Prepping for the New Year: Reflections on 2023 and Predictions for 2024

Ashley Alderson walks through end-of-year tasks for boutique owners: processing returns, clearing inventory, and planning markdowns. She identifies three burnout types hitting owners right now and predicts 2024 rewards those who slow down to rebuild basics like email, community, and inventory management. A free challenge runs Jan 2-4.
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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 to the podcast and I'm just going to tell you, this is my favorite week of the year. I don't know about you, maybe you're traveling, maybe it's still a little bit chaotic. You're probably doing an inventory reduction sale. You're taking inventory. Maybe that's busy for you, right? But I think in the busy that this week can be for some people, the week between Christmas and between New Year's, I think it's also one of the most reflective weeks of the year, which is why I love it so much. So personally I try not to schedule a lot of meetings this week just to create some space for daydreaming and planning and getting really clear on where I personally want to go and where I want the business to go in the next year. And I hope that you've mapped out some time for yourself to do that as well. So I wanted to come and just maybe prompt you with a couple of questions today to help you reflect on what happened in 2023, but also help you get ready for what's to come in 2024 and also give you a few of my, I don't know, crystal ball predictions, if I had one, on where I think our industry is headed next. So thanks for joining me today on the podcast. Again, it's just you and me and let's dig into my favorite week of the year. So first things first, as you are thinking about success this week, I want to remind you of a couple quick things. First, if you didn't listen to last week's episode on the podcast, it was a solo, but it was me going over all of my best tips for the end of the year. What things to remember, tax efficiencies, things that you want to make sure you get done before January 1st. So if you need a couple of quick reminders, check out last week's episode. Second, if you are a member of the Boutique Hub, I just made a post this week in the Boutique Hubs Facebook group all about the best ways to drive sales this week in between Christmas and New Year's to keep your end of year books and cash flow running strong. And I wanted to share a couple of those with you really quick. First, make sure that. And this sounds so obvious, you guys, but make sure. And when your customers come back in your store or online and they have a return, and you know they have a return, it's really easy to get grumpy about that return, right? I want to make sure that you welcome them back with open arms and excitement, even if it's just to make a return. Because for so many people, this is maybe the first and only time they've ever shopped with you. So it's not just the experience of how they felt when they bought something from you or when they received that gift that was from your business, but it's how you make them feel if the gift wasn't perfect, right? So the attention to detail of the emotion you're creating in others this week, if they do have a return, is more important than how you made them feel when they bought it. This is your opportunity to win back a customer for life. So when you have a really hard and fast return policy, just be careful with how you might be leaving people as they encounter that return policy. I'll give you an example. I am a big believer and a big fan in the more open the return policy, the better the Zappos experience, right? If you haven't read the book by Tony Hsieh, delivering Happiness, read it. It's worth it. They've pioneered this concept of more open return policies. But when you say it is credit only, seven days, must have receipt, must have tags only at the value of, you know, whatever the item would currently be marked, whatever it is, I could go on into a lot of detail. When you're really hard and fast on that and someone wants to push back and say, but, but, but, right? And you're like, nope, that's what it is, because I can't sell it. I just want you to think about what if, right? What if you gave into that? What if you said, okay, yes, it is store credit. I don't want you to give cash back, right? But what if it is store credit and you make it a little more lenient? It's 14 days, it's 30 days, it's a rush of the holidays, whatever it is. And yeah, you might take a loss on that item. $12 loss, right? But based on that experience, that $12 loss could turn into a customer that's spending 250 to $750 a year with you or more in some cases. How you win that customer, one at a time really does matter. So be creative this week as you're thinking and just be open, willing to greet your customers, where they are when they come in or come online for returns. All right, next thing this week, don't forget as you're taking inventory and you're ready to slash it all with your sale, right? What's the diamonds and what's the dirt? This is your time to really review your inventory. What's new and needs to be restyled, reshot, reposted? What can you drop as a new arrival this week that maybe isn't new, but you can make look new? Because there are still customers with Christmas cash ready to buy new arrivals. I'm a good example of this. I just learned I'm going to go on a trip to the Caribbean in February, which I'm so excited about. I don't have anything to wear. So here I am with Christmas cash ready to buy something new. And there is literally nothing new for me to buy on most of the boutiques websites that I'm shopping right now. So what can you make new, right? Or what can you bring new still this week to excite people and to draw people into wanting to spend that Christmas cash with you and not anywhere else. But also, I know you're running inventory reduction sales, so that's what's new, but what's aged? And you need to flat out slash and get rid of 50% off, 60% off. It might be 75% off for some of you because cash is king. The faster you can get the cash, even if it's at a loss, the faster you can turn that into a new investment that can work for you quicker in January. So think about what's new, what's age and what really, what do I need to do with it going forward? The third reminder I want to give you of this week is when you're taking inventory and your inventory typically is at the lowest part of the season that it's going to be. This is your time to say, do I have the right class structures or product types listed in Shopify or whatever my point of sale is? So am I simply really classifying tops and bottoms and accessories, right? Or my home and gift? Is it just home and gift, right? And is it just too broad or do I need to break it down by graphic tees, long sleeve tops, sweaters, blouses? Or I need to break my home and gift down by candles and stationary and garden and tabletop and I need to get a little Bit more details. When your inventory is at a low point, this is the time to make the point of sale switches that you're wanting to make and implement skews. Maybe if you really haven't done a barcode system and really getting iron, like clad tight on whatever it is for your product description or not, product descriptions, product types and class structures so that you can make better buying decisions as you come into 2024. So a couple of quick reminders again, just to finish this week as you move into 2024. All right? Now, third thing, when it comes into really closing out 2023 and reviewing just as a whole how it went, one of the biggest struggles I've seen in the last year is if I've seen it once, I've seen it a thousand times. And this might be you, but the struggle has been burnout. And so maybe as you're looking back and you're looking at 2023 and you're going, you know what I didn't love this year? I hustled. Things didn't work. I felt like I had to compete with TikTok shops and maybe that was great, maybe it was terrible and maybe you're somewhere in the middle. Maybe you felt like you had to compete with Sheen and Temu and you thought your customers all of a sudden are just going to cheaper is better, right? For a lot of people, how we have traditionally done business in the last three to four years really started to shift this year and the old way wasn't working anymore. And so if that was you, I just want to encourage you and let you know you're not alone. There's a lot of people that felt that way. But there's two ways of looking at that, right? There's the way of, oh, crap, it's never going to work for me. I should just close and be done right. The economy's changing. People want cheaper is better. This business isn't for me, it'll never work, right? I failed. That's one way of looking at it. Or the other way of looking at it is to say, boy, there's a lot of businesses in this industry. There's thousands of them in the Hub, let me tell you that. Maybe started business in 2009 during the last recession, or maybe they bought their building at the most inopportune time, or maybe they've been through a ton of retail cycles that are up and down, because that's what this industry does. It goes up and it comes down and it goes up again. It goes down. But we have become so accustomed to this hypergrowth curve where we beat month over month over month that all of a sudden this year, when that started to switch for us, we were in panic mode. Oh my gosh, I'm failing. Really? We're not, right? It is just a part of the cycle. So again, maybe the second type of person, that type of person that you are is like, hey, this is just another cycle. And if I'm not winning, I'm learning. So I'm learning that it's time to innovate. And maybe what was currently working 12 months ago is not going to be currently working when it comes into 2024. My personal opinion is this, you guys, I've seen so much talk on Sheen and Temu and TikTok shops and this rat race that we're all running. And my personal opinion is they just came in and innovated. They came in, they saw opportunity in our industry, they saw everyone looking alike, they saw everyone buying the same stuff, they saw this opportunity to sell what's on trend and they innovated. They had more money and they innovated faster than we did. Right? We got disrupted, our industry got disrupted. And so either we're gonna let that defeat us or we're gonna go, okay, great, I'm gonna take that as a cue that now I need to innovate. Maybe I need to do something different. And my personal opinion is that has led to a lot of the burnout that I want to talk about. Right? But my personal opinion is that in that innovation, we have great opportunity in 2024, we have great opportunity to go back to what makes boutiques boutiques. Now, to me, what makes boutiques boutiques is they're highly curated, they're unique, they have things I can't find at Walmart and Sheen and Temu and Tick Tock shops. Right? If we're going to lump them all into same into the same boat, I can find things that are a little bit unique, that are hand picked, that are different. I can also shop from a boutique. That creates an emotional reaction in me and it helps me to remember where I shopped versus what I shop for. I want to shop with a business that makes me feel good, that makes me feel like I'm a part of something. It makes me feel like I'm doing good. It makes me feel like I'm a part of a community. It makes me feel like I'm shopping with someone who I really admire and I trust and I want to be in that person's space. Those are the things that make boutiques really special and really different versus this constant chasing of product that looks like everyone else's that's just a little bit cheaper than the next guy down the road that doesn't work anymore. And so to achieve really what we want to and innovate in 2023, or, I'm sorry, in 2024, I'm going to go back to again. What do I think that's going to be? What do I think is going to set you apart in 2024? I want to just, again, address that elephant in the room of you might be at this point of burnout, saying, I don't want to. Right? Innovating sounds great, but I'm just. I'm not happy with where I am. So here's how I see this idea of burnout. I see burnout kind of coming out in three different ways right now across our industry. Number one, there's hustle burnout. Some of you are just sick and tired of hustling. You're sick and tired of always being busy and feeling like your worth is tied to busyness. Like, if you're not doing something or producing something or if you're not running right, that you're somehow not a value. Are you so sick of when you have this conversation with people and you're like, how are you? And they're like, I'm just so busy. I. I find myself doing that and I hate it. I really want to eliminate the word busy from my Life. Truthfully, in 2024, I don't want to tell people I'm busy. I'm doing great. I just had the best quiet weekend doing nothing, reading a book with my kids in a camper, right? Like, I just want to be present. I want to be joyful. I want to be happy. I want to be full of content. Like, I just want to be content. I don't want to be busy. So this idea of hustling and trying to beat our numbers again and again and again is not sustainable. So rather than constantly thinking about bigger is better. I just want to invite us all to think about better. Being better, sustainable being better and riding the retail waves being. Being better. What does that look like for you? How do you build a sustainable business that's better, right? So no more hustle burnout. More. How can I really lean into better being better? The second type of burnout I'm seeing is industry fatigue. Simply, some of you have been around the block. You've been in this business for a while, and you're Just tired of the way you've been doing it. You're tired of, you know, constantly buying and selling and trying to keep up with the Joneses. And now you've got TikTok and Sheen and everyone else breathing down your neck, and you don't want to do it anymore. That's normal, too. That's normal for so many of you. And so the best way to beat industry fatigue is time to shake things up a little bit. What can be innovated in your business? What can be new and exciting and different in your business that gets you coming back and gets you jumping out of bed in the morning saying, I can't wait to go do this thing today. I can't wait to go work on this new idea today. What does that look like for you? The third type of burnout I definitely think a lot of us have faced, I've personally faced this is achiever burnout. So typically, entrepreneurs are visionaries and achievers, right? And we somehow, somehow learned when we were kids that we could tie our worth, our personal satisfaction, to the moments where we're achieving things, to the moments where we're beating goals and we're crossing things off the list and we're winning, right? And I feel like this achiever was really amplified with the hustle of 2020, right? 2020 now being almost four years ago, which is crazy. It feels like it was yesterday. We're all traumatized by 2020, but we're moving on, right? We're past it. But this idea of being an achiever, that the crappy part about this and having your worth tied to all these things that we're trying to win and achieve is that we achieve the thing, we meet the goal, and then we never once stop to celebrate it and go, God dang it, Ashley, look at what you did. Good job. Like, let's just sit in this for a minute. Let's just be here. But instead, we instinctively move on and say, oh, can't rest on our laurels. Can't sit there very long. What's the next thing going to be? And we take pride in that. We take pride in, oh, I'm already on to the next goal. I don't need to celebrate this one. Which is a cop out and an excuse, by the way. So how do we shift that conversation and narrative in our head to my worth is my worth today. Whether I sleep in, whether I meet my numbers, whether I do X, Y or Z, or get an award or beat my goals, My worth is my worth, no matter what. That's the goal at the end of the day. And if you have fun chasing those things, like we all do, right, we're all business junkies and it's a game, then do it. Play the game. Chase the things. I still will, but I will not make the mistake again of assigning my worth and riding the emotional highs and lows roller coaster of if I hit the numbers or not, letting me feel differently about myself in that moment. Remember, bigger is not better. Better is better. So how you address this achiever mentality will definitely address how you feel in the new year.
Okay, give me a quick head nod if you love the power of January. Like opening a new planner, the smell of the paper, not writing like you're a 12 year old boy like me, like maybe even using some fancy gel pens while you're at it, right? Like it's just such a feeling. That's why I love January so much. It feels like such a clean slate. So every year at the Hub we host this week long challenge called the Best Year Yet Challenge. You don't even have to be a member to participate. It's literally free for everyone and the goal is just how do we start this year off in a really powerful way. So this year I just have to say it's going to be more important than ever because we're facing some major changes. How we do business in this industry is changing and I think there's so much opportunity in it. But if we don't address the opportunity and lean into it, it's going to be really a tough year for a lot of people. So I want to get ahead of that with you. This year we are talking into the three major ways to grow and change your business and we're going to deep dive each of those three ways each day of the Best Year Yet Challenge. So I've got a link for you in the show notes. Go ahead and drop your email again. It's completely free and I'll email you the information and the zoom links. It'll be January 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 10am Central Time. Each day will go for about 90 minutes. You're going to want to be there because it is the most powerful way to start your year off completely fresh and and address the changes that we're seeing together. You guys, this is your time, this is your opportunity. This is just like opening that planner and getting out your fancy gel pens. Let's do it together. During the Best Year Yet Challenge.
I'll let you in on a little behind the scenes. One thing I love to do during this week is look back and just really review the year that we just lived together. Right? So what worked and why and how can I do more of that in the next year? What didn't work and why and how can I change that in the next year? What was my word of the year last year? How did I actually live into that? And then what shifts do I need to make? What are my. What's my word of the year going to be this year so far? Here's where I'm at. I have a business word of the year and the team all knows that. And then I have a personal word of the year. Our business word of the year is focus. And to me, focus means if you follow the Hub for any period of time, you probably know my squirrel brain because I'm always like, we could do this and we could do that and we have this project and we could do Pink Friday and we can launch this course. And, you know, members really want to meet up in this certain way. So we opened up a mastermind. And I've got all these things, like, there's always something to do and I love that. But sometimes we get chasing all these different things, specifically us as a company and we need to be reminded that, you know, what really the most important thing for us that we do, the thing that we hang our hat on every single day, day in, day out, is our membership. It's if you are a member of the boutique Hub, how can we serve and delight you today? What do you need? Is it this training that you're like, I need to know how to do this. I have a problem, I need a solution? Or is it. God dang it. Finances are tight right now. I need to save some money. Are you. Are you using and do you know about these resources and discounts that you have, whether it's free shipping with hundreds of brands on Hub and Tori that you get just because you're a member of the Hub, right? Or all these discounts that you have on your member dashboard, like, to me, that's focus is going back to what is our queen bee role? If you're a Mike Michalowicz fan, you know what I'm talking about. What is the queen B role and how do we just focus on it? So what is that for you? What is your. What is your focus in 2024? Some of you maybe got a little distracted with TikTok shops last year. You maybe got distracted thinking you had to be on Pinterest and on Instagram and on Facebook and on Snapchat and on TikTok, and you had to have emails and texts and all the things, and you did all the things, but you didn't do any of them really well. So how do you go back to focusing on what are my top three sales channels? What is my number one top way to serve my VIP customers? Like, where is my focus? So that's my word of the year for the company is focus. My personal word of the year, however, very different. And here's why. I'm not going to get trapped in this achieve or burnout anymore. My word of the year, personally, is fun. How can I do more of in 2024, what is really fun for me to do? And there's things in my role and there's things as a mom and things as a wife that I thoroughly love, but because I get so busy doing the things that I think I need to do that really I could hand off probably to someone else or just say no to. I'm so busy doing the things I don't want to do that I don't have time to do the things I want to do. Does that resonate? Is that you. I'm so guilty of that. I look at my to do list and I look at the things that I'm doing and I'm like, go. Is that where I want to be spending my time? Editing grammar? Because somehow I've, like, held on to that. No. So what do I need to do to move that so I can get back to what I want to be doing and what's fun for me, which for me is being in our Facebook groups. If you notice, I happen to do a lot of, like, long posts. I love to write. I love to take ideas and inspiration and just like, business tips and strategy. And I love to write about it. And so I write a lot of long posts in our membership. I hope this, I hope those are helpful to you because I love doing them and then I love taking those ideas and, you know, using them in multiple different ways. So my word of the year is fun. And I hope that you have a personal word of the year too, that really resonates and gets you excited about waking up in the morning. The word focus doesn't necessarily make me excited about getting up in the morning, if I'm being honest, but I know it's necessary and it will drive our team forward. But the word fun gets me up in the morning. It gets me motivated, which I know if I'm motivated, then we can continue to drive the team forward. Right? So this week is perfect to do some of that reflection and planning. All right, last thing. So here's where we're gonna go in 2024. If I had a crystal ball, here's my predictions. We talked about the highs and lows of 2023. We talked about how this industry goes up, and it comes down. Yes, there was people, lots of people, who struggled this year, but I'm going to tell you, there was also a lot of people who won this year who won big time. And the more of those people that I talk to and we think about what's going to happen in the next year in 2024, here's what I hear the most of. And I love this because I use this when I ride barrel horses. This is it. Slow down to speed up. Slow down to speed up. That's what I think is coming in 2024. What do I mean by that? Well, let me give you my. Some of you who don't have horses, you're gonna be like, ashley, what the crap are you talking about? This is how I look at it. So if I'm riding young horses, right, and I'm teaching them barrel racing, so when you put them on the pattern, typically, you know, they don't know what the crap they're doing, right? So you're going slow, and then pretty soon you're adding more speed, and you're adding more speed. Well, when you start to add a lot of speed to a young horse who's inexperienced, things tend to fall apart all of a sudden. They're making mistakes and their body's out of position and they're doing things they shouldn't be doing. Just because they don't know how to add and handle all the speed that you just added, they don't know how to do it all at once, right? Things kind of fall apart. So once you've added the speed, sometimes you have to slow way down and go back to the basics and rebuild the foundation and teach them correct body position to slow down so that then you can go back to add more speed again. And then they get it right. One plus one equals two. We've got to go back to that foundation. And I think business a lot of times is the same way. I could tell you many years for us at the hub and where we had, like, way too much speed and then we needed to slow way down in order to speed up. 2023 was kind of a year like that for us where we went back to a lot of the foundations of what we. We've been doing to rebuild them. And now we're ready to speed up again. So I think about your business the same in 2024. Where can you slow down to speed up again? Bigger is not better. Better is better. So things that I am consistently seeing from so many of you, number one, going back to events and experiences for your customer, those are things that TikTok shops, Sheen, Temu, Amazon, Walmart, they don't provide events and experiences for your customer. Only you can do that. And that's what creates an emotional reaction with your customer. That's what builds a community around your brand. That's what builds trust. That's what keeps you top of mind, right? We saw that a lot over the holiday season. So going back to events and experiences where maybe you took some time away from that in the past, going back to Facebook groups, some of you were like, oh, my Facebook group kind of died for a while and I walked away from it and I went hard on TikTok. But what we have found, and I've seen this with thousands of you literally talking about this is Facebook groups is the number one converting social media platform for sales. And so how do I make my Facebook group work for me again, going back to creating community, creating user generated content, asking daily engagement questions, doing threads, going live right behind the scenes content, all of that, not just selling, selling, selling in a Facebook group, but building community and trust and conversations in Facebook groups. Other things that are going back Facebook ads. Facebook ads took a bit of a rough patch for a while. However, we're seeing success out of Facebook ads at the hub that we've never seen before and through Boutique Hub Black, which is our high level program for Boutique Hub members that specifically want to learn how to maximize their own ads, how to run their own ads or maximize what they're doing with agencies, how to learn the latest in SEO and Google Ads like high level and one on one coaching. We're seeing people crush it with Facebook ads. Again, getting back to the basics of what is really working because Facebook ad strategy has changed big time. Another thing that's I think going back to the basics for 2024 is name brands. We totally went away from name brands. Honestly around 2020 I saw so many of you guys shifting and going back to I'm in a private label, I'm going back to just like Zenana, what can I buy low and sell high? All those things kind of getting out of the name brand game because some of them, right, they're MSRP protected, whatever it might be, zip code protected. However in order to really make your own brand and set yourself apart from everyone else on the Internet and Sheen and Temu and TikTok, you've got to have something that's different and name brands are different. And frankly, there's a lot of customers myself in general, and I know there's others like me. I don't want to shop on Shein and Temu. I want to shop where I know I can find something that's a quality product that I can trust. And so I'm going back to the name brand and the customer that's, you know, upper 30s, into her 40s, into her 50s, she has more money to spend anyway, so why not chase that customer more than the 20 year old who wants a $499 top on Temu? Totally different experience. So who is your customer? What is she shopping for? Why is she shopping for it? How can I give her name brands that would satisfy what she's really looking for? All right, last thing, Going back to the basics, slowing down to speed up emails. Email marketing. I have preached this for every single year I've owned and operated the boutique hub. It's the number one thing. And if you still have not implemented growing your email list and sending email flows and automations, this is your very direct, direct message that you need to do it now is the most important sales channel that you have because not only can you email them, but you can remarket to them on Facebook ads. You can do so many different things with your emails. So why not grow that list? Right? Yeah. You may not love getting emails, but guess what? They work. They keep you top of mind. Right? So get in there. As long as you give people a reason to engage with you in emails, they will. So get back to your email list. All right, last thing. When it comes to slowing down, to speeding up, and again, what I think is really important to rebuilding your business in 2024. 2024 to me is a year of inventory management. And for some of you, I know some of you are left brain, some of you are right brain. There's retail art, there's retail science. I think hands down, we all love retail art a whole lot more than retail science. Right? Right. Very few of you love the retail science part of it, but it is a retail science part of it that really pays the bills. And again, the retail science is what is going to set you apart from everyone in the next year because can't sell what you don't have. And if we don't have the right inventory at the right Amounts at the right price. What is the business that you're in? So a couple keys to remember when it comes to really, you know, everyone says know your numbers. Well, what does that really mean? Uh, my gosh, my phone is just going off. That's embarrassing. Okay, knowing your numbers, what does that really mean? Number one, what is your inventory on hand? So maybe having delirious profit or better reports and really under or stocky right in Shopify, that will help you to actually know what is my inventory on hand of that inventory, what is aged and what is new, what's fresh. That's the basics. Second, what are my product categories? Right, we just talked about that. My product descriptions. So this is your week that you're doing inventory, right? So tops, bottoms, dresses. Well, actually it's blouses, it's graphic tees. It's breaking our categories down further and making sure it's set up right in our point of sale system. Next, how am I managing my purchase orders? Am I just placing an order and hoping it shows up? Or am I using fades across whether I'm shopping on Hubventory or Fair or fashion Go or in person at market? And I'm actually tracking what's on order so I can plan accordingly and I make sure I've got a great assortment plan coming in. Next, what is my pricing strategy? Am I pricing for a profit or am I pricing to compete with Sheen and Temu? Because that's a great way to go out of business. So do I have enough margin built in my pricing strategy Strategy so I can have enough markup to take my markdowns when I need it. Next, what is my markdown strategy? So if I know I have something on hand for four weeks and I haven't sold 2/3 of it, I need to slash it and market 50% off or more. What does that look like for me? And how am I tracking it? And who on my team is responsible for helping me track that? So I have a constant flow of markdowns because I know cash is king, right? This idea that if I just save this product, I keep it for three weeks longer so I don't have to mark it down an additional 10%, I'm going to lose more than I gain. Because if I just took like 20% versus the 10% or if I took 50% versus the 10%, I at least have that money to reinvest in something new that I could sell through another third of and make how much more money at the end of the day, right? So quit trying to hang on to your inventory for longer to try to save whatever you might discount it. Take the markdown deeper, faster so you can get the cash out and put it into something that will actually work for you. That is the name of the game. It is a quick turn business. So what is your turn rate per category? Really understand what is my markdown strategy for all those products? All right. And finally, when it comes to inventory management, I really want to double down on this here for you. What is your profit first strategy? So I'm a huge Christine Gray fan. She's a huge part of what we do in the boutique hub. We teach profit first every single day in the Hub with Christine in Retail bootcamp as well. She has her own wonderful programs. But what is your plan to pay yourself this year? How is your business going to get lean? How are we going to have a smart inventory strategy? How are we going have a smart pricing strategy? How are we going have a smart markdown strategy so that we can have a great profit first strategy? So the key for the year, slow down to speed up. Going back to the basics isn't a bad thing, you guys. I think there's a great opportunity for our industry to shift and to innovate and to go back to being community focused and curated and unique. And we don't have to compete with these online platforms that are causing so much fear for so many people right now. Your business can be your business and you don't have to compete with anyone else to make it just like anyone else's. Right? Don't be the best imitation of someone else. Be the best version of yourself in 2024. All right with that. I wish you guys, I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. I hope you had a very merry Christmas. I'm excited for you. Happy New Year's. I hope I will see you guys on January 2, 3rd and 4 worth during our best year yet Challenge. I can't wait. I will see you very soon. If you haven't signed up for the best year Challenge yet, it's free. We're going to kick off the first three days of the new year together planning how to make this your best year yet. So check for that link in the show notes today or anywhere on the Hub socials. The links are everywhere and I hope we'll see you in zoom during the best year yet challenge. That's it. Happy New year's. Welcome to 2024. I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much for supporting the hub, supporting me, my family who have you have changed my family's life, that is for sure. And our team at the Hub, from all of us, thank you sincerely for being a part of what we do here at the Hub and we can't wait to support you in 2024. Thanks guys. Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode.
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