In this episode, Salena coaches Cathy, the owner of an online gifting business, through one of the most common struggles in retail and ecommerce - spending too much time and money on customers who may never become profitable.

Cathy shares how she has been sending free gifts with purchase to customers in an effort to get people to try her products, along with the challenges she faces when corporate customers continually negotiate on price. Salena unpacks why customer experience strategies need to be backed by real data and ROI, and why retailers need to stop making decisions based on emotion alone.

The conversation dives into the difference between B2C and corporate customer strategies, why customer qualification matters, and how low-value leads can quietly drain time, energy, and profit from a business. Salena explains the importance of understanding customer value, protecting profit margins, and focusing on the customers who are most likely to generate long-term growth.

If you've ever felt busy but not profitable, struggled with discount shoppers, or found yourself saying yes to customers who drain your time, this episode will help you rethink where your attention and energy should really go.

What would happen to your business if you couldn't show up tomorrow?

It's a question most entrepreneurs avoid asking, until life asks it for them.

In this deeply personal episode, Salena Knight opens up about the terrifying moment she was told she was likely facing cancer and how that experience forced her to confront a reality many business owners quietly fear: has the business been built to survive without you?

This episode is not just about health. It's about leadership, dependency, burnout, systems, priorities, and the emotional weight so many founders carry behind the scenes.

You'll hear the lessons that came from stepping back, re-evaluating what truly matters, and recognising the risks of building a business that depends entirely on one person to keep everything moving.

If you've ever felt like your business couldn't function without you, this conversation will challenge the way you think about growth, success, and sustainability.

If this episode hit close to home and you realised your business relies too heavily on you to survive, then it's time to build a business that can grow sustainably.

Register for the Million Dollar Store Blueprint here.

If you've ever left a networking event wondering whether your business is behind everyone else's, this episode is for you.

Salena Knight breaks down the dangerous comparison cycle that many retail and ecommerce store owners fall into without even realising it. From hearing someone talk about record-breaking sales to another retailer struggling with foot traffic, it's easy to start mentally measuring your business against everyone around you.

But those comparisons rarely tell the full story.

In this episode, Salena shares why benchmarking against other businesses can keep you stuck, distracted, and focused on the wrong things. More importantly, she explains what you should be measuring instead if you want to build a profitable, sustainable, and scalable business.

You'll also hear more about Salena's Million Dollar Store Blueprint training and how to identify what actually needs to change inside your business to reach your next level of growth.

Register for the Million Dollar Store Blueprint here.

Most retailers assume that when customers are already buying, there's no need to market harder.

In this episode, Salena shares the costly lesson she learned after treating busy seasons like "business as usual" instead of strategically maximizing every customer interaction. From missed upsell opportunities to poor inventory planning and passive selling, she reveals how retailers unknowingly leave money on the table during their busiest periods.

You'll learn how to increase average order value, create strategic gift bundles, improve customer experience, and turn seasonal shoppers into long-term customers - without relying on heavy discounting.

If you want your next busy season to be your most profitable yet, this episode will change how you think about promotions, planning, and customer buying behaviour.

Ready to make your marketing work? Join the Marketing That Works Bootcamp here

Show Notes

Every week in retail and e-commerce Facebook groups, the same question appears. Sales have dropped off. Is anyone else experiencing this? And every single time, the comments fill up with store owners saying the same things back to each other - it's the economy, the algorithm killed my reach, I've tried everything and nothing works.

But here's what almost nobody says: what they've actually been doing for marketing.

In this episode Salena Knight gets into why the revenue rollercoaster - that exhausting cycle of a good month followed by a slow month followed by a so-so month - is almost never about the economy or the algorithm. It's a mirror. And once you understand what it's reflecting, you can actually do something about it.

In This Episode:

• Why your sales today are almost always a reflection of your marketing three to six weeks ago

• Why doing a little bit of everything across every platform gives you exactly the results you'd expect

• What campaign-driven marketing actually looks like and why it makes everything else easier

Ready to make your marketing work? Join the Marketing That Works Bootcamp here

You're not being ignored, you're being overlooked. And that's a very different problem.

In this episode, Salena Knight shares a simple but powerful story - walking past a beautifully curated store for 18 months without ever going in, despite being the ideal customer. It highlights a problem many retailers and ecommerce brands face: being visible, but not truly seen.

If your store isn't getting the attention or sales you expected, this episode breaks down why - and what to do about it.

You'll learn how to think about the real cost of inconsistent marketing, why customers overlook brands that don't show up consistently, and how to reframe marketing so it feels less like selling and more like serving.

• Why being technically visible is not the same as being seen

• How ideal customers can still miss your brand

• A simple way to calculate the cost of not showing up

• The mindset shift that makes marketing easier and more effective

• Why consistent, campaign-driven marketing leads to better results

Customers don't go looking for you - they respond to what's consistently in front of them. When you show up with intention and frequency, you create more opportunities for them to choose you.

Ready to be seen? Join the Marketing That Works Bootcamp here.

I recently stopped at a fuel station to fill up my car - something I don't do very often - and watched the bowser tick past $90, $100, $110, $120. I was genuinely waiting for fuel to come gushing out because surely it had to be broken.

It wasn't broken. And that moment is exactly what this episode is about.

Rising costs are hitting every part of retail and e-commerce - freight, fuel, wages, rent, suppliers. But what I'm seeing over and over again is store owners absorbing those costs out of their own pocket instead of adjusting their prices. In this episode, I'm getting into why that has to stop, and what you need to do before the damage becomes irreversible.

Key Topics

• Why every step of your supply chain is getting more expensive - and why economists are saying this will be felt for at least 12 to 18 months

• The time lag effect: stock ordered today may not sell for months, but the costs are locked in now

• The two pricing mistakes store owners make - and why the second one is the most dangerous

• Why the customers you lose when you raise prices are rarely the ones worth keeping

• How to raise prices with confidence, without apologising or over-explaining

Key Takeaways

• Rising costs must be reflected in your pricing

• Review your margins now, not at the end of the financial year

• Pricing decisions should be based on data, not fear

• A profitable business is a better business - for you, your team and your customers

Enrol in the Marketing That Works Bootcamp.

My guest today is Teresa Olson, founder of Olson House in Milwaukee, a beautifully curated store known for Scandinavian-inspired homewares, design-led products, and now a growing vintage collection.

But her story does not begin in retail showrooms and brand catalogues.

It starts in a Kmart, moves through a record store, a speech communications degree, DJing, interior design, corporate office life, and eventually a leap into opening her own store in 2015.

In this conversation, Teresa shares how she built Olson House with intention, how she sourced directly from Scandinavia, what she learned from navigating freight and tariffs, and how a vintage pivot helped drive a 90 percent jump in online sales.

This is one of those episodes that is full of heart, but also packed with quiet commercial wisdom.

• Teresa's unconventional journey from record stores to retail founder

• Why she left corporate life and retrained as an interior designer

• How a trip to Scandinavia shaped the Olson House brand

• What independent retailers can learn from sourcing with intention

• The hard realities of tariffs, freight, and small-space inventory decisions

• How vintage became a strategic pivot, not just a passion project

• What drove a 90 percent increase in online sales

• Why Google Shopping ads worked better than broad awareness marketing

• How Teresa uses email segmentation and VIP offers to increase conversions

• What local retailers can do when external factors hit foot traffic

• Why nimbleness matters more than ever in today's retail environment

You can explore her store online at Olson House.