my stuff, with my posting. I'll play around with adding extra items to my audience to see if I can pick up, do a little bit better with my meta targeting." And then casually towards the end of the meeting, I said, "Yeah, you know, Tina, people have been telling me, maybe I should put my art in something else." Right? Then not everybody wants to hang a picture up on a wall, but maybe they'll buy a mug, maybe they'll buy a coaster or a tea towel. And Tina basically goes, "Okay, oh my gosh." She goes, "Put your art on a hoodie, and make a new brand video, and give it some time, and that might take care of your traffic problem." And so we signed off at that point, but yeah, that was pretty much, and it took a long time to get my art on that hoodie. Let me tell you, there were some stuff that kinda went down, so it didn't happen right away. But I had been thinking about that literally ever since, to put my art in some clothing and to try and launch it. - Yeah, so just wait everyone till you hear what happened, but I just wanna point out a couple of things, is that Tina noticing with fresh eyes, right off the bat. She's a really good strategist by the way, but no, right off the bat that I can't tell what you do here. And then a bit of a, you could feel a little, yeah, so good. - Yeah, so good. - Ruth is, you're really smart. - You're really smart. And most of the people that do this are really smart. It's just that you're too close to it. - Yes, and great. - And see what you can't see. - Yeah. - But the other thing I really want to note, and for everyone else to hear, is that you took that advice with an open mind. You know what I'm saying? - Yeah, but, or the thing. - I was not offended by it at all. I just, that's what I wanted. I wanted somebody to take a look at it, and they, hey, you know what, I try this, try that, or maybe this isn't working. That's what I wanted. That's why I set up the call in the first place. - Yeah. It's so good that you came to it with an open mind, and then actually, even though it took time, 'cause everything takes 10 times longer than we think it was. - Totally. - 10 times harder to say. - Yes. - But that you actually implemented that, and made that brand video. Like for anyone who's listening, it doesn't know what a brand video is. They're the best thing ever, because people are so visual, and it just shows you the product. - It does, okay, so what I should do, what I should back you up because, she suggested make the brand video. Susan, I never got to the brand video yet. I have not made, oh, brand video yet. So I had a plan for that, and we can talk about that, but there were a bunch of other things that I had planned before that, and just before I got to that brand video, is when things took off, because it was another set of things that I had implemented that pushed that brand video back a little bit, but that was literally the next step, and then some things took me in a different direction. - That's so cool. We're working on it. - Yeah, you look at it done, and but you know what, here's the beautiful thing about all of this is you get to decide the outcome you want, and once you decide the outcome, then you can decide the path you're gonna take to get to decide. You get to decide. And so let's share with everybody the steps you took. So how, so you went from release product sales to a huge questioning your existence. - Yeah. - All that stuff. - To a place where you have more orders than you ever dreamed. - Yes. - And so what did you do? Let's talk about, because all of the things you did are available to our inner circle members, and any one of them could do this. So let's let it rip. I'm gonna let you talk. So the first thing you did was, - Just start experimenting. And with the background in academia, you're used to experimenting and you're used to things blowing up and going wrong, and just became okay with that. So I believe it's towards the end of a reliable revenue where the suggestion is to do an event just about a month. So that's what I did. So come May, I did my first, like Mother's Day or Dog Mom's Day event. I tried another one in June, tried another one in July, did another one in August. And all the while I was thinking about the hoodies, but I had launched some stickers that have done quite well, although I kind of have a love hate relationship with the stickers, but they sell very well, and had not had an opportunity to test hoodies yet. And then as I know, your members would know, 2025 has been a bit of a minefield with tariffs and import fees and how we're gonna get stuff over the border I am in Canada. And most of my customers are in the US. So how am I gonna get product over there, what am I gonna do? And so that back things up a little bit. But by the end of August, I had found a supplier in the US using a product that I liked and a printing method that I thought was neat and I ordered a sample and got it back, loved it. And so that puts us into September. And I thought, oh, there's a lesson in the inner circle about recruiting testers. And maybe I can reach out, put out the word, run some ads or whatever and see if somebody wants to test a hoodie for me. And so I put out the call and I said, hey, I'm gonna give away five. And what I'd like you to do is I would love some content. Because right now all I have is me in a hoodie, my kid in a hoodie, some stuff on my desk, I would love for me to not be in the hoodie, okay? So that was one of the stipulations is to sign up. I had a link to a type form. And one of the stipulations, really the only stipulation was that you have a public Instagram account. I'd love you to share an unboxing, take a few photos if you have your dog in it, the better. And sooner or later, I'm gonna send you a drop box link. And I'd love for you to download the photos and videos that you're okay with me using, whether it's through an ad or email campaign or product photo. But you need to be okay. I want you to just send me something that you're okay with me using but understand that that's what I need out of this relationship. And so that was the end of September. I think I got about 160 people who filled out that type form. Yeah, and about 200 something people signed up in that email list. So I picked I ended up picking seven people sent out goodies and Susan got back the most incredible photos and videos that all of these people there across North America. They have all generously shared I now have tons of content sitting in my drop box that they have most generously said go ahead. It's yours and good luck. And number of these people have been following me some of them for four years. Yeah, and are just seeing me launch into this endeavor. Can I have a quick question? They all have the same dog skeleton or did you make it like they all have different breeds. Yes, so yes, and we we can yeah get to that. But so that test event so I thought oh, this is great. I now have an extra two or something people on this tester email list. What I'm going to do is I'd like to launch the goodies, but I'm going to do a pre sale pre launch sale secret sale. You can only get to it through email. I know the inner circle has lessons for the secret sale. So I took a look at those and set that all up. And because this is like my seventh event of the year. I don't even know how many of us are trying to run now. But I had everything set up about a week early and I thought okay, I'm going to run this event like the third week in October. And we're all set up. We're all good to go. One of the challenges that I have is that I have tons of breeds tons of dog arts about 60 breeds up on site, but I have about 130 breeds sitting on my computer. And I thought okay, that's the way the sales page was set up is you go into sales page and then you select your breed from a drop down. And if it's not there, there's a space at the breed and all you can pre order it'll make it for you. And I thought okay, so here comes a potential problem is people are always asking me do you have my breed. I'm not seeing it on your website. I have it, but it's not on the website. And I thought okay, the problem is going to be that people are going to land on that page. And you're asking them to purchase something that they can't see the art. And so I thought okay, this is what I'm going to do. So a few days before the event, the pre launch sale, I put together all the art I had into a gallery. And I made that gallery available on my website and through my landing pages. And I thought okay, so now people can see the art, right? I can direct them to the art so they can see what that breed looks like. And if the breeds not in the 130 breed list that I have now, you can add it to the space and I'll create that for you. And just on a whim, I decided a couple days before I said I should post that gallery to Instagram. And so that's what I did. So I chopped up that gallery and I posted that to Instagram. These are all the breeds that I have scroll through and find your favorite. I'm about to launch a sale. It is email only listen to me carefully. These are not up on the website yet. You can only get there. If you're on this list, sign up for the list if you want access. These are the days that the event is happening. That was the post that went viral. Yeah, it was this and by the way, like no product photo in it, it was just a gallery of dog art that I have collected over the years and a message in the caption that said if you want a hoodie, sign up because I'm doing this pre-launch event. But even though that post didn't have a hoodie on it now, I've been posting tons of pictures of me and a hoodie so people can easily see what they look like and imagine what it might look like. And so that post blew up that was the Saturday before the event. No ad. No, I tried to run ads. I think I got about 100 or so people from running that ad. But that list, that pre-launch list blew up over a thousand people. So by the time. Yeah, so between Saturday and Tuesday morning, that list went from about 200 or something people to 1200 people. And I had also taken the Black Friday lessons, even though this was not a Black Friday sale. I thought this is totally applicable. I'm just going to do all that stuff. And had set all my expectations based on a list size of 200 people. And came up with my goals. I'm like, okay, if I can just do ABC and D if I can make this amount of money, that'll be my, I didn't really have great Black Friday data from last year. But you know, I had a sense in my mind, okay, if I can make X, this will be my best month this year. And I'll make back the costs that I spent on recruiting testers and sending out three days and stuff. And that'll be great. And yeah, and things went a little bit crazy when the doors open. Yeah. You sold 500 units. So not 500 hoodies. I ended up selling. So it was 220 orders. Okay. Of about 300 hoodies. So a lot of people ordered more than one. And then went on a little dipsy doodle and picked up a print and picked up some stickers. So that's what blew up the rest of that. I have been in sticker hell, basically. I had to figure out what to do with those stickers because they're killing me slowly. I swear to God. Oh, that's just a new problem to solve now. It is a new problem to solve for sure. But yeah, about 300 hoodies. Yeah, sense real. Yeah. And the beauty of all of this is I believe it's print on demand. It is. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you ended up having this. I just wanted to share with you that and I'm sure this isn't the exact math. But if you think about that is like a, on your 12, your list of 1200, that's like a 25% conversion rate. Yeah. It's so the conversion rate that's on my Shopify through that event was about sitting at 8%. Amazing. Yeah. These are a couple of things I wanted to ask you about really about how you feel and for others who are listening to this for them to understand how normal all of this is. You literally had to try seven or eight events. Before you figured it out. Absolutely. And every one of those events before the one that really went well. Made you feel whether it was true or not felt like a bit of a failure. Yeah. But when you think about all of those events that felt like a bit of a failure, you never ever had a captive audience of 1200 people for anyone. So you're conversion rate on those events actually might have been pretty good. You were just talking to almost nobody. Yes. And yet because you're human and all human. You probably often felt like nobody wants my stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And so lots of people would have set fire to it. Yeah. I can close trust me after July. July was the event that literally almost had me because it was like a sticker mini print event. Yeah. It did reasonably well, but almost no profit from it. And I was so busy literally in my office printing because stickers I fulfilled myself. And now anything and cutting and cutting and things are going wrong and the cutting machine is going off and it's me swearing and just all my. I got that litter that one event literally almost had me light everything on fire. I'm like, I. And I'm like, I can't do this. Right. What the heck am I doing? Yeah. What am I doing? I just earned zero dollars an hour. Yeah. I got it. So I just want everyone to notice this that what Shelley's talking about is is normal except for the part where it all blew up and went viral because it won't always for most of you blow up and go viral. But you'll have this baby step this stair step and like even when you had your sticker event, you're like, oh, this is going to kill me. But I have a huge proof of concept people. Yes. The problem is not. Yeah. I had the problem is the fulfillment end. Yes. And so it's really normal. And it's like I'm sure you spent a small fortune getting a doctorate. I did. Yeah. And all that time. Yes. And here I am for New Stiggers. Yes. Don't know what I'm thinking is this these seven events and you took reliable revenue. And I said, oh, that's such a leap of faith because you were brand new in the inner circle. Yeah. And you did the work. Yeah. And did the classroom and you found the lessons that would apply to you and you did that work. That was like your education. Totally. Even though it's like painful because all the way along it feels like a failure, but it's not. Yeah. It's a learning curve. And so I can. Yeah. The one thing I would like to add to is that by the time we're rolling into October and I'm setting up for my my pre launch event. And for the seven or so events that I've done before it by this time everything is cut and paste. by this time I'm just cutting and pasting forms in Clavio, I'm cutting and pasting like duplicating flows and autoresponders, I'm duplicating landing pages and literally just changing out copy. And so with every okay yes, so it didn't necessarily work terribly well from a financial standpoint. But there were, by the time October rolled around there was no more learning curve. I literally was just cutting and pasting and replacing copy, replacing images, testing to make sure everything is triggering properly and was done with it. Perfect. So way more rinse and repeat than it was totally yeah of that hard journey. Oh, you're so smart. The other thing I wanted to point out is that you paid attention. Yeah, you paid attention to and followed your gut after you got the re-corrective. Hey, I'm not an artist, I'm a business person. Yep. And so you paid attention and you noticed that the biggest barrier to getting that conversion was people not knowing. Yeah, if you had the breed and then if you said you did but they couldn't see it, yeah, you didn't just expect them to trust you. Yes, that was really good too. Congratulations. Thank you. And so now you're in the driver's seat. Yeah. And so this all happened at the end of October. It's all still pretty fresh because I record this, it's November 12th. And so is everything shipped? Any customer service? Blow-ups yet. So there have been one or two hiccups, but knock wood when I say this, but surprisingly few. The fulfillment company has been amazing. Oh, good. And yeah, they've been super reliable. I think only one issue on their end that I'm aware of and they have very graciously just sent, yeah, we're going to send our replacement right away. And so they have taken care of things from their end. The pre-launch sale was done on the 25th. I literally just finished up fulfilling all of those hoodie orders. I want to say like November 7th or February 8th, like just in time to actually officially watch them on the site. So now the hoodies are on the site. It may just one small announcement there about them now being live. So now there's a link you can just go purchase and have made some more sales between the 8th and now. And you've got some momentum. Some momentum, yeah. Yeah. So in your perfect world, I always ask this. So buckle up. So in your perfect world, if we look to head to 2026 and maybe this time next year, what will have happened in your business between now and then? What will have happened? Yeah. World. Yeah. I think the main goal for 2025 was not even necessarily to make a lot of money. It was literally to find that hero product. If there was one, and if this business could work, if it wasn't going to be one product, was there a bundle, was there something that I could get people interested in? And I think it's pretty safe to say I think we found that product, right? Or some version of clothing to move forward with. And I think for 2026, what I'd like to do is just keep building on it. I want a brand video, hopefully by the end of the year. And I would like to start running like using some of the inner circle lessons with regards to meta ads and get those ads going on a daily basis. So I can try and get more people interested in that. One of the reasons I asked for all of that tester content was so that I could pull some of those pictures and some of that video into a new brand video. And the only reason it hasn't happened yet is because that event took off. And so I've just been busy in fulfillment ever since. But I would love to do that. And just continue to run ads, see if I can keep some form of momentum going. I've already had some customer feedback in terms of people who want zip ups instead of full hoodies, people who want lighter garments, people who live in warmer climates, they're like, we love this, but I can't wear a hoodie. People who are in just a few other colors. So I'd like to experiment with that. And I would love for this business a year from now to be on its way to be a six figure. Yeah. And and pay you. And pay me something. Yes, that would be great. Yeah. So if we said a win next year would be steady growth. Yes, you're absolutely steady sales growth. But also if we talked about this time next year, it would be a paycheck for Shelley too. Yeah. Yeah. Shelley would love a paycheck. I'm sure Shelley would. Shelley deserves a paycheck. And what I know because of all the all the mistakes that I've made in my world, what I know is that it's completely possible and within your control. And if you're not getting a paycheck now, like you really need to just figure out, okay, how much do I want? And what thing have to look like in order to do that? And so what does it mean that I need really, I need to get to sales of 10,000 a month. And then I can comfortably take it. But what I remember, and lots of people will do just a percentage, like a percentage of their top line sales is what they pay themselves. That could be something that you could do. But for a long time, my whole first business, I was doing this stupid flop around is and can I tell you that was 20 years. It wasn't like 20 months. I would do this. I just take what I need as a draw and then we figure it all out at the end of the year. And two things happened. I think the first thing that happened is, first of all, I never had any idea whether I could afford that paycheck because I was looking at cash flow, not profit. And then the second thing that happened is I was always last to get paid. Even though I had a lot of people working with me, I was the last one to get paid because again, my pay was based on cash flow. So, say to you, even if you pay yourself a little bit and increase it, that's the secret sauce. It's just to make it like, Hey, if this wasn't me, and I was paying someone to do this job, would they be okay with me saying, Oh, we're actually not going to pay you this week because they did an ads test and made our budget for that. Yeah. So funny. It'll be beautiful. Yeah. Like we torture ourselves with these businesses, but I'm so impressed with you. Is there anything that you want to ask me or anything that you're thinking about that you want to just chat about? I think the biggest thing for me is to sit back down and try and figure, Okay, what do I do next? And I wanted to wait until I had some of these orders off my plate to do that. Yeah. But yeah, that was it. Having mentioned, okay, I would love to build off with this momentum and not and not have things go stale. That was one of the reasons, by the way, I decided not to wait for Black Friday to run this event because I had these testers. People seemed interested and I thought, No, instead of formulating it around Black Friday, I'll formulate it around my shop's first anniversary, which is technically November 1st and I'll turn it into a first anniversary event as opposed to Black Friday event. Yeah. Yeah, because people buy, like you have to tell them what to buy. Yeah. And when and give them a reason to buy, but yeah, it doesn't really matter what you could formulate it around pretty much nothing. Yeah. Work that you did that paid off. And so I think that always and again, this kind of came late to me in my business career, but always when you think about your next steps, the first thing you want to think about is what do I want to happen? And maybe now you want to stabilize your income, like maybe you want to say, Hey, I want to be able to do $7,000 a month every month of the year. Yeah. Like maybe it's something like that. And so you've got all the reliable revenue training. You've implemented a lot of it. And so that'll be a numbers game. That'll be like that might be the next thing you do is maybe book a call with maybe with Tina again, because she's good strategist that way and say, let's go over all my all my reliable numbers. And let's figure out what this has to look like so that I get I get these sales on auto pilot. I want seven grand a month on auto pilot. Love to do. Yeah. Yeah. And that's completely possible. I'm actually so this year for the first year ever for reliable revenue alumni. I'm doing a whole week with the alumni, just me and the alumni and we're doing an audit of their reliable revenue system and we're on or their best opportunity. And I think that's what you need now because if you could and you can easily like I could go on with the nerd out about this forever, but you can nerd. So you're okay with it, right? You like that. Like I can tell you like the numbers you like to do. Yeah. So like you could literally figure out what it costs you to wake up every day. Like what are your fixed expenses and even pat in a small paycheck for you. I look, I need this much. I need to be able to cover all my expenses. Yeah. Plus a little bit on auto pilot. And then we could go into your reliable revenue system and say, okay, what are we doing? What are we generating? Yeah. Right now. And so how many more people do we need to put into these flows and how many more people do we need to be in front of these campaigns? He's done what we're at right now. Yeah. That conversion rates and our revenue perlite. like all of that stuff, how many more people do we need? And then your one thing is to just go out and get those more people. Yeah. And you might not be like, I don't know, you built your system before you had your hero product. You may want to fix that up a little bit. But it's really smart, Shelley, to be thinking about a hero product. What is the front door to this thing? Because it just felt like my head was just all over the place. And I thought if people were just interested in one thing, can I just put my interest in the one thing, right? And get that back in completely set up. Part of my problem was I have tons of art, but most of it isn't formatted for clothing. And so that became a massive Susan bottleneck for the last couple of weeks as I just was not anticipating it. And just spend hours and hours at my computer just reformatting art before I could even submit it to the print on demand suppliers. So to even just now that I know that's how people appreciate the art that I can get all of that set up and push that. And so it's a lot more automated so that I'm not like when I wake up to the minute I go to bed, like literally just a moment. Yeah. Yeah. Also though you're at a place now where you know how to make it rain in your business. But yeah. So now you can very confidently say, hey, I'm not going to do the next 60 of these things. I'm going to hire somebody who's really good at Adobe. Is that what you're using? Adobe Illustrator. Yeah. Who's really good at Illustrator. And I'm going to get them to make this stuff ready for clothing. Yeah. You could put that on bulk caps. Like there's just for sure. For sure, there's lots of things you could do. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. Because now that it's formatted for fabric, it's formatted, right? So you could put it on a t-shirt. You could put it on a hat. You could put it pretty much anywhere you did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just all a process. But I think that for you and someone at your stage of business, how do we get the most out of everything I've already done? And how do I just look at the numbers and figure out what I want to be reliable revenue? And how do I create a plan to fill my system with enough people that it generates the revenue? What? And if you accomplish that, by next year, by the end of next year, if you could wake up every day and say, I know I'm going to get at least seven grand a month, or I'm going to get at least 10 grand a month, or whatever you're now. Then now I can sit there and say, OK, that's systemized. I would love to be there. Because right now everything is just, I have no idea when what is coming in. Yeah. It's always a surprise, right? But you're kind of surprised. Is there going to be a good month? Or is it not going to be a good month? And you don't want that. No, I do not want that. It's a complete cruise with your mental health. It does. And to be honest, that was one of the reasons why I wanted to try and dive into e-commerce. Working as a surface-based freelancer can also get quite precarious with you. Have some great months when the months are good. They're really good. But when the months are slow, it's really slow. Yeah. I want to start with your head. It totally messes with your head. And I wanted to get away from it. Yeah. What are the biggest things? I think that we don't ever talk about as e-commerce store owners. Or actually, maybe just even self-employed people is that feeling of safety that we need, that a lot of us are afraid to spend money because we don't know if we will need it next. That's right. Yes. That's a huge barrier. It's OK. I have a couple hundred or a couple of grand that I could spend on this resource or on this coach. But when you don't know when the next paycheck is coming in, you start to hold your funds really just totally been there. And so it slows down your progress? It absolutely slows it down. Yeah. Yeah. I remember from my whole first business, the one where I didn't really get it and learned all the hard lessons, I remember just stomping around a lot and saying, everybody gets paid but me blah, blah, blah. I've got lots of stuff, no money, blah, blah, blah. With no realization that I actually was the one in control, like feeling like the number of conversations I've had with my husband where he has said, stop, playing victim because you are holding you're the one who's in control of the ship. Just steer it through. Yeah, steer it through. And get your smart, emotionally mature person. But that's what these-- Doesn't matter. You do us, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I didn't realize that I could actually say that's why reliable revenue is-- Yeah. --born is because, oh my gosh. You can do this. And then when you are using your data instead of your feelings to run things, then it's really easy to see what you've nailed. And it's not because you're dumb or you missed something really important or any of those-- Yeah. --almost always a numbers failure. I-- Yeah. I definitely learned that. And even in the summer, probably the one thing that kept me going was realizing I'm sure hearing through the inner circle and you guys many times that a conversion rate is around 1% to 2%, which I was at based on the amount of traffic going to my website. For you. But it doesn't feel like enough. When the numbers are still really low, when the sales are really low, you don't realize, oh yeah, this is-- Right? This is the problem. You're not getting enough eyeballs on this stuff. Yeah. You just think that everybody else has got it figured out and they're missing. I've noticed that a lot in the last year, I've spoken to more members than I have for many years. And sometimes it's just a matter of giving yourself permission to invest the money to go get the traffic you need. Yes. Know that it's not going to be perfect the first month or the second month or the third month. But by the fifth or sixth month, you'll have brought-- if you're doing your reliable revenue work, you'll have brought those people back to your site enough times that they will buy your crop. Absolutely. Yep. Oh, this has been such a pleasure for me. Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you so much. If I can help you in any way, you're just going to let me know, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'm actually Canadian girl, too. Everybody-- Where about Steve's home? Just west of Toronto. You will know it because you're Canadian, but it's prant for it. It's the home of Wayne girls. Anyway. I would love just a couple of things before we wrap it up. And the first thing is, what do you have? What would you say to anyone who was in your shoes in January, where you're like, oh, this is really hard? And then you buy another course. And what would you say to either Shelley in January, or somebody who is Shelley right now? I would say that one of the hardest things about working for yourself is that you don't know when that moment is going to happen, or if it's going to happen. That's the danger is you don't know if it's going to happen. But I think one of the things that I think I've learned, and I think probably the most important thing to pass on, is that you exponentially increase your chances of that moment happening if you keep showing up. If you stop or if you slow down, you stop posting, stop emailing, you have absolutely guaranteed that moment is not going to happen. But if you just put on a smile, I think, the thing that you give yourself the best possible chance that you will break through. OK, that's absolutely gold. Yeah, you're so right. So good. Where can people see you? Where should we send them? Yeah, the easiest place is to my website that is barkinbone.ca. You can also find me on Instagram as me on bones. That's meet.on.bones, which I've been there for the last four years. Either one of those places you can DM me or send me a message through through my website. Yeah. And you're in the inner circle. I am also in the air. You're a lurker. I am a lurker. I am very quiet. I am just generating knowledge that are unleashed from all your amazing members and staff. I love that, though. I love that because you're thoughtful and you're doing the work. So thank you for all you've shared today. And thanks for having me. Oh, any time. Anyway, gang's gang. Go look at this art because as soon as I thought I was like, this is amazing. And it's just so cool. And I don't even have a dog. But it is. Oh, I'm also thinking about all the collaboration opportunities for you. Oh, yeah. So yeah, just one quick message, because people have been reaching out for a collaborate. Because this season has been so busy, I have pushed back collaborations until next year when I can or focus on them. Yeah. And totally willing to. I'm actually excited to dive into collaborations. Yeah. Yeah, because even though we were just about to wrap up, it's actually free. And so because you did-- and we have to thank Tricia Callahan, who was the one that did the big share about the product tester. And it's actually Jane Hammels idea. Never was my-- And so all of that, because you invested, you had more time than money. As you invested the time in that product tester, you got your-- and you hit on something that really worked. You got yourself 1,200 email addresses for basically free time, rather than money. Yeah. If you think about it, that's probably $2,400 worth of email addresses right then and there. And you didn't have to spend money on all ones to get that or traffic to get people to your site and get them to do your pop-up. But also with collaboration, every one of them will be a raging success. But again, you'll get in front of an audience of buyers that are the right people. and you will be able to, in January, we're doing that build your collaboration for growing your email list. So you will be able to maybe finish the year with 10,000 people on your email list. Like you might be able to solve your reliable revenue every month. - Right. - With a lot of big knot you want to crack and grow your list at the same time. And if you fall-- - Being full. - Yeah, collapse. Any referral is always more valuable than somebody who comes from an ad. - Great. - Yeah. - I'm excited for you. There we go. All right, go see this art, guys. Shelly's in the inner circle. You could always say hi to her there. She's lovely and so smart. So that's all I got. - Thanks for having me Susan. This has been so much fun. - So fun. - See you soon. - See ya. (upbeat music) - Hey, if your sales are slower than you want them to be and you're not sure what to do next to reach your sales goals, I want you to head on over to the show notes and grab a link to get your copy of my new course conversion school. It's absolutely free and inside the lessons, you will learn our step by step process to grow your sales without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies and without discounting your products. The strategy that you will learn in conversion school works for e-commerce stores of all stages. You'll use your store's data. So if you're starting out, you'll learn how to get consistent sales every day. And if you're an established store looking to really scale your sales, you'll use your data to learn how to achieve significant sales for every month, month of a month. So head on over to the show notes, grab the link and get your copy now.