Boutique Chat Podcast - Lessons Learned from 2022

Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works, from mainstream fashion to fashion on Main street and the entire ecosystem behind it. How do we scale your company and do it with the balance and the happiness that we all seek? Let's hear from those insiders, experts, and strategists that actually make it happen. I'm your host, Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub, and I can't wait to chat. I am so pumped that you're here, because if you're like me, the end of year just feels different, right? It just is a different way of operating. It's a different way of showing up, and it's also a different level of excitement. I think there is so much to learn and to gather and to reflect on this time of year. So I'm pumped that we're going to spend the next several minutes together because I want to just look back with you and talk about the last year that we maybe survived or maybe we thrived and. And learn some lessons together. And then let's talk about what is gonna happen in this industry and in your business as we move forward. You guys, I have so much. I have so much I've been busting at the seams that I wanna talk about. So get ready, buckle up. I cannot wait to hear your opinions on every single one of these things. So send me a message over on the gram at ajalderson, my personal account, or at the Boutique Hub on Instagram, and let's talk. I'd love to hear what your biggest takeaways and your biggest lessons from the last and how these hit and resonate with you. So let's talk through my list of our biggest lessons learned in 2022 and what we can learn from each of them. You ready? All right, lesson number one, you guys, this is a big one. And I'm gonna hit you right with the feels and the opinions right away. How many of you watched the documentary? Lula Rich, raise your hand. Okay. Better yet, how many of you lived through it? Because I know many of you did. Many of you were a part of that entire journey. I think that watching this journey unfold in the last year, not just about the documentary, but really seeing friends of mine, actual business owners who lived through this journey, seeing them change and grow and explore, has been really, really fascinating. So let's look back. As I look at the documentary and I think about what happened with Lularoe, the company, both good, bad, and indifferent. I think there's definitely some takeaways. So number one, I'd say this, that cult mentality of getting behind a person or an idea or a movement is incredibly powerful. It will build a brand, it will create fomo, it will create a community and sisterhood and all those things that not only go along with Lularoe, but so many MLM companies because they all have that cult mentality. I've been part of some of them myself and there's nothing wrong with that. I think rather than shaming the MLM community, right, and Lularoe specifically, I think that each of us need to take a step back and ask, wow, what can my business learn from this? And how can I create that tight knit community within my own independent retail business or whatever my business might be? How do I create a community that is ride or die and they are ready to buy or to sign up for or to believe in whatever it is I'm talking about at that moment? So cult mentality definitely will build your brand. A couple other lessons I think are really important from Lularoe are make sure there is a huge difference in your mind between females competing and females empowering. And I can tell you this coming from the boutique hub where ever since we started almost 10 years ago, our motto has been community over competition. Some people eat, sleep and breathe that. Some people are such great examples of that. And some people are honestly terrible at it. Some people cannot get past the competitive nature and the I feel better about myself when I can tear you down mentality. Some people struggle with that. Just make sure it's not you. Are you truly living in community over competition or is it a motto that you like to post on Instagram, but as soon as no one's looking, it's completely different? There's that old saying. I'm not sure if you guys have heard of it, but I know my parents used to say this all the time. Character is who you are in the dark and don't do anything unless you'd want it to read on the front of the newspaper. And when I think about competing versus empowering, there's a lot of truth that goes with that. So how can you lift someone up? Because truly, community over competition in my mind is when two or more businesses come together, we become a destination or we become more powerful working together than trying to tear one another apart. And when you walk down that old wine aisle or the bread aisle at Walmart or any supermarket, you can tell there's more than enough to go around. And I think the same is absolutely true in this industry. Now, a couple other lessons I think that we can definitely gain from Lularoe. And I'd say number three on my list actually for Lularoe is this. There is a huge difference in the personality and the retail art side of your brand and the retail science side of your brand. And I think so many of my friends that came from Lularoe would agree. They were great at live selling and building a community and excitement and the social media side of the business. But when so many exited Lularoe, maybe they struggled at actually building the business and understanding inventory and margins and team and actually running a fiscally responsible business. So it's been fun to see so many people actually figure that out going forward. So definitely a side between the retail art and the retail science side of your brain and you have to have both. Now, the last lesson I would say learned from Lularoe is there's many ways to do things right. We all can't look like one another. We all can't wear the same leggings every day. We're going to get bored. And I feel like in the last year maybe a downfall in the retail industry is so many boutiques started to look alike and maybe not in the best way, right? I can only take so many color block tops with leopard and some color blocked, random color and some other random pattern put together. Like, I can only see so many of them. And I want boutiques to go back to being fashion again. So I think there is a lesson to be learned going forward that you can definitely be too much like your neighbor and not everyone wants that. Which leads me into another lesson learned in the last year, and that is let's make boutiques unique again. Again, this is a huge lesson. So many boutiques, I feel like, started to look like one another. They started to source from the same brands, buy the same products. It became almost like there was a product Chase in 2022. And I don't care if it was CBD cream or tooth whitener or those, gosh, those ugly color block tops. Sorry, guys. I know you made a lot of money with them, but some of them got really ugly at the end of the day, right? Whether it was any of those things or my goodness, toys, toys of a very personal nature which are going crazy right now. There is money to be made in the product chase, but there's risk as well. And that is that you become just a clone of some other random social media boutique just selling something, but maybe slightly cheaper than the next. So I challenge you to really look and say, am I uniquely serving my customers Am I solving problems? Am I building a memorable brand? Am I standing out from the crowd? Or am I looking just like everyone else? So make boutiques great again. Make boutiques unique again in the next year. Definitely a huge lesson learned in the last year. All right, lesson number three from 2022 is spam. Spam. Stop clicking on those God dang spam links, you guys. I bet every single day inside of our membership at the Boutique hub, in one of our niche Facebook groups, someone would ask this question, is this spam? Or someone would say, hey, do you have a contact at Facebook or Instagram? I completely lost my account because I clicked on something I shouldn't have. So my challenge to you in learning from this lesson is making sure when you get an email from Facebook or Instagram that you look at the return sender, look at the email account it came from. If it came from a Gmail account, market as spam, block them. Do whatever you have to do. Investigate the email if it is officially coming from a company that you're familiar with. Make sure those links make sense, make sure the domain makes sense, make sure the address makes sense, and if the spelling is wonky, I would definitely give it a second thought. Now, my experience has been with Facebook and Instagram, if you are actually getting a notification about your account, it will send a notification to you on the home screen. It will take up your entire screen for every single admin that's listed on your account. That's where official notifications will show up. Not just in your notifications, not in your email. Right. You've got to be really careful. There's also Facebook pages that are named something like Official Page Notification of Facebook. But when you go there, it's like a page from Turkey and they have, you know, two friends and something is spelled wrong, but they're tagging you in a post saying your page is going to be disabled if you don't click this link right now and basically grant us permission to your entire Facebook activity. So be really careful. Be a better investigator, because so many retailers are clicking on these links and they're losing everything in the process. Don't let that be you. Lesson number four from 2022. Man, let's do this. Lesson number four in 2022. Collections are king. Lesson number four is collections are king. I feel like maybe this is something I've preached about for a while. So I'm a little frustrated that I'm saying that this is a lesson in 2022, because I think this was a lesson way back in 2018, the collections were king, but I think more people finally started to adopt it and run with it and execute really well on it in the last year. And what I mean by collections are king is this. Your customer shops for very specific reasons. And if you were to sit down and look at the 52 weeks out of the year, you could map out 52 different reasons your customer wants to shop with you. So build collections around those ideals. Is your customer going to a summer wedding? Is your. Is your customer decorating for Halloween? Is your customer shopping for. You know, how many different people over the holidays? Is your customer looking to outfit their kid for graduation or send a graduation or teacher gift? Why is your customer shopping when you can put yourself in the seat of your customer and then start to build product collections around your customer's actual needs so that you can fill them and so that you know you can think about Ricky Bobby if you ain't first year last. You got to beat Target to launching the collection because Target will get you every time, right? They're pushing holiday six months ahead of time. You have to be just as fast. So think about being Ricky Bobby. Launch those collections early so you can fill your customer's need before she realizes she needs them, right? Be ahead of the game. So build collections into everything that you do. And I will say, this is a huge reason why when we built Hubventory, Hubventory is our wholesale marketplace at the boutique Hub. You can check it out@hubventory.com you don't have to be a member to shop. Anyone can shop. But we built boards much like Pinterest into Hubventory so that as you're shopping and planning what you're going to buy, you're not just putting everything in your shopping cart, but you're actually pinning and creating collections as you go so that you can buy in that same mentality and then eventually push all of that live directly into your Shopify account. So, of course, check out Hubventory. But second to that, definitely be thinking about collections in the new year. And map out for 52 weeks, what collections can you be featuring in your business? All right, last little takeaway that I want to mention. Takeaway. What am I on? Number five from 2022 is. Oh, this is such a big one. Trademarks. Trademarks. Stop selling what's illegal. Stop selling what's illegal. Just today, just before I recorded this podcast, you guys, I was in, like, a wholesale beware type of Facebook group. There's several of them out there, but one, one post in particular was talking about how a T shirt vendor sent them some crappy merchandise and they were upset about it. But when you look at the merchandise, it was a knockoff Chanel logo. And I thought, am I taking crazy pills? I just, I can't even help it. Number one, why would you buy that? Number two, if you're a T shirt brand, why on earth would you risk your entire business, your entire well being, your entire future by putting someone else's logo on your stuff? Right? You guys think about it like this. How would you feel if you woke up tomorrow and someone took a picture of your face and put it on a T shirt and sold it and made millions of dollars, but it's your face and you actually got zero. That's how every brand in America feels when you take their logo and put it on a T shirt. Or you as a boutique owner buys it and sells it. It's illegal. If you don't have the proper licensing agreements, you're not allowed to sell that merchandise. I don't care if it's the Yellowstone logo, if it's a picture of rips face, if it's a white claw that you've slightly altered, right? If it's a Starbucks logo, if it's a Disney logo, if it's a sports teams, high school, college, NFL, NHL, any of them logo, if it's Dolly Parton's face, oh my gosh, if it's Louis Vuitton, if it's Chanel, it doesn't matter if it's a logo or if it's replica of someone famous or the lyrics to their song. And you don't have a licensing agreement you've paid for because you have to pay for them. If you don't have that, it is illegal. And not only is it illegal, not only will you get busted by the feds, not only are there fines and penalties, but you can lose your entire Shopify account, all of your social media accounts, and essentially your business. So this is something we've watched. I mean, I would say hundreds, if not thousands of stores go through and I'm still flabbergasted every day that people are still doing this. So excuse me if I sound like your mom. Your mom, that was my Wisconsin accent. If I sound like your mom, and I'm totally on a soapbox right now. But you guys, we have to stand up, like, we have to stop doing this. You might make a couple hundred bucks, but when you lose several thousand, it's going to hurt. So don't do it. So, biggest lesson that's number five in 2022 is stop selling what's illegal. Trademarks are protected and you don't want to risk it, right? Your time and your life and your big why in your business are far too important to risk than to go down that path. So be very careful. All right, last one. I'll say lesson number six and I'll wrap it up here from 2022 is this profit in your business is actually found in efficiencies and systems. Now, 2022 was a tough year for a lot of people, right? It was a weird year, right? Maybe you had a couple record months, but maybe you had some months that really left you scratching your head. Like, what is this? Right? There's really not a new normal. We're all trying to figure it out as we go. And it's just different than it's been in this industry in the past. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, right? They say never waste a good recession. There's opportunity in all of it if we choose to look for it. And one of the biggest opportunities and lessons that I feel came from this in the last year is we all were very focused for time on cutting expenses. But I learned this early on from a mentor. You really can't grow a business by cutting expenses, right? There's management and we have to be smart in cutting expenses. But you really only can grow a business by focusing on new revenue. So one place there is new revenue is in building efficiencies and in building processes. And truly, it's probably like the lamest, most unsexy thing anybody talks about. They don't make reels and tiktoks about like, oh, look at how efficient I am. Look at this new process that I created. No, it's about, look at, I went to market and it's so fun and I had margaritas and I bought all the things, right? That's what's attractive about our business. But what's profitable is how we operate on the day to day. So a couple things to look at inside your own business. Number one, unskilled and untrained employees will kill your profit, right? Your payroll is not an expense, it's an investment. When you're actually reviewing and building efficiencies. And this is so hard, you guys. I know so many friends and I guess I would say the boutique hub too. We've really looked through our payroll to find efficiency in the last year and to say, okay, is this really where we want to be spending time and money, right? On doing these tasks? Or could we take our team and shift it in such a way where we could get the most important things done efficiently first and then worry about the rest of this second? So unskilled and untrained employees will kill your profit. Go in, retrain, refresh, refocus with your team and make them as efficient as possible. The second thing I would say is stop touching things twice. Make that a rule of thumb. Put it on a post it note, put it on a poster board, train your staff. Stop touching things twice. Go through every system in your business and look and see where am I backtracking my steps. Maybe it's in picking, packing, pulling. Maybe it's in dealing with customers, customer service, emails. Maybe it's in hanging, tagging, steaming, sorting, merchandising, shipping, uploading products to shopify or comments sold. Or when I'm going live, how can I stop touching things twice so that I can become more efficient? The last thing I would say when it comes to efficiency is the longer we procrastinate, the bigger the problems we create. So slow moving goods, right? Being slow to fire, avoiding bookkeeping. And I mean like good bookkeeping, not just I took all of my stuff in a box to my accountant at the end of the year, but efficient bookkeeping with QuickBooks on a weekly basis. The longer we procrastinate, the bigger our problems become. So how can we look at what's happening in our business and actually eat the elephant one bite at a time instead of being overwhelmed by all of it? At the end of the day, when I think about that, that big takeaway, right? Being profitable and finding profit in efficiencies and systems, it really comes down to this. And it's the question you've probably heard me ask a million times. And in retail bootcamp, I mean, I spent 14 weeks on this question and answering it with you in your business and that's, are you actually the CEO of your business or are you a hustling entrepreneur? And I want to make this invitation to you. If you are a hustling entrepreneur and you're kind of sick of it, and you're like, you know what? I could get more done. I'm so tired. I'm overwhelmed. I'm overworked. I want to enjoy my life, I want to enjoy my business again. I want to get more done. There's more money to be made, right? If that's you, can I please help you? Can I please work with you in the next year? Because I know how painful that can be and how draining it can be. And I've run into so many of you in my travels in the last several months that are there. But so I want to make this invitation. Can I please work with you? So I want to invite you to our best year yet challenge. I've talked about it a little bit on the podcast, but I want to invite you again January 3rd, 4th and 5th. It's free, it's a webinar. It's you, me, our rock star team of Sarah and Shannon and Jeff. And we're going to map out how to make the best year yet in 2023 for your business. So if you're a hustling entrepreneur and you want to get past it, come and join me for those three days. And I want to get to see your face. Actually, I don't want you just to hear my voice. I want to see your face this time. Right. This is going to be a two way relationship between you and me. I would also invite you if you are already the CEO and you're like, ashley, I got this right. I've scaled. But still, those of you of my friends who are CEOs, I know there is still a part of you that's burnt out, it's overwhelmed and you might be profitable and you might be crushing it with your numbers, but you're like, God dang it, I want to enjoy my life just a little bit more. So I want to invite you too. All my CEO friends, all my CEO listeners out there, let's go. Let's do better. Let's talk about what's going to happen in the year ahead. And I seriously want to see your face and I want to get your feedback on what we're talking about. What were the biggest lessons of 2022 and what can we look forward to going into 2023? So for each one of you listening, jump on. There is a link in our show notes today or just message me. It's all over our Instagram. It's for the best year yet challenge. January 3rd, 4th and 5th. And here's what we're going to do when we're together. This is my favorite training of the whole year. I freaking love it. Because there is nothing like starting a brand new year fresh with everything mapped out. Like, I'm so nerdy about this. So here's what we're going to do. Many of you have your boutique boss planners, so I invite you to bring those. And whether you do or you don't, bring whatever planner it is you have and we're going to use it together to do a a couple things. We're going to look back and review the last year. We're going to talk about not just the things I talked about today on the podcast, these five or six takeaways, I've actually got about 12 of them. We're going to talk about what worked and what didn't and we're going to reflect personally on your business in the last year. I've got several questions I want you to answer about your business that we're going to reflect on. Then we're going to talk about. Okay, great. Coming from what we learned in 2022, what do we need to to know about what's coming in 2023? Because I will tell you, our industry is shifting so fast right now with the rise of takeovers and drop shipping and the new way people are buying, how we're stocking our stores, how we're marketing on social media and what is changing with video content and TikTok and TikTok shops. All the things that are coming in 2023, we've got to talk about them. So we're going to map out all those things and I want your opinion and I want your feedback. I want to hear what you think about all those things as we go. And then we're going to deep dive into two really important areas. We've got three days together to do this. So two topics that I really want to deep dive. Number one, inventory. We want to map out your inventory plan for the next year ahead and talk about how to use your dollars wisely because you're probably buying in a very different manner than you have before. Whether you're an apparel shop, a gift shop, a home decor shop, children's, you name it. We're going to talk about inventory. And then the second area we want to deep dive, and this is by personal passion, is your content strategy. I feel so strongly that you can do so much more with less in your content strategy going forward. And that is going to help every single one of you that has told me. Ashley, I'm burnt. I'm tired. Right? This is hard. It's a lot of work and I want to talk about that and I want to make your life a little bit easier because here's where we go in the future. I'm going to give you this tidbit and again, this is something we're going to hit on really hard in the best year yet challenge and that is you're no longer a product based business. You're no longer a retailer. Don't care if you're online or if you're in store, it doesn't matter. It's all the same. You're not a product based business anymore. You are a creator and you're going to be a creator for the rest of your business. You don't have a choice, right? It's where we're going. And so being a creator is different than being a retailer. And I want to talk about what that means, how you can lean into that and how you can use more content. Actually, let me back up how you can use less content to get more done and to make more money because so many of us are stuck in this one revenue stream trap and I'm going to tell you how to get out of it by being a creator. So I have a master laundry list of topics to cover with you. I hope you're as pumped as I am. January 3rd, 4th and 5th, the best year Yet Challenge. Again, it'll be myself and Sarah and Shannon Gordon, the content queen, and Jeff, our digital marketing expert, Facebook ad expert. All the things. And we are going to deep dive into all of it during the Best Year yet challenge. But here's one more bug I want to put in your ear over the next year. And actually, you know what? This is what I'll say. This is also a huge lesson learned for many of us in 2022 and that's feedback. Oh, feedback, right. Did you date your customer and did you get feedback in 2022? I want to tell you about my experience because I did. I asked those of you who are already members inside the hub, you know this, I asked you a ton of questions about the hub and retail boot camp and Hubventory and shopping on the wholesale platform and the planner and the podcast. I asked you all these, like, what do you like? What don't you like? What do you want to see? What are you hungry for? What's working? What's not working? Where do you want to go? And you guys answered, oh my lanta, you answered. And sometimes I'll be honest, taking feedback sucks. Like, it's hard. It's hard. But I feel like if you can take feedback and know, man, this is for the best. If I just listen to your pain point and you guys all do this with your customers every day, right? If I can listen to your pain point and I can fix it and if I can make your life easier, man, this, this feedback gets better and better, right? And my life becomes easier and easier, that's true for all of us. So for me and the Hub, we asked all these questions, we took all your feedback, and now as I'm recording this podcast, we just got done with a leadership team meeting here at the Hub. All of our leadership team flew in, we met, we mapped out the year ahead, we talked about what's good, what's bad, what do we need to do different. And so can I give you a sneak peek? This is really what I wanted to tell you. I'm going to give you the sneak peek. We are completely, and when I say completely, I mean completely, tearing apart our whole membership platform at the hub in 2023 and rebuilding it on a new platform with some tools that I have never seen before and that I'm so freaking pumped about. I cannot wait to get them in your hands. I'll just say this because I can't tell you any more than this, but tracking and understanding your actual data in your business and what's working and what's not, minute by minute, and then having actual what to do about it when scenarios and training played out for you automatically is coming. And it's going to be so freaking life changing for so many of you. I cannot wait to get this in your hands. So this is me saying 2022 was a lot of lessons for all of us. And to put a bow on top of it for me and hopefully for you, you have some time, the holidays, to ask questions and to get feedback. It's the best thing I could have done is to ask for your feedback because it's going to lead us into what's coming in 2023, and I guarantee you've never seen anything like it. And it's going to be so life changing for so many business owners to have access to this type of data. So I can't wait you guys to roll into this new year together with you and to get really excited about your business and what's to come so that you can be excited about your business again. No more burnt out, no more overwhelmed, no more tired, just pure excitement. I want to get back there with each and every one of you. So with that, I'm going to wrap up today's podcast. I want to invite you back next week. We're actually going to wrap up this entire season of the podcast, season four, and roll into season five after the new year, the end of January. So next week is going to be our season four ender. I've got some high notes that I want to share with you next week as we roll into our best year yet challenge in January and then into retail boot camp and then into the unveiling of our entire new membership platform. You guys, thanks so much for being with me today. I will see you back here next week. Shoot me a message over on Instagram @ajalderson or the Boutique Hub and let me know what you thought. What takeaways did you agree with? What were the biggest lessons you learned in 2022? And if you're super pumped for 2023. All right, guys, have a great week. I'll see you back here soon. One of my favorite things to do toward the end of the year is to lay out all of my notebooks, my thoughts, my ideas, my vision board and really dig deep into what worked, what didn't work, and what do I want to do different going forward. And a key component to making sure I end the year right and start a new year fresh is making sure I have a great planner. So you guys, if you haven't had an opportunity yet to visit our BoutiqueBossStore.com and check out our line of planners and paper products and content creators built with boutique owners specifically in mind, I encourage you to do so. The Boutique Boss Planner was created specifically for your business with inventory tracking and reporting, social media tracking, Best of checklists for quarterly, monthly and annual to dos in your business. Plus my favorite part, the month in review that details out what works, what didn't work, how did your business perform, inventory issues you might have had, and how to plan the next best month ahead. So please check out.