Mastering The Mega Boutique with Leslie Hall, The ZigZag Stripe

Okay. Have you ever heard the term mega boutique? I feel like that term was floating around our industry for a while. I'm not even sure if people still use it, but if I was going to put anyone in that category and say that, man, this is a business that I have loved to watch because they were around from the very beginning, it's this one. Today, as a part of our 10 year anniversary series here on the podcast, I am so excited to interview Leslie hall, the founder of the Zigzag Stripe. Leslie is somebody who has built an incredible online business with really intentional brand recognition. And today we're going to deep dive and like, reconstruct her entire business model. But talk about the power of the brand recognition that she has built. Someone with a really recognizable model who is not her, who is not Leslie. She's not the face of the brand. And I think this is really interesting how Leslie's put this together over such a period of time. Not only that, but one of the things I admire about Zigzag Stripe is how Leslie, from the very beginning, really did build a community around her business. And if you guys have followed for any period of time, you know what I think of community. It is absolutely everything in business. And when you go into the Zigzag Stripes wholesale, or I'm sorry, not wholesale, but Facebook group for their business, you'll notice that there are just as many posts in that group of customers talking about how they love the product and also sharing selfies and building one another up and truly being such a positive space for one another. There's just as many posts about that as there are actually showing and selling products. That's a really, really incredible achievement. So today I am so pumped you're going to meet Leslie Hull, the founder of the Zigzag Stripe. Let's talk about your business strategy and the juicy details of what actually works. 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 to the podcast. I feel like this one's been a long time coming. Leslie Hall, I haven't seen you in such a long time, so I'm excited to get to catch up and hear all about the changes in your life and business and some lessons learned along the way. So thanks for joining me today.

Thanks, Ashley. I'm excited to be here with you.

We've got a lot to cover, a lot of rabbit holes we're gonna go down. But in case someone's lived under a rock and has not followed, like, some of the pioneers, I would say, of the boutique industry, and they don't know zigzag stripe, they're. They're about to know. So take me back to the beginning of how and why you started the business.

So this is. We started zigzag in 2013. Actually, it was tax day. It was April 15, 2013. I can't believe that we're about to celebrate 10 years. But we started Zigzag just, you know, you hear a lot of people talk about kind of their story. And, uh, I was looking for a change in the. I was a stay at home mom, and we had three littles at home, and Joel's a firefighter. I was bored. I needed a change. And I had always kind of been one of those little boutique shoppers. And so one day I told Joel, he got home from the fire station, and I said, you know what? I think I am going to. I want to start a boutique. He kind of giggled at me and was like, yeah, yeah, right, okay, whatever. How are you going to pay for that? Like, we lived on a firefighter's salary. We had three small children. We lived paycheck to paycheck. And he's like, really? Like, how are you going to pay for this? And I told him, I said, I know that you just paid off a credit card, and I'm going to use that credit card and I'm going to buy some inventory and I'm going to sell some clothes. He initially, like most husbands, like I said, laughed at me. And then the next day, I maxed out that credit card and he. We kind of haven't looked back since. So we started just at the house. I was selling just on Facebook, when Facebook was the old Facebook, and everybody saw everything. And I was taking pictures in my front yard with my camera phone and, you know, like, just. Just doing. Doing the thing. And I was like, so excited because I remember the first month that I had started, I sold like $7,000. And I. I told. I'm like, how in the world is this possible? You know, like, these women just love everything that we. That we are selling. And 10 years ago, you know, everybody always asks, how'd you come up with the zigzag stripe? Well, 10 years ago was like, you know, Chevron everything. I mean, everything. You know, like, all the crazy colors, like, you know, and that was just the thing. And so I was like, well, all the clothes that we're. They have zigzags and stripes on them, you know, so let's roll with it. And what's so funny is I never in a million years would have thought that we would get phone calls and magazines in the mail after I registered this business name as the Zigzag Stripe, because they thought that we were selling rolling papers. Oh, zigzags. And so. And, like, after all of that started coming out, I was like, I probably should have researched this a little bit more, you know, Like, I mean, I was just taking zigzags and stripes. That's what we're doing. Let's roll with it. This is great. And still to this day, 10 years later, we still get phone calls, like, to our customer service department telling us that they are not satisfied with the. The papers that they purchased. And we have to tell them every time, like, sorry, bud. Like, we just sell women's clothes.

Like, I.

We. I can't help you there. But. So, you know, I love our name because it has, you know, it comes with kind of what the style was back then. It still works for today. Clothes still have zigzags and stripes on it. But it's kind of funny to. To look back and know that that's kind of what the trend was when we started. But, you know, so, you know, we started again, like you said, at the house. And within nine months, we had moved out of the house to a small little. We called it our warehouse, but it was literally two 10 by 10 rooms that we rented out of this local little place. Within, like, 45 days, we had outgrown that. They let us take over the rest of the building that they had. We stayed there, I guess, only about nine months. Nine to 12 months, and then moved again. And when we moved again, we were still carrying our lease from the first place because we couldn't break our lease. But we. I mean, we were just busting at the seams. The growth we had those first two years was just unreal. And. And, you know, when you have growth like that so fast, you know, you kind of bat backpedal once you kind of catch your breath of going, okay, so our business just blew up. I wasn't planning on running a business like this. You know, like, what do we have to do? Like, we need to get our ducks in a row. And so we moved into a. A different warehouse that was 5,900 square feet. And we were there for eight years, almost eight years, until we built our very own 25, 000 square foot warehouse that we now have occupied for the last six months. So. But to rewind to those seven, eight years that we were in 5,900 square feet, I have no idea how we survived. Honestly. Honestly, because we that, like, it worked and whatnot. But we had to get creative. We had to get really creative on our space and how to use all of our space, which then gave us this huge, like, love for efficiency. And ever since. And I think that when, you know, you're put in those situations where you have to just figure it out and you don't have any other options, you learn how to make it work. And you. And we learned that efficiency was going to be what we, you know, kind of like, pride ourselves on, because it's a lot. I would rather be super efficient than be wasting money on things that I don't have to. I mean, isn't that everybody that, you know, shouldn't you want to be. You should want to be efficient. So that's kind of what we've done over the years, is just really learn how to do that so we could build a business and not have to carry so much overhead, so many employees. Because we all know how hard it is to get employees these days. So it's been a whirlwind. There's been a lot of things that's happened over the 10 years, but it's been a ride for sure.

Oh, my gosh. Well, there's a lot we could dive into just from that piece of the story alone. But I want to stick on the warehouse piece for a minute before we talk about the new warehouse. I love that you say we built our business on efficiencies and you had to become obsessed with those efficiencies. Talk to me about the old warehouse and maybe some of the systems and process and efficiencies you really lived and died by that helped you get the most out of that space.

So when we first occupied that building, you know, I had zero experience with what a traditional warehouse looked like. You know, I'd heard people, my brother had worked in a warehouse, you know, like, I knew some people, but I had never really had my hands in on it. And so when we moved in, we were on rolling Z racks. Everything was hung because that's how it came from the vendor. So I, you know, just being naive to the whole situation, I'm like, that's the way we have to Keep it. So that's what we did. And, you know, my brother ended up coming to work for me. And when he came to work for me and, and kind of took over the warehouse, he, you know, really educated me a lot on what does a traditional warehouse look like? You know, that how are you finding your product? You know, you need to have locations, you need, you know, all these things. And it was just blowing my mind because I was like, is this how, this is how it works? Okay. Like, I just literally, you know, I had no idea. And so he educated me a lot in. I'm always anxious and like, I love to learn new things and, you know, and it was just one of those things that just, I don't know, it got my, my motor running. And, you know, I love to know that, oh my gosh, we can only have two people packing orders, but we can ship out a thousand orders. You know, like how, how, you know, like, how can we continue to do that? But we made sure that we used our space wisely. And so everything that started coming in, we were bagging it and tagging it with barcode. Everything had a location. It helped keep things from getting dirty. You know, we're in Texas and a traditional warehouse, there's no air conditioner, so, you know, some days we'd have the doors up. And so, like, we had to start thinking of, yes, we're going to run a real warehouse, but how am I going to keep everything clean and, and new and, you know, all those things? So we used all the space that we could and went as high as we could in the building that we were in, which wasn't. They didn't have. It wasn't tall ceilings, but I think we had like 12 foot ceilings or something. I don't know, 14 foot ceilings. But we racked out everything and put boxes up and used as high as we could. Anything that was up high, what we used for shoes or backstock, you know, like, we literally used every little nook and cranny and put a location on it and everything had a spot and there, you know it. When that's the only option you have, you figure it out. And once we started doing that, I was like, okay, like that starts helping on, you know, oh my gosh. We worked. We sold that last one. Where's that last one? You know, everything is always we, you know, always talking about onesies. We have so many onesies. Where are we putting all these onesies? You know, when you get down to that just very last, last one that you're Trying to sell. And so, you know, you start learning, you know, when you develop these systems that those small headaches start to disappear because you've developed a real system, a real way of receiving product and putting it on the shelf. And. And everybody is on board with that. And when your whole staff and we're all doing the same thing, those little headaches, those little mistakes start. Start to disappear. And then you realize, like, oh, my gosh, like, we're running a business here. Like, we're. We're. We've got a real warehouse. And so. And as we've just. We just consistently perfected that. That those systems. And now, you know, we're doing the same thing, just at a grander scale.

Yeah, I want to go back with that system. How did you. And the onesies, because I know that's such an issue. How did you, like, what was your process for barcoding and knowing what went in what row? And then what did you do with the onesies twosies or those returns that you may have had and had to put back on the shelf? What was your process for those two things?

So when we, at our old place, when we, you know, were limited on space, we had actually onesie bins that we would use. And so when things would get down and a box was almost empty and we needed to clear that location, we would just have a onesie bin. So we would know that, okay, anything that's left that is, you know, down to one, our warehouse manager would kind of go through and. And relocate all those things to a onesie bin. And then it was just kind of like a hunt for it when it did sell. But we knew that it was all going to be in one spot, and we weren't trying to hunt through the whole warehouse for it. And so that worked for a little while because you never want to waste a empty spot for one. One product. We did get to a point though, where we. We had mix of products in one bin. You know, we would try to, like, we'd have one big box and we'd have four products of different colors. So nobody would pull, you know, things that, you know, nothing that was two black tops could go in there. So you would know that, you know, because we just didn't have enough space. But the ones he'd been worked for a long time, and we had just one little section that. And. But every day we had somebody that was, you know, our warehouse manager that was walking the. The aisles and trying to figure out, okay, you know, this box is low. Like, how can we move things around to open this space up for new product to come in because we were receiving product every single day. And so there was literally somebody always moving things to, to use every spot in every space that was available. It was our, it was control, chaos. I guess that's what we like to tell ourselves. Control, control, chaos.

So did you, did you ever do a time study in that like period of time of okay, what are the things I sell the most and that I'm always walking for so that I have those like closer to my ship stations and then move other things out to the fringes or what did that look like?

Yes, we did actually when we, I guess maybe like in our third year of business we had actually UPS came out and did a big study on us and of how we should, to help us be efficient, how we should set up our, you know, our warehouse for all the hot spot, you know, or all the hot products that sell out the most, that are the most popular, that they need to be closest to, you know, pack tables. And so we could pull orders faster doing any kind of, you know, bulk pool for any singles. It was all the same product, you know, those kinds of things. But it was very interesting. They came in and actually literally like walked with every single picker, every packer of, you know, down to how big of the mat that they stand on and pack should be. I mean it was crazy. Like, you know, and we've, you've only been in three years and you're like this warehouse, like I don't know what I'm doing, you know, and they're telling you all these things, things. And I was just sitting there like a deer in the headlights going, okay, like, man, like they've got, there's a lot of things that we could be doing. And so after they came in that made another big difference for efficiency because they just kind of, you know, like you said, you know, making sure that those hot items are up close. Anything that's not selling as well or that you have overstock of those kind of things were farther away down to the way that our aisles were set up. So when you, we would print an order, we were paper pulling and so that even our aisles, when you walk down it, you know, let's say we have, our aisles are lettered so they're abcde, you know, whatever, and then they're numbered that when you walk down this aisle, when you would pick back up and make the corner and turn to go down the next aisle, it was flip flop. So the flow of traffic was always the right way. So you could literally, you know, everything was in alphabetical order and then Alphabet and numerical order. And so that way, the flow of the warehouse just worked. And you weren't bouncing back and forth from, oh, I got to go to the far right corner of the warehouse, and then I have to go back over here and then over here. So it was just really making sure that that footage footprint was being used the most efficient way and that you taught your employees that this is how you pull an order. As long as you're pulling in the order that they're listed and you're not bouncing around, it will be the quickest way for you to pull that order and get it back to the PAC station. So that was. That was probably the biggest thing that we made sure that has made a huge difference is, is that ups. When they came out and gave all the recommendations, they even gave us, like, drawings of what we should build when we outgrew that facility to use every bit of space and be able to use every, you know, all the square footage efficiently. So it was pretty cool. So I don't know if they still do that or not. That was a long time ago. But if they do, I would take it, take them up on it because it was, well, well worth it.

I am so glad that you're here, that not only are you listening to the podcast, but you know why you're different, because you actually implement what you learn, and that sets you apart from everyone else in this industry every single day of the week. So thank you for that. And because I know you love to take action, I want to make sure, if you're not already a part of our community at the Boutique Hub, that you have an opportunity to join us. You see, the membership at the Boutique Hub is the core of everything we do, and it has been for almost 10 years, which is crazy. We gather together from all 50 states in the United States and seven countries, boutique owners, wholesale brands, and our trusted and vetted industry partners on a daily basis to talk about what's really happening, to answer your ongoing questions, to share stories, to learn and grow from, and with one another inside of the membership of the Boutique Hub. Not only do you have access to our daily community, but also our ongoing education. You see, we have live experts coaching and speaking every single week, two days a week, both retail and in our private wholesale groups. We also have monthly training bundles and content calendars that go out to our members on a regular basis on all kinds of topics, plus our vetted training library, our Training library is full of tools and templates and videos and how to's checklists. Everything from non disclosure agreements that you can learn from. Model agreements, content calendars and engagement library videos on how to run Google Ads and Facebook ads, to optimizing your inventory, your buying and how to pay yourself more with profit first. Besides learning, I want to make sure that you also have an opportunity to buy and stock your store accordingly. So members of the Boutique Hub also have access to so many discounts from vetted and trusted wholesale partners, almost a thousand of them now inside of the hub and also on our platform, hubventory.com the new wholesale marketplace built by the industry, for the industry. And finally, you guys, your membership. I can tell you how to get it for free, and many members do, and here's why. Membership at the Boutique Hub comes with all kinds of exclusive perks and discounts only open to you, a Boutique Hub member. And when you use those perks and discounts, it saves you often three to four times the amount your membership actually costs, which starts at just $24 a month. So access those perks and those discounts, those wholesale savings, and also make sure you're growing your business to build more revenue with all the trainings happening at the Boutique Hub. You know what, one last thing. I know you like listening to podcasts, but you know what's even better? Meeting in person. And that's one thing I'm so thankful for at the Hub. Because at every market in Dallas or Atlanta or Las Vegas or even at our conference for boutique owners, the Boutique Summit members have an opportunity to meet up, learn and grow together in person. So I want to invite you to join us@theboutiquehub.com join to become a member of our community today. Yeah, I've heard a couple people say that they've had that opportunity and just how valuable that was, I'm curious. So when you decided, okay, now it's time, like, we cannot live here anymore, we're moving on, we're building our own. I mean, that does have to feel like an incredibly daunting move to start to draw that out and map it out. Where did you start when you knew you had to upgrade and build a new facility?

When Joel, you know, me and him, had always talked about it, it was one of those things that we're like, oh gosh, when we build our own warehouse one day, this and that, what do we want it to look like? Where do we want it to be? Like, what is this going to start? And you're just daydreaming. But then that day came and it's like our lease was coming. And you know, we knew that we weren't going to be able to stay there. But you know, like I always told him, I said, if I have to drive far to go to work, I'm not ever going to go to work. And so, because I've just always been that person, like, I don't want to drive 30 minutes. Like that's the point of why we have this business. So we had to find something that was close and you know, and just finding a general contractor, all those things, like while you, when you talk about it, it sounds all good and dandy. And then you have to like kind of put pen to paper and really come up with those plans. And we happen to just kind of fall upon some property that's literally two miles from our house. It was, we're two acres or three acres. And so when we found that piece of property or the property that we're on, you know, Joel is like, we, we just kind of snatched it up. We. Joel had actually been in the talks with I guess a handful of contractors over the years that he had just kind of reached out with. He's just all about that research. And so he had just been doing some research of, you know, what is that? You know, what does a general contractor look like? What kind of price range is this? You know, all of those things. And so when it was time, he had reached back out to some of those guys. And there was one company that had always stayed in contact over the years. And so Joel had reached back, you know, he had reached out and they had had a conversation and they, you know, came up with drawings and whatnot. And then we found our piece of property. We bought our property in December. December, I guess we closed on it in December of 19. Yes. Because that was right before the world fell apart. And so we closed on that in December of 19. And then. No, I don't remember. I'm like losing my day. I'm like, is it 19 or 20? I don't know. Anyways, I knew it was December and we didn't break ground until. April. So it was like four or five months. But from just buying our property just before we even broke ground and then our build time got delayed. I mean it was, it was a lot. I mean it was a whole lot. But it ended up was supposed to only be like a eight or nine month build time and ended up being 16 months. Oh yeah, yeah. So. So when we were going through the whole, like, we know we don't want to extend our lease and all this with our old building, we extended our lease multiple times. Went to like, a high premium month to month while we were in our build. And it was. Oh, it was. And all that was going. Covid was going on as well. So, you know, we're like, we're working. No, we're not. Yes, we're open. No, we're not. You know, and then it's like half our staff got Covid and then, you know, it was just so in the midst of just trying to build something that is millions of costs, millions of dollars, and you're, you know, already taking on that stress of that, you know, and then to throw a wrench of COVID in there, that was. It was a lot. It was a lot.

That is a lot. But what happened during COVID for so many businesses was business grew. So I can't imagine. Talk me through how you balanced your business growing. You trying to create some sort of buying plan to take on more inventory or turn inventory faster in limited space and juggling when is my new warehouse going to be open and then how do I plan for that move? How did you have to adjust your buying during that transitional time to have space for it all?

So. Oh, my gosh, yes. There are so many. There's always so many moving parts to business. And, you know, you don't ever know which parts are going to be moving until you're kind of in it. And, you know, when Covid hit and all, I remember the day that one of our vendors told us that LA was going to be shut down and that they were not going to be able to ship anything else out. This. It was a Thursday evening, or it was a Thursday. And so me and my buyer, which is Mel, she's now the president of Zigzag, and she. We literally were like, we're going to get on the phone and we are going to call everybody that we know and see who can ship what today. Yeah, like, and we. I told Joel, I said, I need money. I need you to. You know, I know this is outside of our normal budget, but everything's shut down. Like how? Like, we're not gonna have any shipments. We're not, you know, like, nobody was really. Nobody was prepared for that. And so I remember, I think, gosh, we spent like 80 or $90,000 in the matter of, like, I felt like minutes of just trying to. To get as much whatever product we could get. And. And then, you know, we were prepared for Things to kind of fall, you know, like, oh my gosh, people are going to be freaking out, you know, like, you know, all this stuff, there was so much just worry and unknown in the air and. But man, you start locking people up at home, they like to shop, they start shopping, you know, like that. What was crazy to me is how fast it made E Commerce grow. You know, like they, you know all the predictions and everything of what, where we should be in the next five years for E Commerce and you know, all this tech stuff and all of that, like it sped up five years because of COVID And so businesses like, everybody's like freaking out, like, how are we going to keep up with the demand? Like there's no supply. You know, we have the demand. You know, there's, there was just a lot. And so we just, you know, you just have to roll with the punches. And one thing that I've always said over the years is, you know, I love change. Not most people say that I get bored easy and so I'm all for the change. So when things are like kind of, you know, moving around and looking kind of, you know, unsteady, I'm like, let's change it up. Like, what can we do? What can we do to, to, to sell 3, 000 masks today? You know, because we all went through that. And so like, you know, like we were selling things. I would have probably, I would have told you that I would never have sold. Hence all the masks that we were selling and tie dye and leopard and you know, all these things. But you know what, at the end of the day, like that's what we do. Like we're, I'm there to sell a product and Covid just made people want things. It was great for business because it, you know, obviously increased revenue. But it also put a new demand on small businesses of having to keep up with Amazon and same day shipping. And I wanted to, you know, I ordered it today, but I wanted it yesterday. You know, like there, there was, there's become so much pressure that we have to, you know, be able to process and ship things same day now because of everything we went through during the pandemic. And you know, it's a double edged sword. You know, there's always good and there's always, you know, bad thing. I don't say bad, but there's always those struggles and, and you just have to learn how to change and adjust and, and keep moving. As soon as you stop moving, that's when you know things can get bad. And then you start doubting yourself and, you know, all those things. So we just keep moving, and it's all. It's all worked out for the better. So just gotta stay positive.

I think we're back in that space. You know, I think there's a lot of people right now who are not moving because they're scared, but I think they have to keep moving in order to adapt to what we're going through. Again, right now, I have to ask you this question. I have more warehouse questions. I could talk about that all day. But something that amazes me about you, and I've always been really intrigued by this, and especially, you know, with what happened during COVID and all this growth, you've managed to grow this company, a traditional e commerce company now, and you're not really the face of the brand. And that amazes me because a lot of people like you have an amazing sense of community that you've built even without doing that. And in that sense of community that you've built, what I think is really strong, your Facebook group, I feel like, has always been the very best one at your customers, sharing selfies of themselves in the outfits and then encouraging one another when they post a selfie of themselves in the outfit. Like, by far the best I've seen. So how did you foster that sense of community even without yourself, like, at the helm of that ship?

So I have. When I. When we started zigzag, like, it was one of those things that I've never wanted to. I knew from the very beginning that I never wanted to be the one, the face that was out there. I had three small kids when we started, and it was just. It was too much. Like, I couldn't do all of these things. And so. And I think that. And Joel was a firefighter, so every third day, no matter what day it fell on, every third day he was at the fire station. And so every third day, I was a single mom doing the things. I have three boys. And, you know, we were always doing something. There was no way that I could always have a family, like a full face of makeup and my hair done and didn't have, like, a goldfish stuck to my sweater, you know, like, there. There was just too much. And, you know, and so from the. Literally, from the very beginning, we started in April, and in June of the same year is when we hired our first model. And she is still with us today. So she has been with us. Actually, two of them have been with us the whole journey. And so, you know, I think that that Says a lot, too, about us being able to build the brand that we have. And where we've been is. Yes. Just because it's not my face that's out there. There's still been a familiar face that's been there for all those years. And so, not that, you know, just because I don't take, you know, my selfies and I don't take tours of myself and you don't see me all over the website. I'm still there, you know, I'm still communicating with them. I'm still, you know, sending, you know, or Facebook message. It's lots of Facebook messages and emails. And, you know, there's still a lot of chatter that I. I'm involved in. It's just not literally my face that's out there. And, you know, I kind of like it that way because, you know, one of the things that we've always talked about is one day there's going to be an end game. And what is my end game? And how am I going to be able to, you know, walk away or have any kind of transition of somebody else in my role if I'm the face of it? And, you know, I. We always have talked about it, and that's. That could be a whole nother podcast in its own of, you know, because those are, you know, avenues that we've always entertained of what will that look like? And so that makes that transitional part much easier when you're not the face. And that's always been on our mind. That's always been that. That thing that's in the back of my mind going, there's a reason why you're doing this, you know, and. Yeah, and that's probably the biggest reason.

Yeah, and I think that's forgotten a lot, so I totally agree with that. How did you get your community off the bat, sharing so many selfies with one another?

One of the things over the years, especially just being in the industry now for 10 years and seeing just the change in myself and, you know, when I started the business, I was 30. I'm 40 now. You know, like, there's a lot of things that change from 30 to 40. And, you know, when we started, it was always. We've always been about providing clothes for women of all sizes. And that was, you know, I have fluctuated in weight so much over 10 years of like 50 to 60 pounds up, down, you know, and so I've always wanted to encourage women to just learn to love themselves and to learn to. To be comfortable in their own skin. And, you Know, like, don't follow the trend of what everybody's saying. Like, nobody fits in a box, so why are you putting yourself there? And so I feel like that is kind of what has really made our community as good as it is, is because that's kind of, you know, like, I don't want to say practice what you preach, but, you know, like, that. That is what we've always been preaching is, like, it's okay to be different. It's okay to be a little quirky. It's okay to have an edge to you. You don't have to fall into such a strict, you know, criteria of the norm. And who wants to be normal anyways? It's overrated. There's nothing normal about me. And, you know, and so I think, really, that's what. That's what has changed our community is because, you know, like, it's okay be you. Do you want pink hair? Rock it. Be confident in it. If you are. Do you, you know, want to wear crazy eyeshadow? Do it. Why? You know, like, why not? Like, if you want to mix your patterns in your color, like, go for it. And as long as you're confident in what you're doing or wearing or whatever it is, like, just own it.

Yeah, I love that.

That's kind of where I feel like it's come from.

I love it. Well, in 10 years, you've learned many lessons. So as we wrap up, I would love to hear just in 10 years, parting thoughts. What are. What are three things you wish? Boutique owners listening today really took home from your journey over 10 years.

I think that, number one, I would say over 10 years and looking at what we have accomplished, the failures we've had, my biggest thing would always be, is to follow your gut. There's words. Over the years, there's always been so many situations that I look back on and go, man, I kind of wish I would have followed my gut that day. You know, I let too many other people in my ear tell me what I should or shouldn't be doing, and at the end of the day, it's your business. It's. You know, we've all built these things for purpose. And always follow. Yeah, always follow your gut. It typically does not lead you astray. And I wish that I could. You know, I don't want to say that there's any regrets, because absolutely, I've learned from all the things that we've been through, but I wish that I would always listen to Micah and go with that, man. I don't know what else? Put me on the spot, Ashley.

That's my job.

You know, I would say don't be afraid of change. If you can't roll with the punches, then this might not be for you. Because there is so much change in our industry that if it gives you anxiety to be up a creek without a paddle, because it's changing every day. Every day. And I thrive for it. I thrive on it. So. And let's see. I don't know what else I got. Just stay true to you. You stay true to you and be passionate about it. You'll do big things.

Those are all good things. All right, as we wrap up, last thing, your oldest son's going to college, right. You're entering this new journey of your life, this new phase. So after all that, those lessons, right, that you just listed off, I want to even fast forward from 30 to 40 to 60 to 70 down the road. And your boys now, you know, your sitting with them on the front porch, maybe you've got grandkids, you've got friends and family. You're all gathered around and you're talking about zigzag and, you know, the multiple warehouses now that you've built and the journey that you've had. What's the thing that you want people to remember the most about you in this journey and who you are?

Oh, my gosh. I've always said it's not about, you know, oh, God, I don't like it ever being about me. So I would. I don't. I don't know what kind of legacy. I don't. That is a really hard question that I feel like I'm. I've been trying to figure out myself here lately, honestly, because there's just been so much that has happened. I don't even say happened, just. Ashley, I don't know how to answer that question.

What do you want your customers maybe to feel at the end of the.

Day that they love themselves and that you don't have to impress anybody else? It's not about everybody else. We just live in a world right now that it's always about keeping up with the Jones and trying to, you know, we're living through filters.

Take the.

Take the filter off. Just. Just be you. Just be you. Why does it have to be so hard? Why does it have. Have to be that everybody's working so hard to be somebody else? Yeah. And that is not the life to live. It is not the life to live in your business. It's not the life to live in your marriage. It's not the life to live as a parent. You know, be true to who you are and quit trying to be like everybody else. That's what I want my customers to walk away with.

I love that. And that's what your legacy will be. Leslie, thanks so much for this time today. Awesome job. I hope everyone has pages of notes. I really do admire you and Joel and what you've built and the people that you are and your willingness to share this with others. So thanks so much for your time today.

Thanks, Ashley.

Hey, thanks for listening to our 10 year anniversary series here on the Boutique Chat podcast. Not only is it our 10th anniversary here at the Boutique, but several stores in our industry. So each week on the podcast we are hosting a series for our 10 year anniversary special. You're going to listen to lots of great stores just like this one who are sharing their lessons learned in 10 years. You guys, to help celebrate, we have a massive, massive biggest we've ever done giveaway happening on Facebook and Instagram at the Boutique Hub to help celebrate 10 years in business. Or giving away prizes like a thousand dollar shopping spree on Hubventory, $100 credits across 10 different brands on Hubventory, a lifetime membership to the Boutique Hub VIP package to the Boutique Summit, a VIP planner package, an opportunity to get into Boutique Hub Black and so much more. So check out the giveaway details on our Facebook and Instagram. And thank you for helping us celebrate 10 years in business. We couldn't do it without you guys. We appreciate your trust, your loyalty and your community so much.