In today’s episode you’ll learn:
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How she went from making keyrings in her garage to a team of six
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The strategies she used for getting the most traffic and sales on Etsy
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Pricing products in a competitive market
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Insight into the realities of running a business and being a Mum
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How she manages her team and deals with delegation
Where to find Nikki and the podcasts she mentions on the show:
Where to find Nikki
https://kellectivebynikki.com.au/
Podcasts Nikki Recommended
Transcript:
Dahna Borg:
Hi, and welcome to the Bright Minds of eCommerce Podcast. I’m Dahna, founder of Bright Red Marketing, your e-commerce advertising specialists. We focused primarily on Facebook and Instagram ads, driving direct return on investment only for eCommerce stores. I started this podcast to share the inner workings of the eCommerce world, share success stories, as well as advice from experts. So whether you’re thinking of starting your first e-com store or you’re ready to scale to $500,000 months, this podcast is for you. So let’s get started. Welcome to episode three.
Dahna Borg:
Hi, and welcome to the Bright Minds of eCommerce Podcast. Today we are here with Nikki. Nicki is the director of Kellective by Nikki, a personalised jewellery brand. They hand-make jewellery that is unique to you. No two pieces are ever the same. And with the dates, names, or initials that matter the most to you, hand-stamped onto your necklace, bracelet, earrings, or rings, your jewellery will tell your story. Hi Nikki, we’re so happy to have you.
Nikki Kelly:
Hello, I’m so happy to be here.
Dahna Borg:
So tell us a little bit about how Kellective by Nikki came to be.
Nikki Kelly:
There’s sort of two separate parts to it. So the first part is, I’ve always been a bit creative. I’ve always wanted to do something on top of my normal job. I used to work in a bank in a corporate environment and it was awesome. I really liked it, but it was sort of … I really wanted to do something on top of that as well. This is before I had children, when I had a lot of time. And then I was 38 weeks pregnant, really looking forward to maternity leave and I’ve got made redundant from my corporate job and suddenly I thought, everything that I foreseen happening.
Nikki Kelly:
I was going to be on maternity leave for nine months, I was going to come back and just slot right into my normal job, all of that sort of disappeared and because I get quite bad anxiety, I didn’t want to start at a new work place with building connections, establishing a network of people that in years knew what I was like and knew that you don’t call in sick every day because I’d have a new baby and yeah, I’ve got really nervous about all that stuff.
Nikki Kelly:
I’d never had a baby before and I just heard that they were sick all the time so I didn’t know what to do and I felt right, okay, so I’m going to start something at home and I want to earn $200 a week. So I was like, that was my goal and I thought $200 a week, that’s 10 grand a year, that’s like our emergency funds, we might go on holiday. That’s sort of covers that stuff. And from there I sort of just started. I knew what I wanted to make because I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I couldn’t afford to start making jewellery. It was too big of a risk sort of.
Nikki Kelly:
So what I did instead was I made little keyrings and a little other bits and pieces, that was a lot lower value. So sort of lower value to get started, and then I did that for 12 months and saved up all of the little bits of profits that I made from that and then started jewellery and yes. So that’s sort of how it was born. Pretty much because I was too anxious to get a job. I guess that’s the real reason.
Dahna Borg:
I like it. As someone with anxiety and depression as well I totally understand.
Nikki Kelly:
Yes it does it, overtakes your mind, yeah.
Dahna Borg:
So how did you progress then from keyrings and things to the incredible jewellery products that you have now? Was it just like … how did you transition customers from that?
Nikki Kelly:
So originally I had an Etsy store and I had everything on there. So I used to make like keyrings, bookmarks. I used to make that little shoe tags and stuff because my mom, she runs quite a lot of marathons and she wanted … she was like, “Oh can I put something on my shoes?” So pretty much I just made all little bits and pieces for people, and then when I started jewellery, I took a few days on making stuff, photographing stuff, right and all of the listings and stuff and put them on Etsy along with all of these other bits and pieces. And I honestly thought, I was like, okay, I’ll hit submit on this product and people are just going to start ordering. That’s what I thought. But it didn’t quite work like that. I think the next order that … I was getting a few orders a day from the other bits and pieces and then the next order was not jewellery, and then the next order was not jewellery, and then the next order was not jewellery.
Nikki Kelly:
And then finally someone ordered a necklace and I was like, “Oh this is amazing.” And then I panicked because I’d never actually sort of … I had only made for myself and friends and family and stuff. And I was like, a higher of value item. And my husband would come into my workspace, which was just the garage at the time, and he would say like, “Oh, so someone’s buying this from you?” And he would even be amazed. So I was like, “Yeah, I guess amazed myself.” So at first I just tried to sell both of them, and then when it got to the first Christmas on … I started this mid year and as it got closer towards Christmas and the sales were picking up and I couldn’t manage it all myself, I started to drop off what I didn’t want to sell anymore.
Nikki Kelly:
And then from after Christmas, I thought I’ll just going to sell just jewellery. And so that’s what I did. And I sort of had all these listings on Etsy as a backup in case I didn’t get busy enough. But luckily, I’d never had to use them. And I think it’s been maybe three years now. This will be, yeah, three years this Christmas and I think I only just deleted it, those listings off Etsy just a few weeks ago maybe. It was still , I still thought, what if nobody ever buys a necklace again?
Dahna Borg:
Yeah. So you obviously started out on Etsy. How did you get your first real customers rather than the friends and family customers?
Nikki Kelly:
So on Etsy, it’s a marketplace and it’s on. It’s like a website, just if you don’t know what Etsy is, it’s a handmade marketplace. So similar to eBay, things like that, but everything is either handmade or vintage and so you can go there and you can search for what it is that you’re looking for. And I guess I was just relying on that. I was relying on that traffic to begin with. So the traffic that Etsy already bring in and then just hoping that people found me in the searches.
Nikki Kelly:
There’s a lot of work behind that with, yes, search engine optimisation even on Etsy. And so I did a lot of research. You have to do a lot of research around all of these things to get the most out of the platform that you using. So I would spend hours reading forums, Googling stuff, watching YouTube videos in Facebook groups and things.
Nikki Kelly:
And from there I’d sort of … like with the jewellery, I’d started to have an Instagram account. I just turned my own Instagram, my personal one into my … also if you go back far enough, you’ll just see photos of me and the kids, I think these are over a thousand photos now, so you’d have to scroll quite far. But I sort of started doing that when I started doing jewellery. And so gradually I’ve been building up my own traffic.
Nikki Kelly:
So from Etsy you can have a website, you can pretty much just duplicate your Etsy store into a website. It’s called Paton and it’s a function that Etsy offer. I don’t know if they still offer it or if it’s the same. I’m not sure. But I did that. So that served its purpose for a little while. And it sort of proved that the majority of people were now not finding me on Etsy, they were finding me through the links that I was putting out there.
Nikki Kelly:
So the ones from my Facebook and from my Instagram. And then based on that, I then closed that store. I stopped using the Paton and just went back to a normal Etsy store and I’ve built my own website. And I remember putting it on Instagram like, hey, I’ve got a new website. Everyone go and check it out. I’m so excited. And somebody ordered within half an hour and messaged and were like, “Yay, I’m the first order on your new website.” And I was just like, oh my God, people are actually looking at what I’m doing and people are reading these captions that’s taken me two hours to write and overthinking everything. But it was quite amazing. So since then I haven’t ever looked back. I do still have an Etsy store because I figure why not. Everything is already there.
Nikki Kelly:
And I guess it’s just another channel to sell on and it takes care of itself. You don’t really have to do anything to it. So it’s sort of just brings in, it might bring in like 20 sales a week or it might bring in one sale a week, but it’s better than nothing. So yeah. And then we have our own store that’s separate that I built. So from that first store that we’ve been sort of uped our game a bit and then made it better and made it better and made it better again. And at the minute we’re actually behind the scenes doing a full overhaul of our website right now. But that won’t come out until the new year, yeah.
Dahna Borg:
That’s exciting. So I know you said that you did a lot of research and optimising that Etsy site. Are there any maybe like one or two big tips that you could share for those that are on Etsy and maybe not getting the traffic that they are after?
Nikki Kelly:
Oh, for sure. So probably the best thing … so Etsy allows you to have tags and you can have up to 13 tags on your items. And so you’ve got to use all of those tags and you’ve got to have them relevant to obviously what the product is and think about. … So if you think about what you’re selling and then think about what things people would type in to search for that. So if you were selling, I don’t know like, headbands for babies, people might not type in what you would imagine them to. It might be like a first birthday gift. People might look at your baby’s headbands and think that would make a beautiful first birthday gift.
Nikki Kelly:
And so that’s the sort of things that you’ve got to try and get into those tags. And then you’ve got to try and match the tags to your description. And so I think Etsy, I can’t remember the exact number, but say it has about 170 characters for the product title and people just would use say baby headband and that’s not going to get found because that title is what connects. It’s pretty much part of the search engine, so if you type in like baby headband, first birthday headband, white, I don’t know, white organza headband, sort of detail and just keep … it sounds like you’re repeating yourself and you definitely are, but I guess that’s how you get people to find you.
Nikki Kelly:
Yeah.
Dahna Borg:
That’s a great idea.
Nikki Kelly:
So that would be my two biggest tips.
Dahna Borg:
Wonderful. Yeah, because I know that a lot of people will set up on Etsy and some people by what appears to be magic, just do really well and other people really struggle. But that makes sense. You know, there’s a lot of background, research and you know things that you can do to help with that.
Nikki Kelly:
And when you search on Etsy, if you were to search for say a baby headband, there’s going to be thousands and yours has got to come up really well. So what you can see is the photos. So the photo, you need to have clear and crisp photos. So not against say, patterned backgrounds or anything like that. They just need to look really fresh and very obviously what it is. And the other thing that I just thought of, of people in Australia is a lot of people want to search Etsy just for stuff that’s in Australia. I know I definitely do. And not everybody uses … there’s like a filter where you can see the shop location and not everybody would use that.
Nikki Kelly:
So what you could do is in your tags you can put in Australia. So if people were searching baby headband Australia, then yours would come up. Yeah, because not everybody will use those filters. So that’s just some small things. And that’s just from me using Etsy because I buy a lot on Etsy as well. And I will use the filters and the original search might list 17,000 products and then if you filter for Australia, it might only be 1000 products or 500 products and that sort of suddenly gets your competitors. It gets rid of a lot of them. So that’s another big thing just from me using Etsy that I would do.
Dahna Borg:
Yeah, I know. I do the same thing because I don’t want to pay the shipping for something from US.
Nikki Kelly:
And you know the weird times as well. And I also think like, if I’m a small business and I’m trying to support small and local, so I would rather do that myself.
Dahna Borg:
Exactly. Obviously you’re hand-making each individual piece. How do you go about managing I suppose, that workflow and customer expectations rather than people buying a necklace and expect to get shipped tomorrow, how do you kind of manage that process?
Nikki Kelly:
Oh, that’s a hard one. And I don’t think that it’s ever going to be perfect. I think that sometimes customer expectations can be really hard to manage. Obviously we will sell things that’s are sort of handmade and unique, but then the sort of people will select say, express post and expect that it’s going to be there the next day. So things that we try and do is every where that we can, we have sort of our turnaround times and so even when it goes to check out and you’ve got to choose your postage options, we’ll list them as in express post and then have in brackets plus making and dispatch time and we sort of hope that these sort of things try and filter out the miscommunications and we’ll have our turnaround times on our Instagram.
Nikki Kelly:
So even when those turnaround times go up we’ll up it on our Instagram say at Christmas and mother’s day. So we try and be very clear and we also send an email. So when you purchase the product and you get your order confirmation, we see in the order confirmation as well approximately how long it will take for us to dispatch it. We often work way ahead of our dispatch times. So I know that say today, I will work on orders that have a seven to 10 day dispatch (business days). So that can be say like a week and a half to two weeks and we’re sort of currently turning them around in about a week and even lower than that. So when we send things out in a couple of days, those will be things that were just ordered five days ago including the weekend. Yeah, so we try and always over estimate what it’s going to be and sort of, yeah.
Dahna Borg:
I suppose by doing that, when your customers get them a little bit early, that makes them a little bit happier because they were expecting it to be two weeks. If you made the full two weeks then you’ve kind of managed those expectations as best you can.
Nikki Kelly:
Yeah. And I think there is and I do it myself, everybody wants things quite quickly and I’ll order things and want it quickly as well. So I guess it’s just trying to be clear and upfront. And even like on Etsy when you get an Etsy order say, it’ll tell you how many days you’ve got to ship it. And when you’ve got like two days left to ship, it’ll turn it to red and say due in two days. But when your items take three to five days, then when you have two days left, you’re still well within your …you’re only at the start of your estimate. But I’ll panic and I’m like, oh my God, I’ve got to get this out now.
Nikki Kelly:
So it’s also try and understand yourself that you’re not running late and yeah. So whilst we try our best to get it out beforehand. If we get it out within our timeframe, then that’s perfectly good. We’re doing well. The only time where we should really panic is if we’re not. But yeah, I guess it can be hard to manage for us and for customers, but so we just try and plaster it everywhere.
Dahna Borg:
Give them all the information they can make the decision as they go.
Nikki Kelly:
Yeah, that’s right.
Dahna Borg:
I like it. So I know that pricing is a really big issue for a lot of handmade businesses. I see them all the time in Facebook groups complaining … not complaining, but questioning how people can make money and they’ve calculated it and they’re only making $5 an hour, but they don’t want to put their prices up. I know that you have now expanded your business to having staff and you’re moving into a new space so that’s really exciting. But that obviously means you’ve got your pricing, I suppose, in a really good situation. What would be maybe your suggestion to those starting out in terms of how to price your products so that you can still run a business effectively?
Nikki Kelly:
This is a really difficult question to answer and it definitely depends on the product that you’re making. And I guess because certain people value certain products say, the jewellery, we have quite competitive pricing. We actually sell say, cheaper than the big jewellery stores like the Michael Hills and stuff, we are usually cheaper than those stores and we can usually deliver faster. But when it comes to things like say, there’s a lot of handmade clothing and then things like that.
Nikki Kelly:
That’s really hard because people don’t always have the same expectations on price. I mean you go to Kmart, you can pick up a t-shirt for $5, so people think that that’s how much a t-shirt should cost. So when you’re starting out in business, you really need to look at what your brand is about, what it values, are you a sustainable sort of brand and sort of really sell those points and also look at who your customers are.
Nikki Kelly:
If you’re trying to sell to someone that wants to pay $5 at Kmart and you’re making a handmade shirt that costs $50 then you’ve got to aim towards the customer that’s got to pay for that and you’ve got to try and market it for that person as well rather than the Kmart person. And with that, you always start off … you obviously try and get great suppliers with competitive pricing and I would look into detail as to how much everything costs you. So how much time, how much you want it in an hour, look at your overall, I would always have targets.
Nikki Kelly:
And then you’ve also got to factor in time for admin. The admin in a business takes hours, hours and hours. So for instance the lead up to Christmas now, I haven’t been doing much admin because I’ve been making as well as the rest of the team because I really have to, we need everybody to make and the admin is taking forever.
Nikki Kelly:
And I think people when are starting business they don’t factor in that they need to get paid for those hours, and that’s a big thing. So before you start your business, I would really look at what it is that you want to make, you research what you can sell it for, make sure that that’s something that people are going to pay for and then almost not get sad about the people that don’t want to pay for that. So if you’re selling baby clothes, I know I buy lots of handmade baby clothes for Aspen. I also do buy things from Kmart because I can’t send Aspen to daycare in a $50 romper from like … she’s just going to trash it.
Nikki Kelly:
So yeah, I would try and stick by your values and value your time. And then I know that some brands as well, some handmade brands, especially in the say the clothing area, they’ll outsource it once they get sort of a foot in the door, they’ve got an audience, they’ve got a customer base and then start looking to outsource whatever you can.
Nikki Kelly:
So that’s what I would be doing if I was of in that space. But it is a hard question to answer and it depends what your goals are. So before you start, I would always sit down, work out how much money you want to make, what you’re going to sell, how much you can sell it for, what it costs you, what other time it’s going to put into it and factor in all these things and then see if you’ve got a product. Because you might not necessarily have something that people are going to pay for or have something that’s different enough that there’s a place for it in the market. There’s all those things, but pretty much as well if somebody says, because I’m in a lot of Facebook groups of hand made items and a lot of them will be say stay at home moms who they’re not wanting to start a big business.
Nikki Kelly:
They just want into earn a wage whilst they stay at home and work around their children. And that’s awesome, but that’s sort of, when you go into that, you’ve got to understand that that’s what your target is. And then you can obviously price things accordingly and value your time accordingly and their time’s worth just as much. But what I’m saying is that they might not want to make 50 items a week. They might just want to make a handful of things to get them through. But yeah, I would factor in all of these things before you start and look at what people are prepared to pay and work out if you can fit in that before you start.
Nikki Kelly:
And if somebody tells you that something’s too expensive, then I wouldn’t worry they’re not your customer. Because I used to get quite upset by that … not upset but even now people message me all the time, asking for a discount code all the time. And it used to be like, “Oh, do you not think that it’s worth full price?” And it’s honestly, it’s not a personal thing. It’s really hard to take your emotions away from that and yeah, but I guess that’s ultimately what you’ve got to do. There’s a lot of harsh lessons in business, a lot of harsh lessons.
Dahna Borg:
Yeah. I think you’re right there. I think it comes down to making sure you do the math and making sure that you’ve included all of the variables. Because I think a lot of people get stuck in, I’m going to make this, I only want to make a little bit of pocket money on the side, but then they don’t work out if they’re only making two or three a week with a certain profit margin and then all the admin time it works out that they’re only earning like $5 an hour and it’s just awful at that point.
Nikki Kelly:
I’ve seen exactly that in Facebook groups and it’s like, you really need to up your price then or change your product to something that’s a simpler design. It doesn’t take so long to make or something that you can outsource or yeah.
Dahna Borg:
Or find a different potential customer that’s willing to spend more on it so you can put your prices and those other things.
Nikki Kelly:
Yes, but it is also … there’s a lot of handmade stores out there that are just killing it and there people are obviously willing to pay those prices. Obviously. They’re stores out there that are killing it. I buy from them all the time. I get so sucked in by all the cute little baby things.
Dahna Borg:
I like it, there’s the kind of people that only ever want to buy things from Kmart and then there’s the people that go and spend $20,000 on a handbag, at Gucci or whatever it is. Do you know what I mean?
Nikki Kelly:
Yes.
Dahna Borg:
People will pay the price if they see the value in it, so sometimes it’s a marketing thing, sometimes it’s a value thing.
Nikki Kelly:
And it’s how then you market yourself is to like, if you are, I know this say a lot of sustainable swimwear and stuff around at the minute. That’s made from say like recycled plastics and stuff. That’s all awesome. I’m very much a person that will go to a website and read the about me section. I’ll do it all the time now. I’m never used to, but now I definitely do and sometimes after I’ve been following someone for a while on Instagram and then I read the about us, I’m sort of like, oh wow, I didn’t realise that. I would always make sure that your key messaging is just all over the place because that’s what people want to know and that’s when they can start seeing the value in things as well.
Dahna Borg:
Yeah, 100%. I know there’s a lot of handmade artists products. They end up dealing with a lot of copycats. Have you had to deal with much of that?
Nikki Kelly:
We do. This is sort of fine line between … so we make initial necklaces, we may bar necklaces. There’s a fine line between what sort of copying. I’ve questioned it myself a few times. I try and come up with unique patterns and things. We have had to send a couple of emails to people that have copied our content from our website. So they went to our website and copied and pasted everything that I’ve written. So that’s a very obvious one because you simply can’t do that. You can’t take someone else’s content and claim it is your own.
Nikki Kelly:
So there’s that part of it and then the second part of it is, in terms of designing products, so industry or in the market that I’m in, there is similar brands out there. There definitely is. There’s brands that are, I use the terms like … the same as what we sell and the same quality and then there’s brands that sells inferior quality. That sounds like not a very nice word, but that’s how to describe it. It’s maybe not the right-
Dahna Borg:
Maybe it’s the truth because you use real … like everything is-
Nikki Kelly:
We use precious metals. And so then there’s obviously companies that will sell things that just play to things that you know will last for a couple of months. And that’s again, that’s fine because there’s a market for that. There’s market for people that don’t want to sort of pay for … like the one I have the cheaper option sort of thing, and I don’t mind that. But yeah, what we sort of come up against is there’s a fine line between design, so you’ve got a necklace, you’ve put someone’s initials on it, it’s been done to death sort of thing. I wouldn’t even know where to begin on who originally started this.
Nikki Kelly:
And then, yeah. It’s trying to be different, it’s trying to make different products or even if you make the same product, trying to stand out for a reason or it’s definitely a hard one. I feel like I have completely screwed this question.
Dahna Borg:
No, not at all. It was a great answer. How did you deal with people blatantly stealing content from your website?
Nikki Kelly:
That was a hard one and it still is a hard one. We still have a couple of issues where we have even our Instagram content, things like that and if I’m honest, I don’t really know what to do because it’s not something that I would personally do. And so it’s hard to put yourself in someone else’s shoes when you can’t sort of, yeah. I can’t-
Dahna Borg:
Is this the kind of thing where you use cease and desist letters or there’s just not much you can do about it?
Nikki Kelly:
When they copy our content, I’ve never luckily … Touch Wood had to get our lawyers involved for cease and desist just yet, I generally try and send an email myself first because I think I try and be a nice person. I try and be kind and I try and always be reasonable and I think I try and give people that chance to take it-
Dahna Borg:
Do the right thing.
Nikki Kelly:
Yeah, to do the right thing and just take it down and replace it. I once had a lady that emailed asking a few questions about how I made things and she was in South Africa and I thought, Oh well that’s not my market, I don’t really get many orders for South Africa, so I’ll help her. Like why not? So I started writing back and then I thought, oh, I’ll just have a look at her website and just see where she’s up to. And she had all my photos on her website and I was like, oh dear.
Nikki Kelly:
So I deleted what I wrote and then I was like, please take down my copyright from your website. And people do, I don’t know, people don’t think about things themselves. My only advice to people is to just, even if you’re going into a market that’s saturated or there is very similar products out there, my advice is to just be yourself, be your own individual because that I’m very, I think I’m a very genuine person. I’m a very honest person and I’m a huge over sharer.
Nikki Kelly:
Anyone that follows my Instagram, they’ll see photos of me, photos of my kids, they’ll know all about my anxieties. Like what hair straighter I’m using all sorts of stuff. I really enjoy the connection with people and a hope that that comes across to our followers and our customers. I’m also a very reasonable person, I’d say.
Nikki Kelly:
And I think that being that genuine, authentic self is great. So I think that when you do something because someone else is doing it, you lose that. And that’s something that you can’t mimic, so you can’t guess somebody else’s next step. So my only advice is to just completely do your own thing. Don’t worry about what anybody else is doing. I know there’s people out there selling bar necklaces. There’s people out there selling initial necklaces… I don’t worry about what they are doing, I wish them best of luck.
Nikki Kelly:
Sometimes if somebody asks me, “Can you get this to America in however many days?” And I’ll say, “No, but there’s this person over here in America that should be able to help you.” And I wish them best of luck. I just think that being yourself and being genuine and authentic and running your own race is like the biggest part of it. And then when you successful you can say that it’s your own success and you’re not-
Dahna Borg:
Even from a marketing perspective that’s the best way of doing things anyway.
Nikki Kelly:
Yeah, and you don’t want to be like … who wants to sit and be like, oh I don’t know what to make next. Let me see what this girl over here does and then I’ll try and do the same thing. Oh, I don’t know what to write on Instagram, let me see what this girl over here has and … nobody wants to be like that. And people notice as well, because quite a lot of my followers have messaged me about a company that’s sort of done very similar things.
Nikki Kelly:
This is actually how I came across one that had taken our content from a website because a lady went to the other website and said it’s exactly the same as mine and then messaged me and that happens a lot and people notice, and this is a person that I’ve never met before, she’s just a customer, it’s not a friend customer and she’s taken the time to message me. And so people notice and people don’t like that, yeah. It’s not a selling point. So I would look at what is the selling point and what is the selling point is yourself.
Dahna Borg:
Yeah, I think that’s great advice. Just focus on what you’re doing and don’t worry about everyone else.
Nikki Kelly:
Yeah, just run your own race. People like that. And it’s honestly a much better head space to be in when you just forget about what everybody else is doing.
Dahna Borg:
I know that the last time we spoke, which I think it was a couple of years ago now, you were still just doing things on your own, it was very exciting. You were really busy. And when we talked before we started recording today, you said you’ve got a team of six now and you’re moving into commercial space. How did you find that transition from solo to running a team of staff?
Nikki Kelly:
Oh my goodness, how long have you got? I seriously struggled with it. I’m not a very good leader. I tell my entire team all the time. I’m not a very good boss. It’s sort of like the hashtag shit boss. That would be me because I’m way too anxious, so I’m not very good at giving people negative feedback. I’m not very good at feeling as if I’ve let somebody down or so. There’s lots and lots of things like that. I’m a people pleaser. I want to keep everybody happy and I want to make sure that everyone on my team is happy. When everything’s going great, that’s great, but it’s even sort of small things like, ah, look, I would’ve done that differently. That, I used to really struggle with that. It’s gotten a lot better because I have to.
Nikki Kelly:
I’d have to do it every day. And I also have a really, really good, very understanding team and they happy with the way that I managed them and they happy that I’m quite open and stuff and I don’t have to have sort of hard conversations with them because there are really good teams so that’s good. But in terms of even processes, letting things go yourself, like letting things go from me doing it to having someone else do it and they might do it a slightly different way to you, I hugely struggled with that. We’ve currently got over 500 orders outstanding and so I cannot … I used to know what everybody wanted and I used to think, okay this person, like Karen needs this by Thursday, so let’s get that one out.
Nikki Kelly:
This is for Lisa’s grandchild who’s due whenever, let’s get this one out. But now with over 500 orders I simply can’t be that person. So even coming to terms with that was hard and expanding like, trying to because I try and be genuine and real on our social media and I try and share our story and things. So even sharing stuff like that, I think how do I go about it when it’s not just me anymore? And it’s not just me that writes Instagram captions anymore. There’s lots and lots of things are sort of thing. I might come and across as disingenuine, which is a really something that I don’t want to do, something that I never want to do. So there’s all these little different pots of how is this possibly going to work?
Nikki Kelly:
And then I just hired somebody and just started and they were really good, like really good to work with. And I sort of explained at the beginning, everything that you see here has just been made up by me. It doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right way to do it, but it’s definitely the way that works. So yeah, I just get my staff to work with this, and it’s been hard and it’s been really hard and I’ve cried and I’ve got frustrated and all of the emotions. But honestly, it’s really good now it has been tough to get here and lots of learning.
Nikki Kelly:
There’s just learning curves every way you look. But I knew that because I do get that anxiety. I knew that it would always be something I would struggle with. So I almost when I interview people, I try and work out who I could work with, who would work well with my personality and whose personality would obviously fit in the team as well, as well as there skills. So that’s something that I’ve learned to do a lot better I think. And we’ll be hiring again in January. So I’ll take all of the learnings from the last few rounds of hiring and hopefully we’ll add another really great team member. So that would be good.
Dahna Borg:
Amazing. It’s such an exciting journey because I know you started out and it’s just, I just want to make $200 a week and now you’re shipping out 500 orders before Christmas. It’s huge growth and it’s very exciting and inspiring.
Nikki Kelly:
It is. When I look at life when we started, I used to have a little toolbox, like a guy’s toolbox and it would sit next to the kitchen table and then every time I went to work I would take only tools out and get all the bits and pieces and then upgrade into a just a desk. I think it was from ALDI or something, like this desk from ALDI in my garage and I was so chuffed just to have my own space. Yeah, and now it’s about to move into a commercial building that’s like more than three times the size of my entire garage. And I think, oh God, how did I get here? I’m not even really a responsible person. I’m not sure how I’m doing this every day.
Dahna Borg:
But I think that’s really important for people to hear because everyone thinks everyone’s got it together and everyone’s got this grand plan and everyone knows exactly what they’re doing. But to hear from you that you’ve gone from working at home with your toolbox to moving into a giant commercial space and you still like, how did this happen? What’s going on? That’s really I suppose, comforting to other small business people and go look, I don’t have to have all the answers. I can just keep trying. And I think that’s really great.
Nikki Kelly:
And I think that that’s the truth. I think that it’s very much, people say it to me all of the time like, oh, I don’t know how you manage it with kids and stuff. And I sort of think, I don’t think I really do manage it very well. I obviously get done what needs to get done, but I feel very thinly stretched a lot and I do definitely. I don’t sit here confidently and think, ah, the next 12 months are going to be awesome. It’s a lot of worrying and it’s a lot of … and we’ll have a sale and then it’s a joke in the office that if we put a sale out, at the end of the day I’ll say, right, okay. So do we think that anyone’s going to order tomorrow when the sale’s over? And then everyone’s like, no, we’ll be fine. Nikki, we’ll be fine.
Nikki Kelly:
It’s a lot of that. It’s a lot of, and I think I’ve voiced my concerns quite a lot, and by voicing them, because when you say it out loud, you realise that maybe it is a bit ridiculous and then you can have people tell you whether it is or whether it isn’t. And that really helps.
Dahna Borg:
And you’ve got a team that can kind of cross check you now too. Everyone will be like, you’re fine.
Nikki Kelly:
And it seems silly like, I’m supposed to … when people think of maybe a successful business woman, which I can’t believe I’ve maybe just referred to myself as, but don’t know, maybe I am.
Dahna Borg:
You’re definitely in that bracket.
Nikki Kelly:
And then when people imagine that, they probably don’t imagine me wearing my pyjamas to work and sort of having like worrying out loud to my staff and that sort of thing. It’s sort of-
Dahna Borg:
I think it’s real and it’s human and I think that’s what’s so exciting about the way business is going these days is that you can do that and that doesn’t take away … you can go to work in your pyjamas and still be a successful business woman.
Nikki Kelly:
Yes, that’s right.
Nikki Kelly:
That’s exactly right. I might wear a blazer over the top of my pyjamas, maybe.
Dahna Borg:
I love it. Someone needs to do like Peter Alexander pyjamas so when we going to work so that they can like-
Nikki Kelly:
That is a nice idea.
Dahna Borg:
… look like they’re working and it’s not so bad if you have to jump on a call meeting but you’re still technically in your pyjamas.
Nikki Kelly:
So if anyone listening is looking for maybe like a niche market. There you go-
Dahna Borg:
We’ve just given you a business idea, I’d love some credit and you need to come on the podcast eventually.
Nikki Kelly:
Yes, that’s right. Maybe we’ll put shares or something in and I will definitely be a customer obviously.
Dahna Borg:
Exactly. Me too. Before we wrap up, is there any other advice, experiences that you can share that you think would help people listening?
Nikki Kelly:
I guess nothing. Not one thing jumps out. It’s just I think that in order … if I think about how I got here, I think it’s a lot of hard-work, an incredible amount of hard-work and researching. I spent hours, I am quite an obsessive person and I’ll get up through the night and spend hours researching suppliers or better website. What else I can do. I’m looking at what is search engine optimisation? All of these things. I never knew any of this. I guess you’ve just got to learn and put the time and the hard-working.
Nikki Kelly:
I honestly think that most people who are successful, they didn’t just fall into it. It’s been a conscious decision as to how much you want to focus on this and that’s what’s got you where you are. So that’s my biggest thing and oh, actually as something that I am really good at is strategy and I’m very good at making targets and budgeting, yeah, that is a huge thing. Even when I started, like I say I wanted to make $200 a week, I would never go into anything blindly and not know what I want to get out of it, and so I think that that’s a key thing you need to look and decide what it is because how will you know if you met your targets, if you don’t have any targets? How will you know if you’re on track, if you’ve got nothing to go against?
Nikki Kelly:
That is what I find that not a lot of people when I talk to actually sit down and do. Every January we have a new strategy. Every June we sort of have like, not as big a new strategy, but for the financial year we hone in on different things that goes by the financial year, like our turnover and stuff and it is so important. So, so important. And yeah, that’s what I would do. I would have targets for absolutely everything.
Dahna Borg:
I love that because you can’t really … you can get stuck in business if you think you’re going somewhere but you don’t know when you actually get there. So I think that’s a really great tip I suppose. And ] it’s really important, especially when you’re starting out, like knowing that you want to make $200 a week, then you can feel like you’ve got somewhere rather than just selling things and you never really know where you are.
Nikki Kelly:
Yeah. So that was a whole about maybe being some help to someone one out there.
Dahna Borg:
A 100%. We got three last little questions.
Nikki Kelly:
Oh yeah, go for it.
Dahna Borg:
We ask every podcast guest. Do you have any secret strategies, routines or habits that you follow every day in your business? Personally, they kind of keep you on track.
Nikki Kelly:
Oh my God. I honestly don’t. I’m probably the most disorganised organised person ever. I’m like a hurricane. I don’t really have … what I work on is prompts. So I’ve got this system that, I don’t know, maybe I invented it, maybe I didn’t. I don’t know. But everything I do is done by prompts. So I will never get rid of something until I’ve either done it or I’ve got another prompt to do it. And so I will say, I will never get rid of a customer’s email until it’s finished or until it’s in their ball park to message me back. And that’ll be my prompt.
Nikki Kelly:
All sorts of things like that. So I work on that sort of system a lot and that in my personal life as well. And yeah, that’s pretty much it. Apart from that, I would look like a hurricane most days. It often looks like I’m disorganised, but I don’t often miss things. I don’t know how, because I don’t have a great system.
Dahna Borg:
But I think not having the great, and I think your prompting system is good. You keep things around so they remind you to do them later. I think you can’t still run a business like you run a business and be … it’s more like organised chaos, I’d say.
Nikki Kelly:
Yeah, all for sure. For sure. It’s somewhere in my head. Yeah, it’s just maybe not at the forefront and it doesn’t obviously look like that.
Dahna Borg:
No, that’s cool. Do you have a favourite business book?
Nikki Kelly:
You know what? I really don’t. I don’t really have very much time for reading books at the minute. I did subscribe to that audio book and I went for six months without using any of my credits. So then they sent me reminder to use the credit. So then I bought a book on sleep and how to get the most out of sleep because I don’t get much. But I haven’t listened to that yet. So yeah, I’m obviously not a great book reader right now at this point in life, but so I couldn’t recommend any, sorry.
Dahna Borg:
That’s all right. Your favourite podcast.
Nikki Kelly:
This is a good one. So it’s, it’s probably Casefile, the True Crime one. I listen to those a lot. Yeah, I quite like True Crime. So I listen to quite a few of those. And then there’s a few business ones, maybe the obvious ones like, Lady Startup. That’s quite interesting one. The girl that started kikki.K, she does a podcast on that and I found that one quite interesting. And then there’s like Serial and stuff. It’s quite … yeah. I’m into a lot of the true crimes.
Dahna Borg:
I have enough problems double checking doors at night without listening to True Crime. But I love that everyone else seems to love them.
Nikki Kelly:
Yes it is. It seems to be big genre at the minute. Everybody seems into them. Which is good because it doesn’t make me feel as weird.
Dahna Borg:
No, you definitely not weird and you not the first person to mention it on our podcast. So you’re definitely not weird. And if people want to see more about your products, check it out, buy a necklace themselves. What’s the best way for them to find you?
Nikki Kelly:
Probably on our website. Which is www.kellectivebynikki.com.au or Instagram or Facebook is also Kellective by Nikki and we also have a discount code for any listeners here. So it’s BrightRed15.
Dahna Borg:
It’s kellective with a K, so it’s K-E-L-L-E-C-T- I-V-E and Nikki, N-I-K-K-I. I and we will put everything in the show notes for everyone just in case.
Nikki Kelly:
That’s good because I probably have the worst named business ever, especially with my accent. The way that I pronounce my A’s and my E’s. Pretty much nobody knows what I’m saying.
Dahna Borg:
That’s okay, That’s what links are for. Thank you very much for joining us on the show. It’s been a pleasure having you and you shared some really great advice, so thank you very much.
Nikki Kelly:
Thank you. I hope I helped. Thank you so much for listening.
Dahna Borg:
Thank you. Have a great day.
Dahna Borg:
Thank you for listening to the third episode of the Bright Minds of e-Commerce Podcast. If you want to read today’s transcript or to find Nikki’s website, please head on over to our show notes. You can find them at www.brightredmarketing.com.au/shownotes/episode3. The link will also be in the episode description. If you liked the show I would love for you to leave your review. We’re brand new, so each review helps us to grow our audience, which means we can get more amazing guests. A few to listen to. Also on the show notes page is a section for questions. We’ll be launching our first Q&A episode shortly, so we’d love to feature your questions or if you know someone would make a great guest on the show or you want to join us, you can use that section to apply. Thank you so much for listening. Chat again next week.
