Keys For Successful Boutique Planning

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.

Hey, guys. Welcome back. This week it is you and I in another quick solo episode. And I know this time of year you're starting to think ahead about planning for the new year. And so I wanted to give you a couple of quick tips on planning today that hopefully help you be more successful, get more done, or feel like you actually did something at the end of the day, because I know that feeling of overwhelm sucks. So let's talk about a couple of quick planning tips and then I know that so many of you know about our boutique Boss planner. If you're catching this on YouTube today, I have a visual. If you're catching this on Spotify or any of the other places you listen to podcasts, maybe you don't see this, but it's probably all over our social media. You can go to Instagram BoutiqueBossPlanner and check out the live visuals if you'd like to see it there. But let's start with three quick planning tips, and then I'm give you a quick tour of the planner and what's inside. So first planning tip I want to give you that I know has really become really important for me in just getting more done at the end of the day. And this has a big part to do with CEO versus entrepreneur mindset, which I know you guys hear me talk about a lot, but it's number one, setting boundaries. All right? It's really easy when you are an entrepreneur. Hustle diy. I've gotta prove this concept and make this business work. I've gotta tell everyone that they're wrong who doubted me. It's easy to feel like you have to work 24 7. And the truth is, you're gonna burn out really fast and you're gonna become inefficient really fast. And so a hard lesson I learned both from my mental health, for my physical health and for my relationship health with my family is I had to become better at setting boundaries. So when I sit down to plan my week, one of the very first things I do is I set in my hard stops. So what is my hard Stop around. This is going to sound so dumb, but it's so obvious eating lunch, right? I used to say like my, my schedule was an open book. I, I could do things anywhere. I'll just fit in a lunch or I'll run through a drive through here or there. But you guys, it becomes so unhealthy. And I find that when I don't eat well and I'm not a great eater anyway, like, I eat a lot of junk, but when I don't eat well or I don't eat on a consistent like hour, I become so hangry. Like, I will bite your head off. Seriously. I might not bite your head off, but you know what I mean? Like, I get so hungry I feel like I'm going to throw up and then I just get crabby. So I have to eat at the same time every day. So, so that's an example of a really easy boundary to set. When am I actually gonna eat lunch and do I have enough time to eat the type of lunch that I want? Another boundary that's important to me is my tiger time. When am I most productive in my day? For me, it's 8 to 10 in the morning. That is my time to get things done that are on my to do list. Not elsewhere in the day. Other parts of the day. I can meet with other people, work with the team, work on other projects, but from 8 to 10 in the morning, that's my time to do the most important 20% of my list that's gonna get me 80% of the results. And the third place I set boundaries. That's really important is for my family. I used to think, oh, okay, I'll try to wrap this up at 5. But then after dinner and when the kids are going to bed, I'll sneak this in and I'll answer this message and I'll finish this email. And that is such crap. Like the family knows. They know that they are second fiddle when we do stuff like that. So at 5 or 5:30, depending on the time of year, or if our kids have a sporting event that Hard Stop is in my calendar every single day. So do the kids have a basketball game that is in my calendar Because I'm not going to miss it. I'm not going to sacrifice. Part of the reason I'm an entrepreneur is I want the freedom and flexibility to be there for my family and enjoy the things I enjoy about my family.

And a lot of that is sports.

So that Hard Stop's got to be in the calendar at the end of the day. Also, I found for my marriage especially, especially because Eric and I work together, we have to have hard stops and boundaries around lunch dates. A lot of times those are work meetings for us. Lunch dates during the week and then date nights. Is there a night during the week? Just he and I can go connect because it is so hard with three kids and sports and a business and all these things spinning at us 247 to ever just have time to ourselves. So boundaries is first and foremost the most important thing on the list. All right, second tip when it comes to planning. And I know again, this is going to sound really obvious, but sometimes it's the obvious stuff we need help with. But we've got to do a better job at setting clear and measurable goals. So when we think about planning, if everything is important, nothing is important. If we think there's 10,000 things we have to get done, we're not going to do any of them very well. The only way to clear a forest is to choose one tree at a time, notch that tree and continue continually swing your axe in the same place at the same time at that same tree. We can't run around like the little woodsman in the movie Hoodwinked. Shout out if you even know what I'm talking about. I love that kids movie. It's one of my favorites. But you can't run around like old Choppy swinging at all the trees. You've got to choose your one tree and knock it down. So when it comes to planning, shet shet, set shorter, more meaningful and direct goals so you know exactly what aiming at and when you're aiming at it. So for us inside of the boutique hub, we set quarterly rocks, we break them down into to dos and a to do should take no longer than two weeks. So everything is a short little sprint to get those things done. When you set shorter rocks, shorter to do's, you can accomplish a lot more and you can be more meaningful when it comes to what is the ideal timeline for this project. If we know we need to revamp our whole website, revamp all of our emails, re merchandise the store, put in new dressing rooms like whatever all those things are. You can't attack all those projects all at the same time. So choose one that you're gonna do this month or choose one you're gonna do this quarter and then move on. Get better about planning clear, specific and measurable goals.

You guys, thank you so much for listening to today's episode and I'm so excited to make a personal invitation to you, you guys know, behind the scenes.

At the Hub, we are always looking.

For new ways to serve our industry. Both our community of retailers, but also our community of wholesalers. And so for the last two years, we've been working on one massive project. A brand new wholesale marketplace built by the industry, for the industry. And you're invited with so much of your feedback along the way. Today we're so excited to announce the grand opening of hubventory.com that's hubventory. H U B V E N T O R Y dot com. You're invited to come make a profile to shop your favorite curated and vetted brands handpicked by the boutique hub. But not only to shop, because you see, Hubventory is a different kind of wholesale marketplace where we want to help you buy smarter. Each and every week we want you to invest in your inventory rather than buying on a whim. So when you sign up for Hubventory, not only will you be able to find your favorite brands, but we'll encourage you to follow those brands and then start to pin products to boards to build boards that are designed for your next new arrivals launch or an upcoming collection by product category or even by uploading your open to buy plan and buying with your budget. So you're welcome to join us today on hubventory.com to plan and buy smarter and to follow the vetted, curated and trusted wholesalers that we all love. I'll see you on hubventory.com okay, third.

Tip when it comes to planning is stop focusing so much on your to do list and focus on your to done list. To done. So tell me this, have you ever gotten to the end of the day and wondered, okay, I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off today, but what did I actually accomplish? What did I actually get done? So when we get focused on making this long to do list, which I'm so guilty of, like, I'll write down all the things, right, because I just want the endorphin release. Like when I cross things off my list, I'm so guilty about that. But then what happens is at the end of the day, I only get one or two things crossed off my list and I see this long nagging list left over and it's a feeling of lack, it's separation between where I am and where I know I want to be. And so then I'm pissed. At the end of the day, I have anxiety about all the things I didn't get done because I'm only focusing on what I didn't get done. So I'm challenging you to instead think about what did you actually get done at the end of the day, before you walk away from your desk, write down my to done list today I and then list out the things you actually accomplished so that you go home at night with a feeling of accomplishment and gratitude and power like I did this and you're going to be so much more amped up to start work the next day. Knowing how much you accomplished the day before that also goes to tell you it's wise to make shorter to do lists. Break your to do list into this week versus next week or next month. A this week list versus a later list, which if you're familiar with our four part to do list inside the Boutique Hub, you're already doing that. So shorter lists make a to done list. So those are my quick three planning tips to hopefully help you guys get more done every week. But if you're still hanging around and again if you're on YouTube, I'm going to show you the planner because I wanted to bake and our team, Sarah, Jesse, everyone at the Hub that helps us create this planner, we wanted to bake a lot of those ideas and concepts into the planner for you. So a couple things that I think are really helpful and important inside of the Boutique Boss Planner, which is the only planner created just for retailers like you. The first is checklists. So our team went through what are the annual checklists that are important, the quarterly checklists that are important, the monthly to do lists that are important that may have slipped your mind. Or maybe you have a manager who is using this planner that may have slipped her mind that's going to help her think ahead about the important things to do to protect and grow your business. So inside the planner, you're going to find tons of pages like this that are full of checklists for every month, every quarter and for the year to remind you to get those things done. Now, at the beginning of every month there is this here beginning of month checklist and also a place for you to brainstorm. We want you to think about, okay, what happened this month last year? If I look back at my old planner, what do I need to remember for this month? What are some plans and goals and dreams that I have for this month and how am I going to execute them? And drop that here in the beginning of the month there's two more pages of notes and to DOS at the beginning of every month. Now I know the daily layout inside of a planner is also really important to you. So I want to show you what we've got here. This is column. So across the two pages are each day of the week laid out in a long column. At the beginning of the day, there's a spot for only three to do's. So I really want you like that shorter to do list I was talking about, I want you to get specific about that shorter to do and only putting three things there and then being able to go in all the hours of the day and drop whatever tasks or time blocks you have to accomplish. And then in this blank space down at the very bottom of the day in the planner, that's where I want you to go in and write your to done list so you can look back and know, okay, this is what I actually accomplished today. Okay. Once you get through that month of the planner, at the end of every month, there's four pages of reflections that are really important that are going to help you be a more analytical, smarter business owner. So here's a couple of the things that are included in these end of month reviews. So first is all of your monthly tracking for sales, e commerce, and in person. So what are my website visits, my traffic, my checkouts, my conversion rate, my biggest month or my biggest day of the month, my promotions that I ran, and then how did I meet and accomplish my goals this month? Also, what is my inventory on hand, received discounts, what's on order, what are my new arrivals that are coming in, what are my advertising notes and my event and promotion notes. So all the good stuff for the business is here. Then we have the second page which is all of your actual financial tracking. So yes, this has to be in QuickBooks for you, but you can also put it here sometimes. For me anyway, what I do is I transpose it from QuickBooks. Like we have a bookkeeper on team that tracks all these things. But when I go in and I look at a monthly management report, I note these things in the planner as well. Because there's something about like taking it from a computer screen, through my brain, through my hands, and writing it on paper that like sinks it deeper into my soul and helps me really analyze where we're at and where we're going. So this is all of our cash, our deposits, our sales, our top sales staff, our total payroll, and again, our beginning and end of month inventory. So all those important numbers to us at the end of the month to help us set up the next month ahead and then the next two pages in the reflections for the month. These are A little bit more external. So our month's biggest surprises, our most profitable vendors, our trend reports, our customer reports, what were customers asking for? Buying, requesting notes that affected sales this month, supplies needed, debt trackers. So how much debt am I still looking at? And then some personal reflections. So what did I do well? What am I most grateful for? Did I live in my greatest purpose and my why this month? And then more on actual goals. So lots of space, things I didn't even mention here but obviously lots of questions for monthly reviews. So our goal with the planner, these things plus all the resources and to DoS and retail acronyms and just very retail specific topics in the planner. This is meant to be like your retail bible, like all the things you need to know about your business, your growth plan, what's working, what's not, how you're going to get more done. At the end of the day it's all inside of the planner and and each year we try to take your feedback and add and refine and really get more good stuff inside of this planner just for you. There's no better way to say it right than just get you more of the good stuff, stuff that you need and the stuff that you're asking for. So I hope today was helpful. Guys, just a short little note from me on three quick planning tips and a quick tour of the Boutique Boss planner. You guys can snag the planner@boutiquebossplanner.com or the boutique boss store.com. you're also going to find some of our other products on there like our content creator which is an undated undated so you can fill this in whenever you want to start. Social Media Content Planning notebook so these are all blanks that are inside of this book inside the Content planner so that you can map out the day of the week, the hour, the channel and you can put all of your content plan on here. If you have someone helping you on your social media team, this is a really great asset for them. So you're on the same page with your marketing plan every single week. Then we have our four part to do list, tear off sheets, our seasonal notebook that also matches the planner and content creator and then a quick little to do list tear off sheet. So I hope you guys love these. I always love them. They're always branded so beautifully. I love the colors this year. It's really funky, it's really retro. It's just a lot of fun to do this project for you guys every year. So thank you for supporting it. We always appreciate getting to serve you guys in this way, so hope today was helpful. You guys, thank you again for tuning in with me. If you have more quick tips or questions you'd love for me to answer on the podcast, please shoot me a message. Take a picture, take a screenshot, Let me know what you're doing while you listen to the podcast and shoot it to me over at ajalderson AJ Alderson, my personal Instagram or the Boutique Hub's Instagram. Ask your questions, give your feedback, let me know what tips you want to hear on the show. And as always, those of you who are also members of the Boutique Hub, you get a lot more of me inside of the Boutique Hub and our entire team. So I hope to see you in there on a weekly basis. You guys, see you next week. Thanks for tuning in. Have an awesome rest of your day and I'll talk to you soon.

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