Revolutionizing the Boutique Game with Jeff Fenn

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. This week I have a special guest in the house. Some of you may know him as terrible Steve Jobs impersonator.

Maybe that was the best I could do. That was the best I could do.

For those of you who attended the Boutique Summit or you watched the replay of the Boutique Summit, I have had more people comment, Jeff, that have said, I didn't know who you were for a minute. Like, they didn't know who you were and they didn't know who I was. When we came out dressed like Steve Jobs, it was a bit of a moment. Would you agree?

Yeah, Yeah. I think it was mostly because the glasses that you ordered last minute were squeezing my brain.

I did. I ordered these glasses that were supposed to be good Steve Jobs glasses, but they made you look like Harry Potter. Maybe Where's Waldo?

Yeah, yeah, they were. There's a difference between Harry Potter glasses and Steve Jobs glasses. I don't know that anybody else has quite analyzed it as much as I have, but there's certainly a difference.

Definitely a difference. Well, those of you who are at Summit, Oregon caught the replay or who are active members inside the Hub, you know that we've been working on something for a long time. So today I'm really excited to have you on, Jeff, just to talk about this new dashboard project, everything that's rolled out at the Boutique Hub, and something that I'm so proud of that we're celebrating this year is our 10 year anniversary in business. And there's no better way to launch a 10 year anniversary than to completely basically, like burn your whole, like, membership down and rebuild it from the start and give everyone a fresh, fresh set of tools, a fresh new dashboard to launch something totally new. So do you want to give me the backstory of kind of your process with the dashboard, the feedback that we heard from members and what got you going down this new rabbit hole for us?

Yeah. So, you know, at the end of last year, last November and December, we started to ask some pretty major questions about the usability and if people were being, you know, being able to like, get enough out of our membership dashboard. And so we sent out a survey. We sent out a survey last December, I think it may have been November, but whatever. And so we sent out a survey and we kind of thought, oh yeah, you know, we'll get some good feedback and you know, our members will let us know, you know, what we can improve. But it turned out to be like this waterfall, this like fire hose of like, oh man, we've got some work to do. And so, you know, some of the most common issues that we found, you know, that we heard back, was people had a, people had a hard time finding things and they just couldn't figure out where the tools they needed were fast enough to be able to not only find them, but implement them into their business in a, in an efficient and meaningful way. And so we kind of came together and after you read four or five hundred comments like that, like, if it doesn't spur you into action, something's wrong with you. And so like we jumped into action and you know, like, there was a good month of non stop, what are we going to do? Meetings. And so we, you know, we met with the marketing team and we met with the content team and we met with the executive team and the development team and we, and we started to line out solutions and we, you know, we said, you know, if we were to prioritize these things, what, you know, what things do we need to prioritize? You know, what do we need to make available to our members to make their lives easier so that they can jump into the boutique, use the tools and the education that we have in a quick, efficient way so that they can, you know, so that they can, they can take one step a day in, in 20 minutes or 15 minutes and then not be exhausted the next day to take the next step. And so that's, that's, that's kind of how we set out. We thought originally, oh, you know, maybe we'll, you know, maybe we'll move this stuff to Kajabi. Maybe we'll find a platform that'll work. And then we had the opportunity to actually team up with Kajabi, just, just by happenstance, actually, the CEO of Kajabi, we were on a call with him and he said, hey Jeff, how would you like to join my mastermind? And of course, you know, like, I completely fangirled for like 14 minutes or something and then like jumped in and then jumped in and it's been really, really rewarding and it's opened up all these opportunities, all these opportunities not only for us, but for the Boutique Hub owner as a whole, we've been able to create an all new dashboard that's searchable and the entire training libra flows into one menu and we're able to feature all the different tools and all the different events, you know, that are going on at the boutique hub. And one of the coolest things that came out of it was the ability for us to implement these, these website audits and these boutique owner website audits into that dashboard. I don't know how many of you guys were part of our RBC Retail Bootcamp last year, but we offered this service like I had this hair brain idea, I was like, oh yeah, as part of rbc, I'll perform these website audits and thought oh you know, 150 people will request them or whatever, it won't be any big deal. Well, it turns out 1100 of you requested them. And so like it was, it was overwhelming at first and but it also limited like how deep we could go, you know, so like it limited how, how deep we could dive into your business, like how many things we could actually handle and how much stuff I could actually give advice on. And so one of the things we set out with on this new dashboard was how to make that available to everyone and to be able to give you access to the same recommendations I would give a, you know, individual client, an individual marketing consult client. And so we did that. So we teamed up with a couple huge data banks here in the United States and we were able to not only develop those tools to where you can analyze your website across several different verticals at once, but then you can also take those, take those recommendations and those, those metrics and, and jump in and, and, and implement these bite sized lessons one day at a time.

It's so good and I'm excited for. We're going to share screens here in just a minute. So those of you who are not just listening on audio version of the podcast, but are catching this on YouTube, you're going to get a little sneak peek of exactly what Jeff's talking about. But before we get there, I just want to pause and mention this. So one of the first things we do inside of Retail Bootcamp is we encourage every single store owner to run a. And that can be a really intimidating thing. And just like you said for us, it set our hair on fire because the comments were like, oh my gosh, we've got so many things we want to fix and improve on. So I just want to encourage you if you're listening, get feedback. Even though it feels heavy and it's really intimidating and scary, don't take it personal. It's not about you. It's never about you. It's always about your customer and your customer's experience. And if you lean into that, some really cool, amazing things can happen. And Jeff, I mean, you're, you're evidence of that. Like what happened when you started to build, build and tinker and all of a sudden Kajabi caught wind of what we were working on and they came in full force and invited, you know, CEO invited you into the Mastermind and the connections and opportunities we've had since, I'm so proud of that because you've been able to now take all of that back and put it in front of thousands and thousands of retailers in a way that's going to change their business and can change their life. So one little piece of constructive criticism, one piece of feedback can be the catalyst that changes everything. So if you're listening, just remember to lean into that opportunity and never take it personal. So, Jeff, I want to get into these audits and before you share your screen, talk to me a little bit about SEO, because these audits, what's available to members, and of course there's a lot more data that we're going to be able to give to people through Boutique Hub Black, and we'll talk about that as well. But these audits and what people have access to right now is very SEO focused because we feel like so many people are intimidated by SEO. They have no idea what is important and how powerful organic traffic through SEO can really be. So can you just give me like a couple high points and walk me through why that's so important and where to start tracking SEO and how these metrics are going to lead people down that correct path?

Yeah, so it wasn't necessarily intimidation. Like, we didn't start with SEO because people are intimidated by it. Not necessarily. But when we were, when I was, when I was performing all of those audits last year, there was one thing that really stood out amongst the consistently growing, consistently scaling, stable boutique businesses. And it was the, those companies that didn't worry about the economy. The, the, the companies that didn't feel like they needed to go live six times a day. The companies that didn't jump in bed with some crazy ad agency. I mean, well, whatever. And so like the. But like, you know, like what? So like those companies, the companies that weren't like, squirreling all the time and like, you know, coming up, you know, you know, with these crazy marketing ploys. The companies that were really stable were the ones that had really put effort into. Really put effort into their SEO. And they had a. They had a robust backlink strategy, and their page loaded well, and they had a. They had a really great keyword database and just these core metrics. And then I also had, like, kind of a personal relationship with trying to coach this. And so I knew that it was a difficult thing to coach because I would jump on lives with members of the boutique hub, and I would get, you know, 35 seconds into this conversation and everybody start puking all over their desk because they were just. They were just nauseous from the conversation. And so, like. So, like, we had to find a way to break down this kind of technical component into these simple things. And that, you know, that's what. That's what you're talking about is, you know, people get intimidated by the technicality of SEO. And so that's. We thought that if, you know, if we could assign personalized data with personalized recommendations and then tie those back to recorded trainings, people would be able to take it one bite at a time. And so far, they have. We launched this just to put some perspective on it. We launched this at Summit a week and a half ago. We hit 5,800 audits last night. And so it's really pretty. Pretty awesome and massive.

It's awesome and massive. Why don't you go ahead and share your screen? And as you're doing that, I just want to kind of give this lead in to those of you who cannot see the screen. I want you to know what you're going to be hearing about and what we're going to be looking at. And when you look at these SEO metrics that we're talking about that are most important, that you can get your arms wrapped around pretty quickly and then have personalized training that follows. We put everything on a grading scale. So already in the hub, if you're. You're talking about those 5,800 audits that have taken place, we've seen a lot of people come into the hub and they drop their grades. I think someone said to you, they're like, jeff, I haven't got an F since. What? I don't know. Had they ever even gotten an F? I don't think so, but they got an F in their backlink strategy, and that fueled that boutique owner to get busy and start making some changes. And that all came from this dashboard. So why don't you walk us through what we're looking at.

Okay, so this is the new dashboard, as you see, is a dynamic dashboard. So it will change the appearance a little bit as you come and go. And so we'll just start up at the top. And so this dashboard button here will always bring you back home. It'll always bring you back to this. This dashboard is housed inside of Kajabi. Many of you are familiar with Kajabi, and we host our courses and opt in things like that out of Kajabi. And so this. If you've bought any Kajabi courses or downloaded any products through Kajabi, they live in here. This categories tab here allows you kind of a kind of simplified version of the dashboard. It looks like this. I have this on the preview screen. I hope that doesn't end up being an issue. Can you see that Categories, or did it stay on the other screen? Okay, so the category screen looks like this and it just kind of simplifies it down. We know that there's a real need for simplification and people to be able to just see what they want and jump right in. So that's the purpose of this screen. When we come back here and you scroll down, there's a. There's a. All products group here that takes us. Takes you to all the products that are offered by the boutique hub. And then a search. A search bar so you can search. Well, I mean, you're not going to search for Chevy's or Lamborghinis in here, I don't think. But, but anyway, so you can search for Facebook ads or anything like that here, and it'll take you directly to that training. And so, like, for example, if you, if you search Facebook ads, it will. It'll take you directly to all of the trainings that are available through the, the. The dashboard here, which is really kind of a nice feature. When we go back, this thing's confusing me because the screen is. The screen stays on a different tab. Can you see the dashboard now?

I feel like it's delayed, so, no, it's still on the search page.

Okay. All right, that's what I thought. Okay, so if you go back to the dashboard here, that's. That's kind of the top. That's kind of the top here. This is your. This is your profile here. And then it'll track your overall progress through the dashboard up here in this progress bar. Now, if you're a new member to the hub, the only, the only module that will be opened up is this getting started module. You will have to Start there. There's some simple things you can take care of in here. Watch this welcome video and then download the getting started checklist. As you see these, these play signs are when there is a video. And then once you complete those modules, it checks it off for you. So you know what you've utilized and what you haven't. You jump into the. The new part, the my metric section. And these are all the audits that you can do on your own website and your own brand. And that's. We'll get into that in a second. And then from that point down, and then, then we have all the upcoming events. And so any of the upcoming events are listed here. From this point down is the training library. And at, you know, as you guys were used to it before, as you guys were used to it before, these are the things that were all, all throughout the training library. Business, foundations, products, inventory, team sales channels, content marketing, wholesale trainings, toolboxes, service providers, and discounts. And so everything that you would have found in the training library is all housed right here in this kind of dynamic menu. And so each of these lessons are organized like this. And then you can see which ones are videos, which ones are articles, and then it'll check those things off for you as well. You go, one other cool thing in this is the one. One of your guys's favorite things is the engagement graphic library. And so in here, you can pull up whatever holiday you want or, you know, whatever event you want, and it, it will pull it up in a ready to use. I have a tendency to do Cinco de Mayo for some reason, I've noticed. So it'll pull it up in a ready to use library. And so on those days that you're just too busy to create a social post for Cinco de Mayo, and you think, man, I just need to get my social media done now. You can come right in here and you can say, okay, I want that post, I want this post, and I want this post. And you can put those right into your Facebook scheduler and, you know, put it in there, fill up the gap and move on. And so I think that tool turned out really cool.

Hey, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I wanted to give you something extra and a little special. Each Friday, I send out an email with my top tips for the week. It comes in the form of the latest on the podcast. What's new on the blog, and what do we see happening in our industry that maybe you want to be aware of too. It's called Free Friday. It's our free email list and I just want to invite you in case you aren't already there. Please check out the link in the show notes or head to the boutiquehub.com, scroll all the way down to the footer of the website and jump on our email list right there. I can't wait to see your inbox and you every single Friday on our email list. And I promise I will keep it juicy. No fluff allowed. We're here to grow your business. Let's go. It absolutely did. And that's always been a member favorite. You guys, those of you who are already part of the hub, I know you're using this on a weekly basis, but if you're not, I feel like, you know, not only is this engagement library housed right here in the dashboard, but every single Sunday in the hub we have our social Sunday post hosted by Shannon. And Shannon goes through a new social holiday or reason to build engagement this week and she does it again every single week. And then all those posts are dynamically loaded into the dashboard so that you can come back and pull them in anytime that you need to.

So the next thing up is this. Your metrics, your recommendations, your success section. These are the first four audits that we have implemented. We are working on a new one coming out in the next few days and that that one is going to feature duplicate content. So whether you're being penalized by Google for duplicate content and unfortunately in the boutique industry, that is the first trend we noticed after analyzing, you know, 5,800 different boutiques in the last week and a half was we noticed that you guys have a tendency of copying pasting product descriptions. And so and so that new filter will help you line that out and which products you are being penalized for. But let's give you an example here. This is an audit. And so once you put in your URL, it will analyze the SEO for your page. Now one recommendation that I've noticed on the audits that are being done so far is make sure that if you have, if you buy deep in something, if you're going all in on a collection, don't be scared to put your collection page in here. This is not for homepage only. And so you can put in your collection page here and audit that collection page. So don't be scared of that because we want to know that data too. And so anyways, just make sure you keep that in mind. But then so what this does is it'll give you an overall score on whatever page you enter there. It will tell you, you know, your page is good, bad, ugly, your buttons are ugly, whatever, it'll, whatever it's going to say here and then, and then it's going to give you a series of recommendations. So we have six recommendations for the Boutique Hub homepage and it breaks those recommendations down right here. So the one mistake that we're making at the Boutique Hub is that our meta descriptions are too long and we're being penalized for that. And so any medium priority or high priority, you are receiving a penalty from Google for medium and high priority items. And so one of the things we would want to do is go to our WordPress page, go through the meta description on this, on this page there's only one, and shorten it. And so we would go take care of that and then how this recommendation here is tied directly to a training right here. So right here you see how to write a perfect meta description. And so that is a training. These are all new trainings, by the way. I just loaded. But all of these trainings, you can jump right in here and then I'll, I'll walk you through how to write a perfect meta description. And we just click on this. And so this video here is a video on how to do it. And then I just, I kind of broke it down into steps. And so if you don't have time to watch the video or if you just want to know the steps and hand it off to your employee, have at it and you can just, you can just do it that way.

That's so helpful. And I just want to reiterate this. You guys can come back to the dashboard anytime and continue to test and watch those grades change and improve as you start to implement these trainings. And I think the cool part about the dynamic data that's included in here, so this data, when you enter your website, you're being measured against the boutique industry as a whole.

Whole.

So not just members of the hub, but as a whole what is happening and not outside the Boutique hub. Right. But just our industry. So it's going to give you a lot of like real world data. And the more we learn about what our members, what's working, what's not working for them, just like you demonstrated, we'll put in more training specific to the holes that we're starting to see across many of our members businesses.

Yeah, just, just to build out on that point a little bit more. When we say the boutique industry as a whole, we mean the boutique industry and home decor and home decor and gift. And so that it pulls those type of retailers into and it's testing. Even if you're just a brick and mortar store and all you use your website for is to tell your local customers how to get to your business. It's incorporating those too. And so it kind of, it's kind of the data that's in there is kind of universal. And so in the boutique and Home Depot core industry.

Yeah, great point. This is not just for E commerce stores or apparel stores, but it's meant to encompass everybody.

Yeah, one, one, one, one thing that came up at the summit was there were several brick and mortar stores there that said, well, Jeff, you know what, why is, why is, you know, why is SEO important? I'm just brick and mortar. I'm just a local brick and mortar. And one thing that, you know, it's a stat that's widely published, but 83% of all in person sales start on Google and if you don't pay attention to your, to your SEO, you won't show up on the Google Organic listing or the Google Map listing. And so it becomes really important for brick and mortar.

That's so good. You know, another thing I remember you breaking down during your talk at summit, not just talking about Google Maps, but Apple Maps and all the other versions that are, you know, that are out there and how we need to show up both as brick and mortar and E commerce. That's really, really good. Can you talk to me next, Jeff? And I don't know that you'll even need to share your screen. You can probably close that down, but this is just like one tiny piece of data that we can help you analyze and come back and make direct improvements in your business. I don't know how many other data points we can point to, but talk to me about what Boutique Hub Black is meant to be and how those additional data points are going to become available so you can see what else is happening in your business.

Right. So when we ventured down this rabbit hole, we kind of got like, you know, we kind of got talking to some very like forward thinking like developers and data collectors and things like that. And so it immediately made us realize that there was another level. Right. So there's all sorts of boutiques that are at the ground level that, you know, don't have a ton of time to invest in their SEO, can't quite afford an agency or don't want one and you know, they just want to get the, the ball rolling. And those metrics that we have inside the dashboard for the membership will handle that. It will get you in the air, right? It'll get, you know, it'll get you in the air. It'll get people finding, finding your, your boutique on the Internet. It'll get in. We're going to load, we're going to load social information on here. It'll get your social media up and running. It'll get you in the air. But for those that want to go to the moon, those that want to fricking go to the moon, Boutique Hub Blacks for those. And so Boutique Hub Black is where we jump in and the metrics just get bonkers. And so every metric that is measured in Google Analytics or G4, if you've converted every metric that's measured in your Facebook Insights, if you use Klaviyo, the metrics that are measured through Klaviyo, your email performance, all of those like deep rooted metrics are pulled into Boutique Black. And so what that does is it creates a group of boutique owners that are metric driven and they can analyze their metrics all the time. We're part of a business group called eos. I'm sure Ashley's talked about it, but they talk about if you were stuck on a tropical island, what metrics would you need to run your business from that tropical island without having to have a zoom with Jeff? Right? That's what they, that's like one of their core principles, I think. And so the, and so Boutique of Black actually does that. It develops this scoreboard for your business to where if you were on a tropical island, you could open your, your custom dashboard link from anywhere in the world. You don't even have to log on. You have your own personalized link that you can access anywhere in the world. And you know what your Facebook did that day, what your organic traffic was that, that day, what your Facebook ads did that day, what your emails did that day. And at a moment's notice, you can see exactly how your business is doing. You don't have to, you don't even have to put down your pina colada. You can just keep having a good time. And so like the, and so, you know, like, and so that's, that's kind of the core of Boutique Hub Black. And then there's one more step to it. So the metrics are more robust, the metrics go deeper. The metrics, they go into more of the aspects of your business. But then, but then the training's quite a bit different too. So it's live, live Training on whatever is most pressing that week. And so we will gather up that data for all the boutique owners. Like this dupe content issue that we just ran across last week, we will be able to bring that to Boutique Hub Black members and we'll be on live. You and I will be on live or whatever, whoever the guest expert is that live will be on live and we'll just handle that issue right then and there. I'll share my screen, I'll say, hey, this is my dummy Shopify account. This is how you fix it. Everybody who got an F this week, Sarah. The. She's the one that, she's the one that said, I've never gotten an F in my entire life. Harsh Jeff. But the, but so you know anybody that, that you know did not get a good grade or in Boutique Hub Black, the charting is a little bit different. So like it plots it out historically and if you're on a downward cycle more than you know, one or two or three weeks in a row, you better be bringing that up on the live training so we can solve it. And so that's kind of the structure.

You had me at Pina Colada.

Almost everybody sounds good.

Well, this is awesome. And I think that's really important to note what you just said. So the Boutique Hubs membership, I mean obviously it's a limited pool of data and trainings and it's real time. And Boutique Hublaque being historic and be able to chart out those trends, that's a huge advantage. Plus all the other data you're going to have access to. So to bring this full circle, here's what I just think is so cool. Jeff. So this all started by just asking what's working, what's not, how can we help? Like that's where this all came from with members and members being honest, like here's what we love, here's what we hate. And as we think about like what is our purpose at the Boutique Hub, like how do we really want to hold up our members? We always think the Boutique Hub is like this three legged stool that props up all of our members businesses and that comes from being the community that our members trust. It comes from providing the like latest strategy and education that our members need to grow and then providing the best, most curated and trusted wholesale brands that our members need to buy products from. But when I look at what's happening now and this journey we've been on, it's really a four legged stool at this point because the fourth leg that we've been able to pull in in the last several months is the data that we've never had access to before that can give you this real time insight that you literally cannot get anywhere else in the world, only through the Boutique Hub. So I just think this is so awesome. This is just the beginning of where we're going. And there's more tools being added to the hub every single week, including what's going to be coming with Boutique Hub Black. So from. From me and from everybody who's listening, I just want to thank you for sharing this today. Thanks for being on the show and thanks for your vision for bringing all this together. And I'm so excited to see where we're gonna go next. So thanks again, Jeff.

Me too. Me too. Let's go, y'.

All.

Let's go.

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