Episode #209: Balancing a Large, Growing Business and Being a Mom with Tori Gerbig

Well, hey there. Are you guys ready for this one?

It's episode number 209 with someone I know you are going to love to hear their story.

Get ready to hear from Tori Gerbig.

From the Pink Lily Boutique.

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.

You know, I think inside of any industry, we all have people that we look up to as leaders or people who've paved the way or people who've done something unique in the space that we're all building in. And so I know today many of you are probably already familiar with the Pink Lily Boutique and Tori Gerbig and have kind of watched this really unique growth from afar, saying, man, what is she doing? I want to do a little bit of that because I think it's pretty unique and special. So I'm really excited today, you guys, that Tori is joining us on the podcast so you can hear more of her story of what's happening inside of the Pink Lily with the amazing growth that they've had over the last couple of years. And I hope that you get some great takeaways as Tori is really open about kind of lifting the veil to some of their strategy and how they operate on a daily basis, how they're working with influencers and really what's next for some of their marketing strategy. Things like building out into really unique collections to how they work with influencers, all the things that they are doing both on Facebook and Instagram. Now with over 1.6 million followers on Facebook and 500,000 followers on Instagram, I hope there's some fun nuggets that you're able to pick up through this conversation. Guys, I think it's so cool. Anytime we can have a conversation with somebody who's not only a leader in our industry, but it's also a member of the Boutique Hub and someone that's been kind and made themselves open to conversation with our entire industry, I think that's really cool to watch and to celebrate. So I'm curious to hear because, you know, I'm big on action. We all can be motivated by listening to a podcast, but motivation only takes us so far. Action Takes us the real leg of the journey. So I want to hear let us know over on Instagram Boutique of Business or on my personal Instagram @ajalderson. And let me know what is your biggest takeaway from today and the one thing you're going to do to take action on on what you learned each and every week. I love hearing these stories. So you guys don't forget to do that, tag us over on Instagram or mention it in your story. We're happy to repost it for you. But at the end of the day, what this is all about is how can we lean in together in community over competition and help one another succeed in the boutique retail space.

So thank you to Tori for being.

Our special guest today and I'm really looking forward to hearing your guys takeaways from this episode. Enjoy you guys.

All right, guys, I know you're in for such a treat on the podcast this week because our guest is someone that if you have been around the boutique world for any amount of time, this is definitely going to be no stranger to you. So I am so excited to be joined by the co owner, co founder, CEO of the Pink Lily, Ms. Tori Gerbig. Hey, Tori, thanks for being on the show today.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited.

Oh, man. Now you and I went back and forth for a while to put this together. I know you're such a busy woman, so I'm so happy that this worked and that we're able to get together because we're going to drop a lot of bombs today.

Yeah, for sure. Thank you so much for having me. And I do apologize. It takes so long to get anything on my calendar because my days are just so jam packed these days. For sure.

Absolutely. Well, let's start at the beginning. I know we've got a lot of really specific topics that we want to cover so that everyone listening has got some great takeaways and inspiration today. But no, I think to set the stage, let's go back to the beginning. As every story begins, talk to me about the Pink Lily, how it got started and just kind of how you stepped into this evolution of growth that you've had up till today.

Yeah, basically how it got started was my husband and I were just looking for another way to pay off student loans and pay off some debt. We both worked full time, so we started selling things on ebay here and there for a few years. But then after my son was born, I was on maternity leave and, you know, it was kind of the Beginning of online boutiques. Very few were out there. It wasn't very many at all. And I was like, you know, that's something I really think that I would like to do. And I think I would do it well, but I don't want to just start a website. So what I did was I got my reseller's license at that point and started selling clothes. I started a Facebook group. So I was literally just selling clothes out of my house and out of the trunk of my car. I was meeting people all around town four or five days a week. They would come to my work and pick up stuff, but basically like just a clothing dealer, like outside of my, my vehicle. So I, it got to the point where it was just too much. I was so tired of running everywhere to meet people. And as much as I wanted to, I just, I knew we had to launch a website because I. There was so much more interest and so many more women that wanted to shop with me. But I was only one person and I was literally driving to and from everybody, like to see my collection and like hosting events every weekend. And there was just so much interest. So from there we just decided. In January 2014, we launched our website and it just, it took off from there. Oh, man.

So 2014, so fast forward, Gosh, I'm just trying to think. Instagram was pretty new around that time and you started to get traction pretty quick after you took off on the website. Would you say there's help that you had along the way or one strategy that you were like, man, once I launch this website, this is what I'm going to do to keep the ball rolling.

And I do have a marketing degree, so I'm really good with social media marketing because I did go to school for that. And I graduated college in 2009. So, you know, this was just five years after college. I have a lot of information fresh in my head. So basically all I did the first year was sell our products through Facebook, not through their platform. Like, I just directed customers from Facebook to our website. But I did not focus on Instagram. I barely focused on Pinterest. I was like, you know, running it for the first six months all by myself. So I did all the social media and the orders and everything. So it was literally just okay post a few times on Facebook. But back then everybody saw, you know, as a page, it would just show up in their feed. So I would do contests and we grew really fast to having, you know, three and 400,000 followers within a six month time span. So anything you'd post, you know, four or 500,000 people would see it. So. So of course that's not today's Facebook. Like it's totally changed, but it grew really fast, really quickly due to social media, man.

So fast forward me to today because it's crazy how that takes place when social media was organic back in the day. Today you guys, I know, have been really nationally recognized with BigCommerce. And I know you've been writing for some big magazines. You've got a new warehouse. What does the business look like today versus back then? Tell me a little more on that.

Yeah, back then, right after we launched in 2014, for the first seven months, we did it right out of my house. So our first million dollars of sales came from my dining room table. So that's where we packaged orders. We did. The post office hated us because they'd have to pick up every day like 100 packages. It was just basically my husband, myself, my mom and my sister in law and we were still working our full time jobs for a while during that time frame. Then fast forward to today. We've got our 50,000 square foot warehouse. We have, you know, 55 full time employees. We just had a meeting about an hour ago about bringing on at least 10 more full time employees. Because of our growth, we have a studio for photo shoots right upstairs. We have pickers, packers inspecting team, monogram team, our graphic tee design team, marketing team. Like just a huge overall corporation. And our retail also, we have one retail store now too. So definitely changed very quickly in five years.

Pretty crazy rapid growth right there. At what point did you and Chris look at each other and go, holy smokes, like we've got something. We've got a rocket ship here. We better change paths or take this seriously or whatever. That conversation was like, when did that happen?

That was probably about four or five months in. That was like right before I quit my job, of course. Course, you know, the first four or five months I was working full time, we did have a toddler running around and doing this on the side. I would stay up till two or three every morning. You know, I was like trying to find new clothes, look, talk to vendors, schedule, post on Facebook for the next day. Then I'd wake up and go to work eight to five, come home, take care of my son. After he'd go to bed, from 10 to two or three, answer questions. So it was just, it was too much. And we were like, okay, something's got to give. Like how much can we sell to start Making what we make in our combined salary. You know, like we both had great jobs, probably making $125,000 combined. So that was a lot to be like, okay, we're going to walk away from our jobs now. But we just knew we were like, we have to devote ourselves full time to this because we could do a lot more with it than just doing it as a side hobby. Both of our parents thought we were insane because they're just, you know, a generation where you don't just quit a good job and leave for a job on the Internet, you know, or a job, you know, to be self employed to sell stuff on the Internet. They thought we were insane and tried to talk us out of it. And we just obviously followed our hearts and it was definitely for the best man.

Tell me about this part of the growth. This is fascinating to me to think about 55 full time employees right now. How did you balance or was there a mindset shift that you and Chris needed to make at a certain point where you were like, okay, in order to sustain a level of growth we have now and prepare for the next level of growth that we see coming, we know we need to hire X number of people. How did you balance that process of knowing how much team to bring on at what point? Because you knew where that ship was going.

I mean, we're still trying to figure that out. Honestly, we, we struggle with it because I mean, for the first year, for the first six months, it was just a four man team. By the end of December of 2014, we had done $4 million in sales and there was just six of us. Like we literally ran it lean. The following year we grew to 12 million and we still only had nine of us. We always ran it really lean. And then after that, once we built this warehouse, we were like, okay, now we have to, we have to add labor. Like we have to stop worrying about the payroll expenses because we have to grow the company. So now we're still to that point. Like I said, we have 55. We honestly, with our increase in sales, I mean we're having 1500 to 2000 orders a day. We probably need 75 full time employees or a second shift or something. So I mean that's still, we still talk about it all the time. Like, because we, it was like, okay, now we have 20 full time employees, now we have 30, now we have 40. So like we've never gone backwards. We've never had to let people go. We've never, I mean, unless it was performance, but not because of, you know, we can't before payroll. So we have that conversation probably every few months.

It's such a. It's a shift to go, you know what I'm going to hire for where I'm going, not for where I am right now. And I think that's like a scarcity mindset thing that many business owners really get caught in that trap of what way you're going to look through it. What lens? Was there someone you went to, a mentor or inspiration outside of this industry that you were like, man, someone can talk to me about what it's really like to grow a business of this scale?

Nope. My husband and I have made this all decisions all by ourselves. We would obviously love to have a mentor, but it's really hard to find somebody with the same situation as us because most is there's a lot of people are like, oh, I've been in the industry for 20 years. I'm like, oh, okay, I've only been in it for five years, you know, but like, so we don't compare to just the people who've been in it for so long because we've had such a rapid growth and we've had to make quick strategies and, you know, quick choices. And it's just, I really, I haven't found anybody yet that I can compare the situation to being kind of the same.

Absolutely. And certainly not in this industry. Very unique. Talk to me about, like, that growth along the way. Is there things you look back at and go, you know what, man, that was a. It was a failure, or not necessarily a failure, but that was an obstacle I was facing at the time, or maybe something that didn't go the way you wanted it to go. That looking back, you know, hindsight's 2020 and you're. You're happy that it happened. Was there an obstacle you turned into an opportunity along the way?

Not really anything that turned into an opportunity. There's definitely obstacles that we were like, oh, wow. That we should have, like, thought this through a little bit more. Definitely, kind of with our labor and with like our Black Friday sales and some of that. We promoted and we push and we did so much with marketing, but then we didn't think through how long it was going to take to package all those orders that came in. So we were about two and a half weeks out after our Black Friday sale because we, from Thursday through Cyber Monday had over, I think, 20,000 orders. So that was definitely an obstacle. We couldn't keep the staff, our staff. I feel bad. We had to Work them, like, literally 60 hours. And, I mean, I was in here packaging on the weekends. I didn't. I didn't think it all the way through. I was like, let's push it, push it, push it. Let's sail it. We'll have all these awesome $25 sweaters that are normally 50 bucks. We'll have all these orders coming in. We'll have 150 influencers lined up for the day. And never once did I think, oh, okay, we don't have this stuff to handle all the orders. So that was kind of the biggest. In retrospect, I should have been like, oh, you know, our customers might get pissed if they have to wait three weeks to get their order, or maybe we should try to find more staff to. To do that. But I was just, like, focused on the. Let's just get the sales numbers up there.

Right. Good problem to have. So when you think about organic strategy, I know one thing that you are so good. You just said you had 150 influencers lined up. And I know that's kind of a big question for a lot of retailers today is, man, how do I maximize relationship with influencers? And you just had this really cool trip to Cabo and launched a Cabo collection on your website. Talk to me about that evolution a little bit. And how did you dip your toe in that water and find, like, man, I know this works for my business, or this is the type of influencer I know finally I can latch onto, because it works for me. How did that work?

Yeah, I mean, it's still a learning game because, I mean, we just heavily started getting into it back in the fall. Prior to that, we had, like, a very, very small influencer budget, and we would work with some of the same ones over and over again or, you know, just gift them items. But then from there, I finally convinced my husband. He's the cfo, and of course, I'm the marketing. I oversee all the marketing. So I'm like, we have to increase our budget. So he finally agreed to it. So from there, at first, we were like, let's just find anybody and everybody. But that's just really not how I think about it now. There's so many people, especially with the influencer world, that, yeah, they might have a lot of followers, but those followers don't really convert. So it's not. You've got to kind of learn as you go and, like, give the influencers code, see how many orders they're actually bringing to your site, see how many clicks they're getting for you because you don't want to pay them $500 or $1,000 or $2,000 and then bring in 0 clicks to your site. Like that's not the point of. To me it's, you know, it's just the same as an ad. We want to have a three to four times roi. We want to get a return on that investment that we spend spent for them to post for us. So since the fall, we've gotten pickier with who we use. We do have certain ones that we have a contract with for three to six months to a year. So we're like, okay, here. If you post three times a month for us or six times a month for us, we negotiate discounts with them as much as we can. But for the most part, we definitely try to go after up and coming ones too because they're going to be working a lot harder to bring people and customers to your brand. Sometimes once the influencers get to be a certain level, they're not really that they're like, okay, sure, send me the clothes and I'll post it. But you know, they don't really go above and beyond. And so I try to stick with the ones who do that because there's certain ones that I love so much and that they'll post. Not even paid posts. Like they'll post. Okay, their combo collection too just went live, you know, and like really help us grow our brand too. And so we'll post and we'll tag them all the time. So it's really just kind of learn as you go. You know, we've had some bad experiences, we've had some influencers that we just decided that weren't going to work for our brand and we've had to cut them out. So you just have to, with each one, really pay attention to what they're posting, what their engagement's like and basically who they are as a person. Because I don't like to work with people who just see it as an opportunity to make money. You know, I wanted to make sure that it's somebody that fits our brand and that their followers are really going to be, you know, possibly our customers and that they're just like somebody we want to work with.

Absolutely. And something you said that was so special, spot on and smart was, you know, just because they have the followers doesn't mean they're engaged followers or doesn't mean they're going to convert for your brand. So really making sure they're aligned. Absolutely. Who would you say? I mean, Because I know branding and just like nailing your ideal customer is so important for you. Who would you describe? Is the Pink Lily woman? Like who is that woman who identifies most with your brand? How would you want her to describe your brand to other people?

Just really fun and outgoing. Like most of our, especially our spring collection, it's always bright, it's florals, it's prints, it's not too in your face, but very just like a fun girly, lots of pinks and yellows and fun prints and you know, just something that you could get like vacation styles or you know, event type styles, casual. Basically anything and everything that you want to wear. And I feel like our main customer is, you know, anyone in the early touch to late 20s, 30s, my age, you know, moms who want to look cute on vacation, but they don't really want. They've outgrown certain stores, younger generation stores, but there's not really a lot of 30 year old stores out there. You know, you don't go to 21 when you're 32, so you know that kind of situation. So like I feel like that they, when they're talking about our brand, they're talking about, you know, just like really fun vacation and wear all the time type styles versus, you know, I mean we don't really carry a ton of dress clothes like as in like workwear and we don't really have, I mean we have a lot of casual for sure. You know, we have graphic tees, we have monograms and that's really what we focused on more. So in the beginning we've added the prints along the way and I really feel like, you know, it's just more unique prints and fun patterns for this time of year. So I love seeing all of our customer photos. You know, they're always at the beach or they're, you know, they got some stuff for their trip or their Easter dresses. Easter's huge for us. You know, we always make sure that we do a giveaway on Easter where people can like tag us to enter to win a gift card. And we usually have hundreds of people posting what they wore their dress for Easter, you know, so it's just a lot of fun things that we like to do to see all of our customers dressed up in our items.

You know, I think that's something that you do so well. And honestly, like looking back over the last couple of years to watch the evolution of boutiques, probably something that you did early on that maybe not many people were doing yet was really driving customer engagement. By them sharing on social media like I've ordered from you in the past, and I know it's all over your packaging. And man, that customer photo, getting it with your hashtag on Instagram, on Facebook, wherever is crucial. Would you say like that combined with just massive consistency in your brand photography, your brand style, and just the way that you consistently post on social media. Do you think those three factors combined were really something that drove a ton of traffic over time and helped grow your business to what it is today?

Oh, for sure. I mean, we've had our photographers worked with us since 2014, and she is amazing. So keeping that consistent has been the biggest thing. I mean, she's gotten better over the four years. You can go back to our very beginning photos, and they are not as good, but, you know, we make sure that the way she edits them is cohesive with our Instagram and we want it to look very good. And we want to repost as many customer photos as we can, but we want to keep them engaged with contests or by. We do a lot of emails with like, reviews, like showing, like customer reviews. So then that people know that, okay, if you leave a review, it may get shown too, or if you instastory us, then we may repost it. So we have to stay consistent with it because as soon as we, you know, if we do take a few days off and then, I mean, engagement drops too. So we want to engage with the customers. I feel like overall, I've been asked that question a lot. How do you feel like you stand out versus every other boutique out there? And I feel like even compared to some bigger companies out there, your Nordstrom's and companies like that, we are much more engaged. We do a lot of live videos, we do a lot of behind the brand. Here's the CEO, here's me at our Cabo trip. I'm showing you everything we're doing. This is what it takes to get these photos. This is what the models do during it. And we're really just out there and interacting with our customers and letting them know that we're real people too, too, because they really do enjoy seeing all that. So I feel like as a brand, we do that really well compared to even, you know, like I said, some of your bigger brands out there.

Do you see that? So many people are worried about algorithm shifts and just a constant change of social media, especially with the massive outage Facebook had, which actually is their largest on record, which was nearly 24 hours for some people, and then just changes in instagram do you let any of that bother you or how do you mentally prepare for like the ongoing shift of social media, which can scare so many people?

So I used to let it bother me more a few years ago. Basically in the beginning when Facebook went from being so organic to not so organic, it bothered me more than it does now. Because now we've spent so much, I mean, just as much time as building up our Instagram, we spent building up our text alert in our email list. So our email list has over half a million people on it. Our Text alert has 150,000 and growing by 2 or 3,000 a day. I mean, we're spending just as much time other ways to get them to the site because we do send one to two email newsletters a day and a couple texts a week. So I mean, we're not going to stress about it. Like, if it were to crash, like the day that it went down, we still had 1500 orders come in. And that was just from like the email and text alert. So I mean, we didn't stress about it. Yes, if it kept, if it stayed down, it probably would create a drop in sales eventually for us, but we would probably just find other ways to get them back to the site with ads or something. But I try not to stress about it. We definitely have shifted most of our attention more to Instagram from Facebook in the last two years. We heavily, like, we were way behind on Instagram. I think we had like 30,000 followers, like after two years of being on Facebook and having a million, and we're like, whoa, we gotta get set that up now too. So we've definitely heavily focused on Instagram and growing that in the last two years. So Facebook goes. We still have Instagram, hopefully, but we're not gonna stress about it.

Do you guys have an app as well?

We don't. We've had a lot of back and forth talk with apps because we know how hard it is to get to the people to download the app. And just keeping inventory consistent with our inventory system, it would be just a process. So it's not out of the question, but we don't currently have one.

Gotcha. Now I know you've got your own Instagram following as well, which has also grown significantly in the last year. Talk to me about that. I bet your customers love having that behind the scenes look at everything that's happening at Pink Lily. Much more personal, much more authentic. How did you come to make that decision? And do you find that you enjoy posting on that more than on The Pink Lily page.

Yeah, I mean, I enjoy posting on mine, but I also kind of. It just depends. Like, I try to post mostly work stuff because. And it's even hard. Even with that, sometimes I still have complaining customers in my dm. So I'm like, okay, can you please leave me alone? But I definitely tried to grow that because I don't want. I'm our number one advocate. I'm the. No one cares about this business in the world more than I do. So when we do collection releases, when we do all that, most of the time I'm in those live videos. So I want to show them. I want to show my followers, too, that we just launched something, and I want to have just as many followers, and a lot of them are mostly our customers, but I want them, if they don't see it through Pinkly, to see it through me. So I want to help get them back to the site. So for the majority of the time, I do post Pinkly stuff. I think last night I posted something I got on Instagram or from Amazon, and somebody's like, oh, my gosh, what's the Pink Lily? What's the name on Pink Lily? Cipher me to buy this. I was like, it's actually from Amazon. So, you know, they were kind of shocked, like it was not a Pink Lily find. But, yeah, I mean, for the most part, I do do a little bit of personal stuff and with my family and stuff, but I also. I kind of keep it mostly now just more Pinkly focused because that seems like what the customers and my followers really enjoy seeing.

Absolutely.

Talk to me.

I know you mentioned just a little bit about paid strategy, so we talked about influencers. I know you said you were talking about ads. I'm sure Facebook, Instagram, Google Ads, probably a hefty SEO policy or strategy as well. Is there one area, do you think? Because I hear this question all the time, would you, if you had money, put it in Facebook, Instagram, or Google Ads?

And the ones that have the biggest ROI right now for us, because we do all of it, are the Instagram ads. So we have. We spend about 20 to $25,000 a month on Facebook ads, and we actually spend less on Instagram, and we're trying to shift most of that over to Instagram because our Facebook ads do still convert. You know, most of them are still doing well, but they're converting so much better on Instagram. So our Google Ads, I think, are just okay. Like, they. I mean, obviously, if you type in online boutique, it's going to show an ad for Pink Lily, but I don't feel like other than that, like it's driving traffic to our site. But I do know like the. We also do retargeting ads too, and those do pretty well. But the Facebook still converts and they're still good. But I feel like overall we're getting way more out of our Instagram ads.

Let's shift gears a little bit from paid strategy and from just like marketing in general. And we kind of talked about team at the beginning and I'm still fascinated thinking about this, about growing team and just knowing how much effort it takes to onboard that many people and to interview that many people. Is there a head cheerleader on your team for really onboarding and indoctrinating your team into the Pink Lily way of life? And how do you go about, you know, shifting gears to manage that many people on your team? Is it weekly team meetings or how do you keep everybody on the same page and motivated?

We have a full time HR director, so she does all the hiring and she does onboarding. We just recently started a new like a three week training program once you get started. So they learn if they're in the warehouse, they learn to pick, they learn to pack, they learn to inspect, they learn everything. And then from there my husband and I do weekly or bi weekly, it just depends on the season meetings with our managers. We have a warehouse manager and then we also have a customs department manager for our monograms and graphic tee. We have a team lead with our packaging department and then also a incoming inventory manager. So we kind of meet with them on a bi weekly basis to motivate them. But I honestly don't go step out in the warehouse every single day because my office is right here with the marketing team. But and I don't if it's a picker or a packer or inspecting. They go to their manager to talk to them and ask them the questions. Because I'm already getting bombarded all day long, so there's no way I could answer everybody's question out there. So we definitely do like once a month food days and we do lots of fun events. Like for Easter we do Easter egg hunt. We'll do. We always have a big Christmas party and then like one or two other like work events throughout the year. So it definitely gets people to get to know each other and just team building. I think at Halloween we always do like fun games too. So I mean we definitely try to stay involved with them if there's like a holiday and like do fun team building activities, but for the day to day operations and leadership and team building, I'm not really out there as much to oversee all that just because I have so much work I have to do for myself. And for the end goal for Pink Lily and getting it to where I want it to be.

Would you say as you're looking at that, is there something that keeps you motivated on a daily basis? Just knowing that your schedule is so overwhelmed, overwhelming? Is there a vision board? Is there your why that you're focused on every day? Or what is it that helps keep you on track when you're like, man, I just need a nap.

I thoroughly enjoy my job. So I think that's the biggest thing because I know my husband and I, we go back and forth with talking about this all the time because he's just like, I work with a bunch of women and I'm like, he's like, you have your dream job. But I really, really thoroughly do enjoy it. But my why definitely, of course is always going to be my family and just setting that example to my daughter that, you know, women can run a company and you can be successful in the world and be a leader and still be a woman. So, you know, that's definitely something that motivates me. But just really I, since I have a degree in sales and I've always been really competitive, I've just always wanted to just grow our numbers. So like I always, every single day I'm on Google Analytics at every point of the day, at some point it's on a tab and I'm comparing how many people are on our site versus the time yesterday, how many people were on a site. So I'm like just always just making sure we get a better day than the day before. So it's just luckily I don't have to to stress about losing interest because I've never lost interest yet. But yeah, I think I'm just really determined to, to take it to the next level. So Pinkly is just a nationally known brand.

I love it. You know, a lot of boutique owners are probably listening, thinking, gosh, you know, I wish I was more of a numbers person or you know, because you've mentioned several times in this interview that the numbers really motivate you and drive you in that competitive spirit. If someone's listening and they're like, hey Tori, where do I start with really looking at my numbers on a daily basis and being motivated by them, whether it's financial, from your point of sale system, whatever it is, or Google Analytics and traffic and social media numbers. Where would you tell someone to start in terms of what they should be looking at daily or weekly to get those numbers?

Honestly, both. Like with our, with BigCommerce, I know it's Shopify is probably a little different, but I'm sure there's somewhere on there that shows you the revenue you're at currently compared to the same time yesterday. Or at least commerce has that. So I always have that up and I'm like, okay, what were we at yesterday at this time? Why are we down? What's the reason? What have we posted? What have we done? Did we instastory enough? Have we done this? If we're in that. I've come to learn there's certain days where it's just going to be less, you know, like your Wednesdays may not be as much sales as your Sundays. So I kind of just follow the trend of also where were we were last week? You know, like so far like the week over week. So I definitely look at. We go over week, year over year and day over day numbers every single day. Like that's just. I pull it up, I look at the store performance and then for Google Analytics, I just kind of look to see, you know, like right now it's usually three to 400 people on a site at any given time. During our peak days, like Sunday, it's usually 8 or 900 at any given time. I don't like it to dip too low like of what the averages have been. So like if it does, then I feel like, okay, it's time to be reactive. Let's send a text alert, let's give a coupon code out, let's do something because there people are losing interest. So I don't know, I just, I like, I like to study all the numbers. For sure.

I love it. And actually it's funny, last year at the summit at the Boutique Summit, one of our, like we call it mega boutique owner panels, right. Was talking about that very thing and they looked at it in a similar way as you just described. So I find that to be really unique where, you know, we all try to plan things out as much as we can, but sometimes it's just you have to be in the moment and know your business like the back of your hand so well that you can react at any given moment to those numbers. So I'm glad that you mentioned it that way.

Yeah, for sure.

So working with your husband Chris, we're kind of talking offline before we started recording the podcast. I know this is more common. A lot of women, their husbands have come on board at their company. My husband Eric has come on board here at the Hub. I would love to know from your perspective, how do you guys manage both being working together, but then also having a great marriage at the same time and going home with the kids and just having family time, how do you manage that balance?

Sometimes we love each other and sometimes we hate each other. No, for the most part. Part. I mean, we actually don't talk a ton during work because we do very different jobs. He works with. We. He just hired recently a finance girl who helps him. He does. He works with our accounting team. He works with lawyers. He works with big commerce and all the operational stuff. So me, I'm working with our marketing team and our photo shoot team and things like that. So a lot of times, unless it's a meeting where, you know, one of the manager steps in that she's like, I need to meet with you and Chris. There's some days we don't speak at all. So. And I think that helps because his job isn't dependent on mine and mine's not dependent on his. The only time we do have issues is typically like, if he'll set a budget. And then I go over it, like, he'll go like, okay, here's your spending budget for January. And I'm like, oh, okay, let's be realistic now. But, you know, so the biggest struggle for us, probably honestly, is when we go home. We do want to talk about our day at work to each other like we used to with our previous jobs. But then we realize it's like our own company and it's just, we're talking about that only so, you know, it's like, okay, what else can we talk about to not talk about work? You know, so of course our kids and our friends and everything else. But a lot of times we will sit there and like just on a Friday night, we're like, okay, what can we do to grow the business? And I'm like, okay, wait, stop. Let's stop talking about this. But, you know, but we also are very both business minded, so we do enjoy talking about it too. So it is a give or take. I mean, we don't talk about it every single night, but. And we definitely always make time for, like, hiking and fun things with the kids on the weekends. And. But even while we're doing some of that, we still, like, have ideas come to our brain and just want to talk about them.

Awesome. Awesome. You were talking a minute ago. About your daughter and about showing what it's like to be a female CEO and that girls can do anything they put their mind to. You had a great article also. Was it in Forbes? I'm trying to remember exactly where I saw your article earlier in the year about this.

I've had so many. I don't know, I don't think that one was the Forbes one, but it might have been. I've had like two in there. I usually write them and my PR lady sends them out. So I'm not sure which publication. But yes, there was an article previously about that. I just don't exactly know which one it was published in.

Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, talk to me more about that mantra and really standing up as a female CEO and inspiring others. You know, that you can be the leader of a company of this size, be female and, you know, work with your husband as the CFO and have that type of opportunity. Tell me more your thoughts on that on that balance.

Yeah. Well, one of the biggest things is in my previous job I was selling insurance and there was only two girls who were sales team members and then four men. And, and when I say men, they were like, we were 25 years old. So like they were boys, but for the most part they got to do whatever they wanted. And it drove me crazy because I was always like, okay, I'm working my ass off and you're taking off the whole month of March for March Madness. So I just, I was better than them. Like with my, with what I sold more than them. I was just a better salesperson, but they got recognized more than me. So that was just like something that really bothered me because I felt like I was never, I was better, but I wasn't. Since I was a woman, I wasn't getting recognized. So it was something that I knew that I was like, okay, if I'm going to be self employed and I'm going to do this, I'm going to make sure that I take a stance on that, because that is an issue. I mean, like to be somebody and to be a really good salesperson to, you know, I was selling insurance, but I would have the highest numbers on record numbers every single year. But to like be told that, okay, well, you're not going to be your own agent one day, but we're going to train these, all these men to do it. You know, I'm like, that's not okay with me. So it just doesn't sit well. I mean, I know there's a lot of, even some of My friends who, they're like, well, you know, that's a. That's a man's job. And I'm like, no, no, no. Like, that's not the mentality you should have for anything. I mean, there's just so many men out there who are CEOs, but there's room for that to change. I mean, like, there's a lot of capable women and business minded women out there that can do this. Like, you can be a mom and you can be a family person and you can also run a business. Do I have to make sacrifices? Yes. Do I have help? Yes. I have, you know, a nanny that does help me get the kids to school some days, and she does pick them up if they're sick because I can't just always leave work. And yes, I know a lot of women are like, well, I don't want to be so locked down to work where I have to be there every single day if my kids are sick. You have to make those sacrifices too. So for me, it's just been. I'm gonna set this example because I don't want my daughter to be in the workplace in the future and her to feel the way I did to be a woman and to be a very hard worker and to feel like she's not being recognized in the position because of who. Because of her gender.

Yeah, man, I appreciate you taking the stance on that. I think there's a lot of women that would echo that for sure. Talk to me more about you personally. Should we have some fun questions on this? Personally, trends in your closet that you wish would stay and trends that you wish would die.

Trends that I wish would stay would be athleisure comfy clothes all the time. Because I wear my Lululemon leggings, like, five days a week and just like crop sweatshirts and stuff. Just like, you know, casual, like, athleisure. Trends that I wish would die. I really don't feel like there's anything in my clothes closet that I wish would die.

Are there trends that, as you look back at the evolution of Pink Lily, you're like Chevron.

Sure, Chevron. I remember exactly where I feel like that did die. Thank God. So, yes, the Chevron in the Aztec trend for sure made us a lot of money, but that was just something I'm glad is over.

You probably even going into the future could look back on your business and go, okay, Chevron. Yes. I know exactly where I was at that moment in time when Chevron was trending. And for the normal person they're probably like, I remember that song on the radio and what I was doing when that was trending. But for you, it's fashion.

Yes, for sure. Yeah. I mean, we're gonna probably look back that in a year or two and be like, oh, rainbow. You know, like. But like, right now we like it, but we're gonna probably look at that and be like, okay, rainbow trend, for sure. What were we thinking? But yeah, I mean, the chevron, that one did definitely last a few years. And I was like, I'm ready for it to go way before I left. So.

Yes. Is there one trend that you wish was bigger than it is right now?

Probably more. There's, like, a lot of things that I personally love to wear. Just like your little casual, like, sunflower style dresses. I wish those sold better for us than they do. Like, you're more of your festival type clothing. I know there's a lot of boutiques out there that do well with it, but honestly, on our site, if it's not fun and bright and vibrant, it doesn't tend to do as well. So, like, I still like your muted, like, American eagle dresses, you know, like, stuff like that. But a lot of times they just. They don't go over as well with our customers. So I think we've gotten a customer, you know, that's Southern and our. I mean, obviously our biggest states, Texas, they like your bold, bright stuff.

So, yeah, perfect. Okay. What is your biggest fear? Snakes, payroll, or Internet trolls?

Hmm. Oh, payroll doesn't bother me. It does my husband, but not me. So probably. I mean, I feel like Internet trolls would be the biggest fear because they're kind of mean. So.

Yeah. Do you have any good Internet troll stories? Do you feel like you've come up with a strategy on how to handle them? Because you must have. We must deal with them often with that volume of traffic and customers, I mean, it's bound to happen to every single one of us.

Oh, yeah, we just block them. That's our strategy.

Don't engage and just block them.

Yeah, for sure.

Awesome. Okay, couple more quick questions just to get to know Tori. Tell me your favorite book in the last year.

Oh, well, that's easy because I think I've only read one book in the last year that sounds horrible, but. And actually it was the ebook, so it was Rachel Hollis's girl, wash your face. And I listened to the ebook, and they actually sent me the most recent one for free, like, six months ago. And I literally have not even read it because I have to listen to Ebooks, like, I can't even read because I. I just don't have. I have to be doing other stuff while I'm listening to the ebook. So that's why I can't, like, sit down and actually read a book because I'm just too, like, I have so much to do type mentality that I can't just sit down and relax and read a book.

Do you listen to podcasts too?

I listen to one. It's Brooke Castillo. It's the Life Coach podcast. So I'll listen to that a lot whenever I'm on the treadmill.

Gotcha. How about tell me about your morning habits. How do you get up in the morning and set yourself up for success throughout the day?

So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I go work out with a trainer because I have to. Just because, like, my brain cannot function if I don't, like, go do some strength training. So I'll do that a few days a week, and then I come straight in to work after. The other few days a week, I just come straight into work. So I'll wake up, of course, you know, eat breakfast with my kids. Like I said, sometimes we have our nanny come over and she does breakfast with them and take them to school, but then the day's not. Then get them ready, get them to school, then come into work. So she helps us a few days a week just because it's so much easier for, you know, they go to two different schools on opposite sides of town. So it's like by the time I did both of that, It'd be like 9, 9:30 before. Before I can get in here. So. And a lot of times I have 8am meetings. So. But basically, I'm. Honestly, I don't do anything really, like, cool. Like, I. I would love to wake up and make a smoothie and go sit in my sauna. And like, I think my husband was telling me about Mark Wahlberg. He wakes up at 2am and he works out and he plays golf and he, like, has an hour of meditation. I wish I could do all that, but I really like to sleep too. So usually I just sleep until I wake up and then make a big pot of coffee and come to work.

Oh, my gosh. Well, if we all couldn't live life like life like Marky Mark. Right.

Perfect.

Okay, is there any apps or tools that are on your phone that help make your life more organized? How do you survive with organizational apps that help you?

Oh, I'm completely unorganized. So if you look at my phone at any given Time. I have at least 13,000 like unread emails, which is mostly my personal email, not my work email, but really? Yeah, I don't have anything that's that organ. I probably should get something that helps me. I do have a personal assistant, so that helps me for sure. But she's not an app on my phone.

So you need the human version of organization. Okay, just a couple more questions. So if you could go back in your business, looking back and do one thing differently, is there anything you would change?

The one thing I feel like me personally, I would change in the beginning, I had a lot of family involved with it and my mom was like my first employee. We struggled with that for the first two years because she wanted to do things her way and I wanted to do things my way. So of course she doesn't work here now and I love her to death and she's glad she doesn't work here now either too. But I feel like I would have never tried to involve my family from the get go. It's really hard to work with your sister, your mom, your sister, you know, like, and just like your sister in law and your husband and all of them because you want to make sure you still have a good relationship with them outside of the business. So there would be times where my mom would be like, okay, no, I don't think you should order this style. I'm like, Kathy, you are 65 years old. Like, you can't pick it, you know, so like, and then she wouldn't talk to me for like three days. So I'm like, no, that's not okay. So it was for the best. She doesn't work here anymore and she left and she's so much happier because she watches all of her grandkids, she watches my kids, her, you know, all of her grandkids. And it was just, it's for the better to not really heavily involve a lot of family. Obviously. I think for the people that do might work with their sisters or their husbands, I mean, obviously it's your husband, but it's. You still want to make sure you still have that good relationship outside of work. And sometimes there might be issues with working with that person that can hinder that relationship outside of work.

Yeah, that's, that's great advice. Great advice. Okay, second to last question. If someone's listening right now, which there's lots of people listening right now that look at you as a leader, right? As a motivator, as an inspiration, as someone they aspire to be as they grow in Their business. What's one tip or takeaway that you would like that person to know about how they can continue to grow and have a successful business like you have?

I don't know the one tip like the most important thing.

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

To don't try to do it all yourself. I feel like that's probably too. From year two to year three, we kind of didn't grow a ton because I was so controlling and and I had to do everything the way that I thought it needed to be. But now I let our marketing team come up with ideas and let them handle the marketing. I let our buyers go to LA without me and pick out styles. I've basically handed over a lot of the things that I try to do. I try to do everything. I was doing social media posts, I was doing all the buying. I was doing basically 70 to 80 hours of work and I was stuck. So by me bringing on team members who are doing really, really good buyers who are really, really good marketing team, like they do lives without me every day. Like they went live earlier on Facebook and they. I don't have to be involved in the day to day. Sometimes I just want to. And like with the buying especially, I still have the overall say in most of it, but I have great team members to build and lead the company so I can just sit back and focus on what's going to get us to the next level. So I feel like that should be like a very big thing that people should focus on instead of trying to do everything yourself. You know, finding right creative brains to work with you, man.

Great takeaway. Work on your business, not in your business. Absolutely. Okay, so last question and before I ask this, I just really want to take time. Tori, just thank you for joining us today. I know there's a lot of people who've probably taken away some great notes and found inspiration and just have been able to relate to you on a new level today. So I really want to commend you for coming on the show and for being a part of the hubs community, the boutique hubs community and for leading the way for so many women in this industry. I think that's making a huge impact on people.

Yeah, I definitely want to, you know, inspire as many women as I can.

Yes. So as you're looking at your business and where you see your business growing in the future, let's just say, you know, it's 30 years down the road, your kids are grown and you're sitting there with grandbabies on the front porch and you're reflecting on what the pink lily was, right? And the business you created in the life that you lived. What is the one thing that you want people to look back and remember? Not only the business buy, but you buy as a leader. What's the thing you want them to remember most?

One thing that I really want people especially to remember me most is by how much I gave back and what I used our platform to do. So I really, you know, in the last year, we've donated over $100,000 between clothing and donations with fundraisers from the website to different organizations. And I really want to continue over time to make that number, you know, more than the millions. Like, I want to donate and give back to not only local organizations, but organizations all around the country. And honestly, I definitely think one day I would like to start my own. So, you know, I want people to. To look at me and not just be like, oh, yeah, she, she started a successful business, but she made sure to do more than just, you know, have a successful business. She changed different organizations. She, you know, took her money and helped grow things that really needed help in the world. Or, like, take the platform and really make a change for the way that women look at themselves and like, basically create more positivity out there amongst the world, man.

I like it. And you're definitely on your way to doing that, that is for sure, man. Well, Tori, thank you so much for spending some time with me today. I know this is going to be a great episode. You're probably going to get lots of DMs on Instagram, which we'll definitely have that linked up in the show notes for people. But I hope you have an awesome rest of the year. And again, thanks for being with us today.

Great. Thank you so much for having me.

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