#4: Fashion Truck Or Brick & Mortar? How To Give Your Customers A Great Experience Through...

Welcome back to episode number four. This week is all about you and your community, and we're with none other than the fairy prom mother herself, Ms. Kinsey Fauckler of Cuckoo's Nest in Bismarck, North Dakota. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. Hey, boutique boss. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. I'd love to know where you're from this week. Is it a small town, a large city, or is it somewhere in between? Make sure you let me know over on Instagram boutiquehubbusiness or send me a personal instastory over at Jalderson, because this week we're having a conversation all about the importance of your community and just how impactful retail in rural area truly is. As many of you know, I'm from North Dakota originally, and my friends, it may not get more rural than that. Unless you're from Wyoming. Our guest today is also from the Nodak country. So besides sharing some awesome accents, complete with the A's and the O's, we also have a love of sarcastic Norwegian humor with the locals. And we love small towns where everyone knows everyone. This week's topic is near and dear to my heart because as many of you have heard in episode one, I can remember growing up with that innate love of fashion. But because of my rural location, I felt like fashion was something out of reach for me. But it was my experiences with boutiques that led me to know and understand that boutiques, small towns and big cities around the world are truly the front lines of fashion. Like in the movie Pretty Woman, they have the ability to turn you away. Or the majority of boutiques that I know will reel you in and they'll make you feel loved and beautiful and confident and ready to take on a world fueled with just a little more kindness and a great pair of jeans. Boutiques in small towns make fashion an experience, one that's memorable in many cases, especially especially when it includes specialty items like special occasion dresses, decor, or more specifically, proms. So today's guest on the show is Kinsey Fauckler. She's the fairy prom mother, as she's lovingly known. Also the founder and owner of Cuckoo's Nest, a women's apparel and special occasion boutique located in Bismarck, North Dakota. Kinsey is going to share with us what it means to dress teenage girls for prom, a memory that those teens are going to have for the rest of their life. She'll also be sharing her experience in owning a fashion truck, one that she believes is much harder than most people know and one of the reasons she sold the truck, to focus on her store. Kinsey will also talk about the highlight of her career, dressing Miss America, also from North Dakota, by the way, plus much more. So this week, as you listen, I invite you to think about your community and how you can become more connected. Leave those lasting memories with the locals and and how you can celebrate fashion that's near to you. You don't have to be from New York or la. Boutiques are fashion on the front lines wherever you are. So let me know what you think and again, tell me about your community and its take on fashion over on Instagram. And if you haven't already, be sure to join our community at the Hub. All right, guys, it's time to meet the fairy prom mother herself. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This week on Boutique Chat, I'm so excited to talk to a boutique owner who is not only a ton of fun in her own right, but her store definitely reflects her personality, which she uses to speak to women of all ages and across a couple of different style genres, which I can't wait to talk about. So guys, help me welcome Kenzie Fauckler, the fairy prom mother and owner of Cuckoo's Nest from Bismarck, North Dakota. So, Kinsey Nodak in the house. Welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. I think we should have a Nodak accent impression.

Should we start off with an oofta just for old times sake?

Oh, don't you know, I got my oofta. Yeah.

I have a brother in law from down there by St. Anthony there.

South Amanda, you sounded really like Celtic.

It's really strong. South Amanda, I'm just telling you.

Oh, buddy.

So let's talk about. I mean, not only is this conversation going to be fun because we're both Node hackers, but one of the main reasons I wanted to invite you to join us on the podcast and knew you'd be such a great fit is because you've done such a great job blending niche markets in what you do at Cuckoo's Nest and you have a really unique story about how all this came about. So do you want to just kick this off Tell us a little bit about this project. Turned into business, turned into lifestyle.

So, long story short, my store began as a school project my senior year for a club called deca. And I took that project of hypothetically opening up this store to a state competition and won. And I took it to a nationals competition and placed in the top three, and with that, got a scholarship. So I always tell all my kids that come into my store to utilize all those opportunities available at school. We opened the store the next following year, and the store was seasonal because it was prom. So what I would do is go to school for a semester and then work the prom store for a semester. So I did that until I got through school. And then in the off season, after I was done with college, I decided to open a fashion truck and sell ready to wear clothing. And then I would do the fashion truck when it was summer months, and then I would do prom when it was prom season. After managing the prom store for nine years, my husband and I purchased. Purchased the prom store, and then we wrapped everything all into one. And now we are a storefront and a website. We no longer do the fashion truck, and we are all now rebranded to Cuckoo's Nest.

I love it. So the store. I've been, of course, stalking your social media, and you're in the heat of prom season right now. And I want to talk about that more in just a minute. But I think something you and I have talked about previously, which is really interesting, is the highs and lows of having a fashion truck. And as you mentioned, you had one for quite some time and now no longer have one. Tell us what that was all about.

So our fashion truck used to be a bookmobile, which if you're looking to do a fashion truck, that is the way to go. It was perfect for what we needed. But I feel, and I think my husband could vouch for me as well. A lot of people go into the fashion truck route rather than doing a storefront, thinking this is going to be easier or less overhead.

And.

And I honestly think that a fashion truck is harder. Fashion truck. I mean, for example, if your truck breaks down, we had our truck breakdown. You're out that all those potential sales you're out building that relationship with wherever you are planning on parking. There's just so many variables that are such a huge critical factor to you creating revenue. And then I also thought with the fashion truck, I knew exactly how many hangers I could fit in there. I knew exactly how many products could fit per shelf because you had to utilize Every square inch of that space. You had to price your things properly so that price or sales per square foot would turn out to be profitable for your business. So I thought that a fashion truck was harder. And also it was so much more labor intensive for myself and my husband. Just hauling things from the UPS truck to our garage, from the garage to the truck, and then back and forth.

Each and every weekend.

Well, and each and every day. I mean, we would, depending on the day, if there was a different event in town or we were booked for at people's houses for like parties, you'd have to do it each and every day. Or sometimes we do multiple events in a day. I mean, sometimes too, when you have the truck, it's so small, you can plan ahead, but you never know. I mean, one time we stopped at a gas station to fuel up and we ended up being there for like two hours. And then when we got to our destination, we didn't have enough product because we had sold so much at the gas station on like a fluke deal. So it was just so many variables with the fashion truck. But the fashion truck was honestly for me, more educational than college. I learned so many things on the fly, so many things hands on that I was so not ready for.

But the things that you learned on the fly were probably things beneficial now as you operate the storefront. Like at this stage of your business. Those educational takeaways, especially understanding the numbers and the margins and the cost per square or the sales per square foot rather, were beneficial to build you where you are now.

Oh, my goodness, it was so beneficial. And I think if somebody does get into a fashion truck, maybe they don't look at like, okay, I'm going to do this fashion truck forever. They look at it kind of as a leeway. Like, for me, it was a leeway. Got me introduced into the boutique clothing and got me to build those relationships. But I didn't see it as a long term. I am so thankful for all of the knowledge that I gained from the fashion truck because, yes, 100%, all the things that I learned, I utilize on a regular basis now in my storefront.

So now the storefront, the way that it is today is women's ready to wear, you said, right. Plus prom, pageant, tuxedo, and what else?

Clothing. So, yeah, you covered it all perfect.

So right now you're in the heat of prom season. The women's ready to wear kind of carries you throughout the year. Let's talk about how you market those two things right now, because it's really two different audiences and two different ideal customers. What does that marketing strategy look like during prom season?

We really focus all of our energy and all of our resources on prom because it's such a limited sales time. So we focus all of our social media towards prom. We still are building those relationships, kind of educating people about our brand and about our company. Even if they might not be a prom shopper. You know, we're still posting things such as different quotes or things like that that pertain to our brand. We might not be as heavily marketing the clothing just because we don't have the resources available during this time of year. I always compare prom season to kind of like fireworks sales. You know, they have such a limited time to sell those fireworks, so they really. They focus on that. So that's kind of how we are too. We utilize every resource that we have. All of our employees we utilize as models. And we definitely really emphasize in our advertising and marketing that we are selling an experience for us, it's not just a dress.

Absolutely. Do you use, like, in terms of the way you reach those ideal customers to get them in the door, two different channels? Like, we talk about two different Facebook groups just to get those younger customers in through the door, as well as women in a little higher age bracket?

Yes, definitely. How we advertise on Instagram is a little bit different. We have like the voice of a high school girl on Instagram. You know, we have the Instagram story, and my employees do a lot of takeover on that when I'm advertising on Facebook because for me, that is a little bit older demographic. I'm more so utilizing the voice that a mother would want to hear, highlighting those key topics of like, lowest price, guaranteed, variety of sizes available, variety of price points available. Whereas the teenage girl on Instagram, she's more so just interested in the dresses and the style. She doesn't really know or worry about, like, the price. That's more so a mom factor. So when we're marketing on Facebook, I focus and use my verbiage for a little bit older demographic to target towards the moms.

Do you also use Snapchat just because you have that younger demographic?

I don't, because I hate it. Like, does that make me an old lady?

Oh, it's such a catch 22, isn't it?

Yes. I mean, I, for example, me as a consumer, I love watching Instagram stories. And so that's just what I use to choose to market my customers. And I think too, it's so hard when you're an Entrepreneur for a small business. I mean, you could advertise on everything and market on everything, but might as well just pick the two that you're the best at and really focus there. Don't spread yourself so thin thinking that you have to do it all. And for me, I just can't get on the Snapchat bandwagon, so I just utilize the Instagram stories. Because isn't it kind of like the same thing?

Yeah, it's just like the same thing. I think like you said though, just don't spread yourself too thin. Good for you. If you've realized that's what works for you and that's what you can get excited about, go for it. Right? Right. How about let's talk about Instagram because you said that is your favorite channel and you love Insta Stories and you were telling me as we were chatting earlier just about some tips that you found really helpful to you. What are those go tos when you think about being successful on Instagram?

I recently went to an Instagram seminar and two things that I left with that really left an impression on me were to utilize on Instagram every picture, those 30 hashtags. So you go in your notes and you make those 30 hashtags. Don't use those hashtags to describe the picture. Use those hashtags to attract your target customer. So for example, I'll post a picture of a prom dress, but I won't put like red dress, prom. I'll put senior style, senior picture, inspo, Netflix, binge. Just things that will target my consumer. So, you know, my target customer right now is a high school girl. So what are some hashtags that either she would be utilizing or she would be searching? And another thing that in the seminar they said was use the kind of like sweet spot with hashtags is hashtags that have already been used about 30,000 times. If it's over that, it's just going to get lost. Nobody's really going to see it. And if it's like under a thousand, it's not a strong enough hashtag yet to generate enough viewers.

Yeah, man, good takeaway.

That was kind of interesting. Yeah. And then another thing that I learned from the Instagram class was for your feed, there's a different method, you know, because you can be posting like top a top boots, whatever, back and forth and just really selling, selling, selling. And this class that I went to, she said to try and make your feedback serve, sell seven. So you have break it down into seven posts. How are those seven Posts. If you pick two of them that are going to be sellers so they're selling products, how are the other ones serving your clients? So serving such as inspiring them, showing them how to take an outfit from day to night, showing them how to style an outfit rather than just pushing it down their throat to buy, buy, buy it Kind of if you use the serve sell seven humanizes your brand. It doesn't make it so it's so much of a feed of buy this, buy this, buy this.

Absolutely.

I thought that was kind of interesting.

How have you used. I mean because you call yourself the fairy prom mother, right. And because we've met, I know you have an awesome personality. How have you inserted yourself into your brand to humanize it even more?

Oh, that's a great question. I guess I am so hands on at my store. So if you come into my store, 9 times out of 10 I will be there. And I think one thing that my staff and I really do well is we do like what we call a poll. So like a girl come in and try on dresses, but then we'll recommend like two or three. The girl usually leaves with one of the ones we recommended because we see these on all day and we know different body types, things like that. Another thing of it's kind of funny that I call myself fairy prom Mother, but if you bought a dress from me 10 years ago, I remember you, I remember your name, I remember the dress, I remember everything. So for me it's such a valued purchase that I think that humanizes the brand too. It's not just like you're another customer. No, I genuinely remember you. And a lot of the times if we go out to eat as a family, I feel obligated to tell the waitress, like if I know she bought her dress at the store, I will always tell her, oh, you bought your dress at the store. And sometimes they're like, oh my gosh, that was eight years years ago. How do you remember that?

So that's so cool though, like you and I were visiting about this earlier as I was reminiscing way back in the day to buying prom dresses. For the consumer too, that's a lasting memory that they don't forget. They know exactly what that dress was like and how they felt when they wore it. Like what a cool experience to be able to give people.

Definitely. I think that's the best part of my job. Even yesterday I was had a mom that came in with her daughter and when she first came into the store, you could tell by the daughter's like, body posture and how she was talking to me that, you know, she didn't have a lot of confidence, and she was, like, very shy, very timid. After I had helped her for like a half an hour and we found a dress, her body language. When she left, she was like a completely different person. She was so smiley. She was standing up tall. She was so excited. So those are the days that I strive for my job. It's like, look at how I just changed her life with 30 minutes of my time.

Oh, that's so good. So worthwhile. Do you find when that happens, like you were mentioning that you have a huge pocket of girls back in my hometown, who are your customers? Do you find that when someone comes in like that, it's easy for them to refer you to their friends? And then you get pockets of, say, schools or communities that come and shop with you, because, I mean, North Dakota is pretty rural, let's be honest. So you have a draw from several hundred miles away to come and shop with you.

Definitely, Definitely. And you're exactly right how you're saying, like, the pockets of people. So one girl will come in from that smaller community, and her experience in the store could ripple affect a lot of potential business income. For me, I always live by the golden rule of treat others the way you want to be treated. So if when you come into my store, I'm going to treat you the way I would want to be treated. I'm going to be positive. I'm going to be encouraging. I don't want you to have a negative experience because that could ripple effect. You know, these small towns, do they do a lot of communicating? So we want to make sure that every girl has the best experience possible. So she'll go back home and tell all of her friends, or the mom will tell all of her friends about their experience at the store. It was really funny because you'll know where this place is that I say. But on Sunday at the store, we had so many girls in the store, I think every single fitting room was Beulah, which is a small town in North Dakota. And there was so many moms back there. I kept calling them the Real Housewives of Beulah. And they thought that was so funny. And then two days later, two more people came from Beulah, and they were.

Like, oh, we heard you call them.

The Real Housewives of Beulah. They got shirts made that said that to wear to the basketball game.

That is awesome. You need, like a. You need a map in your store. Like of North Dakota. So people can come and, like, pinpoint where they're from and then, like, pin the communities against each other. Like Beulah versus Hazen. Who has the best Real Housewives of Beulah.

I really should do that. That's a good idea.

So let's talk about one of the highlights of your business, and that has been dressing Miss America. Tell me all about that.

Oh, man, that is, like, a career highlight for me. I'm gonna start crying just talking about it. We have known Cara for years and years and years. She got her junior year prom dress at the store. She has constantly bought pageant dresses, appearance dresses through, because she's been doing pageants forever. So I have known her for a very long time. She went off to college, came back to compete in Miss North Dakota. This was her fourth time, and won Miss North Dakota. And then really quickly after she won, she won, I believe, in June. And then her nationals pageant was in September. So she was coming in, and we were getting ideas for her nationals gown. She had to go down to nationals with several dresses, several cocktail dresses, actually. The day before she left or week before she left, she. She had to come to the store because I had to find her big boxes to ship her dresses down there because she had to bring so many. And then her infamous chair. But I don't think I will ever forget sitting at home with my family on that Sunday night watching. Oh, my gosh, I'm gonna cry just talking about it. Watching her get crowned Miss America, that was like. When you. When you're in these small businesses and you really get to know your customers, they become like, your. Your cheerleaders and your family. So to see one of my girls accomplish her biggest dream was just unlike anything I've ever experienced before. So it's your small. You're so proud of.

Not only the fact that she came from your small business, but when she's from a rural state like North Dakota, where, I mean, literally everyone knows everyone or we're related one or the other. But the pride that comes along with that, to see someone do so well on a big stage, that's a huge deal.

Yes, definitely. And just after she won, like, the ripple effect of everybody in North Dakota being so proud of her and being behind her and her accomplishment was just because I had known this girl forever. I knew how amazing she was. It was like, finally, everybody now knows how amazing and giving she is. So was so proud of her.

So tell me more about. Because that same, like, feeling of pride run so deep just right within your community. Let's talk about downtown bismarck and how involved you are with other local businesses near you. And maybe even talk about how other boutique owners who are listening, how can they get involved in their local community like you are, because that has a huge impact on your success.

I love my local downtown group of businesses. So when we first opened 10 years ago, there was not much thriving in downtown Bismarck. And since we've been open, it's been so much fun to watch the community around us grow and create different experiences and different destinations for shoppers to want to come to. A couple things that we do is monthly in our downtown, we get together as retailers and we meet once a month. And then we also. One thing I think is nice is we have a downtown retailers facebook group. So that's great. Just like the hub to do different ideas, ask questions. It's really nice if there's like a shoplifter and then everybody knows who the shoplifter is or what they look like immediately. I think in downtown Bismarck, we do such a wonderful job of community over competition. We'll always tell people, oh, I don't have that, but why don't you go over to this boutique on the next street over? They'll help you out. One thing that I do is each year I do two big events that give back to the community, that focus on businesses that aren't my own. In December, we do 25 days of downtown giveaways, which we pick a different business downtown for 25 days. We do a live video from that business every day on social media, and we meet the owner. We talk about products or we talk about services in that business, and we just get to feature a business every single day. And we do a giveaway. That was wonderful this year. I had so many people tell me and other businesses that that's how they found out about a store or a restaurant, and otherwise they had no idea it even existed. And what I love about doing that is it's free, it doesn't cost anything. It's just a facebook live video. That's one of the things we do in downtown bismarck. And then another event that we do to give back to the community is every year during prom season, about February or January, we do a dress drive for a local nonprofit organization, and we collect used dresses and used prom attire for less fortunate youth so that we can make prom a possibility for everybody, Every size, every financial situation. We want to make sure that all girls get to accept experience the milestone that is prom.

That's so cool. So then do People come into your store to access that program or do the prom dresses go somewhere else where others can access?

We're the facilitators of the event. So what we do is we collect all the donations and we sort them all by size and then we see what's missing. So for example, if nobody donated anything in a size 16 and up, that's where we go through our inventory and we make sure that the girls at Carrie's kids of all sizes have a size to shop. And then all those dresses we bring over to the nonprofit Carrie's Kids, we get them set up like a little miniature store and the girls have the experience to have that prom shopping. We aren't able to help the girls with the prom shopping due to confidentiality reasons because they are clients. And so we're not able to help with that part. The fact that our first year we dressed 220 girls that probably wouldn't have gone to prom, that made all of hauling those boxes across town completely worth it to make sure that they were able to experience prom.

That's so good. And I mean, just listening to you speak, you can hear your why in your business come through so clear. And it's so evident that you have such a giving heart for other people. And I mean, I think if there's any tip that we give boutique owners at the Hub to help them be successful, it's exactly what you've just demonstrated. So that's so cool to hear you talk about that. If you think about other boutique owners who may be listening to this right now, whether they're moms and they're listening with their earbuds and their kids are sleeping in the backseat as they're going somewhere, or just those families that are in the middle of the hustle trying to build a business. As you look back at your career, what do you think that number one tip or that greatest takeaway that you could give someone would be?

Don't ever, ever, ever give up. I mean, wow. I didn't know that a podcast was so emotional. I mean, every, every prom season, I have an emotional breakdown on my husband and he is my biggest cheerleader. All it is is just hard work. And you know what? Some days suck. And some days you feel like, why am I doing this? People are mean, people are negative. But then you'll have one customer come in and they turn it all around. Or you'll have one like a next door neighbor business that'll bring you a cup of coffee. And it's like those relationships that you're building with your business, whether it be your next door neighbor business, your accountability partner that you met in the boutique hub, your customer that comes in every Wednesday night when her kids are at confirmation. That's why I do what I do is I love the relationships that I'm able to build with people. I mean, yes, selling them things is definitely a perk, but I would much rather buy from a human being and get to know their story rather than buy from online. What I really would say to anybody that's in the thick of it is don't give up. I know it gets hard and it gets stressful and sometimes it sucks. But then you always have to think back to like those highlight points to those customers that made it so worthwhile or those vendors that genuinely and sincerely appreciated your business. And I mean, if at the end of it all, I mean, we're all striving for some goal of, you know, being successful or making money or making our families proud, but to be your own boss and just enjoy the ride, I mean, isn't that an accomplishment in itself that you were able to say that you did this no matter if your business has been around for 20 years or two weeks? I'm proud of you because it's hard and you have to sacrifice so much and people don't get it there. You know, One of my pet peeves is when people say the phrase must be nice. I hate that. So when I'm happy for another person, I'm always like, I am so proud of you or I am so excited for you that you're doing this. I guess that would be my takeaway. It's so good.

So true. You mentioned your husband along the way because he plays a huge role in this, right? So my wonder was if you're the fairy prom mother. What's your husband called?

My husband's business cards say brains behind the oper. Oh my gosh. Brains behind the operation.

Perfect.

I think if my husband wasn't around, I'd like give away all the prom dresses. He holds me back. He brings me down to reality because he's the numbers guy. Otherwise I think that I would just go crazy buying way too much and giving way too much away.

You are not alone, man. I hear that from so many couples in this business. Does he go to market with you and help you create like your open to buy plan when you go to market and help you analyze those numbers and those sales?

He analyzes the numbers and the sales based off the point of sale and all the stats from the Years previous or the season previous. Prom market or formal wear market is very different than like going to Magic or going to Dallas. You go to fashion shows for prom market or formal wear and then you can't just buy one dress. I mean, you have. The buy in at a company is very high. So when you go in, you have to know what you're open to buy is you have to know what you did last year with this company, what you did with this certain size. So he, when we sit down at market, he has spreadsheets for me that are like, okay, here's how many reds you need. Here's how many size eights you need. Here's how we did with this company last year. He does not work in the store. He can't handle that. But man, is he good at the numbers and breaking things down.

Totally flying in the dark and asking for disaster. If you don't have good data like that, so good for you guys to have that relationship. Is the margin in the prom market, what is that like compared to just ladies ready to wear?

Prom is very high cost. You don't get a great margin and it's so payroll intensive. It's a lot of risk because you invest quite a bit of capital with one company. Let's say you end up getting a dress and beads fall off or something. I mean, it's going to cut out on your margin. If you have to get the dress repaired, how long is it going to hang there? I will say formal wear or bridal is a very high capital investment compared to the boutique industry. Boutique. You guys can, I mean, we can get a pack of sweaters in and sell them in 10 minutes. You know, with prom, it's a lot more payroll intensive, labor intensive than the ready to wear.

Oh, so important that data. I mean, you're just totally flying in the dark and asking for disaster if you don't have good data like that. So good for you guys to have that relationship. So let's talk about the juicy stuff. Are you ready for that?

Oh, boy. Okay. You've already like, basically made me cry five times.

All right, goal accomplished. All right. What would you be doing if you didn't own Cuckoo's Nest?

Oh, my gosh. What would you be? I would be like the girl at the baseball game for the Kansas City Royals during the innings that goes around and is like doing all the fun games on the microphone and making the, you know, the kids run the bases or whatever. That would be my dream job.

You know what, you just need to be the girl with the microphone, like anywhere in life, you are the girl that needs to be on the stage because you're fun. I love it.

I think I'll just get a karaoke machine for the store.

You could be, like. You could relive the wedding singer again and again and just, like, sing some like. I love it. What is. Back to the serious questions. What is your favorite book and your favorite podcast?

My favorite book is, I would probably say, the Alchemist, my favorite podcast, which I was so hyped when Ashley asked me to be on the podcast because I am a podcast junkie. I love podcasts. So a podcast that I really enjoy is. It's called How I Built this, where it's entrepreneurs, and it talks about how they started their business or how they came to be. And you listen to that. Yes, Yes.

I love that one.

That one's a good one. And I also love to listen to success talks. I just really like entrepreneur ones because I like to hear those stories of where they overcome triumph and different obstacles that entrepreneurs have along the way.

So good. What do you think your biggest obstacle has been that you overcame?

Sincerely? My hardest thing with this business has been doing business with family. That's very hard.

We can leave it at that. I don't think you even need to elaborate because I think everybody knows exactly where you're coming from and has been there at some point. Very good. All right, last piece. What scares you the most? Snakes, payroll, or Internet trolls?

Whoo. This is a great question. I would have to say, what scares me the most is payroll. What hurts me the most is Internet trolls. And I am a huge Indiana Jones fan, so I. Snakes. I hate snakes.

Perfect. Well done. Well done. All right, last question. Thirty years from now, after you've had your exit strategy from the business and you are visiting with your friends and your family about your life and your business, what is the thing that you want others to remember most about what you've created?

I would say, for example, a lot of people say, in my store, so and so much dollars for one night. No, it's not just one night for me. Like, when people get their dress, it's an overall experience. So I want to make sure that when people are in my store, they remember when they were in my store and the experience they had, how they felt when they put on their prom dress, when they got ready for prom, how they felt when they got ready, when they look back at their pictures, how that dress made them feel. That's what I want. That's what I want.

Such Good, lasting memories. I love it.

And I better be on a beach while I'm remembering that.

Amen. I mean, if you're putting up with like negative 10 degrees in North Dakota today, you better be on a beach somewhere when you exit this business, right?

That's right.

Well, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to be on the podcast today. And honestly, for being so transparent and honest and supportive of other people inside of the boutique hub who are in bridal and prom. I know that you're always the go to gal when someone has a question that I can tag in a post and you're so willing to jump in and lend a hand or an ear or advice. So thank you for living in that spirit of community over competition in everything that you do.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And I want to thank you from all of us boutique owners for creating this environment for us to go to and to serve us. I mean, it's just such an amazing platform that you've created for us all to utilize. And think of how many friendships that you creating the Boutique hub have created.

Oh, man, I just heard Cats. It's a great community of very supportive people. And honestly, it's the ones that are generous that are so giving that make it what it is. And you're part of that. So thank you so much. Thank you. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope that you loved it. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a rating and review down below for a chance to be one of our featured listeners each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and how to access complete show notes and bonus downloads from our guests, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.