Ask Ashley Anything! Listener Questions

Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and.

Do it with the balance and the.

Happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat.

Hey, guys, it's you and me today. I love these episodes so much. We've got a very special, special special. It'd be special if I could talk episode today that you guys participated. Participated in. So if you heard our request, we have been getting your questions and your feedback so that we could have a special episode called Ask Ashley Anything. So nothing's off limits today, and we're gonna dig into all the questions. Well, not quite all. There was a lot, but most of the questions that you guys submitted to try to answer a few things from every single aspect of business and also personal. So let's dig in. The first question comes from Built by a Queen, and her question is, what do we do with return clothing that we can't sell? And as a part of business, whether it's a home and gift business, children's business, women's apparel business, there's always going to be things that are returned that you can't sell. And if you've been in the Hub for a while, I know you've heard the horror stories of items that come back with special materials on them. We'll just leave it at that. I'll let your mind wander with what that might be. But we all know that that's a part of life and a part of business. So a couple of suggestions for Built by Queen. Number one. Assuming that you did a thorough job of quality control before all of your items were sent out and this truly wasn't damaged from the vendor, in that case, you would have obviously had a conversation with your vendor about those items coming in damaged. Let's say they come back. And option one, there's maybe something you can do to try to steam or spray spot clean or repair the item that comes back that has a slight damage or something that's off, if that is the case. But it's still visible on the product. I've seen stores that have a scratch and dent section, right. Much like your furniture, where there's items that are at a significant discount because there's some slight blemish. There definitely is still a customer for these items. So it's okay to try to sell some of them as long as you're upfront and honest about what those items might be. If you've been in Retail bootcamp, you've probably heard me talk about Discount Debbie and Discount Debbie loves the scratch and dent section and there's nothing wrong with it, so put it for sale. Or if you feel like it's beyond the scratch and dent section, start a pile or a box or a bin of the items that you're going to be able to donate. And here's how you're going to make this work for you. Once, maybe twice a year, you're going to have a promotion in store or online. However you do business, where you're going to have a closet clean out a promotion to your entire community. You may run some educational videos or lives or cheat sheets or checklists to help your community participate in this global effort to help clean out their closets and then bring in those items either to your storefront or to your warehouse. Or maybe they just have video proof that they're donating it in their local community. And when those items are dropped off with you and your business so that you can widely donate them to a local women's shelter or whatever the local charity might be, you're going to give those participating in your clean out challenge a gift certificate or discount code or some type of redeemable that they can use in your store in the next seven days. So they're all going to participate. Hopefully you're going to drive a ton of social media engagement with those participating with you. You have an opportunity to do some style education or some home styling education on how to rebuild your closet with staples or rebuild your home with staples and then reward them with a discount or coupon that they can use in your business. Now it doesn't just stop here. When you run a promotion like this, you're going to want to think about the greater scheme of where else can I drive traffic and awareness that I'm doing this besides just having my customers check in and tag me on social media? Well, this is where press comes in. And I love the topic of press coverage. And you guys know this is why I think People Friday is so huge. The Friday before Black Friday, which we'll get into more episodes about Pink Friday as we go along. But press is such a powerful tool to leverage. So be sure when you run a promotion like this to take as many pictures as you can to do a donation presentation to your local women's shelter, and to write a press release and alert all of your local and regional media outlets that this is happening and how your community has really come together and teamed up to help those in need. So don't let a few damages and returns scare you. Remember, it is always more beneficial in the long run to take that return and to keep a happy customer that's going to increase her customer lifetime value and tell her friends about you than it is to reject a return to lose the $14 wholesale investment you made on a crappy top and to reject that customer for life. So don't get hung up on your return policy. Don't get lost in the details. Keep a bigger view on what the opportunity is, when your customers are happy and when they can collaborate with you. All right, next question comes from Nikki Hip. She asks how to break into wholesale and how to start sourcing the right manufacturers. And honestly, Nikki, I love this question. I could talk for hours on this question. And I'm going to let you in on a big secret in quarter three of this year as we've just done all of our annual planning recently, we have a huge initiative to offer more wholesale education for those who might be in your shoes or for those wholesale brands who are already out there and existing, those who are already a member of the Hub and just want to grow and scale their business. So look for way more information and education and even meetups coming on this very specific topic. But I want to give you a couple places to start because I tell you, I've seen the highs and the lows the wholesale business. I've seen some that have blown up in a good way and I've seen some that have blown up in a really bad way or really bad way. You don't want to be that person. So a couple things to think about. Number one, what are you going to sell and why are you going to be different? The world does not need one more T shirt manufacturer. I'm here to tell you that there's a lot of great ones out there. There's a lot of copycats out there. And if your business is simply going to be putting transfers on a T shirt, you got to rethink your model because there are so many in existence. Everyone's buying these crappy transfers off of Etsy. No offense. If you're doing that right, just make sure yours is unique. But there is more to this opportunity than just being another Me too. So how are you going to be different? And next, who's your customer going to be? When you target everyone, you reach no one so get very specific on the type of retailer you're going to be targeting. What is the price point, what are the other brands she's carrying? Why will she need my product and how will my product make her life better or easier? Now here's another thing to consider when getting into wholesale. What type of wholesale business do you want to be? Are you going to be a manufacturer, right, Working all the way with factories in China, working on imports and duties and all those things, or are you going to be a distributor of someone else manufacturing your product? You're buying it, curating it and reselling it. Right. So when you decide where you want to be on that spectrum, a couple places you can go for more resources. Number one, the sourcing show at Magic in Vegas in February and August is the best sourcing show in the country. There, there's others, but truly for our industry, that's the best one. So it's a great place to go, walk around, just gather more information, get as many contacts as you can and see what opportunities are out there. The second option might be working with existing manufacturers. So the existing manufacturers that you're working with, whether it's a vendor in la, it's a shoe vendor, it's a jewelry and accessory vendor, whatever it might be, they already have the manufacturing know how and expertise. And many of them are actually willing to do a white label collaboration with you while you're still figuring out what your wholesale brand is going to be really intended for. So talk to them, talk about what the minimums might be, how this product is going to be different, who it's going to serve, and what type of guarantees you can offer in terms of minimums. Because once you get into the business of doing your own sourcing and bringing it in from factories, wherever they are, overseas or domestic, you're looking at about an average of a 250 to 300 piece minimum per style. So when you think about really building out a collection, if you're going to build a brand and, and you have to have a number of, let's say, 25 to 30 pieces per collection that you're going to launch wholesale, and you multiply that by 250, you're looking at a lot of pieces, right? So how are you going to develop that collection? What is your process going to be for developing the mood board of that collection? Your tech packs, your samples, your quality control, all of that, to which, as I mentioned, the wholesale training we're going to be doing this fall at the boutique, we'll cover all of that we'll teach you all of that. But you have to have a process and also a plan on how to pay for that process. Right. Because all those pieces, that definitely adds up. So is this something that you're going to bootstrap? Is this something you have cash for, going to take out a loan for, going to get some other type of outside investor for, or who are you going to collaborate with to make this happen? That's why you see oftentimes if there's a boutique that's actually branching into wholesale and they want to do like full scale women's apparel, they're already a boutique that is scaled to where they can buy those pieces and actually launch them in their own collection in their own store first, because they know they can guarantee that sell through before they're going to go on and try to sell them to others. So it's really that number game of what can I afford, where am I going to sell these products through? And then making sure that you're able to price it accordingly, pricing it, giving yourself enough volume and margin that you can reinvest in this business and continue to grow it. Because you guys who wholesale clothing is a pretty low margin, tough business, you've got to be able to do a lot of volume in order to make it happen. So lots of things to consider, but hopefully this gets you in the right direction. All right, next question of the day. How do I branch out from my hometown? And I love this. This comes from hometown boutique foresight. I love this question. I actually yesterday had several VIP coaching calls from students from the boutique hub, from boutique retail Bootcamp. And many of these are brick and mortar boutiques that are like, you know what, I want to grow my brick and mortar store online. How am I going to start to reach a new customer base to drive online traffic? And I want to give you this very first piece of advice that I talked to many of them about. So when you picture a brick and mortar store physically, you are going and putting the key in the door and opening the business and someone is physically there every single day. And I want you to think about growing an online business in the same manner. So often we only are coming into our online business through the back door, through the back end of Shopify, and we're wondering, why are the sales not there? Well, we have to completely flip our mindset to come in through the front door of our business every single day, come in through the front end of our website, come in through the front end of our social media and see our business the way our customers are seeing it, am I actually sharing links? This is a big one. Am I sharing links on social media and product tagging? And am I sharing enough product that people can get to my checkout process in two clicks or less? And if I sold through 50% of what I actually posted on social media today, is that enough to actually drive traffic and make the sales goal that I have for my online business? When you think about the difference in an online and brick and mortar business, online businesses are pumping so much more content on social media through email lists, through text lists, every single day than brick and mortar stores are. Brick and mortar stores often get in this habit of taking a picture of the front display, or maybe it's a quote, maybe it's a meme, and maybe it's one or two product photos. But brick and mortar stores typically are a little further behind in terms of content generation because there's not the dedicated individual working full time in the business every day like there is in a brick and mortar. So it really comes down to your management and how you're going to manage time and who is going to be working on that online business consistently to drive the amount of traffic through that social media, through those emails that you need in order to make it worthwhile. And here's the thing. When it comes to building that online business and growing your customer reach, the most important metric you measure is not your sales. So please stop looking at your sales on a daily basis. Instead, the most important metric you can possibly measure is traffic. Those of you who've gone through retail bootcamp, you've heard me talk a lot about the boutique traffic formula and how to set up what your average order value and your conversion rate and your traffic need to be in order to hit your ideal sales goals. So once you know that, and you know you need a thousand visitors a week to your website to convert in order to hit your sales goal, then the really the question and the strategy because really easy, because it's all right, where's the traffic and come from? How much am I driving from email? How much am I driving from Facebook? How much am I driving from my text list or my apps or my lives, whatever. Because then we can adjust the strategy, the post quality and the post frequency in order to meet those traffic goals. All right, so let's take one more step back and say, where else can this traffic come from? I'm going to put my foot in the ground here and, and this is my personal opinion, but I believe it wholeheartedly and maybe Others don't. But I believe that having a Facebook group is still one of the most important things you can do for your business. And the reason is this. It's twofold. Number one in marketing, the most powerful asset that we have is our opportunity to build a community. Right? Our customers buy from us because we make them feel a certain way. We make them feel special and seen and included. And when they're a part of a community, not only are you seeing them, but they're seeing one another. So it goes back to bidirectional communication. When you're posting on Instagram, you're posting on Facebook, you're talking to your customer, and maybe your customer is talking back to you. But in a Facebook group, they can also talk to one another. And that's where the sense of community comes from. Now, here's the other thing. Facebook groups have 30% more organic reach than Facebook pages. And Facebook groups drive notifications when Facebook pages often do not. So growing a Facebook group and growing it with first your engaged local audience and then encouraging and incentivizing them to invite friends that are from at least 100 miles away and running giveaways and collaborations and ideas in order to start to do that. That's a great way to automatically start growing that reach outside of your hometown. The second asset that you need to have is an email list. I will preach this till I'm blue in the face. I've been preaching it for 10 years, and still there's so many boutiques who do not have an email list. This has to be a central part of your strategy as well, no matter if you're brick and mortar or online. Because if your social media got hacked tomorrow, and trust me, it happens to everybody, yesterday I saw a major mega boutique lose all of their social media. The only thing you have to fall back on to reach your customers is your email list. And you can segment your email list by local or national traffic, or by size or by brand or by contest that they've entered, whatever it might be. There's so many ways to reach your customer and make her feel important with your email list. All right, ambassadors and collaborations, those are two other great ways to start to grow your business outside of your hometown. Get busy collaborating, running giveaways, and trying to reach new audiences. Incentivize them to get inside that Facebook group. Alright, next question comes from Amanda Long. Amanda, thank you for submitting your question. It was, I opened a new online boutique and I hear all the time to not use stock photos. I don't have A huge cash flow in order to purchase all the things listed and to use my own photos. Nor do I have the space to hold all the stock in my home. Boutique owners say to make it your own brand. How can you start doing this with low funds in space as well as being online only? Amanda. All right, Amanda, so I've got to agree, right? Stock photos are doing nothing to build your brand. And to be really honest with you guys, I know drop shipping is huge trend right now and I do think there's a place for drop shipping as a supplement, especially seasonally or when cash flow is low. But do I think it's wise to build an entire business based on drop shipping and using someone else's photo? No. I feel like that is 100% building a house of cards. So Amanda, to your question, I agree you've got to start taking your own photos, but there will be times where you're going to supplement. I get it. And yes, you can use those stock photos at that time, but the majority of your photos need to be yours. And here's how you're going to do it. There's really three options when it comes to photography. Number one, you can do your own DIY cell phone photography, which by the way works really great. I'm going to tell you more about that in a second. Your second option is to find a company that will outsource photography for you where you can send them samples, they'll photograph it and send them back. And the third is hiring a photographer or at least doing a photography swap. You may know a local up and coming photographer that doesn't need to be paid cash, but instead you can pay them in clothing. There's all kinds of creative ways to do that. So if I was really going to focus on building my own brand with not a lot of funds, where I would start is at least doing a seasonal photo shoot. So four times a year with four changes of seasons. These photo shoots are not meant to be about the products and selling the products in the shoot, but they're meant to be about the brand, the feel, the aesthetic. You're going to use these for all of your marketing photos, your website hero images, your, any kind of graphics you've got on social media, you're going to build your brand around these photos. So at minimum that's what I would really focus on doing. Then on a week to week basis when you have new arrivals, if you can find. I'm going to use Becca Clark or not Becca Clark, sorry, Becca from Hale House. Too many Beccas in my life. She has really great product photos that she actually takes in her bathroom in her closet. It's got this, like, pretty white background. She does it at home. Simple to do. And all the photos are consistent. You wouldn't know that they're in her bathroom. The most important thing when it comes to doing your own photos with a cell phone is lighting. Just finding some place with great lighting. Maybe it's in your backyard, Maybe it's at a local park. Maybe it's just some place you can find with a really white or neutral wall. When you take your own photos, again, the lighting is key. But then if you can get in a consistent editing pattern. I don't love a lot of filters. I think you've got to stick with something that's a really neutral filter so that you don't change the color of your products. That's a huge risk. But it's all about the feel and the vibe and the consistency of that photo you take, even if it's with an iPhone. Now, at the end of the day, when you're taking all of these photos, a couple of photography tips to think about. Again, it's clear it's consistent. It's got to be really well merchandised. If you're someone who's taking a product photo and it's just a T shirt and jeans, you're leaving a lot of opportunity on the table. Because your job as a boutique owner is to be curated and to be a style expert, and you're going to sell what you show. And if you're only showing a T shirt and jeans, well, there's your opportunities to sell a T shirt and jeans. But what if you showed it with three necklaces, layered and earrings and bracelets, and holding a tumbler or a mug with a cute belt and a cute pair of shoes or a backpack or a purse or something else that goes along to set the tone of the outfit. A cute pair of sunnies, maybe. So merchandise, merchandise, merchandise, and layer up those pieces every time you're taking photos with them. The second tip I want to give you is eye contact. Avert the eye contact. So as humans, when we look at photos, the first thing we look at is someone's eyes, because they're a gauge of character. We want to know, can I trust this person? So when our eyes are making contact, with every photo, finding myself looking at their eyes first more than I'm looking at the product and I'm judging, right? That's human nature. You're judging based on the eyes more than you are the product. So use sunglasses or use eyes averted with you or whoever is doing the modeling for you. And the most important piece is just to start. Just start. Get those photos taken, get them up on your website, Improve the editing and quality as you go, but start making it your own. You want to get to the point where people know your brand not by seeing your logo or seeing copy or anything else, but just by the quality of photos that you take. They know you, they know your models, they know the look and the feel and the vibe that you're giving across in these merchandised photos. And that is going to sell 10 times more product than any stock photo ever will. Great questions, you guys. All right, here's a technical question. I love this. What percentage of sales should I put back into my inventory in our first three years of business? Nikki? All right, Nikki, I'm going to give you a very quick and dirty version today. But I want you to know, and when you go through retail boot camp, you're going to hear me say this. I don't live in black and white. I live in shades of gray. Not 50, but some shades of gray. Right? You have to make these numbers yours. And if you are somebody who is growing and scaling, I'm also going to say this. Get an expert to help you. Christine Gray with she profits now is an excellent resource inside of the boutique hub or or management one. Also an excellent resource when it comes to inventory planning. Your inventory is your biggest and most important investment. So getting this number right is critical. But also getting this number right so you can pay yourself is critical. Nikki. This idea that we have to invest it all back in order to grow and that a business doesn't grow in the first five years and all that is hogwash. Right? You can pay yourself, and you need to pay yourself. Even if it's 10 bucks a month, it's 100 bucks a month. It's you taking over your cell phone bill, whatever it is. The morality of business is you've got to figure out a way to make it worth your while or you're going to burn out so fast. So here's my quick and dirty rule of thumb again. We cover this in detail in retail boot camp, but it's this. It's called the where does my money go formula. And this formula is different based on if you're an online boutique or if you're a brick and mortar because your allocation of expenses is different. Right? If you're a brick and mortar, you're going to have more rent, you're going to have more payroll. If you're online, you're, and you're still operating out of your home, which I suggest you do as long as you can to save that, to save that expense. That's going to look much different. Rent and payroll are going to be much lower. But here's the general idea. So out of a whole, right, out of 100% of the profits you have, if you were to invest 52% back into your inventory, that's going to leave you 48 to allocate to your business. Roughly 10% of that is going to go to rent. Roughly 14% of that is going to go to payroll. 14% of that is going to go to operating. And about 10% of that should go back to your reserve and to your savings. To your savings, right? So no more of this opening up your bank account and saying, is there money there? Okay, great, I'm going to spend it. I'm going to, I'm going to invest it all back into inventory because we've got to be smarter than that. So if you want to dig deep into this, I highly recommend the book Profit first by Mike Michalowicz. And again, Christine Gray is a profit first professional. But when you do that, you're going to have several different accounts set up. You're going to have your taxes account, right? Because you got to be accounting for that every single month. But you're also going to have your reserve and owner's draw and savings account set up. So there's a number of ways to again slice and dice this, all kinds of shades of gray. But this is just a quick and dirty rule of thumb. And I encourage you to please log into your QuickBooks and get out your P. Ls for the last six months and just run the numbers and see, all right, what percentage have I been investing back into inventory? What percent has been going to rent, payroll, operating and owner's savings for that rainy day? We know in retail there's going to be highs and lows. There's going to be good months, right? Fourth quarter, there's going to be months that are a little bit tougher sometimes. That's our J months. So making sure in those good months that we're putting that money away into reserve and savings is critical to help us get through the cash flow ebbs and flows of the slower months. Not every month is going to look the same. It can't. That's not how this business works. So making sure you've got that cash flow, then if you've been in business longer than a year. You've got that cash flow projected out over the next 12 months. So you know where those numbers are likely going to land. Okay, next question from Shop. Mia and Ray, I love this question. This is my life. The question is, how do you manage working full time, owning a boutique and trying to be a good wife and mom? And I just want to tell you this, man, this has been my life for 10 years. When we first launched the Boutique hub, I, you know, the first idea of the boutique hub, I was still pregnant with our youngest, Jade. And literally the day that we brought Jade home from the hospital and I was sitting in this chair, like probably half naked with a robe on, right? With my laptop on my lap as well as Jade nursing, we launched the first version of our website. And I'll never forget those moments because along the journey with little kids and then toddlers and now middle school and gosh, going to be an eighth grader, kids, our time is really ebbed and flowed. And the need for me to set personal boundaries as a wife and as a mom have become even more important along the way. So first thing I want to say to you is please give yourself some grace. You are trying to do so many important things. And life is about juggling a lot of different balls, right? Some are glass, some are rubber. And you have to know sometimes it's okay to drop a few you right, it's okay to drop them, but you have to know which ones are glass and which ones are rubber in order to do that. There are seasons for everything. So make sure you give yourself grace in each of those seasons. Now, tangibly beyond that, I want to tell you how important it is to set boundaries. This is something I had to learn early on. Early on I was working and working and working and working and I had no boundaries. I would work before dinner and after dinner and when the kids went to bed and early in the morning and all day long and I realized I was just working myself into a hole in the ground. So if you've heard me talk about the difference in a CEO and an entrepreneur, that's really when the shift started for me. And I had to get out of this idea that I could just DIY everything. I can't. And you can't either. None of us can. We cannot save our way to prosperity. We cannot grow a business by cutting expenses and saving. Right? We have to focus on income generating activities and then outsourcing the rest. So where can you ask for more help? And maybe you've Got help already. Whether that's starting with an intern or a babysitter or just, you know, an hourly employee. If you're for easy math, investing five hours a week for 10 bucks an hour, that's 50 bucks. If you had those five hours back and you only were focused on income generating activities, right, your marketing funnels and going live and sourcing product, those types of things, how much money could you make in those extra five hours a week? Most people that I ask that question to, they're like oh, easily, like a thousand bucks. Easily. Okay, great, so you invested 50 and you made 1000. Now let's replicate that. And so scaling a business is really as simple as that process. Now it's not simple decision making, right? It's, that's hard, but that's the process that we have to follow in order to get there. So what's your boundary as a wife and as a mom? Where are you done working for the day? And you will shut your phone off, right? So you can put your mom hat back on. And what is your tiger time? Right. If you're open to take meetings and doing this and that and all the things all the time, you're not ever going to be effective. You're going to be busy, but you're not going to be effective. So when is your tiger time to get your five most important tasks done on your list? And what are your theme days? On Mondays you do marketing and on Tuesdays I do inventory. On Wednesdays I do photo shoots. On Thursdays I order more product. Right. And on Fridays it's catch up day. So set tiger time, set boundaries, time block as much as you can, know the difference between glass and rubber and lean into automations and autoresponders and don't feel like you have to respond to every single message instantly. And then most importantly, ask for help. Okay, next question. These are good. These are such good questions. All right, Gracefully Made Boutique asked, how do these big boutiques get such high viewers and tons of people on their page? There's gotta be a secret out there, okay? I get asked this question all the time, so I'm so glad that you asked it here. Gracefully Made Boutique. So first thing is you have to remember that a lot of the larger boutiques, right, have been around for several years, back to the days when the algorithm was a lot nicer than it is today and you could grow followers a lot faster than you can today. So there is a bit of a built in advantage. But you also have to keep in mind that having more followers doesn't always equate to more sales. There's many cases where I see boutiques that have a smaller but more engaged following that are actually crushing it and have more in sales than some of these quote unquote, big boutiques actually do. So don't get lost in this, like, vanity metric of followers and viewers until you actually know what someone's books look like. Because you could be selling a million dollars a year, but it could be costing you 900,000 in order to do that, right? Or you could be selling 400,000 a year and it could be costing you 200,000 in order to do that. What would you rather have? It could be way less than that, right? As long as you have a profitable business that you have figured out a system, a process, a margin, and an ability to pay yourself for, that's what matters. So the secret is, there is no secret. The secret to success that a lot of these bigger stores have is doing a lot of little things, right? So first, knowing their customer, building a brand, having a personal face of the business that builds relationship and builds an emotional connection with their audience. Knowing their audience's needs and serving them by sourcing the right products and the right quantity of products, and then being incredibly consistent and clear with their marketing and showing up again and again and again, the same time, the same date, the same place, with excitement so their customers can count on them. They've done an excellent job of training their customers of how to get the latest goods every single week. So it goes back to there's no big secret that any boutique has that I've ever seen. The secret is doing the little things that we already know we need to do, right? You already know the things I just mentioned, but it's being able to put the time in and set the boundaries on your time and asking for help so you have more support to create more time in order to do those items. So this is something again in retail bootcamp. I feel like we. We hit all of these things to death because they're all so important. And no matter what size your business is, there's always room to go back to the basics, rebuild the foundation. And every time you rebuild the foundation of your customer and your brand and your strategy, it rebuilds the top of your funnel. Okay, next question. What do I do if a boutique in the same town is pushing you out by having vendors not sell to me? How do I respond and come in stronger? I won't say this person's name, but I know you're not alone in Asking this question. And sometimes maybe you're the opposite. Maybe you're the other boutique. I want to take you back to before the boutique hub ever started and really where one of the most foundational ideas of community over competition ever came from for me. And that was before I started the boutique hub. I worked in economic development in Bowman, North Dakota. Small town, loved it, Dream job. Absolutely was my dream job after college. And I'll never forget, there was one business that was going out of business on Main street and there's two clothing businesses businesses. And the business across the street came in, the clothing business across the street came in and said, ashley, you have to do something to get another like business, another like clothing retail business on Main street right away. And I sat there and I was stumped and I was like, why would I do that, right? Like one clothing business went out of business. Now you have all the market share. Why would you want a competitor to come in across street? And they said, ashley, you don't understand. When two or more like businesses come together, you become a shopping destination. Our business is stronger because that business is across the street. They are not our competitors. They are an ally. Holy crap, you guys. That is where community over competition came from for me. And I challenge you. If you are in a fixed mindset and you are worried about your competitor across the street, I dare you to tear down the walls and go build an ally out of that competitor. I dare you. There's so much opportunity there. But in this questions case where someone else has has built a wall around your business, right? You still can rise above this. You still can be the bigger person in this case. So a couple things. Number one, don't ever complain about your competitor across the street. Build them up, be an ally, even if they don't like you to your face. Let your customers know that you're here to support them as well. Because your customers want to go where they feel good. And when they feel like there's drama, they don't want to be a part of that, right? And anytime you're around somebody that talks about somebody else, you immediately feel like the second you leave the room, they're going to talk about you next, right? We've all been there. That's junior high stuff. So nobody wants to be a part of that. So kill them with kindness. Always rise up, be an ally, even if they don't look at you that way. Now here's the other thing. You may have some of the same vendors, so you can either have a conversation with them about, hey, this is a huge vendor and you're only ordering three styles. I'm going to order three styles, but they're going to be totally different. Right? So we aren't competing. Let's create that agreement. Or the good news is there's thousands and thousands of vendors out there. So find your niche. What makes you different? Who's your customer? How can you take a slightly different angle on what's needed in your community? How can you take a slightly different product path than what this other business is doing? Right? How can you be better and stronger? Because you both are there. Your vibes, your windows, everything can be a little bit different. I warn you though, don't get into a price war. Don't get into a price war being cheaper than the next person. Because cheaper, cheap ain't loyal. Right? Cheap just makes you look like trash. You don't want to be that. Be curated, be thoughtful, be unique, serve your customer, but don't try to be the cheapest game in town because that's the fastest way to go out of business. Hopefully that was helpful. I need you to send me a DM on Instagram. I need to hear your thoughts on that and if that's helpful because I believe that to my core. And I have seen horror stories, but also some really amazing success stories come out of that conversation. Like businesses, how they've teamed up, how they collaborate, do boutique crawls, how they lift one another up, how they break down barriers. Like it really does come down to fixed mindset versus growth mindset. So my Instagram's AJ Alderson. I'm a challenge you guys to send me a message on that right there. Okay, couple more minutes left you guys, couple more questions to answer. Oh, literally like two minutes left. Okay, I've got to skip ahead. All right, Sharla asked, what's the best policy to ensure your merchandise when you have a storefront online boutique and do shows? Number one, my father in law is my insurance agent. He is anal as all get out. So keep constant communication with your agent. You've got to have coverage on your actual property, so you have to alert him when what your level of inventory is. Especially if like you're continually buying more and more. Make sure you have that number right because you'd hate to lose it in a fire and be totally out and actually have double the amount of inventory than you were insured for. And then you also have to have liability coverage. If you have a cord out and you're doing a pop up event and someone trips over that cord they can sue you for all you've got, so you don't want that to happen. And then also cyber liability coverage as well. Make sure you are videotaping your inventory and your assets regularly and keeping a record of what you actually own, keeping that with your insurance agent. All right, last question. I'll jump into when I'm starting out and not sure how to mark up my product. Help new boutiques know their margin. Alright, if you're wondering, should I mark my products up two times, three times, four times, five times, what's the formula? There is none. Here's the formula. What can I sell this for? Chances are if you go to market and the first thing you do is look at a tag, you, you are already cutting yourself short of margin. So when you go to market, look at an item and say, okay, what could I sell this for? Can I sell this for $70? Great. Then I flip the tag and I go, oh gosh, it's only 14 bucks and I know I can sell it for 70. Winning where if I used a formula, I might have cut myself short and sold the item for 40 bucks. And then I left 30 bucks on the table. So what can I sell this for? Get as much margin as you can. You can always do a price reduction, but you can't increase your price over time. So your branding, your photos, your marketing, they will set the tone for the price of your product. If you want to increase the prices of your product, increase the quality of your marketing in your photography. That does the trick every time. All right, last thing, your next big idea at the Boutique Hub. I love this personal question. So here's what's coming next at the Boutique Hub. You guys, number one, please save the date June 5th, 6th and 7th for summer school. It's completely free. We'll be talking about AI, how to beat the JMons, how to prepare for the biggest shopping seasons of the year, all the things you need to know, why some boutiques are growing and some are not. Right now I'm going to drop that link in show notes to get on the list for summer school. And then the next big thing that the Boutique Hub has come in is a little product called Boutique Hub Black. This is for boutiques who want high level analytics reporting and a customized personal dashboard. So, so with Boutique Black, every single week you'll be emailed a custom dashboard containing all of your organic and paid traffic sources, your performance on Facebook ads, Instagram ads, SEO backlinks, Klaviyo reporting, Shopify reporting, and more. As we continue to add this is a completely custom dashboard accessing your personal information shared only with you. That's going to give you an insight on exactly how you're performing and then custom training on how to improve every single one of those metrics. So look for more information in the show notes on Boutique Hub Black because it is incredible, it is highly detailed and there is nothing else out there like it for boutique owners. All right guys, that's it for today. Thanks for playing along and asking questions. As always, you can ask me anytime on AJ Alderson on Instagram or at the Boutique Hub on Instagram. If you love this episode, please subscribe and leave a review. I would appreciate that so much. That helps us a ton and we can get your guys's feedback and your quality 5 star reviews. You guys, thanks so much. I hope you have an awesome rest of your day and I will see you back.

Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We hope that you loved it. Don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a rating and review down below for a chance to be one of our featured listeners each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition and how to access complete show notes and bonus downloads from our guests, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community.

We'll see you next week. Sam.