Using AI for Your Retail Systems – After the Show

Using AI for Your Retail Systems (After the Show)

Crystal Vilkaitis: Hello, hello, and welcome to after the show, I’m your host, Crystal Vilkaitis. And this week’s episode with Melodie from Max Retail, what did you think? We talked about so many great things to make a retailer be successful and how to get rid of old inventory. So if you have not listened to this episode, you need to listen to it.

I feel like it’s a foundational must listen to every retailer in the world. If you are an independent retailer, even if you are a big box, it should be like a requirement to listen to this episode because there’s so many foundational things in it. As you know, in, after the shows, I’m not recapping the episode.

You need to go and listen to it to learn from my guest. But what I do here is I share my big takeaways and I had two really big takeaways while I was filming with Melodie. The first was systems. As she was talking, you can tell she is a very systemized person because she talked about having a system for checking the date of your inventory there.

It’s a very clear cut, simple process working with Max Retail. And there’s just so much. The systems to it, right? The steps to take. When she was talking about handbooks and long term thinking and setting yourself up for success and team, like there were systems in place. And I think that for small businesses, we can miss the mark on systems.

When you have a big business, there’s a lot of moving pieces. There’s a lot of employees, like in order to get to that place, you have to have systems. You can’t have people running around, not knowing what’s expected and not knowing what to do and having somebody do it this way. And somebody else does it a different way.

Like it will crumble. It will not work. And that’s why, I once heard a podcast a couple of years ago that before reaching to a million in your business, million dollars in revenue. You need to focus on sales and marketing up until that million. After a million, you need to be focusing on operations and systems.

And I think that some businesses maybe need to focus on both, take that, I’m not necessarily saying that’s exactly what I agree on. But when I heard that with the podcast, it did make a lot of sense because in the beginning you want to grow the business. You got to nail your messaging, get out there with your sales and marketing, have a son, have a sales system, have a funnel.

How are you generating those leads? How are we really building our brand and building the awareness, building traffic? That’s your big focus as you grow the business. And then as you get bigger, you’re going to need some systems to support that growth. Now, I just say that it’s not necessarily what I believe.

I do believe it, but I will say that at Crystal Media, there was a little bit of both. Like we definitely put some systems in place early. We weren’t at the million yet, but it freed up a lot of time. Like it created more time management because there was some more systems in place. And then as we grew, it was just sort of easy to kind of grow past that million because some of those systems were in place.

So that’s my thing. The whole key here is your business needs systems. And I can just tell, I don’t know Melodie really at all. I mean, we met one time at a conference in San Diego or Coronado in June of 2024, but just having this conversation with her, she is very systematized. And I think there’s a lot of opportunities for retailers to create systems to save you a lot of hassle.

And we talk about some of those systems in the episode. So that’s where you definitely need to listen to that. If you’re struggling with your systems, we talk about AI in this episode as well, but you can go to AI and ask it. Like share, this is my store. This is what I sell. If you have a ecomm or not, sell on social or not, brick and mortar or not. Give all the logistics, your team size, revenue size. Give it information and say, what kinds of systems do I need in place to save me time?

Generate leads. Sell, create funnels, inventory, checking my inventory dates, like all the things. What things do I need to those big tasks, those things that you work on every single week and month. What are those things? What systems do I need? Because sometimes if you’re not a system person like Melodie, then we might be like, I don’t know.

Like we just kind of are doing the thing. We’re not even thinking about creating systems or any kind of automation or processes to really save us hassle and time and frustration. So you can use AI to create that. Also, you can go into the Rooted in Retail Facebook group. You can ask our members in there, what kinds of systems are you doing?

How are you doing XYZ? Do you have a simpler way for this? You know, if there’s an area where you’re really struggling or a pain point that you have, it might just need a system. You might just need that. And that can really help alleviate that stress or that time that you’re spending on it.

The other takeaway I had in this episode was innovation. Melodie was a rep, then a retailer, and then created a software to really support retailers in selling their old inventory or inventory they can’t move. She solved a problem. And that’s often what happens with businesses, right? How they are created is that we did something, we created something to solve a problem and issue a challenge that we had, and now we have a separate business.

I just feel called to say like, if you are in your store , or even in your personal life or whatever this looks like for you. But if there is something that you really want to do, that solves a problem. It’s solved a problem for you and it can solve a problem for somebody else.

Start those stages of what does that look like if you moved more into that, if you did develop that, if you worked on that. Because I just think about Melodie and I know a lot of us will have these ideas, but we won’t really do anything with it. We can have limiting beliefs or oh, I could never do that.

And I understand sometimes maybe you just don’t want it. Yeah, right. like we have some really good ideas and we’re like, I just don’t have the energy or interest in doing that. And that’s okay. But this is more for the person who’s like, I’m really wanting to do this, but I’m having some fear around it, or I don’t even know how to get started.

Then I think reaching out to Melodie and maybe she can offer some tips or advice or a system for you on how she got started. Talking to AI. Hey, you know, I’m wanting to create something totally different. Where do I start doing some research, contacting people who are in the industry, similar industries.

Just start your initial information gathering to see what it takes. Don’t be afraid to try something and create something because I just think of what Melodie created. And I think she’s got a potentially really big business, and I can’t wait to see them grow and expand and just help so many more retailers in the world.

And I’m just really grateful that she went out and did it and built it. And getting investors and is just growing this business. Those were my two takeaways, just that importance of really following that thought, that idea that you have that can really solve a problem for somebody.

And then systems as much as you can. Can really save you a lot of time and hassle and frustration. So I hope that you got a lot of value out of Melodie’s episode. Let me know what your takeaway was. Go to the Facebook group, search for Rooted in Retail on Facebook and share your big takeaway from today.

And remember that I am rooting for your success. I will see you on the next episode. Have a great weekend, bye.