Leveraging Your Creativity After the Show

Welcome to Rooted in Retail: After the Show

Crystal Vilkaitis: How are you honoring and leveraging your creativity? I want to talk about it and why it’s so important in this episode of after the show.

So hello, and welcome to after the show. I’m your host, Crystal Vilkaitis. This is where I do a little bit more of a deeper dive on this week’s episode, highlighting my takeaways and the things that I really got out of the guest of the week. And my guest this week was Kareen Walsh, who I absolutely love. She’s so brilliant. Isn’t she? How she just answers these questions. She flows, she gets retail. She really offered so much advice and help in this episode. That you might listen to it a second time.

Honestly, I see you listening to it this week. Come back to it in a month. I think you’re going to get. Additional things that you didn’t get from the first time around. That’ll be really helpful for you. And in this episode, I want to, really there were like every episode, there’s so many things that stand out the most to me.

And like, you know, when she was talking about. Leveraging when she’s talking about the evolve acronym and there’s so much we could do with leveraging. We’ll talk about leveraging your creativity here.

Some thoughts about exiting your business

Crystal Vilkaitis: But then also the E and evolve, which is exiting. I think about this for our retailers. Even if you are not planning on exiting your business, Having it in mind and how would you operate your business if you were, it might be different than how you operate today.

Let’s say you’re never going to exit your business, but let’s say that we run our store through the lens of exiting in five years. You might have a really big focus over the next five years on building your list, your email list and your social media following, because that’s an asset that you’d be bringing to the new buyer where today maybe you have no initiatives for growing your email list and growing your social following or getting a text marketing program in place, or really building out this amazing loyalty program.

Maybe you don’t have those things in place today because you’re just, Busy with the day to day running your business. And you don’t have that vision looking forward of what you’re really trying to achieve and where you want to go. I just think that through that lens, it makes any business, not just retail, any business, a better business a more profitable business.

And maybe not necessarily if you have to invest money to really grow. But. You know what I mean? It’s going to make you look at your business differently and maybe spot some holes that you have that you could fill now and create an awesome business for yourself that maybe you do exit one day, who knows, but that’s actually not what I want to talk about today.

And my team is always like, just pick one thing you’re going to focus on and after the shows, because let’s just stay targeted here. Let’s stay focused. And it’s hard for me to do that when we talk about so many amazing things on the episode.

But Kareens answer to what do you think the future of independent retail is at the very end of this episode? It was a beautiful answer. You need to listen to this full episode. You need to listen to how she answered it. I think that she has a very interesting take and the way that she communicated it. Was well done.

As an independent retailer, you have the advantage of creativity

Crystal Vilkaitis: And part of that is where she was saying that independent retailers have an advantage because that’s where creativity lies and you do, you have the ability to be creative in your store when it comes to your merchandise your merchandising, your store layout, how the vibe of the store, you know, your, how you treat your customers and your employees and the things, your culture within your store and the content you’re creating on social and the experiences that you create in your business, you have the ability to have so much creativity.

That we’re just not going to get from Amazon and big boxes and in faceless e coms. And so that’s why I opened this episode with asking you, how are you leveraging and honoring your creativity?

Because what I have seen, and I know as a small business owner myself, you can get really tied up in doing the day to day of your store and of your business where we don’t honor our creativity.

We aren’t leveraging it. And it becomes back burner, similar to how marketing becomes back burner. Marketing for a lot of retailers, I think could actually be a lot of fun because it is very creative. And a lot of our retailers are very creative, but it’s just, we’re putting so many things in front of the marketing and the creativity. Because we are just making those a priority.

We think that those need to be the priority has happened now. And I get it. Yeah. You’ve got to train your team and you’ve got to work with your customers and you’ve got to be selling and you’ve got to be unpacking boxes. But my question with a lot of those things is, does it have to be you?

Do you have to be the one training your team? Do you have to be the one that’s unpacking new merch and putting it out there? Like those are definitely things that you can hire for, which we talk about in this episode with Kareen. So I think that It’s really important if you haven’t been honoring and leveraging your creativity in a while that you make space for that.

Can you make being creative in your store a priority?

Crystal Vilkaitis: And and I think that if anybody is listening to this that might feel a little burnt out with your store or maybe a little disengaged or disenchanted. If you make the creative and your creativity come through as a priority. More often throughout your week, every week, I think you’ll find more of that energy coming back to you and it could be really fun.

So make it a priority. It’s going to help build your business. Your creativity is your superpower. Again, it’s something that the big boxes in Amazon just can’t compete on. So leverage it, use it, own it, live in it, and pull that through.

Ideas for being more creative with your physical space

Crystal Vilkaitis: And one of those ways that you’re pulling your creativity through is something that Kareen also talked about on this episode on leveraging your physical space, because, as she mentioned, rent prices are going up and we have this big overhead of our building and we aren’t always.

Open you’re not open 24 seven. So you can be creative on other things you’re doing with your physical space and the events and the opportunities and the community engagement that you can have go on there. And I want to give another plug to Beth Rich’s episode that she did on Rooted in Retail. We’ll link to it.

I don’t have the exact number off hand. I really should. I should have tattooed on my wrist because I feel like I referenced Beth’s episode so many times because she does over 70 events. And she’s got people who are on wait lists to do events at her store. Like That is an incredible example of leveraging your physical space.

And making more money out of that and being creative and being a hub and connecting with the community. She does some really smart things. So go listen to that episode.

Final thoughts for this week

Crystal Vilkaitis: But that’s my thought for today for this after the show is I really want you to spend some time. There were so many journal prompts.

There’s so many opportunities for you to really have some self growth through this episode. And I think that’s one of Kareen’s superpowers. She’s definitely helped me in my own personal self growth, like personally growing as well as professionally. And so take advantage of her knowledge that she shares on this episode and the prompts and the things that she’s telling you to do on getting really clear and living in that creativity and leveraging it. And owning it. I want you to focus on that.

And there’s a journal prompt that we talk about in this week’s episode. And she says ask it every morning for five days, over and over again. So I want to know, are you doing that journal prompt? Did you do it this morning? Are you going to do it tomorrow?

If you’re not, why, what are you waiting for? Carve out 15 minutes. Ask that question. I’m being mysterious for a reason. I want you to go listen to the actual episode because you’re going to get so much out of Kareen like so much. So go listen to hear what prompt I’m talking about and then I want you to put on your calendar or an alarm in your phone that every morning wake up 15 minutes early.

That’s it. 15 minutes for five days. And I want you to ask that question to yourself and I want you to journal and I want you to see what you get out of it, because I bet you’ll get some good stuff out of that and make space for your creativity. It’s so important.

Coming up Next Week

Crystal Vilkaitis: Next week’s episode is Paul Erickson with Management One. Now, here’s the deal. If these next things are keeping you up at night. You gotta listen to this episode.

These things are the election year, the cost of goods increasing and inflation, and the economy. And if these things, and of course, they’re all tied together and, these are heavy topics, they can be stressful. We did a survey at crystal media and so many of our retailers said that those three things are what they’re worried about, what keeps them up.

And I turned to a pro Paul Erickson who’s been dealing with this, he’s been through many cycles. Of this in the retail space, he provides such incredible feedback and support for you in that episode. You’re not going to want to miss it. In fact, it should be an episode you’re sharing with like every retailer, you know, so we can have some sense of relief and calmness.

And understand what we do with what’s going on in our world today, because I do understand. And I don’t take it lightly that things are heavy, heavier for some than others. And this episode is going to help you navigate the times that we’re in right now. So make time for that episode. It is so good.

Join the Facebook group. Say hello. Remember, I’m rooting for your success and have a great week ahead. Bye.