Best Year Yet 2025 | Day 3 Replay

All right.

Hello, Hello.

There we go.

Hi, guys.

Welcome.

Look at them all coming in.

Let's turn on the chat. Okay, if you're jumping in the chat today of the last two days, what has been your biggest takeaway so far? Hear some wins? Did you implement anything? What's your takeaway, Ben? Let's hear from you guys. And then, of course, we're gonna have some polls. Yes, we will. If you're just jumping on, drop your takeaway or an action item you've taken from the last couple of days. Welcome to day three.

Basically, I'm very excited for retail boot camp. Nice, Natalia. I love it.

If you're not earning, you're learning. Put that on a bumper sticker.

I did talk to somebody, Ashley, yesterday, I talked to somebody who had went through that. The touch points that customer experienced yesterday, and they walked through their website and realized how clunky it was to check out. And I said that that is a win. And they were so upset. They went through the whole holiday season and they had not actually checked that out until yesterday. So that was a huge, huge win.

I mean, it's like going through the front door of your business with a whole fresh set of eyes. I love it. Imagine walking through the front door of a brick and mortar and there's like a broken candle on the floor and the clothes are in a big heap. Right. And it's dirty, man. We all could walk through our websites like that. I have walked through the boutique hub's website, like, that many times. Yep.

Everyone hates somebody just put in here. I don't want to consider myself an affordable store. I. And I think I know exactly what you mean based off of all the things we talked about yesterday. And that is a big move. That's a big growth thing for your business.

Nice work. Yeah. Cheap ain't loyal. I love it. Keeney Clothing Company says the encouragement from everyone to join RVC despite being scared, I think that's really common. And I just want to call that out. And I can tell you from personal experience, and Eric, my husband, can tell you from personal experience, the first time I ever hired a coach, I basically spent money that we definitely did not have. I cried for at least two hours afterwards because I felt so embarrassed and ashamed. And bless him, like, bless him because he was like, it's all right. Like, we've got this. We'll figure it out. And for me, within the next 30 days, I think I had more than doubled my investment. So it sometimes is the mindset of, like, investing in something you're scared of. Because when you do that, it forces you to take action. Like, there's no more. Oh, I'm just going to open this in a tab and if I have time I'll watch it. It's like, no, I'm actually a little bit scared because I'm on the edge about this, so I better show up and do the work. And sometimes it's that fear that pushes us over the edge to have actual action which results in a better business at the end of the day. So congrats. You're not alone. There's a lot of past RBCers who have felt that same way.

I just gotta call out Tiffany from Shop Orange. You love it. I am loving all your comments. I've been watching the last couple days. I know you're here. We haven't been able to get to people's comments a lot, but I keep seeing you, you making comments and I'm loving it. I. Yeah, she said I'm a very laid back person who's not great at making a plan. So knowing there's a road map I can find and follow through retail boot camp makes me excited to make a plan. I love that. Thank you for sharing that.

There's so many good takeaways in here, Sandy. I see you. Facebook and Instagram are sisters, not twins. They can't be treated the same.

It's like your eyebrows.

It is like your eyebrows.

I believe I've heard you say that before.

Oh, it's so true. Oh, so true. God bless my eyebrows. You know, did anyone just over pluck the crap out of them in high school and now you're just paying the price? I keep using the grande lash from Ulta thinking or the grande brow it is. Anyone else? Total side note, but I'm like, how do I get these puppies to grow back? It's a good question. Free meeting with Pinterest. Amber. Yeah, that was a great nugget from Jeff yesterday. Did you all feel like, holy smokes, the SEO knowledge, Google Analytics, knowledge traffic, Facebook ads and knowledge from Jeff is incredible. So much to know there. I could read through these.

I know.

All day long.

Now we're dropping cosmetology tips here because I know there's some cosmetologists in the group. So we're getting. You're getting all sorts of tips on your, on your eyebrows that you want.

Oh wait, I gotta scroll down to.

The bottom and I'm over here a little bit now. I'm nervous. I haven't tended to these things for quite Some time. So maybe I put my glasses on so we don't even look at them.

Hadley calls hers little caterpillars. She's like, I got caterpillars on my face. Oh my gosh. Jello. Okay, all right, Sure. I can see the, like the bio. The biotin. What?

This?

I'm not in cosmetology. I'm sorry. My head. Amy, my neon sign is back. Thanks for listening. I got a new one because the old one I've had for, I don't know, eight years probably. It's amazing it lasted that long. So I just ordered a new one and you guys, I'm such an idiot. I couldn't figure out it was so bright. It would, like, blind you. And I couldn't figure out how to turn it down. And finally yesterday I played with it enough, I figured it out. So it's back. Okay, so good. I'm gonna go back to the chat and read all of these comments. You guys, this is amazing. Okay, let's get started. Oh, I'm so distracted. Let's get started. We've got some polls for today. Okay. Today is all about the numbers, so. So buckle up. I am glad you guys are the brave souls who showed up to have this conversation. Says a lot about you, first of all. And it also says a lot about you that you showed up on day three because everyone shows up on day one and then people trickle off on day two because life's busy. I totally get it. Very few people show up on day three and really, like, hold themselves accountable. So congratulations. I'm so thankful you're here. You guys are action takers and that means a ton about. About who you are. We see you for sure. All right, let's do some polls. So today's. Today's stuff. We're going to talk all the numbers things. Let's start with this. Who here has a date with your numbers? Like every week you get in there and you're holding yourself accountable to talk about your numbers, to review your numbers. You know, we've talked about the planner. Grab mine, guys. Butt chop while I bend over. But in the planner, this has been Sarah's brainchild. All the tracking sheets about your numbers. Because, you know, there's different types of learning, right? Like there's audible learning, visual learning and immersion learning and all of that. But it's one thing to go and take the date with your numbers, running your reports from QuickBooks or whatever, but then transposing them through writing them in the planner is a whole other way to Build comprehension and to make those numbers stick. All right, let's share the answer of that pole. Okay, good. So, yes, but not often enough. So room for improvement. I see you guys. Oof. Not yet. Is second no and no. What's that?

Okay, you know, I just. I'm gonna step in and say, this doesn't surprise me. As we work with hundreds and hundreds of retailers, we find this. And here's the. There's a couple common factors here. One, if you're not familiar with your numbers, they can be very scary. They can be just like, oh, my gosh, the piles of papers, they're just adding up. I just. I know I need to get into it. Next thing you know, somebody comes in the front door of your store, the phone's ringing, you're like, oh, I really should make that. You know, take photos or I should do this. And maybe you're more attracted to some of those more fun things. And yeah, Tiffany, the numbers freak me out. And here's the thing. I just want to give you this. This bit of analogy in. Stop thinking. Mary. Mary from Management one has said this for many, many years. She says, stop thinking about them as numbers and start thinking about them as dollars. So if that whole stack of paper sitting on the corner of Yalls desk, which if you guys look to the left, to the right, I bet you're seeing some. You're going to see some. Think of that as your dollar sitting there. Think of that as your dollars. Don't think of that as, you know, numbers that you're scared of. Okay, so that's. That's one analogy. The other part is I like to think of this as, you know, this. This problem. The bigger it gets, the harder it is to tackle. The longer we leave it, the harder it is for us to make sense of it. Just like a garden. Is there anybody in here that gardens? You plant the garden, you or you go through, you manicure the ground, you get everything ready to go, you figure out what seeds you're going to plant. You do all this. You're so excited. You label it all. It's going to be great. Next thing you know, you plant it, and then you're waiting, and then you're waiting, and then all of a sudden, you know, life gets a little busy. The rain comes, the sun comes. The next thing you know, you're like, oh, gosh, I really should get out there and weed that garden today. And something else happens. I really should get back out there and read that, weed that garden.

And next thing you know, you look.

And you're like, I don't even know what I planted. Thank goodness there's a little sign there because not right now. It's just all weeds. That's what happens. And that's what happens to our numbers. And by the time you get to the fruit or those vegetables, they're sickly, right? They're just not healthy vegetables. Healthy fruit because you've neglected them. And that's what happens in our, with our money. And that's what's so sad because we do. We get so tied up in the fun things. So today I want to break a few things down for you and just give you some bumpers and roadblocks. So let's clear our mind. Let's clear our mind and start. And like, we don't want to say, I can't do, I can't do the numbers. I can't do it. Let's like have, have that clean slate today. And then the next thing I want you guys to all do is take your pencil and look at your calendar and think, when can I have this date with numbers? Because 41% said not very often, 33% says not yet. My date with numbers when I had my store was every Monday morning non negotiable. We did not open up until 10 o' clock. And so I would get in there early and I would have my date with numbers. I'd clear out my whole week prior. I'd make a game plan for the current week. And by 10 o' clock in the morning, when my staff was there and the customers were coming in, we were ready to rock and roll. So I see drop in the chat. When are you guys going to commit? Every Wednesday morning. Mondays, Mondays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Sunday night. Okay, Mondays, yes. And it's just non negotiable. Here's the, the next tip for you guys. You own this, but if you have a team, you let them know, do not bother Sarah at this time. This is my, as Ashley calls it, tiger time. This is not a time for you to like call me and ask me if I want to go do this or it's not a time for you to have whatever meeting with me. And you tell your husband, you tell your kids, you tell whoever is like maybe going to bother you at that time. Blacked out on my calendar. Date with numbers. Sunday, Sundays, Mondays, whatever it's going to be. And set aside some time because if you give yourself two hours, you'll get it done in two hours. If you say it's all day Monday, it won't be so narrow that focus, narrow that time. Give yourself a time block like, I'm starting here and I'm ending here. Your success rate is going to be a lot higher.

So good. All right. And Brittany, Yes. We will talk all about the exact numbers to look at. For sure. It's a broad date with your numbers as a broad term, but we will more about that. And just so you know, those of you jumping in retail bootcamp, we talk about this over and over in detail. Like, you have all the detail. So there's no, you know, we don't want to leave you overwhelmed in any capacity when it comes to numbers. We'll teach you all the formulas. We'll talk about what's most important, how to get there. We'll give you all of that support for sure. All right, let's do the next poll. So when it comes to date with your numbers, we've got to talk about, like, what are the tools you're using to get those numbers? And there's really two different types of numbers in general, we talk about there's inventory and product related numbers, right? So your point of sale system and then there's cash flow numbers and that's your bookkeeping system. So two different animals. So let's talk about how you're tracking your numbers. First, Beth, if you could put up the poll, what point of sale system are you using? And if your options not on here, because I know we've got salons and different types of businesses here, drop in the chat what you're using. And I also, I also want to say this. I get this question a lot. Hi, Sarah Koblitz. Good to see you. So we get this question a lot. Like, people will sometimes feel insecure when they see what other people are using. So I want to assure you wherever you're at now, you were led there on purpose. You've got a great start wherever you're at now. And if you choose at some point to migrate to another platform, great. But don't feel like you have this like, panicky pressure that you've got to jump on something now that you're not. I will say in general. And this poll, Beth, you can share the poll and end it now. It looks like it's, it's done. I'm not surprised by this. Shopify is, is most common and the reason is it's the largest in the world. It's had the most investment, it's fastest growing by far. It has the most apps and the most integrations. So when you hear us talk about Shopify a lot, it's because it's the most common. But if you look at Square and Lightspeed, you know, close behind, those are also great platforms. So when we talk about Shopify, we're never going to dog these others. But there is a reason we talk about Shopify so often is because it, it just has so many additional tools. And Mia, I see a lot of people, those of you who are from Wix, I will just make this blanket statement. If you're on wix, moving to Shopify is probably going to be a good choice for you because it has so many additional features. And the other thing too is it has an open API, so it integrates with so many things. Like if you're using, I mean, I could go on for hours about this. I will spare you the details. We can talk about that later. But yeah, there's, there's just a lot more options. All right, Point of sale POS is point of sale system. This is where you track all of your sales. So if you're new and you're like, oh, what is this term? It's not a piece of, it is sale. And this is where you upload all of your products, all of your inventory, and then it tracks for you what you've sold. We're going to talk about product categories today or classifications. So this would be like if you sell home and gift, you would probably be separating classifications like candles, paper products, toys, apparel, whatever it is. If you're in apparel, you're going to be not just saying tops, bottoms, dresses, but blouses, short sleeve tops, sweaters, outerwear, graphic tees. Right. So we're detailing out what our product categories are so we can really understand what's selling and what's not selling. So the devil's in the details for sure.

The comments about the pos, y', all, I hear you. There are days you're like, ashley, I think you're wrong. I think it does mean what you said. Yes. But at the same time, I just want to say it is a growth tool. It really is. And the more you use it and the more you get involved with it, the better, the more familiar you're. You will be with it. So often our point of sale systems are much like our cell phones. We know what we know. We can make a phone call with our cell phone, we can take a picture with our cell phone, but we don't know all the other things it can do until we really get in there and start playing around with it. And that's what we like to do. We've got a number of different trainings and different videos and things throughout membership and Inside Retail Bootcamp as well about different systems. And we partner with Square, we partner with Shopify. So we have, we have people inside our membership that can help you with different troubleshooting and, and comment Sold as well and, and Accumula. And if you, if you need help, we want to be able to get you to somebody that can help you.

All right, let's go to the next one. Beth. Now let's. So this is all about products right now. Let's talk about date with your numbers with cash flow and managing income and expenses. So what bookkeeping system are you using, Julie? I see your answer. Lightspeed has a lot of really great reporting. Yes, absolutely. Okay, this is good. I'll give you just another. I'll give you another minute. Anna, you're cheating. She Profits now. She's using QuickBooks and then she's your guru.

Yes, she profits now.

Is.

Is pretty dang awesome.

Yes. Becky, Danielle, Harquin, same thing. That's. You're still using. Absolutely.

Yep. We part. So as everybody's putting these in, I, some of you guys may be wondering, like, what are you guys talking about? Inside Boutique Hub, I mentioned our service providers. We partner with services that are vetted that come highly recommended to us that we interview, that we think would be good for us to reference and, and recommend to our members. Harquin Bookkeeping and She Profits now are two of them that we use. They're actually really the only two bookkeepers that we put our sample of approval on for members. And it's, it's because they understand retail businesses. They understand the world of cosmetology, they understand the world of clothing, they understand home decor and gift, all of those kind of things, because your, your H and R block people down the street or, you know, your bookkeeper, whoever in your local town, they may just do general bookkeeping, but to be very honest, there is an art to understanding retail business. And so that, that's why, you know, you're going to see people talking about those two as well as some of the other services inside the Boutique Hub. But that's, that's just another perk of becoming a Boutique Hub member.

Absolutely. I just want to make the definition of the difference in bookkeeping system and bookkeeper are two different things. So every bookkeeper has a bookkeeping system. The vast majority of them use QuickBooks. So just those are two different animals. And I liken it to this speaking about, like moving to CEO mindset, right? As your time becomes more valuable, there's things that you outsource, there's things that you can do. But do you need to spend all of your time doing it? Is that the best use of your time? Probably not. Think about cleaning, cleaning your house, right? We all can probably clean house with best of them. None of us here are scared to clean the toilet. Can I get an amen? Like we don't want to, but we can if we need to. But that's probably a wise thing for us at some point to outsource to somebody who has more time, wants to do it, can do it better so that we can work on income generating activities. Now working with a bookkeeper. So a Harquin a she profits now somebody like that, probably I'm going to just, I'm going to bluntly say probably someone more specialized in H R Block because they aren't always very good at managing inventory. To be frank. You want someone who understands retail, but that's like having a consultant who, like this is what they do. But for them to be successful and just like a house cleaner to be successful, you still have to have some background knowledge of how to clean the house, right? Because how do you know if they're doing a good job if you don't even know what a clean house looks like or feels like? So same with your bookkeeping system. Even though you're outsourcing it to somebody else, it's still on you to understand the base principles of what does it mean to understand your numbers? What does it mean to read a profit and loss report? How much money's coming in and where's it coming from? How much money is going out and where is it going. So again, it's important that you know both. Just like it's important that you understand how to clean your house before you outsource somebody else to do it as well. All right, that's it for our polls today. So let's get into the how shall we?

Let's do it.

Let's close this little guy on my screen. All right, if you've all been here, it's day three, you know us. But just as a reminder, rather than introduce ourselves related to the business today, introduce yourself with something personal. Sound good, Sarah?

Yeah.

Okay. All right, so I'll go first. Ashley, you know me, founder, CEO of the Boutique Hub. I have three kids, ages 10, 13 and 14, almost 15. And things you may not know about me. My imaginary friend as a child was Kenny Rogers, which it sounds a little bit Creepy. I realize at this point in my life, I play old lady basketball for fun, and I try not to injure myself, which is hard to do. I'm a cancer survivor, and we have horses, and I am on team rodeo. All right, Sarah. Holy smokes.

You said one. What? Something personal now I feel like I. All right, let's see. That was a lot. All right. I'm also team rodeo. I mentioned that earlier. Ashley and I were both rodeo queens.

That's.

That's something we have in common. That's personal.

Yes.

Yes. I also am a mother of two. I have. One of my daughters works here at the Boti cup, and she's been in the chat. Her name's Bridie. She is. Lives in Idaho, and I'm getting to go see her this weekend, and I'm so excited. And she is newly married and living her best life. So proud of her. And our other daughter plays college basketball at a university here in Wisconsin, so I get to go watch her tonight. So we're also big basketball fans. Super excited about that. Let's see. My husband is from Arkansas, so I have a deep connection to the South. And every once in a while, when I see people come in from the south and I hear different companies or different verbiage and things like that, I totally relate. I. I totally relate. Uh, I can call the hogs with.

The best of them.

Yes, I can. Yeah. Yay, Arkansas. Let's see. Live in rural Wisconsin. Grew up on a farm out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Ashley says her childhood imaginary friend was Kenny Rogers. I was telling my daughter about how when I'd get out of school in May, we would go to the farm, and I wouldn't come back to town until August. It was like, fend for yourself, play in the woods, don't come in until it got dark kind of life for me. And I.

This is.

Sounds so silly. This is so silly. And Ashley, you do not know this, but I designed a lot of clothes when I was in school, right? Even some of my queen clothes.

My.

My. My prom dresses and things like that. My first thing I ever made and designed was an outfit for one of my goats that I wanted that I took out a parade that I made up myself as a kid.

Is that personal enough?

Is that. Is that personal enough? Yeah. There you go. So you didn't know that about me. And now I'm sweating because I'm like, I just told the world that I made a dress for a goat and took it on a parade. Needless to say, nobody really came to the parade. But it was fun. Yes. But that stem my love for the fashion world.

Yes.

So if you guys want to hear about trend reports.

No, I'm just kidding. Oh, my gosh. Fun fact. When Sarah and I go out to dinner together, neither of us will eat goat cheese because we have been around goats in real life. And if you've been around in real life, you don't eat goat cheese. Okay. Wow. That topped everything.

There you go.

All right.

Don't challenge me, Ashley. And hey, somebody jumped in. Julie from Blackfoot. Awesome, Idaho. I'm gonna be right down the road from you. Message me, Message me. Maybe I can jump up and see you. Love to see your store.

So good. This is the best. I love day three. And those of you who have been through retail boot camp, you get. You get a lot of honesty every week. So welcome to the family. Yeah. Today's the last day, so we are announcing giveaway winners today. Shannon Gordon is with us in the chat. At the end of the day, we will announce our giveaway winner. So we're doing. If you tagged us on Instagram, you still have time. You can do it now. We will give away one free retail boot camp at the end of today. And then anyone who has. Anyone who has already purchased retail boot camp is in the drawing for the free one on ones with our VIP upgrade for a retail boot camp. I did see a couple questions really quick in the chat, Sarah. So again, just to be. Just to be clear, I think today at the end of the call, would it be helpful for you guys who are still thinking about retail boot camp, if I did a little tour, I'll pull up the course and we can look in the modules. Would you guys be cool with that? Because it's brand new and actually those of you who are returning who've been in boot camp for you haven't even seen it yet because we redid the whole thing just here in the last couple of months. Okay. Yes to the tour. I'll do it. I'll do it. We also made a change today. So in the past we've done a manual four part payment plan. This round we added after pay and Klarna. Those are still after paying Klarna. You can still choose those options. But this morning we made the decision to bring back our. Our additional four payment payment plan so that additional checkout options live on the page for you and I'll get you that link if you need it or the girls can get you that link in the chat. And then those of You. I saw a question about the affiliate program. So something really cool we do with Retail Boot Camp is. And this is kind of a cool way where people like find a way to pay for Retail Bootcamp. Once you've been through it, you have an opportunity to be an affiliate for it. Only if it's been successful for you. Let me add, like, I don't want any fluff or bs. Like, yes, I love it, but really, I didn't even take the course. Like, that's not cool with me. So. So only people who have actually taken it, had results with it, have an opportunity to be an affiliate. And the information for that, you guys is inside the Retail Bootcamp group. So if you're returning student, which I know many of you are, it's inside of the Retail Bootcamp group where you pin to the top of the post or top of the page. All right, last thing. I also. Yesterday you got a little. A sneak peek. You got to hear. We were building a brand new dashboard for members at the Boutique Hub. I did another tour of that this morning. Our team is sprucing up a couple things and that will launch very soon for members of the Hub. Those of you who are in Retail Boot Camp, there was a question about should I be a member of the Hub or be in Retail Boot Camp. Let me just spill the beans. If you join Retail Bootcamp, you actually get a discount on becoming a member of the Boutique Hub. So you're going to want to take advantage of that. If you're joining Retail Bootcamp, we're going to give you a perk on being a member of the Hub as well. So all kinds of things in terms of community events, meetups, discount savings, connections, all of our daily communications. We would invite all of you to be members of the Hub. It should pay for itself. That's how we designed it. With the discounts you receive as being a member, that should take care of covering the cost of being a member. So hopefully that's a wash for everybody.

I just want to address. Some of you guys are asking. You've been in RBC before and you have the old workbook. You guys, this is the current one. This beast right here, the one that we had last semester. This one, this new one's even bigger and it has more graphics in it. More like charts to work through.

More.

More creativity in it.

It's less spelling errors. Less spelling errors as well.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We actually, we. We had someone proofread it and put her sample of love and approval on it. And Sorry about the errors in the last one, you guys, but I'm just telling you, this workbook is. It is a gem. It is. We're so freaking proud of it. I cannot. I can't wait for you guys to see it.

So I love it. Okay, Is it ready to download? Yes, Amy, it is. So again, if you are already an RBC in retail boot camp, it's in the group, it's in the modules. You can go to the intro modules and you can either download it, print it yourself, or you can order one where we've printed it, bound it, and we'll flip it right to you because it's like 300 pages. It's a lot.

Yeah, I see Ashley Wilkins. She said she printed hers yesterday. Yeah, it is a beast.

Yeah. And then Ashley Pope, I see your question. Does RBC Fast 25 still work with payment plans? Yes. And today is the last day to use that code for $100 off, plus the two free handbooks that will end at midnight tonight. So you can do that and do the payment plan in addition to it to make it as affordable as possible. Okay. If you purchase it, can you pick it up at Wesa? No, they're only. We are using a 3 PL this time. Eric and I used to ship these with our own two hands. We. With basketball and travel and all that, we just don't have the time to do it anymore. So we sent them to A3PL, so they've got to be shipped from there. The workbook is free to download with rbc. If you want the done for you bound printed version, we paid to have those produced, so there's a small fee for those if you want the done for you version. Otherwise. Yes, print. Print it out for free. Okay. All right. Lots of good questions. I think we're. Are we caught up? We're good. Should we get into it? Yeah, let's do it. Lisa. RBC fast 25. That's the code. The girls can help you in the chat too. All right, let's go. Let's get into it. Inventory, financials, profit first. This is all coming from layer two here in our six layer formula. And again, we're talking about inside of retail Bootcamp. We go into so much detail about the products, the pricing of the products, the turn rates, the formulas, inventory management, and then profit first and how to put more money in the bank. So that's. That's the goal and the focus today. So where do we start, Sarah? Let's talk about trends. Not just apparel trends, but all lifestyle trends. How do we decide first, how we're going to have a great assortment in 2025.

Yeah. I'm curious when you guys are thinking about what are you going to be stocking and putting in your store, where are you guys being inspired? Love to hear from you guys in the chat. Like where, where do you get your inspiration? Currently. Myself. Market. Celebrities. Yes, Walking. Walking. Showrooms at Market. Okay, perfect. You do polls. I love that. Whoever said they do polls with their customers? Pinterest. Yes. Yeah, all of these things. All of these things. And you know, when you sit back and you look at some of the biggest trends that have come out lately, we can, we can follow those trends back to a celebrity, back to a, a TV show or a movie or a, a singer or something. Right. So often, so often they're attributing to what we're, what our fans, our customers, I, I like to call them fans are wanting. And so then it's up to us, it's up to us to have, have some trend on hand and have some trend like in the background. And I know Oola's on here from Faves today. And this is, you'll see as a hub member, you'll see a lot of information about, about Faves and about different ways to like, hold on to your ideas of what you want to bring in. So when the time is right, you have that inventory found curated so you can fill those collections.

Right.

But the thing is like, you don't want to just go, you don't want to just go to an, a wholesale platform or a market and go into the very first booth you see and buy whatever it is they say is hot. That's what we, I just want to say that's what a lot of people do. And then they say, well, I just, I look like everybody else. Yes, you do. You still, if you want to be a boutique, you want to be unique, you want to be authentic, you want to be, you want to be you. You still want to make sure whatever you're putting out in front of your customers, your fans relate to them. So what we like to do is we also, we put together this trend report. We've got the QR code here for you. But with that, it's a lot of also education on becoming a wholesale buyer. There's information there on the home decor and gift trends, what we're seeing in the industry, what industry experts are saying are coming, you know, coming across, you're going to be seeing them at future markets. There's a lot of different things on the inspirations for collections. And you know, a collection is something that is that story, that story that you're putting together for your fans to be inspired and to discover and to potent eventually buy from.

Right?

It's not dresses. It's the wedding dresses or the, you know, orchard, you know, going to the apple orchard or the pumpkin patch or it's, you know, it's, it's the, the holiday collection. It's those kind of things that really help somebody narrow down. What am I going to do with this outfit or what am I going to do with this collection or that, this purchase.

Right.

And how am I going to use it? The idea, I just, I want to say when we're thinking about inventory that we are selecting for our customers, keep in mind, you guys as the retailers, you guys see these trends. You're reading the magazines, you're looking, when you watch, when you watch TV shows or whatever, you're looking at the clothes or the home decor or the hairstyles, you're looking at it through the lens of a CEO of a business. It's like, how can I make money on that? You're not looking at it just for entertainment. Your customer, your fans typically are looking at that for entertainment. And then eventually they're like, oh, wow, I'd like to look like that. And where do they turn? Well, if they're fans, they turn to you.

So good. I've seen some questions in the chat just about trends are different in different locations, and I want to call attention to that. Sarah and I both can speak to this. Growing up in North Dakota, how fast do you think the trends got to us? Not very fast. Not very fast. But you know, what's so different about today is social media. It changes everything. Everyone's access to trend is just so much faster. And of course, not everyone's gonna, you know, go all in on, let's say bows or leopard or red or whatever the trend is. But typically you will see them at some point, point in time trickle into your location. If you're like me and from the North Dakota originally. So it's really important to just stay up on what is that opportunity? And again, how do I stay ahead and be, you know, if it's like Ricky Bobby, if you ain't first, your last. So how do I, how do I stay at least aware of what that is, even if I'm not ready to stock it yet? So what you guys see here on the screen is this is our 2024 spring and summer trend report from the Hub. Just kind of. This is an apparel piece.