Are you running your retail business – or is it running you into the ground?

I’m Catherine Erdly, and on this episode of the Resilient Retail Game Plan, I peel back the glossy sales charts to reveal what really comes after that six-figure milestone.

I’ve seen it firsthand: when independent product business owners hit £100K or more, the chaos, decision fatigue and burnout can hit even harder – unless you’re ready to swap the founder hustle for actual strategy.

Through candid stories and my Focus Framework, I’ll show you how growing past six figures doesn’t have to mean drowning under to-do lists or turning your business into a bottleneck. There’s a smarter, healthier way to scale your retail brand.

Why listen?

• Pinpoint why scaling a product business is nothing like starting one
• Spot the four founder traps (burnout, overwhelm, plateau… and more)
• Shift from gut-feel chaos to data-led, confident growth [quiet stockroom rustle]
• Tame your stock monster with inventory management tips from a 25-year retail expert

**Share your “aha” moments — DM me @resilientretailclub on Instagram. If this episode gives you a retail reality check, rate and follow the Resilient Retail Club Podcast in your favourite app.

Mentioned in this episode:

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Are you running your retail business or is your retail business running you?

Many people that I speak to have the impression that the most important

thing that they need to do is grow their sales and once they've got more

sales, then all of the problems that they have in their business are going to

disappear. However, I can also tell you that I work

with many six figure, multi six figure and seven figure founders

who are feeling stuck, overwhelmed or burnt out.

In today's episode, we're going to delve into how you can scale past

six figures without chaos, exhaustion or constant

firefighting. But it does require strategy,

structure and support. Welcome

to the Resilient Retail Game Plan. I'm Catherine Edley and in the next few

minutes you're about to get powerful real world retail strategies

from insights shared both from my guests and myself, backed

up by my 25 years in the retail industry. Keep listening to

learn how to grow a thriving, profitable product business. Let's

jump in with this latest episode.

So why do people feel like hitting six figures

is the hardest part? Well, part of that is because

a lot of people will be working towards this milestone for

a significant amount of time. I do come across businesses that

launch and pretty quickly hit six figures, but I have to say

most of them are in the minority. Most people I work

with who get six figures have got there over a period of time

and it's something that they've been working towards. So it makes sense that if

you're not there yet, if you're not at that six figure stage, then

your belief is going to be that the most important thing is for you to

get there. And then again, all of your problems will be solved. Once

you've got more sales, then you'll have a better cash flow, you'll

be better known with your customers, you'll have a stronger presence.

All of the issues that you've had at the moment around stock management,

anything like that, it was all going to go away because you're going to have

more sales. But what people don't

realize is that really when you get to

100k, it's a bit of an inflection point and

things change. So one of the phrases I love is what got

me here won't get me there. And I think that the 100k mark

is one of those points where the skills and

the requirements that you've had to get you to that point are not going to

be the same things that get you beyond that. Often people

put all of this time and effort and energy into getting to that six figure

point and then they're acting a certain way, they're

running their business a certain way, and that's what's got them to that point.

But the skills that they need and the focuses that they need to get them

beyond that are not the same thing. So as

you grow, your sales grow, but so do your

responsibilities. And the complexities of often

managing multiple sales channels, for example, multiple product

drops, multiple suppliers, multiple

ways of communicating with your customers. You can

also find that as the numbers go up, the sales numbers go

up, then the stock purchasing numbers go up, so admin piles up

and that all invasive decision fatigue

can set in. If you have got your business to 100k,

you probably have been the person who's been doing the bulk of the work.

And if you keep going with that above 100k,

then it can lead to burnout. The founder feels

responsible for everything and this can lead them to burnout.

In fact, I would go as far as saying that the skills

and the characteristics that you need as a founder to get

you up to 100k are fundamentally different to the

skills, the tasks and the behaviors that you need to go beyond

100k. And unless you realize that, it can

feel like a little bit like insanity, like you're doing the same thing

that you've always been doing, but it's getting more and more stressful.

So it's not surprising at all to me that I talk to a lot of

founders who hit that a hundred k mark who are really feeling

stressed out. And I use the term 100k

fairly loosely. It could be anywhere. It could be the fat limit, it

could be a hundred k. So some people feel like this at

50k because of the complexity of their business. Other people might get to

2,50,300k and still not feel this

way. But there is a point, and if you're at that point where you feel

like you're burning out and the business is just getting out of control and

feeling really more and more difficult as you get bigger, then you may be at

this situation where there are certain characteristics,

behaviors and activities that, that got you to this point that are not going

to be the same ones or maybe even detrimental to getting you past

that. So As I said, 100k, it's a useful benchmark, a

useful thing for you to keep in your mind. But if any of this is

resonating and you're not at that revenue number, then still do keep it

in mind

up to 100k. What's important, it's important

to have a certain instinct and A certain gut feel when you're working

under 100k. The reason I say that is that I often

think that one of the hardest things to do when you're first starting out is

find a really great product or group of products that people will pay you money

for. The creation or curation of your product range is

one of the first, most difficult tasks for product business founders.

And it requires a lot of tuning in to your

customer. You have to listen to what they're saying, you have to try lots of

new things, you have to have instinct and you have to have gut

feel. You have to go with, what do I think people want? Okay, I'm going

to try this. I'm going to really see what is my belief

in this business, what do I believe it should stand for, what do I believe

that I should be selling? So all of those things will help you lock in,

really understand your customer and get to that point, get to that six figure

point. Now, it's not that you don't need to have instinct and gut feel once

you get over 100k. In fact, when I'm talking about these two sets

of characteristics, behaviors, whatever you like to call it,

it's not that one is unimportant under 100k

and only becomes important over it. It's that

one thing is more dominant under 100k and then over 100k,

something else becomes dominant. So from instinct and gut feel,

we need to move into strategy and data. So

you are learning a huge amount that first 100k of your business. You are going

to be learning absolutely everything from who your customer really is, what

they're prepared to spend money on, what kind of price points

you can charge, what kind of products that they really want from you. All of

those different things are going to be what you're learning and

getting to grips with up to 100k. Once you've got to that point,

then really running everything off instinct and gut feel is

going to become chaotic. You need strategy, you need

a plan, and you also need data. You need to understand,

where are my sales coming from, who's buying from me,

what price points do they want? What are the best times of year for me

to launch all of those different things and you need to have that data to

back you up

up to 100k. Again, another characteristic is you need

to be willing to wear all the different hats. Are you willing

to put the time in? Are you willing to put the effort in? Are you

willing to roll up your slee? There's a saying that somebody said to me when

I was beginning my business, which was that, you know, airplanes use

the most fuel during takeoff. And it's true of businesses, you

absolutely have to really push to get things through. You often don't have the

budget for other people to be doing things. So you have to learn a lot

of things. And that's a really important trait in a founder, to be able to

roll up your sleeves, dig in, do everything yourself. As you

get to a hundred K, what happens is if you insist on keep going with

that, then you become the bottleneck. So you become the

bottleneck of the business. And if you insist that everything is down to you doing

it yourself, you will get to the point where you've just created a pinch

point and you basically can't grow without burning out because

everything has to happen through you. So at that point, what it's all about is

putting in systems, building your team and really

focusing then on how can you take yourself out of the day to day.

If you're at multiple six figures and you're

still doing the majority of everything, then I'm willing to put good money on the

fact that you're very stressed and burnt out. So one of the

key things that you need to do is as the business keeps growing, you've got

to take yourself out of the day to day because that is how you eliminate

bottlenecks and you allow further growth without you being basically

completely crushed by the business. And

again, under 100k, this is really important. You have to just try lots and lots

of different things. And again, still really important to try new things when

you're over 100k. But it's really about knowing your key drivers.

Going back to that strategy and data. You need to really understand what are your

best sellers, what are the things that are really driving you forward. So you're

going to try everything up to 100k, but then after that you really need to

be focusing on the things that you know are going to make a difference. So

fundamentally then that is the shift. You have this inflection point,

you have this bit where it changes. You go

from really needing to just roll up your sleeves, do everything, try

everything to, to really hone in on what's working, what's

successful, and take yourself out of the day to day.

When I think about scaling founders, I have spoken to

literally hundreds of people over the last seven years,

people who've started their own business, people who are, who are growing,

people who are at that six figure point and beyond. And

what I found is that there are four different types of

founders and no doubt there are many more. But I grouped them

together and I'd love to know if any of these resonate with you. So for

example, the first person I would say that I

tend to work with especially on retail by design, my one to one

program is some called fast Growth Fiona.

So this is someone whose sales are booming, but she's burning out

now. This is a particularly difficult problem for many people

when they're on social media, they're showing piles of

packages. Everyone around them is probably telling them, oh my goodness,

you're doing so amazingly well. But what they

don't realize and what a lot of people don't realize, and one of the reasons

I really like to stress the fact that it's not always just about more sales

is, is that it's actually extremely stressful to be in a

high growth situation. And I think about those games, I

don't know if you've ever played them where there's like a conveyor belt or you

have to like make a meal in the kitchen or something like that. Or put,

I've seen one where you put like a little tag on luggage and it's fine.

It starts off, it's slower, it's slower. And then the conveyor belt

speeds up or there's more orders coming in to the kitchen and all of a

sudden your little person on the screen is running around and then usually things start

catching fire and it gets really dramatic. And that can be what

it feels like when you're in that fast growth. In one hand it's great

because from a sales perspective you're often,

you know, you've got sales coming in, you've got sales coming in almost faster than

you can deal with. But from a founder perspective, it

can be extremely difficult and, and

stressful because there's a lot of things that have to happen quickly. It's like

you have to build the engine while the plane is flying and

that can be really super stressful. And it's also

can be made more stressful, as I said, by the fact that people around you

often will be like, oh boohoo, poor you, you know, you're drowning in sales

when they maybe aren't having that experience. So it's a

particularly difficult way of growing. But it

can be a super exciting time, really exciting time, lots of opportunities.

But it needs some careful support and some quick

action. Another person that I see is more to this,

Moira. This is somebody who is spread

really thin. They've got two or six figures or above. By doing Lots

and lots of different things. They've tried all

the different avenues, they've tried lots of different products and it's

worked. You know, there's lots of things that have worked, but the business has got

more and more complicated. So they

get to the point where they feel unsure of their next step

because there's just so many different bits going on and they don't really know which

bits they can let go to focus in to make it simpler and easier.

Then we have what I call unconfident UNA and

this is just to really take note of the fact that people

can look really successful on paper, they can have

substantial businesses, but there are often people who,

whose confidence gets knocked and they're sitting there every day

thinking, is this all going to end? What do I do now? They find it

really hard to make decisions because they know that they need to

bring more people in or they need to invest more in certain

amounts of stock. But they just feel really

paralyzed because for whatever reason they've started to doubt

themselves. They've started to get that imposter syndrome. Often I

think this is linked to people who basically haven't had enough of a holiday

for, for a long time. So they end up

overwhelmed, burning out, and then they also

just feel paralyzed. They don't really know how to move forward.

And then the final one is plateaued. PETRA so

this is somebody whose growth has stalled and they're not sure how to

reignite it. So this is somebody

who may have had a Covid boom or even

post Covid boom and what's been working before

hasn't been working so well recently. And they get to

the point where they also can lose a lot of confidence because they suddenly have

gone from having a fast growth business to a slow growth or a

no growth business. And they don't really know how to fix it and they feel

like they're further along now, so they should know how to fix it. Maybe they've

been running the business for quite a long time, but they actually just don't know

what to do. So there are some of the common scenarios that

I see when it comes to people who are scaling. And as I said, people

can be elements of each one of those. The thing that I really

want to just stress though, is that what people's businesses look like

from the outside and how they feel on the inside can be two very, very

different things. And some of the people who've been struggling the most as founders

that I've spoken to have been the people with that. If you looked at their

business externally, you'd have thought, wow, that was, you know, everything must just be

wonderful. So first off to say that you're not alone if you

feel like this and secondly to say that don't believe everything

you see on social media.

So why does it get more stressful then? We've talked

a bit about the fact that you need to have different ways of behaving, different

ways of thinking about things as you go from the under 100k to over

100k. But I want to touch on a few very

specific things to product businesses. And the

truth is, is that a mess plus growth equals a bigger

mess. And as I said, one of the most harmful beliefs that

people have is that, oh, if only I just gross myself some more, then

I'll be absolutely fine. So some of the key pain points that they get

are cash flow becomes even more difficult because either

they're running now with too much stock or they're making stock purchases that are too

high. They don't have a proper plan

so they're constantly firefighting and they

don't have the proper support. So they get exhausted. They don't, they're not

able to take time out and they're not able to step away from the business.

So how do we fix this? Well, inside Retail by design,

my one to one program, we have what I call the focus

framework because the biggest themes that come up when people,

I talk to people about retail by design are this feeling of winging it.

That is a phrase that a lot of people use, this I feel like I'm

winging it. I feel like I don't know what I don't know. And the other

thing that people often report, often talk about is this feeling of

scatter gun. So they feel like they're trying lots of different things.

They're pulled in loads of different directions. They may well have other

very pressing needs or, or demands on

their attention and their time from outside the business, like, you know, let alone the

business. But it could be that they've got caring responsibilities

or all kinds of other things or restricted time that they can spend on the

business. So there's lots and lots of things that could be pulling them in

lots of different directions. So the idea of the focus framework

is that focus is one of the most important things that people really

need and this is how we go about it.

So the first part of the focus framework, the F is foundations.

So this is about going through everything

in your business and checking the fundamentals before we go

any further. And it's Usually the first piece of work that I do with people

when they come into the retail by design program. So

we go through everything from profit margins, pricing,

key sales channels. We look at a break even analysis which is a really great

diagnostic tool. It helps me understand how

their fixed costs stack up against their sales

compared to their profit margin to understand if there are financial pressures

as part of this, how's it doing, how's it looking?

And sometimes fairly often actually people will be

in a great position but they don't even realize it. So they was still stuck

in paralysis because they didn't realize they could actually, for example, pay themselves

more out of their business. So it's all about know before you grow

and get to that point where we've gone through, we've gone, gone through all of

those business fundamentals, underpinnings so that you can be really, really clear

in terms of what you need to do before you move forward.

The next thing that we do is we look at the O in focus,

which is offer strategy. So this is everything to do with what you actually

selling. So we get really specific on who you're selling to,

where you should be selling and what you should be selling. And this is a

great opportunity to really lean into the data to understand what's working

well and you should do more of and what's not working so well and you

should pull back on. And it's really, really good for people who've got

themselves spread really thin doing a lot of different things in a lot of different

places and helps them really

consolidate, rationalize everything, make sure

that everything that they're doing is contributing to the bottom line,

not just the top line and really focus in.

So for example, I might work with a client who's

represented on a lot of different websites and it's taking up an

unnecessary amount of time for them to keep all of those different

third party partners updated when really it's generating virtually

nothing. We're able to eliminate all of that work and just focus on the

key channels. So offer strategy. Getting really clear

is really a key part of helping you feel more focused.

The sea of focus is calendar planning. And this can

be really transformative. It's a simple but powerful process of mapping out

peak seasons, product launches, monthly sales goals. And

this really helps avoid that feast or famine. It helps you be

proactive, keep on top of seasonal events and just

generally move your marketing from feeling like a total

overwhelm to a really clear structure. The U of focus is

upskilling. So that is all about

improving your own skills. When it comes to things like cash flow management,

when it comes to things like stock control, team

management, nobody is born with these skills. And a lot of

the skills that you need to run a successful product businesses are not ones that

you may even know what you don't know, for example.

So we go through all of the skills that you need as a founder to

help you move to the next level. And then the final S is

support, which is all about not only having support

in retail by design, but we also look at the support that you have in

the business, we look at the structure of the business and we look at what

it needs for you to really be able to

have that support and to, to be able to take the time

out to step away. For me, when I talk to clients and

they tell me they were able to take a two week holiday in August, that

is success. That is something that they maybe wouldn't have been able to do

before and it has a huge, huge impact on their lives and it has a

huge impact on their businesses as a result. There we go. You have

the Focus framework which is your foundations, your offer strategy, your

calendar planning, upskilling and your support.

It's really all about moving from this scattergun approach

being spread really thin to being more focused to being

able to upskill to learn those

behaviors that you need to do to take you out of the business

on the day to day basis and carefully,

strategically and profitably put in support. That means

that the business can actually grow profitably.

So success is not about working harder and you get to the point where actually

you just can't work any harder and have the business grow.

It's about working smarter and choosing clarity over

chaos. So if you're interested then you can head over

to resilientretailclub.com and check out Retail by Design,

which is my one to one program. We are kicking off shortly. You can

also head over to resilientretail club.com calm

and get the Calm CEO Guide which has all of this in detail,

the Focus framework and how you can go from being

overwhelmed and scattergun to being

calm, confident and focused. See you next week.