https://www.listennotes.com/e/e2fbb6cc111e40dda3ae27d37c44c24d

Hey there. Katie has been a maker for years and when she joined my Inner Circle program, she was able to transition the bulk of her sales from Etsy to her own store. That was a big success. And once she did that, she dug in, she did the work, and she actually reached her goal of $100,000 in sales a year. But after hitting that milestone, Katie really wanted more. And for a few years, her growth felt really slow. And it wasn't until she made a few what we call mindset shifts in her thinking that everything came together and she was able to really scale her high touch business. I know you're going to love this, especially if you're a maker, but it's really good information for everyone. So come listen. Katie's kind of genius. I'll see you on the inside.

Welcome to the E Commerce Roadmap, the podcast for store owners who are growing their sales without spending a fortune on ads. Each week you'll learn actionable strategies and tips that will fast track the growth and profitability of your E Commerce business. So buckle up and join your host, Susan Bradley as we dive into the work that will grow your sales this year.

Hey, welcome back. I am so, I'm so excited actually to record this episode because this could be me 20 years ago, this guest and I'm, I want you to meet her. Her name is Katie Butler. She's the owner of Miss Monogram Kids. She has made huge progress in the last few years. She's a member of our Mastermind. She is a multi six figure store owner and she's just wicked smart and we were laughing about manifesting things because both of us are so analytical and so black and white. We don't even know what people are talking about. We don't when they talk about that. So Katie, I am so glad that you are here and I can't wait for you to share a little bit about your journey and your reflection on your journey with, with everybody who's listening. Because it's so practical, it's so smart, it's so real and you have some amazing strategies going forward that I want people to, to hear about. But here's what made me laugh is that I, I said to Katie at our Mastermind meetings, I ask all of our members to write a headline and really I asked that to see what' their business, what's what they've had some success with. And Katie, who's wicked smart and did this on purpose, gave me a headline that said how I stopped flying by the seat of my pants and got Things done. And I thought, okay, she doesn't want to do a presentation tomorrow. That's quite clear.

It's all about the hook, right? You got to give a good hook.

Yes, some people did vote for you to do a presentation, so you did dodge a bullet. But I thought, oh, no, I have watched this journey firsthand, and it is so good because it's so normal. And it's almost like you could be talking to your or listening to your future self when you listen to Katie, because her situation was very normal of common and. But what's not common is the progress that you've made in the last few years. It's pretty amazing. So I'm just wondering if you could start by just sharing a little bit about Ms. Monogram kids, how you started, like, when you started and really what the business looked like at this pivotal time. When you really started, you stopped flying by the seat of your pants. Let's go there.

Okay. Thank you so much for having me. I need to apologize in advance for the banging in the background. One of the. One of the big leaps I took is I've moved into a warehouse this year, and so the noise comes with the territory. But so Ms. Monogram Kids, I Monogram children's clothing. And it started very small when I had my own children and started doing this for myself, and then Neighbors Ask and Etsy Store and all of that. And when I first came to you, Susan, I think I had just built a website. I was on Shopify, and I think I was under the impression that if I built the website, build it, and they will come. And nobody was coming. Like, nothing was happening with that website. And I didn't really know what to do next. Traffic Boot camp popped up on my Facebook feed, or somebody mentioned it in a group or something, and that's how I found my way to you. And so then I started driving traffic. I started emailing. I started doing all of the things that you teach. And my business grew and grew, but it was growing very slowly. Some people might say that it was growing fast because it was growing 20% year over year. But 20% of not much is still not much. And I really wanted faster growth. So once I got up to 100,000 in sales for the year that I joined the Mastermind, and I feel like that was really a pivotal point for me. And when it really took off, I.

I want to talk about what I saw from my perspective. I'd love you to share a little more about that, because I think one of the biggest, hardest decisions you Made was a few years ago when you, you had this room in your house where you were doing all the embroidery. And one of the things you said to me is, I'm really worried that I'm going to kill my mom because.

I had her working so hard.

And we talked about it and you really took a huge leap of faith and you, you moved your embroidery, your production, you handed it off to an outside company. Do you want to just talk about that? Like how hard that decision was and what happened?

Yeah. So I knew that I needed more time. I knew that I was spending too much time on the sewing and the packing and that while important, that has to get done, it's not what grows my business. I wanted more time to spend on marketing and strategy. And so I needed something. And there was lots of talk in the inner circle that time about 3pls and I think 3pls are great for people. But my setup was a little bit different. I. We have to touch every single piece. We monogram every single piece. But I thought, if other people can have this free PL situation, why can't I? I'm not the only person in the world that embroiders. So I found another business that was much larger than mine that was doing embroidery. And I. We worked it out. Essentially this was not a service that existed. And she priced it for me. I said that was fine. I put all of my inventory in my minivan and drove it to her warehouse in South Carolina. And when I first got there, I was so hopeful. I thought it was going to be so great. Her warehouse was so much bigger. She had three times as many machines as I did. She had full time employees. So I was really very hopeful. But in the end, it didn't work out. It turned out that I was still doing a lot of the work in that I was still creating the designs and emailing them over to her, which took a lot more time every day than I had anticipated that it would. Some things were lost in translation. And so the final product wasn't quite what I needed it to be either. But what ultimately made me pull it back was the cost. It was just too expensive. I was essentially giving to her all of my profits. And I don't blame her for that. She has to make money and she priced appropriately. But it wasn't sustainable for me. And it was at that point that I realized that I needed to go get all my stuff and I needed to bring it all back to my house, which I did. And I gave myself three months to do it myself. And recoup some of my costs. But then I'd had to get over myself and I had to hire help.

Yeah, you did that to try and buy back some time this year and to get it out of your house and all the things. And. And how long was that process, Farming it out and bringing it back? How much time was that?

I researched it for a long time, probably three or four months before I finally found a situation that I thought would work. And then I was with her for nine months.

Nine months. So a year it was.

Yeah.

And how did you feel when you brought it all back? Did you feel defeated or were you. Were you already onto, okay, what's my next solution?

I knew that I had to do it because I was bleeding money when I had two machines, when I took all of my things and turned it over. And I, in the process ended up selling one of those machines, just trying. I needed capital, and I kept waiting for it to turn around and it became clear that it just wasn't going to turn around. So on that hand, I was ready to bring it back because I was ready to make money again. Because I don't work for fun. I work for money. So that on that hand, I felt good. On the other hand, I was overwhelmed all over again because I knew I had all these orders. I was grateful to have the orders. I was grateful to have a business that brought in orders, but that was work for me to do and it was going to take me away from the tasks that I knew would really push my business forward.

The typical maker problem, I need sales, but the sales take up all my time.

Yes. Yeah, that's exactly the maker problem.

Like, I feel like that was a hard lesson and it could have worked really well, but it didn't. And I feel like there's be a lot of people that would just throw up their hands when that happened and accept their fate or close their business. And then what I saw from you was so remarkable in that I've known you for so long, we talk casually. Whenever I get a chance to talk to you, I'm excited to do that. And I knew that you really didn't want to hire people to come into your house. You really felt like that wasn't something that you wanted to do, but you did it.

I had to. And what was actually the turning point is in the Mastermind chat, we talk very honestly about numbers. And somebody had come in and talked about this great sales event that they were running and gave the numbers, and my jaw just hit the ground. I was Like, I am so out of my league here. And I reached out to you and said, I want that, but I don't think. I don't know how to get there. And you were the one that said to me that it was sales weren't my problem. You were like, if you had these sales, you wouldn't be able to handle it. Like, you have to get your structure set up. And that's when I realized I had to get over myself and I had to hire people. Because you were absolutely right. There was no way that I do 10 times the work that I was currently doing by myself in my basement. And I'd thrown up all these walls about all the reasons I couldn't have somebody. It's. My basement's not very nice. It would be an inconvenience to my family. They'll have to go upstairs to use the restroom. Like, all these things. And finally I was just like, you know what? It doesn't matter. Like, I have to have it.

And so I got it, and everything changed.

Everything did change. But what I learned is it only changes for a minute. I hired a girl, and she came in and she was packing orders, and it was fantastic. And I, Instead of spending 40 hours at my machine, I was now spending 20 hours at my machines, and I had 20 hours to do all the other things. Inevitably, all those other things totally worked. I increased my sales volume, and then I was back to being at the machines 40 hours a week because we had increased orders. So it was fantastic, but only for a minute. It became another problem to solve.

Yes. I just love the way you position that. I really do. Because some people would look at it as a failure and you have just normalized it.

I don't want to fail. I want to keep going. So I have to solve the problem.

Maybe a failure was the wrong word too. Maybe it's okay. Now I'm stuck again when you just normalized it. Like, it's so smart. So you hired a person, you did the work you knew you needed to do, and then you were back on the machines. And was that around the same time? Because one of the other big moves that stopped flying by the seat of your pants is you stopped focusing on acquiring customers for all the things and instead shifted your attention to acquire customers for your bloomer box, your subscript monthly subscription. So did that happen, that employee happen after you started acquiring those customers or before?

No, it happened before. And I actually had an employee probably for a full year before I started focusing on the box.

So tell me the, aha, moment when you just decided, hey, I'm gonna grow this box because we'd have thoughts about it. But I still remember you. We came home, I think we were in the Dominican retreat and you came back and you sent me this message. And it's like the math. And I'm like, oh, I like the math.

Yeah, I like the math too. So I guess that I say it was a year before I started focusing on the box, but that's actually not true. It was a year before it started working. Really?

Okay, can everybody just listen to that? It was here before it started working. So you focused on it and did the things for a whole year before you hit the thing.

Exactly. I had to try a lot of things. So I started with what I knew which was emailing. And so I put it into my monthly calendar that I was going to send an email about the box every or every month. And then I built a pop up just for the box and a separate flow just for the box. And I had my VA start posting about the box on social media every week. Like I was focusing on it, but I still wasn't seeing the numbers really jump and grow until we were in the Dominican and I looked at my numbers and the numbers that I looked at were the people that were going through the box flow in Klaviyo, like the number of people that were opting in on that pop up and then going through the flow and purchasing. And I realized that I had a really high conversion rate from that flow. I don't remember the numbers but I want to say it was like 12 or 14% and a really high opt.

In rate on that pop up.

Oh, the opt in on the pop up is double what it is on my like site. Wide pop up. I think even today it's dropped back a little bit but I think even today it's nine point.

Amazing.

So my aha moment in the Dominican Republic was I have to get more people on that landing page because when I get people on that landing page, they sign up for the pop up, they go through the flow and they purchase. And so it was at that point that I said my emailing and my social media is not enough. I needed to put all of my ad budget behind it. And so that's what I did. I worked with Kathy. We figured out what we were going to put out there in front of people. We did a lot of tests and then I put my entire ads budget behind it and it finally started growing. At that point when we were in the Dominican, my I was at like 70 subscribers a month. And my goal was to be to 200 by September. And I blew that out of the water. And by the end of the year I was over 400.

Amazing. So good. I hope you're so proud of yourself together.

But it took time.

It takes time. That's what I love about a couple of things. One is that you're so transparent about it taking. You had to try a lot of things and so you faced a lot of that didn't really work and then still dug deep and tried again. So there was that. And then what I loved is when you all of a sudden had the aha moment and looked at that data and realized that what you what was working was right in front of you and you just had to put gas on the fire. And so that pop up had probably been. I think it was 11 something percent. You told me it was converting at. But it had been converting at that probably for a long time. And you just hadn't focused hard enough to analyze it, which is so common. Often our answer is right in front of us. And I know that you like, you're good at this stuff. Like you're not afraid of the numbers. You actually love the numbers. So it just happens because we're busy.

And it also happens because there are a lot of variables. We talk to other businesses and it's so interesting to hear what works for them or this process worked, but doesn't mean that it's necessarily going to work for you. It's like you can't. There's not a magic bullet where everybody needs to do this one thing and they're going to get these same results. There are a couple different things that you have to look at and try. I'm sure there are people out there where their social media was their silver bullet, but it wasn't mine.

Yeah. Yeah. And it has to be aligned with your skill set and what you like to do too.

But I do think it's interesting that while the box grew and it was fantastic. I was so excited. I'd never seen growth like that before. It was amazing and it was so fun. But it a hundred percent changed me to those sewing machines again. Because my order volume exploded and suddenly my employees became the next problem to solve.

Yeah. So at the time when it really started exploding, you had one person.

I did. And we were still in my basement.

Still in your basement. And then what happened?

So I decided that we needed another. We hired her. And I'll never forget the first day that we had to pack the boxes. And I had both of the girls there. They literally. We were falling over one another in boxes, and I was like, oh, my God, somebody's gonna get hurt. Like, we have to leave. Like, we can't be here anymore. And so that's when I really got serious about finding a space. That's a whole other thing. But if I take it back a little bit, when I was first considering employees, I talked about the barriers being not wanting to be in my basement and all of that. But if we're being honest, the real barrier was I was already not paying myself as much as I wanted to. I felt like I couldn't afford to pay somebody else. I. That just. I didn't understand how the math would work on that. And I am a very mathematical.

You're a math major, aren't you?

I was for a minute, yeah. I didn't finish as a math major, but yes. And so I. I went at it from a math perspective, and what I did was I have loosely followed profit first for all of this time. So I did some research about how much should you pay employees? Like, how much of your budget should go towards employees. And I found a figure that was like, if you go under 10%, like, you're not going to have enough help, but if you go over 30, that's too much of a burden, blah, blah, blah. So I decided that 15% was a number that I was willing to commit to my employees. And kind of the aha moment on that for me was that that number changes over time. It's not like I've got the money to hire this one employee. So I'm going to hire that one employee, and I'm going to be done. And that's going to save all my problem or solve all my problems. I now have a fund for employees, and when I have extra in that fund, that is my cue that it's time to go hire somebody else.

That is, like, one of the most brilliant things I've heard in a long time. And we had our monthly call of our mastermind group yesterday, and I like the. Everybody in our room needs to hear it, but everybody who's just you needs to hear that, because our mentality is, okay, I got a problem. I need to hire someone. I hire someone, they're done. And what you said to me earlier, too, because I was like, whoa, Katie, that's brilliant. You gotta share that. Is that what you realized, like, your mindset shift? Oop, Mindset shift was that, hey, I'm actually never done hiring people. I can't say that. Problem solved. I've plugged that hole.

That's very true. Because the reality of it is, if I am at my sewing machines, I am not building my business. The orders are important. They have to go out, but they do not have to be done by me. And when I step in and do that, the other things that are more important get set aside. And honestly, that was a really hard thing to do as a maker, because I started this business as a maker. It was all me. I was product development, I was making the products, I was marketing, I was accounting. I was everything. And that was satisfying, the fact that this business was growing. And it was all because of my efforts. But at some point, it grew to the point that I realized that's not what my business needs for me anymore. Yeah, I don't need to be the maker of the things. I need to be the maker of the business. I need to be the maker of the systems that make the business work. And if I don't have enough employees and I'm at those sewing machines, our progress stops. Yeah, we don't grow anymore. And that's where my focus needs to.

Be when you make all these decisions. Because the other big decision was, I remember talking with you about it is, can I afford to move this out of the house? And all of this, whether it's employees or moving your business, it's all like a chicken or the egg. It's, can I afford to? Can I afford not to? But the way you've set it up in my mind, like the thinking that you're doing around this, and particularly that 15% for employee fund, that gives you a very clear line to know when it's a yes and when it's a no. And then add that to the. Just because you have the money there and you don't have a pressing need today for someone, you're going to just pocket that money or let that watch that money grow, you're saying, no, I know that it's time to go hire someone because I'm one person away from being back on those sewing machines.

Exactly that. And it takes time to train people. And I don't want to. I want to give myself a little bit of leeway. So if I can get somebody in and train them before we have another explosion of growth, if I can afford it. Yeah. And let's be honest, even if I don't have sewing for them to do, I can always find something for them to do.

Yeah, there's always something. All those years, I still remember so like you're one of the smartest people in the room, for sure, hands down. And.

But I, I don't. That's very nice of you to say, but I do not feel that way.

You are. And I know it just drove you crazy to think why I have all the things and I'm feel so stuck. Because you were stuck at that first a hundred thousand dollars for like ages. Right? Like you'd grow 10 grand or. And yeah, it's 10% or 20%, but it's just not enough. And do you think that the reason that you have had this huge growth in the last two years is due to the way you're thinking about things more than anything else?

Like, I, I think yes, I do. I think that I have redefined my role in my company and I think that is really what has changed it. Because as I said, when I first started, I was doing everything. I was designing the products or I was sourcing the designs, I was making them, I was packing them, I was shipping, I was doing everything. And now I think way more about who can I get to do that for me. Like I'm, I don't even, I don't even design my bloomer boxes anymore. I've hired someone to design them. And you know what? It's better because she's better at it than I am and she's doing it just for me. So they're exclusive. It's not something anybody can get anywhere else.

Yeah.

So I think, yes, my mindset has. There it is again. Mindset.

I know we're laughing about.

Mindset changed a little bit. I'm not as focused on the day to day grind of the business. I'm more focused on where do I want to take it and how am I going to get there.

So good. So that's really what's changed is you feel you've gone from feeling stuck to feeling I have options. Here are all the things I could do and here's how I would get there. It's just. Am I saying that well, for you, you are.

I just, I think that instead of being, I think I'm not a maker anymore. I'm a business owner now. And that was the biggest change, I think.

So can we just quickly, for anyone who's in this place where you were before you did this, how did you get your head around being able to afford a location, like an independent location, your own warehouse? How did you talk yourself into that?

I am a numbers person, definitely. I like the numbers. And I, I say I loosely follow profit. First, I have all the way. Profit first works. If anybody doesn't know it's. You take percentages and allocate them to different expenses in your business. So there's a percentage for owners pay, there's a percentage for operating expenses, on and on. And basically what I did is I just carved out what I was putting towards the bulk operating expenses and I just carved it out for rent and kind of earmarked it. And now I have a rent account and I do everything by percentages. So I set my percentage based on. I looked for spaces and had to get an idea of what it was going to cost. And then I realized that my cost was going to be about 8% of my profit first percentages. So now I have an 8% account. And as my sales grow up and I have more money, 8% is more. That's when I know I'll be ready to get a larger space or can I afford a larger space?

So good. The other thing we talked about, and I don't want to let you go without you sharing this because this is just another thing that I think is so strategically smart and safe at the same time. And it was what you talked about with your going over your numbers quarterly and your own compensation. I just have to share with everyone because it's so darn funny. Katie's big goal is to earn, earn more than her husband, to be the top dog.

I do like to be the top dog.

I know you do. Me too.

Yeah. So it all goes back to profit first again. So I have an allocation. I have the percentage that I pay myself and it's set aside every week when I look at my sales and move it over. But basically the way that I account for that money is I look at my sales for the last 12 months and I base what my salary is going to be off of that. And I revisit it every three months. So it's been really exciting since the box has started growing every three months. When I go back and revisit it, I'm like, oh, I can pay myself more. And the money's already sitting there in the account because it's been accruing for the last three months. And it really just is a, it's, it's a good feeling because when my business is doing better, I feel like I should be doing better too. Like I don't want to give everything back to the business. Could I grow faster if I did more with ads? Maybe. But it's more important for me to be paid well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because you spend lots of years not being paid well and you at heart are a business person. Like.

I work for money.

Yeah, yeah.

That's why I'm here.

Yeah. And a big benefit is that you love it and it's flexible, all those things. But I think that's really smart. If you. We'll put the. In the show notes. We'll put the link to the profit first book. I think it's a good, easy read and I think it's okay to tailor it to you and your business. But I do love. I love it too. We use it loosely as well. And it is really great to see that money accrue in those accounts. Like, for me, one of the things shocker, because I'm not a great detail person is long before I had people doing all my books and all that stuff, I got so many fines for filing government stuff, late coins. And one of my accounts is a tax account. I put money every month in my tax account. And to look at the balance of my tax account and know that I never have to put my taxes on the line of credit or like that money is always there. And I've been doing that since right when I owned. We squeak. I started that. And you've just done that with your own pay.

Yeah, I do it with everything. I do it with my tax account as well. And the thing that I think is most helpful about it is rather than seeing this one bank balance that's higher, that's inflated, you can actually look at the sub accounts and know what you actually have to spend.

Yeah.

Because I don't have that tax money to spend. It's already. It's already meant for something else. So I can look at the much smaller operating expenses account and know what I really have to work with. Yeah, it helps with inventory, too, knowing how much I've got to spend.

Oh, yeah. Because that's where we all are inclined to spend our money. So if I asked you to think about somebody who was where you were when you were in your house, still doing the sewing, if I asked you to give that person advice, knowing what you know now, what would you tell them?

You can't do it all by yourself. You can, but you're putting up a wall and you are preventing your own growth. You're getting in your own way. There comes a point when you need the help and your role needs to.

Change really good and qualify that with. It will take longer than you think. You'll try a lot of things that don't work. You might have to do some Things that you don't want to do. Let somebody use your bathroom.

Yes. Yeah. And it's a learning. There's a huge learning curve and nobody has all the answers. You have to try a bunch of stuff and see what works and you'll hit on something that works.

Yeah. You're also really good at asking, like, just identifying the problem and then going out and asking for help with a solution. You're good at that, too.

You always say it's just a problem to someone. That is so true. Because it's really easy to get overwhelmed and think, oh, my God, this isn't working. My sales are down, or whatever it is. But you just have to pinpoint what the problem is and then solve that one thing. You don't have to save your business every day of the year. You just have to do that one thing.

Yeah. And it's not. Whatever's happening to you is not happening because of some terrible, deep, dark, personal bad quality you have. Or you're just not good at stuff that's. Yeah, but I know you're really good at that. Where can I send people if they want to see more of you? Where do you want them to go?

Yeah. The website is missmonogramkids.com and I'm Ms. Monogram Kids on all the social stuff. But I don't do my social stuff, so you'll be talking to my va. If you message me there. I am in the inner circle, though.

You are. And. And we should talk about. You've got a new subscription launching soon.

I do. I do. I've had bloomers for a long time and now we're going to try the T shirts. Excited to see how it goes.

Yeah. And it's funny, just for everyone else who's listening, who sometimes struggles. I just want to share with you that I said to Katie a couple of days ago, I'm excited to hear about the new T shirt subscription that you're launching and what your plans are. And you came right back to me and said, I'm building a waiting list first. Like you're not just coming up with an idea and lobbing it out there and expecting people to buy it, even though you have all these customers already, you've got a plan.

Yeah. And the wait list makes me not be able to take it back. Too true.

Yeah.

Once I put it out there, it's out there. And now I've got this. I've got this timeline. I've got this deadline. I got to get everything done before we open the door.

I'M excited about it for you. Anyway, thank you so much for all you shared. I think you will inspire a lot of people. It was a really generous share so I so much. But yeah, we have to do it again sometime for sure. Yeah. See you soon. Hey, if your sales are slower than you want them to be and you're not sure what to do next to reach your sales goals, I want you to head on over to the Show Notes and grab a link to get your copy of my new course, Conversion School. It's absolutely free and inside the lessons you will learn our step by step process to grow your sales without spending a fortune on risky ad strategies and without discounting your products. The strategy that you will learn in Conversion School works for e commerce stores of all stages. You'll use your store's data so if you're starting out, you'll learn how to get consistent sales every day. And if you're an established store looking to really scale your sales, you'll use your data to learn how to achieve significant sales growth every month, month over month. So head on over to the Show Notes, grab the link and get your copy now.