The One Simple Shift That Tripled Her Sales

One of my Inner Circle members left a comment in our group recently that stopped me in my tracks. 

"It's only the first quarter, and I have already sold as much as last year."

When I read that, I knew I had to know more. I had to know exactly what she did, because it was way more simple than you'd think it is.

That member is Jennifer  Evans, and she owns Home Style Fabrics and Furnishings. Her story is the kind of story that reminds me why I do this work.

From Fashion School to Finding Her Niche

Jennifer started in fashion. She went to college, did all the training, the whole thing. But it wasn't the right fit. So she started looking at home decor, and that's when something clicked. She realized how important quality pieces are. When you buy low-quality items, the finish just isn't quite there.

So Jennifer made a decision. She invested in quality products. All of her fabrics are high quality because she works with them herself, so she knows exactly what her customers are getting. And every pillow she makes is done the way she would want it done. She puts all of her expectations into her products. You really do feel that care when you see them.

She sells finished accent pillows and the fabric for people who sew themselves. It's a beautiful business, and it's a beautiful product.

The Long Road Before Breakthrough

Here's the thing though: Jennifer has been in business for five years. Five years. And when she first came to me, most of her sales were still on Etsy. She wasn't getting sales on her own website, even though it's gorgeous. She built it herself. She took all the photos. It's really something special, but she couldn't figure out how to get it to actually make sales for her.

She'd tried Shopify first.

“I launched everything, nothing. Not a sale, not any views, nothing. I struggled and struggled. I was posting and trying whatever I could to get some sales or visibility.”

Then someone suggested Etsy. So she went backwards from what everyone tells you to do. She went from Shopify to Etsy, and suddenly she started getting sales. She had proof of concept. She knew her business worked. So she kept growing on Etsy, and her website just sat there, beautiful and invisible.

When Jennifer joined the Inner Circle, that's why she was here. 

She'd mastered the Etsy sales, and now she wanted to get her website moving too.

The Moment Everything Changed

Jennifer listened to my podcast before she even joined, and there was one thing I kept saying: post every week consistently. That's it. That's the one thing. So she decided to do that.

She started sending emails every single week. And then, here's the part that was so smart: she took those emails and turned them into social media posts. She didn't reinvent the wheel for each platform. She didn't spend hours creating different content for Instagram and Facebook and her email list. She just broke down what she was already writing into posts for social media, and she used it across everything. Consistent. The same message, multiple times, through multiple channels.

The traffic started to grow. The sales started to come in. And then they just kept coming.

By the end of the first quarter, Jennifer had sold as much as she had sold the entire previous year. Not close. Exact same amount. In three months.

Right now, she's sitting at 324% over last year. Three hundred and twenty-four percent.

What Actually Moved the Needle

I asked her to break it down. 

“I was always constantly working on my website—improving pictures, improving copy, everything I could do to make it flow or work easier for customers. Always thinking from their perspective was basically the biggest thing.”

And here's what I want to point out: Jennifer did all of this while working a full-time job. Forty hours a week, and then every waking minute after that was spent packaging, making product, improving her website, or creating content. She wasn't some entrepreneur with endless time and money. She had real constraints. She had a real life.

But she wasn't trying to be perfect. She wasn't waiting for the ideal conditions or the perfect strategy. She took what worked and she repeated it.

Here's why that matters: 

People need to hear something about ten times before it really registers. They have to be in the right place and the right mindset. 

They might scroll past your content one day and not even see it. Two days later they see the same thing again and they stop and read it. Or they click. And so as store owners, we have to be brave enough to repeat the message multiple times.

Jennifer didn't stress over repeating herself. She was too busy to reinvent the wheel. She had a full-time job and a growing business. So she used the same content across all her channels. And that consistency, that repetition, that's what got people to notice her.

“I work 40 hours a week, and then my waking minutes that I have left, it's either product packaging, product making, improving my website, or creating content.

I didn't have time to think of a new piece for Instagram and a new piece for Facebook and then a new piece for my email. It was consistent across all three.”

When One Problem Leads to the Next

Here's the thing about growing a real business: every time you solve one problem, you get a new one. That's what progress actually looks like.

Jennifer had solved the sales problem on her website. She figured out how to get traffic. She figured out how to convert that traffic into orders. But then came April, and she realized she had a bookkeeping problem.

She'd been running on cash basis accounting, which is fine when you're small. But once you start scaling, you have no idea if you're actually profitable. 

You look at your bank account and you think you're making money because there's money there. But you already bought inventory for next month. You already paid for shipping. You're not actually seeing reality.

She brought on a bookkeeper to switch to accrual basis accounting. But that person left because e-commerce accounting is complicated. There are hidden things in the background. Inventory. Cost of goods sold. Things that most bookkeepers have never dealt with before. So Jennifer took it on herself. She learned. She figured it out. She asked questions.

And you know what she discovered? She has a 30% net profit margin.

In a product-based business, 10% is normal. 15% is good. 20% is great. Jennifer has 30%. That's exceptional. That means when she's ready to scale her sales, she already knows she's going to be profitable. She doesn't have to guess. She knows.

What she doesn't have is a paycheck for herself yet. Not because the business isn't making money. It is. But because she's reinvesting everything to handle the next problem.

The Real Challenge Now

And the next problem is production. Jennifer lives in a very small town. By small, I mean 500 people. She needs a sewist. She needs someone to help with production so she's not making and packaging every single product herself. But there aren't a lot of people in her town with those skills. And there aren't a lot of people who want to do production sewing.

So she's faced with a real problem. And she's going to solve it, just like she's solved every other problem.

Here's what I know about Jennifer: she's capable. She's smart. She's a good problem solver. She has a successful business in a small town in Canada. She sells her products all over the world. She created her website herself. She took all the photos. She figured out how to sell online.

We can teach people how to sell anything. We can show them the strategy and the steps. But here's what we can't teach: the work. The willingness to do the work. And that all came from Jennifer. I can help guide, but she's the one who has to do it. And she does.

Could she ignore the bookkeeping problem? Sure. A lot of people do. But she didn't. She solved it. And she'll solve this one too. It might not look like she imagined. Mary Poppins is not going to show up and start sewing for her. But she'll find a way. She'll outsource part of it, or change her product selection, or shift her business model. She'll figure it out because that's who she is.

The Message I Want You to Hear

And here's the thing I want everyone listening to know: all of this stuff is completely normal. If it were smooth and easy, everybody would do it. But it's not smooth, and it's not easy.

Jennifer's grit and her problem-solving skills got her this far. They're going to get her the rest of the way. The next time we talk, she's going to have a multi-six-figure business, and she'll have solved the production problem, and she'll be asking a different question. But the skill that gets her there is the same one that's getting her here: the willingness to see a problem and solve it.

And here's what I asked Jennifer at the end of our conversation: what would you tell someone who is where you were? Someone who has a beautiful website, who has proof of concept, but who just can't get sales on their website?

She said: 

“You have to love it. In order to power through all of those challenges, if you don't love it, it's not gonna work. So make sure you love what you're doing, and then all the rest is just problems to solve. You'll figure out a way if it's something you're really passionate about.”

And it's a rollercoaster. There's always something to learn. There's always something to figure out.. That's what she loves about it. You can have your nine-to-five job and you're doing the same thing every day, but with a business, it's always different.

That's Jennifer. That's what I see in her. And I know exactly where she's headed.

What Changed for Jennifer

If I had to pick one thing that changed everything for Jennifer, it was this: she stopped trying to be perfect and started being consistent. She picked one strategy that worked. She did it every single week. And she repeated the message across every platform she could.

Most of us are stuck because we're waiting for the perfect strategy or the perfect product or the perfect website. We're waiting for conditions to be ideal. Jennifer didn't wait. She had a full-time job and limited time and a product that was already beautiful and working on Etsy. She just took what she knew worked and she did it consistently, week after week.

The sales came. The traffic came. And the business that had been invisible for five years suddenly had eyeballs on it.

That's the shift. That's what changes everything.

If that resonates with you, if you know you have a beautiful product and you know you're capable, but you're stuck on getting consistent sales on your own website, that's exactly the work we do in the Inner Circle. We teach you what to do, and then we show you how to do it, and then we support you while you're doing it. Because the strategy is one part. The support and the accountability and knowing you're not alone, that's the other part.

RELATED LINKS:

See Jennifer’s store here: https://homestylefabrics.ca/

And find her on Instagram

How a Maker Scaled Her Sales and Replaced Her Teaching Salary in 4 Months https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/how-a-maker-scaled-her-sales-and-replaced-her-teaching-salary-in-4-months-episode-327

The Real Reason You Feel Busy But Stuck https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/the-real-reason-you-feel-busy-but-stuck-do-this-to-fix-it-episode-319

Getting Help Vs. Going It Alone https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/getting-help-vs-going-it-alone-2xd-bergens-episode-314