#639: End-of-Year Retail Reset: A Guide to Reflect, Plan, and Thrive

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, welcome back to the podcast this week I am so excited. This is one of my favorite times of the year as a business owner and hopefully it's one of your favorite times of the year as well. We have already beat the crazy holiday rush. We've already been through hell and back when it comes to this season of retail. And now it's this moment that we have like a moment of pause for the just reflecting and looking back on the year that we had, making some plans, digging into the things that we don't always get to on our to do list as we start to prepare for a new year. And so I wanted to come to you today in this episode just to remind you of a couple of really critical things that we need to get done this time of year. And hopefully if you've created some space in your calendar, maybe some time away from the store or out of the office, some of these things are going to float to the top of your to do list because they are truly going to set you up for success in the new year and long term in your business as well. This week, as we get into it, I'm here in my office. I'm super sad if you notice behind me, if you're catching this on YouTube or the video, but my neon light died today. So it's feeling a little dark in here. But the amazing thing is I think I've had this neon light, you guys, for like, I don't know, seven years, like something incredibly long. It was probably time for it to die. But there are so many great places to order neon lights these days. I got on, boom, had one. It's going to be here in two days. It's all good. So we'll look forward to that new neon light when it shows up. All right, let's dig into it. Here are your five must do reminders for the end of the year. First things first. Number one, let's talk about maximizing your cash flow for the end of the year. So I always think about it like this business is kind of this game, right? And it's not just about how much money you make, but really it's about how much money did you actually keep? That's the game. And if we don't play the game accordingly, we can get into a situation where maybe we become more profitable than we realized we were. Maybe we spent that profit on inventory and didn't have enough money left over to actually pay ourselves. Maybe we weren't implementing profit first, or maybe we were kind of winging it. And we get to the end of the year and realize, oh, crap, I actually have a huge tax liability and Uncle Sam's going to get his. So we need to be prepared for any and all scenarios because there's nothing worse than working your butt off during the holiday season, getting to the end of the year, feeling like you, you know, made sales and had a great season, but then realizing either your bank account's empty or you get to pay that first quarterly estimate in January and you panic because there's not enough money in the bank to pay the estimate. And I know, I've been there. I can tell you from experience, and I know hundreds of other retailers who have been in that situation as well. So let's talk about avoiding it. A few different things to think about when it comes to maximizing your cash flow. Number one, biggest asset you have is hopefully you have a great accountant. You have somebody who is not an H and R block, someone who, you know, you kind of like diy, fill in your stuff and they give you the results and there's no, you know, deep conversation about what should be going on. Hopefully you have an accountant who also doubles as a retail consultant and an accountant who understands retail as a whole and inventory management, how to maximize your inventory. There's a couple great accountants that we work with inside of the hub. If you go to your service provider directory, you're going to find them there. There's two Harquin and Christine Gray, and both have tons of experience when it comes to retail. But really what you should be thinking about is meeting with that accountant before the end of the year, knowing what options do I have, how are my numbers looking? Like they're going to finish up so that I can make adjustments accordingly in order to have a maximized cash plan when I get into the first quarter of the year. So meet with that accountant. That's really, really important. If you have cash, you had a good year. Something to really think about is long term, setting your business up for success with multiple assets and streams of revenue. Like I said earlier, business is a game and it's not just about playing this one game of selling products to people for a profit. This is one small piece of the business that you're building. And as you continue to and evolve, you'll see more opportunities open their doors. One of the biggest opportunities being real estate investment. So as you have cash left over, if you're in a situation where you're leasing the property that you're in, one great way to maximize cash and tax efficiency is owning that property under a separate LLC name so you can then lease that property back from yourself. There's a number of great deduction opportunities to take advantage of when you own real estate. So really playing that game and diversifying your revenue stream and your asset, that's really, really important. Second thing to think about when it comes to maximizing your cash is leveraging what you have on payroll and who you have on payroll. I've got three kids, they are 10, 13 and 14. All three of them are on my payroll. And of course the 10 year old doesn't have the same responsibilities that the older ones do. But if it comes to cleaning offices, shipping planners, taking out garbages, helping with little tasks and projects, they help and we maximize what we are able to pay them. Now we do this for a couple of reasons. If we know we are going to have a profitable year, it's important that we are maximizing those expenses and those expenses in payroll are coming back into our household right as income. So it's one big circle of opportunity. This is also a great way to teach your kids responsibility. Having them understand what it means to having their first job before you know, your state can probably legally hire them somewhere, whether that law is 14 or 16, depending on where you live. So they get kind of a shot at working for someone, having some responsibility. They see what you do for a living and for us this is their opportunity to start saving for college or tech school or whatever it is that they decide to do. They're starting to have some money put aside. So again you're getting that tax deduction, but it's also maximizing profitability coming back into your home. Another way to look at this same scenario is through Roth IRAs. So there is a cap, there's a max amount that you can put into Roth IRAs every year. But this is another way that we really build wealth long term for our family and that is putting some cash aside inside of those safe tax buckets for long term investment. When we meet with our accountant, another thing that we really think about in terms of maximizing cash flow at the end of the year is understanding what is your debt and what is your debt pay down strategy. Now, there's good debt, there's bad debt. Right? We could have a whole podcast episode on that. But it's a time for you to really look at am I using debt efficiently or is my debt using me efficiently? So what I mean by that is if you're somebody who's gotten caught up in maybe not getting your fair terms paid back on time, and now you owe 30% on that money, or you took Shopify Capital and they're now garnishing your wages, essentially because they're taking money out of what should be your profits. You did it with PayPal or you did it with Stripe, or you did it with whatever. Because everyone wants to get into offering capital now because they know if you miss one payment, they've got you, they've got you for a long time. So if you don't already have a local banker, if you haven't interviewed local banks, this is the time to do that. Get in an established relationship with the banker and start to understand what is my opportunity to maximize and consolidate debt. Maybe it is through operating a line of credit. Where you have that line of credit, you have a more favorable term in terms of payback. And then when you're using credit cards, if you're somebody who's using credit cards for points and travel and all of that, you are now able to use credit cards efficiently and not rack up a bunch of debt on those credit cards with insane interest rates. So if you're using a credit card, you're paying it off in full immediately, several times a month. But if you need the credit, you're actually relying on the line of credit to pay off that credit card and holding the debt on the line of credit, which would have a more favorable term. So there's lots of strategy around that. But again, talking to your accountant, talking to your banker, make sure you analyze what is your debt situation and how are you going to move that positively forward? All right. When it comes to maximizing cash, something else really critical to do this time of year is what do you have in vendor credits? Do you have a solid system for really capturing whatever those vendor credits may be? So if you've been ordering on fashion, go. And let's say those vendor credits don't actually, you know, automatically come back to you. You aren't notified, you don't know you actually have credit on the platform. Maybe you have credit with individual vendors on their own websites. How are you keeping track of where your credits lie so that you can maximize those in the new year. So what is your credit is, you know, do you have a stack of damages and returns and things that you need to deal with that you could have money hiding in those pockets? What's your system, what's your process, and what's your plan to get that cash back into your hands? Now, the same is true with the gift cards that you've given to your customers. So I went through recently and shared with the community at the boutique hub, an experience that I had with a pretty large boutique. And I really loved their process of reminding me that I had credit. So they sent out this whole sales funnel, and it was like reminding me that I had a gift card. It was like a countdown. It was some kind of, like, perk to come in and log in and use that gift card right away within a certain period of time. And it had just, like a series of reminders, and it was both text and email. And I loved this because the gift card, I'm going to say, was like 25 bucks. It wasn't much, but when I look at gift cards, I look at it as an opportunity to say, yeah, maybe it's 25 bucks, but chances are, if my average order value, if I'm doing a good job marketing and merchandising, and my average order value is 100 to $120, well, if I come in and I have a $25 gift card, I'm not just gonna spend 25 and walk out. I'm probably gonna spend that AOV of 100 to 125. So gift cards, and reminding people to come in and use those gift cards is really critical because you're going to increase the amount of sales that go with those gift cards. All right, finally, last way to think about maximizing your cash flow at the end of the year is this is prime time to go through and just look at what are the unused or underutilized apps and services that I'm paying for. I'll give you a good example. So we use an email marketing program at the hub called ActiveCampaign. And this is quite in depth. We pay probably like $20,000 a year to use this platform. Like, it's large, it's a CRM. It has all kinds of bells and whistles. It's yada yada. When we went in to renew our contract with them this year, what we realized was we had 20 users just from the boutique Hub. So, like, all of our team had logins to this platform and we were paying another like a hundred to $200 a year. It was something stupid for all these logins. And so Eric and I were like, whoa, okay, team, we need to do a better job of understanding who on our team owns, really maximizing the account that they are using every day, like who has ownership over ActiveCampaign and does having ownership mean. We need to define that. So it's not just that you, you know, are the resident expert, but you're in charge of the billing. So if billing gets out of hand and we somehow have 20 users, which we really, you know, maybe three, maybe four people actually need logins that use it on a daily basis, we're paying for all this waste. And so our team, we had to create a system of ownership of every app that we subscribe to. Someone on our team owns the app. And what does it mean to own the app? We had to define what that process looked like as well, otherwise you're going to lose your heinie in all these unused subscriptions and services. Now, the same is true. It's not just about cutting expenses when it comes to these apps, but the same is true for maximizing profitability and output. When we look at apps and services, sometimes the question is not just can I eliminate this or cut this, but it's could I actually subscribe to the higher level version of this app, which would be an investment in helping me generate a greater ROI and to become more profitable at the end of the day. So an example, I'll say at the Boutique Hub, lots of you, you know, are members of the Boutique Hub, right? Some of you use it more than others. It is a gym membership. So if you want to, if you want to get fit, you don't just buy the gym membership and never go to the gym. If you want to grow your business, if you want advice on what is working right now, you don't just buy the membership and never log in and don't do anything with it. You know, it's like hoping in one hand and wishing in the other and seeing which one's going to develop first. Neither, because you didn't take action. So I think about that. With a Hub membership, what is your strategy to take action? And if the answer is I don't have time to take action, then you don't have time to grow your business. Plain and simple. If you show me your calendar, you show me your priorities. So the most successful stores I work with are the ones that when I see their calendar, I know that they have time for learning, they have time for quiet time and investing in themselves, they have time for action. If they are simply tied to whatever the need of the business is today and they're simply reacting, there's no way for them to grow forward. Growing forward is going to be by luck, not by strategy. And that is not long term sustainable. So again, what are you involved with if with like the boutique hub that is a gym membership and you've got to use it and to the point of upgrading and then getting even more value. So several of you are a part of a program called Boutique Black and this is like our higher level program for our boutique owners who seriously want to scale and they need traffic, they need paid ad strategy and they needed a higher level understanding of SEO. Google Ads, Facebook ads, Pinterest ads, TikTok ads, all of that strategy as serious boutique owners, only those who decide, okay, that's for me, it's a greater investment of time, it's a greater financial investment. But those are the people who are like, oh crap, I am seeing major results within the first week of me implementing this. So where do you have those situations with other apps and programs where a, you're not really utilizing it or B, you could actually be upgrading and getting 10 times the return on your investment? Definitely something to think about when it comes to maximizing your cash flow strategy. Hey, are you on the list yet? I know you want to be on this list. You don't want to miss this list because we are deep diving into your business college style. Not 101 style, not 301 style, 501 style. And that is inside of our college level course for boutique owners called Retail bootcamp. Now, many of you may have already taken retail bootcamp because the cool part about this course is not only do you get to watch it at your leisure, but then join us for 14 weeks of live group coaching twice a year. That's 28 weeks of live group coaching every single year. Once you're inside a retail bootcamp, you're always inside. So you get that same two semesters of group coaching every single year for as long as you want to join us this year inside of retail Bootcamp, I can't wait to go back to deep dive into the six layers of your business strategically, step by step. What do you need to grow before you're ready for the Facebook ads and digital traffic, which we definitely cover. First we have to make sure how's your pricing, how's your profit, how's your inventory, how's your team Management. We're going into literally every single topic of your business throughout Retail Bootcamp. So it only opens twice a year, January and June. Make sure you're on the wait list again. Once you get in, you're in for life. Why didn't college allow us to do that? Right? Whatever happened, all that college debt we had, that was silly. I can make way better use of your time inside of Retail Boot Camp. So I hope you're on the list. Get on the waitlist right now so you're the first to know when we open the doors of our 2025 session. I can't wait to see you inside of Retail Bootcamp. All right, strategy number two. We talked about maximizing cash flow. Let's talk about maximizing inventory. So end of the year is prime time to do two audits. Two quick. These are easy audits. I say audit and they'll probably want to puke in our mouth a little bit. What I mean by this is I want you to look at these two things and just say, hey, do I like how this is providing me data? The first is looking at my QuickBooks classifications. So when I analyze a profit and loss statement in QuickBooks, which I do every single month, sometimes more than once a month, but I'm looking at the flow, like, does it make sense of if I just have all of my income lumped in sales? That doesn't really tell me anything. Right? Sales. Okay, well, I want to know more than that. Where are the sales coming from? Was it online sales? Was it brick and mortar sales? Was it one location versus the second location versus pop ups versus E commerce? Like, how am I really digging into the classifications in QuickBooks so that I can really generate, like what's working and what's not? Same is true for expenses. Like if I just have all of my expenses lumped into advertising or operating right. It doesn't really tell me a lot. But can I break operating down into printing supplies, market travel, whatever it might be like, getting into the nitty gritty of the classification structure of QuickBooks is going to give you better data that's going to help you make better decisions. The second place you want to do this exact same thing is in your Shopify or in your of sale system. So you want to make sure you're going in and you're not. Just if you're an apparel business looking at tops, bottoms, accessories. Because again, it doesn't tell you anything. So are your product descriptions or your product categories rather broken down? Like tops would be T shirts, blouses, Long sleeve tops and sweaters, outerwear, maybe jumpers and rompers. So my breaking it down into further details so I know what is actually performing and what's not, where can I make a change? So audit those two places at the end of the year so that when you roll, your beginning of the year is all set up in a very tidy way that helps you make better decisions. Okay, now you knew I was going to say this next one. And I know you probably like got cold sweats thinking about this next one because every single one of you needs to do this, has to do this at the end of the year. And typically you would do this during your slowest times of the year. So like right after the holidays when you've sold down most of your merchandise before you stock up again. And that is taking year end inventory. Taking year end inventory. So one of the most important parts of business, and I say right brain, left brain, like some of you are great at the art side of business, customers marketing, you love buying the pretty things and selling it right. And then there's the other side of the brain, the right side of the brain, which is the analytical side. This is how you get paid and inventory management's part of it. If you want to be successful in retail, if you actually want to pay yourself, if you actually want to build a long term sustainable business, this is critical is understanding inventory levels. And I'm here to tell you, if you're listening and you're new, you're like, okay, I need to set this up right? If you're experienced, maybe you're experienced and you're like, okay, I've got this. But I'll tell you, I visit with a lot of experienced business owners, particularly live sellers. I'm so going to call you guys out that are terrible at inventory management. It is such a turn and burn in and out business that they're like lost in. I need new, I need new, I need new. And not being great at understanding what inventory do I have on hand that I can maximize and I can actually sell more by doing less. So whole strategy around inventory management. And this is why taking your own inventory is so important. We have to know how much inventory we have on hand for a couple reasons. Maybe you are. I think there's 11 states that have, you know, an inventory tax of sorts, a personal property tax of sorts. So you need to know that. But you also need to know, what did I lose this year in terms of theft or bookkeeping errors or damages or just disorganization, like where is Their money hiding in boxes, racks and hangers that actually should be in my pocket. So twice a year, commonly you would be doing an inventory across your entire business again at the lowest inventory seasons of the year. So get to know where is their inventory and get that counted. And then as you go forward, if you are actively using the Boutique Boss Planner, I know many you are using that. Let me just grab it. Oh, grab it here. So if you're looking at this on video, you see it. So in our monthly reporting Inside the Planner, this is like your business bible. It has all the reports and things that you're probably doing in QuickBooks and elsewhere. Kind of combining everything on paper so you get a great snapshot of your business. But one of my favorite reporting sheets Inside the Planner is actually looking at sales versus inventory. So how much did I sell compared to how much inventory I had on hand? You can't sell what you don't have. Right. So you probably know in your business based on your turn rate, what is my common inventory level that I need in order to have adequate sell through. But as you get smarter with inventory management, you're going to figure out how do I continue to sell more while optimizing and not being oversold in my inventory. So starting to get the hang of what's beginning a month inventory. End of month inventory only can happen when we have an accurate end of year inventory. So it's fun. It's really fun. I know you guys, you know that it's fun. I'm being so sarcastic. It's not fun, but you're going to love it because it means money at the end of the day. All right. Other ways to think about analyzing inventory. This is really important. I want you to think about this. I want you to analyze your sales reports at the end of the year deeper than you normally do. So a lot of times I'll see, you know, oh, I just look at, you know, overall sales, sales by month, sales by this month compared to this month last year. As I'm planning out a budget for the new year, that's really important. Maybe I'm looking at sales by classification. Maybe I'm looking at sales by vendor. I really want you to make an intentional effort to dig down into what sales actually mean for you. So yes, by classification, by vendor, by size. If you're in apparel, how much I sell In a small versus a 2x, I want you to really dig deep into understanding your margin. And how much discounting did you have to do this year in order to meet these sales if you have different sales channels, analyzing the sales channels to see what worked and what didn't, all of the deeper analyzing of the sales is going to give you. And even sales by team member. I forgot to add that. Sales by team member. If you're tracking, doing commissions, all of that, you have an A team and a B team. Certainly you do. So the deeper you analyzing sales, the more you were going to dig into what is the biggest opportunity that I have in the new year. Where can I double down? Where can I find new revenue? Where can I cut the things that are no longer working for me? If you're someone who jumped onto the Queen of Sparkles bandwagon because it looked fun, everyone was doing it. But then you realized in order to sell Queen of Sparkles, you actually had to discount 50%. Well, is it really worth your time, energy and investment to sell Queen of Sparkles or is there another opportunity that you could have invested in? So dig into those sales categories. All right, let's go on. Number three. End of year time to deep clean. This is one of my favorite things to do. The kids came in, helped me deep clean my office the other day, which was scary. We found lots of golden oldies, but it looks pretty dang good. And I tell you, there is something about working in a clean and organized space that makes my brain operate. It makes me want to be here. I feel like I can get more done. I feel good about myself at the end of the day. Like just cleaning myself space makes such a huge difference. And it's not only just cleaning my space, but, you know, let's go beyond that. Cleaning my desktop, getting my email inbox organized with folders, cleaning my Google Drive. Oh, I hate that job. But it's so necessary. Cleaning my trello boards, cleaning out my Slack messages. Anything that involves like just cleaning and organizing and backing up data. So important. Also is a great time for you as you're deep cleaning to do an analysis. Do an analysis of what supplies do I need. So again, going back to maximizing cash and tax efficiency. If you're somebody who has a positive balance and you're going to owe some taxes, buy your supplies now because you're going to get a 30% savings on those supplies not having to pay that revenue in taxes. Right? 30%. So do an inventory. I always. We buy all the supplies, paper, printing, labels, I mean, all the crap we could need before the end of the year. Last year I went to Best Buy and I went on a freaking haul and I bought like four Apple computers that I needed for team, I needed for travel, I need for markets. But I also bought two of them just to do giveaways with because I knew I was going to have big giveaways I wanted to do around the boutique summit and some different events. So I bought all of that Black Friday end of the year last year. This year I missed it on Black Friday. So I'm gonna have to do it like, you know, end of December. But buy all those supplies because you can get them at a great discount when it comes to tax efficiency. Same with booking travel. I try to book all of my first quarter, second quarter travel before the end of the year if I know we're going to be profitable, because I want to use that all as a deduction. All right, so deep cleaning, finally, last thing I'll mention when it comes to deep cleaning, these are two areas of deep cleaning that you may not think of as cleaning, but I think of this as like setting you up for long term success and protecting your business. Two things. One, I want you to think about your long term financial situation, your long term financial situation. This is the time of the year to do that. So is there a crucial conversation you need to have with someone you love about wills, about an estate plan, about setting up a trust, or is it about having that conversation with maybe parents? Maybe you have parents that have a business that is going to be transitioning in the next several years. Maybe you have aging parents. I do. My mom turned 80 this summer. And if there is a concern about that parent potentially going to a nursing home someday, that risk or, you know, having some sort of huge medical liability, what does that mean to your family business that is set up to be transitioned? So again, I could do another whole podcast on this. But I'll tell you, when my dad passed away several years ago, he passed away in 2013. It absolutely ripped my family apart because my parents did not set up a proper estate plan. They tried to do it when it was too late. My dad already had brain cancer and wasn't capable of doing so with a clear mind. And so a lot of snap judgments were made that set up my five siblings and I for some real disaster. So we have lived this nightmare firsthand. So I just want to encourage you. These conversations are not fun, they're not comfortable, they're hard to bring up. But if you want to save your family a lot of stress and heartache in the long run, you will be the bigger person and you will have these deep conversations that require time and they require putting your pride Aside and just asking the question. So think about your long term financial situation for yourself or your family. Accidents happen, people die, sometimes very quickly and unexpectedly. And we don't have time to do the things we wish we would have done 10 years ago. So take a deep look at that. Now this also ties into the second area of deep cleaning I wanted to mention. Again, not always fun, kind of boring, but that's insurance. Insurance. This is the time of year if you don't have a great insurance agent, if it's time to shop around, maybe just having a meeting with your insurance agent as your inventory fluctuates throughout the year, making sure you're properly, properly insured for those different inventory levels. Important. I tell you this firsthand. My father in law has been our insurance agent our entire life. He could tell you horror stories of people not being properly insured. So have that conversation, whether it's about property life, casualty liability, cyber liability, talk about all those different exposures that you may have. All right, number four, let's talk about overall end of year strategy. Number four, and that is just setting your next year up for success. Rolling into 2025 with a plan, with vision, with a mission. So a couple of important things. Number one, I already mentioned the boutique boss planner, you guys, but if you do not have a great planner, that is not just about day planning, but it's about you managing your retail business and keeping your numbers, your stats, everything in one place. This is a really awesome opportunity to do so. If you have a manager, a lot of retailers will buy the book for themselves and then buy another one for their store manager. There's retail checklists, there's social media tracking and stats, there's inventory tracking and stats, sales tracking and stats. And then one of my favorite parts of the planner is every month is a year in review. And we put this in there so that next year when you're planning, okay, what should I do this month? What did I do this month last year? You have accurate records. So we ask about everything from what was happening in the community, in the world around you, with the weather, what sales promotions, events you ran, what worked, what didn't, what would you want to do different next year? All those like little reminders for you and nuggets are in the planner. So grab that planner, I'll link it up for you guys. Inside of the show notes, other things I would be thinking about. Of course, your vision board. We could talk a lot about vision boards. I think I'll do a five minute Friday on that. Setting up Your goals, your quarterly rocks, maximizing your plans for the rest of the year. When it comes to travel plans, market plans, collection plans, staffing, and event plans. Speaking of staffing, doing team reviews, this is the time of year to start having those conversations about annual reviews, reviewing payroll, Just kind of a quick note on that, something we do at the Hub, we only evaluate compensation once a year. We had gotten ourselves into a situation where literally everyone wanted a raise all the time. And it was like a revolving door for Eric and I about like, can I have a raise? Can I have a raise? And we were like, whoa, once a year, January. That's when we talk about it. Otherwise, all the rest of our reviews are all performance based throughout the rest of the year. And then finally setting personal boundaries and family goals. This is the time to black out the calendar for family vacations. Again, your personal boundaries with your family. I encourage you to think about running your family just like you would with the business. So does your family have its own set of values, mission, vision, a set of processes, standard meeting times, and family meals, or really, like, communicated standards? Has your family had those conversations? Do you run your family like you would a business? So everyone is on the same page and you're all pushing in the same direction? All right, finally, tip number five. I want you just to take a minute this week to just give thanks. Just give thanks. Reach out to 10 people, whether they're vendors, customers, friends in the industry, people who have supported you, someone who has touched your life this year in an unexpected way. Gratitude is cyclical. What goes around comes around. The more you share, the more you will receive. Our hearts need gratitude. We need to share gratitude, and we need to receive gratitude. So take some time this week. Be very intentional about the gratitude that you're giving. And I really want you to think about this as you're reviewing. You know, of course, what you're thankful for, and you're reviewing your goals and strategies and you're thinking about what you want to do and be in the next year. Our minds are inherently negative, and it's so easy for us to. To look back on the last year and just say, ah, this didn't work, and that didn't work, and I don't want that to have happened. It's so much easier to become obsessed with the negative than it is to become obsessed with the positive and the things we're grateful for and the things that did work. So I want you to make a list with your gratitude of all the things you accomplished this year, all the things that did work. I just did this with our team and at the time of recording this podcast episode, we have an all team meeting. Our last one of the year on Friday. And so this huge list of like, guys, look at this. We did this and this and this and this and this and we survived this and this and this. This entire list I created. Like, we're going to celebrate the shit out of that on Friday and I can't wait. So do it for yourself, do it for your family, do it for your team. Focus on the good and you will find more of it. All right, that's it for our five end of year reminders. I hope you enjoy this week. I know there's lots of different tasks and reminders and things that you need to do, but it's all good. It is all good. Setting you up for success inside of the new year, you guys, I hope you'll join me. So I love this topic so much. It turns out our, like biggest and best training we do all year long is called the best year yet series. We do it every January. Ours is coming up January 6th through the 8th. You have to be on the list. It is free, but you have to be on the list so that I can send you the zoom links to join us. It is hundreds and hundreds of you will be joining us. Probably thousands. We maxed out our zoom link last year and people got kicked out. So be there early so you don't get kicked out because we had too many people on. But we want to invite you back again this year. So January 6th through the 8th we are going to be talking about more of what I talked about today in terms of setting your year up for success. Us, we'll be digging into the trends that are coming this year. The marketing opportunities, the changes with meta that you should know about, all the things that are working so that you can capitalize on them inside the new year. So join us for best year yet. Make sure you snag a planner and I will see you around the hub as a member. I hope you join us if you haven't already. It is going to be an amazing 2025, you guys. All right. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas from our family to yours. We love you guys. We are so blessed to get to do the work that we do and to share this space that we do with all of you. Take care and I will see you next year on the podcast. 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.