Meet Ashley Alderson | Founder at The Boutique Hub, Boutique Expert, Coach, Mom, Cancer Survivor

When I was growing up, people would always ask, what do you want to be when you grow up? I want to do something unique that no one's ever done before. And I really want to help people. That was the only logical answer I could give them. My name is Ashley Alderson, and I'm the founder of the boutique Hub. And Eric and I, I think, have a pretty cool, unique story about how we can overcome some of life's greatest challenges only to find beauty in what God's created around us and turn that into an opportunity to help other people and touch other people, not only to grow their businesses, to have better marriages, but also and ultimately to live a better life for him. Rodeo and the Western way of life have been a huge part of our background, both Eric and I growing up. And in 2006, I was able to compete and be named Miss Rodeo North Dakota, which ultimately meant I could compete for the title of Miss Rodeo America. So I had an entire year to travel and to represent the sport and my state. But my travels quickly became something much greater. Actually, the very first big trip that I went on, when I got home from that trip, which was a month long, the first night I was back in my apartment, I woke up with a terrible pain in my chest.

Next, and about 24 hours later, we were sitting there with my family and I hearing the words that I had cancer. But it did give us hope that it was optimistic. But the next thing he said, I'll never forget, and it was, how you handle your mindset through this process is going to be a big determining factor of its outcome.

How did we meet?

So I had come home, I think we were at a wedding dance maybe, and I just lost all my hair recently from chemo. You thought you were going to be smooth and give me a compliment. And so you're like, hey, I like what you've done with your hair. Don't think I don't notice the details. And I'm thinking, what a jerk.

He knows that I'm wearing a wig.

I thought you were dissing my new hairdo.

Although we had just met, one of the things that the doctors told me right away as I entered into chemo was that they had no idea if I would ever be able to have kids someday. So even though I clearly wasn't ready for it at the time, it was a long term goal of mine and it was totally up in the air at that point. We didn't know what would happen. I ended up doing six months of chemo. And lucky for us, I didn't have to do any radiation because they said I would most likely have breast cancer within five years had they radiated the tumors in my chest like they would have needed to. And in July of that year, I went through my last chemo treatment. And in August, I had a PET scan. And thank God, we were named cancer free and I was declared in remission at that point in 2007, I was able to win Miss Rodeo America and spend over 320 days on the road that year, traveling the U.S. speaking about professional rodeo and the Western way of life, and also telling my story as a cancer survivor. And it was a year I will be eternally grateful for the friendships and connections that were made. Soon after Miss Rodeo America, Eric and I got married. And lucky for us, we soon found out we were able to have kids, which, again, was a big question mark in our mind. And we welcomed Hadley to our family first. And then soon after came Easton and Jade. And today, the three of them are the absolute joy of our life and the center of everything that we do. When we moved from North Dakota to Wisconsin for Eric's job, it really gave me some freedom after I left my role in economic development to start something new. And I came back to this wild idea that I had while I was traveling. And I love discovering boutiques all over the country, but I had no way to find them all together in one location again when I got back home. And for me, and I know a lot of people, fashion used to be something that was unattainable. It was something up on a shelf. And you only love fashion if you were from New York or la, or you had money, which I didn't have. But boutiques were a way for women of all ages and sizes and locations and budgets to feel welcome to fashion and to feel confident and beautiful. That's what I loved about them. So the boutique hub started as basically an online shopping mall of boutiques, which it still is today, which where women can discover stores that they love from around the world on one platform and then connect and shop with those stores independently. And even deeper than that, the boutique hub is shaping the way that the boutique fashion industry operates. Our boutique business platform, which is behind the scenes, believes in community over competition. And so we together collaborate with boutiques, brands, designers, service providers, and insiders in the industry to allow them to connect and to collaborate and find tools, resources, and training on our platform so that they have everything they need in one place to operate, do business, and grow. And really that's the greater purpose, because we know that if we change a small business, we change a life, and we change a family and we change a community. So forever impact has always been our main mission. But boutiques and fashion are the driver. So even though we're still pretty young, and I think it's really in our story, I know that we've been through some pretty unique mortality moments. Moments from Miss Rodeo America to having cancer, to then losing my dad to cancer, to creating a business, almost losing said business, and now the business being really successful. I think that there's always one constant, no matter what, that remains true. And that's our why, and it's our faith in God.

Anything else. Can't be a cowboy and a nice guy. You got an image to uphold.