Salena Knight is a Retail Strategist and founder of The Retail Academy – a marketing agency that specialises in helping independent retail and ecommerce store owners to scale their stores into profitable, thriving brands. She’s passionate about delivering highly effective strategies that improve the five core pillars of a retail business!
Entrepreneurial Role Models:
When business started difficulties overcame:
“I had a business degree; I had a bachelor of business management and it taught me nothing about having your own business . The biggest obstacle, global financial crisis… Not the best time to start a retail business. And that lasted for three years. So that was the biggest one. The other one was just learning all of the things that nobody tells you. It’s different now I think to a degree because we had the Internet, we didn’t have the Internet on our phones back in 2007… So having to learn so much staff and not having the resources. There was no wealth of information on the Internet like there is now”…[Listen for More]
Favourite Books:
The Dip: The extraordinary benefits of knowing when to quit (and when to stick) Book by Seth GodinFavourite Quote:
“stop thinking small”
Recommended Online Resources:
- Asana – Easily organize and plan workflows, projects, and more, so you can keep your team s work on schedule
- Google Calendar – You can create calendars to keep track of different types of events. For example, you could create a calendar called “Soccer” that tracks upcoming practices
Also mentioned:
- Voxer – Walkie Talkie App for Team Communication. Voxer is a Walkie Talkie messaging app for your smartphone with live voice like a PTT walkie talkie , text, photo and location sharing Download Voxer for iPhone, Android, or use Voxer for web
Best Advice to Other Entrepreneurs:
“it depends on what they need to hear at the time. Sometimes it’s just take action, sometimes it’s… This is not what you want to hear though… What’s the worst that can happen. Probably the big one in our business is done is better than perfect… Maybe not in heart surgery but in business is that whole imperfect action, it’s the whole minimal viable product, it’s getting your thing out there and getting the feedback so that you can make the tweaks. But the more you just sit on it then who are you helping? You are not helping anybody. You are not helping anybody if nobody knows that this thing exists. And maybe that thing is just an idea, maybe it’s a product or maybe it’s a service but if you don’t get it out there then no one gets helped. So done is better than perfect”…[Listen for More]
More About Salena Knight:
Neil’s Quote at the Beginning:
Princess Diana “Only do what your heart tells you.”
Other Quotes From the Chat with Salena Knight:
- “a lot of it is about fun and really enjoying what it is you do”
- “definitely the money thing and increasing your circle of influence that you can just go to and having… I’ve heard it called a business advisory board. So just having those people that you know that you can call, no strings attached and just ask question”
- “definitely fun, I think knowing why you want to do this. What do you get out of it?… What drives you? Knowing the answer to that even if you can’t put it into words that’s really important”
- “in our business I and the word ’small business’ because what I found was having conversations with people who were ‘small business owners’ probably eight times out of 10 the word just was in front. So, it’s just an excuse, ‘I can’t because I just a small business’, ‘how do I compete? I’m just a small business’. Most people in my opinion used word small business as an excuse. So, I say stop thinking small, small ”
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