Behind the Strategy: 4 Steps for Solving Any Business Problem

Do the words “business strategy” make you feel overwhelmed, undereducated, or like “nobody puts this baby in a corner”?

Me too. But also … I really love strategy at the same time. 🥸

So in today’s episode, I’m sharing how I approach retail problems in our signature feel-good ways. Tune in to hear:

• Why every business needs a unique strategy
• A few recent strategies I’ve helped retailers implement
• How to diagnose the real problem in your business
• My four-step process for creating your own strategy

Ready for support building your unique retail strategy? 🪐 Join The Here & Now 🧭
 

🕸 feelgoodretail.com

📱 @feelgoodretail

✉️ hiii@feelgoodretail.com

Transcript

Janine Mulone [00:00:04]:
Welcome to Retail for the Rest of Us, a podcast for indie retailers, makers and shop owners who wanna do business differently. I'm your host, Janine Mulone, retail expert, small business cheerleader, and the founder of Feel Good Retail. On this show, you'll hear insights, strategies, and ideas on how to sustain and scale your shop without sacrificing your sanity. Each week, you'll hear from me and the occasional guest expert in what I hope feels more like a voice note from your retail BFF than a business podcast. Additional goodies and support can be found in our show notes and at feelgoodretail.com. Now let's get into the show.

Janine Mulone [00:00:48]:
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Retail For the Rest of Us. I am your host, Janine Mulone. And today, we are gonna be talking about building strategy. And if the word "strategy" sends shivers down your spine because you feel overwhelmed or you don't know where to start or that feels too restrictive and nobody puts baby in a corner, we are going to be talking more specifically about how do you build a unique and aligned strategy for your business. Not a road map that can just apply to every single retail business because guess what? Those don't exist. But really how to think about approaching a problem and not getting overwhelmed, not falling into this anxiety spiral, and not just trying to copy what other people are doing or what you've heard on the Internet is good or what someone on a podcast has told you to do. Because you're a sovereign being and your business is fundamentally independent and creative, and I want you to solve your problems in ways that feel good to you. But before we get into that, I wanted to give you a little update about what's happening inside of the Here and Now. And if you're like, what the heck is the Here and Now? I'm gonna tell you.

Janine Mulone [00:02:05]:
The Here and Now is our seasonally inspired membership for indie retailers looking to uncover the secrets, skills, and cycles needed to build a sustainable shop. Inside, you'll get access to an evergreen resource library. Every month, you'll get an almanac and reflections and activities to help support your business right here, right now. You'll also get first dibs and discounts on working with me one-on-one, all for the low, low price of $28 a month. And this spring, we're really focused on, you guessed it, building strategy. And one of the things we're really honing in on is identifying and building comfort with some of the key metrics inside of your business. So right now for spring, we're doing a little quarterly workshop called Numbers Person that I've had so much fun making. And in the month of May, we are going into a chapter about taking action.

Janine Mulone [00:03:02]:
So understanding not only how to read your numbers, but what to do with them, how to take what's happening in your business quantitatively and build strategies and solutions to get you where you want to be. It's really fun inside the Here and Now, and I would love it if you joined us. You can go to feelgoodretail.com/join and find all the information there. We'd love to have you, and it's definitely not too late if you're feeling inspired after listening to this episode to dive in and catch up on Numbers Person.So let's talk strategy. I really wanted to record this episode because this year for the first time in what feels like a long time, I have opened up my calendar and been doing a little bit more one-off consulting sessions with small business owners. And so that has looked like a couple of things -- either a single session where we're diving really deep into an individual problem or opportunity in a business, or I'm building out quarterly strategy sessions, like 90-day, very in-depth plans to sort of shift the trajectory of a business.

Janine Mulone [00:04:14]:
I love doing these sessions. I love diving in, rolling my sleeves up, getting into the nitty gritty with folks. And two things have come out of that that sort of inspired this episode. One is that no business is exactly the same. Which is obvious. Right? Like, of course, someone who's selling, you know, high-end designer jewelry is going to look different than someone who is selling paper goods. And their audience sizes are different, their revenue goals are different. But also, the person who is operating the business and the team that's operating the business have different resources and skill sets and interests. And so what that has led to in the past couple of months alone has been the following strategies.

Janine Mulone [00:05:11]:
One business is developing a loyalty and referral program because they have an extremely shareable product, and most of their customers who find them are saying that they heard about them from a friend. So we're aiming to amplify that acquisition strategy by really developing a program to incentivize folks even more to share their product and brand. Another is trying to convert third party customers to direct customers. And so what that looks like is this brand is selling on Etsy, selling their products on Amazon, and they also have an individual Shopify site. The split of their revenue is relatively diverse. Like, it's pretty not exactly 1 third, 1 third, 1 third, but let's just say that's the case. And they really wanna get away from paying those high commissions, paying those high fees for products that they're developing, and drive more people to their site where there's a little bit more control of the experience. You can give a bit more context about the products, etcetera.

Janine Mulone [00:06:19]:
So the strategy that we came up with there was really identifying opportunities in different ways that we can take those new customers who maybe have never been to your website or maybe even never heard of your brand and are just searching for something in particular, finding your products and how do we get them to be loyal customers. A third strategy is optimizing email automations and the customer life cycle. A lot of folks overlook this. Right? There's a lot of talk around acquisition inside of the marketing world, primarily because when you're trying to seriously grow a brand significantly year over year over year, you are in a constant game of trying to find new people, find new customers. For a lot of indie retailers, and I've talked about this many times before, a great shift that you can make is making sure that after you acquire a customer, there is some kind of system or ecosystem set up to nurture and care for and retain that customer. So this brand in particular had a really large audience, especially on their email subscribers. However, they weren't really leveraging the tool, the beauty, the magic that is Klaviyo, and creating opportunities to more personalize the messages that people are getting. So if you're sending a campaign, odds are that's something like a newsletter or just a, hey, new product is here or, you know, this is what's hot for spring.

Janine Mulone [00:07:54]:
Please don't ever say that again. And, really, there's kind of a missed opportunity there between sending people just kind of like sales emails versus designing a life cycle for them. And so what do you need them to know before they're making a purchase? What's important to tell them between their 1st and second purchase? At what point have they become really loyal? And maybe you wanna offer them some kind of reward or referral or, basically, keep them happy and keep them feeling, like, seen and supported throughout their customer journey. And so that was a real priority for this brand. I'm actually still currently working with them to set up those kind of touch points along the way. And once they're set up, it's not totally set it and forget it, of course. You're always gonna wanna be checking in with your automations, making sure that they're performing well. But it's always really fun to kind of develop the storytelling throughout a customer's relationship with your brand.

Janine Mulone [00:08:59]:
And, finally, I worked with another client who came on basically saying, like, I think it's time for me to double down on paid ads. I'm not getting enough traffic. You know, there was just a lot of doubt around how much and how often people were coming to their website. And when I was able to dig into the data, I realized that, actually, the problem wasn't traffic. It was really the conversion rate on their website. And they have an incredibly large inventory, so it was looking like people were spending a lot of time on the site going to multiple, multiple pages. One of the longest times on-site I've ever seen and weren't checking out. And for a lot of that, it was, like, just the information architecture on the website didn't really make sense.

Janine Mulone [00:09:44]:
Like, if you were looking for a specific designer, it was hard to find. If you there weren't really great filtering options. The search function wasn't as easy as it could have been. And so before spending a bunch of money on paid acquisition, we made the commitment to reimagine the website in some way. So that turned out into updating their theme, updating their navigation, creating some filtering options, etcetera, etcetera. So as you can see, there is no one size fits all strategy. If you come and work with me or if you work with any other retail or business strategist, I would be wary of anyone creating some kind of, like, blanket solution. Of course, I believe that there are some best practices, and I talk about them frequently on this show.

Janine Mulone [00:10:39]:
But this episode, I wanted to be more of a, like, choose your own adventure for lack of a better term and teach you a little bit more about the 4 steps of strategy. So this is sort of how I approach a problem with a client and the kind of phases that I go through before I deliver a solution. So let's go through them together so that the next time you are building a strategy or solving a problem, you can come back to this episode and map it out for yourself. Phase 1 is diagnosing the problem, and I mean, the real problem. As you can see in some of the examples that I just gave, oftentimes, we are diagnosing a symptom and not the core problem inside of our business. We are maybe seeing that there aren't enough sales, and we're making an assumption that we're not getting enough traffic or that we're not retaining enough customers or that they're not spending enough money. And those kind of observations or gut instincts are really valuable because you are running your business every day. You know your customers.

Janine Mulone [00:11:55]:
You understand sort of the sales cycle innately. But I always think that before you dive in and build a strategy, you need to marry those qualitative observations with quantitative analysis. And that does not have to be complicated. I've talked about it before on this podcast. There are three numbers that you really need to know, your traffic, your conversion, and your average order value. That's where I tend to start. It usually will send you in the right direction in terms of where you need to focus your energy and dig a little bit deeper. This is also the moment to be asking why.

Janine Mulone [00:12:32]:
I think on the surface, when you ask why do I wanna solve this problem, it is very likely because you would like to be making more money. But I think that if you dig a little bit deeper and you get a better sense of, like, what that amount of money means to you and means to your business or why this problem is feeling like it's really pressing right now, you can just find a little bit more motivation and clarity that will help you not only in the diagnosis of the problem, but as we go through the next three steps to kind of come back to what feels aligned, what feels important. So that's step 1, diagnosing the real problem. Number 2 is exploring solutions. This is like there's no bad ideas at a brainstorm time. We are not using our super strategist hats. We are just, kind of, like, brain dumping everything that could possibly solve this problem. For me, it is really valuable to see all of my options clearly so that I can make the most aligned choice, and that's really our goal here.

Janine Mulone [00:13:43]:
Get all the ideas, all the possibilities outright in front of us, and then we can make our choice. Let's take an example of we are not driving enough traffic to our website. Very straightforward, very common problem. So if we jumped right into what do I want to do, you're gonna do a lot of, like, nay saying yourself. You're gonna say, okay. Well, I could run paid ads, but I don't have a budget for that. I could work with an influencer, but who would I work with? I just think that when you start with, like, I need to find the one perfect solution, you close yourself off to opportunities. You also usually make yourself feel bad because there's usually some kind of, like, limitation or doubt that's stopping you from pursuing that strategy.

Janine Mulone [00:14:33]:
And you're just, like, pouring gas on the fire of perfectionism, which I don't think any small business owner needs. So I welcome you to get creative here. With the problem of driving more traffic, maybe you could run paid ads. You could put up posters in your neighborhood. You could start a Pinterest account. You could post more products on your Instagram stories. You could do some SEO on your website. You could work with influencers or affiliates.

Janine Mulone [00:15:02]:
You could, I don't know, rent a blimp and put your URL on the side of it. These are, you know, meant to just kind of show you the breadth of, like, anything that comes to mind that you think could maybe solve this problem, I want you to write down. And usually, that's, like, its own step. Afterwards, you're just gonna step away for a little bit, crack a nice cold crispy diet Coke, and give yourself a break. Because the next part is about really crafting your plan and using intuition and analysis. This is where you are going back to that list and you're sort of auditing. Right? Not only for, like, would this actually work, you know? Who knows? Would the blimp idea work? I don't know. Maybe.

Janine Mulone [00:15:52]:
Who doesn't like to see a blimp? But is it the most practical? Probably not. So when it comes to step 3, crafting your plan, your feelings and your skills and your interests are just as important as how you estimate something will perform. I want to say that again. Your feelings and your skills and your interests are just as important as how you estimate something will perform. So if you are seeing, let's say, SEO, and you're like, oh my god. I feel like I've heard such good things about SEO. I have so much content on my website. I know if I just sat down and really, like, learned about search engine optimization that I could probably drive more organic traffic to my website.

Janine Mulone [00:16:42]:
Great. However, if you have ADHD or you're dyslexic or most of your working hours are I don't know that SEO is the suggestion I would make. Because if it's gonna feel like pulling your teeth out and like nails on a chalk board, or just like you're forcing yourself to do something, odds are it's gonna take you a long time. You're gonna avoid doing it, and you're gonna resent it. And I don't know. I just really believe that, like, doing things that are aligned for you and that make you feel skilled and talented and excited are just innately going to be more valuable than the things that you're forcing yourself to do. And I never wanna make it sound like feel good retail is, like, just do what you wanna do in your business, and it'll work. I think more so, I like this as an opportunity to reflect on, like, there are a lot of ways to solve problems inside of business.

Janine Mulone [00:18:01]:
And what you get to do as the founder and the CEO and the head visionary of your shop, of your brand, is to decide. You get to make the decision of what will work and what will feel good. I want us to all, like, live in that space because there are gonna be things like doing your taxes or having tough conversations with your teams or dealing with, collaboration that isn't going your way. Like, those things are unavoidable in business. So when it comes to our strategy, I want you to feel empowered to do things that you feel most called towards first. If those don't feel like they're working or aren't working anymore, we may have to push ourselves. There are always ways to approach problems that we can find ourselves in, that we can see, okay, I'm actually really good at networking, and I love talking to new people, and I love talking about my business. So I think what might work for me is doing this more, like, influencer approach versus this SEO idea.

Janine Mulone [00:19:23]:
You know, totally just an example I'm pulling out of nowhere. But hopefully, that kind of illustrates the point. That's why you're exploring your solutions and brainstorming before you're crafting. Okay. These are the top three things I think could work for me and my business. And finally, you're revisiting and you're reviewing. So of course, the big missing piece here is, like, actually doing the damn thing, putting that strategy into practice, executing on your plan, testing things out. But it's also really critical that you come back, I usually say 60 days later, to assess, am I seeing the results that I'm looking for? And, you know, sometimes 60 days feels like an eternity, and other days, it feels like the blink of an eye.

Janine Mulone [00:20:11]:
But I usually use that as a benchmark of you've implemented this strategy, you've sort of let it do its thing and marinate, and now it's time to revisit and review and either change courses, go back to the drawing board, or just continue to do what you're doing. Pat yourself on the back, tell yourself you're a brilliant strategist, and look for your next opportunity to grow inside of the business. So that is a part I think can be often forgotten about is that once we're implementing and trying and experimenting with new strategies, it's critical to go back and review so that we're not just, like, building and building and building our to do list, but actually only doing what is working for us and what is feeling good. So those are the 4 steps I use when I'm approaching building a strategy for a client, and I'm really excited for you to get to implement them and test them out in your own business. I'm also just curious to hear, like, what problems are you working on? What's keeping you up at night? What, kinds of things can I do to support you? So as always, you can email me. My email address is in the show notes all the time. And if you wanna learn more about building an aligned strategy for your business, that is exactly what we're working on this spring inside the here and now. You can learn more at feel good retail dot com slash join.

Janine Mulone [00:21:39]:
And, yeah, $28 a month. Come hang out with us. It's a really fun, chill, strategic, intuitive, creative, analytical place to be. And I would love to have you. But until next time, thank you for being here. Thank you for being in business, and cheers to feeling good. Thanks for listening to Retail for the Rest of Us. Find additional information and resources related to this episode in the show notes or on our website, feelgoodretail.com.

Janine Mulone [00:22:14]:
This show was lovingly produced and edited by Softer Sounds, a feminist podcast studio. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a minute to text it to your business bestie, share it on social media, and leave us a rating or review. It really helps the show grow organically, and we love making new friends. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being in business, and cheers to feeling good.