Boutique Chat #217 | 7 Keys to Productivity | Ashley Alderson, Founder of The Boutique Hub

Who is ready to get productive already? Hey, it's episode number 216, and it's time to talk about the seven keys to being productive just for boutique owners. 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, strategists, that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. You know, if there's one universal struggle that I think so many of us have, whether we're boutique owners or wholesale brand owners or we run our own business doing, you name it, it's that there's not enough hours in the day to accomplish all the things we want to accomplish. And now maybe part of the issue is actually that we're all just overachievers as entrepreneurs, and we want to keep doing more and more and more. Right. Have you ever been there? You feel like you set a goal, and the second that you hit the goal, you're not satisfied because now there's new goals to hit? Well, I think time management is pretty similar. As an entrepreneur, if we could fit in more into every day, we would. But think about how could we actually start doing more with less so that we could get back to living the life that we actually want to live as a part of being an entrepreneur? I would venture to guess that not many of you started your entrepreneurial journey to work more and potentially make less. Right. Most people get into business and boutique owners specifically because they want freedom. You know, a lot of us have kids and families and sports and all these other things happening. And the idea of being an entrepreneur is so appealing because we want the freedom and flexibility to enjoy life with our families along with running a business. But if we're not careful, the business can soon run us. So if there's one thing I really want to drive home today, it's a struggle that I face myself, and that is of being the bottleneck of your business. Right. Being the bottleneck of your business means being the control freak that we all are on the inside and thinking that all of the decisions have to run through us. And essentially what happens is all of the business gets slowed down because there's not enough time in the day to handle all the things that are on our plate. So today, I want to walk you through how to not be the bottleneck of your business by giving you the seven keys to productivity. Now, I say it's for boutique owners, but truthfully, this is for anyone and everyone. And I want to make sure you're taking notes because you guys, there is some gold in here that has saved me a ton of time and is, you know, some tips and tools that we've actually used inside of Retail Bootcamp and some other trainings that we've done inside of the hub. And so I know that these little ideas have saved hundreds of our members hours and hours of time as well. So let's get started, shall we? All right, let's jump into it. Tip number one in terms of the seven keys to productivity, and that is how you manage your calendars, right? I want to give you a strategy for calendar management that you may not have thought of before, because so many of us take our calendar just one day at a time, or maybe one week at a time at best. But the truth is, if you're going to be successful in business, in marketing, and especially if you're a boutique owner with buying, you have to manage your calendar six months to a year in advance. If you're going to markets, you have to be able to know when to buy, when things are coming in, and how you're going to start marketing for seasons. Because if you're going to start marketing back to school in September, honey, you have missed the boat. It is time to start marketing Christmas in July, folks. If we could just start planning ahead a little bit better. So here's how you do it. I want you to go ahead and grab a good old fashioned wall calendar. You know, like the kind that they used to sell at the seed store growing up. Actually, truthfully, they didn't sell the calendars. It was like a freebie that you got for doing business at the feed store. Or maybe that was just us. So you get the old fashioned wall calendar. And what I want you to do is start going through it month by month and circling all of the big holidays and the big seasons that are coming your way. So Christmas, Black Friday, shop small Saturday, cyber Monday, giving Tuesday, Valentine's Day, Fourth of July, you name it. All of the major holidays, retail holidays, and then holidays specific to you and your store. So your store's anniversary or any big events that are happening in your community, if you have a brick and mortar or anything else you want to be prepared for online that you typically take part in throughout the year. All right, so I want you to walk through the entire year 12 flips of that calendar to get through the whole year and highlight the big stuff. Step number two, I want you to go through again the whole year 12 flips and I want you to start adding in buying seasons. So what markets are you going to be buying at and what seasons are you going to be buying for and what are your customers really needing most at that time? Therefore, when do you need to start buying for Christmas? When do you need to start buying for back to school? And when should you start your marketing schedule for similar holidays? Right. When are you going to start marketing for Black Friday and the holiday season as a whole? And when are you going to start marketing for back to school? Right. Those are really big topics that again don't just affect marketing, but that's where your dollars are going to be allocated throughout the year as well. Step number two, once you've gotten through the 12 month calendar view, now I want you only to just go all in with the next three months. So for the next three months I want you to get even more specific about what are products you know you have coming in. What are social media holidays like? National Hot Dog Day? Is that one that you celebrate? Maybe not maybe National Ice Cream Day, National Selfie Day, National Best Friend Day? Heck, National Margarita Day. We all need to celebrate that one. Right? Start adding those in in those next three months, just the three months that are coming up to you closest. Right. And then any other specific marketing things you know you need to create. If there's Facebook ads, campaigns that you know you want to run for, some of these things. Start to mark in as much detail as you can for the next three months. All right, Final step to maximizing your calendar is the next month alone. Now, how we do it inside of the hub is we have this opportunity to that we're going to be sharing with you called the Content Sanity plan. And the Content Sanity plan is something that I developed a while ago after being totally overwhelmed with social media. And it's how we maximize key pieces of content every single week and how boutique owners can do the same thing and then take those six key pieces of content and share them in numerous ways across social media, emails, marketing and schedule them ahead of time in like a plug and play type Excel calendar. So what we do is for the next month only, we fill out our entire calendar in our Excel spreadsheet. For this content sanity method, we plug and play everything wherever it needs to go and it's highlighted in black in our Excel spreadsheet. Then once you've got the month done Every Monday morning, you can sit down and maximize, one week at a time, what content actually needs to be created. And once it's created, scheduled into Tailwind, hootsuite, planoly later, or natively into the Facebook app. And once those things are scheduled, you gray them out on your calendar so you can keep track of where you're going. Now, I also realize there's a ton of content that you create on the fly each and every week, and so those things are accounted for in the content sanity plan as well. The point is, with tip number one here, mastering your calendar is you gotta have a system, right? If you're gonna start running your business in terms of events and marketing and promotion and social media and buy on a whim, you don't have a business. So get serious about getting a strategy. Maximize the calendar. And once you have the opportunity to grab the content sanity method that we're going to share with you, look for that because it's coming right around the corner. Number two, tip number two for productivity, and that is time block. Time block. I know so many of you in the hub have already heard me talk about this and you're like, ashley, I've tried time blocking already and it was hard. Well, time blocking is really hard to stick with you guys, if I'm being honest. It took me a long time to figure out how to do it, but once I had a method man, did it start to give me my life back at the end of the week. So that's my want for you too. Maybe it's not perfect and maybe it doesn't work all the time, but if you can start to create a system and a routine to your weeks, and it is really going to enhance the quality of time you're able to spend on key projects in your business, but then also with your family. How time blocking works is you would start by looking at your weekly calendar and weekly calendar, which would be like an ongoing weekly calendar. Okay, so every week, where do you first need to spend time with your family? Because I fully believe that you have to start there or nothing else matters. Circle if you've got to pick up your kids from school or summer camp, if you have date nights planned with your husband, if you have some kind of book club that you're a part of, if you work out every morning, start by time blocking and mapping in on your calendar every week. Where there's you time, where there's your spouse or significant other time, and where there's family time. Next step, once you've got your Family mapped into the calendar. I want you to start thinking about all the jobs you do on a weekly basis in terms of batches. So photography, social media, scheduling, ordering, buying, negotiating with vendors, following up with vendors, processing, shipping, staff meetings, social media scheduling. If I didn't mention that, it comes way too often throughout the week. All the things that you have to do on a weekly basis to operate your business. Start thinking about, how could I be more efficient with my time by batching them and doing my photo shoots only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or just Tuesdays, depending on the level of inventory I carry? What days could I really focus in on buying? Or what days do I sit down and spend time working with my vendors and placing phone calls and following up, rather than sitting there with 12 fashion go tabs open every single day, just buying as you go. Because frankly, guys, if you are a boutique owner, you have a bit of a shopping addiction. And that's okay. It's your job. But it can take a ton of time. So be mindful about the time that you're taking on all of these different tasks and start batching them together by time blocking. All right, productivity tip number three. What is the 20 that's gonna get you 80? I'm a huge believer in the 8020 list, right? So if you look at your entire to do list, if you're a list maker on a weekly basis and you start going down your list, have you ever done this? Like, if you're a paper list maker, like I am, and you have to, like, physically feel what it feels like to cross that item off with a pen, and you're like, oh, it feels so good, I'm getting somewhere. Well, because of the endorphins released, when we do that simple little task, it trains us to start attacking the items on our list that are the simplest and that are going to give us the quickest wins. And that feels good in the moment, but what happens after is at the end of the day, we look back and we go, crap, what did I even accomplish today? Right? I checked my email, I checked my DMs on Facebook and Instagram 35 times. And I did all of these quick little responses and tasks. They were on my list. But the big things, the things like analyzing my numbers and scouting new vendors and building a new email automation and updating my Facebook ads, updating my website homepage, those things didn't get done because they seemed bigger. And subconsciously, we put them off to the back of the list, just like we do with so many important Things in life, we go after the easy, quick wins first, and we push the big stuff off till later. So, guys, this is my plea. Please start attacking your list with the hardest things first. So few people do this in life, but I guarantee you this is what sets you apart from everybody else. What is the 20% of your list that's going to get you 80% of the results you're looking for? Right? What are the things that are going to move the needle forward the fastest? All right, number four. Number four is about lists and not just how you attack your list with the 80, 20 rule, but what actually gets on your list. I want to mix a couple things together here, right? Because let me just start with this. A lot of people will look at their list and go, okay, before I start my list in the day, I want to check my email and I just want to tie email back to time blocking, if I can, for a second. What an email inbox actually is, is a holding place, right, for other people's agendas. Let me repeat that. Your email inbox is simply a holding place for other people's agendas. It's very seldom that you get an email that's a huge win for you personally, right? Most often it's customer service and responding to somebody's question or collaboration or asking you for help, which is great. And we all have to do that, right? That's a part of the job, that's a part of business, and that's also how you're going to grow. But subconsciously, as you start to set your day up every single day, if you start your day working on everyone else's agenda versus your own, it's going to be pretty hard to get motivated to get those big rocks done on your list that we just talked about, right? So email comes at a time and place, but it's usually after your big rocks are accomplished or toward the end of the day. So when you're thinking about being productive and attacking your lists, your email inbox comes after your list is first attacked. So if you've been a part of the Hub for very long, you've probably also heard of this strategy called the four part to do list, which you can find inside of the Hub's training library in our Best Year Yet Challenge. I'll walk you through it in great detail. The point is, lists should be managed in a place where you can quickly review them. They can be prioritized in order of priority, but they can also give you that sense of satisfaction in crossing things off. Now, I know some of you love the paper and pen to do list and so do I. But one thing I found that I was doing with a paper and pen was I was kind of a neat freak and I wanted to rewrite my list like 37 times throughout the week, which I found in itself was taking a ton of time. So what I've started to do is a little bit different strategy and I started to use something called Trello. Maybe you guys are familiar with Trello or Asana. Essentially they're project management tools where you can go in and create lists inside of Trello. Our whole team is able to collaborate on numerous boards and our team can create a board for themselves with their own to do list. Or we can create to do lists for different projects we're working on, like the Boutique Summit. And we can see and share on one another's list if we need to collaborate. I like Trello because it allows me to plan out what are the things important to me this month and I can quickly drag and drop and prioritize items. I can make a list for what's important this quarter and the next three quarters that are to come. And that's also where I like to keep track of our annual goals. So again, in Trello, I feel like it's the master list of all the things I want to have coming in the next couple of months and in the year. So that when I'm sleeping and I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm like, oh, I have to remember to do such and such and it gives me anxiety the rest of the night I can quickly open Trello on my phone and drop that item on my board and know that it's somewhere safe and sound and I can get rid of that anxiety and go back to sleep. And then what I do with my paper list is each week I just have a short little paper list of the things that are most important to me this week alone, tip number five, Outsource. Outsource. Outsource, outsource. What are the things on your list that are truly slowing you down? You've probably heard me again, I love some of these tips. I'm going to just share until I'm blue in the face. So forgive me if you're like, heard that. But the question is, are you the bottleneck of your business? Because I've got a post it note that will forever be on my compute asking that question because nine times out of ten I am. I'm being a control freak and I'm trying to hoard all the things onto my plate. But guys, you cannot grow and scale a business that way. You have to be able to let go and let go of more and more things so that you can do more as a team by you doing less individually. So what on your list can actually be outsourced where you, the CEO of the company, can work on the $100 an hour jobs and someone else can work on on the $10 an hour jobs. Outsourcing is how you really evaluate what's important in your business and to you personally. And that's how you really start to grow. And scale tip number six, the three item rule. Have you guys heard of this? I am a huge fan of biography books of people who have been successful in life or business, wherever, and still to this day, one of my favorites is the book about Mary Kay Ash, who started the Mary Kay makeup company. And the one thing she's got a number of things that I think are brilliant in there. By the way, if you haven't read her book, you definitely should. But one thing I still live by to this day is the three things rule. And that is like we were talking about with lists and with the 8020 rule, it's really easy to look at a long list every day and go, gosh, I only got two things crossed off my list. And look how long the rest of my list is. And you feel defeated, like, what did I actually do? And that again goes back to that little subconscious trick we do of I'm going to cross off all the simple little tasks and I'm going to add things to my list like taking a nap so that I don't feel bad about taking a nap. I feel good about taking a nap because I now crossed it off my list, right? Don't put taking a nap on your list because it's irrelevant. Make sure your list are the items that are most relevant to the job that needs to be done and make sure that you have three items, only three items every day that are the three most important items for the day so that you know if you got through your three items. I star my items among the rest of my list so I know what my items are every day. If you get through those three items, you know you're winning and everything else is just gravy, right? So be smart and try to give yourself some grace as you're building to do lists because you've only got so much time in the day. And granted, if you're running a business, you know that fires pop up and and your team needs your help, and your customers need your help. And sometimes technology fails. So give yourself some grace and time by only giving yourself three priorities so that you can start to work ahead on tomorrow's list and feel really good about yourself and where you ended for the day. All right, tip number seven, and that is start to mix your numbers with your marketing. All right, hear me out, because you're going to be like, what does that have to do with productivity, Ashley? Well, here's the thing. If you're obsessed with using day planners, I feel like I'm also a day planner connoisseur on the side. I'm a casserole connoisseur, but I'm also a day planner connoisseur. And one thing that I've learned to be so helpful with day planners as I make my list and then have a planner, I also use Google Calendar, by the way, kind of go back and forth with paper calendars. But one thing I've learned that's really been helpful in business and I've seen this help other people along the way as well, is when you're planning out your to do lists, a lot of times you're making notes about your marketing in your day planner as well. And just like the Old Farmer's Almanac was, it was like, here's what's going to happen. You're going to have rain 90 days after fog. That's what the Old Farmer's Almanac would tell us. So my mom would go like, circle every day that it was foggy growing up because we were farmers, right? This was important. And then 90 days later, she would star like should be moisture. And truth be told, that Old Farmer's Almanac was spot on so many times. And we used it for a lot of different things in terms of like, planting season, haying season, like harvest at the end of the year. Plus, my mom loved it for her garden. Well, the same is true in business. If you start to attack your calendar on a weekly basis like the Farmer's Almanac, and you start to note things like weather and traffic patterns and marketing that you did. Like, I ran this Facebook campaign this week. So not just setting your day up with what I'm going to do, but what I did, what was my done list so that two weeks from now, when your sales start to pick up, you can go, where's this traffic coming from? And you can look back two weeks and go, oh, duh, I tweaked my Facebook ad campaign, right? Or three months from now or a year from now. When you're trying to plan the month of August, you can look back at the previous month of August and go, that's right. That's the marketing promotion I did. That was the weather. That's how many people came, and that was the sales result. This is what I'm going to do differently this year. Right? So the more you can correlate your to dos, your to dones, your weather, your marketing, and your actual sales numbers for the day, the more it's going to help you, you know, three, six, 12 months down the road. So start to look at planning and productivity as a holistic approach to managing your business and what's working or what's not working in your business. Because honestly, you guys, every single one of those seven tips is so tightly tied together. And at the end of the day, if there's one goal, I would want you to feel like, I did it, I accomplished this. At the end of the day, it's to have your life back. It's to have sanity. It's to simply be able to look at your plan at the end of the day and breathe a deep breath and go, oh, it was a good day. And I maximized my day in every single way possible. All right, so if you resonated with any of those seven keys to productivity, I'd love to know which one was your favorite, because it's kind of different for everyone based on how you typically keep track of your schedule now. So if you have a favorite, please do me a favor. Send me a message over on Instagram Jalderson or on our business Instagram BoutiqueHubBusiness, because either way, I want to see your results, and I also want to see what happens once you start to implement this. So tag me, message me, and let me know how this podcast and how this specific episode is working for you. And while we're on the topic of productivity, you guys, this episode comes at such an important time because there's something huge happening inside of the Boutique Hub right now. So as we are just wrapping up our 2019 Boutique Summit and all the chaos that comes with Summit, one of our favorite things that happens each and every year at the Boutique Summit is, you know, Steve Jobs style. We unveil all the new products and tools and additions to our Boutique Hub membership that are coming each and every year. And one of the tools that I am most excited about this year is something brand new. It's never been done before in our entire industry. And that is a planner just for boutique owners. Right? So there's Lots of planners out there, but never before has someone actually made a plan that speaks just to boutique owners and the unique business that we operate. So our team, Sarah Burks and Jesse Jarvis have spent, I would say just about a full year now working on this planner, getting input. You know, I think we've, gosh, probably spent about a thousand bucks just on buying planners and going, oh, I like this layout or I don't like that layout or this would work, this wouldn't work. Until we could finally tailor fit based on all of our own life experiences, the things that would work the best for you. So our goal is to help save time, obviously, but also to create that tailored dashboard for your business so that we can integrate the things that we just talked about. Productivity, your schedule, numbers, marketing, and the old Farmer's Almanac, the weather that comes 90 days after the fog. So what's inside the boutique boss planner is really specific lists and tips for boutique owners on a quarterly, annual and monthly basis. Like a monthly checklist, if you will. There's also a weekly checklist, things that we want to remind you of to help you not only operate your business and your social media and your buying at a higher level, but also to keep you motivated. Right. There's all of the retail specific markets inside and also retail specific holidays. There's daily and monthly sales trackers. So not only are you looking at your Shopify reports, but you're noting everything in your planner as well. There's a year over year sales analysis and then there's tons of critical review notes inside. So reviews on vendors and what's getting the best sell through, what promotions are working, what staff is working the most, what you're open to buy is going to be weather notes and also tons of business tips that are included each and every month. We had some partners inside of the hub, marketing company partners and open to buy planners and lots of people who are associated with different parts of your business on a daily basis. And so we asked them, we're like, hey, can you please help us by giving us more business tips that you think are critical for boutique owners to know on a monthly basis. So those are tailored inside as well. And finally, you know, we're all a little bit different with how we like planners laid out. So this one is actually a spiral bound 8 1/2 by 11 size planner. And because it's our first ever edition, this is what we wanted to do. We created a six month edition so it's June through December so that we could get this in your hands. Get you using it and hear your feedback. Because since we created the Planner from scratch, we're able to make tweaks and adjustments and hear what you love or what you think might be missing so that we can reprint our 12 month edition for a January to December full year Planner opportunity after we get your feedback. So guys, if you haven't already snagged the Planner, go to the BoutiqueBossStore.com or go to the BoutiqueHub.com it's linked up on your membership down dashboard and grab a copy of the Planner. And then don't forget, use BoutiqueBossPlanner, show us how you're using the Planner so that we could get your feedback and continue to grow this thing as we go. So as always you guys, thank you so much for being a part of the Hub. Thank you for listening to the podcast today and I can't wait to hear which of the seven productivity tips you're going to put into action. So send me a dm, let me know how it's working for you. And I can't wait to see what you guys think of the Planner. You guys, I hope you have a wonderful week ahead and we'll be back here same time next week. 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 act, access complete show notes and bonus downloads from our guest, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.