Five Minute Friday: Feeling Stuck in Your Business? This Might Be Why

Foreign. 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. Hey guys, welcome back to 5 Minute Friday. It is so good to have you here and to be in your ear today. I wanted to bring you just a really quick lesson. That is something I've come back to and asked myself again and again throughout the course of growing this business. And I think as time goes on this question becomes more and more relevant and the question is, well actually let me back up, is it really a question? It's not even a question, it's a statement. But it's a question to ponder. Once you make the statement, let's be real, the statement is what got you here won't get you there. And I've had to think about this and ask myself this question. Why is this so confusing so many times in many different areas of business? And I want you to consider the same. The reason I bring this up right now is I feel like right now I've had more conversations than I normally have with businesses who are well established. They've been around some 10, 20, 30 years and they've had a pretty good run. And now all of a sudden, you know, our industry is really shifting. Social media is shifting, the vendors we're working with are shifting. And suddenly what was working and has been proven to work for so long suddenly isn't. It's changing. And the other thing I think, you know, when I'm having these conversations is there's really not just one path to success in this industry. There's so many different ways that people are marketing and selling that all work. And they work differently. Whether you're a live seller, use comments sold, or you're just a straight E commerce seller, maybe you just do pop ups, maybe a brick and mortar. There's just so many different ways to go about it and I think that's exciting because you don't have to be pigeonholed into one particular way of doing things. So I challenge you after you listen this today just to make that statement to yourself. What got me here will not get me there. And then I want you to ask yourself two questions after that. Where can I test something new Today, and then what can I learn today? Because the risk we run when we think things have, you know, kind of been steady or they've always been working is we don't always challenge ourselves to try something different and test, like I mentioned, or we don't challenge ourselves to show up and learn something different. The hub's a really great example of that. I see a lot of people saying, you know, I've been a member or I've been a part of Boutique of Black or whatever, but I just don't use it. Well, if you want to grow and if you want to learn, you have to carve out the time to use it and to actually test something and to put it into place. But if we're so busy doing the same thing every day, we're really not challenging ourselves to learn to grow, be challenged, and to try a whole new avenue and opportunity to grow our business. So when I think about what got you here will not get you there. It really falls into really four main areas of our business on a daily basis. The first is, of course, in marketing. So across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, even email, our reach is so different than it used to be. I just had a coaching call before I jumped on to record this today with a store saying, man, we used to drive, you know, a thousand people a day to the website. Now we're maybe lucky to get 300. Our reach is like maybe eight people saw it. It's just different. So when you look at it like that, I would ask yourself, well, what am I doing different to test? How am I showing up different? What got me here to this point is not working. So what's going to get me there? Am I doubling down on different types of posts? So am I testing out different model types? Am I testing out different backgrounds? Am I testing out frequencies? Am I testing out the links and the calls to action that I'm using? Am I testing out going live more often or different styles of live? Am I testing out adding in more community to my brand or adding in more products to my brand? Where am I at? Where do I need to test? How does that change the amount of traffic or the amount of reach that I'm getting? So test in your marketing. The second is testing your brands. It is so easy in this relationship when we have great relationships with vendors to say, this has always been my best seller. You know, this has always been a brand that I love to carry. Well, maybe it's time to test something out. What do your numbers tell you? What is your margin by vendor, what's your GM roi? What is your returns? By vendor, what is your sales? By product category or product type? How can I double down and test out some new brands? If I always go to Atlanta market, maybe I need to test going to Dallas. If I always go to Dallas, maybe I need to test going to la. Maybe there's different opportunities to discover new brands. If I only go to home and gift shows, maybe I should go to some apparel shows. If I go to apparel shows, maybe I should test some home and gift showrooms. You get the idea. But there's so many great vendors out there. Are you challenging yourself to test out new ones? The third area is just plain and simple. Traffic and how I'm measuring traffic. Do I look at my my sales and ask myself, okay, have I run the retail traffic formula? Do I know how much traffic it takes me at a certain conversion rate and at a certain average order value to achieve this amount of sales? And I can show you. I'll link up in the show notes today, our free retail traffic formula calculator so you can know those things. But if my traffic is not what I once was, where am I, like I said, testing in my social media marketing, where am I also testing in my paid traffic or my SEO or my emails or my texts? How am I testing out where the traffic is coming from and how much is coming from that particular channel? Or am I just saying, oh, traffic's down or do I know where it's coming from? Do I actually know where it's down and where I need to double down? Is this an opportunity for me to learn how to run Facebook ads right? Which is all what Boutique of Black is all about. And then finally in team, and this is probably the most painful lesson to learn in what got me here will not get me there. There's a lot of times where we have hired somebody who has grown with us along the way and maybe they just haven't grown as much as we have or maybe as much as the business has. I guarantee your outlook on life and your mindsets and your operations and how you show up as a leader has definitely been stretched throughout your time in business. Is that the same for the people who work for you? So where do I need to go back in my systems and my processes and in my training? Do I need to retrain my team? Do I need to reassign accountability to my team? Do I need to reassign scorecards and metrics with my team? What got me here in the way I manage my team and in my team as individuals has probably changed since I first brought them on board. And so where do I need to go back and redo this process? We're in the middle of this right now at the Boutique Hub, creating an entire digital training program where I have lessons on our company values and our mission and our structure and eos and how we operate it and our meeting cadence. All of these different things. Our core values, our marketing, our ideal customers. It's all digital so that anytime we have a new team member, obviously it's a clear onboarding. But our entire existing team is also required to go back and watch this and retrain and relearn so that we are all on the same page for this exact date and time. So at the end of the day, what got you here may not get you there. I challenge you to go back to these four areas in your business, test it out and then again, ask yourself two questions. What can I test out today? And then what can I learn today? Am I carving out that opportunity to learn so I can continue to test and continue to stretch and continue to grow? That's it for this five Minute Friday, you guys. Thanks for jumping in and joining me. As always, let me know what you thought over at the Boutique Hub on Instagram or AJ Alderson, my personal Instagram. I'd love to strike up a friendship and hear more about your business and what you do while you're listening to this podcast. All right, have a great week ahead. I will see you guys next week. That's it for five Minute Friday, you guys. I hope you found some quick, actionable steps you can put into play in your business right away. As always, if you're not yet a member of the Boutique Hub, I would love to personally invite you to join us. It's where all of the daily conversations happen. The up to date what is working now in the industry conversations, the latest trainings, trend reports, discounts, resources, and of course, access to thousands of wholesale brands that you also know and love. So please take a minute, follow the link in the show notes and we would love to invite you to join us inside of the Boutique Hub.