#626: The Ultimate Guide to Efficient Planning for Retailers in 2025

Foreign. Business can be a lonely game, but it doesn't have to be. Welcome to Boutique Chat where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek. We'll hear from product based businesses of all types, retailers, e commerce and wholesale brands, along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry. I'm your host Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and I can't wait to chat. Hey guys, it's you and me this week and I've got some big news. It is time to start planning out 2025 and just talking about how to get more done and be efficient with the way that you're planning things. And today's episode is special because the idea of planning and just becoming a CEO versus a hustling entrepreneur, the idea of things like the four part to do list which I've had entire podcast episodes about if you want to go find that one, or how to get more done on a weekly basis, how to time block, how to be a parent and a business owner at the same time. All those topics are so near and dear to my heart because I feel like I've lived through trial by fire on all of them. And it's all of those topics that led me several years ago now to create my very own day planner. The day planner built for retailers and for product based business owners, for small business owners. Because I felt like in all of the years of trying to be more productive and trying to be the CEO and trying to get more done, I was frustrated by having a day planner, having a content creator, having a bunch of financial spreadsheets and tracking spreadsheets and feeling like yes, I was trying to track these things and be organized in all these ways, but I never had a product that put all of them together in one place. And so that's where the entire idea several years ago of our team building out a day planner for boutique owners called the Boutique Boss Planner really came from. So today I I just want to share with you behind the scenes what is happening inside of our 2025 boutique boss planner. Give you some of the highlights, some of the different ways to use it. If you're not familiar with it yet, and whether or not you use this very specific day planner that we built. I just encourage you to think differently about how you're planning your business and how you're being organized in your business. And hopefully some of these nuggets will help no matter what it is you sell or no matter what planner you use. So let's get into it. I first, if you are watching this on YouTube or you're watching the replay anywhere, I want to show you the COVID of the 2025 Boutique Boss Planner. We have so much fun here at the Hub, launching a new theme for the planner every single year that we build it, a new color scheme and a new layout. This year is all about the purple. Right? So I love how the 2025 Boutique Boss Planner works. Now, anytime I buy a planner, I want to know what are the days laid out like? So just to kind of give you an idea of how we lay out days on a two page spread. It's a seven day week. So that for every day of the week, there is the three most important priorities that I have to get done this week at the very top and then there's room for me to lay out every single hour of the day. What do I need to get done today specifically, and then a place for notes down at the bottom. So again, every week is a full page spread. Something that we started to do different in the Boutique Boss Planner last year and we're continuing into 2025 is we actually paired the planner, the day planner, together with what we used to call the Boutique Boss content creator. And it was basically a blank book helping you plan out all of your social media and marketing content for the week. Again, the idea was less overwhelm, less books to carry around, less ways to, you know, let something fall through the cracks. So last year we built the content creator inside of the planner. So for every single week of the year, you'll have your full page, you know, two pages open, spread of the planning for the week. And when you flip the page, it'll be that same week's social media and marketing planning. So when you look at this by example, down the first column down the page is all the different days of the week and then across the top is all the different social media channels that you're going to be marketing on. So Pinterest, email, text, app, Facebook, Instagram, like all the things so that you can sit down and map out, okay, next week on social media and next week in the emails I need to send, I need to remember these things or, or these are going to be the topic of the post and you can pencil all these things in. So while you're checking off your to do list, you can also plan out and check off all of your social media content at the same time. Now, something special about this that I hear from boutique owners every year when they buy it is they Love the fact that if they have a social media manager or an in store manager in the business, they both can run off of the planner at the same time. So a manager has a planner, the owner has a planner and they're working in tandem to get that done. Or the owner will leave their planner open in the back room for the social media girl to go in, look at the plan and check it all off when she's done. So lots of fresh ways to collaborate there. All right, so that's how the planning works, that's how the content planning works. But let me show you a couple of the things that I think are really special inside of the Boutique Boss Planner that no other planners also include. And this is really the business side of planning. So not only are there places for you to fill in the blank and do your business planning, but we wanted to build in as much baked in education and ideas as we possibly could. So it starts with content creation. So there are by all the different months of the year inside of this planner there's a couple pages of ideas on social media, holidays, different events and marketing campaigns that we could run by month or by season. And also kind of a quick look at what type of buying I should be planning for if I'm launching into collections. Now this is just a small taste of content planning. I'm going to show you an entire handbook separate from the Boutique Boss Planner in just a minute that does much of the same but like to the 100x degrees, right? 100x degrees beyond that, but it's just a start in the planner. The next section of the planner is your personal self assessment. So when we go into really laying out our year things we do in January, right. A lot of us will do goal setting in many different areas of our life. We'll get nitty gritty on some self reflecting questions like what am I most grateful for? What was my biggest accomplishment I'm celebrating from last year? Just an opportunity to be grateful. What are my greatest skill sets? Where am I continuing to be the bottleneck of my business? What have I already created in my life that could be maximized? What skills am I determined to develop this year? Just a really deep personal reflection on where things are going to go. And then goal setting by different categories. There's also a place just to do goal setting by different months of the year inside the planner. So whether it's personal goals or health goals or business goals, everything's got a spot for you to mark it down so you can reflect on it as the Year goes on. All right, so here's where the rubber meets the road. The next section in the planner is all about your business and your business's numbers and tracking things like inventory, sales, social media, team, productivity, all kinds of different ways. So our next couple of pages are, we've got our yearly comparison and this is sales in relation to inventory. We have our social media tracking, which goes across months and all the different channels and then expense categories as well. Next section of the planner is something that again, it bakes in the education and it makes it really incredibly unique. And, and this is also what makes the planner really good for managers and employees as well is we have baked in checklists and to do lists. So there's an annual checklist and also places, of course, for you to add in your own checklists beyond what we've already put in. Like, every business owner on an annual basis should be doing these specific things and then a place for you to add in yours as well. There's a quarterly checklist and then there is a beginning and end of month check checklist. So a great way for you to think about what should my managers, what should my employees be working on, what should I not forget? What do other business owners already know that I might need to look back on? It's all inside of those checklists. All right. The next part of the planner, I feel like. And the next. And the next, like Vanna White over here, the next part of the planner that I love. And this might actually be one of my very favorite things, because when I'm doing coaching one on one with boutique owners and retailers, I often find myself asking, well, what did you do last year? What worked and what didn't work and why? And I find that as business owners, we're often very good at planning the event we're going to host, planning the promotion. We're going to run like we lay it all out, we can plan it, but we get so busy that we plan it and then it's over and then it's gone and we move on to the next thing. Rarely do we sit there and reflect and post call how the event actually went and the success of the event. Right. And how we could do the event next year a little bit different or a little bit better. And the same is true with really everything in business, isn't it? It's all about the tracking and iterating on what we already know based on the data that we're gathering. The trick is to gather the data. Right? So the next section of the planner is a month by month breakdown of all the different aspects of your business. What's working, what's not, what do you need to remember? So the first page is sales. So we can look at by the days of the month, what were the sales? Where did they come in at? What was my percentage of discounts? Did it reconcile with my till? If I'm a brick and mortar, what were my best staff members this month? What were my biggest days, what was my beginning of month inventory, what was my end of month inventory, total sales for year to date and what do I currently have on order for the next couple of months? So it's a really great way to really relate sales in relationship to inventory. And then when I have a planner and I look back 12 months from now, I can go, oh yeah, that's right, these were my sales. But wow, look at the level of the inventory that I had. Or oh yeah, it didn't work these days because I started and I made a note that we had a hurricane come through. Weird how those can affect sales, right? So the actual data is there for you, but the next section when it comes to tracking my month in review is really a more like Q and A section. So you've got did I reach my goals this month? And you're reviewing my sales goal, my maintain markup goal, my website traffic, my personal goals, my social media follower goals, my returning customer, my website conversion rate, like all the metrics that really drive our business, how am I really performing with these top goals in my business this month? Then I'm asking what were this month's biggest surprises? So what's growing old? What's my most profitable vendor? What's the trend report? What are people buying? What are they asking for? What's my best ROI on? On a social media promotion? What's my best ROI on an in store promotion? Weather's weather, things that affected sales, supplies needed and then things that happened in my community that affected sales. So you should be able to month over month look back and have an absolutely complete view of what worked, what didn't, and what are you going to do different in the next year to come. So all of this, all of this for 12 months is inside of this boutique boss planner. So hopefully again, it's like your business bible. Everything is together in one place. Are you ready to participate in Pink Friday 2024? This is your official invitation. I hope you join us to shop small first and promote your store. Whether you're online or you have a beautiful brick and mortar that you want to really tell your story about why to Shop Small first this holiday season. November 22, 2024 is the Friday before Black Friday and annually every single year on Pink Friday, we join together to promote this idea of shopping small first before Black Friday, before the big box stores. You know, I love Small Business Saturday and I just hate that it comes after Black Friday. It's an afterthought. That's why Pink Friday again is always the weekend before Black Friday. So join us. Sign up to promote your store to be on our Shop Small First. Map and receive of the ideas, toolkits, stickers, window clings, graphics, anything you can use to set up an event in your community or to promote your online business on Pink Friday November 22, 2024. Link is in the show notes. Be sure to sign up. It's completely free to promote your business on Pink Friday. Now it can be it's a bigger book, right? So you have to decide like, oh, do I want a big planner like this? A lot of people, you know, they'll use this along with their Google Calendar so that this can stay on their storefront and doesn't always have to go everywhere with them. But it's up to you how you choose to use this. Using the Boutique Boss Planner, our team does a really good job of creating tons of training videos. So when you get into some of the tracking sheets and you're like, how do I gather my most profitable vendor information or where do I find my beginning of month inventory and where do I find my end of month inventory? How do I run some of these formulas and reports? We have training videos on all of those things available for you guys who've bought the Planner or those of you who are also members of the Boutique Hub. Now we kind of like to over deliver. So there is also anytime you buy the Planner, a digital resource pack that we are going to email you. It's also going to be a direct download the second you buy the Planner. So even if the Planner hasn't shipped yet, you're going to get the digital resource pack and that's going to come packed with 2025 market dates, some 2025 business tips and ideas, an expense tracker, a retail acronym guide, a few more of the tracking sheets that we didn't include in the Planner that are a little bit more in depth and advanced for those of you who have maybe a larger inventory. But there's several more resources that are going to come digitally that you can just download and quickly print out and use along with the Planner. Okay, again, I'M feeling like Vanna White. Thanks for bearing with me. Let me show you what else is coming in this year's Planner in our Planner Bundle. So I'm a big fan and I go through these like absolute crazy of these tear off to do lists that are sticky on the back. So you're gonna get a little tear off sheet inside of your bundle and you're also going to get a custom notebook that matches your boutique boss planner, one of the little notebooks here that comes with the elastic band. So everything's matching with the Planner. Now, something that's new this year with the bundle that we've actually never done before. We're testing it out this year, so don't kill us if this somehow doesn't work. But two of our most requested products that go along with the Planner that typically are not sold with the Planner are number one, our Small Business Marketing Handbook and number two, our ultimate Small Business Hiring handbook. So this year when you snag a copy of the Planner, you're going to have an option. These are our digital products and you're going to get a digital version with them. But this year we're also going to send you a printed version. We've never printed these out and tried to offer them before except for at markets. So we're printing out. This is the Small Business Marketing Handbook. If you're watching this video and this little puppy is do we have a total page count? It's over 100 pages of all kinds of content ideas, all kinds of marketing ideas, everything from tick tock ideas, tick tock ideas, group and live sale engagement ideas, Pinterest pins and group board ideas, buying collection ideas, what to post every day on social media ideas, Instagram story ideas, hashtag guide for Instagram Engagement questions by month. This maybe is actually one of my favorite things inside this book. So for the month of December I can. Oh my Gosh, there's like 40 questions here. Are you a last minute shopper or are you an early bird shopper? Spice cider or eggnog Favorite Christmas song? Like those of you who are working on boosting engagement, that's your go to Daily content ideas in here Event ideas in here Promotion ideas in here Collections. How can you launch your new arrivals and your products and collections? All of that is in the Small Business Marketing Handbook. So you have an option to add this to your bundle at checkout. Or you also have an option to add your ultimate Small Business hiring handbook, which is interview questions, job descriptions, onboarding checklists, all the details that you need to know about adding employees and doing it the right way to your staff. All kinds of team meeting guides and ways to engage staff members, ways to measure and support staff staff members. If you have had questions about how do I efficiently hire someone to my staff and then make sure they're really trained so they perform. We dumped all of that into the ultimate hiring handbook as well. So that is the overview of what it looks like inside of the Boutique boss planner this year and just planning strategy for retailers this year with the new 2025 bundle. Now let me just take this one step further again, doesn't matter to me what planner you use. I hope you use ours and I hope ours is helpful. But really what I want more than that is I just want to make sure you guys feel like you have a life with your business. That's it. I know so many of you who are listening are also parents. You also have family, you have friends, you have hobbies, you have things you want to do in your community outside of just own your business. So having a few great strategies around planning is really important. So if I could give you just a couple quick tips. Number one, if you haven't listened to the episode yet about the four part to do list and how to time block and schedule your week, highly encourage you to do that. It's very detailed. It's a whole strategy that I can walk you through just to help you get more efficient. Ultimately, I want to make sure that you're looking at not just a monster to do list at the end of every single day, but you're actually starting with a plan of what are the income generating activities or what are the CEO roles versus the busy entrepreneur roles. What are the hundred dollar an hour jobs versus the ten dollars an hour jobs? And you as an entrepreneur are attacking the most important stuff first. And you're honestly having a question with yourself or a conversation with yourself about what can you say no to and what can you outsource. And sometimes that feels like a big I'm not ready to hire someone yet conversation. But for me anyway, and I know for so many retailers I work with, it's really like hey, can you get an intern for five hours a week? Let's just say you pay him 10 bucks an hour, that's 50 bucks, right? Let's say you pay him 20 bucks an hour, that's 100 bucks a week. Could you invest $100 a week to get five hours back to work on income generating activity in your business? That's where you start with hiring and then you grow and scale from there. Because now, again, that idea of a CEO versus an entrepreneur, it's all about the relationship between time and money. Time is the only limited resource in this world. Money is infinite. It's always available. We just have to figure out how to go get it. But it's leveraging the availability of time to work on the things, the strategies that we know will create more money. There's only so many hours in the day for you and I to do that without asking for some sort of help. So how are you really balancing what's important on your to do list and asking for help on the rest? The second tip I would give you is just to be incredibly consistent with what days you're working on, what product projects. If you wake up every day and you leave it up to chance what you're going to work on today, it's really easy to get distracted and overwhelmed and let your mood of the day affect the output of the day. So how can you start to create some theme days in your business? You know, Monday being marketing day, and Tuesday being your day with your vendors, and Wednesday being a photo shoot and marketing day, and Thursday being a day where you're working on buying for the next month, whatever that looks like, get a plan, stick to it, and be really consistent. And then finally, only attract, number grows. Only attract, number grows. And so when it comes to getting stuff done and being productive and being a CEO again, it's really easy to wake up and go, hmm, where should I focus today? What should I get done? And a lot of times I know for me, when I do that, I end up answering emails, or I end up on social media, or I end up in things that aren't really the big rocks I needed to move in my business for the day. It's the busy work that made me feel like I was accomplishing something, but really I wasn't. So when I say only attract, number grows. If I start my day by understanding what are the metrics that are actually going to move the needle in my business, then I'm going to probably work first on the things that are going to actually move the metrics in my business, right? If I'm driven to increasing my average order value or increasing the traffic on my website every day, I'm going to have tasks related to that. But if I don't know my numbers and I'm not focused on measuring these metrics and celebrating them when I get there, hmm, I'm probably gonna just be posting to Instagram for the fun of it and trying some new trending sound, right? Not very impactful unless there's an end goal and an end purpose. So that's it for planning today. I hope a couple of quick tips help and I just want to encourage you, the earlier you can plan ahead to 2025, the better and more exciting it's gonna be. You guys know this is one of my favorite times of year as we gear up for a new year and in January we roll into our best year yet week here at the Hub and everyone is invited. It's free, it's open to the public. Bring a friend and we're going to talk about how to plan and maximize 2025. But I want you to be ready even before we get there. Lay out what those marketing promotions are going to be, lay out your holidays, lay out what markets you're going to go to, lay out some collections you really want to make sure you dig into based on the sales data you had last year in terms of what's working and what can you double down on. So let's team up. I want to be on your team and help you create the most successful 2025 we possibly can. And hopefully the Boutique Boss Planner or the Small Business Marketing Handbook or any of these tools can help you get where you want to go even faster. That's it for the podcast this week, you guys. I've got a link for you inside of the show Notes to access your 2025 boutique boss planner that is on sale right now. It's on sale right now and it will be shipping, I believe in early November. So as soon as she lands with us, she's going to ship directly to your hands and be there in plenty of time to get you prepared for the end of year and for mapping out that best year yet when it comes to January 2025. So I hope you love this. I hope you love the Planner. Reach out with questions anytime. I would love to be of service any way I can. And as always, you guys, thanks for listening to the podcast. I will see you here next week. Thanks for listening guys. I hope you took away all kinds of nuggets and new ideas from this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating and review. We love to hear your feedback and give you a chance to be featured on the show each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and to access guest downloads and bonuses and all the resources we talked about on the show, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.