Small Business COVID-19 Updates, Tips & Strategies

Hey, welcome to the boutique hub, the connection point for the global boutique industry. And every tip a boutique owner, a retailer, and an e commerce store must know. I have lots of things to share this morning, lots of thoughts and ideas, but I also just wanted to use this time today to answer some of your questions. I don't want to be too flippant about the situation that we're all waking up with every day. I think we all would, like, long for two Mondays ago, right? The world is a new day today. And no matter what we do, as much as we want to, like, wake up and this all be a memory, kind of in the middle of the battle right now. And so I think part of the key to being in battle is being able to look at the soldier to your left and the soldier to your right and knowing that you're in this together and that you're going to forge forward together. And that's what we're going to do. So if you guys have questions today, I'm the soldier to your right, and I'm here to answer any questions I can. And if I can't answer it, I will find you a resource of somebody who can, because that's. That's our mission, is just to help you guys as much as we possibly can today and every single day. And I know that we are going to be stronger because of this. I think we all can agree we just have to get through the hard times first, right? So if you have questions again, drop them. I've got some comments pulled up over here on my laptop, and I will answer them as we go. But I just kind of wanted to share a couple of FAQs. That's kind of my purpose today of questions that I see happening again and again. And I wanted to give you some FAQs. In the meantime, I also want to hear from you. And I'm looking at Angela. I'm looking at your. Oh, so you're still there. My niece keeps trying to call my daughter. So Marissa, if you're watching, Kalissa keeps trying to call. And I had the phone on do not disturb, but apparently that's not working. Also, my kids are home. So if they, like, ramble in in the middle of this video, like, God bless, I'm gonna try not to yell at them because I think we've all been in the same boat if we have kids and we're trying to get things done at home. So before my phone fell off, I was asking you share something good. Angela shared something good. I appreciate that. I know there's good things to celebrate. And we're going to come back and we're going to talk more about that through the video. But let's start here. FAQs One question I'm seeing a lot is what should I do if I'm going online? What should I do with my shipping policy? Should I go with free shipping? And I want to drop this as a resounding yes. I think now is a great time to make sure that you have free shipping or I would caution you to say maybe like free shipping at least over 25. Usually I would say 50, 75 or 100. But I think this is an opportunity to lower that because I think we're in the game of like new customer acquisition and any type of sale is going to help at this point. So lowering that shipping policy is great. But I also want to encourage you to think about your IMU and adding some of that shipping cost in if you're new to going online and you aren't used to that process. So think about how can you recruit a little bit of that cost but also use that shipping policy to your advantage. I'd rather see stores give a little bit of savings there than run a big blanket, blanket sale and mark everything down completely. I think there's more harm done with that than there is with free shipping. So something to think about there. Another question I get a lot about is return policies. So shipping and return policies. I've seen some stores, I think out of fear, really like latch down the return policy. And I just want to encourage you to think about it this way before all this madness happened. You know, Zappos, I always use this example of this like free and open return policy they have and how studies show that less people use that return policy because it is so lenient. While now may not be the best time for that type of return policy, I want to encourage you just to have this conversation with your customers because they're going through this battle just like you are. A lot of them are. They're worried about their jobs and they're doing everything they can to save every day. And so, you know, buyer's remorse is a real thing. We've all been there. So I think still having a lenient return policy is okay. Maybe not cash back, maybe exchange only. Maybe you've lengthened the days a little bit because we all know that shipping has some delays right now. So lengthening that policy, I think is okay. But remember that your customers are humans too, and just to have that conversation with them, it's A great conversation to have. The other question I've gotten a lot, this is number three on my FAQ list, is about guilt. And holy Hannah, I know there's men watching. But for you ladies that are watching, guilt can be your nemesis. And I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I have been dealing with my own sack of issues when it comes to guilt. I think as a society, we see so much negativity in the world around us right now and so many people are hurting and we feel so bad about even selling products, right? I know a lot of you have said, I just feel bad about selling anything right now because I know my customers are scared and they're hurting. I guess the thing I would say to that is think that all of you have such an opportunity to be a light to your customers, right? You have an opportunity to give them a sense of like, normalcy in their day to day life. They're doing the best they can at home, they're figuring out how to homeschool their kids. They're doing all these things. And then you show up live and you're a ball of energy and you're sharing, you know, quarantine outfits 101 or closet clean out challenge 101, whatever it is, I think you have an opportunity to create a lot of really fun content that engages your customers and your customers can relate to. And yeah, I think customers are still buying. You know, there's a lot of people. Angela, I'm looking at your comment, but I've seen a lot of people in the last couple of days talk about how online sales are still really, really strong. Some people I know it's fallen off, other people are saying it's still strong. You may be somewhere in the middle, but I think you only sell what you show. And the biggest risk we run is when we let that guilt and when we get that, that taking advantage of us, that worry and that guilt, we slow down what we're doing, we slow down selling, we slow down showing product, we slow down showing up for our customers, and in turn, our business slows down. Now isn't the time to slow down, you guys. Now is the time to get more visible and more present than ever before for your customers. Whether you're selling or whether you're just showing up with content and just engaging and relating with them, now is the time to keep the foot on the gas. I shared this video the other day and I've been saying this over and over again, you guys, you cannot save a business and you cannot grow a business by cutting expenses. You absolutely can't. You can only do it by building revenue. And the only way to build revenue is to keep showing up in your business. So don't let the guilt and the fear get the best of you. Honestly, you keep showing up and being that sense of normalcy for your customers and just engage with them and help them feel beautiful even if they're working from home. You can take my tip if you want. This whole idea of you're more productive when you actually get dressed at home and share with your customers. Have them do a, you know, a selfie challenge of their quarantine outfits of the day. Don't let the fact that they can't go out be a reason to feel frumpy about themselves. Right? Give them something to look forward to and to get dressed up with every single day and keep showing up and selling in your business or customer. Customers want you to do that, right? Don't let the guilt get the best of you. E Commerce let's talk about this. I've had a lot of questions. I know a lot of you do online sales already, but some of you are a little bit newer to the process brick and mortar you maybe also had online, but you just really hadn't used your online a lot. So I want to give you just a couple of really quick tips on online selling. Thank you for the thumbs up and if you've got questions, drop them in the comments and I would go over as many and answers as I can to your questions. But when it comes to online selling, let me walk you through this. And actually it's funny, this is the module that we're on in Bootcamp this week. So those of you that are in Bootcamp, you're going to get a whole lot more on this topic, not just from me, but from our experts that are coming into Bootcamp as well. But your typical website homepage flow looks something like this. You've got your homepage hero and that's like the big image at the top. Or actually what's really popular in e commerce design now is more like the boxy layout and where there's like little boxes put together on the top of your page. That's your hero area and that is the first impression of your site, right? That's the immediate thing everyone sees and they ask themselves, is this store for me? Does this store know me? Do I like this store? Do I trust this store? Do I feel like this is my style? Right? That's first impressions. And that hero area is the place that we want to make sure we pay attention to every single week or every other week, updating it with new images, new words, new collections, whatever it is. But that's like the window to your storefront. That's the place where when people walk by, they go, oh, they do have something new. I am going to go into this store. Right. The Homepage Hero is the same thing that is the window into your store, and it should be updated and treated and merchandise, just like the window of your store. So as you go down from the Homepage Hero, now we're getting into three featured collections, and depending on the boxy layout of your theme, you might do more, you might do less. Featured collections, again, should be things that are just like merchandising your window, and they're constantly updated. So even though, you know, there's really no Easter mass to go to at this point that I know of, no Easter egg hunt or whatever, you know, the things that we're doing normally out in society, maybe your collections are athleisure. Maybe it's quarantine chic. Yeah. You know, like, make the most of it. Maybe it's denim, maybe it's staple capsule wardrobe, maybe it's closet staples. Just adjust to the times and create those collections to fit where your customer is right now and speak to what her needs are right now. And that's the thing that we should be doing throughout the entire year anyway, is speaking to our customer exactly where she is right now and filling her needs with those collections. After the collection, we drop into whatever our new arrivals are or our featured products are. And then after those featured products, which are usually dynamic, we drop into our first call to action. I want to invite you, I think this time of year, especially with what we're dealing with, to think about your call to action. In this way, your sense of community matters more than anything. So if you can get people to join you in your community, I think calling to action to join your VIP group is really important. But also adding, like, an about you section on your homepage, which normally is on an about page somewhere else on the site, I think now is the time to add that in there. People want to know they're doing business with people. They want to know they're doing business with small businesses. I think that what this entire experience is going to cause is one of the greatest comeback stories of our history. For small businesses, like Small Business Saturday ain't got nothing on when they lift quarantine for everyone. When life can go back to normal, like small Business Saturday has nothing on what is going to happen. I think people who we're doing business with, Chinese knockoff sites and Amazon and all these other places are now coming to realize I'm going to support a small business. So I just want you guys to be ready for that. So share your story, build your community. Put that in your call to action on the homepage of your website. Connect with people now more than ever because they're looking for you and they're going to continue to support you throughout this entire process. All right, last piece of a homepage essential. Down at the bottom is your Instagram feed. Make sure it's there. Be there or be square. And then in your footer. And there's a number of things that should be in your footer, including your shipping and return policy, info about gift cards, call to action to join your Facebook groups, your socials. I've been on so many websites lately, you guys that don't have their socials listed. Like, I think it's just an oversight. I'm not sure what's up, but make sure those are listed there. Your about page, your sizing chart, any information you have about, like, giveaways or promotions that you're running, that's another good place to put it. And then those of you with storefronts that should definitely be in the footer of your site as well. Information about your storefront, even if your storefront is obviously closed at the moment. But just a little something to think about when it comes to homepage layout for your website. I guess the other thing I want to mention that I think is something that's missed from brick and mortars just spit on the table in front of me. The other thing that's often missed by brick and mortars that are going online is they aren't sure how to sell or how to train their customers to go online. And the thing is this, make sure you're selling the exact URL or you're posting the exact URL of the product on your website. It's too easy to go, hey, go find this on myboutique.com which, if you think about how many clicks it takes to get there, you're like, okay, I go to myboutique.com and then I'm searching the new arrivals, or I'm searching the tops and I'm scrolling to page two, and then I'm gonna find the product and click on it. And then I'm gonna add it to the cart and pretty soon I'm six clicks deep. And now I've gotten distracted by my kid who just ran into the room. Right, so the exact URL of the product that you're selling goes in every single social media post. Make it clear and easy and allow them to shop with one single click as often as you possibly can. That's going to make it really easy for them to shop with you. But those of you, again, who are new to online selling, it's just all about training your customers. Just showing up consistently, consistently and training them of how your business operates. All right, let's switch gears a little bit. My next frequently asked question after E commerce is about live selling. And I know lots of you who were intimidated, I'll say, by showing up live before have taken this challenge head on and the results have been awesome. You guys. To see your posts inside of the Boutique Hub group has been so cool because so many of you are like, dude, I just showed up and like I sold 400 bucks or I sold 4,000 bucks. They're like, look at what happened. You know, my customers were so excited to see me live. So please take that, you guys as an indication that it's an opportunity for you to show up and go live right now. I know there's. I'm going to tell you about something that we're doing inside of the hub in just a minute. If you're not familiar with going live and we're going to help you with that. But I know Comments Sold. I just saw this post this morning. Morning that they're doing two webinars a week helping train people on how to go live and how to use comments sold. But you guys, if you aren't there yet and you're not using comments sold, that's okay. Start wherever you are. Just go live. And if you have to invoice people the old fashioned way with PayPal for now, do it right. Just show up, go live, get the hang of it, get consistent. People are going to be there and your viewers are going to grow every single time you do it. Just relax and be yourself and have fun. That is the best advice I think anyone could ever give you is just to do it and have fun doing it and your customers are going to be there to support you. PayPal invoice them. And when you're ready to take that weight off your shoulders again, I know Common Sold is doing a ton of training on live selling as well and we're going to have some experts inside of the boutique hub sharing their own live selling tips. Also, next frequently asked question I get is about Content. Oh man. And right now I think content is so important. How many of you guys let me know if you in the comments have played Quarantine bingo yet? Who's played Quarantine bingo with your groups yet? Shannon, Inside of the Hub, our social media manager created quarantine bingo for you guys. But then she also created a customer facing version that you guys are welcome to copy and use. But it's so much fun because you guys, we all can relate on so many issues right now. Letting your eyebrow hairs grow out, not putting on makeup, yelling at your kids, trying to figure out how to homeschool, figuring out how to cook. Again, like all the things so show up because money follows eyeballs, right? The more you are present and engaged and just relating with your audience, when you have an opportunity to sell something, your customers are going to be there with you, ready to buy it. But if you aren't engaging them, they're gonna go somewhere else. To somebody who is like I said earlier about the whole like guilt thing is it's so easy to feel guilty about just like showing up and even smiling or having a good attitude. But you guys, the only way to get through this is to share a whole lot more light in the world than darkness. You know, the only thing, what is the saying about how darkness can't extinguish the light, right? It can't. Light is always stronger than the dark. So the more you can show up and be positive and be a light for your people, the better off you're going to be. Your morale is going to be, your community's morale is going to be, your team is going to be and your business is going to be in the long run. So you got to keep finding reasons to show up and find something positive to show up with. And that doesn't mean you have to be Pollyanna. And this can't suck for a while because it will, right? But you've got to look for the good even with the bad. Next frequently asked question I get actually is kind of going back to shipping policies and that is that because shipping is delayed. Someone was just posting the other day about Amazon prime being like two and a half weeks out or something crazy like that. I would say just be real with your customers about what your shipping times are right now. Just keep as much open, clear communication as you can can about the situations with pickups and drop offs and, you know, not wanting to venture into the public as much as you have to go to the post office. All those things, just be real with your customers. All right, next frequently asked question. And I posted about this, I think yesterday or the day before is about masks. I know a lot of you are taking this opportunity, and thank you for doing this, to find ways to give back to your community. I've seen so many of you guys helping do food drives and clothing drives and mask drives and whatever you can do to try to find support for your community. I think the opportunity we have because we're in the fashion industry is there was, like, hundreds of comments on this post yesterday about people who are in our community who are manufacturing masks right now, and they're doing as much as they can for all of their local hospitals and any hospitals or nursing homes that are on the list. I would love to see a way. And our team is working on this right now, where our community continues to come together. And we have, like, a master list in the hub where you guys can post all of your information where people can come and, like, find how to help one another in this time of crisis, where maybe you don't have an opportunity to sew, but you have a hospital that's in need, and you bring it to this list. And those of you, so many of you, Valerie, so many of you are sewing, and you can put your information there to help connect people in the hub or. Or connect with all these other Facebook groups that have popped up to help people find masks. I think that's a huge opportunity. But no matter what, I think there's so many ways that we can help others who are struggling with this process right now. So I think that's gonna be a unique conversation for each one of you and for your team and for your family. But we're gonna try to find as many as we can in the hub and keep bringing them back to you. All right, what other questions you guys have? For me, those were a lot of the frequently asked questions I've been getting. What is quarantine Bingo? Quarantine Bingo is Shannon's in the comments. Shannon can drop this for you, Michelle, but it's a. It's a bingo card with, like, all the things that you've probably done so far in quarantine, like wear sweatpants, not shave your legs, like overeat in Oreos and wine. All the. All the things. Try to find a mask or make a homemade mask, but it's just a way to engage with your customers on the things that you're all going through together. And. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. So many of you are saying that you did live sales, and they have been Going well the last couple of nights. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So any other questions you guys have, drop them in the comments. But I want to link to you when I'm off this video. I'll link all of these into the comments. But we have a whole bunch of resources that we've created for you guys, both members and non members. And actually later today we're trying to create something. I'm gonna pull this up in my email because I made myself some notes on this. But we're trying to create like a Coronavirus retail resource center for those of you who are not members of the Hub. We have two podcasts and I'll have another podcast out tomorrow on ideas for you on what to do, how to move forward, how to cut expenses in your business, all those things. We also have some blogs, we have partner resources from Whiz Bang from Management One, who is doing an awesome webinar series from the National Retail Federation. All those things and we're going to keep sharing them. We're also in the process of creating an industry wide job board because I bet in the last day I've had 15 messages from people saying I'm out of job, I have to lay someone off, they're looking for a job. Or I've also had messages from people saying I'm looking to hire. I need virtual help. I need someone to help me with my website. I need someone to do X, Y and Z from home. So we're creating a virtual job board for free that you guys can all use as well. Inside of the Hub for members, we have kind of our own Coronavirus Retail Resource center. And I want to list off those things for you now. And I'm going to link them all in the comments of this video and in the description of this video. Number one, there is a brand new module in the training library and it's called COVID 19 Coronavirus Resources. Inside of it there's hundreds of ideas, probably 10 pages of ideas. The last one I uploaded the other day was about again, how to cut expenses and how to build more revenue in your business. Things that you can be doing right now. We have a ton more of those things planned and those are going to continue to go in that brand new module inside of the training library. The other thing that I'm really excited to tell you guys about is we're launching a free for all of our members five week business bootcamp and that is that twice a week, every week for the next five weeks, on Tuesday morning at 10 and Friday morning at 10 Central Time. We have guests coming in to talk about the areas of your business that I think are most critical right now and that is SEO because it's free and you guys can do this. And it's simple. Jeff on our team is going to be doing his own mini bootcamp on SEO on, on E Commerce. I've got Angela coming in and I've got one other person that I've asked to come in on E Commerce to talk about both how to get set up if you're not set up already, but also how to optimize your site for more conversions. Live selling. I've got a couple of experts coming in on Live Selling to answer all of your questions, to give kind of walkthroughs and train you to make sure you're optimizing, you're doing live selling. I've got two experts coming in to do like business financials. So talking about where is your break even, what reports can you be running right now? How can you optimize and find your ideal percentages of your expense categories, all the ways we can dig into your business there and then the fifth piece of content is all about social media. It's about engaging. It's about how to maximize Pinterest right now where we really should be spending our time and effort creating engaging content. So, so that's free for all of our members. 5 week business bootcamp that we're gonna be launching. The other things I wanna mention for Hub members right now too is all of our products, anything that we sell, courses, the boutique boss planner, everything we have is going on significant discount. So if that's something you've been wanting to do, we wanna make it available as affordable as possible for everyone. We have a brand new social media engagement library which I'm super pumped about. Shannon has been busting her butt creating all kinds of graphics, just like Quarantine Bingo and a million other ideas that she's been dropping into this. So it's a Google Doc or I'm sorry, it's a Google Drive folder and it's inside the training library and all of our members, you're welcome to go there, it's for free, go use the graphics, create more engaging content. It's all yours. We did. We've been working for several months on an affiliate program. Actually rolled it out about three weeks ago to a couple people to test it out out. And although we feel like we didn't really get all the kinks out of it yet, we're making it available now because if that's A way if you guys are sharing the hub with other people and you want to get cash back for it, we figured it's just one more tool in your toolbox. If that's not for you, that's okay. You don't need to share the hub with anyone. But we're going to be here every single day for our members, no matter what, creating new ideas, new resources, and building whatever we can for your business to sustain during this time. We're also working with all of our wholesalers on something called a virtual market pop up. I know a lot of you are looking for more products right now to share. So Ed has been managing the brands and vendors group and we've got a whole new like product project for free that we're working on just to try to connect you guys with the retailers and the wholesalers that have the products that you need to bring into your business right now. So there's going to be a virtual market pop up coming. Or those of you who are looking for LA brands that are still shipping from home, they can come in and do videos and show you what they have and you can still pick up some product. The masks, I talked about that just a little bit. We're going to continue to build a place where you guys can connect with one another to find masks. And then also I want to mention our discounts page for those of you guys who are members. Our discounts page had about 50 discounts on it before. But Sarah's been working really hard to reach out to everybody that we partner with to say, hey, what else can you provide? Is there any other perk or discount you want to add to this for hub members? And there's been so many people who have come through and added to this. I know Jackie Holmes has offered her services for free. There's no like monthly fee, you just pay commissions on whatever she can find for you. In la, which now is virtual, right? There's a number of people that do E commerce setup that have waived their fees to just help you guys get online. A number of other people have added perks and discounts to that. So we're going to keep rolling those out as much as we can to help save you guys some money in this process as well. So that was kind of a bucket load of things. I'm going to put it all in the description. But if you guys, if you think of anything that you need, if you think of anything that would be helpful, a tool, a tip, a strategy, a how to, whatever it is, a resource, a connection that we can provide. We're going to provide it, right. Going to be here every single day. Our team has nothing else to do except work on this project. Right. To help you guys get through this time. And what I want to mention to that is, you know, at the hub, we have a team. There's 15 of us. And you guys are small businesses. And we're a small business with you. We're a family owned business just like you guys. And just like you guys are struggling through this time, wanting to make sure you're running lean and you're being smart and you're protecting the people that you love, we're trying to do the same thing. Our team is our family, mine and Eric's. And we're doing everything we can to support our team because we love them. And our team is bending over backwards to create anything and everything that they can for you guys. This isn't an easy road for anyone. And I think that as we go through this process, we're going to find that, you know, tensions get high for people and, you know, people react to stress differently. Some people don't react to it well at all. You know, it becomes negative. But no matter what happens, I think that there's always going to be light to found. To be found. Just like I told you earlier, we're going to keep showing up, we're going to do our thing every day. We're going to protect our team, we're going to protect you because you guys are a part of our team as well. And we are in this together. And we are going to come out of this stronger than ever before. I encourage you guys to keep looking for the good every day and keep sharing that good every day. And don't let this stress and the tension and the negativity that you find from others pull you down because it's not worth it. There's too much good, there's too many things to celebrate in this world to get lost in that. The other thing I want to mention is tomorrow you're going to hear from me about something that I'm. I want to celebrate with you. Something that we found out about about a week ago that should be something to celebrate, but honestly has caused me more sleepless nights than I can even shake a stage stick at. Because, you know, going back to this idea of feeling guilty for being happy about something that's really eaten at me, but I'm going to share this with you tomorrow and I think it's going to give all of us something to think about and something to reflect on and something to be happy about because it's something that we all accomplished together. And I look forward to sharing that message with you. And I just want to tell you guys, I just want to thank you. I just want to thank you for showing up today. I want to thank you for those of you who are part of our family, who are members of the hub, who continue to support one another every day. To see the way that you guys have shown up to support one another, to share positivity, to share ideas, to share feedback, to collaborate, to do giveaways, to do all the things that you guys have been doing I think is really remarkable. And it gives me so much hope about the human spirit. You know, I said this yesterday on my Insta stories. The reason that the human race is to still here and the dinosaurs are extinct, right? No other, no other animal species can do what the humans do is because we have the power to do this one thing that no one else can do. And that's adapt. Right? Humans grew thumbs. Think about that, right? We grew thumbs back from cavemen days. We have thumbs. We adapted and we will continue to adapt. Let those eyebrows grow out and get bushy, right? Adapt your daily routine. Adapt how you're going to operate your business and find some normal in the new normal and know that it's all going to be good in the end. You guys, if I can answer any questions, I'll come back in the comments. Feel free to shoot me a message anytime. We will be kicking off our five week business bootcamp tomorrow morning with my friend Christine Gray at 10am digging into the numbers in your business and we will be here every single step of the way with you. You. So peace, love thinking of you guys and saying a big prayer for our world appreciation guys. Leave a comment below if you loved this video and make sure to subscribe to our channel if you want to connect with us anytime. It's Boutique of Business on the Gram or the boutiquehub. Com.