#707: Retail with Soul: The Business of Crystals, Wellness, and Events

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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 and I can't wait to chat. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This week I am so excited to have my friend Denise on the show with me. Denise, welcome to the podcast.

Oh, thank you, Ashley. Thanks for having me.

You and I have gone back and forth. We've had like phone tag, email tag, getting this set up. And like I was telling you, I've been so excited to have you because you have such a unique product category. And personally, I can't wait to hopefully get to Houston soon and see your store. I hope that's an opportunity because I just love everything that I see that you're up to. So this will be great.

Yeah, I would love to see you in the store. That'd be fun.

It would be. All right, well, let's go back to the backstory before we get into what the business is today. You've been in retail a long time. Tell me more about how the business got started and how you first set foot in the business.

Oh, gosh. Okay. So I have been in retail a very long time. I think even my very first job was in retail. From forever ago. My mom actually started this store. At the time I was working for cosmetic companies like Clinique and Lancome. And she started this in 1980. We are a metaphysical store and we sell crystals and books and things like that. She started it way back then because she was into astrology and she wanted to learn how to accept herself. Like, what, what was up? How could she learn to love herself more? How could she accept herself? So she started a bookstore selling astrology books and teaching classes. And it was teeny tiny, like 300 square feet teeny tiny. That was pretty much her love. About four years later, I had to do a project for while I was in college and I decided to approach her with an idea for expanding her business and selling sidelines. And I kind of, I don't know, I just, I had to do a little project and I walked up and I asked her if I could join and be her buyer and bless her. She said yes. I mean, you know, like, give me a budget. I, you know, I didn't know what I was doing, it was kind of funny. So I figured out this was way back before you could search things on the Internet. I figured out what gift shows to go to, took myself to the LA gift show at the time and just figured it out and really found that I loved buying. I loved retail, I'd always been in retail, but I really loved it from this other side and it never ended there. And we've just grown from there. So from this teeny tiny little store to a much, much bigger retail store. And books are probably maybe, I don't know, 5%, 10%, you know, they're definitely less than 10% of what we sell. So we've grown in crystals, gifts, jewelry and all sorts of other ways. But we've been on this journey together for a very long time through many ups and downs, many locations, well, maybe three or four loc and just gotten bigger each time. So it's been fun.

What a journey. And I'm sure when you guys got started, I've got to go back to the beginning. In the 80s there, there must not have been many like businesses. I mean, it had to be pretty unique at the time, right?

It was very unique. There was definitely an interest there. It was a small audience, it was very unique. It was fun. I know I'm going to talk about things probably no one's going to remember, but Shirley MacLaine did a movie called out on a Limb and I remember I was in LA at a gift show and that kind of exploded the genre. I remember we had one person on the sales floor and he called and he was like, oh my God, we're swamped. And I was like, what? And he was like there. And I was in the bod tree in LA at the time and they were busy and he was like sternly just did a movie talking about all this that we do and from it probably never stopped from there. It just kind of went on and like I said, it exploded. So there were a few shops that. There's a lot of shops now. There's a ton of shops, but I've been with them all the way.

I was going to ask about that, like about the most recent explosion and I don't know, is this a Covid thing? Because even, I don't know if it's a Covid thing or a TikTok thing or what, what. But even, you know, my daughter's talking about crystals and you know, just being so, I don't know, just interested and enamored and what it's all about how has that changed your business even in the last couple of years as people viewing it as like personal wellness?

Basically, yeah, I would say definitely it's. It's certainly more mainstream than it was and we attract a lot of different people from all ages. I would say TikTok has a lot to do with the younger people for sure. We definitely saw that. And I think during COVID I mean you had all this time to explore yourself, to do a lot of personal growth, self exploration work on maybe your spiritual journey that you never had time to do before. So I think that was part of it. And crystals were big, but they had been growing for us already. I mean they really had started out even 10 years prior. We'd seen steady growth and the department's now to where it's huge. If you come to our store, you're going to see a ton of crystals, tons from specimens from all sizes. Huge $10,000 pieces down to dollar stones. It's been a fun journey. So crystals and jewelry have grown together. Or the gemstone jewelry to where it's probably about more than 50% of our business is in that.

Oh, wow. Okay, so crystals and jewelry are more than 50%. What are your next three biggest categories?

If I were to say the home fragrance category, sometimes I used to laugh and say I could have my own candle shop with candles, incense and diffusers. After that it would be the gift category we do. And sound healing. We do sell a lot to practitioners and people that want to bring in crystal bowls or metal Tibetan bowls into their life. And we even have other drums. We have quite a. Quite a variety of instruments. Yeah.

Oh, incredible. Now something I know you know from your business as it's expanded and remind me, how many square feet is it now? Because it's quite a few.

We have 6,000 square feet now.

Yeah. So as you've expanded, I know something that you do just a really excellent job at is hosting events. And it's not just about the product, but it's about how people experience the product and really I would assume just expand their knowledge in this space. So how did the events side of the business kind of first come to be and how have you actively grown that and what does it look like now? Like how many events are you hosting and how often?

Oh, wow. We always, even when she started the store in the 80s, we taught classes because you didn't have very many places to go to learn how to do things such as meditate or take yoga. There were just so few places then. So we always had Classes. And it was a very small part of our business. As we've grown, there was a point where I. I sort of came on and I was like, look, you know, this is a great. People are interested. It's also a good way to get people in your store is to have more classes. So we really developed a more robust program and we worked on it. Plus we also had a lot of author events. There was a time in our life, it's not so much now, where authors toured all the time. So I had all the big authors from in. This was probably in the 90s and maybe 2000s. Deepak Chopra has been to our store. We've had Marianne Williamson. We've had so many big authors. Louise Hay, which I don't know if anyone know her name, but so many authors that came through our store and did events and they were touring with the book. So we did a lot of author events and we did taught classes in addition to that. And it's just grown now. We have a whole events manager. We have two or three classes every weekend during the week. We'll have meditations, we'll have sound baths. It's really almost its own little side business. And then we still have authors that are touring that come in and do ticket events with us. So it's. It's just grown over the years, I guess. We've been doing it for a long time, so we've attracted a bit of a following and a whole email list. Just for events.

Yeah. And just to reiterate what you said, your events, like, they're paid to participate events. It's not that. They're just a free event you're hosting to get people.

Oh, no, everything's paid.

But it's a revenue stream.

It is a revenue stream. It is, definitely. And then we have practitioners also in our store, so we opened up for that. We have practitioners that will do sound healing or Reiki. We've got astrologers. We do. And they're all very, very well vetted. I'm super picky about who comes in. They have to show pure talent and no, you know, really get some good hits on things that no one would know. So we have a really special group of practitioners.

That is so interesting to me because again, I think I'm just. As a practitioner, I'm sure that category has exploded. How do you go about vetting them for and for anyone who doesn't? Let me take a step back, because I feel. I feel like in my journey, I'm always, like, kind of cautious of like how much do people know or not know about this space? So going back, like, in my own journey, I've been lucky to experience some of these things. So I'm familiar. If someone's listening and they don't know what is Reiki, and how would you. If you were going to find a practitioner of any sort that you just mentioned, how would you evaluate is this a good one or maybe a newer one? Like, how do I know what's real and what's not?

So it is. And it's funny because I do forget, because this is my world. I forget that people are not exposed to it. But so long ago I remember maybe it was in the early 2000s, there was a holistic nurses group here in Houston, and they started talking about energetic healing, which I would have to say there's. Sometimes people will touch you and you'll just feel this nice, comforting energy from them. So there is, like, an energetic energy that can come from people. And there's a method called Reiki, and I would call it energetic healing. It's not quite a massage, but it is a sort of soothing. You could call it more like, if I get Reiki, I get tingles in my head, like someone's brushing my hair. It feels really good. I'm instantly relaxed. It allows the body to do its own work. So it is definitely used in some of the hospitals and from some of the nurses that I know and a lot of the practitioners. And then sound healing would be sound waves and vibration. A lot of it's based in science. If you get one, it gets sciency. But it's just a very. Anything that we can do to help people relax, chill out. Breath work's another one. I know. Crystal Rose, I think, does breath work. I'll take a deep breath as we're talking about that. But just all those things that make us just be more calm throughout the day, make better decisions, be better people. Does that maybe answer part of the question?

Yeah, I think that's really helpful. And talk about this. So this practitioner that I've seen for a while who does Reiki, she's a visionary. She does all kinds of different things. I've just been enamored with her. Like, first time I went, I was such a skeptic.

I was like, what? You know, I'm still skeptical, but some.

Of the stuff she says to me, I'm just like. I'm just so knocked off my. Like, off my. My feet. The things she knows about, like, I will ask her business things. I'll ask her family. Things I'll ask her health things. And the things she knows without even really knowing me at all is just unbelievable. Tell me this. So people who are skeptical, she once told me, I said, gosh, I see this as such good in the world. And there's people who see this, and they're like, oh, my gosh, this must be bad. Right? Like that we have these kind of two polarizations of there's good and there's bad. Energetic healing. She described it to me like it's a mirror. Like, it's amoral. You can either choose to use it for good, or you could choose to use it for. Or dark. And anything.

You could choose anything to be good or dark.

Right.

So tell. Yeah. Oh, that is such a deep discussion. You want to go on that? Such a deep discussion. And I really didn't answer the first question on Betty. It depends on your belief system. So I do believe that God has given us many gifts, and the world's a mystery. I would never assume to know it all. So how does all this work? And I think that. I think that as we're going through life, we are finding out that it does work. Science is proving it works. People. I've had many experiences that are unusual. Gosh, that would. Yes. I'm always skeptical. So when someone tries out, I'm always skeptical until I feel something. Until I feel the good. Or they say something like, well, how did you know that? But I. Ammoral is maybe a good way to put it for us when we're looking for someone. They're always coming from good. They want to create good. That's their kindness. They want to create good. They're not using it to change you. They're just using it to help you. That is really our number one criteria for everything. Is it for a positive good reason that you're doing this? And so I think she's definitely right. You could use anything for good or bad. But I personally feel like crystals, they were put here on earth. They mean God made them. They're beautiful. They're in. We could go in a whole deep row. But they're in the Bible. I've had customers come in and quote the Bible, you know, find confirmation gifts from the Bible. With the crystals that were mentioned for the 12 apostles, I found so many things. There's. It's just kind of woven throughout history. So much history to what we've done and so many mysteries, and some of it comes from Asia. Why does acupuncture work? I don't know if you've ever Done that, Ashley? Yes.

Yeah, my husband has.

Yeah. It's amazing. But we could question it. Why the meridians? I don't know. It's not provable. Right. But once you experience it and you realize how relaxed you are and how good you feel, and that's what I say. If you're going to go to someone and you feel good and afterwards, that's probably a very good experience. That would be a good barometer. If someone asks you. I would always tell people, someone asks you for more money because they can't fix you unless you give them more money, I'd say maybe you should turn away. That's not what we're here for. You know, we're just here to help people. So does that maybe help?

No, I think that's a really good answer and just, I think a healthy dose of skepticism.

Anytime you try something, always discernment is key.

Discernment. And it's probably no different than just, you know, all natural family practitioners, like we. We go to an all natural doctor and, you know, just try to have like another perspective. And I think we could have a whole nother conversation and go down so many rabbit holes on Western medicine and, and kind of Western medicine and capitalism and why we've walked away from all of these, you know, standard practices that have been here throughout history or even what the Native Americans have done. And I mean, so many different topics there are.

But always, I do always say, you got to talk to your medical. I mean, this is not a substitute for medical treatment. You know, this is. And I love to go both ways. I'll go to the doctors, I'll do everything they tell me to do, but when I want to feel better, it's just amazing what Reiki or sound healing can do. And I think part of it is we just relax or we do breath work and we relax the body and allow it to do what it needs to do.

Yeah, I so agree. So anyway, we totally did get him a side tangent, but I love that we did because there are just so many different perspectives and worries. And I think at the end of the day, if we just can settle on it's amoral, it's going to be good, bad. It's what you make of it. And as a Christian, I think the issue is you're not replacing this with. With your love of Christ. Right. Like, this is not what you worship. That is the issue of separation. So all of that to say you've had a lot of growth in the last couple of years, again with this just explosion of awareness. Tell me more about how you've capitalized on that. Just marketing strategies for the store. You know, you have been a part of our Mastermind, and I've watched you become more digital with how you're showing up, whether it's through your content or your blog posts and SEO or ads. But tell me about the marketing side of your growth.

Well, definitely the mastermind has helped because I've had to make some changes. I love. I think I always say I love to learn, I love to relearn. Changing your mindset is sometimes hard. I'm still working on quite a few of them, but for the digital side for sure, it's really. Honestly, we exploded in during COVID I mean, there was no doubt in store. It was crazy. It was four, four to five registers going nonstop, lines out the door, 25 people in at a time, seven days a week. It was intense. We did a lot of intense hiring. And then we just tried to work more on getting more digitally online because originally the website was built just for our current customers. So it really was. I would never thought of the world. That is probably your first, like big mindset explosion, I guess I could say when I joined was like, I never thought about the whole world. It was all like my little community, my community here in Houston. I just want to please them. So that was fabulous. When I first joined the Mastermind, I was thinking of going into wholesale and you gave that. Nice. Talk about going down many rabbit holes and, you know, the squirrel syndrome, which I have. And I decided then that, no, there's so much more opportunity if we try to grow more digitally, we need to be more focused and focus more on what we're doing and doing it really well. And then once we get all that done and feel like we're on a nice stable platform and level with that, then I could maybe explore wholesale more. We were getting a lot of requests for wholesale. We still, we do sell wholesale. I just don't push it. I just don't really advertise it. So digitally, yes, the Mastermind help first by my mindset of getting me to change how we do some things. And then you join Boutique Black, which is fabulous. But actually, I'll be honest. Honest, I'm not the best. I mean, Jeff could talk to me for his full 30 minutes and I would be. I feel like I'd be like old time typing on the computer. I'm over here and he's way over there. So I truly. I got my son to help me. And that was when we started really moving fast because he had already come out of marketing. He got the whole, he got the whole deal. He holds me accountable, he makes me show up for videos, he helps me. He got, he can talk to Jeff and I can listen to him and they go a mile a minute and I'm still in step one. So that has been super helpful. So I would have to say that we've always had a website, we've always done email, all that I very much understand how to do. But with the ads and the Facebook and showing up is probably another one of my issues. I'm not good at showing up because I'm a very shy person naturally. But now I'm just trying to put myself out there and that's really been working. And Boutique Black tremendously has helped. But before that it had to be the mastermind. I really had to just, I dove deep in. I mean, as you know, I like, I joined and I joined everything. I'm like, I'm going to master this. So it's been very, very helpful.

Hey, can we meet up in person? It is one of my favorite things to do here at the Boutique Hub. To get to meet you face to face, to hear your personal business story and your journey and what you're working on, but also to put you in contact with and to build friendships with some of the most amazing business owners from around the world. Boutique owners, wholesale brands, industry service providers and experts. All of us together in one room. And that's what we do at our annual Boutique Summit event this year. I would love for you to come to Dallas, Texas of course, on June 8th and 9th for our annual Boutique Summit. Our theme this year is the summit and your business completely reimagined. And I think it's time for that theme to take effect. Right. We have been through some crazy highs and lows in this industry and I think going into 2024, five, we are all ready to reimagine what's possible in this industry and in your business personally. So get ready for detailed hands on workshops. Not just you listening to speakers, but you actually getting things done, pulling out your Facebook ads account and building some ads together or planning out an entire quarter of content, maybe doing some social media audits with some of our most well listened to experts in the room along with fellow boutique owners. It's time to dig deeper into your business and that's what we're going to do together at the Boutique Summit in Dallas, Texas June 8th and 9th. I hope to see you there. It is our biggest and best and favorite event of the year, and it's time to take your business to the next level. Let's do it together. I think if there's one lesson anyone could learn just from listening to you and your story, it's just how you dove in and embraced everything, and you never once made an excuse of, you know, well, I just don't feel comfortable online or, you know, I'm so slower to learn how to do ads or whatever. Like, there was never an excuse made. You just said, I'm going to figure it out. And you ask questions, and you showed up and you completely went for it. And I think today in any type of retail and in, you know, kind of the weird economy we've had, that's what it takes to succeed.

It really does. Everything's so different. So, so different. And it is harder and easier at the same time. It's just different.

Yeah, it's just different. And it always will be. You know, we're going to figure it out, and then we're going to get six months down the road, and it's probably going to change again.

And that's why I love y', all, because it's just. You keep up with it. I go in and there's all. Everything that's been new. Here's what's. Here's what's fresh, here's what's working. I mean, I don't know. I'm pretty hooked, so I don't think we could ever look back.

Yeah, well, we sure appreciate you. Something else that you've done a great job at is. I know, just like the operations of your store. Talking about a business that's been in existence for, you know, a long time and seen a lot of changes and moves and transitions. Just tell me about the operation side of how you standardize things or SOPs or team training or just keeping people on the same page. What does that look like?

Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, that is what we need. We need to get better at. So honestly, we're not the best at that. I don't know why I. And that's what I'm trying to learn. Get it out of my head and get it on paper. And I'm always telling my staff now, like, okay, write it down. For me, I've been blessed with having a staff that's been with us for quite a long time. And so we all know what we're doing, but if someone were to leave, it would be kind of like, oh, so we have some. We did. We always had an employee manual We've always had some pieces of it and some of the charts and graphs that we share. But honestly, we still have a long ways to go on systems and the loom. I mean, I love it. I sit down and our managers watch your boutique. I mean, the boot camp, which is a far better introduction to how retail works than anything I could ever give them. I mean, from start to finish. I mean, I literally let them listen to everything so they understand how it all works. They don't really realize all the working pieces that go into having a store. So I don't know if that's probably been the biggest key for me. And then from there, we have just taken your steps and tried to break them down and try to explain it to people coming in and just. Even if it's just from the vision, from the beginning all the way to the end of here's how we're advertising things. So we are on Asana. We do communicate through Asana because there's a team chat on Asana and that's our main communication channel with our team. It seemed to be the best. Some of our team members are not on Facebook and some of the other things, this was just easy. We do project management on Asana. We have a few people that are fabulous at it. Some of us are not so fabulous at it. I'm still learning it, but it is really great for keeping up. So we use it for our marketing and our in store events. Every weekend, our events manager goes in and puts how we set up the store. Here's the events, here's all the setups for the room. We have our own special classroom. Here's who's coming, here's who's not, here's who's canceled, or it's just everything. But it's also that. But far as in store training, I certainly have a lot more ways to go on that. And I'm really, I would have to say though, I've been very, very lucky. If you're going to work in our store, you're usually before we hire, you already know you maybe have a specialty. A lot of our practitioners work in our store and sometimes I watch them grow and I've watched them take classes, I've watched them develop themselves. And so they do have opportunity to grow into being a practitioner or a reader here or they'll teach the classes here. And usually it's because we, like I said, our vetting process is first we have to know, you know, the knowledge we. We know what, how you, who you learned from and how Much you learned and then it's just, and then can. Do you have the skill? Can you teach? Can you do this? And if you're a reader, certainly is. Are you going to say something that no one else would ever know? You're going to make some good direct hits like oh my gosh. Yeah, we never, nothing general, someone just says, oh, you love music. You're going to know that they're not like the rest of the population.

Well, I'm sure just the opportunity for just cross selling and upselling from your team, them being practitioners and I'm sure going to some of the events that you're hosting in store from one another gives them, you know, just an opportunity for knowledge that they wouldn't necessarily get anywhere else.

And if you work here, you're generally pretty interested in what we have. So we have. They're always reading and they're, they're teaching each other, which is great because when you come in our store, the one thing we do want you to do is feel like you've got some people that are really grounded in knowledge. And I've been very blessed that people that work here usually have had something. There have been a yoga instructor or they, or a meditation teacher or they, they're somewhere from this background and they really know we have specialists for sure in each area. Yeah.

So good. Well, I, I have a hard hitting question for you.

Oh dear. Okay.

It, I, I just, again, I love all of these topics. If you look across the boutique industry and the average boutique owner, if you could give them the gift of knowledge of anything in your store, what would it be?

The gift of knowledge, I would have to say the best gift I've ever had. Okay. This is, is learning to meditate. And I don't know if that's considered knowledge, but it's learning to quiet the mind because we have so much chatter in our mind that wants to go a million miles and, and I can fall prey to that. I mean I'm a very mental person. But I've learned, I learned to meditate when I was super young. And if you had to come in and lear one thing, it would be learning to quiet the mind so that you can really think clearly and then make your plan. You're not panicking, you're not worrying about what's going to happen in the future. The future hadn't even happened and you're worried you're all in the future. So I think that's what meditation has done. So I don't know if that's considered knowledge. Or not. But that is a definite gift that I've had for my entire life. I literally learned to meditate when I was 12 and I've used it ever since.

Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what I'm asking. I just, I see so many retailers and business owners so busy and just getting caught up in the badge of busyness. And that's not always where our most productive and thoughtful self comes from. So I think just creating that space is absolutely critical.

Now, sometimes the best ideas come out of stillness.

Right? Right. I love this. Denise. Well, I have some lightning round questions for you.

Oh, here. Okay.

Okay. All right, so first question. I give you two hours back in your day for you to work on income generating activity. Activity. What do you focus on first?

I would have to say for us, lately I've learned it's definitely making videos or reels. We do a lot of educational videos and that seems to be really resonating with our audience. So that is what I should be doing two hours probably every day.

I, I think we all can agree, everyone who's listening, we need more of Denise on video. Watch. You like the opportunity for reels and just like product education that you have unique to other stores. Like, I mean, a sweater is a sweater, right?

Yes.

There's a couple ways to wear it, but it's a sweater. But with your products, like, there's just so much to know. So I, I echo that completely. All right, next question. What is the unsexiest process in your business with the most impact?

The unsex. Oh, dear. Okay, let me think about that. The unsexiest process, could it be cleaning the store? Wait, the most impact? That's the most unsexy process. But what was the rest of it?

But it has the most impact on your business. So clean is great, but does it really impact your business? Probably right?

That does not impact the business. There's so many unsexy processes to a store. There really are so, so many. I would say maybe people wouldn't put planning in, in the. It's not exciting to plan, to plan ahead, to get your, like, use your, your planner, get it all planned out. That's sort of boring in a way. Well, for me, that's boring. Some people might just totally jive into that. But I, for me, it's a little boring not to sit still. I don't like to sit still still very much. And I have to go think about it and plan it out and then follow the plan. But when you do that, then it really does work. So and it gets everybody on the same page. So that might be it. For me, Me personally, it's the planning. I'd just rather jump into it.

Yeah, I love it. All right. What's been the hardest business lesson you've had to learn?

You know, I think of. Because I've been doing this for so long, I even was talking to Sam about this one at the summit. I was like, I feel like. And I know everyone has their own analogy, but for me, businesses like riding a wave, you're either paddling super, super hard. You're just trying to catch that wave. You're working hard, you're catching that wave, and you catch that wave, and you're riding, and it's great. And then you come down and you're relaxing a little bit, and you get down to the water and you're like, ha. You relax. And then it's still. There's all these levels. It's just. Don't get caught up in any of them. It's always going to be different. There's always another wave. There's always another opportunity. So it's just learning when there's nothing going on, you just accept it. When you got to paddle hard and catch that big wave because it's coming, that's just. It's all part of business. And you just kind of roll with it and just relax into it and enjoy the process.

Yeah. Oh, that's so good. That's very well said. I completely, completely agree. All right, what's been the best business advice that always sticks with you?

Oh, it's probably from you, Ashley. And it's the best business advice that y' all talk about all the time. And I have to really work hard, and I actually really like to work. I love to work. Trying to get out of the. Doing the work and doing, like I said, the planning and the creating, which I love, too, but I get so caught up. So I just was reading a book you mentioned. Was it buy back your time? Yeah. Oh, yes. Oh, my gosh.

Love it.

That's my constant lesson, is, like, gotta delegate. You gotta give up some of this work. I mean, like, right now, I'm itching to go in there and just create displays. I really love to do that. Doesn't really make us a lot of money as much as, like, doing videos, but buy back your time. Delegate, delegate. I just constantly need to remind myself on, because that's a big lesson for me. I still haven't learned it. Yeah.

Oh, And I don't know that you ever do, like, I think it is kind of like you were talking about the wave analogy. I think that, you know, personal productivity and CEO versus entrepreneur mindset and what we're working on and what we're holding on to, like, little control freaks, I think that's a constant evolution as well, so. Totally agree.

Good advice from y'. All. Just keep working on it. Thank you.

I did this whole. For everyone listening at our last Mastermind retreat, I've just really been into Dan Martell lately. He's been one of my favorite things.

He's a great book. Very well. Yeah, he's so great.

The other day I drove down the road, I had a two hour long drive, and I went through his Instagram account and listened to every one of his Instagram reels. I was just like, oh, it's gold. But at our Mastermind retreat, I did this huge training on that whole process, so it was really good. All right, last one. What is one metric that you live by and what's one metric that you wish you knew more about?

Well, the one metric that I live by is roi. I mean, that's just for me personally, for buying. It's. I love it. I mean, I would love to analyze lines, I love to analyze products. I'm always looking at the return on investment. That is my favorite. That's how I decide what we keep and what goes away. It's. It's been my favorite, honestly, now that I'm just. Because we don't sell clothes like y' all do, but I really don't understand. The one metric I don't understand is this. Oh, what is it that y' all call it? It's the aging. It's a report. Maybe. The aging report. Yeah. And the markdown cycle. I don't have to mark very many things down. That's what's so different about our business, probably from y'. Alls. I have very few markdowns, so it's always like, trying to figure out, how are y' all figuring that out? Like, what does that mean? The markdown? Yeah. I don't understand even the markdown budget. I mean, is there a budget for that? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I haven't had to play with that.

For, like, home and gift categories versus apparel categories. It's such a different business model in that sense because in apparel, it's such a turn and burn.

You're like a.

You're like a hamster on a wheel. You're buying, you're selling, you're marking down. Like, it's a constant ebb and flow and a gift. You've got a little more life cycle. Things don't move quite as quick, so it turns a little bit slower. But you don't have the markdown strategy, you know, and cycle.

I don't have a markdown strategy because really there's so many I do mark down, but it's not that much. It doesn't really affect us that much. So that's been interesting to me. I just want to. Admittedly, I want to learn it. Like, I'm going to get that. I'm going to figure out what they're talking about. I'll teach you all about it now. You will?

Gosh.

All right.

Well, Denise, actually, I do have. I've got one more question before my final question. So you've been a boss and a leader coming into this family business and leading others. What's your best advice for those listening on how to be a great boss?

How to be a great boss? Well, first, I think you do have to be yourself completely and be kind and empathetic. I do think those are all really important for me. I would just say the biggest lessons I had is I am conflict resistant. So I have learned over the years that there is conflict. I do have to address it head on. And that's really being more kind to the team versus the person in front of you. So I don't know, maybe that's it. Just being able to learn how to speak the truth that you have in a very kind way with someone when they need to hear it. I don't know if that's how to be a great boss, but that's my lesson. I'm learning.

That's such a powerful lesson. I heard it. I heard this analogy a while ago, but it was, are you nice or are you kind?

Right.

So being nice is like I'm just being fluffy and I'm being conflict resistant like you said. But being kind is the ability to say what needs be to. To be said for the good of.

The other person and the whole team, too. Because I forget about the team because I have the person right in front of me. And I. And I realize if I'm not being so honest and truthful, I'm affecting a whole group of people that work with us.

That is absolutely right. So good. Yeah. Who are you being kind to? Both that person and the rest of the team. Well, Denise, this has been so great. I feel time flies by in these conversations. I've been so grateful that you had an opportunity to join me on the show today. I have one last question and this is the big question. This is the ultimate question, because, right, we don't get into this business just to sell products. Like, we're not just slinging crystals and slinging sweaters. Like, there's so much more to this than what we're doing. So I want to know. You fast forward down the road, you know, 15, 20, 30 years from now, and you're looking back on this life that you've lived. The family business, you've been a part of, how you've taken over and grown the business. All these things, your friends, your family are all surrounding you at this point. And you're looking back, what's the thing that you really want people to remember most about who you are and how you lived?

So it probably comes back to what I've been saying this whole podcast is I do want people to hopefully look back and think, oh, she was a really kind person. She was a good person. I mean, my biggest accomplishment really, are my kids, because they're just good, kind people. They're productive people. They're just. Oh, they're just wonderful. And I love my family, and I took, you know, want to be. I am very, very close to my family. Even though we work together, we're still all very close, very good friends. But I would like people to look back and just think, she was really kind and she just created good in the world. That was really what I'm here for, just to create good. Yeah.

Well, that is exactly what you're doing. You. Every time I'm around you, you are. You just have such a sense about you. You're so calm, gentle, thoughtful, and you have this light around you. So you are definitely living in that space. Denise, I'm just so thankful to be your friend. Thank you. Thank you for being a part of the mastermind, being a part of everything in the Hub, and thanks for being on the show today.

Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.

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.

Sa.