How Shae Grew Her Sales 40% in a Year (Without Spending a Dollar More on Ads)

Imagine you have about two hours a day to work on your business. And not two focused, quiet, coffee-in-hand hours, either. Two hours squeezed into nap time, while your older kids do their schoolwork at the kitchen table.

That's Shae Miller's reality. Shae lives in Brisbane, Australia. She homeschools three kids and works a part-time nursing job two days a week. And in the year since she joined our Inner Circle, she grew her sales by 40% over the previous year.

She didn't do it by spending more on ads or by working through the night. She did it by focusing on a couple of simple things that most store owners overlook completely.

I sat down with Shae on the podcast, and honestly, she's my favorite person right now. Here's what she did, and why I think you can do it too.

The Business That Sat in the Background for Years

Shae's business is called Knobbly. She and her family handmake and hand-paint timber decor for kids' rooms, and it's gorgeous. Their original key products are wall hooks, which come in over 80 shapes and in letters. This year they added peg rails and bookends, and they've got more new products in the works.

They bought Knobbly back in 2021, and by Shae's own admission, they pretty much ignored it for years. They had another business at the time, and Shae was working in nursing, so Nobly just ran quietly in the background with no real drive behind it.

Then Shae had her son, and they decided it was time to give Knobbly some real energy. It's unique, it's fun, it's colorful, and it deserved a little love.

Before we started recording, I asked Shae if she had built the website herself. She had. I asked because it's really well done. It's easy to shop, it's clear, you know exactly who it's for, and the images are great. That matters, and we'll come back to it.

What Two Hours a Day Can Actually Get You

One of the biggest questions I get from people deciding whether to join the Inner Circle is "How much time does it take?" So I asked Shae how she splits her time between learning and actually doing the work.

She told me she watches a lesson, then implements it over the course of a week. 

"I think what the program does is it gives you focus... So my time is wisely used rather than flapping around trying to figure it out myself."

When your time is limited, you can't afford to spend it guessing. Shae knows that when she needs to set up her email campaigns, she can jump into the right module and get it done. (She also watches everything at 1.5 speed, which I completely relate to. I can't listen to anything slowly anymore. It's painful.

The lessons are short on purpose. Most of your time should go to getting the work done, not sitting through training.

The Boring Habit Behind Her Best Month Ever

Shae follows the weekly workflow we recommend. Every Monday, she sits down with her task sheet and looks at her numbers. That tells her what to focus on for the week. At the end of the month, she crunches the numbers again.

So throughout the year, she watched her numbers climb higher and higher. One month, she got so close to her biggest sales month ever that she posted on social media asking for help. Her community showed up, and she ended the month just $4 short. Two months later, she beat her all-time record.

Growing your business isn't about doing a bunch of things. It's about doing a few things consistently.

The One Number That Changed Everything

When I asked Shae what made the biggest difference to her sales, she didn't hesitate. It was her average order value.

You've heard me say it a hundred times. There are three numbers that make up your sales: traffic, conversion rate, and average order value. Every single time, those three are the formula.

When Shae started, her average order value was just under $40. So she made two changes.

First, she introduced a multi-buy offer:

"I implemented a multi-buy system where, you know, you buy three hooks and you get 10% off, buy four, get 15% off."

Second, she realized she needed a higher-value product. That's when Nobly introduced the peg rails and bookends, which start at $79. They've sold really well.

Put those two things together, and her average order value now sits at $77 averaged over the year. She almost doubled it.

Shae grew her revenue by 40% without spending money on more traffic. She simply got her customers to spend more on every order. It's the easiest way to grow your sales without paying for ads, and it's the fastest, too. Shae picked it because it felt like the lowest-risk move she could make, and it paid off.

There's a bonus here, too. An average order value under $40 is expensive. It costs you in time, in labor, and in shipping. With a higher average order value, when Shae does start adding more traffic, she's going to keep a lot more money at the end of the day.

How to Stop Feeling Like a Failure When Sales Dip

Here's what I loved most about my conversation with Shae. When I asked what she makes sure to do every week no matter how busy she is, she said she analyzes her funnel.

Understanding her funnel was a turning point for her. She'd dabbled in business for a while, and then:

"I did that training and I kind of went, 'Oh, that's how it works.'"

Suddenly she could see how everything she did during the week, her emails and her social posts, flowed into her sales.

When I had that same light bulb moment years ago, it took all the emotion out of my results. I stopped feeling like a giant loser. I used to be on top of the world one week and staring at a dumpster fire the next. Once I understood the funnel, I could look back and see why. Usually I hadn't gotten enough traffic, or I'd made an offer I never should have made.

Shae described it perfectly:

"If you're not getting the traffic, it's not your product that's a problem, it's the traffic. So you go, 'Okay, well, problem solved. Sort that out.'"

She uses another habit I talk about a lot, too. When she has a slow month, she compares it to the same month last year. More often than not, there's the pattern. That time of year is just quiet in e-commerce. So instead of deciding her business is failing, she regroups, focuses on what she can control that month, like social media, and gets back into it next month.

We beat ourselves up over our results. It's crazy. Your numbers will tell you the truth if you let them.

The Mysterious Page Everyone Clicks

Remember how I said Shae's website is really well done? There's one page in particular I couldn't stop thinking about.

Right up in her navigation bar, there's a link that just says "Important." So of course, I clicked it. What's important?

It's a gated page. If you're not familiar, a gated page is really just a full-page pop-up that doesn't look like a pop-up. You land on the page, there's an embedded form, and you drop your email to see what's behind it. Shae made it feel almost top secret.

She got the idea from a previous podcast guest, Melanie Bandy, a longtime Reliable Revenue student. From the data our Reliable Revenue students have shared with us, we know gated pages convert really well into new email subscribers, and they convert really well into buyers. The people who opt in have high intent.

Behind Shae's "Important" page, she features products that haven't been released to the public, discounted seconds stock, and early access to new products before everyone else sees them. People already on her list skip the form and go straight to the page.

Simple. Smart. And I bet it converts like crazy.

What Comes Next When You Want to 3X Your Revenue

Shae's goal for next year is to triple her revenue. 

To get there, she knows traffic is the next step. But I think email marketing is going to be just as important. Shae has been running mini email campaigns, and when she does them regularly, she sees an extra $800 to $1,000 in sales. That's why she's focused on growing her list with that gated page and a new pop-up she's testing, getting people with real intent to buy onto her list.

Brand collaborations are another great fit for her. When you swap emails and a little social promotion with another merchant, you're reaching an audience that's already bought in. They're already on someone's list, already following, already potential buyers. That's high-quality traffic without a big ad spend.

Your Growth Is Your Growth

I want to leave you with something Shae said that stuck with me:

"[Knobbly] is growing, but it is slow and I need to be okay with that because I am doing this part-time and I'm busy."

It's really hard to remember that with all the noise out there. When people only share their big sales wins, you don't get the whole story. Maybe they spent half again as much on ads. Maybe it's not the whole picture at all.

What we're doing is hard. Nothing in our lives before this trained us to do it. It takes time, and that's normal. Your growth is your growth, and the opportunity isn't going anywhere. We have so many nurses and teachers in our community, and I can think of one nurse who started with very few online sales and is on track to do $3 million this year.

So here's my challenge for you. Before you spend another dollar driving traffic to your store, look at your average order value. Could you add a multi-buy offer? Could you introduce a higher-value product? Even $20 more per order makes a huge difference.

And if you want the step-by-step plan, a community that's in your corner, and coaches who've walked this road themselves, I'd love to have you in the Inner Circle. Head over to thesocialsalesgirls.com/innercircle and get on the waitlist. As Shae put it, it gets someone in your corner who gets it.

You can also go check out Nobly and see that "Important" page for yourself. Take some notes, then go raise your average order value.

RELATED LINKS:

Check out Shae’s store here: https://knobbly.com.au/

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

How Sarah Built a Full-Time Income Selling Her Art Online (Without Ads) https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/how-sarah-built-a-full-time-income-selling-her-art-online-without-ads-episode-313

The real reason your sales are unpredictable https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/the-real-reason-your-sales-are-unpredictable-episode-310

This store owner grew her list by more than 1600 names - and you can too https://www.thesocialsalesgirls.com/blog/this-store-owner-grew-her-list-by-more-than-1600-names-and-you-can-too-episode-336