So often you get caught up being so busy in your business, but are being productive?Â
What’s the difference?Â
Did you know productivity to one person is totally different to another?
One major step I’ve taken in my business this year is to hire an accountability coach to ensure I’m productive with my time. My goal is to get more done, in less time so I have more free time to spend with my family.
The Productivity Queen herself has been worth her weight in gold and such an amazing asset for my business so I just had to get her onto the podcast to share her tips with you too.
We discuss tips, tools and techniques you can use to be more productive in your business and get those tasks done that you keep putting off.Â
Work smarter, not harder by being productive with your time this year.
Episode Highlights
Reinframe actions to keep the business forward[04:54]
I hope you enjoyed some kind of break over the holiday period and were able to switch off from your business for a while, it’s so important. If you didn’t, take the time now to schedule in some down time in the next month to avoid burnout.
Before we jump in to setting goals for 2023, it’s important to reflect on 2022 and the goals you set at the start of the year. Quite often we get so caught up in chasing the next goal or milestone that we forget to stop and see just how far we’ve come.
Look back at your stats for the 2022 period and write down everything you improved on in the 12 months from increase in social media followers, email subscribers and of course sales.
Goal setting – it’s one of those things where I kind of cringe when I see the words! Like oh great another chance to write down some big goal that won’t come through or set an unrealistic New Years Resolution! Did you know that January 13 is National Quitters Day – so named because it’s the day most people are likely to quit their New Years Resolution!
So when I say goal setting I’m talking about working out exactly what you need to do in your business this year to move the needle and get you to where you’d like to be. So in a little under 12 months time when you’re reviewing 2023 you’re smiling, nodding and ticking off your list, thinking hell yeah I did it!
Now make no mistake, I’m not saying you have to think small, not at all. What I am saying is you need to have a plan behind your goals – because goals without action are just wishes but when you make goals around what you really want for you, for your business, your family, your life and have clear action steps to follow well that’s where the magic happens.
Working out what you want
One of the hardest parts of goal setting can actually be working out what it is you want.
I want you to think about your typical week, what it looked like last year and now what you want it to look like this year.
Think about tasks that you don’t enjoy, that you may be able to start outsourcing this year. How would it feel to remove those from your week? What else can you change? Do you want to start later? Finish earlier? Have a day off? This year I’m starting with taking Friday afternoons off to spend with my little one to have a mummy daughter afternoon. I want to transition to taking the whole day off when I can.
Thinking about all the things you want to do, or not do, what will it take to make that happen? Write down all the steps you need to take, what you’ll need to outsource, or what new systems you’ll need to implement.
Profit over revenue any day
My mum has always said “money equals choices” and she’s so right. If you have money in your business, you can choose to outsource tasks, pay yourself more, hire people to work so you can take a day off, pay for software that will save you time or hire a cleaner so you can spend your time off doing things you enjoy.
So let’s talk about financial goals. So often we’re guided by what we see around us and pluck arbitrary numbers like “I want a 6-figure business” or even a 7 figure business. But honestly your profit, and what you get to pull out of the business at the end of the day is far more important than how much you turn over.
One of my best friends said to me recently, she turned over more than $600,000 last year… Now most of us would be so happy to do that. But when you lift the curtain that meant for her juggling lots of clients, lots of staff, multiple projects, all in the same year she had a baby. I know first hand it was a super stressful year for her and what did she take home at the end of the day for all the hard work she put in… $20,000.
Now I don’t know about you but for $20,000 I’d rather just work at McDonalds a few days a week and not have any responsibility at all. So if you’re like my friend and perhaps things looked great last year until you worked out how much YOU actually earned, not your business. Then like I said to her, it’s time to cut down on expenses – go at those with a chainsaw until you cut them all right back. The longer we’re in business the more expenses creep in. We sign up to a great new software, we hire staff to do things and then perhaps hire more we didn’t need. Or as things change we don’t adjust our expenses to accommodate the changes.
Now the biggest thing you need to do if this sounds familiar to you is forgive yourself.
My first year in business I lost over $100,000. The money wasn’t even mine – it was my mum’s divorce settlement which she leant me to start my business. Sure we had a lot of fun, as she likes to remind me – and now we call it my university degree – BUT it hurt like hell losing that kind of money and my confidence took a huge hit.
So if you’re struggling with any kind of money mindset issues I’m a huge fan of Denise Duffield Thomas’s book “Get Rich, Lucky Bitch” it’s all about money mindset, specifically for women in business. This book was absolutely life changing for me and got me out of my funk when I needed it most.
Another great book if you’re looking to take control of your finances this year is Profit First by Mike Michalowicz.
For me I used to always think I wanted to make a million dollars a year.. Sounds great doesn’t it? But this year what I’ve done is work out exactly how much I want in my pay each week. I calculated how much I need to pay my mortgage (allowing for more interest rate rises), how much I need to pay my bills each week, and then how much I wanted left over to have the freedom to do the grocery shopping, buy petrol and then eat out if we want to, take my little one to do something fun or GASP enjoy a date night! Then I want to be able to save for a holiday each year. Once I worked this all out I realised I don’t need to make a million dollars at all to live the life that I want.
Next I put together a spreadsheet for budgeting. I calculated all the expenses in my business, so I know exactly what it costs me each day, week, month and year to run it. I include all my software, internet, insurance, subscriptions, staff costs, website, advertising everything.
You want to include things like Shopify, Klaviyo, ad spend, and scheduling software you use, packaging, stock costs, printing, stationary, insurance, photoshoots – everything you can think of. List all of these under operational expenses.Â
Then in line with the profit first model I also allow for the tax that needs to come out for annual business tax and the PAYG tax for staff and GST for BAS. I then put in the owner drawings – which is going to be my wage.
You can then put in your estimated income each day, week, month and year based on 2022 sales.
This is all in a Google spreadsheet so I then duplicate the sheet and do another version based on what I want the numbers to be in 2023. So the first sheet may only allow you to pull a wage of $2,000 a month, but if you want $5,000 a month then write that in there. Change all the expenditure to what you want it to be. You may increase some things like staff costs if you’ll need to hire some help to grow, or decrease some costs if there are some subscriptions you can get rid of.
Then, if we’re increasing all the outgoings we’re going to need to increase the incoming so this is where we start to increase the sales until we can cover the desired expenses. Remember if you’re increasing sales, you may need to increase your advertising budget to the same percentages to suit.
Now you should have a more accurate picture of exactly how much you need to bring in, to reach your desired wage. This is your revenue goal for 2023.
So write down your revenue goal for the business, and your owner drawings goal – your wage.
Key Metric Goals
Next we use my free eCommerce calculator to see what we need to do to get there. If you haven’t got a copy of my free eCommerce calculator yet you can grab it now.
Start by inputting your real data for 2022.
You’ll include your average monthly website traffic, your average conversion rate and your average order value.
Then the yearly revenue should be close to what you did in 2022.
Now comes the fun part, we start to change these stats until we reach the desired yearly revenue for 2023. This is the business revenue, not your income.
Website Conversion Rate
Start with the website conversion rate – this is the number of people who visit your website who go on to make a purchase. If your conversion rate is under 2% then the first thing I want you to do is increase it to 2% – as that is really the baseline for where you need to get it. If it’s between 2-3% then increase it to 3% as that’s an achievable goal. Now if your conversion rate is already at 3% or above this is quite healthy, and although you may be able to make a small increase (maybe aim for 10%), your focus should be more on getting more traffic and increasing your average order value as your conversion rate means your business is ready to scale.
So how much did changing your conversion rate change your yearly revenue? If that’s gotten you to where you need to be then that’s your primary focus for the start of 2023.Â
See what happens to this example when I change the conversion rate from 1.5% to 2%.
Average Order Value
The next thing to adjust is your average order value. You want to get this to a minimum $50 if you can to have the best success with paid advertising, which is how you can start to scale your business. If it’s under $50 this needs to be a focus for your goals. If it’s already over $50 see what increasing it by $10 or $20 does to your yearly revenue. Pretty cool hey? You can make a dramatic difference to your bottom line simply by getting each customer to spend that little bit more.
See the increased revenue when I put the average order value up $20. It generates an extra $24,000 a year in revenue.
Traffic
To make up the rest of the gap between the current yearly revenue showing and your goal revenue, increase your monthly traffic until you get there. There’s no limit on how much you can increase that as there are lots of ways to drive traffic to your website, and you can use paid ads to send as much traffic as you need.
Keep in mind though you don’t want to start spending money on traffic until your conversion rate is at 2% and your average order value at least $50.Â
Now if I wanted to hit a goal revenue of $500,000 for this business I would need to increase the traffic to 20,850 visitors per month.
Publish your metric goals
Now you’ve got the calculator spitting out your goal yearly revenue it’s time to write down those goals in the workbook. So fill in:
“In 2023 I want to get my conversion rate to X”.
“I want to increase my average order value to $X” and
“I want to increase my monthly traffic to X”.
Now each of these things: increasing your conversion rate, your average order value and your website traffic I’ve covered in other blog posts and podcast episodes. I also cover them in depth in the eComm Ignitor program.Â
So use this training to help you create your goals, and your action tasks around each goal. For instance if you want to increase your average order value and decide having a bundle is your best plan then your action item will to be to implement the bundle on your website. Â
If you want to increase your traffic you may want to start posting more consistently on Instagram and that could be one of your goals. Make it specific like I will post 3 times per week on Instagram including one reel. Or if you’re at 2% conversion rate it may be time for you to implement a Facebook ad strategy so that could be a goal for you.
Action Items
Now once you’ve written out all your goals you need to put some timelines against the action items, otherwise you won’t get very far if you leave it until the last day of the year to do them!
I recommend focusing on the next 90 days rather than the whole year and working towards achieving everything you can in those 90 days. This will really kick start your 2023 and give you the best results for the whole year.
I hope this has helped to you get clear on your goals for 2023 and what you need to do to make them happen.
And if you’re really serious about taking 2023 to the next level and achieving those goals and you want my help I’ll be running a live 12 week eComm Ignitor program from February where you’ll get weekly live calls with me to answer all your questions and make sure you implement the training so be sure to join the waitlist to find out all the details and get a super special saving when it goes live.
Let me know in the comments which metric is your focus for the next 90 days?
Written by Karyn Parkinson
Karyn (“with a Y!”) Parkinson is an eCommerce marketing specialist with a knack for high-converting Facebook ad funnels and website optimisation.
Through her eCommerce marketing agency Unstoppable eCommerce and on-the-pulse membership eComm Club, Karyn’s helped hundreds of eCommerce store owners across the globe boost profits, generate more revenue, and achieve an ad-spend ROI of their dreams.Â
If you listened to the previous episode on how to review your business, I hope you’ve had a chance to reflect on 2022 and really review what worked for your business, and what you’d like to change this year.Â
One of the hardest parts of goal setting can actually be working out what it is you want. In this episode we’re breaking things down to figure out exactly how much you need to earn this year in your business and personally to live the life you want.
We’ll then break down exactly what action you need to take to make it happen in 2023.Â
This is an interactive episode so be sure to download the workbook and calculator so you can follow along.
Episode Highlights
Money Equals Choices [03:05]
Let’s talk about financial goals [02:24]
Money Mindset Book Recommendations [05:18]
How to set a financial goal and scale your business [06:07]
Wow what a year it’s been! In this episode I’m going to walk you through how to review 2022 for your business and look at the things that actually matter and those that will help you have an even better 2023.
It’s always mixed emotions when I get to the end of a year. There’s the exhaustion, I’m sure you’re feeling it too. Everything seems to all come at you at once and the list of things you wanted to get done before the end of the year seems to get bigger while the days left to do it are disappearing quickly.
Then there’s the excitement for next year and all the possibilities, but somehow the excitement soon turns to overwhelm – I think because you realise you may not have gotten everything done that you wanted to this year.Â
So to start with how about we just give ourselves a break yeah? It’s been a big year and we tend to focus on all the wrong things at the end of the year. So if you’re focusing on all the things that didn’t go to plan, all the things you want to do better next year, all the things you haven’t gotten done I want you to take a moment to shift your focus.Â
What went well
I want you to write down 20 good things that happened this year. Once you get to 20, see if you can make it 30, then keep going and make a list as long as you can. See if you can get to 52 so there’s one for each week of the year.Â
It’s easy to focus on all the negatives and things that could be better but when we force ourselves to stop and reflect we can start to remember all the awesome things that happened this year. Now these don’t all have to be about your business. Maybe you were able to take a long weekend off and get away with the family, maybe you worked less this year, which is a win in itself.Â
Perhaps you were able to make your kids swimming carnival or assembly, maybe you and your significant other went on a date night! That’s one thing I want to do more of next year, but all the ones I got in this year are going on my list.Â
For your businesses think about what you did this year, did you launch a new product? Hire a staff member? Move premises? Outsource something? Post to social media more than last year? Build your email list? Send regular emails?Â
Put it all on your list.Â
Don’t forget the big things too, did you win an award? Have a record month? Or even a record year? I was talking to one of my ad clients last week and said congratulations on joining the 6 figure club as she’d done over $100,000 in her business for the year and she went “oh yeah” like she hadn’t actually noticed.
That’s the thing about goals, ambition, growth. We are always striving for the next thing and we forget to celebrate when we achieve what we set out to do, we’re too busy striving for the next thing. And there is nothing wrong with constantly increasing your goals and moving forward, but it’s important to stop and celebrate your milestones, all your little wins, otherwise you’re constantly striving and will feel as though you’re never getting anywhere.Â
So if you got your website live this year – congratulations! Celebrate!Â
If you made your first sale this year – Good on you – celebrate!Â
If you had your first $1,000 month, or your first $10,000 month – hell yeah – celebrate!Â
If you had your first 6 figure year – awesome – you guessed it, celebrate!Â
If you had your first 6 figure month, which some of our students did – AMAZING! Celebrate that like crazy! You’re on your way to a 7 figure business!Â
And if you hit the 7 figure mark this year – YES! Go you! High fives all around, I hope you stopped to celebrate and if you didn’t – do it now.Â
One day the things you will strive for today will become your new normal. A $10,000 month will be OK, whereas right now it may seem amazing. Then down the track you’ll feel the same way about a $100,000 month if you choose to grow that big.Â
I used to be the person who never celebrated but then it made that achievement seem so insignificant that I really didn’t have the purpose behind hitting my next goal. These days I set a reward for each goal I set.
Rewards can be anything you like – maybe you treat yourself to a nice piece of jewellery, or a date night at a nice restaurant, a massage or a weekend away. It can be anything – but it must be something you want. Something special.
Then when you’re setting your goals for your business in 2023 set a reward for each one. The bigger the goal, the more effort required, the bigger the reward.Â
So if you hit your monthly revenue goal you know exactly what you’re going to do to celebrate and it will help drive your motivation to get it done.
Years ago when I first hit 6 figures in my business I didn’t do anything, then I was in Melbourne with a girlfriend and we went past a Tiffany store (we don’t have those in Tassie) and I said stuff it I’m going to celebrate my 6 figure year and I went in and bought myself the only thing I could afford in the shop which was a $200 necklace. At the time that was huge for me to spend that kind of money on myself, especially on something like jewellery. But now every time I wear it I remember that I earned that necklace and that I bought it for myself.
So once you’ve finished celebrating all the amazing things you have done in 2022 please take a photo and share it with me on Instagram – or better still post it to your stories and tag me – that way you can share your wins with everyone and encourage others to do the same.
Before you start making your goals for 2023 I next want you to answer a few questions about this year.
What can you outsource?
Firstly let’s look at what you’re doing in your business, and perhaps what you could be getting others to do for you.
Write down all the things that you enjoy doing in your business – it may be that you like making the products, or taking the photos, or creating content. Write them all down.Â
Then write down all the things you don’t like doing in your business. ANything that makes you cringe when you think about having to do it – it may be the graphic design, your bookkeeping, posting to social media or packing orders.
There’s no right or wrong answers, it’s what you personally enjoy and don’t enjoy in your business.Â
Then take the list of things you don’t like doing and split them up into 2 columns. The first column is all the things you don’t like doing, but are good at. Then the next column is all the things you don’t like doing and you’re also not good at.
Now when you’re looking towards the new year your goals should include starting to outsource some of the things in the second column.
If you don’t like doing these tasks and you’re not good at them then you’re not doing you or your business any favours by doing them.Â
Once you’ve managed to outsource everything in that column then look at the first column to outsource things just because you don’t enjoy them, even though you’re good at them. Be sure to write a list of all the things you do enjoy as well. Again you can split this into things you are good at and things you aren’t. Those things you enjoy but aren’t necessarily good at – perhaps you can find some training on them in the new year so you can continue to do the things in your business that you enjoy, but ensure that you are helping your business grow by doing them well.
Reflect on your numbers
Take a look at your sales. How did they compare to previous years? Which month was your best? Which month was your slowest?
Which product sold the best? Which was the worst? What was your profit margin for the year? Which products made you the most profit? Which promotions worked well, which ones didn’t? Why?Â
What was your return on investment for all your marketing efforts this year? Take a look at how much revenue you made all year, then divide it by how much you spend on marketing – including all your paid advertising. You want to make sure that what you spend is less that the profit you make on the revenue to ensure you’re making money.
And the last financial question is how much did you pay yourself?Â
Now in Australia we’re only half way through the financial year so if you’re not happy with some of the answers there is still time to change them before the end of the financial year.
Deep dive your data
Look at your website traffic in Google Analytics. Where was your traffic coming from? Who were your audience? What gender are they, how old are they? Which audience converted the best? What was your overall conversion rate? What was your average order value?
Sometimes we think we know the answers to these questions so we don’t bother to check. But things can change, content you put out, photos or videos you use can attract an audience different to who you thought, so you need to check in every now and then and make sure you’re attracting the right audience.
If you’re a list lover, another list you can write is all the things you learned this year. My first year in business I was 24, and I lost so much money… But looking back I call it my uni degree as I learned so much. So even if things didn’t all go to plan this year, what did you learn? It’s important to take stock of all the learnings, that way it wasn’t a failure as you learned something. It may have been about you, about your customers or about your business. You may have learned which days not to send your emails, when the best time to have a promo is, which times to avoid, which promotions work for your audience, which don’t. You may have learned about a new product your customers would love to see from you, or something you thought would be a great idea and you learned it wasn’t. Anything at all, big or small, write it down.
Start to think about what you want your business to look like in 2023, when you write these lists this time next year, what do you want to be on there, what do you want to be different? Join me on the next episode as I help you plan your goals for 2023 and create a strategy to achieve them.Â
Have a very Merry Christmas and please give yourself some time off to rest and recover and celebrate everything you have achieved in 2022.Â
Thank you once again for supporting Unstoppable eCommerce in 2022. I can’t wait to help you become Unstoppable in 2023.
Episode Highlights
Ask me anything [01:34]
List down the good to shift focus [02:24]
Celebrate the little things [05:04]
Share your success stories with us [07:41]
Strategy to imrpove the business and maximize time [08:18]Â
Influencer marketing is a rapidly growing industry for brands and creators.Â
But with so many options available and so many influencers you could work with, how do you decide who to choose and how to work with them?
Today I’m joined by Danielle Lewis to break down Influencer Marketing and how to successfully use it for your eCommerce brand.Â
Danielle is the Co-Founder & CEO of Scrunch, a global analytics and education platform for Influencer Marketing.Â
Scrunch launched in late 2014, and since then has raised $3 Million in capital, built a world-class team and launched a SaaS platform in Australia and the US, setting up HQ in Brisbane, Australia.
Danielle and her team have been proven to be game-changers in the Influencer Marketing world, taking on massive advertising campaigns, collaborating with the likes of Amazon, Deliveroo, NewsCorp, Publicis Mojo, Under Armour, Youfoodz and more.Â
Episode Highlights
What is Influencer Marketing [01:10]
The Benefits of Influence Marketing [02:02]
What to do when using Influence Marketing [04:09]
How to choose an Influencer for your brand  [08:05]
Creator Platform: Scrunch [09:48]Â
Agreements to offer when using Influencer Marketing [13:51]Â
In this episode I’m joined by fellow Tasmanian business woman Bronwyn Kidd. Bronwyn founded sustainable home brand SUSTOMi back in 2016. SUSTOMi was among the first to market in Australia with beeswax wraps, long before they became an eco-friendly kitchen staple.
In today’s episode Browyn generously shares with us an unfiltered look into what it was like to launch a product first, only to be followed by so many others – including Kmart and Woolworths.
She shares with us mistakes she made along the way and what she would do differently next time – like paying herself more!
Having been stocked in over 300 stores Bronwyn knows a thing or two about wholesaling and shares her top tips for gaining and keeping wholesalers for your brand.
She also shares how she managed to run a successful company while only working 3 days a week. #LivingTheDream
Episode Highlights
How did the brand SUSTOMi started [01:48]
SUSTOMi’s marketing strategy [04:51]
Advice for e-commerce businesses interested in wholesaling [08:26]
The biggest challenges that Browynn face along the way  [18:08]
Times are tough and there is a lot of uncertainty in the air. So while people are starting to tighten their purse strings how do you prepare your business and what should you be focusing on right now?
A recent survey by eCommerce review platform Yotpo found that 51% said news about the economy has them spending less.
69% of people said they were more likely to shop in store than they were a year ago.
More than half said they are spending less on electronics, home decor, clothing and accessories.
There were, however, some positives to come out of the survey with 82% of those surveyed saying they will still buy from their favourite brand.Â
And more than 65% said they are willing to spend more for an item if it’s more convenient to buy.Â
So in today’s episode I’m talking about how to grow your brand loyalty, generate repeat purchases and prepare your business for a potential recession.
Episode Highlights
Recent eCommerce survey by Yotpo [01:49]Â
Building customer loyalty [03:28]Â
Creating an experience for yout customers [06:03]Â
Little Tots Treasures is a children and baby boutique specialising in quality products.
Since enrolling in eComm Ignitor Lyndal has grown both her confidence and her business.
When I first found out I was pregnant in 2020 my first purchase was from Lyndal at Little Tots Treasures. She has such a beautiful range it was hard to choose but I still remember picking a gorgeous little elephant rattle and some milestone cards to celebrate each moment.
Little Tots Treasures is designed to help you explore the world of creativity, fun and education with the little people in your life.
Little Tots Treasures is a shopping haven for those looking for the more traditional option when selecting your gifts.
Stocking a range of unique toys and gifts, Little Tots Treasures has everything from classic wooden toys, puzzles, soft toys, back to school supplies and much more. Not only will you be impressed with the quality, range and price they also make your shopping experience an enjoyable one with good old-fashioned service.
“Over the years I have wasted a bucket load of $$ on useless training. I have to say that the investment I made for eComm Ignitor was worth every cent, especially knowing that I will have lifetime access. I will be revisiting the training regularly to continue implementing and improving my strategies. If I could turn back time this would be the ONLY program I would have needed. Just DO IT and watch both your confidence and business grow.”
Lyndall
Lyndal has a brick and mortar store in Goondiwindi QLD and over the last few years has focused on setting up an online store which not only showcases her beautiful range but brings the same high level of customer service as her customers receive in store.
Karyn (“with a Y!”) is an eCommerce marketing specialist with a knack for high-converting Facebook ad funnels and website optimisation. Through her eCommerce marketing agency and on-the-pulse training programs, Karyn’s helped hundreds of eCommerce store owners across the globe boost profits, generate more revenue, and achieve an ad-spend ROI of their dreams.
