Process, Delegation and The EOS Model with Valerie and Ryan Becker, Wellington Design Co

Okay.

My love language is talking about all the behind the scenes things when it comes to business processes, how you scale team efficiency, team accountability, all these things that when I think you first start a business, you really get into it because you love the art side, so the marketing and the people and the product and all the things you maybe see on Instagram, right? But then once you're in it and you're like, okay, I'm serious about this and I'm going to scale this business, this, then you get into the science and the behind the scenes and the operations. And that's why today's episode with Ryan and Valerie, the founders of Wellington Design company, is so important. And I hope you have a notebook page full of notes after you listen to this episode, because we're going to talk about not only how do they grow this great brand, this is an awesome children's brand, e commerce brand that you can find inside the hub and on hubventory.com but also how do they do it while building and scaling and efficiency that allowed them to scale down their team and their payroll. And also how do they do it as a husband and wife duo working together? Because I know for Eric and I that's been a journey and a labor of love. And I know many of you are asking that same question. I want to work with my spouse or I am working with my spouse. How do I make that work for us? So today, get ready to get into the nitty gritty of the systems and processes and all the really cool behind the scenes talk of scaling your brand. And bonus, if you happen to be a wholesale brand or a children's retailer, you're gonna love the realities and the things that you have in common with Ryan and Valerie from Wellington. So get ready for this episode. I know you're gonna love it. I know you're going to take a lot of notes. Plus, if you happen to be catching this episode live as it's dropping this week, remember, this is kids week on hubventory.com, our very own wholesale marketplace here at the Hub and Wellington happens to be featured with exclusive product just for hubventory shoppers on hubventory.com so be sure to give them a follow on Hubventory and check out all your wholesale favorites each and every week. But this week, specifically for children's brands and children's retailers. Guys, you're going to love this episode. Take a ton of notes, let me know what you think. You're going to love it. Meet Ryan and Valerie. 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 show this week. I have double trouble on the show today. Man, I love it when I get two for ones like this. You guys, it's gonna be so good. Ryan and Valerie are joining me today and I. I'm so excited because, number one, we get to talk about children's, which we don't always get to talk about on the show.

And we get to talk about both.

Both wholesale and retail. And we're going to have an opportunity.

To talk about working with your spouse.

Which I'm sure you guys are ready.

To write a book about by now.

We could.

I love it.

We're going to deep dive into all of it. So Ryan and Valerie, why don't you guys start?

I would love to hear your journey from the beginning. What brought you guys into starting Wellington and starting your own line?

So we started in 2018. I had gotten a die cutting machine and I was making T shirts and designing them, and I was making them for our family like him and the kids. And finally he was like, listen, stop. You cannot make any more shirts. We don't need any more. So he encouraged me to start an Etsy shop. So I did that. And it went really well to the point where it was just us working it, but we were like cutting and pressing shirts in our living room until like one o' clock in the morning every night. It was too much. But then, as if that were wasn't enough, I asked him what his thoughts were about kind of transitioning into like a full blown children's boutique online. And we would still do our T shirts but sell, you know, bring in other vendors. And he said that would be fine. Let's give it a try. He's very supportive, which was good. So, so we started. We kind of morphed into that children's boutique. We were online only. We did pop ups. Pop ups went really well. But then I realized I missed the designing piece because I wasn't doing as much. I was just like, selling the designs I had already made, but I wasn't creating. So I got it in my head that I would like to try to design Children's clothing again. I was like, hey, what do you think if I find a factory? And like, I can't believe he did not think I was crazy.

He.

There was a little bit of your crazy in there.

Well, you didn't share that with me. He was very supportive. So we, I found a factory I wanted to work with. We sampled quite a few, got, you know, samples, things like that, found one that we liked and kind of went from there. My thought was that we would, I would design some pieces. We had created a Facebook group. I had a really cool network of other boutique owner, children's boutique owners. And I was just like, hey, this is what we're gonna do. I'm gonna design some things, we'll put them here, and then whatever doesn't sell, I'm gonna sell in my retail boutique. Everything was selling out on the Facebook group before I could really bring it into my, my retail side. So we're like, okay, I think we have something here. We launched that in January of 2020, which had we known what was coming, I probably wouldn't have. But thankfully, through Covid, we had product. Like, we somehow managed to not run out of things, which actually brought us more customers because they were able to get things from us when other vendors couldn't ship. Then by June of that year, we. Our retail side was so neglected, we had to decide which direction we were going. So we jumped in with both feet into the wholesale world and kind of didn't look back. And then we. So we kind of grew organically. We joined the hub and used that for, you know, posting marketing to boutique owners that way. And then in January or June of 2022, we joined the Kids World studio at Dallas Market Center. So we are just. This June market will be our one year there.

So. Yeah, that's amazing. That's quite a. Quite a ride. An organic ride. Take me back though. You mentioned something and you kind of breezed over it like it's no big deal. I'll just find a factory. I'll just manufacture a children's line. That's not an easy undertaking. And I asked that question a lot in the hub about, oh, I think I'm going to start something. I'm just going to find somebody to do it for me. But there's so much back and forth, quality control and just finding a vendor that you trust.

Yes.

Talk to me about that process and what you learned, what you would do again and what you might do different.

Well, ordering is a lot him now as far as fact, like finding the Factory. It was a lot of trial and error. Like, I. If I heard of a factory, I mean, I would order samples. There were so many that when they came, we were like, this is not going to work. And my background, neither one of us have a background in like fashion industry. So this was a whole learning curve completely even like how to communicate with the factory and things like that.

So, yeah, so the one piece that was impressive to me for her is she was extremely organized on that front side. So when she's reaching out to factories and getting stuff shipped, when the items arrived, she knew what it was supposed to be, who it came from, what the expectation was, what the price points were for everything, evaluating whether or not if we were to turn it wholesale, what, what could we mark it up as, what could we sell it to retailers as? And I kind of just watched that whole thing go and allowed her to run with that piece of it. And I think without that organization and patience, we would have never had the opportunity to do it. Because it took, I mean, I want to say it took six to eight months to even get to the point where we were comfortable with an initial factory producing some product that she would have designed. And then it took an additional probably 3ish months to get those products in. And we actually determined, I think the first two factor. The first factory we went to for manufacturing, we just kicked them out. The communication completely fell off after we launched and agreed to go with them and just issues arose. So there's a piece of patience that she's a very patient person. I am not. So had I been dealing with that, we would have failed initially. But also that the Val is just a process driven person. She likes to know what she's doing and like how she's going to get there before she goes and does it. It's the most annoying thing ever because I'm more of a fly by the seat of your pants. She's like, wait, wait. So I think that was the piece to me that I observed that was pretty neat.

So thanks.

That's awesome. Val, talk to me about, because you're a process person, when you started to scale organically in the company, you're like, oh man, I've got legs here, right? We've got to go back and order more. Talk to me about how you analyzed and made decisions on expanding the line, going deeper in production in the line. And you kind of have some unique viewpoints, I would say, with how you even cap the designs in your line. Talk to me how you like systematically made those decisions. To protect yourself as you scaled because you can scale too fast. You can scale and it'd be total fire. But you didn't talk to me how you about how you managed it.

Well, I. So I kind of like Ryan said like I am kind of the visionary. So I had told him, I said I want to find a factory and I think it'd be really cool if as a wholesale company we could offer product like almost every day. We found we were selling, we were connected to a lot of online boutiques in the beginning. We didn't have many brick and mortars that we were selling to. We were selling to a lot of online who was they were relying on posting on social media. So I told him, I'm like, I think it'd be really cool if we had something where every day we're giving them something new to post and we've got new product to go along with that. So I kind of, that was my vision and then I handed it off to him and he does all of the like logistics. He has scaled the company. I just like throw out ideas and he like runs with them to a point.

So Val define when I say she's process driven, she says this is what I want to do, this is how I want to do it. And then we'll actually write out and document what we're going to do.

I'm big on work instructions and like detailed how to do things.

So I still remember sitting on our couch and she said I really wish we could do this. So okay, write it out. So she kind of defined what it was. And then with my background in engineering, I've also been in supply chain management. All that fun stuff I start, I started then building out our supply chain and when did we need to order, how frequently did we order? And because to answer the question though, as far as like how deep and wide we go, we're cash based business. So it's, it's semi profit first strategy where if I don't have the money, we're not buying it. When we look at going deeper into a product, it's really only based if the funds are available. But it's all in support of the vision and process that she has outlined to make sure we can support that need for her. And it became easy on the front side because we were a little conservative and our sell through was fantastic. As the sell through became more difficult then evaluating each product when it's released, what your turn is on that product. I mean I've got spreadsheet after spreadsheet after spreadsheet, evaluating style, size, print season when it's released as relationship to the holiday and we still screw up at times but we had to get into the numbers and there was this, because I'm an engineer and I'm a numbers guy, I'd come to her and say this is what we're doing. And we started to get into that battle of well that's stupid, Ryan. You need to do this because of all these different reasons. And it was really a numbers driven decision that was then either overridden or at least taken into consideration. The more I call it the intangible aspect of it, you know, just, just because it's, she looks at me, says, right. Just because it's a romper doesn't mean it's going to sell as well as the last one. It's got a different design. It's not as, you know, it's not as a broad based of a, of a print that people are going to like. So I'll be quiet at that point.

This is why the two of you work well together, right? I can totally see the ends of the spectrum that you're bringing together. So Val, on that note, talk to me about your launch strategy on the front end because like you said, it's really important for you to, to give your store something that they can post often. So how are you rolling out new products and keeping your audience engaged with all of your new launch, your new launches as they come?

So that we really had to learn to be consistent. So we want to make sure that our retailers know what to expect. So we again like our process in this. So every Sunday we send out a newsletter and that will list everything that is releasing that week. And then our customers know that Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we've got new releases. Those will all be in the newsletter. But even if they don't get a newsletter, they know what days we release and we release at 9:30pm Eastern every night. It goes live on our website and they, they know that's when they have to be on and it's just because we have been consistent from the beginning. I think that's. And then there is a learning curve because it's not common to have that many new releases. Like we don't have like a season, we don't launch, you know, our spring at one point. And like we always have new stuff so it's just teaching them our rhythm. Basically.

You don't give yourself enough credit. So, so, so it's not just, it's not. She didn't just Send a newsletter out in the morning. Again, she outlined the entire plan. So there is a newsletter that goes out every Sunday morning and the work in advance of that is planned the prior week. It's assigned to staff members. Everybody knows what they're supposed to do. She has the final say the Saturday before to make sure everything's lined up the way it's supposed to be. But Sunday the newsletter goes out that tells people what is releasing.

And then I guess we do. You're right. We do Facebook posts also every morning and Those go at 7am and then we send out an email when it's live on, on the website. And then we also have a text service and they get a, they can sign up. We call it our live in five text. So five minutes before the launch, if they've signed up for our text alerts, they'll get a text with the link that says hey, this is going live. Shop here. So yes, you're right. There's more than just the newsletter. But so all of that goes into, into how they know what's launching when. But again those. We are very consistent. Like it's very. Unless there's like a glitch and like a text doesn't go out or we miss schedule something. But we schedule. I used to do this personally. We now we've delegated this to one of our staff members but she'll schedule out all of our posts for the week, all of our text messages, all of our emails. Those all get scheduled normally the Saturday before.

So yeah, I, I love all the nerdy process stuff. You guys are like speaking my love language right now. I just want to break it down. How many employees do you guys have? Like talk to me about the structure of your team because I seeing the.

Background of all of that, we are, we have scaled down so we've had as many as five of us working on the business and we have gotten it down. I, I give credit to Val and her ability to process it. We've gotten it down to us and one staff member that the productivity that this team member has, that's the other aspect is we, we got a, a software system on the back of Shopify that tells me how much stuff is packaged, how many pieces, how many, how many orders go out by by hour. We have increased productivity by around 375% in the last 12 months of our shipping team. It's not just us. The young lady who works for us, I would never give up for anything. But we are actually shipping more product than we have in Years past with less staff members. We ship out a few thousand pieces a month, a week, excuse me, on a pretty regular basis. And she's able to do that. In addition to about 90% of the stuff that Val used to do, Val has been able to step back and really step more into that visionary role and creative role, and that's where she spends the vast majority of her time now.

Well, and we just had a new baby a month ago, so I knew I needed to start handing off things before he was born. So that was kind of part of our. Because I did not want to give things up. There were certain things I did not want to give up, but with him coming, I knew that I was going to need to.

So necessity is the mother of all invention. Right. It forces you to have to set that down.

It's one of the areas that I. I think I press Val is, hey, you've got to delegate. You've got to elevate what you're working on. And she looks at me and just, you know, it's not. It's not in her nature. And the reason she's been successful with it goes back to before she delegates it out again. It's a written process that's developed. It's. It's step by step done. And then with the person that we're training, it's okay, watch me do it. Read along as we go. Watch me do it again. All right, you do it. I'm going to watch you. And then, hey, I'm going to leave you alone. Go try this for yourself for a little bit. Call me with questions. And then a circle back after the fact of you're doing great or you're not doing great, or here's some things to tweak and adjust. And, you know, my style is, I tell you, and you should just go do it. So you've got to have the two of us pushing me, pushing her to do it with her skill sets has allowed her to do things that, you know, nine months ago, nine months ago, she told me she would never hand off three things that we've handed off in the last few months. So it's just a testament to the stuff that she's able to accomplish through her processes. That is kind of annoying to me.

Oh, my gosh. I just want to be a fly on the wall. You guys are all shipping together. I just love it. Again, you're speaking my love language here. I heard many EOS tools come through, and we were talking about this before we started to record for you guys. Who are listening and just context for those of you who are listening. We've talked about EOS a lot in the Hub in the last year because it's a process our company's been implementing. And Ryan, I know you, you've been involved with EOS as well. So just help me understand how have you guys taken EOS and put it to work in your company? And then Val, of course I'm going to ask you the how, like how did you hand those things off? What did you hand off? Tell me more about your processes because I mean I deal with hundreds and thousands of burnt out boutique owners and wholesalers every day that want to hand things off but are scared to or don't know where to start.

So the probably the most condensed version of it was us taking a look at the bigger picture of what we were trying to accomplish and what our goals were, not only for the company, but individually and then taking that and bringing it back into more bite sized pieces in the US world referred to as rocks. So there are some items that we established as goals for a year out that we typically were not. Before we kind of started looking at the OS aspect. We really didn't look at your audit stuff. It's how do we survive today, how do I get through tomorrow? And no focus really ever placed on things for the future. So when I mentioned those items, you know, nine months ago, the Val said she was never get rid of. That was them. It's okay, we've got, you're going to have this baby. You cannot do these things. We can't wait until it gets to that point to consider it. Let's identify some smaller rocks along the way of how do we get you to that point? What, what is the first thing we can work away for you, for you to hand off, you know and I'm going to give the specific example example of your newsletter and, and, and flat lay photography.

Well because I was the first thing like I handed, I was making all like content creating and then I got comfortable saying okay, post this like in giving, you know, our team like okay, this is what you need to post. Do it this way. And then it was okay, you're, you're doing a great job with this. Why don't you try to create some content? And like we actually use the marketing bundle and I have her go through and like different questions and we, she just, we bought a copy, printed it and that's what she uses. But I, that was something I was not, I didn't want to give up at first. And then, like he said, my newsletter. So I had her. Then she was doing, like, the Facebook post and creating that content, but I still held on to the newsletter. I was like, well, I need to. I need to do that. And he did. He pushed me. He's like, no, I think she can do this. She's done great with all of these. So then, yes, she started doing the Sunday newsletter. Did a great job with that. And then the last thing I gave up was I was take. I have taken all of our flat lays from the beginning because I wanted them to look again, consistent. Like, I wanted to look that if you saw a picture, you knew it was ours. And that was. I was like, I will never give this up, because I don't think anyone else will do it. He's got a great mindset of if I don't give it up. Yes, they may not do it exactly to the T of how you would do it, but if they're doing it and it's satisfactory, you can then focus on these other things. And that was huge. Like, okay, it doesn't have to be. As long as it. It meets my qualifications. It. Maybe I would put a different color bow in the flatly, that doesn't matter. Let her do it so that I can focus on other things at our higher level. Yes, more difficult, more important. So he's great at pushing me because otherwise I would be the one stuck in the rut. Like, I can't give any of this up. Like, no one will do it as well as I do it, you know?

But in order to accomplish it, we couldn't sit here and say, all right, we're going to have a baby in nine months. You have to be done right. We had to go in and view it from that EOS mindset of what are we going to set up as these rocks for the next three months? And if we lay out the next nine months, can we get there? Can we accomplish it in smaller bites and pieces? I think the other aspect of EOS is that quarterly look back where we're taking at a more intentional time frame, quarterly, saying, what did we screw up so badly that we never want to screw up again? What did we get out of the park that we could have hit out of the park better? And spending some time to focus on that. I think lastly, was really establishing metrics that can be tracked that have value. So not just, hey, what are my sales? Great, we had a great month. What does that. You know, what does that actually mean? Does that really matter to us? Is that determining Whether we're successful or not. There's so many other metrics that I think really are better future indicators of how we're going to perform as opposed to just a backward look that we were able to sit down and identify several. And the first time we did it, we got so many wrong. It was laughable. But going through it a second and a third time and going through the iteration really has gotten to the point where we've got some, some metrics now that are a good indication both on our cost and our, on our future expectation of sales, which then feeds back into what we buy going forward.

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So this is a great, like, V and I relationship, visionary and integrator relationship. But I have to give you guys credit. Not only did you have a baby, you had a baby that went to the nicu. Yes, correct.

All of our go to the nicu. All of them do. This was our longest stint, though. How long were we there with K?

Thirteen days.

Thirteen days. Everybody's home.

Y.

And again, the business continued to run. And it was, it was, it was because of that work that the ground, groundwork that was laid.

We were offline, I mean, quite a bit. So he was like sleeping in the NICU with the baby. Like, he didn't leave. So did all the feedings, all of it. So we were very much like, it.

Will never be said. I did not change a diaper. I still have the diaper record going in this family. At least for a few more weeks, I think.

Oh, I love it, you guys. All right, so one more background question on that because we talked about the processes and just, you know, the ability to like, weed your way back and say no, but I think this is important. What is your, like, communication? Like the technology that you use for communication, organization and processes? Because it's one thing to say I'm going to document these processes or I'm going to train someone on how to do something, but what's the technology you also use to implement those things? We don't, we don't don't give yourself any credit.

Go ahead.

I, I mean basically I, we just, I have like an employee handbook. We use a Google Drive and as like things come up that we wanted to hand off or I would work through it, type it up and then have him work through it and then. But we don't really do any.

So we have a, we have. She, you're. I don't disagree completely. We have a Google Drive that has all the master documents in it. So they're segmented by the, the different kind of areas that it's being worked on. She is right. She does the initial read through on it. I do a walkthrough with it. All of those are printed out, put in an employee handbook. Each one has gone through with the employee as it's done. And then we actually have a feedback loop where we're coming back into those leave right now. It's annually to do a rewalk to make sure things change over the course of a year. So not anything crazy sophisticated, but it's available anywhere, any place, anytime because it's on our Google Drive and then there's hard copies available for the employees and we've instructed all of the employees that we've had, hey, if there's something in here that's incorrect, mark this piece of paper up and let us know because you're the one that's on the front line working on this. We know things change, let us know so that we can update it and make sure the next person that rolls in here is set to go. So not anything crazy, but I refer to it as it's still some controls in place that's better than nothing.

That's not sophisticated. Like we're not.

I'm glad that you answered the question that way honestly because what you just said is very simple, it's very manageable and I think people need to take away from what you just said this part. Yes, you have everything in Google Drive but the second step in the process, we call this in the Boutique of ttrr, train, test, review, repeat. And that's the part like anyone can create a Google Doc and put it in there, right? But if you don't TTRR and if you don't do your annual feedback loop, it's all for naught. It's just a document that's sitting on a shelf collecting dust. So what you demonstrated was doable. Anybody who's listening today can implement that same process and have it be effective. So I appreciate that. One other thing you guys had mentioned to me a while ago that was maybe challenging for you, but I think it's also challenging for a lot of listeners today is the ability to say no. And clearly in this process, you've had to say no to a lot of things to say yes to others. So how do you delineate what to say yes to, what to say no to, and what you're going to set, probably even as your next quarterly rocks based on what you say yes and no to?

This is not good for me because I am one that will say yes to everything. Really? Like, especially because our business model is different than, you know, others. We'll get. Customers will be like, hey, this is nice, but we'd really love if you would do X. But then if it doesn't match what we have set as our goals, objectives, we, as much as I don't like it, I have to say I'm sorry. You know, we, we have considered that, but that we're not able to accommodate that is not easy for me because I want to be like, yes, we can do that. We can do that. Like, but then we're losing sight of what our goals are, our business, our core business model. And we don't want. We can always improve, but we don't want to change our core business model. And we need to make sure that everything that we're doing is pointing back to that.

So the other aspect of it that really makes it easy to make decisions is not, hey, can you do this? Because a lot of times the answer is, yeah, we could do that. You've got the initial walkthrough of does it align with our business model? 100%. But we were, We've been able to nix. When Val and I came to the agreement because I'm the no, absolutely not person. But we came, you know, we talked through some things as a couple, and we said, listen, if we cannot say yes to something knowing that we are going to be able to consistently do that time and time again, the answer is no, or the answer is not right now. Hey, we'll consider that in the future. But we don't have the, the resources to do it. We don't have the processes to do it. You know, something as simple as we recently asked to provide a different type of photography for the retailers. We can do it. It really only takes 20 minutes, right, to do just that one little piece of it. But to have everything available ready every week, week after week, and then to have someone do it, we have none of those steps in place. So what happens is that, hey, that's not Something we can do right now. It actually goes on a hit list of stuff that people have asked for that we may want to do in the future. And then when we're looking at next quarter, next year, next month, whatever it is, can we start putting things in place that will allow us, in six months, nine months, 12 months to do what they asked us to do, but only if we can do it consistently. So that was able to nix a lot. If I can't. If I don't have a way to do it repeatedly and consistently right now, I can't do it right now. So that's kind of the second kind of lens that we look through when we answer that.

I love that. It's not. It's not no. It's just no right now. Like, I love the hit list idea that you can always come back to it later. I heard this analogy, actually, on a podcast this morning, and they were talking about the lady in the red dress analogy. You know, how in every, like, movie, the lady in the red dress walks into the bar and the man gets distracted and looks. And when he looks back, there's a gun in his face. And. And I think about that in business, like, every time we get distracted and we want to say yes to something and we lose sight of what we're actually supposed to be focused on, the gun pops in our face. So good for you guys for being able to have that discussion and stay married at the same time, working your way through that discussion. So there's a lot of listeners that are going to want to know, I'm sure, just as a married couple working together, what are your best tips or maybe what are some things to avoid when you're working with your spouse?

Definitely stay in your lane. I mean, we. It works for us because we are very opposite. Like, we have very different strengths and weaknesses. He actually, in his day job, they use a, Like, a personality test and. But it's tailored towards, like, working. It's not just like, I don't know. How would you say? Like, it's. I don't know.

How would you, Taylor? It's just the types of things that you like to work on. Yeah, you're good at that don't kind of burn you out. You know, you may be an individual who can be in front of people, but you don't love being in front of people. And if you're in front of people all day, every day, you're going to burn out quickly. It helps identify some of the things that you not necessarily are good at, but Enjoy doing.

And like, I like, I am a person that I like to work on one thing at one time and don't interrupt me or else I'll lose my place. And like, I cannot multitask. Like, I like to do something, start to finish, things like that. So he had me take it also. And it kind of helps us because I know what my. It, like, helped me know what my strengths and weaknesses are. Helped him know what my strengths and weaknesses are. So then when we react to things differently, we're like, okay, that makes sense. Like, that's how you operate. You know what I mean? So very much knowing how the other person functions. And then, like I said, we are very. Numbers give me a headache. So I let him. He does all the numbers. I get to do the creative side. So that's why I had told him. I didn't realize before we were doing this. I had my previous life before kids, I was working in a medical office as an office manager. I didn't realize, like, you could have a job and actually enjoy it. I hated me. I realized I hated managing people. But give me tasks to manage. I'm golden all day long. So things like that where, you know, we're very different. So I get to manage the tasks, he does the numbers, the operations things. And it just works that way for us. So, yeah.

And from my seat, if you look at it as a business, right. When you walk into any business, people have roles and responsibilities. And if the person that's in charge of accounting is trying to manage the, you know, the manufacturing line is probably not going to work out very well.

No.

And it's going to have a poor product in the day, and you're going to irritate people. We made some of those mistakes. I made some of the mistakes early on where I. I got in her lane. I. I got in her way. And Valerie, that's the other thing that, that we learned through marriage and through this is Valerie is more accommodating than I am. She will say yes to keep the peace. I will say no to argue because it's fun. So I had to learn. And there was. I mean, it was. So we made a decision. I made a decision to do something that was in her lane. She told me I was wrong. I said, I don't care. I'm doing this.

So I said, okay.

She said, okay. At the end of the day, when, when that decision came to fruition, I was the one sitting there going through hours and hours of work that I created for myself because I made this decision, and she sat on the couch and smiled. So there was a few of those, but we wound up actually identifying who is supposed to do what and who has the final say. Not to, to, to, to be a jerk about it, but there's things we don't agree on. And if, if we're just going to argue about who's got the, who can yell the loudest or who can, who can debate the best, you would win that. I would probably win every time. Again, I'm just more forceful. But that's not the best thing for the business. It's not the best thing for our marriage. It's not the best thing for our family. So we, One of the things we did is sat down and said, where. Where does your responsibility start and stop? Where does my responsibility start and stop? And is there some. Is there something that neither one of us are good at that we really need to collaborate on? And then we take each other's opinion, advice. I do ask. There's things that I ask about and there's things that I don't ask about. There's things that she asks about and she doesn't ask about. But at the end of the day, when the decision is made, the person who's responsible to make decision does. And it's the other person's responsibility to get on board and support that, just like any company. And that was really hard to take. A marriage that has the dynamics of a marriage and, you know, very different than walking to work at 8 o' clock in the morning and be able to say, you know, okay, fine, like, I'll, I'll let you make that decision. And I think the easy piece of it was she did a good job and made good decisions that made me feel stupid when I didn't or when I pushed against her. And that made me recognize, holy smokes, you don't know everything. You gotta, you gotta give a respect for that. And that was, for me, one of the hardest things. But now looking back, I was an idiot.

So Valerie's like, and I'm gonna just play that part of the podcast on repeat.

So it's, I mean, it is, it's, it's true. So I'll get off that, I'll get off that soapbox now.

So many admissions. This is so powerful. Are there rules that you've put into place in your home? Or like, we don't talk about work before or after this time, or no phones during this time, or how have you also managed, like work, family, marriage, and I hate the word balance, but I don't have another good word, but really trying to balance all of it.

We aren't that great.

No, we don't. I mean we. Every night we're talking about Wellington. I think like, no. So we are not. I'm probably more so I'll be like, okay, put your phone down for a little bit. But then there's times where he. I'm the one with my face in my phone. So we have not mastered that.

So. But we've done a few. So we are not good at it. We have identified a few areas. So. So Val will actually go out on retreats for designing. She's not allowed to really design on a day to day basis. We found that it's far more. She's a much happier person because she doesn't have that hanging overhead.

Yes.

All the time. So we'll take, whether it's a weekend or a few days throughout the week. And she'll go to a bed and breakfast. She'll. She'll go to a, a family cabin up north from, you know, somebody in our family that's got something that she can go stay at and she will just crank out X amount of designs. She'll have a target when she goes that she's going to try to get through. And that allowed her that. I think that was the first reclaiming of time.

Yes, that's true.

Was to go do that. Then when you come back, you can focus on being a mom. I'm terrible on my side. I, I come home from work and, and kind of start working again. So it's a great item to put on our task list for the next, next year to improve.

I, I see this going on an IDS list. I can see it already. All right, well, let's shift gears a little bit. You guys have been a part of Hubventory and one of our leading children's brands on Hubventory since the beginning. You're a part of Children's Fashion Week on Hubventory and you have an exclusive design. Tell everyone listening what else they can find from Wellington on Hubventory. And also the exclusive exclusive that you have for Kids Week.

Yeah. So the exclusive is going to be a Halloween coordinating set for boys and girls. It's called Me and My Boo. So it's a boys jogger set and a girl's pant set. So that'll be available. You can, we're gonna cut that to order. So that will be on there next week. And then we've got all of our inventory, our ready to ship inventory. On there also. So you can find all of that there.

Awesome. You guys are working with children's stores online, brick and mortar, every single day. So I have to ask this question as we're wrapping up our time here, but as you look across, like, all the children's stores that you guys work with that carry your products, is there anything that you see across the board that maybe some of your most successful customers have in common? I don't.

I think it's.

Consistency. I was gonna say, I think it's the ones that actually are using like with our social media. The ones that are using like our posts and posting something every day, therefore they're consistent on their social media. I think that would be. Do you disagree?

I think no. I think that's for sure. No, sorry, let me try again. I think that's for sure. 1. Whether it's ours or their own planning. But on the, on the back end, I also see you can tell the difference between the boutiques that plan and the boutiques that react. And the boutiques that react and they see something think is cute, so they grab, you know, two, three runs of it. We have a D stash page and, you know, I'll monitor that and go through it and you'll see that reactionary purchase. And while, hey, it's great, it's fantastic. You bought stuff from me. But at the end of the day, the boutique that's planning and says, hey, I know I need to get two Americana collections this year and I need, I need two runs. And if I sell through, maybe I'll go back and get something else, but that's my limit. That's what I'm going to get from, from wbc. Those are the boutiques that we, that we see that I have seen grow over the last 18 months. And I've seen those, the orders have increased. But you can tell it's just a little bit more intentional and you don't see that. That D stash a week or a month or two later. And I think that's one of the hardest things to do is to discipline yourself to actually plan. So I would throw that one out there.

What I. I would agree.

Those are both so good. And I, I echo that. And I don't think it even matters if your children's really, because I think that's the same across specialty beauty, apparel, lifestyle. That consistency in social media and planning and inventory and knowing your numbers are just critical. The interesting thing, and I'm curious your thoughts on this because, Valerie, I know you make your social Media posts available to your customers. I think somet children's stores feel like because I'm a kid store, I'm limited in my ability to be consistent on social because I feel like I need to have more kids in my marketing, when really, I don't even think that's the case. It's. There needs to be a figurehead of your brand. It's really you, the curator of your brand, that needs to be consistent in your marketing. And yes, kids are your models and they can be part of it, but you're not limited by that. It doesn't have to be kids, kids, kids every single day. It's you as the curator. What's your thoughts on that?

No, I would agree. Well, and we've even done that, like, with our, our customers because we are a small business too. Like, yes, we're selling children's clothing, but at the end of the day, like, it's still. It's us. Also, one thing we do every month, we go, we do a Facebook Live and just, we try to be very transparent. So we'll, we'll jump on a Facebook Live. It's always the second Tuesday of them. We say the first or second Tuesday of the month. Normally the second Tuesday. But we, that's another thing we like with the consistency theme. Like, they know when to expect that. And we will get on and if there's any changes coming, we show sneak peeks. We just did one last Tuesday. We talked about, like, the Hubventory exclusive, and then we'll open it up for questions. So then, yes, we're selling children's clothing, but then there's also that relationship between us and our customers, which I think is super important.

So I love that. Well, you guys have talked about so many valuable topics today. Thank you so much for spending your time. I have one final question before you both jump off. And I love this topic. We talk about this with all of our guests on the podcast because I just really believe our purpose for being here is not just to sell clothes. Right. It's not just to sell widgets. We have such a greater purpose on this earth. And as you think about the business that you guys are creating together and the lives that you're touching, I want you to fast forward with your kids 30 years from now, and you're sitting on a front porch and you're looking back at this whole journey that you've been on together, this wild ride, and you're talking to your grandkids about this journey. What's the thing that you really want them to remember most about the both of you and this life that you've lived together.

Good luck.

What do you think? I think for me, I don't even know that it'll be business oriented, it'll be family oriented. I want them to know, like, that I pointed them to the Lord that I was authentic. And I would love that they would look back at, like, our marriage as like, oh, that's what I want a good example of, like a partnership marriage, you know, not. Not like, oh, I don't want to get married ever, because this example, you know, So I think that's it for me.

I don't know.

I mean, the only thing I would add to it is, you know, we, we are. Our faith is very important to us. We're very active in our church and most important legacy I can leave to my kids is I, I would, I would love to see my kids and my grandkids actively living their faith out. And they have to make decisions and they're their own. They're their own people. But that's the legacy that I want to leave for the rest of the world. Yeah, I'd love WDC to be fantastic and grow to be something crazy, but at the end of the day, that's not the most important thing to us. So hopefully that answers your question.

I love it. Well done, guys. Thank you so much. It's so good to see you both and meet you. Both you guys are listening today. You can catch this podcast, of course, everywhere podcasts are at, but also the video version of this podcast on YouTube. Ryan, Valerie, again, thank you so much for your time today and thanks for being a part of our community at the Hub.

Thank you so much.

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