Ashley Alderson lays out four rules for small-business success: know your customer deeply, solve a clear problem for them, present it well through photography and detail, and build community by showing up personally. Consistency and curiosity let you sell across products and pivot over time.
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Business can be a lonely game. But it doesn't have to be. Welcome to Boutique Chat where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek. We'll hear from product based businesses of all types, retailers, e commerce and wholesale brands, along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry. I'm your host Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and and I can't wait to chat.
Okay. Do you want the most simple advice ever? If I could distill from literally thousands of conversations with small business owners of all types, literally of all types, no matter what you sell and if someone said, Ashley, what is the key? What do I need to do for this business to work? This is is what it would be, this is what I would tell them. This is what I'm telling you. This is what it is. It is this simple advice. Number one, do you intimately know your customer? Who are they? What's their name? What's their customer Persona? What do they drink? What do they wear? How old are they? What do they do for work? What's happening in their life? What's their fears? What's their frustrations? How do they speak? Where do they go? What season of life are they in? Do you know like you know, like you know, your customer has to be number one and you might have two customers, right? Depending on who you are, what you sell, you might have two, right? But when you target everyone, you reach no one. Who's your customer? Number two, what problem do you solve? What problem do you solve for her? How do you make her life special or interesting or different or create emotion? Where is she going and what is she struggling with? And how do you make that just a little bit better, just a little bit easier? How do you make her day just a little bit brighter? What problem do you solve? Where is she going and what does she need? How can you solve it for her? Easy. Number three, if you know your customer and you know what problems she has, then your content has to tell her how you're going to solve it. So the quality of your photography, truly the merchandising of your photography has to be a one critical. If you're trying to build a brand, especially a brand online and you're like, I'm just going to snap a photo of this, right? I'm going to just snap a photo of this thing while it's sitting on the shelf. I'm going to have my girls who are actually working the front of the store just like take a couple Random photos, and I'm just going to throw them up on Instagram. If that's the strategy, which is really like, there is no strategy. Don't expect there to be traffic. That's a harsh truth. But if you truly are interested in knowing your customer, solving her problems and building a brand and actually selling products, there has to be some thought into how you're presenting those products, right? If your storefront really needed to be painted, if your store was dirty, right? If it didn't look like there was any attention to detail, do you think people would want to walk into that storefront? Probably not. And the same is true for your photography online. Now, I'm not telling you it has to be perfect. I'm not telling you everything has to be perfect, right? Because there is a level of people want to know behind the scenes, the raw, the bloopers, the funny. They want to see all that stuff, but the photos have to tell a story. Nailing who the customer is and how you're going to solve their problems, how do you want them to feel? Through your photography, that becomes really important. All right, so you've done those three things and now how do you tie it all up? With a bow? You build a community. That's the fourth thing. You build a community, you build relationships. You show up consistently every day, not just with the products, not just with what you're selling, but with who you are as a person. Your customers may come for the product, but they stay for you. So who are you with your brand? Who is the person? Who is the voice? Who is the lifeblood of the brand? People don't want to do business with companies. People want to do business with people. And so that's where you being a part of your brand becomes so important. So who's your customer? What's the problem you solve? How are you showing up in a really meaningful way? Through photography and through merchandising and through the cleanliness of your storefront, let's say. And then how have you built a community with your brand? If you've been able to build community by simply having conversations, sharing the good, the bad, the real, the behind the scenes, the funny, the mission, the vision, the why, the value, Right? Show me the salad you're eating for dinner. Everyone wants to know. It might seem weird, but everyone wants to know. When you've built a community of people who feel like they're seen and they're understood and they're in a place with others who are just like them, when you've built that community, it doesn't matter what you sell. You can sell them anything. It could be toothpaste, it could be a hairbrush, it could be clothes, it could be a beauty product. It could be anything. It doesn't matter. When you've built a community, you have a solid foundation on which to stand for whatever direction your business goes in the future. So there it is boiled down. The secret to success is do those things really, really well. Be obsessed with figuring out how to do those things even better, and be curious about where you can serve your customer next. Curiosity, consistency, and being obsessed with those details. And you guys have got this. Thanks for tuning in to five Minute Friday, you guys. I'm so pumped that you're here. Thanks and I'll see you next week.
Thanks for listening guys. I hope you took away all kinds of nuggets and new ideas from this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating and review. We love to hear your feedback and give you a chance to be featured on the show each and every week. For more information on on our spirit of community over competition and to access guest downloads and bonuses and all the resources we talked about on the show, head on over to theboutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.
