#825: The Boutique Owner's Guide to Using AI in Your Business

Welcome to the Boutique Chat Podcast, where we're gonna help you build a profitable, sustainable business without you having to sacrifice your profitability, your family, or your sanity. Each week we're gonna dive into real conversations with retailers who have been exactly where you are and industry experts so you can learn and know exactly what to do next, all in community over competition. Whether you're just getting started or you're growing past an 8-figure business, you're in the right spot. So let's get into it. Welcome to this week's episode. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This week I'm joined by Jim Nye, the AI guy. I feel like we need an intro, like monologue or sound or something really fun. Like, could you— why aren't you wearing a white lab coat today?

I could do that. That would've been like, uh, like scientists in the background. Like maybe I should have that, like science and like smoke coming out and things like that.

Yeah.

That'd be cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Could you like maybe for Summit, like a, like a Bill Nye wig and costume would be appropriate. I think that'd be good.

Does he have a wig? Does he have crazy hair?

He has like brown curly hair, right? I'm trying to think. I don't know. It was always a good day in science class. Mr. Hall, 6th grade science. When somebody like wheeled in the TV, you know, with like the straps over the top on the cart and it was like, oh, it's Bill Nye day. We're gonna watch it. Okay, Jim Knight, the sign.

It makes me think of like the Muppets character with the orange spiky hair, the beaker guy. That's what it reminds me of. So that's what I remember.

A little bit.

A little bit. Okay.

Well, I love the play on words. I love the name. But Jim, I'm so glad that you're here. For anyone who hasn't had a chance to meet you yet, you are one of the newest additions to the team. And I'm just so thankful for the opportunity to get to work with you as the Director of AI and Innovation and really mastermind behind so many things that are being built at the Boutique Hub right now. But the cool part is you've been a member of the Boutique Hub long before coming to work for us. So give me a little bit of the backstory. Tell me about life before the Boutique Hub, and we'll talk about how we came to connect at Summit.

Yeah, so my wife and I started our boutique, and I think it was 2015 or 2016, as a brick and mortar. And so she's a style coach, and we'd always go on walks and she'd be talking about going to different stores and not being able to find the stuff she needed for her clients. And then I came up with the brilliant idea, like, why don't we open up our own store? How hard could it be, right? You just put some clothes on a rack, you open up your door, people come in, they go, oh my God, this is amazing. And then, you know, in a couple years you have as many yachts and, you know, houses as you want in Malibu, and it's, it's super easy. Like, how hard could it be? So, um, yeah, it's hard, right? And so we went through that whole process of setting up a brick-and-mortar and ordering our first inventory. And I remember working with our first coach. His nickname was Hollywood. He was a great guy. And he looked at our— we didn't have an open-to-buy plan, but he looked at the amount of merchandise that we bought. And he said, you guys are gonna be bankrupt in like about 2 months because you had spent— I think we spent like $300,000 in inventory for a store that was just opening. We were so far. I mean, she was just having a great time buying this, that, and the other thing. We were so overbought.

Yeah.

We first came in because you don't know what you don't know, right?

Yeah.

And so I think getting into that and having the learning curve that most entrepreneurs do about what it takes to run a business, and you can't just really open the doors and everybody comes in. And then we joined The Hub shortly after that. We've been a member of The Hub for quite a long time since then. So yes, it's been a journey for sure. It was a decade-long journey of being an entrepreneur in the retail world.

I love that. All right, so Hub membership then led you to the Boutique Summit, which is where we had an opportunity to meet. I think you were already in Boutique of Black at the time, if I remember right. But I was on stage launching Ask Ashley, which is a Delphi-trained AI bot that was trained off of all of my voice, my knowledge, all the podcasts, all of the trainings I've done in the Hub, basically all of our knowledge. And it's an instant chatbot, much like the way people use ChatGPT now, But they could just query all the hub's knowledge base. And members of the Boutique Hub still have access to that. But as I was launching that and I came off stage, I ran into you kind of in the back of the room toward the trade show and you were like, hey, that's cool, but what if we did something way bigger than that? And you started to show me just something that you had whipped up real quick. And what you didn't say in your introduction was your background with technology before starting the boutique and having the retail knowledge, but you had quite a background in technology as well. Tell me about that. Tell me about really when you first saw Ask Ashley and started to think, hey, we could do more than that, and what your background, you know, how that really led you to be able to build some of those things.

Yeah, I think I was sitting in— we were in Summit in Dallas in June, and that was actually the first Summit. I think it was the first Summit I had been at. And so it was an impressive experience. So I remember listening to you on stage and you said about something in the area of think, you know, think differently, right? Come up with a different strategy or like think of another way of doing stuff. So that was percolating in my mind. And then, then they had the panel discussion later on and everybody's, know your numbers, know your numbers. Like if you've heard that once, you've heard it 100 times as a retailer, know your numbers.

Yeah.

And I remember thinking to myself, how is it possible to know your numbers for marketing, for inventory, for customer retention, for churn, for Like, you could spend— first of all, how do you even go and find the information and then pull it all together, then analyze it? Then you're brain dead by the time all that, all that comes in. There's no way you could know all your numbers all the time. And so that, that between that session there with the panel and then what you said about thinking about things differently, and then my background in technology, we're working at Cisco Systems, I was like, there's got to be a better way to do that. What if you had a dashboard And this is where AI, even just a year ago, was really not as prevalent as it is now, that if you had a little agent in the background that was reviewing all the things that are happening in your business and you just woke up in the morning and then on your phone was like, hey, Yeah. Here are the 3 things you need to do to run your business today. Because as a business owner, when have you not gotten in your car, driven with all this hope and optimism that you're just gonna conquer the day? And then as soon as you get into the store, you got emails and customers, employees and this and that. And then you're on the drive home, And you're like, I don't think I got a damn thing done today.

Yeah.

So the day just goes by. So if you had an agent that just said to you, hey, I want you to do this thing and that thing and this thing to help move the needle, like, how awesome would that be to give you some direction? And that's how the whole BOSS idea sort of germinated that day at Summit. And we just, from there, we've just taken it and, and now it's a monster. Now it's a beast that does all kinds of stuff. So yeah, I love it.

All right, so if you're not yet familiar, if you're hearing this for the first time and you're like, what is this? So again, BOSS Boutique Hub Operating System is like your very own AI agent with ChatPod, whatever you use, right? And all the features and functions you're used to, but it's trained on all the Boutique Hub's knowledge base, and then it's leveraged with your actual real-time data, right? We've got some direct integrations with Shopify and Square where that data can flow in there. We're working on others. You can always upload your data. But now you can do exactly what you're saying, Jim, like you've got that agent that's saying, hey, based on industry best practices, and all the knowledge I have as AI and your data, here's where you should focus today. How do you feel like, you know, as that's really just started to roll out with our Retail Bootcamp Accelerator group and the first beta testers and people that have really gotten in there, do you feel like it's already started to solve that problem of where do I focus on today? There's so many squirrels, How do I get in there and just make the most use out of my day based on what this AI is telling me?

Yeah, I think what we've seen is it's gone. That's why I say it's a beast earlier. It was, I was reflecting that with, um, Eric, our CFO this morning. We were having a conversation about that the store owners that are using Boss are using it far beyond what I originally thought that they would be using it for in this sense. That, and it gives you an idea of how overwhelmed and how many hats that an entrepreneur has to wear. So originally the concept was, is that it would just be like a dashboard and it would give you some tips and tricks on what to do for the day. But now we're finding, because you have your store knowledge in there, you have the Hub's best practice and its knowledge base in there, which I think is like 2.3 million data points that are in there from just from the Hub alone. But then you have general AI, which has gone out and scraped the entire internet and read every book. known to man. So you have all this general knowledge in there, plus hub-specific knowledge and store-specific knowledge. What a lot of store owners are doing now is that going well beyond just, hey, give me a to-do list, they're going and asking it to do strategic planning or full entire workflows from all the way from buying something down to a markdown strategy. So this is entire body of work that normally that a store owner has to take on by themselves and figure out all those different pieces and parts. from marketing and inventory and math and all those customer service. It's asking AI to help out with that. And what I, what I educate, try to educate folks on when it comes to AI is AI is not a magic genie. So you can't just dump a bunch of stuff in there. Like we had a store owner the other day said, here's my entire company history and just dumped it all into chat and said, I want you to refer to it whenever I need it. Like, it's not a magic genie. It doesn't quite work like that. You have to put some structures around it. But what we're finding is that when you can put the proper structure around AI, it can do 80% of the work for you. And then that saves you time and energy, both like on the clock, but then also your mental energy, which is just as important.

Yeah.

To be able to go do that 20% that actually moves the needle forward. So yeah, people are using Boss in just some Really interesting ways. I mean, simple stuff like, hey, can you create an Instagram caption or tagging for this new product, to full product marketing strategies and just basically a lot of stuff, how you run your business at a high level.

Hey, you're invited to join us as a member of the Boutique Hub. I love that you follow the podcast and all of our content here at the Hub, but more importantly, let's get you inside. As a member of the Boutique Hub, you have access to 4 key areas to grow your business. Number 1, we're gonna surround you with an amazing community of retailers just like you who get it at your size, at your business type. We wanna get you connected with the people who can help you through all of the good and the bad that it takes to be a business owner. The second thing, we wanna get you expert education, live trainings every single week, instant AI answers with our personally trained bot, and a full training library on every single area of your business. Next, exclusive savings. Hub members save money, whether it's on wholesale brands that you're shopping with at market or the apps and the tools you're using on a daily basis. Hub members have massive savings. And finally, it's all about networking and relationships with wholesale brands. So if you are looking for the best vetted, proven wholesale products for your business, we partner with over 1,000 brands inside of the Boutique Hub to get you instant access and the best savings. So come and join us as a member of the Boutique Hub. I can't wait to see you inside. If you were to look across like all the power users of BOSS at this point and just say, hey, here's how the best performing people are actually using the system on a daily basis, what features or, you know, like what actions are they taking that's getting them the best results?

So I'll give you, so I'll give you the best and we'll talk about like specific features in a moment. I'll give you the 3 things that if you're listening to this podcast and you're using AI at all, whether it's our model or you're using Claude or ChatGPT or Gemini, there are 3 things that if you really want to get the best use out of AI, This is the framework that you want to work with, the mental framework. Think of AI as your best assistant ever, but that also has a severe case of amnesia. Because every time you go into AI, it literally remembers nothing. People say, oh, it has memory. It only has memory because it actually goes in every time you hit enter. It goes and rereads the entire script of memory. And then once that memory is read, it forgets it.

Mm-hmm.

and then you put in another request, it has to go back and reread that same information it just read 10 seconds ago. It's rereading it again. So if you think about it as a, a very powerful store manager or a virtual assistant that you have that's very knowledgeable, but it's forgetful.

Mm-hmm.

So if you help it with its memory by giving it good memory, like your own stuff about your store, about how you operate your business, the different nuances to your business, that's the memory. So have it in there. then you give it some context, right, about what you're trying to do. So if you go in there and you just say to AI, hey, I want you to create a plan to increase traffic into my brick and mortar. Okay, well, that could mean, like, if I said that to you as a coach, you would come back to me and you'd have a whole list of questions just right off the top of your head. Okay, well, what's going on in your store? Is there any, like, construction in your shopping center, for example, that might be prohibiting traffic? So you would have all these contextual— questions for me that I would give you answers to before you gave me your expert advice. So the same thing with AI, you wanna make sure that it has enough memory about your store and what is going on, that you're giving it some context about the goal that you're trying to achieve, and then give it a goal like, this is the outcome I'm trying to achieve. Here's the background.

Yeah.

And here's the number one thing. If you're using AI, here is the one of the best pro tricks. Well, there's 2 pro tricks. One, if you're on a free plan, Get on a paid plan. Do the $20. You might not be able to have a Starbucks for a day and a half, but do the $20. It's worth it for sure because you get better, you get better access to the models and better features. But then also, when you're in there, give it the ability to ask you questions. So when you say to AI, hey, I'm trying to do A, B, C, and D, ask me clarifying questions. And so why is that? Why is asking clarifying questions important? It's important because AI is a super helpful helper, but it will make stuff up. It will try to fill in the gaps with things that sound plausible. And on the surface, when you read it, you're like, oh, that makes total sense. But if you were to ask follow-up questions to it, and this has happened to me a number of times, it'll say to you, I gotta be honest with you. Um, I made that up. Like it'll literally say to you, my bad, I made that up. And then you're like, why did you make that up? You're not supposed to make anything up. So if you give it some context and you say, hey, this is a complicated task I'm asking you, ask me some clarifying questions, it'll generally ask you maybe 3 to 5 clarifying questions to fill in some of those gaps so it's not making stuff up.

Yeah.

So that's the best thing. If you're using AI, make sure it's got some memory, some knowledge, and then give it some context around the, your ask. Don't just say, hey, I need you to come up with a foot traffic plan for my store. It's too generic. It's not a magic genie. You've got to give it a little bit of direction. Think about it like if you're in a boat and we're in the ocean and you're like, hey, I wanna go to an island and all you see is just blue waters, right? You have to give AI some direction about where to go.

So I love that for like Chat, Claude, like all your general models, what you're using. Is that different with Boss because Boss is actually trained trained on your specific data. And most users of Boss have uploaded and built like SOPs, or they've pulled over all of their knowledge base from chat, and you can just like with one click upload all of it into Boss. Is it different because it's built on so much more specific background information than general AI models are?

No. So it's actually— the challenges are still the same because if it goes back to the lack of memory that AI has, so every time you start a new chat or even within a chat, Once it completes the answer, its memory is wiped clean. So it doesn't remember, like if we were talking about an SOP about new hires, for example, and then as soon as it writes its last word, it, it forgets that we were talking about an SOP on new hires. And so, and then if like humans do, like you and I can go off on different threads of a conversation and then come back to a previous thread and we're able to tie those in together. AI has a difficult time doing that because what it's doing, it's predicting— literally, it's a next word predictor. So it's literally in a sentence, it is predicting what the next word will be. Like, Jack and Jill went up the blank. Everybody knows it's the hill, and AI will say the hill because that is the most likely strongest word would be hill versus a valley or something like that, because it's read Jack and Jill went up the hill. probably a million times. So having knowledge in your database is great because what it does is it helps the AI not make things up because it'll make things up. Because you have knowledge in your database, it'll go back and say, oh, instead of making something up about new hires that I read on a blog post somewhere, let me go to Ashley's boutique and say, okay, how does Ashley do a new hire process? What does that process look like? So the knowledge base helps in that sense, but in any AI model, you have to make sure that you give it the proper context and give it direction on where to go.

Sure. Okay. So when you're a new user on BOSS, would you say that the most important thing you do when you get started is to build that knowledge base? And what does that all entail?

Yeah, the first thing to do is give it the background, right? So if you have SOPs already, great. You can throw those into BOSS. You can just load up an entire document, or you can do it document by document if you have it broken out that way. Or if you don't have SOPs, I think we have like, um, 18 or 19 different SOPs that we've identified in the BOSS system. You can click on the button and it'll interview you and it'll ask you 3 to 5 questions about, hey, in this example, how do you conduct new hires? I don't know, I haven't done a new hire before. So it's okay, no problem. So what would you like in a new hire? Like, it'll ask you some specific questions and then you can go back and forth. This is the best thing to remember going back to the mental framework for AI, is that it's a conversation, right? We're used to using tools up until this point. We're used to using tools. You go to a vending machine, you put in a dollar, you get out your little bag of Doritos, right? That's a tool, right?

Yeah.

AI is a conversation back and forth with an agentic agent. And you're, you're like taking a mold of clay and you're building something with it. So having that conversation back and forth for your SOPs or your markdown plan or your strategies for inventory buying or marketing for Black Friday or something something like that. It's a back and forth conversation will give you the best results.

I love that. So there's— I think when a lot of people think of AI in general and the BOSS system, they immediately equate it to the conversations back and forth with Chat or with Claude. But what's being built with BOSS is the next level. Talk about the agentic side of AI and AI that can actually take actions based like on your behalf versus just having the conversation alone and then suggesting you take the action.

Yeah. So I think this is going to get into a little bit of where I think AI is going, and it's already being built out by the big boys. You're going to see in 2027, or there's still several months left in this year, as fast things, as fast as AI moves, you could see it really shortly, is agents. So it's called what's called A2A, agent-to-agent conversation. So think about it this way. If you had a virtual assistant that you had employed for you for like 15 years. It would know everything about you, like what your food preferences are, what your travel preferences are. You prefer the aisle or the middle seat or the window seat, right? Like, you wouldn't have to ask you anything. It would know. This is where agents are going. It's going to be both on a personal level. I think at some point we'll all have personal agents. I actually got a story about that that came up this morning. And then also be business agents. And so a business agent is what we're building out now. That it knows everything about your store, your operations, things that are going well, things that aren't going well, what your high seasons are, what your low seasons are, what better days of the week for sales than not better days of the week for sales. All those little nuances, your agent will start to learn and have in its contextual memory. Then when agent-to-agent conversations really start to take off at the end of this year into next year, you're going to be able to say to your agent, Oh, it's going to do it overnight. It's going to go into like Shopify, for example, and it's going to have a conversation with the Shopify agent and your agent. It's going to have a conversation about inventory. Then you're going to have an agent that's able to go out and do product sourcing for you. And let's say your agent is looking, talking to the Shopify agent and recognizes that you're selling out of star-studded jeans, for example. Right. And so your agents, they're going to have that conversation between your agent and Shopify agent. And then that your agent's going to go, great, thanks for the information. Then it's going to go talk to agents that do product sourcing and it's going to go find you jeans that match the margins you're looking for. That matches the style of your store and what your customers are buying. It's going to pull that information down for you. And then when you get up in the morning, you go to your dashboard, you're going to get a message from your agent that says, hey, I was talking to the Shopify agent last night and we saw that your jeans are really taking off. So I went out and found you some jeans that are similar that have better margins. Here's a link, go take a look at it, right?

Yeah.

So, so this prod— this type of thing is going to happen in the background, or you can take it with VIP customers. Hey, I had a conversation with the Klaviyo agent last night and we identified these 4 people are your VIPs that we haven't seen in the last 45 days, which is odd for them. Hey, here's an email and a special coupon, win-back coupon for them. Do you want me to send it? Yeah. Boom. Send it. Right. So just taking that VIP thing, how much time would it take you to go into Klaviyo or Shopify or wherever your information is at, figure out what the VIP list is, figure out how long they have or haven't shopped with you, then figure out what the coupon winback should be, then write the email, schedule the email. Like by that time you're like, man, I'm done for the day. I'm done for the day. So the agent—

Yeah.

Agent will take care of all that for you in the background. All that's coming. Like that is. It's on the runway, the plane is going down the runway.

Well, there's already a lot of that that is built into Boss, right? So, and correct me if I'm wrong, but 2 examples that come to mind. One, uh, I go to market and I buy a bunch of, bunch of denim from Hidden Denim, and I have a PO, and I can upload that PO into Boss. And if my Shopify is connected, that PO will then automatically go ahead and create all those draft products based on how I have told it to set up all of my products. Of course, it's gonna take the, the photo and whatever from the product information, so I'm gonna have to edit the product eventually by adding new photos and just double-checking that it's priced right. We'll do the edit, but all of that work of one by one manually uploading products to Shopify is done. You can do it all in one click, and then once it's uploaded, then you can say, okay, here's this new launch of Hidden Denim that I want to roll out. Okay, Boss, build me a marketing plan. You know my customer base, you know my marketing cycle. I'm going to launch these on such and such a date. Build me a marketing plan. It'll do that. And then it'll take it a step further and draft the actual marketing, whether it's an email or Facebook post or Instagram captions. It'll, it'll lay all of that out for you. And all you have to do is boom, execute it. Is that what you're referring to in terms of like agent-to-agent communication and it actually taking This whole process that used to take hours and hours, and it's condensing it down and doing it in just a couple of minutes.

Yeah. So the part that you're talking about now is like what agent is the agentic work that's taking on right now. So the agentic, agentic meaning that you have a, an agent basically is what we're calling an agent go and do work on your behalf. Right. So instead of you going and inputting all the Shopify stuff, you know, manually, your agent, your AI agent does that for you. So all that can be done now and you can create like a shop the looks for your marketing. Let's say you had the denim jeans and then you got a nice top. You can put those together and you can create like a bundle marketing plan. So it's all these agentic tools that are built into Boss that we're building new stuff. Almost every week we're shipping new features into Boss based on user feedback. And all that's great. So that helps minimize the administrative overload and the tasks that shop owners have to have. That's the baseline. The next piece, which is super exciting, is the part I was referring to a minute ago, is where it does that autonomously for you. Like it has conversations on your behalf. And the only way that it can do that is because you've done all the pre-work before and it knows your knowledge. It has your knowledge base, it has your memory. Has all that stuff so we can act on, on your behalf. So Boss already has a number of agentic tools in it, which is the groundwork for the next phase, which is A to A. And so if you're in it now, if you're in Boss now and you're using Boss now, which is different to your point on the workflow, it's different than going into Claude or ChatGPT because you can't do all those agentic tools in those systems. You can't go and put a PO in necessarily and have it do all your marketing and have all your knowledge base and the hub's knowledge base. Like you can't do that. You can do bits and pieces of it, but you can't do it systematic like we have in Boss.

I love that. I mean, there's just no, yeah, there's no limit. I feel like boutique owners come to us, retailers come to us of all types every single day and to your office hours specifically. And they're like, hey, this is great. What if we also added in the ability to do blah, blah, blah? And so it's been so cool to see see so many fresh ideas of the little things that just suck so much time out of our day, and being able to add that into Boss and say, wow, you're going to have one system that can literally run a lot of the operations. I won't say the majority, but a lot of the operations of your business. Jim, if you were going to go through, just kind of for context for everyone who's listening who have not been inside of Boss yet, walk through some of the other features that are available inside the system. So once I get in, I've built out my knowledge base, I've pulled over my, you know, knowledge base from Chat or Claude, whatever I'm using. I've connected my store's data, whether again it's Shopify or Square or whatever I'm using. And now I'm like, okay, great, I could chat with my agent, but what else could I do? What are some of the other features that are inside right now?

So you can do content planning. I'll start content planning 'cause that's a big thing for a lot of people. You can pull in blog posts, You can do all your social media posts in there. You can write ad copy is in there. There's a number of different things. Almost anything you want to do related to content copy is there. And what's great about the way we built the system is not only is it taking best practices from the Hub and just general social media best practices that are out on the internet, but then it's also taking your brand voice. So when you onboard, you go through a couple of questions and it identifies sort of what your brand aesthetic is like. Are you funny? Are you witty? Like, what's your— is it a Western? Like, what's your theme? Like, what's your vibe all about? And it'll write content in that style for you. So it's all consistent. And then all the SEO and the AEO and GEO and all those little acronyms that are out there to, you know, to be seen and heard on the internet, that's all included in there. So that's all done for you. So content is a big thing. We're working on a content library that you can plan stuff out in advance. So one of the stepping stones to that is we just created, uh, with a lot of help from our store owners, a, a task manager. So if, say, you're in chat and you're asking it to, hey, I want to do— since we just had 4th of July, I want to do a markdown strategy for my 4th of July merchandise. So it'll go through and do a number of things, right? It pulls your inventory, it looks at what the margins are, and it gives you a list of like 10 things to do right now. All you do is click a little button and it'll create— it'll go through that chat and it'll pull out the 10 different items that were action items and it'll create tasks for you on your calendar. And you can assign those to specific people on your team. You can give it due dates. You can follow up with it, kind of like a Trello style thing. So task management was huge. We got a lot of feedback about task management. So that's in there. Your content planning is in there. Your inventory POs. You alluded to that a few minutes ago. You can upload POs and it'll process them all for you. You can do, um, you can do it by single, you can do a single, or you can update existing. Let's see if existing products that are already, and you need a product description written for an existing product. You go in there, you select the product, it does it all for you, sends it back to Shopify. It's all ready to go. We have that in there. The knowledge base, uh, uh, Bridie on our team, she and I are working on an HR section, which would be out pretty soon. So that's a huge piece.

Yeah.

Because look, if you're running a business, I don't think anybody got into business so they could do HR. I mean, that is probably like the most administrative— if you're a creative person, that is like just probably nails on a chalkboard. You're like, oh my gosh, I have to do HR-related stuff. All that.

Yeah.

So we've got like job postings, tracking your job interview applicants, who you made offers to and why you like them, and all that kind of stuff is in there. So Bridie and I are working on that. That's going off really well. That'll be out there pretty soon. The other piece we have is projects. So you have the ability to go in like you do on some of the other major models, and let's say you're doing a Black Friday event. So you can have a number of chats and tasks and documents uploaded into a particular project that you're working on. So you're doing a second opening of a new store or something like that. So that's all in there. So there's so many things that we're adding to the system integrations. We've got Square. Square is now up and running. I don't know if you knew that. That just came out yesterday. Yeah. So Square is up and running, which is great. And we eventually want to be able to bring on some of your financial stuff and Klaviyo and different connections. And there's just so much that we can do. I have to prevent myself from actually doing them all at the same time because it's a lot.

Well, those are— I mean, I just was jotting notes as you were talking so you guys all could, I mean, kind of come back to this. Every time that I log into Boss, it's different. Every time I log in, there is something new, something's changed, something's been added, but these are a lot of the features that I personally have heard from our members on. Obviously, the knowledge base is huge, 'cause that's the base for everything, but all the, at first it was called the Action Center, but all of the planning that goes into it, like you said, Trello-style boards where, based on all of your chats, and based on all of your data, your agent will be like, hey, Ashley, you should really add this to your list. You should really get this accomplished. Add this to your, to your task list now. And you can arrange those things, like you said, change dates, all of that. To me, that's huge as a CEO to have all of that in one place. I think that's huge. The team and HR piece that you and Bridie are building, I am so excited about that. We have been asked for years and years to have one central location where not only can you manage all of your team's data and hiring, firing, onboarding, interviewing potential candidates, all of that, but then one central place to train your team once they're on board. So they can come on, go through an onboarding mechanism, get to know how to, how to be a part of your team effectively and have all of that in one place. I think the future of what's being built there is really, really huge. And then I would just call this like leadership management, Jim, but in the settings when you're adding in your goals and your financial goals and your, your rocks, like what are the objectives I need to hit in the next 90 days in order to get there, which is kind of a nod to the EOS system. I mean, all of those things all being in one central operating system. I mean, it's a no-brainer. Of course, I would want to use something like this every single day that's trained on my business and trained on best in practice in our industry. Like, I'm just so excited about what the future is going to be because we're literally just getting started. This is literally so new.

Yeah, I mean, all this agentic stuff is so new. And, and if anybody tells you they know where it's going to land, no one knows. Even the guys that invent this, it's like gravity. Like, you know, it's there, but you're not really sure how it works. AI is kind of the same way. The guys that built this stuff, they're like, we're not really sure exactly how it works, but we know it's awesome. So And so we're jumping on that piece to provide just some help to small business owners. Like you and I talked about in June last year, you wear so many hats and it's overwhelming. And when you sit down and you talk to small business owners and the amount of things that are going on in their mind and things that they adjust with, and that's not even getting to the fact that they're moms and wives and parents and all the stuff you have to do outside of the office. Yeah, it's, it's a lot. And if you can get somebody to, to help you out, which is what we created the BOSS System for, like, yeah, it's worth its weight in gold.

For sure. Well, huge shout out and nod to our members of the Mastermind at the Boutique Hub and members of Retail Bootcamp Accelerator. Those 2 groups of people were, I mean, I hate to say guinea pig because I don't think that's fair, but you were our first users and beta testers and literally built this system with us. We had all the framework, everything was in place, but we're like, okay, now we got to make sure that our theories work. And so many of you got in there, you, you added your information, tested it out, broke things, told us where they were broken so we could fix them, and have just— because of you guys, um, the system has gotten better every single day. Going forward, again, at Summit, uh, big announcements happening about Boss being added to Boutique of Black and versions of Boss being added to general membership. Of course, there's so much inside Boss. There's different tiers of access to some of those different tools inside, but we are just getting started. There's a whole lot more to build. And Jim, I'm excited for where the future's taking us and how we can serve our industry and just make boutique owners' and small business owners' lives a little bit easier and a little bit better every single day. So thanks for all the great work that you're doing.

Yeah, you're welcome. That's good stuff. And I think so if you're getting into AI for the first time, it can be a little bit Intimidating. Um, I wouldn't be intimidated, uh, too much about it. Remember, AI is the most helpful and patient advisor you could ever have, uh, other than Ashley and Erica. Or actually, Ashley, sorry. You guys are patient for sure. Um, but it's there for you 24/7, and you— it's a system that you can go in if you don't understand something. You can just say, I don't really understand how this works, can you just explain it to me? In plain simple terms. And it'll come back and it'll explain stuff to you until you finally feel like you get it. So I wouldn't be intimidated by AI at all. There's a lot you can do with it, but you don't have to start doing everything at day one. Just get started. And every day that you use it, in probably about a year from now, 6 months from now, you'll be super excited that you got on onto the journey because it's going to be, it's going to be well worth the ride.

Totally agree. All right, Jim, thanks so much for being here today. You guys, you can catch Jim inside of the Boutique Hub. He's inside of all of our groups if you have a question, but he hosts ongoing office hours. So if you want to catch up, learn more about Boss, if you're starting to onboard, if you're inside of any of our memberships here at the Hub, look for the information in the groups about our office hours calls with Jim. Those are the best ways to get your questions answered and your system looked at. Otherwise, if you're in the system, There's a little flag feature in the upper right-hand corner. You can also add notes and give feedback there as well. Jim, again, thanks for being here. You guys, thanks for tuning in today. All things AI, much more to come, but we will see you back here next week. Have a great week, you guys. Hey guys, thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you found it helpful, please share it with a friend or feel free to subscribe. And I would always love it if you would leave a rating and review. Hey, if you want more tools, education, and just support, head on over to theboutiquehub.com. Or if you have feedback or episode ideas, DM me personally, AJ Alderson, on Instagram. Thanks so much for being here and listening to this week's episode. I'll see you next week.

Bye.