#740: Retail Predictions for 2026 and How to Make It Your Best Year Yet
2 Dec 2025 · 34 min
Ashley Alderson and Sarah Burks predict that AI adoption, Meta's algorithm shifts, and niche positioning will define retail in 2026. They emphasize AI as a productivity tool for forecasting and hiring, the need for high-volume diverse content, and live video to humanize brands and boost discovery.
Chapters
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. And I can't wait to chat.
Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. Today it's Denim Dan and Denim Dan.
Oh my God, Denim Dan.
Sarah and I, you know what it's like. We have telepathy. Is that what that's called?
Yes, it is what that's called and yes, I believe we have it.
I. This has happened before. We both show up today. If you're not watching the podcast on YouTube, today, we're both wearing Denim. Denim Dan. When has this happened to us before? We've randomly shown up, like, wearing the same thing or matching.
At Summit every year. We. We don't. Or. Or at a market when we're doing a talk together. We've never coordinated our outfits, but weirdly enough, we show up and we match or we coordinate together.
We look.
It looks good together.
Yeah. The only time I feel like it hasn't worked was that one time.
Hold on. You're gonna mention my coat of many colors, aren't you? You're gonna snap, climb that.
No, it was a time where we were at magic. I don't know what we were wearing. You were wearing a red shirt and a black skirt and I can't remember what I was wearing, but all pink and brown.
That like, little dress and it. That's right. Yeah.
It didn't go well together, number one. And then number two, the pictures surfaced later and one of our team, like, used it in a social media post or something. And you and I and actually Jeff and also piped up and all of us were like, take that down immediately because we both looked pregnant. We did. Yeah. It was like a bad camera angle or the skirts or the lighting.
The rumors started flaring on that one.
No press. What is it?
All press is good press. It's okay.
Geriatric mothers over here.
Easy, easy.
Listen, I'm 40. Once you're 40, you're considered a geriatric mother. Like, it wouldn't go well. My mom had me when she was 40. You know this story, and her friends threw her a birthday party that had napkins that said, I'd rather be 40 than pregnant. She was pregnant and I was sixth child.
So, you know, Yay.
All right, well, back to business. In case you guys have not met, Sarah Burks yet. Sarah Burks, welcome back to the podcast.
Hello, everybody. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.
She is the Retail professor, the wearer of denim and of the coat of many colors and all things. I don't know. You do all the things here at the Boutique Hub. Do you want to introduce yourself in case someone has not met you yet?
Absolutely, yes. Well, if we have not gotten a chance to meet yet, I hope we do someday soon. Hopefully you'll come see us at a market or summit or somewhere along the lines. But yes, I, uh, I guess I'm known as the Retail Professor. I started in retail way back in the early 90s and had a. A store for many years. Ashley used to shop at my store a lot and over the years decided for a little bit of a life change and came to work here at the Boutique Hub in 2017, which I was a member of the Hub when Ashley first got started with my store and love that. But yes, came to work here in 2017 as the director of partnerships in Education. And Ashley and I teach retail boot camp together. We do a lot of. A lot of online courses and trainings together and in person events and all the things. So that's who I am. I also live in Wisconsin, just south of the river from Ashley.
We both live in Wisconsin. Hooray. Midwest is the best. No offense, Texans, but one of my favorite things to do with you is to.
I love.
Well, these podcasts are so fun when we get to do them together, but coaching with you is fun because I feel like we, like, we both bring different sides of the retail industry together. You know, like, I feel like our knowledge complements each other and we have a lot of fun all the way along the way. And I know all of your analogies. You're very, very analogous. I like to tell people that about you. Yeah, he's got the best stories, so.
It makes it a lot of fun.
To work with you.
I feel pressure. You feel like you know all of them.
Oh, well, we will not share.
Yeah.
I'll have to see if I can't pull out some brand new ones for you.
Oh, my gosh. Okay. Well, the reason we are here today is because we wanted to, you know, we could recap 2025, but let's just skip that because some people want to erase that year from their memory. Let's just talk about 2026 and predictions of what we think is coming to the retail industry, which I think is fun. And I mean, you and I, we do have a pretty cool vantage point. You know, we, we work with thousands of business owners every single day. We both do tons of coaching calls, different types of coaching calls. Right. I do a lot of e commerce audits and social media audits and you're doing tons of teamwork and inventory and just overall strategy. So out of all the people that we get to talk to, let's just kind of roll off. You can do two, I'll do two biggest predictions for 2026. Do you want to start us off?
Oh my gosh, yes. And this is perfect timing because feels like almost every single small business owner that I'm talking to right now, whether it's inside the boutique hub or out of the boutique hub, I'm having these conversations about AI and just how AI is fitting into your business. And to be very honest, yesterday I met with a, a group of retailers that are more in the farm space, the ag space. And here was my analogy on that. I said you can be the person that is still planting corn with a little, you know, bag of seed off your pocket and your mule right in your little plow and maybe plant one acre in about 40 hours. Or you could go ahead and advance and be the guy that got the nice tractor, maybe even the GPS tractor, all that stuff and just get it all done right away. Yeah, that's the same way I kind of look at AI in, in all businesses.
Right.
We don't need to be sitting here reinventing the wheel every day and saying, oh, Nope, I am 100% going to curate this email, curate all of this, this blog post, or come up with these amazing hooks all on my own. And by the time it takes us to do one, Susie down the streets boutiques already pushed out all of her content. She's, she's got everything scheduled and she's at the park with her, with her kids or on her girls weekend or spending time with her family or whatever it is do. She's doing that. She's living her life right. And we're all sitting here still trying to run a very fast moving business in retail using old school products.
Yeah, that's what I think. That's what I think. I think AI is a huge push in the right direction for 2026. And I know there's going to be some people sitting there saying, but Sarah, I don't want the universe to know everything there is to know about me. I don't want to Feed a machine all this information. And I get that, I get that. But there's also, I also look and think, my gosh, if you've own an iPhone, if you've own a smartphone, it's it. And you have apps and you have GPS and you have all these things and you're talking you. If you have an Alexa, sorry, your stuff's out there. Anyway, Alexa knows it all. It does.
Alexa knows it all.
But yeah, and so I think AI is going to be a huge game changer and this is why we're building this into everything we do here at the Hub. As far as education around AI, how to use it, whether it's for building out your SOPs or hiring and firing or, you know, sales automations or sales analytics and forecasting, all of the things, not to mention just your emails and your product descriptions, AI is really, it has a place in every facet of your business. And I think retailers that are on that train are going to be, they're going to be very competitive. People are worried. I hear it all the time. And somebody's right now thinking, how sad is it going to be that my business or my kids business or their jobs could be replaced by, by AI? And I don't know, I've done a lot of research on it and I've read a lot of things, listen to a lot of videos, a lot of people a lot smarter than me and I really do think, I don't, I don't think you're going to be replaced or a person is going to be replaced by AI. I think the people that refuse to use AI will be replaced by AI.
I totally agree with that. I, I heard someone put it this way once. They were saying, you know, it's just like the Industrial revolution, right? Like machines coming along. And you could have made the same argument then, like, oh, all these people are getting replaced by machines. Well, but the machines, then when they came in, it created a whole new type of atmosphere. All kinds of new jobs that were now available for people to use the machines. And AI, I think is the exact same way. If you refuse to play, yes, your, your livelihood to some extent will probably be replaced. Other than we could go down the rabbit hole of like the trades, like the need today for plumbers, the mechanics and all these people. But in terms of business and marketing, I mean, it's absolutely critical that you get on board.
Yeah. 100 so yeah, as we're looking into, you know, what is going to be trending in 2026, I think it, if you're not curious about it right now. Get curious. Start having conversations, asking people about how they're using AI. Make sure you're talking to your, you know, talking to your kids about how they're using it. I'm telling you, they, I, I, I always laugh because it's almost like kids came out of the womb understanding how to run an iPhone. And it's funny because you talk to kids about AI right now and it's just like it's another language that they know. They're very fluent in it. It's wild. But yeah, and, but there's also, I will say there's also still, you know, there's things to learn from every generation and there's things that we want to, you know, adapt old school mentality into a new way of thinking. But the, the thing about the AI especially is using it as, you know, like a conversation and a prompt generate. You're, you're giving it prompts and having it in conversations back with you. I think one of the coolest things is anytime you're inputting something, it's always coming back to you and saying, would you like me to do this or would you like me to do this? You know, how about if we take it one step further and the more you use it, the more it's thinking through your brain, like on a good day.
Right?
Because sometimes my brain's just like.
Oh yeah, that's a great idea. I hadn't even thought about that yet.
Right.
Where once you've trained your AI tools, they're thinking three or four steps ahead of you all the time.
Yeah, I totally agree. That's a huge opportunity. My first biggest prediction, my first big prediction for 2026. I'm going to stay on the AI train, but I'm going to switch it to thinking about Meta's new algorithm, Andromeda, because it's really an AI infused new algorithm that rather than us, you know, just like publishing all of this content and relying on, you know, people who said they like and follow us and that connection to connect us on social. Instead it's using AI and saying, okay, Sarah, 15 minutes ago interacted with a meme about a wiener dog and, and now all I'm going to show her is wiener dog content. Right.
I, poor moxie, great analogy. Couldn't be any further from the truth. But yes, I, yes, if I were, if I were to interact with the wiener dog meme. Yes, yes, I would all of a sudden be getting all the wiener dog little sweatshirts and earrings and all the.
Things, I could totally see that happening.
You know, not if you have me for Christmas. I don't need any inner dog paraphernalia.
Well, if I have you for Christmas, you just better buckle up because you're.
Gonna get something real. I'll add it to the list of the crazy gifts from Ashley Alderson.
Oh my gosh, it makes Christmas fun. No, but Andromeda, I mean it. In case you guys haven't noticed yet, your feeds on Facebook and on Instagram are totally different. And Facebook especially, I think it's more noticeable on Facebook than anywhere else. Where all of a sudden you're like, why am I getting this content? And it's because the AI is reading so fast. You know, what you're listening to, what you're watching, what you're engaging with. And so it's totally switching up your feed. So how you produce content has totally changed. I think that there's still a lot of business owners agree or disagree with me, but I think there's still a lot of business owners who think if I just take a picture of this one outfit and I throw it up on the Facebook on Thursday, people are going to see it and come into the store on Saturday. And it just doesn't work like that. So as a business owner, you are a full time content creator. I don't think you can avoid that. There's no way around that. The idea of I don't have to be on social media doesn't exist. I think you have to be on it and you have to have a strategy to create the amount of content that's going to be necessary to get notice going forward. And then this plays directly into Facebook ads as well. And we're seeing this in boutique Hub Black with some of our high level stores is, you know, you might in the past have come up with like four or five ads in an ad set where now it's like, no, you need like 60. And Andromeda is reading everything from like the background, the words that you're using. And rather than you being able to exact target the audience you want, it's using the AI all like reading all the content and it's automatically targeting for you. So the entire targeting strategy for Facebook ads has changed this year. And so then the amount of content you need to, to meet that targeting strategy has also changed.
Yeah, 100%. It, it blows my mind. But you know, when you sit back and you start to think about it and how fast this has evolved, you know, compared to, you know, just go back 10 years ago and what marketing looked like, what social media content creation looked like 10 years ago. And think about even. Yeah, even one year ago. Yeah. And so, but the opportunity to reach more customers, it continues to improve and I think that's, that's what we want to look at is, you know, it used to be you both, you had a brick and mortar store on your downtown and your, your audience was within what we'll just say easy driving distance to you, but now it's worldwide and it really is if, if you are catering to that wiener Dog loving 50 year old. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. You're not just like it's not just in your local 60 mile radius, it's all over the world. Right. And, and with the way Andromedon works, you're going to be able to attract them all over the world.
Yeah, there's a lot of them out there. Sarah, you could join like a Support group for 50 year old wiener dog loving women. Oh my gosh.
I guarantee you somebody, and it's probably going to be Jane Casper or Jesse Jarvis is already sending me DMS on support groups for Wiener Dog Universe that are empty nestes.
Yeah. Are you ready to kick off the new year? Right. I hope you will join me. It is my favorite time of the year. Q. New planners gel pens. Trying not to Write like a 12 year old boy. That's what we do during the Best Year Yet Challenge. But better yet, we help you plan out your year from scratch. And we go far beyond just goal setting and the regular things that you put on the board that you say you're going to do but maybe don't do every single January. Instead, January 6th through the 8th for the best Year Yet Challenge, we're going to spend three days together, you and I, Sarah Burks, Jeff Fenn, our team here at the Hub, helping you map out real strategy for the new year, talking about what's actually trending and working right now across our industry. Everything from mapping out content, mapping out inventory, strategy, sales strategies, growing your team, or just making sure you have the systems and processes in place for you to be the CEO of your business this year. And not just the hustling entrepreneur. Let's face it, I just want to make sure you have more profit and peace not only throughout the holiday season, but all the way throughout 2026. So come join me during the Best Year Yet Challenge. It's completely, completely free. Members, non members, doesn't matter. If you're listening to this and you just want to start your year off a lot stronger Come and join me for the best area challenge. All of the links are across our social media in our show notes. Be there or be square. Let's start this new year off right. Well, it kind of just backs up the point that I think the content, it has to be community focused.
Right.
People want to do business with people. So the more content we can create that just simply connects humans. Right. It's funny, it's relatable, it's personal, it's, you know, creates some sort of emotion. That's the content that leads and fosters that ongoing connectivity throughout the algorithm. And then you can leverage in ads to hyper focus and get your products then in front of that community. But you really need to have both approaches.
Yeah.
Going forward, I think it leads into.
The third thing, you know, is when I'm thinking about 2026 and I'm thinking about all you busy business owners, small business owners and what is working going forward. And you know, what we're, our research has told us is going to be bigger in 2026 goes along with this. What Andromedon's doing is are you really going to try to cater to absolutely everybody and sell something to everyone? No, you're not. You don't have that amount of time. And when you're creating all this content and you're sourcing all the products and all of the things and you want to be named as the authority on wiener dog paraphernalia. Right. That's the space you're going to live. We're going to run with this all this whole session. We're going to run with this the whole time. Okay, keep going. Hopefully nobody has turned this into a drinking game that every time we say wiener dog they have to take a drink of something. But nonetheless, so, but if you're that small business owner, like the theme is like be good at what you're good at. Yeah. You just, it's, it's too much anymore to try to be like the, the Walmarts of the world for a small business owner. Right. Like you're not selling a little bit of absolutely everything to, to what you think is everyone and actually attracting no one. Ashley has said this forever, Right. So I think that's where it comes down to niches like get very, very specific and be riches are in.
Yeah.
But be awesome at that. Be awesome and be the authority there. And that's where you can really start to bring the value. You can bring an experience back to your customers. You can give them discovery and creativity. But you are, you're able to really like.
Yeah.
Build your brand voice again. Yeah. With value, strong, solid reputation, you can go above and beyond. We always say it, you know, talk about that. Do the unnecessary, the undeserved, the unexpected for your customers. If you're really focused in on that niche type of market.
Yeah. There's just so much opportunity and take this one step further. But in the niches, right, so specific groups of people. But also I think when the more niche you are, the more people are willing to pay for products. So rather than selling like a bunch of cheap stuff to everybody, I think you have a huge opportunity in the new year to sell really high priced items. Last night I'll, I'll call out Becca Pollock and Hale House. Last night I was laying in bed scrolling and I came across a blazer on her website and it was $168 which is pretty high. I mean typically her things are under a hundred bucks. But the more she has niched down to this is who my demographic is. And he's got very like bright, loud. I saw this blazer and it was like, I have to buy that.
I abs.
I have to have it. It's me. It was like. I'm going to describe it for you because I know you would like it too, but it was like an olive green with pinstriping and then it had like big patches all over it. Yes, I. Did you buy the same one?
I did not, but I thought it would be awesome. Yes, I'll wear yours when you get it. Yeah, I bought it.
Don't tell Eric, but that's a good example of there's more value. The more you can niche down, the more you can charge for things because.
People are looking for it 100%. So I think that is, you know, going along with this, right. Like tariffs, all the things people are worried about pricing and all of the things. So when you get really niche, you can focus in on your pricing strategy. You can be very value driven. Right. And then you can, you, you have that built in for when you have to take some discounts and different things like that that are still able to make your margins. But that's good, solid business practices and, and we've talked about it a lot over the last few years and we've seen this really come on and oh my gosh, if we were to go five back five years and think about all the little things people tried to pedal just because they wanted to get their hands on something.
Fidget spinners.
Yes, all the things. So look and see where we're at as a small business right now. And I bet if you're a small business listening, if you're in your. In your brick and mortar store, in your warehouse, I guarantee you, you could look around and some of you guys are going to be like, yep, I've gotten lean. I've gotten mean and lean, and that's where my money is at. Or some of you guys are looking around and thinking, why do I have that pallet of of stuff there? Why are those bins like, those bins are three years old. Why do I have those? And I wish I wouldn't have invested in those. And this is where I think 2026 is going to be a big year for. What are you known for?
Yeah.
And put your stamp of excellence on that.
Put your stamp on it. I love wiener, but wiener dogs stamp that.
You know, I. I'm gonna swap lovers next summer with a wiener dog T shirt on and on stage and be like, if, you know, you know who listened to it, who, who's. Who's where.
You know, why they're on my mind is because Hadley keeps sending me tick tocks because all she wants for Christmas is a miniature dash hound.
That's what Lainey wants.
Why, yes, Quick talk is polluting our children's minds.
No, it's one of my girlfriends in Idaho. She breeds them and they're adorable.
Really?
Yes.
And now we have an in.
They're so cute.
Okay.
Yes. Julie, if you're listening, I'm shouting you out.
Okay. Last trend. I think this last trend that is going to be huge in 2026 is how you niche down. And this is not a new trend, but this is an evolution of this trend. And it's live video. I mean, shout out to Malula Row girls who the first users of Comet sold who blew live selling up in 2020. Yes, we saw it. It was huge. And I think there was some people who felt like, well, that's just kind of for a certain group of people, like, maybe that's not for my brand, but I think it is for every brand. You could be a home and gift store in Pennsylvania that has really just adopted social media recently, but live video is still for you.
Go.
Go live and unbox. You know, go live when you set up your new display. Go live as you're remerchandizing the store. Go live as you're setting up your new table displays. People want to do business with people. And I think the more we go live, the more it humanizes our brand. It creates real connection and I think that's the best way to grow your business and to, like, really niche down is to go live more often.
I love it. And, you know, I'm a brick and mortar girly from way back, and I love it because I feel like when I'm watching someone's live, I feel like I'm right there in that space in their brick and mortar store with them seeing the item in action. I mean, I'm. If there's pockets, I know there's pockets. If they, if they love the feel of it, I can tell as soon as they put it on, I see the reaction on their face and almost like, feel like it's on myself. If they take. If they pick up a candle and smell it, I see their eyes light up like they must have loved it versus on an E commerce site. It's like, oh, that's a pretty candle. I think, you know, it's pretty. I have no idea how it smells. Words are words, right? Like, I can read it and it can tell me mahogany, and it can tell me all this and that, but it doesn't really make me feel that way. Like, it does if I'm watching someone during a live sale or just going live. Makes me just like it's that urgency, too. So I. I absolutely. I abs. I. I'm a. I'm a big component of the live seller as well.
Yeah. Video has to be a part of the strategy going forward for sure. Yeah. All right, well, these are all good predictions. I feel we have a lot more. We could probably stay here all day and talk about predictions for 2026, but as everyone's listening and they're closing out the new year and planning or closing out the year, planning for the new year, talk to me about the importance of just, like, resetting the new year with like minded people and starting with, like, the correct planning and goals in place.
Man. I'm gonna sum it up right now by a couple coaching calls that I've had here within the last few weeks in the few months. The ones that have really killed it this year in 2025 said that they got a game plan right at the beginning of 2025, and they felt like they were able to narrow in on a few things and just go in that direction. Right. They didn't feel like they were all of a sudden starting out with like, okay, we're gonna try this and this and this and this and this. Like, they, they opened up the playbook. They said, here it is, 2025.
Yeah.
And they, they ran with it. With, with some direction. And so I think starting your year off on a clean slate and learning from the past, looking forward to the future, getting in a room with like minded businesses or business owners too, and saying, hey, what's working? What are y' all doing?
What are you doing?
What are you guys seeing? You know, hey, Boutique Hub, this is Yalls deal. What are you seeing? What are you as industry experts, forecasting. Yeah. And getting in that space. Those are the people that I've been talking to that are like, we're way ahead of the game that right now going into Q4, they, they feel like, you know, they, they've got a handle on it. Whereas some of the stores that I'm talking to that didn't put the work in and didn't start off with a game plan, they felt like they just spun their wheels the whole year. Yeah. And they jumped from one thought to another thought to another thought. And so I think, you know, that's what we love to do that here at the Boutique Hub is create that opportunity for all small business owners to get together and just have that big, you know, team huddle, so to speak, for a few days at the beginning of the season, the beginning of the year, and identify some big villains that are out there. Right. Like, let's talk about the things coming after us as small business owners. Let's talk about how we, together, we can mitigate this risk. We can take advant these opportunities. You know, what's the technology that we need to do this? What are some of those tools? And in, in at the end of it, like, kind of you. Rah, rah. All right, let's go, let's go.
Yeah, I agree. What, what is this saying? When you aim at nothing, you'll hit it every single time.
Yes.
That's kind of what it's like, right? So this is honestly one of my favorite things that we do all year long. And it's coming up January 6th through the 8th, but it's called the best year yet challenge. So for everyone listening, whether you're a member of the Boutique Hub or Boutique of Black or retail boot camp or you're just like, hey, I listen to the podcast, but I don't really do anything else. It is free and it's for literally everybody. And boutique home and gift, children's men's will probably have some furniture stores, bookstores, pet stores, like, kind of have the gamut.
Yeah.
Wellness stores that will join us. But it is our time to lock arms and come together at the beginning of the year. Map out what's working and what's not. What do we see coming down the road. And then for three days, like we'll also get into some nitty gritty strategy. So day one is all about like looking back to look forward. And I love that day. Like what's the data telling us and how are we going to use that going forward? And we'll do a whole like planning 20, 26 day together. Day two is really one of your favorite days. You want to talk about what's on day two?
Yeah. The whole idea of planning and preparing that systems, your space, your all the things.
Right.
Like that solid foundation and understanding. Like I can't build up if I don't have a solid foundation in place. And this can go back to your pricing strategies. Right. Like I'll just. Perfect example. Working with a retailer that finds herself her very cash poor. And we go back and we get beautiful merchandise, gorgeous merchandise on all the sales channels, all the things. But her pricing strategy was so poor that she couldn't afford any markdowns. She couldn't, she couldn't hardly afford any payroll. She was barely making her rent and she was getting full price for her items. But yet in her head she was like, I want to be the affordable place in town. I want to be affordable for my customers. So you go back and look at then what she was investing her money into and then what she was charging. There was no way she was going to make ends meet.
Yeah.
And so that's the kind of things that if we're going to look and say, hey, you want to grow a business? Yeah, I want to grow a business. You want to make more money? Yeah, of course I want to make more money. We got to look back and just say, okay, that doesn't mean you just got to pedal more product. It's a bigger deal than that. It. You know, Ashley and I talk about basketball all the time. You can't say, hey, you just need to get better at the long ball. You need to make more threes. Right. You can't say that if you turn the ball over every time, like you could be the best three point shooter in the world, but if you don't ever get a chance to shoot, you're not going to put many points on the board. So we have to look at your whole game of business and make sure you are doing great at all of them. Right. And some of them you're going to be like, that's not my wheelhouse. And we want to say, all right, you bet. Thanks for owning that. Let's delegate that out. Let's introduce you to a service that can help you with that right now. Take that off your plate. But that's so important when you think about how do I build a business?
Yeah. Figuring out where the money is leaking and then putting more of it back in. And then day three, Andromeda is a huge topic. Content strategy is a huge topic. So on day three, we want to map out your content strategy for the New Year together. What does that look like? How is the algorithm shifted? How are you going to keep up? You're all wearing like 27 million different hats right now. Probably lots of them that don't really fit very well. So how do we get back to finding the right hat? When it comes to content strategy, that's going to work for you so that you can get done what needs to get done in the new year. And it can't be you doing it all by yourself every single day. We're going to talk about systems, processes and team as well. That can help you with content strategy. So anything else, we're going to drip in there.
Probably some giveaways, probably like little friendly competitions involved and all the things. But at the same time, you get to meet a ton of boutique besties, retail besties, people in the space. This is what I love is like, I ran into this snag and hey, guess what? I've got somebody I can call. I've got a group of people I can jump and jump in and bounce an idea off of. That's what it. That to me is so valuable. Building those relationships, getting in the right room with the right people. And that's why we want to create these opportunities. So you're going to be in Zoom with all of us. You're not just going to be sitting there, like, just listening from afar, not being able to see us. If you want to raise your mind and ask a question, let's do it. At the end, we're going to go ahead. We're going to have roundtable conversations and Q and A sessions and. And you have a chat going and you're. Yeah, it's just. It's a great time. It really is. And we enjoy it. We say they're 90 minute sessions and we will do our best to keep them to 90 minutes because we. Your time is very valuable. We know it.
Yeah.
But those relationships you build honestly are going to carry throughout the rest of the year and beyond.
Yep. I don't know that you and I have gotten off of Zoom, like, for Bester Yet Challenge before without making sure everyone's questions were answered. Oh, yeah, we really try to make sure. So, you guys, you're all invited. Please come join us. January 6th, 7th and 8th, we'll sign the link is in the show notes for today, but it's also all over our social media. It's called the best year yet challenge. Make sure you're on the list. We'll get you Zoom links. We will see your face on Zoom. Like Sarah said, all the questions, all the answers. But we really want to make sure that you're able to start the year off right with all the latest ideas and strategies and kind of some help to see the forest through the trees. So I hope you guys will join us there for sure.
Yeah. And I just want to say, you know, this is what we do. We, you know, we're constantly in conversation with people in this industry that, you know and people overseas, and we've got people talking to us about all the tariffs, and we're going out and getting that insider intel from the best in the business and want to bring that back to you. And I always say the big box stores have that, right? They have their corporate office that's giving them that planogram, that, that dialogue of do this, do that, whatever. You don't have that as an independent retailer. You have us.
Right?
So lean in on us. Let us be your guides and, and hold us accountable. Right? Like our entire team, we all have our own individual gifts that we're bringing to this. You're going to get Jeff Ben, who is just this ultimate guru marketing guy, right? Like, yeah, that guy speaks a whole different language, and he is in a circle of people. That man, he. He runs with a pretty elite crowd when it comes to the marketing strategies. Right? So it's not just Ashley and I, right? And we're. We're out there bringing in the best of the best, and we're. We're taking education pieces as well and doing all the research to bring it back to you guys. It's not just us saying, hey, let's just sit down and BS about this stuff for a while.
No.
We're bringing you guys the best information, timely information that we possibly can.
Do you think it'd be better if we plan matching outfits for those days? Should we do that? Like, maybe like all. One day we all wear denim, and then one day we all wear black. One day we all wear very colorful sweaters.
I thought you were gonna say leopard.
In.
In for a. Jeff.
Well, we should do that. That would be. That's a good idea. I think we might ask you.
Never Regular Ben and Leopard.
Okay, you guys, we're gonna have a ton of fun. Please come join us for the Best year yet challenge. January 6th, 7th and 8th. Bonus points to you if you mention Wiener Dog in the comments when you get there.
Oh, yeah. The first comment you have to have is wiener Dog.
We'll be looking for you. We'll be looking for you. All right, Sarah, thanks for joining me today. You bet.
Thanks, guys.
Great to be here.
Bye.
Bye. We'll see you guys soon.
Thanks for listening, guys. I hope you took away all kinds of nuggets and new ideas from this week's EP 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.
