#747: Blending Home, Gift, Apparel, and Events into One Profitable Business

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. Hannah, I'm so pumped you're here.

I am happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

If you guys are catching this on YouTube, it sort of looks like we're in the same room because we have the same background. Great mindset.

Unintentional. I did not plan this.

I just. We were talking about backgrounds before this, and I'm like, I just started to use this backdrop like a friend built this for us. And I'm trying to figure the light piece out. Like, your lighting has my beat today. It's a little dreary here, so it's.

Literally just my bedroom window. I do have the shade pulled down. It's like an actual diffuser to really diffuse the light to make it look. It looks good. And.

Well, your business has been one that I've admired for a long time. I loved watching you come through retail boot camp and just, I mean, you always had a fresh angle, and so I felt like I kept using your store as an example and like, hey, this is what Hannah does, because I just think it's so unique. So I'm pumped that you're here, literally, and we get to hear your story, but also, you're part of our Mastermind program now too. So I am so excited to have you in that room and to just share light with those women as well.

Well, thank you. Thank you.

Yeah, let's get into it. Tell me the back backstory, backstory first, and then we'll get into all the details of it. Now, how did you get started in this business?

Oh, boy. It's been a. It's been a wild ride. It was never something that I planned for by any means. Like, I went to school for engineering, I went to school for ag, like, various things like that. I actually went to school for, like six years and never ended up finishing. But I actually started by making jam for farmers markets. And I had this little veggie stand at the end of my driveway, and we had a mulberry tree at the end of our driveway. And so I would sell, like, our fresh Eggs and our vegetables and stuff like that. And then I started making jam out of this tree at my parents farm and made like a strawberry mulberry jam. And it went like hotcakes on this veggie stand. And a friend of mine was like, oh, you should try going to a farmer's market. And so I made I think like 20 or 30 jars and sold out at our first farmer's market. And it was crazy. And then we ended up. This was way back, I think like 2016, 2017ish. Adding we had 36 flavors of jam. And I still sold my. Still sold like my eggs and veggies and stuff like that. And then brought in a friend of mine's soap to our farmer's market stands and then had like more accessories, like I would sell like a soap dish to go with it and just random stuff like that. And then kind of started to outgrow the farmer's market vibe and wanted to do more like craft shows and vendor markets and stuff like that. And then kind of just kept adding to the products that we offered. I would make like body scrubs and gosh, we had like loofahs and just all the little accessories that you would want to go with it. And then the jam eventually started just like dying out. I still make it for myself, but it was so much work that I could not keep up with it. We were making hundreds of jars a week and you get to a point where you outgrow the cottage food laws. And then I need like a commercial kitchen and stuff like that. And I was enjoying more of the gifty part of the soap and that kind of thing more than anything. So I started just adding more things along those lines like bath salts and whatever and doing bigger vendor markets. And when I got into these like bigger, like vintage markets and stuff like that, I'm seeing all these women curate these beautiful booths and all this decor. It was like they're having so much fun and they're getting to be super creative. And my mom and I were like, oh, we should do that. Because she was like my right hand man for all of that stuff. And so I think I placed like a thousand dollars order with Creative Co Op and it was the most terrifying thing I've ever done. And I'm like, how am I ever going to sell all of this? I that's one of my favorites.

I have to pause Creative Co Op. If you're going to go into a showroom and look at stuff like that, you're going to be in there Forever, ever.

Because it's beautiful. Yes, it's beautiful. Good job.

The merchandising is like.

Yeah, but yeah. So I had our first order and made our first little vintage market. If anyone's from the Midwest, Michigan area, finders keepers, vintage market. Love them. They're where I got my start and traveled around with them and then kind of, they were all kind of far away from home, so a lot of my friends and family wanted to shop all of our decor and whatnot. So for the holidays I set up in my, or set up in an outbuilding on my parents farm. And basically just like my booth, like bare bones, 10 by 10 booth inside this building. Like nothing fancy. And way more people came than I could have imagined. And so I did that a couple times through the holidays and then kept doing it for a couple more months the following year, once a month, you know, just small. And then I was like, we could actually do something here and decided we're going to overhaul this building and completely gave it a facelift, new floors, walls, whatever. And open this store on my parents property and had a monthly market from for three years there. We had, we were open Friday, Saturday, Sunday once a month for three years. And it did really well there. It was super fun. I feel terrible that I left all my customers there in Michigan. I miss them dearly and I hope to one day be able to have a store back there again. But I met my husband and he lived in eastern Washington and I wanted to go in the mountains anyways and crazy mean decided to move out here and run that shop remotely. So from 2021 to the end, like December 22nd, I flew back and forth running the store completely remote, which was crazy. I had really good employees. They kicked butt and took care of the place while I was gone. And I would fly back for like five days a month to make sure, you know, place hadn't burned down and everything's ready to go. But I almost sold it and I was like, I can't fly back and forth anymore, I'm exhausted. And I had one of my employees who was actually gonna buy the business and then fell through, funding fell through. They ended up going a different route with their life. And a week later I found the building that I'm in currently. And I say everything happens for a reason. It was destiny. I love my building. I'm hoping to buy it like within the next year or so. We've been renting now. We've been in there for, it'll be two years in June. So the amount My store has grown since moving from Michigan to out here has been just exponential. I can't get over it because I was basically starting fresh, you know, So I just can't believe how it's grown in such a short amount of time.

We've got to dig into that because, I mean, it was starting fresh. You. So let me just like when you moved, you probably had somewhat of an email list so they could buy from you from your online presence in Washington.

Not even. I did not even have an email list. I had never sent an email once until I moved. My head's exploding. I know, I know. I also, I didn't barcode anything. I also hand wrote every single one of my tags for those. Things really escalated when I moved down here. I was like, this is a fresh start. We're going to do everything right. And fell right off the bat. We switched point of sale systems. We got everything barcoded when we moved in and it was a game changer. I could maybe owe it all to that.

Seriously. Like before and after, truly. So you found this beautiful building. You barcoded, you got. I think you're on Shopify, correct?

Yeah, I switched from Square to Shopify also when I moved. So square of my website as well. And now we have Lightspeed in the store.

Got it. And you have Lightspeed and it integrates with Shopify. Obviously. Lightspeed's every. What theme are you on? Just if. Because I want. If you're listening to this, I look at Hannah's website all the time. I think it's beautiful. I think it's such a great example of like home gift decor, apparel events. We're going to talk more about that in a minute. What theme are you on on Shopify.

When we're using Impulse? Okay. I think that's kind of like the go to for a lot of people. And the boutique Realm. Yeah, it's just really easy to work with and you can really customize and make it pretty.

Yeah. Well, very well done.

It is.

It's a great theme. Great setup. I hope you guys check it out. So you start the new store, you find the building. I'm sure you go back to creative co op with another order. How did you start? How did you start with what was the new product categories that you started to carry and how did you expand from there?

I tried to keep it 90% of the same style and everything. Just what I knew best. One thing I did right when I opened is I went to a lot of local like farmers markets, craft shows, stuff like that. And I reached out to a lot of makers that I thought would fit our vibe because we did have a lot of local in our previous shop. As far as like candles go signs and things like that, it was all locally made jewelry, whatever. So I wanted to keep that local feel, but obviously with people from my new area. So I went out, introduced myself to a ton of new people and brought their products into the store on commission. Because I was going from a thousand square feet to 3,200 square feet. So filling this was really hard. I look back and I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe you guys let me open the store. It was so empty. But so I brought in a lot of local. And doing that also kind of skyrocketed everything because they were then telling their markets about the fact that they had their products in our store. So come out to the grand opening, whatever, stuff like that. So I filled the store with local products and we worked with them on commission for a long time. We're now buying wholesale from them. Just easier cash flow, but kept a lot of the local feel. All of our candles are local. Soaps, jewelry, a lot of like T shirts and stuff like that are locally made. Just. I don't know, it's fun. And everyone loves to be able to come and visit and be like, hey, can I buy a gift that's like Spokane made or something like that?

Yeah, that's awesome. So then two categories that you've added in. I don't know how recently. Apparel. You started to add it. How did apparel come to be? When into the mix, I was.

I don't even know. That was an insane idea. I never look at myself as someone that is like, fashionable. My alter ego is I'm a snowmobiler and dirt biker at heart. And so 90% of the time I'm in like a flat brim hat and like a flannel or a hoodie. And so I've never deemed myself fashionable and let alone to pick out fashion for somebody else to pick from. And. But it's been really fun. It's been about, I'd say a year since we first started to dabble in it. It was literally just like one rack to start with. And I was like, okay, people are kind of into this. People like this. And I was like, one clothes run at a time. And just like, okay, I'll get like three pieces and then would all sell. I'm like, okay, maybe like, I can actually do something with this. So we like converted a whole corner in the Shop. I'd say it's about, I don't know, maybe 8 or 900 square feet at this point. And it was just, okay, we're going to try a little bit. We're going to keep adding more, we're going to keep adding more. And then we put a dressing room in and everything and everyone was just loving it. And I'm actually having a lot more. Oh, having a lot more fun with it than I thought I would. But it's just so interesting. It's completely different than buying from decor as far as, like, buying patterns. When you're purchasing things, how often you're purchasing, it's just, it's completely different. And honestly, I love, like, the game of it. It's something new for me to learn and to, like, master. And I think it's really fun and it's doing super well for the store.

I'd like to talk about that a little bit more because I think that's something. As I look at our industry going forward, one of the biggest changes I've seen in our industry, and I only look for this to continue to expand, is that crossover. Whether someone started as like home and gift or, you know, some sort of specialty retail, and then they bring in apparel and they realize, wow, apparel is super fast turning, has great margins, it's creative, it keeps people coming back every single week for something new. Um, so there's a lot of crossover happening in that direction. And then there's also a lot of crossover in apparel stores saying, wait, I want to expand my categories, I want more home and gift. Whether it's just starting with candles or they're moving into like, tabletop and all the other fun things that creative co op and others like them have to offer. So you mentioned it is totally different to learn the buying patterns of the two. Can you talk more about, like, some of the key differences that you had to learn between the two sides of the industry?

I, since I started on gift, obviously we have our big, huge markets that we go to in January. February ish. Or like June, July. We usually were when I first started out. We're hitting Atlanta pretty hard in January. And you try and plan out as much as you possibly can from that date all the way through Christmas. And so, like, you have to have your, you, your fall and your Christmas, like, planned as soon as it ends. Like, you actually need to be thinking about it going into that. How much do I need to order? Whatever, like, with great intention in January for the following December or I guess really September to December and you can kind of just follow that pattern. And then you hit June, July, and you have to have everything planned for another six months from now. Already you have like our Easter and springs really big and Valentine's Day, even, like sprinkling a little bit of that. And you have to have it ordered so far in advance. As far as like those larger distributors, a lot of smaller, like, gifty stuff, it's not as big of a deal. You can kind of get it last minute. But like those big orders, like when we're getting pallets upon pallets of Christmas ornaments that had to have been placed a long time ago, and if it's not, you're going to miss out. So that was a weird thing to, like, go into. Just you're not getting one drop once a year. You're getting numerous drops of clothing throughout the year and you're having to, like, keep up on all of it and just keep ordering more consistently. I think it's easier actually to order the clothes for that reason because you don't have to think so far in advance and worry about it so much. The clothes, like, like, okay, every, like couple of months, I can kind of like, all right, we're now we're shifting a little bit. But it's not like, boom, Christmas, right, when it's January and you. The least amount of time you want to think about it is right after it all happened. But you have to.

Yeah, I hear that as well. I mean, that has got to be one of the biggest differences is you're ordering a year out in home and gift and apparel. You could order today and have.

It could be here tomorrow or tomorrow.

Yeah, it's so fast. What about even like, margin and sell through or markdown strategies? I mean, that's slightly different as well.

Clothes are so much easier, I think. So we ended up adding another, like, thousand square feet of clothes because it's going so well. The margins, I think, are just way easier to get that three to four times markup, home and gift. Sometimes you, you look at the things and you're like, I know I need to get this three times markup, but would I actually personally pay that much for this product? And especially like, the tariffs hit really hard in those larger orders this year that I'm like, I have to get that. But I'm like, shoot, I really want to keep my, my prices reasonable, but I just can't if I'm trying to cover all my bases. Whereas clothes, you don't even have to worry about it. You're sometimes, if it's a good deal. You can get four or five, six, seven times markup on a product and not even worry about it. And you know it's going to be good quality and you're happy with it and your customers can be happy with it and you're going to get a good margin that's going to help you pay your rent. Whereas, like, we also dabble in. We have a whole, I'd say about thousand square foot of kids clothing. Kids is terrible margins. Bless your heart, for all of the people that have strictly kids boutiques, I could not do it. The margins are terrible and they cost as much as a woman's top. It's this big, you know. So I think the margins on women's clothing are significantly better. And I think they've definitely shifted our business. But I definitely think I could never go without the gift.

Right?

I think, I think if you're not doing both, you're really missing out. Like, someone's gonna come in and buy a top for a Christmas gift. Why not also upsell them a candle to go with it or something? If you're not dabbling in both, I, I think you're missing out a lot.

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 one on one 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 of 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 to all that college debt we had? That was silly. I can make way better use of your time inside of Retail Bootcamp, so I hope you're on the list. Get on the waitlist right now so you're the first to know. I can't wait to see you inside of Retail Bootcamp. I think that's kind of the idea too. You know, like you mentioned, like, children's can be really tough, and children's comes in so many more sizes. You know, they're carrying a lot more in one particular skew. That could leave you a lot at the end of the day that you have to deal with markdown strategy and all of that. But each one on their own can be tough. That's why I like the idea of. Of them overlapping. And I don't know what your opinion is on this, but I'm. I've got this, like, brainchild that I think the word boutique, in my opinion, I think some people think of boutique is just apparel. I think of boutique is like a curated retail experience which might include, I've got a little children's, I've got some home and gift, I've got some apparel, but this is my brand, this is the customer I love to serve, and these are the pieces I curated for you, and that's a boutique experience. How do you define the word boutique and how it relates to products you sell in the industry?

I think. I think it's changing. I think it used to be strictly, you think the word boutique. And I don't know, maybe like even 10, 15 years ago you think boutique and you're like, oh, that is strictly clothing only. But now I think a lot of people are curating all these local goods or we're shifting a lot towards local, and people are wanting to pull all of that together. And I completely agree with you that I like when I'm going out on some kind of trip and I'm searching for a store similar to mine, I do, I search boutique. I'm not a clothing boutique, but I search a gift boutique or something like that, trying to find these curated, beautiful shops that have a little bit of everything in it, whether it's local, whether it's clothes, whether it's gift or like kitchen or something like that. Just, I don't know, a beautiful collection is how I feel boutique should be.

Yeah, I love that the word collection. Funny you mentioned, you know, the Google search and I've been, again, I've been on a soapbox about this lately. I'm not going to get off the soapbox because. Because I think this is important. But I was curious about that myself. What do people search when they're out traveling and they're looking for a shopping experience? And the stats show that an average Google search every single month, it's about 950,000 people a month searching boutiques near me. Gift shop near me is about 90,000amonth. So it's a massive difference in the terminology that the consumer uses. So I think that's so important that has to trickle through the rest of our industry, like through the retailer, through the rep, through the showroom, through the brand. Like, it's not gift shops and boutiques.

It's.

We are all curating a collection of products in a boutique experience. So I do opportunity there.

I feel like when I think the word gift shop, I think like when you go to a super touristy town and you see all the chachkis and everything that are very like, obviously tourist trap kind of stores, that's what I think of with gift shop. And I think boutique is more curated, I guess. Aaron, I don't know. Classier person.

Yeah, I agree with that. Something else you've done really well. So not only you've blended, you know, home and gift and apparel, but also your online business and sort of a lifestyle brand. Like, you've got this great Instagram account that you're kind of sharing behind the scenes and all these other things. Tell me about the blending of the content that pulls all of these experiences together.

We. So we initially had like a separate page for our kids stuff and everything. And I found just like putting it all together actually is more worthwhile for us. People want to see a little bit of everything, even if they're not necessarily right now buying for the kids stuff. They might want to see it on that page and it's just easier to pull everything all together into one. But our social media gal, Joelle, she kicks butt. She makes some beautiful posts and it's so fun. Like all of the. The silly reels. I always complain about making them, but I know I actually have fun. We always say, like, oh, no, not on Tuesdays. I don't want it's Tuesday. We have to film our reels today. But it really is fun and I'm glad we get to do it. But having such a good group of girls to do all those fun things, things with on our page is really nice. And having all of the different things in the store really gives us the opportunity to keep it fresh. We. We always have something that we could post or share about, whether it's like a new blog or a new recipe because we got a new cookie dough mix or something in. There's so much going on all the time. There's just always something that we could talk about or share. And whether it's contests we're entering or something crazy, I don't know, we're always doing something.

Yeah. What I love about this, and honestly, this is a lot of the. The home and gift boutiques that I work with. I feel like there's a stumbling block or, like a mental. Like, I don't know what to post on social media. And a lot of times they'll revert to just posting, like, a display of the vignette or a photo of a vignette in the store display that they have or whatever. But I hope they look at your social media as an example, because what you do beautifully is it's all, like, demonstrations and examples, and it's the products being used in real life. Like, you said a cookie dough mix, right. And you're actually making a reel or going live or whatever you're doing to demonstrate that product. Plus, just beautiful photography of both product and apparel all tied into one.

I think there's something to be said about having, like, a. I know it's something little, but having. I know everyone doesn't have the curated feeds that they used to, but at least having a filter that doesn't take away from everything but keeps everything looking the same definitely makes it so that people are like, I know that this is a wheel that was. Or a photo that's from Mulberry or something like that, but I definitely think there's something to be said, like. Like the whole just posting a big vignette thing. Yeah, that's great. People see what's in your store. It's beautiful. But you have to give something to the customer. They need a reason to go purchase that item. And, oh, my gosh, I keep saying cookie dough, but this cookie dough is amazing. These cookies are so good. I have to go buy that or. Why is this lip scrub so amazing for my lips? They're gonna feel like butter after. And I know that now because they taught me you have to give some kind of, like, information, some kind of of value to each of your posts. And I think that's super important.

You know, it's funny, before I jumped on to record this podcast with you today, Hannah, I was. We'd hired a consultant to do some, like, ads consulting, like content hook strategy consulting with us. And he kept talking a lot about your content has to present life before and life after the product. And we refer to that a lot. And you've been through retail boot camp. How many times do you know? But pain point and benefit. And I think that's the difference in the type of content you're talking about is you're creating content that allows people to see themselves in it. Like, you're creating a space of, oh, my gosh, I could smell those cookies and I can taste those cookies. And I know what it's like to make those cookies. Same with apparel. You know, when you're building an outfit, oh, I could see myself wearing that here, here, and here. Versus when you're just taking a photo of a product or a flat lay or a style stock photo, and you're just like, here's the product. Go buy it. Like, there's no. There's no before and after. There's no transformation, there's no pain, there's no benefit, there's no emotion. It misses all of that. And so content has to be able to tell that story.

Yeah. Even down to, like, making a collection or something like that. Why? What is this collection for? If it's like, oh, we have summer country concerts or something like that. So here's all these outfits. Just go do that. It's just, I don't know, I think it's easier to look at it that way, is why should the customers need each of these products? Because you can, you can stack your shelves full things, and if no one actually needs them, why would they come buy them? So you have to tell them why they need them.

Yeah, tell them why. I love it. Okay, I'm going to nerd out a little. This is like my favorite conversation ever. I'm going to nerd out one step further.

Yeah. And go for it.

The next level is not only is the content critical to create that creates life before and after, but the other super cool thing you do that is unique and is a huge opportunity in our industry today is events. You literally bring the people in the store for the cookie making class with the cookie dough, and they pay for it.

They pay to attend the event to learn how to use the product that.

You'Re going to upsell. And then while you upsell it, then they're going to also check out the apparel and all the other things you're selling at the meantime. Like, to me, it is such a beautiful funnel. So tell Tell us about the events and how you do it.

So we are crazy with our workshops right now. We also do like a couple bigger events every month that aren't necessarily workshop, but more just to like get people into the shop. But our workshops have seriously taken off. In my old store when I was back in Michigan, I never had the space for it. I tried to do a couple, but we would have to like move all the displays and everything out of the way. And it was just way too much work. And it didn't end up working out, but we acquired part of our building actually has like a 2,000 square foot warehouse. And we turn that into like an event space so we can seat 24 and in there comfortably. And we have been teaching classes. You can come. We bring in local artists and makers to teach you how to make sourdough candle, pouring soap, making fused glass, stained glass, all of these different things. We're always trying to keep it fresh. We do like mosaics and we always are changing up the classes so that we can be bringing people either back in or attracting new people. And these classes, if they seat 20 people and we have three classes a day, that's 60 people coming into the shop that might not have came into it before they found out about it because of their sister wanted to go make a candle with them for her birthday or something like that. And so it's bringing all these new faces into the store. And I would say 90% of them end up purchasing something while they're there. They are waiting for us to let them back into the classroom. So they're mowing about in the store, checking out what we have, and they're like, oh, my gosh, I had no idea you were even here until I saw this ad for your class. And so we really, we started doing just like a couple at a time. And then it started getting. They were selling out and so we really just jumped on it and have been going crazy with these classes and we run ads for them. So I would owe a lot of the success to our Facebook ads that we've been running and just fill them up and get all these people through the door that might not have even known we were there in the first place. So I find that really good. And then also like, our not just workshops, because I feel like workshops can kind of sound like unattainable for others. Like, obviously we're doing this on a huge scale. Yes, you could do like once a month and it wouldn't be as big of a deal. As overwhelming as what we're currently tackling. But I think just doing anything outside of just being a shop, you need to create an experience for people to keep coming back to. And we'll have like a pop up market where we have permanent jewelry and stuff like that and other local vendors will come in and set up like a little booth in there and so trying to create this like hype as to why they should come back. So we have the holidays coming up and so we are obviously doing a lot of these holiday themed events but throughout the year we're always still doing something like January, we have like a winter reset planned and we're bringing in massage therapist, a gal to do like eyebrow waxing, a personal candle pouring they, things like that so people can come together and make like a vision board for their year and stuff like that. Just an exciting excuse to get to the shop. And we do that all year round and I think it really makes a difference into the experience that our customers have coming into the shop and really make it like a community and we really get to know our customers that way. I enjoy it a lot.

What an. I mean yeah, it's an opportunity for them. Build community, build connection. They're building friendship which is building an emotional connection to not only the friend but to you, the brand. They want to come back and have that experience again. But then digital marketing wise, they're on your email list. They've probably confirmed that they're coming to your Facebook event which you can retarget all of those people and then if you're running ads to them, we can now retarget all of those people into clothing ads or candle ads or whatever product based ads we want down the road. Tell me more about like once someone's on your list, tell me a little bit more about how you're planning out like ad strategy and emails that are going out as well.

This is something I really need to improve on. I feel like I haven't had the bandwidth lately or we've been scaling so quickly that I feel like I'm just kind of putting out fires instead of like tackling these bigger projects lately. But we obvious everyone that comes into a workshop ends up on our email list. So we currently send out, we send out three just like basic emails a week that involve like what we have going on. Um, super simple. And we do have like a couple retargeting ads for people that have like viewed our workshops but not actually committed, um, that we've set up through BTC Black. But I actually, I'm not doing as Much as I could be doing in that department. I just, I just don't have the bandwidth yet.

Oh, I think everyone listening is like girl you already wearing a lot of hats.

Understand we have a lot of hats. We have been scaling really quickly and hiring some new employees. I have a new workshop coordinator that took a lot of the like customer service off of my plate and so now I've been able to kind of get back into like okay, now I can get back to figuring out ads and stuff like that. I've actually been wanting to outsource the email situation. I want someone to come in and help me build all of my like automations and everything because I could only know so much. Just little me and so I feel like I've learned a lot on my own but some stuff is just over my head and so I think we have a really good list that we've built. We're just not using it as good as we should be. And so if I had someone come in and help me build all these automations out, I think we would be doing really well.

Do what you do best and hire the rest, right?

Exactly.

Oh man. I know you and I, we've connected on this before just over email. I connected you with Denise out of Houston who also does lots of events. She has a crystal shop. I don't know if you know this but her son Dylan is a coach in Boutique Black.

I did not know that.

Yes, that's her son. So if you need someone in Boutique of Black who understands like workshops and.

Events and stuff like that, Dylan is the specifically noted. I did not realize that and I don't knock at the connection.

I forget to tell people these like random connections but for those of you listening too, I know there's a lot of people in Boutika Black who are listening and working on ads but like Dylan is the go to for that sort of thing. So good to have that connection inside too.

I'm telling you that if you're not running ads it's you're, you're missing out. It's like the best money we've spent.

Oh man. Yeah. So impactful. Well thank you for that. Absolutely. Let's do lightning round. Are you good with that?

Sure. Let me have it coming off if I go too long.

You won't, you'll be fine. Okay, first thing, I give you two hours back in your day to work on income generating activities. What do you choose to focus on first?

Oh gosh. Getting back at the ad thing, Getting new ads posted, trying to develop a New, some kind of strategy, new workshop or anything like that. Trying to get that out into the world so it can start generating the cash. It's almost instantaneous with the ads. As soon as you throw it out there, I swear something happens. So if I could do that, throw out a new reel or something with some money behind it, I think that would be what I would do.

Awesome. What do you think is the unseen, sexiest process in your business that drives the most impact?

I will nerd out about this one. My most favorite is purchase orders. I love purchase orders. I love how accurate they have to be. And if whoever's inputting them does not understand how the reason of why they have to be accurate, you. They can tell a whole story. You got your cost in there. You. You've got what you're going to sell it for. And it's so easy because at the end, once it's all set up, it's going to equal how much you're invoiced for. And it's just, you know, if you got it wrong or right and. And it's something that has to be done. But I really enjoy it. Oh, my gosh.

I.

But it's such a weird thing.

No one has ever answered that way before. And no one has ever, like, sat forward in their seat and had that much enthusiasm with their love, of course.

And I think I am excited about them because up until moving out here, yeah, I am not having barcodes, not having all these systems and processes in place. I was just kind of winging it. Like, I know for a fact that there are products that I paid for that did not show up, or there are products that showed up that I did not pay for. And I'm like, oh, these are for free. Didn't even know. Or like, just a random order that probably just ended up in the abyss. And I did not even remember it. And it just showed up. And if I would have just putting. Been putting these purchase orders in this whole time, I would have had all this information in front of me. So why did it take me so long to do it?

Literally? Like, you're speaking Sarah Burks's language because she. In retail bootcamp, she talks about this all the time. And she gets so frustrated when people are like, man, I don't know, like, it's a Tuesday.

And these random boxes showed up.

I had no idea what was coming. And she's like, purchase orders? Or do you use faves for your purchase orders or do you do it manually?

I don't. I don't I manually put everything in. I. We're just ordering from so many different places and it's just. I don't know, I like to be able to see each thing, like, going in nicely. And I just hear my mom in the back of my head and she's like, if you put crap in, you're gonna get crap out. So make sure you're putting it in accurately.

Is your mom an accountant? Because that's an accountant like phrase. It's garbage and garbage out.

She's actually. That's what she always. Sorry, she's a little bit more explicit than that. But yeah, she was always adamant and so she. It drove her nuts that I never used to do that before, and now that I do, she's just all like, now you get to see all the numbers and everything's so much more accurate. And, you know, if you didn't pay for something and I'm just like, how much money did I lose? Because something didn't show up that it said I got or something like that.

Yeah.

I don't know.

You know what you need to do on Tick Tock? I think you should start a channel that's like, about your love of purchase orders. You know, some people have like, ASMR channels or like.

Clicking receive.

There's business owners that would appreciate it for sure.

It's funny.

Okay, last lightning round question. What's been the best business advice you've received that always sticks with. With you?

Oh, gosh. Best business advice. I think just to go for it. I know that's so basic, but, like, nothing will ever happen if you don't just try. And I would rather try and fail than to have not tried at all in the first place. And just don't worry about what others are doing and just kind of stay in your own lane and just kind of do your thing and not have to worry about what others are saying. And. But yeah, I feel like you could call me crazy for half the stuff I've done moving a whole store across the country, and I'm like, I'm just gonna do it and if I fail, I fail. But here we are. So I think you just gotta jump in head first and not overthink it. Just go for it. Yeah. Learn as you go.

Spoken like an entrepreneur. I absolutely love that.

Yeah.

Well, Hannah, this has been awesome. I have one last question for you, and it's the big question. You know, 30 years down the road, you're sitting on the front porch with your friends and your family and grandkids and whatever all the things. And you're looking back on this, the big move you made, first of all, the big risk you took and the business that you've grown along the way. What's the thing that you want people to remember most about you and how you lived?

Who? Oh, gosh. About me. I was hoping that was going like, what would they remember about the store talking about me? I don't know. I hope that I remembered as someone that was willing to take risks and always went for it and did it bigger and better and created something beautiful along the way. I have so many crazy ideas and I don't want them to ever get back burnered. I just want to be the one that actually went out and did it, not ever just talked about doing it for a long time. The one that actually did.

She's the one who did it. You guys, thanks for listening today. Hannah, thanks so much for being on the podcast. This has been awesome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it a lot. It's an honor. So fun.

Well, I hope you guys reach out to Hannah. Check out her website. Like I mentioned, it's beautiful and she's doing really special, unique things. So again, Hannah, congrats and thanks again.

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 guests 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.