Best Year Yet 2025 | Day 1 Replay

Foreign.

There we go. Hi, guys. I see you coming in left and right. Good to see you this morning. Glad you guys are here. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Let's get this chat working. Let's see who is here. If you guys can see the chat, you should be able to answer a little question. Tell us about your business, tell us where you're from. We can't wait to meet you. And then we're going to kick this thing off with some polls in just a minute. So introduce yourself in the chat and then, Beth, let's start the business duration poll. How long have you been in business? We'll start with that poll first and then we'll have a couple more as we just wait for everyone to get on and get joined this morning. This is working so good. Look at how fast. Can everyone see the poll? Can you see how fast those numbers are changing? Look at the number of five to 10 years. We've got some vets here. I love it. We've got some newbies that haven't opened yet. Welcome. Hello. I think they don't see the results in that until I click end poll. Oh, okay. Okay. Only we can see it. Okay. Well, we can.

Mary Hill is here. Good morning, Mary Hill. I see you in the chat. Kyleen. Nice.

Avenue J. Hello.

Hello.

From Maryland, Texas. Walk to North Dakota. Hello. Oh, my gosh. Opposite corner of Bowman, North Dakota. Just so everybody knows where my hometown is. I live in Wisconsin now. Love seeing my North Dakota friends. All right, California, Colorado, Illinois. We should actually. We gotta do a poll next to where everyone's from.

Beth.

All right, everyone. It looks like. It looks like the first poll's answered. Business duration ready. All right, let's share the results of what we've got so far. Bismarck, North Dakota. Hello. All right. Are you sharing it? Can everyone see the results of business duration? Are we there? Yes, they should be able to. Okay, sweet. So where did we end up here? 23. The majority of you are five to 10 years in business. We should have had like a 10 plus year option. We did.

Yep. We. 15%.

10.

10 plus years. 15%.

Yeah.

Not bad. All right, sweet. Five to 10 years is the most. Second most. One to three years. Third is three to five years. Beth, let's start the next poll. Is it business location? Is that the next one? Let's see how many states we get. I feel like that should be. Oh, we don't have by state. We have it by region. Okay.

Yep.

Is ready. Let's see. No pressure, but you know, Sarah and I have a Tagline. Midwest is the best. No offense, Texas. No offense. We should have had Texas as its own option on here outside of the USA. Look at you. I see 16 of you already outside of the United States. That's amazing. Welcome, you guys. All right, where are we from? Yes. Texas. I see you. All right, you can drop it in the chat, too. If you've already answered the poll, we would love to see what states you're from. Also, our friends who are outside of the United States. Can you drop where you're from? What country are you from? I think that'd be really fun to see.

Hi, Val. I see you. Awesome. Canada.

I see the uk Denmark. Bermuda, Puerto Rico. All Saint Lucia. Can we just come visit you? It is five degrees in Wisconsin today. Chile. Oh, my goodness. This is so great. California is outside of the usa. That's my favorite answer yet. Brenda, I see you. Oh, my goodness. Welcome me, guys. Lots of Canadians. This is so great. All right.

Yes.

Your mics are turned off. Taylor, we see you. All right, Beth, let's do the third poll. Where are we at with our third poll? We'll share the results with you guys. Who's our winner here? Midwest. All right. Second is Southeast. All right. And then we're close between the Northeast and Southwest. All right, but 21 of you from outside the USA, that's amazing. Virgin Islands. Where at the Virgin Islands? I would love to know. That's amazing. Cece, welcome.

All right, next poll. What type of business are you? These are so fun. I love getting to know more about who our audience is.

So good. So many familiar faces here, you guys. I love it. So while we're waiting for you to answer this poll, tell me in the chat. So I see some very familiar faces who have been through retail boot camp. I see some Boutique Hub Black members here today. I see. Hi, Val. I see you. I see some members of the Boutique Hub here today.

Yes.

Jeannie, your mics are off. Mics are off for all of you. So you don't have to worry about it if you go to the bathroom. I mean, go in peace. Right? But let's hear who here's a member of the Boutique Hub. Or if this is your first time joining us for any kind of training at the Boutique Hub, I would really love to know.

First timers, put first time.

Yes.

Let's see. Club member first.

Connie, I see you. A hometown gal right there. Urban shootique. I'm so glad that you're here to join us. All right, first timers, we should add a poll on first Timers, we'll do that tomorrow. Tomorrow we'll do a poll on all those things. My gosh, you guys are amazing. This is so good. This is the first time we've done polls like this. Sarah. I'm loving it.

Good, good. I'm glad.

First time. Listen to the podcast OG Wendy Knight.

See Wendy. Yes. Boot Camper. I love it. Boot Camp. Boot Camp.

Oh, this is so great. Where is the podcast? It's called Boutique Chat. It's anywhere you can get podcasts. So Spotify, itunes, all the places. So good.

Amy Sharp. Hey, girl, I see you. Nice to see you back.

All right.

Yep. Jenny, we're going to get to that here in a little bit.

So good. Okay, well, let's, let's share the results of what type of business this is. And as you guys are jumping in tomorrow, we'll do the poll of Boot Camp, Boutique of black members, non members, first timers, welcome. We're going to get to know you today, hopefully get to know each other today. We'll tell you a little bit about what we do here at the Boutique Hub in just a minute. All right. Type of business online plus brick and mortar, a whopping 59. I'm, are you surprised at that? I'm not surprised at that.

Nope. That's pretty, I, I, I felt like that would be right on track.

Yep.

I am a little surprised. The amount of pop ups. I'm loving that. 20 pop ups. That's very cool.

Very good. Online only. 26% brick and mortar, live sellers. Typically, if you're a life seller, you've got live seller and online only. Very good. Tomorrow we should also do a poll, Beth and Sarah, on what you sell. That'll be our tomorrow poll because I know we've got shoes, we've got home and gift, we've got children's, we've got scrubs, we've got quilt stores, we've got a little bit of everything. We talk about apparel a lot, you guys, but we literally will talk about retail for anyone and everyone. So hopefully everyone feels welcome and seen today. We're so excited to dig into your business. Quick reminder as we get started, hopefully you all have notebooks today so you can take some notes. I promise, promise we're going to give you a lot of notes. You all should have this workbook that came in your email. So if you have not printed out this little workbook yet, I think it's like 17 pages. This is going to be handy to take notes while we're here. And then we've got Some goodies and some surprises for you today too.

Awesome. And I see the girls drop the workbook link right there in the chat for you guys if you need it. Thanks, Beth and Megan.

All right, let's get started. So hopefully everyone's found the chat by now. Let me scroll down to the bottom so I can keep up with you. Let me know if you can see my screen. Give me a big thumbs up and then I'm going to open the Q and A box. You guys are welcome to use the Q A box as we go today, but we are going to specifically start with Q A at the end of our session today. We'll be going for at least an hour, probably more like 90 minutes. I hope you can join us the entire time, but be live today, Tomorrow and Wednesday, 10am Central Time each day. We'll record it, but I guarantee you're going to want to be here in person. We're going to be doing some bonuses, some giveaways, some things that are going to be only available to those of you who are here in the next three days. So please do your best to join us. We hope to give you some really great nuggets. We're a fluff free zone. We don't like business fluff. We love hard hitting nuggets. So we're going to get into that each and every day. Today or this week? Day to day this week. All right, let's get started. Let's talk about best year yet. So if this is your first time here, which there's lots of you, who are the best area challenge. Sarah, how many years have we done this? This like seven.

It is.

Yep. Yeah, it's, it's been a while. So this every year. I'm sure you hear this, Sarah. I hear this all the time. But our, our community, this is always their favorite event of the year. It's always how we kick off the new year. It's planning out your business and who you want to be as a leader of your business for the next year. We deep dive into things so each day is a bit of a different topic. And, and today we're digging into the ultimate retail business plan for 2025. We're going to talk about really you as a business owner, you as a leader, you as a CEO. We know you're managing 10,000 different things all at once at any given moment and we want to make sure we can help you do that even more effectively today. And something I'm really excited and sir, I know you're most excited about this because you've set this up. We've never done this before at best year yet. But today we have four amazing guests joining us. So, I mean, we did the technology walkthrough. Let's hope it all works. But these four retailers who are joining us today are going to add so much value to what we're going to talk about, because they have walked the walk in the last year. This was a tough year in business for a lot of people. And these four retailers overcame in some major ways. And we're really excited for you guys to hear from them directly. So that's going to be new today during the Best Area Challenge. All right, a little bit about us. Hello, my name is Ashley Alderson. I'm the founder and CEO here at the Boutique Hub, also of our wholesale platform, hubventory.com which is where we have about a thousand vetted brands. From here at the Boutique Hub, you can shop wholesale with at any given moment with member discounts. And what we do here at the Boutique Hub and what I do at the Boutique of gosh, what is it then? 11 years. This will be our 12th year in business. Is that right? Goodness. Sarah was one of the very first people I told about this wild idea to build a boutique hub so long ago. She's from the same hometown my husband is from. So I've shopped at her boutique when she was a boutique owner. And when I told her, hey, I have this idea of bringing all these retailers together in one place and every resource that a retailer could need in one place, she was like, awesome. Do it. I would use it. I know other people would use it. And so today, the boutique of that's what we do. We really focus on three things. We focus on education.

Right.

Which is why we're here. We want to help you build a stronger business from the inside out. We focus on community. So we have been about community over competition for 12 years. A rising tide always lifts all ships. So we're for people who want to see the industry be successful, not just themselves. And when we look at it as a whole and how do we make this industry successful, it provides more opportunity for each and every one of us. So we'll talk more about that. And then the third big thing that we do again is wholesale, which is where Hub and Toy comes in. We also want to support those who are wholesale brands. And because we know it's a partnership. So when wholesale brands are successful and retailers are successful and they work well together, it's better for everybody. So that's really the foundation of everything we do here at the Boutique Hub. All right, Sarah Burks.

Hey guys, I'm Sarah Burks. I'm the director of Partnerships education here at the Hub. And I, I agree with Ashley. This is a really fun time for me. It felt weird starting the new year last week in the middle of the week, but us not doing this until today. So as far as I'm concerned, the new year starts today. This is a super awesome time to rally together, get in this zoom room with everybody that is going through the same things as you are, right. And collaborate and network and share ideas and hear from industry thought leaders and business owners that can really take your business to the next level, whatever success means to you. So that's like, that's my daily mission. We always say here at the Botique Hub that we change people's lives and that is, that is what I get out of bed for every single day. So seeing you guys jump in here today warms my heart. I have goosebumps, you know, seeing the returners, seeing the OGs, seeing how many new people we have here today, that this is our first opportunity to meet with you and help you, you know, achieve your goals. This is what I'm all about. I'm, I'm here for it. So I started in retail back in 1992, just a few years ago. I have a few years of experience under my belt and ran a store for many years. Like Ashley said, she shopped there. And you know, I just, I've walked in your shoes and I've, I've done the whole, take the store online, expand to multiple locations. I've taught entrepreneurship at the university here locally. I've coached at a collegiate level. I all of these things. I, you guys, I rented cars for enterprise.

Rental.

Rental car, right? Anybody with me? Anybody done something like that? I, I've, you know, I've ran livestock auctions for a sale barn near us. I've done a lot of things, but that all got me to where I'm at today. And I, I feel like surrounding yourself with people and taking information from each other really can really build you as a person and build you as a business owner. So when somebody is in this room and they're saying something about pop up shops or live selling, you're like, well, I'm not a live seller. You can learn something from them. I guarantee you I've learned something in every space I've sat in, every business I've ran. So I'm hyped to bring all that information to you guys. Not just today and tomorrow and Wednesday. I mean, we just have a few short hours together. But I teach retail boot camp. I teach retail owner basics as well. You'll see me inside the membership on a thousand different educational sessions. So that's what I'm all about. I'm an open book. And I really. My. I really want to make sure you guys don't make a lot of the same mistakes I did. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what I'm here for. So I'm excited. This is going to be great.

So good. Sarah, we're so lucky. Sarah, I'm so lucky to get to coach with you. This is something I love so much. This is my favorite time of year. Not just kicking it off of that challenge, but as we get into retail boot camps here. And I coach live together every week with our students inside a retail bootcamp. And the cool thing is, I'm sure many of you had parents or family members that told you this growing up. My dad always said this to me, but he's like, it's not always what you know, but it's who you know. And that's like. When I think about Sarah joining our team here, the Boutique Hub, so long ago, it's. I wasn't, you know, the retailer Sarah was. It's not what I know, but it's who I know. And that's our motto here at the Hub. How do we surround ourselves with some really amazing experts who excel in different areas of business so that we can bring all that knowledge and information to you? So over the next three days, you're going to hear Sarah talk a lot about team and inventory and leadership in different areas of business. And you're going to hear me talk a lot about content marketing, traffic leadership, prioritization of being a CEO. We bring different aspects to the table that I hope you guys can really get some nuggets from. For sure. All right, well, let's talk about what's going to happen today and the next couple of days. So today, again, this is exciting. We've never done it like this before. We're bringing four retailers to the Zoom screen here in a minute who really overcame some amazing obstacles and had amazing years even in a really tough economy. Last year, these guys really excelled. Can't wait for you to meet them. We're also going to go over some framework on. Raise your hand if you've already in your goal setting for the next year, like you've tried to plan out goals. Maybe your word of the year, all those things. Well, in order to really plan forward, I want to encourage everybody to first take a step back. And so even if you've already planned forward, we're going to go over the framework to also look back. In order to plan forward, we're going to dig into productivity and leadership and some of my favorite tools to get you in that CEO mindset. And then finally, we're going to talk about all things operations and company culture and some EOS tools we're going to throw in there that you can hopefully cast across your team. If you guys have employees, if you have a team, drop that in the chat as well. It's always helpful to see who here is a solopreneur and who here is also building as a team as you go. Now, as we get into today and the next two days, Sarah and I have a very specific framework that we love to think about retail in. And it's a six layer framework. I'm going to show it to you here in just a minute. You can take a picture of this screen so you can save it, reflect on it later. But today we're starting at the base of that framework. It's the leadership portion. It's all about the foundation of the business that you're building. So we look at it like this. I want you to start down at the bottom in the hot pink section. This is the six layers of business. Our team lovingly calls this the six layers of lasagna. I don't know how that came about. Jeff, Ben, I'm pretty sure came up with that. But we talk a lot about the crunchy cheese layer on top, which I think is everyone's favorite part of lasagna. And the funny thing is, this is kind of why the six layer formula exists, is everybody wants to start with a crunchy cheese layer. Everyone thinks that the secret to success in business is marketing, traffic, social media. I just need to run paid ads, right? That's all I need. Wrong. No. Why would you run paid ads if you have a leaky bucket and you haven't really set your business up to be profitable and you haven't trained your team and you yourself aren't yet a leader. So we started this foundation. Layer foundation is all about your own vision as a CEO versus an entrepreneur. It's about building a brand. It's about mindset and productivity, and then it's about building an operation plan. So if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, your business could continue to operate even without you. Sarah, do you want to hit some of the next layers, you bet.

So then after you have your foundation, right, that solid foundation would of which we can build on. Now it's time to go to market. Now it's time to get our finances in order. Now it's time to start profit planning. So a lot of times Ashley said, you know, people like to start at that crunchy cheese layer. The other thing we hear a lot about is, yeah, I already went to market, I went to market and I have all this inventory now I need to find my customers. That's not the right, the right order. So we want to say foundation, brand vision, mindset, all of those things. Get your SOPs put together. Then start looking at like building out, building out those products, building out that profit plan, understanding who your customer is, right, that who am I serving? So that's what comes in the products, that foundation, the products layer. Then we move into team, then we move in a team. And we know I see a lot of you guys saying you're solo, that's awesome. But the bigger you get, the bigger your problems. The but the thing is you still only have the 24 hours in a day, right? So you're going to need some team, you're going to need the infrastructure, you're going to need that support. So we want to teach you all about the hiring, the firing, all of those kind of things, Managing your employees, payroll, all that then, then from there, right? Once we have that in place, then we can really take it to that next level with sales. And come sales, you guys saw all the different sales channels, right? We asked you that earlier in the chat, like who's brick and mortar, who's online, who does pop ups live selling, all the things. So at that point, now we want to diversify and say, okay, how many different angles am I coming at? My said customer with the products that I'm invested in. And so that's what sales is about. And it's not just about, hey, here I have a black dress on social media, right? We're going to talk about sales channels, we're going to talk about merchandising, we're going to talk about training your staff or sales, all of those things. I think that stuff is really, really fun. And then I'm going to hand it over back to Ashley on the content.

Yeah, we're getting into the melty cheese layer. This is all about content strategy. So I think one of the most stressful parts sometimes of the business is all the content we're creating all of the time. Anyone agree with that? You're like, dang it, it's Thursday. What did I post today on Instagram? What am I going to post tomorrow? Or, gosh, I'm posting all of this stuff to Facebook. But is anyone really seeing seeing it? Is this making a difference in my business? So we've got to be able to really set the tone that there's a difference between content strategy and marketing and traffic. Two different windows. So we first start with the strategy. How much should you be posting? Where should you be posting? What is the definition of some really successful posts across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, they're all different. Pinterest, again, totally different. So what's the strategy? We've got to start there. And I really like to do something that we're going to look at on Wednesday called the retail traffic formula, where we can equate your sales goal, your average order value, your conversion rate, all the way down to the traffic that you actually need to be driving. So I'll give you all that information again on Wednesday. So that's content strategy. And then finally, the crunchy cheese layer on top. This is where the marketing and traffic really comes to play. So we deep dive into each social media channel strategically. Email marketing, text marketing, paid traffic on Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Tick tock, and then of course, traditional marketing. So pr, postcards, collaborations, radio prints, all of those pieces. So when you're thinking about your business and where do I focus in my business? We really want you to think about this in a six layer, from the bottom up strategy. So you can see maybe where you're weak, where you're strong. The only way to continue to build that business and keep layering on the success is we've got to have a really good foundation first. So that's where we're going to get into it all today. All right, as we get started today, we've got a little giveaway. Are you guys ready? Who likes free stuff? So if you're here, I would love it if you would take out your phone at any point during the training today, take a picture, tag us on Instagram at the Boutique Hub. And we're going to give away two things. We're going to give away an opportunity to win a free retail boot camp with us. So we'll do that. We'll announce the winner on Wednesday and then anyone since Retail Bootcamp opens today, anyone who purchases Retail Bootcamp in the next three days, who are new enrollees. And we're going to be giving away a free VIP session with Sarah and I. That's one on one coaching. It's a free session with Jeff, Ben and it's four small group sessions as well. So those are our giveaways happening this week and we're going to announce all of the winners on Wednesday. So should be exciting. All right, Sarah, let's talk about this. Let's get into it. You guys ready to get started?

All right, let's do it. Let's do it.

All right.

We're going to be bringing on our guests here in a little bit and you're going to get to hear from them straight away what they have implemented over the last year, what they have learned. And you know, the thing is, everybody, it's so, it's just bred into us. I don't know. It's one of those things that, especially on social, the scrolling of the thumbs, you always see what somebody else has and you're just like, oh, gosh, I want to be that person. I want to be that person. Well, then we get a message that says, how do I. Right? And I saw somebody say, how do I achieve success? I'm a small town business owner. How do I do it in my small town? And we want to say, you know, these are the consistent common factors, right? We're seeing our retailers that have went on from last year and best year yet, where there's, you know, they're here, they're starting, they're setting goals to now coming around full circle 365 days later and are like, I'm killing it. It's going like, I've reached, I, I reached my goals in September. You know, we're getting these messages saying, I did it. And here's what happens. They were coachable, right? They took the classes, they took the time, they showed up, they were nimble. When something wasn't working, they recognized it, they would try something, test something, and they were nimble to pivot here and there. We don't necessarily like to use the word pivot, right? But at the same time, we have to read the play. We have to read the play. If any, you guys, if you don't know, I talk sports all the time and you never know what's coming at you, right? What's the defense going to bring at us, right? And we try, we have playbooks, we try to, you know, be ready, ready for all these things. But at any given day, any Monday morning, you walk into your store, you turn on, you turn on your computer and who knows what happened, right? They have to be nimble. Successful retailers are nimble. Retail boot camp Boutique Black. Those are two common denominators we are seeing inside successful retailers. It's because they are focusing on these six layers of their business. They're not just jumping and focusing on the real fun, really fancy things.

Right.

They're over the idea I want to show up on Instagram for my friends and family to think I'm successful. They're over that. They have dove in and become very disciplined in those foundations of their business and tried things, tested them, repeated what was to be repeated. They, they made adjustments where that had to be. But they also, here, they also were able to take some risks. Risks are, I mean, it is, it's, that's one of those things that it can be very hard and sometimes people by nature are more risk tolerant than others and we're going to talk about that here today. So, you know, we, we just want to identify something, you know, inside you personally. Like there's going to be, there's going to be your personal reaction to money, to failure to success, all of those things. So understanding your risk tolerance, you do this when you do investments. Right. But it's also important to understand this when you're building a business. What am I capable, what are some of those things that are holding me back? And then next, you know, positive outlooks. Positive outlooks. Not being the negative Nancy, not coming in with just a negative mindset. Oh, yep, woe is me. I can't do it. I live in a small town. Oh, woe is me. My Facebook got hacked. Oh, woe is me. Blah, blah, blah. Right? There's going to be setbacks, there's going to be Internet outages on a snowy snowstorm, ice day in the middle of the United States right now. Right? There's going to be those things. But if that's you, I promise, you've got to be able to have that positive outlook and say, hey, what is, what is in my control that I'm going to, I'm going to take action on and look at this through a positive lens, right? And then obviously the last one, I mentioned this a little bit, but willing to test it out, willing to jump in and test it and find out, yes, this is what's going to work for me. This is how it, how it's going to work for me. And, and not just say, ah, that's not going to be me. That's not for me. That's for that other person, that's for that other business owner that I see on Facebook all the time. That's just killing it. I'll never be the common things. Guys, it's so true.

Retail is a business of ups and downs and how you play them. I mean, the majority of you who are here, like we saw in the poll, have been in business for five to ten years or longer. So you guys know, like, can I get an amen? If you're like, it is the ups and the downs and the question and the statement have to shift. Like, the conversation has to shift from this will never work for me or this is not working for me to how can I make this work for me?

Right?

How can I make this work for me? And when you do that, it opens up the opportunity in your brain to find the evidence to support the outcome of that answer. And let's get into it. Sarah, these are the four guests we're going to be joining us. Let's start adding them to the room if we can, because these guys did a really great job of answering that question correctly this year. Dana. I can't say enough. As we add Dana to the room, you guys can read a little bit about her bio here on the screen. But let me just give you this nutshell. When Dana and I first started to speak probably a year and a half ago, this is what happened. Many of you maybe saw this happen in the news. You guys remember jane.com? jane.com? Well, Dana was a retailer who was left with about $150,000 in unpaid payouts when Jane.com went under. And so she came and she was like, what am I going to do? What am I going to do about this? It was a major hit. A lot of people would have said, okay, that's it. I'm folding up. I'm closing up shop. I'm owed 150 grand of payouts I did not receive. And she's like, nope, that's it. I'm digging in. And so Dana showed up last, I think it was last January, if I remember right, to retail boot camp. Showed up every session, did the work, put in the effort, literally rebuilt her company from the ground up. And then she got into boutique black, learned how to run her own Facebook ads, Google Ads, really mastered her e commerce strategy. And Dana has a business that is 100 back. It is an incredible story of what data overcame. So if we can. If we can add Dana and the rest of our guests, I know you guys are. Are working on it. Let's see, are they coming in?

We're having a little technical difficulty, so we'll.

All right. As you guys are working on it, I'm Going to keep going on with the rest of our guests here. Okay, so Sandy, Sandy Cooley is going to be joining us. Sandy is the one of the just happiest people you are ever going to meet. Sandy's been in retail boot camp. I don't, I don't know too many times to even count, like multiple, multiple years. And every time I see Sandy, she's got a huge smile on her face. Even when things have not gone her way. I don't know when Sandy gets here, I've got to ask her that how long ago it was that she completely lost her Facebook everything ad account. I mean, it was a complete cluster. Everything got hacked. We were able to help Sandy get that back. And she rebuilt her entire business going live, doing the work, running ads. She's been working with Jeff for an awfully long time and she's a joy to be around. So I'm so excited for Sandy to be here as well. From Lucy do okay, Carrie. Oh, man, Carrie's incredible. Carrie is like such a just hard working, humble human being. She's been a part of Retail Bootcamp and Boutique Black. She's been in our mastermind here at the Hub. She is just a builder and a doer. If you look at these stats for her business right now, I mean, she has been going blowing up in a big way. She's got a beautiful online business, brick and mortar business. I know some of you have gotten into the color analysis. Carrie's done a great job early on before people were really into that of building collections around some of that color analysis. So she's got a really great inventory management system she's been putting into place. And just Driving traffic has been a huge success for her here in the last year. All right, and then finally joining us today, Gretchen Hilly. Okay. Gretchen has been like an OG member of the Boutique Hub, you guys. She is somebody. I've had a front row seat. Sarah's had a front row seat to watch her grow. And literally just the other day I found an old spreadsheet where she did before it was retail boot camp. It used to be called Boutique boot camp. And she had a numbers tracking sheet. And in this numbers tracking sheet, Gretchen, I hope you don't mind if I say this, but her goal at that time, it was like $10,000 a month. She was just scratch and dig into to make $10,000 a month. She's a teacher that had just quit her job teaching and was going all in on being a retailer. And this is probably I'm going to guess 2018 maybe. Since then, Gretchen has built an incredible business. And the thing that I love about how Gretchen built this business was it was completely family. First her husband Casey works in the business with her. Now her son is a part of the business. They're able to travel. They love a western like a rodeo lifestyle, which is something Sarah and I also are involved in. And since I think Gretchen built an incredible eight figure business doing live selling with, with comments. Sold. Not even with the live aspect of it. She did a lot of it before even going live. It kind of proves that you guys can have that same approach as well. And of course, Gretchen will be speaking this year at Boutique Summit, so we can't wait to hear more from her there as well. All right, these are four awesome women. Holy smokes, can we have a big welcome for everybody? I see Dana. All right, we're getting the other ones.

We had to send a whole new zoom link. Dana, we got you in. That was some, that was some fast typing over here.

All right, well, as everyone else is jumping in, let's start. Sarah, I know you've got some questions for Dana as we first get started while everyone else is jumping back in with it.

Yeah, I just, I just want to say and all right, Carrie's coming in too. So you guys, you got the bio on, on Dana and we're super excited to see where Dana has come in the last year. We have done one on one coachings with Dana. Both Ashley and I have, we've, we've, we've worked with her on a number of different levels but we've listened to her story from where she was, what happened with everything with the Jane.com thing like Ashley mentioned and where she's at today. And to be very honest, like we follow that journey, but then she has went on through retail boot camp into Botica Black. And everybody on the panel today, when we talk with Jeff, Ben, who you guys will get to meet tomorrow, Jeff was like hands down, yes, get Dana on there. Dana's got a story to tell. So Dana, I just, I'm going to turn it over to you. Give us the, like, just give us some highlights of 2024 and what you've overcome and let I know the panel or everybody here today wants to hear from you, wants to hear that story.

Thank you, Sarah. Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you for the such kind introduction. I am just thrilled to be here. I love the Boutique Hub, but let's be honest, running an online business has taught me anything. It's like Feels like you're an episode of survivor, especially in 2024. 2024 was next level for Lineberry. It wasn't just surviving. It was about rebuilding, like Sarah said, from the ground up. And let me tell you, it pushed me to limits that I didn't even know that I had. From navigating the loss of Jane.com of $150,000 and the chaos that I discovered, I discovered something incredible. Resilience, resource resources, fullness. A community of experts that wouldn't let me give up. So I started Limeberry in 2013. And from 2013 to 2023, Lineberry was pretty much focused on selling our graphic tees through jane.com I was one of their top resellers, their top sellers generating over 3.5 million in yearly sales. In November of 2023, when Jane.com suddenly shut down, they left sellers unpaid for six weeks of sales. And Limeberry's owed over $150,000. For the first time, I faced $130,000 in operational expenses with no funds coming in to back those costs. This was the first time that Lime Bearer had ever been in debt. Looking back, I felt like I was standing in the middle of a storm, not knowing which way to turn. Just desperately trying to hold everything together and salvage the company that I loved. In January, I made the decision that if I wanted to recover quickly, I had to lean into the experts. And that's where retail bootcamp came in. Limeberry already had the right products. I had 10 years of experience knowing what graphic tees designs consumers wanted. I had the production processes, the equipment. But what I didn't have was the marketing. And that was the key piece to drive growth. So I joined retail bootcamp. I joined the VIP for extra coaching from Ashley, Sarah and Jeff. Their insights were invaluable. And what really shifted things for me in the beginning was their recommendation to connect with Christine Gray of she profits. Now with the $150,000 in debt accumulating coaching from Ashley, Sarah and Jeff, their insights were invaluable. And what really shifted things for me in the beginning was their recommendation to connect with Christine Gray of she profits. Now with the $150,000 in debt accumulating at 30% interest, I needed financial clarity. And Christine was exactly the accountant I needed to guide me. She helped me map out a plan and manage the crisis and rebuild with confidence. And that way I could focus more on marketing versus just the debt that I had to deal with. But to be real, balancing the sudden decrease in revenue while trying to grow was brutal. Patience and resilience is what I learned in 2024. I was stuck in this massive warehouse with sky high rent. I had operational expenses to trim. I had a net 30 lawsuit that I couldn't pay and employees I had to let go. This was some of the hardest decisions I've ever made. But step by step, I started to rebuild a stronger foundation. Retail boot camp became my lifeline every week. There was so much gold in the sessions. Ashley and Sarah are a phenomenal team and their expertise helped me to see my business with fresh eyes. But I committed to the work every week. I implemented what I learned piece by piece. I also joined Boutique Hubla where I dove into meta ads, website conversion tips, Google Analytics, Pinterest ads with Jeff and his team. The weekly coaching calls gave me much insight into what was working for other boutiques that I could implement. This community is incredible and it gave me the confidence to push forward. So in June, I attended Summit, something I dreamed of doing since I saw Ashley's first recap back in 2018. Finally being there, surrounded by industry leaders and soaking up their wisdom felt like a turning point. The support felt there by the entire Boutique HUD team is incredible and so wonderful to meet everyone in person. So if you have a chance to go, make it happen. So 2024 forced me to be brutally honest with myself about Lineberry. I had to ask what's working, what's not? What needs to change for us to thrive. I started to trim costs where I could. I scheduled employees work based on actual sales versus their set hours. I made tough decisions to let team members who weren't moving the needle go. And then with my lease ending in early 2025, I decided to downsize our warehouse space to something more practical for our current needs. These choices weren't easy, but they were absolutely necessary. On the creative side, I got scrappy. I revamped Lime Ry's website to improve conversions. I made social media my focus. It was uncomfortable. During my one coaching call with Ashley, she pointed out that my page was missing a personal face and voice. And she was right. I knew I had to show up and let people see me, not just my products. So I got on camera, shared my story, started building real connections with my audience. And it's working. I also leaned into growing the wholesale side of Limeberry. I focus on building relationships with amazing boutiques through Fair and Hub and Tory. From my time on Jane, I knew Limeberry could crank out orders quickly and with precision. One of the biggest pain points in Graphic tee wholesale industry is turnaround time, so I made sure Limeberry delivers faster than competition. I pride myself on our wholesale boutiques receiving their orders within a week. Now, after everything we've been through, it was time to refresh Lineberry's branding at the end of the year. A clean start with updated branding was the fresh energy I needed and felt so good to let our old logo go and our brand colors. I also learned that growth isn't about what you add, but it's about what you're willing to let go of. This past year, saying no was just as important as saying yes. I said no to focusing.